WATCH AND WARD.—THE BEADLE.
The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably, maintained on the north side of London until the institution of a general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four men in each rural township, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord to the Feast of St. Nicholas. The watchmen could detain any one unknown to them; any one who would not stand and declare himself, was pursued with hue and cry—with horn and voice—
"Swarming at his back the country cried."
We suppose that St. Nicholas became the patron of highwaymen, because the watch was intermitted on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas. The wardmen were occasionally noticed in the Domesday of St. Paul's. The survey of 1279 states, that at Sutton, in Middlesex, each tenant who had cattle on the lord's lands to the value of thirty pence, paid a penny at Martinmas, called ward-penny; but this tax was not due from the watchmen of the ward, who waited at night in the King's highway, and received the ward-staff:—
"They wared and they waked,
And the Ward so kept,
That the king was harmless,
And the country scatheless."
In Essex, the ward-keeper had a rope with a bell, or more than one bell, attached to it: the rope may have been used to stop the way. The ward-staff was a type of authority, cut and carried with peculiar ceremony, and treated with great reverence.
The duties of the beadle (Saxon, bydel or bædel), in ancient times, lay more on the farm than in the law-court, the state procession, or in the parochial duties of punishing petty offenders, as in the present day.[58] In many places, the bedelry and the haywardship were held together by one person. The beadle was the verger of the manorial court; he likewise overlooked the reapers and carried his rod into the harvest-field. At Darent, near Rochester, the beadle held five acres as beadle, shepherd, and hayward; he had eighteen sheep and two cows in the lord's pasture; against Christmas he had a crone—an old sheep—a lamb with a fleece, and some other allowances. At Ickham, in the same county, the beadle's office was hereditary: the beadle had five acres with a cottage for his service, and made all the citations of the court, and, if he went on horseback into the Weald of Kent, he was allowed provender for his horse; he had pasture for five hogs, five head of cattle, and a horse; he attended in the fields to regulate the labours of the harvest. And such had been the tenure of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.
Old English gentlemen were anciently very much afraid of theft and peculation; they believed that "Treste lokes maketh trewe hewen,"—or, to change their maxim into current English, they believed that "firm locks made faithful servants." The barns were to be well closed after August, and no servant was to open them until threshing-time, without the special direction of the landlord or the steward. The strictest accounts were kept. Every person, in any situation of the slightest trust or responsibility, was required to render an account of every penny and every article passing through his hands, to the receiver, or bailiff, whose accounts were revised once a year by auditors, who went round from manor to manor.
[OLDEN HOUSE-MARKS.]
he means by which property has been identified, and denoted by some distinctive mark, at various periods, present us with some curious customs.
In England, individual marks were in use from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, probably much earlier; and when a yeoman affixed his mark to a deed, he drew a signum, well known to his neighbours, by which his land, his cattle, and sheep, his agricultural implements, and even his ducks, were identified. In the 25th year of Queen Elizabeth, a jury at Seaford, in Sussex, convicted John Comber "for markyng of three ducks of Edwd Warwickes and two ducks of Symon Brighte with his own marke, and cutting owt theire markes." Cows and oxen were marked on the near horn. When cattle in bodies of many hundreds ranged over extensive commons, as was formerly the case, the use of marks for identification was more indispensable than at present. Our swans retain their marks to the present day. In Ditmarsh and Denmark the owner's mark was cut in stone over the principal door of the house; it designated not only his land and cattle, but his stall in the church, and his grave when he was no more. At Witney, Oxon, a woolstapler's mark may be seen so incised on a house, with the date 1564; and numerous merchants' marks are at Norwich and Yarmouth. At Holstein, within the memory of man, the beams of the cottages of the bond-servants were incised with the marks of their masters. A pastor, writing from Angeln, says, "The hides had their marks, which served instead of the names of their owners." In the island of Föhr, a little to the north of Ditmarsh, the mark, cut on a wooden ticket, is always sold with the house; and it is cut in stone over the door; and the same custom is still in use in Schleswig and Holstein. In the Tyrolese Alps, at the present day, the cattle that are driven out to pasturage are marked on the horn with the mark of their owner's land. Marks for cattle are also used in Switzerland, in the Bavarian Alps, and in some parts of Austria.
These house-marks are connected with merchants' and tradesmen's marks, and also with stonemasons' marks, all of which formed a lower kind of heraldry for those not entitled to the bearings of the noble; for, on old houses at Erfurt, double shields, with the marks of the families of husband and wife, are found.
Many of the marks found on old pictures are true house-marks, and not alphabetical monograms. A painting by Wouvermans or Lingelback, in the writer's possession, bears the mark known as the crane's foot. Michelsen considers armorial bearings to have been originally little more than decorated marks, and to have been engrafted, as it were, upon the system: indeed, he asserts that the arms of Pope Hadrian VI., a Netherlander, were framed from house-marks. Some knightly families in Schleswig still retain their house-marks on their coat-of-arms: for instance, the Von Gogerns bear the kettle-hanger, or pot-hook; the Von Sesserns, in 1548, bore the same, which occurred on their family tomb, anno 1309. The earliest marks were supposed to represent the most indispensable agricultural implements, as a spade, a plough, a scythe, a sickle, a dung-hook, the tyres of a barrow; also, anchors, stars, &c. There was, also, often a supposed connexion between the figurative name of a house and its owner's mark, which was a representation of the object, more or less exact. Michelsen considers that the names and signs of inns are but remnants of the once universal and necessary custom of giving figurative names to houses, which the modern numbers have superseded.
Prof. Michelsen shows that the cultellum, which was given by the Franks, Goths, and Germans, in the ninth and tenth centuries, on the transfer of land, with the signum cut on a piece of wood, was originally intended for notching the mark on the wood, in the same manner as the inkstand and pen were lifted up with the chart, as symbols of a transfer of land. Among the archives of Nôtre Dame, at Paris, is preserved a pointed pocket-knife of the eleventh century, on the ivory handle of which is engraved the record of a gift of land; and at the same place is preserved a piece of wood, of the ninth century, six inches long and one inch square, attached to a diploma, as was then the custom. A similar knife, with an ivory handle, is still preserved, attached to a charter of Trinity College, Cambridge.
The surrender of copyholds by the rod or glove, and occasionally by a straw, or rush (whence the word "stipulation," from stipula, straw), is well known in England; and in the manor of Paris Garden, Surrey, an ebony rod is preserved with a silver head, on which are engraved the royal arms, with E. R. and a crown, and an inscription purporting that it is kept for the surrender of copyholds of the manor. The inscribed sticks, mentioned in Ezekiel xxxv. 16, appear to relate to this ancient mode of conveyancing.
[V. Olden Customs and Ceremonies.]
[MAY-DAY CAROL ON MAGDALEN COLLEGE TOWER.]
ay customs are nothing more than a gratulation of the spring, to testify universal joy at the revival of vegetation. Hence the universality of the practice; and its festivities being inspired by the gay face of Nature, they are as old as any we have on record. There is at Oxford a May-day ceremony which has a special claim upon our respect and veneration, for nearly four centuries.
Upon the majestic Perpendicular tower of Magdalen College we have many time and oft looked with reverential feeling: seen from every point, it delights the eye with its stately form, fine proportions, and admirable simplicity; and with its history is associated a May-day custom of surpassing interest. For more than three centuries and a half the choristers of the College have assembled upon the top of its tower on a May-day morning, and there performed a most harmonious service, the origin of which has been thus traced by the learned Dr. Rimbault.
In the year 1501, the "most Christian" King Henry VII. gave to Magdalen College the advowsons of the churches of Slymbridge, in Gloucestershire, and Fyndon, in Sussex, together with one acre of land in each parish. In gratitude for this benefaction, the College was accustomed, during the lifetime of the royal benefactor, to celebrate a service in honour of the Holy Trinity, with the collect still used on Trinity Sunday; and the prayer, "Almighty and everlasting God, we are taught by Thy word that the heart of kings," &c.; and, after the death of the King, to commemorate him in the usual manner.
The Commemoration Service ordered in the time of Queen Elizabeth, is still performed on the 1st of May; when is sung on the College-tower a Latin hymn, which has evidently reference to the original service. The produce of the two acres before-mentioned used to be distributed on the same day, between the President and Fellows: it has, however, for many years been given up, to supply the choristers with a festal entertainment in the College-hall.
The arrangement of the ceremony is as follows. At about half-past four o'clock in the morning, the singing boys and men, accompanied by members of Magdalen and different colleges, ascend to the platform of the tower; and the choristers, having put on their surplices, range themselves on the slightly-gabled roof, standing with their faces towards the east. Magdalen bell having tolled five, the choristers sing from their books the Latin hymn, of which the following is a translation:—
"Father and God, we worship Thee,
And praise and bless on bended knee:
With food Thou'rt to our bodies kind,
With heavenly grace dost cheer the mind.
"O, Jesus, only Son of God!
Thee we adore, and praise, and laud:
Thy love did not disdain the gloom
Of a pure Virgin's holy womb.
"Nail'd to the cross, a victim made,
On Thee the wrath of God was laid:
Our only Saviour, now by Thee
Immortal life we hope to see.
"To Thee, Eternal Spirit, rise
Unceasing praise, from earth and skies:
Thy breath awoke the heavenly Child,
And gave Him to His mother mild.
"To Thee, the Triune God, be paid—
To Thee, who our redemption made—
All honour, thanks, and praise divine,
For this great mystery of Thine!"
SINGING THE MAY-DAY CAROL ON MAGDALEN COLLEGE TOWER.
At the close of the hymn, all heads are covered, and the singers hasten to the belfry, whence the bells ring out a joyful peal. The spectators in the road beneath disperse, the boys blowing tin horns, according to ancient custom, to welcome in sweet May; while others ramble into the fields to gather cowslips and field flowers, which they bring into the town. Occasionally the singing on the tower has been heard, with a favourable wind, at two miles' distance. This being a "gaudy day" for the choristers, they have a dinner of roast lamb and plum-pudding in the College-hall at two o'clock. There is a good representation of the ceremony on the tower, carefully engraved by Joseph Lionel Williams, in the Illustrated London News, whence the accompanying representation has been reduced.
Dr. Rimbault, whilst making some researches in the library of Christchurch, Oxford, discovered what appeared to him to be the first draft of the above hymn. It has the following note:—"This hymn is sung every day in Magdalen College Hall, Oxon, dinner and supper throughout the year, for the after grace, by the chaplains, clerks, and choristers there. Composed by Benjamin Rogers, Doctor of Musicke of the University of Oxon, 1685." The author of the hymn is unknown.
At Oxford, formerly, boys used to blow cows'-horns and hollow canes all night, to welcome in May-day; and girls carried about garlands of flowers, which afterwards they hung upon the churches.
Before we leave the sacred ground whereon this holy May-day ceremony is, year by year, performed, we present the reader with a very ably-drawn picture of the locality itself, and its many attractions.
"Probably," says a writer in the Saturday Review, "there is no city in the United Kingdom, with the exception of the metropolis, which possesses such a concentration of interest as Oxford. Its historical associations are spread over a long succession of ages. Not to speak of more apocryphal reminiscences, it was a favourite residence of one of our monarchs, and the birthplace of another. It was the scene of important transactions in the troubled reign of Stephen, and witnessed an episode in the equally troubled reign of the third Henry. It beheld the seeds of the Reformation sown by Wycliff, and saw the martyrdom of Cranmer and his fellow-sufferers. It became a confessor for the Church of England as against Puritanism under the second Stuart, and as against Popery under the fourth. It has been, at least since the Reformation, a sort of head-quarters of that Church; and has witnessed, in our own day, the most remarkable theological convulsions which it has experienced since the Reformation. Its outward appearance is in keeping with its history. It bears traces of the architecture of eight centuries—from the rude belfry-tower of St. Michael's, which has been assigned on good authority to the age of the Confessor, to Mr. Scott's exquisite imitation of the Sainte Chapelle, in its immediate neighbourhood. It is true that it contains no building of the first rank; but it exhibits an almost infinite variety, under the influence of accidental yet harmonious grouping, which has a charm more akin to that of nature than that of art. In its æsthetical as well as in its moral aspect, it betrays a strong spirit of Conservatism, and, occasionally, one of studied Revivalism. We see in Oxford the shadow of the Middle Ages projected far into the region of modern life. A College is a strange compound, half club, half convent, and its daily usages are curiously intermingled with the past. For two centuries after the Reformation, Protestant founders cast their institutions in the mould of Wykeham and Waynflete: the scholastic system appears to have been a living thing at the beginning of the last century, and its ghost still haunts the academic shades. These facts have their parallel in the architecture of Oxford. The revival of mediæval art, which we have ourselves witnessed, had its precursors here in the early part of the seventeenth century. Nowhere in England—we may almost say, nowhere in Europe—shall we find such good and pure Gothic, built at a time when the style was defunct elsewhere, as is presented by the Chapels of Wadham, Lincoln, and Jesus Colleges, and in the staircase of Christchurch Hall; and as was to be seen in the chapel of Exeter College, before its destruction.
"With such attractions, added to that of personal interest, arising out of the past or in direct connexion with the place, it is no wonder that Oxford, at the most pleasant season of the year, draws to itself crowds of visitors from all parts of the country. The only wonder is, that it is not even more popular than it is, when we consider the throngs of English men and women who are to be met with in the dingy and unsavoury Colleges of continental cities from June till October."
At Saffron Wolden, and in the village of Debden, an old May-day song is still sung by the little girls, who go about in parties carrying garlands from door to door. The first stanza is to be repeated after each of the others by way of chorus:—
"I, I been a rambling all this night,
And some part of this day,
And, now returning back again,
I brought you a garland gay.
"A garland gay I brought you here,
And at your door I stand;
'Tis nothing but a sprout, but 'tis well budded out,
The works of our Lord's hand.
"Why don't you do as I have done
The very first day of May?
And from my parents I have come,
And could no longer stay.
"So dear, so dear as Christ loved us,
And for our sins was slain,
Christ bids us turn from wickedness,
And turn to the Lord again."
The garlands which the girls carry are sometimes large and handsome, and a doll is usually placed in the middle, dressed in white, according to certain traditional regulations: this doll represents the Virgin Mary, and is a relic of the ages of Romanism.
The May-pole still lingers in the village of St. Briavel's, in the picturesque forest of Dean. In the village of Burley in the New Forest, a May-pole is erected, a fête given to the school children, and a May-queen is chosen by lots; a floral crown surmounts the pole, and garlands of flowers hang about the shaft. Among other late instances are recorded a May-pole, eighty feet high, on the village-green of West Dean, Wilts, in 1836; and in 1844, there was "dancing round the May-pole" in St. James's district, Enfield. William Howitt describes May-poles in the village of Lisby, near Newstead; and in Farnsfield, near Southwell, Derbyshire, May-poles are to be seen. Dr. Parr was a great patron of May-day festivities: opposite his parsonage-house at Hatton, near Warwick, stood the parish May-pole, which was annually dressed with garlands, and the doctor danced with his parishioners around the shaft. He kept its large crown in a closet of his house, from whence it was produced every May-day, and decorated with fresh flowers and streamers, preparatory to its elevation to the top of the pole.
On May-day and December 26th, is distributed the fund bequeathed in 1717 and 1736, by Mr. Raine, a wealthy brewer at St. George's-in-the-East, who founded schools and a hospital for girls, and added marriage portions of 100l., to be drawn by lots: the winner is married to a young man, of St. John's, Wapping, or St. Paul's, Shadwell; the couple dine with their friends, and in the evening an ode is sung, and the marriage portion of one hundred new sovereigns is presented to the bride.
Miss Baker, in her Northamptonshire Glossary, tells us that there are very few villages in that county where the May-day Festival is not noticed in some way or other.
[BANBURY CAKES.—CONGLETON CAKES, etc.]
hat the ancient town of Banbury, lying on the northern verge of the county of Oxford, should have been famed, from time immemorial, for its rich cakes, should not excite our special wonder, seeing that the district has some of the richest pasture land in the kingdom; a single cow being here known to produce 200 pounds of butter in a year! Butter, we need scarcely add, is the prime ingredient of the Banbury cake, giving it the richness and lightness of the finest puff-paste; and, to the paper in which the cakes are wrapped, the appearance of their having been packed up by bakers with well-buttered fingers.
The cause of this cake-fame must, however, be sought in a higher walk of history than in the annals of pastry-making. It appears that the Banbury folks went on rejoicing in the fatness of their cakes until the reign of Elizabeth; from which time to that of Charles II., the people of the town were so noted for their peculiar religious fervour, as to draw upon themselves most unsparingly the satire of contemporary playwrights, wits, and humorists. By some unlucky turn of time, cakes, which were much valued by the classical ancients, and were given away as presents, in the Middle Ages, instead of bread, became looked upon as a superstitious relic by the Puritans, who thereupon abolished the practice. They formed so predominant a party at Banbury, in the reign of Elizabeth, that they pulled down Banbury Cross, so celebrated in our nursery rhymes. In the face of this historical fact, however, the reputed "zeal" of the Banburians has been attributed to an accidental circumstance, in modern phrase, "an error of the press." In Gough's edition of Camden's Britannia, in the MS. supplement, is this note: "Put out the word zeale in Banbury, where some think it a disgrace, when a zeale with knowledge is the greater grace among good Christians; for it was first foysted in by some compositor or press-man, neither is it in my Latin copie, which I desire the reader to hold as authentic." It was, indeed, printed, as a proverb, "Banbury zeal, cheese, and cakes," instead of "Banbury veal, cheese, and cakes." Gibson, in his edition of Camden, however, gives another version, relating: "There is a credible story—that while Philemon Holland was carrying on his English edition of the Britannia, Mr. Camden came accidentally to the press, when this sheet was working off; and looking on, he found, that to his own observation of Banbury being famous for cheese, the translator had added cakes and ale. But Mr. Camden thinking it too light an expression, changed the word ale into zeal; and so it passed, to the great indignation of the Puritans, who abounded in this town." Barnaby Googe, in his Strappado for the Divell, refers to Banbury as
"Famous for twanging ale, zeal, cakes, and cheese."
Better remembered are the lines in his Journey through England:
"To Banbury came I, O profane one!
Where I saw a puritane one
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday."
Early in the seventeenth century, the Puritans were very strong in Banbury. In Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, the Puritanical Rabbi, is called a Banbury man, and described as one who was a baker—"but he does dream now, and sees visions; he has given over his trade out of a scruple that he took, that it spiced conscience, those cakes he made were served to bridales, May-poles, morrises, and such profane feasts and meetings:" in other words, he had been a baker, but left off that trade to set up for a prophet; and one of the characters in Bartholomew Fair says: "I have known divers of these Banburians when I was at Oxford." And Sir William D'Avenant, in his play of The Wits, illustrates this Puritanical character, in
"A weaver of Banbury, that hopes
To entice heaven by singing, to make him lord of twenty looms."
Old Thomas Fuller personifies the zeal in the Rev. William Whately, who was Vicar of Banbury in the reign of James I., and was called "The Roaring Boy." Fuller adds: "Only let them (the Banbury folks) adde knowledge to their zeal, and then the more zeal the better their condition." The Vicar was a zealous and popular preacher, according to his monument:
"It's William Whately that here lies,
Who swam to's tomb in's people's eyes."
In the Tatler, No. 220, in describing his "Ecclesiastical Thermometer," to indicate the changes and revolutions in the Church, the Essayist writes, "That facetious divine, Dr. Fuller, speaking of the town of Banbury, near a hundred years ago, tells us, 'it was a place famous for cakes and zeal,' which I find by my glass is true to this day, as to the latter part of this description, though I must confess it is not in the same reputation for cakes that it was in the time of that learned author."
The Banburians, however, maintained their character for zeal in a grand demonstration made by them in favour of Dr. Sacheverell, whose trial had just terminated in his acquittal; and in the same year, this High Church champion made a triumphal passage through Banbury, on his journey to take possession of the living of Salatin, in Shropshire, which was ridiculed in a pamphlet, with a woodcut illustrative of the procession; and there appeared another pamphlet on the same lively subject.
Thus far the association of cakes with zeal in the case of Banbury. It is worthy of remark that cakes had formerly not unfrequently a religious significance, from their being more used at religious seasons than at other times. The triangular cakes made at Congleton, in Cheshire, have a raisin in each corner, thought to be emblematic of the Trinity; the cakes at Shrewsbury may have had something to do with its old religious shows. Coventry, on New Year's day, has its God-cakes. Then we have the Twelfth-cake with its bean; the Good Friday bun with its cross; the Pancake, with its shroving or confessing; and the Passover cake of the Jews. The minced pie was treated by the Puritans as a superstitious observance; and, after the Restoration, it almost served as a test for religious opinions. According to the old rule, the case or crust of a minced pie should be oblong, in imitation of the cradle or manger wherein the Saviour was laid; the ingredients of the mince being said to refer to the offerings of the Wise Men.
