Fragments of Two Centuries: Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King

by Alfred Kingston

A CAMBRIDGE ELECTION PARTY.

It seems strange in these days that there should have been so much interest centred in these flying channels of civilization. I have mentioned the "Safety" and "Tally-ho," two coaches driven through Royston from Cambridge to London and back. These were well-known as rival coaches—rivals in time, for each went up in the morning and back in the evening, and, what is more interesting, they were also rivals in, and between them there was a keen competition for, popular favour; so much so that one might almost describe them as the aristocratic and democratic coaches. There is sufficient reason for making this distinction between them in the fact that the Royston people of those days (1820-25) did, in the absence of anything more exciting to divide their thoughts and preferences in the quiet daily round of their lives, manage to set up a sort of party-distinction, not exactly on the lines of Whig and Tory, but, strange as it may seem, by the names of "Tally-ho," and "Safety." From the smallest boy to the oldest man in Royston and the district, the inhabitants showed sufficient leanings one way or the other to be classed as "Tally-ho" men or "Safety" men. By these rival coaches men swore, pledged themselves, and regulated their watches—those who had any. But the "Tally-ho" and "Safety" party-cries came out more especially amongst the boys, for when "Tally-ho" and "Safety" boys met, it was a case of "when Greek meets Greek," with frequent fights! The two rival coaches thus became the means of sharply dividing popular sentiment, with many who had never enjoyed a seat on either of the champion coaches!

About 1825 the rivalry between "Tally-ho" and "Safety" was at its merriest, and ten years later other coaches had appeared upon the scene. Thus in 1839 the following were the coaches, and their places of call, passing through Royston:—The "Star," from Cambridge, daily, calling at the Red Lion, Royston, and destined for Belle Sauvage, London; the Cambridge "Beehive," up and down alternate days, the Bull, Royston, and the Catherine Wheel, Bishopsgate Street, and White Bear, Piccadilly; the Cambridge "Telegraph," daily, the Red Lion, Royston, and the White Horse, Fetter Lane; the "Rocket," daily, the Bull, Royston, and White Horse, Fetter Lane; the "Wisbeach," daily, the Bull Hotel, Royston, and Belle Sauvage and Golden Cross, London; the "Stamford," up and down alternate days, the Crown, Royston, and the Bell and Crown, Holborn; the "Wellington," from York, the Queen Victoria, Royston (now the Coffee Tavern), and the Bull and Mouth, London; the "Rapid," daily (including Sunday), the Red Lion, Royston; Edinburgh and York mail and the Cambridge mail, daily, the Red Lion, Royston, for the General Post Office, London.

The times at which these coaches arrived at Royston followed in fairly consecutive order like a railway time table—thus of the up coaches the "Star," 8.20 a.m., "Beehive," 11.30, and so on up to the "Rocket," at 4.30, while the Edinburgh and Cambridge Mails passed through at 1 and 2 in the morning; the return journeys were of course chiefly towards the evening. The usual time from Royston to London was 44 hours, excepting the York mail, in the night time, which reached the General Post Office within four hours after leaving the Red Lion, at Royston.

One of the coaches in the above list, the "Star," naturally leads one from coaches to coachmen. I am not aware who was the driver of the "Tally-ho," but of the rival coach, the "Safety," the driver was Joe Walton, the driver of the "Star" at the later date mentioned above, a famous coachman in his day who lived to see, and curse from his box that "iron horse," which was destined to break up the traditions of the road.

It was the general testimony of those who had ridden behind him, or beside him on the box, that Joe Walton had few superiors on the road as a driver of a stage coach, especially for the manner in which he would handle his "cattle," and pull his coach through the streets of the Metropolis. He was, however, daring to a fault, but a strong will and an iron nerve could only have enabled him to carry that heavy handful of reins for ten hours at a stretch—fifty miles up and fifty miles back on the same day, all through the season. This was no child's play!

He was a driver who was not easily turned aside by difficulties or obstacles in the way, and has been known to conduct his coach across "hedges and ditches" when snow blocked up the highways. The firm grip of his position was sometimes apparent to those who encountered him on the road. Woe-betide any inefficient or sleepy driver whom Joe had to pass on the road, for a heavy smack from his whip was often as effectual a cure as the modern roundabout process of dragging the sleepy teamster before the magistrates and extracting a few shillings from his earnings!

At a recent dinner at Cambridge, Professor Humphry, who came to Cambridge to commence what has been a brilliant career by a journey on the "Star" coach, lightly hit off Joe Walton, the driver of the "Star," as a man who "used to swear like a trooper and go regularly to Church."

Joe Walton was also a man who could show off his powers on the box, and did not like to be beaten. In 1827, finding, just as he was leaving Buntingford with the "Star" coach, that the "Defiance" was cutting out the pace in front of him, he put his "cattle" to it with a view to pass the "Defiance;" but by one of the horses shying at the lamp of the coach in front, Walton's coach was overturned and he and a passenger were injured. Again in 1834, Joe overthrew the "Star" coach not far from Royston, on the 2nd September, but it would almost seem that the fault was as much in the "Star" as in Joe's daring style of driving, for again on the 30th September it was overthrown on the Buntingford and Royston road, when it was being driven by Sir Vincent Cotton. Every inch a coachman, Joe Walton felt the bitter slight upon his high calling, when at last, with the introduction of the railway, his journeys were curtailed to the miserable make-shift of driving only as far as Broxbourne to meet the iron horse, whose approach Walton would hail with a memorable emphasis, and a more forcible than polite "Here comes old Hell-in-harness!"

Other men on the North Road, though having less of Walton's rough grip of their calling, were noted for their urbanity and general intelligence. A place of honour among these was well deserved by Valentine Carter, the son of a Hertford coach-proprietor, the driver of the "Rocket," already referred to, and of the "Royston Coach" from Cambridge to Ware, as a connection with the Great Eastern Railway (1845-50), and in after life known as the genial landlord of the George Hotel, Buntingford. At the time of his death he had reached his 85th year, and when his remains were interred in the Layston Churchyard only a few years ago it was well said of him that "a more upright, truthful, and honourable man never lived."

Another man of some note on the London and Barkway road was Thomas Cross, the driver of the Lynn coach, to whose interesting volumes, "The Autobiography of a Stage Coachman," I have previously referred. The Cambridge "Telegraph" was, at one time, driven by a type of man whose character found expression in the soubriquet of "Quaker Will."

The difference between the risk of accidents on a coach and in a railway train has been well put by the old stager who asked the question—"If you meet with an accident by a coach and get thrown into a ditch, why there you are! but if you meet with an accident when riding by train—where are you?"

A few coaching adventures may be worth mentioning. Thus in 1803 it is recorded that—

On Saturday morning, early, the Wisbeach Mail from London coming down Reed Hill, between Buckland and Royston, was overthrown by the horses taking fright, by which accident one woman was killed on the spot and some other passengers slightly hurt.

On one occasion the Hertford coach met with a very alarming accident when overloaded with 34 passengers, nearly all of whom were severely hurt. A shocking accident, from top-loading, occurred in 1814 to the Ipswich coach, on the top of which the Rev. Gaven Braithwaite, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, was crushed to death as the coach entered the gateway of the Blue Boar Inn, in that town.

Sometimes a coach was overturned with ludicrous results. Thus the Lynn coach, when being driven through Trumpington, on one occasion was overturned against the wall of a cottage. It so happened that the good house-wife was washing at the time; it further happened that her door was standing wide open, and it also happened that the ladies on the coach were pitched into the open doorway of the cottage, and one of them was pitched into the tub of soapsuds! In 1834, as soon as the day coach from Wisbeach to London, through Cambridge, arrived at the White Hart Inn, Cambridge, it was seized by the Excise officers and taken to the Rose and Crown, where it remained some days "in confinement," owing to the interesting circumstance that smuggled brandy was "on board."

Of the personal adventures of those in charge of the coaches and their hardships, the late Mr. James Richardson used to tell a graphic story to the effect that one winter's day he was waiting at the Cross, Royston, till the coach came in from the North. The townspeople were more than usually interested owing to the severity of the weather. This particular coach changed horses at the Old Crown, and when the vehicle rattled up the street it was noticed that the horn did not sound, and, on pulling up, the driver went sharply round to scold the guard. Poor fellow! He was found frozen to death, fast on his perch!

Sometimes the passengers by coach found themselves in contact with rough characters. In 1825, for instance, the Lynn coach contained three men being taken up to London for trial on a charge of burglary. When ascending Barkway hill the three men took advantage of the slower pace of the coach and began to descend with a view to escape, but the attendant immediately brought a pistol to their faces and one who had actually got off the coach was "persuaded" to get up again by the determination of their attendants to "have them in Newgate this night either dead or alive." They got them there alive and they were transported.

In the coaching days of this century the old highwaymen had for the most part disappeared, but a notable instance was afforded in this district in which the Mellishs, then residing at Hamels Park, were concerned. There were really two incidents, one in which Colonel Mellish fired at a highwayman and killed him, and in the other Captain Mellish was robbed, and as the highwayman rode away, not satisfied with his triumph, he turned and fire at the carriage, and the ball passed through the window and killed Captain Mellish!

Mr. Cross, the driver of the Lynn coach, gives an instance of three rival coaches on the road, of which he was driving one, and that a race for the lead resulted in accomplishing one stage at the extraordinary pace of 20 minutes and a few seconds for an eight miles course, which, if timed correctly, was at the rate of 24 miles an hour! But three of his opponents' horses never came out of the stable again!

One of the most alarming stage coach accidents in England was that between the Holyhead mail and the Chester mail near St. Albans in 1820. There had been a race between the two coaches from just this side Highgate, to near St. Albans. When going down a hill both drivers—Perdy, of the Holyhead, and Butler, of the Chester coach—put their horses into a furious galop, the velocity of the coaches increasing at every step. There was plenty of room, but as Butler found the Holyhead gaining a little upon him, it is said he wildly threw his leaders in front of his rival's and the coaches were immediately upset with a terrible collision. A man named William Hart was killed and others had their limbs shattered. The drivers were put upon their trial at the Hertford Assizes before Baron Gurney, and were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced each to one year's imprisonment.

Railway passengers are at least tolerably free from the "begging nuisance," but not so the passengers by stage coaches when the coach pulled up for the change of horses, as the following entry in the Royston committee book for 1815 will show:—

"Ordered that Notice be given to John T—— and J. B—— if they are found begging in the street from the Coaches that their pay is to be taken off."

One curious indication that the end of the coaching era was approaching was afforded by the invention of steam coaches. Thus we find in 1839 that "Hancock's steam coach" came through Royston for the first time, being seven hours coming from London, including stoppages. Rather a slow rate from the agency which was to annihilate horse coaches!

