We are told, on authority, [183] that at one time all kinds of traffic went on within St. Paul’s Cathedral, and its precincts, in London. It was the common lounge of gallants and their female friends; and even a horse might be bought there; and such a transaction actually did take place in St. Mary’s Church, Horncastle. The Vicar had a chestnut mare which he wished to sell. Two dealers at the fair bid for her up to £35, which he refused to take. Sitting together at breakfast on the Sunday morning at their inn, Brown said to Robinson, “I bet you a bottle of wine I buy that mare of the Vicar’s.” “Done,” said Robinson. They both went to church, which was more than many dealers do nowadays. Brown took his seat just under the pulpit. Robinson, not knowing this, sat near the porch, intending to intercept the Vicar as he went out. The sermon ended, Brown waited till the Vicar descended from the pulpit; as he reached the bottom step of the stairs, Brown went to him and said, “That was a good sermon, but your reverence has not yet sold that mare; the fair is over, and I am leaving in the afternoon. Won’t you take the £35? You’ll never get a better bid.” The Vicar thought for a moment, and then whispered, “You may have her.” He went out, was met in the porch by Robinson, who found that he was too late, and owed Brown a bottle of wine; his only consolation was that he resolved himself to drink the better half of it.
At these fairs good bargains may be made by one who has an eye to the points of a horse, and can use his opportunities. The writer knew a curate in the south-west of Lincolnshire, whose stipend was £50 a year. He came regularly every year, for many years, to the August fair. His first purchase was a young horse, for which be gave the whole of his year’s stipend, £50. He kept it a year, and hunted it. I have ridden with him, when mounted on that horse, with the Belvoir hounds, and the next year he sold it for £300, a pretty good percentage on the original outlay. A cousin of the writer picked out a young horse from a number and gave £24 for it; he afterwards refused to take £300 for it, offered by “Lord Henry”; but he lent it to his lordship occasionally. Another, which he bought cheap, and for which he refused £400,
broke its leg in jumping the river Bain, in a Horncastle steeplechase and had to be shot on the spot. Both these horses I have ridden to hounds, the one a bay, the other black.
Connected with the fairs is the so-called “Statutes,” a day in May for hiring servants. It was formerly the one general holiday in the year, but now that the Bank Holidays have been established, the statute-day is dwindling in its proportions. Of old all the servant girls, and all the clodhoppers from the country, used to gather in the town dressed in galore fashion, crowding the Bull-ring. Anyone who wanted a servant, as an old farmer once told the writer was his invariable custom, used to walk into the crowd and hire the first lass against whom he stumbled. The “fasten-penny,” a silver coin, was then given, and the bargain was then struck. Wild beast shows, and enormities such as lambs with two heads or a dozen legs, and other attractions, were provided, and the day ended with music and dancing at the different inns in the town; some of the proceedings having after-effects not desirable. At the present time, when there is more regard for our domestic servants and their characters, and cheap postage prevails, this mode of haphazard engagement has nearly died out, and the Statute will soon be a thing of the past. It was first enacted by Ed. III. in 1351; again by 13th Richard II., and, in later times, was held under “a precept” from the Chief Constable of the Division. To those who wish to read a humorous and graphic description of the doings on this day, in comparatively recent times, I would recommend the poem “Neddy and Sally; or, The Statute Day,” by John Brown, “the Horncastle Laureate, [184] of which I can here give only the opening lines, which breathe of the spirit inspiring the occasion.
“Cum, Sall! It’s time we started now,
Yon’s Farmer Haycock’s lasses reddy,
An’ maister says he’ll milk the cow.”
“He didn’t say soa, did he, Neddy?”“Yees! that he did; soa make thee haste;
An’ get thee sen made smart an’ pritty;
Wi’ yaller ribbon round thee waist;
The same as owd Squire Lowden’s Kitty.And I’ll goa fetch my sister Bess;
I’m sartin sewer she’s up an’ ready;
Cum! gie’s a buss! Thou can’t do less.”
Says Sally, “Noa, thou musn’t, Neddy.”
There have not been wanting, in this old town, some eccentric characters, whose doings have been peculiar, and have been traditionally preserved for the entertainment of a rising generation. Of these two or three may be recorded here, but for obvious reasons I avoid mentioning names. One individual, exulting in his strength, undertook, for a wager, some time in the thirties, to drag a dung cart from Lincoln to Horncastle, a distance of 21 miles, and successfully accomplished the feat in eight hours, but he is said to have suffered from hæmorrhage for the rest of his days. Another man made a bet that he would start from Lincoln on horseback when the moon rose there, and would have his horse in his own stable at Horncastle before the moon had risen there. Lincoln being on a hill, the moon would be seen earlier there than at Horncastle, which lay in a hollow. As he galloped along he is said to have shouted, “Now me, now moon,” as the chances seemed at intervals for or against the one or the other. He just, however, missed the success which he might have achieved, as he had to pull up, late in the evening, at the toll-bar on the Lincoln road, about a mile from Horncastle, the toll-bar keeper being in bed; and this slight delay caused his failure, for, as he opened his stable door, he saw the moon shining in a bucket of water which was standing ready for his steed. The writer is informed that one, if not both, of these individuals was considered to be a little “short” of the full modicum of brains. Another person, still resident in the town, remembers the burning, in the street, of the effigies of Bayock and Demont, two of the witnesses in the trial of Queen Caroline, in 1820. They were Italians. There were great rejoicings and illuminations, in London and throughout the country, on Her Majesty’s acquittal; and this was the demonstration of Horncastrians. An old song was popular at the time, beginning thus:
False witnesses from Italy, they came to London town;
And all they had against her was to keep her from the crown.
Wharrie, a shoemaker in the town, was inspired to preach a sermon in the Bull-ring, from a cart, denouncing the trial. This sermon was printed, and a copy was long in the possession of my informant.
A character of a higher type than those yet named, was the late proprietor and manager of “The Bull” hostel, at which we are now supposed to be staying, Mr. Clement James
Caswell, a genial, generous, and cultivated gentleman. He came of an old and highly respectable stock located in the county of Herts., his father being for many years landlord of “The George,” at Barnet, a stage on the Great North road, through which, in the old coaching days, scores of coaches passed daily. He was a coach proprietor, and handled the ribbons himself. The son was educated at the Spalding Grammar School, and acquired antiquarian, tastes while yet a boy. After having held some important public offices in that town, and then managing some mills at Aswardby, he bought the Bull at Horncastle. Though the inn had previously held a high position, he still further raised its character; and his spare time was devoted to reading, and research of various kinds. He had a very valuable collection of coins, the result of many years of careful selection. His garden, just out of the town, had an observatory, furnished with telescope, books, and other appliances for amusement and relaxation. He supplied the illustrations for a book entitled “In Tennyson Land,” by J. Cuming Walters, published in 1890. He was a member of the Architectural Society of Lincolnshire, Notts. and Leicestershire; a member of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, one of the oldest antiquarian societies in the kingdom; and he was continually corresponding, in various directions, on subjects of antiquarian interest. He had a valuable library of books bearing on these and kindred studies, and indicating the wide extent of his reading. Especially, perhaps, as a Tennysonian expert, he was consulted by almost everyone who has written on that subject, as in the case already named, and in Napier’s “Homes and Haunts of Tennyson.” It was a treat to get a quiet, genial hour with him, when he would run on with a stream of informing converse, but on few themes did he warm up with so much inspiration as that of the late Laureate, witness these lines of his own composition:—