In the times prior to the growth, rapid yet steady, of the neighbouring town, Great Castleborough, and to the simultaneous development of the love-of-nature principle in the Castleburghians, nothing had been thought of all these roads. The roads were well enough till they led to these inroads. Then Sir Roger aroused himself. This must be changed. The roads must be stopped. Nothing was easier to his fancy. His fellow justices, Sir Benjamin Bullockshed and Squire Sheepshank, had asked his aid to stop the like nuisances, and it had been done at once. So Sir Roger put up notices all about, that the roads were to be stopped by an Order of Session, and these notices were signed, as required by law, by their worships of Bullockshed and Sheepshank. But Sir Roger soon found that it was one thing to stop a road leading from One-man-town to Lonely Lodge, and another to attempt to stop those leading from Great Castleborough to Rockville.
On the very first Sunday after the exhibition of those notice-boards, there was a ferment in the Grove of Rockville, as if all the bees in the county were swarming there, and all the wasps and hornets to boot. Great crowds were collected before each of these obnoxious placards, and the amount of curses vomited forth against them was really shocking for any day, but more especially for a Sunday. Presently there was a rush at them; they were torn down, and simultaneously pitched into the river. There were great crowds swarming all about Rockville all that day, and the next, being St. Monday, with looks so defiant, that Sir Roger more than once contemplated sending off for the Yeomanry Cavalry to defend his house, which he seriously thought in danger.
But so far from being intimidated from proceeding, this demonstration only made Sir Roger the more determined. To have so desperate and irreverent a population coming about his house and woods, now presented itself in a much more formidable aspect than ever. So, next day, not only were the placards once more hoisted, but rewards offered for the discovery of the offenders, attended with all the maledictions of the insulted majesty of the law. No notice was taken of this; but the whole of Great Castleborough was in a buzz and an agitation. There were posters plastered all over the walls of the town, four times as large as Sir Roger’s notices, in this style:—
“Englishmen! Your dearest rights are menaced! The woods of Rockville, your ancient, rightful, and enchanting resort, are to be closed to you. Castleburghians, the eyes of the world are upon you. ‘Awake! arise! or be for ever fallen!’ England expects every man to do his duty! And your duty is to resist and defy the grasping soil-lords, to seize on your ancient patrimony!”
“Patrimony! Ancient and rightful resort of Rockville!” Sir Roger was astounded at the audacity of this upstart plebeian race. What! they actually claimed Rockville, the heritage of a hundred successive Rockvilles, as their own. Sir Roger determined to carry it to the Sessions; and at the Sessions was a magnificent muster of all his friends. There was Sir Roger himself in the chair; and on either hand a prodigious row of country squirearchy. There was Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, and Sir Thomas Tenterhook, and all the squires—Sheepshank, Ramsbottom, Turnbull, Otterbrook, and Swagsides. The clerk of the Sessions read the notice for the closing of all the foot-paths through the woods of Rockville, and declared that this notice had been duly, and for the required period, publicly posted. The Castleburghians protested by their able lawyer, Dare Deville, against any order for the closing of these ancient woods—the inestimable property of the public.
“Property of the public!” exclaimed Sir Roger. “Property of the public!” echoed the multitudinous voices of indignant Bullocksheds, Tenterhooks, and Ramsbottoms. “Why, sir, do you dispute the right of Sir Roger Rockville to his own estate?”
“By no means,” replied the undaunted Dare Deville; “the estate of Rockville is unquestionably the property of the honourable baronet, Sir Roger Rockville; but the roads through it are as unquestionably the property of the public.”
The whole bench looked at itself; that is, at each other, in wrathful astonishment. The swelling in the diaphragms of the squires of Otterbrook, Turnbull, and Swagsides, and all the rest of the worshipful row, was too big for utterance. Only Sir Roger himself burst forth with an abrupt—“Impudent fellow! But I’ll see him —— first!”
“Grant the order!” said Sir Benjamin Bullockshed; and the whole bench nodded assent. The able lawyer Dare Deville retired with a pleasant smile. He saw an agreeable prospect of plenty of grist to his mill. Sir Roger was rich, and so was Great Castleborough. He rubbed his hands not in the least like a man defeated, and thought to himself—“Let them go at it—all right.”
The next day the placards on the Rockville estate were changed for others, bearing, “Stopped by order of Sessions!” and alongside of them were huge carefully painted boards, denouncing on all trespassers prosecutions according to law. The same evening came a prodigious invasion of Castleburghians, who tore down all the boards and placards, and carried them on their shoulders to Great Castleborough, singing as they went, “See the Conquering Heroes come!” They set them up in the centre of the Castleborough market-place, and burnt them along with an effigy of Roger Rockville.