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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #61087 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61087)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Norwich Road, by Charles G. Harper
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Norwich Road
-       An East Anglian Highway
-
-Author: Charles G. Harper
-
-Release Date: January 3, 2020 [EBook #61087]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NORWICH ROAD ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow, Alan and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: SCOLE WHITE HART.]
-
-
-
-
-                             =THE NORWICH
-                            ROAD=: AN EAST
-                            ANGLIAN HIGHWAY
-
-                         By CHARLES G. HARPER
-
-           Author of "_The Brighton Road_," "_The Portsmouth
-            Road_," "_The Dover Road_," "_The Bath Road_,"
-         "_The Exeter Road_," _and_ "_The Great North Road_."
-
-                 _Illustrated by the Author, and from
-                    Old-Time Prints and Pictures._
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                   LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 1901
-
-                       [_All Rights reserved._]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-_The author of a little book published in 1818, called_ A JOURNEY TO
-LONDON, _which is nearly all "London" with very little "journey,"
-remarks that "it is as uncommon for a book to go into the world without
-a preface, as a man without a hat. They are both convenient coverings."
-Here, then, is the customary covering._
-
-_Introducing this, the seventh in a series of books telling the story
-of our great highways, it may perhaps be as well to re-state the
-methods used, and objects aimed at. The chief intention is to provide a
-readable book which shall avoid the style either of a Guide-Book or a
-History. It is the better fortune to be in the reader's hands than in
-the dusty seclusion of those formidable works, the County Histories;
-or disregarded among the guide-books of forgotten holidays. To the
-antiquary it will, of course, be obvious that this and other volumes
-of the series "contain many omissions," as the Irish reviewer said;
-but such things as find no place here have, as a general rule, been
-disregarded because they not only do not help the Story of the Road
-along, but rather hinder its progression._
-
-_The_ NORWICH ROAD, _in its one hundred and twelve miles, passes by
-many an historic site and through districts distinguished for their
-quiet pastoral beauty. In being historic it is not singular, for, as
-Oliver Wendell Holmes very truly said, "England is one vast museum,"
-and the old road would be remarkable indeed, that, like Canning's_
-"NEEDY KNIFE GRINDER," _had no story to tell. It is, however, in the
-especial characteristics of East Anglian scenery, speech, customs, and
-architecture that this road stands apart and is highly individualised.
-"East Anglia" is no merely arbitrary and meaningless term, as those who
-travel it, if only on the highway, will speedily find._
-
-_But this shall be no trumpet-blast; nor indeed do the charms of
-Eastern England require such a fanfare, for who has not yet heard
-of that lovely valley of the Stour, so widely known as "Constable's
-Country," by whose exquisite water-meadows and shady lanes the old
-turnpike passes? Scenery such as this; windmills, cornfields, tall
-elms, winding rivers, and commons populous with geese and turkeys, are
-typical of the_ NORWICH ROAD, _which may, with this introduction, now
-be left to recommend itself_.
-
-  CHARLES G. HARPER.
-
-  PETERSHAM, SURREY,
-  _October 1901_.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: LIST
-
-OF
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS]
-
-SEPARATE PLATES
-
-
-  SCOLE WHITE HART                                       _Frontispiece_
-
-                                                                   PAGE
-
-  ALDGATE PUMP. (_From a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_,
-  1854)                                                               9
-
-  ALDGATE, 1820                                                      21
-
-  THE "OLD RED LION," WHITECHAPEL, WHERE TURPIN SHOT
-  MATTHEW KING. (_From a drawing by T. Hosmer
-  Shepherd_, 1854)                                                   59
-
-  WHITECHAPEL ROAD IN THE COACHING AGE                               65
-
-  MILE END TURNPIKE, 1813. (_After Rowlandson_)                      71
-
-  ROMFORD                                                            91
-
-  MOUNTNESSING WINDMILL                                             103
-
-  INGATESTONE IN COACHING DAYS. (_From an Old Print_)               107
-
-  NEW HALL LODGES                                                   125
-
-  CHIPPING HILL                                                     133
-
-  "THREE BLIND 'UNS AND A BOLTER." (_From a Print
-  after H. Alken_)                                                  145
-
-  COLCHESTER                                                        215
-
-  THE VALE OF DEDHAM. (_After Constable_)                           219
-
-  SPRING: SUFFOLK PLOUGHLANDS. (_After Constable_)                  229
-
-  THE CORNFIELD. (_After Constable_)                                233
-
-  THE OLD SIGN OF SCOLE WHITE HART                                  265
-
-  STAIRCASE IN THE "WHITE HART"                                     269
-
-  DICKLEBURGH                                                       279
-
-  A DISPUTED PASTURAGE                                              289
-
-  LONG STRATTON                                                     293
-
-  NEWTON FLOTMAN                                                    299
-
-  NORWICH, FROM MOUSEHOLD HEATH                                     311
-
-  NORWICH MARKET PLACE                                              315
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
-
-
-  Vignette                                                _Title Page_
-
-                                                                   PAGE
-
-  Preface                                                           vii
-
-  List of Illustrations: London Stone                                ix
-
-  The Runaway 'Prentice                                               1
-
-  Yard of the "Bull," Leadenhall Street. (_From a drawing
-  by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854)                                      12
-
-  Front of the "Saracen's Head," Aldgate: Present Day                14
-
-  Yard of the "Saracen's Head" in Coaching Days. (_From
-  a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854)                            16
-
-  Yard of the "Saracen's Head": Present Day                          18
-
-  The Yard of the "Bull," Whitechapel, in Coaching Days              27
-
-  The Norwich Coach at Christmastide. (_After Robert
-  Seymour_, 1835)                                                    38
-
-  Whitechapel Old Church                                             63
-
-  Bow                                                                76
-
-  Seven Kings                                                        84
-
-  Whalebone House                                                    87
-
-  Entrance to Romford                                                89
-
-  Old Toll-house, Puttels Bridge                                     93
-
-  The "Fleece," Brook Street                                         94
-
-  The Martyr's Tree, Brentwood                                       95
-
-  Yard of the "White Hart," Brentwood                                98
-
-  Shenfield                                                         100
-
-  Mountnessing Church                                               102
-
-  The Gatehouse, Ingatestone Hall                                   106
-
-  At Margaretting                                                   111
-
-  The "Good Woman" Sign                                             113
-
-  The Bridge: Entrance to Chelmsford                                115
-
-  The Conduit, Chelmsford                                           116
-
-  Tindal's Statue                                                   117
-
-  The "Three Cups" Sign                                             122
-
-  Springfield Church                                                123
-
-  Boreham                                                           128
-
-  The "Angel," Kelvedon                                             141
-
-  Birthplace of Spurgeon                                            151
-
-  Near Mark's Tey                                                   176
-
-  Lexden                                                            180
-
-  The Grand Staircase, Colchester Castle                            199
-
-  Old Man Trap, Colchester Castle                                   205
-
-  Colchester Castle                                                 207
-
-  Gun Hill                                                          221
-
-  Old Toll-house, Stratford Bridge                                  222
-
-  Wolsey's Gateway                                                  242
-
-  The "Lion and Lamb," Angel Lane                                   244
-
-  Sparrowe's House                                                  246
-
-  The "Great White Horse"                                           248
-
-  Mockbeggar Hall                                                   253
-
-  "Stonham Pie"                                                     256
-
-  Near Brockford                                                    257
-
-  "Thwaite Low House"                                               259
-
-  The "Cock," Thwaite                                               260
-
-  Long Stratton                                                     295
-
-  Tasburgh                                                          297
-
-  The Old Brick Pound                                               301
-
-  Caistor Camp                                                      303
-
-  Norwich Snap                                                      318
-
-  Norfolk Turkey, on his way to Leadenhall Market                   320
-
-
-
-
-THE ROAD TO NORWICH
-
-
-                                                                 MILES
-
-  London (Whitechapel Church) to Mile End                            1
-  Stratford-le-Bow (Bow Church)                                      2½
-        (Cross River Lea).
-  Stratford (Broadway)                                               4
-  Forest Gate                                                        5
-  Manor Park                                                         6
-  Ilford                                                             6½
-        (Cross River Roding).
-  Seven Kings                                                        7½
-        (Cross "Seven Kings' Watering," or Fillebrook).
-  Chadwell Heath                                                     9
-  Romford                                                           12
-  Hare Street                                                       13
-  Puttels Bridge                                                    15½
-        (Cross Weald Brook).
-  Brook Street                                                      16½
-  Brentwood                                                         18
-  Shenfield                                                         19
-  Mountnessing Street                                               21
-  Ingatestone                                                       23
-  Margaretting Street                                               25
-  Widford                                                           27½
-        (Cross River Wid or Ash).
-  Moulsham                                                          28¼
-        (Cross River Chelmer).
-
-  Chelmsford                                                        29
-  Springfield                                                       29½
-  Boreham                                                           32¾
-        (Cross River Ter).
-  Hatfield Peverel                                                  34¾
-        (Cross River Witham).
-  Witham                                                            37½
-  Rivenhall End                                                     39½
-  Kelvedon                                                          41
-        (Cross River Blackwater).
-  Gore Pit                                                          42
-  Mark's Tey                                                        45¾
-  Copford                                                           46¼
-  Stanway                                                           47
-  Lexden Heath                                                      48
-  Lexden                                                            49
-  Colchester                                                        51
-        (Cross River Colne).
-  Dilbridge                                                         52½
-  Stratford Bridge                                                  57¾
-        (Cross River Stour).
-  Stratford St Mary                                                 58½
-  Capel Railway Crossing. Capel Station. Capel
-      St Mary.                                                      63½
-  Copdock                                                           65½
-  Washbrook                                                         66
-        (Cross Wash Brook).
-  Ipswich                                                           69¼
-        (Cross River Orwell)
-  Whitton Street                                                    71¾
-  Claydon                                                           72¾
-  Creeting All Saints                                               76¾
-  Stonham Earls                                                     79
-  Little Stonham                                                    79¾
-  Brockford                                                         83¾
-  Thwaite                                                           84½
-  Stoke Ash                                                         86¼
-  Yaxley                                                            88¼
-  Brome                                                             90¼
-        (Cross River Waveney).
-  Scole                                                             92
-  Dickleburgh                                                       94½
-  Tivetshall Level Crossing                                         97¼
-  Wacton                                                           100
-  Long Stratton                                                    101½
-  Tasburgh                                                         102¾
-        (Cross River Tase).
-  Newton Flotman                                                   104½
-        (Cross River Tase).
-  Hartford Bridge                                                  109¼
-        (Cross River Yare).
-  Norwich (Market Place)                                           111½
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: The NORWICH ROAD]
-
-
-I
-
-
-IN the days before railways came, robbing the exits from London of
-all dignity and purpose, the runaway 'prentice lads of the familiar
-legends, who were always half starved and continually beaten, revolting
-at length from their uncomfortable beds under the shop counters
-and their daily stripes and scorpions, were wont, according to the
-story-books, to steal at night out of their houses of bondage and make
-for the roads. Such an one, making in those days for Norwich, and
-standing at Aldgate in the grey of the morning, looking across the
-threshold of London, would have seen, in the long broad road stretching
-before him, the only means of escape. The shilling or so of which he
-would be the owner would scarce serve him for two or three days' keep;
-and so, although he might have longed for a place on the coach he
-could see starting from the "Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, at
-4 a.m., there would have been for such as he no choice but to start
-afoot, with as light a heart as possible, and chance the offer of a
-lift on some waggon returning into Essex. Had he, in leaving Aldgate
-behind, asked some passer-by the way to Norwich, he might have been
-seized for what he was, a runaway; but, if he escaped suspicion, would
-have been answered readily enough, for everyone in those times knew
-the way to lie along the Whitechapel Road and by Mile End Turnpike.
-Has anyone in these enlightened and highly-educated times courage
-sufficient to ask his way to Norwich from Aldgate? and, assuming that
-dauntless courage, is it conceivable that anyone in that crowded street
-could tell him?
-
-There are no apprentices and no tyrannical masters of the old kind left
-now, and the only runaways of these days are the bad boys of precocious
-wits who would not think of tramping the highway while they could raise
-a railway fare or "lift" a bicycle. But the way still lies open to the
-explorer from Aldgate, and the old Norwich Road yet follows the line of
-the Roman way into the country of the Iceni.
-
-Between the era of our imaginary truant and that of the Romans, who
-originally constructed this road, there yawns a vast gulf of time;
-certainly not less than eighteen hundred years. The history of the
-road during that space has largely been forgotten; but, worst of all,
-we know perhaps less of it and its life in the times of Charles the
-First, onward to those of William and Mary, than we can recover from
-Roman historians; and certainly its coaching history is in tatters and
-fragments, for those who made it did not live in the bright glow of
-publicity that surrounded the coachmen of roads north, south or west,
-and died unexploited by the sporting writers of the Coaching Age.
-
-
-II
-
-
-NEARLY seventeen centuries have passed since, in the great _Antonine
-Itinerary_ of the Roman Empire, the first guide-book to the roads was
-compiled, and almost eighty years since Cary and Paterson--the rival
-Bradshaws and A.B.C.'s of the Coaching Age--issued the last editions of
-their _Travellers Companions_, which now, instead of being constantly
-in the travellers' hands, are treasured on the shelves of collectors
-interested in relics of days before railways.
-
-The _Antonine Itinerary_ was compiled, A.D. 200-300. Among other roads
-of which it purports to give an account is the road to Venta Icenorum;
-the Norwich Road, as we should say. Its statement is brief and to the
-point, if requiring no little explanation after this lapse of time:--
-
-  Iter a Venta Icenorum Londinio _m.p._             cxxviii _sic._
-  Sitomago                                          xxxii
-  Combretonio                                       xxii
-  Ad Ansam                                          xv
-  Camuloduno                                        vii
-  Canonio                                           viiii
-  Cæsaromago                                        xii
-  Durolito                                          xvi
-  Londinio                                          xv
-
-A hundred and twenty-eight miles, that is to say, between Venta and
-London. The Romans, of course, calculated all their mileages in Britain
-from that hoary relic, the still existing "London Stone," which, from
-behind its modern iron grating in the wall of St Swithin's Church,
-still turns a battered face towards the heedless, hurrying crowds in
-Cannon Street, in the City of London.
-
-In coaching days the Norwich Road, in common with most East Anglian
-routes, was measured from Whitechapel Church, and the distance from
-that landmark to Norwich given as 111½ miles. The apparent wide
-difference between those measurements of classic and modern times is
-very nearly reconciled when we add a mile for the distance between
-London Stone and Whitechapel Church to the 111½ miles, and when we
-reduce the Roman miles to English. An English mile measures 5280 feet,
-while a Roman mile runs only to 4842 feet, this fact accounting, along
-the road to Norwich, for some 13 miles of the discrepancy, and bringing
-the difference to the insignificant one of 3½ miles; or, assuming the
-Roman ruins at Caistor, 3 miles short of Norwich, to mark the site of
-Venta Icenorum, 6½ miles; no very wide margin of error.
-
-The compiler of that ancient itinerary is unknown. He, or they (for
-a survey of the Roman Empire cannot have been made by one man), are
-quite hidden and lost to sight under the title of "Antonine," which
-was given in honour of the Emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla,
-father and son, who both owned the name Antoninus. By similarly
-honorary titles we are accustomed to christen our public buildings.
-Thus, in coming ages, when such earthworms as engineers and architects
-are forgotten, the "Victoria" Embankment, "Victoria" Station, the
-"Victoria and Albert" Museum, and the thousand and one other things
-thus entitled will serve to hand a Sovereign down to futurity, while
-the names of those who created them, good or ill, will have perished,
-like the leaves of autumn. Customs change, and fashions cease to be,
-but snobbery is more enduring than brass or marble, and outlasts the
-mummies of the Pharaohs.
-
-The compiler who drew up the list of places on the road between
-Londinium and Venta has chosen to reckon backwards. The "_m. p._" is
-the abbreviation for _mille passus_, or paced Roman miles; the figures
-after the first line giving the distance from the place last mentioned.
-Setting out from London, we find "Durolitum" to be identified with the
-Roman earthworks of Uphall, near Romford; "Cæsaromagus" to be identical
-with Writtle, near Chelmsford; "Canonium" to stand for Kelvedon;
-"Camulodunum" for Colchester; and "Ad Ansam" for Stratford St Mary;
-while "Combretonium" and "Sitomagus" still puzzle antiquaries, who are
-reduced to the extremity of suggesting the opposite alternatives of
-Brettenham or Burgh for the one, and Dunwich or Thetford for the other;
-names with a specious resemblance, and on circuitous routes east or
-west of the direct road which would more than account for the Roman
-surveyor's overplus of miles. The direct road, however, is unmistakably
-Roman, and those who will may seek for the elusive "Sitomagus" and
-"Combretonium" along it. Haply they may discover them at Scole,
-Dickleburgh or Long Stratton.
-
-But along the whole length of the road, from London to Norwich, the
-wayfarer receives impressions of its true Roman character, whether
-in its appearance or in the place-names on the way. Old Ford and
-Stratford-at-Bow, where the Roman paved fords crossed the River Lea;
-that other "old ford" at Ilford, across the River Roding, which was
-already ancient when the Saxons came and so named it, "Eald Ford,"
-leaving it for later times to corrupt the name into "Ilford" and
-for uninstructed historians to explain the meaning to have been
-that it was an "ill ford"; to which condition, indeed, many had
-descended in mediæval times: these are examples. Others are found at
-Ingatestone, the Saxon "Ing-atte-stone" = the "meadow at the stone,"
-a Roman milestone that stood by the wayside; in the names of Stanway,
-Colchester, Stratford St Mary. Little Stonham, Tivetshall, and Long
-Stratton, places to be more particularly mentioned later in these pages.
-
-It has been aptly pointed out by East Anglian antiquaries that the
-circuitous route eastward or westward of the straight road between
-Stratford St Mary and Norwich, on which Sitomagus and Combretonium
-may have been situated, may probably have been an early Roman way,
-constructed shortly after the conquest of the Iceni, along an old
-native trackway, and superseded in later and more settled times by
-the direct road, overlooked by the Antonine compilers who, working at
-Rome, the very centre of the Empire, may not have been fully informed
-of changes in countries like Britain, on the edge of the Unknown.
-This view, when we consider the long period stretching between the
-conquest of this part of the country and the final break up of the
-Romano-British civilisation, about A.D. 450, has much to recommend it.
-A period of some three hundred and eighty years of colonisation and
-development, equalling, for example, the great gulf of time between
-our own day and that of Henry the Eighth, the changes in its course
-must have rivalled, if not have surpassed, those in our roads between
-the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. During those eras, between the
-first and the fifth centuries, many of the original winding tracks
-must have been straightened, or left to the secondary position of
-byways, while new and straight roads were engineered across country
-formerly, for one reason or another, avoided. Meanwhile, the Antonine
-Itinerary-makers must have relied for their surveys upon old and
-out-of-date information, just as, in our own time, we find many recent
-maps, printed from the Ordnance Survey of a hundred years ago, still
-indicating winding roads that have been non-existent for generations,
-and ignoring the direct highways made by Telford and others just before
-the opening of the Railway Era.
-
-
-III
-
-
-LONDON made no remarkable growth between the Roman and mediæval
-periods, but this road had in that time slightly altered its course
-from its starting-point, and, instead of going from Cannon Street
-to Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Old Ford, left the City by way of
-Leadenhall Street and Aldgate, continuing down the Mile End and Bow
-Roads to Stratford.
-
-The traveller of Chaucer's day, coming to Ald Gate, in the City wall,
-had reached the country. That gate spanned the road at a point marked
-nowadays by the house, No 2 Aldgate High Street, standing at the
-boundary of the parishes of St Katharine Cree and St Botolph. In 1374
-Chaucer took from the Corporation of London a lease for the remainder
-of his life of the rooms in this gate, which was pulled down and
-succeeded by another, built in 1606, which in its turn disappeared in
-1761.
-
-From his windows commanding the road Chaucer must often have seen that
-dainty gentlewoman, the Prioress of St Leonard's, Stratford, riding to
-or from London, escorted by a numerous train, and from her must have
-drawn that portrait of the prioress who spoke French with a Cockney
-accent:--
-
-  "After the scole of Stratford-attè-Bowe,
-  For French of Parys was to hire unknowe."
-
-In Chaucer's day they probably taught French, of sorts, at the Priory
-schools.
-
-[Illustration: ALDGATE PUMP. _From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_,
-1854.]
-
-At that time it was no little journey to Stratford, although by
-measurement less than four miles, and the lady went strongly escorted,
-as, indeed, did all of consequence, or those who had aught to lose.
-For the more common wayfarers who went alone on this desperate eastern
-trail there stood the Chapel and the Holy Well of St Michael the
-Archangel within the City, where the otherwise unprotected might seek
-the aid of the Saint's strong arm before leaving the walled City behind
-on their perilous faring. This chapel stood where Leadenhall Street,
-Fenchurch Street and Aldgate meet, on a site thrown into the roadway
-in 1876, when the street was widened. Until that year the crypt of
-this shrine had filled the prosaic functions of a cellar in the corner
-house, itself demolished, together with the beautiful Early English
-arches on which it stood. Adjoining was "Aldgate Pump," which had long
-before unromantically taken the place of the sanctified spring. That
-celebrated civic monument is seen in the accompanying illustration,
-taken in 1854. Many City wits have exercised their satirical powers
-upon it, and the expression long current of "a draft on Aldgate Pump,"
-a once popular mercantile phrase for a bad note, goes back so far as
-the days of Fielding. Oddly enough, the water of the pump retained some
-repute until 1876, when, on being analysed, it was found impure, and
-the supply closed. The pump, however, is still in existence, rebuilt
-of its original stones, a few feet away from the old site, and yields
-water again; not, however, from the old saintly source, but from the
-strictly secular filter-beds of the New River Water Company.
-
-[Illustration: YARD OF THE "BULL," LEADENHALL STREET. _From a Drawing
-by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854.]
-
-Having implored the protection of St Michael, travellers of old
-went, heartened, upon their way down what is now Whitechapel High
-Street, which Strype, writing in the time of James the First, calls
-a "spacious fair street," with "sweet and wholesome air." Past
-hedgerows of elm trees and rustic stiles and bridges, those old
-wayfarers went, and onward down the Whitechapel Road, where the
-country was a lovely solitude, with "nothing but the bounteous gifts
-of Nature and saint-like tokens of innocency," which, according to Sir
-Thomas More, in 1504, characterised the charming fields of Mile End,
-Shadwell, Stepney and Limehouse. This, it will be allowed, is scarcely
-descriptive of those places to-day, whatever they may become when the
-People's Palace and the University Settlements have done their work.
-
-Thus far for sake of contrast. Let us return to Aldgate for a while,
-and, without following its fortunes throughout the centuries, glance at
-it in the Coaching Age, before the squalor of modern Whitechapel had
-invaded it from the east, or the extension of City business had come to
-destroy most of that picturesque assemblage of old inns and mediæval
-gabled houses, to replace them with the giant warehouses and "imposing"
-offices of modern London.
-
-
-IV
-
-
-ALTHOUGH, as we have seen, the East Anglian roads were, in coaching
-days, measured from Whitechapel Church, the great actual starting-place
-was Aldgate, where many of the old inns were situated, as, in like
-manner, the ancient hostelries of the Borough clustered at the
-beginning of the road to Canterbury and Dover. Aldgate occupies a
-position midway between London Stone, the Roman starting-point in
-Cannon Street, and Whitechapel Church, and to and from this spot came
-and went the stage-coaches, post-chaises and waggons in the palmy days
-of the road. The mail-coaches, of course, had a starting-point of their
-own, and set out from the old General Post-Office in Lombard Street,
-or, in the last years of coaching, from St Martin's-le-Grand.
-
-[Illustration: FRONT OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD," ALDGATE: PRESENT DAY.]
-
-It is true that one might have taken coach from many other and more
-central inns for Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich:--from the "Spread
-Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, a fine old galleried inn demolished at
-the close of 1865; from the "Cross Keys," in the same street; from the
-"Swan with Two Necks," in Lad Lane, anciently Lady Lane (that is to
-say, the Lane of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin), now Gresham Street;
-or from the "Bull," 151 Leadenhall Street, which must by no means be
-confounded with its namesake in Aldgate High Street. Exactly what
-that Leadenhall Street hostelry was like let the picture of its old
-galleried courtyard show.
-
-There was also "another way" to Norwich; out of Bishopsgate, by way
-of Newmarket, Bury and Thetford. Taking this route, which, although
-2½ miles shorter, no true sportsman considered to be the real Norwich
-Road, one started from the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross; from the
-"White Horse," in Fetter Lane (improved away in 1898); from the
-"Flower Pot," in Bishopsgate Street; from yet another "Bull," also in
-Bishopsgate Street; or from the "Bull and Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand.
-But when all these places have been duly set forth, it is to Aldgate
-that we must turn as the real starting-point.
-
-[Illustration: YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD" IN COACHING DAYS. _From a
-Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854.]
-
-Aldgate in the days before railways was quite unlike the Aldgate of
-to-day. Certain of the old buildings remain, but the "note" of the
-place is entirely altered. It is now a noisy, distracting ante-room to
-the City, in which tinkling tram-cars and costermongers' barrows jostle
-with elephantine railway goods vans; where the Jewish second-hand
-clothes shop rubs a greasy shoulder with the "merchant tailor's" vulgar
-show of electric light, plate glass and wax models; and where the East
-End, in the person of the aproned, ringleted and ostrich-feathered
-factory girl, meets the West, in the shape of some City clerk strayed
-beyond his mercantile or financial frontiers, each regarding the other
-as a curiosity in these social marches. It is as the meeting of salt
-water and fresh, this mingling of the tides of City and East End, and
-to the observant not a little curious. Nothing like it--nothing so
-marked--is to be seen on any other of the borders of the City. There
-is, too, a smack of the sea, a certain air of romance, in the street,
-coming, perhaps, from the windows of the nautical instrument-makers,
-where the binoculars, the quadrants, the sextants and the sea-faring
-tackle in general hint of distant climes and the coral reefs of South
-Pacific isles.