Returning to the Banbury cake: in a Treatise of Melancholy, by T. Bright, 1586, we find the following:—"Sodden wheat is a grosse and melancholicke nourishment, and bread especially of the fine flour unleavened. Of this sort are bag puddings made with flour; fritters, pancakes, such as we call Banberrie Cakes; and those great ones confected with butter, eggs, &c., used at weddings; and however it be prepared, rye, and bread made thereof, carrieth with it plentie of melancholie."
At Banbury, the cakes are served to the authorities upon state occasions. Thus, in the Corporation accounts of this town, we find a charge of "Cakes for the Judges at the Oxford Assizes, 2l. 3s. 6d." The present form of the cake resembles that of the early bun before it was made circular. The zeal has died away, but not so the cakes; for in Beesley's History of Banbury, 1841, we find that Mr. Samuel Beesley sold, in 1840, no fewer than 139,500 twopenny cakes; and in 1841, the sale increased by at least a fourth. In August, 1841, 5,000 cakes were sold weekly; large quantities being shipped to America, India, and even Australia.
The cakes are now more widely sold than formerly, when the roadside inns were the chief depôts. We remember the old galleried Three Cranes inn at Edgware, noted for its fresh supplies of Banbury cakes; as were also the Green Man and Still, and other taverns of Oxford Road, now Oxford Street.
Banbury Cheese, which Shakspeare mentions, is no longer made, but it was formerly so well known as to be referred to as a comparison. Bishop Williams, in 1664, describes the clipped and pared lands and glebes of the Church "as thin as Banbury cheese." Bardolf, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, compares Slender to Banbury cheese, which seems to have been remarkably thin, and all rind, as noticed by Heywood, in his Collection of Epigrams:—
"I never saw Banbury cheese thick enough,
But I have often seen Essex cheese quick enough."
The same thought occurs in Jack Drum's Entertainment, 1601:—
"Put off your cloathes, and you are like a Banbury cheese—nothing but paring."
In the Birch and Sloane MSS., No. 1201, is a curious receipt for making Banbury cheese, from a MS. cookery book of the sixteenth century. A rich kind of cheese, about one inch in thickness, is still made in the neighbourhood of Banbury.
We have already traced the destruction of the Cross at Banbury to the leaven of fanaticism. The nursery rhyme,
"Ride a cock-horse
To Banbury-cross,"
is by some referred to this act; and to signify being over-proud and imperious. Taylor, the Water-poet, has,—
"A knave that for his wealth doth worship get,
Is like the divell that's a-cock-horse set."
The Banburians have rebuilt the Cross to commemorate the marriage of the Princess Royal with the Crown Prince of Prussia. They also exhibit, periodically, a pageant, in which a fine lady on a white horse, preceded by Robin Hood and Little John, Friar Tuck, a company of archers, bands of music, flags and banners, passes through the principal street to the Cross, where the lady (Maid Marian) scatters Banbury cakes among the people. How far this pageant may be associated with local tradition, time and the curious have hitherto failed to explain.[59]
Other towns, in addition to Banbury, have been celebrated for their cakes, from remote times. The ancient borough of Congleton, upon the Staffordshire border of Cheshire, have already been incidentally mentioned. The streets have an air of antiquity, many of the houses being constructed entirely of timber framework and plaster. The place has long been famed for its silk-mills, and tagged leather laces, called Congleton points. These, however, have been outlived by the sack and cakes, which have, for ages, figured in the festivities of Congleton; eclipsed for a while during the gloomy mayoralty of President Bradshaw, but happily retained to our time.
The Congleton cakes are of triangular form, with a raisin inserted at each corner. These have been used at the Grammar School breaking-up for three-quarters of a century. They have been the orthodox cakes at the quarterly account meetings of the Corporation for more than a century, and are hence called "count cakes." It is conjectured that the three raisins represent the mayor and two justices, who were the governing body under the charter of James I. The trio of raisins have also been deemed symbolical of the Trinity. Be this as it may, Congleton has been noted from time immemorial for these cakes, as well as for its gingerbread; and in the Corporation records we find such convivial items as the following:—"1618. Bestowed upon the Earl of Essex, being money paid for figs and sugar, 1l." "1614. Bestowed upon Sir John Byron, one gallon of sack and one gallon of claret, 5s. 8d." "1619. A banquet bestowed upon Sir John Savage, being a gallon of sack and a sugar-loaf, 5s." "1627. Bestowed upon my Lord Brereton, in wine and beer, 5s." "1633. Bestowed on the Earl of Bridgewater, in wine, sack, and sugar, 8s." "1632. Paid Randle Rode, of the Swan, for wine, cake, and beer, for a banquet which was bestowed upon the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, 1l. 4s. 2d." "Paid Mr. Drakeford for a pottle of wine, bestowed on Sir B. Wilbraham, 2s." "1662. Paid for sweetmeats bestowed upon Lord and Lady Brandon, 9s. 3d., because," as the book says, "he was our great friend." This must have been in reference to the influence exerted by that nobleman, in obtaining a re-grant of the borough charter, which Charles II., on his accession, had thought fit to call in, along with several others, that of London among the rest.
Among the recent celebrations, was the hospitable reception given by the Corporation of Congleton to the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Francis Graham Moon, Bart., in the year 1855, when the entertainment well represented the ancient festivity. On the chairman's table lay the gold and silver maces of the borough, and capacious china Corporation bowls full of sack, and flanked by large old two-handled silver flagons, by which the sack was gradually drawn off, and circulated amongst the company. On every plate was placed a count cake, and the centres of the tables were covered with delicate cakes and confectionery, among which was pre-eminent the famous Congleton gingerbread, and a profusion of choice fruit. The brewage of the sack was entrusted to Joseph Speratti, who boasts that he alone possesses the true receipt.
The famous old city of Shrewsbury has also long been celebrated for its brawn and cakes; the latter are made of much larger size than we are accustomed to see them in the metropolis, and are packed in round boxes made for the purpose.
Around London some of the villages boast of this celebrity. Islington was once as famous for its cheesecakes as Chelsea for its buns; and among its other notabilities were custards and stewed "pruans:" old Wither, in 1628, told us that Islington
"For cakes and cream had then no small resort;"
and to this day the place is noted for its cakes and confectionery. Lower Holloway was once noted for its cheesecakes, which, almost within memory, were regularly cried through the streets of London by a man on horseback.
[HORSELYDOWN FAIR, IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.]
orselydown is situate near the bank of the river Thames, about half a mile eastward of London Bridge. "It is difficult," says Mr. Corner, the Southwark antiquary, "to imagine that a neighbourhood now so crowded with wharves and warehouses, granaries and factories, mills, breweries, and places of business of all kinds, and where the busy hum of men at work, like bees in a hive, is incessant, can have been, not many centuries since, a region of pleasant fields and meadows, pastures for sheep and cattle; with gardens, houses, shady lanes, clear streams with stately swans, and cool walks by the river-side. Yet such was the case, and the way from London Bridge to Horselydown was occupied by the mansions of men of mark and consequence, dignitaries of the Church, men of military renown, and wealthy citizens."
Horselydown was part of the possessions of the Abbey of Bermondsey, and was, probably, the common of the manor. After the surrender to Henry VIII. it became the property of private individuals, and, in 1581, was conveyed to the Governors of St. Olave's Grammar School, to whom it still belongs; and it is one of the remarkable instances of the enormous increase in the value of property in the metropolis, that this piece of land, which was then let as pasturage for 6l. per annum, now produces to the governors for the use of the school an annual income exceeding 3,000l. Hereon were erected the parish butts for the exercise of archery, pursuant to the statute of 33 Henry VIII.
The Marquis of Salisbury possesses, at Hatfield, a very remarkable picture, which has been supposed to have been painted by the celebrated Holbein, but is really the work of George Hofnagle, a Flemish artist in Queen Elizabeth's time, as is shown by the costume of the figures: it bears the date of 1590, whereas Holbein died in 1554. The picture represents a Fair or Festival, which, from the position of the Tower of London in the background, appears to have been held at Horselydown. In the catalogue of the pictures at Hatfield, in the Beauties of England and Wales, the painting is said to represent King Henry VIII. and his Queen, Anne Boleyn, at a country wake or fair, at some place in Surrey, within sight of the Tower of London; but several circumstances, in addition to its situation with respect to the river Thames and the Tower of London, concur to show that the locality is Horselydown, or, as it was then called, Horseydown or Horsedown. This is proved by a curious picture-map, dated 1544. Its centre shows a large open space, now occupied by the diverging Queen Elizabeth Free School, and Fair Street. It is not known whether Southwark Fair was ever held on Horselydown; but it is worthy of observation, that when the down came to be built on, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the principal street across it from east to west, and in the line of foreground represented in the picture, was, and is to the present day, called Fair Street; and a street or lane of houses running from north to south is called Three Oak Lane, traditionally from three oaks formerly standing there. The tree-o'ershadowed hostelry, where the feast is being prepared, may indicate the spot. In Evelyn's time, however (Diary, 13th Sept. 1666), the fair appears to have been held at St. Margaret's Hill, in the Borough, for he calls it St. Margaret's Fair; and it continued to be held between St. Margaret's Hill and St. George's Church, until the fair was suppressed in 1762.
The portly figure in the centre foreground, with a red beard and a Spanish hat, must have occasioned the idea of its being a representation of King Henry VIII.; but the general costume of the figure is later than his reign, and the date on the picture shows the period of the scene to have been towards the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
The principal figures seem rather to represent some of the grave burgesses and young gallants of Southwark, with their wives and families, assembled on Horseydown on some festive occasion, on a bright day in summer. The principal figure is evidently a man of worship, for whom and his company a feast is preparing in the kitchen of the hostelry; while the table is laid in the adjoining apartment, which is decorated with boughs and gaily-coloured ribbons. The principal figure may be one of the Flemish brewers, who settled in the parish in great numbers; one of whom Vassal Webling, dwelt hard by Horseydown, having become possessed of the house of Sir John Fastolfe, called Fastolfe Place. Or, it may be Richard Hutton, armourer, and an alderman of London, an inhabitant of St. Olave's. Whoever it is, he is accompanied by a comely dame, probably his wife, and by two elderly women, and followed by a boy and girl with a greyhound, a servant carrying an infant, and a serving-man with sword and buckler. Near them is a yeoman of her Majesty's guard, with the Queen's arms on his breast. The citizen, in his long furred gown, accompanied by a smartly-dressed female, crossing behind the principal party, is worthy of notice. The gay trio behind them are also remarkable objects in the picture.
The minister accompanying a lady, is probably Thomas Marten, M.A., parson of the parish. The hawking party behind shows that the neighbourhood of Southwark was at that period sufficiently open for the enjoyment of the sport. The flag-staff, or May-pole, in the left background, is also noticeable, as well as the unfinished vessel at the river side, and the unfortunate transgressor in the stocks.
Two young women and two serving-men are bearing large brass dishes for the coming feast; while in the right foreground a party of five are dancing to the minstrelsy of three musicians seated under a tree. A party are approaching from the right, headed by another minister, who may be the celebrated Robert Browne, a Puritan minister, and founder of the sect of Brownists, who was schoolmaster of St. Olave's Grammar School, from 1586 till 1591. He was connected by family ties with Lord Burghley, which circumstance may account for this picture being preserved at Hatfield, which was built by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, second son of Lord Burghley.
Behind the musicians are two figures which deserve some attention. It has been suggested that the appearance of the foremost is much that of the portraits of Shakspeare, and the head behind him is not unlike that of Ben Jonson. Nor would there be any improbability in the idea of Shakspeare and Jonson being present at such a fête, as Shakspeare lived in St. Saviour's, and is very likely to have been invited to a festival in the adjoining parish; but the date of the picture is somewhat too early to be consistent with that notion.
The church-like building with a tower, at the right of the picture, may be "The Hermitage," marked on the plan: it was no uncommon thing for hermitages to have chapels attached to them, as at Highgate, where the hermit was authorized by a royal grant of Edward III. to take toll for repairing the road. The hermitage at Highgate, which had a tower, became a chapel for the devotions of the inhabitants.
Hermitages were generally founded by an individual upon the ground of some religious house, who, after the death of the first hermit, collated a successor; and as those persons devoted themselves to some act of charity, it does not appear so extraordinary that we find hermits living upon bridges, and by the sides of roads, and being toll-gatherers, as numerous records indubitably prove. (Tomlin's Yseldon.)
The Hermit of Horselydown, or Dock-head, perhaps, received a toll for keeping in repair the road across the Bermondsey Marshes from Southwark towards Rotherhithe and Deptford.[60]
[WAKE FESTIVALS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY.]
akes were originally established to commemorate the erection of the church in the parish where they were held. They were then celebrated on the Sunday, and the parson did not deem it "unworthy his high vocation" to enjoy a gambol on the village-green after the morning service. In the larger towns, most of the churches had weekly fairs or markets attached to them, these also being held on the Sabbath. As late as the commencement of the fourteenth century, Wolverhampton had a market every Sunday morning, the shingles being arranged round the old Collegiate Church; and when the voice of worship ceased, the Babel of the Fair began. During the fourteenth century, however, the custom of holding Sunday markets was abolished, but the village Wake continued to be celebrated on the sacred day, until the commencement of the present century. The leading diversions of Wake-time in this district were, as is pretty generally known, bull and badger baiting, cock-fighting, pigeon-flying, boxing, running, and wrestling. There is, we think, a very fair standard of comparison between past and present, presented to us in the subject of Wake festivals; and for this reason we have thought it worth while briefly to compare Wake-time in the Black Country half a century ago with the corresponding season now. We think it will be allowed that, after taking into consideration all educational and other advantages, there has been a progress towards social and moral excellence among our working men and women which is deserving of all praise.
The traditions of Bull-baiting, Cock-fighting, and other exhibitions of brutality which characterised Wakes in this district forty or fifty years ago, have in many cases been so distorted and magnified by frequent repetition that they can no longer be accepted as truthful pictures of the festivals which it was the humour of our ancestors to establish and be pleased with.
During the past half-century, there have been some brutal exhibitions of this class. In the Staffordshire Advertiser, November 23, 1833, we read of bulls being shockingly tortured in the neighbourhood of Dudley. At Rowley Regis, a two-year-old bull was worried most brutally, his horns being torn off, and his head and face mangled in the most appalling manner.
In the following year the Wolverhampton Chronicle publishes this intelligence:—"At Wilhenhall Wakes, two bulls were baited in the streets of that town, and more than usual cruelty was displayed on the occasion, as one of the bulls died on the night after being baited." At Darlaston Wakes, about the same period, three bulls, three bears, and two badgers underwent baiting simultaneously; to say nothing of dog and cock fights.
These instances might, of course, be multiplied by records of each town in the district, but they will suffice to show the extent of the barbarity which distinguished the Wakes of our forefathers. The ludicrous was sometimes associated with the cruelties in these scenes. At Tipton on one occasion, the bull broke loose, and, dashing madly through the crowd, entered the open door of a house, at whose fire a huge piece of Wake beef was roasting. From the force of habit, the bull tossed the smoking joint to the ceiling, and disappeared, to the great joy of the affrighted inmate. On another occasion, at Bloxwich, some wag stole the bull at midnight, and when the excited crowd assembled on the morrow, from all parts of the district, they were doomed to disappointment. The circumstance gave rise to a local proverb still in use. When great expectations are baffled, the circumstance is instinctively likened to "the Bloxwich bull." The remembrance of this barbarous pastime is perpetuated in the topographical nomenclature of the district, where, following the example of Birmingham, almost every town and village has its Bull King.
The stronghold of Cock-fighting was at Wednesbury, where the "cookings" were resorted to by persons from all parts of the kingdom. In a Directory of Walsall, 1813, we read:—"The cockpit is situate on the left-hand side of the entrance into Park Street, from Digbeth, at the bottom of a yard belonging to Mr. Fox, known by the sign of the New Inn. It is spacious and much frequented at the Wakes, at which period only it is used."
The minor sports and pastimes were the interludes between the tragedies, and served to complete the day's programme of the Black Country Wake-time. Forty years ago it was dangerous to pass through a town during the Wakes. The inhabitants who took active part in these sports were so infuriated with drink and excitement, and their feelings were so hardened by scenes of torture, that they regarded neither the limb nor life of any who happened to offend them. There was no amusement provided either for young or old but the most vicious and degrading, and the Wakes seldom passed by without some other blood than that of bulls being spilt—the blood of comrades, and too frequently of wives and children, who dared to remonstrate with a furious husband and father in his orgies.
Happily, modern Wakes have been divested of nearly all the characteristics of the olden festivals. The only vestiges which distinguish them are the booths, clowns, and drinking bouts; and these amusements are only indulged in by children and the lowest class of the population. Among the features recently introduced in connexion with district Wakes may be enumerated out-door fêtes, flower-shows, bazaars, and excursions. Temperance Societies and Working Men's Institutes select Wake-time for their celebrations. Two of the most successful exhibitions ever held in the district were inaugurated at the Wakes of Willenhall, in 1857, and at those of Bilston a year or two later, both in connexion with the progress of popular education. The Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P. who was present on both occasions, and who knew this district in its dark days, took occasion to compare the former Wake times with the present, as an evidence of the social advancement of the Black Country. The cultivation of cottage window-flowers, now happily so general throughout the same district, is another refining agency, which has helped in no small degree to root out the love for grosser sports among the people. But, perhaps, the most powerful agent in improving the character of modern Wakes is the influence of popular excursions. The district is fortunate in its situation in this respect. Within easy distance are the lawns and flowers of Enville, Hagley, Shugborough, and Teddesley, which it is the delight of their noble owners to place at the service of our working men and women; and the more recent facilities for locomotion have also placed the Malvern slopes and Southport sands within their reach. Wake-times are therefore now become seasons of excursions, when hard-working men quit the factory bench and the dark mine, to delight and refine their inner manhood with views of Nature's fairest works. This, we think, is one great step towards the development of a love for art among the artisans of our utilitarian district; and Wake-times so spent will assuredly exert an influence for good through the remainder of the year.[61]
Nevertheless, the Wakes are still disgraced by sad scenes of intoxication and other excesses: the agencies of education and religion are not working in vain in the district; let us hope that the progress, though slow, may be sure.
[KEEPING BIRDS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.]
lexander Neckam, from whose Treatise the following curious things are derived, was a learned man of the twelfth century: his work, which is written in Latin, has been translated by Mr. Thomas Wright, and published under the direction of the Master of the Polls. Of Neckam's birth we learn the date from a chronicle formerly existing among the MSS. of the Earl of Arundel, which inform us that "in the month of September, 1157, there was born to the King at Windsor a son named Richard; and the same night was born Alexander Neckam at St. Alban's, whose mother gave suck to Richard with her right breast, and to Alexander with her left breast." Thus was Alexander the foster-brother of the future Cœur de Lion, who was celebrated for his own love of literature and learning; and the position which the circumstance here related by the chronicler gave to Neckam in regard to such a Prince goes far to explain the honourable position he gained in after-life.
Neckam was born and passed his boyhood at St. Alban's: he received his earlier education in the Abbey School there; and such a rapid advance did he make in learning, that whilst still very young, the direction of the school at Dunstable, a dependency of the Abbey of St. Alban's, was entrusted to him. But he soon, of his own accord, sought a larger field for his mental activities, and proceeded to the then celebrated University of Paris, where he was a distinguished professor as early as the year 1180, when he can have been no more than twenty-three years of age.
He did not long adhere to the scholastic learning of the University, but in 1186 returned to England, and resumed his old post at Dunstable. He subsequently became one of the Augustinian monks of Cirencester, and in 1213 was elected Abbot of Cirencester. He died at Kempsey, near Worcester, in 1217, and was buried in Worcester Cathedral.
Neckam, in these early times, displayed a taste for experimental science. The Treatise from which we quote is a sort of manual of natural science, as it was then taught; and it derives a still greater value for us from the love of its author for illustrating his theme by the introduction of contemporary anecdotes and stories relating to the objects treated of; as well as the mention of popular facts and articles of belief which had come under his observation or knowledge, many of which offer singular illustrations of the condition and manners of the age.
From Neckam we learn how great was the love for animals in the Middle Ages; how ready people, apparently of all classes, were to observe and note the peculiarities of animated nature, and especially how fond they were of tamed and domestic animals. We see that the mediæval castles and great mansions were like so many menageries of rare beasts of all kinds. It is in the stories told by Neckam, also, that we become more than ever acquainted with the attachment of our mediæval forefathers to the chase, and to all the animals connected with it. Beginning with the King of Birds, the Eagle, however, he offers no new facts; though he makes it the subject of numerous moralisings. With the lesser birds of prey he becomes communicative of his anecdotes. He recounts how a Hawk one day, by craft and accident and not by mere strength, killed an Eagle. "This occurred in Great Britain, the King of which country, with his courtiers, were witnesses of the occurrence. The courtiers applauded the ferocity of the smaller and weaker bird, which, too, had only killed its adversary in self-defence; but the King interfered, reproved his followers for expressing sentiments which justified the employment of force by vassals against their Sovereigns, and ordered the Hawk to be hanged immediately as guilty of treason."
