WINDY WEATHER.
Waiting until the second assailant had recovered consciousness, the coachman and guard, with the coach-horses; the midshipman and the rest of the passengers, in charge of the two prisoners and their steeds, trudged through the gloom and the fallen snow to Petersfield, leaving the coach abandoned on the highway.
This party of ten reached the town late at night, almost exhausted, and handed over their prisoners to the civil power, which no doubt dealt with them in the time-honoured fashion of sending such gentry out of the world “stabbed to death with a Bridport dagger,” as the humorists of the time termed execution by hanging, “hempen cravats” being usually of Bridport make.
SMUGGLING
But they were not only highway robberies that gained the Portsmouth Road so unenviable a notoriety a hundred and fifty years ago. Smuggling was rife along the highway from Hindhead to Portsmouth in those days, and the whole sea-board, together with the forest villages that were then so untravelled, swarmed with the “free-traders,” as they euphemistically called themselves. And this district was not alone, or even pre-eminent, in smuggling annals, either for the number or for the ferocity of those engaged in the illicit trade of importing wines, spirits, tea, or lace, without the formalities of entering their goods at his Majesty’s Custom-houses, or of paying duty uponthem. The whole extent of the south coast, from the North Foreland and Dungeness, in Kent, to the Dodman and the Land’s End, in Cornwall, was one long line of resistance to the Excise. The people, groaning under a heavy taxation, whose proceeds went towards the cost of Continental wars and the perpetration of shameless and atrocious jobs at home, saw no crime in evading the heavy duties that took so much out of the pockets of a generation notoriously addicted to continuous drinking; and the wealthy middle-classes, the squires, even members of the Peerage, and not a few of the country clergymen (semi-pagan as they were in those days), purchased and consumed immense quantities of excisable goods that had never rendered unto Cæsar—if, indeed, that imperial term may be used of either the Second or the Third George.
The possession of a cellar well stocked with liquor that had never paid duty was, in fact, a source of genuine pride to the jolly squires who winked at each other as they caroused round the mahogany, and, holding their glasses up to the light, pronounced the tipple to be “the right sort,” and as good stuff as ever came across the Channel on a moonless night; and madam or my lady wore her silks, her satins, or her lace with the greater satisfaction when she knew them to have been brought over from France secretly, wrapped around some bold fellow’s body who would surely never have hesitated to put a bullet through the head of the first Excise officer that barred his path.
UNHOLY TITHES
The risk of smuggling was great, the profits large,and the men who, having counted the cost of their contraband trade, still persisted in it, were not infrequently well able to afford presents to those easy folks who might know a great deal of their midnight runs, and who, knowing much and suspecting more, were folks to be rewarded for past silence, or to be bribed into a passive acquiescence for the future. Thus the Parson Trullibers of that time who discovered the belfries of their churches crowded with strange kegs and unwonted packages and smelling to Heaven with the scent of other spirits than those usually associated with churches and churchyards, were not at all surprised at finding a keg in their pulpits, together with a package of silk or such similar feminine gauds, if their parsonages held any womenkind. The sexton was simply told to take the keg and the package up to the house, and if, some blusterous night, those easy-going clerics looked forth of their casements and saw strange processions of men passing along the road, hunched with tubs on their backs, and bound, strange to say, for the House of God, why, they said nothing, but thought with great complacency upon the certain prospect of some right Hollands or some generous brandy from over sea.
Smuggling, in fact, was not regarded as a crime by any considerable section of the public, and public opinion in the counties that gave upon the sea was altogether in favour of the “free-traders” up to a certain point. And if the squires, the clergy, and the tradesfolk largely sympathized with them and connived at the wholesale cheating of the Revenue that went on for a long period almost unchecked,certainly the licensed victuallers—the country innkeepers and the struggling pot-house landlords of the hamlets—were eager to buy goods that had never seen the inside of a custom-house. Even the officers and men of the Customs and the Excise were often found to be in league with notorious smugglers, and the early inadequacy of the Revenue sloops and cutters to prevent the clandestine landing of excisable goods is to be traced, in part, to bribes judiciously expended.
The loss to the Revenue during a long series of years must have been simply enormous, for the bulk of the hardy ’longshore men were engaged all the year round in running cargoes across from France; in landing them at unfrequented coigns and inlets of the sea; and in secreting them in the most unlooked-for recesses of the country, until such time as they could be safely disposed of. The fisheries, too, were neglected for this much more remunerative trade, and few men cared to earn an honest and meagre livelihood by day when anything from five shillings to a guinea might be the reward of a night’s work, climbing up cliffs with kegs slung on back and chest.
