The woods here are chiefly of oak; the ground consists of a series of hill and dale, as you go long-wise from one end of the estate to the other, about six miles in length. Down almost every little valley that divides these hills or hillocks, there is more or less of water, making the underwood, in those parts, very thick, and dark to go through; and these form the most delightful contrast with the fields and lawns. There are innumerable vessels of various sizes continually upon the water; and, to those that delight in water-scenes, this is certainly the very prettiest place that I ever saw in my life. I had seen it many years ago; and, as I intended to come here on my way home, I told George, before we set out, that I would show him another Weston before we got to London. The parish in which his father’s house is, is also called Weston, and a very beautiful spot it certainly is; but I told him I questioned whether I could not show him a still prettier Weston than that. We let him alone for the first day. He sat in the house, and saw great multitudes of pheasants and partridges upon the lawn before the window: he went down to the water-side by himself, and put his foot upon the ground to see the tide rise. He seemed very much delighted. The second morning, at breakfast, we put it to him, which he would rather have; this Weston or the Weston he had left in Herefordshire; but, though I introduced the question in a way almost to extort a decision in favour of the Hampshire Weston, he decided instantly and plump for the other, in a manner very much to the delight of Mr. Chamberlayne and his sister. So true it is that, when people are uncorrupted, they always like home best, be it, in itself, what it may.
Everything that nature can do has been done here; and money most judiciously employed has come to her assistance. Here are a thousand things to give pleasure to any rational mind; but there is one thing, which, in my estimation, surpasses, in pleasure, to contemplate, all the lawns and all the groves and all the gardens and all the game and everything else; and that is, the real, unaffected goodness of the owner of this estate. He is a member for Southampton; he has other fine estates; he has great talents; he is much admired by all who know him; but he has done more by his justice, by his just way of thinking with regard to the labouring people, than in all other ways put together. This was nothing new to me; for I was well informed of it several years ago, though I had never heard him speak of it in my life. When he came to this place, the common wages of day-labouring men were thirteen shillings a week, and the wages of carpenters, bricklayers, and other tradesmen, were in proportion. Those wages he has given, from that time to this, without any abatement whatever. With these wages, a man can live, having, at the same time, other advantages attending the working for such a man as Mr. Chamberlayne. He has got less money in his bags than he would have had, if he had ground men down in their wages; but if his sleep be not sounder than that of the hard-fisted wretch that can walk over grass and gravel, kept in order by a poor creature that is half-starved; if his sleep be not sounder than the sleep of such a wretch, then all that we have been taught is false, and there is no difference between the man who feeds and the man who starves the poor: all the Scripture is a bundle of lies, and instead of being propagated it ought to be flung into the fire.
It is curious enough that those who are the least disposed to give good wages to the labouring people, should be the most disposed to discover for them schemes for saving their money! I have lately seen, I saw it at Uphusband, a prospectus, or scheme, for establishing what they call a County Friendly Society. This is a scheme for getting from the poor a part of the wages that they receive. Just as if a poor fellow could put anything by out of eight shillings a week! If, indeed, the schemers were to pay the labourers twelve or thirteen shillings a week; then these might have something to lay by at some times of the year; but then, indeed, there would be no poor-rates wanted; and it is to get rid of the poor-rates that these schemers have invented their society. What wretched drivellers they must be: to think that they should be able to make the pauper keep the pauper; to think that they shall be able to make the man that is half-starved lay by part of his loaf! I know of no county where the poor are worse treated than in many parts of this county of Hants. It is happy to know of one instance in which they are well treated; and I deem it a real honour to be under the roof of him who has uniformly set so laudable an example in this most important concern. What are all his riches to me? They form no title to my respect. ’Tis not for me to set myself up in judgment as to his taste, his learning, his various qualities and endowments; but of these his unequivocal works I am a competent judge. I know how much good he must do; and there is a great satisfaction in reflecting on the great happiness that he must feel, when, in laying his head upon his pillow of a cold and dreary winter night, he reflects that there are scores, aye, scores upon scores, of his country-people, of his poor neighbours, of those whom the Scripture denominates his brethren, who have been enabled, through him, to retire to a warm bed after spending a cheerful evening and taking a full meal by the side of their own fire. People may talk what they will about happiness; but I can figure to myself no happiness surpassing that of the man who falls to sleep with reflections like these in his mind.