Another anecdote places the reputation of the Hawk in a less obnoxious light. It was one of the characteristics of that bird, as Neckam tells us, in the cold of winter, to seize in its claws a Partridge, wild Chick, or some other bird, and hold it under its belly all night, in order to profit by its warmth; and when the warmth of day returned, the Hawk, however hungry it might be, spared the bird, in consideration of the service thus derived from it, and displayed the noble nature of the bird of prey, the fit representative of the Feudal Baron, by setting it at liberty. Neckam tells another story of a Falcon which revenged itself on an Eagle; and another of a Weasel which caught a Sparrowhawk and dragged it under the water. We may pass over his account of the Phœnix, which is taken from the ancients; but that which he tells us of the Parrot shows how great a favourite it was as a cage-bird even in our islands during the Middle Ages. He speaks especially of its mischievous cunning and of its skill in imitating the human voice, adding that, for exciting people's mirth, it was preferable even to the jongleurs. It must, however, be acknowledged that Neckam's wonderful anecdotes become at times rather legendary.
Passing by the Peacock, the Vulture, the Pheasant, and Partridge, the often-described Barnacle, supposed to be generated from the gluey substances produced on fir-timber when immersed in the waves of the sea, finds its place here. The qualities of the Swan, which celebrated its own death in sweet song; the Ostrich, said to be devoid of affection for its own offspring; the Nightingale, which was so capricious in its choice of habitation that Neckam tells us there was a well-known river in Wales on one side of which the song of this nightingale was often heard, but nobody ever heard it on the other; the Swallow, singular for the form of its nest and for the locality which it selected for building it; the Nuthatch; the Ibis of Egypt; the Dove; and several birds less known, as described by Neckam, are chiefly worthy of notice on account of the singular moralisings and symbolical interpretations which are given to them. The Sparrow, according to Neckam (long anticipating Sterne), is a libidinous bird, light, restless, "injurious to the fruits of man's labour," too 'cute for the birdcatcher, and subject to epilepsy. The Raven is, by its colour and by its habits, emblematical of the clergy; it is easily domesticated. A Crow foretells rain by its clamorousness.
Neckam has also something to say about the Lark and the Magpie, and something more about the Parrot, "the jongleur of the birds;" but he says of the Cuckoo that it does nothing but repeat the words "affer, affer," i.e. "give, give,"—and on that account it was the type of avarice, and "sang the old song of those who have not yet divested themselves of the old man." Surely, however, Neckam's ear was at fault in this description, or the Cuckoos of Cirencester sang a very different song, with a different moral too, from the cuckoos on the banks of Avon in the dayspring of Shakspeare. But it is a novel fact to learn that the saliva of the Cuckoo produced Grasshoppers; yet this was, no doubt, a popular explanation of the well-known cuckoo-spit of our fields. The Pelican of those days killed her own young, after which, in self-remorse, she tore her own body to shed her blood upon them, by means of which they revived. The Cock was symbolical of the Christian preacher or doctor of the Church; and Neckam gives a rather curious physical explanation of the question why it announces the hour of the day by its crowing, and why it has a comb. The Wren was remarkable for its fertility, and for another rather singular quality. When killed and put on the spit before the fire to roast, it wanted no turning, but turned itself with the utmost regularity. Though the smallest of birds, it claimed to be their king, and hence the Latin name of Regulus. Did it not, when the birds assembled to choose a king, conceal itself beneath the Eagle's wing, when it was agreed that the throne should be given to the bird which mounted highest towards heaven; and when the Eagle, having soared the highest, made its claim to the prize, did it not start from its hiding-place, jump on the Eagle's back, and claim to be highest of all, and therefore the winner?[62]
[VI. Historic Sketches.]
[THE STORY OF FAIR ROSAMUND.]
n the noble Park of Blenheim they show you two sycamore-trees on the spot where the ancient Palace of Woodstock was built; and near the Bridge is a spring called Rosamund's Well. Hard by was the celebrated Bower, erected by Henry II., and the scene of Addison's poetical opera of Rosamund, in excellent verse, which, wedded to the music of Dr. Arne, proved very successful. Several passages long retained their popularity, and were daily sung, during the latter part of George the Second's reign, at all the harpsichords in England.
Drayton, in the reign of Elizabeth, described "Rosamund's Labyrinth, whose ruins, together with her Well, being paved with square stones in the bottom, and also her Tower, from which the Labyrinth did run, are yet remaining, being vaults arched and walled with stone and brick, almost inextricably wound within one another, by which, if at any time her lodging were laid about by the Queen, she might easily avoid peril imminent, and, if need be, by secret issues, take the air abroad, many furlongs about Woodstock, in Oxfordshire."
Nor are these the only memorials of the frail Rosamund, whose history is one of the most interesting in our stock of legendary lore. About two miles north of Oxford, near the river Isis, there are some remains of the famous Nunnery of Godstow, from which, we are told, "there is a subterranean passage to Woodstock." It was about the end of the reign of Henry I., that this Nunnery was founded, at the instigation of Editha, a pious lady of Winchester. Assisted by benefactions, Editha finished a convent for Benedictine Nuns, in 1138; and King Stephen and his Queen were present at the consecration. Editha was Abbess here; and the lands given were confirmed by grants of Stephen and Richard I. When Prince Henry arrived in England, in 1149, to dispute his title to the crown with Stephen, he happened to visit the Nunnery of Godstow, where he saw Rosamund, the daughter of Lord Clifford; she was not a nun, but boarded in the convent.
Fair Rosamund—Rosa Mundi, the Rose of the World—was the second daughter of Walter de Clifford, the son of Richard and grandson of Ponz. Richard is mentioned in the Domesday Survey as holding lands in the counties of Oxford, Gloucester, Wilts, Worcester, and Hereford. Walter de Clifford, by his wife Margaret, had four children:—Lucy, first married to Hugh de Say, and subsequently to Bartholomew de Mortimer; Rosamund, Walter, and Richard. Of Rosamund's early life we have no particulars. Local tradition affirms that Canyngton, about three miles from Bridgewater, was the place of her birth, and that within the walls of its priory she received such education as the age afforded. That, as the daughter of a powerful lord, she was entrusted to the care of some religious sisterhood for nurture, both of mind and body, we have no doubt, though the old chroniclers are silent on the subject. The art of embroidery would appear to have been one of her accomplishments, for the venerable Abbey of Buildwas long possessed among its treasures a magnificent cope, which bore witness to the taste and skill of its fair embellisher. Of her first acquaintance with Henry II., and the mode and place of her introduction to him, no details have been preserved. Probably she was known to him from her earliest years. Nor have we any reason to suppose that, according to some modern versions of the sad story, a broken vow added its shadow to a life whose record is sufficiently gloomy without this additional darkening of woe. Not a hint of her having been a nun do the chroniclers give us; and, had such been the fact, full use would have been made of such an aggravation of her offence. Her royal lover was one of the most unscrupulous of mankind, and for his many enormities he was notorious. His affection for Rosamund, however, such as it was, was constant. In order to protect her from the vengeance of the Queen, he removed her successively to various places of greater or less security. But the most famous of all, and with which her name is more than with all others associated, was her retreat at Woodstock. It was here that Henry built a chamber, which Brompton describes as of wondrous architecture—resembling the work of Dædalus; in other words, a labyrinth or maze. A manuscript of Robert of Gloucester, in the Heralds' Office, says that—
"Att Wodestoke for hure he made a toure,
That is called Rosemounde's boure,"
the special intent of which was to conceal her from her royal rival. The internal decorations of this abode were as much attended to as its means of escaping external notice. The Abbot of Jorevall describes a cabinet of marvellous workmanship, which was one of its ornaments. It was nearly two feet in length, and on it the assault of champions, the action of cattle, the flight of birds, and the leaping of fishes were so naturally represented, that the figures appeared to move.
Rosamund did not long occupy the retreat that royal though guilty love had created for her. She died in 1177, while yet without a rival in the King's affections, and, as it would appear, of some natural disease. In after times the injured Queen Eleanor had the credit of discovering her place of concealment, by means of a clue of silk which the King had incautiously left behind him; and which enabled her to thread the intricacies of the path, and of gratifying her revenge by obliging her rival to drink from her hand a cup of poison. That the Queen discovered the abode of Rosamund is possible; and it may have been that the shock of the meeting, and the unmeasured language which her Majesty is said to have employed, were too much for the poor victim of her womanly and natural displeasure. It is only fair, however, to say that the Queen's part in the entire transaction is not alluded to in the older writers, and is probably the fiction of more modern times.
Rosamund was buried in the first instance before the high altar in the Church of Godstow Nunnery, which was probably selected from its neighbourhood to Woodstock, and which henceforward enjoyed a goodly number of benefactions in memory of her and for the health of her soul. The body was wrapped in leather, and then placed in a coffin of lead. Over the whole Henry built a magnificent tomb, which was covered with a pall of silk, and surrounded by tapers constantly burning. This occurred in the lifetime of her father, for he gave to the nuns of Godstow, in pure and perpetual alms, for the health of the souls of Margaret his wife and of Rosamund his daughter, his mill at Franton, with all appurtenances, a meadow adjacent to the same called Lechtun, and a saltpit in Wiche. Walter, his son, confirmed the gift. Osbert Fitzhugh added to this the grant of a saltpit in Wiche, called the Cow, pertaining to his manor of Wichebalt.
Indeed, Walsingham goes so far as to say, though incorrectly, that the Nunnery of Godstow was actually founded by King John for the soul of Rosamund. It is not unlikely that a chantry was founded by that king for the object stated, but the foundation of the house was beyond question the work of a much earlier period.
Rosamund's remains, however, were not allowed to occupy their sepulchre in peace. Fourteen years after their solemn commission to this sacred place of interment, Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, in a visitation of his diocese, came to Godstow. After he had entered the church, and performed his devotions, he observed the tomb occupying its conspicuous position before the high altar, adorned as already described, and forthwith asked whose it was. On being informed that it was the grave of Rosamund, whom Henry, the late king, had so dearly loved, and for whose sake he had greatly enriched this hitherto small and indigent house, and had given lands for the sustentation of the tomb and the maintenance of the lights, he imperatively commanded the nuns to take her out of the church, and to bury her with other common people, as the connexion between her and the King had been base; and to the end that the Christian religion might not be vilified, but that other women might thus be deterred from similar evil ways.
In obedience to the bishop's mandate the tomb was removed from the church, and erected in the chapter-house. It bore the following epitaph, containing the obvious play upon the lady's name, and declaratory of the unhappy contrast which death had effected:—
"Hic jacet in tumba Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda;
Non redolet, sed olet, quæ redolere solet."
This tomb remained, an object of interest and respect, until the dissolution of the house. It was then destroyed, and a stone was discovered within it, bearing the simple inscription, "Tumba Rosamundæ." The bones were found undecayed, and on the opening of the leaden coffin which contained them, "there was a very swete smell came out of it." Another eye-witness described it as having "enterchangeable weavings drawn out and decked with roses red and green, and the picture of the cup out of which she drank the poyson given her by the Queen, carved in stone." A stone coffin, said to be that of Rosamund, was still to be seen at Godstow when Hearne wrote his "Account of some Antiquities in and about Oxford," but this was regarded by him as a "fiction of the vulgar."[63]
In the "French Chronicle of London," 1259-1343, one of our earliest records compiled in illustration of the History of the City of London, under 1262, we read another version of this legend: "In this year the Queen was shamefully hooted and reviled at London Bridge, as she was desiring to go from the Tower to Westminster; and this, because she had caused a gentle damsel to be put to death, the most beauteous that was known, and imputed to her that she was the King's concubine. For which reason the Queen had her stripped, and caused a bath to be prepared, and then made the beauteous damsel enter therein; and made a wicked old hag beat her upon both arms, with a staff; and when the blood gushed forth, there came another execrable sorceress, who applied two 'frightful toads' to her breasts, which they sucked until all the blood that was in her body had run out, two other old hags holding her arms stretched out. The Queen, laughing the while, mocked her, and had great joy in her heart, in being thus revenged upon Rosamonde. And when she was dead, the Queen had the body taken and buried in a filthy ditch, and with the body the toads.
"But when the King had heard the news, how the Queen had acted towards the most beauteous damsel whom he so greatly loved, and whom he held so dear in his heart, he felt great sorrow, and made great lamentation thereat:—'Alas! for my grief; what shall I do for the most beauteous Rosamonde? For never was her peer found for beauty, disposition, and courtliness.' He then desired to know what became of her body. He caused one of the wicked sorceresses to be seized, and had her put into great streights, that she might tell all the truth as to what they had done with the gentle damsel.
"Then the old hag related to the King how the Queen had wrought upon the most beauteous body of the gentle damsel, and where they would find it. In the meantime, the Queen had the body taken up, and carried to a house of religion which had 'Godstowe' for name, near Oxenforde; and had the body of Rosamond there buried, to colour her evil deeds And then King Henry began to ride towards Wodestoke, where Rosamond, whom he loved so much at heart, was so treacherously murdered by the Queen. And as the King was riding towards Wodestoke, he met the body of Rosamond, strongly enclosed within a chest, that was well and stoutly bound with iron. And the King forthwith demanded whose corpse it was, and what was the name of the person whose dead body they bore. They made answer to him, that it was the corpse of the most beauteous Rosamond. And when King Henry heard this, he instantly ordered them to open the chest, that he might behold the body that had been so vilely martyred. Immediately thereon, they did the King's command, and showed him the corpse of Rosamond, who was so hideously put to death. And when King Henry saw the whole truth thereof, through great grief, he fell fainting to the ground, and lay there in a swoon for a long time before any one could have converse with him.
"And when the King awoke from his swoon he spoke, and swore a great oath, that he would take full vengeance for the most horrid felony which, for great spite, had upon the gentle damsel been committed. Then began the King to lament and to give way to great sorrow for the most beauteous Rosamond, whom he loved so much at heart. 'Alas! for my grief,' said he, 'sweet Rosamonde, never was thy peer, never so sweet nor beauteous a creature to be found: may then the sweet God who abides in Trinity, on the soul of sweet Rosamond have mercy, and may He pardon her all her misdeeds: very God Almighty, Thou who art the end and the beginning, suffer not now that this soul shall in horrible torment come to perish, and grant unto her true remission for all her sins, for Thy great mercy's sake.'
"And when he had thus prayed he commanded them forthwith to ride straight to Godstowe with the body of the lady, and there had her burial celebrated in that religious house of nuns, and there did he appoint thirteen chaplains to sing for the soul of the said Rosamond, so long as the world shall last. In this religious house of Godstowe," says the Chronicler, "I tell you for truth, lieth fair Rosamond buried. May very God Almighty of her soul have mercy. Amen."[64]
The history of this unhappy lady, of whom the reader now possesses all that can be gathered from olden sources, and more, perhaps, than can be accepted as true, was a favourite subject of Mediæval romance; and all kinds of embellishments were imported into the story in order to impress a salutary caution against any imitation of the heroine. The story of her being poisoned by Queen Eleanor is of comparatively modern invention. A long ballad of forty-eight verses has been founded upon this piece of strange history.
[CARDINAL WOLSEY AT ESHER PLACE.]
n one of the loveliest and most picturesque vales of the county of Surrey, there exists, to this day, a fragment of Esher, or, as it is termed in old records, Asher Place, the last place of retreat where Wolsey fell,—
"Like a bright exhalation in the evening."
Here,—
"In the lovely vale
Of Esher, where the Mole glides lingering; loth
To leave such scenes of sweet simplicity,"—
was anciently a palace of the prelates of Winchester, built by William Wayneflete, who held the see from 1447 to 1486. It was a stately brick mansion, on the bank of the Mole, within the park of Esher.
The Bishops of Winchester occasionally resided at this palace. Cardinal Wolsey, who was appointed to the see on the death of Bishop Fox, in 1528, gave directions for the repair and partial rebuilding of this house at Esher, purposing to have made it one of his usual residences, after he had bereft himself of the palace which he had erected at Hampton Court, and which he had found it prudent to surrender to his jealous master. Many interesting circumstances relating to this last retirement of Wolsey to Esher, on the decline of his favour with the King, are related by his biographers.
On the 18th of October, 1529, when the Cardinal was at York House, Westminster (where now stands Whitehall), King Henry sent to him the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, to demand the Great Seal, Wolsey being lord chancellor; and he was ordered, at the same time, to retire to Esher. The order being unaccompanied by any voucher of authority, the chancellor refused to obey it; but the King's messenger returning with his written commands on the following day, the devoted minister submitted. He then went to Putney by water, and having landed, rode to Esher.
Wolsey now took up his residence at Esher, where he continued, with a numerous family of servants and retainers, "the space of three or four weeks, without either beds, sheets, table-cloths, dishes to eat their meat in, or wherewithal to buy any: howbeit, there was good provision of all kind of victual, and of beer and wine, whereof there was sufficient and plenty enough: but my lord was compelled of necessity to borrow of Martin Arundell and the Bishop of Carlisle, plate and dishes, both to drink in, and eat his meat in. Thus, my lord, with his family, continued in this strange estate until after Hallownetide."—(Stow.) He then dismissed a considerable part of his attendants; and Thomas Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex, who was in his service, went to London, professedly to take care of his interest at court; and having obtained a seat in the House of Commons, where a bill, of articles of impeachment against the Cardinal for treason, was brought forward, "Master Cromwell inveighed against it so discreetly, with such witty persuasions and deep reasons, that the same could take no effect."
Although the charge of treason was for the present abandoned, Wolsey was indicted for a præmunire, the result of which was, to place him at the King's mercy as to all his goods and possessions. Whilst his enemies were thus steadily pursuing their schemes for his destruction, the King betrayed occasional symptoms of returning favour, sending him gracious messages, first by Sir John Russell, and then by the Duke of Norfolk; but it may be questionable whether these demonstrations were not merely meant to cajole him; for, during the time that he was entertaining the Duke, Sir John Shelly, one of the judges, arrived at Esher, for the express purpose of obtaining from Wolsey a formal cession of York House, the town mansion of the Archbishops. The cardinal hesitated at making such an assignment of the property of his see, but at length yielded, yet not without a spirited remonstrance against the conduct of his despoilers. The acts of insult and oppression to which he was subjected, at length brought on severe illness, and he was confined to his bed. Dr. Butts, the court physician, having visited him, informed the King that his life was in danger; and Henry, as if in a moment of conscientious regret, sent him "a comfortable message," with a valuable ring, as a token of regard. Cavendish, in his Life of Wolsey, has thus related the circumstances under which the Royal message was delivered:—
"At Christmas, he [Wolsey] fell sore sick, that he was likely to die, whereof the King being advertised, was very sorry therefore, and sent Doctor Buttes, his grace's physician, unto him, to see in what state he was. Dr. Buttes came unto him, and finding him very sick lying in his bed, and perceiving the danger he was in, repaired again unto the King. Of whom the King demanded, saying, 'How doth yonder man; have you seen him?' 'Yea, sir,' quoth he, 'if you will have him dead, I warrant your Grace, he will be dead within these four days, if he receive no comfort from you shortly and Mistress Anne.' 'Marry,' quoth the King, 'God forbid that he should die. I pray you, good Master Buttes, go again unto him, and do your cure upon him, for I would not lose him for twenty thousand pounds.' 'Then must your Grace,' quoth Master Buttes, 'send him first some comfortable message as shortly as possible.' 'Even so will I,' quoth the King, 'by you. And therefore make speed to him again, and ye shall deliver him from me this ring for a token of our good-will and favour towards him; (on which ring was engraved the King's image within a ruby, as lively counterfeit as was possible to be devised.) This ring he knoweth very well; for he gave me the same; and tell him that I am not offended with him in my heart nothing at all, and that shall he perceive, and God send him life, very shortly. Therefore, bid him be of good cheer, and pluck up his heart, and take no despair. And I charge you come not from him until ye have brought him out of all danger of death.' And then spake he to Mistress Anne, saying, 'Good sweetheart, I pray you at this my instance, to send the Cardinal a token with comfortable words; and in so doing it shall do us a loving pleasure.' She being not minded to disobey the King's earnest request, whatever she intended in her heart towards the Cardinal, took incontinent her tablet of gold hanging at her girdle, and delivered it to Master Buttes, with very gentle and comfortable words and commendations to the Cardinal."
The invalid was comforted by the seeming kindness of his tyrannical master, and recovered. In his last letter from Esher, which was addressed to Stephen Gardiner, one of his secretaries, he prays him to help him and relieve him in his miserable condition, and remove him from this moist and corrupt air: dropsy had overtaken him, with loss of appetite, and sleep; "wherfor," says the letter, "of necessyte I must be removyd to some other dryer ayer and place, where I may have comodyte of physcyans," &c. Wolsey subsequently obtained permission to remove from Esher to Richmond, where he remained until his journey into Yorkshire, a few months previous to his death, which took place at Leicester Abbey, on the 29th of November, 1530.
