Thirty-One Battles: Nathaniel Reading and the Long Reckoning
The Isle of Axholme, 1651–1719
By the summer of 1651 the Sandtoft settlement lay in ruins, the Participants’ tenants had fled, and the commoners of the Isle of Axholme held the land they believed had always been theirs. They had won, for now. What followed was not peace. It was six more decades of conflict.
The Restoration and Reading’s Return
The Interregnum years, the 1650s, brought relative quiet to the Isle. With the Participants unable to call upon military or legal support strong enough to dislodge the commoners from the 7,400 acres, and with Cromwell’s government preoccupied with larger concerns, the Epworth and Belton men largely held what they had taken. Daniel Noddel continued to act as the commoners’ solicitor, fighting a rearguard legal action through the Exchequer and managing the political relationships that kept the question alive in London. Thomas Vavasour, a gentleman of Belton and descendant of the original Mowbray treaty signatories, provided leadership at the local level.[1]
The Restoration of Charles II changed everything. In the autumn of 1660 the sheriff delivered possession of the 7,400 acres to the Participants, confirmed by an order of the House of Lords on 20 December. At once Nathaniel Reading entered the picture. Originally employed by the commoners as their counsel, Reading had changed sides, a defection the Islemen never forgot or forgave. He now worked for the Participants, with a large workforce and a remit to re-enclose the grounds.[2]
It did not go smoothly. In May 1661 commoners seized and detained livestock belonging to the Participants’ tenants. The Participants appealed to the Lords; a reaffirmation of the December order was read in Epworth parish church by John Amory, a French settler and the very man whose windmill had been demolished in 1651 and was snatched from his hands as he read it to the congregation after the service. Guards were mounted in each street in Sandtoft, armed with clubs and pitchforks. Sewer tax collectors were chased out of the Isle. When Reading himself read the Lords’ order to the assembled commoners of Epworth, they told him ‘they cared neither for the King, the Lords nor Laws, they would keep their ground in despite of them all.’[3]
Noddel acted for the commoners for the last time in May 1662, when he secured the release on bail of Thomas Vavasour and twelve others imprisoned by the Lords for contempt. Shortly afterwards, in a striking reversal, he accepted employment as steward of the manor of Epworth under the Crown lessee, Sir George Carteret. He died in April 1672, leaving a total estate of £41. His second son Joseph showed no interest whatever in his father’s cause. The man who had spent twenty-five years as the sharpest legal mind in the commoners’ service died almost destitute, and the family that might have carried on his work did not.[4]
The Battles of Nathaniel Reading
The task of restoring the Participants’ position now fell almost entirely on Reading. What followed was, by any reckoning, one of the most sustained campaigns of enforcement in seventeenth-century England. Reading himself described fighting thirty-one ‘set battles’ against the commoners, a figure that rises to thirty-four in his own memoir as quoted in the French Huguenot sources. The discrepancy may reflect different reckonings of what constituted a battle. Either number is remarkable.[5]
Reading impounded the commoners’ cattle at a pinfold in Hatfield. The commoners retrieved the animals by force, wounding the constable in the process. He sought the backing of Major General Whalley, who called both parties before him; he obtained deputations from the sheriffs of three counties; he paid twenty men twenty pounds a year to back him. He re-enclosed grounds; they pulled down the fences. He harvested their crops; they took his. He read orders in church; the congregation drowned him out.