Now observe, it is a duty, on my part, to relate what I have here related as to the conduct of Mr. Chamberlayne; not a duty towards him; for I can do him no good by it, and I do most sincerely believe, that both he and his equally benevolent sister would rather that their goodness remained unproclaimed; but it is a duty towards my country, and particularly towards my readers. Here is a striking and a most valuable practical example. Here is a whole neighbourhood of labourers living as they ought to live; enjoying that happiness which is the just reward of their toil. And shall I suppress facts so honourable to those who are the cause of this happiness, facts so interesting in themselves, and so likely to be useful in the way of example; shall I do this, aye, and, besides this, tacitly give a false account of Weston Grove, and this, too, from the stupid and cowardly fear of being accused of flattering a rich man?
Netley Abbey ought, it seems, to be called Letley Abbey, the Latin name being Lætus Locus, or Pleasant Place. Letley was made up of an abbreviation of the Lætus and of the Saxon word ley, which meaned place, field, or piece of ground. This Abbey was founded by Henry III. in 1239, for 12 Monks of the Benedictine order; and when suppressed by the wife-killer, its revenues amounted to 3,200l. a year of our present money. The possessions of these monks were, by the wife-killing founder of the Church of England, given away (though they belonged to the public) to one of his court sycophants, Sir William Paulet, a man the most famous in the whole world for sycophancy, time-serving, and for all those qualities which usually distinguish the favourites of kings like the wife-killer. This Paulet changed from the Popish to Henry the Eighth’s religion, and was a great actor in punishing the papists; when Edward VI. came to the throne, this Paulet turned protestant, and was a great actor in punishing those who adhered to Henry VIIIth’s religion: when Queen Mary came to the throne, this Paulet turned back to papist, and was one of the great actors in sending protestants to be burnt in Smithfield: when Old Bess came to the throne, this Paulet turned back to protestant again, and was, until the day of his death, one of the great actors in persecuting, in fining, in mulcting, and in putting to death those who still had the virtue and the courage to adhere to the religion in which they and he had been born and bred. The head of this family got, at last, to be Earl of Wiltshire, Marquis of Winchester, and Duke of Bolton. This last title is now gone; or, rather, it is changed to that of “Lord Bolton,” which is now borne by a man of the name of Orde, who is the son of a man of that name, who died some years ago, and who married a daughter (I think it was) of the last “Duke of Bolton.”
Pretty curious, and not a little interesting, to look back at the origin of this Dukedom of Bolton, and, then, to look at the person now bearing the title of Bolton; and, then, to go to Abbotston, near Winchester, and survey the ruins of the proud palace, once inhabited by the Duke of Bolton, which ruins, and the estate on which they stand, are now the property of the Loan-maker, Alexander Baring! Curious turn of things! Henry the wife-killer and his confiscating successors granted the estates of Netley, and of many other monasteries, to the head of these Paulets: to maintain these and other similar grants, a thing called a “Reformation” was made: to maintain the “Reformation,” a “Glorious Revolution” was made: to maintain the “Glorious Revolution” a Debt was made: to maintain the Debt, a large part of the rents must go to the Debt-Dealers, or Loan-makers: and thus, at last, the Barings, only in this one neighbourhood, have become the successors of the Wriothesleys, the Paulets, and the Russells, who, throughout all the reigns of confiscation, were constantly in the way, when a distribution of good things was taking place! Curious enough all this; but, the thing will not stop here. The Loan-makers think that they shall outwit the old grantee-fellows; and so they might, and the people too, and the devil himself; but they cannot out-wit events. Those events will have a thorough rummaging; and of this fact the “turn-of-the-market” gentlemen may be assured. Can it be law (I put the question to lawyers), can it be law (I leave reason and justice out of the inquiry), can it be law, that, if I, to-day, see dressed in good clothes, and with a full purse, a man who was notoriously penniless yesterday; can it be law, that I (being a justice of the peace) have a right to demand of that man how he came by his clothes and his purse? And, can it be law, that I, seeing with an estate a man who was notoriously not worth a crown piece a few years ago, and who is notoriously related to nothing more than one degree above beggary; can it be law, that I, a magistrate, seeing this, have not a right to demand of this man how he came by his estate? No matter, however; for, if both these be law now, they will not, I trust, be law in a few years from this time.
