“JACK OF NEWBURY”
It is impossible to escape Jack of Newbury in this the scene of his greatness. “John Smalwoode the elder, alias John Wynchcombe,” as he describes himself in his last will and testament, in 1519, was the most prominent of the clothworkers in the reigns of the Seventh and Eighth Henrys. He is perhaps best described in the words of a pamphlet published towards the close of the sixteenth century:—“He was a man of merrie disposition and honest conversation, was wondrous well beloved of rich and poore, especially because in every place where he came he would spend his money with the best, and was not any time found a churl of his purse. Wherefore, being so good a companion, he was called of olde and younge ‘Jacke of Newberie,’ a man so generallywell knowne in all this countrye for his good fellowship, that he could goe into no place but he found acquaintance; by means whereof Jacke could no sooner get a crowne, but straight hee found meanes to spend it; yet had he ever this care, that hee would always keepe himselfe in comely and decent apparel, neither at any time would hee be overcome in drinke, but so discreetly behave himselfe with honest mirthe and pleasant conceits, that he was every gentleman’s companion.”
This is so excellent a voucher for him that it is not surprising so universal a favourite stepped into the shoes of his master’s widow. She was rich, and he with a plentiful lack of coin; yet though she had a choice of suitors, including a “tanner, a taylor, and a parson,” she set her heart on Jack with something of the determination which characterized the “Berkshire Lady” already referred to in these pages; and though he was something loth, married him out of hand. We are not told that she regretted it, but probably she did, for the stories have it that she was a gossip and given to staying out late, while Jack stopped at home and went betimes to bed. Once, when she returned at midnight, and knocked at the door, he looked from his window and told her that, as she had stayed out all day for her own delight, she might “lie forth” until the morning for his. “Moved with pity,” as the narrative says, but more likely because her continual knocking kept him awake, he at last went down in his shirt and opened the door, when “Alack, husband,” says she, “what hap have I? My wedding ring was even now in my hand, and I have let it fallabout the door; good, sweet John, come forth with the candle and help me seek it.”
He “went forth” accordingly, into the street, and she locked him out! We are not told what happened when he got in again.
He seems to have taken her loss, a little later, calmly enough, for he speedily married again, and although “wondrous wealthie,” he chose a poor girl who lived at Aylesbury. A grand wedding it was when Joan (for that was her name) and Jack were married. Her head, we are assured, was adorned with a “billement of gold, and her hair, as yellow as gold, hanging downe behind her.” In fact, “Her golden hair was hanging down her back,” as the music-hall songster has it; which goes far to prove that the modernpenchantfor yellow locks has a respectable antiquity, and warrants brunettes in using all the arts of the toilet to redress the errors of Nature.
JACK AS ENTERTAINER
Jack of Newbury entertained Henry the Eighth here, and, wonderful to relate, the floors of the house were covered with broad cloth, instead of the then usual rushes. Also, he equipped a hundred of his workmen, fifty as horsemen, and fifty armed with bows and pikes, “as well armed and better clothed than any,” and went with them to the Scotch war. The “Ballad of the Newberrie Archers” tells us how they distinguished themselves at Flodden Field; but it must be added that it is doubtful whether they ever reached so far; which proves the ballad-maker—the “special correspondent” of that time—to have been more eloquent than truthful. That Jack was the principal man of his trade must be evident from thesefacts and from the statement that he employed a hundred looms; and a great deal more evident from his having been selected to head the petition of the clothiers for the encouragement of trade with France. He had a pretty taste in sarcasm, too, if his retort upon Wolsey, to whom it had been referred, and who had delayed to answer it, is considered. “If my Lord Chancellor’s father,” said he, “had been no hastier inkilling calves than he in despatching of poor men’s suits, I think he would never have worn a mitre.” It is only necessary to remember that Wolsey was the son of a butcher for the sting of this quip to be appreciated.
OLD CLOTH HALL, NEWBURY.
In 1531, and again in 1556, Newbury was the scene of martyrdoms; and in 1643 and 1644 the site of two battles between Charles and his Parliament, both almost equally indecisive, and both remarkable for desperate courage on either side.
