CHAPTER XIII

SALTWOOD CASTLE.

Saltwood Castle is a peculiarly interesting object in the Ingoldsby Country, for it was the place where the four knights who murdered Becket assembled, on the night before the tragedy, and FitzUrse, among them, was, as we have already seen, claimed by Barham as his ancestor. The massive circularstone entrance-towers of the Castle come into view as we turn inland and surmount the crest of the hill at the back of Hythe. From this hilltop it is seen how exquisitely beautiful was the situation of Saltwood in days of old, before Hythe and its neighbouring mushroom townlets had begun to throw out their villas and suburban residences upon the spurs of the downs, flouting the sylvan solitude and mediæval aloofness of that secluded fortress. It lies a mile inland, at the head of a green and moist valley, still thickly wooded, sloping to the sea. We do not fully realise, until we take thought, the due meaning of that beautiful name of Saltwood; but, dwelling upon its old history, and in imagination sweeping away the modern accretions of houses, it is possible to recover the look of that Saltwood of old, when the woodlands were even more dense than now, and extended to the very margin of the sea;when a little pebbly brook came prattling from the bosom of the downs beyond, and, overhung by forest trees, found its way to the beach. The high tides then oozed some little distance up the valley, and the trees dipped their branches in the mingled waters of sea and stream. No roads, save the merest bridle-paths, then led up to the Castle, whose towers rose from amid the encircling trees like some fortress of fairyland.

From very early times Saltwood Castle was held by the Archbishops of Canterbury. It was, indeed, the seizure of this archiepiscopal castle and demesne by the Crown, and the grant of them to Randulf de Broc, that formed one of Becket's bitter grievances against Henry II. De Broc and his relatives were not only seated on the Archbishop's property, but were given the custody of his palace at Canterbury during his long six years' banishment, and on his return in December 1170, strenuously set themselves to be as insolent and as injurious as possible. Randulf himself hunted down the Archbishop's deer with the Archbishop's own hounds, and seized a vessel off Hythe laden with wine, a present from the King to Becket, killing some of the crew and casting the survivors into the dungeons of Pevensey. It was ill business quarrelling with that heady family, unanimously bent upon spiting and spoiling his Grace, from bloody murder and the seizing and destroying of property down to acts of wanton and provocative petty buffoonery. While Randulf de Broc was committing murder and piracy upon the high seas, his kinsman Robert, a renegade monk, on Christmas Eve waylaid one of the Archbishop's sumpter-mules and one of his horses andcut off their tails. It was this minor indignity that made the greater impression upon Becket's mind. For it he cursed and excommunicated both Randulf and Robert on Christmas Day from the nave pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral.

Saltwood Castle, however, and the De Brocs bore a still further part in the tragedy of Becket, now fast drawing to its final act. When the four knights, Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Bret, rushed forth from the King's presence at his court of Bur, in Normandy, on the night of December 24th, with murder in their hearts, they agreed to cross the Channel by two different routes, landing at Dover and at Winchelsea and meeting here, in this fortalice of Saltwood, where hatred sat embattled, already excommunicated and given over in any case to damnation, and so ready for any deed. Ghastly legends, theatrical in the rich gloom of their staging, tell how the four from over sea and Randulf de Broc met here, and plotted together on this night of December 28th the deed that was to be done on the morrow; arranging all the details of that act of blood in the dark, with extinguished candles, fearful of seeing each other's faces—so strong a hold did the event take of the popular imagination. The next morning, calling together a troop of soldiers in the King's name, they galloped off to Canterbury, along the Stone Street, to the commission of that crime whose echoes have come down to us, still hoarsely reverberant, despite the passing of more than seven centuries.

But it must not be supposed that here at Saltwood we see the veritable walls that sheltered thoseassassins. There is nothing remaining at Saltwood that can take us back to the days of Becket. The oldest, as well as the most imposing, part is the entrance, whose great drum-towers, built or restored by the cruel and haughty Archbishop Courtenay about 1350, give a very striking impression to one who stands beneath them of the almost impregnable strength of such mediæval strongholds before the days of heavy ordnance—the walls are so thick and smooth, the loophole windows so high up and small, the stout gate so strengthened with iron. If to force such a place seems almost impossible in cold blood, what of the time when it was defended by determined persons who heaved heavy stones from the battlements, so high up, upon the devoted heads of the equally determined persons, so far below; when the molten lead poured down in silvery cascades, to burn through the flesh to the very bone, and the winged missiles sped from the arbalasts into the liver of many a gallant warrior?—

The oak door is heavy and brown;And with iron it is plated and machicollated,To pour boiling oil and lead down;How you'd frownShould a ladle-full fall on your crown!

