Bentley: Gold Pieces

Coiner's Moors:

1 = Bell House

2 = Keelham Farm

Phyllis Bentley Gold Pieces, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972 [1968]

Where Ned Carver in Danger is linked very closely with Bentley’s treatment of the Luddites in the Inheritance sequence, Gold Pieces is more restricted by its desire to write for children.  The damage to the economy of Britain that the Cragg Valley Coiners are alleged to have caused is of less interest than familiar children’s books themes such as boy acquiring a dog as a pet or falling into bad company.    Nevertheless the economic interest of the book is sustained by Bentley’s continuing interest in the wool trade.  One of the men who befriends Dick and eventually gives him the dog, is ‘Mr Kay’, inventor of a semi-mechanised weaving shuttle.  The actual Mr Kay had no involvement with the Cragg Vale Coiners but apart from this the text presents an accurate outline of the brutal events that reverberated through the Halifax region because of the investigation of coining and the counter measures taken by the coiners.

Morality and Temptation

Jamie Hartley, the son of ‘King David Hartley’, the chief coiner, has been invented for purpose of the book.  He is not mentioned by the family tree at: http://www.yorkshirecoiners.com/Family%20Tree.pdf

The hero Dick Ward grows up  in a loving family with a younger sister and parents but is keen for masculine company and he make friends with Jamie Hartley.   Initially Jamie appears to be merely mischievous, involving Dick in tricks like knocking on doors, goading horses and tying the wig ribbons of two men together. (Chp 5 p80-82).  At the end of the text Dick discovers that Jamie has been decoying him whilst David Hartley has been engaged in clipping coins and helping his family try to kill the incriminating dog that Dick has befriended.     Dick describes these acts as ‘wicked’ and gets called a ‘prig’ by Jamie (Chp 12 p189).   Despite this argument taking place beside the grave of David Hartley, each boy is prepared to come to terms with the other and run into the sunset as friends:

  Together we gazed out over the West Riding landscape, very beautiful in the evening light and I 

  think very dear to both of us.

  ‘Have it your own way,’ said Jamie suddenly.

  We ran down the hill together.  Chp 12 p190)

Above Heptonstall Church

This glimpse of beauty distracts from deeper issues.    Jamie’s father has always been cruel to him, physically and mentally:

   He gave his son such a violent push that Jamie reeled ahead and then fell heavily.  He got up  

   instantly, however, and though he was obviously a good deal shaken, turned a laughing face to the

    crowd. (Chp 6 p93).

Bentley’s books for adults have paid deep attention to the complex relations of parents and children and the psychological traumas that can be a child’s inheritance.   Gold Pieces has no inclination or space to pursue such themes.   Jamie’s possible trauma at the execution of his father is covered in a sentence:

    I gave him a moment or two to look down alone into his father’s grave – I did not think he loved  

    his father as I loved mine, but a father is a father. (Chp12 p188).  

Instead of providing authorial analysis Bentley imitates Dick’s child-like perceptions.  Jamie apparently recovers quickly and runs downhill happily with Dick but the incident is disturbingly similar to Jamie’s defiant laughter after his father has pushed him to the ground. 

Heptonstall Old Church; David Harley's grave is in thsi part of the churchyard.

To add to the book’s appeal to child readers of the late 1960s Bentley distracts attention from the attitude to crime and the age of criminal responsibility in the 18th century.   Execution or transportation was not inevitable for a child criminal but was certainly a possibility.  As the passage below shows what would influence a judge or jury was consideration of individual cases; they had to decide whether an accused child ‘knew right from wrong’:

    The historical sources are unclear during the above centuries as to whether there was a lower age   

   limit beneath which a child could definitely not be convicted. In the 17th Century, a lower age limit

    of 7 was agreed upon from the compilation of principles from archaic case law. Also, the upper

    limit was changed to 14, rather than 12. With any potentially criminal actions of a child under 14,

     it had to prove that they knew right from wrong. https://englishlegalhistory.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/age-of-criminal-responsibility/

The dialogues between Dick and Jamie in Chapters 9 and 12 show that Jamie does know ‘right from wrong’ in so far as he is aware of the criminal activities of the Hartley gang and will aid them and shield them.  Under such circumstance Jamie looks liable to transportation or execution.   This site gives examples of extreme punishments for children and reprints a commercially produced Broadside account; 'The Dreadful Life and Confession of a Boy Aged Twelve Years'.   This shows a society accustomed to child criminals and prepared to punish them harshly, not the 18th century we see in Gold Pieces.

