The noted John Cooke of Exeter.
The noted John Cooke of Exeter.
“DRAWN FROM NATURE.”
To the Editor.
Corporations in old times kept fools, and there are still traces of the custom. The antiquary admires the carving of a fool, “a motley fool,” at the porchway of the King John tavern at Exeter, and contemplates it as probably the faithful representation of an obsolete servant of that ancient city; while the traveller endeavours to obtain a sight of the “noted Captain Cooke, all alive! alive!”—the most public, and not the least important officer of its lively corporation.
A tract, published without a title-page, yet symbolically, as it were, bearing a sort of half-head, whereby it is denominated “A Pamphlet called Old England for Ever!” is the production of captain Cooke himself; and a lithographed print represents that “noted” personage “drawn from nature,” in his full costume, as “Captain of the Sheriffs troop at 74 assizes for the county of Devon.” An [engraving] from the print is at the head of this article; the original is “published by George Rowe, 38, Paris-street, Exeter,” price only a shilling. The present representation is merely to give the reader some notion of the person of the captain, previously to introducing so much of his “particular confession, life, character, and behaviour,” as can be extracted from his aforesaid printed narrative.
The tract referred to, though denominated “Old England for Ever,” seems intended to memorialize “Captain Cooke—for ever.” Aspiring to eclipse the celebrated autobiography of “P. P. Clerk of this Parish,” the captain calls his literary production “a pamphlet of patriotic home achievements during the late direful war from 1793 to 1815;” and, accordingly, it is a series, to adopt his own words, of “twenty-two years multifarious but abridged memoirs, novelties, anecdotes, genealogy, and bulletins, by the author’s natural instinct.”
The first most important information resulting from the captain’s “natural instinct,” is this:—that “the duke of Wellington, marshal Blucher, the allied officers, and armies, defeated the atheist, the enemy of the Sabbath and of peace to the world, on Sunday, 18th of June 1815, at half after eight o’clock in the evening:” which day the captain, therefore, calls “an indelible day;” and says, “I built a cottage that year, and have a tablet over my door—Waterloo Cottage, in memory of Europe’s victory, Sunday, 18th June, 1815; and I went to Wellington-hill to see the foundation-stone laid for a Wellington column, in honour of the duke. So much for Buonaparte’s fanfaronade!—At daybreak of the 15th of July, he (Buonaparte) surrendered himself to the English captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon—an appropo name to the refugee.—I was called up the next morning at one o’clock; I wrote twenty letters to country gentlemen of the O!-be-joyful news, by the same morning’ post. I have been often called up on express news.”
From hence may be deduced the value of the captain and his opinions in the city of Exeter; and, no doubt, due importance will be attached to his proposition, that “parliament should always meet of a Friday or Saturday, and prorogue of a Monday, to prevent sabbath-breaking as little as possible;” and that “the mails should be prohibited from blowing their horns in the dead of the night or morning, in towns or villages.” It was contemplated to carry these measures into effect by joint stock companies, wherein all the captain’s friends were shareholders, when the “panic” came down from London by an opposition coach, and destroyed public confidence in the captain’s plans. They are noticed here in the order wherein he states them himself; and, pursuing the like order, it is proper to state, in the first place, something of the house wherein this self-eminent person was born; then, something respecting “Ashburton Pop;” and, lastly, something respecting his apprenticeship, and his services as a loyal man and a saddler to “the city of Exeter, and the corporation and trade thereof.”
“I was born,” says the captain, “at the Rose and Crown public-house on the old bridge, in the borough town of Ashburton, 1765; where a good woollen-manufactory has been carried on; and it has produced a great character, or so, for learning:” and “has been as famous for a beverage, called Ashburton Pop, as London is for porter. I recollect its sharp feeding good taste, far richer than the best small beer, more of the champaign taste, and what was termed a good sharp bottle. When you untied and hand-drew the cork, it gave a report louder than a pop-gun, to which I attribute its name; its contents would fly up to the ceiling; if you did not mind to keep the mouth of the stone bottle into the white quart cup, it filled it with froth, but not over a pint of clear liquor. Three old cronies would sit an afternoon six hours, smoke and drink a dozen bottles, their reckoning but eight-pence each, and a penny for tobacco. The pop was but twopence a bottle. It is a great novel loss to the town; because its recipe died with its brewer about 1785.”