-
-These mariners' emporia were here and in the Minories before railways
-came, and so also were many fine old inns. For Aldgate, difficult
-though it may be to realise it to-day, was not only the place whence
-many of the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk coaches set out, but was also
-the resting-place of travellers to London; and its inns were quite
-as well-appointed as those of the more central ones in the City,
-or those of Charing Cross, or the West End. As travellers by rail
-to London in modern times resort to the railway hotels, so did our
-great-grandfathers find rest at the coaching inns at whose thresholds
-they were set down at their journey's end.
-
-[Illustration: YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD": PRESENT DAY.]
-
-The fragments merely of the last of Aldgate's old hostelries remain, in
-the bold front of Nos. 6 and 7, forming two-thirds of the old frontage
-of the "Saracen's Head." No. 5, the other third, has been destroyed,
-and so also has the old appearance of the galleried courtyard, still
-named "Saracen's Head Yard," but now surrounded by warehouses. The old
-coach archway remains, and the gables at the back of the buildings
-are quaint reminiscences of other times. Coaches plied between the
-"Saracen's Head" and Norwich so far back as 1681, and Strype, the
-antiquary, born in the neighbourhood, in a court whose name now flaunts
-the horrid travesty of "Tripe Court," referring to the inn, speaks of
-it as "very large and of a considerable trade." The existing fragment,
-with its handsome architectural elevation of richly-moulded plaster in
-the Renaissance style of the late seventeenth century, is part of the
-building mentioned by him. Small shops now occupy the ground floor,
-and the upper rooms are let as tenements.
-
-But the "Bull" was perhaps the most famous of these old inns. From it
-Mr Pickwick set out for Ipswich, and from Sam Weller's remark on that
-occasion, "Take care o' the archway, gen'l'men," as the coach started,
-it is evident that the "Bull" possessed a courtyard. At that palmy time
-of inns and coaches, the opening of the nineteenth century, the "Bull"
-was, and long had been, in the Nelson family, a noted race of inn and
-coach proprietors. At that particular time Mrs Ann Nelson, widow of the
-late host, who died about 1812, was the presiding genius. Associated
-with her was her son John. Another son, Robert, had a business of his
-own, and was long proprietor of the "Belle Sauvage," on Ludgate Hill,
-and partner with others in many coaches. A third son, George, drove the
-Exeter "Defiance," horsed by his mother out of London.
-
-But to return to the "Bull" and Mrs Nelson, who had, as her husband
-had, and his father before him, some sort of interest in many coaches
-running into Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, on main or bye-roads. She
-also at one time leased the "Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street,
-and extended her energies so far as to horse the Exeter "Telegraph"
-and the "Quicksilver" Devonport Mail out of London, together with
-the Exeter "Defiance" night coach, the Manchester "Telegraph," the
-Oxford "Defiance," Brighton "Red Rover," and the Leeds "Courier." In
-their coaching speculations the Nelson family were associated with
-a pastrycook whose little shop adjoined the gateway of the "Bull."
-Occasionally a new hand on one of the coaches would send his leaders'
-noses through the shop front, for that gateway was very narrow and Mrs
-Nelson's coachmen anything but deliberate. On the other side of the
-gateway was a whip-maker's shop, kept by one James Johnson, who throve
-mightily on the custom of the coachmen and others who frequented the
-"Bull."
-
-This most energetic of landladies and Napoleonic of coach proprietors
-developed and managed her extensive coaching interests long before her
-husband died. He, good, easy-going man, had been a fair whip in earlier
-days, but had long left the box, and had no head for business, although
-a very fine taste in wines and spirits: the lack of the first probably
-a corollary of the second. She spared neither herself nor her servants.
-Rising considerably before the lark, she saw the owls to bed, and was
-a martinet to her coachmen. Left a widow while in the prime of life,
-she still wore in old age the dress of her youth. The sketch of her in
-the picture of the "Bull" yard in coaching days shows exactly what her
-costume was like. A short skirt revealed high-heeled shoes with large
-buckles, the heels painted red. Black velvet was her winter wear, and
-fancy apron, lace neckerchief and frilled cap invariable items. Up to
-her seventieth year she was the last up at night, scouring the house
-to see that all was safe; and the first up in the morning, looking
-after the stable people and seeing that the horses had their feeds and
-were properly cared for. Inside and outside the house, and down the
-eastern roads, her influence was despotic and would brook no defiance.
-Her "Ipswich Blues" had long been famous when an opposition coach was
-started. Opposition could not be allowed to live, and so the fares
-were reduced from eight shillings inside and sixteen shillings out, by
-regular stages until the point was reached when passengers were not
-only carried for nothing, but were presented with an excellent dinner
-at Witham. At that point the rivals discreetly retired, when fares rose
-again to their old level.
-
-[Illustration: ALDGATE, 1820.]
-
-Mrs Nelson insisted on the most rigid punctuality. Did the coachman
-of one of her crack coaches or one of her still more famous
-"Oppositions" bring his team down her yard five minutes over time,
-he was reprimanded; ten minutes, and he was fined half-a-crown; a
-quarter of an hour, and he stood a good chance of being dismissed. She
-ran a Southend "Opposition" every afternoon by Romford, Brentwood,
-Billericay, Wickford, Raleigh and Rochford, along Essex roads of a
-feather-bed softness of mud; but time must be kept. She provided good
-horses and would not hear of excuses. One day, when the roads were
-particularly heavy, the "Opposition" came in half an hour late from
-Southend. The coachman, after the manner of his kind, on driving into
-the yard and pulling up at the coffee-room door, threw his whip across
-the wheelers' backs. Mrs Nelson had long been watching the clock, and,
-coming out, took the whip and hung it up, with the quiet remark, "That
-whip is no longer yours, Philpot--half an hour behind."
-
-"But the roads are so bad, ma'am," remonstrated poor Toby. "I'm sure,
-ma'am, the gentlemen knew I did my best; but I felt bound to spare the
-cattle."
-
-"_I_ find the cattle and employ you to drive them," replied the
-inexorable landlady; "_you_ have nothing to do but to keep time. Draw
-your wages and leave the yard."
-
-Under this iron rule it is no wonder that her coachmen were sometimes
-"pulled up" for furious driving. On one of these occasions she appeared
-in court in defence of her man. "I understand, Mrs Nelson," blandly
-remarked the Chairman of the Bench, "that you give your coachmen
-instructions to race the rival coach."
-
-"Not exactly," replied the lady; "my orders to them are simply that
-they are to get the road and keep it."
-
-But if a very dragon of strictness, she treated coachmen and guards
-very well. They had their especial room, and dined as well there, at
-reduced prices, as any of her coffee-room customers. This especial
-consideration reflected itself in those functionaries, who jealously
-preserved the privacy of their room; the amateur coachman who secured
-the invitation to join them (and to pay out of his own pocket for
-their wine and spirits) feeling himself greatly honoured.
-
-In other respects, the "Bull" was a model to other houses. No damp
-sheets in any one of its hundred and fifty beds, no drunken brawlers;
-nothing a minute out of time, or an inch out of place. Mrs Nelson's
-fine house was, indeed, nothing less than an institution. In later
-years her son John took more of the management upon his shoulders, and
-the business seemed likely to long outlast his time.
-
-
-V
-
-
-BUT a whisper of coming changes disturbed the air as early as 1830.
-Coachmen and travellers talked in the stableyard and the cosy rooms of
-the "Bull" of men with strange instruments encountered along the road;
-"chaps with telescopes on three sticks, and other chaps with chains
-and things, measuring the fields." It was thus that they described
-the surveyors, with their theodolites and their staff of men, who
-were setting out the proposed route of the projected Eastern Counties
-Railway that was to run all the way from London to Colchester, Norwich
-and Yarmouth.
-
-John Nelson was too confident in the existing order of things to
-believe that a few pounds of coal and some boiling water would ever
-be a match for his horses, or that a time would presently come when
-those passengers of his who now derided the railways would desert the
-coaches. The "Bull" had been in his family for more than a hundred and
-twelve years, as an inn and a coaching house, and he could as soon have
-imagined the end of the world as a day coming when the Essex, Suffolk
-and Norfolk coaches should no longer enter or leave his yard. It was a
-good joke for a while, when the coaches came in, to ask "How they were
-getting on with that railway?" but when the surveys were completed and
-the prospectus of the "Grand Eastern Counties Railway" was issued in
-1834, it was seen that the railway men meant business. The original
-proposal of the directors was to follow the road closely and to bring
-the line into Aldgate. When it was seen that the railway was really to
-be made, Nelson raised an opposition against the Aldgate terminus, and
-was successful in driving the Company into an out-of-the-way site in
-Shoreditch, where for many years that terminus remained.
-
-[Illustration: THE YARD OF THE "BULL," WHITECHAPEL, IN COACHING DAYS.]
-
-The Eastern Counties Railway was opened as far as Chelmsford in 1839,
-to Colchester in 1842, and communication to Norwich was opened up in
-1845. From the day of the first opening, the "Bull" declined. Old
-customers still found their way from the slums of Shoreditch to its
-hospitable door, but were not reinforced by the newer generation of
-travellers, to whom the road and its end in Aldgate were alike unknown.
-They went to the City inns, and later to the more central hotels,
-leaving the "Bull" to slowly sink into neglect. John Nelson made a big
-bid for success in another line, and ran the "Wellington" omnibuses
-with success from 1855 until his death, at the age of seventy-four, in
-June 1868. He had long resided in the West End, and was a man of ample
-fortune, so that the end of the "Bull's" coaching career hurt him only
-in sentiment. His mother, that most autocratic and business-like of
-women, had died ten years before, active almost to the last, although
-she had reached the age of eighty-five years. Towards the close of
-1868 the old inn ended its long career. Its substantial, old-fashioned
-silver-plate and massive furniture were sold by auction, with the stock
-of rare old wines, laid in many years before, for that old generation
-of travellers who delighted in port and sherry, and plenty of both.
-
-The very site of the "Bull" is now sought with pains and labour, and
-only to be discovered with difficulty by the present generation. It
-was numbered 25 Aldgate High Street, and stood where Aldgate Avenue, a
-modern alley rich in offices of "commission agents," and curious things
-of that kind, now cuts its way through where the old yard used to be.
-
-Close by the "Bull" was another old coaching inn, the "Blue Boar,"
-now quite vanished, kept for a time by John Thorogood. The Thorogoods
-were in those days, and in these times of amateur coaching are still,
-a family of coachmen. "Old John," who owned the "Norwich Times," and
-actually drove it for two years without missing a journey the whole of
-that time, clearly deserved his patronymic, in thus handling the reins
-along a hundred and twelve miles of road for seven hundred and thirty
-consecutive days.
-
-It was to the "Blue Boar" that little David Copperfield came, on his
-miserable journey from Yarmouth:--"We approached London by degrees, and
-got, in due time, to the inn, in the Whitechapel district, I forget
-whether it was the 'Blue Bull' or the 'Blue Boar,' but I know it was
-the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted upon the back
-of the coach." The sculptured effigy of a boar, with gilded tusks and
-hoofs, built into the wall of a tobacco factory, marks the site of the
-inn.
-
-Among other noted inns, the "Three Nuns" must be named. From it set
-out the short stages to Ilford, Epping, Romford and Woodford, together
-with coaches for several of the Essex by-roads. The house owes its
-name to the Minoresses, or nuns, of St Clare, from whose religious
-establishment the Minories obtains its title. The inn was rebuilt in
-1877, and is now nothing more than a huge public-house.
-
-Many other inns of consequence in their day have left nothing but
-their yards behind them to show where they stood:--George Yard, Spread
-Eagle Yard, Black Horse Yard, Boar's Head Yard, White Swan Yard, Half
-Moon Passage, and Kent and Essex Yard are such relics, bordering High
-Street, Whitechapel, where one curious sign survives, that of an inn
-called the "Horse and Leaping Bar."
-
-
-VI
-
-
-ONE decided advantage the Chelmsford, Colchester and Ipswich route
-to Norwich possessed in old times over that by way of Newmarket and
-Thetford. Neither could have been considered safe in the bad old
-days, but while the traveller across the wild heaths of Newmarket and
-Thetford was almost certain to be "held up" on his lonely course, the
-other way, through Essex, passed by few such wildernesses, and had more
-towns and villages along its course, to give a sense of security.
-Briefly, robbery on one route was a probability, and on the other was
-regarded as certain. Margaret Paston, writing from Norfolk to her
-husband in London, so long ago as the fifteenth century, certainly
-gives even the way through Essex a bad name, for she asks him to pay
-a debt for one of their friends, because it was not safe, "on account
-of the robbers," to send money up from the country; but at the very
-same time the Thetford route had a much more sinister reputation, and
-travellers versed in the gossip of the road avoided it if possible,
-or went in company and well armed, for in that era a certain William
-Cratfield, Rector of Wrotham, "a common and notorious thief and lurker
-on the roads, and murderer and slayer," lurked and robbed and slew on
-Newmarket Heath, in company with a certain "Thomas Tapyrtone, hosyer."
-He was at last laid by the heels, in 1416, and charged with robbing
-a Londoner of £12. This distinguished ornament of the Church died in
-Newgate, but of the villainous hosier we hear no more. Perhaps he had
-realised a fortune in the business and retired to enjoy the fruits of
-his industry. With the disappearance of this worthy couple, travellers
-breathed more freely, but for surety's sake continued to patronise the
-Essex route, and so by way of Ipswich to come to the City of Orchards,
-as Norwich was called of old.
-
-As time went on, a certain degree of security was found in the
-coaches that began to make an appearance with the second half of the
-seventeenth century. They travelled at first no more quickly than
-a man could walk, but they provided company, which was, under the
-circumstances, highly desirable. Soon, however, they found it possible
-to do the journey in two days. Strype, we have already seen mentions
-the "Saracen's Head" in Aldgate as the centre of a considerable trade,
-and to it in 1681 a Norwich coach was running; an innovation which
-aroused the indignation of innkeepers on the way to almost as great a
-height as that of their descendants when, two hundred and forty years
-later, railways were depopulating the roads. When travellers began to
-go by coach instead of on horseback, and to reach London or Norwich in
-two days instead of three or four, those antique tapsters thought they
-saw their living going, and, strange to say, there were not wanting men
-who raised their voices against the innovation of being carried on a
-journey, instead of riding; although, for the most part, their outcry
-was the result only of innate conservatism.
-
-"Travelling in these coaches," said an anonymous pamphleteer, "can
-neither prove advantageous to men's health or business. For what
-advantage is it to men's health to be called out of their beds into
-these coaches an hour before day in the morning, to be hurried in
-them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
-insomuch that after sitting all day in the summer time stifled with
-heat, and choked with the dust, or the winter time starving and
-freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often brought
-into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get
-supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that
-they can get no breakfast. What addition is this to men's health or
-business? to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes sick, ancient,
-diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose humours they are
-obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and many times are poisoned
-with their nasty scents, and crippled by the crowd of the boxes and
-bundles."
-
-Yet "these coaches" (one can almost hear the intonation of contempt in
-that phrase) were from the first a success. The greater that success
-the louder for a time was the outcry against them. Taylor, the Water
-Poet, was one of those who wrote vehemently against the new methods
-of travel. To him a coach was "a close hypocrite; for it hath a cover
-for knavery and curtains to vaile and shadow any wickedness. Besides,
-like a perpetual cheater, it wears two bootes, and no spurs, sometimes
-having two pairs of legs to one boote, and oftentimes (against nature)
-it makes faire ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are
-carried back to back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in
-that miserable manner and thrown overboard into the sea. Moreover, it
-makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways as they are
-when they sit in the boot of the coach; and it is a dangerous kind of
-carriage for the commonwealth, if it be considered."
-
-The boot of which he speaks so contemptuously, was a method of packing
-the "outsides," of which we still find a survival in the Irish
-jaunting-car. There are those who trace the origin of the term from the
-French "_boîte_," a box. Even now the coachman's seat is "the box," and
-the modern fore-boot is under it.
-
-Writers of that time seem almost unanimously to have taken sides
-against coaching; with, however, no effect; for, somewhat later than
-Taylor, that doughty Conservative, John Cresset, is found exclaiming
-furiously against the multitude of them. He favoured the suppression
-of all, or, at least--counsels of moderation prevailing--of most. They
-were, he said, mischievous to the public, destructive to trade and
-prejudicial to the land. Not only did they injure the breed of horses,
-but also that of watermen; which last objection goes further than the
-complaints of Taylor himself, who, writing at the same time, does not
-speak of his breed being debased, but only of his trade being crippled.
-Cresset thought the stage-coaches tempted the country gentry to London
-too often, and he accordingly proposed that these conveyances should be
-limited to one for every county town in England, to go backwards and
-forwards once a week.
-
-Vain hope! Coaches of sorts must already have appeared on the road to
-Norwich by the middle of the seventeenth century, for in a proclamation
-of July 20th in the plague year, 1665, when all places were dreading
-infected London, it is ordained, that "from this daie all ye passage
-coaches shall be prohibited to goe from ye city to London and come
-from thence hither, and also ye common carts and wagons." Already,
-in 1696, the "Confatharrat" coach was a well-known conveyance between
-London and Norwich, and the name of Suggate, the London and East
-Anglian carrier, a household word. Unhappily, nothing can be gathered
-as to when Suggate first began to jog along the road, or when the
-"Confatharrat" started to ply between Norwich and the "Four Swans,"
-Bishopsgate Street. All particulars are lost. The odd name of that
-coach was probably a seventeenth-century way of spelling the word
-"confederate," and the selection of such a name proves both that it was
-carried on by an alliance or co-partnership, and that "confederate" had
-not then acquired its sinister modern connotation. Besides these aids
-to travel, a stage-waggon began to ply from the "Popinjay," Tombland,
-Norwich, at an early date; and another from the "Angel," in the Market
-Place, to the "Blossoms" Inn, Laurence Lane, London, was advertised in
-the _Norwich Mercury_, of March 29th, 1729, to "now go regularly every
-Thursday night," setting out on the following Wednesday from London,
-on the return journey. It will thus be seen that it was a five or six
-days' journey for those primitive affairs, and that they apparently did
-not run at regular intervals until that year.
-
-A London and Beccles coach was running in 1707, but the first regular
-Norwich coach of which particulars remain was the "Norwich Machine,"
-which in 1762 set out for London three times a week from the "Maid's
-Head," according to the advertisement still extant. There is nothing
-in that old coaching bill to show that 1762 was the first season of
-the "Norwich Machine." It may have been established some years before
-that date.
-
-  _Norwich, March 26, 1762._
-
-  SUSAN NASMITH and JAMES KEITH,
-
-  Proprietors of the
-
-  NORWICH MACHINE,
-
-  Give Notice
-
- that their Machine will set out from the MAID'S HEAD Inn, in St
- Simon's Parish, in Norwich, on Monday, the 5th day of April next, at
- half-past eleven in the forenoon, and on the Wednesday and Friday in
- the same week, at the same time; and to be continued in like Manner,
- on those Days weekly, for the carrying four inside Passengers, at
- Twenty-five Shillings each, and outside at Twelve Shillings and
- Sixpence each. The inside Passengers to be allowed twenty pound
- Weight, and all above to be paid for at three half-pence per pound;
- and to be in London on the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday Evenings
- weekly.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
- _N.B._--A Machine will set out on the same days, at the same time,
- from the GREEN DRAGON, in Bishopsgate Street, London, for Norwich.
-
-In the following year, the "Widow Nasmith" and James Keith advertised
-that they had built large and commodious machines, to carry six
-inside, and reduced the fares to twenty shillings and ten shillings
-respectively; but they had apparently not succeeded in performing the
-journey in less time than a day and a half, for no mention is made of
-speed being accelerated. But a remarkable feature in that announcement
-is the extraordinary cheapness of the fares, little over twopence and a
-penny a mile for inside and outside passengers, at a time when prices
-on other roads ruled from twenty-five to fifty per cent. higher. This
-tells a tale of competition; but Time, the thief, has robbed us of all
-knowledge of those competitors.
-
-A year later the London and Ipswich Post Coaches were advertised to
-set out every week-day, and to perform the 69¼ miles in ten hours, an
-average pace of almost 7 miles an hour; a marvellous turn of speed
-for that age. As to whether those Post Coaches ever _did_ cover that
-distance in ten hours, we may reasonably express a doubt; but there
-was the promise, and 011 the strength of it the proprietors charged
-threepence a mile. As will be seen by the advertisement, these coaches
-carried no outside passengers:--
-
-  _Ipswich, August 17th, 1764._
-
-  THE LONDON AND IPSWICH POST COACHES
-
- Set out on Monday, the 27th of August, at seven o'clock in the morning
- from the BLACK BULL, in Bishopsgate, London, and at the same time from
- the GREAT WHITE HORSE, in Ipswich, and continue every day (Sunday
- excepted), to be at the above places the same evening at five o'clock;
- each passenger to pay threepence per mile, and to be allowed eighteen
- pounds luggage; all above to pay one penny per pound, and so in
- proportion. The coaches, hung upon steel springs, are very easy, large
- and commodious, carry six inside but no outside passengers whatever;
- but have great conveniences for parcels or game (to keep them from the
- weather), which will be delivered at London and Ipswich the same night.
-
- As these coaches are sent out for the ease and expedition of
- gentlemen and ladies travelling, the proprietors humbly hope for their
- encouragement, and are determined to spare no pains to render it as
- agreeable as they can.
-
-  Performed (if God permits) by--
-
-  PET. SHELDON, at the Bull, Bishopsgate Street, London.
-  THOMAS ARCHER, at the White Hart, Brentwood.
-  CHARLES KERRY, at the Black Boy, Chelmsford.
-  GEO. REYNOLDS, at the Three Cups, Colchester; and
-  CHAS. HARRIS, at the Great White Horse, Ipswich.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
- _N.B._--The proprietors will not be answerable for any money, plate,
- jewels, or writings, unless entered and paid for as such.
-
-The reader will perhaps have observed that this advertisement
-especially mentions a convenience for carrying game, and, as a matter
-of fact, game and oysters were prominent from an early period in
-the history of Norwich Road conveyances, and, by the middle of the
-eighteenth century, the Norfolk and Suffolk coaches had already earned
-quite a distinctive character in two seasons of the year, Michaelmas
-and Christmas. East Anglia has always abounded in game, and its
-broad heaths and extensive commons have been the breeding-grounds
-of innumerable geese and turkeys whose careers have ended on London
-dinner-tables. In those two seasons it was often difficult to secure
-a seat on or in any of the "up" coaches from Norwich or Ipswich, for
-while every available inch of space on the mails was occupied by
-festoons of dead birds consigned by country cousins to friends in town,
-the whole of a stage-coach was frequently chartered for the purpose
-of despatching heavy consignments of these noble poultry to the London
-market. Christmas provided extraordinary sights along the Norfolk Road,
-in the swaying coaches, with parcels and geese and turkeys mountains
-high on the roof; with barrels of Colchester natives in the boot, and
-hampers swinging heavily between the axle-trees on a shelf called "the
-cellar"; while from every rail or projection to which they could be
-either safely or hazardously tied depended other turkeys or braces of
-fowls, booked at the last moment before starting. It was something
-in those days to be a turkey or a goose, before whose importance the
-claims of human passengers faded; but it was a fleeting elevation which
-the philosophic did not envy, thinking that here indeed the poet was
-justified in his sounding line--
-
-  "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
-
-[Illustration: THE NORWICH COACH AT CHRISTMAS TIDE. _After Robert
-Seymour, 1835._]
-
-That unfortunate genius, Robert Seymour, has left us a picture of the
-Norwich coach nearing London at Christmas time, with its feathered
-load. The drawing was made in 1835, at the very height of the Coaching
-Age, and shows from his own observation with what ingenuity every rail
-and projection was used to hang the birds from.
-
-Another highly specialised branch of traffic, which only left the road
-on the opening of the railway, was the constant service of fish waggons
-running between Harwich, Colchester and London, at the then express
-speed of 8 miles an hour.
-
-
-VII
-
-
-BETWEEN the early days of coaching and the end of that period, many
-changes took place on the Norwich Road. So late as 1798, the Mail, the
-"Expedition," and the "Post Coach" were the only coaches to Norwich,
-supplemented by three road waggons; two of them doing the journey
-twice a week, the third setting out weekly. Later came the "Norwich
-Times," "Gurney's Original Day Coach," the "Phænomenon," as it was
-originally spelt; the "Magnet," the Ipswich "Shannon," and the Ipswich
-"Blue." With the object of serving as many places as possible, and,
-incidentally, securing heavier bookings, the "Times" and Gurney's
-coaches took a somewhat circuitous route, leaving the direct road
-at Chelmsford, and going through Braintree, Halstead, Sudbury, Long
-Melford and Bury St Edmunds, rejoining the Norwich Road at Scole.
-
-But the lord of the road was the Mail Coach, beside which the stages
-were very commonplace affairs.
-
-The first mail-coach that ever ran the road between London and Norwich
-started in March 1785, and the service was from the beginning continued
-daily. Before that time the mails had been carried by post-boys, who
-began in 1741 to go six days a week instead of three, as they formerly
-had done.