The foremost smugglers were no men of straw, for, like all other trades, the free-traders’ business had its capitalists and its middlemen, who financed the buying of cargoes and received their share of the plunder, taking their ease at home while their less wealthy fellow-sinners worked in fear of capture and condemnation. Others, anticipating the joint-stock companies of later years, formed themselves into bands or confederacies who shared both risks and gains, and keptup an armed organization that, particularly in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire,[5]kept the law-abiding country-side in terror, and not infrequently offered battle to the officers of the Preventive Service. These organized gangs of desperadoes alienated from themselves much of the sympathy that was felt for the individual smuggler; for, as their power grew, they committed crimes, not only upon that impersonal thing, the Revenue, but robbed and despitefully entreated the lieges, and even overawed considerable towns.
A SMUGGLERS’ RAID
One of the most daring exploits of these armed bands of smugglers was the famous attack upon the custom-house at Poole. This resistance in arms to the King’s authority arose out of the capture by a Revenue cutter of a heavy cargo of tea shipped, in September 1747, by a number of smugglers from Guernsey. Captain Johnson, the commander of the Government vessel, brought the tea to the port of Poole, in Dorsetshire, and lodged it in the custom-house there. The loss of their entire venture was a very serious matter to the men who had paid for their tea over in the Channel Islands, and looked to selling it over here for a profit, and they resolved not to let their cargo go without an effort. Accordingly, a consultation was held among them, and they agreed to go and take away the tea from the warehouse where it was lodged. A body of no less than sixty armed and mounted smugglers assembled in Charlton Forest, and proceeded thence to Poole, posting half their number on the roads, in truemilitary fashion, to scout, and to report the movements of Revenue officers or soldiers who might hear of their expedition. Thirty of these bold spirits reached Poole on the night of October 6, and, meeting with no resistance, broke open the custom-house and removed all their tea, except one bag, weighing about five pounds.
The next morning they returned through Hampshire, by way of Fordingbridge, where the expedition was a matter of such common notoriety that hundreds of persons were assembled in the streets of that little town, to witness the passing of their cavalcade. Among the leaders of this body of smugglers was a man named John Diamond, and it so happened that this fellow was recognized by a shoemaker of the place, one Daniel Chater, who had turned out from his cobbling to witness the unusual spectacle of sixty “free-traders” riding away with their booty in broad daylight. Diamond and he had worked together at haymaking some years previously. Now, to be identified thus was an altogether unlooked-for and unlucky chance, and Diamond threw his old acquaintance a bag of tea, by way of hushing him, as he passed by.
Chater, however, was not gifted with reticence, or perhaps the good folk of Fordingbridge looked askance upon one of their fellow-townsmen being selected for so considerable a gift as a bag of tea was in those days, and they probably plied him with awkward questions. At any rate, Diamond was shortly afterwards arrested at Chichester, on suspicion of being concerned in the raid at Poole, and Chater having acknowledged his acquaintance with the man, thematter became the subject of local gossip and presently came to the ears of the Collector of Customs for Southampton. At the same time, a proclamation was issued, offering a reward for information as to the persons implicated in the affair, and Chater, in an evil moment for himself, offered to give evidence.
The shoemaker, then, in company of an Excise officer, William Galley by name, set out for Chichester with a letter for Major Battin, a justice of the peace for Sussex, who lived in that city, and before whom it was proposed to examine Chater, in relation to what he knew of the affair, and whether he could prove the identity of Diamond.
The two set out on horseback on Sunday, February 14, 1748, and, calling on their way at Havant, were directed by a friend of Chater’s to go by way of Stanstead, near Rowlands Castle. They, however, lost their way, and calling at the “New” Inn, at Leigh, to get their direction, were met by three men, George Austin, Thomas Austin, and their brother-in-law, Mr. Jenkes, who accompanied Galley and Chater to Rowlands Castle, where they all drew rein at the “White Hart,” a public-house kept by a Mrs. Elizabeth Payne, a widow, who had two sons, blacksmiths, in the village; both grown men, and reputed smugglers.