FIRST BATTLE OF NEWBURY
The first battle was fought to the south of the town on September 18, and was the culmination of a Royalist attack upon the Parliamentary army under the Earl of Essex, on the march from Gloucester to London. Essex had designed to lie at Newbury, the town being strongly for the Parliament; but as he was marching across Enborne Chase on the 16th, his line was cut by the appearance of Prince Rupert, who charged down upon him with his dragoons. In this skirmish the Marquis de Vieuville was slain, and many others of the Royalists. The battle thus forced on by the rashness of Prince Rupert was one of the fiercest in the war.
The King was encamped near Donnington. Essex advanced and seized some elevated ground, where his men were charged by the Royalist cavalry, at whose head was the Earl of Carnarvon. Carnarvon had that morning measured a gateway with his sword, to see if it were wide enough for the prisoners who,with Essex at their head, they were to lead through it in the evening. Although they cut up Essex’s cavalry, Carnarvon himself fell in that gallant charge, and was carried through the same gateway, a corpse, that night.
It was the Parliamentary foot, the London train-bands, that saved the day, which would otherwise have been a disastrous rout for their leader. They withstood the cannonading and the impetuous charges of Rupert’s horse, and, with Essex himself among them, in a conspicuous white hat, drove back the Royalist infantry. It was not until night had fallen that the contest ceased. Six thousand were slain that day, and neither side had won. Essex was so weakened that he retreated upon Reading the next morning.
He had nearly reached Theale when Rupert descended upon his rear like a hurricane, and cut down many of his troops in a spot still called, from this circumstance, “Dead Man’s Lane.”
The Royalists perhaps had slightly the better of the First Battle of Newbury; but at what a cost! Carnarvon, the young Earl of Sunderland; and Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, slain! Falkland was Secretary of State, and a patriot whose feelings were above partizanship. He seems to have had a presentiment of death, for he received the Sacrament on the morning of the battle, saying, “I am weary of the times, and foresee much misery to my country; but I believe I shall be out of it ere night.” There is a monument on Wash Common to him—
“The blameless and the brave,”
who fell thus with his brothers-in-arms; and mounds still mark the places where the dead were buried. The memory of this great battle has recently been revived, for in 1897 its anniversary was celebrated, and wreaths and crosses of evergreens were laid upon the monument and the tumuli.
THE SECOND BATTLE
The Second Battle of Newbury was fought on Sunday, October 27, 1644. The thickest part of it raged round Speen, on the Bath Road, and in the gardens of Shaw House. This house, one of the finest mansions in Berkshire, was built by Thomas Dolman, clothier, in 1581. He was evidently something of a scholar, and worldly wise as well, for he knew that his riches and his grand mansion would rouse envious talk. Accordingly he caused Latin and Greek inscriptions to be carved over the entrance, which, Englished, run—
“Let no envious man enter here.”
And—
“The toothless man envies the teeth of those who eat, and the mole despises the eyes of the roe.”
It is quite obvious that Thomas Dolman had been a great deal criticized locally, and that the iron of that criticism had entered his soul.
His son became Sir Thomas Dolman, and it was his descendant, Sir John Dolman, who garrisoned the house and entertained King Charles here on the night before the second battle. A hole is still shownin the panelling of the drawing-room, said to have been made by a shot fired at the King that night when standing at the window; and a brass plate records the circumstance in a Latin inscription.
THE LAST OF THE SMOCK-FROCKS AND BEAVERS.
The parapets of Shaw House were lined with Royalist musketeers on this occasion, and entrenchments thrown up in the gardens; but after a stubbornly contested fight the Royalists were too weakened to retain the position. Their ordnance and the wounded were left at Donnington Castle, a mile away, and they fell back upon Oxford. Neither side had been sorry when night fell and put an end to a hard-fought, but inconclusive, day; and for their part the Parliamentary leaders were glad to see the King’sforces withdrawing by the light of the moon, and did not dare risk an attack upon them.
It is not a little singular that during all this clash of arms the Royalist governor of Donnington Castle held that stronghold, although repeatedly attacked, from August, 1644, to April, 1646, and then only surrendered when desired by the King to do so.
CURIOUS OLD TOLL-HOUSE BETWEEN NEWBURY AND HUNGERFORD.