https://www.bl.uk/georgian-britain/articles/crime-and-punishment-in-georgian-britain

In Gold Pieces the anachronistic optimism of the father seems justified: ‘Let’s hope he’ll grow out of it, that’s all,’ (Chp6 p94).  Not only does he’ grow out of’ it but at the book’s end it appears Jamie has grown out of it as well.  However the future for the father, both economic and personal looks less confident.     This is a matter of implication rather than declaration as Bentley spends Chapter 11 and the early part of Chapter 12 talking about the future developments of the weaving industry.   

The shape of the future, a Mill on the canal near Hebden Bridge

History and Location

As usual Bentley’s interest in the weaving industry is inscribed into her interest in the local landscape.   Contrary to her practise in earlier books, Bentley has not disguised the names of the major locations of the book.  The main exception is Dick’s home at ‘Owlet Hey’.  There is no name like ‘Owlet Hey’ in Cragg Vale, according to Ordnance Survey Landranger OL21.    The description of the site does not clear up the problem.   It is ‘high up on the hill, just below the brow, with Blackstone Edge moor spreading to the side and back of us.’ (p7).   Though the Ordnance Survey confines ‘Blackstone Edge Moor’ to the area south of the A58, Bentley follows her usual practice of using the emotive name to cover the slopes that separate Yorkshire from Lancashire.   If the Pennines are followed north east from Blackstone Edge, one spur ends at Turley Holes Edge, a crag overlooking a small valley that runs west out of Cragg Vale.  This looks north over Erringden Moor, which keeps its name in the text, but the OL21 shows no signs of dwellings here.  

Branch valley on the west of Cragg Vale; a possible site for 'Owlet Hey' is on the heather slopes on the right.

The text begins with a chapter called ‘Lost and Found’ and the words ‘It is very easy to get lost on the moors’ (p7).  It is tempting to see these words as symbolising the moral struggle that will occupy the protagonist Dick Wade and his companion Jamie Hartley but it literally applies to Dick’s finding a lost dog and getting lost himself.    Dick discovers a landscape ‘the same as any other moor’ (Chp 1 p10), a setting hardly affected by man: ‘turbulent ups and downs of the ground, the waving grass, the jagged rocks, the mats of heather,’ (Chp 1 p11).

Nevertheless she shows the heavy handed response of the authorities once they suspect the Halifax region is involved.  Dick’s house is examined even to the extent of searching his sister Susan’s doll: ‘actually picked Susan’s doll out of her arm and turned it upside down and felt in its clothing, ‘ (Chp 4 p65).

In Chapter 5 coining is declared ‘HIGH TREASON’ (p85) and in Chapter 6 another historical character enters the story.   John Wesley comes to preach in Cragg Vale, as he did in fact, in the days when Cragg Vale was an obscure valley, before its industrialisation at the start of the 19th century: ‘Cragg Vale’s nowt but two houses and an inn,’  (Chp 8 p126) [http://www.erringden.net/craggvale/html/cragg_vale_church.html] 

  Cragg Vale,The Hinchcliffe Inn.  

Bentley uses Wesley simply to show how unthinkingly Dick is falling under the influence of Jamie; Jamie tempts Dick to throw a stone at Wesley.   It hits Wesley on the shoulder but he: ‘went on speaking, so that I could not but admire his courage,’ (p93).    Wesley’s courage alerts Dick’s father to Jamie’s malign effect on Dick: ‘He has cast an evil spell on you,’ (p94).   The word ‘spell’ shows Bentley to be less concerned about the implications of Wesley than she has been in Manhold.   In Manhold the evangelical Wesleyite instance on the reality of the threat of witchcraft, because of the authority of the Bible, is challenged by the rationalist Collier.   Here the word ‘spell’ is used as unthinkingly as it might be in 20th century Yorkshire.  

Cragg Vale Church: St John's In The Wilderness 

The foundation of this church was laid on 15th March 1813 and the Church was consecrated in 1817. It accommodated around 250 worshippers and was rebuilt in 1839. http://www.calderdalecompanion.co.uk/c109_s.html

Ironically by the time of the rebuilding , the Church of England was trying to curb the influence of dissenters in the industrial Pennines.