-
-Mail-coaches are entirely things of the past, for the modern coaching
-revival has only brought back the smart stages and drags of the last
-years of the Coaching Age. The mails were expensive and exclusive
-affairs, constructed to carry only nine persons; four inside and five
-out, including coachman and guard. For the higher fares passengers paid
-they had not always the satisfaction of travelling faster than on the
-stages; but perhaps there was some dignity attaching to a seat on the
-mail which was lacking on ordinary coaches. And certainly they were
-surrounded by pomp and circumstance. The guard wore a scarlet coat
-and went armed with pistol, sword and blunderbuss; not, of course,
-for the protection of the passengers, but for the safe-guarding of
-His Majesty's mails. And everything gave place, as a matter of right
-and not merely courtesy, to the mail. Surly pikemen swung open their
-gates and asked no toll, for it was one of the privileges of the mail
-to go toll-free, and the highwaymen, if they walked in the ways of
-caution, left the gorgeous conveyance severely alone, reserving their
-best attentions for the plebeian stages. It was a much more serious
-thing to rob the mail than an ordinary coach, for a conviction was more
-certain to end in death, judges having hints from the Government how
-undesirable it was that mails should be ransacked and the robbers live.
-The rewards usually offered by the Post-office, too, were tempting to
-those who could inform if they would. £200 was the sum generally to be
-had for this service, together with the £40 reward by Act of Parliament
-for the apprehension of a highwayman; and if the mail was robbed
-within five miles of London, another £100. Courage, recklessness, and
-desperation--whichever we like to call it--often nerved the night-hawks
-to brave even so heavy a handicap as this, as this very road bears
-witness, in the daring robbery of the Ipswich Mail in 1822, when
-notes to the value of no less than £31,198 were stolen. In addition
-to the usual rewards, a sum of £1000 was offered by the losing firms
-of bankers, as shown in the accompanying old handbill, but without
-avail. This sum was afterwards increased to £5000, and a notification
-given that, in order to prevent the notes being changed, the ink on all
-new ones had been altered from black to red. But the robbers had the
-impudence to ask £6000 for the return of the notes. They had already
-passed £3000 worth, and naively said, in the negotiations they opened
-up, that the trouble they had taken and the risks they had run did
-not make it worth while to accept a smaller "reward." The bankers,
-however, would not spring another thousand, for by that time everyone
-was too shy of an "Ipswich black note," and it was extremely unlikely
-that any more could be passed. Negotiations were broken off; but a
-month later notes to the value of £28,000 were returned. The thieves
-were never traced, and although the bulk of their booty was useless to
-them, made the very substantial haul of over £3000 by their lawless
-enterprise.
-
-  =£1000 Reward.=
-
-  =STOLEN=
-
-  =FROM THE IPSWICH MAIL,=
-
-  On its way from London, _on the Night
-  of the 11th Sept. Inst._ the following
-
-  =COUNTRY BANK NOTES:=
-
-  Ipswich Bank, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
-  _ALEXANDERS & Co._ on _HOARE & Co._
-
-  Woodbridge Bank, 1, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
-  _ALEXANDERS & Co._ on _FRYS & Co._
-
-  Manningtree Bank, 1, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
-  _ALEXANDER & Co._ on _FRYS & Co._
-
-  Hadleigh Bank, 1, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
-  _ALEXANDER & Co._ on _FRYS & Co._
-
-  Particulars of which will be furnished at the different Bankers.
-
-  Whoever will give Information, either at ALEXANDERS and Co.
-  or at FRYS and Co., _St Mildred's Court, Poultry_, so that the
-  Parties may be apprehended, shall on his or their Conviction,
-  and the Recovery of the Property, receive the above REWARD.
-
-We have said that mail-coaches were gorgeous. They were painted
-in black and red. Not a shy, unassuming red, but the familiar and
-traditional Post-office hue. Also they bore the Royal coat-of-arms
-emblazoned upon the door panels, and the insignia of the four principal
-orders of knighthood on the quarters. There was no mistaking a
-mail-coach.
-
-The Norwich Mail, which took fifteen and a half hours to do the journey
-so late as 1821, was greatly improved in later years; and finally, in
-the early forties, when the railway reached Norwich and superseded the
-roads, performed the journey in eleven hours, thirty-eight minutes, at
-the very respectable average speed of 9½ miles an hour. It was not the
-only mail on the road, but shared the way so far as Ipswich with the
-Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail. This coach was unfortunate on two occasions
-between 1835 and 1839. On September 28th in the first year, when the
-coachman was climbing on to his box in the yard of the "Swan with Two
-Necks," the horses started away on their own accord, tumbling the
-coachman off and knocking down the helper who had been holding their
-heads. Dashing into Cheapside, they flung themselves against the back
-of the Poole Mail with such force that the coachman of that mail was
-also thrown off. He was taken unconscious to the hospital. Continuing
-their furious rush, the horses of the Ipswich Mail at length ran the
-pole of the coach between the iron railings of a house, and so were
-stopped.
-
-The second happening, in 1839, was somewhat similar. The mail had
-arrived at Colchester, and the coachman, throwing down the reins, got
-off the box. No one was at the horses' heads, and they started away and
-galloped down the High Street, until the near leader fell and broke
-his neck, stopping the team.
-
-It was by the Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail that David Copperfield
-journeyed down to Yarmouth on his second visit to Mr Peggotty. In the
-ordinary course of things, he would have reached Ipswich at 3·12 a.m.
-But on this occasion the weather was a potent factor in causing delay.
-He occupied the box seat, and remarked upon the look of the sky to the
-coachman while yet on the first stage out of London.
-
-"Don't you think that a very remarkable sky?" he asked; "I don't
-remember to have seen one like it."
-
-"Nor I--not equal to it," said the coachman. "That's mist, sir.
-There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long."
-
-The description of this stormy sky is very fine, and seems to have been
-drawn from observation; just as true and as effective in its way as Old
-Crome's billowy cloudscapes, in his _Mousehold Heath_, or as any of
-Constable's rain-surcharged Suffolk scenes.
-
-"It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a colour like
-the colour of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds tossed up into
-most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than
-there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in
-the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as
-if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way
-and were frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising
-then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much
-increased, and the sky was more overcast, and it blew hard.
-
-"But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
-overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow harder
-and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face
-the wind. Many times in the dark part of the night (it was then late in
-September, when the nights were not short) the leaders turned about,
-or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that
-the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before
-this storm, like showers of steel; and at those times, when there was
-any shelter of trees or lee-walls to be got, we were fain to stop,
-in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.... We came to
-Ipswich very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we
-were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in the
-market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of
-falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the inn-yard while
-we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped
-off a high church tower and flung into a bye-street, which they then
-blocked up."
-
-At Ipswich the Yarmouth coaches left the Norwich Road, and so the
-further adventures of David Copperfield do not in this place concern
-us.
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-HERE, as on the other roads, the early advent of the Motor Car, in
-1826, caused much commotion. The steam coaches of that period never
-achieved any success on this route, but caricatures of what might be
-expected were plentiful, and pictures of the Colchester "Dreadful
-Vengeance," the Norwich "Buster," and other fanciful conveyances, in
-the act of exploding and distributing their passengers in little pieces
-over a wide stretch of country, were popular. The railway itself came
-in for much abuse, and misguided and fanatical coach proprietors wasted
-their substance in pitiful attempts to compete with it. Among these
-was Israel Alexander, that Jewish hero of the Brighton Road in the
-early forties, who, although a first-class whip, was perhaps chiefly
-associated with the many upsettings of the Brighton "Quicksilver." He
-fell out with his noble friends on that highway, and, coming to the
-Norwich Road, ran a well-appointed coach to Colchester for a little
-while, until even the Eastern Counties Railway, then the slowest on
-earth, made the pace too quick for him. His turn-out was given the
-extraordinary name of the "Duke of Beaufort's Retaliator," and might
-have continued much longer to carry those who were prejudiced against
-railways, had it not met with so many accidents.
-
-One who was contemporary with the coaching age has ingeniously divided
-coaching accidents into three classes:--1. Accidents to the coach; 2.
-Accidents to the horses; 3. Accidents to the harness. The most common
-kind of mishap to the coach was, he says, the breaking of an axle.
-This was not, as a rule, due to any faulty construction of that most
-essential feature of a public conveyance, but to the overloading either
-of passengers or goods, to which coaches were continually subject. The
-sudden snapping of an axle at a high speed or on a down grade produced
-a tremendous crash which generally shot coachman, guard and "outsides"
-in all directions. Happy those who, in such a case, were received into
-the thorny arms of a quickset hedge or the soft embraces of a mud-heap.
-
-Another kind of mishap, not always accidental, was that of a wheel
-coming off; an incident often caused in early times, before the
-introduction of patent axle-boxes, by the mischievous removal of the
-lynch-pin by some unscrupulous rascal in the employ of the rival coach
-proprietor.
-
-The sudden snapping of a skid-chain while descending a hill, resulting
-in the coach running on to the horses and a general overthrow, in
-which horses' legs and passengers heads came into unwonted contact,
-was perhaps as uncomfortable a kind of disaster as could be imagined.
-Overloading, too, sometimes had the effect of rendering a coach
-top-heavy, when a slight lack of caution in running round curves would
-upset it.
-
-Accidents to the horses were:--casting a shoe, involving lameness, and
-perhaps a fall; tripping and stumbling on loose stones and rolling
-over; slipping up in frosty weather; and kicking over the traces or the
-splinter-bar.
-
-Accidents to the harness usually happened to the traces, which commonly
-snapped under an uneven strain. To cobble them up with twine, and so
-complete a stage, was a common practice. In such cases, the thoughts
-of passengers during the remaining miles were, like those of the poet,
-"too deep for words." Most nerve-shaking of all these varied and
-untoward happenings, however, was the breaking of the reins. Rotted
-by age, by the sun's heat and the winter's frosts, they would "come
-away" in the coachman's hands at that worst of moments;--when he was
-holding in his horses downhill. In that contingency, says our ancient,
-who, in the modern slang phrase, has "been there," it was the approved
-thing to say your prayers first and then take a flying leap (result, a
-broken neck, or fractured leg: the bone protruding over the top of the
-Blucher).
-
-"Then shrieked the timid and stood"--or, rather, sat--"still the
-brave;" who had this consolation, that if they fared no better than
-those who jumped, the odds were that they fared no worse.
-
-To be dragged at hurricane pace by four runaway horses (for in such
-a case they generally _did_ so run) with the broken reins trailing
-helplessly after them, was to acquire the knowledge of an inner meaning
-in the word "terror." In escapades of this kind the "insides" were in
-the most unenviable situation; for the "outsides," including coachman
-and guard, took the better, if unheroic, part of crawling over the roof
-and slipping down the back of the coach into the road. The wisdom of
-their doing so would, in most cases, be proved a few seconds later by
-the sound of a distant crash as the coach hurtled against some roadside
-tree and dissolved into matchwork, while the "insides" were stuck as
-full of splinters as a "fretful porcupine" of quills.
-
-The "human boy" was as much the terror of the old coachman as he is
-of the modern cyclist. The sight of a boy with a hoop reduced him to
-a state of purple indignation or of quivering anxiety, according to
-temperament. Many an one of our great-grandfathers, attired in the odd
-costume of boys in that period, and trundling a hoop along the road,
-has felt the lash of the coachman's whip. The following little story
-will show us why.
-
-"When a very little boy," says one of our forebears, "I once upset
-a four-horse coach by losing control over my hoop, which, to my
-consternation, bowled among the legs of the team. I shall never
-forget the horror with which I for an instant saw the spirited
-horses floundering about with that hateful hoop among them, or heard
-the execrations of the coachman and the shouts of the passengers.
-Abandoning the wretched plaything to its fate, I took to my heels down
-a bye-lane, the portentous crash that followed only accelerating my
-speed."
-
-Coach proprietors were favourite targets for Fate's worst shafts.
-They were a hard-working, much-enduring class of men; up early and to
-bed late, retiring in good circumstances and rising perhaps ruined
-through some unforeseen accident. They were "common carriers" in law,
-and bound under many Acts of Parliament to deliver goods uninjured at
-their destination. As carriers of passengers, it is true, they were
-only required to exercise all "due care and diligence" for the safety
-of their customers, and were exempt from liability in case of mishaps
-through the "act of God" or the unforeseen; but the observance of due
-precautions and a daily inspection of the coach had to be proved in
-case of injury to passengers, or in default they were held liable for
-damages.
-
-Thus, the carelessness of any one of his many servants might mean
-a very serious thing to a coach proprietor. In those days the old
-Anglo-Saxon Law of Deodand was not only in existence, but in a very
-nourishing and aggressive condition. Indeed, coaching had practically
-rescued it from neglect. It was a law which, in cases of fatal
-injuries, empowered the coroner's jury to levy a fine, which might vary
-from sixpence to a thousand pounds, upon the object that caused the
-mischief.
-
-The very multiplicity of tribunals before whom the personally
-unoffending coach proprietor was liable to be haled was in itself
-terrifying. There was the already-mentioned coroners jury; the jury on
-the criminal side in trials at the Assizes for manslaughter, and the
-other "twelve good men and true" who assessed damages in the Sheriff's
-Court.
-
-How even the most well-meaning of men might thus suffer is evident
-in the case of a proprietor who was cast in damages from excess of
-caution. For additional security, and in order to protect it from road
-grit, he had a part of an axle incased in wood. One day this axle broke
-and a serious accident happened, resulting in an action against him for
-damages. He lost the day; the judge ruling that, although no proof of a
-defective axle was adduced, a flaw _might_ have existed which a proper
-daily examination would have detected had the extra precaution for
-safety not been adopted.
-
-
-IX
-
-
-WHAT Aldgate might now have been had the original intention of the
-Eastern Counties directorate to place their terminus there been
-successful, we need not stop to inquire. But, as a good deal has
-already been said on the subject of coaches and coaching, it will be of
-interest to learn what were the views of the projectors of the Eastern
-Counties Railway. With their original prospectus was issued a map of
-the proposed railway from London to Norwich and Yarmouth, by which it
-appears that, instead of going to the left of the road from London, as
-far as Seven Kings and Chadwell Heath, it was originally intended to
-construct the line on the right of the road so far. Between Romford and
-Chelmsford the line has been made practically as first proposed, but
-onwards, from Chelmsford to Lexden, it is again on the other side of
-the highway; and, north of Colchester, goes wide of the original plan
-all the way to Norwich.
-
-In many ways this document is very much of a curiosity at this time,
-as also are the hopes and aspirations of the directors at the first
-General Meeting of the company. The chairman, for instance, confidently
-anticipated dividends of 22 per cent., upon which one of the confiding
-shareholders replied that the report was most satisfactory and the
-prospects held out by no means overcharged. "If this understanding,"
-said he, "fails in producing the dividend of 22 per cent., calculated
-upon in the report, then, I must say, human calculations and
-expectation can no longer be depended upon." O! most excellent man. But
-better is to come.
-
-"Should I live to see the completion of this and similar undertakings,"
-he resumed, "I do believe I shall live to see misery almost banished
-from the earth. From the love I bear my species, I trust that I may
-not be too sanguine, and that I may yet witness the happy end that I
-have pictured to myself." His was, you think, the faith that might
-have moved mountains; but it did not produce that promised 22 per
-cent., nor, although we now have many thousands more miles of railway
-than he ever dreamed of, has the millennium yet arrived. Even the most
-far-seeing have not yet discovered any heralds of its approach. Let
-us drop the tribute of a tear to the sorrows of this excellent person,
-whose love of his species and touching anticipation of 22 per cent.
-dividends were so beautifully blended, and so cruelly disappointed.
-
-For some years small (very small) dividends were paid. Hudson, the
-"Railway King," paid them out of capital. "It made things pleasant," he
-said, when charged with such financially immoral practices. Alas! poor
-Hudson, you lived before your time, and went to another world before
-such "dishonest" doings as yours were sanctified in principle by Acts
-of Parliament which authorise payments of dividends out of capital in
-the case of railways under construction.
-
-In 1848 the Eastern Counties Railway was in Chancery, and its very
-locomotives and carriages were seized for debt; while for years
-afterwards its name was a synonym for delay. The satirists of that
-period were as busy with the Eastern Counties as those of our own time
-are with the South-Eastern Railway. Every journey has an end; "even
-the Eastern Counties' trains come in at last," said Thackeray, very
-charitably.
-
-In 1862 it was amalgamated with several minor undertakings, and
-re-named the "Great Eastern Railway"; "great in nothing but the name,"
-as the spiteful said.
-
-When matters were at their worst, the Lord Cranborne of that time was
-invited to accept the position of chairman and to help extricate the
-company from its difficulties. He accepted the post in January 1868
-and held it until December 1871. In April 1868 he had succeeded to the
-title of Marquis of Salisbury. Thus the statesman and prime minister of
-later years was once a great figure in the railway world. His financial
-abilities helped to put the Great Eastern line on a firm basis, and
-when he left it the railway was already greatly improved in every
-respect. To-day, instead of being a "shocking example," it is a model
-to be copied by other lines.
-
-
-X
-
-
-ALTHOUGH the last of the old coaches was long ago broken up, and the
-Norwich Road is no longer lively with mail and stage travellers, it
-has, in common with several other roads out of London, witnessed a
-wholly unexpected revival, in the shape of the Parcel Mail service
-between London and Ipswich. When the Parcel Post came into being on the
-1st August 1883, it was speedily discovered by the General Post-office
-authorities that in paying, according to contract, 55 per cent. of
-the gross receipts to the railway companies for the mere carriage of
-parcels, they were paying too much. Accordingly, a system of Parcel
-Mail coaches was established on several of the old roads, commencing
-with the London to Brighton Parcel Mail, in June 1887. A London and
-Chelmsford four-horse mail was soon added, and this was shortly
-afterwards extended to Colchester, and thence to Ipswich by cart. This
-curious enterprise of the Post-office was immediately successful,
-and it has ever since been found to effect a large saving over the
-railway charges. Nor is time lost in delivery. The down mail leaves
-London at a quarter to ten o'clock every night and the parcels arrive
-at Colchester and Ipswich in time for the first delivery the next
-morning; while the country parcels come up to London by an equally
-early hour. The way in which the service is worked will be gathered
-from the accompanying official way-sheet of the down mails.
-
-  GENERAL POST OFFICE
-
-  THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY
-  Postmaster-General
-
-  LONDON, CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER, & IPSWICH ROAD
-  PARCEL SERVICE.
-                                                                 This
-  Guard's Remarks as                          Proper  Actual    Column
-  to Delays, &c.                              Times   Times   to be left
-                         Date  190 .          H. M.   H. M.      blank
-
-  Coach Service          Mount Pleasant          P.M.
-  between      Distance  Parcel Office     dep.  9 45
-  London and     M.F.
-  Colchester.     3 0    Eastern District {arr. 10  8
-    Contractor--           P.O.           {dep. 10 10
-    C. Webster,
-  279 Whitechapel
-    Road, E.     11 3    Romford          {arr. 11 40
-                                          {dep. 11 42
-  Cart between                                   A.M.
-   Colchester &   6 2    Brentwood        {arr. 12 29
-   Ipswich.                               {dep. 12 31
-
-  Contractor--    5 0    Ingatestone      {arr. 1 9
-  F. W. Canham,                           {dep. 1 11
-  Ipswich.
-                  6 0    Chelmsford       {arr. 2 0
-                                          {dep. 2 5
-
-                  8 6    Witham           {arr. 3 13
-                                          {dep. 3 15
-
-                  3 2    Kelvedon         {arr. 3 41
-                                          {dep. 3 43
-
-                  9 6    Colchester       {arr. 5 0
-                                          {dep. 5 5
-
-                         Stratford St.    {arr. 5 58
-                           Mary           {dep. 6 0
-
-                 18 2    Ipswich           arr. 7 20
-  Signature
-  of Guard       71 5
-
-              T. E. SIFTON, Inspector-General of Mails.
-
-  The Guard in charge of the Coach must report the cause of any Delay.
-  He must enter all Remarks and Times in the proper Columns. This Bill
-  to be sent, as addressed, by First Post.
-
-  TIME-BILL OF THE CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER AND IPSWICH
-  PARCEL MAIL.
-
-The up service, starting with the mail-cart from Ipswich at 7·9 p.m.
-and continued from Colchester by four-horse van at 9·30 p.m., brings
-the country parcels to Mount Pleasant at 4·30 a.m., throughout the
-year. Up and down mails meet at Ingatestone at 1·9 a.m. On this
-service, as on all others, the vans go through, but the drivers and
-guards exchange places; the London men changing on to the van from
-Colchester at Ingatestone, and returning to London; the Colchester men
-taking over the down van and similarly returning whence they came.
-
-It is a curious and unexpected revival of old methods, but an entirely
-successful one. No highwayman has ever attempted to "hold up" the
-Parcel Mail, for the last of that trade has for generations mouldered
-in his grave; but should any amateurs essay to complete this revival
-of old coaching days by waylaying the mail, the guards would be found
-well armed. Their virgin steel and untried pistols have for years been
-carried without any excuse for using them; but there need be no doubt
-that, were the occasion to arrive, they would defend their parcels--the
-pounds of country butter, the eggs, and wild flowers, or the
-miscellaneous consignment from London--with their hearts' blood. There
-are more romantic things in the world to die for than postal parcels
-of eggs, cheese and butter, but the ennobling word DUTY might glorify
-such a sacrifice for the sake of a pound's weight of "best fresh," or a
-dozen of "new laid."
-
-But although the possibility of attack is remote, a spice of danger and
-romance savours the conduct of the parcel mails.
-
-The up Colchester Parcel Mail had a mishap on the night of October 11,
-1890, when, owing to the prevailing fog, it was driven into a ditch
-near Margaretting. Happily, both coachman and guard escaped injury, the
-heavy vehicle resting against the hedge. The coachman, mounting one of
-his team, and hurrying back to Chelmsford, succeeded in overtaking the
-down coach, which, returning to the scene of the accident, unloaded and
-transferred the parcels, and continued to London, leaving the down mail
-to be forwarded with local help. It eventually arrived at Colchester
-four hours late.
-
-
-XI
-
-
-COACHING days, old and new, having now been disposed of, we might
-set off down the road at once, were it not that our steps are at
-once arrested by the sight of the "Red Lion" Inn, at the corner of
-Whitechapel Road and Leman Street, which, together with the "Old Red
-Lion," adjoining, stands on a site made historic by Dick Turpin's lurid
-career.
-
-It was in the yard of the old house that Turpin shot Matthew King
-in 1737. He had stolen a fine horse belonging to a Mr Major, near
-the "Green Man," Epping, and had been traced by means of the animal
-to the inn, where he was found by the Bow Street runners in company
-with Matthew and Robert King, birds of like feather with himself. The
-landlord endeavoured to arrest King, who fired at him without effect,
-calling to Turpin, "Dick! shoot him, or we are taken, by God!"
-
-Turpin had his usual extensive armoury on his person--three brace of
-pistols and a carbine slung across his back. He fired, and shot Matthew
-King, whether by accident or design is not known. King first exclaimed,
-"Dick! you have shot me; make off," but is said afterwards to have
-cursed him as he went, for a coward. King died a week later of his
-wounds, Turpin fleeing to a deserted mansion in Essex, and thence to a
-cave in Epping Forest. It is usually said that it was the more famous
-Tom King who met so dramatic an end, but original authorities give
-Matthew; and certainly we find _a_ Tom King, highwayman, decorously
-executed at Tyburn eighteen years later.
-
-[Illustration: THE "OLD RED LION," WHITECHAPEL, WHERE TURPIN SHOT
-MATTHEW KING. _From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, 1854._]
-
-We have met Turpin before, notably at York, where he made an end, two
-years after this exploit. This especial hero of the Penny Dreadful and
-the romantic imagination of the average errand boy belongs especially
-to this road, for he was an Essex man, born at Hempstead in 1705.
-Apprenticed to a Whitechapel butcher in his youth, he commenced his
-career of low villainy by stealing some cattle from a Plaistow
-farmer, and then joined a band of smugglers and deer-stealers and
-housebreakers in Epping Forest, where they set up a storehouse of
-stolen goods in the cave just mentioned. This band became so notorious
-that a sum of fifty guineas was soon offered for their arrest; but it
-was not until the amount had been doubled that two of the ringleaders
-were caught and hanged. The gang thus broken up, Turpin was reduced
-to scouring the roads singly, and pursued a solitary career until one
-dreary February night in 1735, while patrolling the Cambridge Road,
-he saw a horseman approaching through the mist. At the time-honoured
-demand, "Your money or your life!" the stranger simply laughed.
-
-"What!" said he, "should dog eat dog? We are of a like trade."
-
-Thus Turpin and Tom King met, and struck up a partnership. If only one
-quarter of the deeds assigned to Turpin were true, his would be a very
-gallant, as well as phenomenally busy, figure on the roads of England.
-Although by no means a mythical person, the stories told of him nearly
-all belong to the regions of romance, and his true history shows him to
-have had few redeeming qualities. Many of the old knights of the road
-were courageous, and hand in hand with their courage went a humour not
-seldom kindly; but Turpin was a bloodthirsty ruffian whose courage is
-not an established fact, and whose humour, like the "tender mercies of
-the wicked," was cruel, not to say ferocious. It is quite hopeless to
-attempt to finally destroy the great Turpin myth after this lapse of
-time: Harrison Ainsworth's romance has enjoyed too great and too long a
-popularity for that; but let the attempt here be made to paint him as
-the cowardly ruffian he was.
