Apart, however, from its literary associations, Jack Straw’s Castle has a romantic history. It is generally agreed that its name is derived from that of the notorious peasant leader of the rising in the reign of Richard II. And this may be so in spite of the fact that its present designation is not older than the middle of the eighteenth century.
The Peasants’ Revolt took place in 1381, and we are told that it is more than likely that the Hampstead villeins took part in the famous march to London. One authority says that “the St. Albans men, in their advance to join Jack Straw at his headquarters at Highbury, might or might not have passed through Hampstead. If a contingent of adherents was ready to join them at Hampstead, they probably took the village into their route, especially as it would give them particular pleasure to make an offensive demonstration against the Knights Hospitallers, who had a temple there and were the objects of bitter hatred. The attack of the mob upon the house of the Knights Hospitallers at Highbury is a well-known incident of the rising. Whether they visited Hampstead or not, they passed at no great distance from it—near enough to bring the Hampstead villeins within their influence. May it not be that the events of these few days provided the reason for the local name of Jack Straw’s Castle? The mere fact of there being Hampstead sympathisers with Jack Straw who held their meetings at a certain house would be sufficient excuse to gain that house the title of Jack Straw’s Castle.”
Sir Walter Besant thought that, although there is no direct evidence of Jack Straw being connected with the hostelry named after him, “it is quite possible that the Heath formed a rendezvous for the malcontents of his time.” In early days there had been an earthwork on the site, which might have given rise to the name “Castle.” Referring to this point, Professor Hales, who leans to the opinion that Jack Straw was no more than a generic appellation, and instances the fact of there being an inn called Jack Straw’s Castle in a village near Oxford, says: “‘Jack Straw’s Castle’ is so commanding and important that there can be little doubt there would be erected upon it some kind of earthwork or fort at a very early period. Traces of both the Neolithic and the Bronze Age man have been found on and near the Heath, and, possibly enough, both these races raised or held on the spot some rude fortification which subsequent times would call a ‘Castle.’ This being so, we have only to infer, from facts already stated, that the place was used as a tryst for the local partisans of Jack Straw to arrive at the origin of the name of ‘Jack Straw’s Castle’—that is, the Castle of the Jack Strawites.”
To-day, Jack Straw’s Castle is the favoured resort of the district, and perhaps the Dickens traditions act as the strongest lodestone to visitors, and do more to sustain its popularity than any others. At any rate, the Dickensian pilgrim on his ramble through Hampstead places great store on Jack Straw’s Castle for the simple and justifiable reason that it had such attractions for the great novelist.
The “little, dirty, tumble-down public-house” at the foot of Hungerford Stairs, where the Micawber family were lodged the night before their departure for Australia, was called the Swan. It was there at the time Dickens worked in the factory as a boy, and appears in contemporary pictures of Hungerford Stairs. The Micawbers occupied one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. We read that Betsey Trotwood and Agnes were there, “busily making some little extra comforts in the way of dress for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting with the old insensible work-box, yard measure, and bit of wax candle before her that had outlived so much.” In that ramshackle old inn was enacted that last wonderful scene with Mr. Micawber, when he insisted on making punch in England for the last time. Having obtained the assurance that Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield would join him in the toast, he “immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug,” and quickly served out the fragrant liquid in tin mugs for his children, and drank from his own particular pint pot himself.
There are three other inns calling for brief reference. The Gray’s Inn Coffee-House, where David Copperfield stayed on his return from abroad, was first mentioned in The Old Curiosity Shop, and is dealt with in our chapter devoted to that book; the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, a prominent feature in Chapter XIX, is commented upon at length in “The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick”; and the coffee-house in Doctors’ Commons where Mr. Spenlow conducted David Copperfield to discuss a certain delicate matter (Chapter XXXVIII) demolished in 1894.
CHAPTER X
Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Hard Times