History caught up with and then abandoned Cragg Vale.  During the Industrial Revolution there were 11 mills in the valley, a 'wilderness' no longer.  Traces of mills and Hinchliffe’s grand house remain.

Cragg Vale Mill 

The Gatehouse to Hinchliffe's grand house. 

The church was remodelled and a rectory built to counteract the influence of Methodism. 

The Rectory, sited to look down on the village

http://www.erringden.net/craggvale/industrial_cragg.html

However, Bentley is not interested in following through the consequences of actions, like Wesley’s visit, as she was in Inheritance.  Instead the story comes to a surprisingly optimistic end, like Manhold has done, the ‘sunset’ finale discussed above.

History and Drama

Coiner's Halifax:

A= Bull Close Lane

B= The Piece Hall

C = The Old Cock Inn

D = Parish Church

The close-clustering of these sites show how much smaller pre-Industrial Halifax was.

According to John Marsh’s To Clip a Bright Guinea, (Otley, Smith Settle, 1990) the arrest of David Hartley was not dramatic and took place in the Old Cock Inn: ‘’Taking advantage of surprise Deighton aided by the bailiff snapped irons on Hartley’s wrist’, (Chp 5 p68).  Marsh attributes this to Hartley being ‘fuddled’ by drink (p68).  Marsh replaces the lack of action with atmosphere: ‘The room was thick with tabacco [sic] smoke and the light from an oil lamp was poor,’ (Chp 5 p68).    Neither the arrest nor the activities of the Cragg Valley Coiners involve John Kay, who is not mentioned in the book.  The arrest is attributed to an informer called James Broadbent (Chp 5 p66).   The killing of William Deighton  took place about a month later (Nov 9, 1769), orchestrated by Isaac Hartley (brother to David)  but carried out by men called Robert Thomas and Robert Normington: ‘dissolute men always in need of money,’ (Chp 7 p81).  The facts are summarised on this site: https://www.visitcalderdale.com/the-cragg-vale-coiners

The Old Cock Inn, Southgate Halifax

Bentley changes everything except the locations.  Hartley is caught in ‘The Old Cock Inn’, and Deighton is shot in Bull Close Lane but the protagonists and significance have all been altered.   In Bentley’s version it is Mr Kay, and his dog Sam, who recognise Hartley as the man Kay has seen forging coins in a house on Erringden Moor (Bell Farm): ‘Guinea coins lay on the windowsill,’ (Chp 8 p p130).  The party goes into Halifax ‘outside an inn; the sign, swinging and creaking in the wind, was painted with a very bright bird,’ (Chp 9 p134) and go inside.  ‘That’s the coiner,’ said Mr Kay in a tone of satisfaction. ‘I saw him pouring gold!’ (Chp 9 p135).   David Hartley does not come quietly in this version: ‘Seizing my shoulder, he threw me violently to one side, then brought the heavy mug down on Mr Kay’s head, ‘ (Chp 9 p135).   It is Sam who brings him down: ‘Sam fastened his teeth in the man’s shoulder,’ (Chp 9 p136).  The attack is violent and bloody in complete contrast to the actual arrest: ‘Blood appeared beneath his teeth; Hartley put up his hand to shield his face; Sam seized it and Hartley gave a cry of pain,’ (Chp 9 p136).   Even after this mauling Harley has enough strength and malice to kick Dick unconscious: ‘The iron point of his clog pierced my scalp, and I fainted from the pain,’ (Chp 9 p137).   This is a piece of clever plotting on Bentley’s part.   It brings together all the significant people in the text, unites the two separate histories  of Mr Kay and the Coiners’ plot and makes boy and dog into significant participants.

By contrast Bentley has to simplify the killing of Deighton.  The first change Bentley makes to history is to call ‘Deighton’ ‘Dighton’, possibly to make the pronunciation of the name clearer.     Dick recovers from being stunned in time to be on hand when Dighton is murdered in Bull Close Lane.   Where the arrest of Hartley was dramatized, the brutality of Deighton’s killing is played down.    According to Marsh: ‘Deighton slumped down mortally wounded from a slug in the head behind the left ear which lodged near his eye,’ (Chp 7 p86).  In order to make sure Deighton died: ‘Thomas first hit viciously at the body with the butt end of his gun, then after kicking it for good measure, jumped on the chest and face with his heavy shoes,’ (Chp 7 p86).   In Bentley’s version the weak Dick leans on Mr Dighton as Dighton explains the earlier part of the plot that Dick was not witness to.    Conveniently Dighton finishes his explanation before ‘a strange hollow bang flew through the air,’ (Chp 9 p144).  He has been shot but no one attempts to stamp on the body or indeed kill Dick who is a significant witness.   Dick is left alive to run and grab at the feet of someone trying to climb the ‘high wall which edged the lane,’ (Chp 9 p145).  This turns out to be Jamie.  Dick questions him about his past actions and ends up declaring:  ‘Forgive your treachery?  Never!’ (Chp 9, p146). 

