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hundred years, triumphing on the backs of gross poverty and misery at home. Millions would
toil in inhuman conditions so that Britannia could rule the waves and the nobility and the new
middle class, in town and country, could prosper and prevail.
Cobbett was one who bemoaned the rise of these socially callous profit-makers and takers. He
was disparaging about the difference 'between a
resident native gentry, attached to the soil, known to every farmer and labourer from their
childhood, frequently mixing with them in their pursuits... practising hospitality without
ceremony... and a gentry only now-and-then residing, having no relish for country delights,
looking to the soil only for its rents, unacquainted with its cultivators, despising them and their
pursuits.1
Wriiing in 1832, when he was 69, Cobbett recalled a time when 'there was scarcely a single
man to be found that had ever entertained the slightest thought of envying his richer neighbour,
or wishing to share in his property, or wishing to see all men pulled down to a level... I could
never gather from one single wording man... that he wished for any change other than that which
would leave him the enjoyment of the fair fruit of his earnings.'
Such was the background, to some degree, of William's early years in Calstock - a dozy,
ramshackle, rural place, peering out from the dense woods that walled the dark, winding, tidal
River Tamar, the parish comfortably supported and fed by its small sloping farms and strips of
land, by browsing cattle and scruffy sheep, by snorting pigs and squawking hens, by the labour
of some small copper mines and quarries, and by the seasonal produce of its market gardens
and orchards, the latter laden with black cherries, pears, apples and plums.
The untidy village of Calstock then lacked any gutters, sanitation or light; its awkward little
streets ran with filth and mud when it rained; by day it was lit by the sun, though seldom in
winter; by the moon and tallow candles at night. The greatest activity was on its riverside quays,
which were used for transporting goods and people, mainly in row-boats, to the markets
downstream at Plymouth and Devonport. Otherwise, it was an uphill slog, and then along and
down and up, by horse or on foot, to Liskeard; or across the slow river to Devon, via the
Gunnislake bridge.
The age of steam, of paddle-steamers and trains, was yet to come, to be heard and seen, as
well as the clamour and smoke of industrialisation. But by the time of the Battle of Waterloo, in
1815, the industrial heart of England was beginning to throb, The network of canals had been
largely completed by then, and main roads had begun to be surfaced by Messrs Telford and
McAdam. Steam-driven machines were already at work in northern mills and factories, making
textiles from cotton and wool; and the heavy industries of iron, coal and engineering, nurtured by
the Napoleonic Wars, would soon become the chief source of the nation's power and wealth.
Our little Cornish lad, William Honeycombe, was one-year-old when the Battle of the Nile was
fought. He was three when the parliamentary union of Britain and Ireland was effected in 1800.
The first practical steamship appeared on the River Clyde when he was five; the next year
Britain was again at war with France. War with Spain followed; Napoleon became Emperor;
and in October 1805, when William was eight, the Battle of Trafalgar was fought and Nelson
died. Austeriitz followed, and the death of Pitt. In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was disbanded
and Prussia overthrown; Britain was blockaded by the French; Portugal was occupied, and then
Spain in 1808. The Peninsular War was the
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