One of the arguments against railways was that there would no longer be employment for horses, and yet just before railways were heard of one man stood at the Old Tyburn Turnpike and received the toll and issued tickets for the whole of the Oxford Street traffic! What a picture that old Tyburn turnpike man would form now, standing there in his white apron with its two pockets, "one for half-pence and one for tickets," and assessing the great volume of Oxford Street traffic of to-day! Yet the disappearance of coaches from our highways did make a very considerable difference to old towns like Royston, where, next to malting, the posting business was the most important in the town. As to the effect of the decay of coaching upon towns on the great coach roads, it is said that the town of Barnet had been accustomed to keep upwards of 1,000 horses in its stables, and Hounslow, on the Great Western Road, 2,500 horses!

Coaches and coach horses are not the only things which have disappeared from our high roads. One of the things to be met with on the roads in 1800-20 was the velocipede. It was not unlike in form the "Safety" bicycle which is so universally met with on our roads to-day, with a trifling difference which made long and rapid journeys out of the question. The fact is the mechanical genius of Englishmen, which has made such enormous strides during the century, had not then found out that it was possible to use the solid earth as a fulcrum and at the same time to leave the feet and legs free. A horse used its feet to draw a coach and why not a man! So the velocipede was constructed for the rider's feet to just reach the ground, and by pressing first one foot on the ground and then the other he managed in this undignified attitude, to propel the thing along!

Another characteristic thing about the old locomotion was the dog cart—small carts used by pedlars and others drawn along the high roads by a dog or dogs. Sometimes these old pedlars would drive to Royston market with their "carriage and pair" of dogs in rattling style! This sight was very common during the last century and lingered to about the end of the coaching days. In the Gentleman's Magazine, for 1795, a writer says: "I have sometimes seen two dogs yoked one on each side of a barrow drawing regularly and well, similar to ploughing. Their feet being tender, to prevent their being foot-sore, they should have some sort of shoeing; perhaps leather would be properest."

So well established had the use of dogs for drawing carts become that the subject came before Parliament about fifty years ago. An old magazine of this date gives a kind of petition to Parliament, drawn up by a village schoolmaster and signed by three small hucksters, setting forth, like the three historic tailors of Tooley Street, the injured sense of the "people of England" at the prospect of an interference with the use of dogs, and praying for the suppression of horses and the protection of the small trader's dog, "because the dog carts of poor people were continually, almost, and sometimes quite, run over by these rough beasts [horses], and that this tyranny and wilfulness is very difficult for the poor man to bear, who may have as good a spirit as any coachman, although he is not so high up"!

From as late as about 1855 there comes to the writer a vision of a pedlar, muddled with drink, riding home in his little square box cart and the faithful dog drawing the cart and the man as well, and also a faint echo of "shame" from some bystanders. Verily the fable must in those days have been true, that when the goddess Fidelity was lost among men, after long searching, she was found in a dog-kennel!

A picturesque part of the old system of locomotion was, of course, the turnpike. The keepers of toll-gates found their principal customers in the numerous coaches and the wagons which travelled up and down the main roads, for the farmers could, and frequently did, by a little mutual contriving, manage a cross-cut by their field-ways on to the main road on the town side of a toll-gate, as in the case of Bassingbourn and the Baldock Road into Royston. For the wagon traffic, which conveyed much heavy merchandise, the older toll-gates had a weigh-bridge attached to them so that the weight might be ascertained and charged according to their scale. In later times the regular coaches generally ran through without being stopped, and paid the toll periodically.

The turnpike-road to Caxton—or rather from Royston Cross to Wandesford Bridge in the county of Huntingdon, of which the southern part from Royston to Kisby's Hut formed one Trust, is said to have been the first turnpike-road in England.

Certainly the various Acts of Parliament for its repair and maintenance date back to the time of Queen Anne, if not earlier, and, after turning up in Acts all through the reigns of the Georges, ended with the Act of 1822 under which the old Trust was managed in the times of the modern coaching days. The traffic never was sufficient to maintain the road without resorting to a rate upon the neighbouring lands, owing to the diversion of a good deal of the coaching and wagon traffic at Royston for Cambridge, and the Trustees were often in great straits, and on the horns of a dilemma—if they charged enough toll to pay their way, the traffic was driven off the roads; if they modulated their charges the roads went to the bad.

Money was advanced by private individuals upon the security of the tolls, and the road between Royston and Arrington was always in debt and dirty. So bad was it that the mail coaches were delayed, the Postmaster-General came down upon the trustees, and Mr. McAdam, the surveyor to the trustees (at a salary of L50 per annum), whose hands were full of surveying at that time in various parts of England, reported that though the road was "not indictable at common law, it certainly was not in a fit condition to travel upon, at the speed which the excellent regulations of the Post Office require." "It required fourteen hundred tons of material and one thousand pounds value in labour to put it into a proper condition, at a cost of L7,500, or about L500 a mile"!

That this state of insolvency was not due to tolls being too low is evident from the fact that a petition was presented to the trustees, setting forth that the tolls were so high as to drive the traffic off the road. Eightpence per horse at both gates was a considerable sum between Royston and Kisby's Hut. Again and again the bankrupt condition of the road, both in solidity and finance, was submitted to the Postmaster-General and the Treasury Authorities in the hope of getting some relief from that quarter, and in 1833 the Trustees, despairingly, stated that upon the success of their application for a subsidy (including L1,500 to cut through Arrington Hill), depended the question of keeping open "this most important line of general communication."

Between 1790, when the Kneesworth toll bar produced about L5 a week, and 1820, there was a considerable increase in the traffic on the roads, and the highest figure reached was in 1828, when the amount realized from the Kneesworth and Caxton toll gates was L1,367 for the year. As coaching declined, the turnpike receipts fell off so much that by 1847 the Kneesworth and Caxton toll-gate receipts had dwindled down, in twenty years, from L1,367 to L282 a year! That the railway did not knock all the horses off the road, but on the contrary brought them on for other purposes, is evident from the fact that after the establishment of a railway station at Royston the above toll-gate receipts went up again in the next twenty years to L600 a year!

The Wadesmill Turnpike Trust (from Royston to Wadesmill) was a much more profitable road, as it included some of the Cambridge as well as the North Road traffic. Indeed, for three years before the London Road hill was cut through, the tolls from Royston to Wadesmill were let to Mr. Flay for L4,090 per annum, and in 1839 after the cutting was finished, they were let for L4,350, the highest sum ever made under this Trust.

With the disappearance of the last of the toll-gates the last relics of the old coaching days vanish. Antiquated such an expedient may seem—placing bars across the road—yet the system did enable some very notable improvements to be carried out in cutting through high hills at an expense which modern highway authorities would never dream of. Then, they not only secured the desirable result that all who used the roads should pay for them, but helped to preserve the balance of trade between towns and villages, for, no sooner were gates abolished than many heavy users of the roads got off almost scot free of contributing to their maintenance, and the town tradesman could afford to send his carts round and compete with, and, as a natural consequence, to annihilate many small village shop-keepers who had flourished under the old régime.

CHAPTER XV.

NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES.—A PAROCHIAL REVOLUTION.—THE
OLD POOR-HOUSE AND THE NEW "BASTILLE."

Over the dark night of the 18th and the dull grey morning of the 19th century there was this remarkable feature, that while the local records show how deplorable was the condition of the people, there was at the head of the affairs of the nation a perfect galaxy of great men, such as the public life of this nation had perhaps never known. There were Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, Wellington, Wilberforce, Nelson, Canning, Brougham, Lord Chancellor Eldon—whose greatness was only tempered by the fear that the sun of Great Britain would set if a Catholic was allowed to sit in the House of Peers,—the Duke of York—whose speech against Catholic emancipation was printed in letters of gold and sold by our local stationers,—the great Lyndhurst (four times Lord Chancellor) Palmerston, Lord Derby, who, from a maiden speech about lighting Manchester with gas, rose to be "the Rupert of Debate," Macaulay—the brilliant Buntingford school boy who went stamping through the fields of literature with an éclat which made him one of the giants of the coming century,—O'Connell, the Liberator; and Grattan, of Irish Parliament fame. All these great names made up a reflection of the glories of Ancient Greece and Rome in the arena of debate. They shone like stars in the firmament, helping to make the common people content to dwell in the night by the glittering panoply they threw over the public life of the nation. Men and women forgot their grievances in the contemplation of great names whose owners did not then, like the statesmen of to-day, come down to the level of the common life to be jostled on railway platforms.

It is only when one looks into the details of local life that it is possible to realize the sharp contrast of great men and little happiness for the people, or how terrible must have been the strain for the whole nation to have existed under such conditions without a revolution.

The marvel is that Parliament with so much talent in its foremost men should have been powerless to deal with the weakness outside, or that the brilliant leaders should have been content to reach such an eminence by so rough and thorny a path; but the great forces which have been liberated within this century had not then set men's energies free, and they were pretty much confined to, and did not see much beyond, the narrow way along which they were toiling.

Parliamentary Reform, for which more enlightened men here and there had for fifty years been asking, was the first setting of the tide which was to penetrate and revolutionize all our local life. Early in the present century when the then Lord Dacre contested Cambridgeshire, and had the audacity to advocate Parliamentary Reform and Civil and Religious Liberty, he was called the Fire-Brand, and he had few supporters when, in 1810, he moved for an inquiry into the state of Parliamentary representation.

The amount of political literature and printers' ink used in the agitation for "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," was perhaps unparalleled in the history of English electioneering. Some of it, to say the least, was not very refined, but it expressed very well the prevailing state of things which the "Bill" was destined to upset. The electors of Herts. and Cambs. were not unlike those of Stafford who said "Now, Gronow, old boy, we like what we have heard about you, your principles and all that sort of thing. We will therefore all vote for you if [slapping their breeches pockets]—you know what we mean, old fellow, and if not, you won't do for Stafford!" Though the candidate did not trouble himself much about his "principles and that sort of thing, you know," his opponents generally managed, in the form of squibbs of a more or less elegant turn, to supply the deficiency. Here is a specimen of a Hertfordshire squib [after other promises put into the mouth of a candidate]—

"Lastly, I engage to hire all the bullies, blackguards, bankrupts, blacklegs, bum-bailiffs, and even the gipsies in the neighbourhood," &c. This and much more of a scurrilous character appeared in large type with the printer's name in bold letters!

It is curious to note how the desire for Parliamentary Reform took hold of all classes of the people, and during that stormy period, when the Commons were engaged in passing and the Lords in repeatedly rejecting "the Bill," Parliament was watched by its constituents, through such imperfect channels as were open to them, in a manner which had never been known before. Here is a local incident which is vouched for by an eye witness. On a certain division in the House, Mr. Adeane, the then member for Cambridgeshire, walked out of the House without voting, and shortly after when he was canvassing in Shepreth village, one, old Jerry Brock, met him with this brusque little speech:—"Muster Adeane, I've heerd say that when a sartin motion agin the Bill was made, you walked out o' the House o' Commons without votin. Now I'll just thank you to walk out o' my house!"