When Henry VIII. had resolved to constitute Hampton Court an honour, and make a chace around it, he purchased several neighbouring estates, and, among them, Esher. A survey of the manor, early in the reign of Edward VI., shows there to have been here a mansion-house, sumptuously built, with divers offices, and an orchard and garden; and also a park adjoining, three miles in circuit, stocked with deer.
We shall not trace the future possessors of Esher Place. The natural undulations of the ground would seem to have required but little improvement from the conceptions of Art. Yet Kent, the landscape-gardener, "the inventor of an art that realizes painting," was employed by the Right Hon. Henry Pelham, a leading statesman in the reign of George II., possessor of the estate; and the artist and patron have thus been inseparably connected with
"Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love."
Noble fir and beech plantations cover the swelling heights of Esher; and there are fine oaks and elms, together with a remarkable holly-tree, the girth of which is between eight and nine feet. There are also several small ornamental buildings in the park; but the principal one in picturesqueness and historic interest, is the old brick tower, which formed part of "Asher Palace," when this estate belonged to the see of Winchester. It also constituted the central division of the mansion of the Pelhams, but was judiciously left standing, when the modern additions, by Kent, were pulled down by Mr. Spicer, who purchased the estate in 1805, and erected a new mansion upon a more elevated site. In Mr. Pelham's time, the mansion consisted of little more than the Tower, or Gate-house, to that in which Wolsey had resided, and to which Kent's additions were much inferior, proving, as Walpole remarks, "how little Kent conceived either the principles or graces of Gothic architecture."
The erection of this Tower has been attributed to Wolsey, whose name is associated with several architectural works; but there is inferential evidence to show that he did not erect the Tower at Esher. Although nominated to the bishopric of Winchester in the autumn of 1528, he was not installed until April in the following year (and that by proxy), at which season he was too deeply engaged in the affair of the King's divorce, to have time for extensive building. The only distinct notice which has appeared to connect Wolsey's name with any architectural works at Asher Palace, is where Cavendish speaks of the removal to Westminster (Whitehall), of "the new gallery which my lord had late before his fall newly set up at Asher;" and "the taking away thereof," he continues, "was to him corrosive—the which discouraged him very sore to stay there any longer,—for he was weary of that house at Asher, for with continual use it waxed unsavoury."
In the form and character of the Tower itself are also indications of an earlier period than that of Wolsey; and this well-built structure may be assigned to the days of Bishop Wayneflete, who preceded the Cardinal in his possession of the see by about eighty years, and is known to have erected "a stately brick mansion" and "gate-house" in Esher Park. The Tower is luxuriantly mantled with ivy, which was planted by a son of Mr. Spicer, whilst yet a boy. The interior comprises three storeys; but the apartments are small and much dilapidated. There is, however, within one of the octagonal turrets, a very skilfully-wrought newel, or geometrical staircase, of brick, in excellent preservation; and in the roofing of which the principles of the construction of the oblique arch, (a supposed invention of modern times) are practically exhibited.[65]
There is, on the Esher estate, another structure, which is popularly associated with Wolsey's name. This is a small building, of flints and rude stones, with a central recess and stone seat; and at the foot a refreshing spring, called Wolsey's Well. It is most probable that this little edifice was raised by Mr. Pelham, as the buckle, a part of his family arms, is sculptured upon a stone over the middle arch, and also the initials, H. P. The seat is more properly named "the Travellers' Rest." Wolsey spent some weeks at Esher, a prey to his fears and mortified ambition. As might be expected, the world, that had paid him such abject court in his prosperity, deserted him in this fatal reverse of his fortunes. Wolsey was not himself prepared for what he conceived to be base ingratitude: it surprised and deceived him; and the same pride, unsupported by true dignity of character, which made him be vainly elated with his recent grandeur, made him now doubly sensitive to the humiliations of adversity. Under any circumstances he would be unfit for solitude: the glory and the gaze of the multitude being the breath of his nostrils, the calm contentment of private life was to him a sound of no meaning. What, then, must have been his feelings in this first hour of his misery? Baffled in all the schemes of his ambition, disgraced before his rivals, abandoned by the world, and forsaken by his royal master, his heart was not yet sufficiently chastened by affliction to seek for consolation in its only true source—religion; but still clung, with the despair of a lover, to the hope of the royal mercy. His letters to Gardiner, whom he had the merit of bringing forward from obscurity, and who, excepting his other secretary, Cromwell, of all his followers, alone retained grateful respect for their benefactor in his fallen fortunes, bespeak the agony of his feelings. They are severally subscribed, "With a rude hand, and sorrowful heart, T. Cardlis Ebor. miserrimus," and are scarcely legible, from the excitement under which they seem to have been written.
In chastening verse has our great moralist thus portrayed the proud Churchman:—
"In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand:
To him the Church, the realm, their pow'rs consign;
Through him, the rays of regal bounty shine:
Turn'd by his nod, the stream of honour flows;
His smile at once security bestows.
Still to new heights his restless wishes soar;
Claim leads to claim, and pow'r advances pow'r;
Till conquest unresisted ceased to please;
And rights submitted, left him none to seize!
At length, his Sov'reign frowns—the train of state
Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate;
Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye;
His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly.
Now drops at once the pride of awful state,
The golden canopy, the glittering plate,
The regal palace, the luxurious board,
The liveried servants, and the menial lord!
With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd,
He seeks the refuge of monastic rest.
Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings,
And his last sighs reproach the faith of Kings."—Johnson.
Whatever appertains to the record of his appalling fall is treasurable as an addition to the narrative in our popular histories. A few points of novelty and interest as regards Wolsey have been derived from a State manuscript of the reign of Henry VIII., now in the possession of Sir Walter C. Trevelyan, Bart. F.S.A. a junior member of whose family was one of the chaplains to Henry VIII.; and through him it may have found its way to the venerable seat of Nettlecombe, in the county of Somerset, where this MS. relating to domestic expenses and payments has for some centuries been deposited.
In this manuscript Wolsey is spoken of by his double title of Cardinal of York and Bishop of Winchester, in connexion with a payment to him of one thousand marks, out of the revenues of Winchester. By the above entry, confirmed by a subsequent passage in Cavendish, it is clear that this was a pension of 1,000 marks; and that in consideration of the necessities of the Cardinal, it was to be allowed him beforehand. After all his pomp and prosperity, after all his vast accumulation of wealth, after all his piles of plate and heaps of cloth-of-gold, and costly apparel, Wolsey, in March 1530 (judging only from this entry), was reduced to the necessity of obtaining a loan of a thousand marks. This, too, to carry him to his exile at York, whither his enemies had by this date induced the fickle, selfish, and luxurious King to banish his great favourite.
Of Wolsey's subsequent residence at Cawood, we find in this MS. an item to David Vincent, of the considerable sum of 35l. 6s. 8d. (more than 200l.), whence we may infer this messenger to have made some stay there, watching the progress of Wolsey's illness, and sending intelligence to the King, who was more anxious for the death than for the life of his victim, in order that he might seize upon the remainder of his moveables. It is quite evident that the Cardinal was not at this period so destitute as many have supposed, and that he had carried with him a very large quantity of plate, of which the King possessed himself the moment the breath was out of the body of its owner. Among the payments for January, 22 Henry VIII., we read in the Trevelyan MS. that two persons were employed for three entire days in London "weighing the plate that came from Cawood, late the Cardinalles." Such are the unceremonious terms used in the original memorandum, communicating a striking fact, of which we now hear for the first time.
It is a curious and novel circumstance which the Trevelyan manuscript has brought to light, that exactly three months before the death of Wolsey, the Dean and Canons of Cardinal's (now Christchurch) College, Oxford, had so completely separated themselves from Wolsey, and from all interest he had taken in their establishment, that, instead of rewriting to him for the comparatively small sum of 184l. for the purpose of carrying on their works, they applied to the King for the loan of the money; the entry of which loan is made in this State manuscript, "upon an obligation to be repaid agayne," "on this side of Cristinmas next cumming;" so that even this trifling advance could not be made out of the royal purse, filled to repletion by the sacrifice of Wolsey, without an express stipulation that the money was to be returned before Christmas.
To the credit of Wolsey it must be told, that in the midst of his troubles his anxiety for his new college was unabated, and it is upon record, that, among his last petitions to the King, was an urgent request that "His Majesty would suffer his college at Oxford to go on."[66]
Everything in Wolsey—his vices and his virtues—was great. He seemed incapable of mediocrity in anything: voluptuous and profuse, rapacious and of insatiable ambition, too magnanimous to be either cruel or revengeful, he was an excellent master and patron, and a fair and open enemy. If we despise the abjectness which he exhibited in his first fall, let it be remembered from and to what he fell, from a degree of wealth and grandeur which no subject on earth now enjoys, to instantaneous and utter destitution. He wanted at Esher the comfort which even a prison would have afforded, the very bed on which he slept having been taken from him. We are also to take into account the abject submission which he had long been taught to exercise towards the tyrant,
"Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate."
There are certain circumstances connected with Wolsey's death and interment which are noteworthy. "He foretold to Cavendish that at eight o'clock he would lose his master.... Towards the conclusion, his accents began to falter; at the end his eyes became motionless, and his sight failed. The abbot was summoned to administer the extreme unction, and the yeomen of the guard were called in to see him die. As the clock struck eight he expired."
Cavendish and the bystanders thought Wolsey must have had a revelation of the time of his death; and from the way in which the fact had taken possession of his mind, it is supposed that he relied on astrological prediction.
Mr. Payne Collier observes:[67] "It is unnecessary, as well as uncharitable, to suppose what there is no proof of—that Wolsey died of poison, either administered by himself or others. The obvious and proximate cause of his death was affliction. A great heart, oppressed with indignities and beset with dangers, at length gave way, and Wolsey received the two last charities of a death-bed and a grave, with many circumstances affectingly told by Cavendish, in the Abbey of Leicester."
Wolsey's remains were privately interred in one of the chapels of the Abbey at Leicester, which has long been reduced to a mass of shapeless ruins. The Cardinal had, however, designed a sumptuous receptacle for his remains. Adjoining the east end of St. George's Chapel at Windsor is a stone edifice, built by King Henry VII., as a burial-place for himself and his successors; but this Prince afterwards altering his purpose, began the more noble structure at Westminster, and the Windsor fabric remained neglected until Wolsey obtained a grant of it from Henry VIII. The Cardinal, with a profusion of expense unknown to former ages, designed and began here a most sumptuous monument for himself, from whence this building obtained the name of Wolsey's Tomb-house. This monument was magnificently built; and at the time of the Cardinal's disgrace 4,250 ducats had been paid to a statuary of Florence for the work already done; and 380l. 18s. sterling had been paid for gilding only the half of this costly monument. It thus remained unfinished; in 1646 it was plundered by the rebels of its statues and figures of gilt-copper. The Tomb-house is now in process of decoration as a memorial to the late Prince Consort.
Wolsey had also executed for him at Rome a beautiful marble sarcophagus, but which did not arrive in time for the burial of the Cardinal: it lay neglected for two centuries and three-quarters, when it was removed to the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in it were placed Nelson's remains.
WAYNFLETE'S TOWER, ESHER PLACE.
It is scarcely possible to leave the Tower at Esher without saddening thoughts that "lie too deep for tears." Here, amidst "the sweetest solitude" of wood and grove, stands the memorial of the ambitious minister, the powerful favourite, the selfish ecclesiastic, and the victim to tyranny,—yet a tyranny that he had himself assisted both to form and exercise. How troubled were the times which the sight of this structure recals! How painful is the contrast with the scene of peaceful nature around it!—with the refreshing quiet of the wood and glade, and the repose of the water, whereon the nothingness of human glory may be shown in one simple but sublime lesson—the circle that expands into nought. How painful, we repeat, is the contemplation of such contrasts; yet, how fraught with lessons for our happiness! We weep over the fallen fortunes of men, and their abuse of the means entrusted to them for the welfare of their fellow-men; yet what a rebuke do we receive in the reflection that Nature surrounds us with the means of endless enjoyments, while Art, by its subtlety, perverts and corrupts, thus weaning the affections from the beautiful and the pure.
Yet, if "Asher Place" had its vicissitudes in past ages, so too has Claremont—a portion of the same manor—in our own times. Here, in the mansion built for the great Lord Clive, Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Cobourg, half a century since, brought his bride, the fair-haired daughter of England, and lived for a short and blissful period, in all the happiness of conjugal and domestic union, when premature death struck down the Princess and her infant offspring. Here Louis Philippe and his Queen found an asylum, in the year of Revolutions, 1848; and have since gone to their earthly home a few miles distant. Leopold, too, has descended to the tomb, full of years and kingly honours, having received in marriage, in succession, a daughter of the King of England, and a daughter of the King of France.
[The Life of Wolsey, by Cavendish, (quoted in the preceding pages,) is one of the most interesting and valuable specimens of biography in the English language. Its first merit is originality in the strictest sense of the word. The writer, one of Wolsey's gentlemen, and much in his confidence, was not merely a spectator, but an agent, and in some degree, a sufferer in the scenes which he describes. In the next place, though he writes from the heart, there is an air of impartiality in some parts of the work, which gives them the clear stamp of veracity. Of the hauteur and insolence of the Cardinal during his elevation, he sometimes allows himself to speak with asperity. The tender compassion which rendered him the faithful companion of his fallen fortunes, gives an amiable and pleasing colour to the latter part of his narrative. Besides, the cumbrous magnificence of the reign of Henry VIII., under the great change of manners which two centuries and a half have produced, is become in its representation to us, extremely picturesque; and for this part of his undertaking Cavendish was eminently qualified. He was not one of those unobserving men, who seem never to apprehend that what is familiar to themselves will become curious to posterity. He saw with an exact and discriminating eye, and what he beheld he was able to describe. In no other work, perhaps, is to be found so minute and faithful a detail of what the palaces of kings and prelates, and the houses of the great nobility then were; their loads of plate, their hangings of arras, the ponderous plenty of their tables, and the useless accumulation, as we should conceive, of cloth, linen, &c., which were sometimes exhibited in their great galleries as in so many warehouses. Add to this, the innumerable links then subsisting in the great chain of dependence, the haughty distance of the superior to his immediate inferior, the obsequiousness of the immediate inferior in return; the young nobility serving in the houses of the greater prelates like menial servants, and these prelates themselves as often, perhaps, on the knee to their king as to their God. All these particulars, acquired from the life by the writer before us, form so many vivid pictures presented to the mind's eye, so that ideas become images, and we seem to behold what we only read of.—See Dr. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography.]
[TRADITIONS OF BATTLE-FIELDS.]
t has been frequently remarked that the general decay of local traditions, or the difficulty of obtaining particulars of events, or the sites of the most remembered passages of history, is, year by year, becoming more evident. It might be expected that in the vicinity of great transactions, among a rude and ignorant peasantry, we should find more frequent vestiges of the one memorable action which made their locality famous; yet, it is astonishing to find how often these are completely obliterated.
Much of this falling-off in tradition may be referred to the more rigid test to which it is subjected by means of the printing-press; as well as to the new class of materials for history. For a century or so, the habit had prevailed of receiving implicitly the traditions and records of past times, assuming them to have been substantiated at the date of their publication. This mode of constructing history consisted merely of breaking up and re-arranging the old materials, which have been compared to stereotype blocks. The worthlessness of this mode of proceeding has become apparent; and now the opposite error has come strongly into vogue—that of going back to neglected documents of the same date as the transaction, and, on their evidence, revoking the settled deliberate verdict of past centuries. The vast accession of materials of this kind obtained of late years, is truly surprising. There is likewise another means of verifying the dates, places, and names, of great events: we mean in the visits of archæologists to the sites, and the comparison of the actual localities with recorded details; proceedings of the most pleasurable and intellectual kind.
Nevertheless, the old traditional stock is not yet entirely exhausted. There are no families in the British Islands more ancient than many of those which are yet to be found among our yeomanry and peasantry. Every now and then some proof comes to light of an antiquity of tenure on the part of such families, far exceeding that of the Stanleys or Howards. The Duke of York, for example, ejected from a farm at Chertsey a certain Mr. Wapshott, who claimed lineal and accredited descent from Reginald Wapshott, the armour-bearer of Alfred, who is said to have established Reginald in this very farm. This personage was an example of the tenacity with which tradition might be thus preserved, for his family version of their origin derived them from Wapshott, the warrener, and not the armour-bearer of Alfred.[68]
Again, we have recovered of late a series of instances, which show how few individuals not uncommonly intervene between ourselves and the eye-witnesses of remarkable men or actions. King William IV. had spoken to a butcher at Windsor, who had conversed with Charles II. What is still more remarkable, a person living in 1847, aged then about sixty-one, was frequently assured by his father that, in 1786, he repeatedly saw one Peter Garden, who died in that year at the age of 127 years; and who, when a boy, heard Henry Jenkins give evidence in a court of justice at York, to the effect that, when a boy, he was employed in carrying arrows up the hill before the battle of Flodden Field.
| This battle was fought in | 1513 | |
| Henry Jenkins died in 1670, at the age of | 169 | |
| Deduct for his age at the time of the battle of Flodden Field | 12 | |
| —— | 157 | |
| Peter Garden, the man who heard Jenkins give his evidence, died at | 127 | |
| Deduct for his age when he saw Jenkins | 11 | |
| —— | 116 | |
| The person whose father knew Peter Garden was born shortly before 1786, or 70 years since | 70 | |
| —— | ||
| a.d. 1856 |
In this year, 1856, Mr. Sidney Gibson, F.S.A. showed, as above, that a person living in 1786, conversed with a man that fought at Flodden Field.
We now proceed to narrate a few instances in which the details of early battles have been most successfully investigated and identified.
There is not much myth about the Battle of Hastings. On that undulating upland, and in that steep morass, raged on Saturday, October 14th, a.d. 1060, from nine till three, when its tide first turned, as fierce a battle, as real a stand-up fight between the army of England and the great Norman host, as any which has ever decided the destinies of countries. There is no important battle, the details of which have been so carefully handed down to us. How the Conqueror's left foot slipped on landing—the ill omen—and how his right foot "stacked in the sand"—the good omen of "seisin;"—how the ships were pierced, so that his host might fight its way to glory without retreat; and how he merrily extracted an omen for good even while putting on his hauberk the wrong side foremost; how brother Gurth with the tender conscience counselled brother Harold with the seared conscience to stay away from the fray, lest his broken oath to William should overtake him; and how, as they reconnoitred the vast Norman host, the elder brother's heart had failed him, had not the younger one called him scoundrel for his meditated flight; the prayerful eve in the one camp and the carousing eve in the other, "with wassails and drinkhails;" the exploits of valiant knight Taillifer between the lines; how the Normans shot high in air to blind the enemy; and the dreadful mêlée in the "blind ditch Malfosse shadowed with reed and sedge;" and the Conqueror's hearty after-battle meal, when he was chaired among the dying and the dead; and that exquisitely pathetic touch of story which tells how Edith, the swan-necked,—for the love she bore to Harold,—when all others failed to recognise him, was brought to discover his mutilated corse among the slain; and the Conqueror's vow, so literally redeemed, to fix the high altar of the "Abbey of the Battaile" where the Saxon gonfanon fell—all these, and a thousand other minute circumstances of the memorable day, stand out in as clear relief at this distance of time as the last charge of Waterloo, or the closing scene at Trafalgar.
Sussex has little occasion to feel humbled by having been the scene of this well-contested field. Whatever the inhabitants of the British isles have since been able to effect for their own greatness and for the happiness of the human race, is attributable in no small degree to the issue of that fight. Thenceforth the Saxon was guided and elevated by the high spirit and far-reaching enterprise of the Norman, and the elements of the national character were complete.[69]
Among the memorials of the conquered must not be forgotten the roll of the companions of the Conqueror, which was installed with great festivity in August, 1862, at Dives, a small town on the seacoast, in the department of Calvados, in Normandy. It was near this town, at the mouth of the Dives, that William and his companions in arms met previous to their embarkation for the subjugation of England. The very spot was already marked by a column erected in 1861, by M. de Caumont, the eminent Norman savant and archæologist; and the fête in August, 1862, was held under the auspices of the same learned gentleman. The commemoration was intended to be international, and a public invitation was given to the English residents in the locality; but, from some unexplained cause or other, no English person attended. Sir Bernard Burke attributes this absence to the announcement being imperfectly made; "for what," he asks, "could more come home to the better and more educated classes of English people than the inauguration of a roll which contains the greatest names amongst us; a roll to which the proudest feel prouder still to belong, and which may be said to form the very household words of our glory—the roll, in fact, of what has since been the best and bravest aristocracy in the universe?"