One is altogether indisposed to quarrel with the very thoroughgoing restoration that has given these great entrance-towers so striking an air of newness, for one instinctively feels that these towers must have looked so in times when the garrison was still kept up. While the place remained a fortress-residence it would have been simply suicidal notto maintain the entrance in the utmost state of repair.

The arms of Courtenay—the three-pointed label and the three bezants—supported by an angel, still remain over the entrance, but Courtenay himself, before whose frown his unfortunate tenants trembled, and in whose rare and uncertain smiles they dared to breathe in deprecating fashion, is forgotten locally. In Cornwall, in Wales, or in any Celtic part of Great Britain he would have survived in wild diabolic legend, but in Kent, which has been phlegmatic and matter-of-fact ever since Hengist and Horsa and the rest of the Teutons landed, he has long been consigned to dryasdust records, where his memory lingers, inanimate. When a little of the dust has been banged out of him, he can be made to strut the stage again and lord it once more, like the very full-blooded tyrant he was, zealous in upholding the spiritualities and the temporalities of the Church, and fanatic in the exaction of deference and manorial dues to himself. Did any poor hind or woodsman offend, ever so unconsciously, in failing of that deference, why, let him be seized and flung into some Little Ease or earthly purgatory, damply underground, there to reflect, with stripes, upon the majesty of Archbishops in general, and of Courtenays in particular, and to wonder when it shall please my lord to release him. Meanwhile, his Grace has forgotten all about his victim, and is thundering in his manorial court against the trembling bailiffs and townsfolk of his manor of Hythe, who have not done him, as he imagines, that yeoman service which is his due, and have now come to compoundfor that dereliction with fines in good coin and propitiatory offerings for his table, such as porpoises (the old records call them "porpusses") and others of the beastly dishes that mediæval times delighted in. All these folk had cause to rejoice when his exacting Grace died in 1396, and made way for a milder occupant of the seat of St. Augustine, but they were not happy until the Reformation came and the Church and the manor parted company. The property now belongs to the Deedes family, but it needs no very prophetic eye to discern the ultimate fate of Saltwood's ownership. It lies too near the gates of the consorted towns of Hythe and Folkestone and their satellites to be much longer suffered to maintain its present semi-solitude, and the day will come when it and its romantic setting of woods will be offered to and purchased by those towns as a public park. The landscape-gardener will be let loose upon it; winding gravel paths of the kind that takes a league of path to go a mile of distance will be made, and the public will be requested to "keep off the grass" and to "place all refuse in the receptacle provided for the purpose": all very parlourmaidenly, and the essence of neatness and order, but—well, there! one can imagine the choleric ghosts of De Broc and Courtenay and those of many a gross man-at-arms or warlike seneschal walking on the grass in derision, or with ineffective kicks of impalpable mailed feet seeking to demolish the receptacles.

Magnificently-wooded hills stretch from Saltwood inland to Westenhanger, and the delightful road goes full in view of the gorgeous sylvan beauties of Sandling Park, presently to come to a broadhighway running due north and south, beside whose straight course the ruined, ivy-clad outworks and towers of an ancient mansion are seen, in whose midst is planted an eighteenth-century mansion. This is Westenhanger House, erected by Squire Champneys in place of that older manor house which was built on the site of a still more ancient fortified place by Henry VIII. Like many another manor of ancient descent, Westenhanger has been many times in and out of Royal possession. Its odd name, inviting inquiry, really means no more than, in modern parlance, "Westwood," and is derived from the Saxonangra. It is mentioned in a deed of St. Augustine's monastery as "Le Hangre," and was early divided into two portions, Westen and Osten (or eastern) Hanger. Remains of the moat that once surrounded the old fortified mansion are still to be seen, together with the defensible towers.

WESTENHANGER HOUSE.