AN ATROCIOUS CRIME
And now commences the horrible story of the two most dreadful and protracted murders that have ever set lonely folk shivering by their firesides, or have ever made philosophers despair for the advancement of the human race. It becomes the duty of thehistorian of the Portsmouth Road to chronicle these things, but here duty and inclination part company. The tale must be told; but for those who take a deeper interest in the story, let them procure, if they can, any one of the several rare editions of a dreadfully detailed pamphlet, entitled “A Full and Genuine History of the Inhuman and Unparalleled Murders of Mr. William Galley, a Custom-House Officer, and Mr. Daniel Chater, a Shoemaker, by Fourteen Notorious Smugglers, with the Trials and Execution of Seven of the Bloody Criminals, at Chichester.” If a perusal of the gory details set forth in these pages does not more than satisfy curiosity, why, then the reader’s stomach for the reading of ferocious cruelties must indeed be strong.
But to resume the account.
Shortly after the arrival of the party at the “White Hart,” Mrs. Payne took Mr. George Austin aside and whispered him her fears that these two strangers were come with intent to do some injury to the smugglers. When he replied that she need not believe that, for they were only carrying a letter to Major Battin, the landlady’s suspicions became more fully aroused, for what other particular business could Galley, who was dressed as a “riding officer” of the Excise, have with the Justice of the Peace? But, to make sure, she sent one of her sons, who was in the house, for William Jackson and William Carter, who lived within a short distance. While he was gone, Chater and Galley wanted to be going, and called for their horses, but the woman told them that the man who had the key of the stable was goneout, and would be back presently. Meanwhile the unsuspecting men remained, drinking and gossiping.
DRUNKEN QUARRELS
When the two arrived who had been sent for, Mrs. Payne drew them aside and told them her suspicions, at the same time advising Mr. George Austin to go away, as she respected him, and was unwilling that any harm should come to him by staying. Mr. George Austin had the saving virtue of prudence. He went away, as he was bid, and left his brother and his brother-in-law behind, which seems to have been unnecessarily selfish on his part. Then the other son came in and brought with him four more smugglers, and the whole company drank together. After a while, Jackson took Chater aside into the yard and asked him after Diamond, and the simple-minded shoemaker let fall the secret of his journey. While they were talking, Galley, uneasy about his companion, came out and asked him to rejoin them within, whereupon Jackson struck Galley a violent blow in the face that knocked him down. “I am a King’s officer,” said Galley, “and cannot put up with such treatment!”
“You a King’s officer!” replies Jackson. “I’ll make a King’s officer of you; and for a quartern of gin I’ll serve you so again!”
The others interfered, and the whole party set to drinking again until Galley and Chater were overcome by drunkenness and were sent to sleep in an adjoining room. Thomas Austin and Mr. Jenkes, too, were beastly drunk; but they had no interest in the smugglers, nor the smugglers in them, and so they drop out of the narrative.
When Galley and Chater were asleep the compromising letters in their pockets were found and read, and from that moment the doom of these unfortunate men was sealed, and the only question seems to have been the manner of putting an end to their lives. True, less ferocious proposals were made, by which it was suggested to send them over to France; but when it became evident that they would return, the thoughts of the company reverted to murder. At this juncture the wives of Jackson and Carter, who were both present during these consultations, cried out, “Hang the dogs, for they came here to hang us!”
Another proposition that was made—to imprison the two in some safe place until they knew what would be Diamond’s fate, and for each of the smugglers to subscribe threepence a week for their keep—was immediately scouted; and instantly the brutal fury of these ruffians was aroused by Jackson, who, going into the room where the unfortunate men were lying, spurred them on their foreheads with the heavy spurs of his riding-boots, and having thus awakened them, whipped them into the kitchen of the inn until they were streaming with blood. Then, taking them outside, the gang lifted them on to a horse, one behind the other, and tying their hands and legs together, lashed them with heavy whips along the road, crying, “Whip them, cut them, slash them, damn them!”
BURIED ALIVE!
From Rowlands Castle, past Wood Ashes, Goodthorpe Deane, and to Lady Holt Park, this scourging was continued through the night until the wretchedmen were three parts dead. At two o’clock in the morning this gruesome procession reached the Portsmouth Road at Rake, where the foremost members of the party halted before the “Red Lion,” kept in those days by one Scardefield, who was no stranger to their kind, nor unused to the purchase and storing of smuggled spirits. Here they knocked and rattled at the door until Scardefield was obliged to get out of bed and open to them. Galley, still alive, was thrust into an outhouse while the band, having roused the landlord and procured drink, caroused in the parlour of the inn. Chater they carried in with them; and when Scardefield stood horrified at seeing so ghastly a figure of a man, all bruised and injured and spattered with blood, they told him a specious tale of an engagement they had had with the King’s officers: that here was one comrade, wounded, and another, dead or dying, in his brew-house.
