XXIX
The approach to Newark is long and dull, by way of the suburban “London Road” and past the decaying Beaumond Cross, but this leads at length to the great open square of the Market-place, the most striking of all such centres of public resort to be found on the way to the North. Newark-“upon-Trent” is a misnomer, for neither the town nor the castle, which was once the “new work” that gave the place its name, are on that river, but only on a branch of it—the Devon—which falls into the Trent at Crankley Point, some miles below the town. The “new work” was only new some eight hundred years ago, when Edward the Confessor’s castle on the banks of the Devon was built, or when it was rebuilt or enlarged by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, 1123–47. Bishops and other mighty castle-builders in those times not infrequently built their own prisons when piling up their grim fortresses, and so the Bishop of Lincoln found, when King Stephen seized him and kept him in durance within his own stronghold. A judiciously low diet of bread and water, and confinement in an unhealthy dungeon below the level of the river, soon broke the haughty Churchman’s spirit, and he transferred the castle to the Crown.
But Newark Castle has better claims to notice than as the dungeon of one of those old bloody-minded prelates. As the place where King John ended his evil life, we may well look upon its ruined walls with interest. His rebellious barons scattered on his approach in that year of 1216, and England seemed in danger of a long continuance of its troubles under the profligate king. But a surfeit of peaches brought that wicked life to a hasty conclusion, and here, on the banks of the sluggish Devon, one of the worst of English monarchs died. We need not regard peaches with apprehension because John is said to have died of them. We must consider whence they came; from the monks of Swineshead Abbey, where the king had stayed on his journey to Newark. Now, Holy Church had the very best of reasons for hating that monarch, and from hatred to murder was not a far cry in those days. So of peaches King John doubtless died; but of peaches subtly flavoured with poison, there is little doubt.
The castle was again seized by the barons, in the succeeding reign, but they surrendered, after a week’s siege, and by the gift of the king, the Bishops of Lincoln received their own again. Under Edward the Sixth it again became the property of the crown, and when James the First “progressed” through England to his throne, these walls sheltered him during a week of festivity.
A lawless and discourteous, as well as a weak-minded king, as we shall see. Crowds assembled during the festivities set apart by the corporation, and a fellow was caught in the act of pocket-picking. By order of the king, the unfortunate wretch was strung up, instanter, without the veriest semblance of a trial! There’s your lawlessness, and here follows the discourtesy.
There was a certain Dame Eleanor Disney, who, to do honour to this strange kind of king, came, splendidly dressed, with her husband, Sir Henry, to one of the receptions. James’s eye lighted upon all this finery, and his frugal mind was shocked. “Wha,” he asked, “be that lady wi’ a lairdship to her bock?”
But the most stirring of Newark’s historic days were yet to come. Newark to the last was loyal to Charles the First. Three times was the town besieged by the Parliament, and never taken. All the inhabitants armed and did excellent service, making sorties and capturing troops of Parliamentary horse; and had not the royal cause failed elsewhere, Newark must have emerged, triumphant, at the end. But at last all that remained were some few outlying garrisons throughout the country. Newark was especially commanded by the king to discontinue a hopeless resistance, and accordingly the town laid down its arms in 1646. It was then that the castle was ruined.
It is a highly picturesque ruin to-day, and lacking nothing in itself of grandeur, only needs a more effective site. As it stands, only slightly elevated above the river and the surrounding levels, this historic castle has not the advantages that belong to fortresses like Ludlow and Harlech, perched on their rocky heights. But it has done its duty and still serves to give a note of dignity to Newark town, as one approaches it by the long straight levels of the road from the north. It looks much the same to-day as when Rowlandson made his sketch of it, with the coach dashing over the bridge, more than a hundred years ago; the projecting Tudor oriel windows still looking forth upon the sullen tide from the more ancient walls, their crumbling stones scarce more decayed than then. The old wooden bridge, however, that formerly spanned the Devon, was pulled down and rebuilt in 1775.
The great glory of Newark is its beautiful church, with that soaring spire which is visible for miles away, before the town itself is glimpsed. Not so tall as Grantham spire, it is as beautiful in its simpler style, and the church is better placed in the town than that of Grantham. Especially striking is the view across the great market-place, the grey Early English and Decorated spire, with its numerous belfry-lights, and the fine windows and bold arcading of the tower forming a splendidly effective contrast with the seventeenth and eighteenth century red-brick houses facing the square. Newark and Grantham spires are really the products of an old-time rivalry between the two towns. Either town is satisfied that it possesses the best, and so the peace is kept throughout the ages.