From the never-enough-sufficiently to be lamented and for-ever-departed “Pop,” the captain returns to himself. “My mother,” says he, “put me apprentice at fifteen to the head saddler in Exeter, the late Mr. Charter, whom I succeeded when I came of age, and have lived in the same house thirty-seven years, up to 1817, where my son now lives, under the firm of Cooke and Son.” He evidently takes great pleasure in setting forth the names of his customers; and he especially relates, “I got to be saddler, through the late Charles Fanshawe, recorder of Exeter, to the late lord Elliott Heathfield, colonel of dragoons. His lordship was allowed to be one of the first judges of horses and definer of saddlery in the kingdom; his lordship’s saddle-house consisted from the full bristed to the demy pick, shafto, Hanoverian, to the Dutch pad-saddles; and from the snaffle, Pelham, Weymouth, Pembroke, Elliott, Mameluke, and Chifney bridles. Chifney was groom to the prince regent. Besides all this, the vast manage horse-tackling, tomies, dumb-jockies, hobbles, lunging, lifting, and side reins. His lordship’s saddle and riding-house was a school for a saddler and dragoon. And I had the honour of being saddler to other colonels of dragoons, connoisseurs of saddlery, when they were at Exeter quarters.”
Here the captain’s enthusiasm increases: “I could write,” says he, “a treatise on all the parts of the bearings and the utility of all the kinds of saddles, bridles, stirrups, and harness-collars, made for the last thirty years, for the benefit of horse or rider; from the bullock-back horse to the finest withered.” With just judgment, while on the saddle, the captain expatiates on the mode of riding to the best advantage. “As is said, keep your head cool, feet warm, and live temperate, and you won’t need the doctor, without something is amiss; so let your saddle clear your finger with all your weight in the stirrups going down hill; the same on the hind part with all your weight on the seat going up hill; you won’t need the saddler without something is amiss.” A miss is as good as a mile, and the captain diverges to a “great mystery,” which must be related in his own words:—
“The great mystery to know a horse’s age is between five and eight years old. A horse may live to thirty; but not one out of a thousand but what are worked out of their lives at fifteen. From their sucking first teeth, they loose, and get their permanent teeth at five years old; at six they have a small pit-hole, a bean’s eye, a cavity in two of their outer lower teeth; at seven they have this mark but in one, the outside tooth; at eight years old the teeth are all filled up; then the mark is out of the mouth. But dealers and judges look to the upper teeth; there is a mark to twelve years old, but no vestige afterward. An old horse has long large teeth, worn off on the top edge. The prime of a horse is between six and twelve years of age. He is weak and faint before six, and stiff and dull after twelve. Some say a horse is out of mark at seven; but it is at eight. The average age of horses is at twelve years—the average of man not at the half of his time appointed on earth!”
To a posey of poesy, occupying nearly a page in this part of the pamphlet, it is impossible to do justice with equal satisfaction to the reader and the captain; yet, in courtesy, it is proper to cull
——————— a twig,
Or two, to stick about his wig.
As a specimen of the materials whereon he relies for a laurel crown, the following lines are drawn out from his “snarl” of versifyings:—
As few began the world, so I multiplied.
Plain, at twenty-one, I did begin
Which in my manuscript was seen.
Tho’ I did not know the use of grammar,
I was well supported by my hammer.
I sticked to my King, leather, and tools;
And, for order, wrote a set of shop rules.
Working with the hands only is but part,
The head’s the essential to make the work smart.
