Only a handful talk ill of his father, and even then they are words whispered behind closed doors amongst trusted company. The fear is still there because the stories still circulate: of burnt heads and broken bones. Hot pokers and musket sparks.
There are those treacherous bastard traitors who have fallen in with the mill men at the first opportunity, of course: those valley folk that sold up and let the money men take their soil and fence off their streams to sink water-wheels there, and build these great stone monstrosities in which boys like him were made to work for fourteen hours a day.
Many of his friends were in the mills now. Some had lost fingers, hands and limbs. One was blinded by the backlash of a snapped spinning belt, another left shrunken from lack of food and light and sleep, a half-formed boy kept small by industry.
The turnpike has brought noise and offcumdens and now there is talk of sinking another fresh stretch of canal through the heart of the valley too, as if a river wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t work. His mother said so and his uncles said so and all the men who paid a visit to Bell House with food and drink and clothes and clogs said so. All this was a passing fad, they said. Hand-looms were still the best way; any right-minded valley man or woman knew that. A hand-loom in a wool loft never killed a child. Only the men from the cities with their stone cathedrals of mass production killed children.
Down in the vale below there were already new mills. Not just for the cotton, but paper too. Mills brought people, families. Chimneys had grown from the ground as if born out of spring snowdrop bulbs, and Cragg Road was paved with slabs now. There were new cottages in the trees. Three had gone up in Hollin Hey Wood last summer, three more in the spring. Spa Wood echoed to the sound of more building; another mill. Whams Wood and Sandy Pickle Wood were shrinking; great gaps had appeared in their silent centres to make way for buildings to house dye vats and storage barns, combing racks and foremen’s quarters.
There was a constant procession of stone and timber passing through these days, and the sound of the workers’ voices rang up to the moor tops. Noise carries here. Always has. Couldn’t the cough of a coming lawman be heard a mile off?
Yes. It was only a matter of time before the trees of Bell Hole would feel the bite of the forester’s axe too. Mills needed fuel and it was all around them. Already David Hartley the younger pined for the old times when men with courage and initiative could control their turf. He finds himself nostalgic for a time he has never known.
He carries the coins right across the moor’s interior now, where a flat dullness gives an impression of eternity until finally after a hard hour he drops down to an obscure valley called Sandbeds above the hamlet of Eastwood, and Lodge Farm, their new home, perched high and alone.
The dog goes with him. It trots alongside and then bounds ahead, stout chest puffed, short muscular legs flexing. It is still strong despite the advancing years, and the dog’s blood runs on in many offspring it has spawned across the valley and beyond now. He has sired several similarly stubborn little dogs of the moors.
He whistles. Calls the dog’s name. Moidore. The beast turns and runs back to him, tongue lolling, ears flapping.
The farmer is waiting for him when young David Hartley arrives. He has a sheaf papers for the boy to take back. Once signed, the house and out-buildings will be theirs. The Hartleys’ new home. Paid for in cash once stashed. This was his mother’s foresight and good thinking, as these coins have been brought up from the soil, raised like ghosts. From beneath twisted roots. From holes in walls. From boxes buried. From beneath boulders. Some even tethered in purses deep in slow-flowing stream beds. Coins going green and mouldy, coins battered and bent but all perfectly milled and perfectly kept.
Tomorrow with their uncles’ help they will hitch up the cart with their chairs and beds and tables and lanterns and rugs and plates and pots and their father’s tools, and his mother and his brother and his sister and the dog and he will trek across the moor and move into the new house on the far edge of the moor.
And they will begin again.
Postscript
David Hartley was hanged at Tyburn in York on April 28th 1770 for forgery and diminishing the coin. He is buried in the hill-top graveyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England.
After a trial in which conflicting evidence was presented, much of it by James Broadbent whose numerous witness statements varied wildly, both Matthew Normanton and Robert Thomas were acquitted of the murder of William Deighton.
Coining continued in and around Calderdale sporadically over the next decade. The Coiner Thomas Clayton was arrested for counterfeiting in 1773, escaped in chains in 1774 and was then re-arrested in Liverpool while seeking passage to America. He offered a witness statement that implicated Normanton and Thomas in the attack on the exciseman.
Normanton and Thomas were charged again, this time with the highway robbery of William Deighton. Robert Thomas was convicted and sentenced to death but the case against Matthew Normanton was dropped. Clayton was also cleared of any involvement in the attack on Deighton, as was Thomas Spencer.
For his part Robert Thomas was executed in York in August 1774 and his body then hung in chains on Beacon Hill, Halifax, despite fervent opposition from the inhabitants of the town who gathered in protest against such gratuitous barbarity.
