The actual relics of those times are few. Chief in point of interest is the old Brasenose Gate, the only fragment of the College of that name, said to have been founded by students from Brasenose College, Oxford. Here remained until recent years the ancient bronze knocker, in the form of a lion’s head with a massive ring in its mouth, brought, according to the legend, from the Oxford college. This knocker certainly belongs to a period not later than the thirteenth century, and may have been conveyed away. Whether it was the original “brazen nose,” said to have originated the odd name of the College, or whether that name arose from the brassen-huis, or brew-house, whose site the original College was built upon, is one of those mysteries of derivation never likely to be solved. During the last years of its stay at Stamford, the knocker was kept in a house adjoining, until it and the house were purchased by Brasenose College, Oxford, in whose Common Room the ancient relic now occupies a place of honour.
Stamford was attached to the Yorkist cause in the Wars of the Roses, and had occasion to regret the fact; for it offered an especial mark to the victorious Lancastrians in 1461, after the battle of St. Albans, when Sir Andrew Trollope, with the triple ferocity of the trois loups from which the name derives, fell upon the town and pillaged and burnt it. Eight churches, two castles, and the town walls, together with many hundreds of houses, were destroyed, and Stamford has never recovered its ancient importance since then. It is enough for us that it is among the stateliest of towns, stone-built and dignified; with its beautiful churches of St. Mary, All Saints, and St. Martin; its old almshouses and mansions, not exactly matched in all England.
The histories tell of a long list of famous men, natives of Stamford; but the mere mental capacity or personal bravery shown by these great ones is sardonically overshadowed by the physical greatness of quite another kind of person, who, although not even a native of Stamford, has, by his dying here, shed an especial lustre upon the town.
Although destined to this undying fame, and to pothouse canonisation, Daniel’s career was short, as that epitaph tells us:—
“In Remembrance of
That Prodigy in Nature
DANIEL LAMBERT
who was possessed of
An exalted and convivial mind
And in personal greatness
Had no Competitor
He measured three feet, one inch, round the leg
Nine feet, four inches, round the body
And Weighed
Fifty-two stone Eleven pounds
He departed this life
On the 21st of June
1809
Aged 39 years.”
His diet is said to have been plain, and the quantity moderate, and he never drank anything stronger than water. His countenance was manly and intelligent, and he had a melodious tenor voice. For some years before his death he had toured the country, exhibiting himself, and visited London on two occasions. The weights and measurements quoted on his tombstone were taken at Huntingdon only the day before his death. In the evening he arrived at the “Waggon and Horses,” Stamford, in good health, in preparation for “receiving company” during Stamford Races, but before nine o’clock the next morning was dead in the room on the ground floor which he had taken because of his inability to go upstairs. For many years two of his suits were shown at the inn, seven men often succeeding in squeezing themselves within the mighty embrace of his waistcoat, without bursting a button. The “Waggon and Horses” has long since given place to a school, and so here is a place of pilgrimage the less; but Daniel’s fame is immortal, for he lives as the sign of many an inn and refreshment-house, whose proprietors use him as an advertisement of the plenteous fare to be obtained within, regardless of the fact that his immense bulk was due rather to a dropsical habit than to much eating or drinking.
XXIII
The road, mounting steeply out of Stamford, reaches a fine, elevated track commanding wide views. This is the spot chosen by Forrest for his painting of the old “Highflyer” London, York, and Edinburgh coach which ran from 1788 to 1840. In less than two miles the road crosses the border of Lincolnshire, traversing for six miles an outlying corner of little Rutland, the smallest county in England, and entering Lincolnshire again on passing Stretton. Great Casterton, at the foot of the hill two and a quarter miles from Stamford, is in Rutland. It is said to be situated on the Guash, but that stream and the bridge over it, from which the old road-books often called the village “Bridge Casterton,” are not readily glimpsed.