While it was yet dark they carried Galley to a place in Harting Coombe, at some distance from the “Red Lion,” and, digging a grave in a fox-earth by the light of a lantern, they buried him, without inquiring too closely whether or not their victim was dead. That he was not dead at that time became evident when his body was found, with the hands raised to the face, as though to prevent the dirt from suffocating him.
The whole of this day this evil company sat drinking in the “Red Lion,” having disposed of their other prisoner for a time by chaining him by the leg in a turf-shed near by. This was Monday, and at night they all returned home, lest their absencemight be remarked by their neighbours; agreeing to meet again at Rake on the Wednesday evening, to consider how they might best put an end to Chater. When Wednesday night had come, this council of fourteen smugglers decided to dispatch him forthwith, and, going down in a body to the turf-shed where he had lain all this while, suffering agonies from the cruel usage to which he had already been subjected, they unchained him, and with the most revolting barbarities, set him across a horse and whipped him afresh all the way back to Lady Holt Park, where there was a deep, dry well. Into this they threw the wretched man, and by his cries and groans perceiving that he was not yet dead, they collected a great number of large stones, which, together with two great gate-posts, they flung down upon him, and then rode away.
Even in those times two men (and men who had set out upon public business) could not disappear so utterly as Chater and Galley had done without comment, and presently the whole country was ringing with the story of this mysterious disappearance. That it was the work of smugglers none doubted: the only question was, in what manner had they spirited these two men away? Some thought they had been carried over to France, and others thought, shrewdly enough, that they had been murdered. But no tidings nor any trace of either Galley or Chater came to satisfy public curiosity or official apprehensions until some seven months later, when an anonymous letter sent to “a person of distinction,” and probably inspired by the hope of ultimately earningthe large reward then being offered by the Government for information, hinted that “the body of one of the unfortunate men mentioned in his Majesty’s proclamation was buried in the sands in a certain place near Rake.” And, sure enough, when the authorities came to search they found the body of the Excise officer “standing almost upright, with his hands covering his eyes.” Another letter followed, implicating one William Steel as concerned in the murder; and when Steel was arrested the mystery was discovered, for, to save himself, the prisoner turned King’s evidence, and revealed the whole dreadful story.
TRIALS AND EXECUTIONS
One after another seven of the murderers were arrested in different parts of the counties of Hants and Surrey, and were committed to the gaols at Horsham and Newgate, afterwards being sent to Chichester, where their trial was held on January 18, 1749. They were all found guilty, and were sentenced to be hanged on the following day. Six of them were duly executed; William Jackson, the seventh, who had been in ill-health, died in gaol a few hours after condemnation. The body of William Carter was afterwards hanged in chains upon the Portsmouth Road, near the scene of the crimes; three of the others were thrown into a pit on the Broyle, at Chichester, the scene of the execution, and the rest were hanged in chains along the sea-coast from Chichester to Selsea Bill, at points of vantage whence they were visible for miles around. Another accomplice, Henry Shurman, was indicted and tried at East Grinstead, and being sentenced to death, wasconveyed from Horsham Gaol by a strong guard of soldiers, and hanged at Rake shortly afterwards.
And so an end to incidents as revolting as anything to be found in the lengthy annals of crime. Country folk breathed more freely when these daring criminals were “turned off”; and numerous other executions for resisting the military and the Excise followed, thus breaking up the gangs that terrorized law-abiding people.
But the Customs officers were still so intimidated that few possessed hardihood sufficient to carry them on their duty into places beyond reach of ready help. The more remote roads and lanes were patrolled at night by the most daring fellows, who, despite the warnings visible on every side in the dangling bodies of their dead comrades, dealt largely in many kinds of crime beneath the very gallows-tree; smuggling, starting incendiary fires, and assaulting and intimidating those wayfarers whose only fault was being found on the road after night had fallen.