After this poetical effusion the captain rises to “the height of his great argument,” his undying doings. “Now,” says the captain, “now for my sixty home achievements during the late war for my king and country.” Alas! the captain seems to have disdained the “use of numbers,” except when inspired by the muses, or the “sweet voices” of the people of Exeter, when they honoured him with a “Skimmington,” which he passes over with a modesty equal to that of the Roman general who never mentioned his great ovation. The captain’s “sixty achievements” are doubtless in his pamphlet; but they in “wrong order go,” and are past the arithmetician’s art to enumerate. The chief of them must be gathered from his own account. Foremost stands “the labour I took in pleasing and accommodating my customers;” and almost next, “the many hours I have knocked my head, as it were, against Samuel Johnson, to find words for handbills and advertisements all at my own expense, to avoid inflammatory pamphlets. I gloried in the name of ‘John Bull,’ and shall to my life’s end. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter, and treated with mugs round, and gave loyal toasts and sentiments. I became a volunteer in the infantry, before the cavalry were equipped by my brother tradesmen, that they should not say my loyalty was for trade. After this, I joined the second troop of the first Devon Royal Cavalry. One of my advertisements in the difficult times, at a guinea each, in the Exeter, Sherborne, and Sun, which was then the ministerial paper, was reprinted for its loyalty and novelty in Philadelphia, and in two miscellaneous volumes of Literary Leisure, by Solomon Sumpter, Esq.; and from the attention I paid to the nobility, gentry, dragoon and militia officers, &c. when they tarried at Exeter or its neighbourhood, it was a pleasure and an honour mixed with fatigue. Besides my own business, I procured for them, gratis, manors, estates, houses, lodgings, carriages, horses, servants, fish, fowl, hunting, shooting, and trout fishing. I may say John Cooke, the saddler of Exeter, is known from England to the Indies; on the Continent, Ireland, in Scotland, by the lord chief baron Dundas, from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Penzance. I had two direction-posts at my door during the war, that no one had in the kingdom beside; one to the various places and distances, from Exeter to London 170 miles, &c. &c.; the other a large sheet of paper written as a daily monitor gratis, a bulletin of news, to cheer people in the worst of times, to guide them in the constitutional road. I even made myself a direction-post, and wore a conspicuous breastplate painted with this motto, ‘Fear God, honour the king, and revere his ministers;’ which made not only the auditory, but the judges, sheriff, and counsel stare at me. I went from Exeter to London, to the funeral of lord Nelson, the late hero of the Nile, in 1805.” The truth of the latter of the captain’s achievements “nobody can deny.” He did go to the funeral, and sat on a wall in solemn silence, fast asleep, while it passed, and then returned to Exeter, great as the great Bourbon, who
———————— with forty thousand men,
Went up the hill, and then came down again.
From hence the captain diverges to other of his achievements. “I used to rise, before we had firemen, at the dead of night or morning with my apprentices at any alarm of fire, desiring all women, children, and lookers on, if they did not help they were of harm, being in the way. I put in my bulletins, you are to take the left of all you meet in riding, and the right in walking. I was the means of the watering cart to lay the dust of the streets in summer. I have subscribed to all the institutions at Exeter, and at rejoicings of news I was not behindhand. When I saw the allied sovereigns in London, I compared colonel Hain of the North Devon, if he wore mustachios, to marshal Blucher, who came forward to his window at signals; Mr. Chubb, of St. Thomas, Exeter, and Mr. Gribble, attornies, of Newton Bushel, to the emperor Alexander in face; the king of Prussia and his sons like healthy English country esquires in their best clothes. I saw the duke of Wellington, who looked thinner than his picture. I saw Buonaparte at Torbay, exact like his picture; a huge stiff broad back, strong neck, big calf to his legs, he looked about fifty, and about five feet eight, resembling a country master builder, a sturdy one, full of thought as about a building.—I end this pamphlet. Four words: thought is the quickest; time the wisest; the laws of necessity the strongest; truth the most durable.
“This from a Devonshire Jog-trot, who has done enough to be termed a public character in his way; a John Bull tradesman.
“John Cooke.”
“Waterloo Cottage,
18th Feb. 1819.”
