17 July 2023 , 20:00
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Lesley Manville is astonished to learn she has family in Australia after her convict ancestor was transported in 1831.
The actress, who plays Princess Margaret in The Crown, is told her great x3 grandfather Aaron Harding, a farm labourer, narrowly avoided execution for leading a mob in the Swing Riots.
The widower with nine children put up with years of poor pay and conditions before the great uprising of workers protesting at their livelihoods being threatened by machinery.
Bafta winner Lesley, 67, tells Who Do You Think You Are? experts: “I’m bursting with pride. He was this poor man not being properly paid. He sounds like such a fantastic character.”
Lesley Manville who plays Princess Margaret in The Crown discovered she had family in Australia (Keith Bernstein)The swing riots were one of the biggest uprisings that Britain had ever seen, with agricultural labourers - who’d long suffered tough conditions and low pay - protesting about the increasing mechanisation of farming.
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Mobs attacked threshing machines and symbols of oppression such as workhouses, ripping off roofs and pulling down doors and ceilings.
Because the authorities feared a full-blown revolution, the sentences for those arrested and convicted were harsh.
Nearly 2,000 protesters were brought to trial in 1830–1831; 252 were sentenced to death (though only 19 were actually hanged), 644 were imprisoned and 481 were transported to Australia. The country was first set up as a penal colony in the 1780s and by the 1830s was fully established.
Lesley's great x3 grandfather was sent to Australia (Out of copyright)Aaron faced the death penalty after his mob of hundreds attacked and partially demolished the workhouse in Selborne, Hants, before moving on to nearby Headley.
Lesley learns that rather than being executed, he was sentenced to “transportation for life” to New South Wales.
She says: “He would have been without anyone that he knew. No love, no family.”
Aaron was pardoned in 1837, but on the condition that he did not leave Australia. A decade later, he settled down with Alice, who bore him two sons, leading to a whole line of Australian relatives that Lesley knew nothing of.
She is thrilled to meet Rebecca and Claire Watts, also great x3 granddaughters of Aaron, who have a photo of him.
She says: “Aaron had descendants! It’s bizarre to think I’ve got family here. It’s extraordinary.”
- Who Do You Think You Are? is on BBC1 on July 27 at 9pm.