AT DEAD OF NIGHT
Few people cared to be out alone after the sun had set, for the more daring among the “free-traders” were wont to appear then, and stopped and interrogated every one they chanced upon, lest they might be Government agents. If a peaceable villager, jogging home after sundown, failed to give a good and ready account of himself and his business upon the highway at that moment, he stood an excellent chance of a crack across the skull with something heavy, in the nature of a pistol-butt, which rendered further explanation impossible; and so, things being still in this pass, we can afford sympathy for the wayfarerwho, having missed his road, found himself, when night was come and the moon risen, at some remote cross-road, far removed from sight or sound of human beings, except the ominous pit-a-pat of distant hoofs upon the hard road that heralded the approach of the merry men who played hide-and-seek with death and the gallows; to whom daylight was as unwelcome as to the predatory owl, and whose high noontide stress of business fell at dead of night.
BENIGHTED.
Chalton Downs is the ideal tract of country for so heart-stirring an encounter. Never a considerable tree for miles in any direction: only bushes and sparse clumps of saplings, and, for the rest, undulations of chalk as bare as the back of your hand, save for the short and scanty grass that affords not even a good mouthful for sheep. Here, where the Downs are most barren, a rough country lane dips into the hollow that runs parallel with the right-hand side of the highway, where a gaunt finger-post points the way to “Catherington and Hinton.” On the corresponding ridge stands the small and scattered village, but large parish, of Catherington, whose church, dedicated to St. Catherine, is the parish church of modern Horndean and of other hamlets, a mile or more down the road.
The church of Catherington, so far as outward appearance goes, may be taken as amongst the most representative of Hampshire village churches, standing on the hill-brow, its graveyard separated from ploughed fields only by a hedge, its tombs overshadowed by two great solemn yew trees, its situation, no less than its shape and style, suggesting thoughts of Gray’s “Elegy,” and the peaceful rural lives of them that sleep beneath the skies in this retired God’s acre. It is, therefore, with nothing less than a start of surprise that the wayfarer, weighted with obvious moralizings, discovers first the tomb of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and then the resting-place of Charles Kean, his mother, and his wife. What do they here, who lived so greatly in the eye of the world? Here is the epitaph “to the memory of Mary, relict of the late Edmund Kean, who departed this life March 30, 1849, in or about the 70th year of her age”; and from her grave one can view the ridge along which runs the road to Portsmouth, tramped by Edmund Kean in 1795, when he, as a boy of eight or nine years, ran away from his home in Ewer street, Southwark, and shipped as cabin-boy on a vessel bound for Madeira. He lies at Richmond: his widow was buried here, close to the small estate upon which she had lived in retirement for years.
CATHERINGTON CHURCH.
In “Charles John Kean, F.R.G.S.,” whose epitaph occupies one side of this monument, it is difficult at first to recognize the famous actor, who, after playing well his varied parts in Shakespearean plays, and in melodrama, died in 1868, in his fifty-seventh year. His widow, Eleonora, survived him until 1880, when, at the age of seventy-three, she died, and “now lies with her loving husband.”
ADMIRAL NAPIER
The Admiral, after his eventful career, rests near at hand beneath an altar-tomb in an obscure corner of the graveyard, where ashes from the heating apparatus of the church are heaped, and defile, together with the miscellaneous dirt and foul rubbish of a neglected corner, his memorial, that sets forth his rank and aprécisof his varied achievements. When the present writer visited the spot, a bottomless pail and the remains of an old boot placed on his tomb formed a hideous commentary upon the pride and enthusiasm of a grateful country, and preached a sermon, both painful and forcible, on the fleetingconsideration of men for the distinguished dead. It is thirty-five years ago since “Charley Napier,” as his contemporaries (brother-officers, or Tom, Dick, and Harry) called him, died, after having performed many services for his country in many parts of the world. It may seem, at the first blush, ungenerous to say so, but the fact remains that, had he quitted this scene but seven years earlier, his reputation had been brighter to-day, and this through no shortcoming of his own. He had achieved many important, if somewhat too theatrical, victories in his earlier days, when ordnance was comparatively light, and when the old line-of-battle ship was at its highest development; and so, when he was, in his old age, sent in command of the Baltic Fleet to reduce the heavily-armed sea-forts of Cronstadt and Bomarsund, the uninstructed but enthusiastic mob of his countrymen anticipated merely a naval promenade, ending with the capitulation of those fortresses of the North. When the Baltic Fleet cruised ingloriously for years in that icy sea, and the Russian strongholds yet remained unreduced, the disappointment of the million knew no bounds, and the Admiral’s fame became tarnished. He was ridiculed, and he had himself to thank in some measure for this, because, in his characteristically reckless way, he had vowed to be either in Cronstadt or Heaven within a month, and Heaven had not claimed him nor Cronstadt submitted when the war was done.
