To the artist Samuel Palmer, the country around Shoreham in Kent was a visionary rural idyll populated by piping shepherds and smock-clad peasants forever gathering in sheaves of ripened corn. It was close to London, yet a world away from the city’s grime and misery. In 1830 the rustic vision was violently dispelled by the outbreak of political unrest known as the Swing Riots. Mass gatherings of impoverished labourers, protesting against low wages and mechanisation, were supplemented by arson attacks on barns and hayricks, and sinister threatening letters to landowners, signed by “Captain Swing”. These events caused a disillusioned Palmer to leave behind both Shoreham and with it the most creative period of his artistic career. I have made four miniatures based on Palmer’s Shoreham paintings. In Kent four farmworkers were hanged for arson in 1830-1, and the miniatures bear their names.