The Pasque Flower, so named from the paschal season of its blossoming, affects the windiest and most unlikely situations in chalk and limestone pastures, and thrives where it might be supposed only the coarsest grasses would grow. In these exposed places its purple blooms flourish. They nestle close to the ground, and are only to be easily discovered by the expert. Do not attempt to transplant this wild beauty of the downs. You may dig roots with the greatest care, and cherish them as tenderly as possible; but, torn from its stern surroundings and lapped in botanical luxury, the Pasque Flower droops and dies.
XIX
Royston stands where the Ermine Street and the Icknield Way intersect one another. To old Cobbett, travelling with a censorious eye upon men and things and places in the early years of the nineteenth century, it appeared to be "a common market-town. Not mean, but having nothing of beauty about it." This is not a very shrewd or illuminating opinion, because, while it is true that Royston is not beautiful on the one hand, nor exactly mean on the other, this description is not quite descriptive, and fails to explain where the town stops short of beauty or of meanness. Royston, in fact, is a little grim, and belies the preconceived notion of the expectant traveller, who, doubtless with some wild idea of a connection between Royston and roystering, is astonished at the grave, almost solemn, look of its narrow streets. The grim shadow of the Downs is thrown over the little town, and the houses huddle together as though for company and warmth.
There are those to whom the place-name suggests a Norman-French derivation—Roy's ton, or the King's Town,—but although the name arose in Norman times, it had a very different origin from anything suggested by royal patronage. Eight hundred years ago, when this part of the country remained little but the desolate tract the fury of the Conqueror had made it, the Lady Rohesia, wife of the Norman lord of the manor, set up a wayside cross where the roads met. The object of this cross does not clearly appear, but it probably filled the combined purpose of a signpost and wayside oratory, where those who fared the roads might pray for a happy issue from the rigours of their journey. At anyrate, the piety of the Lady Rohesia (or Roesia, for they were very uncertain about their h's in those times) has kept her name from being quite forgot, preserved as it is in Royston's designation; but it is not to be supposed that the pilgrims, the franklins, and the miscellaneous wayfarers along these roads tortured their tongues much with this awkward word, and so Rohesia's Cross speedily became known as "Roise's," just as to the London 'bus-conductors High Holborn has become "'iobun." A town gathered in course of time round the monastery—"Monasterium de Cruce Roesiæ"—founded here a century after this pious lady had gone her way. Monastery and cross are alike gone, but the parish church is the old priory church, purchased by the inhabitants for public worship when the monastic establishment was dissolved, and Royston Fair, held on 7th July in every year, is a reminiscence of that old religious house, for that day is the day of St. Thomas à Becket, in whose honour it was dedicated. As "Becket's Fair" this annual celebration is still known.
For centuries afterwards Royston was a town and yet not a parish, being situated in portions of the five adjoining parishes of Melbourn, Bassingbourn, Therfield, Barley, and Reed; and for centuries more, after it had attained parochial dignity, its chief cross street, Melbourn Street, divided the place into two Roystons—Royston, Hertfordshire, and Royston, Cambridgeshire. The doings of one with the other afford amusing reading: how a separate workhouse was established and separate assessments made for each parish, and how at length, in 1781, an Act was passed for consolidating the two for local government purposes; all these inconvenient and absurdly conflicting jurisdictions of parishes and counties being eventually swept away in 1895, when the Cambridgeshire portion of Royston was transferred to Hertfordshire, the whole of the town now being in that county.
They still cherish the memory of King James the First at Royston, though the open Heath where he hunted the hare is a thing of the past, and the races and all the ancient jollifications of that time are now merely matters for the antiquary. Where the four roads from the four quarters of the compass still meet in the middle of the town stood the old Palace. Its remains, of no very palatial appearance, are there even yet, and form private residences. Close by is that prime curiosity, Royston Cave. James and his courtiers and all their gay world at this corner never knew of the Cave, which was only discovered in 1742. It is a bottle-shaped excavation in the chalk, situated immediately under the roadway. Its age and original purpose are still matters in dispute. Whether it was excavated to serve the purpose of dust-bin to a Roman villa, or was a flint quarry, we shall never know, but that it certainly was in use by some religious recluse in the twelfth century is assured by the curious rough carvings in the chalk, representing St. Catherine, the Crucifixion, mitred abbots, and a variety of subjects of a devotional character. The hermit whose singular piety led him to take up his abode in this dismal hole must have had great difficulty in entering or leaving, for it was then only to be approached by plunging as it were into the neck of the bottle. The staircase by which visitors enter was only made in modern times.
A QUAINT CORNER IN ROYSTON.
The old Red Lion at Royston has already been mentioned as having ceased to be. It was kept for many years in the eighteenth century by Mrs. Gatward, a widow, assisted in the posting and coaching business attached to the house by her two sons. One of them came to a terribly tragic end. What induced him to turn highwayman we shall never know; but he took to the road, as many a roving blade in those times did. Perhaps his life lacked excitement. If that were so, he took the readiest means of adding variety to existence, for he waylaid the postboy carrying His Majesty's Mails on the North Road, between Royston and Huntingdon, and robbed the bags. There was in those times no method of courting death with such success as robbing the mails, and accordingly young Gatward presently found himself convicted and cast for execution. They hanged him in due course and gibbeted his body, pursuant to the grim old custom, near the scene of his crime. The story of this unhappy amateur highwayman is told—and, a tale of horror it is—by one Cole, a diligent antiquary on Cambridgeshire affairs, whose manuscript collections are in the British Museum. Hear him: "About 1753-54, the son of Mrs. Gatward, who kept the Red Lion at Royston, being convicted of robbing the mail, was hanged in chains on the Great Road. I saw him hanging, in a scarlet coat, and after he had hung about two or three months it is supposed that the screw was filed which supported him, and that he fell in the first high wind after. Mr. Lord, of Trinity, passed by as he lay on the ground, and, trying to open his breast, to see what state his body was in, not being offensive, but quite dry, a button of brass came off, which he preserves to this day, as he told me at the Vice-Chancellor's, Thursday, June 30th, 1779. I sold this Mr. Gatward, just as I left college in 1752, a pair of coach horses, which was the only time I saw him. It was a great grief to his mother, who bore a good character, and kept the inn for many years after."