AN UNCOUTH FIGURE
But if, like General Trochu, of some sixteen years later, he had “a plan” and became the butt of witlings when that plan failed, he had the Englishman’sinfallible refuge and court of public appeal—the “Times,” and in the columns of that paper he stormed and thundered from time to time, a great deal more effectively than ever he had done in the Baltic. He had nearly always possessed a pet grievance, and had, ere this, obtained election to Parliament to air the injustice of the hour; and in the House he was wont to hold forth in a fine old quarter-deck manner that amused many, and let off the steam of his wrath in an entirely harmless way. Betweenwhiles he resided at Horndean, on a small estate he had purchased years before, and in a house he had re-christened “Merchistoun,” from the place of that name in Scotland where he was born. Here he, a modern Cincinnatus, farmed his own land and pottered about, a singular combination of sailor and agriculturist, and one of the most extraordinary figures of his time. “He is,” said one who wrote of his personal appearance, “stout and broad built; stoops, from a wound in his neck; walks lame, from another in his leg; turns out one of his feet, and has a most slouching, slovenly gait; a large round face, with black, bushy eyebrows, a double chin, scraggy, grey, uncurled whiskers and thin hair, always bedaubed with snuff, which he takes in immense quantities; usually his trousers far too short, and wears the ugliest pair of old shoes he can find.” He became quite an authority upon sheep and turnips, and so died, after a busy life, on November 6, 1860.
Another great man lies at Catherington, within the church; Sir Nicholas Hyde, Lord Chief Justice of England, and uncle of the still greater Clarendon.His splendid monument, with recumbent marble effigies of himself and his wife, occupies the east wall of the Hyde Chapel. Hinton House—the seat of the Hydes near here, and the scene of the marriage between James, Duke of York (afterwards James II.), and Anne Hyde, daughter of the Chancellor, Clarendon, in 1660—has long since been rebuilt.
From Catherington, one may either retrace one’s steps to the Portsmouth Road above Horndean, or else continue on the by-lanes that bring the pedestrian to the highway below that wayside hamlet.
Horndean stands at the entrance to the Forest of Bere, and at the junction of roads that lead to Rowlands Castle and Havant. It is just a neat and comparatively recent place, like most of the wayside settlements that now begin to dot the highway between this and Portsmouth. An old house or two by way of nucleus, with some few decrepit cottages—the remainder of Horndean is made up of a great red-brick brewery and some rural-looking shops.
The Forest of Bere is at this day the most considerable remnant of that vast tract of woodland (computed at some ninety thousand acres) which formerly covered the face of southern Hants. It follows on either side of the roadway from this point to within a short distance of Purbrook, and extends for many miles across country, including Waltham Chase. Outlying woodlands still occur plentifully; among them the leafy coverts of Alice Holt (==Axe-holt, the Ash Wood), Liss Wood, Hawkley Hangers, and the green glades of Avington, Old Park, and Cheriton.
WATERLOOVILLE
Presently the road becomes singularly suburban, and the beautiful glades of the old Forest of Bere, that have fringed the highway from Horndean, suddenly give place to rows of trim villas and recent shops. The highway, but just now as lonely as most of the old coach-roads are usually become in these days of steam and railways, is alive with wagons and tradesmen’s carts, and neatly-kept footpaths are bordered with lamp-posts, furnished with oil-lamps.
This is the entirely modern neighbourhood of Waterlooville, a settlement nearly a mile in length, bordering the Portsmouth Road, and wearing not so much the appearance of an English village as that of some mushroom township in the hurried clearings of an American forest. The inns, past and present, of Waterlooville, have all been named allusively—the “Waterloo” Hotel, the “Wellington” Inn, the “Belle Alliance.”
Waterlooville, as its ugly name would imply, is modern, but with a modernity much more recent than Wellington’s great victory. The name, indeed, was only bestowed upon the parish in 1858, and is a dreadful example of that want of originality in recent place-names, seen both here and in America. Why some descriptive title, such as our Anglo-Saxon forebears gave to their settlements, could not have been conferred upon this place, is difficult to understand. Certainly “Waterlooville” is at once cumbrous and unmeaning, as here applied.