SPEEN
The road ascends to Speen, or, as it is often called, “Church Speen.” The present writer was climbing it when he overtook a countryman in a smock-frock, to whom the steep gradient was evidently anything but welcome.
“You’re a regular Mountjoy, a’ b’lieve,” said the countryman, puffing and blowing.
“A regular what?”
“A Mountjoy—a walker. But there; you bain’t Newbury?”
I told him I certainly was not a native of that town.
“Well,” said he, “you won’t, never have heerd of ’un, p’raps.”
It seems, then, that about fifty years ago Newbury boasted a pedestrian of that name, who obtained such a great local reputation that he has become proverbial with the country people, so that a “regular Mountjoy” is any one who possesses good walking powers.
Church Speen passed, an undulating road leads past a curiously castellated old toll-house to Hungerford.
It is at Hungerford, sixty-four miles from Hyde Park Corner, that one leaves Berkshire and enters Wilts, coming into wilder and less pastoral country. Hungerford town, however, is just within the Berkshire borders. The constant Kennet flows across the road here, and is crossed by a substantial bridge, from whose parapets anglers may be seen patiently waiting to lure the wily trout from their swims. Fuller quaintly says: “Good and great trouts are found in the river of Kennet nigh Hungerford; they are in their perfection in the month of May, and yearly decline with the buck. Being come to his full growth, he decays in goodness, not greatness, and thrives inhis head till his death. Note, by the way, that an hog-back and little head is a sign that any fish is in season.”
The chief street of Hungerford lies along the road to Salisbury, and the cyclist who is intent upon “doing” the Bath Road without turning to thoroughly explore the places along its course, consequently sees little of the town beyond the few old mansions and cottages, and the old coaching inn, “The Bear,” which front the highway. Not much, however, is in this case lost, for Hungerford contains little of interest, and were it not for its singular Hocktide customs, and for the fact that it was the first town to obtain the free delivery of letters between its post-office and the houses to which letters were addressed, would scarce demand an extended notice.
OLD POST-OFFICE CUSTOMS
The original plan of the General Post-Office, all over the country, was to allow postmasters of country towns to demand a fee for delivery. Those who expected letters were supposed to call for them. If they desired them to be delivered, the additional fee was a penny or twopence, according to the conscience or the cupidity of the postmaster, whose perquisites these fees were. This applied to houses quite near post-offices, and even next door to them. This extraordinary state of affairs was borne with for some time, until at last several towns brought actions against the Post-Office to decide if prepaid postage ought not to ensure delivery in the boundaries of post-towns. Hungerford was selected by the Courts as a typical case, and secured a judgment in its favour, Michaelmas, 1774.
Hocktide is a stirring time in this little town of less than three thousand inhabitants. It is determined by Eastertide, and generally falls in April. The odd observances derive their origin from the conditions imposed by John of Gaunt, father of Henry the Fourth, who, in the fourteenth century, conferred the rights and privileges of common-land and fishing in the Kennet upon the town. To hand down the proof of his gift to posterity, he presented with the charter a brass horn which bears the inscription:—
“John a Gaun did giue andgrant the Riall of Fishing toHungerford Toune from EldrenStub to Irish stil excepting somSeueral mil PoundJehosphat Lucas was Cunstabl.”
Not this horn, but its seventeenth-century successor, is jealously preserved in the Town Hall. It has a capacity of one quart.
HOCK TIDE
As an unreformed borough, Hungerford still enjoys the old-time custom of appointing, in the place of Mayor and Corporation, a Constable, Portreeve, Bailiff, Tithing-men, Keeper of the Keys of the Coffers, Hayward, Water Bailiffs, Ale-tasters, and Bellman. The ceremonies begin on the Friday before Hock Tuesday with a “macaroni supper and punchbowl,” and are held at the “John of Gaunt” inn. Tuesday, however, is the great day, when at an early hour the bellman goes round the borough commanding all those who hold land or dwellings within the confines of the town to appear at the Hockney, under pain of a poll-tax of one penny, called the “head-penny.” Lestthis warning should be insufficient, he mounts to the balcony of the Town Hall, where he blows a blast upon the horn. Those who do not obey the summons and refuse the payment of the head-penny are liable to lose their rights to the privileges of the borough.