The fête commenced by a meeting in the Market-hall of Dives, which was characteristically decorated; one of the objects being a large picture of the construction and embarkation of William's fleet, painted from the Bayeux Tapestry. The Dives Roll is deposited within the church, over the principal entrance. It differs from the Battle Abbey Roll in this respect, that the latter is the roll of those who actually fought at Hastings, and the former is the roll of those who assembled for the expedition, and were otherwise engaged in furthering the conquest of England. The roll is printed in the Bulletin de la Societé des Antiquaires de Normandie, and in the Vicissitudes of Families, third series.
Next are three battles of the fifteenth century: Towton, Tewkesbury, and Bosworth. Towton Field, supposed to be the most fierce and bloody battle that ever happened in any domestic war, was fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster in 1461. On the 29th of March, the armies met at Towton: the Lancastrians were totally routed, and Edward left unquestionably king. The carnage of this terrible field is appalling. Proclamations forbidding quarter were issued before the engagement. Like Leipsic, it reached over the night; but, unlike Leipsic, even the hours of darkness brought no rest. They fought from four o'clock in the afternoon, throughout the whole night, on to noon the next day. Like Waterloo, it was fought on a Sunday. And the accounts of contemporary writers state, in words very like the letters from Mont St. Jean, that, for weeks afterwards the blood stood in puddles, and stagnated in gutters, and that the water of the wells was red. No inaccuracy is more frequent in ancient authors than that of numbers, and generally on the side of exaggeration. But on this occasion we can form a more correct estimate of the carnage by the concurrence of unusually reputable testimonies; and, perhaps, in these times it will give the best idea of it, to say that the number of Englishmen slain exceeded the sum of those who fell at Vimiera, Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo.[70]
Tewkesbury Field has been minutely explored. Mr. Richard Brooke, F.S.A., after narrating, from Holinshed, the circumstances which preceded this memorable battle—from the arrival of Queen Margaret at Weymouth, to the termination of the conflict, and the murder of Prince Edward—points out the field of battle as close to the first mile-stone on the high road leading from Tewkesbury through Tredington to Cheltenham and Gloucester. On the western side of the town of Tewkesbury is the Home-ground, or Home-hill, where once a castle stood; a part of this elevated ground is a field, called "the Gastons," which extends to the first mile-stone, just opposite which, on the eastern side of the road, is a field which has been immemorially called "Margaret's Camp." The battle was, according to tradition, fought on that place, and in the adjacent fields on the southward, as also in those a little eastward of it. In "Margaret's Camp," in the centre is a small circular inclosure, surrounded by a ditch, without hedge or bank, but having some large elm trees growing round its inner edge. This is too insignificant to have been a military entrenchment; but it may have been the place of interment of some of the slain; or is thought to have been formed in comparatively modern times to commemorate the spot where the Lancastrian army was posted. In the field, called "Gup's Hill," Mr. Brooke was told by elderly persons, bones had formerly been discovered.
The old annalists and chroniclers, Mr. Brooke says, have left us much in the dark as to the exact spot near the camp of the Lancastrians where Edward's forces passed the night prior to the battle; but on the morning of the battle, and immediately before it commenced, his army, according both to tradition and probability, took up a position upon some elevated ground adjoining the turnpike-road, and to the southward of and opposite the Lancastrian army. From that position a tract of ground (now fields and closes) slopes downwards, so as to form a depression between it and the spot occupied by the Lancastrians. This tract of ground was formerly called the "Red Piece," and it is now intersected by the turnpike-road, and forms two fields, one on each side of the road, one of which is called the Near Red Close, and the other the Further Red Close. This tract of ground extends to the field called "Margaret's Camp," and it appears almost certain that it was on the southward side of the latter that Edward's forces made their attack.
A meadow in the rear of the Lancastrian position, and lying on the westward side of the turnpike-road, half a mile from Tewkesbury, and within a few hundred yards of the Tewkesbury Union Workhouse, is called the "Bloody Meadow:" an idea is generally entertained that it derives its name from the slaughter of many of the fugitives, who fled from the battle towards the meadow, in hope of getting over the Severn, as there is a ferry not far from it. Fourteen or fifteen years ago, was found in the Bloody Meadow a long piece of iron, which appeared to have been part of a sword-blade.
Bosworth Field is a still more memorable site. On August 22, 1485, was fought the famous battle of Bosworth, the precise spot being pointed out by the following passage contained in a proclamation sent by Henry VII., almost immediately after his victory, to the municipality of York: "Moreover, the King ascertaineth you that Richard, Duke of Gloucester, lately called King Richard, was slain at a place called Sandeford, in the county of Leicester, and brought dead off the field," &c.
The field of battle lies about three miles south of Market Bosworth; and it is clear from direct historical testimony, which is in this instance fully corroborated by local traditions, that the principal encounter between the forces of Richard and Richmond took place on "Ambien Hill," on the southern slope of which rises the spring, "Richard's Well," from which the King is traditionally reported to have drank during the engagement. The plain of Redmoor was also partly comprehended in the movements of the two armies, and across which there cannot be a doubt the flight of the vanquished royalists was afterwards directed towards Dadlington, Stoke Golding, and Crown Hill, besides the strong position of Ambien Hill, on the south and west. It is, therefore, evident that the place where the King fell must be looked for in the immediate vicinity of these two well-ascertained sites of conflict. Now Sandeford, or Sandford, named in the proclamation of Henry VII., is not known to have existed as a hamlet or village in the county of Leicester, from the date of Domesday-book; hence Sandford is taken to imply an ancient road or passage over some fordable stream or water-course. It has been found that the old road from Leicester to Atherstone, through the villages of Peckleton and Kirkby Mallory, and along which road Richard advanced, when on his march from Leicester upon Sunday, August 21, to meet his antagonist, used formerly, after skirting and partially traversing the field of battle, to cross a ford, remembered by the present generation, and situated at but a short distance from the south-western slope of Ambien Hill. And part of the comparatively modern highway which now passes over the site of the same ford, is called the Sandroad at the present time. The stream which once flooded the highway, is now carried through a vaulted tunnel beneath it. The ford has consequently disappeared; but any visitor to Bosworth Field, who inquires for the Water Gate, may yet stand on the ground pointed out as the scene of the death of Richard III. by the words of his rival Henry VII. It should be added that Mr. J. F. Hollings, of Leicester, who has communicated the above details to Notes and Queries, 2nd S., No. 150, has shown also that the Ordnance Map is not altogether to be relied upon as a guide to the various localities connected with the battle of Bosworth.
Mr. Syer Cuming, F.S.A., in a paper read to the British Archæological Association, in 1862, has grouped these interesting Memorials of Richard III. On this occasion, the archæologists proceeded from Leicester to the battle-field; and a considerable accession to the number being received at Bosworth, the procession extended upwards of half-a-mile in length. On arriving at the field, large numbers of people had preceded the procession and congregated round the platform, and altogether there could not have been fewer than a thousand persons present. The platform was decorated with banners. A facsimile of the crown of Richard III. was shown on a cushion in front of Major Wollaston, who presided on the occasion. A flag marked the place where King Richard died, near a small pond, and a white flag pointed out the position of Richmond's army.
Richard Plantagenet was born about the year 1450, of Lady Cecilia, wife of Richard, Duke of York, in the ancient castle of Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire; but his natal abode was swept away by order of our first James, and we have perhaps no earlier relic of the Prince than his official seal as Admiral of England the date of which is fixed by Mr. Pettigrew between the years 1471 and 1475. It bears on it a large vessel, the mainsail blazoned with the arms of France and England, crossed by a label of three points; similar charges appearing on a flag held by a greyhound at the aft-castle. The verge represents a collar of roses, and within it is a legend setting forth that it is the seal of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Admiral of England, for the counties of Dorset and Somerset—S' Rici: Dvc' Glovc': Admiralli: Angl: I: Com: Dors' et Soms.
[When Dr. Dibdin was on his "Northern Tour," published in 1838, at Whiburn, in the neighbourhood of Tynemouth, he had the good fortune to be introduced to Sir Hedworth Williamson's old trunk of family seals, in red and white wax, among which he found a warrant of Richard III., then Duke of Gloucester, dated 20th of February, in the thirteenth year of Edward IV., with the Autograph of the Duke, and part of the Seal appended; both of which are of most rare occurrence.]
If tradition is to be believed, King John and Queen Elizabeth must have had as many palaces as there are counties in England; and though the name of Richard III. is less frequently connected with old mansions, there are still plenty of antiquated houses which are said to have been his abiding-places for more or less lengthy periods. Among others may be mentioned the Black Boy Inn, Chelmsford, where were formerly to be seen two carved bosses on the ceiling of its great room: one being painted with a blue boar on a deep red field, surrounded by a collar of seven stars or mullets; the other, with a full-blown rose, once entirely white, but subsequently white and red, indicative of the union of the Houses of York and Lancaster. Both these bosses were communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine (May, 1840), by John Adey Repton; but the editor of that serial contended that the boar is the insignia of Vere, Earl of Oxford, and that the tradition regarding Richard must therefore be rejected, forgetful of the fact that after the attainder of the Earl for high treason, his vast possessions in Essex and other counties were given to the Duke of Gloucester, so that the Black Boy Inn may, after all, have served as a hunting-lodge of the Plantagenet. Of Richard's two London residences one has altogether vanished, and the other has lost much of its antique aspect, but Shakspeare has given a world-wide and lasting fame to both. Baynard's Castle stood on the northern bank of the Thames, and was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. It was in the court of this fortress that Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, offered the crown to the Duke of Gloucester, and where the dramatist makes the latter say:—
"Since you will buckle fortune on my back,
To bear her burden, whe'r I will or no,
I must have patience to endure the load."
Richard III. ii. 7.
The other dwelling alluded to is Crosby Place, Bishopsgate, built by Sir John Crosby about the year 1467; and, in spite of alterations and renovations, this is still one of the finest examples of Early Domestic architecture in England. Hither Shakspeare makes Gloucester invite the Lady Anne; and bid the murderers repair after the assassination of Clarence and the young princes in the Tower.
The old building in Leicester, which was properly called "King Richard's House," was known to be part of the Old Blue Boar: at the commencement of the last century, it was used as an inn, and known by that sign, though originally it bore the name of the "White Boar," the cognizance of King Richard III.; but, after his defeat, this sign was torn down by the infuriated populace, and the owner or landlord compelled to change the title. Popular tradition has always identified the building with the ill-fated monarch, and the inquiries of our local antiquaries confirm the tradition. It was taken down in the month of March, 1836; but, fortunately, before its destruction, a drawing was made of the front; and that has been frequently engraved. In this house Richard took up his quarters, and slept on a bedstead, the remains of which are believed to be in existence. It had a false bottom, in which a large sum of money could be concealed, and did duty as a military chest. Engravings of the house and bedstead are given in Hutton's Battle of Bosworth Field, 2d edition, by J. Nichols, F.S.A.
Richard is reported to have been peculiarly subject to the influence of omens. "During his abode at Exeter," says Holinshed, "he went about the citie, and viewed the seat of the same, and at length he came to the castle; and when he understood that it was called Rugemont, suddenlie he fell into a dumpe, and (as one astonied) said, 'Well, I see my dayes be not long.' He spake this of a prophecy told him, that when he once came to Richmond, he should not long live after." He had more rational cause for alarm when Jockey of Norfolk produced the doggrel warning found in his tent, for it clearly indicated the desertion and treachery that were about to prove fatal to him.
On the night before the battle, going the rounds, Richard found a sentinel asleep, and stabbed him, with the remark, "I found him asleep, and have left him as I found him."
The vanguard of Richard's army was commanded by the Duke of Norfolk; the centre and main body by the King himself, who rode at their head, mounted on his celebrated milk-white steed, White Surrey, and arrayed in the splendid suit of armour which he had worn at Tewkesbury. Like Henry V. at Agincourt, Richard wore a golden crown, not as a man would wear a hat or cap, but by way of crest over his helmet. Richmond, too, bore himself gallantly, and rode through the ranks, marshalling and encouraging his men, arrayed in complete armour, but unhelmeted. His vanguard, commanded by the Earl of Oxford, began the battle by crossing the low ground towards the elevated position where Richard prudently waited the attack. "The trumpets blew, and the soldiers shouted, and the King's archers courageously let fly their arrows. The Earl's bowmen stood not still, but paid them home again; and the terrible shot once passed, the armies joined, and came to hand-strokes."[71]
The leaders of those days deemed it a point of honour to fight hand to hand, if possible, and Oxford and Norfolk managed to engage in a personal encounter. After shivering their spears on each other's shields or breastplates, they fell to with their swords. Oxford, wounded in the arm by a blow which glanced from his crest, returned it by one which hewed off the vizor of Norfolk's helmet, leaving the face bare; and then, disdaining to follow up the advantage, drew back, when an arrow from an unknown hand pierced the Duke's brain. Surrey, hurrying up to assist or avenge his father, was surrounded and overpowered by Sir Gilbert Talbot and Sir John Savage, who commanded on the right and left for Richmond:—
"Young Howard single with an army fights;
When, moved with pity, two renownèd knights,
Strong Clarendon and valiant Conyers, try
To rescue him, in which attempt they die.
Now Surrey, fainting, scarce his sword can hold,
Which made a common soldier grow so bold,
To lay rude hands upon that noble flower,
Which he disdaining—anger gives him power,—
Erects his weapon with a nimble round,
And sends the peasant's arm to kiss the ground."—
Bosworth Field, by Sir John Beaumont, Bart.
If we may credit tradition or the chroniclers, all this was literally true. When completely exhausted, Surrey presented the hilt of his sword to Talbot, whom he requested to take his life, and save him from dying by an ignoble hand. He lived to be the Surrey of Flodden Field, and the worthy transmitter of "all the blood of all the Howards."
When Richard was about to make that renowned charge, which historians describe as the last effort of despair, he was bringing up his main body, and intelligence reached him that Richmond was posted behind the hill with a slender attendance. His plan was formed on the instant; nor, although fiery courage or burning hate might have suggested it, was it ill-judged or reckless. Three-fourths of the combatants, if we include the Stanleys, were ready to side with the strongest. Richmond's army, without Richmond, was a rope of sand. His fall would be the signal for a general scattering, or a feigned renewal of hollow allegiance to the conqueror. Neither did the execution of the proposed coup de main betoken a sudden impulse inconsiderately acted upon. Richard rode out at the right flank of his army, and ascended a rising ground to get a view of his enemy, with whose person he was not acquainted. He summoned to his side a chosen body of knights, all of whom, with the exception of Lord Lovell, perished with him; and he paused to drink at a spring, which still goes by his name. That Richard's horse was slain is very doubtful; and, for aught we know, it was White Surrey that bore him, like a thunderbolt, against the bosom of his foe; and it was spear in rest that he dashed against Richmond's surprised and fluttered bodyguard.
The personal prowess of the pair who were contending for a kingdom, is thus estimated by Hutton: "Richard was better versed in arms, Henry was better served. Richard was brave, Henry was a coward. Richard was about five feet four, rather runted, but only made crooked by his enemies; and wanted six weeks of thirty-three. Henry was twenty-seven, slender, and near five feet nine, with a saturnine countenance, yellow hair, and grey eyes." According to Grafton, Richard, so soon as he descried Richmond, "put spurs to his horse, and, like a hungry lion, ran with spear in rest towards him." He unhorsed Sir John Cheney, a strong and brave knight,[72] and rushing on Sir William Brandon, Henry's standard-bearer, cleft his skull, tore the standard from his grasp, and flung it on the ground. "He was now," says Hume, "within reach of Richmond himself, who declined not the combat." Others say that Richmond drew back, as a braver man might have done in his place—
"No craven he, and yet he shuns the blow,
So much confusion magnifies the foe."
Fortunately for him, Sir William Stanley came up at the very nick of time, "with three thousand tall men," and overpowered Richard, who died, fighting furiously, and murmuring with his last breath, Treason! Treason! Treason! So nicely timed was Stanley's aid, that Henry afterwards justified the ungrateful return he made for it, by saying: "He came time enough to save my life, but he stayed long enough to endanger it." Richard received wounds enough to let out a hundred lives; his crown had been struck off at the beginning of the onset; and his armour was so broken, and his features were so defaced, that he was hardly to be recognised when dragged from beneath a heap of slain.
And can that stripped and mutilated corpse be the crowned monarch who at morning's rise led a gallant army to an assured victory, who had recently been described by Philip de Commines as holding the proudest position held by any King of England for a hundred years? Nothing places in a stronger light the depth of moral degradation and insensibility, fast verging towards barbarism, to which men's minds had been sunk by the multiplied butcheries of these terrible conflicts, than the indignities heaped upon the dead King, with the sanction, if not by the express orders, of his successor. The body, perfectly naked, with a rope round the neck, was flung across a horse, like the carcase of a calf, behind a pursuivant-at-arms, and was thus carried in triumph to Leicester. It was exposed two days in the Town-hall, and then buried without ceremony in the Gray Friars' Church. At the destruction of the religious houses, the remains were thrown out, and the coffin, which was of stone, was converted into a watering-trough at the White Horse Inn. The best intelligence that Mr. Hutton, who made a journey on purpose in 1758, could collect concerning it, was that it was broken up about the latter end of the reign of George I., and that some of the pieces had been placed as steps in the cellar of the inn. "To what base uses may we return!" The sign of the White Boar at Leicester, at which Richard slept, was forthwith converted into the Blue Boar; and the name of the street called after it has been corrupted into Blubber-lane.
Leicester and Richard III. are associated in traditional history, which the Corporation have handed down, with a newly-built bridge, in two inscriptions:—1. "This bridge was erected by the Corporation of Leicester, in the mayoralty of S. Viccars, Esq., a.d. 1862, on the site of the ancient Bow Bridge, over which King Richard III. passed, at the head of his army, to the battle of Bosworth Field, August, 1485. Joseph Whetstone, Chairman of Highway Committee; S. Stone, Town Clerk; E. S. Stephens, Borough Surveyor." The plate on the opposite side bears the legend in verse, according to Speed's History of Great Britain:—
"Upon this bridge [as tradition hath
Delivered] stood a stone of some height,
Against which King Richard, as he passed
Towards Bosworth, by chance struck his spur,
And against the same stone, as he was brought
Back, hanging by the horse's side, his head
Was dashed and broken, as a wise woman
[Forsooth] had foretold, who, before Richard's
Going to battle, being asked as to his success,
Said that where his spur struck, his head
Should be broken."
This is legendary evidence of Richard's belief in omens, in addition to that recorded at page [305].
Richard had a habit of gnawing his under lip, and a trick of playing with his dagger, which, although misconstrued into signs of an evil disposition, were, probably, mere outward manifestations of restlessness. Polydore Virgil speaks of his "horrible vigilance and celerity." It was the old story of the sword wearing out the scabbard; and the chances are, that he would not long have survived Bosworth Field had he come off unscathed and the conqueror.
"In the dreadful wars of York and Lancaster," writes Mr. Brooke,[73] "it is said that more than 10,000 Englishmen lost their lives; but that is merely the number believed to have been slain in battle; and, however repulsive it may be to our feelings, it must be admitted that it cannot include the numbers who must have perished during that disastrous period, in unimportant skirmishes, in marauding parties, in private warfare, by assassination, by the axe or by the halter, in pursuance of or under the colour of judicial sentences, or by open and undisguised murder. Besides this horrible sacrifice of human life, during this distracted period it is shocking to think what sufferings unprotected and helpless persons must have been exposed to, from the lawless partisans of the rival parties, when they passed through or were located near any district, which they chose to consider as favouring their antagonists. Pillage, cruelty, violence to women, incendiarism, and contempt of the laws and of religion, were the natural attendants upon a civil war, carried on with feelings of bitter hatred by each party; and it is certain that the examples of cruelty and wickedness which were openly set by the nobles and leaders of both factions would readily be copied by their followers. One of our ancient historical writers correctly states, that 'this conflict was in maner unnaturall, for in it the sonne fought against the father, the brother against the brother, the nephew against the uncle, the tenant against his lord.'"
It is well known that the Wars of the Roses had weakened to the last degree the great nobles—destroying many of the houses, and impoverishing all to such an extent that when Henry assumed the Crown he found himself in possession of nearly absolute power. Under his Plantagenet predecessors the great nobles had so much authority that at times they could defy the Crown, and an influential earl might be regarded as almost the rival of the Sovereign. The English barons were now reduced to comparative insignificance, and the descendants of men who in the bygone time might have aspired to the throne, and actually ruled as independent princes in their ample domains, were content to appear at Court and to swell the train of their Sovereign liege. The Wars of the Roses had in reality precipitated in England a change which was gradually approaching—the destruction of the feudal, and the rise of the municipal system. But the decay of the feudal system and the rise of the municipal produced consequences which are very important for their social and political bearings.[74]
Sad are the memories of these devastating wars, which are intertwined with many a legendary tale and fitful romance. Not the least curious of these records is the story that in a beautiful district of England, whilst the wars raged, there was discovered in the garden of Longleat Priory, in Wiltshire, a French rose-tree, covered on one side with white roses, and on the opposite with red; which, being known, attracted crowds of persons, who believed it to portend the speedy return of peace to their country, by the union of the rival powers. According to the same tradition, a short time afterwards, the tree bore roses of mixed petals, and there immediately followed the marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth, thus fulfilling the floral prediction by the friendship and union of the contending parties. The rose is thought to have been an early specimen of our "York and Lancaster;" a red-white—the colours of the two houses—hence its name; and although the account is probably but a fable, it has, like many others, found its way into history.