In December, 1832, following the passing of the Reform Bill, three Liberal Members each were returned for Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, to the first reformed Parliament—for Hertfordshire, Sebright, Calvert and Alston, and for Cambridgeshire, Townley, Childers and Adeane, but with the great issue of the Corn Laws looming in the distance, these agricultural counties gradually went round, and in 1841 all the representatives of the two counties were Conservatives. In Cambs., Yorke, Allix and Eaton, were returned without a contest, and in Herts., Grimston, Ryder and Smith, were returned, Alston one of the old members being defeated. In 1847 Mr. Trevor (the late Lord Dacre) turned the tide in Herts. by recovering one of the seats, but it was not till 1859 that a seat was gained for the Liberals in Cambs.—a seat afterwards held by Mr. Brand (the Speaker), the late Viscount Hampden, whose death everyone laments. It was in the election of the first reformed Parliament that Royston first had a polling place.

We can hardly realize what the passing of the Reform Bill meant in the estimation of almost all classes of the people in country districts, but a pamphlet published by J. Warren, Royston, in 1832, in order that "everyone may have in his possession a faithful report of so glorious a triumph," affords us some interesting glimpses of the effect of the passing of that great measure upon our local life. Here is a summary of the record for Royston:—

"The struggle for so grand and important a measure having at length terminated in favour of the wishes of the people, the inhabitants of Royston were determined to commemorate it in that respectful way, so glorious a triumph in passing the Reform Bill into law, really deserved; consequently a committee was formed, and a subscription collected of L130 without difficulty, with a promise of more if wanted. A band was sent for from London, then on Thursday morning the bells were set ringing and the musicians struck up with the beautiful air, 'Away, away to the mountain brow,' in the street, which so struck the ears of the people that they really forgot all business."

"Twenty tables were admirably arranged, covered and fenced in on the green where the horse-fair is kept. Some 1,400 of the towns-people headed by the band filling the street from one end to the other and forming a most imposing spectacle besides innumerable spectators, the windows on both sides of the street crowded, so that it is supposed there was not less than 3,000 pleasant faces to be seen at one time."

The scene at the great booth which accommodated the assemblage was an imposing one too with its outward banners flying:—"Reform Festival, 1832," and "Triumph of Liberty "; while at the head of the tables were mottoes galore:—"The people's Triumph," "Grey, Brougham," "Althorpe, Russell," "The King and people united must prevail," "No slavery," "The House of Dacre," "Townley and Reform," "Speed the plough," "England's wealth, the working classes," "Our aim is peace, our end is victory," "Sebright, Calvert," "Duncombe, Currie," "We unite to conquer," "God save the King," &c., &c. With three carvers, three waiters and a tapster to each of the twenty tables, the eager 1,400 could hardly wait for grace from the Rev. Samuel Cautherley (vicar of the parish), before the set-to upon the beef and plum pudding "with good brown stout." The cloths being removed, "the pipe fillers amply produced their fruits, and the tapster regulated his tap which continued to run freely," while the carvers and waiters were having a set-to in the Market House. Tea followed, and what with tobacco, snuff, peals of bells and the music of the band, the poor continued to enjoy themselves until nine o'clock, when the illumination of the town began, and by ten o'clock at night the streets "with their coloured lamps and candles and transparencies had a most beautiful appearance."

The second day, Friday, 116 of the principal inhabitants sat down to dinner at the Red Lion, Mr. John George Fordham, then of Odsey (father of Mr. Henry Fordham), presiding, and supported on his right by Mr. J. P. Wedd, and on his left by Mr. E. K. Fordham, the venerable banker. Toasts came thick and fast, and all shared the enthusiasm of "this proud moment of conscious victory when the march of ages is over-stepped by the exertions of a day."

We kindle not war's battle fires;
By union, justice, reason, law,
We claim the birth-right of our sires:
We raise the watchword liberty,
We will, we will, we will be free!

In this strain the oratory flowed, from the reformers—the Chairman, Mr. Wedd, Mr. E. K. Fordham, who re-called the first reform meeting he attended in that very room forty years before, and the Rev. J. Horseman (rector of Heydon).

The third day, and still the reforming zeal had not spent itself, and the musicians were still in tune, and on Saturday joined in witnessing a cricket match on the Heath, with a cold dinner. Unfortunately for the older cricketing reputation of the town it is recorded that "owing to their having had two amusing days previous there was too much work in the game of cricket for their performance to be worth recording, and so threw away their bats and balls and retired to the Indies who were preparing a social cup of tea, making altogether a party of about 100."

"They then returned to the town headed by the Band, and concluded in the High Street by playing and singing in full chorus the grand national anthem of "God save the King," while the bells rang the old Constitution out and the new one in! Thus ended three days such as the inhabitants of Royston never before witnessed, and probably never will again." Other towns in the district—Hitchin, Biggleswade, Ware, Baldock, &c.,—also had their celebrations, and among the villages there was a "spirited little set out" at Meldreth, where 750 were provided with dinner, and the musical amateurs of the village and neighbourhood with their "violins, clarinets, horns, &c., which they were using to the best of their knowledge, gave youthful spirits to the aged, and so well was the commemoration of the Reform Bill conducted that it was much admired by all who witnessed it. In the evening they all, ladies and gentlemen and poor, about 400 in number, had a reel together, and concluded the evening in a very amiable manner, wishing success to reform."

At the present time when comprehensive schemes of Old Age Pensions are talked of which may, if carried out, transform much of the present character of relief of the poor, it will perhaps be of interest to glance at the state of things just before the introduction of the present Poor-law had worked a complete parochial revolution.

There is, I imagine, a general impression amongst us, when we ever turn our thoughts back to the subject, that the remarkable shaking of the dry bones during the Reform Bill period, which culminated in the great measure of 1832, was merely a matter of politics—that John Bull was only buying a new broom to sweep away here and there an Old Sarum, and dust the benches of St. Stephen's for new company and—voilà tout! the nation was reformed at a stroke! Yet that was not all by any means. In most of the rural districts of England there were parishes, not here and there, but parishes by shoals, presenting a state of things more rotten and more demoralizing than anything that the annals of Borough-mongering could furnish.

Then the great bulk of the poor people in our villages held to the sentiment expressed in the lines—

Come let us drink, sing, and be merry,
For the parish is bound to maintain us!

When the ratepayers began to assert themselves the pauper element broke out in open riot and incendiarism. Then came severe penal measures, Poor-law commissions, and an awakening of the national conscience to the fact that there was something besides political Old Sarums to reform if the salt in John Bull's family cupboard was not to entirely lose its savour. A state of things was disclosed in many villages in rural England at which the more thoughtful stood aghast, for under the sacred name of charity, laziness and immorality, unblushing and impudent, were found to be feeding the stream of pauperism and eating out the vitals of our country life.

At the root of the domestic and social ruin which the old Poor-law was silently but surely spreading through our villages, lay the two principal factors of labour and public morals—the farmers paying low wages and the parish making up the difference according to the number of a man's family, and the lax way in which bastardy was dealt with by the parish.

As to Royston, in 1831, when the Commissioners were appointed to inquire into the laws affecting the relief of the poor, there were fifty agricultural labourers in the town; wages nine or ten shillings a week without beer; the magistrates required an allowance to be made from the rates to make up earnings, according to the number in family, but, it is added, that "this system is objected to by this parish."

"The desire to build the largest number of cottages upon the smallest space and with no ground attached was strongly condemned," but the seed had been sown and the harvest is still with us. Upon the subject of making up a labourer's pay out of the parish funds, and the labourer looking to the Overseer to pay him when he was not at work, a remarkable test case occurred in Royston, of which I transcribe the following particulars from the parish books—

"There is a difference of opinion existing between the parishioners of this parish and some very respectable and intelligent magistrates acting for this neighbourhood. The magistrates think it is within their jurisdiction (if they are convinced of its necessity) to order Overseers to pay money to able-bodied labourers in full employment by private individuals, in order to make up their earnings to a sum considered by the magistrates necessary for the support of their families."

This the parishioners seemed inclined to resist, and it is added—"the parishioners consider that if the Overseer be ordered to make up the wages of one farmer's labourers, he may be ordered to go round the parish and make up the wages of every labourer. It would then be the interest of every master to lower his wages and throw as much of them as possible on to the poor rates. The poor rates might thus be enormously increased and those ratepayers not employing labourers might be crushed."

Upon this subject the parish officials and two of the local magistrates, the Rev. H. Morice and Rev. T. Sissons, got into conflict; for we learn from a communication to the Commissioners, that the Royston Select Vestry, refusing to add to a labourer's pay, the Overseers were actually summoned before the magistrates for Hertfordshire to show cause why they should not make him an addition to the pay he received in full employment. Two labourers, John James and Joseph Wood, of Royston, having been refused additions to their wages by the parish, applied to the magistrates in Petty Sessions, and the magistrates making a verbal order upon the Overseers to make up the wages to a certain sum, the Assistant Overseer put it off until he had seen the Select Vestry. A few days after, he says he was taking a ride with one of the Overseers and met the Rev. Henry Morice driving his carriage with the man Wood riding behind. Observing them, he pulled up and said, "Mr. Docura, here is this man Wood who says that you refuse to relieve him as we ordered you on Wednesday last!"

Mr. Docura admitted the fact, upon which the rev. gentleman said, "I wish I had given you a written order!"

Mr. Docura: "If you had, I have orders to resist them to the utmost."

The Rev. T. Morice upon this, in the presence of Wood and another labourer, exclaimed in a violent passion, "it would serve you right if your town was burnt down; you richly deserve it!" and then ordered the man Wood to come to him at some other time.

A few days afterwards the Overseers received a summons to appear at the Rev. Thomas Sissons', at Wallington, to show cause, &c.

The Overseers naturally resented being dragged to Wallington, and wrote a letter asking for the case to come before the ordinary Sessions at Royston, as one of the Overseers was ill.

The suggested alteration was not acceded to, however, and one of the Overseers and the Assistant had to go to Wallington before the Rev. Thos. Sissons and Rev. John Lafont. The magistrates first tried to persuade the Overseer by appealing to his feelings, and then to intimidate by pointing out the consequences of his refusal to comply with their order, but he was proof against both, and said if they thought proper to make an order he was under the necessity to say that he must refuse complying with it. Upon which they gave him till Wednesday to consider, and if he did not comply by that time they would certainly give an order and enforce it.

They had orders to appear again on the Wednesday, "but for some unaccountable cause the men did not appear, to the joy, apparently, of the Magistrates and Overseers, since which time they have not tried to enforce it, but we have since had good reason to suppose that they have not either forgotten or forgiven us."