HUNGERFORD.
By nine o’clock the jury are assembled in the Town Hall for the transaction of their annual business, and immediately after they are sworn in, the two tithing-men start on their round of the town. It is in this part of the proceedings that most interest is taken, for the business of the tithing-men is to take a poll-tax of twopence from every male inhabitant and a kiss from the wives and daughters of the burgesses. This is in recognition of the ancient powers of the Lord of the Manor, who had peculiar rights over the property and persons of his “chattels,” as the people were once regarded.
HUNGERFORD TUTTI-MEN.
The tithing-men are known as tutti-men; tutti being the local word for pretty. They carry short poles as insignia of office, gaily bedecked with blue ribbons and choice flowers known as tutti-poles; while behind them walks a man groaning under the weight of the tutti oranges, it being the custom to bestow an orange upon every person who is kissed, as well as upon theschool and workhouse children. The rights of office having been duly vested in them by means of strange customs and exhortation, the two favoured ones start off down the High Street on their kissing mission, followed by the orange-bearer and greeted with the cheers of the assembled people. One by one the houses are entered, and the custom observed both in spirit and letter; nor is it confined to the young and comely, for the old dames of Hungerford would deem themselves, if not insulted, at least sadly neglected, were the tutti-men to pass their houses unentered. Usually these officers find little difficulty in carrying out their pleasant duties, but sometimes the excitement is increased by some coy maiden, whose rustic simplicity prompts her to run away or hide. But as a general rule the ladies of Hungerford show very little objection to the observance of the ancient customs, so that the labours of the tutti-men are considerably lightened.
Thus, amid laughter, merriment, and mock-seriousness, the fun is continued until about half the borough is visited, by which time the tutti-men have taken care that all the duty kisses that should gratify the ancient inhabitants have been administered, as well as certain others that are more a pleasure than a duty. Certainly they deserve well of the town, for the tutti-men go through a good day’s work by the time dinner is served. Then, in accordance with the time-honoured precedent, the Chief Constable is elected into the chair; the great bowl of punch is placed on the table after dinner, and the various offices toasted and replied for. One is drunk in solemn silence—that of John ofGaunt, the town’s benefactor. All the townspeople seem satisfied with their day’s carnival, save, perhaps, a crooning old burgher, who may occasionally be heard to extol the good old days when the punch was strong and the newly-elected officers went home in wheelbarrows.
LITTLECOTE
From the everyday respectable dulness of Hungerford itself we will pass to the exciting scandals which make up much of the story of Littlecote, that gloomy and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become famous (or infamous, if you will have it so) through the crimes and debaucheries of Will Darell. There are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath Road. The most obvious way is by turning to the right when in the midst of Hungerford town; the other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mile further down the road. Either will bring the traveller to that secluded spot in the course of three and a half miles.
It stands, that hoary pile, in a wide and well-wooded park, sheltered beneath the swelling Wiltshire downs and close beside the gentle Kennet, whose stream has been fruitful of trout ever since “trouts” (as our ancestors quaintly called them, in the plural) were angled for. Littlecote, as we now see it, was built by the Darells in the closing years of the fifteenth century, in whose early years it had passed from the Colston family by the marriage of the heiress of theColstons to William Darell, son of Sir William Darell, of Sesay, in Yorkshire. A descendant of this emigrant from the North Riding, the “Wild Will Darell” of this blood-boltered history was born into an estate comprising an ancestral home and many thousands of acres in the counties of Wilts, Berks, and Hants, and might have been accounted fortunate had it not been for the rather more than trifling circumstances of an unhappy up-bringing which included a shameful treatment of himself and his mother by an unnatural father; the paternal extravagances which had alienated much of the property; the heavy charge made on the estate for the benefit of the mistress of his brother, who preceded him in the estate; and, finally, the crop of lawsuits into which he was plunged immediately upon succeeding to this singularly-encumbered patrimony. At this interval of time it has become quite impossible for serious historians to discriminate between the facts and the—fancies, shall we call them?—of the Wild Darell story. This difficulty does not arise from lack of patient research on the part of Darell commentators, who have ransacked the Record Office to prove that he wasnota villain of the most lurid kind, or the industry of others who have searched among musty muniment chests to determine that hewas. It would, considering the fact of the records in the Littlecote muniment room not having yet been explored for the benefit of these historic doubts, be rash indeed for any one to pronounce definitely for either of the very diverse views held of Darell as Villain, or Darell as Good Young Man.
