Character guide

Thomas Broad

major

Also known as Mr. Broad, Tommy Broad, Tom, Mr. Thomas Broad, Mr. Thomas, Broad, Tom Broad

Mr. Broad presides over Tanner's Lane as its eminently orthodox minister, his family the model of respectable Dissent, his Monday picnics at Shott Woods a fixed institution. Yet his somnolent virtue hides a bitter, concealed animosity toward the Allens that even he cannot fully explain, and his son Thomas carries that inherited suspicion into London. Broad matters because the story's early world is measured by his approval — and quietly poisoned by his resentments.

George Allen

major

Also known as Mr. Allen, the Serpent George Allen, Mrs. George, George, Allen

George Allen belongs to Tanner's Lane on Sundays but to a more dangerous current the rest of the week, his household steeped in Zachariah's letters and the politics of the age. The Broads feel the cross in him — nothing heretical can be proved, yet Mr. Broad hates him with an intensity out of proportion to any fault. He anchors the novel's central friction: respectable Dissent versus the revolutionary leaven seeping into it.

Zachariah Coleman

major

Also known as Zachariah, Coleman

Zachariah is the novel's radical conscience — a printer caught in the suspended Habeas Corpus days, moving among Ogden, Caillaud, and the Major as the march on London approaches. His marriage to a wife he stimulates only into hardness is a private disaster running parallel to the public one, and Mrs. Carter's Samaritan kindness exposes how isolated he has become. He matters because the Revolution's cost is measured in his own household before it is measured in prison.

Pauline

major

Also known as Miss Pauline, Little Pauline, the astonished Pauline

Pauline keeps her father's small house and receives his visitors, her beauty and decision of lip already famous as far as Cowfold. When the callow Thomas Broad arrives with his smelling-salts and greasy compliments, her instant, outspoken loathing draws a line the plot will keep testing. She matters because she is what the Revolution looks like at home — vivid, unprotected, and unwilling to be condescended to.

Mrs. Zachariah

supporting

Also known as the first Mrs. Zachariah

She is the domestic counterweight to Zachariah's public fervor, a woman whom neighbors call hard and even cruel, though the narrator insists her injustice grows from a false relationship rather than a false nature. With a better man she would have been better and happier; with Zachariah, every virtue of his seems to sharpen her temper. She matters because she makes the reader feel the private cost of revolutionary zeal before any political consequence arrives.

Mrs. Broad

supporting

Mrs. Broad is the presiding respectability of Tanner's Lane, high-headed, managing, and utterly certain of her own judgments, whether naming an infant's lineage or warning her son away from disreputable friends. Nurse Barton's frank contempt — that she orders the minister about and shows no feeling — reveals how the congregation's women privately take her measure. She matters because her social verdicts shape what the younger generation may and may not do.

Mr. Bradshaw

supporting

Also known as Bradshaw

Bradshaw is the magnetic preacher whose gifts the Major cannot stop praising, a man who can make a hardened Londoner resolve to reread the Bible. Yet Zachariah wishes he would choose a New Testament text and preach Christ more plainly, hinting at tensions between rhetorical power and simple gospel. His sway over the Tanner's Lane congregation makes him a pivot for the novel's debates about faith, eloquence, and what truly converts a soul.

Mrs. Coleman

supporting

Also known as Coleman, Presently Mrs. Coleman, Accordingly Mrs. Coleman

Mrs. Coleman belongs to the older, sober generation of Tanner's Lane believers, the kind of woman who keeps a copy of The Idler by her bed and quotes it to husband and son. Her faith is undramatic but steady, a counterweight to the fervours and fevers around her. Through her influence on Zachariah, she quietly anchors the novel's concern with how ordinary domestic piety survives in an age of revolution and revival.

Mr. Caillaud

supporting

Also known as Caillaud

Caillaud and the Major stand together in St. Peter's Fields, aghast at the unarmed thousands who believe a petition will topple Lord Liverpool. He is a foreigner among English reformers, close enough to their hopes to share the danger but detached enough to see the innocence and fanaticism of the Blanketeers' march. His presence widens the novel's frame, linking Manchester radicalism to the larger European upheavals of the age.

Reverend Thomas Bradshaw

supporting

Also known as Jephthah, the Reverend Thomas Bradshaw

Bradshaw is the orator whose sermon so moves the Major that he resolves to read Scripture again, though Zachariah wishes the text had been from the New Testament. He is a born speaker, the kind whose eloquence divides a congregation between admiration and unease. His pulpit presence sets the terms for the novel's running argument about revival, rhetoric, and the plain gospel of Christ.

Priscilla Broad

supporting

Also known as Priscilla, Miss Priscilla Broad, Miss Priscilla, Miss Broad, Priscilla Broad

Priscilla is the minister's daughter who marries George Allen, only to find herself the fault line between Tanner's Lane respectability and George's revolutionary sympathies. When her father bolts the door against George after the riot, she returns home pale and unusually silent, and George dreads to open the subject. Her divided loyalty makes her the novel's most intimate casualty of the collision between faith, family, and political passion.