In August 1661 Edmund Mawe and more than forty Epworth men rounded up over 150 head of cattle found grazing in the disputed grounds and impounded them. Thomas Vavasour, Richard Mawe, and Richard Kingman organised a levy of 3d a week per head of livestock from all Belton commoners, collected house by house, to pay each guard 12d a day. When the sheriff tried to disperse the guards at Michaelmas, a crowd of fifty to sixty men fell upon him and his men, seriously wounding a bailiff, and pursued them for a considerable distance.[6]
At the Lincoln assizes of summer 1666 the commoners finally obtained what they had been denied since 1636: a verdict on the question of title. The Mowbray deed, produced in support of an action brought by Vavasour against the leading Participant John Bradborne, was declared by the presiding judge to be a bar to any further improvement of the wastes of Epworth manor. After 1666 the Participants virtually surrendered all their grounds to the commoners, with one exception: the 2 acres at Sandtoft on which Nathaniel Reading’s own house stood, with its outhouses, garden and grounds. Reading refused to leave.[7]
Reading Against Everyone
What makes Reading’s career in the Isle so remarkable is that he eventually managed to quarrel not only with the commoners but with the Participants too. Around 1663 relations ruptured over his salary and expenses claims, and there were allegations that he had assisted the commoners in throwing down enclosures and helping himself to the harvest. In August 1668 twenty-five men, including John Bradborne, formerly a leading Participant, attacked Reading’s Sandtoft home, terrorised his family, and wrecked his outhouses. The men attacking him were a mix of commoners and former Participants, united only by their exasperation with him.[8]
In 1669 Reading declared that ‘the Curse of Egypt light upon the Commissioners and the Participants and the Devil take all the Tenants, if he lived two years longer, they had lost the Lincolnshire land and they should lose the Yorkshire land too.’ He meant it as a threat. His home was stormed by Bradborne and forty neighbours in January 1670. In March 1672 he was shot in the legs at Sandtoft by one of Bradborne’s servants.[9]
His career outside the Isle was no less turbulent. During the Popish Plot crisis of 1678–79, Reading was engaged as legal counsel to the Catholic lords imprisoned in the Tower and was subsequently found guilty of suborning witnesses on the other side. He was sentenced to the pillory, fined £1,000, and imprisoned for a year. Lindley notes that he was possibly a victim of perjury in this matter. Whatever the truth, it added another layer to a biography that already defied simple characterisation.[10]
The Ryther Years, 1681–1692
By 1681 Reading was at it again. He procured a writ of assistance out of the Exchequer nominally to protect his Sandtoft house from commoners who threatened to pull it down. Then he extended the writ to cover the whole 7,400 acres, attempting in effect to reverse the commoners’ gains of fifteen years. The deputy remembrancer, Toby Eden, produced a narrative of events in Epworth with a pronounced pro-drainer bias and the writ was officially extended. The commoners’ response was instant: they pulled up the fences, turned in cattle, and indicted Reading and his tenants at assizes and quarter sessions for encroaching upon their commons.[11]
The leading figure on the commoners’ side in this period was Robert Ryther, senior, gentleman of Belton, who had succeeded Vavasour as their principal champion. His wife, Sarah Reading, yes, Sarah Reading, joined the fray in May 1685 when she and two other wives pelted commoners with stones and set the dogs on them. The family dynamics of the Isle of Axholme dispute were complex. In July 1687 a crowd descended on Reading’s house, breaking windows and damaging the orchard; nearly half the thirty-four accused were women.[12]
The 1691 Decree and the Charge of Betrayal
By the late 1680s both sides were exhausted. In April 1688 the dispute was referred to arbitration; Sir Thomas Hussey and Sir Willoughby Hickman proposed an award giving the commoners 4,075 of the 7,400 acres. This was not accepted. A further hearing in the Exchequer in April 1691 produced new terms: the commoners of Epworth manor would receive 1,000 acres outright and the Misterton commoners 664 acres, with the remaining 5,736 acres divided equally between Participants and Epworth commoners, leaving the Participants with 2,868 acres but burdened with sole responsibility for maintaining the drainage works. The decree was entered on 14 May 1691.[13]
The commoners’ representatives in London had been Robert Ryther, Robert Coggan, John Maw, Robert Whiteley, and their solicitor John Pinder. Before departing for London, Pinder had been expressly forbidden by an Owston meeting of principal commoners from entering any accommodation with the Participants. He made one anyway. On their return to Epworth the representatives found ten to one of their neighbours implacably opposed to what had been agreed. John Maw later claimed to have been duped by Pinder. The accusations were specific: Pinder had allegedly received 1,000 guineas, Ryther had been granted 100 acres out of the Participants’ allotment, and Coggan 50 acres. Particular fury was directed at Ryther for supposedly revealing the commoners’ secrets to their enemies. An Exchequer Bill was exhibited in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the decree.[14]
There is a shadow falling across this Robert Coggan’s name. In 1628, a Robert Coggan had been shot dead by Vermuyden’s armed guard on the banks of a drain at Haxey. Whether the Robert Coggan accused of accepting fifty acres in 1691 was a descendant we cannot say with certainty. If he was, then the arc from the dead man in the ditch to the living man accused of betraying his neighbours for fifty acres is a peculiarly bitter one.
