THE “BULL”
The old inns of Dartford are very numerous. Most of them, unfortunately, have been cut up into small beer-houses and tenements since the coaches were run off the road by steam, but one fine old galleried inn, the “Bull,” remains to show what the coaching inns of long ago were like. The courtyard is now roofed-in with glass, and the little bedrooms behind the carved balusters of the gallery are largely given up to spiders and lumber. But, fortunately for those who care to see what an old galleried inn was like, the changes here have consisted only of additions instead, as is only too usual, of destruction. There is a curious detail, too, about the “Bull,” and that is the whimsical position of its sign in a place where ninety out of a hundred people never see it. The “bull in a china-shop” is proverbial, but a bull among the chimney-pots is something quite out of the common. It is here, though, that the effigy of a great black bull may be seen, reared up aloft in a place between the constellations and the beasts of the field.
THE “BULL” INN, DARTFORD.
There is one modern incident in connection with the “Bull” at Dartford which shows how inflamed were the passions of the working class in favour of George the Fourth’s silly and indiscreet wife, and this incident happened while the monarch was changing horses here. It was a journeyman currier who showed his sympathy with Queen Caroline, and he did so by thrusting his head in at the carriage window, and roaring in the face of startled majesty, “You are a murderer!” which can be taken neither as a compliment nor a statement of fact—unless, indeed, we agree with that mathematically inclined cynic who held that a “fact” was a lie and a half.
Pastor Moritz, in his account of a seven weeks’ tour in England, tells us how he passed through Dartford. He was by no means a distinguished person, but what he has to say of his travels is interesting, as contributing to show how others see us. He came into England by way of the Thames, May 31, 1782, and landed (he says) just below Dartford—probably at Greenhithe—to which place he walked in company with some others, and there breakfasted. He was fresh from the dreary, sandy Mark of Brandenburg, and this fair county of Kent delighted him hugely. At Dartford he saw, for the first time, an English soldier. That robust Tommy struck him with admiration, both for the sake of his red coat and his martial bearing. “Here, too, I first saw” (says he) “(what I deemed a true English sight) two boys boxing in the street.” The party separated at Dartford, and, taking two post-chaises at the “Bull,” drove to London, the Pastor “stunned,” as it were, by a constant rapid succession of interesting objects, arriving at Greenwich nearly in a state of stupefaction.
WAT TYLER
Dartford will ever live in history as being the starting-point of Wat the Tyler’s rebellion of 1381. Tradition places the scene of Wat’s murderous attack on the tax-gatherer opposite the “Bull,” where once was Dartford Green. The Green has long since gone, but the story never stales of how the Tyler dashed out the tax-gatherer’s brains with his hammer. It is, for one thing, a tale that appeals strongly to an over-taxed community, sinking under burdens imposed chiefly for the support of imperial and local bureaucracy; and I fear that if some modern tax-collector met a similar fate, many worthy people, not ordinarily bloodthirsty, would say, “Serve him right!”
The particular impost which caused the trouble five hundred years ago was the odious Poll-tax, a hateful burden that had already caused wide discontent throughout England, and needed only a more than usually unpleasant incident to cause ill feelings to break out in ill deeds. That incident was not lacking. At Dartford, one of the collectors had demanded the tax for a young girl, daughter of he who is known to history as Wat Tyler. Her mother maintained that she was under the age required by the statute. The tax-collector grew insolent and overbearing, and, it seems, was proceeding to a delicate investigation—like that which procured Mr. W. T. Stead three months’ imprisonment some years ago—when the Tyler, who had just returned from work, killed him with a stroke from his hammer.
How Wat the Tyler was appointed by popular acclamation leader of the Commons in Kent; how, at the head of a hundred thousand insurgents, he marched to Blackheath, are matters rather for the history of England than for this causerie along the Dover Road.