Major Maitland

supporting

Also known as Maitland, Major, the Major, The Major

Major Maitland moves easily between Mrs. Coleman's parlour and the radical club, a soldier of fortune whose cosmopolitan talk about France unsettles her tidy English certainties. He refuses to be upset by talk of the fatal night in London, preferring to steer conversation toward what Manchester will do in the coming twelvemonth. His worldly tolerance and revolutionary connections make him a bridge between the drawing room and the conspiracy, and a foil to Zachariah's earnest faith.

Jean Caillaud

supporting

Also known as Jean, Caillaud

Jean Caillaud moves through the radical circles of Tanner's Lane as a Frenchman who has seen revolution up close and cannot forget it. His love for Pauline is a hungry, self-effacing fire — he falls silent when she speaks, content to let her brilliance carry the room. That very devotion, set against his unyielding hatred of kings and his grief over Napoleon's exile, makes him a still center of political and emotional tension in the novel's early chapters.

Carter

minor

Also known as Mrs. Carter

A servant or housekeeper, providing local color and gossip.

Mrs. Allen

minor

Also known as the Allen

George Allen's wife, a quiet but observant character.

Fanny Allen

supporting

Also known as Fanny, the Allen, Miss Fanny Allen, Miss Fanny, Miss Allen

Fanny Allen belongs to the tight web of Tanner's Lane families, where her father George's marriage to the minister's daughter Priscilla Broad has already stirred gossip and resentment. Raised amid chapel discipline and the sharp tongues of women like Nurse Barton, she carries the weight of her family's precarious respectability. Her romantic choices — and the judgments they provoke — draw her into the novel's central drama of faith, class, and desire.

Old Bushel

minor

Also known as Brother Bushel, Bushel

A rustic and comic figure, often providing earthy wisdom.

Victorine

minor

A French woman connected to the Caillaud family, adding a romantic subplot.

Mr. Coleman

minor

Also known as Coleman

Zachariah's father, a figure of traditional authority.

Reverend John Broad

minor

Also known as John Broad, John, the Reverend John Broad

Thomas Broad's brother, a clergyman with differing views.

Brother Scotton

minor

Also known as Scotton

A member of the religious community, often involved in disputes.

Mr. Isaac Allen

minor

Also known as Isaac, Mr. Allen

A relative of George Allen, involved in family and business matters.

Mr. Hardy

minor

A figure of authority, possibly a magistrate or constable.

Nurse Barton

minor

Also known as old nurse Barton

An elderly nurse, providing care and commentary.

Brother Wainwright

minor

Also known as Wainwright

A member of the religious community, often in conflict with others.

William Ogden

minor

Also known as Ogden

A figure involved in the political or religious scene.

Ferguson

minor

Also known as the Ferguson

A minor character, possibly a servant or tradesman.

Reverend James Harden

minor

Also known as Harden

A clergyman, possibly involved in the religious controversies.

Brother Allen

minor

Also known as Allen

A member of the religious community, possibly related to George Allen.

Mrs. Barton

minor

Also known as nurse Barton

A nurse or caretaker, possibly the same as Nurse Barton.

Marie Pauline Coleman

minor

Also known as little Pauline

Pauline's child, a symbol of the next generation.

Mrs. Carver

minor

A minor character, possibly a neighbor or servant.

Tryphosa

minor

A minor female character, possibly a servant or friend.

Ellen

minor

A minor female character, possibly a servant or relative.

Mrs. Muston

minor

Also known as Mr. and Mrs. Muston, Mr. Muston

A married couple, possibly neighbors or friends.

Mr. Bushel

minor

A local tradesman, possibly related to Old Bushel.

Mr. Scotton

minor

Also known as Scotton

A local figure, possibly related to Brother Scotton.

Dupin

minor

Also known as Dupin the younger, the younger Dupin, Madame Dupin, Madame

A French family connected to the Caillauds, with political intrigues.

Bill Rogers

minor

Also known as one Rogers, Bill

A local character, possibly a worker or radical.

Miss Wootton

minor

Also known as Wootton

A young woman, possibly a love interest or friend.

Dr. Flavel

minor

Also known as Flavel, grandpapa Flavel, uncle Flavel

An elderly relative, possibly a doctor or scholar.

Miss Coleman

minor

A female relative of Zachariah Coleman.

Mrs. Bushel

minor

Also known as Bushel

Old Bushel's wife, a minor domestic character.

Mr. Nadin

minor

Also known as quoth Mr. Nadin, Nadin

A figure of authority, possibly a constable or magistrate.

Widow Oakfield

minor

A widow, possibly a landlady or local character.

Old Pinfold

minor

Also known as Old Pinfold

A local character, possibly a farmer or tradesman.

Mrs. Isaac

minor

Also known as Isaac

Isaac Allen's wife, a minor domestic character.