Westenhanger stands upon the old Stone Streetfrom Lympne to Canterbury, surrounded by densely wooded parks and neighboured unromantically in these times by a railway—nay, more, a railway junction. One might suppose that the force of modernity could no further go, but that supposition would be an error, for the grounds of the famous old place have been of late years converted into a racecourse, and Westenhanger House itself is given up to the business of a new turf enterprise—a sufficiently thorough change from those remote times when it was a bower of Henry II. and the Fair Rosamond, that beauteous harlot of whom Queen Eleanor was so very properly jealous, and for whose safety from the queenly nails and tongue the infatuated king built several artful retreats in various parts of the country. The chief bower of the wanton Rosamond was at Woodstock. Its like, according to the old ballad-writers, was never seen. It had a hundred and fifty doors, and a vast number of secret passages, so cunningly contrived that no one could find a way in or out without the aid of a thread. Despite those precautions, or possibly because there were a hundred and forty-nine doors too many, the furious Queen Eleanordidenter and poisoned the "Rosa Mundi"; and "a good job, too," will be the verdict of most people with properly-developed domestic instincts. Rosamond was buried in all the unmerited pomp and odour of sanctity in Godstow Nunnery. If that shameless young person had remained at Westenhanger, where there was, apparently not so embarrassing a choice of doors, she might have escaped the Queen's vengeance altogether. Nothing, however, at Westenhanger is of so great an age as Rosamond's day,although, to be sure, the remaining angle-towers were built only some forty years later.

Stone Street, that goes so broad and straight on towards Canterbury, is not the deserted road that many are inclined to think it. Once a week it is populated by a stream of carriers' covered carts going between Canterbury and the obscure villages on either side of the Roman way, not yet within touch of railways; and some very quaint survivals are to be found on those occasions. There are carriers from sleepy hollows who are as russet in complexion and clothing from head to foot as the soil, and as much a product of it as the trees and fruits. These are those true Kentish men in whose mouths the sound of "th" is impossible, and who pronounce the definite article "the" like a Frenchman. To hear a Kentish rustic holding forth upon the iniquities of "de wedder" when he is intent upon abusing the climate is as humorous an interlude as to listen to a Kentish housewife who talks in unaccustomed plurals and asks the hungry tourist at tea if he will have any more "bread and butters."

Others there are in a way less rustic, if equally provincial. These are those grand seigneurs in the carrying line who sport ancient silk or beaver hats and wear broadcloth of an antique cut—broadcloth that was once black and hats that of old were glossy. If the clothes can scarcely be suspected of being heirlooms, the hats certainly are. They are extremely rare and genuine stove-pipes, calculated to impress the rural neighbours with the dignity of the wearers and to extinguish the casual stranger at Canterbury with spasms of laughter. "He were giv' me by my feyder," said Carrier Hogben of Postling, who,alas, is now gathered to his kin in the rural churchyard; and that amazing headgear seemed to gather respect to itself when referred to in the masculine gender. It seemed to stand more upright, and to look more rigid, if that were possible. "Yes," he repeated, "m' feyder givvimee, and 'e's still a good 'un. Dey don't mek 'at's like 'e now," he added with pride, as he carefully brushed it the wrong way with his coat-sleeve, so that the nap stood up like the fur of a cat when it sees a strange dog. One used to heartily agree that hats of that sort arenotmade nowadays. Hogben was then wont to give a grunt of satisfaction. "Cloes used to be made tolast," he would say, as he carefully replaced that gruesome tile in the box that had held it close upon forty years, "and folks when dey'd got a good 'at, took care of 'im."

Having put away that impressive head-covering and resumed his everyday clothes, "Mr. Jeremiah Hogben," as he was respectfully known by his rustic neighbours on carrying days and Sundays, became simple "old Jerry" or "old Hogben" for the rest of the week. It was as though a king had relinquished his robes and regalia and come among the people as one of themselves.

Mr. Hogben, in common with the rest of the countryside, had a good deal of inaccurate lore respecting the Stone Street. According to him, it was made by the builders of Canterbury Cathedral, to convey stone quarried at Lympne to the scene of operations. He declined to believe in the Romans. They were "foreigners," and as such, incapable of road-making—"or anything else," as he sweepingly declared. Mr. Hogben had seen a foreigner once:an Italian with a monkey and a hurdy-gurdy organ, who had found his way to Postling by mistake—the only manner in which strangers ever do find themselves in that village. Not having been present at this rencounter, it is difficult to determine which of the trio was the more astonished—the monkey, the Italian, or Mr. Hogben. Presumably the monkey, for at sight of the carrier and his hat the terrified animal escaped up a tree, whence his master only recovered him after much trouble and many "Per Baccos!" "Swearing awful, he was," according to Hogben.

"Do you understand Italian, then?" we asked.

"Lor' bless ye, no, sir; whatever put dat in yer 'ed: no Eyetalian for me, so long as I can talk Inglish; and when dey tells me dat such as dem, mid deir monkeys and orgins, made this ere roäd what we're travelling on, why, I begs to not believe a bit of it."

