In August 1838, upon their return from Australia, George Loveless his wife and four children and James Loveless, his wife and one child, together with James Brine who was single, were installed in New House Farm, Greensted, which consisted of some eighty acres of arable and pasture land. The lease on the farm had been paid by the Central Dorchester Committee and had a further seven years to run. The price paid by the Committee for the farm was £600, plus a further £40 for furniture.
The land was in poor condition and difficult to farm - one of the fields is still known as 'Starve Goose Field'!
In 1808, New House Farm had been described as:
‘A compact and very desirable freehold estate beautifully situate in the parish of Greensted, on the verge of the Common, One Mile from Chipping Hill, Two from Ongar, Five from Epping, Twelve from Rumford, Fourteen from Chelmsford, and Bishop Stortford and only Twenty-one from London, in the most salubrious and luxuriant District of the County of Essex.’
‘Comprising of Eighty Acres, Three Roods and Thirty Seven Perches (be the same more or less) of remarkably rich meadow, arable and wood land; abounding with fine Marle, lying completely in a ring fence and subdivided into convenient enclosures. With a large Farm House, farmyard, Barn, Stabling, Out Buildings, A Good Garden and Orchard’.
James Hammett lived at New House Farm for a few months after his return in 1839 but then returned to Tolpuddle to become a builder’s labourer.
Another of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Thomas Standfield, his wife and five children were also re-located to a farm at High Laver, which consisted of some forty-three acres. The farm was described as in a dreadful condition – three years untenanted and the house in ruins. The committee paid £100 for the farm.
The presence of the Loveless family in Greensted was not well received.
The following article was published in the Dorset County Chronicle – on Thursday 26 December 1839
THE DORCHESTER LABOURERS
The Morning Post of Tuesday gives the following statement relative to the existence of Chartism in the neighbourhood of Ongar. It is well known that the Whig Ministers were compelled by their Radical supporters to recall from transportation the “Dorchester Labourers” convicted of administering unlawful oaths for seditious or treasonable purposes. The Post, after referring to the facts, says-
The arrival in London of the returned convicts was signalized by a public procession, public dinner, and a public subscription. The cause of Radicalism and of unlawful oaths had gained splendid victory over social order and Lord John Russell, on this first and only occasion of even an apparent alliance between the two latter: and the joy of the Radicals knew no bounds. That it made many of them subscribe to the fund for the Dorchester labourers would be an inadequate attestation of its power; it carried some to the extraordinary length, as our subsequent narrative will show, of paying the amount of their subscriptions.
Some short time after the creation of the fund a gentleman, who acted as the trustee or manager of an estate in Essex, was solicited by one of the tenants to grant him permission to sub-let his farm, as he (the tenant) had received a most advantageous offer. Not only was he to have a considerable premium, but be was to be paid according to his own valuation for his stock, ploughings, &c. The representative of the landlord was a little surprised at this communication, as he considered the actual rent quite as much as the farm was worth. He acceded, however to the application, requiring of course, satisfactory security for the future payment of the rent and the fulfilment of the other conditions of the lease. The arrangements were speedily completed, and a person of the name George Loveless entered into the occupation of the farm, which is situated in the parish, up this time a very tranquil one, of Grinstead, near Ongar. George Loveless was accompanied by two men, who assisted him in the labour of the farm. The names the latter are Joseph Loveless and James Bruce.
“Well!” the reader will naturally exclaim, ‘what can all this have to do with Chartism or its propagation, with the Dorchester labourers whom Lord John Russell brought back from New South Wales, or the subscription which Lord John's Radical supporters and squeezers raised for their benefit.
We proceed, therefore, to supply the necessary link of connexion. The names we have just mentioned, are those of the men who bought out the Essex farmer, and the names of three of three of the Dorchester Labourers, and the check which the outgoing farmer was paid on account of premium and stock, bore the signature of Sir William Molesworth.
It was soon afterwards discovered that two others of the Dorchester labourers had also been planted in a farm in another parish (High Laver) in the same county.
And what was the effect of this Ministerial counter-colonization from Botany Bay to the rural parishes of Essex?
