Cobbett's return to England in 1819

Gyorgy Lukacs’s assertion that the “approach of a revolutionary period is heralded by all the dissatisfied elements of the old society seeking to join, or at least make contact with, the proletariat” is perhaps best illustrated by an unlikely alliance that occurred between William Cobbett and Queen Caroline of Brunswick. This paper examines two aspects of Cobbett’s engagement with England after his return from America where he had fled, in 1817, to avoid imprisonment: firstly the considerable achievement of a Sussex farmer becoming speech writer for the Queen. And secondly the mistrust that he encountered almost from the moment he arrived in Liverpool on 21 November 1819