I have just finished reading this book. I have to say that it was one of the most difficult books I have ever read – not because of its difficulty, erudition or academic depth – but because of the sheer injustice of the period. It covers the Regency 1811 – 1820 and the appalling treatment of ordinary people by the wealthy and powerful. There are twenty three chapters that will make your blood boil. From the sinecures of church and state – paying friends up to £18,000 a year to do nothing, to the suspension by parliament of habeas corpus – putting protestors in jail without charge. And the newspapers of the time supported the aristos. Why on earth did we not have a bloody revolution such as the French did? 

I thought I knew how bad matters were for the poor agricultural labourers of MIlton Abbas because we have transcribed the Overseers of the Poor Books of this period, we know what they and their families were paid, and we have researched the Combination Acts of 1799 used to condemn our six Milton Abbas Martyrs in 1803 for trying to improve their conditions. But this was clearly a national problem and the state used fair means and foul to oppress its ordinary people by the privileged and wealthy few.