-
-Whitechapel, quite apart from memories of Turpin, owns an unenviable
-repute, and its very name is a synonym for villainy. Its bad savour,
-however, goes back no greater distance in time than the first half
-of the eighteenth century, for until that period it was not built
-upon, and indeed "Whitechapel Common" was spoken of so late as 1761,
-maps proving the old church to have been quite rural at that date.
-Originally a chapel-of-ease to the great mother-parish of Stepney,
-the district was erected into a separate parish so far back as the
-fourteenth century and the original "white chapel"--doubtless so called
-from its mediæval coats of whitewash--made a church. But old names
-cling, and although it has been a church for over six hundred years, it
-has not been able to confer its more dignified title upon the parish
-itself. Thus the name of Whitechapel is doubly misleading nowadays, for
-it is no longer a chapelry and its stately church is in red brick; so
-that there is some force in the argument for re-christening the borough
-and dignifying it by a revival of the old name of Eastminster, owned by
-that not very fortunate Abbey of St Mary Grace, founded by Edward the
-Third in 1348, which formerly stood on the site of the Royal Mint.
-
-[Illustration: WHITECHAPEL OLD CHURCH.]
-
-St Mary's, Whitechapel, is a beautiful church, built in 1877, burnt
-August 20, 1880, and since restored. It replaced the ugly old building,
-which was "taken down for the simple reason that it would not stand
-up." The ancient wrangling over its full title of St Mary Matfelon is
-not yet done, and rash would be he who voted for any particular one
-among the rival derivatives of the name. Matfelon, holds one school,
-was the name of a forgotten benefactor, whose particular benefactions
-are not stated. Who, then, would found, since benefits are thus forgot?
-"_Mariæ, matri et filio_," an ancient dedication, say others; while yet
-different parties find its source in a Syriac word meaning "mother of a
-son" = the Virgin Mary. Perhaps the most entertaining legend, however,
-is that which tells how it originated in the killing of a murderer,
-in 1429, by the women of Whitechapel. "Between Estren and Witsontyd,
-a fals Breton mordred a wydewe in here bed, the which find hym for
-almasse withought Algate, in the suburbes of London, and bar away alle
-that sche hadde, and afterwards he toke socour of Holy Chirche in
-Suthwark; but at the last he took the crosse and forswore the kynge's
-land; and as he went hys waye, it happyd hym to come be the same place
-where he had don that cursed dede, and women of the same parysh comen
-out with stones and canell dong, and ther maden an ende of hym in the
-hyghe strete." These things seem quite in keeping with Whitechapel's
-evil fame.
-
-The old church, as it stood until well into the nineteenth century, is
-shown opposite this page, with one of the old road-waggons crawling
-past. In another view of the same date the High Street itself is
-seen, its long perspective fully bearing out the old description of
-spaciousness. At the same time, it is seen to be empty enough to
-resemble the street of a provincial town. The houses are exceedingly
-old, the road paved with knobbly stones, and the shop windows
-artfully constructed with the apparent object of obstructing instead
-of admitting the light. Very few of these old shop-fronts are now
-left, but a good specimen is that of a bell-founding firm at No. 34
-Whitechapel Road.
-
-[Illustration: WHITECHAPEL ROAD IN THE COACHING AGE.]
-
-This old picture has long ceased to be representative of Whitechapel's
-everyday aspect. The coach has long ago whirled away into limbo,
-the elegantly-dressed groups have been gathered to Abraham's, or
-another's, bosom, and Whitechapel knows their kind no more. Bustle,
-and a dismal overcrowding of carts, waggons, costermongers' barrows,
-tram-cars and omnibuses are more characteristic of to-day. Also, the
-Jewish element is very pronounced; chiefly foreign Jews, inconceivably
-dirty. Many of the shop-fronts bear the names of Cohen, Abraham,
-Solomon and the like, and others ending in "baum," or "heim." But
-on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week the spacious street regains
-something of its old rural character, in the open-air hay and straw
-market held here, the largest in the kingdom. It fills the broad
-thoroughfare and overflows into the side streets: the countrymen
-who have come up on the great waggons by road from remote parts of
-Essex lounging picturesquely against the sweet-smelling hay or straw,
-attending to their horses, or refreshing in the old taverns. It is
-Arcady come again. The eyes are gladdened by the long vista of the
-hay-wains, and the nose gratefully inhales the rustic scent of their
-heaped-up loads. It is true that Central Londoners also have their
-so-called Haymarket, but hay is the least likely of articles to be
-purchased there in these days.
-
-What do they think, those countrymen, of the Whitechapel folks, the
-"chickaleary blokes," used, as a writer in the middle of the nineteenth
-century remarked, to "all sorts of high and low villainy," from
-robbery with violence to "prigging a wipe," and the selling of painted
-sparrows for canaries? Nor was Whitechapel a desirable place when Mr
-Pickwick travelled to Ipswich. "Not a wery nice neighbourhood," said
-Sam, as they rumbled along the crowded and filthy street. "It's a wery
-remarkable circumstance," he continued, "that poverty and oysters go
-together.... The poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to
-be for oysters.... An oyster-stall to every half-dozen houses. The
-street's lined vith 'em. Blessed if I don't think that ven a man's
-wery poor, he rushes out of his lodgings and eats oysters in regular
-desperation." Sam was a keen observer; but there is now a deeper depth
-than oysters. Periwinkles and poverty; whelks and villainy foregather
-in Whitechapel at the dawn of the Twentieth Century.
-
-But the poverty and the villainy of Whitechapel must not be too greatly
-insisted upon. They may easily be overdone. Loyal hearts and brave
-lives--all the braver that they are not flaunted in the face of the
-world--exist in the cheerless and unromantic grey streets that lead
-off the main road. The domestic virtues flourish here as well as--if
-not better than--in the West End. The heroes and heroines of everyday
-life--the greater in their heroism that they do not know of it--live
-in hundreds of thousands in the dingy and unrelieved dulness of the
-streets to right and left of Whitechapel Road and of the Mile End Road,
-that go with so majestic a breadth and purposeful directness to Bow.
-
-
-XII
-
-
-LET the Londoner who has never been "down East," and so is given to
-speaking contemptuously of it, take a journey down the Whitechapel and
-Mile End Roads, and see with what an astonishing width, both in respect
-of roadway and foot-pavements, those noble thoroughfares are endowed.
-The London he has already known owns no streets so wide, save only in
-the isolated and unimportant instance of Langham Place; while, although
-it cannot be said that, taken individually, the houses of the great
-East-End thoroughfares are at all picturesque, yet there is a certain
-interesting quality in the roads as a whole, lacking elsewhere. This,
-doubtless, is partly explained by the strangeness of the East-ender's
-garb, and partly by the many Jewish and other foreigners who throng the
-pavements.
-
-A strangely-named public-house--the "Grave Maurice"--is one of the
-landmarks of the Whitechapel Road. Many have set themselves the task of
-finding the origin of that sign and its meaning; but their efforts have
-been baulked by the very multiplicity of historic Maurices, grave or
-otherwise. The sign may originally have been the "Graf Maurice," Prince
-Maurice of Bohemia, brother of the better-known Prince Rupert, the
-dashing cavalier, but a difficulty arises from the fact that there was
-another "Graf Maurice" at the same time, in the person of the equally
-well-known Prince Maurice of Nassau, who died of grief when the Spanish
-overran Holland and besieged Breda. Nor does the uncertainty end here,
-for Dekker uses the expression "grave maurice" in one of his plays,
-written at least thirty years before the time of those princes, in a
-passage which reads as though it were the usual nickname at that period
-for an officer.
-
-Beyond the house owning this perplexing sign we come to the beginning
-of the Mile End Road, one mile, as its name implies, from Aldgate, and
-for long the site of a turnpike-gate, only removed with the close of
-the Coaching Age. Rowlandson has left us an excellent view of Mile End
-Turnpike as it was in his time; with isolated blocks of houses, groups
-of rustic cottages and a background of trees, to show how rural were
-the surroundings towards the close of the eighteenth century; while
-maps of that period mark the road onwards, bordered by fields, with
-"Ducking Pond Row" standing solitary and the ducking-pond itself close
-behind, where the scolds and shrews of that age were soused.
-
-The Ducking-Pond as an institution is as obsolete as the rack, the
-thumb-screw, and other ingenious devices of the "good old times"; but
-most towns a hundred years ago still kept a cucking or ducking-stool;
-while, if they had no official pond for the purpose, any dirty pool
-would serve, and the dirtier it were the better it was esteemed.
-
-[Illustration: MILE END TURNPIKE, 1813. _After Rowlandson._]
-
-"The Way of punishing scolding Women is pleasant enough," says an old
-traveller. "They fasten an Arm Chair to the End of two Beams, twelve or
-fifteen Foot long, and parallel to each other: so that these two Pieces
-of Wood, with their two Ends embrace the Chair, which hangs between
-them on a sort of Axel; by which Means it plays freely, and always
-remains in the natural horizontal Position in which a Chair should be,
-that a Person may sit conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let
-it down. They set up a Post upon the Bank of a Pond or River, and over
-this Post they lay, almost in Equilibrio, the two Pieces of Wood, at
-one End of which the Chair hangs just over the Water. They place the
-Woman in the Chair, and so plunge her into the Water as often as the
-Sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate Heat."
-
-One has only to go and look at the average rural pond to imagine the
-horrors of this punishment. The stagnant water, the slimy mud, the
-clinging green duckwood, common to them, must have made a ducking the
-event of a lifetime.
-
-The difference here, at Mile End, between those times and these is
-emphasised by the close-packed streets on either side, and by the
-crowded tram-cars that ply back and forth.
-
-Yet there are survivals. Here, for instance, in the little
-old-fashioned weather-boarded "Vine" Inn that stands by itself, in
-advance of the frontage of the houses, and takes up a goodly portion
-of the broad pavement, we see a relic of the time when land was not
-so valuable as now; when local authorities were easy-going, and when
-anyone who had the impudence to squat down upon the public paths could
-do so, and, remaining there undisturbed for a period of twenty-one
-years, could thus derive a legal title to the freehold. Here, then, is
-an explanation of the existence of the "Vine" in this position.
-
-Close by are the quaint Trinity Almshouses, built in 1695, for the
-housing of old skippers and shellbacks. Wren designed the queer little
-houses and the chapel that still faces the grassy quadrangle where the
-old salts walk and gossip unconcernedly while the curious passers-by
-linger to gaze at them from the pavement, as though they were some
-strange kind of animal. Nothing so curious outside the pages of fiction
-as this quiet haven in midst of the roaring streets, screened from them
-by walls and gates of curious architecture surmounted by models of the
-gallant old galleons that have long ceased to rove the raging main.
-It is a spot alien from its surroundings, frowned down upon by the
-towering breweries, which indeed would have bought the old place and
-destroyed it a few years ago, but for the indignation aroused when the
-proposal of the governing body of the almshouses to sell became known.
-
-There is nothing else to detain the explorer on his way into Essex.
-The People's Palace, it is true, is a remarkable place, the result of
-Sir Walter Besant's dream of a resort for those of the East who would
-get culture and find recreation, but it is a dream realised as an
-architectural nightmare, and is a very terrible example of what is done
-to this unhappy quarter in the names of Art and Philanthropy.
-
-
-XIII
-
-
-AT last, by this broadest of broad roads, we come to Stratford-le-Bow
-and its parish church. In these hurried times, and for some centuries
-past, the old hyphenated place-name has been dropped, and as "Bow"
-alone it is familiar to all East-enders. The place is nowadays chiefly
-associated with Bryant & May and matches, but there yet remain many old
-Queen Anne, and even earlier, mansions by the roadside, telling of days
-long before "patent safeties" were thought of, and when flint and steel
-and timber were the sole means of obtaining a light.
-
-"Bow," says the _Ambulator_ of 1774, "is a village a little to the
-east of Mile End, inhabited by many whitsters and scarlet dyers. Here
-has been set up a large manufactory of porcelain, little inferior to
-that of Chelsea." That description is now somewhat out of date. The
-manufactory of porcelain has long disappeared and Bow china is scarce,
-and treasured accordingly. Whitsters--that is to say, bleachers of
-linen--and scarlet dyers, also, are to seek.
-
-Bow Church confronts the eastward-bound traveller in bold and
-rugged fashion; its time-worn tower standing midway of the road and
-challenging, as it were, the crossing of the little River Lea, just
-beyond, to Stratford and into Essex. Church and churchyard split the
-road up into two channels and thus destroy its width, which it never
-afterwards regains until the suburbs are passed and the open country
-reached. A modern touch here is the bronze statue of Gladstone, in
-advance of the church, facing westwards in declamatory attitude
-from its granite pedestal, and erected in his lifetime; recalling
-the fervent hero-worshipping days of the "People's William." The
-outstretched hand is oddly crooked. Few be them that see statues raised
-to themselves, unless indeed they be made of finer clay than most
-mortals, kings and princes, and the like. Of recent years this bronze
-Gladstone has, in our vulgar way, been made to preside, as it were,
-over an underground public convenience, from whose too obtrusive midst
-he rises, absurdly eloquent.
-
-[Illustration: BOW.]
-
-Just how Stratford-le-Bow received its name is an interesting piece
-of history. Both here and at the neighbouring Old Ford the Lea was
-anciently crossed by a paved stone ford of Roman construction,
-continuing the highway into Essex; but when that river's many channels,
-swollen by winter's rains, rolled in freshets toward the Thames, the
-low-lying lands of what we now call Hackney and West Ham marshes were
-for long distances converted into a sluggish lake. For months together
-the approaches to the Lea were lost in floods, and the real channels of
-the river became so deep that those who valued their lives and goods
-dared not attempt the passage. To the aid of poor travellers thus
-waterlogged came the good and pious Queen Matilda, consort of Henry the
-First. "Having herself been well washed in the water," as old Leland
-says, she fully appreciated the necessity for bridges, and accordingly
-directed the raising of a causeway on either side of the Lea and the
-building of two stone structures, of which one was the original "Bow"
-Bridge; "a rare piece of work, for before that time the like had never
-been seen in England." It seems to have been the stone arch that gave
-its name of "Bow," and if an arched stone bridge was so remarkable in
-those times that it should thus derive a name for its semi-circular, or
-"bow" shape, it must have been either the first, or among the earliest,
-of stone bridges built, in times when others were constructed of timber.
-
-The original name of the village that afterwards sprang up here, on the
-hither or Middlesex shore, was thus singularly contradictory; meaning
-"the street ford at the arched bridge." The Stratford on the Essex
-side was in those days known as Stratford Langthorne.
-
-The good queen not only built the bridges and causeways, but endowed
-them with land and a water-mill, conveying those properties to the
-Abbess of Barking, burdened with a perpetual charge for the maintenance
-of the works. Having done all this, she died. Some years afterwards a
-Cistercian monastery was founded close by, where the Abbey Mills now
-stand, and the then Abbess of Barking, of opinion that the Abbot of
-that house, being near, would find it easier to look after the bridges
-than herself, reconveyed the property, together with its obligations,
-to him. The trust was kept for a time and then delegated to a certain
-Godfrey Pratt, who had a house built for him on the causeway and
-enjoyed an annual grant, in consideration of keeping the works in
-repair. Pratt did so well with his annual stipend and the alms given
-him by wayfarers that the Abbot at length discontinued the grant.
-Accordingly, the wily Pratt set up a quite unauthorised toll-bar and
-levied "pontage" on all except the rich, of whom he was afraid. This
-went on for many years, until the scandal grew too great, and, in
-consequence of an inquisition held, the Abbot dispossessed Godfrey
-Pratt of his toll-bar and resumed the control himself.
-
-Meanwhile, no repairs had been effected, and the road had been so
-greatly worn down that the feet of travellers and those of the horses
-often went through the arches. Bow Bridge had, consequently, to undergo
-an extensive cobbling process; a treatment, by the way, continued
-through the centuries until 1835, when it was finally pulled down.
-
-In its last state it was a nondescript patchwork of all ages. The
-property for its maintenance had, of course, been lost in the
-confiscation of monastic estates under Henry the Eighth, and its repair
-afterwards fell upon the local authorities, who always preferred to
-patch and tinker it so long as such a course was possible. On February
-14, 1839, the existing bridge was opened, crossing the Lea in one
-seventy-foot span, in place of the old three arches.
-
-
-XIV
-
-
-"FAREWELL, Bowe, have over the bridge, where, I heard say, honest
-Conscience was once drowned."
-
-Thus says Will Kemp, in his _Nine Days' Wonder_, the account of a
-dance he jigged from London to Norwich in so many days, in 1600. It
-is hopeless to recover the meaning hidden in that old joke about the
-drowning of conscience here, and so we will also without delay "have
-over" the modern bridge of Bow and into Essex, past dingy flour mills,
-and crossing another branch of the Lea by Channelsea Bridge, come to
-Stratford.
-
-Here, then, begins the county of calves, according to the popular
-jest that to be a native of Essex is to be an "Essex Calf." It is not
-generally regarded as a complimentary title, for of all young animals
-the calf is probably the clumsiest and most awkward. To this day in
-rural England the contemptuous exclamation "you great calf!" is used
-of an awkward, overgrown boy tied to his mother's apron-strings. Yet,
-if we may believe a seventeenth-century writer on this subject, the
-nickname had a complimentary origin, "for," said he, "this county
-produceth calves of the fattest, fairest and finest flesh in England."
-
-We have already seen that the French spoken at Stratford-le-Bow in
-Chaucer's time was a scoff and a derision. To-day, neither on the
-Middlesex nor the Essex shores of the Lea is the teaching of languages
-either a matter for praise or contempt. Mills of every kind, the
-making of matches that strike only on the box, the varied work of the
-Stratford and West Ham factories, fully occupy the vast populations
-close at hand; while the business of covering the potato-fields, the
-celery-beds and the grounds of the old suburban mansions with endless
-rows of suburban dwellings is engrossing attention down the road.
-Stratford and Maryland Point are now strictly urban, and Ilford far
-greater in these days than it ever was when its "great" prefix was
-never pretermitted. London, indeed, stretches far out along this road,
-and the country is reached only after many miles of that debatable
-land which belongs neither to country nor town. Heralds of the great
-metropolis appear to the London-bound traveller while he is yet far
-away, and even so far distant as Chelmsford "the dim presentiment of
-some vast capital," as De Quincey remarks, "reaches you obscurely like
-a misgiving."
-
-Stratford has not improved since coaches left the road. It has grown
-greatly, and grown dirty, squalid and extremely trying to noses that
-have not been acclimatised to bone-boiling works, manure factories and
-other odoriferous industries. But it is a place of great enterprises
-and great and useful markets, and when its introductory mean streets
-are passed, the Broadway, where the Leytonstone Road branches off to
-the left, looks by contrast quite noble. This brings one to Upton
-Park, Forest Gate, Woodgrange and Manor Park in succession, past a
-building which, whether as an institution or an example of beautiful
-architecture, would well grace the West. The West Ham Public Library
-and Technical Institute is here referred to. "Irish Row," on the
-way, marked on old maps, is a reference to old wayside cottages
-inhabited until recent years by a turbulent colony of London-Irish
-market-gardening labourers, subsidised by Mrs Nelson in times of
-coaching competition to impede hated rivals as they came past the
-"Rising Sun" at what is now the suburb of Manor Park; a house which,
-like the "Coach and Horses" at Upton, has declined from a legitimate
-coaching trade to something more in the gin-palace sort. This is not
-to say that the staid and decorous Mrs Nelson entered into direct
-negotiations with the Mikes and Patseys of Irish Row, but when the
-rival Ipswich "Umpire" or the "New Colchester" coaches developed much
-sporting competition and their coachmen evinced a dogged determination
-to be first over Bow Bridge on the way up to London, and, by
-consequence, the first to arrive at their destination, why, an obscure
-hint or two on the part of one of her numerous staff, accompanied by
-the wherewithal for a drink, produced wonders in the way of highway
-obstruction. But such recollections are become unsubstantial as the
-fabric of which dreams are made, and fade before the apparitions of
-tramways and interminable rows of suburban shops that conduct to Ilford
-Bridge.
-
-Great Ilford lies on the other side of the sullen Roding, that rolls
-a muddy tide in aimless loops to lazily join the Thames at Barking
-Reach. The townlet has from time immemorial been approached by a bridge
-replacing the "eald," or old, ford, whence its name derives and not
-from that crossing of the stream being an "ill" ford, as imaginative,
-but uninstructed, historians would have us believe; although the slimy
-black mud of the river-bed would nowadays make the exercise of fording
-an ill enough enterprise. Ilford is now in the throes of development
-and is fast losing all individuality and becoming a mere suburb. Let us
-leave it for places less sophisticated.
-
-The morris-dancing Will Kemp of 1600, leaving Ilford by moonshine, set
-forward "dauncing within a quarter of a mile of Romford, where two
-strong Jades were beating and byting either of other." We take this
-to mean two women fighting on the road, until the context is reached,
-where he says that their hooves formed an arch over him and that he
-narrowly escaped being kicked on the head. It then becomes evident that
-he is talking of horses.
-
-Leaving the centre of Great Ilford behind, and in more decorous
-fashion than that of Will Kemp, we come, past an inn oddly named
-the "Cauliflower"--probably as a subtle compliment to the abounding
-market-gardens of the neighbourhood--to the long, straight perspective
-of the road across Chadwell Heath. Unnumbered acres of new suburban
-"villa" streets now cover the waste on either side, so that the
-beginnings of the plain are not so much heath as modern suburb,
-created by the Great Eastern Railway's suburban stations and by the
-far-reaching enterprises of land corporations, which here carry on the
-usual speculations of the speculative builder on a gigantic scale. In
-acre upon acre of closely-packed streets, each one with a horrible
-similarity to its neighbour, thousands of the weekly wage-earning
-clerks, mechanics and artisans of mighty London live and lose their
-individuality, and pay rent to limited companies. Where the highwayman
-of a century ago waited impatiently behind the ragged thickets and
-storm-tossed thorn trees of Chadwell Heath for the traveller, there
-now rises the modern township of Seven Kings, and midway between
-Ilford station and that of Chadwell Heath, the recent enormous growth
-of population on this sometime waste has led to the erection of the
-new stations of "Seven Kings" and "Goodmayes," while widened lines
-have been provided for the increased train services. "Seven Kings"
-is a romantic name, but who those monarchs were, and what they were
-ever doing on the Heath, which of old was a place more remarkable for
-cracked skulls than for crowned heads, is impossible to say. Many wits
-have been at work on the problem, but have been baffled. The natural
-assumption is that at this spot, marked on old maps as "Seven Kings
-Watering," the seven monarchs of the Heptarchy met. History, unhappily
-records no such meeting, but there was no _Court Circular_ in those
-times, and so many royal foregatherings must have gone unremarked,
-except locally and in some fashion similar to this. So let us assume
-the kings met here and watered their horses at the "watering," which
-was a place where a little stream crossed the road in a watersplash.
-The stream still crosses the highway, but civilisation has put it in a
-pipe and tucked it away underground.
-
-[Illustration: SEVEN KINGS.]
-
-A lane running across the Great Eastern Railway at this point, known as
-Stoup Lane ("stoup" meaning a boundary-post) marks the boundary of the
-Ilford and Chadwell wards of Barking parish. Here it was, in 1794, on a
-night of December, that a King's messenger, James Martin by name, was
-shot by five footpads. The register of St Edmund's, Romford, records
-the burial of this unfortunate man on the 14th of that month.
-
-Let us not, however, in view of the more or less grisly dangers that
-still await belated wayfarers on this road, enlarge too greatly on
-the lawlessness of old times; for the homeward-bound resident making
-for his domestic hearth in these new-risen suburbs towards the stroke
-of ten o'clock is not infrequently startled by the sinister figure
-of a footpad springing from the ragged hedges of Chadwell Heath and
-demanding--_not_ his money or his life, as in the old formula, but--a
-halfpenny! This invariable demand of the nocturnal Chadwell Heath
-footpads, which argues a pitiful lack of invention on their part, is
-for half the price of a drink.
-
-"You haven't got a ha'p'ny about you, guv'nor?" asks the threatening
-tramp.
-
-"No," says the peaceful citizen, anxiously scanning the long
-perspective of the road for the policeman who ought to be within
-sight--but is not; "w-what do you want a halfpenny for?"
-
-"I've walked all the way from Romford and only got half the price of a
-glass o' beer," says the rascal.
-
-The citizen is astonished and incredulous, and his astonishment gets
-the better of his fear. "Oh, come now," he rejoins, "no one walks three
-miles from Romford for a glass of beer; besides, all the houses here
-close at ten o'clock."
-
-"Oh, they do, do they?" replies the tramp, offensively. "'Ere, my
-mate Bill'll talk to you," and, whistling, the ominous bulk of Bill
-emerges aggressively from the darkling hedge, and together they proceed
-to wipe the road with that respectable ratepayer, and, rifling his
-pockets, leave him, bruised and bleeding, to reflect on the blessings
-of civilisation and to be thankful that he was not born a hundred years
-ago, when he might have been shot dead instead of being felled to the
-ground by the half-brick in a handkerchief which he finds beside him
-and takes home as a trophy.
-
-Chadwell Street, a wayside hamlet, conducts past Beacontree Heath,
-on the right, to an open country of disconsolate-looking contorted
-elms and battered windmills, telling even in the noontide heats and
-still airs of summer of the winter winds that race across the watery
-flats of Rippleside and Dagenham Marshes, out of the shivering east.
-Lonely, until quite recent times, stood "Whalebone House," beside the
-road, the two whalebones that even yet surmount its garden entrance
-the wonderment for more than two hundred years of chance travellers.
