t an hour upwards of sixty
foresters collected together, and set off in pursuit of the waggon.
The magistrate followed on horseback, and at the Lea he came up with
the waggon, which he sent on, and ordered the cavalry to stop till
the approach of the mob. They soon made their appearance, and being
at first somewhat refractory, the ringleader was taken into custody;
when, after the most persuasive remonstrances of this very active
magistrate, and the patient forbearance of the soldiery, they were at
last prevailed upon to give up the desperate idea of rescuing the
grain, and returned peaceably to Ross."

A reputed highwayman, and noted deerstealer, named William Stallard,
living on the Upper Purlieu, above the Hawthorns, is stated to have been
the instigator of these outrages, and others of a similar kind on Mr.
Prince's flour-mill at Longhope. His lawless career, however, brought
him to the gallows at Gloucester for horse-stealing, at the age of forty,
on the 16th August, 1800, as appears by the records of that gaol. The
decline of the market in Mitcheldean is said to date from the above
disturbances, which naturally deterred the neighbouring farmers from
sending their grain thither for sale. {85}

Nor were the bread riots confined to the northern side of the Forest, as
upon "the evening of the same day, November 9th, many persons assembled
at Hanstell, in the parish of Awre, in this county, where a vessel
belonging to Eversham, and bound to Bristol with a cargo of pease, oil,
flour, leather, and wheat, was waiting for the tide. About twenty men
boarded her, examined the lading, and, upon discovering the flour, gave
loud huzzas, when the bank was instantly covered with their comrades, who
had many horses in waiting, with which they proceeded to carry off the
flour, though the trowmen (unable to defend the vessel, and menaced with
instant destruction) had offered to sell it to them at a reasonable
price. About 7 o'clock one of the trowmen contrived to slip ashore, ran
to Newnham, and sent off an express to Gloucester for immediate military
aid; but fortunately that assistance was nearer at hand. In consequence
of some apprehension of a disturbance at Mitcheldean, an officer, with a
serjeant and ten file of the Essex Fencibles Cavalry, had marched into
the place early in the morning, and upon the arrival of the express from
Newnham instantly set forth for the scene of depredation,