The following year Normanton was tried yet again, pleaded guilty and was convicted of the murder of William Deighton. He too was sentenced to death and executed in York in April 1775. His body was also hung in chains beside the weathered corpse of his friend, this time in the middle of the night so as to avoid further public protest.
The night before their respective executions both Normanton and Thomas gave written confessions for the murder of the exciseman.
Thanks to his collusion with the authorities, James Broadbent escaped prosecution for his involvement both in coining and the murder of William Deighton. His life beyond the trial is unknown.
The last recorded execution for coining was that of one Robert Iredale of Southowram, a village above Beacon Hill, in 1776, though the aforementioned acquitted Coiner Thomas Spencer was later executed in 1783 for leading a starving mob on a series of riotous raids on a Halifax corn grain store and several grain wagons during a period of civil unrest. Locally he was martyred as a man who had tried to feed the hungry, and was buried close to David Hartley.
William Hartley Sr. lived until 1773. During the downfall of the Coiners, the last sighting of his youngest son, William Hartley Jr, also known as the Duke Of Edinburgh, was of him fleeing in his nightshirt. He later resurfaced, escaped any prosecution and lived until 1789. The middle brother Isaac Hartley, known as the Duke Of York, was also never prosecuted for any offence and died what witnesses described as a slow and painful death at his home in Midgely near Mytholmroyd in 1815 at the age of 83.
The solicitor Robert Parker, who brought about the downfall and prosecutions against the Coiners, enjoyed a successful legal career. He established the Halifax County Court and generated substantial outside financial investment for both the town and the Calder Valley during the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. Some of the money was used to build new turnpike roads, install a clean water supply and construct a canal, which is still in use today. Some historians and literary scholars believe that Robert Parker, admired for his integrity, was the inspiration for the character of Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, written ten miles away in Haworth, West Yorkshire, and published in 1847.
Four years after her husband’s execution Grace Hartley moved a mile or so across the moor to Lodge Farm. She paid £560 for her new home – in cash.
She died in 1802.
In June 2016, shortly after the completion of this book, the original fireplace in which the labourer Abraham Ingham was tortured and killed was uncovered in The Cross Inn, Heptonstall. A neighbouring pub, The White Lion, and the Heptonstall Museum both host several origina
l Coiners artefacts.
Today many descendants of the Cragg Vale Coiners and their associates still reside in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, and its surrounding areas.
Sources & Inspirations
The following books, publications, websites, films and recordings proved helpful in the writing of this book. I am especially indebted to Clip A Bright Guinea: The Yorkshire Coiners of the Eighteenth Century by J. Bright and The Yorkshire Coiners 1767-1783 & Notes On Old and Prehistoric Halifax by Henry Ling Roth, both of which contained several letters, news items and bill posters that I have replicated as accurately as possible. Most names featured in this telling of this story are those of real people.
Alexander, M. British Folklore, Myths & Legends. Sutton Publishing, 2002.
Bright, J. Clip A Bright Guinea: The Yorkshire Coiners of the Eighteenth Century. Robert Hale Ltd, 1971.
Bull, M (Ed). www.calderdalecompanion.co.uk
Carey, Peter. True History Of The Kelly Gang. Faber & Faber, 2000.
Cooper, D. The Horn Fellow. Faber & Faber, 1987.
Davison, D. (Ed). The Penguin Book Of Eighteenth-Century English Verse. Penguin, 1973.
Defoe, D. A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain by Daniel Defoe. Penguin, 1724-26 edition.
Drake, M & D. Early Trackways In The South Pennines. Pennine Heritage Network, 1982.
Ely, S. Englaland. Smokestack, 2015.
Foss, M. Folk Tales Of The British Isles. Books Club Associates, 1977
Garner, A. Strandloper. Harvill Press, 1996.
Gaskill, M. Crime Mentalities in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Green, J. Slang Down The Ages: The Historical Development Of Slang. Klye Cathie, 1993.
Grose, F. 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence. Digest Books, 1971.
Hartley, S. Yorkshire Coiners. Unpublished.
Hartley, S (Ed). www.yorkshirecoiners.com
Here’s A Health to The Barley Mow: A Century Of Folk Customs And Ancient Rural Games. BFI, 2011.
Hughes, T. Crow. Faber, 1972.
Hughes, T & Godwin, F. Elmet. Faber, 1994.
Kershaw, P & Danks, V. The Last Coiner. Duchy Parade Films, 2006.
King, Ian ‘Shedrock’. ‘Yorkshire Coiners’ from the album Outlaws of England. Released 2012.