Catherine Popplewell and the Final Campaign
By the time Robert Ryther died in October 1693 he had lost the confidence of most Epworth commoners. Leadership passed to his son-in-law Robert Popplewell of Belton, and more conspicuously to his fourth daughter Catherine, Popplewell’s wife. Where Noddel had been the legal intelligence and Vavasour the gentleman champion, Catherine Popplewell was something else: the organiser of direct action, unabashed and persistent.[15]
The 1691 decree had satisfied almost nobody, and the violence that followed its publication demonstrated how little authority a distant court decree commanded in the Isle. Catherine Popplewell recruited crowds of Belton men, women, and children to make bonfires of newly erected fences and destroy the settlers’ crops. Reading, with characteristic perversity, briefly joined them, helping to pull down fence sections and paying local boys sixpence to make passageways for cattle. before making his peace with the Participants once more and re-enclosing about a thousand acres. The commoners’ response was to assault him and his sons, slaughter his cattle, and set fire to his crops.[16]
On 15 April 1697, around midnight, Reading’s rebuilt house at Sandtoft burned to the ground. His account described disguised commoners creeping up to the building while the household slept, thrusting torches under the thatch, and stopping the keyholes with clay so that the occupants could not escape; the family only survived by pulling out a window bar and squeezing through into the garden. The commoners’ account said the fire started accidentally from wood piled for brewing and that Reading thrust torches under unburnt sections to misrepresent the accident as an outrage. Lindley, who has read all the evidence, declines to decide between the two accounts.[17]
Catherine Popplewell was indicted at Lincoln assizes in 1694 for her part in earlier violence, but escaped with moderate fines on the strength of her husband’s pledge to work for peace, a pledge which his enemies said he did not keep. Attacks on enclosures continued, increasingly at night or by disguised perpetrators. A Bill was introduced into the Commons to extend statutes to cover offences by disguised persons and to make neighbouring towns liable if they failed to bring rioters to justice. The commoners read it as further evidence of Reading’s deviousness and opposed it vigorously.[18]
The End of the Reckoning
The final phase of the conflict outlasted Reading himself. In the years after 1700, with violence increasingly replaced by legal attrition, both sides pressed their claims through the courts. In 1715, during the disturbances that followed the Jacobite rising, the Riot Act was invoked and a regiment was quartered in the Isle. The imagery of military occupation would have been familiar to anyone who knew the history of the 1620s and 1630s.[19]
The last proceedings in Chancery were dismissed in 1719. The legal war that had begun with Vermuyden’s arrival in the Isle in 1626 was over. Nathaniel Reading had survived to be over a hundred years old, his remarkable longevity probably more useful to the cause of eventual settlement than anything he had done earlier. By the time of his death, some accommodation had been reached: Reading’s sons had been effectively assimilated into Fennish life.[20]
Most of the Isle of Axholme was not enclosed until 1795 — more than 150 years after the original drainage. Writing in the 1830s, W.B. Stonehouse observed that the Isle remained ‘divided among a greater number of owners than in any other part of the kingdom.’ The small freeholder culture that Arthur Young had noted with admiration persisted precisely because enclosure had been successfully resisted for so long. That resistance had cost lives, livelihoods, and generations of conflict. It had begun with a woman throwing a stone at John Kitchen in a field at Haxey on 13 August 1628. It ended, ninety-one years later, in a Chancery court.[21]
This post concludes the main series on the commoner resistance to the drainage of Hatfield Chase and the Isle of Axholme.
Sources: Lindley, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (Heinemann, 1982), chs 4, 6, and 7 (The Restored Undertakings); Lloyd, The Communities of the Manor of Epworth in the Seventeenth Century, PhD thesis, University of Sheffield (1998); Dugdale, History of Imbanking and Draining (1662), Axholme chapter; van Cruyningen, ‘Dutch investors in the drainage of Hatfield Chase’, AgHR 64, I (2016); Boyce, Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens (2023); ‘Un Asile des Huguenots’, 1859 Huguenot translation; Reading Case, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal; Stonehouse, History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme (1839); H.L.R.O., Main Papers; Notts. U.L., H.C.C. 9111; P.R.O., K.B. 9; E. 134.
[1]On the restoration of Participants’ possession around Michaelmas 1660 and the Lords’ order of 20 December: Lindley, Fenland Riots, p. 233. On Reading’s employment by the Participants: Dugdale, Axholme chapter; Lindley, p. 233. On Noddel acting for the last time in May 1662 and his subsequent employment as steward under Sir George Carteret: Lindley, p. 241. Noddel’s inventory at death valued his total estate at £41 4s 8d. His second son Joseph showed no interest in his father’s cause: Lindley, p. 241, citing Lincs. R.O., Inventories 220/98.
[3]On the May 1661 livestock seizures, the Epworth guards, and the reaction to Reading reading the Lords’ order: Lindley, Fenland Riots, pp. 237–9, citing H.L.R.O., Main Papers, 24 May 1661 petition of the participants; 7 March 1662 petition; 10 March 1662 affidavits of Reading, Amory, and others. The commoners’ declaration that ‘they cared neither for the King, the Lords nor Laws’ is from the 10 March 1662 affidavit of Nathaniel Reading, cited by Lindley, p. 238. On John Amory having the Lords’ order snatched from him in church: Lindley, p. 237.
[5]On Reading’s thirty-one battles: the 1859 Huguenot translation (Un Asile des Huguenots), quoting Reading’s own memoir, gives thirty-four battles; the figure of thirty-one appears in axholme.info secondary accounts drawing on the same source. The slight discrepancy may reflect different reckonings of what constituted a ‘battle.’ On Reading’s workforce, salary, and armed backing: Lindley, Fenland Riots, p. 233; Dugdale, Axholme chapter. On Major General Whalley’s role: Dugdale, Axholme chapter.
