It is abundantly possible that the foregoing incident had some connection with that locally favourite smugglers’ route from the Norfolk coast inland, the Peddar’s Way, which runs a long and lonely course from Holme, near Hunstanton, right through Norfolk into Suffolk, and is for the greater part of its length a broad, grassy track, romantically lined and overhung with fine trees. Such ancient ways, including the many old drove-roads in the north, never turnpiked, made capital soft going, and, rarely touching villages or hamlets, were of a highly desirable, secretive nature. The origin of the Peddar’s, or Padder’s, Way is still in dispute among antiquaries, some seeing in it a Roman road, others conceiving it to be a prehistoric track; but the broad, straight character of it seems to point to this long route having been Romanised. Its great age is evident on many accounts, not least among them being that the little town of Watton, near but not on it, is named from this prehistoric road, “Way-town,” while that county division, the hundred, is the Hundred of Wayland.
CHAPTER IX
The Dorset and Devon Coasts—Epitaphs at Kinson and Wyke—The “Wiltshire Moon-Rakers”—Epitaph at Branscombe—The Warren and “Mount Pleasant” Inn
Not so much smuggling incident as might be expected is found along the coasts of Dorset and Devon, but that is less on account of any lack of smuggling encounters in those parts than because less careful record has been kept of them. An early epitaph on a smuggler, to be seen in the churchyard of Kinson, just within the Dorset boundary, in an out-of-the-way situation at the back of Bournemouth, in a district formerly of almost trackless heaths, will sufficiently show that smuggling was active here:
To the memory of Robert Trotman, late of Rowd, in
the county of Wilts, who was barbarously murdered
on the shore near Poole, the 24th March, 1765.A little tea, one leaf I did not steal,
For guiltless bloodshed I to God appeal;
Put tea in one scale, human blood in t’other
And think what ’tis to slay a harmless brother.
This man was shot in an encounter with the revenue officers. He was one of a gang that used the church here as a hiding-place. The upper stage of the tower and an old altar-tomb were the favourite receptacles for their “free-trade” merchandise.
Trotman, it will be observed, was of Rowd, or Rowde, in Wiltshire, two miles from Devizes, and was thus one of the “Wiltshire Moonrakers,” whose descriptive title is due to smuggling history. Among the nicknames conferred upon the natives of our various shires and counties none is complimentary. They figure forth undesirable physical attributes, as when the Lincolnshire folk, dwellers among the fens, are styled “Yellow-bellies,” i.e. frogs; or stupidity, e.g. “Silly Suffolk”; or humbug—for example, “Devonshire Crawlers.” “Wiltshire Moonrakers” is generally considered to be a term of contempt for Wilts rustic stupidity; but, rightly considered, it is nothing of the kind. It all depends how you take the story which gave rise to it. The usual version tells us how a party of travellers, crossing a bridge in Wiltshire by night when the harvest moon was shining, observed a group of rustics raking in the stream, in which the great yellow disc of the moon was reflected. The travellers had the curiosity to ask them what it was they raked for in such a place and at so untimeous an hour; and were told they were trying to get “that cheese”—the moon—out of the water. The travellers went on their way amused with the simplicity of these “naturals,” and spread the story far and wide.
But these apparently idiotic clod-hoppers were wiser in their generation than commonly supposed, and were, in fact, smugglers surprised in the act of raking up a number of spirit-kegs that had been sunk in the bed of the stream until the arrival of a convenient season when they could with safety be removed. The travellers, properly considered, were really revenue officers, scouring the neighbourhood. This version of the story fairly throws the accusation of innocence and dunderheadedness back upon them, and clears the Wiltshire rural character from contempt. It should, however, be said that the first version of the story is generally told at the expense of the villagers of Bishop’s Cannings, near Devizes, who have long writhed under a load of ancient satirical narratives, reflecting upon a lack of common sense alleged to be their chief characteristic.
Many of the western smuggling stories are of a humorous cast, rather than of the dreadful blood-boltered kind that disgraces the history of the home counties. Here is a case in point. On the evening of Sunday, July 10th, 1825, as two preventive men were on the look-out for smugglers, near Lulworth in Dorset, the smugglers, to the number of sixty or seventy, curiously enough, found them instead, and immediately taking away their swords and pistols, carried them to the edge of the cliff and placed them with their heads hanging over the precipice; with the comfortable assurance that if they made the least noise, or gave alarm, they should be immediately thrown over. In the interval a smuggling vessel landed a “crop” of one hundred casks, which the shore-gang placed on their horses and triumphantly carried away. The prisoners were then removed from their perilous position, and taken into an adjoining field, where they were bound hand and foot, and left overnight. They were found the next morning by their comrades, searching for them.
There are several points in this true tale that suggest it to have been the original whence Mr. Thomas Hardy obtained the chief motive of his short story, The Distracted Preacher.