Kingsnorth, P. The Wake. Unbound, 2014.
Ling Roth, H. The Yorkshire Coiners 1767-1783 & Notes On Old and Prehistoric Halifax. Kessinger Legacy Reprints, 1906.
Lupton, H. Glossary notes from The Ballad Of John Clare. Dedalus, 2010.
Macfarlane, R. Landmarks. Hamish Hamilton, 2015.
Mills, A.D. A Dictionary Of British Place Names. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Murty, S. Summat A’ Nowt: The History Of Saxokakaurhs, A Long Forgotten Settlement. Self-published, 2009.
Northern Earth magazine. Various issues. Billingsley, J (Ed).
Odetta (Odetta Holmes). ‘The Gallows Pole’ (traditional) from Odetta And The Blues. Hallmark, 2013.
Ondaatje, M. The Collected Works Of Billy The Kid. Picador, 1981.
Pegg, Bob. ‘The Man From Luddenden Dean’ from The Last Wolf. Rhiannon Music, 1998.
Requiem For A Village. Directed by David Gladwell. BFI, 1976.
Stripe, A. Dark Corners Of The Land. Blackheath Books, 2012.
Tilston, S. ‘King Of The Coiners’ from Ziggurat. Hubris Records, 2008.
Valley Life magazine (various issues) West, G (Ed). LGB Media, Hebden Bridge.
Various. ‘Hanging Johnny’. Shanties & Sea Songs. Crocodile Records, 2009.
Welsh, S. Cragg Vale: A Pennine Valley. Pennine Desktop publishing, 1993.
Whone, H. Essential West Riding. Smith Settle, 1987.
Whalley, B. Protest Walks. Unpublished.
Winstanley. Directed by Brownlow, K and Mollo, A. 1975.
Acknowledgements
For their support and input I wish to thank: my agent Jessica Woollard, Alice Howe and all at David Higham Associates. Kevin Duffy, Hetha Duffy, my editor Leonora Rustamova, Lin Webb and all at Bluemoose Books for the continued support. Delaney Jae for the cover artwork.
I extend gratitude to The Royal Society of Literature whose Brookleaze Grant enabled the undertaking of valuable research time. I am also extremely grateful to the Society Of Authors’ Roger Deakin Award, of which this book was the recipient, and which facilitated the completion of this work.
Thanks also to Steve Hartley, great, great, great, great, great grandson of King David Hartley. Steve has kept the Hartley story alive and his (currently unpublished) book Yorkshire Coiners Chronology and website www.yorkshirecoiners.com are key resources for anyone who wishes to read more on the subject. The story of The Coiners lives on the lips of generations, and in the descendents of those on both sides of the law, so a broader thank you is extended to friends, neighbours and passing strangers in Calderdale, West Yorkshire who have imparted information, stories or opinions on the subject.
Thanks also to Carol Gorner, Phoebe Greenwood and Richard Clegg at the Gordon Burn Trust. Robert and Jenny Dutson at The Workshop in Hebden Bridge for the practical coining advice. Claire Malcolm, Anna Disley and everyone at New Writing North. Jeff Barrett and all at Caught By The River. Emma Marigliano, Lynne Allan and all at The Portico Library, Manchester. The respective editors at the various publications I contribute to. Thank you to Boff Whalley for sending me extracts from his book Protest Walks. Steve Ely. John Billingsley at Northern Earth magazine. All at The Book Case, Hebden Bridge. Nick and Candice Small. David Atkinson and Anna Barker. Anthony Luke. Lisa Cradduck. Katy, Matt and Iris Calveley. Michael Curran at Tangerine Press. Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar at Galley Beggar Press. Alan The Ex-Postman. Rob St. John and Emma Cardwell. Amy Liptrot. Jenn Ashworth. Michael Stewart. Stephen May. Ian Stripe. Thanks also to Richard Dawson and his vile stuff.
I reserve special gratitude to my parents, family and to my wife Adelle Stripe, who first suggested that perhaps this story needed telling.
Benjamin Myers
Upper Calder Valley
AD 2017
About
Benjamin Myers was born in Durham in 1976. His novels include Turning Blue, Beastings (winner of the Portico Prize For Literature), Pig Iron (winner of the Gordon Burn Prize) and Richard, a Sunday Times book of the year. He has also published a novella Snorri & Frosti, the poetry collections The Raven Of Jórvíkshire and Heathcliff Adrift, and received the Tom-Gallon Prize for his short fiction. His journalism has appeared in publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, BBC, Caught By The River, New Scientist and others.
Benjamin Myers lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, UK.
www.benmyers.com
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