The tendency to embalm falsehoods is a part of the question of the worth of traditions, which is really worthy of a philosophical inquiry. The rib of the Dun cow and Guy's porridge-pot are still shown at Warwick Castle, though the one is the bone of a fossil elephant, and the other a military cooking vessel of the time of Charles I. Sir Samuel Meyrick scientifically classified and arranged the collection of armour in the Tower, but the Beefeaters stick to the old stories still. Richard the Third's bed in the neighbourhood of Bosworth, turns out to be Elizabethan;[75] Queen Mary's, at Holyrood, to be of the last century. Only the other day they sold off at Berkeley the bed of the murdered Edward as an undoubted anachronism and admitted imposture. Old chairs are as little to be trusted. Some persons have even doubted the famous Glastonbury specimen, but these are unduly cautious and sceptical. St. Crispin's chair in Linlithgow Cathedral is of excellent mahogany,—a wood which he could only have obtained by miracle previous to the discovery of America. Princes of Wales are not more fortunate in their traditions than the Popes themselves, for the Tower of Carnarvon, in which it is said that the first of them was born, was almost certainly built after he came into existence. The printing press will dispose of these false traditions in time, as it has already extinguished so many others, whether false or true.[76]
[CURIOSITIES OF HATFIELD.]
his noble seat has been incidentally noticed in the preceding pages.[77] Although the Princess Elizabeth was kept a prisoner at Hatfield, she occasionally went to London to pay her court to Queen Mary; and in 1556 she was invited to court, and proceeded thither with great parade. Elizabeth, however, preferred the quiet and pleasant scenery of Hatfield. The hall of the old palace now accommodates about thirty horses. The combination of old trees, the rich-coloured brickwork, and the curiously-wrought ironwork of the flower-garden gate, independent of its historical associations, forms a pleasing scene.
The noble park is eleven miles in circuit: here the new house, finished, in 1611, by Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, comes boldly to view. The river Lea passes through the park. Nor far from the house are a racket-court and riding-school, both large buildings: near here is an ancient oak of extraordinary size, called the "Lion oak," a venerable tree, which, although deprived of many branches, is still crowned by large masses of green foliage and numerous acorns, is upwards of thirty feet in circumference, and reputed a thousand years old.
A long and noble avenue of trees, with sunlight glistening on the grey mossy trunks and boughs, leads to the kitchen-garden. Here is an old oak, now much stunted, under which the Princess Elizabeth was sitting when the messengers brought to her the news of Queen Mary's death, and saluted her as Queen. With pomp, and amid great rejoicing, Queen Elizabeth progressed to London—a journey accomplished with much greater trouble three hundred years since than at present. Decayed parts of this historical oak, the "Lion oak," and some others, have been, from time to time, covered with cement; and this has not only had the effect of stopping the progress of destruction, but also been the means of producing both new wood and vegetation.
At the further end of the avenue just mentioned is a building of two or three centuries old, but which has been much disguised by alterations: it is now used as the gardener's lodge. Through this we reach the vineyard,—a curious example of the trim gardening of former days. From a terrace a bank descends by a deep gradient to the river Lea. On the upper portion of the terrace are yew-trees planted at intervals, and dressed into singular shapes; in other parts the yew-trees are so cut, that up to a considerable height they seem as straight and solid as a wall: openings are left here and there which lead to dark avenues, cunningly formed by the arching of the branches. From the centre a broad flight of steps, covered with turf, leads to the Lea. On the opposite side of the river, an opening has been made in the trees, which shows a picture that stretches away in long perspective. Descending the steps, and looking upward, the view is very striking, and we perceive that the design is intended to imitate a fortress, with its towers of defence, loopholes, and battlements,—in fact, vegetation is made to assume an architectural form, which has an extraordinary effect. The vineyard is admirably kept.[78]
"QUEEN ELIZABETH'S OAK," IN HATFIELD PARK.
Of the many fine ancestral mansions in England, Hatfield, the seat of the Marquis of Salisbury, is, perhaps, the most interesting for its historical documents, and other illustrations of English history. Here are preserved the forty-two articles of Edward VI., with the superscription of that pious Monarch; the first Council Book of Queen Mary; Cardinal Wolsey's Instructions to the Ambassador sent to the Pope by Henry VIII., with that eminent churchman's autograph; the original draft of the Proclamation Secretary Cecil used at the Accession of James I.; and a very amusing Pedigree of Queen Elizabeth, emblazoned (dated 1559), by which the ancestry of that Sovereign is exhibited as traced to Adam. Here also are several manuscript letters of Elizabeth, and the celebrated Cecil Papers; the cradle of Elizabeth, of oak, ornamented with carving, decidedly Elizabethan; also James I.'s purse, and the first pair of silk stockings introduced into England, worn by Queen Elizabeth.
In the long gallery of the mansion is a state chair, said to have been used by Queen Elizabeth; and in a black cabinet is preserved a hat with a broad circular brim, which, we are told, was worn by the Princess Elizabeth, when seated under the oak in the park just mentioned. This historical tree is inclosed by a dwarf fence. When Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Hatfield, in 1846, Her Majesty was much interested with this memorial oak; and, as a memento of her visit, had a small branch lopped from the tree.
In each bedchamber of the mansion are wardrobes and closets carved in the style of the reign of James I.; the carved mantelpieces are very large; some supported by massive pillars entwined with flowers, others supported by caryatides and figures. The bedsteads and much of the furniture are of the same date as the other fittings. King James's bed-room has the fittings, it is said, exactly as when the king last used them: the hangings, of deep crimson, are profusely ornamented with tassel-work and fringe; the quilted coverlid has wrought flowers in the centre, and at the top of the bed are a royal crown, and other ornaments. It should be mentioned that many of the rooms throughout Hatfield House are fitted with woods of different kinds, and are named, in consequence, "the Oak-room," "the Rose-room," "the Walnut-room," "the Elm-room," &c. The chapel and a suite of ten rooms completed by the present Marquis of Salisbury in the old baronial style, have panelling of various woods, some being of oak, walnut, ash, sycamore, &c.
Among the historical pictures at Hatfield is Zucchero's famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth:—She wears a robe embroidered with eyes and ears, a favourite device of hers to express her ubiquitous and sleepless intelligence; and not satisfied with the symbolic eyes and ears, she grasps a rainbow, with the motto, "Non sine sole Iris."
In the recent exhibition of National Portraits at South Kensington were nineteen portraits of Queen Elizabeth, wonderful examples of her fantastic and execrable taste. "It was a bad time for the arts of portraiture. The costume, in which the Queen led the taste of both sexes, and was a keen critic of it after her fashion, was over-laden, stiff, and unbecoming. The monstrous ruffs, high-shouldered leg-of-mutton sleeves, long-pointed stomachers, and broad-hipped Spanish fardingales of the women are not redeemed from deformity by all their wealth of lace, embroidery, pearls, and jewels; while the round hats of the men—their long-waisted doublets, their hose, wide-swelling at the thigh, and tight to the knee, would defy even a Titian to make them picturesque, in spite of silk and satin and velvet, lace and slashes, ropes of pearl, rich pendants, jewelled belts, and hatbands of goldsmiths' work. There never was a time when foppery ran so rampant, and the Queen was the worst of all in the bad taste and extravagance of her attire. Melville, the Scottish Ambassador, tells us how she had weeds of all countries, and would appear in a different one at every audience—how she talked to him of millinery and dress-making, hair and head tires, and seemed more anxious for his opinion on such matters than on affairs of State. We have her wardrobe books when she was 68, and find among her stores of finery, exclusive of 99 State dresses, Coronation, mourning, Parliament, and Garter robes, French gowns 102, round ditto 67, loose ditto 100, kirtles 126, foreparts 136, petticoats 125, cloaks 96, safeguards 13, jupes 43, doublets 85, lap mantles 18, fans 27, pantofles 9. And we may see among her 19 pictures here wonderful examples of her fantastic and execrable taste. The Hatfield Zucchero looks true, but, after all, it is to the Hampton Court picture of her at 16 that we turn with pleasure when she was still King Edward's 'sweet sister Temperance,' and the docile pupil of Roger Ascham in the pleasant shades of Ashridge, or Hatfield, and not that withered, gray old woman, her mind heavy with black and bloody memories, who sat on the cushions for ten days and nights, and for the last 24 hours silent, staring on the ground, with set tearless eyes, and her finger in her mouth."—Times journal.
In the collection at South Kensington, too, was the portrait of the man who brought the news of Mary's death to Elizabeth at Hatfield, one of her commanders in Scotland in 1547, and one of the many who supped once too often with my Lord of Leicester, and died in 1570, after eating figs at that table, where the wariest guests were careful only to taste the same dishes as my lord ate of.
Among the pictures, which are hung through the house, are the portraits of the great Lord Burghley, and his two sons; various portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary of England; and Queen Mary of Scotland, at the age of sixteen. Here are the Earl of Leicester of Elizabeth's reign; James I. and Charles I.; Philip of Spain: Van Tromp; the famous Charles of Sweden, and Peter the Great of Russia; various members of the Salisbury family; and the curious picture of Horselydown Fair, described at pp. [254-258]. In the Great Hall, which has a minstrels' gallery, ornamented with carvings of figures and animals, heraldry, &c. are a picture, life-size, of the white horse on which Queen Elizabeth rode at Tilbury Fort: and ten large paintings of Adam and Eve.
The Lady Elizabeth kept her state at Hatfield with no small cost and splendour. At a subsequent period, after her imprisonment at Woodstock, her Highness obtained permission to reside once more at Hatfield, under the guardianship of Sir Thomas Pope, who not only extended to her the kindest care and most respectful attention, but devised, at his own cost, sports and pastimes for her amusement. "The fetters in which he held her," says Agnes Strickland, "were more like flowery wreaths flung lightly around her, to attract her to a bower of royal pleasaunce, than aught which might remind her of the stern restraint by which she was surrounded during her incarceration in the Tower, and subsequent sojourn at Woodstock." Thus, we read of maskings in the Great Hall at Hatfield, banquets, and "the play of Holophernes," which Queen Mary misliked.
When Queen Mary visited her sister at Hatfield, Elizabeth adorned her great state chamber for Her Majesty's reception, with a sumptuous suite of tapestry, representing the Siege of Antioch, and had a play performed after supper, by the choir-boys of St. Paul's; at the conclusion of which one of the children sang, and was accompanied on the virginals by the Princess herself.
Hatfield, during Elizabeth's reign, remained vested in the crown. At her decease, however, her successor, King James, exchanged it with Sir Robert Cecil for the palace of Theobalds, and thenceforward Hatfield has continued uninterruptedly in the possession of the noble family of Salisbury. Sir Robert Cecil was styled by his royal mistress, Elizabeth, "the staff of her declining age," and was so highly esteemed by King James, that his Majesty created him successively Baron Cecil, Viscount Cranbourne, and Earl of Salisbury; conferred on him the blue riband of the Garter, and finally appointed him Lord High Treasurer of England. About this period, his lordship laid the foundations of the present mansion of Hatfield, which he finished in 1611, in a style of equal splendour with that of Burghley, which his father had erected in the preceding reign. The year after the completion of Hatfield, worn out by the cares of state the Earl of Salisbury died at Marlborough, in Wiltshire, on his way to London: he was interred in Hatfield Church, under a stately monument. How striking an example does the closing year of his life present! In his last illness, he was heard to say to Sir William Cope: "Ease and pleasure quake to hear of death; but my life, full of care and miseries, desireth to be dissolved."
He had some years previously (1603) addressed a letter to Sir James Harrington, the poet, in nearly the same querulous tone: "Good Knight," saith the minister, "rest content, and give heed to one that hath sorrowed in the bright lustre of a court, and gone heavily on even the best seeming fair ground. 'Tis a great task to prove one's honesty, and yet not mar one's fortune: you have tasted a little thereof in our blessed Queen's time, who was more than a woman, and, in truth, sometimes less than a woman. I wish I waited now in your presence-chamber, with ease at my food, and rest in my bed. I am pushed from the share of comfort, and know not where the winds and waves of a court will bear me. I know it bringeth little comfort on earth; and he is, I reckon, no wise man that looketh this way to heaven."
Hatfield is a very interesting seat, not only for its association with the past, but for its presenting, at this moment, a picture of the baronial life of two centuries and a half since. The Hall of the ancient Palace remains; the historic Oak is preserved; the vineyard was in existence when Charles I. was conveyed here a prisoner to the army, and its famous yew walk is left; and the deer are still numerous. The mansion has been restored to its pristine magnificence; the landscape gardening is fine. The noble owner of Hatfield has devoted a portion of his domains to the pastimes of the people; and on every occasion, whether it be the reception of royalty, or the entertainment of the toilers of the country, it is carried out in the generous spirit of olden English hospitality. And this princely place lies within a score of miles of the metropolis and its three million of people, who are brought almost to the park gates within an hour's railway journey.
[THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE.]
he most memorable sitting in Parliament, in the fourth year of King Charles the First, was that of the House of Commons, on March 2d, 1629, which was pronounced by Sir Simonds D'Ewes as "the most gloomy, sad, and dismal day for England that had happened for five hundred years."
The incidents of this day will be recollected by every one. Sir John Eliot is said, according to all accounts, to have made an indignant attack upon Lord Weston, the new Treasurer, and to have concluded by moving the adoption of a Remonstrance. The Speaker, Sir John Finch, declined to put the Remonstrance to the vote, and announced that he had received the King's command to adjourn the House until the 10th of March. The House paid little attention to the royal message, contending, first, that it was not the office of the Speaker to deliver any such command; and, secondly, that the power of adjournment belonged to the House, and not to the Crown. Regardless of these arguments, the Speaker prepared to obey the royal mandate. He rose and quitted the chair, when two members, Denzil Holles, son of the Earl of Clare, on the one side, and Benjamin Valentine, on the other side, stepped forward, and forced him back into his official seat. He appealed to the House with abundance of tears. Selden argued and remonstrated with him. Sir Peter Hayman disavowed him, we are told, "as a kinsman," and denounced him as a disgrace to a noble family. Again he endeavoured to quit the chair. Sir Thomas Edmondes, who was old enough to have been ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to Henry IV. of France—a man of small stature, but of great courage—with other privy councillors, pressed forward to the Speaker's help; but Holles violently held him in his chair, and swore, by what is termed Queen Elizabeth's oath, "God's wounds!" that he should sit still until it should please the House to rise.
In the midst of this uproar, Coriton and Winterton, two of the members, are said to have fallen to blows, numbers of the more timid fled out of the House, and the King, hearing of the tumult, sent to Edward Grimstone, the Serjeant-at-Arms, who was then within the House in attendance upon the Speaker, to bring away the mace, without which it was supposed that no legal meeting could be held. To defeat this object, the key of the door was taken from the Serjeant-at-Arms, and delivered to Sir Miles Hobart. Sir Miles stopped the egress of the Serjeant-at-Arms, and having taken from him the mace, quietly put him out of the House and locked the door. The mace was then replaced upon the table, and Holles, standing by the side of the Speaker, put to the House three resolutions, which were deemed to be voted by acclamation. The King is said to have sent, in the meantime, Mr. Maxwell, the Usher of the Black Rod, to summon the House to attend in the House of Lords, but Maxwell could gain neither hearing nor admission. Grown now, as is stated in Lord Verulam's manuscript, "into much rage and passion," the King sent for "the Captain of the Pensioners and Guard to force the door." Ere this officer could muster his stately band, the House had done its work. The resolutions had been passed, the Speaker had been released from the strong grasp of Denzil Holles, Sir Miles Hobart had unlocked the door, the excited members had been set free; and, for a period of eleven years, parliamentary discussion in England had come to an end.
Such is the narrative which was read by Mr. Bruce to the Society of Antiquaries, in 1859, upon his reading also a "True Relation" of the scene, in the handwriting of Lord Verulam, now in the manuscript collection at Gorhambury. Other MSS. of the proceedings of this Session are not uncommon, and many variations occur. Mr. Bruce has, in his paper, printed that portion of Lord Verulam's MS. which relates to the sitting of the 2d of March. Mr. Bruce, who has narrated the leading points according to Lord Verulam's MS., instead of Hayman's word, "kinsman," gives these words: "he was sorry he was a Kentish man, and that he was a disgrace to his country, and a blot to a noble family." Lord Verulam, too, gives Mr. Stroud's speech, not in other MSS.: he "tould the Speaker that he was the instrument to cutt off the libertie of the subject by the roote, and that if he would not be perswaded to put the same to question, they must all retorne as scattered sheepe, and a scorne put upon them as it was last session." This is important, since it explains more precisely than had hitherto been known, why he (Stroud) was prosecuted for his share in that day's transactions. On the other hand, Lord Verulam's MS. does not mention the Resolutions that were put to the House by Holles standing by the Speaker's chair. The concurrent testimony of a variety of authorities, however, forbids us to doubt that those Resolutions were really passed in the way described, and that in this respect Lord Verulam's MS. is defective.
[CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS.]
he word Cavalier was not at first necessarily a term of reproach. Shakspeare does not so employ it when he speaks of the gay and gallant English eager for French invasion—
"For who is he ... that will not follow
These cull'd and choice-drawn Cavaliers to France?"
But it was most unquestionably used in a reproachful sense on the occasion of the tumult in the reign of Charles I., probably to connect its French origin with the un-English character of the defenders of the Queen and her French papist adherents, to whom it was chiefly applied; it was likewise bandied about in declarations alternately issued on the eve of the war by the Parliament and the King, the latter speaking of it more than once as a word much in disfavour. Charles, when the battle of Edgehill had been fought, elaborately accuses his antagonists—"pretenders to peace and charity"—of a hateful attempt "to render all persons of honour, courage, and reputation, odious to the common people under the style of Cavaliers, insomuch as the highways and villages have not been safe for gentlemen to pass through without violence or affront." Even in the very earliest popular songs on the King's side, the word has not the place it afterwards assumed, and one meets with Royalist poets of a comparatively sober vein,—
"Who neither love for fashion nor for fear,
As far from Roundhead as from Cavalier."
D'Ewes's earliest uses of the word, in his MS. journal, occur under 10th January, and March 4th, 1641-2, and 3d June, 1642. In the first he is speaking of parties who had been suspiciously entering the Tower; in the second, of the Cavaliers at Whitehall who wounded the citizens; and in the last of the King's party in Yorkshire.
Of the word Roundhead, on the other hand, and the mixed fear and hatred it represented and provoked, decidedly the most characteristic example is furnished by the ever quaint and entertaining Bishop Hacket, who tells a story of a certain worthy and honest Vicar of Hampshire who always (in such a manner as to evade the notice of one section of his hearers while he secretly pleased the other) changed one verse in the last verse of the Te Deum—"O Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be a Roundhead!" William Lilly, however (Monarchy or no Monarchy in England, edit. 1651), referring to tumults of which he was an eye-witness, describes Puritans to have received the nickname as follows: "In the general, they were very honest men and well-meaning: some particular fools, or others, perhaps, now and then got in amongst them, greatly to the disadvantage of the more sober. They were modest in their apparel, but not in their language; they had the hair of their heads very few of them longer than their ears; whereupon, it came to pass that those who usually with their cries attended at Westminster (Whitehall), were by a nickname called Roundheads. The Courtiers again, having long hair and locks, and always swordes, at last were called by these men Cavaliers: and so, so few of the vulgar knowing the sense of the word Cavalier."—Notes to Forster's Arrest of the Five Members.
Swift, regarding Cavalier in the reproachful sense, says: "Each party grows proud of that appellation which their adversaries at first intended as a reproach: of this sort were the Guelfs, and Ghibelines, Huguenots, and Cavaliers."
Nevertheless, Cavalier was formerly an ordinary English term for a horse-soldier. Kersey gives it as "a Sword-gentleman, a brave Warrior."
Nares gives it: "Cavalero, or Cavalier. Literally a Knight; but, as the persons of chief fashion and gaiety were knights, any gallant was so distinguished. Hence it became a term for the officers of the Court party, in Charles I.'s wars, the gaiety of whose appearance was strikingly opposed to the austerity and sourness of the opposite order." Glossary, New Edit. 1859.
In the Roundhead accounts of the period are details of the contests and assaults that were continually made between the years 1648 and 1658 upon the Roundheads abroad, for at home the Cavaliers were too weak to indulge frequently in such manifestations of party feelings.
