The information the above account is based upon is the Old Bailey's version. Unfortunately, the trial of Thomas Reynolds was a show trial and the court was given inaccurate information.
This Ledbury Turnpike Riot took place on 21st September 1735, one week earlier. Most of the actual events are the same except the two men who the mob/turnpike levellers attempted to free were not Reynolds and Bayliss, they were in fact William Bithell and William Morgan. Both men were later hanged at Worcester amid tight security - almost 100 soldiers armed with muskets with bayonets attached.
There had already been disturbances in and around Ledbury because of the turnpikes and their one shilling levy on all the nine roads leading out of Ledbury, so much so that the Government passed an act in June 1734 making 'cutting down turnpikes' a capital offence.
On the day of the levelling John Skyppe III (one of the 39 trustees of the Ledbury Turnpike Trust) read the riot act to a mob of about a hundred men armed with guns, swords and axes. Skyppe and his men then went to defend the 'last turnpike.' From this we can then assume that the other eight had been successfully destroyed.
Even after this riot there were further turnpike disturbances which still continued after the renewal of Ledbury Turnpike Act, when the toll was reduced to 6d. Troops were sent to Ledbury to quell the riots but they were refused food and accomodation by the towns people.
The turnpikes were a failure. They were hated by the people, they further damaged an already depressed economy and the roads were as bad as ever.
It wasn't until the end of the C18th when Ledbury became the first market town in Herefordshire to get a canal linking it to Gloucester that Ledbury's economy improved significantly and times they changed.