-Legends tell that they are relics of a whale stranded in the Thames in
-the year of Oliver Cromwell's death, and set up here in memory of him.
-However that may be, they certainly were here in 1698, when Ogilby's
-_Britannia_ was published, for the house is marked on his map as "Ye
-Whalebone."
-
-These "rude ribs," it may shrewdly be suspected, have little longer yet
-to remain, for though apparently proof against decay, the house and
-grounds are, like those of the surrounding properties, for sale to the
-builders.
-
-[Illustration: WHALEBONE HOUSE.]
-
-The sole historic or other vestige remaining of the "Whalebone"
-turnpike-gate, once standing here, is an account to be found in the
-newspapers of the time of an attack made upon George Smith, the
-toll-keeper, on a night in 1829. He was roused in the darkness by a
-voice calling "Gate!" and, going to open it, was instantly knocked
-down, in a manner somewhat similar to the treatment accorded the hero
-of that touching nursery rhyme, who tells how:--
-
-  "Last night and the night before,
-  Three tom-cats came knocking at my door.
-  I went down to let them in,
-  And they knocked me down with a rolling-pin."
-
-The two men who felled the unfortunate George Smith, alarmed by his
-cries of "Murder!" threatened to shoot him if he were not quiet,
-and, going over his pockets, were rewarded by a find of twenty-five
-shillings. While they were thus engaged in sorting him over, a third
-confederate, ransacking the house, discovered three pounds. With this
-booty and a parting kick, they left their victim, and disappeared as
-silently as they came.
-
-
-XV
-
-
-ROMFORD, now approached, is but twelve miles from London, and has
-frankly given up the impossible and ceased all pretence of being
-provincial. At the same time, building-land having only just (in the
-speculator's phrase) become "ripe for development," the townlet has not
-yet lost all individuality in suburban extension.
-
-The place, say some antiquaries, derives its name from the "Roman
-ford" on the Rom brook, but it is a great deal more likely that the
-origin is identical with that of the first syllable in the names of
-Ramsgate, Ramsey and Romney, and comes from the Anglo-Saxon "ruim" =
-a marsh. Time was when the town was celebrated for its manufacture
-of breeches; an industry which gave rise to a saying still current in
-the less polished nooks and corners of Essex--"Go to Romford and get
-your backsides new bottomed." Breeches have long ceased to be a noted
-product of the town, which for many years past has bulked large in the
-annals of Beer. Barricades, avenues, mountains and Alpine ranges of
-barrels, hogsheads, firkins and kilderkins of Romford ale and stout
-proclaim that the Englishman's preference for his "national drink" has
-not abated, and that
-
-  "Damn his eyes, whoever tries
-  To rob a poor man of his beer"
-
-is still a popular sentiment; as both the brewers of arsenical
-compounds and the more rabid among teetotallers are some day likely to
-discover.
-
-[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ROMFORD.]
-
-A French traveller in England some two hundred years ago wrote that
-"there are a hundred sorts of Beer made in England, and some are
-not bad: Art has well supplied Nature in this particular. Be that as
-it will, beer is Art and wine is Nature; I am for Nature against the
-world." That old fellow did not know how artful beer could be, and if
-he could re-visit his native France might discover that even wine is no
-longer the simple child of nature it once was.
-
-But although John Barleycorn is the tutelary deity of Romford, it is
-quite conceivable that the stranger bound for Norwich, and turning
-neither to right nor to left, might pass through the town without so
-much as a glimpse obtained of those Alpine ranges aforesaid. True,
-on entering Romford, he could scarce fail to observe certain weird
-structures ahead: odd towers like first cousins to lighthouses,
-springing into the sky line, with ranges of perpendicular pipes, like
-the disjointed fragments of some mammoth organ, beside them, the
-characteristic signs and portents of a great brewery; but the barrels
-are secluded, nor even are Romford's streets blocked, as might have
-been suspected, with brewers' drays. Romford, indeed, spells to the
-uninstructed stranger rather bullocks than beer; for the cattle-pens
-are the chief feature of its market-place, and sheep and hay and straw
-bulk more in the eye of the road-farer than the products of Ind, Coope
-& Co., which are to be seen in all their vastness beside the railway
-station and on the sidings constructed especially for the trade in ale
-and stout.
-
-[Illustration: ROMFORD.]
-
-The town in its most characteristic aspect is seen in the accompanying
-illustration taken from the doorway of that old inn, the "Windmill and
-Bells," the broad road margined with granite setts and the pavements
-fenced with posts and rails; the re-built parish church prominent
-across the market-place.
-
-[Illustration: OLD TOLL-HOUSE, PUTTELS BRIDGE.]
-
-Beyond Romford the road grows rural, and, by the same token, hilly.
-This, gentle reader, let it not be forgotten, is Essex, and we all
-know with what persistence that county is spoken of, and written of,
-as flat. If you would know what flatness is, try the Great North Road
-and its long levels between Baldock, Biggleswade and Alconbury, or
-search Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire or Hunts. _There_ is flatness, beside
-which that of Essex is the merest superstition, started probably by
-some tired traveller of inconstant purpose, who, essaying to explore
-the county, gave up the enterprise when he had reached Wanstead Flats.
-Surveying that not highly romantic expanse, he took it as an exemplar
-of the rest of the shire, and so returned home to start this immortal
-myth on its career. Certainly no cyclist who knows his Essex will
-subscribe to its flatness as an article of faith, and as such an one
-cycles from Romford, through the hamlet of Hare Street, over Puttels
-Bridge, where stands an old toll-house, to the other hamlet of Brook
-Street, the fact that he will actually have to _walk_ his machine up
-the steep hill that conducts into the town of Brentwood will cause him
-to think hard things of myth-makers.
-
-[Illustration: THE "FLEECE," BROOK STREET.]
-
-Brook Street Hill is the name of this eminence. Beside it stands a
-cemetery, convenient for brakeless cyclists who recklessly descend, and
-at its foot is a fine old inn, the "Fleece," a house of call for the
-fish-waggons that were once so great a feature of this road so far as
-Colchester and Harwich.
-
-[Illustration: THE MARTYR'S TREE, BRENTWOOD.]
-
-Brentwood, on the crest of this hill, occupies an elevated table-land,
-with sharp descents from it on every side. The "burnt wood" town,
-destroyed in some forgotten conflagration, is now a long-streeted,
-old-fashioned place, apparently in no haste to bid good-bye to the
-past. It keeps the old Assize House of Queen Elizabeth's time in
-repair, and carefully sees to it that the Martyr's Tree, decayed though
-the old elm stump be and hollow, is saved from perishing altogether.
-It was in 1555 that William Hunter, in his twentieth year, suffered
-in this place for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. That
-staunch upholder of the Protestant faith scarce needed the modern
-memorial, close by, while this shattered trunk remained, its gaping
-rents carefully bricked up by pious hands; but let the venerable relic
-be doubly safe-guarded in these times, when that candle lit by Latimer
-and Ridley, close upon three centuries and a half ago, burns dim, and
-lawless and forsworn clergy within the Church of England are working
-towards Rome and the return of the famous days of fire and stake; when
-the blood of the martyrs has ceased to inspire a generation which
-demands to be shown some tangible object before it can realise the
-significance of that sacrifice. Here, then, is something that can be
-seen and touched, to bring the least imaginative back in fancy to those
-terrible days, when brave hearts of every class gave up their lives in
-fire and smoke rather than abjure their faith. The Romanising clergy
-of to-day are made of coarser fabric than the martyrs. _They_ are not
-actuated by honesty, but take oaths they have no intention of observing
-to a Church whose bread they eat and whose trust they betray.
-
-Would you know something of that martyrdom at Brentwood? Then scan the
-inscription on the modern granite obelisk, and control, if you can, a
-righteous indignation when you perceive a modern Roman Catholic chapel
-standing, impudent in these days of an exaggerated tolerance, over
-against the Martyr's Tree itself, typifying the Scarlet Woman in midst
-of her blasphemies, exultant over the blood of the saints. "He being
-dead yet speaketh," quotes that inscription; but what avails it to
-speak in the ears of the deaf, or to talk of honour to the perjured?
-"Learn from his example," continue those momentous words, "to value
-the privilege of an open Bible, and be careful to maintain it"; but
-the world goes by unheeding, and only when the danger again becomes
-acute and liberty of conscience is passing away will indifference be
-conquered and the folly of it revealed.
-
-
-XVI
-
-
-BRENTWOOD still keeps a notable relic of coaching days in the old
-"White Hart" Inn, a curious specimen of the timbered and galleried
-type of hostelry familiar to our great-grandfathers. It turns a long
-plastered front to the street, but the great carved and panelled
-doorway leading into the coach-yard confirms the proud legend,
-"Established 1480." Full forty coaches passed through Brentwood in
-every twenty-four hours at the close of the Coaching Age, but the
-earlier days of coaching brought the "White Hart" more custom than
-came to it at the close of that era, when, in consequence of the roads
-being improved, travelling was quicker, and places once halted at were
-left behind without stopping. Innkeepers were considerable losers by
-this constant acceleration of coaches, and saw the smart, long-distance
-stages go dashing by where, years before, the old slow coaches stayed
-the night, or, at the very least, halted for meals.
-
-The "White Hart" remains typical of the earlier times, and still keeps
-the old-world comfort regretted in other places by De Quincey, who
-lived long enough to witness the beginnings of the great changes that
-have come over the hotels of town and country since coaches gave place
-to railways.
-
-[Illustration: YARD OF THE "WHITE HART," BRENTWOOD.]
-
-
-XVII
-
-
-BRENTWOOD is no sooner left behind than the road descends steeply
-over what was once a part of Shenfield Common, an exceedingly wild
-and hillocky spot in days gone by, and probably the place where, in
-November 1692, those seven jovial Essex squires mentioned by Macaulay
-were themselves, while hunting the hare, chased and at last run down
-by nine hunters of a different sort, who turned their pockets out and
-then bade them good-day and be damned. The original chronicler of
-this significant incident, the diarist, Narcissus Luttrell, makes no
-especial feature of the event. He merely records it as having happened
-"near Ingerstone," and then proceeds to chronicle other happenings in
-the same sort along the several approaches to London. Little wonder,
-therefore, that Macaulay should have drawn the conclusion that at this
-time a journey of fifty miles through the wealthiest and most populous
-shires of England was as dangerous as a pilgrimage across the deserts
-of Arabia.
-
-From the descending road or from Shenfield Church the country is seen
-spread out, map-like, below, over the valley of the Thames, to where
-the river empties itself into the broad estuary at the Nore. At least,
-there is the vale, and the map vouchsafes the information that the
-river flows thereby; but the compacted woodlands shut out the view of
-that imperial waterway. "I cannot see the Spanish fleet, because it's
-not in sight," says the disappointed searcher of the horizon in the
-poem, and it is precisely for the same reason that the Thames is not
-visible from Shenfield. But if one is denied a view of that imperial
-river, at least Shenfield Church itself and its churchyard, a prodigal
-riot of roses of every hue and habit, are worth seeing. The attenuated
-shingled spire, one of the characteristic features of Essex churches,
-beckons insistently from the road, and he who thereupon turns aside is
-well repaid, in a sight of the elaborately-carved timber columns of
-the interior, proving how in this county, where building stone is not
-found, thirteenth and fourteenth-century builders made excellent shift
-with heart of oak. This is, in fact, like so many other Essex churches,
-largely wooden, and its timber is as sound now as it was six or seven
-hundred years ago.
-
-[Illustration: SHENFIELD.]
-
-Mountnessing, known locally as "Money's End" lies two miles distant
-from Shenfield. As in the case of so many other places near the
-great roads, a comparatively recent settlement bearing the name of
-the old village sprang up, to catch the custom of travellers; but an
-additionally curious fact is the utter extinction of the original
-village, which lay a mile distant from the highway, where the parish
-church now stands lonely, save for a neighbouring farmstead. Explorers
-in the countryside are often astonished at the great distances
-between villages and their parish churches, and seek in vain in their
-guide-books or in talk with the "oldest inhabitant" an explanation of
-so curious a thing. Here, as in many cases, the root of the mystery is
-found in the enclosure of the surrounding common lands. The enclosure
-of commons has never been possible without the passing of special Acts,
-which have divided what should have been the heritage of the people
-for all time between the lord of the manor and the villagers, in their
-proper proportions. Thus the lord of the manor and the tenants would
-each obtain their share of the plunder, in the form of freehold land,
-with the obvious result that the villagers, instead of paying rent for
-their cottages clustering round the church in the original village,
-built themselves new and rent-free cottages on their share of the spoil
-of the commons. The old cottages being pulled down, or allowed to
-decay, it was not long before the last trace of the original village
-disappeared.
-
-[Illustration: MOUNTNESSING CHURCH.]
-
-Mountnessing was once the seat of the Mounteneys, who have long since
-vanished from their old home. The old church, largely red brick without
-and timber within, still preserves the fossil rib-bone of an elephant,
-long regarded with reverence by the country folk as the rib of a giant,
-and has for an additional curiosity the carving of a head on one of
-the pillars, a head fitted, perhaps by way of warning to Early English
-parishioners of shrewish tendencies, with a brank, or "scold's bridle."
-The red-brick west front of the church, masking the wooden belfry-frame
-from the weather, still bears the date, 1653, carved in the brick,
-but such is the fresh appearance of the brickwork that without that
-evidence of age it would be difficult to credit it with so long an
-existence. The iron ties in the shape of the letter S give the view
-a singular appearance. An apologetic epitaph in verse, beginning,
-"Reader, excuse the underwritten," is a curiosity of Mountnessing
-churchyard.
-
-[Illustration: MOUNTNESSING WINDMILL.]
-
-Returning to the road, Mountnessing Street, as the modern settlement is
-named, is seen clustering on a hill-top, around four cross-roads and
-a wayside pond. The place may aptly be summarised as consisting of a
-dozen cottages, two public-houses, a general "stores" (our grandfathers
-would have been content with the less pretentious word "shop"), a tin
-tabernacle to serve those too infirm or too lazy to walk a mile to
-church; a sweep's shop, a tailor's, and a windmill situated on a knoll;
-a windmill that for picturesqueness might win the enthusiasm of a Crome
-or a Constable.
-
-From this point it is, as a milestone proclaims, two miles to
-"Ingatstone," the "Ingatestone" of customary spelling. The milestones
-are undoubtedly strictly correct in their orthography, if erring on
-the pedantic side, for that village derives its name from a settlement
-of the Anglo-Saxons by the "ing" or meadow, at the Roman milestone
-they found here, but has long since disappeared. "Ing-atte-stone"
-they called their village, which lies in the little valley of the
-River Wid, or Ash, trickling (for it is a stream of the smallest)
-hither and thither to give a perennial verdure to the meads along its
-course. "Ing" is, by consequence, a marked feature of the place-names
-successively met with along the River Wid. Mounteney's Ing we have
-already seen, and Fryerning, or Friars' Meadow, is not far away; while
-Margaretting, the prettiest name of all, lies beyond Ingatestone.
-
-[Illustration: THE GATEHOUSE, INGATESTONE HALL.]
-
-Ingatestone's one street, fronting on to the highroad, is of the
-narrowest, and remains in almost every detail exactly as it is pictured
-in the old print reproduced here, with the red-brick tower of the
-church still rising behind. It is a tower which by no means looks its
-age of over four hundred years, so deceptive is the cheery ruddiness
-of the brick. Within, by the chancel, is the monument of that Sir
-William Petre who, emulating the accommodating qualities of the famous
-Vicar of Bray, bowed before the religious storms of the reigns of Henry
-the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary and Elizabeth. "Made of the willow
-and not of the oak," those tempests not only left him unscathed, but
-brought him much plunder. Under Henry he was enriched with the manor
-of Ingatestone, plundered from the Abbey of Barking, together with
-much spoil elsewhere. How he managed to do it is a mystery, but during
-the reign of Mary this ardent Catholic (for such the Petres always
-have been) actually obtained a Papal Bull confirming him and his in
-these grants. One marvels, when gazing upon his high-nosed effigy,
-recumbent beside his wife, how one with that noble physiognomy could
-be so accomplished a time-server and truckler. His home, plundered
-from the nuns of Barking, and known for many years as Ingatestone
-Hall, is yet to be seen at a short distance from the road, down a
-beautifully-timbered country lane. The entrance is by a gatehouse
-with the motto, "_Sans Dieu Rien_," situated at the end of an avenue
-and framing in its archway a fine view of the romantic old red-brick
-turreted buildings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Lord
-Petre of to-day does not reside here, but the place is still in the
-family, and the Roman Catholic chapel is even now in use. Miss Braddon
-is perhaps scarce to be numbered among those novelists whose literary
-landmarks are followed with interest, but it is claimed for Ingatestone
-Hall that it is the scene of her _Lady Audley's Secret_. The
-fish-ponds of old monastic times, the well in which Lady Audley thrust
-her husband, the lime-walk he haunted, together with such romantic
-accessories as terraced walks and a priest's hiding-hole, form items
-which would require the business enthusiasm of an eloquent auctioneer
-to fully enlarge upon. They _do_ say--the "they" in question being the
-gossips of Ingatestone--that the guard and driver of the Parcel Mail,
-passing at 1·15 a.m. the head of the avenue leading from the high road,
-once saw "a something" in white mysteriously sauntering beneath the
-trees, but whether it was the shade of an Abbess of Barking or one
-of the sisters thus bewailing the fate of their old home, or merely
-a white cow, remains an unsolved mystery, the Postmaster-General's
-regulations and time-sheets not allowing for time spent in psychical
-research.
-
-[Illustration: INGATESTONE IN COACHING DAYS. _From an Old Print_]
-
-The shingled spire of Margaretting Church is visible on the right, soon
-after leaving Ingatestone. Like the church of Mountnessing, it has its
-timbered belfry-framing, and like it again, is remote from the village,
-standing solitary, save for the vicarage and a farmhouse, beside a
-railway crossing--if, indeed, any building adjoining the main-line of a
-great railway may ever be called solitary. The Margaret thus honoured
-in the place-name is the Saint to whom the church is dedicated. Some
-traces of the "marguerite," or herbaceous daisy, painted on the old
-windows, in decorative allusion, remained until they were swept away
-for modern stained-glass in memory of a late vicar and his family;
-glass in which Saint Margaret has no place; so that, save for an
-inscription on one of the bells, she now remains unhonoured in her
-own church, deposed in favour of Isaiah and Jeremiah and subjects
-kept "in stock" by the modern ecclesiastical art furnisher. The only
-remaining ancient glass is that of the east window, a magnificent
-fifteenth-century "tree of Jesse."
-
-[Illustration: AT MARGARETTING.]
-
-Margaretting Street fringes the wayside at the twenty-fifth milestone,
-where a post-office and some few scattered cottages straggle
-picturesquely at the foot of an incline leading up to Widford. The
-odious wall of pallid brick that helps so materially to spoil some
-two miles of this road is the park wall of Hylands, a large estate
-purchased about 1847 by one John Attwood, a successful ironmaster, who
-stopped up roads, pulled down cottages, and raised this eyesore to
-enclose his new-made park. Almost as soon as the last brick was put
-in its place, the autocratic Attwood became utterly ruined by railway
-speculations, and his walled-in Eden was sold. Nature in the meanwhile
-has done her best, and a continuous fringe of trees now overhangs the
-ugly wall, while at a break in it, where the River Wid crosses beneath
-the road, water-lilies gem the stream and the wind sounds in the
-luxuriant Lombardy poplars with the sound of a waterfall.
-
-If it were not for its church, which has been re-built and has a very
-fine and tall spire, one might easily pass Widford and not know it,
-for the very few houses do not suffice to make a village. Such as it
-is, it stands on the crest of something not quite so much as a hill
-and rather more than an incline, and beside its large church has an
-equally fine and large and brand-new inn, the "White Horse." Time was,
-and that until three years since, when Widford was celebrated for its
-one other inn, the "Good Woman," or, as it was sometimes styled, the
-"Silent Woman"; a bitter jest emphasised by the picture-sign of a
-headless woman, with the inscription, _Fort Bone_, on one side, and a
-portrait of Henry the Eighth on the other. "_Fort Bone_" was commonly
-Englished by slangy cyclists as "good business." The sign, of course,
-was a pictorial and satiric allusion to Anne Boleyn, but it remains an
-open question whether or not in their present form this and the several
-other "Quiet Woman" and "Good Woman" signs throughout the country are
-perversions of the original legend, "_la bonne fame_" displayed on old
-inns in the distant past; an inscription laudatory of the hostelry,
-and matching the self-recommendation of "_la bonne rénommée_," found
-in modern France, or the more familiar "noted house for--" and "good
-pull up" inscriptions on inns in modern England. Virgil's description
-of Fame, walking the earth, her head lost to sight in the clouds,
-may have originated the pictorial sign of the headless woman in days
-of ancient learning; and the classic allusion becoming lost and the
-supposedly incorrect spelling of "_fame_" being altered to "_femme_,"
-we thus obtain a very reasonable derivation. We may take it that many
-shrew-bitten folks, innkeepers and customers alike, readily agreed to
-forget the original meaning in order to adopt one so exactly fitting
-their opinion that the only quiet or good women were headless ones.
-
-[Illustration: THE "GOOD WOMAN" SIGN.]
-
-Unhappily, in that senseless itch for change that is robbing places of
-all interest and distinction, the sign of the "Good Woman" no longer
-swings from its accustomed place, and the bay-windowed inn opposite the
-"White Horse" has retired into private life. The picture sign is now
-housed inside the "White Horse."
-
-
-XVIII
-
-
-WIDFORD almost immediately introduces the explorer to Moulsham
-(originally the "mole's home"), itself own brother--but a very
-out-at-elbows brother--to Chelmsford. If we wished to put the wind
-between our gentility and the somewhat fusty purlieu of Moulsham, we
-should turn to the left at the fork of the roads, half a mile short of
-the town, and so, proceeding along the "new London road," come into
-Chelmsford, half way down the High Street. Being, however, intent
-rather upon old roads than new, we will e'en endure the half-mile
-length of shabby, untidy street, and thus come bumpily into Chelmsford,
-the county town of Essex, the Metropolitan City of Calves, over the
-hunchbacked and narrow stone bridge across the Chelmer, the successor,
-at an interval of seven hundred years or so, of the original bridge
-built by Maurice, Bishop of London. That is a huge slice of time, but
-it was too late, even in Norman days, for the town to change its name
-from Chelmers_ford_ to something more appropriate when the ford was
-thus superseded.
-
-Straight ahead over this bridge goes the High Street of the town,
-the view closed by the Shire Hall and the church; the Norwich Road,
-however, turning abruptly to the right, by the Conduit, and refusing
-to make acquaintance with the town. It is the Conduit that is seen in
-this illustration of the High Street, its architecture scarce improved
-by the placing of an electric lamp, alleged to be ornamental, over its
-cupola.
-
-[Illustration: THE BRIDGE: ENTRANCE TO CHELMSFORD.]
-
-Chelmsford church and the Shire Hall, seen at the end of this view,
-spoil one another, the Hall almost entirely hiding the church when
-looking down the High Street, and the dignified Perpendicular exterior
-of the church putting the clumsy architecture of the Hall to shame,
-as a pagan upstart. The Shire Hall has its terrors for some, but
-its architecture, alleged to be classic, alone concerns the passing
-stranger, who feels so concerned by sight of it that he accordingly
-passes the quicker. A captured Russian gun and the seated bronze effigy
-of a native, a bygone Lord Chief Justice (who looks whimsically like
-an old apple-woman crouching over her basket, and drops green coppery
-stains over his nice stone pedestal) keep one another company in the
-open space fronting this building.
-
-[Illustration: THE CONDUIT, CHELMSFORD.]
-
-The L.C.J. in question was Nicholas Tindal, whose career came to a
-close in 1806. The monument was erected in 1850, "to preserve for all
-time the image of a judge whose administration of English law, directed
-by serene wisdom, assisted by purest love of justice, endeared by
-unwearied kindness, and graced by the most lucid style, will be held by
-his country in undying remembrance." His birthplace could hardly have
-said more than that.
-
-[Illustration: TINDAL'S STATUE.]
-
-Chelmsford stands not upon the ancient ways, being indeed very severely
-bitten with a taste for modernity. Is it not famous as the first town
-in the kingdom to adopt electric lighting, and have not its streets
-been resolutely swept clear of antiquity? The town, in short, is
-scarce picturesque. It is busy in the agricultural way on Fridays,
-but on other occasions every house provokes a yawn, with perhaps the
-exception of the "Saracen's Head," an inn that, despite its modernised
-and stuccoed frontage, keeps some memories of old times. There was a
-"Saracen's Head" here certainly as far back as the fifteenth century,
-and probably much earlier. Like all the signs of that name, it derived
-from Crusading times, when the knights and men-at-arms, returning
-from Palestine with wounds and spoils from the pagan; with monkeys,
-leprosy, tall stories, and other relics out of the Holy Land, found
-their fame come home before them, and the old inns they had known--the
-"Salutation," the "Peter's Finger," the "Catherine Wheel," and the
-like--often re-named in their honour. With little effort we can imagine
-the scenes at the "Saracen's Head" of that period, when exploits at
-Acre, Joppa and Jerusalem were told and re-told, and gained wonderfully
-in the repetition over sack and malvoysie. What bloody fellows they
-were, and with what zest they slew the Soldan's soldiers over and over
-again as they sat over their cups. It is, at the least of it, six
-hundred years ago, and the "Saracen's Head" has been rebuilt many times
-since then; but human nature remains the same though timber rot and
-brick perish, and again and again the same old talk has been heard in
-the bar-parlour of the inn. Those who fought at Agincourt and Creçy;
-men of a later age who warred under Marlborough at Blenheim, Ramillies
-or Malplaquet; the lads of the Peninsula and Waterloo; survivors from
-the horrors of the Crimean winter, and heroes from a hundred fights on
-the burning South African veldt--all have had their circle of greedy
-listeners here.
