In West Sussex we had many pleasant neighbours, amongst them the Rev. Mr. Knox, a most amusing man and a great authority on birds. He lived in an ancient manor-house which belonged to my husband—Trotton Place, a quaint old house still the property of my eldest son. Trotton, a small village on the Petersfield Road, possesses some claim to attention in having been the birthplace of the unfortunate Otway, who was the son of the rector of the adjacent parish of Woolbeding. Educated at Winchester and Oxford, Otway, when twenty years old, betook himself to London and became an actor, and, some five years later, a playwright. Obtaining a cornet’s commission in a regiment about to proceed to Flanders, his military career was short and unfortunate, lasting only about a year. The force to which he was attached never reached its destination, the money voted for transport having been diverted by King Charles II., who preferred the worship of Venus to that of Mars, to more peaceful and congenial purposes. In his comedy of The Soldiers Fortune Otway clearly alludes to his disappointment:—
Fortune made me a soldier, a rogue in red (the grievance of the nation). Fortune made the peace—just as we were on the brink of war; then Fortune disbanded us and lost us two months’ pay. Fortune gave us debentures instead of ready money; and by very good fortune I sold mine and lost heartily by it, in hopes the grinding, ill-natur’d dog that bought it may never get a shilling for’t.
After his retirement from the army the young poet wrote several plays, amongst them The Orphan, and in 1685 the powerful and beautiful Venice Preserved, which, as Dr. Johnson wrote, though the work of a man not attentive to decency or zealous for virtue, yet shows that the author was a man of great force and originality, and had consulted nature in his own breast.
At thirty-four years of age Otway died, choked, it is said, by a roll which he too hastily swallowed after a long fast. The unfortunate poet, almost naked, starving, and fearfully harassed by creditors, was given a guinea by a friendly gentleman in a coffee-house where he had asked for a shilling. Out of this guinea he purchased the piece of bread which caused his death. Another account declares that Otway, desirous of avenging the death of a friend who had been shot in the street, pursued the assassin as far as Dover on foot, which brought on a fever from which he died in the “Bull Inn” on Tower Hill. Pope corroborates this version of Otway’s death, but says his friend had been merely robbed and not murdered.
A brass affixed to the wall of Trotton church within comparatively recent years commemorates the memory of the unfortunate young man, but Otway himself lies in a vault under the church of St. Clement Danes.
CHURCH RESTORATION
Trotton church is an interesting old building, which contains a tomb of great archæological interest—the sarcophagus of Sir John Camoys and the Lady Elizabeth, his wife. This church has, like many village churches, suffered more or less from the restorations to which it has been subjected. One alteration which particularly annoyed me was the removal of an old door which bore the mark of many a Cromwellian bullet upon its exterior side. Within the last few years, however, some attempt has been made to repair the ravages of the restorer—the old wooden altar-rails having been replaced in their original position, whilst certain very curious mural paintings have been once more exposed to view. In the ’sixties and ’seventies the fiend of restoration may be said to have stalked rampant through the land, and rectors vied with one another in renovating and vulgarising the sacred edifices committed to their charge. At a Sussex church in a village quite close to where we lived, great indignation was, I remember, aroused by workshops being erected all over the churchyard, in which workmen fashioned modern Gothic pinnacles and other architectural gewgaws wherewith to decorate the stately old church. Tombstones were temporarily taken up, no particular attention being paid to their exact position, and in consequence no one felt at all certain that they were ever replaced in their old position—the tombstone of “John Smith” being in many cases placed over the grave of “Thomas Brown,” and vice versa, a proceeding not entirely satisfactory to their families, some of whom were very annoyed. The rector, however, who was delighted at his vulgarised church, thought little of such a trifle as this, and organised an ornate service of reopening at which his parishioners somewhat ruefully returned thanks for the blessings of the restoration.
Not very far from Trotton is the town of Midhurst, for which Charles James Fox, when only nineteen years of age, was returned in 1768. He actually had two encounters in debate with Burke before he attained his majority. On one of these occasions, it is said, when Fox had set the Treasury Bench in a roar of laughter at Burke’s expense, the latter was much nettled, and turning on the youthful member, exclaimed, “You may speak if you like, but being a minor you have no right to vote.”
At one time Midhurst was a great place for the manufacture of quilts, and from this, no doubt, originated the weaver’s shuttle which was stamped on the town pieces or tokens about 1670. These were known as Midhurst farthings, issued, as the legend on one side of them said, “For ye use of ye Poor.”
Midhurst and Rye were the only two places in Sussex which issued town tokens, that is, one token struck for the use of the whole town. The custom of striking tokens—small coins of the value of farthings, halfpennies, and pennies—only prevailed from about 1648 till 1672. As a rule, these were issued by tradesmen, but in some cases towns struck them. In Somersetshire, for instance, there were thirteen town tokens; in Dorsetshire, eight; in Devonshire, five; in Kent, one; and in Sussex the two which have just been mentioned. In Yorkshire there were none at all.