So ended the attempt to enforce a legal right to supplement wages, which was acted upon in all the surrounding parishes.

Everything seemed to conspire to make the labourer a pauper even if he would aspire to independence, until, through early and improvident marriages, the lax treatment of bastardy, &c., paupers became a glut in the market so to speak, and, finding the doles less satisfactory in consequence, discontent, riot, and incendiarism, manifested themselves in many places; hence the inuendo of the Rev. Mr. Morice, the magistrate, about the town being burnt.

At Gamlingay the Overseer was summoned before a Magistrate six miles off because he had a difference with the paupers about their parish pay. On the day of their attendance something prevented the case being heard, and on their return to Gamlingay, all together, they passed the house of another magistrate about two miles from home when the Overseer said, "Now, my lads, here we are close by; I'll give you a pint of beer each if you'll come and have it settled at once without giving me any more trouble about it." The proposal was rejected without hesitation!

It may be appropriate here to give a few instances of the way in which paupers were pampered, and extracts from the Commissioners' report as to how the old system of relief worked in the villages—

"An inhabitant of a large village near Newmarket has taken out a certificate for killing game and actually goes out shooting with his pointer and gun, although at this time he has 3s. weekly allowance from the parish as a pauper, and during last year received 4s. 6d. weekly."

In one small parish containing 139 persons, only 35 of them, including the clergyman and his family, were supporting themselves by their own exertions!

In many villages the expenditure in out-relief—chiefly in orders upon village shops for flour, clothes, butter, cheese, &c.—amounted to from L2 to L3 per head of the population, that is, a village with a population of a thousand persons would expend L2,600 a year in "relieving" pauperism.

It seems incredible, yet it is in black and white in the Commissioners' Report, that at Westoning, in Bedfordshire, there was scarcely an able-bodied labourer in the parish in the employment of private individuals who was not at the same time receiving his allowance from the parish!

As to rent and taxes from cottage property, under such circumstances these too often had to be paid or remitted by the parishes. Thus the Royston Overseers state:—"We have omitted rating the cottages to the number of 99, occupied by labourers and low mechanics, owing to the difficulty of collecting the money and the ill-will it engendered amongst the cottagers towards the parish authorities."

"Order'd that Mr. Simons apply to the justices and inquire of them whether they can compel labourers who have decent earnings to pay their rent"!

The following incidents are mentioned from Over in Cambridgeshire:—

"A widow with two children had been in receipt of 3s. a week from the parish, and was able to live upon this. She afterwards married a butcher, and still the allowance of 3s. for the children was continued. But the butcher and his bride came to the Overseer and said 'they were not going to keep those children for 3s. a week, and if a further allowance was not made they should turn them out of doors and throw them on the parish altogether.' The Overseers resisted; the butcher appealed to the Magistrates, who recommended him to make the best arrangement he could as the parish was obliged to support the children"!

The law and its administration, on behalf of the parish, actually put a valuable premium on bastardy.

The Parish Beadle was tempted to bribe the young woman to lay an information against someone in another parish, "a compulsory marriage" was brought about and the woman and bastard, and all future liability, were sometimes got rid of at one stroke! A Parish Beadle, in addition to looking after little Oliver Twists, often had these delicate negotiations to manage, and whether Mr. Bumble was able to ingratiate himself with 'Mrs. Corney' or not, he often did a good stroke of business for his parish in the matrimonial market, when, as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, a labourer could not even go into another parish to work without a certificate from the parish he belonged to. In the report of the Commission, to which I have referred, occurs this significant little item:—

"A Beadle in a small district assured me he had alone effected fifty marriages of this description in the course of a few years."

The labour market was the parish, and this was completely disorganised and demoralised. The old law of settlement made it practically impossible for labour to find the best market. Even if a young man had an offer of a situation in another part of the country at double wages he would often refuse to go lest he should "lose his parish," or it might be that the parish where he was asked to go was considered a "bad" parish compared with his own. Each parish was thus considered as a sort of freehold, with a family cupboard bound to provide for nil its children.

It was almost impossible for any individual farmer to stand out and follow an independent course, for if he paid his men full wages he would also, as a ratepayer, be paying part of the wages for the other farmers in the parish. In some cases the masters combined with the men and gave false certificates as to the amount of their wages in order to get more "make up" from their parish.

The farmer preferred to employ men with large families to keep them off the parish, but single young men, finding they were not wanted, contracted early and improvident marriages, to make sure of being "provided for by the parish." Population increased to beyond the requirements for local industry; the law of settlement was squeezed to the utmost against removals, and thus the farmer was creating the Nemesis he was seeking to flee from.

In many cases wages were as low as 8s. per week, the difference being made up according to the labourer's increasing family, and "if he makes more, still he receives his allowance in order that industry may not be discouraged."

At Over on one occasion, Mr. Robinson, the overseer, refused payment to men who would not keep their proper hours at work upon the road. "They complained to the Bench at Cambridge, and beat him as usual," so says the report, and not only that, but they returned home wearing favours in their hats and button-holes, and in the evening collected in a body before Mr. Robinson's house and shouted in triumph!

The report for the parish of Bottisham showed that the effect of the scale for single young men when not working, or receiving less wage than the scale, was that one family, consisting of man, wife, and seven children, were entitled to and were at that time receiving 19s. 6d. a week (over and above their earnings) from the parish, several of the sons being grown up!

"At Little Shelford," says the Commissioner, "a worse case than this was given me by the Acting Overseer, of one family, a man, wife, and four sons, living together, receiving 24s. weekly from the parish"!

The effect of this pauperising system could not fail to be very disastrous—it placed a direct premium upon idleness, as a man was sure of a living from the rates even if he did not work, and also a bounty upon wages, or an inducement for the farmer to pay a much lower wage than he could afford. The ultimate effect of both these circumstances was that there was such a large amount of pauper labour that it became necessary, in order to relieve the rates, to take care that such labour should be employed before any other. In some cases the unemployed men were actually put up to auction, or rather their labour, and an instance is mentioned in the Commissioners' report of ten men in one parish being knocked down to one farmer for five shillings, and that out of a body of 170 men, 70 were let in this manner! The parish also meddled and muddled in the labour market by making a contract with some individual to have certain work performed by the paupers at a given price, the parish paying the paupers. The making of the Newmarket Road Cutting, near Royston, was an instance of this.

Parochial affairs presented this extraordinary condition of things that for the industrious, thrifty man who was desirous of laying up something for a rainy day, there was no hope! Take the following, which I copy verbatim from the Commissioners' report—

"We have already quoted from Mr. Cowell's report a letter from Mr. Nash, of Royston, in which he states that he had been forced by the Overseer of Reed to dismiss two excellent labourers for the purpose of introducing two paupers into their place. Mr. Nash adds that of the men dismissed, one,

"Was John Walford, a parishioner of Barley, a steady, industrious, trustworthy, single man, who, by long and rigid economy, had saved about L100. On being dismissed, Walford applied in vain to the farmers at Barley for employment! It was known that he had saved money, and could not come on the parish, although any of them would willingly have taken him had it been otherwise! After living a few months without being able to get any work he bought a cart and two horses, and has ever since obtained a precarious subsistence by carrying corn to London for use of the Cambridge merchants; but just now the current of corn is northward and he has nothing to do; and at any time he would gladly have exchanged his employment for that of a day labourer, if he could have obtained work. No reflection is intended on the Overseers of Barley; they only do what all others are expected to do; though the young men point at Walford and call him a fool for not spending his money at a public-house as they do; adding that then he would get work"!

A somewhat similar instance is supplied to the Commissioners by Mr. Wedd who is spoken of in the report as "an eminent solicitor of Royston."

Here is another case:—"A man without children in this neighbourhood emerged from poverty and bequeathed many pecuniary legacies, some L100 apiece, and others larger and smaller, to a number of agricultural labourers who were his distant relatives. As soon as the legacies are paid the legatees would not be able to obtain any employment in husbandry until the legacies are spent! The employment in this parish is all wanted for those who from deep poverty can claim it of the Overseers, and these legatees will have no title to claim employment till they have reduced themselves again to poverty by having spent all their legacies!"

It was not, however, so much in favour of the farmer as the system might seem, for they got the worst of the labour—of the two whom Mr. Nash was obliged to take in the above instance, one killed a valuable mare, and the other he was obliged to prosecute for stealing corn—for the farmer was obliged to take his share of the unemployed labour, and often had a dozen idle worthless men on his hands at times when five or six would have done the work.

Those of us to whom the memory of the bent-backed figure of the "wheat-barn tasker" in every village, is now but a dim vision of the past, can hardly realize how bitter must have been the feeling when the threshing machine came to do away with the flail. A simple matter it may seem, yet the peasant revolt which it brought about was for the time more universal, and more effective, than Wat Tyler's rebellion, because, without Wat Tyler's organization, it found a means of working in every village. To the mind of the labourer this uprooting of the habitual daily work of a thousand years, taken in connection with the coming movement against allowing the labourer to go to the overseer to make up his wages out of the rates—these things together presented to his mind an outlook which was bad enough to arouse the sluggish mind of the peasant in every village. So he set about upon a course of retaliation and unreasoning revenge. The threshing machine was threatening their work, and so upon the threshing machine wherever they found it the labourers set with a vengeance. The effects of that vengeance are traceable in the criminal returns for the period. Thus the number of criminals for trial for malicious offences against property, which for the previous five or six years had scarcely averaged fifty a year, in the year 1831 went up at a hound to a total of 1,245, of which no less than 921 were for "destroying threshing machines." Riots, incendiarism, and sending letters threatening to burn houses, &c., also went up almost to a corresponding extent.

One or two local examples of pauper insolence and tyranny may be given from the Commissioners' report:—

"The tone assumed by the paupers towards those who dispense relief is generally very insolent and often assumes a more fearful character. At Great Gransden, the Overseer's wife told me that two days before my visit, two paupers came to her husband demanding an increase of allowance; he refused them, showing them that they had the full allowance sanctioned by the magistrates' scale; they swore, and threatened he should repent of it; and such was their violence, that she called them back, and prevailed on her husband to make them further allowance. Mr. Faircloth, by a stricter system, reduced the rates at Croydon; he became unpopular among the labourers, and after harvest they gathered in a riotous body about his threshing machine and broke it to pieces. At Guilden Morden, in the same neighbourhood, a burning took place of Mr. Butterfield's stacks to the amount of L1,500 damage. Mr. Butterfield was Overseer, and the Magistrates have committed, on strong circumstantial evidence, a man to whom he had denied relief, because he had refused to work for it. I have found that the apprehension of this dreadful and easily perpetrated mischief has greatly affected the minds of the rural parish officers, making the power of the paupers over the funds provided for their relief almost absolute as regards any discretion of the Overseers."

Report of Mr. Power, Assistant Commissioner for Cambs.:—

"If an Overseer refuses relief, or gives less than the pauper thinks himself entitled to, he (the Overseer) was liable to be summoned before Justices to defend himself against the charge of inhumanity and oppression, and unhappily the applicant, who has been refused relief, has frequently recourse to a much more summary remedy than the interference of the Magistrates. The tribunal which enforces it sits, not at the Petty Sessions, but at the beershop—it compels obedience, not by summons and distress, but by violence and conflagration. The most painful and the most formidable portion of our evidence, consists of the proof that in many districts the principal obstacle to improvement is the well-founded dread of these atrocities."

But worse than mere insolence of words were the acts of lawlessness and crime which prevailed. These items occur in a number of typical questions and answers in the report of the Commissioners, extracts from which I give below, with the name of the Overseers or other informants:—

BOURN (Mr. Whittet.)

The poverty which compelled the farmer to use the threshing machine, bore down the labourer to unprecedented distress, and drove him to desperation.

FOWLMERE.

The lawlessness, &c., here was "Chiefly attributable to a long course of bad execution of the Poor-laws. The cause of the riots and fires was chiefly the cruel policy of paying the single men much below the fair rate of wages. The object of the riots and fires was the same, not the wanton destruction of property, but to obtain higher wages which was too generally the result.

"Immediately after the fire at Guilden Morden, in 1831, I went to the parish and found the farmers assembled in Vestry, the very morning after the fire, consulting what they had better do to put their labourers in a better state by raising their wages. I remonstrated with them upon the impolicy of doing it then, as it would be a bonus for such wickedness." [William Metcalfe and William Wedd.]

MELDRETH.

John Burr (churchwarden) gives this answer:—

"Keep up the price of labour or there will be always cause to fear." A very fair echo of the Guilden Morden farmers' sentiments referred to above.

ROYSTON.

Dissatisfaction at the decreased parish allowance tended to produce these acts of insubordination. [Gamaliel Docura, Vestry Clerk and Assistant Overseer.]

WIMPOLE.

The fires were lighted up by malice in the breasts of the labourers because the farmers pinched them in their wages; the riots may be called an effort to recover their former rate of wages, and answered their object. [Robert Withers, Land Agent.]

STOTFOLD.

At Stotfold the late Mr. John George Fordham, of Royston, with a foresight and courage that did him lasting credit, used his influence, at personal risk to himself, in suppressing the riots.

During the years of 1830-5, a period of great discontent ensued, and incendiary fires continued to be of alarming frequency. Ashwell and Bassingbourn suffered severely. Of the former it is said that nearly all one side of the place was burned, and of the latter, in the course of three or four years, most of the farm homesteads were destroyed.

The fires at Shelford deserve notice here, on account of the remarkable circumstances surrounding them. In the first place the perpetrator, John Stallan, was the last man executed for the crime of arson, and in the second place his conviction was brought about by a strange piece of circumstantial evidence. Stallan was a labourer of respectable character and in constant work, and became one of the men attached to the fire engine. The fire in respect to which he was convicted, was discovered in time for the owner to run to it and pull out some of the thatch, and with it came out a ball of rag, and in it a piece of ignited tinder. This was found on examination to be made up of material including a piece of a lady's dress of which the pattern was distinct, and was found to be a piece of a dress given by a Mrs. Headley, to Stallan's wife, the remaining part of the dress being found in his cottage! He was arrested, and at first tried to fix the taking of the rag for the tinder upon a half-witted lad, but being unable to shield himself behind this subterfuge, he next went so far as to try and fix the crime upon his own wife, and again in this he conspicuously failed, and at the Cambs. Assizes was convicted and sentenced to be hung, and was executed in December, 1833, after confessing that he had been the author of all the ten Shelford fires, and that his only motive for committing the crimes was to get the ale and the money he received for helping to extinguish the fires!

Under such a condition of things as that described above, the farmer had considerable difficulty in getting any insurance offices to insure his produce.

One notable riot occurred at Fowlmere (about 1833-35). Warrants were obtained for the apprehension of the ringleaders, and for executing this warrant the Earl of Hardwicke, as Lord Lieutenant, came to Royston and swore in about twenty special constables, whose ornamental staves sometimes turn up now amongst local curiosities. These constables went over to Fowlmere on horseback, under the command of a justice of the peace, Mr. Hawkins, who then lived at the Priory, and was an uncle of Mr. Justice Hawkins. On arriving at Fowlmere the posse of armed "specials" found most of the labouring population of the village—male and female—assembled in the open space near the Swan, armed with sticks and other weapons, prepared to resist the execution of the warrant! After some persuasion and the reading of the Riot Act, a skirmish ensued, in which sticks, fire-irons and shovels, mixed with constables' staves, produced some cuts and bruises, and some torn clothes. Eventually the party of the law triumphed, the ringleaders were secured, and marched off under escort of the special constables to Cambridge gaol.

Out of the parochial inertia and the demoralization, discontent and lawlessness, which we have seen springing up, a full crop, from the old Poor-law, the Commission of 1831 presented a report which left no alternative but a sweeping measure of reform of the parochial life if England was to be saved from its own children, who, living a parasitical life, were eating away the vitals of that upon which they thrived. Salvation from within the parish was now well-nigh impossible. So the new Poor-law of 1834 swept away the parish as a unit of Poor-law administration—the Churchwardens and Overseers were no longer to meet after service in Church to consider applications for relief or the apprenticing of pauper children. The new order provided for grouping a score, more or less, of such parishes into a Union, with some uniform system of administration which should be less dependent upon the circumstances and prejudices of an individual parish.

The Royston Union was formed in 1835, consisting of 29 parishes in Herts., Cambs., and Essex, as at present.

The first chairman was John Bendyshe, Esq., J.P., of Kneesworth, and John George Fordham, Esq., was vice-chairman. Mr. Henry Thurnall was appointed Clerk (an office he continued to hold for forty years), Mr. Thomas Wortham, auditor, and Mr. J. E. Fordham, of Melbourn Bury, treasurer.

For the purposes of the administration of relief, the Union was at first divided into three districts, or divisions as they were called, and a relieving officer for each was appointed at L80 a year salary. This arrangement, however, only lasted a short time, and a re-arrangement was made dividing the Union into two districts as at present, with a Relieving Officer for each at a salary of L120 a year.

Previous to the erection of the "Central Workhouse," as it was at first called, the Guardians held their meetings weekly at the Red Lion Inn, on Fridays, and the first meeting held on 3rd July, 1835, lasted, we are told, from ten o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon.

One of the first acts of the new Authority was to secure a suitable site for the erection of a Workhouse upon, and having secured of Mr. Luke his meadow in Baldock Street, plans were drawn up by Mr. William Thomas Nash for a building to accommodate 350 inmates; the contract for the building was obtained, and carried out by Mr. Gray, of Litlington, and a loan of L7,700 was obtained from the Loan Commissioners.

Before the new order of things had gone far, and ere the walls of the Workhouse were up, the paupers of the old school set up a sort of vested interest in the old order, became dangerously discontented at the prospect of having to work, and the ill-advised action of individuals fanned this into a flame of indignation under which the pauperised element in the villages was encouraged to look upon the great central Workhouse arising on the borders of Royston Heath as a sort of bastille, where for the misfortune of being poor they were to be shut away from their kith and kin, and no longer to have any claim upon the Overseer for that convenient subsidy of "making up" whenever they did not think well to work. So strong did the feeling become that there were disturbances in several parishes, especially in the two Mordens, where the opprobrious Relieving Officer met with anything but a friendly reception on his first visits, and certain individuals from that parish, on applying for relief, found that the supply was cut off until it was safe for the Relieving Officer to enter their parish!

About the same time a dreadful fire occurred at Bassingbourn which was so closely associated in the popular mind with the prevailing discontent that the services of a "Bow Street Runner" to scour the district in search of the incendiary were paid for out of the rates. Efforts were made to reconcile the inhabitants in the villages to the new order of things, and for a very sensible letter or address to the inhabitants which was written (and printed and circulated) by the late Mr. Henry Thurnall, the writer was specially commended by the Poor-law Commissioners.

Another active and sagacious worker in the cause of popularising the reform was Mr. John George Fordham (the vice-chairman of the Board), who did not hesitate to pay repeated visits to all parts of the district during the riots already described, and endeavoured by every reasonable means to quell the popular irritation which had existed for some time before the formation of the Union in anticipation of the new Poor-law. For similar services to these, Mr. Fordham had already received the thanks of Lord Verulam, Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, and was placed on the Commission of the Peace as a magistrate for Hertfordshire, the first Nonconformist to be made a county magistrate for Herts. By the time the new Central Workhouse at Royston was built, the worst forms of popular discontent would have subsided but for the action of one or two individuals of note upon whom it is fitting that a few words should here be bestowed.

The principal agents were two clergymen in the district—the Rev. Thomas Clack, curate of Guilden Morden, and the Rev. Frederick Herbert Maberley, curate of Bourn, Cambs., who had for some time convened meetings of agricultural labourers in their own and surrounding parishes, and harangued them upon the supposed horrors of the new Poor-law Prison to which they would be consigned if they did not rise as one man to stand up for their rights! Growing bolder in their agitation these gentlemen conceived the design of calling a monster meeting from all the parishes belonging to the Royston Union, to be held on Royston Heath in front of the unfinished building. An attack upon, and the demolition of the building, was freely talked about and expected, and from the temper which had been already displayed in former riots, the event was looked forward to with some anxiety! The handbill convening the meeting was of an inflammatory kind, and the new Board of Guardians thought it necessary to call a special meeting of their body at the Red Lion to decide what should be done. The outcome of this meeting was that the Clerk (Mr. Thurnall), Mr. W. T. Nash, and Mr. John Phillips were appointed a deputation to wait upon the Poor-law Commissioners and upon the Home Secretary, to see what measures they would advise, for the Parish Constable and the Beadle, and the swearing in of special constables was about all that the local authority could muster for the preservation of the peace.

This deputation waited upon Lord John Russell, then Home Secretary, with the result that an inspector and a sufficient police force were promised to be despatched from London to Royston on the day before that announced for the meeting. Letters were also sent to the Lord Lieutenants of both counties, and to the promoters of the meeting, warning the latter of their responsibility should any serious disturbance occur.