-
-The "Saracen's Head" of to-day turns a sleek and stuccoed face to
-the street, and the house shows signs of extensive rebuilding and
-remodelling, undertaken in the full flush of the great days of coaching
-prosperity, when so many old inns were rebuilt, in the belief that
-coaching, and the road as an institution, would last for ever. Fond
-belief! Has anyone ever stopped to consider the fact that the great
-coaching era of the 'twenties and the 'thirties had a great deal more
-to do with the pulling down of the old-fashioned galleried and timbered
-inns of country towns than ever railways have had? The average small
-country town felt in fullest measure the great increase in business
-incidental to the last years of the coaching age, and every innkeeper
-hastened to rebuild his inn and to call it an "hotel." Those who had,
-from one cause and another, deferred rebuilding until the dawn of
-the Railway Age, on seeing that the road would decay and travellers
-be carried to their journeys' ends without halting for rest and
-refreshment, promptly gave up any such ideas and were thankful that
-they had not begun the work of reconstruction and enlargement. Those
-who had were ruined, and to this day the huge hotels they reared may
-yet be often met with, a world too large, in country towns where once
-the mails and the stage-coaches passed, like a procession, day by day.
-It is quite by a happy chance that an old galleried house like the
-"White Hart" at Brentwood remains, and it is not too much to say that,
-had the Coaching Age lasted another ten years, it also would have been
-rebuilt.
-
-An amusing story, with Anthony Trollope for its central figure, belongs
-to the "Saracen's Head" at Chelmsford. For some years after he had
-won fame as a novelist he still retained his position in the General
-Post Office, of which he was a travelling inspector. On one of these
-official journeys he happened to be staying here, at the time when
-his _Barchester Towers_ was being issued, after the then prevailing
-fashion, in parts. He was seated in the coffee-room when two clergymen
-entered, one of them with the newly-issued part of the story. The
-cleric, cutting the pages, was soon immersed in the trials of the
-Bishop and the domineering ways of Mrs Proudie, who was rather a trial
-to Trollope's readers, as well as to the Bishop. Suddenly the clergyman
-put the book down. "Confound that Mrs Proudie!" he exclaimed, "I wish
-she were dead!"
-
-Trollope looked up. Introducing himself, he thanked the reader for thus
-accidentally telling him that the Bishop's wife had become wearisome,
-and undertook to have done with her. "Gentlemen," said he, "she shall
-die in the next number;" and die she accordingly did. But in defence
-of Trollope's truthful character-drawing, let it be said that, in the
-opinion of those likely to be best informed, Mrs Proudies may yet be
-found in a goodly proportion of the episcopal palaces of England.
-
-
-XIX
-
-
-RETURNING now to the Conduit, and making for the open road once more,
-Chelmsford is left by way of Springfield, past the successor of
-Chelmsford's finest old inn, the "Black Boy," demolished in 1857. The
-old inn of that name had stood on the spot for five centuries, and had
-been the halting-place of many famous travellers, among them a long
-line of Earls of Oxford, journeying between their castle at Hedingham
-and London; but none of these associations sufficed to save the house.
-Fragments of its carved beams are preserved in the local museum, but
-recall it as little as does the skeleton of the mastodon bring back
-in his majesty that denizen of the earth in the dim æons of the past.
-Chelmsford would dearly like many of its old buildings--wantonly
-demolished years ago--back again; but what is done cannot be undone,
-and there's an end on't. The "Cross Keys" remains, in a restored
-condition.
-
-[Illustration: THE "THREE CUPS" SIGN]
-
-The name of Springfield, the eastern suburb of Chelmsford, carries
-varying significances. To the mere newcomer it sounds idyllic; to the
-American from the New England States it recalls the Pilgrim Fathers and
-their settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts; and to the gaol-bird
-it means a "stretch" of longer or shorter duration. At Springfield, in
-fact, is situated the County Gaol, a gloomy building enlarged in recent
-years for the accommodation of the guests consigned to it at Assize
-time from the Shire Hall down yonder in the High Street. But, once
-past this depressing place, Springfield is pleasing and cheerful. Its
-long miscellaneous street, where the quaint sign of the "Three Cups"
-stands out, gives place to suburban villas situated in attractive
-grounds and designed to sound the ultimate note of picturesqueness.
-That this has been the aim of their architects is abundantly manifest
-in examples where, under a single roof, one may experience the
-mingled romantic feelings of inhabiting an Edwardian castle, a Tudor
-manor-house, a Jacobean grange, and a "Queen Anne" mansion; all done in
-red brick, gabled here and battlemented there, and, moreover, fitted
-with electric light and hot and cold water supply. To this end has
-castellated and domestic architecture unwound its long story during
-some five hundred years. It will be seen thereby that William of
-Wykeham, John Thorpe, and many another old-time architect did not live
-in vain.
-
-But if Springfield be modern as a suburb, it is ancient as a village.
-To see old Springfield, it is necessary to turn off the road to the
-left, and to journey a quarter of a mile, towards the old church, a
-noble building with mingled red brick and stone tower bearing the
-inscription, "Prayse God for al the good benefactors 1586." Oliver
-Goldsmith, it is quite erroneously said, took Springfield as the model
-for his _Deserted Village_. He certainly visited at an old cottage
-opposite the church, but the real Sweet Auburn is Lissoy, in Ireland.
-
-[Illustration: SPRINGFIELD CHURCH.]
-
-Beyond the village and facing the high road are the strangely
-impressive lodges of the historic estate of New Hall; new at the end
-of the fifteenth century, but declined into a respectable age by
-now and cobwebbed with much history and many legends. The place, now
-and for a considerable number of years past an alien convent, has
-been owned during a period of four hundred years by an astonishing
-number of historic personages, who have succeeded one another like
-flitting phantoms. Here the solemn reminder, "shadows we are," peeps
-out spectrally at every turn of Fate's wrist in the handling of the
-historic kaleidoscope. Built by Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, whose
-daughter and heiress became the wife of Sir Thomas Boleyn and mother
-of the unfortunate Anne, New Hall thus eventually came into possession
-of Henry the Eighth, who occasionally resided here and re-named it
-"Beaulieu." Elizabeth gave Beaulieu to Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of
-Sussex. By this time it had resumed its name of New Hall. Later owners
-were George Villiers, the magnificent Duke of Buckingham, and Oliver
-Cromwell, who had it as a gift from Parliament and exchanged it so soon
-as he decently could for the more magnificent, convenient and king-like
-residence of Hampton Court Palace. To him succeeded another Duke of
-Buckingham, and to him that soldier and king-maker, the crafty Monk,
-Duke of Albemarle, who kept great state at the Hall and was visited
-here, when he was suffering from gout and dropsy, by that scribbling
-traveller, Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany. With Monk the line of historic
-owners may be said to end, but constant change has ever been the lot
-of New Hall, and a succession of lesser lights followed him until the
-nuns set up their secluded life here and bade farewell to a vain
-world. That world passes by; the road on one side, the railway midway
-in the grounds, and if it gives them a thought at all, scorns them as
-morbid and idle malingerers from the work of the vineyard.
-
-[Illustration: NEW HALL LODGES]
-
-No glimpse of the Hall is gained from the road. All is emptiness,
-and the lichened brick and the crumbling stone vases of neighbouring
-boundary walls add to the melancholy air of failure and unfulfilled
-aims characteristic of the place.
-
-There is an air of romance about Boreham House, as seen from the
-tree-embowered road at a little distance from New Hall; an altogether
-deceptive air, let it be said, for the house is modern; a classic
-building of white brick. It is its situation at the head of a formal
-lake, fringed with stately elms, that confers the illusory distinction,
-but the explorer of old roads, who halts here and listens to the cawing
-rooks on the swaying tree-tops, or watches the water-fowl squattering
-on the lake, can weave his own romance to fit the scene. And if the
-house, though stately, be modern, yet it holds something of interest in
-the shape of the identical carriage used by the Duke of Wellington at
-the Battle of Waterloo. Greatly daring, they dragged it out in recent
-years to grace a Chelmsford holiday, when it was broken to pieces in an
-accident. Restored now to its original condition, it will need to be a
-great occasion indeed that brings it forth again.
-
-[Illustration: BOREHAM.]
-
-Boreham village lies hidden from the road, its old gabled cottages
-clustering round the still older church, itself embowered in lime
-trees whose delightful scent weights the July air with an Arcadian
-languor. The explorer who adventures into Boreham has every likelihood
-of having his nerves startled by the sudden glimpse at a bend of the
-road of a great mausoleum in the churchyard, with the door open,
-and, if it be midday, the sight, apparently, of one of the inmates
-of the silent tomb making a hearty lunch of bread-and-cheese. High
-noon being an hour when the supernatural is not so terrifying as
-to daunt investigation, it becomes evident on drawing nearer that
-the old tomb-house has been converted into a tool-house and general
-lumber-room, and that the figure seated within is the sexton enjoying
-his lunch, screened from the noonday heats. An inscription over the
-door of the ornate building--a copy of the Temple of the Winds at
-Athens--proclaims it the "Mausoleum Gentis Walthamianæ, Anno 1764";
-but the Walthams have disappeared, both from their mausoleum and the
-district. The body of the last appears to have been arrested for debt
-when on the road hither from Chelmsford. The sexton explains that the
-parish took over the Walthams' last home in consideration of repairing
-the ruinated roof. "We ha'n't the conwenience hee-ar, years ago,"
-says this typical Essex rustic, and goes on to tell how the oil and
-coals and candles for church use were formerly stored in the Radcliffe
-Chapel, where the Sunday School was also held. Three Radcliffes, Earls
-of Sussex, 1542-1583, grandfather, father, and son, lie in effigy side
-by side on an altar-tomb in that chapel, "as like as my fingers are to
-my fingers." "Old wawriors," the sexton calls them, and explains that
-their broken noses are due to the "ruff" having fallen in, years since.
-
-Returning to what, in Essex parlance, is called the "mine" road,
-Hatfield Peverel is reached, past the great red-brick Georgian mansion
-of Crix, standing in its meadows where the little River Ter comes
-down from Terling, flows under the road, turns the wheels of Hatfield
-Mill, and then hurries off, as though belated, for a rendezvous with
-the Chelmer, two miles away. It is an old mill, fronting the road with
-whitewashed brick walls, a chimney bearing warranty of its age in the
-inscription, "A.A. 1715"; but if that evidence were lacking it could
-be found in the position of the mill-house doorway, sunk into an area
-with the raising of the road for the building of the bridge that long
-ago replaced the watersplash at this crossing of the stream.
-
-Hatfield Peverel nowadays shows few signs of the heaths that once gave
-the place its original forename of "Heathfield," and the Peverels,
-identical with the Derbyshire Peverels of the Peak, are so utterly
-vanished that they have left not the slightest vestige of themselves
-in the church--that last resort of the antiquary in search of old
-manorial lords. It is true that on modern tablets built into the west
-front of the church the founding of a Benedictine Priory here in 1100
-by Ingelrica, mother of William Peverel, is alluded to, together with
-the rather scandalous story of the Peverel origin, but these things are
-decently wrapped in the combined obscurity of Latin and lichen-stains,
-so that both their monastic beneficence and their maternal origin are
-only dimly to be scanned by the vulgar or the hurried.
-
-It is the distance of half a mile from the high road to where Hatfield
-church lies secluded, adjoining the grounds of a mansion partly
-occupying the site of the Priory, and so named from that fact. It is
-here, if anywhere, that the "heaths" of Hatfield's original baptism
-must be sought, and accordingly some stretches of common-land may be
-discovered close by. But wayside Hatfield chiefly concerns us, though
-there be little enough to say of it, beyond the note that its closeness
-to the railway station has caused a certain growth and a certain
-amount of rebuilding, in alien and uncharacteristic style, of the old
-plaster cottages that were once the invariable feature of its street,
-and admirably figured forth the Essex manner of decoratively treating
-plaster-work. There remain here but two such cottages, bearing the date
-1703, and the initials M.R., with _fleur-de-lis_.
-
-
-XX
-
-
-A ROAD of almost unvarying flatness conducts in something under three
-miles to Witham, entered nowadays over an imposing bridge erected by
-the Essex County Council over a stream that luxuriates in no fewer than
-three separate and distinct names. As the River Witham, it confers a
-name upon the townlet; as the Brain, it performs the same sponsorial
-office for Braintree; but as the Podsbrook it is endowed with a title
-that smacks rather of the farcical sort. The traveller looking in
-summer-time over the railings of the bridge, down upon the mere thread
-of water oozing and stewing in the mud among the kitchen refuse of the
-neighbourhood, comes to the conclusion that it is not ill-named as the
-Podsbrook; but the Essex Council in bridging it so substantially think
-of it rather as the River Witham, which they have every right and cause
-to do, for the stream can avenge itself of those disfiguring potsherds
-and that contemptuous title in the most sardonic way when winter comes
-and the floods are out.
-
-The long street of Witham is remarkable for the number of large and
-handsome mansions dating from the time of Queen Anne, through the
-period of the four Georges. The greater number of the professional
-men of Essex would, from the number of those houses, appear to have
-settled in the little town and to have medically attended it and
-legally represented it to such an effect that it is only now beginning
-to recover from them and from the coming of the railway, which dealt a
-death-blow to the thriving coaching interest of the early part of the
-nineteenth century.
-
-For Witham was the half-way house, the dining-place of Mrs Nelson's
-famous "Ipswich Blues," the crack coaches on the seventy miles of road,
-which started at eight in the morning and by extraordinary exertions
-made Ipswich in something under six hours. Such remarkable performances
-as these were possible only by establishing six-mile stages in place
-of the average ten miles on other roads, and by placing leaders in
-readiness at the foot of hills like Brook Street Hill at Brentwood. The
-"Blue Posts" is gone, but the "White Hart," where some of the principal
-coaches drew up, is still in existence; its sign, a pierced effigy of
-that animal projecting from the front of the house and looming weirdly
-against the sky-line. There are many "White Harts" on the road to
-Norwich, the sign being just as peculiarly a favourite one here as that
-of the "Bay Horse" is on the Great North Road; but of all the many
-examples to be met along these hundred and twelve miles this is the one
-that is most quaintly out of proportion, with a head and neck less
-than half the size demanded by body and legs, and a golden collar and
-chain of prodigious strength. This heraldic device was the favourite
-badge of Richard the Second, whose connection with East Anglia was
-too slight for assuming this herd of White Harts to be especially
-allusive to him, or indeed more than a curious preference on the part
-of innkeepers along the Norwich Road.
-
-[Illustration: CHIPPING HILL.]
-
-Those who would seek the site of the original Witham must turn aside
-from the high road the matter of half a mile, past the railway station,
-to Chipping Hill, where, within the earthworks of a camp successively
-occupied and wrought upon by the Britons, the Romans and the Saxons,
-it will be found. Chipping Hill overlooks the pleasant valley of that
-triply-named river already mentioned, in 1749 described by Walpole as
-"the prettiest little winding stream you ever saw." The "sweet meadows
-falling down a hill" of which he speaks are there to this day, and as
-sweet, and the by-road that comes up from the gravelly hollow and cuts
-through the earthy circumvallation of the ancient stronghold climbs up
-romantically under the blossoming limes into as pretty a picture in
-the rural sort as you shall easily find. It is a little piece of Old
-England before railways came, or science and the ten thousand plagues
-of modern life, and the cheap builder of hideous new cottages were
-let loose upon the old order of things. Not a jarring note is in the
-picture of yellow-plastered and red-roofed old dwellings, flint-built
-church tower and red-brick rectory, set in, upon and around the
-swelling grassy banks where Romans kept guard and Saxons had both their
-fortress and their market, as evidenced by the still surviving name of
-Chipping, or Market Hill.
-
-Old East Anglian cottages have their own special characteristics,
-arising from local conditions, but one feature they share in common
-with all old rustic dwellings; the great size and relative importance
-of their genial chimneys, suggesting warmth and the lavish laying on of
-logs. They tell the passer-by of old times when wood was the only fuel;
-when it was to be gathered for the mere labour of gathering, and plenty
-of it was piled upon the generous open hearth. Modern cottages, all
-over the kingdom, tell a different tale, in the look of their meagre
-chimney-pots--a tale of coal, dearly purchased, economised in tiny
-grates.
-
-But the special features of East Anglian cottage architecture? They are
-here, in the highways and byways, for all to see who will. It is a land
-without stone, this East of England, where timber and flint and brick
-play important constructional parts in church and hall and manor-house,
-and where timber framing, lath and plaster, parge-work, and a few
-bricks for the chimney stacks, are combined to build up the cottages.
-
-Out of their necessities our ancestors contrived dwellings that for
-durability, comfort and artistry put modern houses, whether halls or
-cottages, to shame. The stone cottages of Somersetshire, Rutland,
-Leicestershire; the cob and thatch of Devon, the granite of Cornwall;
-the timber and plaster, or timber and brick noggin of Cheshire and
-Herefordshire are all evidence to this day of how skilfully our
-forbears employed the materials to their hands; and here in Essex
-you shall find a something in the art of cottage building hardly to
-be discovered elsewhere. This is the frequent use of parge-work, or
-pargetting, as it is sometimes called, on old cottage exteriors.
-Parge-work is the ornamental filling or surfacing of walls with
-plaster. The term is just as often applied to the elaborately-moulded
-and panelled plaster ceilings of Elizabethan and Jacobean halls as
-to the exterior decoration that forms so remarkable and pleasing a
-feature of Essex rustic cottage architecture. Few Essex villages that
-can claim to preserve many relics of old times are without examples of
-this peculiarly local style; although, to be sure, an ignorant want of
-appreciation has been the cause of much destruction of late years. The
-commoner forms of this decoration are frequently seen, in the easily
-incised patterns that even the unskilful can make in the plaster while
-still wet, by the aid of anything from a trowel to the finger-tips;
-just as a cook ornaments the dough of her uncooked pies. Many of
-these patterns are traditional; as much a matter of tradition, for
-instance, as are the needlework patterns wrought on the breast of an
-old smock-frock. The commonest is one produced by a process of combing
-the plaster in repetitions of a device resembling an elongated figure 8
-laid flat, or perhaps more narrowly resembling a hank of worsted. Other
-patterns, of whorls or concentric circles, stars, triangles and the
-like, are produced by wooden stamps. But the really beautiful examples
-are not the products of to-day. These belong to the seventeenth and
-eighteenth centuries, and are lavish in decoration of a Renaissance
-character moulded in high relief. Architects with sufficient culture
-and understanding to enable them to appreciate local style have, in
-recent years, reintroduced decoration of this character when building
-residences in the country, but many a humble cottager lives within
-walls that display a profusion of artistic devices unapproached by the
-houses of the wealthy.
-
-Discoveries close by the church on Chipping Hill have led to the belief
-that the building stands on, or near, the site of a Temple of Diana,
-and certainly Roman bricks are still visible in great numbers in the
-walls of the tower. A memorial in the chancel to Sir Gilbert East,
-who died in 1828, reminds the historian of some strange survivals
-existing at that time. The Easts were owners of the tithes at Witham,
-and although they lived so far distant as Berkshire, always insisted
-on their right of being buried here. Sir Gilbert East's body was, by
-his express direction, buried beside his wife, with a band of brass
-encircling both, engraved with the words from the marriage service,
-"Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." His funeral
-was a three days' business, with knights bannerets accompanying, and
-much pomp and circumstance. In the family vault they laid him, wrapped
-in linen, returned to Berkshire for the reading of the will, when, to
-the dismay of the family, it was found that the knight had expressly
-wished to be buried in woollen. The family solicitor hurried back and,
-disinterring his defunct client, saw to it that he was comfortably
-tucked in as desired.
-
-Between Witham and Kelvedon, where the road runs level, there is but
-one hamlet, an offshoot of Rivenhall known as Rivenhall End, where a
-cottage close by the "Fox" inn, once a toll-house, bears its former
-history, plain to read, in the evidence of its windows commanding
-either approach, up or down the road. A mile and a half beyond begins
-Kelvedon, set down in the flats beside the River Blackwater; "Kelvedon
-Easterford, vulgo Keldon," as Ogilby calls it; "consisting," he
-continues, "chiefly of inns"; a description which remains strikingly
-true to this day. This pronunciation, "Keldon," throws some light upon
-the following remarks of an old traveller who kept a diary of his
-wayfaring, and, writing in 1744, says, "From Colchester in an hour or
-two, I came to an old Village call'd Kildane, where they tell you the
-famous Massacre of the Danes began; but the true Name of the Town is
-Kelvedon."
-
-How Kelvedon can ever have escaped being called "Long" Kelvedon is
-a mystery, for it straggles on and on and must be nearly a mile in
-length; a street of handsome old residences, of cottages and humble
-shops of all ages, and old broken-backed taverns where the Essex
-labourer gathers night by night and discusses the prospect of the
-carraway crop and the likelihood of the entire agricultural interest
-presently, going _en masse_ to the "work'us." After which, with
-the courage of despair, and to drown his troubles, he will call for
-"another pot o' thrup'ny, missus," and, when closing time comes,
-slouch home through the mud and mist until the following evening, when
-the same programme is repeated. It is the agricultural labourer who
-supports the little wayside "publics" whose existence in such numbers
-puzzles the mid-day stranger, who, seeing them empty and apparently
-lifeless, wonders how they can possibly live. Business practically only
-begins when work in the fields is done, and the rent is not so high but
-that a few pots of beer a night represent a sufficient profit.
-
-It must not be supposed that Kelvedon has not its exquisite
-architectural relics of a bygone time, or that its inns are all of the
-rural beer-house type. Not at all. Chief among the inns of Kelvedon
-is the "Angel," which indeed is a house not only of considerable size
-and outstanding character, but of historic interest, as having been
-the favourite resting-place of William the Third on his journeys along
-this road. Its projecting porch is the first thing the traveller sees
-on entering the town from the direction of London, where the road
-swerves violently to the left, and again as violently to the right,
-forming a very awkward corner. "Angel Corner," said Alexander, of the
-"Retaliator" coach, "is the very devil of a corner." This remark was
-drawn from him on the occasion of his nearly driving into the porch,
-when trying conclusions with a rival charioteer.
-
-Almost opposite the still-existing "Angel" stood the equally extensive
-"Red Lion," long since retired from business and remodelled as a row
-of cottages. The histories of both houses, and of many another fine
-old inn, which might once have been written from the recollections of
-those who knew the old days of the road, are now in great part lost,
-and the world so much the poorer. Had scribblers then abounded, and the
-"personal" note of the modern journalist been sounded in those days,
-we should have known how King William came to and set out from his
-inn; how he looked, what he ate and drank, how many long clay pipes
-he smoked, and what comparisons he drew in conversation with Bentinck
-between the flat lands on the way from Kelvedon to Harwich and the
-still flatter lands of his native Holland. And besides such records of
-the great, we should then have been better furnished with the early
-history of coaching, which, if not indeed a sealed book, is at least a
-very short and fragmentary one.
-
-[Illustration: THE "ANGEL," KELVEDON.]
-
-
-XXI
-
-
-EARLY coaching days are wrapped round with strange adventures and the
-oddest tales; some, doubtless, of the _ben trovato_, rather than the
-most truthful, nature. But those stories of coaching miseries and
-adventure that have been proved truthful are themselves so surprising
-and incredible to modern ears that even the most improbable of
-uncertified tales cannot be dismissed as mere romancing. The tale of
-the Sprightly Lady and the Anxious Gentleman should, for instance,
-surely be picturesquely written up some day and included in some
-English (and therefore strictly proper) kind of Thousand and One
-Nights' Entertainments.
-
-The coach was nearing the outskirts of London. The rheumy air hung in
-dank and foggy vapours on the countryside and transformed innocent
-roadside trees and hedges into all sorts of menacing shapes. The guard
-let off his blunderbuss at a pollard willow that loomed suspiciously
-like a highwayman out of the reeking air, and the passengers all began
-to automatically turn their pockets out. It proved a false alarm, and
-purses and trinkets were returned. But the travellers were uneasy. One
-gentleman, in especial, feared for ten guineas he carried, whereupon
-a lady advised him to hide the money in his boot. He had hardly done
-this when a hoarse voice was heard commanding the coachman to stop.
-When the unhappy insides had picked themselves up from the straw at the
-bottom of the coach, into which they had unceremoniously been thrown
-by the driver's prompt obedience to that behest, they found themselves
-covered with a pistol projected through the door, and were invited to
-deliver up their money and jewellery. Those who had little gave it and
-were thankful it was no more. The lady protested that she had nothing;
-"but," said she, "if you look in this gentleman's boot you will find
-ten guineas." There was nothing for it but to take off that boot and
-hand over the coin; but when the highwayman had gone it was another
-matter, and the plundered traveller accused her, in no measured terms,
-of being the robber's accomplice. Bound to admit that appearances
-were against her, she (how like the Arabian Nights fashion!) invited
-the company to supper the following evening, when matters should be
-explained. They accepted, not, it is to be feared, very graciously.