A relic of old times is found in the custom at Newark known as “Ringing for Gofer.” On six successive Sunday evenings, beginning twelve Sundays before Christmas, the old parish church bells are rung for one hour, complying with the terms of a bequest left by a merchant named Gofer, over two centuries ago. He had on one occasion lost his way at night in Sherwood Forest, then infested by robbers of no very chivalrous instincts, who required, not “your money or your life,” but both. Just as he had given up hope, he heard these bells of Newark, and by their sound he made his way to safety. In memory of his deliverance he left a sum of money for this bell-ringing.
The market-square has always been the centre of Newark’s life. It is singularly like the great market-square of Nottingham, on a smaller scale, and, like it, is partly surrounded by houses with a colonnaded piazza. An empty void now, save on the weekly market-day, that occasion finds its broad, cobble-stoned space thickly covered with stalls, while groups of farmers throng the pavements, and with their samples of corn displayed in the palms of their hands sell and buy in immense quantities. In the old times this vast empty square was peopled every day with arriving or departing coaches, and its pavements beset with passengers mounting or alighting, for the celebrated inns of Newark were mostly situated here, and the chief of them are here, even now, on the opposite side from the church, and adjoining one another. Newark is said to have once had no fewer than fifty inns. The classical Town Hall, built in 1773, on the west side of the square, stands on the site of two of them, and many others have been converted to different uses. Here on the south side are the “Clinton Arms,” so called in honour of the Duke of Newcastle’s family, powerful in these parts; the “Saracen’s Head,” with a bust of an alleged (but very pallid and mild-looking) Saracen on its frontage; and the “White Hart,” most ancient of all these existing hostelries. An inn of this name is spoken of as existing here in 1113. A “Saracen’s Head” stood here, certainly as far back as 1341, but unhappily the existing house only dates from 1721. This house is the one mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, who says, “The travellers who have visited Newark more lately will not fail to remember the remarkably civil and gentlemanly manners of the person who now keeps the principal inn there, and may find some amusement in contrasting them with those of his more rough predecessor.”
Let us put on record the name of this remarkable person: William Thompson, landlord from 1784 to 1819. His “more rough predecessor” was perhaps the landlord who dispensed such open-handed and free hospitality to Jeanie Deans, when that somewhat priggish young woman stayed there, and on leaving asked for her “lawing.”
“Thy lawing!” exclaimed that “more rough” person; “Heaven help thee, wench! what ca’st thou that?”
“It is—I was wanting to ken what was to pay.”
“Pay? Lord help thee!—why, nought, woman—we hae drawn no liquor but a gill o’ beer, and the “Saracen’s Head” can spare a mouthful o’ meat to a stranger like thee, that cannot speak Christian language.”
Alas! whatever your language, the more smooth innkeepers of Newark, in our times, do not do business on this principle.
The “Clinton Arms” has seen many changes of name. It was originally the “Talbot,” and as such is mentioned in 1341. At a later date it became the “Kingston Arms.” Byron often stayed there, and writes from London in 1807, “The ‘Kingston Arms’ is my inn.” It was also the inn, during the election contest of 1832, of Mr. Gladstone, soliciting for the first time the suffrages of “free and independent” electors, who duly returned him, in the Tory interest. Newark thus gave him an opportunity in Parliament of defending his father as a slave-owner, and of whetting his youthful eloquence to a keen edge in extolling the principle of slave-owning. The Newarkers were long proud of having returned the “statesman” to the House, but history will perhaps deny him that title. It has been denied, and the term of “egotistical politician” found to fit better. He set a fashion in surrender, and his country reaped shame while he lived; but the bitterest harvest-home of his methods has come, after his death, in the red vintage of English blood. It was when standing for this pocket-borough of the Duke of Newcastle’s that Gladstone gave an early and characteristic specimen of his peculiarly Jesuitical ways of thought. He took the mail-coach on a Sunday from Newark for London, and beguiled the tedium of the journey and the Sabbath by discussing the question of Sunday travelling with a Tory companion. Not merely did he severely condemn the practice, but he also gave some tracts to his fellow-traveller! He gives the facts himself: it is no outsider’s satire. Thus, in one moment of confidence, he reveals not only what he is, but what he will be. He implicitly announces that he is a law unto himself and that those things are permitted to him which in others must be deadly sins. In the very moment of crime he can present an accomplice with a tract, and glow with all the fervour of one helped to save a lost soul.
The “Ram,” another old inn, is still standing, opposite the castle, on Beast Market Hill. George Eliot stayed here in September 1868, “seeing some charming quiet landscapes” along the Trent. Quiet, undoubtedly.
Ridge, the printer and bookseller, Byron’s first publisher, who issued his Hours of Idleness, carried on business in a fine old house still standing at a corner of the square, and the house-door and the brass knocker at which the new-fledged poet knocked exist to-day.