The story, which first became widely known through a footnote appended to Sir Walter Scott’s “Rokeby,” is of a midwife summoned from the village of Shefford, seven miles away, on a false pretence of attending Lady Knyvett, of Charlton, near by, and of her being blindfolded and led on horseback in the darkness of the night to quite another house, in one of whose stately rooms lay a mysterious masked lady for whom her services were required. The horrid legend then goes on to say that a tall, slender gentleman, a lowering and ferocious-looking man, “havinge uppon hym a goune of blacke velvett,” entered the room with some others, and, without a word, took the child from her arms and threw it upon a blazing fire in an ante-room, crushing it into the flaming logs with his boot-heel, so that it was presently consumed.
A prime horror, this, and rich in ferocity, mystery, and all the incertitude that comes of age and conflicting testimony. Masked lady, blindfolded nurse, burnt baby, taciturn and horrible stranger, what lurid figures are these! and how royally abused for the possession of an over-imaginative mind would be that novelist who should dare conceive incidents so romantic!
WILD DARELL
Scott gleaned his traditions from the weird legends current in the country-side. They had, when he first printed them, been the fireside gossip of that district for over two hundred years, and of course in that length of time had lost nothing in the repetition. For that reason we are asked nowadays to discredit them altogether. We cannot, however, do that, because there came to light some years ago the actualdeposition to the facts made by the midwife, Mrs. Barnes of Shefford, taken down on her deathbed by a Mr. Bridges of Great Shefford, a magistrate, who was also a cousin of Darell, and would not, it may well be supposed, be inclined to spread any baseless gossip to the hurt of a family with which he was connected. This deposition tells the story as already narrated. It does not identify Darell or Littlecote, nor does it even hint the identity ofanyperson or place. But the sinister discovery, some twenty years ago, at Longleat, of an original letter from Sir H. Knyvett, of Charlton, to Sir John Thynne, of Longleat, dated January 2, 1578/9 (about the time of the midwife’s confession), brings us to the original rumours pointing to Darell’s being the man and Littlecote the place.
LITTLECOTE.
DEATH OF DARELL
There was then residing at Longleat a Mr. Bonham, whose sister was well known to be living with Darell as his mistress, and this letter requests that “Mr. Bonham will inquire of his sister touching her usageat Will. Darell’s, the birth of her children, how many there were, and what became of them: for that the report of the murder of one of them was increasing foully, and would touch Will. Darell to the quick.” To that letter there is no reply, and it remains uncertain whether Darell was ever arraigned for murder and acquitted (as the story goes), or whether the rumours simply were never crystallized into a definite charge against him. The probability seems to be that he never was called upon to stand his trial. It is quite certain, however, that the legend of his being haunted along the roads by the apparition of a burning infant which startled his horse so that Wild Darell was thrown and killed is a more or less pleasing invention. Darell died quite peacefully in his bed, at Littlecote, eleven years after the midwife’s death, and was buried in the Darell Chapel at Ramsbury, where he was laid to rest, October 1st, 1589. Notwithstanding these well-ascertained facts, Darell is now, if we are to credit the stories of the country-side, an apparition himself, and superstitious rustics still fear to face the roads o’ nights because of a Burning Babe and a Spectral Horseman, who comes dashing down them at a terror-stricken gallop, mounted on a horse of coal-black hue, with a breath like steam and eyes like burning coals!
As for the elaborate embroideries added to the Wild Darell story from time to time, there are many. According to these ingenious fictions, the midwife counted the stairs of the strange house, and cut a piece out of the bed curtains, which she carried away. By these means; by finding the number of the stairsat Littlecote to tally with her counting, and by fitting her piece of tapestry to a hole in the curtains of a bed at Littlecote, we are told to believe the truth of the story. The singular thing, however, is that Mrs. Barnes made absolutely no mention of these things in her deposition. There remains, it is true, the fact already alluded to, that the magistrate who took down the woman’s statement was a connection of Darell’s, and might possibly have suppressed facts which could point to his relative being concerned in the affair. Another story is that upon Darell being arraigned (which in itself is uncertain), he made interest with Sir John Popham, the Chief Justice, to procure an acquittal.
