William Cobbett, best known today as the author of Rural Rides, was a towering figure in nineteenth-century British history.
A radical reformer and journalist, his Political Register and other writings gave a thunderous voice to the disenfranchised in the early 1800s. Yet, during his transformative 'middle years' in Hampshire, Cobbett's public crusade for reform was mirrored by a more private, bold quest for social prestige and financial autonomy.
Focusing on his time at Botley, historian David Chun provides a reconstruction of Cobbett's life as a landed gentleman. Through rigorous archival research and the first-ever cartographic identification of his estate's boundaries, Chun exposes the dubious financial foundations of Cobbett's landowning ambitions. In doing so he reveals a striking irony: despite Cobbett's fierce public objections to the escalating National Debt and the paper-money system, he himself borrowed extensively, exploiting the very credit system he despised. The narrative shows how a tightening grip of debt and government prosecution he spent two years in Newgate prison midway through this period took Cobbett from apparent affluence to insolvency and finally bankruptcy.
This is an in-depth study of a man whose struggle with money and land ownership provides a vital, human dimension to his political legacy.
