Not every parish rioted. On November 15^th, for instance, three hundred men from Rotherfield and Mayfield, under the slogan “One and all, we’ll stand by one another”, marched to Withyham, expecting the men there to join them. However, the expected reinforcements failed to materialise and the band dispersed, calling the Withyham labourers “a set of cowards who would not stand up for their rights.” On the other hand, in Eastbourne, where in 1831 one-sixth of the population received parish relief in some form or other, for a whole month scarcely a night passed without a barn or a rick burning down somewhere in the parish, and one night three were blazing simultaneously.

The arrival of the military in Battle seems to have been the spark that ignited the explosion of riots, demonstrations and arson in at least twenty-four other East Sussex parishes. In some, certain men emerged clearly as leaders of the movement. Often they were artisans or shopkeepers, men with slightly more education than the labourers, often more aware of events outside their own parishes and perhaps readers of publications such as William Cobbett’s Political Register. In other parishes the men denied “having a captain!” “We are all as one,” they said.

At Ringmer, for instance, the labourers met after church on the Sunday and next morning assembled on the green around Viscount Gage, forming a ring into which someone – his identity carefully concealed by the formation – threw a letter. It read:

“1s. 7d. a day sufficient for a working man hale and hearty to keep up strength necessary for the labour he has to do? We ask also is 9s. a week sufficient for a married man with a family to provide the commonest necessities of life? We toil with only potatoes in our satchels, and for drink only the beverage of the cold spring. We therefore as for married men 2s. 6d. a day from April to October and 2s. 3d. a day from October to March. Also that the permanent overseers be discharged.”

Mr. Finch, the governor of the Ringmer Poorhouse, was the immediate object of their anger, but they widened it to include the overseers of the neighbouring parishes. Whether or not this included Richard Lower in Chiddingly is not known, nor whether Finch was, in fact, dismissed. Lord Gage, however, was sufficiently impressed by the letter, the conditions it revealed and the demeanour of those who presented it, to promise that the demands it made would be met, and he brought pressure on local farmers and millers to see that they were. It is not reported but it is likely that the Ringmer farmers, like those in Dallington, Brede and elsewhere, expressed the view, “It’s all very well to give the labourers higher wages but how can we pay them without frittering away our capital unless the landowners (like Viscount Gage) reduce rents, the parsons take less tithes and the Government lowers taxes?”