"But the modern Italians and the ancient Romans are not precisely the same people."

"So gentlemen like you've told me afore; but what I says is, dey both comes from Italy, don't dey? Well den, it stands to reason dey're the same. No people what goes about the country playing hurdy-gurdies ever made this roäd, I'll stake me life on't."

If Hogben had no respect for foreigners, his manner indicated that he owned an awed kind of deference to the memory of Lord Rokeby of Mount Morris, past which park he had driven on his way to and from Canterbury for many years. Which of the several Barons Rokeby it was whose doings in lifetime and whose post-mortem pranks were thetheme of his discourses, does not appear. "He had a goolden bart" (he meant "bath") "for Sundays and a marble one for week-days, and he'd sit in 'em all de marciful day long and read de papers and have his bit o' grub. When he got tired o' dat, and t'ought he'd like a stroll, he'd just nip outer de bart and walk about de park, as naked as Adam before dey inwented fig-leaves. An' now" (? cause and effect) "he drives down de Stone Street every midnight, wid his head in his lap and four coal-black haases, breading fire. No, I can't say I ever seed him—and dunnosiwanto: reckon I'd run awaiy. I knewed a man whatdidsee 'im, and it gran' nigh druv 'im off n 'is 'ed."

Such are the legends still current at the Back of Beyond, but they are dwindling away. Even old Hogben could find it possible to say that "ghostesses" were already "quite out-o'-doors"—by which he meant that they were out of fashion. But he was bung-full of smuggling lore, and could illustrate his stories with object lessons, as he drove his steady course along the Stone Street. "'See dat tree," he would say, in passing a copse. "Dat's where de Ransleys"—naming a ferocious family of smugglers, men and women, notorious for their cruelties and outrages—"dat's where de Ransleys tied one of deir haases, before dey were taken off to Maidstone Gaol." The horse was starved to death, thus haltered, and the gang, who had been known to beat a Revenue officer to death, were almost heart-broken when they heard of it. Such contradictions are we all.

THE BACK OF BEYOND (continued)

If we continued along this straight road, the Mecca of the Stone Street carriers, Canterbury, would be reached again. Instead, we turn to the right, and in a mile and a half reach the Elham Valley and the hoary village of Lyminge, looking very new when viewed from a little distance, by reason of the sudden eruption of red-roofed villas come to disturb the ancient seclusion. Have a care how you pronounce the name of this village, lest by some uncovenanted rendering you proclaim yourself a stranger. The cautious in these matters always accost the first inhabitant met with, and ask him the name of the place, a method never known to fail unless the encounter takes place outside the post-office and the inhabitant be a crusty one who, curtly, and with an over-the-shoulder jerk of the thumb, says, "You'll find it written up there."

LYMINGE.

By the united testimony of the phonetic spelling of the thirteenth century and the twentieth century pronunciation of the natives, "Lyminge" should be enunciated with a short, not a long, "y" for the first syllable; while one should, for the second, pronounce as in "singe" or "hinge." Authority for the ancient pronunciation being the same asnow is found in the name of a thirteenth-century rector, spelled "de Limminge," which clinches the matter. It is, however, quite other-guesswork with the meaning or the derivation of the name. One school of antiquaries finds its origin in the Latin name of the Stone Street, which when the Romans came was, they tell us, an ancient British trackway called the Heol-y-Maen, or Stone Path. The Romans reconstructed both the path and its name, which, in the Latinised "Via Limenea," was as near as they could get to the uncouth tongue of the Britons. Unfortunately for this ingenious theory, Lyminge is a mile and a half from the Stone Street. It really derived its name, in common withLympne, from the Flumen Limenea, or river Limen, which once flowed down the valley, a considerable stream, now shrunken to a tiny brook.

LYMINGE CHURCH.

The Romans prevailed largely in these parts, and, despite friend Hogben, performed some wonderful things, even though "foreigners." They certainly colonised at Lyminge, in whose church walls the red Roman tiles from some shattered villa are plentifully worked in among the undoubted Saxon masonry. The present church is the successor of what is considered to have been the first Christian basilica erected under the Roman rule in this island, and reconstructed aboutA.D.640 by Ethelburga, daughter of King Ethelbert, on the re-introduction of Christianity. Here that pious princess founded a Benedictine nunnery, and here, in the fulness of time,she died. Portions of her religious establishment long remained, and formed admirable pig-sties, but even those few relics have been improved away. Very much, however, remains in and around the church, to indicate its Roman origin and to prove the old theory that it was reared upon a building of three apsidal aisles. Indeed, the base of one of those same apses is laid open to view on the south side of the building, level with the gravel path. This south side of the church is eminently picturesque, with its wooden porch, and windows of widely-different ages and styles, together with the ancient flying buttress built against the south-east angle of the chancel.