So end the achievements of the chief of the javelin-men of Exeter, written by himself, concerning whom, give me leave, Mr. Editor, to inquire, if there be any thing more to be told than is set down in his book. I think that captain Cooke’s “Skimmington” took place after he favoured the public with appearing in print; and I remember to have heard that the procession was highly ludicrous, and honoured by every shop in the High-street of Exeter being closed, and every window above being filled. I may venture to affirm in behalf of your readers, that an account of it would be highly amusing; and if it be agreeable to your inclination, as I think it may, that such a narrative of the recent celebration of a very ancient custom should be permanently recorded, do me the favour to let me express an earnest hope that some of your Exeter readers will enable you to give particulars in the Table Book.
I. V.
[Communications respecting the ceremony referred to in the preceding letter will be very acceptable, and are therefore solicited.—Editor.]
Garrick Plays.
No. XXXIV.
[From the “Antipodes,” further extracts: see [No. XX]]
A Doctor humours his patient, who is crazed with reading lying books of travels, by pretending that he himself has been a great traveller in his time.
Peregrine, the patient. Doctor. Lady.
Peregrine. All the world over have you been?
Doctor. Over and under too.
Per. In the Antipodes?
Doct. Yes, through and through.
Nor isle nor angle in the other world
But I have made discovery of. Do you
Think, Sir, to the Antipodes such a journey?
Per. I think there’s none beyond it, and that Mandevil
Was the only man came near it.
Doct. Mandevil went far.
Per. Beyond all English legs that I can read of.
Doct. What think you, Sir, of Drake, our famous countryman?
Per. Drake was a Didapper to Mandevil.
Candish and Hawkins, Frobisher, all our voyagers
Went short of Mandevil: but had he reach’d
To this place—here—yes here—this wilderness;
And seen the trees of the sun and moon, that speak,
And told King Alexander of his death;
He then
Had left a passage ope for travellers,
That now is kept and guarded by wild beasts;
Dragons and serpents, elephants white and blue;
Unicorns and lions, of many colours;
And monsters more, as numberless as nameless.
Doct. Stay there—
Per. Read here else: can you read?
Is it not true?
Doct. No truer, than I have seen it
You hear me not deny that all is true,
That Mandevil delivers of his travels;
Yet I myself may be as well believed.
Per. Since you speak reverently of him, say on.
Doct. Of Europe I’ll not speak, ’tis too near home;
Who’s not familiar with the Spanish garb,
Th’ Italian cringe, French shrug, and German hug?
Nor will I trouble you with my observations
Fetch’d from Arabia, Paphlagonia,
Mesopotamia, Mauritania,
Syria, Thessalia, Persia, India;
All still is too near home: tho’ I have touch’d
The clouds upon the Pyrenean mountains;
And been on Paphos hill, where I have kiss’d
The image of bright Venus; all is still
Too near home to be boasted. They sound
In a far traveller’s ear,
Like the reports of those, that beggingly
Have put out on returns from Edinburgh,
Paris, or Venice; or perhaps Madrid,
Whither a Millaner may with half a nose
Smell out his way; and is not near so difficult,
As for some man in debt, and unprotected,
To walk from Charing Cross to the Old Exchange.
No, I will pitch no neare than the Antipodes;
That which is furthest distant; foot to foot
Against our region.
Lady. What, with their heels upwards?
Bless us, how ’scape they breaking of their necks?
Doct. They walk upon firm earth, as we do here;
And have the firmament over their heads,
As we have here.
Lady. And yet just under us!
Where is Hell then? if they, whose feet are toward us
At the lower part of the world, have Heaven too
Beyond their heads, where’s Hell?
Doct. You may find that
Without enquiry.
Scene, at the Antipodes.
N.B. In the Antipodes, every thing goes contrary to our manners: wives rule their husbands; servants govern their masters; old men go to school again, &c.
Son. Servant. Gentleman, and Lady, natives. English Traveller.
Servant (to his young Master.) How well you saw
Your father to school to day, knowing how apt
He is to play the truant!
Son. But is he not
Yet gone to school?
