Castlereagh
Michael Rosen has drawn attention to a long ‘lost’ poem by Shelley ‘A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things,which is now available to view:
https://keats-shelley.org/blog/michael_rosens_2019_keats_shelley_talk
The poem was written in support of an Irish radical journalist Peter Finnerty who had become the Parliamentary Reporter for the Morning Chronicle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Finnerty
He had been sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1811 for libelling Lord Castlereagh.
Castlereagh was Leader of the House of Commons when the Peterloo Massacre took place on 16th August 1819.
Shelley’s poem The Masque of Anarchy mentioned him thus:
I met Murder on the way –He had a mask like Castlereagh –Very smooth he looked, yet grim;Seven bloodhounds followed him
Finnerty was in Manchester in the months before Peterloo but on 15th June 1819 he had an encounter with Castlereagh in the Commons. He had been arrested for writing a Parliamentary report in what was claimed to be the wrong position in the House.
Castlereagh moved that he was admonished rather than jailed on this occasion.
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1819/jun/15/complaint-against-mr-finnerty
Finnerty is not mentioned in E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, a classic text covering the period. This may partly have been due to Finnerty’s background in Irish radical politics which Thompson didnt cover in the book. However he was clearly London based from around 1800.
Research in progress….
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