The Elham Valley, in whose basin Lyminge lies nestled, runs up to Bridge and Canterbury, and a branch of the South-Eastern Railway runs down it, taking advantage of the easy gradients in a manner common to railways. Places in it are ceasing to be remote and can no longer strictly be said to be Beyond, much less at the Back of it. Thus we will not pursue this pleasant hollow in the hills very far, but will cut across to Acryse. But not before seeing Elham itself, the capital and metropolis of the vale.

OLD HOUSES AT ELHAM.

"E-lam"—for that, and not the more obvious way, is the correct local shibboleth—sits boldly in the lap of the hills, visible afar off. Those who hunt the fox with the East Kent Foxhounds know it well, for the kennels are situated here, but few else have made its acquaintance. It was once—in far-off times, when the ancient and beautiful houses in its one broad street were new—a market-town, and if it has lost its trade it has by no meansrelinquished its dignity. This is no place to speak at length of Elham church, whose tall tower and tapering spire command the valley, nor is it the place wherein to hold forth upon the library within the church, bequeathed some hundreds of years ago to the good folks of Elham by some old-world benefactor, strong in his belief in the civilising influence of literature when dispensed at the hands of the local clergyman—or perhaps merely anxious to be rid of a mass of useless rubbish. That library is reported to contain a valuable collection of Great Rebellion tracts; but what it does contain no Elhamite can with certainty tell you, because their reading runs in the lines of least resistance—which is equal to saying that they prefer the news columns of their weekly paper to the crabbed literature of that revolution which saved us fromPopery more than two hundred years ago. For that reason alone the position of church librarian at Elham is a sinecure.

We have, for the purpose of seeing Elham, proceeded a little too far for Acryse, and must retrace our steps, ascending the steep hillsides to the east for that purpose.

It is only by dint of much climbing that one reaches Acryse, for it tops the range of uplands that shut in the Elham valley. Climbing up the lane by which Master Marsh and his man Ralph descended, in the legend of "The Leech of Folkestone," the woods of Acryse are found clothing the crest and extending densely into a shrouded table-land, where the sun-rays percolate but dimly through a heavy overarching interlaced canopy of boughs. Acryse means "Oak Hill," but, whatever the character of these woods may once have been, the oak certainly is not the most numerous in them to-day. If one tree preponderates over any other species here, it is the beech, which in the dim light and closely-serried ranks has grown so spindly that it only begins to throw out branches at a height of some thirty or forty feet from the ground. The simpleton who could not see the wood for the trees is proverbial, but it is at first impossible to see Acryse, on account of the woods. And no wonder, for the woods are so large and Acryse so small. There is not even the semblance of a hamlet. The manor house and the adjoining manorial chapel form the whole of the place, except some scattered few cottages out of sight, for whose inhabitants the chapel serves the function of parish church. The Papillons, who once held the manor of Acryse, havelong since relinquished it, and Mackinnons have for three generations past resided here. The butterfly crest of the old owners is therefore sought in vain in manor house or chapel. Chapel and house are discreetly secluded within the mossy woods, and only the diminutive spire of the one and some few glimpses of the outbuildings and bellcote of the other are gained between the clustering tree-stems. History, by association, is making at Acryse, for it is the seat of that Colonel Mackinnon who commanded the C.I.V. in the second Boer War.

ACRYSE.

If signs of human habitation are small here, those of bird-life are overwhelming. The woods of Acryse are one vast rookery. In winter, when the boughs are unclothed, their nests occupy every fork of the branches, and all the year they make their presence known, not only by the disfigurement of the stranger's clothing as he walks under their roosting-places, but by the rising and falling bursts of cawing that mark all hours of the day, like a perpetual session of Parliament with the Speaker absent and the Irish members in individual and collective possession of the House, each one talking "nineteen to the dozen," and each with a personal grievance to duly ventilate. For the note of the rookery is a distinctly querulous one, always in opposition. Occasionally, when the greater din dies down, grave and reverend—or, at least, deep and self-satisfied—individual voices are heard, like those of well-fed and paunchy ministers rising to defend their departments and themselves, with voices remonstrant, argumentative, or triumphant.