THE HAUNTED CHAMBER.
Now it is quite certain that Popham did not become Chief Justice until 1592, when Darell had been in hisgrave nearly three years, and could not therefore have done so. He was, it is true, Attorney-General at the time of Darell’s supposed crime, and,hadthere been a trial, andhadhe been bribed, could possibly have procured anolle prosequi.
But Darell certainly made over the reversion of Littlecote to Popham in 1586, and Popham took possession upon Darell’s decease. The story of this transaction being the bribe in question we owe to Aubrey, the county historian (or rather, the county gossip), who actually gives an account of the trial and says, “Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but being a great person and a favourite, he pronounced anoli prosequi.”
More to the point is the fact that Darell, in 1583, offered Lord Chancellor Bromley the then large sum of £5000 to be “his good friend.”
Those who are interested in the Darell story are equally divided as to his general character. One would have us believe that he was a Model Squire, who fished for trout, took an enthralling interest in his flower-garden, and if he did not always come home to tea (because tea not having at that period been introduced, it was impossible to do so), was content with a modest pint of claret at dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in reading what improving literature was to be had in the Elizabethan age; which, I fear, judging from the general character of the time, was of a somewhat meagre nature.
THE REAL DARELL
The real Darell was not quite like that picture. We already know that he had one mistress at Littlecote, and then there was Lady Anne Hungerford, anelderly charmer, whom by some means Wild Will had seduced from her husband, and whose letters, still preserved, to her “deare Dorrell” are not so improving as the recipient’s other reading. One learns from these choice communications that Lady Anne had been accused of murder, adultery, and trying to poison her husband; and, under the circumstances, it seems quite likely that all these charges were well-founded, even though she says that “luker and gaine makes many dissembling and hollow hearts” (which sounds like one of the admirable copy-book maxims of our youth), and that she anticipates being cleared from suspicion of these “vill and abomynabell practiscis.” Add to these hot-blooded intrigues the extravagances which, together with his litigious disposition, served to ruin his estate and to bring him into disfavour with his neighbours, and we obtain the genesis of all the ill-favoured legends of this picturesque figure of the Elizabethan era.
THE GREAT REBELLION
Littlecote had not done with stirring scenes when Darell was dead and the Pophams took possession. The Great Hall, hung round with pikes, leather jerkins, helmets, and cuirasses of Cromwellian times, serves to tell, in its warlike array, of how the place became a rendezvous of the Roundheads of this vicinity. These relics are the arms and accoutrements of the Popham Horse, raised by Colonel Alexander Popham, whose own suit of armour isstill suspended here, over one of the doorways. A fitting place this, then, for that gathering of the King’s Commissioners who came to Littlecote in December, 1688. The occasion was an historic one. James the Second was tottering upon his throne, and the Prince of Orange, invited to these shores to protect the civil and religious liberties of the nation, had marched up with his Dutchmen from his landing in the West Country. No man knew what would be the course of events, because not one of those concerned in that memorable crisis knew his own mind, from the King and his adherents on the one side, to the Prince and his partisans on the other.
The two parties met at Hungerford on December 8. On the following day, Sunday, the Commissioners dined at Littlecote, and then and there the fate of the kingdom was settled, quite amicably. The old Hall was crowded with Peers and Generals—Halifax, the judicious “trimmer,” whose cautious diplomacy guided the crisis through to its solution without bloodshed; Burnet, Nottingham, Shrewsbury, and Oxford, all waiting upon events. Halifax, the partisan of the King, seized the opportunity of extracting from Burnet all he knew and thought. “Do you wish to get the King into your power?” he asked the Bishop. “Not at all,” replied Burnet: “we would not do the least harm to his person.” “And if he were to go away?” slyly insinuated Halifax. “There is nothing so much to be wished,” whispered the Bishop, apprehending his meaning; and so James slunk away, and William of Orange reigned in his stead.