[THE EVELYNS AT WOTTON.]
t has been well observed of the Evelyn family, that "rarely do we read of people who so admirably combined a love of rural life with literature." Studious retirement, not isolation, was what John Evelyn sought; and nowhere did he so delightfully enjoy his tastes as at Wotton House or Place in Surrey. This "great Virtuoso," as Aubrey called him, has left us the following account of his family, and of their first settlement at Wotton:—"We have not been at Wotton (purchased of one Owen, a great rich man) above 160 years. My great grandfather came from Long Ditton (the seat now of Sir Edward Eveylin), where we had been long before; and to Long Ditton from Harrow-on-the-Hill; and many years before that, from Evelyn, near Tower Castle, Shropshire. There are of our name in France and Italy, written Ivelyn, Avelin: and in old deeds I find Avelyn, alias Evelyn. One of our name was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt. When the Duchess of Orleans came to Dover to see the King [Charles II.], one of our name (whose family derives itself from Lusignan, king of Cyprus) claimed relation to us. We have in our family a tradition of a great sum of money, that had been given for the ransom of a French lord, with which a great estate was purchased; but these things are all mystical."
Wotton House, placed in a valley south-west of Dorking, though really upon a part of Leith Hill, was first erected in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Here, on October 31, 1620, was born John Evelyn, "Sylva Evelyn," as he was called from the title of his valuable work on Forest-trees. When four years old, he was taught at the porch of Wotton Church. He then learnt Latin in a school at Lewes; whence his father proposed to send him to Eton, but he was terrified at the reported severity of the discipline there, and he was again sent to Lewes, which he "afterwards a thousand times deplored." In 1636 he was admitted to the Middle Temple; whence he removed to Balliol College, Oxford. He returned to London in 1640; but on the death of his father he relinquished all thoughts of legal practice.
Mr. Evelyn, thus become his own master, purposed a life of studious seclusion, and actually commenced making a kind of hermitage at Wotton, at that period the seat of his eldest brother. The park is watered by a winding stream, and is backed by a magnificent range of beech-woods: the goodly oaks were cut down by John Evelyn's grandfather, and birch has taken the place of beech in many cases; but we trace to this day Evelyn's hollies, "a viretum all the year round;" and the noble planting of the author of Sylva, who describes the house as "large and ancient, suitable to those hospitable times, and so sweetly environed with delicious streams and venerable woods. It has rising grounds, meadows, woods, and water in abundance.... I should speak much of the gardens, fountains, and groves that adorne it, were they not generally known to be amongst the most natural (until this later and universal luxury of the whole nation, since abounding in such expenses), the most magnificent that England afforded, and which, indeed, gave one of the first examples of that elegancy since so much in vogue, and followed in the managing of their waters, and other ornaments of that nature."
Evelyn, by whom, in his brother's lifetime, the chief improvements in these grounds were directed, thus speaks of their origin in his Diary, under the date 1643, after the disastrous contest had commenced between the King and the Parliament:—"Resolving to possess myself in some quiet, if it might be, in a time of so great jealousy, I built, by my brother's permission, a study, made a fish-pond, and an island, and some other solitudes and retirements at Wotton; which gave the first occasion to those water-works and gardens which afterwards succeeded them."
Further alterations were made in 1652, and are thus described:—"I went with my brother Evelyn to Wotton to give him what directions I was able about his garden, which he was now desirous to put into some forme; but for which he was to remove a mountaine overgrowne with huge trees and thicket, with a moate within ten yards of the house. This my brother immediately attempted, and that without greate coste; for more than a hundred yards south, by digging down the mountaine, and flinging it into a rapid streame, it not only carried away the sand, &c., but filled up the moate, and levelled that noble area, where now the garden and fountaine is."
In 1641, Evelyn, tired of this seclusion, made a tour in France and the Netherlands, in which he appears to have gathered from observation such knowledge of Gardening as led him into its systematic study. He describes the Tuileries as rarely contrived for privacy, shade, or company; and he specially describes a labyrinth of cypress, with an artificial echo, "redoubling the words distinctly, and never without some fair nymph singing to it." "Standing at one of the focuses, which is under a tree, or little cabinet of hedges, the voice seems to descend from the clouds; at another, as if it was underground." He tells us, too, of the curious garden of the Archbishop of Paris, at St. Cloud, with a Mount Parnassus, and a grotto, or "shell-house," on the top of the hill, the walls painted with the Muses, many statues placed about it, and within, "divers water-works, and contrivances to wet the spectators," reminding one of the famous copper-tube willow-tree at Chatsworth. Evelyn speaks of the Luxembourg Gardens as a paradise, where the Duke of Orleans kept tortoises in great numbers. The young traveller was charmed with the gardens of Italy; and at Padua he bought, for winter provision, three thousand weight of grapes, and pressed his own wine, which proved excellent.
Faithful to the Crown, Mr. Evelyn (who had become a volunteer in an English regiment serving in Flanders) joined the King's army at Brentford; but that he had not the temperament of a hero we may judge from the fact that, on the day before the battle of Edgehill was fought, after seeing Portsmouth delivered up to Sir William Waller, "he was able to make a careful archæological survey of the city of Winchester, calmly noting its castle, church, school, and King Arthur's Round Table." Knowing this characteristic trait, we are not surprised that he left his distracted country for the pleasures of foreign travel. On returning from Italy he visited Paris, and at the English Embassy met his future wife, the daughter of the Ambassador, Sir Richard Browne. He married her when she was little more than fourteen, and some months afterwards left her, as he admits, "still very young," under the appropriate care of her mother, whilst he transacted business in England. The Prince de Condé besieged Paris, and a year and a half elapsed before Evelyn rejoined his wife.
Upon their return to England, they took up their abode at Sayes Court, the property of Sir Richard Browne, whose estate had been considerably curtailed during the Commonwealth. It was wholly unadorned. Here, from a field of one hundred acres in pasture, Evelyn formed a garden, which was an exemplar of his Sylva, with a hedge of holly, 400 feet long, 9 feet high, and 5 feet thick. He began immediately to set out an oval garden, which was "the beginning of all the succeeding gardens, walks, groves, enclosures, and plantations there;" and he planted an orchard, "new moon, wind west." Evelyn next planned a royal garden to comprehend "knots, trayle-work, parterres, compartments, borders, banks, and embossments, labyrinths, dedals, cabinets, cradles, close-walks, galleries, pavilions, porticoes, lanterns, and other relievos of topiary and hortular architecture; fountains, cascades, piscines, rocks, grotts, cryptæ, mounts, precipices, and ventiducts; gazon-theatres, artificial echoes, automate and hydraulic music."
When Evelyn left Sayes to pass the remainder of his days at Wotton, he let the former estate, first to Admiral Benbow, and next to the Czar Peter, to be near the King's dockyard, (through the wall of which a doorway was broken), that he might learn shipbuilding, but the Czar and his retinue damaged the house and gardens to the extent of 150l. in three weeks. A portion of the Victualling-yard now occupies the place of Evelyn's shady walks and trim hedges; on the site of the manor-house stands the parish workhouse of Dieptford and Stroud; and an adjoining thoroughfare is named Evelyn-street.
Evelyn may have been misled in ornamental gardening by the taste of his age, but there was nothing to mislead him in that useful branch of the art which supplies the table with its luxuries, and which in his time received considerable improvement. Here we may mention that in 1664 Evelyn published the first Gardeners' Almanack, containing directions for the employment of each month. This was dedicated to Cowley, and drew from him, in acknowledgment, one of his best pieces, entitled The Garden; in the prefix to which he says:—"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them, and the study of nature."
In 1694, Mr. Evelyn went to Wotton, with his brother George. In 1696-7, he says:—"I am planting an evergreen grove here to an old house ready to drop." In the great storm of 1703, above 2,000 goodly oaks were blown down. The woods of Wotton have since suffered greatly from high winds, particularly in November 1837, when many hundred trees were laid low during a violent storm.
In his Sylva, Evelyn thus deplores the former devastation: "Methinks that I still hear, sure I am that I feel, the dismal groans of our forests, when that late dreadful Hurricane, happening on the 26th of November, 1703, subverted as many thousands of goodly Oaks, prostrating the trees, laying them in ghastly postures, like whole regiments fallen in battle by the sword of the conqueror, and crushing all that grew beneath them. Myself had 2,000 blown down; several of which, torn up by their fall, raised mounds of earth, near 20 feet high, with great stones intangled among the roots and rubbish, and this almost within sight of my dwelling;—now no more Wotton [Wood-town], stripped and naked, and almost ashamed to own its name."
In the Diary, the same calamity is thus noticed: "The effects of the Hurricane and tempest of wind, rain, and lightning thro' all the nation, especially London, were very dismal. Many houses demolished, and people killed. As to my own losses, the submersion of woods and timber, both ornamental and valuable, through my whole estate, and about my house, the woods crowning the garden mount, and growing along the Park meadow, the damage to my own dwelling, farms, and outhouses, is almost tragical, not to be parallel'd with anything happening in our age. I am not able to describe it, but submit to the pleasure of Almighty God."
Notwithstanding these losses, Evelyn's brother would not depart from the œconomy and hospitality of the old house, but, "more veterum, kept a Christmas in which they had not fewer than 300 bumpkins every holiday."
We find recorded among the Curiosities of the place, an oaken plank "of prodigious amplitude," cut out of a tree which grew on this estate, and was felled by Evelyn's grandfather's orders. Its dimensions, when "made a pastry-board" at Wotton, were more than five feet in breadth, nine feet and a half in length, and six inches in thickness; and it had been "abated by one foot," to suit it to the size of the room wherein it was placed.
Upon the death of his brother, in 1699, without any surviving male issue, John Evelyn became possessor of the paternal estates. Wotton House, built of fine red brick, has been enlarged by various members of the Evelyn family. Hence the absence of uniformity in the plan of the house, and within our recollection it has parted with many of its olden features. The apartments are, however, convenient, and realize the comforts of an English gentleman's proper house and home. An etching by John Evelyn shows the mansion in 1653.
Through the valley at Wotton winds a rivulet which was formerly of much importance. Evelyn, in a letter to Aubrey, dated 8th of February, 1675, says that "on the stream near his house formerly stood many powder-mills, erected by his ancestors, who were the very first that brought that invention into England; before which we had all our powder from Flanders." He gives an account of one of these mills blowing up, which broke a beam, fifteen inches in diameter, at Wotton Place; and states that one standing lower down towards Sheire, on blowing up, "shot a piece of timber through a cottage, which took off a poor woman's head, as she was spinning." Besides these mills, were brass, fulling, and hammering mills.
The Evelyns possess much land in the adjoining parish of Abinger; and the seat of the Scarletts, Abinger Hall, gave the title to Lord Chief Baron Scarlett. Originally, it was a small dwelling at the foot of the Downs, belonging to the Dibble family, of whom it was purchased in the reign of George II. by Catherine Forbes, Countess of Donegal, who was the daughter of Arthur, Earl of Granard, and had the honour of being complimented by Dean Swift, in the following lines:—
"Unerring Heaven, with bounteous hand,
Has form'd a Model for your Land,
Whom Love bestow'd, with every grace,
The glory of the Granard race;
Now destined by the powers Divine
The blessing of another Line.
Then, would you paint a matchless Dame,
Whom you'd consign to endless fame,
Invoke not Cytherea's aid,
Nor borrow from the Blue-eyed Maid,
Nor need you on the Graces call;
Take qualities from Donegal."
Abinger Church is of considerable antiquity, and has a higher site than any other church in the county: indeed, Aubrey conjectures the parish to be named from Abin, an eminence, or rising ground. The church was carefully restored in 1857. The west end is of the Norman period; the nave Early English; the altar has sedilia, and formerly had a piscina; and on the north side is a chancel belonging to the Wotton estate, and restored at the expense of Mr. Evelyn: here is a small organ. The altar-window of three lights has been filled with painted glass by O'Connor, a very meritorious work. In the churchyard in a vault are interred Lord Chief Baron Abinger, and his first wife: to the latter there is a marble monument on the inner wall of the chancel. His Lordship married secondly the widow of the Rev. Henry John Ridley, a descendant of Bishop Ridley, the Protestant martyr; and among the relics of that devout churchman which descended to Lady Abinger, was the chair in which the Bishop used to study.
On the east side of the churchyard is a small green, on which are stocks and a whipping-post; but these, to the honour of the parish, are believed never to have been used.
There was a Mill at Abinger at the time of the Domesday Survey; and it is not improbable that the present corn and flour mill, at a short distance from the road, may occupy the same site. To return to Wotton House.
The interior of the old place, with its oddly-planned rooms, its quaint carvings, its pictures, more especially the portraits of the Evelyn family, is a most enjoyable nook. The author of Sylva, by Kneller, will be recognised as the original of the engraved frontispiece to Evelyn's Diary, by economy of printing now become a household book. Among the Wotton relics, of special historic interest, are the Prayer-book used by Charles I. on the scaffold; a pinch of the powder laid by Guido Fawkes and his fellow-conspirators to blow up the Parliament; a curious account, in John Evelyn's hand, of the mode in which the Chancellor Clarendon transacted business with his royal master; several letters of John Evelyn, and his account (recently found) of the expense of his building Milton House, which occupied four years: the house remains to this day. The library of printed books and pamphlets is curious and extensive. Evelyn was a most laborious annotator, never employing an amanuensis: among his MSS. is a Bible in three volumes, the margins filled with closely-written notes.
John Evelyn died at his house (called the Head) in Dover-street, Piccadilly, Feb. 27, 1705-6. His remains were interred in Wotton Church: his lady surviving him until 1708-9; when, dying, in her seventy-fourth year, she was buried near him in the chancel. It was Evelyn's wish to have been interred in the Laurel Grove, planted by him at Wotton: this wish was expressed in his Will: "otherwise," he says, "let my grave be in the Corner of the Dormitory of my Ancestors." This was done; and in digging the new Vault was found "an entire skeleton, of gigantick stature."
In all the characters of child, wife, mother, and mistress, Mrs. Evelyn, quiet and unassuming as she was, shone forth pre-eminently. Her trials were many and heavy; her heart was torn with the death of child after child, some in infancy, some in ripe age when they had grown to be the pride and stay of their parents. All died, one by one, out of that numerous progeny, till only a daughter, Mrs. Draper, was left, and the bereaved pair were alone in their old age in the wide old mansion at Wotton. Nothing can exceed the touching pathos of those few words in Mrs. Evelyn's will, where, after desiring that her coffin might be placed near to that of her dear husband, whose death preceded hers by three years, she adds:—"Whose love and friendship I was happy in, fifty-eight years nine months; but by God's providence left a desolate widow, the 27th day of February, 1705, in the seventy-first year of my age."
Mrs. Evelyn had acquired the more polished manners of French society without losing her naturally simple tastes. That she cannot have formed a favourable opinion of English refinement we know from the contrast which her husband draws between the two countries in his Characters of England, written when they returned from the Continent.
Mrs. Evelyn was an experienced housewife, and had a special eye "to the care of cakes, stilling, and sweetmeats, and such useful things." "The hospitality of Sayes Court, which was accepted by royalty and extended to savans, divines, and men of letters, was not withheld from the country neighbours at Deptford." Certainly, her own words depict her practice, for she considered "the care of children's education, observing a husband's commands, assisting the sick, relieving the poor, and being serviceable to her friends, of sufficient weight to employ the most improved capacities." That Mrs. Evelyn had close insight into character and great nicety of judgment, we learn from her contemporaries, as also that her "great discernment and wit" were never abused. Ever sedate and kindly, she bore a succession of family bereavements with Christian resignation.
At Wotton, many curious memorials remain. Adjacent to the house are the conservatory, flower-garden, the former stored with curious exotic and native plants and flowers, and the latter embellished with a fountain, a temple, or colonnade, and an elevated turfed mount, cut into terraces; and here, enclosed within a brick wall, is all that remains of Evelyn's flower-garden, which was to have formed one of the principal objects in his "Elysium Britannicum." His Diary is well known; and his Sylva is a beautiful and enduring memorial of his amusements, his occupations, and his studies, his private happiness and his public virtues. Many millions of timber-trees have been propagated and planted at the instigation and by the sole direction of that book—one of the few books in the world which completely effected what it was designed to do. While Britain [says D'Israeli the elder] retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the Sylva of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was an author in his studious retreat, who, casting a prophetic eye on the age we live in, secured the late victories of our naval sovereignty. Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been constructed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.
Persons who are familiar with the picturesque environs of Dorking will remember Milton House, which was built at Evelyn's expense. It is now called Milton Court, and is about a mile west of the town. It is of red brick, and has a grand staircase with massive supports and balusters, a great hall, and many noble rooms. The house was let some years since in tenements to poor families. It has since been restored and furnished in the style of the period. Its history has a literary interest. For nearly a quarter of a century it was the abode of Jeremiah Markland, a model critic "for modesty, candour, literary honesty, and courteousness to other scholars." He will be remembered as one of the eminent Grecians of Christ's Hospital. He lived in bachelorship at Milton Court, among his books; or, as his pupil, Strode, tells us, "In 1752, being grown old, and having, moreover, long and painful fits of the gout, he was glad to find, what his inclination and infirmities, which made him unfit for the world and company, had for a long time led him to—a very private place of retirement, near Dorking, in Surrey." In this sequestered spot Markland saw little company: his walks were almost confined to the garden at the back of the house; and he described himself, in 1755, to be "as much out of the way of hearing as of getting." We have more than once enjoyed the elysium of the old scholar's garden. But troubles came to disturb his peace. Markland had not the rambling old house to himself. His landlady, the widow Rose, got into a lawsuit with her son, when Jeremiah distressed himself to aid the widow in the suit, which she lost; and after that Markland spent his whole fortune in relieving the distresses of the Rose family. This led him to accept an annuity from his former pupil, Strode. Markland died at Milton Court in 1776, in his eighty-third year; and Strode placed a brass plate in the chancel of Dorking Church in memory of the learning and virtue of Markland. He left his books and papers to Dr. Heberden. The story of old Jeremiah's charity is very naïve:—"Poor as I am," said he, "I would rather have pawned the coat on my back than have left the afflicted good woman and her children to starve,"—an episode of charity and friendship which has its sweet uses.
There are two ancient objects at Milton. The water-mill, adjoining the green, is believed to be that mentioned in the survey of the manor, in Domesday book; and on Milton-heath, upon an elevated spot, is a Tumulus, now distinguished by a clump of firs; and near it is War-field. The name of the adjoining estate, Bury Hill, makes us, as Miss Hawkins observes, "seek, in our walks, the very footmarks of the Roman soldier."
[LORD BOLINGBROKE AT BATTERSEA.]
his parish and manor, three miles south-west of London, on the Surrey bank of the Thames, appertained, from a very early period, to the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster; and is conjectured, by Lysons, to have been therefrom named, in the Conqueror's Survey, Patricsey, which, in the Saxon, is Peter's water, or river; since written Battrichsey, Battersey, and Battersea. It passed to the Crown, at the dissolution of religious houses: in 1627 it was granted to the St. John family, in whose possession the property remained till 1763.
Here, in a spacious mansion, eastward of the church, was born, October 1, 1678, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, one of the brilliant lights of the Augustan age of literature in England. Here Pope spent most of his time with Bolingbroke, after the return of the latter from his seven years' exile;[79] and his house became also the resort of Swift, Arbuthnot, Thomson, Mallet, and other leading contemporary men of genius. Lord Marchmont was living with Lord Bolingbroke, at Battersea, when he discovered that Mr. Allen, of Bath, had printed 500 copies of the Essay on a Patriot King from the copy which Bolingbroke had presented to Pope—six copies only were printed. Thereupon, Lord Marchmont sent Mr. Gravenkop for the whole cargo, who carried them out in a waggon, and the books were burnt on the lawn in the presence of Lord Bolingbroke. Thenceforth he mostly resided at Battersea from 1742 until his death in 1751. He sunk under the dreadful malady beneath which he had long lingered—a cancer in the face—which he bore with exemplary fortitude; "a fortitude," says Lord Brougham, "drawn from the natural resources of his mind, and, unhappily, not aided by the consolation of any religion; for having early cast off the belief in revelation, he had substituted in its stead a dark and gloomy naturalism, which even rejected those glimmerings of hope as to futurity not untasted by the wiser of the heathens."
Bolingbroke, with his second wife, niece of Madame de Maintenon, lie in the family vault in St. Mary's Church, where there is an elegant monument by Roubiliac, with busts of the great lord and his lady; the epitaphs on both were written by Lord Bolingbroke: that upon himself is still extant, in his own handwriting, in the British Museum: "Here lies Henry St. John, in the reign of Queen Anne Secretary of State, and Viscount Bolingbroke; in the days of King George I. and King George II., something more and better."
The greater part of Bolingbroke House was taken down in 1778. In the wing of the mansion, left standing, a parlour of round form, and lined with cedar, was long pointed out as the apartment in which Pope composed his Essay on Man; it is said to have been called "Pope's Parlour." The walls may still be seen, but they support a new roof, and can only be distinguished from the rest of the building by their circular form. The mansion was very extensive—forty rooms on a floor.
