ABSTRACT
While Luddism was thus spreading in this district the excesses m Nottinghamshire engaged the attention of Parliament. A bill was introduced by the ministers of the day—the stern and rigid Percival administration—to render frame breaking a capital crime, punishable with death. Against that bill. Lord Byron, the celebrated poet, made his first speech in the House of Lords. His lordship only spoke three times in that assembly and then left the gilded chamber in disgust, never to return to it. At this time he had become famous, for his celebrated poem Childe Harold” had been issued shortly before he stood forth so nobly in defence of his starving countrymen.