-The time came, and, ushered into a splendidly-appointed room, with a
-supper laid, they were re-introduced to their acquaintance of the night
-before. When the repast was over she opened a pocket-book. "Here," she
-said, addressing the loser of the ten guineas, "in this book, which I
-had with me in the coach, are bank-notes to the amount of one thousand
-pounds. I judged it better for you to lose ten guineas than for me to
-be robbed of this valuable property. As you have been the means of my
-saving it, I entreat your acceptance of this bank bill of one hundred
-pounds."
-
-Much of the humour that went to lighten old road travelling was of an
-evanescent kind, and has not survived, but a few examples, preserved
-in contemporary literature, keep their flavour. Among them is the
-narrative called "Three Blind 'Uns and a Bolter." "I recollect," said
-the Jehu who told the tale, "having a sanctified chap for a passenger,
-and nothing that was either said or done was at all to his mind. On
-that day I happened to have a very awkward team--three blind ones and
-a very shy off leader, and I confess that two or three times I lost my
-patience as well as temper. My near leader pulled to such a degree that
-I was obliged to get down and put up her bearing-rein up to the top of
-the bit, and curb her enough to break her jaw. After starting again, I
-could deal with her very well for about a mile, when her mouth got dead
-again, and I was wicked enough to let drive a few hearty damns at her,
-my pious companion all the while exhorting me to patience. 'Patience be
-damned,' at last said I, fairly sick of the two; upon which he bolted
-as if he had been galvanised.
-
-"'Pray, sir,' said he, 'did you ever hear of Job?'
-
-"'He can't keep out of the shop,' thought I, 'but I won't have it;' so
-I answered, 'What coach does he drive?'
-
-"'Awful in the extreme,' said he, throwing up his hands, 'I fear you
-don't read your Bible; but I will tell you--he was the most patient man
-that ever existed.'
-
-"'But, sir,' said I, 'did he ever drive three blind 'uns and a bolter?'
-
-"'Certainly not,' replied he; 'he was not a coachman.'
-
-"'Then it's accounted for,' said I, 'for if ever he had had four such
-horses to deal with as I have here, he would have had no more patience
-than myself.'"
-
-[Illustration: "THREE BLIND UNS AND A BOLTER." _From a Print after H.
-Alken._]
-
-Here, at Kelvedon, one of the old-time coachmen played a drunken trick
-that would have been impossible in the last years of coaching, when
-discipline was strict and drivers less eccentric than they had been. He
-had just driven the London stage from Ipswich, and having more by good
-luck than careful driving brought his passengers safely to dinner at
-the "Angel," turned into the bar for a jorum of that favourite drink
-of coachmen--rum. Emerging, he perceived one of the Harwich to London
-fish-waggons, fully laden, standing at the door, and, mounting on to
-the driver's seat, unobserved, he wheeled the waggon round and dashed
-off at top speed on the way to Colchester, coming to grief at Lexden
-Hill, where the huge conveyance was upset and two tons weight of fish
-strewed the king's highway. The mad coachman survived to repent his
-escapade, but he went on one leg for the remainder of his life.
-
-"Other times, other manners" is a saying that assumes an added
-force when contrasting the Coaching Age with the Age of Steam. Our
-fellow-travellers by railway, who glare at us, and we at them, like
-strange cats on a roof-top, have little idea of the chivalry that ruled
-on the road a hundred years ago. Glance, if you dare, at a lady who
-may be the only other occupant of a railway carriage with you, and
-she wonders whether she had not better call the guard; but it was,
-in the days of our great-grandfathers, almost the bounden duty of
-the gentlemen to see that the ladies in whose company the chances of
-the road might place them lacked nothing that courtesy could supply;
-whether it were merely the aid of an arm in walking up one of those
-hills the coaches could only climb unladen, or the more material
-attention involved in seeing that the dear creatures were duly supplied
-with refreshments. It was, for instance, long the chivalric custom
-of the gentlemen travelling by coach to pay for the breakfasts and
-dinners of the unprotected ladies who might be travelling by the same
-conveyance. "I vow," says one of these old travellers, "'tis a pleasure
-in a cavalier to do so; but, the Lord save us, what a prodigious
-appetite does not the swiftness of the travelling confer upon the fair,
-whose lassitude and vapours at other times render them incapable of
-more than drinking a dish of that noxious herb they call 'tay,' a thing
-which it is only fitting that the heathenish and phanatick peoples of
-the Indies should partake of. I protest that the ladies of the coach,
-when we alighted at the 'Angel' at Kelvedon, finding they could not be
-suited with tay, went to it with a right good will and left as good an
-account of the claret and the beef as if they had been going empty for
-a week. Spare me, I do beg, from your languishing creatures who would
-die of a surfeit of two biscuits at home, but compare with the most
-valiant of trenchermen abroad."
-
-This protesting gentleman might, had he thought of it, have exclaimed
-with Othello on the pity "that we can call these delicate creatures
-ours and not their appetites."
-
-He must have been particularly hard hit in the pocket by the robust
-appetites of his fellow-travellers, but did not, however, let his
-feelings appear, for he goes on to tell how he gave as a toast, "the
-ladies, bless them, whose bright eyes," etc., etc.--a toast we have
-many times heard of; and, indeed, rather flatters himself upon having
-"made an impression." He, in fact, seems to have been like Constable,
-in a way; for it was said of that painter that he was "a gentleman in a
-stage-coach; nay, more, a gentleman at a stage-coach dinner." "Then,"
-said one, hearing that praise, "he must have been a gentleman indeed!"
-
-That is very significant. It was, then, only your very paragon among
-gentlemen who could sustain the character at a stage-coach dinner.
-His manners might survive the strain of the journey itself, and even
-the sight and sound of lovely Phyllis, adorable when awake, snoring,
-unlovely to eye and ear, with open mouth and suffocating gurgles; but
-when after the tedious stage had been accomplished and the passengers
-had descended, irritable, hungry and thirsty, to a dinner scarce to
-be eaten, even at express speed, in the short time allowed, then, ay
-_then_, my friends, came the test! No man so insensible to politeness
-as a starving man, and few attentions were paid to the ladies by
-strangers whose sole chance of obtaining the dinner for which they had
-paid was the resolute determination to attend only to their own wants.
-
-The discomforts of travelling by coach certainly outweighed the
-pleasures of that old-world method. A pleasant day and the open country
-made a seat on the outside of stage or mail an eminence not willingly
-to be exchanged for any other mode of conveyance then known; but, as
-little David Copperfield found on his first coach journey, _night_ on
-a coach was an experience once gained not willingly repeated. Being
-put between two gentlemen, to prevent his falling off, David found
-himself nearly smothered by their falling asleep, so that he could
-not help crying out, "Oh! if you please!" which they didn't like at
-all, because it woke them. With the rising of the sun David found his
-fellow-passengers sleeping easier than they had done during the night,
-when terrific gasps and snorts disturbed their midnight slumbers. As
-the sun rose higher, so their sleep became lighter and they gradually
-awoke, one by one, each one indignant when charged with having slept.
-During the rest of his career, David invariably observed "that of all
-human weaknesses, the one to which our common nature is the least
-disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is the weakness of having
-gone to sleep in a coach."
-
-
-XXII
-
-
-[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF SPURGEON.]
-
-COACHING times and coaching inns have long kept us at the very
-threshold of Kelvedon, which has a modern claim to notice of which it
-is not a little proud. Spurgeon was born here. Although the figure of
-that great wielder of homely and untutored pulpit oratory is but one
-among several preachers in the same family, there is only one possible
-Spurgeon when that name is mentioned. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born
-in a house still pointed out, on June 19, 1834; the eldest son of the
-Rev. John Spurgeon. The old cottage is now the "Wheatsheaf" beer-house
-and has had a bay window and a brick frontage added since that time.
-Close by is a now highly respectable and not a little dignified private
-residence known still as the "Tommy shop," although almost seventy
-years have passed since it was used as a kind of restaurant and canteen
-for the navvies then working on the construction of the Great Eastern
-Railway, which runs at the rear.
-
-The oldest house in Kelvedon is doubtless the "Sun," which dates from
-the middle of the fifteenth century and has within recent years had its
-carved woodwork, long covered with plaster, once more exposed to view.
-It stands, almost the last house in the town, by the bridge over the
-Blackwater, on the way to Gore Pit.
-
-Gore Pit is generally said to be the site of a battle. _What_ battle,
-however, historians do not and cannot specify; and indeed this name,
-bloody though it may sound to modern ears, has, despite the popular
-legend of the derivation of Kelvedon from "Kildane," perhaps no such
-sanguinary association, and is probably a contraction of the old word
-"coneygore," or rabbit warren.
-
-It is, despite its name, a pretty and a peaceful hamlet, with a
-blacksmith's shop and a roadside horse-pond, and surrounded by the
-fruit-farms of a great jam-making company. The church of Feering can be
-seen across the flat fields, on the other side of the railway. Messing
-lies a mile away, in the other direction.
-
-Let the idle wayfarer, curious as to the name of Gore Pit, speak to the
-blacksmith on the subject, and he will be told, with the seriousness
-of implicit belief, of the fighting of a great battle here, and that
-the blood ran down into "that there horse-pond." Moreover, that at
-Kelvedon--"Killdane they used to call it--they killed the Danes; at
-Feering they feared 'em, and at Messing they made a mess of it"; which
-seems to very correctly reflect the views of the neighbourhood on local
-history in ancient times, as reflected in place-names!
-
-Rural Essex, in the aspect of its fields and meadows, is revealed along
-these miles in its most characteristic form. It is, in many respects,
-unlike other counties. In some ways the unhappy industry of farming has
-fared worse here than elsewhere, and many holdings have for years past
-gone uncultivated, and the dock, the thistle and other lusty weeds have
-resumed an evil possession of fields once kept clean and trim. But in
-the smaller operations of husbandry Essex has always been, and in some
-districts still is, remarkably successful; while, although the farmer
-protests that it does not pay to grow any kind of grain, the yellowing
-seas of autumnal cornfields are still a prominent feature of the
-landscapes of Essex and of its neighbouring Suffolk. Essex and Suffolk
-are old-world, far beyond the rest of England, and in growing wheat
-in these times, when a cornfield is a rare sight in other parts of
-the country and when "our daily bread" is chiefly compounded of grain
-grown in North America, Russia, or the Argentine, they maintain their
-singularity. It does the heart good to see the ripening wheatfields of
-East Anglia, to see the gathered stooks in the reaped perspectives,
-and to hear the hum of the threshing machine; for the sights and sound
-seem to carry us back to that England of a bygone age, when Constable
-painted such fields, and when they were numerous enough throughout the
-land to feed the population. Here and there one may still find fields
-of that famous grain, the "Essex Great Wheat," which grows at least
-two feet higher than the ordinary varieties, and is greatly prized for
-the length and stoutness of its straw; but it is a few miles to the
-north-eastward, in the light lands around Harwich, that the Great Wheat
-may be found. Seed and herb-growing are the most prominent industries
-between the Blackwater and the Colne, and the roadside fields are
-striped to wonderment in summer with the rainbow colours of the
-seedsman's trial-grounds. The heavy perfume of stocks and mignonette,
-the claret colour of that gorgeous flower, the "sops-in-wine," the
-gay and varied displays of asters, marguerites, marigolds and a
-hundred others make a midsummer fairyland of the levels that loom
-so drear and misty in the long months of winter. Nor is it only for
-the flower-garden that the Essex seedsman labours. With the sights
-and scents of the flaunting beauties of the garden are mingled the
-homelier ones of mint, grey-green sage and other dowdy kitchen herbs,
-together with the subtle beauty and piercing odour of wide-spreading,
-blue-grey lavender-fields. Even the unromantic mangold, running to seed
-in bush-like shape, sends forth a sweet and pleasing aroma, while the
-yellow mustard contributes its share.
-
-The byways of farming are now, as we have already said, the most--some
-would say the only--profitable kind of husbandry in Essex. Some forms
-of cultivation have largely migrated to other counties, but others
-remain. The growing of the clothiers' teasel was discontinued with
-the decay of the Colchester and Norwich baize industry, and is now
-carried on in other parts of the country, close to districts where
-textile fabrics are still manufactured; but there was a time when,
-along this road between Chelmsford and Colchester, the fields of
-teasels were quite as much a feature as those of mustard are even
-yet. The clothiers' teasel, greatly prized in the East Anglian baize
-manufacture, was nothing but a weed, found useful and cultivated
-accordingly. An aristocratic relation of the less spiky burrs that have
-not been rescued from the hedges and ditches and are still allowed to
-grow wild, the clothiers' teasel was cultivated so far back as the
-reign of Richard the First, but the "common" burr will have to be
-contented with its lowly estate to the end of time, unless something
-unexpected happens.
-
-To "stick like a burr" is proverbial, and the cultivated teasels have
-an even more pronounced clinging property. Furnished as they are with
-natural hooks, they were used in baize-making, and are still employed
-in the cloth trade for raising the nap of the material. The dried heads
-are fixed to cylinders, between which the fabric is passed, and their
-sharp spines, re-curved like so many minute fish-hooks, draw up the
-surface of the cloth. Thus the teasel was raised from its character
-of a worthless weed, and for many years Essex farmers devoted large
-portions of their holdings to its cultivation. It was hoed and kept
-clear of other vagrom weedlings; its heads were cut by hand and
-dried with every care, and eventually were eagerly competed for by
-manufacturers at £12 a load. When the old cloth manufacturers left East
-Anglia, a goodly portion of the Essex farmers' livelihood went with
-them.
-
-Around Colchester, too, is cultivated that other weed, the colewort,
-for cole or rape-seed, which has the quadruple properties of feeding
-cage-birds, yielding rape-oil, making cake for cattle, and of manuring
-the fields. Coriander and carraway seeds, too, help to prop the
-husbandman's fortunes. Corianders and carraways are what "the faculty"
-knows as "carminatives," curative of flatulency; like the once popular
-"eringo root," a candied preparation of the root of the sea holly
-that grows by the estuaries of Essex rivers. Eringo root was once a
-favourite specific for lung troubles, but its popularity waned at last,
-and the preparation of it gradually died out and became extinct about
-1865, when the only manufacturer was an elderly spinster who supplied
-a chemist in High Street, Colchester. Corianders are still used in the
-making of kümmel and other liqueurs, and carraway seeds, which look
-like commas, are those familiar denizens of "seed cake" that stick in
-the teeth and refuse to be dislodged, and are the central feature of
-"carraway comfits."
-
-Farmers who do not occupy themselves with seed-growing have passed
-through evil times, but prosperity beams cheerfully from the seedsman's
-well-tilled land, and fruit-farming has come to render cultivation
-profitable. Still, to the shiftless farmer, who cannot adapt himself to
-new conditions, agricultural depression in Essex is a very real thing.
-Here, shambling along the road, comes such a one, a small cultivator, a
-son of the soil. He does not hurry. Who, indeed, would hurry in rural
-Essex, in these times, when the Bankruptcy Court and the Workhouse
-are said to close every vista? Besides, he has been hard at work in
-the fields, and much of that kind of labour takes all the lamb-like
-friskiness out of the limbs.
-
-A conversation, leaning over a field-gate very badly in need of repair,
-elicits the fact that he has just come away, worsted, from another
-bout in the eternal conflict between Man and Nature. No conflict with
-wild beasts, but a struggle, really just as fierce, for life or a
-livelihood, with weeds--the sorry heritage of the present occupier
-from the slovenly or bankrupt farmer before him. A bookmaker, gazing
-upon the weedy scene, would back Nature pretty heavily against the
-cultivator.
-
-"Farmin'?" says our rustic friend; "no great shakes, I tell 'ee. It
-don't pay to grow nawthen now, an' it gets wusser'n wusser. All the
-fields goin' under grass, for ship'n cattle. An' the land's fair
-pisoned with weeds. Yow see them 'ere beece, in that there close down
-along o' the chutch? There's a mort o' docks in that 'ere close. More
-docks'n grass, an' I thinks warsley o' the chanst of cattle gettin'
-a fair bite off'n it. Don't know what docks is? Wish I didden! I've
-bin a-pullin' of 'em till my back's pretty nigh broke, and I'm fair
-dunted with 'em. Last year there worn't ne'er a one: t'yen there's
-a mort on 'em. Where do they come from? God A'mighty knows. _They_
-don't want no cultivation, bless 'ee. There ain't no land so chice but
-what'll grow docks." Here he pulls out his "muckinger," that is to say,
-his handkerchief--the Essex dialect is not the most elegant form of
-speech--and, trumpeting on it like an elephant, with indignation, goes
-his way.
-
-The "chutch" in question is that of Feering, on the other side of
-the Great Eastern Railway, along whose embankment go the frequent
-Prussian-blue-painted locomotives with long trains at their tail, past
-Mark's Tey Junction, whose forest of signal-masts is visible ahead,
-into Colchester. With the raising of that embankment went the life of
-this highway, only now experiencing a revival.
-
-
-XXIII
-
-
-THE cyclists, the pedestrians, the motor-men, who adventure along the
-road rejoice at its smooth surface, and find little incident to mark
-their journey. A punctured tyre, a defective valve alone hinder those
-mechanical travellers; while the pedestrian finds a limit set to his
-progress only by his walking powers. Even so, he may obtain to Norwich
-long before the others, for the railway hugs the road closely for
-three parts of the distance, and stations are frequent.
-
-In any case, the curtain has long since been rung down upon the Romance
-of the Road. If this were the place to do it, that romance might be
-recounted at great length; sometimes rising to tragical height, again
-sinking to comedy or farce. But we must take our romance as it comes,
-and, reading as we run, be content to act a vicarious part in the long
-story. And we may well be so content, for to have essayed the journey
-in days of old often meant a "speaking with strangers in the gates"
-that entailed fighting on unequal terms, with the possibility of a
-roadside grave and the tolerable certainty of being robbed of anything
-and everything worth the taking.
-
-Nowadays, the trim suburbs of the towns stretch out on either side
-along the old highway and join hands with the villages; so that when
-travellers of the speedier sort spurn the dust from their flying
-wheels, they think the country is becoming one vast town, and are
-depressed and regretful accordingly. But when the road was the sole
-means of travelling and the towns were still girdled by their walls and
-entered only by fortified gates, the wayfarer welcomed the sight of a
-house in the lonely country between town and village. Even to the rich
-these perils came home, and in the more lawless times they were beset
-with troubles of their own.
-
-Royal progresses were not infrequent along the Norwich Road, and they
-have elsewhere been duly chronicled, but they are things apart and
-give no glimpse of old wayfaring life. If we are at all in the way of
-conjuring up that old-time traffic, we must certainly not forget the
-odd processions that trailed their slow length after my lord and my
-lady, changing residence from one castle or manor-house to another.
-My Lord Duke of Norfolk in Elizabeth's time had an exquisite palace,
-of which Macaulay has told us, in Norwich, and the Earls of Oxford
-no doubt kept great state in their castle at Hedingham, but, for all
-their magnificence, they were obliged to take many of their household
-goods with them when flitting from place to place; for the very
-excellent reason that they did not, certainly up to less than three
-hundred years ago, possess more than one fully-equipped establishment.
-When the nobility of old left one of their manor-houses for another
-they commonly took their bedding and a good deal of their furniture
-with them. In even more remote days they removed the glass from their
-windows as well, and stored it carefully away until their return.
-_That_, of course, was a custom of very long ago, when even the most
-luxurious were content with--or, at any-rate, had to endure--things
-which nowadays would drive the inmates of a casual ward to rebellion;
-but, even when the Stuarts reigned, the great ones of the land moved
-from home to home with long baggage-trains and with their entire staff
-of domestics. No board-wages, then! The whole establishment took the
-road, down to the scullery-maids and the hangers-on of the kitchen who
-took charge of the domestic pots and pans. My lord's pages and the
-dignitaries of his household formed the advance-guard; the lowest in
-the scale, who travelled with the culinary utensils and even took the
-coals with them, were, appropriately enough, the "black guard." The
-black guard were probably a very rough lot indeed, at odds with soap
-and water, and on every count deserving of their name, which has in
-the course of centuries obtained a different application, as a term of
-reproach to individuals of moral rather than physical uncleanliness.
-
-Turning from general conditions of travelling to particular travellers,
-there comes tripping along the road an antic fellow, one Will Kemp, who
-danced from London to Norwich in the year 1600; a frolic he undertook
-for a wager, afterwards writing and publishing a book about it, which
-he called _Kemp's Nine Days' Wonder_. Will Kemp was accompanied by
-a drummer whose play upon parchment helped to sustain his flagging
-energies as he skipped it to Widford and thence by a route of his own
-through Braintree to Norwich.
-
-Sprightly, irresponsible Kemp, cracking weak jokes and playing the
-fool, is succeeded in the memories of the road, after an interval of
-some eighty years, by a very grave and responsible figure indeed;
-no less an one than that of King William the Third, on his frequent
-journeys between his dear Holland and his little-loved Kingdom of
-England. Burdened with the care of an alien realm, that saturnine
-little figure with the hooked nose was a familiar sight at Kelvedon,
-where, travelling to and from Harwich, he was wont to stay at the
-"Angel" inn, which still confronts the wayfarer on entering the village
-from London. When the "little gentleman in black" had done his work
-and King William of blessed Protestant memory was no more, the Norwich
-Road, so far as Colchester, was still graced with Royal travellers,
-for, with the coming of the Hanoverians, Harwich became more than ever
-a favourite port of entry and departure, and the choleric early Georges
-knew this Essex landscape well. This way, too, came the Schwellenburgs,
-the Keilmanseggs and the other vulgar and grotesque figures of that
-grotesque and vulgar Court.
-
-Among these figures comes that of the Princess Charlotte of
-Mecklenburg-Strelitz, arrived for the first time in England, in 1761,
-to marry George the Third. One German princess is very like another
-in the pages of history, and the likeness remains even when they
-become queens, so that it is not a little difficult to disentangle a
-Caroline from a Charlotte. Their virtues are of the same drab domestic
-order, and their faces partake of the common fund of unilluminated
-dulness distributed between the Mecklenburg-Strelitzes, the
-Sonderburg-Augustenburgs, and the dozens of other twopenny-halfpenny
-principalities made familiar by German princely marriages and
-intermarryings. On their mere merits, these personages would find no
-place here, though they travelled all their lives up and down the
-road; but in the circumstances of this particular Princess Charlotte's
-journey there are some incidents worth mentioning. She landed at
-Harwich, and comes into our road at Colchester, September 7, 1761. At
-Colchester she was presented with a box of eringo-root, the famous
-local production highly valued for the cure of pulmonary diseases,
-prepared from the root of the sea holly. Graciously receiving this in a
-box "parfumed and guilt," her carriage swept on towards Witham, where
-she stayed the night at a seat then owned by Lord Abercorn, supping
-with open doors so that all who would might gaze upon their future
-Queen. Next day the journey to London was resumed. The King's coach
-was in readiness at Romford, and into it she changed. At Mile End a
-squadron of Life Guards was in waiting as an escort, and from that
-point the procession was viewed by thousands. But by this time the
-September day was closing. The Duchess of Hamilton, who accompanied the
-Princess, looked at her watch. "We shall hardly have time to dress for
-the wedding," she said.
-
-"The wedding?"
-
-"Yes, madam; it is to be at twelve."
-
-On that the Princess fainted, as well she might. It really took place
-at 9 p.m., instead of three hours later. The King, it is upon record,
-was a little disappointed at the first sight of his bride; but that has
-generally been the way with our Royal marriages. The eldest son of this
-amiable pair, George the Fourth, similarly saw his bride for the first
-time practically on the steps of the altar, and his disappointment
-was keen. "No sooner," we read, "had he approached her than, as if to
-subdue the qualms of irrepressible disgust, he desired the dignified
-envoy to bring him a glass of brandy." The Princess, we are told,
-"expressed surprise," which statement requires no credulity for belief.
-Henry the Eighth's disappointment when he saw Anne of Cleves was
-reflected in the words in which he likened her to a "Flanders mare."
-
-Two years later, in 1763, we find Dr Johnson and his inevitable Boswell
-journeying down the road; Boswell on his way to Harwich for Utrecht,
-and the Doctor good-naturedly accompanying him as far as that seaport.
-They set out by coach on the 5th of August, early in the morning;
-among their fellow-travellers a fat, elderly gentlewoman and a young
-Dutchman, both inclined to conversation. Dining at an inn on the way,
-the lady remarked that she had done her best to educate her children,
-and particularly that she never suffered them to be a moment idle.
-
-"I wish, madam," said Johnson, "you would educate me too; for I have
-been an idle fellow all my life."
-
-"I am sure, sir," said she, "you have not been idle;" which was a
-mere empty compliment, for she had not the least idea whom she was
-addressing.
-
-"Nay, madam," rejoined the Doctor, "it is very true; and that gentleman
-there," pointing to Boswell, "has been idle. He was idle at Edinburgh.
-His father sent him to Glasgow, where he continued to be idle. He then
-came to London, where he has been very idle; and now he is going to
-Utrecht, where he will be as idle as ever."
-
-At this, Boswell was very wroth, and asked Johnson, in an aside, how he
-could expose him so.
-
-"Pooh, pooh," retorted the immortal Samuel, "they know nothing about
-you, and will think of it no more." Nor, in all probability, did they.
-
-In this manner they travelled, the gentlewoman talking violently
-against the Roman Catholics and the horrors of the Inquisition;
-Johnson, to the astonishment of all the passengers, save Boswell, who
-knew his ways, defending the Inquisition and its methods with "false
-doctrines." This would appear to have annoyed the rest of the company,
-for Boswell relates that Johnson presently appeared to be very intent
-upon ancient geography. Not so intent, however, but that he noticed
-Boswell giving a shilling to the coachman at the end of one of the
-stages, when it was the custom to give only sixpence. The great man
-took Boswell aside and scolded him for it, saying that what he had
-done would make the coachman dissatisfied with all the rest of the
-passengers, who had given him no more than his due.