The new settlers at and High Laver had not been long established among the hitherto quiet and well-conducted population of these parishes before they began to agitate, and to agitate in a manner and with a degree of success which showed but too plainly that their mission of mischief had not been entrusted to unpractised or unskilful hands. Chartist newspapers were quickly seen in active circulation. The beer-shops in which they were to be found became more frequented and more noisy than heretofore. A Chartist Association was formed at Grinstead, and, the combined or alternate influence of persuasion and terror, nearly the whole of the agricultural labourers in that -and the adjoining parishes were induced to join it. A weekly subscription was exacted from each of them , and they were told that when their fund amounted to a certain sum it would be increased by the committee in London. Frequent meetings were held—the time selected for this purpose being generally on a Sunday morning, during the hours of divine service. The meetings became progressively more and more numerous. At first the farmhouse occupied by the new settlers was large enough to contain them, but ere long the farmyard was found insufficient, and the assemblies were held in an adjoining field. Delegates attended the meetings from Waltham Abbey, Epping, Harlow, Hatfield, Broad Oak, &c. Delegates and orators from London, sometime to the number of forty, were also occasionally present. The project of a general rising of the Chartists on or about the 12th of August was discussed and entertained. The effect of these proceedings was to diffuse a general sense of insecurity throughout that part the country, and so far disturb the habitual relation between the farmers and labourers, that the former thought it necessary to adopt a system of hiring for the last harvest different from their previous practice, and to engage their labourers on such terms that, in case of desertion from their work, they might be liable to summary punishment.
It is gratifying to us to be enabled to add, that, since the discomfiture of the Chartists at Newport, the Essex disciples the Dorchester labourers have dwindled, or seemed to dwindle, alike in numbers and in courage.
It happened by a remarkable, but no doubt quite an accidental, coincidence, that very soon after the establishment of the Dorchester Labourers in Essex, and the commencement of their liberal exertions, Lord J. Russell endeavoured to disband the West Essex Yeomanry Cavalry, the only efficient protection then or since in existence for the extensive gunpowder magazines of government in that part of the country; and that his Lordship made this attempt, which the corps happily defeated, by their patriotic determination to bear their own expenses, not only without consultation with the officers of the Board of Ordnance, but in direct opposition to their well-known opinions.
We fear that only one inference can be drawn from this narrative, viz.—that the Chartist organization is very extensively diffused throughout the country. What spot, it will naturally be asked, can be supposed free Iron Ibis foul infection, when it is seen to have pervaded even the quiet and secluded hamlets of the county of Essex? And what to be thought of the Administration, whose Home Secretary, during the progress of this organisation was dismissing loyal corps of yeomanry, with every possible manifestation of contempt; and whose Attorney-General only waited till it had arrived at its utmost maturity to boast that Chartism had been utterly put down by the indulgent forbearance of the Executive Government?
There was clearly some concern about the influence of the men in Essex. On 28 December 1839 The Morning Post published a letter from an anonymous Conservative magistrate for the County of Essex, who wrote:
‘It is also true that these firebrands, the dreaded Dorchester Labourers, are four poor ignorant creatures, who literally do not even know how to plough the land they occupy.
And...it is also true (and let me tell them they are marked men) That if these half dozen ignorant democrats (nether Essex men nor true agriculturalists are they) should attempt to disturb the peace of the county, they would be put down, not by the military force as at Newport, not by an armed gendarmerie of rural police but by the good sense and strong arm of the TRUE agricultural yeomen and labourers of Essex.’
the Rector of Greensted, the Revd. Philip Ray, preached against their chartist activities. He felt that the foundations of decent society were being undermined; paternal, beneficial order where everyone knew his proper place must be restored. He alerted the Home Office.
According to the Essex Standard:
"George Loveless, instead of quietly fulfilling the duties of his station . . . is still dabbling in the dirty waters of radicalism and publishing pamphlets to keep up the old game."
Despite his opposition to them, the Revd Ray conducted the wedding of James Brine, aged 26, and Elisabeth Standfield, aged 21, daughter of Thomas Standfield, in Greensted church, in 1839.
The five later emigrated to the town of London, Upper Canada (in present-day Ontario), where there is now a monument in their honour and an affordable housing co-op and trade union complex named after them. George Loveless is buried in Siloam Cemetery on Fanshawe Park Road East in London, Ontario. James Brine died in 1902, having lived in nearby Blanshard Township since 1868, and is buried in St. Marys Cemetery, St. Marys, Ontario.
Hammett returned to Tolpuddle and died in the Dorchester workhouse in 1891.
