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This narrative history provides an account of the events leading up to the machine-breaking of the Luddite Rebellion, describing the progress of the riots in detail, as well as examining their motivation and the political and economic legacy they left behind. The Luddite riots began in the Nottinghamshire framework-knitting towns and villages in the early 19th century. Ned Ludd is popularly supposed to have smashed a knitting-frame and thus given his name to the mythology and rebellion of the period. Machine-breaking had, in fact, occurred some years before this, and the disturbances spread through the textile industries of the Midland counties and into Lancashire and Yorkshire. The reactions of the government were savage; more troops were deployed against the Luddites than Wellington had under his command against Napeoleon. Lord Byron, a Nottinghamshire landowner, made his maiden speech in the House of Lords agains the government's proposal to make machine-breaking a capital offence. The climax of the rebellion is often regarded as the attack at Rawfolds Mill, Liversedge, dramatized in Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley".