IX
It is a far cry from the London County Council, the present highway authority at Highgate, to the first roadmaker here, in 1364. A hermit, William Phelippe by name, at that time lived in a little cell on the lower slope of Highgate Hill, looking down upon London. From that remote eyrie, had he been a man of imagination, he might have beheld prophetic visions of London’s future sprawling greatness, when the tide of life should rise to the crest of his hill and bring with it bricks and mortar, wood-pavements, cable-tramways, and other things of equal use and beauty. He foresaw none of these things, possibly because he did not sufficiently mortify the flesh. Certainly he was a hermit not without wealth, and perhaps therefore not one of your sad-eyed ascetics. He had a goodly balance in some old earthenware crock under the floor, or at the bank—the road bank of the Hollow Way, very old-established—and he had ample leisure, unencroached upon by toilette requirements, for which hermits had no use. Lazing in his cell commanding the road—it stood near where the Whittington Stone stands now—he had often noticed how wet, miry, and full of sloughs was the Hollow Way, and with what difficulty travellers ascended by it. Accordingly he devised a scheme by which he conferred benefits alike upon the travellers along the road and the farmers of Highgate. He directed and paid for the digging of gravel and the laying of it along the road, and in the work presently expended all his money. But in so doing he had made an excellent investment; much better than leaving it on deposit at the bank mentioned above, where, in the nature of things, it accrued no interest; for he procured a decree from Edward the Third, authorising “our well-beloved William Phelippe, the hermit,” to set up a toll-bar, and licensing him to levy tolls and keep the road in repair for “our people passing between Heghgate and Smethfelde.” Thus were the first toll-bar and the first turnpike-keeper established, and we may judge that the undertaking was profitable from the records that show how very largely the roadside hermits throughout the country went into the business of road and bridge making or mending shortly afterwards. There were hermits of sorts: some authorised, and some not; some who did good work in this wise and some who did nothing at all, and yet continued to live substantially on the mistaken gifts of wayfarers. The profession of the eremite was not without its jealousies. An industrious road-maker might have a cell placed in a position outside a town favourable for the collection of dues, when another would set up business, say a quarter of a mile further out, and so intercept the money; so that travellers having paid once, had nothing for the real Simon Pure. Having satisfied Codlin, they disregarded Short; whereupon it not infrequently happened that if Short were the more muscular of the two he would go and have it out with his rival, while the world went by, scandalised at the apostolic blows and knocks these holy men were dealing one another.
William Phelippe’s licence was renewed every year. His tariff of tolls is still extant, and we read that for every cart carrying merchandise, its wheels shod with iron, twopence per week was paid; if not shod with iron, one penny. Every horse carrying merchandise was charged one farthing per week. Pedestrians and horsemen without goods went free. These charges seem absurdly small until we multiply them by twenty, which gives results representing the present value of money, and then it will be found that those ancient tolls were on much the same scale as those which existed until July 1st, 1864, when all turnpikes on public highways within fifty miles of London were abolished by Act of Parliament.
A great gap stretches between the time of our road-making hermit and that of Telford—a gap of four hundred and fifty years. Yet, although Highway Acts were from time to time devised for the betterment of the roads, their condition remained bad, and there was always, since 1386, the crest of Highgate Hill to surmount.
Unless we take this hill-top route to the left we shall not have seen Highgate; nor, in truth, is there much to see, now that the old Gatehouse Tavern is gone, and with it the last outward and visible connection with the days of yore. The tavern marked the site of the old turnpike-gate that stood here, the lineal successor of the hermit’s original pitch lower down, when the old route to Barnet by Tallingdon Lane, Crouch End, Hornsey Great Park, Muswell Hill, Friern Barnet, and Whetstone was superseded by the new one through the Bishop of London’s estate, by Finchley and Whetstone, in 1386. It is in the existence at that time of the Bishop’s park that we may perhaps seek with success the origin of the name of “Highgate,” which does not necessarily allude to the very obviously “high” gate situated here—more than 350 feet above sea-level. No; it was the “haigh” gate, the portal which gave access through the enclosure (haia) with which my Lord Bishop’s domain was presumably surrounded. Through his land all traffic passed until it emerged on the other side of Whetstone, where, commanding the entrance to Barnet, stood another gate in receipt of tolls, swelling the income of that very business-like ecclesiastic and his successors for hundreds of years.
At the Highgate end dues were collected on horned cattle, among other things, and here originated the practice of being initiated into the freedom of Highgate, a mock ceremonial founded upon Roman Catholic rites at the time of the Reformation. For three hundred years this farcical observance was continued at the tavern by the gate, and only fell into disuse with the decay of coaching. Those who had not previously passed this way were “sworn in on the horns,” a practice traced to the unwillingness of the cattle drovers who frequented the tavern to allow strangers to mix with them. This exclusiveness no doubt originated in the fear of trade secrets being divulged, a feeling which may still be met with among commercial travellers of the older school, who resent the appearance of the mere tourist in their midst. The stranger who in olden times happened upon these drovers at Highgate was discouraged from taking bite or sup here, and only permitted to join them after having kissed the horns of one of their beasts. This speedily became elevated (or degraded, shall we say?) into a sort of blasphemous ritual parodying the admission of a novice into the Church, and this again, with the lapse of time and the dying of religious hatreds, developed into the merely good-natured farce played during the last hundred years of the existence of the custom.
When the coaches pulled up here, it was soon discovered, by judicious questioning, who were the strangers who had not been made “free.” They were made to alight, and, having removed their hats and kissed a pair of horns mounted on a pole, “the oath” was administered by the landlord in this wise:—“Upstanding and uncovered: silence. Take notice what I now say to you, for that is the first word of the oath; mind that. You must acknowledge me to be your adopted father. I must acknowledge you to be my adopted son. If you do not call me father you forfeit a bottle of wine; if I do not call you son I forfeit the same. And now, my good son, if you are travelling through this village of Highgate, and you have no money in your pocket, go call for a bottle of wine at any house you may think proper to enter and book it to your father’s score,” and so forth.
An initiate had to swear never to drink small beer when he could get strong (unless he preferred small); never to eat brown bread when he could get white (unless he preferred brown); never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress (unless he preferred the maid, and in case of doubt he might kiss both); after which he had to kiss the horns or the woman in the company who appeared the fairest, as seemed good to him, the ceremony concluding with the declaration of his privileges as a freeman of Highgate. Among the well-known privileges were—that if he felt tired when passing through Highgate and saw a pig lying in a ditch, he might kick the pig away and take its place, but if he saw three lying together he must only kick away the middle one and lie between the other two!