The history of Waterlooville is soon told. It was originally a portion of the Forest of Bere, and its site was sold by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests early in the present century. A tavern erected shortly afterwards was named the “Heroes of Waterloo,” and became subsequently the halting-place for the coaches on this, the first stage out of Portsmouth and the last from London. Around the tavern sprang up four houses, and this settlement, some seven or eight miles from Portsmouth, was called Waterloo until 1830, when, a rage for building having set in, resulting in a church and some suburban villas, the “ville” was tacked on to the already unmeaning and sufficiently absurd name.
The church of Waterlooville is a building of so paltry and vulgar a design, and built of such poor materials, that a near sight of it would be sufficient to make the mildest architect swear loud and long. This plastered abomination is, of course, among the earliest buildings here; for no sooner are two or three houses gathered together than an unbeneficed clergyman—what we may on this sea-faring road most appropriately term a “sky-pilot”—comes along and solicits subscriptions towards the building of a church for the due satisfaction of the “spiritual needs” of a meagre flock. It would be ungenerous to assert that he always scents a living in this spiritual urgency, but the labourer is worthy of his hire, and if by dint of much canvassing for funds amongst pious old ladies and retired general officers (why is it that these men of war so frequently become pillars of the Church after their army days are done?) he succeeds inputting up some sort of a building called a church, who else so eligible as incumbent?
PURBROOK
Where Waterlooville ends, the road runs for half-a-mile in mitigated rusticity, to become again, at the sixth milestone from Portsmouth, lively with the thriving, business-like village of Purbrook.
And at this point the traveller in coaching times came within sight of his destination. Painfully the old stages climbed up the steep ascent of Portsdown Hill before the road was lowered by cutting through the chalk at the summit, about 1820, and grumblingly the passengers obeyed the coachman and walked up the road to save the horses. But when they did reach the crest of the hill such a panorama met their gaze as nowhere else could be seen in England: Portsmouth, the Harbour, Gosport, the Isle of Wight, and the coast-line for miles on either hand lay spread out before their eyes as daintily as in a plan, and smiling like a Land of Promise. Unfortunately, however, our forebears were not yet educated to a proper appreciation and admiration of scenery. They, with that jovial bard of the Regency, Captain Morris, preferred the pavements of great cities to the pastorals of the country-side, and would with the greatest fervour have echoed him when he wrote—
“In town let me live, then, in town let me die;For, in truth, I can’t relish the country, not I.If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,Oh! give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall.”
Fortunately, however, the view remains unspoiled for a generation that takes its pleasures afield, and can find delight in country scenes which ourgreat-grandfathers characterized as places of “horror and desolation.”
This is the point of view from which Rowlandson has sketched his “Extraordinary Scene,” and although we miss in the picture the “George Inn,” that stands so four-square and stalwart, perched up above the road, yet the likeness to the place remains after these many years have flown.
The occasion that led to Rowlandson’s producing the elaborate plate from which the accompanying illustration was made, is referred to at length in the title, which runs thus—
“An Extraordinary Scene on the Road from London to Portsmouth, Or an Instance of Unexampled speed used by a Body of Guards, consisting of 1920 Rank and File, besides Officers, who, on the 10th of June, 1798, left London in the Morning, and actually began to Embark for Ireland, at Portsmouth, at four o’clock in the Afternoon; having travelled 74 Miles in 10 Hours.”
AN EXTRAORDINARY SCENE ON THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD.By Rowlandson.
Such a performance as this, at such a time, made a great impression, and Rowlandson has made a very spirited drawing of the scene, full of life and vigour. In the foreground is the “Portsmouth Fly,” with officers inside, taking their ease, and a number of soldiers occupying a precarious perch on the roof, fifing and drumming, regardless of jolts and lurches. Flags are waving from the windows of the “Fly,” soldiers on the box are “laying on” to the horses with a whip, while three others ride comfortably in the “rumble-tumble” behind. Other parties follow, in curricles and carts, hugging the shameless wenches who “doted on the military” in those times as demonstratively as Mary Jane does now. On the right hand stands an enthusiastic group at the door of the “Jolly Sailor”: the landlord, in apron and shirt-sleeves, about to drink the soldiers’ healths in a bumper of very respectable proportions, his womenkind looking on, while a young hopeful, who has donned a saucepan by way of helmet, is “presenting arms” with a besom. An ancient, with a wooden leg and a crutch, is fiddling away with vigour, and a dog runs forward, barking. The long cavalcade is seen disappearing down the hill, while away in the distance is Portsmouth Harbour with its crowded shipping.
