No.129
their own way. The power struggle
between the Warden and the prefects
culminated in the rebellion of 1793,
which took place two months after
the execution of the French king,
Louis XVI.
In March 1793, Huntingford learned
first-hand the dangers of mob-rule
and of the fragility of order. He saw
the Winchester College rebellion of
that year as a consequence of the
excess of liberty allowed to the boys
by Warton at school and by their
parents at home. He had to end
sovereignty of the boys and defend
the institution and its statutes. He
reasserted order in College with
the help of a deputation led by the
sheriff and magistrates, and with
the threat of intervention by the
Buckinghamshire militia. When it
was over, he expelled 35 Collegemen.
Old Wykehamist Church of Ireland
bishop, Christopher Butson, assured
Huntingford that ‘all your exertions
have been for the credit of the society,
& the Benefit of the Individual and
I assure everyone that has of late
years been acquainted with the state
of Discipline in that society, must
be ready to acknowledge that great
Exertions were necessary to recover
the wholesome tone of it.’
One must understand the rebellion
and Huntingford’s response to it in
the broader context of the French
Revolution and the Revolutionary
War, which Britain had entered in
February 1793. It occurred six months
after the September Massacres.
Like the storming of the Bastille,
these murders in the prisons of
Paris demonstrated to men like
Huntingford the importance of
defending existing institutions as
bulwarks against anarchy. They
could not allow an excess of liberty
in Britain; the people must never be
sovereign. When Huntingford heard
of how Parisian militants had invaded
the city’s prisons and murdered 1,200
prisoners, including non-juring priests
The Trusty Servant
and nobles, he reacted in horror.
‘The foulest pages of history scarcely
record similar instances of atrocity’,
he wrote to Addington. France was
‘seized with Infection’.
Huntingford blamed the disease
on ‘the total disregard of Religious
Principles’ in France. This was the
work of Enlightenment philosophers
such as ‘Voltaire, Rousseau, &
Hume’, who had ‘been blasting
mildews & baneful curses to the
happiness of society.’ Huntingford
saw the revolutionaries in France
as the ‘Disciples’ of these writers.
He hated particularly Voltaire’s
argument that certainty is absurd, and
that the people should doubt every
‘fact’ and challenge all authority.
The chaos across the Channel in
France confirmed ‘the wisdom of that
Legislator who made Religion the
Ground Work of his System.’ ‘The
Terror’ was the inevitable outcome
of Rousseau’s call for an alternative
society run, not by the monarchy,
aristocracy, and the Church, but by
citizens prescribing law for the general
will.
Armed with swords, guns, and clubs,
the rebel Wykehamists mounted
the red cap of liberty, barricaded
College, and threatened to burn it
to the ground. Outside on College
Street, a huge crowd gathered in
support of the boys. The ‘infernal
spirit of resistance to all authority
is at the bottom [of it]’, Huntingford
explained to Addington. Echoing
the views of Parr, Huntingford
blamed the boys’ parents: ‘… the
most abandon’d Public Papers
have contributed Not a little to
the subversion of right judgement.
Yet these papers have been sent
by Parents, to their future sorrow!’
Butson agreed; the rebellion was the
result of ‘the general Relaxation of
the age, discoverable in the Houses
& modes of living of the Boys’
parents’, and of ‘the example of other
Schools’. The Warden of New College
7
sympathized with Huntingford and
was ‘happy to find that the School
has recovered its usual tranquillity,
& hope by the same Rules which
you have established you will again
enjoy peace & quiet.’ John M Rogers,
the rector at Berkley in Somerset,
assured his friend that he had ‘acted
with great temper & propriety in so
very extraordinary a business.’ He
informed Huntingford that one of
the rebellious prefects now expelled
had stopped by the house of a Mr
Grant. The boy told Grant that the
rebels ‘sh[oul]d have shed the last
drop of their Blood rather than have
submitted to such Tyranny as the
Warden’s.’
In 1818, three years after the final
defeat of Bonaparte at Waterloo, there
was another rebellion at Winchester
College. Huntingford calmed it by
promising that he would redress the
boys’ grievances if they dispersed.
He then had troops armed with
bayonets (supplied by Addington,
who was then Home Secretary)
escort the rebels back to College. He
supposedly remarked to one of the
boys, ‘Do you know, Sir, that you are
assaulting a Peer of the Realm?’ It is
not clear whether he had stopped
regular Scrutinies by this point –
trying to ascertain the Wykehamists’
complaints and working to address
them. His respect for the established
order was certainly stronger than
his inclination to empathize with
those who did not share his regard
for it. Huntingford’s biographer,
Hilda Stowell, concludes that, by
1818, he was ‘an old man with an old
man’s hatred of things which upset
his well-ordered life and beliefs.’
However, again, one must place the
1818 rebellion within the broader
context. Between 1811 and 1818,
there were Luddite riots, republican
mass meetings and riots in London,
the March of the Blanketeers, and
an attempt by Derbyshire stocking-
makers and quarrymen to seize
Nottingham Castle. Huntingford