A collection of seven broadsides warning the inhabitants of Huddersfield in Yorkshire of the rising threat of revolution.

£8,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A remarkable collection of related - and almost entirely unrecorded - broadsides that illustrate the great paranoia and fear of revolution in the 1790’s in England following the Revolution in France, the publication of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man and the Revolutionary Wars in America. This group of broadsides are largely centred around the industrial market town of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire which was, like most of that part of the country, heavily involved in the textile industry. The first broadside here immediately highlights the fear of uprising and sedition in this period as a hasty meeting is called to discuss an “Incendiary Letter” sent to Rev. Mr. Coates. “being replete with insolent invective against the King, and unfounded aspersions and unmanly threats…” against a committee assembled to quell revolutionary fervour. The broadside printing of Justice William Henry Ashurst’s famous attack on the revolutionary sentiments enflamed by the upheaval in France must have served as a manifesto for the committee setup in Huddersfield to stamp out unrest. Ashurst states: “…for if every man were left to the free and uncontrouled impulse of his own mind, as in a state of Nature, no man could be secure of his person or property, and the weak would become a prey to the strong…“ The third broadside here is addressed from York in March 1793 to Sir Francis Buller reprinting Buller’s own defence of English laws and liberties and paints a similarly grim picture of a post-revolution

• Binding: Hardcover

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