Mr. Cartwright was the owner of a factory called Rawfolds, in Liversedge, not beyond the distance of a walk from Roe Head.  He had dared to employ machinery for the dressing of woollen cloth, which was an unpopular measure in 1812, when many other circumstances conspired to make the condition of the mill-hands unbearable from the pressure of starvation and misery.  Mr. Cartwright was a very remarkable man, having, as I have been told, some foreign blood in him, the traces of which were very apparent in his tall figure, dark eyes and complexion, and singular, though gentlemanly bearing.  At any rate he had been much abroad, and spoke French well, of itself a suspicious circumstance to the bigoted nationality of those days.  Altogether he was an unpopular man, even before he took the last step of employing shears, instead of hands, to dress his wool.  He was quite aware of his unpopularity, and of the probable consequences.  He had his mill prepared for an assault.  He took up his lodgings in it; and the doors were strongly barricaded at night.  On every step of the stairs there was placed a roller, spiked with barbed points all round, so as to impede the ascent of the rioters, if they succeeded in forcing the doors.

On the night of Saturday the 11th of April, 1812, the assault was made.  Some hundreds of starving cloth-dressers assembled in the very field near Kirklees that sloped down from the house which Miss W—–­ afterwards inhabited, and were armed by their leaders with pistols, hatchets, and bludgeons, many of which had been extorted by the nightly bands that prowled about the country, from such inhabitants of lonely houses as had provided themselves with these means of self-defence.  The silent sullen multitude marched in the dead of that spring-night to Rawfolds, and giving tongue with a great shout, roused Mr. Cartwright up to the knowledge that the long-expected attack was come.  He was within walls, it is true; but against the fury of hundreds he had only four of his own workmen and five soldiers to assist him.  These ten men, however, managed to keep up such a vigorous and well-directed fire of musketry that they defeated all the desperate attempts of the multitude outside to break down the doors, and force a way into the mill; and, after a conflict of twenty minutes, during which two of the assailants were killed and several wounded, they withdrew in confusion, leaving Mr. Cartwright master of the field, but so dizzy and exhausted, now the peril was past, that he forgot the nature of his defences, and injured his leg rather seriously by one of the spiked rollers, in attempting to go up his own staircase.  His dwelling was near the factory.  Some of the rioters vowed that, if he did not give in, they would leave this, and go to his house, and murder his wife and children.  This was a terrible threat, for he had been obliged to leave his family with only one or two soldiers to defend them.  Mrs. Cartwright knew what they