Who was William Cobbett?
William Cobbett, son of an English small farmer and grandson of a day laborer, was one of the most controversial political journalists during the revolutionary and Napoleonic era and in the agitation to reform the British Parliament. He was twice a political refugee in the United States: from October 1792 to June 1800, and again from May 1817 to October 1819. His first trip to the new world followed an unsuccessful attempt to expose corruption in his former army regiment: unable to secure essential witnesses and the release of vital data for the trial he demanded, he failed to appear in court, fled to France, and upon the outbreak of war, sailed with his wife to America. Living most of the time in Philadelphia, Cobbett at first taught English to French émigrés, but this obscure life did not last long. He joined in the pamphlet warfare between Federalists and Jeffersonians, patriotically defending Britain and attacking its detractors. He enjoyed vindictive journalism, as is shown by suc
Born in Surrey in 1763, Cobbett spent nearly 20 years overseas with the army, in newly-independent America and revolutionary France. Returning in 1800, he became convinced the agricultural England he’d loved was being destroyed. His campaigning grew, until, aged nearly 60, he began his rural rides to prove his case. These confirmed Cobbett as one of the Industrial Revolution’s most committed agitators. A radical, adventurer and sharp-tongued political journalist, he wrote 30 million words during his career and gave the depressed countryside a voice. More than anything, Cobbett understood the countryside thrives when tended by local people. And that – in a lesson still relevant today – it has a delicate balance we interfere with at our peril.
Prose writer and political journalist. Date and Place of Birth: 9th March 1763, Farnham, Surrey, England. Family Background: Son of a farmer and Innkeeper. Education: Taught himself to read and write at an early age and studied French, Geometry and Logic whilst in the army. Chronology/Biography of WIlliam Cobbett: 1785: Served as a Sergeant-Major in the army in New Brunswick where he studied rhetoric, logic geometry and French. 1791: Bought his way out of the army. 1792: Sailed to the United States were he taught English to French refugees in Philadelphia. He also opened a bookshop. 1797: Started the “Porcupine’ s Gazette” magazine in which he attacked Tom Paine and Joseph Priestley and the native democrats. 1800: Returned to England and was welcomed by the Tories who were fighting the revolutionary spirit then abroad in Europe. 1802: Began his weekly “Cobbett’s Political Register”. 1804: The “Register” at first Tory began to take on radical opinion. 1806: Began the “Record of Parliame