What the rooks find to talk about all day and every day might puzzle anyone who did not read the reports of Imperial Parliament; but those having once been read, there is no room for surprise.

It is only when evening approaches that the rookery is stilled, and even then only after a preliminary clamour from home-coming birds, in conclave, that makes one's ears sing again. After that deafening rally the voices are heard singly, bubbling and gobbling, until at last, when the rim of the sun sinks down below the horizon, the colony is at rest.

Leaving lonely Acryse amid a hoarse partingchorus from its rooks, we will turn our course towards Swingfield Minnis, and thence to St. John's, the scene of that lightest and brightest of the Legends, the "Witches' Frolic." We need expect to find no ruin, for Barham's description in the verse is altogether beside the mark. Thus he, in the character of Grandfather Ingoldsby, apostrophises it:

I love thy tower, Grey Ruin,I joy thy form to see,Though reft of all, bell, cloister, and hall,Nothing is left save a tottering wall.Thou art dearer to me, thou Ruin Grey,Than the Squire's verandah, over the way;And fairer, I ween, the ivy sheenThat thy mouldering turret binds,Than the Alderman's house, about half a mile off,With the green Venetian blinds.

I love thy tower, Grey Ruin,I joy thy form to see,Though reft of all, bell, cloister, and hall,Nothing is left save a tottering wall.

Thou art dearer to me, thou Ruin Grey,Than the Squire's verandah, over the way;And fairer, I ween, the ivy sheenThat thy mouldering turret binds,Than the Alderman's house, about half a mile off,With the green Venetian blinds.

There is no alderman's house in the neighbourhood, with or without Venetian blinds, but that matters little.

It is by a succession of steeply rising and falling, winding and narrow country lanes that the Preceptory of the Knights Templars of St. John of Jerusalem, near Swingfield Minnis, is reached. Like so many other ancient religious establishments, it is now a farmstead. Not altogether picturesque, and wearing very few outward signs of antiquity, it might readily be passed by those not keenly in quest of it, except for the existence of the three tall Early English windows prominent in one of the gables. An inspection of the farmhouse proves that thrifty use has been made of the old buildings,the hall, the principal ancient feature, with fine old timber roof, being divided for domestic purposes into two floors. Modern walls and fireplaces combine to almost wholly alter the internal arrangements. A long, buttressed, monastic barn of great antiquity is pictured in Knight'sOld England, published some sixty years ago, but it has long since disappeared in the insensate rage for "improvement," and there is very little of interest now to be seen outside the farmhouse. But whatever it lacks in picturesque aspect, the glamour of romance thrown over the spot by the legend redeems it from the commonplace.

THE PRECEPTORY, SWINGFIELD MINNIS.

Rival explanations of the singular name of Swingfield Minnis divide opinion as to whetherthe first word means "Swinefield" or "Sweyn's Field," but a striking confirmation of the theory that it is named after that Danish king, and of the vague records of his having achieved a victory here, was afforded by the discovery of a quantity of human bones in modern times, in the course of which were described by a newspaper as "some agricultural operations," when the ancient surrounding heath or common-land was, for the first time in its history, enclosed and broken into for cultivation. If we, in our commonplace way, translate "agricultural operations" into "ploughing," we shall probably be correct. The remains were at the time pronounced to be the relics of some long-forgotten fight. "Minnis" is a Cantise word for a piece of rough stony common, such as long existed here.

Barham, as freeholder in the district, was interested in this enclosure and was awarded his share of the spoil. "St. John's," the name by which the farm is known, is, as he says, in his note to the "Witches' Frolic," two miles from Tappington, but it certainly cannot be seen, as he would have us believe, over the intervening coppices, nor in any other way, as we presently discover on coming past Tappington into Denton, there joining on to a route described in an earlier chapter.

THE COASTWISE ROAD—FOLKESTONE TO DOVER AND SANDWICH

That is a toilsome road by which one leaves Folkestone for Dover. The chalk—"infinite" indeed, as Dickens said—the blinding glare of the sun upon it, the steep gradients, the rain-worn gullies, the tortuous curves, and the persistent up and up of Folkestone Hill, make the salt perspiration start from the wayfarer's brow and run smartingly into his eyes. But when the hilltop is reached, where a once picturesque but now rebuilt inn, the "Valiant Sailor," stands, grand is the view backwards upon the town. That view is so sheer that the place looks all roof, and seems a squalid huddle-together of ill-arranged streets. No one, gazing down upon Folkestone from this view-point, would suspect the palatial and magnificent nature of its later growth.