SAILOR-MEN
But the greater number of the travellers along the Portsmouth Road, whether they walked or rode, were sailors; and so salt of the sea are the records of this old turnpike that the romance of old-time travel upon it is chiefly concerned with them that went down to brave the elements on board ship; or with those happy mariners who, having entered port, came speeding up to home and beauty with all the ardour of men tossed and buffeted by winds and waves on a two or three years’ cruise. Pepys, who happened to be on the road, on his way up from Portsmouth, June 12, 1667, met several of the crew of the “Cambridge,” and describes them in a manner so unfavourable that I am inclined to suspect they showed too little consideration for the Secretary tothe Admiralty. At any rate, he pictures them as being “the most debauched swearing rogues that ever were in the Navy, just like their prophane commander.” My certes, sirs! just imagine Pepys playing the shocked Puritan, after having, perhaps, just committed some of those peccadilloes which he sets down so frankly in his ciphered “Diary.”
THE SAILOR’S RETURN
That is one of the earliest glimpses we get of Jack ashore on this route, and by it we can well see that his spirits were as boisterous then as ever after. “Sailors earned their money like horses and spent it like asses,” says an old writer, and certainly, once ashore, they were no niggards. It was the natural reaction from a long life of stern discipline, tempered by fighting, wounds, floggings, and marline-spikes, and for the most part cheerfully endured on a miserable diet of weevilly biscuit, “salt horse,” and pork full of maggots. The Mutiny at Spithead, April 15, 1797, was due in part to the shameful quality of the provisions supplied, and partly to the open huckstering of the pursers, the unfair distribution of prize-money, to stoppages, and to insufficient pay. But these grievances were of old standing, and the Government actually felt and expressed indignation that sailors should object to be half starved and half poisoned with insufficient and rotten food. However indignant the Government may have been, redress was seen to be immediately advisable, and the demands of the mutineers were granted. Sailors rated as A.B.’s had their wagesraisedto a shilling a day, and were paid at more frequent intervals than once in ten years or so. It was stated (and names and dates were given) in the House of Commons that some ships’ companies had not been paid for eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Under such a system, or want of system, as this, it frequently happened in those days of much fighting and more disease that when the ships were paid off, the sailors to whom money was due had long been dead. In those cases it was very rarely that their heirs touched a penny, and certainly the Government reaped no advantage. The money went into the pockets of the Admiralty clerks and paymasters, who thrived on wholesale and shameless peculation. If by some strange chance, or by a singular strength of constitution, some hardy sailors remained to claim their due, they were paid it grudgingly, without interest, and whittled away by deductions amounting to as much as thirty or forty per cent.
The Sailor’s return from Portsmouth to London.Publish’d as the Act directs March 2 1772 by J. Bretherton, No. 134, New Bond Street.
But when a mandidreceive his pay, together with his prize-money, he was like a school-boy out at play. Nothing was too ridiculous or puerile for him to stoop to, and he was, as a class, so entirely innocent and unsophisticated that the land-sharks waiting hungrily for homeward-bound ships found him an easy prey. Stories innumerable have been told of his childlike innocence of landsmen’s ways, and pictures and caricatures without end have been drawn and painted with the object of making men smile at his strange doings. Here is a caricature dated so far back as 1772, showing “The Sailor’s Return from Portsmouth to London.” The point of view chosen is, apparently, only a mile or two from Portsmouth, for in the background rise some ruins obviously intended to represent Porchester Castle. The sailor, after themanner so often dwelt upon, is keeping up a pleasing travesty of sea-faring life. His jaded nag is a ship, and the course is being steered by the nag’s tail. The sailor himself has evidently “come aboard” by the rope-ladder, seen hanging down almost to the ground, and he keeps the fog-horn going to avoid collisions. A flag flies from his top-gallant—in plain English, his hat—while a Union Jack is fixed at the forepeak and an anchor is triced up at the bows, in readiness for “heaving-to.” His log might well be that of “Jack Junk” on a similar journey:—“Hove out of Portsmouth on board the ‘Britannia Fly’—a swift sailer—got an inside berth—rather drowsy the first watch or so—liked to have slipped off the stern—cast anchor at the ‘George’—took a fresh quid and a supply of grog—comforted the upper works—spoke several homeward-bound frigates on the road—and after a tolerable smooth voyage entered the port of London at ten past five, post meridian.”