ABSTRACT
English history in the years between the onset of the American War (1776) and the collapse of Chartism (1848) is dominated by the most stressful of domestic social problems. English politics, high and low, were consequently troubled and often unpredictable. There were in fact few social groups in England who remained immune to these difficulties and uncertainties. It is hard to know which group felt more troubled; those plebeian groups buffeted and hammered by economic and social distress, or their governing betters who saw in the various political waves of popular unrest and resistance, threats of disturbance and revolt. We could in fact write the history of these years in terms of the English radical movement which so alarmed the entrenched governing orders. And however we view it, one of the key determining forces behind the radical urge, especially after 1791, was the ubiquity of urban distress, poverty and hunger.