The day appointed for the meeting was Wednesday, 22nd June, 1836. Inside the unfinished building on the morning of that day there is a strange and an anxious company assembled—the Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, is there, several local Magistrates, several of the Guardians, and a posse of about a score of Metropolitan police (the County police, as we now know them, had not then come into existence), all assembled to await the threatened storming of the bastille, as the new Workhouse was called by the agitators! It was market day and the town and neighbourhood of Royston were in a considerable state of alarm and excitement, in consequence of the expected meeting. The handbill convening the meeting had been freely circulated, calling upon the labouring population to "come in thousands" and assemble opposite the new Poor-law Prison! This address was signed by the Rev. H. F. Maberley. The Magistrates of the division issued a caution to the people, and this was placarded about the neighbouring villages, warning all persons that if any breach of the peace took place, every individual present would be liable to be apprehended and punished according to law. As a further precaution, "A most efficient body of police" was sent down under the command of Inspector Harpur, as stated above.

Meanwhile there was, we are told, by the old chronicler, [Cambridge Chronicle] "a deep feeling among the upper and middle classes of society, that imminent danger to the public peace was to be apprehended from a meeting of the labourers called to petition on the subject of the new Poor-law opposite a new unfinished house of considerable extent, by a handbill characterising the new building as a new Poor-law Prison, and therefore no one chose to interfere in the discussions of the meeting."

"The labourers, with a large proportion of women and children, continued to arrive in wagons, carts, and on foot, all through the morning, and they sat down opposite the Workhouse on the road side." Being questioned they said "They expected they had come to pull down the Workhouse, but they were waiting for the gentlemen who called the meeting"! They "appeared to consider their object one of ordinary duty, as they spoke without excitement or intemperate language." Soon after 12 o'clock the clerical champion, Rev. H. F. Maberley, arrived, accompanied by the Rev. T. Clack, curate of Guilden Morden, and they soon commenced the great business of demonstrating, but possibly from hearing of the Home Secretary's reinforcements, they assembled the people on the Heath a distance of a quarter-of-a-mile from the Workhouse, and Mr. Clack opened the proceedings in a jubilant strain with a Scriptural quotation, "This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." Some 1,500 persons, of whom at least two-thirds were said to have been women and children, listened to the harangue "with listless indifference," possibly because words did not pull the building down. The Rev. H. F. Maberley declaimed against separating old men and women and the prospective hardships of the new order of things. The whole proceedings lasted several hours, and a storm of rain did not help the ardour of the crusaders.

At the conclusion, however, the people drew the rev. gentlemen in a wagon through some of the streets of the town and the threatened storm passed off without any breach of the peace occurring. The chronicle of the time says:—"The labourers went away apparently dissatisfied with the result, having learned nothing to instruct them," and "the whole was the completest failure ever experienced as to any public meeting." The Guardians laid the matter before the Bishop of the Diocese as to the conduct of the clergymen named, but in the general satisfaction at the peaceful ending of the affair, things gradually settled down into the system as we now know it.

The old parish Workhouses were sold, pulled down, or otherwise dealt with, and the proceeds were in some cases invested in Consols and still appear occasionally as an item to the credit of the parish in parochial balance sheets. The Royston Parish Workhouse on the Warren was sold by auction and realized L315, leaving, after expenses and the paying of a parish loan, advanced by Mr. Phillips, a balance of L166.

The new Workhouse was commenced in October, 1835, upon the site of an old barn the property of Mr. Luke, which had just been blown down. It was finished in September, 1836, the Royston paupers being removed from the old Workhouse on the Warren and those from the villages brought in, notwithstanding the indignation of the Revs. Maberley and Clack.

For some years the new system was the subject of not a little hostile criticism and the meetings were not always harmonious.

The Poor-law expenditure under the old system and the new showed a striking contrast. For the whole country before the new system, and for the last two years under the old, the amount of the poor-rate was L6,913,883, and for the two years immediately afterwards the rate was L4,381,185, showing a reduction of more than one-third of the expenditure. In some cases in the rural districts the figures were much more remarkable, and in one parish in the Buntingford Union the expenditure for the last year under the old system was L800, and the first under the new it was less than L300. It may be that—

Who holds a power
But newly gained is ever stern of mood.

Even so, there was certainly plenty of room both for reform without hardship, and considerateness with economy.

It is mentioned in the Parliamentary returns that in the Royston Union in the winter of 1834, the number of able-bodied men maintained during the winter out of the poor-rate was 361, whereas in the month of December, 1836, after the new system had got into operation, there were only twelve applications for "work or money." All these had orders for the House, which were accepted by seven of them, two of whom stayed in only two days, three only stayed in three days, and two, seven days each. The amounts spent in relief of the poor at earlier periods, in the reign of George III., were as follows:—In 1801 (the year of scarcity), L4,017,871; in 1813, it had risen to L6,656,106; and in each of the years, 1818-20, the figures reached L7,000,000, a figure which was not again reached till 1832.

The late Mr. Henry Thurnall, though then but a young man, took an active part in collecting evidence for the Poor-law Commission in this district, and also in reconciling the working men to the new order of things, and he was the author of a pamphlet in the form of an address by a working-man to working-men, addressed to "The Labourers of England," from which it appears that in some places the new Relieving Officer was at first so unpopular that he was pelted when he came into the villages to pay out his relief money!

CHAPTER XVI.

WHEN THE POLICEMAN CAME.—WHEN THE RAILWAY
CAME.—CURIOUS AND MEMORABLE EVENTS.

With the abolition of the old Poor-law the Parish Constable, as he was understood in the Georgian era, found a large part of his occupation gone. Those important journeys of Dogberry on the delicate errand of marrying off young couples who promised otherwise to be a trouble to his parish, with all the pleasant suppers, breakfasts, dinners, and beer at inns on the road, of which the reader has been afforded some evidence in the parish accounts of the last century—all this interesting part of the village Dogberry's parochial dignity passed away, and there were even rumours that the constable would no longer be entrusted with the hue-and-cry after criminals into neighbouring parishes. Verily the world was getting turned upside down in these reforming days!

But before we come to the actual disestablishment of Dogberry there are a few other matters affecting parish life which were getting ready to be reformed. There were, for instance, tramps even in those days, and, like paupers, they knew upon which side their bread was buttered, and how to turn the prevailing system to the best account. They were accommodated at the public houses, and the publicans sent in their bills to the Overseers. If a tramp wished to take it easy and stay a few days at a comfortable hostelry he did so, and it went down in the publican's bill against the Overseer. Sometimes this sort of thing was carried a little too far, as at Royston in 1829, when the Vestry:—

"Ordered that W. Wilson's bill be paid and caution him, with others who lodge vagrants, that in future their bills will not be allowed if they suffer them [that is of course the vagrants and not the bills] to remain more than one night without an order from the Overseer."

But to return to Dogberry and his blue-coated successor. There was a good deal of opposition at first to the idea of a police force under the management of a county body. The idea of disestablishing the parish beadle and the constable was distasteful in itself, and the notion that they could be improved upon was rather laughed at. For years after the "men in blue" came upon the scene they were known as "Peelers," and have hardly got rid of the "Bobby" part of Sir Robert Peel's name even yet.

So divided was public opinion on the subject that the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions only adopted the new system by one vote—the vote, as it turned out, of Mr. John George Fordham, of Royston, who had been but recently appointed a magistrate, and, I think, went on this occasion and voted for the first time in this division. No man knew better the need of a change, or the general ineffectiveness of the parish constable in the face of the disturbances which had for some years previously been witnessed in many villages. What the first cost of the "man in blue" was I am unable to say, but the first report of the Constabulary Force Commissioners contained the following estimate for a police force for Hertfordshire:—

1 Superintendent at L200 per annum
8 Sergeants at L1 2s. 6d. per week
80 Constables at 17s. 0d. " "
Clothing for 88 men at L5 16s. 5d. per annum
Total cost . . . . L5,132 4s. 8d. " "
1 man to 4,480 acres, and 1,610 persons.

It may be of interest here to make a comparison with to-day, and this shows, I think, that in place of one superintendent there are seven, besides a chief constable, that there are 7 inspectors, a rank unknown in the above estimate, 19 sergeants against 8 fifty years ago, and 136 constables against 80 of fifty years ago, with a considerable improvement in pay, viz., from the 17s. estimate of fifty years ago to the 21s. 7d. to 27s. 5d., according to class—the present pay for constables in the Herts. Constabulary.

We are sometimes reminded of a tendency to extravagance in county expenditure in Hertfordshire compared with Cambridgeshire. I do not know how far this may have held good historically, but certainly there is evidence of it when the policeman came. A few years after the establishment of the forces for Herts. and Cambs. the latter county had 70 police at an annual cost of L4,359 3s. 1d., and Hertfordshire had 71 police at a cost of L5,697 8s. 0d.

The new system was not so sudden a commencement as we may suppose, and at first depended upon the inhabitants meeting the expense if they wished for the luxury of a policeman in their midst. Hence in 1837 it was recorded that "in consequence of petty thefts and depredations committed in Baldock, it has been proposed that a police officer should be stationed there and a subscription has been set on foot by the inhabitants for that purpose."

In 1839 four policemen were sworn in for Royston and the neigbourhood, and yet two years afterwards, in 1841, some persons in Royston appear to have signed a petition against having a force of rural police—against allowing to the village the same police protection that the town and neighbourhood had already obtained for itself. These were, however, exceptional cases, and the system of a county force soon became general. The fact is that the old parish constable was a rough and ready means of dealing with the social and domestic sides of law and order, but on the criminal side he was of little use. He could clap a brawling man in the stocks, or use his good offices in marrying a pauper and getting her off the rates on to those of another parish, but when it came to a question of serious crime he was useless beyond carrying forward the "hue and cry" from his own to the next parish.

But the greatest of all the forces at work, breaking the life of the Reform period from its old moorings, had already begun, and Stephenson's triumph over Chat Moss had determined the great transition in the social life and customs between the Georgian and Victorian eras.

At first the nearest railway station to Royston was Broxbourne on the Great Eastern, and in order to shorten the driving journey to London, gentlemen and tradesmen rose early in the morning and drove from places in Cambs. and North Herts, to Broxbourne to join the new conveyance, the engine of which frightened the passengers as it drew up at the station! It was not an uncommon sight I am told to see a muster of all kinds of vehicles drawn up in rows at Broxbourne from all parts of the north-east of Hertfordshire, and there left to await their owners' return. The start had, of course, to be made at a very early hour in the morning to get to Broxbourne by eight or nine o'clock—"30 m.p. 8" (30 minutes past 8), was the manner of printing the first time tables.

As to the accommodation, at first the guard of a train in some cases sat perched on a back seat of the last carriage outside! like a cab driver, but things had already begun to improve a little at the time I am writing of. Here is a description by one of the old Royston travellers of a journey from Broxbourne to London.

