Isle of Wight

by A. R. Hope Moncrieff

All that variety of soil and surface is packed together into a roughly rhomboidal shape, 23 miles long by 13 or 14 miles at the broadest, about the size of Greater London, or say 1/36000 part of the habitable globe. Within its circumference of 60 miles or so, this space of some 96,000 square acres holds a population of 82,000, beside innumerable transient visitors. A pundit of figures has taken the trouble to calculate that all the population of the world could find standing room in the Island on the foot of four to the square yard, if the human race agreed on spending a Bank Holiday here; but then little room might be left for donkey-rides or switch-back railways. While we are on the head of statistics, it may be mentioned that several scores of guide-books to the Isle of Wight have been published, from Sir Henry Englefield’s noble folio to the small brochures issued by hotels, these works containing on an average 206,732 words, mostly superfluous in many cases; that 810,427 picture post-cards or thereabouts pass annually through the post-offices of the island; that, in ordinary seasons, it sits to 1723 cameras; that the hotel-bills annually paid in it would, if tacked together, reach from St Petersburg to Yokohama, or if pasted over one another, make a pile as high as the new War Office; and that 11.059 per cent. of the newly married couples of Brixton, Balham, Upper Tooting, etc., are in each year estimated to spend at least part of their honeymoon here, who come back to confirm a prevailing belief that in no other part of the British Isles does the moon shine so sweetly; while, indeed, a not quite clearly ascertained proportion of them live to assert that the scenery of the Island and the happiness of the marriage state have alike been more or less overrated. I give these figures for what they are worth, along with the unquestioned fact that the Isle of Wight belongs, in a manner, to the county of Hants, but has a County Council of its own, and in general maintains a very insular attitude of independence, modelled on the proud bearing of Great Britain towards mere continental countries.

Facts and figures somewhat fail one who comes to lecture on the original population of this Island. The opinion fondly held in a certain section of “smart” society, that the lawn of the Squadron at Cowes represents the Garden of Eden, seems to rest upon no critical authority; indeed Adam and Eve, as owners of no yacht, would not be qualified for admission to this select enclosure. With some confidence we may state that the Island was first peopled by aborigines enjoying no protection against kidnappers and conquerors, who themselves found it difficult in the long run to blackball undesirable aliens, as Australia and New Zealand try to do under the protection of fleets steaming forth from the Solent. There are well-marked indications of invasion by a Belgic tribe from the mainland, to make this a “free” state, as early prelude to King Leopold’s civilisation of the Congo. But we may pass lightly over the Celtic period, with place-names and pit-dwellings as its records, to come into clearer historic light with Vespasian’s conquest in A.D. 43.

For more than three centuries, with apparently one episode of revolt, the Romans held Vectis, as they called it; and it has been maintained, though this goes not unquestioned, that here was their Ictis port, at which they shipped the tin drawn from the mines of Cornwall. If so, the island described by Diodorus Siculus was then an island only at high water. The clearest marks left by Rome are the remains of villas unearthed at different points, at least one of which indicates a tenant of luxurious habits and tastes. We can understand how Italian exiles might prefer this station to one in the bleak wilds of Derbyshire or Northumberland, as an Anglo-Indian official of to-day thinks himself lucky to have his compound at Poona or Bangalore, if not at Mahableshwar or Simla. The Brading villa, indeed, like those of Bignor in Sussex and Brough in Norfolk, seems rather to have been the settled home of a rich nobleman, Roman or Romanised British, who had perhaps strong opinions as to the way in which Rome neglected the wishes and interests of her colonies. These remains were unearthed only in living memory, so that writers of a century ago ignore such traces of Roman occupation.

Next came northern pirates, who would be not so much interested in the mild climate of the Island, as in the creeks and landing-places of its shores. They, too, have left relics of their occupation, chiefly in the graves furnished with utensils and ornaments of heathen life. But when Jutes and Saxons had destroyed the Roman civilisation, they fell under another influence spread from the Mediterranean. Bishop Wilfred of Selsey has the credit of planting, or replanting, Christianity in the Island. It could hardly have taken deep root, when the Danes came to ravage the monastic settlements. For a time the Cross and the Raven must have struggled for mastery here like the encountering tides of Solent, till that new wave of invaders ebbed back or was absorbed into the old one; then again the Island became overflowed by a fresh storm of conquest. If we consider from how many races, in three continents, the Roman soldiery were drawn, and how the northmen must have mixed their blood with that of a miscellany of captives, it is clear that, when overrun by a fresh cross-breed between Gauls and Vikings, the population of our islands, large and small, could in many parts have been no very pure stock, such as is fondly imagined by the pride of modern Pan-Celticism and Anglo-Saxondom.