The modern Bull Close Lane, Halifax

In this version of events Dighton is shot because Hartley’s gang have mistaken Dighton for Kay, the chief witness against David Hartley.  He is ‘shot through the heart,’ (Chp 9 p147) and dies instantly.   Bentley decides that the climax of the legal strand in the text should be Dick’s testimony about the shooting of Dighton.   This stops her from having to replicate the complex process by which Thomas and Normington were eventually arrested and convicted.   During the testimony Dick inadvertently clears Jamie of the suspicion of being the murderer: ‘Thus acquitted from a betrayal, I felt as if I had been swept from hell to heaven,’ (Chp 10 p167).   It takes a hard-hearted reader to think that the only reason for Jamie to be in the alley was to identify the victim for the killer.   Nevertheless Jamie escapes being charged as an accessory and the murderer is not brought to trial.

In Bentley’s reworking of the story there is only one gunman, an ex-game keeper called ‘Old Amos’.   Dick catches sight of him at the inquest, notes his ‘pale face, contorted, terrified, with staring eyes and quivering lips,’ and concludes it is he who was ‘coerced or bribed by the Hartleys into firing that fatal shot,’ (Chp 10 p167).     Amos later confesses to Dick but Dick feels no need to report this confession: ‘He is not long for this world,’ I thought,’ (Chp 12 185).  By this stage the text has lost interest in the question of Dick’s conscience and the criminal activities of the Hartley gang.   Indeed the authorities seem to show no interest in pursuing Dighton’s killer despite the anger and pain revealed by Dighton’s son at the inquest: ‘It was one of those vile coiners my father’s been chasing this past month,’ (Chp 10 p166).   The Coroner’s response ‘Haver you any evidence to that effect?’  (Chp 10 p166) leads to no further investigations, quite contrary to history.  Nevertheless it is not this side of history that Bentley is interested in.   David Hartley’s execution is reported, not shown: ‘He’s to be hanged o’ Saturday,’ (Chp 12 p183) and Dick attends the funeral.

York, Tyburn

The hanging of David Hartley took place in York at ‘Tyburn’, a gallows on the west side of Knavesmire.   Bentley does not depict this execution.    In Inheritance, a book intended for adults, she shows the execution of Luddite assassins in York.  By that time the execution site has been moved to outside York Castle and court.

In part this reflects the loose ends left behind by the original investigation.    Isaac Hartley, despite his involvement in coining and the murder of Deighton, was not hanged and the people arrested for the murder of Abraham Ingham, who the coiners suspected of being an informant, were acquitted when brought to trial.   https://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/news/old-fireplace-discovery-stokes-up-coiners-legend-1-7945964).   As in Daisy Baines: The Luddite’s Daughter, the climax of the book is a funeral that becomes a communal event.   In Daisy Baines this is used to show the support for the Luddites amongst the local community.  In Gold Pieces such solidarity is less in evidence.   Dick gives the impression of a casual assembling: ‘this group gradually grew into a crowd, ‘and of alienation: ‘most of the crowd, I felt, had come out of simple curiosity, ‘ (Chp 12 p186).  The crowd’s sympathy is increased when they help push the coffin cart up the steep hill of Heptonstall: ‘their chatter fell away, their faces settled into a suitable gravity, ‘ (Chp 12 p187) until they disperse to leave Dick and Jamie alone to become reconciled.

 David Hartley's Grave

The size and the lettering show it was an expensive and prestigious status-symbol. 

