Note 2 — {263} INTRODUCTION TO THE JOURNAL

In 1811 the growing hostility of those employed in the manufacture of stockings to the introduction of knitting frames, culminated in the Luddite Riots, and in Nottingham over six hundred stocking frames were broken. The riot spread rapidly among the artisans in the cotton and woolen industries in Lancashire and Yorkshire, mills were burned, machinery of all kinds destroyed, and it became necessary to call out seven regiments before quiet was restored. The government became alarmed, especially as the mobs had stormed the militia depots and secured arms for themselves, and several repressive measures were hurried through Parliament. The first, passed March 5, 1812, made frame-breaking a capital offense; the second, the Nottingham Watch and Ward Bill, passed the same month, enabled the lord-lieutenant or sheriff to establish watch and ward if further riots occurred; and the third, the Preservation of Public Peace Act, passed July 27, 1812, empowered any magistrate in the disturbed district to search for secreted arms, and to call upon the people to give up their weapons. See Parliamentary Debates, xxi, pp. 859, 1166; xxiii, pp. 1099, 1251.—Ed.