TOM MOODY,
Buried Nov. 19th, 1796,
and is on the opposite side, near the old porch, and chief entrance to the church.
In the full-page engraving, representing a meet near “Hangster’s Gate,” a famous “fixture” in the old Squire’s time, the assembled sportsmen are supposed to be startled by the re-appearance of Tom upon the ground of his former exploits. It is the belief of some that when a corpse is laid in the grave an angel gives notice of the coming of two examiners. The dead person is then made to undergo the ordeal before two spirits of terrible appearance. Whether this was the faith of Tom’s friends or not we cannot say, but Tom was supposed to have been anything but satisfied with his quarters or his company, and to have returned to visit the Willey Woods. The picture presents a group of sportsmen and hounds beneath the trees, and attention is directed towards the spectre, an old decayed stump. The following lines refer to the tradition:—
“See the shade of Tom Moody, you all have known well,
To our sports now returning, not liking to dwell
In a region where pleasure’s not found in the chase,
So Tom’s just returned to view his old place.
No sooner the hounds leave the kennel to try,
Than his spirit appears to join in the cry;
Now all with attention, his signal well mark,
For see his hand’s up for the cry of Hark! Hark!
Then cheer him, and mark him, Tally-ho! Boys! Tally-ho!”
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WILLEY SQUIRE MEMBER FOR WENLOCK.
The Willey Squire recognises the Duties of his Position, and becomes Member for Wenlock—Addison’s View of Whig Jockeys and Tory Fox-hunters—State of Parties—Pitt in Power—“Fiddle-Faddle”—Local Improvements—The Squire Mayor of Wenlock—The Mace now carried before the Chief Magistrate.
There is an old English maxim that “too much of anything is good for nothing;” the obvious meaning being that a man should not addict himself over much to any one pursuit; and it is only justice to the Willey Squire that it should be fully understood that whilst passionately fond of the pleasures of the chase, he was not unmindful of the duties of his position. Willey was the centre of the sporting country we have described; but it was also contiguous to a district remarkable for its manufacturing activity—for its iron works, its pot works, and its brick works, the proprietors of which, no less than the agricultural portion of the population, felt that they had an interest in questions of legislation. Mr. Forester considered that whatever concerned his neighbourhood and his country concerned him, and his influence and popularity in the borough led to his taking upon himself the duty of representing it in Parliament. There was about the temper of the times something more suited to the temperament of a country gentleman than at present, and a member of Parliament was less bound to his constituents. His duties as a representative sat much more lightly, whilst the pugnacious elements of the nation generally were such that when Mr. Forester entered upon public life there was nearly as much excitement in the House of Commons—and not unlike in kind—as was to be found in the cockpit or the hunting-field.
As long as Mr. Forester could remember, parties had been as sharply defined as at present, and men were as industriously taught to believe that whatever ranged itself under one form of faith was praiseworthy, whilst everything on the other side was to be condemned. Addison, in his usually happy style, had already described this state of things in the Spectator, where he says:—
“This humour fills the country with several periodical meetings of Whig jockeys and Tory fox-hunters; not to mention the innumerable curses, frowns, and whispers it produces at a quarter sessions. . . . In all our journey from London to this house we did not so much as bait at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place, one of Sir Roger’s servants would ride up to his master full speed, and whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer, for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and, provided our landlord’s principles were sound, did not take any notice of the staleness of the provisions.”
So that Whig and Tory had even then long been names representing those principles by which the Constitution was balanced, names representing those popular and monarchical ingredients which it was supposed assured liberty and order, progress and stability. But about the commencement of Mr. Forester’s parliamentary career parties had been in a great measure broken up into sections, if not into factions—into Pelhamites, Cobhamites, Foxites, Pittites, and Wilkites—the questions uppermost being place, power, and distinction, ministry and opposition—the Ins and the Outs. The Ins, when Whigs, pretty much as now, adopted Tory principles, and Tories in opposition appealed to popular favour for support; indeed from the fall of Walpole to the American war, as now, there were few statesmen who were not by turns the colleagues and the adversaries, the friends and the foes of their contemporaries. The general pulse, it is true, beat more feverishly, and men went to Parliament or into battle as readily as to the hunting-field—for the excitement of the thing. To epitomise, mighty armies, such as Europe had not seen since the days of Marlborough, were moving in every direction. Four hundred and fifty-two thousand men were gathering to crush the Prince of a German state, with one hundred and fifty thousand men in the field to encounter them. The English and Hanoverian army, under the Duke of Cumberland, was relied upon to prevent the French attacking Prussia, with whom we had formed an alliance. England felt an intense interest in the struggle, and bets were made as to the result. Mr. Forester was returned to the new Parliament, which met in December, 1757, in time, we believe, to vote for the subsidy of £670,000 asked for by the king for his “good brother and ally,” the King of Prussia. A minister like Pitt, who was then inspiring the people with his spirit, and raising the martial ardour of the nation to a pitch it had never known before, who drew such pictures of England’s power and pluck as to cause the French envoy to jump out of the window, was a man after the Squire’s own heart, and he gave him his hearty “aye,” to subsidy after subsidy. As a contemporary satirist wrote:—