For the rest, Littlecote is a veritable storehouse of art and antiquities. The collection of ancient armour in the Great Hall is one of the finest in England. Here, too, is Chief Justice Popham’s chair, and the thumbstocks which he used as a means of extracting confessions from petty offenders with whom persuasion of the merely moral kind had failed. Then there is the painting of Mr. Popham’s horse, “Wild Dayrell,” which won the Derby in 1855, and many interesting objects besides. First in point of interest, however, is the Haunted Chamber, which is even now said to resound with groans and imprecations; and is still very much in the same condition as in Darell’s day, although, to be sure, the fateful ante-room is now divided from it. Darell’s Tree, an ancient elm, patched and chained together, is still to be seen on the south side of the house, carefully tended; the legend running that Littlecote will flourish so long as its hoary trunk holds together.
But to return to the road, which presently comes to the charming village of Froxfield, with its wide village green and great red-brick barracks of almshouses, founded in 1686 by Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, for fifty clergymen’s widows, and perched up on a bank above the right-hand side of the highway.
SAVERNAKE FOREST
Thence, nearly all the way into Marlborough, seven miles ahead, the road lies through Savernake Forestand its outskirts, passing the loveliest forest scenery in England. Nothing can compare for magnificence with the massed beeches and oaks of Savernake, whose glorious alleys of foliage extend for miles in every direction. These fine full-grown trees are planted for the most part in a well-considered design, and radiate from a central point in eight directions. These “Eight Walks,” as they are called, vary in length from four miles downwards, and lie to the south of the road. The highway runs through the northern verge of the Forest, quite open and hedgeless all the way, with two gates across it, about two miles apart. The scenery is like nothing so much as a painting by De Wint or Constable.
The Marquis of Ailesbury, to whom this noble demesne (the only Forest in the possession of a subject) belongs, has his residence near the southern boundary of the Forest, at Tottenham House, which is a singularly plain building externally, and so reminiscent in name of the Tottenham Court Road that it would have been exquisitely appropriate had the late Marquis sold the estate to Sir John Blundell Maple instead of to Lord Iveagh.
I suppose the eccentricities of the late Marquis of Ailesbury will become the subject of curious legends in the coming by-and-by. He was born out of his time, and was a kind of “throw-back” to earlier types that flourished when the Prince Regent and the Toms and Jerrys disported themselves in the famous Corinthian manner.
The glades of Savernake still remain in the family, but were alienated to Lord Iveagh, the man of Dublinstout, of whom the quaint Biblical conceit was invented by some temperance wag: “He who is not for us is agin us.[3]He brews XX.” Lord Iveagh bought the estates and paid for them, but the House of Lords refused to sanction the sale, and so Savernake still belongs to the Brudenell-Bruces.
The late Marquis had a perfect genius for dissipating wealth. A “horsey” man among the “horsey,” his favourite companions were sporting men of the more unrefined type, and he was hail-fellow with the cab-men and ’bus-men of London. Radicals found in his career a text for their discourses and a reason for abolishing the House of Lords as an hereditary chamber; and the ballet-girls of the London theatres regarded him as all a Peer should be. One who knew “Lord Stomach-ache,” as he was playfully nicknamed before he had succeeded to the Marquisate and was yet Lord Savernake, said—
“The wealth and colour of his lordship’s language surprised me. I never knew or heard a costermonger in the Dials with such a repertory. I saw him once with a couple of choice friends on a costermonger’s barrow, such as is used for hawking fish or vegetables. One ‘pal’ had a ‘yard of tin’ (or coaching horn), on which he tootled melodiously. His lordship wore a very high collar, a blue birds-eye belcher fastened with a nursery-pin for a necktie, a huge drab box-cloth coat with large mother-o’-pearl buttons, a low-crowned, broad-brimmed coachman’s hat, and a very tight pairof trousers. It was raining, a pitiless, pelting drizzle, and as they pulled up for drinks, he took off his heavy coat, and, placing it carefully over the patient ‘moke,’ said to it, as he patted it, ‘There y’are, Neddy; that’ll keep the bloomin’ wet off you, old bloke, won’t it?’”
For my own part, I think the latter part of that incident is the most creditable thing on record in the “short and merry” life of poor “Stomach-ache.”