Despite this ending, most of the last part of the book concerns Mr Kay and his invention the flying shuttle.     This places emphasis where a Marxist might place it.  The most significant events at the end of the 18th century are not the state of law and order but the progression towards the Industrial Revolution.  It is Mr Kay’s shuttle that will create the future not the activities of King David.    This makes Bentley appear to share some of the indifference of the locals: ‘They resented Mr Chamberlayne’s la-di-da manner (as they called it) and Mr Dighton’s strange accent,’ (Chp 5 p75).  However Bentley’s attitude is based on economic hindsight not parochialism.  ‘Mr Kay’ is John Kay, the Lancastrian inventor of a flying shuttle patented in 1733 [https://spartacus-educational.com/TEXflying.htm].    The last two Chapters are called ‘The Flying Shuttle’ and ‘End and Beginning’.  In Chapter 11 ‘The Flying Shuttle’  Mr Kay demonstrates his new device:

      Then Mr Kay jerked the left–hand string, and the left slide lid forward and hit the left box, driving

      the shuttle across the loom.  It was a process infinitely quicker than throwing the shuttle by hand,

      partly because the weaver’s left hand was always free to pull forward the lathe.

              ‘Let me try!’ cried my father eagerly.

          He seated himself at the loom and holding the peg in his right hand, wielded the strings with

       perfect ease.  The shuttle flew back and forth.  He laughed with glee.

              ‘This is wondrous quick weaving!’ he cried.  (p178)

Though a long extract, this is only half of Bentley’s description.  Despite the fact this is a book aimed at 9-12 year olds who are unlikely to be excited by knowing exactly how the Kay Flying Shuttle worked, Bentley insists on giving a long technical description of how the shuttle was operated.  

As might be expected from her other novels Bentley’s sympathies are divided between Capital and Labour.   Bentley presents Mr Kay, as he is presented in Memoir of John Kay, of Bury; Inventor of the Fly-Shuttle With a Review of the Textile Trade and Manufacture From Earliest Times, [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inventor-Fly-Shuttle-Textile-Manufacture-Earliest/dp/1150884983].  She endorses the view that he was the victim of Yorkshire manufacturers who copied his device and refused to pay him.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Kay. 

  ‘This is my patent,’ said Mr Kay, sobering suddenly. ’For which the manufacturers pay me nothing.’

       ‘But I will pay you,’ said my father at once.  ‘I will pay you very gladly.’ (Chp11  p178)

The willingness of the artisan to pay is contrasted within three pages by the resistance of local manufacturer Mr Hoyle.  Though impressed by the machine, Mr Hoyle, like his historical counterparts, refuses to pay for the patent: ‘I shall do nothing of the kind!  No other manufacturer pays,’ (Chp 12 p181).   After ‘half an hour’s’ argument he says ‘Well, well, maybe I’ll send him a few  guineas,’ (Chp 12 p182).  It is typical of the text’s priorities that it is only at the end of this exchange that we hear that Dick Hartley has been tried and convicted and ‘to be hanged o’Saturday,’ (Chp 12 p183).   Here the text enacts its own convictions; the drama of criminality is marginalised, pushed off-stage by the progression of economics.

An ornate gate leading to the present Piece Hall 

The Piece Hall mentioned in the text (Chp 5p 82) is an earlier building.  The huge building, opened in 1779, was attuned to the idea of individual weavers selling their goods in the 315 separate rooms.  By 1869 the expansion of the factory system meant the building had to be converted for other commercial uses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_Hall

The book ends with technology apparently benefitting all parties.  Dick’s father can sit ‘erect’ and Dick realises ‘how much better this would be for my father’s chest,’ (Chp 11 p178).   The new shuttle may reduce accidents like the breaking of the old type of shuttle (Chp 3) and give the weaver a heathier posture.   However, like Manhold, the ending is only happy because it abruptly curtails its economic history.  Dick has decided to be a weaver but he is likely to be one of the last generation of independent, artisan weavers.    If he’s 12 in 1770, when David Harley is hanged, he will be 13 when Richard Arkwright opens his textile factory in Cromford Derbyshire, 21 when the  mythical Ned Ludd first destroys a machine (http://ludditelink.org.uk/perch/resources/ludditelinkpdf1.pdf) and 56 in 1814 when the major Luddite actions in Yorkshire are suppressed.  https://spartacus-educational.com/PRluddites.htm He will face an old age competing with mechanised mills.   

A lane called ‘Dick’s Lane’ runs beside ‘Law Hill’ just to the east of Stoodley Pike.  Might this have inspired Bentley’s choice of name for the hero?