rer who employed the obnoxious machinery was shot down in broad
daylight, as he was passing over Crossland Moor, which was skirted by a
small plantation in which the murderers lay hidden. The readers of
"Shirley" will recognise these circumstances, which were related to Miss
Bronte years after they occurred, but on the very spots where they took
place, and by persons who remembered full well those terrible times of
insecurity to life and property on the one hand, and of bitter starvation
and blind ignorant despair on the other.

Mr. Bronte himself had been living amongst these very people in 1812, as
he was then clergyman at Hartshead, not three miles from Rawfolds; and,
as I have mentioned, it was in these perilous times that he began his
custom of carrying a loaded pistol continually about with him. For not
only his Tory politics, but his love and regard for the authority of the
law, made him despise the cowardice of the surrounding magistrates, who,
in their dread of the Luddites, refused to interfere so as to prevent the
destruction of property. The clergy of the district were the bravest men
by far.

There was a Mr. Roberson of Heald's Hall, a friend of Mr. Bronte's who
has left a deep impression of himself on the public mind. He lived near
Heckmondwike, a large, straggling, dirty village, not two miles from Roe
Head. It was principally inhabited by blanket weavers, who worked in
their own cottages; and Heald's Hall is the largest house in the village,
of which Mr. Roberson was the vicar. At his own cost, he built a
handsome church at Liversedge, on a hill opposite the one on which his
house stood, which was the first attempt in the West Riding to meet the
wants of the overgrown population, and made many personal sacrifices for
his opinions, both religious and political, which were of the true old-
fashioned Tory stamp. He hated everything which he fancied had a
tendency towards anarchy. He was loyal in every fibre to Church and
King; and would have proudly laid down his life, any day, for what he
believed to be right and true. But he was a man of an imperial will, and
by it he bore down opposition, till tradition represents him as having
something grimly demoniac about him. He was intimate with Cartwright,
and aware of the attack likely to be made on his mill; accordingly, it is
said, he armed himself and his household, and was prepared to come to the
rescue, in the event of a signal being given that aid