[7]The 1666 Mowbray verdict: Lindley, Fenland Riots, p. 242: the presiding judge declared the Mowbray deed to be a bar to further improvement of the wastes of Epworth manor. On the participants’ virtual surrender of all grounds except Reading’s 2 acres at Sandtoft: ibid. On the August 1668 attack on Reading’s Sandtoft home by twenty-five men including Bradborne: Lindley, p. 242, citing P.R.O., K.B. 9/911/180. On Reading’s rupture with the participants over embezzlement claims: Lindley, p. 241.
[9]On Reading’s 1669 ‘Curse of Egypt’ outburst: Lindley, Fenland Riots, p. 243, citing Notts. U.L., H.C.C. 6003, fols 74–5. On his 1670 house being stormed by Bradborne and forty neighbours, and his being shot in the legs in March 1672: Lindley, p. 243. On the Popish Plot episode: Lindley, p. 244, citing J.P. Kenyon, The Popish Plot (1972); Reading was found guilty of suborning witnesses and sentenced to the pillory, fined £1,000, and imprisoned for a year. Lindley notes he was possibly a victim of perjury in this matter.
[11]On Reading’s 1681 writ of assistance and its extension to the whole 7,400 acres via the deputy remembrancer Toby Eden: Lindley, Fenland Riots, pp. 244–5. On Robert Ryther as the commoners’ principal leader in this period: ibid. On the Spital quarter sessions of 14 July and indictments against Reading: Lindley, pp. 244–5. On Sarah Reading pelting commoners with stones: Lindley, p. 245. On the 1686–7 attacks on Reading’s home, with nearly half the 1687 rioters being female: Lindley, pp. 245–6.
[13]On the 1688 arbitration award: Lindley, Fenland Riots, p. 246: Sir Thomas Hussey and Sir Willoughby Hickman awarded the commoners 750 of the 7,400 acres plus half the remainder, totalling 4,075 acres. On the 1691 Exchequer decree: Lindley, pp. 246–7; Lloyd, Communities of the Manor of Epworth, PhD thesis (1998), p. 288: 3,868 acres to Epworth commoners, 664 acres to Misterton commoners, 2,868 acres to Participants. On the accusations of bribery against Pinder (1,000 guineas), Ryther (100 acres), and Coggan (50 acres): Lindley, pp. 247–8, citing Notts. U.L., H.C.C. 9111, fols 390–94, 399–402. John Maw claimed Pinder had expressly been forbidden to agree to any accommodation at an Owston meeting of principal commoners; on returning to a hostile reception, ten to one opposed the agreement.
[15]On Catherine Popplewell’s role in the post-1691 violence: Lindley, Fenland Riots, pp. 248–9. On Reading’s brief and erratic alliance with the commoners in fence-breaking, paying boys 6d to make passages for cattle: Lindley, p. 248. On the 1694 Lincoln assizes and moderate fines in return for Robert Popplewell’s pledge: Lindley, p. 249. On the Epworth parsonage fire of 1709 and its connection to the drainage dispute: Boyce, Imperial Mud (2023), p. 88, citing H.N. Brailsford: ‘The feud of these turbulent peasants against the landed gentry was still raging in the next generation, when they burned down Epworth parsonage and the child John Wesley had to be snatched from the flames.’
[17]On the midnight burning of Reading’s house on 15 April 1697: Lindley, Fenland Riots, pp. 250–1. The commoners’ account attributed the fire to an accident with wood piled for brewing; Reading’s account described disguised attackers who stopped the keyholes with clay. Lindley notes the available evidence gives few pointers to which account is closer to the truth, but acknowledges that within a couple of months commoners did devastate what remained on the site. On the attack on John Reading and servants on 12 October 1696: Lindley, p. 250. The privy council’s pardon offer and Reading’s £20 reward: ibid., p. 251.
[19]On the final Chancery proceedings and the 1719 dismissal: van Cruyningen, ‘Dutch investors’, AgHR 64, I (2016), p. 31; axholme.info secondary account drawing on the Reading Case, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. On the Riot Act of 1715 and the regiment quartered at Ross: 1859 Huguenot translation, drawing on Reading’s memoir. On most of the Isle of Axholme remaining unenclosed until 1795: Boyce, Imperial Mud, pp. 88–9, citing Arthur Young. On the equitable distribution of land still characterising the Isle in the 1830s: W.B. Stonehouse, cited in Boyce, p. 89: ‘The lands in the Isle of Axholme are divided among a greater number of owners than in any other part of the kingdom.’