It was but yester-year that the five miles length of cliff-top and chalky road on to Dover was solitary and marked by infrequent houses, but no longer do the crows and the seagulls hold undisturbed possession. It has never been a pleasant road, lying open and unfenced upon the roof of the cliffs and along an inhospitable country. Those whose way has lain along it have been grilled insummer and in winter pierced through and through by icy blasts that no hospitable hedgerows or kindly shelter of any description have served to lessen. Now these bleak and forbidding uplands are varied with brickfields, sporadic new houses, and blatant notice-boards offering building-land for sale, and they are not improved by the change. Greatly to be pitied is that cyclist who essays this road from the direction of Dover, for in that terrible continuous climb he affords the best comparison with the state of a good man struggling with undeserved adversity. "Surely," he thinks, "I shall soon come to the end of this rise"; but the white ribbon of the roadway rises ever before him, until, exhausted, he crests the hill at the "Valiant Sailor," where the staggering descent into Folkestone forbids him to ride down.

How different the case of the eastward-bound! No sooner is the climb from Folkestone completed than the long descent into Dover begins. Five miles away, down at the bottom of a cleft at the end of this chute, Dover Castle is blotted against the sky, and the cyclist has nothing to do but sit still and let the miles reel comfortably away, until the electric tramways at the outskirts of Dover are reached.

There is a point on this road between Folkestone and Dover that on moonlit nights makes a picture after Barham's own heart. When the full moon comes sailing up over the Castle Hill and floods the chalky road with light, leaving the town of Dover lost in the darkling valley of the Dour and the downs behind etched in a profound blackness upon the luminous heavens, then you recall thoseexquisite lines from the "Old Woman clothed in Grey":

Oh! sweet and beautiful is Night, when the silver moon is high,And countless stars, like clustering gems, hang sparkling in the sky.

Yes; and night is more beautiful than day here, for the aching whiteness, the parching dryness, the arid bareness of the chalk highway and the folded hills are touched to romance by the cold majesty of the moon, whose light softens the austerities of the road, just as the dews assuage the lingering heats of day.

Tom Ingoldsby never, in the whole course of his writings, had much to say of Dover, and the legend of the "Old Woman clothed in Grey," tacked on to this ancient port, is really a Cambridgeshire story, hailing from Boxworth, near St. Ives. The incidents, he says, "happened a long time ago, I can't say exactlyhowlong,"—which is rather vague:

All that one knows is,It must have preceded the Wars of the Roses

Here he takes occasion to have another fling at Britton, in this footnote, where "Simpkinson of Bath" (whom we have already seen to be intended for that eminent antiquary) is made to confuse these historic campaigns with some family contentions: "An ancient and most pugnacious family," says our Bath friend. "One of their descendants, George Rose, Esq., late M.P. for Christchurch (an elderly gentleman now defunct), was equally celebrated for his vocal abilities and his wanton destruction of furniture when in astate of excitement. 'Sing, old Rose, and burn the bellows!' has grown into a proverb."

And so, indeed, for many centuries past it has, but no one has yet satisfactorily explained its origin. Many amusingly conflicting derivations of it have been given. One, as old as 1740, is found in theBritish Apolloof that year:

In good King Stephen's days, the Ram,An ancient inn at Nottingham,Was kept, as our wise father knows,By a brisk female called Old Rose.Many like you, who hated thinking,Or any other theme but drinking,Met there, d'ye see, in sanguine hope,To kiss their landlady and tope;But one cross night, 'mongst many other,The fire burnt not without great pother,Till Rose, at last, began to sing,And the cold blades to dance and spring;So by their exercise and kissesThey grew as warm as were their wishes:When, scorning fire, the jolly fellows,Cried, "Sing, Old Rose, and burn the bellows."

An even earlier reference is found in Izaak Walton'sAngler, where, in the second chapter, the Hunter proposes that they shall sing "Old Rose." Ingenuity has been let loose upon this subject, without much satisfaction obtained. "Let's singe Old Rose and burn libellos," is a wild variant, given as the cries of schoolboys on the eve of holidays, and signifying, "Let's singe Old Rose's wig and burn our books"; but we are not enlightened as to that school of which this "Old Rose" was principal. This "explanation" is, in fact, so much sage stuffing for green goslings, and we will not be so simple as to partake of it.