Upon part of the site was erected a horizontal mill, by Captain Hooper, who also built a similar one at Margate. It consisted of a circular wheel, with large boards or vanes fixed parallel to its axis, and arranged at equal distances from each other. Upon these vanes the wind could act, so as to blow the wheel round. But if it were to act upon the vanes at both sides of the wheel at once, it could not, of course, turn it round; hence one side of the wheel must be sheltered, while the other was submitted to the full action of the wind. For this purpose it was enclosed in a large cylindrical framework, with doors or shutters on all sides, to open and admit the wind, or to shut and stop it. If all the shutters on one side were open, whilst all those on the opposite side were closed, the wind acting with undiminished force on the vanes at one side, whilst the opposite vanes are under shelter, turned the mill round; but whenever the wind changed, the disposition of the blinds must be altered, to admit the wind to strike upon the vanes of the wheel in the direction of a tangent to the circle in which they moved.—(Dr. Paris's Philosophy in Sport.) This mill resembled a gigantic packing-case, which gave rise to an odd story, that when the Emperor of Russia was in England, in 1814, he took a fancy to Battersea Church, and determined to carry it off to Russia, and had this large packing-case made for it; but as the inhabitants refused to let the church be carried away, the case remained on the spot where it was deposited.
This horizontal air-mill served as a landmark for many miles round: the proprietor was Mr. Hodgson, a maltster and distiller. It was visited by Sir Richard Phillips in his Morning's Walk from London to Kew, in 1813, who says: "The mill, its elevated shaft, its vanes, and weather or wind-boards, curious as they would have been on any other site, lost their interest on premises once the residence of the illustrious Bolingbroke, and the resort of the philosophers of his day. In ascending the winding flights of its tottering galleries, I could not help wondering at the caprice of events which had converted the dwelling of Bolingbroke into a malting-house and a mill. This house, once sacred to philosophy and poetry, long sanctified by the residence of the noblest genius of his age, honoured by the frequent visits of Pope, and the birthplace of the immortal Essay on Man, is now appropriated to the lowest uses. The house of Bolingbroke become a windmill! The spot on which the Essay on Man was concocted and produced, converted into a distillery of pernicious spirits! Such are the lessons of time! Such are the means by which an eternal agency sets at nought the ephemeral importance of man! But yesterday, this spot was the resort, the hope, and the seat of enjoyment of Bolingbroke, Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Monson, Mallet, and all the contemporary genius of England—yet a few whirls of the earth round the sun, the change of a figure in the date of the year, and the group have vanished; while I behold hogs and horses, malt-bags and barrels, stills and machinery!
"'Alas!' said I to the occupier, 'and have these things become the representatives of more human genius than England may ever witness on one spot again—have you thus satirised the transitory state of humanity—do you thus become a party with the bigoted enemies of that philosophy which was personified in a Bolingbroke or a Pope?' 'No,' he rejoined, 'I love the name and character of Bolingbroke, and I preserve the house as well as I can with religious veneration: I often smoke my pipe in Mr. Pope's parlour, and think of him with due respect as I walk the part of the terrace opposite his room.' He then conducted me to this interesting parlour, which is of brown polished oak,[80] with a grate and ornaments of the age of George the First; and before its window stood the portion of the terrace upon which the malt-house had not encroached, with the Thames moving majestically under its walls.
"'In this room,' I exclaimed, 'the Essay on Man was probably planned, discussed, and written!' Mr. Hodgson assured me this had always been called 'Pope's Room,' and he had no doubt it was the apartment usually occupied by that great poet, in his visits to his friend Bolingbroke. Other parts of the original house remain, and are occupied and kept in good order. He told me, however, that this was but a wing of the mansion, which extended, in Lord Bolingbroke's time, to the churchyard, and is now appropriated to the malting-house and its warehouses."
Sir Richard met with an ancient inhabitant of Battersea, a Mrs. Gilliard, a pleasant and intelligent woman, who well remembered Lord Bolingbroke; that he used to ride out every day in his chariot, and had a black patch on his cheek, with a large wart over his eyebrow. She was then but a girl, but she was taught to look upon him with veneration as a great man. As, however, he spent little in the place, and gave little away, he was not much regarded by the people of Battersea. Sir Richard mentioned to her the names of several of Lord Bolingbroke's contemporaries, but she recollected none, except that of Mallet, whom she said she had often seen walking about in the village while he was visiting at Bolingbroke House.[81]
In the first volume of the Diaries and Correspondence of the Right Hon. George Rose, we find the following entry respecting the treachery of Mallet:—"It appears by a letter of Lord Bolingbroke's, dated in 1740, from Angeville, that he had actually written some Essays dedicated to the Earl of Marchmont, of a very different tendency from his former works. These Essays, on his death, fell into the hands of Mr. Mallet, his executor, who had, at the latter end of his life, acquired a decided influence over him, and they did not appear among his lordship's works published by Mallet;[82] nor have they been seen or heard of since. From whence it must be naturally conjectured, that they were destroyed by the latter, from what reason cannot now be known; possibly, to conceal from the world the change, such as it was, in his lordship's sentiments in the latter end of his life, to avoid the discredit to his former works. In which respect he might have been influenced either by a regard for the noble Viscount's consistency, or by a desire not to impair the pecuniary advantage he expected from the publication of his lordship's works."
Upon this, the Editor of the Diaries, the Rev. Leveson Vernon Harcourt, notes: "The letter to Lord Marchmont here referred to, has a note appended to it by Sir George Rose, the editor of the Marchmont Papers, who takes a very different view of its contents from his father. He gravely remarks, that as the posthumous disclosure of Lord Bolingbroke's inveterate hostility to Christianity lays open to the view the bitterness as the extent of it, so the manner of that disclosure precludes any doubt of the earnestness of his desire to give the utmost efficiency and publicity to that hostility, as soon as it could safely be done; that is, as soon as death could shield him against responsibility to man. Sir George saw plainly enough that when he promised in those Essays to vindicate religion against divinity and God against man, he was retracting all that he had occasionally said in favour of Christianity; he was upholding the religion of Theism against the doctrines of the Bible, and the God of nature against the revelation of God to man."
It is painful to reflect upon this prostration of a splendid intellect; and we are but slightly relieved by Lord Chesterfield's statement, in one of his Letters, published by Lord Mahon, in his edition of Chesterfield's Works (ii. 450), that "Bolingbroke only doubted, and by no means rejected, a future state." We know that Bolingbroke denied to Pope his disbelief of the moral attributes of God, of which Pope told his friends with great joy. How ungrateful a return for this "excessive friendliness" was the indignation which Bolingbroke expressed at the priest having attended Pope in his last moments![83]
It is now, we believe, admitted on all hands that Christianity has not found a very formidable opponent in Bolingbroke, and that his objections, for the most part, only betray his own half-learning. Lord Brougham, whose touching remark we have already quoted, concludes his sketch of Lord Bolingbroke with this eloquent summing up: "Such was Bolingbroke, and as such he must be regarded by impartial posterity, after the violence of party has long subsided, and the view is no more intercepted either by the rancour of political enmity, or by the partiality of adherents, or by the fondness of friendship. Such, too, is Bolingbroke when the gloss of trivial accomplishments is worn off by time, and the lustre of genius itself has faded beside the simple, translucent light of virtue. The contemplation is not without its uses. The glare of talents and success is apt to obscure defects, which are incomparably more mischievous than any intellectual powers can be either useful or admirable. Nor can a lasting renown—a renown that alone deserves to be courted of a rational being—ever be built upon any foundations save those which are laid in an honest heart and a firm purpose, both conspiring to work out the good of mankind. That renown will be as imperishable as it is pure."[84]
Among the memorials of the Bolingbrokes, in Battersea Church, is the altar-window, filled with old stained glass, preserved from the former church, and executed at the expense of the St. Johns. It includes portraits of Henry VII., his grandmother, the Lady Margaret Beauchamp, and Queen Elizabeth; together with numerous shields of arms, showing the alliances of the family.
York House, at Battersea, the mansion of Booth, Archbishop of York, who died in 1480, and bequeathed it to his successors in the See, was mostly taken down some sixty years ago. Archbishop Holgate was one of the few prelates who resided here; he was imprisoned and deprived by Queen Mary for being a married man, and lost much property by illegal seizure. In Strype's Life of Cranmer, p. 308, it is stated that the officers who were employed to apprehend the Archbishop rifled his house at Battersea, and took away from thence 300l. of gold coin; 1600 ounces of plate; a mitre of fine gold, set with very fine diamonds, sapphires, and balists, other good stones and pearls; some very valuable rings; and the Archbishop's seal and signet.
There was long a tradition at Battersea that some ancient walls remaining there were a portion of the residence of the father of Queen Anne Boleyn. It appears from the monument to Queen Elizabeth, in Battersea Church, that the Boleyns were related to the St. Johns. Upon this Sir Richard Phillips contends that at York House, above named, resided Wolsey, as Archbishop of York. "Here Henry VIII. first saw Anne Boleyn; and here that scene took place which Shakspeare records in his play of Henry VIII.; and which he described truly, because he wrote it for Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, within fifty years of the event, and must himself have known living witnesses of its verity. Hence it becomes more than probable, that Sir Thomas Boleyn actually resided in the vicinity, and that his daughter was accidentally among the guests at that princely entertainment. I know it is contended that this interview took place at York House, Whitehall; but Shakspeare makes the King come by water; and York House, Battersea, was, beyond all doubt, a residence of Wolsey, and is provided with a creek from the Thames, for the evident purpose of facilitating in the course by water. Besides, the owner informed me, that a few years since he had pulled down a superb room, called 'the ball-room,' the panels of which were curiously painted, and the divisions silvered. He also stated that the room had a dome and a richly-ornamented ceiling, and that he once saw an ancient print, representing the first interview of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, in which the room was portrayed exactly like the one that, in modernizing his house, he had found it necessary to destroy."
[THE LAST OF EPPING FOREST.]
n the twelfth edition of The Ambulator, edited nearly half a century ago by that trustworthy topographer, Mr. E. W. Brayley, under "Epping Forest," we read "a plan for the inclosure of the Forest has been recently projected." And this plan has been slowly but surely put into execution; the inclosures having been so numerous that little remains of this charming forest district, with its verdant glades, secluded dells, thickets, majestic oaks, and sinking vistas of enchanting wilderness and cheerful landscape, to gladden the hearts of the toilers in the vast metropolis.
The Forest remains where it was. Brayley describes it as a royal chase, extending from Epping almost to London, anciently a very extensive district; and, under the name of the Forest of Essex, including a great part of the county. It had afterwards the name of Waltham Forest, which it long since yielded to its present appellation. To this Forest, that of Hainault, which lies to the south-east, was once, it is supposed, an appendage: it was formerly styled "the Queen's Forest," and it possesses more beautiful scenery than, perhaps, any other forest in England. The Crown possesses the whole of the rights over Hainault, and the encroachments are not nearly so numerous here as in Epping Forest, where the Crown has only certain rights—the right of vert and venison. The loss of the picturesque features of wild expanse of woodlands, heath, and mosses; of vast masses of umbrageous tree-tops, and little patches of cultivation—here and there a little town, sending up its fleecy smoke amidst the forest boughs—must excite concern amongst all who take interest in the amusements of the people. How truthfully has the isolated picture of forest life been sung:
"From age to age no tumult did arouse
The peaceful dwellers; there they lived and died,
Passing a dreamy life, diversified
By nought of novelty, save now and then
A horn, resounding through the forest glen,
Woke them as from a trance, and led them out
To catch a brief glimpse of the hunt's wild rout—
The music of the hounds; the tramp and rush
Of steeds and men;—and then a sudden hush
Left round the eager listeners; the deep mood
Of awful, dead, and twilight solitude,
Fallen again upon that forest vast."
The Forest remains where and as it was, save that invasions on the waste, and encroachments, have from time to time greatly restricted its extent; not so the city, for that has advanced, and meets the old liberty at half-way. Now the metropolis reaches to Bow, or nearly to Stratford, where the Forest commences; and there the road divides, one branch leading northward to Chigwell, the other eastward to Romford. In extent it reaches five miles from Ilford on the south, nearly to Abridge on the north, by four miles from Woodford-bridge on the west, to Havering-at-Bower on the east. Were the whole area of this scope one continuous chase, there would be some 12,000 acres; but from the numberless excisions from, and appropriations of the liberty, the contents of the whole do not at present amount to 4,000 acres.
It appears that an Act of Parliament was passed (the 14th and 15th Vict.) for the disafforesting and inclosure of Hainault Forest; that on the 24th August, 1851, a commission was formed for the purpose: and summary execution was done upon 14,000 oak-trees, which had stood unmolested for centuries. This was preliminary to the utter clearance, parcelling out, and selling off of the whole domain.[85]
The signal advantage of Epping Forest over all other open spaces is that in it alone thousands can at the same time enjoy the country in its natural aspect in that privacy without which the country, as such, is no enjoyment at all. That the inhabitants of London highly appreciate this advantage is shown by the fact that thousands every fine day in the year pass by the Parks that are provided for them near their own doors, and travel weary miles to reach the fragment of the Forest that is left to them.
The case of Epping Forest is matter of dispute. There is an opinion entertained by persons whose opinions command respect that the lords of the several manors included within the precincts of Epping Forest are entitled to call for an inclosure of the portions of the Forest in which they are respectively interested, whenever they please; and that the Crown is not justified, on the ground of public advantage, in setting up its rights as an impediment to such inclosure.
The case as between the lords of the manor, the Crown, and the public appears to be this:—The Forest comprises the wastes of certain manors, over which, from time immemorial, the lords of these manors had the accustomed rights of pasturage; the Crown had the forestal right of keeping deer in them, and for that purpose of keeping them uninclosed: and the general public had the common right of going upon them as uninclosed land. The lords of the manor are in the actual enjoyment of all the rights of property they ever had in the Forest, but they desire to acquire a species of property in it which has never hitherto belonged to them, and which is inconsistent with other existing rights. The right of the public to go upon the Forest land while it is in its present open condition has become one of transcendent importance; and the real question presented to the Crown is whether it shall cede its rights for the benefit of half-a-dozen persons who desire to acquire a valuable property to which they have no present title, or maintain them for the benefit of the large proportion of the British people who live in London and its vicinity. In short, it appears that the rights of the Crown and the public have not been maintained in Epping Forest, because the Government would not incur the expense of litigation.
To show how persons sometimes defeat the cause which they advocate, it may be mentioned that at a meeting held at the Bald-faced Stag, Buckhurst-hill, upon this Forest question, several speakers expatiated at great length on the injustice of excluding the working classes of the east end of London from the rural enjoyments of the Forest, owing to the inclosures made by the lords of the manor and other parties. It was, however, shown at the meeting that two gentlemen of the Committee had inclosed a very large portion of the Forest, parts that are the most picturesque and that were most resorted to by the London holiday folks; but, alas! no more Forest remains in the once sylvan neighbourhood of Buckhurst-hill.
The reduction of Epping Forest began in the reign of King John, and was confirmed by Edward IV., when all that part of the Forest which lay to the north of the highway from Stortford to Colchester (very distant from the present boundaries) was disafforested. The Forest was further reduced; but the metes and bounds of it were finally determined in 1640. The office of Chief Forester for Essex was deemed highly honorary, and was generally bestowed on some illustrious person. The stewardship was also usually enjoyed by one of the nobility. It continued in the De Veres, Earls of Oxford, for many generations; but was taken from them by Edward IV., for their adherence to the Lancastrian party. On the accession of Henry VII., it was restored by grant to John, Earl of Oxford. The steward had the power to substitute a lieutenant, one riding-forester, and three yeoman-foresters, in the three bailiwicks of the Forest. He also had many lucrative privileges, and was Keeper of Havering-at-Bower, and of the house and park trees.
We remember, many years since, to have visited the Forest for the sake of inspecting the house known as Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, which stands about a mile west of the main road to Epping; and the most direct road to which, in the heart of the Forest, we found to be from about midway between the Bald-faced Stag Inn and the village of Loughton. The view from this point is of surpassing beauty and extent; whilst it is no wide stretch of conjecture to set down the ancient forest as nearly covering the entire county. The towns, villages, and seats which now stud the district, and the roads which intersect the woody waste, may have been the work of a few centuries; inns and lodges would be among the earliest buildings for retainers, whose business it was to defend and preserve this royal chase, for the privilege of hunting here was confined to the Sovereign and his favourites. Again, those who flocked thither, with such privilege, would well repay the hospitalities of an inn, and "hosteller," even were we to leave out of the reckoning the boon companionship of foresters, and the debauched habits of marauders, who fattened by the infringement of the royal privilege, in wholesale deer-stealing for the London markets. We were told that in Epping churchyard is the tombstone of a follower, whose business it was to convey venison to the metropolis, but who, in one of his midnight returns, was shot by an unknown hand; the almost headless body being found on the road next morning.
The Lodge stands in the parish of Chingford,[86] about one mile from the village, and thus served the purpose of a manor-house, the courts being held here. Chingford Hall, the actual manor-house, is situated a short distance hence; but Mr. Lysons thinks it probable that the site of the ancient manor-house was that of the present Lodge. The manor was purchased in or about 1666, by Thomas Boothby, Esq., from whose family it descended by marriage to the Heathcotes. The Lodge consists of the main building, a basement, and two floors,—and a building abutting upon it, chiefly occupied by the spacious staircase. The exterior has little of the air of antiquity comparatively with the interior. The basement is principally the kitchen, where the large projecting chimney, the olden fire-dogs, and cheerful wood fire, reminded us of "the rural life," if they carried us not back to
"Great Eliza's golden time."
The staircase is of surprising solidity: its width is about six feet; it is divided by six landings, with four stairs between each, and each stair or step consists of a solid oak sill. The first floor contains two chambers, one hung with tapestry in fine preservation, and the chimney opening has a flattened arch. The height of the first floor and basement has been sacrificed to the story above, which entirely consists of a large room, or hall, entered from the staircase by a low, wide doorway. The dimensions of the hall we take to be twenty-four feet wide, and forty-two feet high; its height reaches to the open roof, the tiles of which are merely hidden by rough plaster; and the sides of the room consist of massive timbers, filled in with plaster, and originally lit with four windows. The roof-tree, we should add, is supported by timbers which spring into two pointed arches, and render it probable that the original roof was of a different form as well as material from the present one. In this apartment were held the manorial courts; and on the plain plaster walls hung three large-sized whole length portraits of one of the Boothbys (lords of the manor), in infancy, accompanied by his brother, in boyhood, and in manhood. The timbers of the staircase sides and roof are massive, and spring into arched frames; and all the doorways in the building have flattened arches.
Tradition reports the Lodge to have been a favourite hunting-seat of Queen Elizabeth. It was occupied, at the time of our visit, by the bailiff of the manor, who had lived there twenty years, and his father occupied the Lodge half a century before him. To the tradition was added, that Elizabeth was accustomed to ride upstairs on horseback, and alight at the door of the large room, upon a raised place, which is to this day called the horse-block. We confess the story savours of the marvellous; but the width and solidity, and many landings of the staircase, are in its favour; and, not many years previously, a wager of ten pounds was won by a sporting gentleman riding an untrained pony up the assigned route of the chivalrous Queen.
There are circumstances related which render it more than probable that the Lodge was fitted up for the reception of Elizabeth. That the Queen was extremely fond of the chase, and hunted at an advanced age, is a well-established fact. That she hunted in Epping Forest is nearly ascertained; for the Earl of Leicester once owned Nakedhall Hawke, or old Wansted House, in the neighbourhood: it is mentioned in a document of Richard II., and seems to have been the manorial residence. Here, in May 1578, Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth four or five days, and one of the rooms in the mansion was called the Queen's. Again, in this mansion was solemnized Leicester's marriage with the Countess of Essex, Sept. 20, 1578, the Queen being then on a visit to Mr. Stonard, at Loughton, in the Forest; and old Wansted House is introduced in the background of a picture of Queen Elizabeth, in the collection at Welbeck.
Of the Queen's hunting the hart in Enfield Chase we have this circumstantial record. Twelve ladies in white satin attended her on their ambling palfreys, and twenty yeomen clad in green. At the entrance to the forest she was met by fifty archers in scarlet boots and yellow caps, armed with gilded bows; one of whom presented to her a silver-headed arrow winged with peacock's feathers. The splendid show concluded, according to the established laws of the chase, by the offering of the knife to the Princess, as first lady on the field; and her taking say of the buck with her own fair and royal hand.
In addition to the Hunting Lodge, we found other memorials of the age of Elizabeth in the neighbourhood. Thus, the hill, or point, when we left the main road to cross the Forest to the Lodge, is to this day remembered as Buckhurst-hill, as may be reasonably supposed, from Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, the accomplished poet, and favoured flower of Elizabeth's court.
In conclusion, the Londoners have lost the Epping Hunt, and the "Common Hunt" no longer goes out; and the old Pumpmaker's Fair, which originated in a wayzgoose of beans and bacon, is no longer held around the oak of Fairlop; but let us not lose the Forest itself; else, of what service is our railway gain?