"At first the 3rd class carriages were open, like cattle trucks, and without seats, and when seats were added they were very rough ones. Later on the open carriages were improved by placing iron hoops over the top and tarpauling over these, something after the fashion of a railway van in our streets now. A smartly-dressed young man in his Sunday best, desiring to appear to great advantage in London, would find his white waistcoat—which was generally worn in those days—a very sorry spectacle, after standing in an open carriage and catching the smoke of the engine, from which there was no protection! On one occasion there was a very great pressure in the train up from Broxbourne to London, and one of these 3rd class carriages with the iron hoop and tarpauling roof over it was so full that the pressure on the wheels and consequent friction began to produce sparks and then smoke! All the passengers were in a terrified state! Some of them set to work trying to tear the tarpauling away from the roof in order to communicate with the guard, but unfortunately the tarpauling seemed to be the strongest part of the carriage, and it appeared to be a case of all being burned to death before the train stopped! At last one young fellow becoming more desperate, got his head through the top of the carriage—that is through the tarpauling—and had his high top hat carried away by the breeze; but succeeded in getting sight of the guard perched on behind. When the train came to the next station there was a general stampede and most of the passengers refused to go any further. A few of them were obliged to go on, and the reduced weight and lessened friction removed all further danger."

After the above period the Great Northern Company came upon the scene in Hertfordshire; but frightened not a few people by the formidable character of its undertaking near Welwyn, for before the famous Digswell Viaduct had spanned the picturesque valley of Tewin, or the tunnels had pierced the last barrier of the hills, it is said that many persons who had invested heavily in Great Northern shares, began to tremble in their shoes, owing to the enormous expense, and a person with enough foresight and judgment might have bought up, for a small amount, shares enough to have made him a wealthy man for the rest of his life!

The railway did not touch the neighbourhood of Royston until much of the novelty of the change, and also of the opposition to it had passed away. The opposition to it here was therefore one of a competitive and interested character, rather than of prejudice against George Stephenson and his iron horse. Owing to the opposition of Lord Mornington in the interest of the Great Eastern Railway Company, the Royston and Hitchin Railway was prevented running into Cambridge, and ran only as far as Shepreth, hence the joint use of a part of the line, after it was carried on to Cambridge.

The first effect of a railway in any neighbourhood was felt upon the conveyance and upon the price of the necessities of life. Reference has already been made in an earlier sketch to the difficulties of getting coals from Cambridge, thirteen miles along bad roads to Royston, and it may be added that the first year after the railway to Royston was opened, the price of coal was so much reduced that the gain to the townspeople was calculated to be sufficient to pay all the rates for the year!

The shares of the Royston and Hitchin Company, whose work of construction involved much less difficulty than the part of the main line already referred to, were at one time sold at a discount though carrying a guaranteed six per cent. dividend, and they are now worth, I suppose, about 80 per cent. more than they cost.

The accommodation at first was not as luxurious as it is now. Some of the carriages on this line, were at first open at the sides like cattle trucks, and at a pinch on market day cattle trucks were attached and the passengers stood up in them!

---

Having already exceeded the bounds of time and space contemplated for these Sketches, and travelled a little beyond the period indicated by the title, the writer might here, in a few words, have taken leave of his task, but for the fact that he finds himself still in possession of a small collection of troublesome "fragments," some of them of peculiar interest, which would not lend themselves very readily to being classified or blended together into any of the foregoing chapters. These fragments are chiefly short paragraph records of local events, on a multitude of topics, and therefore must be treated as such, and thrown as far as possible into chronological order.

1745. Cooper Thornhill, of the Bell Inn, Stilton, near Huntingdon—in whose house, from the hands of a relative, Mistress Paulet, originated Stilton cheese—this year achieved a remarkable feat of horsemanship by way of Royston to London; riding for 500 guineas from Stilton to London, 71 miles, in 3 hours and 52 minutes.

1748. In this year, on August 18th, occurred a fire which is memorable in the annals of Barkway. The record preserved in the parish papers consists chiefly of the accounts of the losses, but it is sufficient to show that there must have been nineteen houses burned, and, as the losses were for small amounts, probably nearly all of them cottages.

I give a few of the articles and items of loss and expense—

A publican and farmer lost "hogsheads bare"; L9 in wine, L16 in "sider" (cider), 42 cheeses, silver spoons, "a chest of lining [linen] L20," and claimant's sister lost in "lining" and other things L7, and there are "30 trenchers," earthenware and wooden dishes, &c., &c.

John Sharp--my Lost at the fier as Folows--
In weat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 7 0
housal goods to the valuer . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 0
In wood to valuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 12 0
L3 19 0
Expense at Royston for two Engins and Buckets 1 10 0
Expense at Buntingford for Engine and Bucketts 0 15 0
L2:05: 0

1785. On the 16th June, 1785, there was a fire at Biggleswade, which in the space of less than five hours burnt down one hundred and three dwelling-houses and nine maltings. The want of water and the rapidity of the flames, with the falling of the houses, being so dreadful, little good could be done till evening, when the fire was happily stopped. Upwards of 60 houses in the middle of the town were burnt down, with all the shops, warehouses, stables, &c., adjoining. It is generally supposed to have been wilfully occasioned.

1786. June 3rd, the Roy-stone, at Royston, was removed from the Cross to the Market Hill by order of G. Wortham, surveyor. [Removed to present site in Institute Garden, 1856.]

There was a remarkable frost in 1786, when among other fatal results of the rigour of the season, a maltster named Pyman, of Royston, when returning home from Kelshall, was frozen to death, and a butcher's boy taking meat from Royston to Morden met with the same fate.

1787. In 1787 the following awful visitation of divine vengeance befell a man near Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. He had applied to a Magistrate, and informed him that he had been robbed by such a gentleman.—"The Magistrate told him that he was committing perjury, but the miscreant calling God to witness, that if what he had advanced was not true, he wished that his jaws might be locked and his flesh rot on his bones; and, shocking to relate, his jaws were instantly arrested, and after lingering nearly a fortnight in great anguish, he expired in horrible agonies, his flesh literally rotting on his bones."

1788. A burial ground as a present for winning a law-suit may seem an odd acknowledgment, but this was what happened in Royston during last century, when, in 1788, the following obituary notice was published which explains itself—

"Died in the Workhouse in Royston, Thomas Keightly, and on the following Friday his remains were interred in the family burying ground in the Churchyard of that parish. He was the eldest son of the late Wm. Keightley, Esq., of that place, who some years ago, to his immortal honour, stood forward on behalf of the parish, and at his own expense supported a very litigious and expensive law-suit, which he gained and for which the said parish as an acknowledgment made him and his posterity a present of the aforesaid burying ground."

What the law-suit was about I am unable to say.

The following remarkable incident is taken from an old newspaper, the Cambridge Intelligencer—

1794. June 15th. On Wednesday last a son and two daughters of the Widow Curtis, of Wimpole, in this county, were returning from Royston Fair in a one-horse tilted cart. They were stopped in the street at Royston by a concourse of people surrounding some recruiting sergeants who had been parading the streets with a flag and playing "God Save the King." The young man, being in liquor, attempted to drive through the crowd. The horse reared up, being frightened by a musket let off close to him, the young man whipped the horse and struck some persons who obstructed the cart. This aroused the courage of the sons of Mars, who thrust their swords through the tilt of the cart, which alarmed the young women who leaped from the cart, and, fainting away, were carried to a house at a trifling distance. The soldiers, not satisfied with the exploit, wreaked their anger upon the horse by stabbing it with a bayonet in such a manner that the poor animal died in a few minutes. During the tumult, one of the sergeants threatened a tradesman in the town, a person of unsuspected loyalty, that if he did not say "God Save the King," he would run him through the body. To which he replied with the spirit of a Briton—"You may stab me if you dare, but no man shall make me say 'God Save the King' only when I please."

1797. Among the numerous parishes in Cambridgeshire which, at the close of last century, adopted Enclosure Acts was the parish of Harston, and in this case the preliminary formalities were attended with an extraordinary manifestation of feeling. The owners of the property in the parish gave notice of their intention of applying to Parliament for an Act to allot and divide the parish. A person of the name of Brand was sent over on horseback from Cambridge to post the requisite notice on the Church door at Harston. But a crowd of persons assembled to prevent this being carried out. The man was roughly handled, his horse kicked, and his coat torn, and he "found it necessary to get away as fast as he could." A warrant was issued for the leader named Norden who assaulted Brand, and a great crowd of persons assembled to prevent Norden's apprehension. The officer of the law on the one side was protected by nine cavalry who were around, and on the other hand the rioters were armed with pitchforks and whatever they could lay their hands upon. The officer and his cavalry escort got hold of Norden when in the field, but were followed on the road to Cambridge by the rioters, who, however, were afraid of the fire of the soldiers, and no lives were lost. Norden was committed to the Quarter Sessions, and on acknowledging his offence he got off with three months' imprisonment.

1799. On the 8th of February, 1799, there was a tremendous snowstorm which caused much suffering to travellers. Coaches and wagons were buried in the snow and lives were lost. It was the same storm that overtook Elizabeth Woodcock on her way from Cambridge Market to Impington, and buried her alive for eight days. The snow was drifted so high in the neighbourhood of Baldock that fifty men were employed on the North Road to dig out several wagons and carriages buried there. Passengers by coach had a fearful time of it, and what it was like in the neighbourhood of Royston may be gathered from the following testimony to the action of a Roystonian—

"The humanity of Mr. John Phillips, common brewer of Royston, during the late severe weather deserves the highest commendation, particularly on Saturday last. Being informed that the York and Wisbech Mail Coaches were set fast in the snow two miles from Royston, about five o'clock in the morning, he despatched several of his men and sixteen horses to their relief, and in the course of three hours conveyed the coaches safe to Royston, to the great joy of the passengers, coachmen, and guards, some of whom would probably have perished had it not been for Mr. Phillips' humane assistance."—Cambridge Chronicle, February 14th, 1799.

1807. Between this year and 1814, for the particular year is uncertain, Louis XVIII. of France paid a visit to Royston and descended into the Old Cave. Louis, while in exile in England from 1808 to 1814, a part of the time occupied Gosfield Hall, near Braintree, Essex, and it was while here, apparently, that he came over to Royston to see the Cave.

On the 25th October, 1809, was the Jubilee of the reign of George III. I am not aware of anything being done in Royston, but if there was it was probably a half-hearted affair and contrasting greatly with the happy augury of the Jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria in 1887.

1809. In June, 1809, Daniel Lambert, the famous fat man, was weighed at Huntingdon and was found to weigh 52 stone, 1 lb.—14 lb. to the stone. A few days afterwards he arrived from Huntingdon at Stamford where he was announced for exhibition, but he died about nine o'clock the following morning.