OLD TIMES ON THE ROAD
Savernake Forest left behind, the road descends steeply down Forest Hill in the direction of Marlborough. This hill was one of the worst obstacles met with between London and Bath in the old times, and its steepness was then rendered more difficult by reason of the execrable surface of the road. This is the experience of one travelling to London about 1816: “Twenty times at least the eight horses came to a standstill, and had to be allowed their own time before they would move. For more than half the way up there lay an extensive encampment of gipsies along each side of the road, forming a most picturesque scene with their wild figures, their bright-coloured costumes, and dark bronzed skin; their white tents, and the numerous columns of blue, thin smoke that curled upwards and lost itself in the dense foliage. These stout vagabonds rendered us an essential service; they cheered and lashed the horses, they pushed bodily in the rear, and they climbed the spokes of the revolving wheels, to send them round, with a recklessness and dexterity only acquired by long practice. To compensate them for their labour, the coachman halted at the top of the hill to givethem a chance of trading; and then the women came forward and did a little fortune-telling with the ladies, not without joking and bantering on the part of the onlookers; while the younger gipsies brought abundance of sweet wood-strawberries, dished up in dock-leaves, than which nothing at the time could have been more welcome.
“During the first half of the journey to London our pace would not average more than four miles an hour, and sometimes the tramps and wanderers of the road would keep up with us for the hour together, especially the pedlars and packmen, who would display their Brummagem wares, and now and then effect a sale as we rumbled along.”
A wide view extends from here, over the valley of the Kennet, with Marlborough lying in its hollow, and the Wiltshire downs, stretching away in bare rolling masses, in the direction of Swindon. Marlborough develops itself slowly as one descends, and becomes lost for a time as the panoramic view sinks out of sight.
MARLBOROUGH
There are fine old inns at Marlborough; coaching inns, fallen from the high estate that was theirs in the days when Pepys and Sheridan, my Lord Chatham with his gout and his innumerable train of servants, and Horace Walpole with his gimcrackery and his caustic comments upon the kind of society in which he found himself upon the Bath Road, stayedhere. No one comes here nowadays with vast retinues of lackeys, and the man does not exist, be he Peer or Commoner, who could dare be so offensive as that haughty and insufferable personage, the aforesaid Earl of Chatham, who, nursing his gout at the “Castle” Hotel in 1762, practically converted the place to his own exclusive use, regardless of the comfort or convenience of any one else. He would not stay at the “Castle,” he said, storming at the terrified landlord, unless all the servants of the establishment were forthwith clothed in the Chatham livery. And so clothed they were, and the “Castle” became for some weeks what it had been before the strange workings of fate had converted it into the finest of all the inns along the road to Bath—the private residence of a nobleman.
There are breakneck streets in Marlborough, for the town, although built in the valley, has the entrance to its principal street carried round the spur of a foothill so that one side of the thoroughfare is considerably lower than the other, and the humorous among Marlborough’s neighbours declare that bicycles are the only vehicles that can be driven round by the Town Hall without upsetting. But, in spite of what Cobbett says in his “Rural Rides,” that “Marlborough is an ill-looking place enough,” this street is the finest, broadest, neatest, and most picturesque of any along these hundred odd miles of highway. Think of all the adjectives that make for admiration, and you have scarce employed one that overrates the dignified and stately air of the High Street of Marlborough. The width of the road is accounted for by its havingbeen used as a market-place; the architectural character of the houses lining it is due to the fires that devastated the town in 1653, 1679, and 1690, burning down the older houses, and causing the town to be almost wholly rebuilt. Those were the days of the Renaissance, and before the dwelling-house became frankly unornamental and merely a brick or stone box for people to live in, with window and door holes from which they could look or issue forth.
Thanks, then, to these fires, Marlborough is to-day a town of architectural delights, while the older portion of the College is fully as interesting, having been built on the site of the old Castle from designs by Inigo Jones or his son-in-law, Webb. It is thus a noble view along the High Street: the shops, which are interspersed among the private houses, being here and there fronted with covered ways, forming dry walks in wet weather; an arcaded Market House and Town Hall at the eastern end, and a church closing the view in each direction.