Page:Two Sussex archaeologists, William Durrant Cooper and Mark Antony Lower.djvu/16

 and the wholesale destruction of machinery. Unhappy rioters, or so-called rioters, were hanged, half-a-dozen or more at a time. On one occasion, eight poor ignorant wretches were thus disposed of at Manchester, one of them being a miserable woman, whose sole offence was the stealing of a few potatoes. In 1812, too, a cabinet minister—Spencer Perceval—was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons. And if to this it be added that the United States of America declared war against England, and in several instances compelled English ships, after hard fights, to strike their flags to their transatlantic assailants, it will be seen that, taking it altogether, the year 1812 was as gloomy and unpromising a one as a human being could well choose—or have chosen for him—for his entry upon the theatre of life.

Mr. Cooper's ancestry may be traced back to Thomas Cooper, of Icklesham, a Sussex squire of the seventeenth century. Thomas Cooper, his eldest great-grandson, also of Icklesham, who married, in 1787, Mary, daughter of Thomas Collins, of Winchelsea, had six sons and two daughters. The second of these six sons was Thomas Cooper, who, born in May 1789, married Lucy Elizabeth, great-granddaughter of Samuel Durrant, of Cockshot, Hawkhurst, Kent; and the eldest son of this marriage was, who was born in High Street, in the parish of St. Michael, Lewes, on the tenth of January, 1812. The first cadet of this family, who settled in Lewes, would seem to have been William Cooper, the second of the great-grandsons of the first-named Thomas Cooper, of Icklesham. He became an eminent solicitor in Lewes, and dying in 1813, was succeeded in his practice by his nephew, Thomas Cooper, the father, as just stated, of the subject of this notice. This William Cooper was perhaps the only member of the legal profession who espoused the Liberal side of politics in Lewes. His residence was in Saint Anne's parish, and being well-nigh as independent in pocket as he was in politics, and endowed, moreover, with a spice of humour as well, he could afford to indulge in a