1814. On January 14th, the deepest snow that had been known for 40 years began—was some days falling—and continued on the ground for five weeks, and in places drifts were 15 feet deep. The frost continued for 12 weeks, till March 20th. On the 8th of the month of January the frost was of almost unexampled severity. A fair was held on the Thames where a sheep was roasted. A card printed on the Thames during that strange winter fair is now in the Royston Institute Museum. Houses were in many cases snowed up, and the difficulties of traffic were enormous. Large gangs of labourers toiled at mountains of snow in order to open up the coaching routes. When the frost was 20 deg. below freezing point, Benjamin Dunham, seventy years of age, was found frozen to death between Barrington and Harlton.

The armed burglar was in evidence during the last and early years of the present century as a terror to householders, with this difference from the present system, that the offenders generally went in gangs. One notable event of this kind is connected with the residence of Squire Wortham (now Mr. J. E. Phillips) in Melbourn Street, Royston. The party, approaching from the Dog Kennel Lane in rear of the premises, disturbed the housekeeper, a Mrs. Cannon. She in her turn called out to Old Matt, the huntsman, but that worthy slept so soundly that she could not wake him; meanwhile the burglars seemed about to effect an entrance, when the redoubtable Mrs. Cannon secured a blunderbuss and, firing out of the window in the direction of the visitors, they made off. It was generally believed that the housekeeper shot one of the burglars, and years afterwards this was verified in a curious way by one of the party who, just before he died, made a confession to Mr. Stamford, then living at the Old Palace, to the effect that he was one of the party and that one of them was shot.

1826. On December 16th, a woman 61 years of age, "undertook for what the public of Royston chose to give her, to walk 92 miles in 24 consecutive hours—that is, starting from the White Lion in the High Street and walking through the town, half-a-mile in and half-a-mile out. She began her journey at 9 minutes after 4 on Friday afternoon (the weather unfavourable, the street excessively dirty and the boys rather troublesome) and completed her task at 3 minutes after 4 the next afternoon, having 6 minutes to spare."

1831. In 1831, with the uneasiness caused by the appearance of the cholera morbus at Sunderland and elsewhere, a great scare was occasioned in Royston, and the sanitary state of the town at last got an overhauling, when the result showed what a terrible state of things had prevailed in the town during the first decades of the century. Mr. E. K. Fordham, the veteran banker and reformer, was the first to set the ball rolling, and a regular scheme of house to house visitation was resorted to. A committee was appointed, and the town was divided into four parts, each committee to report to the Select Vestry. The state of things disclosed by that report now seems almost inconceivable. The Committee's work had a salutary effect, and this burst of zeal for the public health proceeded so far that a proposal was carried unanimously that a Board of Health be formed "for the more effectual removal of nuisances, and obtaining assistance from the Central Board should the cholera morbus unfortunately break out in this town." With the disappearance of all danger of the cholera morbus however the "Board of Health" fell through, but the effect of the enlightenment which it led to as to the condition of the town was not altogether lost. The cholera was then considered a new epidemic, and it broke out at Sunderland and carried off many thousand lives in the year. Hence the alarm spread to inland towns, the inhabitants of which, like Royston, had their eyes opened to things little thought of before, and that great principle of cause and effect took root in regard to public health, which led up to the Public Health Acts of the present day. It was on this visitation that Kingsley in his "Two Years Ago" gives such a graphic description of the terror caused by the appearance of the cholera, in the treatment of which he makes his hero Tom Thurnall take a notable part. Whether cholera actually appeared in the district I am unable to say, but I find an item for Royston, Cambs, "Cholera bills, &c., 14s. 3d." Probably this was part of the expense of the steps above described.

Some years after the above date, when vaccination had got established, a valiant Royston champion of the good old cause inoculated her family with small-pox. She was brought up at the Bull before the magistrates, who, evidently reluctant to punish her, asked if she would promise not to do the like again, to which she adroitly made answer that she could promise them this, that if she did do it again she would not tell anyone. This was not quite a recantation, and so the old lady had to go to Hertford gaol for seven days, and a crowd of people saw her off out of the town—one of the first victims of that law of compulsion of the individual for the public good which was to be a characteristic of the coming legislation.

1833. In this year the Royston Institute was founded under the name of the Royston Mechanics Institute. In 1855 the present building was erected partly on the site of the old turn-pike house, and it was opened in 1856.

1834. The lowering of Burleigh's, or Burloe's, Hill, Royston, by digging a cutting through, was begun about this time. The trustees of the Baldock and Bournbridge Turnpike Trust made a special contract by which the parish contracted to do the work for L250, the parish taking any risk of loss and any chance of profit on the transaction, and the work to extend over two years. Men who applied to the Overseer were set upon it, and there was a strike against 4d. per yard, the price fixed for the labour by Mr. Wm. Smith, the surveyor for one part of the work, and the Vestry stood by the Surveyor and decided that any men who refused to do it at that price should not be employed by the parish.

The labourers refused to work at it, and "as the magistrates sanctioned the offer of work at this hill as an answer to applicants for relief, the labourers who would have been relieved for want of employment have found work from private employers instead of living on compulsory relief from the parish. Labourers living out of the parish, and threatening to come home unless out-allowance was paid them, having been answered that there was two years' work provided for them, have altered their intention of coming home and have subsisted on their own resources." And so the Parochial Pharaohs, as the paupers regarded them, by practical common sense and a strong grip of the handle, managed to make the rough places plain, and the sturdy vagabonds—for many of the old paupers of these times deserved the name—with their threats to "come home to their parish," were kept at a safe distance on the horizon by the ring of picks and mattocks!

1835. In this year occurred the fire at Hatfield House in which the Marchioness of Salisbury was burnt to death; an event which created a great sensation in all parts of the county, the Marchioness having been quite a public character, and was, in fact, at one time mistress of the Hertfordshire Hounds, then called "Lady Salisbury's."

One of the strangest incidents connected with the old highway traffic of sixty years ago, was the mishap which occurred to an old stage wagon with three horses abreast, a team of eight, at Royston about 1835 or 1836, on a Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in November. The incident was cleverly described by a versifier in the columns of the Herts. and Cambs. Reporter some years ago, but it is only necessary here to say that the wagon was travelling up to London, and reached Melbourn all right. Here, however, the sleepy teamster got his ponderous team too near a huge sign-post in the village, when

The ornamental sign by tricks,
Amongst the ropes came firmly fixed.

The sign-post was torn up and fixed immovably between the wheels and the wagon, and in that position was carried aloft, as "slowly the eight big Lincoln steeds" continued their wonted course towards Royston. Before day-light that town was reached, the driver still unconscious of the curious appendage to his load. "Rounding the corner at the Cross" the strange projection crashed into the windows of the shops to the consternation of the inhabitants, as

House after house was ripp'd and torn.
****
Plant-pots and plants alike were strown,
And gilded names in swaths were mown.

Some thought it was an earthquake, and others that the end of all things had come. Amongst the terrified shopkeepers, George Rivers, the witty thespian, is credited with exclaiming:—

"The windows and the frames are gone,
And all the house is tumbling down"!

Not till the wagon reached the Warren did that and the old sign-post part company, and even then the sleepy driver wended his ponderous way towards Buntingford in blissful ignorance of the devastation he had wrought upon the shop windows! "Nor did he learn the strange affray till he returned another day."

1836. The great snowstorm of 1836 was even more memorable than the two preceding storms of 1799 and 1814, for its suddenness, its extent, and the greatly increased number of stage-coaches "on the road" at that time, which suffered from the interruption of traffic. It commenced to snow on the night of Christmas Eve (Saturday) and snowed all day on Sunday, and the next day. No snowstorm in Great Britain for the previous hundred years equalled it in violence and extent. On the evening of the 26th, after it had been snowing for 48 hours, the wind increased to a hurricane, and in the night the fall of snow was from four to six feet, while the drifts were from 20 to 30 feet in depth, and the condition of all exposed to it was appalling! The storm spread all over Europe, and in this island all communication was cut off for nearly a week. No coach got through from Cambridge till the following Thursday. Many a Christmas party that Christmas were minus their guests, for coaches were "snowed up" all over the land, and, but for the timely shelter of inns and private houses, many of the passengers must have perished. There were three coaches almost within sight of each other placed hors de combat in and near Royston. One coach was actually stuck fast in the snow at the Cross, in the centre of the town; another just below the present railway bridge, and another at the bottom of the Kneesworth Hill. These coaches were the Edinburgh Mail, the Boston Mail, and the Stamford Coach, and were all on their way to London at the time. The unfortunate passengers were obliged to spend the Christmas holidays in Royston as best they could, and the mails were sent forward on horseback as soon as practicable. For a whole week no mail coach went into, or came from, London through Buntingford and Royston. Between Royston and Wadesmill, on the portion of the North Road known as the Wadesmill Turnpike Trust, the difficulties of opening up communication were of the most formidable character.

Near the gates at the entrance to Coles Park, Westmill (now the residence of R. P. Greg, Esq.), there were drifts 20 feet deep, and the labour of cutting through the snow between Royston and Wadesmill, was believed to have cost no less than L400, and so great was the loss to the toll-keepers that the Turnpike Trust found it necessary to compensate Mr. Flay, the lessee, to the extent of L200 for the loss of toll through this unexampled interruption of traffic. It may be of interest just now to mention that the above remarkable storm was followed by a serious epidemic of influenza.

1837. Following the important undertaking of cutting through Burloes Hill on the Newmarket Road, came the great work of cutting through the hill on the London Road, south of Royston. The undertaking was begun in 1836, the contract price for the work in this case being L1,723. This work proved more difficult in one sense than that of the Newmarket Road, from the fact that the coaching and other traffic was so much greater along this road and that the work had to be adapted to the continuation of this heavy traffic. The passage of coaches over the temporary roadway was not of the smoothest, and it is said that one passenger became so alarmed that he jumped from the coach, being afraid it would upset, and in doing so broke his leg. The Turnpike Trust, being responsible for the state of the road, though not for the passenger's want of courage, made him a compensation of L50 for the injury.

In 1837 the coronation of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, was worthily celebrated in Royston. There were free dinners for the townspeople on the Market Hill, with bands of music, and the principal residents dined together at the Bull Hotel afterwards—much the same as in the celebration of the jubilee of Her Majesty's reign fifty years afterwards in 1887.

1840. In this year the Royal Agricultural Society held their second annual show on Parker's Piece, Cambridge, and, as an illustration of how such exhibitions have advanced since then, it may be mentioned that at the show of the "Royal" at Oxford in the previous year there were only fifty exhibits of live stock and twenty-three of implements, and the exhibition at Cambridge brought not very many more.

1842. During the winter months of this year a mail-coach driver was killed near the turnpike, Mill Road, Royston, by the coach being overthrown owing to the snow.

In the same year the Rev. J. Snelgar, vicar of Royston, hung himself in his own rooms at the residence (now Mr. Walter —ale's) [Transcriber's note: several characters missing from Walter's surname] near the Sun Inn, at the top of Back Street.