Mr. Chamberlayne has caused the ancient fish-ponds, at Netley Abbey, to be “reclaimed,” as they call it. What a loss, what a national loss, there has been in this way, and in the article of water fowl! I am quite satisfied that, in these two articles and in that of rabbits, the nation has lost, has had annihilated (within the last 250 years) food sufficient for two days in the week, on an average, taking the year throughout. These are things, too, which cost so little labour! You can see the marks of old fish-ponds in thousands and thousands of places. I have noticed, I dare say, five hundred, since I left home. A trifling expense would, in most cases, restore them; but now-a-days all is looked for at shops: all is to be had by trafficking: scarcely any one thinks of providing for his own wants out of his own land and other his own domestic means. To buy the thing, ready made, is the taste of the day; thousands, who are housekeepers, buy their dinners ready cooked; nothing is so common as to rent breasts for children to suck: a man actually advertised, in the London papers, about two month ago, to supply childless husbands with heirs! In this case the articles were, of course, to be ready made; for to make them “to order” would be the devil of a business; though in desperate cases even this is, I believe, sometimes resorted to.
Hambledon, Sunday,
22nd Oct. 1826.
We left Weston Grove on Friday morning, and came across to Botley, where we remained during the rest of the day, and until after breakfast yesterday. I had not seen “the Botley Parson” for several years, and I wished to have a look at him now, but could not get a sight of him, though we rode close before his house, at much about his breakfast time, and though we gave him the strongest of invitation that could be expressed by hallooing and by cracking of whips! The fox was too cunning for us, and do all we could, we could not provoke him to put even his nose out of kennel. From Mr. James Warner’s at Botley we went to Mr. Hallett’s, at Allington, and had the very great pleasure of seeing him in excellent health. We intended to go back to Botley, and then to go to Titchfield, and, in our way to this place, over Portsdown Hill, whence I intended to show George the harbour and the fleet, and (of still more importance) the spot on which we signed the “Hampshire Petition,” in 1817; that petition which foretold that which the “Norfolk Petition” confirmed; that petition which will be finally acted upon, or.... That petition was the very last thing that I wrote at Botley. I came to London in November 1816; the Power-of-Imprisonment Bill was passed in February, 1817; just before it was passed, the Meeting took place on Portsdown Hill; and I, in my way to the hill from London, stopped at Botley and wrote the petition. We had one meeting afterwards at Winchester, when I heard parsons swear like troopers, and saw one of them hawk up his spittle, and spit it into Lord Cochrane’s poll! Ah! my bucks, we have you now! You are got nearly to the end of your tether; and, what is more, you know it. Pay off the Debt, parsons! It is useless to swear and spit, and to present addresses applauding Power-of-Imprisonment Bills, unless you can pay off the Debt! Pay off the Debt, parsons! They say you can lay the devil. Lay this devil, then; or, confess that he is too many for you; aye, and for Sturges Bourne, or Bourne Sturges (I forget which), at your backs!
From Arlington, we, fearing that it would rain before we could get round by Titchfield, came across the country over Waltham Chase and Soberton Down. The chase was very green and fine; but the down was the very greenest thing that I have seen in the whole country. It is not a large down; perhaps not more than five or six hundred acres; but the land is good, the chalk is at a foot from the surface, or more; the mould is a hazel mould; and when I was upon the opposite hill, I could, though I knew the spot very well, hardly believe that it was a down. The green was darker than that of any pasture or even any sainfoin or clover that I had seen throughout the whole of my ride; and I should suppose that there could not have been many less than a thousand sheep in the three flocks that were feeding upon the down when I came across it. I do not speak with anything like positiveness as to the measurement of this down; but I do not believe that it exceeds six hundred and fifty acres. They must have had more rain in this part of the country than in most other parts of it. Indeed, no part of Hampshire seems to have suffered very much from the drought. I found the turnips pretty good, of both sorts, all the way from Andover to Rumsey. Through the New Forest, you may as well expect to find loaves of bread growing in fields as turnips, where there are any fields for them to grow in. From Redbridge to Weston, we had not light enough to see much about us; but when we came down to Botley, we there found the turnips as good as I had ever seen them in my life, as far I could judge from the time I had to look at them. Mr. Warner has as fine turnip fields as I ever saw him have, Swedish turnips and white also; and pretty nearly the same may be said of the whole of that neighbourhood for many miles round.