Ingoldsby advises the visitor to Dover to dine at the "York" or the "Ship," and then to set out for the Maison Dieu and there ask for the haunted house, the scene of the Old Woman's post-mortem visitations. Where are the "York" or the "Ship" to-day? You would as vainly seek them as the haunted house; but they did, at the time he wrote, actually exist, which the house never did. The Maison Dieu, however, was, and is, very real, but is more intelligibly sought, to the Dover townsfolk's ears, under the title of the town hall.

As for the Priory, whence the mercenary Father Basil of the legend came, that vanished long ago in disestablishment and ruin, only a few portions, including the ancient gatehouse, being included in the modern buildings of Dover College. The "Priory" station of the Chatham and Dover line takes its name from this ancient religious house. Some records of the Prior and his Benedictine monks who were housed here still remain. It would seem that they were, at the last, when the Priory was dissolved, a very bad lot indeed, and quite merited disestablishment, if nothing more. They preferred amorous intrigues to mortifying the flesh with the scourgings, cold water, and stale crusts represented by the orthodox as the staple fare and daily discipline of such. They were veritable Friar Tucks, these jolly monks of Dover, so far as provand was concerned, while their morals left much to be desired, as may be judged when we read the testimony of the Royal commissioners who were sent hither to report upon their conduct. Those emissaries gave no notice of their advent; in fact, the first intimation the Prior had of their quite unceremonious visitwas when the noise of their bursting open the door of his bedroom (not, if you please, his "cell") woke both him and the lady who shared his bed. The commissioners turned her out, in that lay brother's costume in which she had gained admittance to the monastery. Such historical evidence refutes the charges of flippant injustice towards the olden Roman Catholic times of which Ingoldsby has often been accused.

THE "LONE TREE."

In quest of the "Marston Hall" of "The Leech of Folkestone," and of traces of Master Marsh we must leave Dover, and, climbing the steep and winding Castle Hill, come, under the frowning keep and warder towers of that great fortress, to the high, bare, chalky table-land that stretches from this point to Deal and Sandwich. It is an open, unfenced road at the beginning, and so shadeless that a very striking elm solitary by the wayside is known far and wide as the "Lone Tree." This isolated object has a story, told with a thorough belief in its truth. It seems that, a great manyyears ago, a soldier of the Castle garrison murdered a comrade on this spot by felling him with a stick he carried. No one saw the deed done, and he was so convinced that the crime would never be traced that he thrust the elm-stick in the ground, declaring that he was safe so long as it did not take root.

His regiment was shortly afterwards ordered abroad, and it was not until many years had passed that he was again at Dover. Once there, a morbid curiosity took him to the scene of his crime, where, horror-stricken, he found that stick a flourishing tree. He confessed, and was duly executed.

It is a legend exactly after Ingoldsby's own heart, but perhaps he never heard of it, for it does not appear in his writings.

From this point, two miles distant from Dover, the way goes straight; East Langdon, for which we are making, lying in the hug of the downs, a mile away to the left, lost to view between those swelling contours and in midst of clustered trees.

It was to this parish that "Thomas Marsh of Marston," the hero of that prose legend, "The Leech of Folkestone," really belonged. He resided at Martin, Marten, or Marton Hall, in the neighbouring hamlet of Martin, whose name is thus variously and impartially spelled by post-office, finger-posts, county historians and other authorities, who to this day have not been able to decide which is the true and proper rendering. East Langdon, on closer acquaintance, resolves itself into a remote, huddled-up village of very small dimensions, situated on a narrow lane that does duty for a road, and consisting of a parish church, an inn, two or three farms, a rectory, and some agricultural labourers'cottages—the whole knowing little of the outside world, and apparently content with that knowledge. It centres around the church and Church Farm, pictured here, and by that sketch, much more eloquently than by any mass of verbiage, shall you see how grim and hard-featured a place it is. The church has latterly been restored, and the monument in its chancel to the veritable Thomas Marsh of the legend again made whole. It had fallen, about 1850, from its place on the north wall of the chancel, and was broken in many pieces, the fragments being preserved in a cupboard in the vestry. Under such circumstances, and fully cognisant of the atrocious things that have elsewhere been wrought, all over the country, in the name of "restoration," it is with a shock of surprise that the pilgrim finds it at all. But here it is, a black marble tablet surrounded by an ornamental framing of white stone or marble, and bearing a long Latin inscription to "Thomas Marsh, of Marton." He is stated to have been born in 1583, and to have died in 1634.

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