Servant. Stand by, and you shall see.
Enter three old men with satchels.
All three. (singing) Domine, domine, duster:
Three knaves in a cluster.
Son. O this is gallant pastime. Nay, come on.
Is this your school? was that your lesson, ha?
1st old man. Pray now, good son, indeed, indeed—
Son. Indeed
You shall to school. Away with him; and take
Their wagships with him, the whole cluster of ’em.
2d old man. You sha’nt send us now, so you sha’nt—
3d old man. We be none of your father, so we be’nt—
Son. Away with ’em, I say; and tell their school mistress
What truants they are, and bid her pay ’em soundly.
All three. Oh, oh, oh!
Lady. Alas! will nobody beg pardon for
The poor old boys?
English Traveller. Do men of such fair years here go to school?
Gentleman. They would die dunces else.
These were great scholars in their youth; but when
Age grows upon men here, their learning wastes.
And so decays, that if they live until
Threescore, their sons send them to school again;
They’d die as speechless else as new-born children.
English Traveller. Tis a wise nation; and the piety
Of the young men most rare and commendable.
Yet give me, as a stranger, leave to beg
Their liberty this day.
Son. Tis granted.
Hold up your heads, and thank the gentleman,
Like scholars, with your heels now.
All three. Gratias, gratias, gratias. (exeunt singing.)
[From the “Asparagus Garden,” a Comedy, by the same Author, 1634.]
Private Conference.
Father-in-Law. You’ll not assault me in my own house, nor urge me beyond my patience with your borrowing attempts.
Spendthrift Knight. I have not used the word of loan or borrowing;
Only some private conference I requested.
Fath. Private conference! a new-coined word for borrowing of money. I tell you, your very face, your countenance, tho’ it be glossed with knighthood, looks so borrowingly, that the best words you give me are as dreadful as Stand and Deliver.—Your riotousness abroad, and her long night-watchings at home, shortened my daughter’s days, and cast her into her grave; and ’twas not long before all her estate was buried too.
Spend. I wish my life might have excused
Her’s far more precious; never had a man
A juster cause to mourn.
Fath. Nor mourn’d more justly, it is your only wearing; you have just none other; nor have had any means to purchase better any time these seven years, I take it; by which means you have got the name of the Mourning Knight.
Timothy Hoyden, the Yeoman’s Son, desires to be made a Gentleman. He consults with his friends.
Moneylack. Well, Sir, we will take the speediest course with you.
Hoyd. But must I bleed?
Mon. Yes, you must bleed; your father’s blood must out.
He was but a Yeoman, was he?
Hoyd. As rank a Clown (none dispraised) as any in Somersetshire.
Mon. His foul rank blood of bacon and pease porritch
Must out of you to the last dram—
Springe. Fear nothing, Sir. Your blood shall be taken out by degrees; and your veins replenished with pure blood still, as you lose the puddle.
Hoyd. I was bewitch’d, I think, before I was begot, to have a Clown to my father. Yet my mother said she was a Gentlewoman.
Spr. Said! what will not women say?
Mon. Be content, Sir; here’s half a labour saved: you shall bleed but of one side. The Mother vein shall not be pricked.
Old Striker, after a quarrelling bout with old Touchwood.
Touchwood. I have put him into these fits this forty years, and hope to choke him at last, (aside; and exit.)
Striker. Huh, huh, huh! so he is gone, the villain’s gone in hopes that he has killed me, when my comfort is he has recovered me. I was heart-sick with a conceit, which lay so mingled with my flegm, that I had perished if I had not broke it, and made me spit it out; hem, he is gone, and I’ll home merrily. I would not he should know the good he has done me for half my estate; nor would I be at peace with him to save it all. I would not lose his hatred for all the good neighbourhood of the parish.
His malice works upon me
Past all the drugs and all the Doctors’ counsels,
That e’er I coped with; he has been my vexation
E’er since my wife died; if the rascal knew it,
He would be friends, and I were instantly
But a dead man; I could not get another
To anger me so handsomely.
C. L.