A total of £5,500 was divided among Lord Lumley, the officers, militiamen, and others concerned in the capture. Among these was Amy Farant, whose information had directly led to it, and she received a sum of fifty pounds.
Local tradition points out the spot on the hillside where this woman’s cottage formerly stood, overlooking the field called “Monmouth Close” and the horror always felt by the rustics at the taking of what they still call the “blood-money” is seen in the story told of her after-years. The price of blood brought a curse with it. She fell upon evil times, and at last lived and died in a state of rags and dirt, shunned by all. After her death, the cottage itself speedily earned a sinister reputation, and was at length either pulled down, or allowed to decay. The spot is still called locally Louse, or more genteelly Slough, Lane.
The “Monmouth Ash”—or “Aish,” in the country speech—still survives, with a difference. Those who, looking upon the present tree and thinking, despite its decrepit and propped-up condition, that it cannot be over two hundred years old—and therefore that this cannot be the precise spot—may, with the reservation already made, be reassured of its absolute genuineness. The original trunk grew decayed in the long ago, and was blown down, but the present tree is a growth from the “stool,” or root, of that under which the unhappy Protestant Champion was discovered.
CHAPTER XXIX
OVER THE HILLS, BEYOND THE RAINBOW
Beyond the rainbow is Fairyland, but no one has ever penetrated to that country, save in dreams, to which nothing is impossible. There is also a Rainbow-land in Dorsetshire, certainly not impossible of achievement, but still a district of which no one knows anything, saving only those who live in it, and those sturdy fellows, the carriers, the Marco Polos and Livingstones of this age and country, who every week or so travel from it to the nearest market-town, and back again. The carriers are men of strange speech and dress. Although sturdy, they move slowly both in body and mind; and their tilt-carts are as slow as themselves, and as dusty and travel-worn as the caravans of any African expedition. The Rainbow country of Dorset is, in fact, a country innocent of railways. It is comprised within a rough circle made by tracing a course from Bere Regis to Piddletrenthide, Cerne Abbas, Minterne Magna, Holnest, Sherborne, Milborne Port, Stalbridge, Sturminster Newton, and Blandford, and is not only in parts extremely hilly, but includes Bulbarrow, one of the highest hills in Dorsetshire, 927 feet above sea-level, and Nettlecombe Tout; among a fine diversified array of lesser eminences. There is thus some considerable difficulty in travelling out of it, and a very widespread disinclination to penetrate into what may, not without considerable warranty, be termed its “wilds.”
Wise men, who study maps, and from the tracks of watercourses deduce easier, or at any rate, rather less arduous, routes, may find a means of winning to this Rainbow country by turning off the Piddletown and Bere Regis road at Burlestone, and thence making along the slight valley of the Chesil Bourne or Divelish stream. The small village of Dewlish on the map points to the amazing colonial energy of the Roman, for here, in a district that even we moderns are accustomed to think remote, was found a fine Roman pavement, many years ago. In another two miles and a half the valley closes in, and the neighbourhood of those big brothers, Bulbarrow and Nettlecombe Tout, is evident from their smaller kindred, on either hand.
Here, under the shelter of the everlasting hills, and in a “lew” warm hollow surrounded by benignant trees that lovingly shut it in, is Bingham’s Melcombe. A little pebbly brook, the Chesil Bourne, prattles down the combe, sheep-bells sound from the hillsides, cattle low in the meadows, and rooks scold and gibber, or lazily caw, in over-arching elms; otherwise, all is still, for much more than even the rustic scenes of Mr. Hardy’s especially farming story, Bingham’s Melcombe is “far from the madding crowd,” and there is nothing of it but a farmstead, the tiny church, and the little gem of an ancient manor-house. For all that Bingham’s Melcombe is so insignificant, it has sent out at least one distinguished man. Fluellen boasted that there were “good men porn at Monmouth,” and here was born that Sir Richard Bingham who earns the praise of Fuller, as being “a brave soldier and fortis et felix in all his undertakings.” He lies, as a brave soldier should, but all brave soldiers cannot, in Westminster Abbey. The Binghams of Bingham’s Melcombe came from a younger son of the Binghams of Sutton Bingham in Somersetshire, and early allied themselves with prominent families. The ducally crowned lion rampant of the Turbervilles quartered on their ancestral shield owes its place there to the marriage of Robert Bingham, about the reign of Henry III., or Edward I., with the daughter and heiress of Robert Turberville.
These long-descended Binghams maintained their hold upon this lovely old home of theirs from the middle of the thirteenth century until recently. Now it has passed into other hands. A member of the family, Canon Bingham, was the original of the “Parson Tringham,” the learned antiquary, who, in the opening pages of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, so indiscreetly informs old John Durbeyfield, the haggler, of his distinguished ancestry.