In Norman England, the Wight soon emerges into note. King William visited it to seize his ambitious brother Odo at Carisbrooke. The fortress there was enlarged by William Fitz-Osborne, to whom the Island had been granted, and who salved his conscience for any high-handed acts of conquest by giving six churches to the Norman Abbey of Lira, the beginning of a close connection with that continental foundation. His son lost this lordship through treason; then for two centuries it was in the hands of the Redvers, Earls of Devon, who grew to be quasi-independent princes. The last of their line was Isabella de Fortibus, holding her head high as Lady of the Island till on her deathbed, her children being dead, she sold her rights to Edward I. for 6000 marks.

Henceforth this dependency was governed for the crown through lieutenants at first known as Wardens, an office held by great names like Edward III. in his childhood, the Earl of Salisbury, the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, Anthony Woodvile, Earl of Rivers; and in such hands more than once showing a tendency to become hereditary. Their post was no sinecure, for at this period the Island made a striking point for French raids that have left their mark on its towns. Not that the raiding was all on one side. The islanders long remembered ruefully how Sir Edward Woodvile led the flower of their manhood into France, when of more than four hundred fighters only one boy escaped to tell the tale of their destruction, that seems to have been wrought by French artillery, turning the tables on the English long-bow.

The weak Henry VI. had crowned young Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, as “King of the Isle of Wight.” Politic Henry VII., for his part, saw well to restrain the power and dignity of those Island deputies, now styled Captains. In the Tudor time, three Captains came to note, Sir Richard Worsley as carrying out the reformation policy of Henry VIII., Sir Edward Horsey, as a doughty soldier of fortune, who is said to have begun his career with a plot to betray the Island to the French, but on coming into this office kept a sharp eye both on foreign enemies and on his private interests, doing a bit of piracy for his own hand, if all stories be true; then Sir George Carey, who had the anxious task of defence against the Spanish Armada. When that peril went to pieces, the Island at last began to enjoy a period of secure prosperity, testified to by the fact that most of its old houses, mansion or cottage, appear to date from Elizabeth or James. Yet so late as 1627, soon after the captaincy of Lord Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, it got a scare from a Dutch fleet, taken for Spaniards.

New confusion came with the Civil War, in which the Wight people were mostly on the parliament’s side, while the leading gentry stood for the king. The best-known episode of the Island’s history is Charles I.’s imprisonment at Carisbrooke, which may be passed over here to be dealt with more fully in loco. The Isle of Wight might well back up the parliament; as then and till the Reform Bill it sent six members, an over-representation now reduced to one, and formerly, indeed, apt to be qualified by official interference with freedom of election.

In Charles II.’s “golden age of the coward, the bigot and the slave,” the governorship of the Island was given to Lord Colepeper, who made himself obnoxious here, and got a wider field of domination in Virginia, where also he seems to have been unbeloved. His huge colonial grants passed by marriage of his daughter to Lord Fairfax, whose eldest son settled on his American property, said to extend over five million acres, giving up the English estates to his younger brother. This was clearly hint for Thackeray’s story of the Virginian Warringtons. Only the other day the heir of this family, America’s sole peer, became naturalised afresh in England, after his title had been laid up in lavender, or tobacco, for several generations. Another personage in The Virginians, General Webb, held the governorship of the Island for a few years. But now the Captains, or Governors as they came to be styled, had little to do which could not be done by deputy, while the post was worth holding by men of high rank, as by the Dukes of Bolton and Montague under George II., when its salary was £1500 a year.

Under them the Island was happy enough to have little history, though it had again to be on its guard when Dutch admirals talked of sweeping the English ships from the Channel. It saw William’s fleet sail by on the way to Torbay; and two years later it seemed about to have from its southern cliffs the spectacle of a hundred French sail engaging the English and Dutch squadrons; but the scene of that encounter was shifted to Beachy Head, where it ended in a manner not much dwelt upon in our naval annals. Then the long struggle with Napoleon once more turned this outpost of England into a camp. In the peaceful days that followed, the governorship became a mere ceremonial function. The title, held by Prince Henry of Battenberg, was passed on to his widow, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, whose death at Osborne makes the last date in this Island chronicle.