Masbrough, Yorkshire - Ebenezer Elliott (1781 - 1849)

Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849) was born in Masbrough, near Rotherham, Yorkshire. His father was a fiery Calvanist and radical known as "Devil Elliott" for his passionate sermons. Ebenezer Elliot inherited something of this radical politics but was also marked by his childhood employment in his father’s iron foundry. His sympathy for the labouring poor lasted throughout his life.

Elliot was an active participant in the Chartist movement and the Anti-Corn Law campaign, which earned him the title of the ‘Corn Law rhymer’. His poetry was central to the development of Chartist verse, with Martha Vicinus referring to Elliot as the 'single most important predecessor of Chartist poets’. Elliott’s poetry was popular amongst readers sympathetic to political reform and helped encourage working-class poetry in the burgeoning Chartist movement. Vicinus describes Elliott’s poetry as characterised by ‘emotional bombast’, ‘fervid language’, and ‘urgent appeals to God’.

‘The Pilgrim Fathers’ contains all these elements. Elliott provides a fiery invective that castigates modern Britain written in the voice of the Pilgrim Fathers speaking from across the Atlantic:

Using the origin myth of the Mayflower, the United States is positioned as a land of freedom in stark contrast with modern Britain. Speaking from the grave, the Pilgrim Fathers are disturbed to find the people of their homeland reduced to ‘soulless slaves’:

Elliot makes direct use of William Bradford (the second governor, and historian of the colony) and John Carver (the first signatory of the Mayflower Compact) as historical figures to articulate his argument for political reform. Describing modern Britons as ‘slaves’, they announce that their ‘sons are free’. The Pilgrim Fathers are positioned as radical freedom-fighters, ‘men whose hearts were torches / For freedom’s quenchless fire’. Whilst clearly ahistorical, Elliott is working in the tradition of British radicalism that stretched back to the fiery oratory and poetry of John Thelwall following the French Revolution. From this perspective, ‘The Pilgrim Fathers’ utilises traditional radical vocabulary and invective to agitate for parliamentary reform. As Nigel Cross comments, Elliott wrote ‘unrepentant political poetry, exhorting the working classes to commit themselves to the struggle against landlords, employers, and governments’. By leveraging the story of the Mayflower for the ends of British radicalism, Elliott demonstrates the malleability of Pilgrim Fathers as a cultural narrative.  

Martha Vicinus, The Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteenth-Century British Working-Class Literature p.96.

Ebeneser Elliot, ‘The Pilgrim Fathers, The Odd Fellow, May 28, 1842, p.1.

Nigel Cross, The Common Writer: Life in Nineteenth-Century Grub Street (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1985), p.149.