-
-They stopped at Colchester a night, at an inn unfortunately not
-specified, Johnson talking of the town with veneration for having stood
-a siege for Charles the First.
-
-The last great occasion on the road, before railways took its traffic
-away, was the funeral, in 1821, of George the Fourth's Queen. Caroline
-of Brunswick had landed at Greenwich twenty-seven years before: her
-body was embarked for Brunswick on August 16, 1821, after a hurried
-three days' journey from Kensington. So many years have passed by
-since the stormy times when the nation was divided between partisans of
-the King on one side and the Queen on the other--both parties equally
-violent--that the long and bitter quarrels between the "First Gentleman
-in Europe" and the most vulgar and indiscreet princess of modern times
-have become historic, and no longer divide families, or cause fathers
-to cut their sons off with a shilling, as they did when the trial of
-the Queen was a recent event. George, Prince Regent and King, was no
-saint; Caroline, Princess and Queen, was at least odiously vulgar and
-utterly wanting in dignity and the commonest dictates of prudence. They
-were not worth quarrelling about, but their feuds were taken up by
-parties and made political missiles of, so that even the occasion of
-the Queen's funeral was made the excuse for a riot by her followers,
-who were indignant at seeing her remains hurried out of the country,
-as they thought, without proper respect. The Queen died on the 7th of
-August, and it was decided to take her body to Brunswick. "Indecent
-haste" was the expression used by the _Times_ of that day in describing
-the funeral arrangements for the 14th, but that journal was a most
-violent enemy of the then Government and had always supported the Queen
-and vilified the King as far as it could safely be done.
-
-It was proposed to complete the journey of eighty miles between
-Kensington and Harwich in two days, and the _Times_ furiously bellowed
-in its reports that the procession was hurried through London at a
-trot. However that may be, certainly the pace was decently slow when
-on the open road. Ilford was reached, for instance, at 6·15 that
-afternoon, but Romford, only five and a half miles further on, not
-until 7·45; an extravagantly slow rate of progression, even for a
-funeral. At Romford the cortège was met by sympathisers with blazing
-torches, who stood on guard round the coffin, while the wearied escort
-and the few mourners refreshed at a roadside inn.
-
-At eleven o'clock the journey was resumed by the light of a full moon
-which shone in splendour from a cloudless summer sky. Throughout the
-night they travelled, coming into Chelmsford at four o'clock in the
-morning. Here the coffin was placed in the church until a start was
-made again, seven hours later. At last Colchester was reached, at
-five o'clock in the afternoon, the famished escort leaving the hearse
-unguarded in the High Street, while they took their fill at the "Three
-Cups." Thus, in its squalor and irreverence, the passing of this Queen
-of England resembled the funeral of a pauper, without kith or kin.
-
-It had been proposed to complete the journey to Harwich that day,
-but, after violent disputes in the street between opposing factions,
-it was agreed to defer the departure until the next morning, and to
-deposit the coffin meanwhile in St Peter's Church. Inside that sacred
-building, disputes broke out afresh, one party wishing to affix a plate
-on the coffin-lid, bearing the inscription, "Caroline of Brunswick, the
-injured Queen of England," while the other vehemently objected. The
-quarrel was finally settled by agreeing to postpone fixing the plate
-until after the embarkation.
-
-With the start made the following morning at half-past five, this
-melancholy procession leaves the Norwich Road, and history goes with
-it. The tale is done, the colophon reached.
-
-
-XXIV
-
-
-IF we seek some touchstone by which to test the progress of a century
-or so in civilisation, there is scarce a better than found in
-comparison between the condition of the roads in old and modern times.
-That Waller could, in all sincerity, speak of "vile Essexian roads"
-is not remarkable: he was a poet, dealt in superlatives and lived in
-the seventeenth century. But that Arthur Young, a hundred years later,
-could with equal sincerity, and in more emphatic language, describe
-Essex roads as "rocky lanes, with ruts of inconceivable depth," is
-startling. It was in 1768 he penned that indictment, adding that they
-were so overgrown with trees as to be impervious to the sun, and strewn
-with stones "as big as a horse, and full of abominable holes." It were,
-he concludes, a misuse of language to call them turnpikes, for they
-were rich in ponds of liquid dirt; while loose flints and vile grips
-cut across to drain off the water made the traveller's pilgrimage a
-weariness.
-
-The modern reader, perusing all these manifold sins and wickednesses
-of the roads, rather wonders how they could all have been crowded
-on to such truly vile ways, and if a stone were as big as a horse,
-how room could have been found beside it for holes, ponds and other
-objectionable features. But Arthur Young was a truthful man in general.
-
-To-day the Essex high roads are as near perfection as any in the home
-counties, even though the byways be steep and rough and more than
-usually winding.
-
-It is in these byways that he who seeks rural Essex shall find. The
-dramatic suddenness and completeness with which, a few hundred yards
-from the high road, the sophisticated wayside towns and hamlets are
-exchanged for the unspoiled rusticity of the original villages is
-surprising. In these lanes the older rustics talk and think much as
-their grandfathers did, but the rising generation unhappily do not,
-and the Essex rustic in general, like his fellows elsewhere, has
-almost wholly discarded the old dress of the peasantry. Only the very
-old or the more remote yet wear the smock-frock--the "round frock,"
-or the "gaberdine," as they called it--that was once as honourable a
-distinction of the ploughmen, herds, or carters as are the uniforms of
-our soldiers and sailors.
-
-The time is long past since a clean smock-frock, corded breeches,
-worsted stockings and well-greased lace-up boots formed the approved
-rural costume for Sundays or holidays, just as the same articles of
-apparel in a "second-best" condition made the workaday wear. The
-Sunday costume of the agricultural labourer is now a cheap and clumsy
-travesty of the clothes worn by townsfolk, and in hideous contrast
-with his surroundings. Exactly what it is like may be seen on any
-advertisement hoarding in the outskirts of Chelmsford, Colchester and
-lesser towns, where pictorial posters bid Giles go to Shoddy's for
-cheap outfits. Sunday mornings find him flaunting his finery in the
-village street; his would-be stylish boots creaking, his every article
-of wear writ large with vulgarity. Often he carries gloves in those
-large hands of his, rough with honest week-day toil, and a pair may
-thus last him for years--for he dare not attempt to put them on. Would
-that he equally purchased his cheap cigars for show and refrained from
-smoking them!
-
-But there the village dandy is. Often his pocket-handkerchief is
-scented; generally his hair is glossy with grease; and he would not
-consider himself fully equipped without watch and chain, scarf-pin,
-ring and walking stick. To grease his boots he would be ashamed. _They_
-must be brightly polished, even though his manners are not, and his
-language defiles the village street what time the bells are ringing
-to church. Such is Young England in the villages at the dawn of the
-Twentieth Century. These things may spell Progress, but they are rather
-pitiful.
-
-It is a little difficult, in presenting a sketch of his ancestor of
-a hundred years or more ago, to avoid drawing too favourable a view
-of him; but the rustic in old times certainly seems to have matched
-much better with his surroundings than is the case nowadays. He made
-no attempts to dress up to town standards, and if he wanted to shine
-above his fellows did so by virtue of superior neatness only. Perhaps
-he had the finer instincts of the two, or more likely lacked the
-opportunities for bad taste that surround his descendants. Certainly,
-if we are to believe in the origin of the smock-frock, as put forward
-by some antiquaries, we must sorrowfully admit that the rustic's remote
-ancestor had as great a longing for unsuitable display in dress as
-can possibly be charged to the present generation. The smock-frock
-is, in fact, traced back by some to the ecclesiastical garments worn
-at Mass by deacons and sub-deacons, at the time when the Reformation
-swept vestments out of every village church in the land. Those who are
-familiar with genuine old smock-frocks have noticed the elaborate and
-often beautiful needlework on collar and breast. The devices appear to
-have a traditional likeness, all over the country, and consist either
-of Celtic-looking whorls, or of semi-decorative flower forms, or of
-lozenge patterns. The comparative simplicity or elaboration of this
-needlework depended solely upon the fancy, or the time at command, of
-the wearer's women-folk whose work it was. Whence came this tradition?
-It is thought from the tunicles of the minor clergy, which were
-certainly decorated in the same position, if not in similar patterns.
-When the minor belongings of the Church became the spoil of the
-villages, Hodge and Giles found themselves the proud possessors of the
-strange garments, for which they could find at first no better use than
-for Sunday wear. A striking appearance they must have made in them,
-down the village street, the envy of their less fortunate fellows.
-
-When the looted vestments grew shabby they must have been used for
-everyday wear, and so have set the fashions in smock-frocks, both in
-shape and decoration, for centuries to come. If it be thought that the
-costume was rather extravagant, it can only be asked, is not that of
-the modern Sunday morning yokel extravagant also?
-
-The rustic of long ago was a man of dense ignorance and dark
-superstitions. No one county was then more guilty than another in that
-respect, but East Anglians, and perhaps especially the Essex bucolics,
-are still, despite their veneer of civilisation, sunk in uncanny
-beliefs. Witches still "overlook" folks in Essex hamlets, and spells
-are cast on cattle and horses, or unhappy fowls are blighted by the
-Evil Eye. Consequently the learned professions of Witch-Doctor and
-Wise Women are not yet extinct. Their existence is not likely to be
-discovered by the stranger, but they thrive, in limited numbers, even
-in these days of pills and patent medicines.
-
-Board Schools are supposed to be educating Young England into a dead
-monotony of speech, but it will be long before they complete the horrid
-work. In Essex, indeed, we may not unreasonably think it a task beyond
-the power of teachers and inspectors, who if they have not succeeded,
-after thirty years working of the Elementary Education Act, in inducing
-the lower-class Londoners to say "yes" for "yuss," together with other
-linguistic enormities, are not likely to be successful in abolishing
-the very marked and stubborn Essex shibboleths. It may not generally
-be known that much of the so-called "Cockney" talk derives from the
-Essex dialect. From Essex especially comes that curious perversity
-of the unruly member which in many cases insists upon pronouncing
-the letter A as I. The lower-class Londoner and the Essex peasant
-are unanimous in enunciating A as I in all words where that letter
-retains its open sound and its individuality. Thus, in the words "baby"
-"favourite," "made" and "native," for instance, the letter becomes I;
-and the Fleet Street newsboy, shouting his "spusshul uxtry piper," can
-legitimately call cousins, if he wishes it, with the Essex lad at the
-plough-tail.
-
-Where A is sounded broadly, or in cases like the word "was," in which
-it masquerades as O, or where the letter is absolutely silent, or not
-fully pronounced, as in "beast" and "maternal," this peculiarity does
-not appear.
-
-The effect is sometimes grotesque, as, for example, near Colchester,
-where the villages of Layer Marney, Layer Breton, and Layer de la Hay
-are always spoken of as Liyer, the last mentioned becoming Liyer de la
-High.
-
-Nor is pronunciation the only singular feature of Essex talk, as
-those who keep their ears alert in these parts will soon find. The
-oddest phrases are matters of everyday use, and the Essex peasant can
-no more help using the word "together," in season and out, than he
-can help being hungry before meals or sleepy by bedtime. "Together,"
-as employed by the Essex peasant, is a word absolutely meaningless;
-a kind of linguistic excrescence which, like a wart or a boil, is
-neither useful nor beautiful. When a ploughman says he is going to
-plough "that there field together," he does not mean to imply that he
-is about to plough it together with some other land, or with a party
-of other ploughmen. He simply adds the word from force of habit, and
-from hearing his father and grandfather before him so use it, in almost
-every sentence, as a sort of verbal makeweight. The present writer has
-had the good fortune to hear a supremely ludicrous use of this Bœotian
-habit of speech. It was market-day at Colchester, and Stanway village
-had emptied itself in the direction of the town. A dog rolled dustily
-in the sunny road, and the historian of these things luxuriously
-quaffed his "large lemon" on the bench outside the village inn. As
-Artemus Ward might have said, "orl was peas," when there entered upon
-the scene a countryman, evidently known to the landlord. He walked into
-the bar, and, surprised to find mine host in solitary state, exclaimed,
-"What, all alone together, bor?"
-
-"Yes," replied the landlord, in no wise astonished at this
-extraordinary expression, "the missus has gone to Colchester together."
-
-"Did my missus go with her?" asked the rustic.
-
-"No," rejoined the landlord, "she went by herself."
-
-In this countryman's talk we find a word belonging more especially
-to Norfolk and Suffolk. This is the word, "bor," a diminutive for
-neighbour.
-
-
-XXV
-
-
-STANWAY is approached along a flat stretch, past Mark's Tey, which,
-without being itself quite on the road, has sent out modern and
-extremely ugly brick tentacles to line the way. For an incredible
-distance along the flat the timber tower of Mark's Tey church is
-visible, amid an inchoate mass of railway signal masts and puffs of
-smoke. Whistlings, screechings, crashings and rumblings proceed from
-that direction, for this is a junction of the Great Eastern with the
-Colne Valley Railway, and the station, by the way, where the lady in
-Thackeray's _Lamentable Ballad of the Foundling of Shoreditch_ appeared
-with the baby which she eventually left behind her. It is this busy
-junction that has caused the hideous outcrop of mean houses along the
-road to render the village of the old De Marcas something new and
-strange. Mark's Tey is at a junction of roads as well as of rails, for
-the road from Braintree and Bishop's Stortford falls in here.
-
-Copford's solitary houses by the way give scarce a hint of the village
-nearly a mile off, whose little church formerly owned a terrifying
-relic, in the shape of a human skin nailed on its door; a skin that
-had been the personal property of some unfortunate straggler from the
-hordes of marauding Danes that once infested the district, of whom we
-have already heard legends at Kelvedon and Gore Pit. His Saxon captors
-must have flayed him with a ferocious delight and nailed up his cuticle
-with precisely the same satisfaction as that of the gamekeeper who
-wages war upon stoats and weazels and other vermin, and hangs their
-bodies on the barn door. But there must have been a bitter day of
-reckoning for those Saxons when the sea-rovers came this way again and
-saw in what fashion that doorway was decorated.
-
-[Illustration: Near Mark's Tey.]
-
-Copford and its outlying houses lie at the crest of a gentle descent
-into the valley of a rivulet which finds its way into the Colne.
-It stands, as its name implies, overlooking some ford which, once
-important, has, in the gradual draining of the country and the
-shrinkage of streams, now lost all significance. Stanway adjoins it,
-and lies along the descent, in the hollow and up the corresponding
-rise on the other side, where its church stands in a forbidding
-loneliness. The name of Stanway is sufficient warranty of this being,
-thus far, the Roman road. It is, however, not so certain that the
-remaining four miles of the existing highway from this point into
-Colchester follow the course taken by the Romans; and, indeed, the
-later researches of archæologists go far to prove that the original
-way into Roman Colchester avoided the intervening village of Lexden
-altogether, and, curving eastwards, avoided what may then have been
-a marsh, to take the higher ground over a portion of Lexden Heath;
-bending westwards again and crossing the site of the present road
-between where the grammar school and the hospital now stand. From this
-point it seems to have crossed by where the Lordsland Nursery grounds
-stood until recently built over, to the ancient Roman gateway and
-bastion in the western wall of the town, long known as Colking's, or
-King Coel's Castle, but originally the Decuman Gate of Roman times.
-The course followed by this old Roman way is lined on either side with
-sepulchral remains, and seems to have once been a great cemetery.
-Wherever the ground is disturbed the relics of some soldier or citizen
-of Colonia are found, some dating back to the foundation of the colony,
-nearly nineteen centuries ago. The most remarkable among them are to be
-seen in the museum at Colchester Castle. There--the most human relic
-of them all--is the touching monument to M. Favonius, a Centurion of
-the Twentieth Legion, discovered in 1871 between the hospital and
-the grammar school, at a depth of 3 feet below the surface, and at a
-distance of 10 feet from the old Roman road. It is a sculptured stone,
-4 feet in height, with the figure of the Centurion himself carved on
-it, in high relief. It is evidently a portrait of him. He stands in
-full military costume, his cloak hanging from his shoulders, his sword
-and dagger by his side. The inscription, almost as sharp as on the day
-when it was cut, nearly nineteen hundred years ago, tells us that the
-monument was erected by two of his servants, Verecundus and Novicius.
-They call him "facilis," the "easy" or "good-natured." It is surely a
-sweet and touching thing that when all other record of that soldier has
-perished, we should yet know him to have been a kindly creature.
-
-But to return to Stanway, which keeps, as sole vestige of its heath,
-a little space of the greenest turf, perhaps half an acre in extent,
-beside the insignificant stream in the hollow, and opposite the "Swan"
-Inn. The heath that formerly spread out across the elevated but flat
-table-land between this village and the succeeding one of Lexden was,
-in its different parts, variously named after them. On Stanway Heath,
-in Ogilby's _Britannia_ of 1697, a picture map shows a beacon standing
-between the forty-seventh and forty-eighth milestones from London, on
-the right-hand side of the road. It appears to have been a post some
-30 feet in height, crowned with a fire-bucket, and climbed by means of
-slats nailed across. The beacon, thus easily lighted, was provided for
-the benefit of travellers going to or coming from Colchester across
-the desolate heath, whose dangers may be guessed from the existence of
-a "Cut-throat Lane" even in the comparative security of Lexden village.
-The heath by the highway is a thing of the past, for those portions
-not brought under cultivation by the farmer have been grabbed by the
-builder, and the so-called Lexden Heath of to-day is a quite recent row
-of houses, with a post-office, and shops, and everything complete and
-modern. At the forty-eighth milestone, amid all this modern upheaval,
-stands a disused toll-house, and, close by, something much more
-ancient; the deep, pre-historic hollow, smothered in dense woods and
-shrubs, known as "King Cole's Kitchen," and now--figure to yourself the
-shame of it!--overshadowed by a cottage, new built, and named from it
-"King Cole's Cottage."
-
-Turning off to the right, the curious in things pre-historic may
-lose themselves in the solitudes of the real Lexden Heath, where the
-Devil, the Trinobantes, the Romans, or Fairfax, the Parliamentary
-General--according to varying legends--threw up the entrenchments,
-and delved the ditches, found there in plenty. The Devil, we say
-advisedly, for "Gryme," or "Grim," whose name is attached to the dyke
-across the heath, was none other, in the minds of the Saxons. "Lexden
-Straight Road" follows for an unconscionable distance a line of Roman
-entrenchments, and is straight and dull beyond belief. Followed long
-enough, it leads to "Bottle End," which may originally have been
-"Battle End," the scene of some traditional legend of Boadicea's
-defeat at the hands of the Romans. Or, again, it perhaps marks some
-forgotten connection with St Botolph, whose ruined Abbey stands outside
-Colchester's walls, and whose honoured name is pronounced "Bottle" by
-Colcestrians. Anything is possible in a district where Beacon End, the
-site of the old beacon already mentioned, has become Bacon End.
-
-[Illustration: LEXDEN.]
-
-Lexden village now claims attention. It is a place in which one school
-of antiquaries finds the original Roman station of Camulodunum,
-established on the site of the royal city of Cunobelin, King of the
-Trinobantes; a finding strenuously contested by another following.
-Certainly, among the tall elms and rolling surface of Lexden Park there
-are remains in plenty of huge defensive earthworks, telling in no
-uncertain manner that this must have been a place of enormous strength,
-by whomsoever held. The surroundings are weird and impressive to a
-degree.
-
-The village skirting the road is one of the prettiest on the way. Going
-towards Colchester, the road drops down the hill, where old cottages
-stand high above the pathway, with steep little gardens in front, kept
-from sliding down into the road itself by lichened retaining-walls
-sprouting with house-leek and draped with climbing plants. Lower
-still, hard by the church whose carpenter-Gothic atrocities are hung
-about with ivy and creepers until they are transfigured into a dream
-of beauty, the grouping of the 'Sun' Inn and neighbouring houses
-is exquisite. Beyond this point begins the suburban approach to
-Colchester, a town it behoves the stranger to approach with a proper
-respect, for here was the first Roman colony in Britain. The history
-of Colchester, indeed, begins so far back as A.D. 44, and there was
-already a pre-historic native city in existence before then; the royal
-city of that ancient British king, Cunobelin, the monarch famous in the
-pages of Shakespeare as "Cymbeline."
-
-
-XXVI
-
-
-CUNOBELIN, Lord of the Trinobantes, ruler of that part of the
-country now divided into Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire,
-Hunts, Cambridgeshire and Essex, was the successor of his father
-Cassivelaunus, who had warred, not ingloriously, with Julius Cæsar. He
-transferred his capital from his native town on the site of St Albans
-to where Colchester now stands. He appears to have been a powerful
-ruler, and, if little is known of him, certainly he is no myth, for
-the vague legends that held the name of the Buckinghamshire villages
-of Great and Little Kimble to be a corrupted form of his own were
-strikingly proved correct some years ago, when a hoard of gold coins
-was ploughed up in their neighbourhood, bearing his title.
-
-We do not know by what name Colchester was then styled. After Cunobelin
-had died, full of years and worn by grief at the revolts of his sons,
-Caractacus, Adminius and Togodumnus, the end of the native State over
-which he had ruled speedily came. Adminius, in a fury against his
-brothers, fled from Britain to seek the aid of the Romans, and if no
-immediate result came, certainly his invitation must have revived
-the old Cæsarian dream of conquest. The real cause of the Roman
-invasion that took place shortly after the death of Cunobelin was the
-solicitation of a certain Bericus, a British Prince of whom nothing
-appears to be known beyond this one fact.
-
-The invasion took place in A.D. 43, under that able general, Aulus
-Plautius, who threw the Trinobantes back from Hertfordshire and
-Middlesex, across the Lea and into the Essex marshes, where for a time
-they could not be followed. This was the position at the close of the
-year. Detached portions of the invading forces had overrun the south of
-Britain as far as Gloucester and had defeated the tribes on the way;
-leaving a garrison in the west. But the island was little known and
-held many mysteries. None could tell the real strength of the natives,
-who disappeared in the forests and marshes that covered the face of the
-land, and by their irregular warfare disconcerted the Roman plans of
-campaign. Plautius was at last driven to act on the defensive on the
-Essex borders. His soldiers were dying in the ague-stricken morasses
-between the Thames and the Lea, and had the enemy possessed powers of
-combination and military skill, he might well have been cut off here,
-at the end of the known world. A retirement with his sick and dying was
-impossible. Nothing remained but to go into camp during the winter, and
-meanwhile to send for reinforcements. He accordingly sent for forces
-from Gaul. They came with commendable promptitude, commanded by the
-Emperor Claudius in person. With these new legions came an elephant
-corps, brought from Africa to carry the heavy baggage. But they acted
-a better part than this, for their strange appearance terrified the
-astonished Trinobantes a great deal more than any increase of the
-Roman soldiery could have done. We may imagine this corps, crashing
-irresistibly through the thickets, the forests and marshes on that
-march into the Unknown, along this line of country now traversed by the
-Norwich Road, and can readily understand little resistance being met
-with on the way. The tribes were dispersed and their territory occupied
-as far as the Stour, and a colony was founded in the opening of the new
-year, A.D. 44, on the site of Cunobelin's city--Colonia Camulodunum,
-the first Roman settlement in Britain.
-
-The Romans had so easily overcome the resistance of the natives that
-they were soon lulled into a feeling of security. For an uninterrupted
-space of sixteen years Colonia grew and prospered. It became a pleasant
-town, inhabited by veteran soldiers grown grey in the service of the
-Empire, and spending their later years in retirement. The Emperor
-Claudius, flushed with his success, had assumed the dignity of a god
-and had caused a Temple to be erected in the market-place to his
-honour, with attendant priests and altars. The governors and consuls
-were lesser gods, and treated with contempt and ill-judged severity
-the natives who had been overcome with such ease. The soldiery were
-uniformly brutal. Degeneracy and luxury flourished together with this
-attitude of oppression, and the town wholly lacked defences. It is not
-surprising that these colonists were bitterly hated by their vassals,
-who in especial looked upon the priests as so many harpies living upon
-their substance, and were so in fact, just as all priesthoods and
-all clergy have been from the beginning, and will be to the end. In
-this last respect these poor Trinobantes, these wretched barbarians,
-exhibited a quite surprising discernment, not equalled by the
-priest-ridden centuries of culture and enlightenment that have since
-passed.
-
-These down-trodden natives were already ripe for revenge when a more
-than usually unjust proceeding of the Roman officials precipitated
-a rising. The Iceni, who inhabited Norfolk and Suffolk, and whose
-frontiers marched with those of the conquered province, had been ruled
-over by a certain King Prasutagus. Dying, he had hoped to propitiate
-the goodwill of the Roman officials by dividing the vast wealth he
-had accumulated, leaving one half to the Roman Emperor and the other
-moiety to his two daughters. But he was no sooner dead than his
-country was invaded. His widow, the famous Boadicea, resisted. She
-was publicly scourged, her daughters suffering the worst indignities,
-and her relatives sold into slavery. The whole nation rose in arms at
-these outrages, and their cousins, the Trinobantes, on the hither side
-of the Stour, joined them. The Romans saw their folly when too late.
-No more eloquent account is possible than that given by Tacitus of
-the premonitions of evil. The statue of Victory fell to the ground,
-and turned its back where the face had been, as if it fled before an
-enemy. Women were seen and heard singing mad, wild songs, prophesying
-disaster. Strange and unaccountable noises were heard in the house
-of assembly, and loud howlings in the theatre. In the estuary of
-the river the buildings of the city appeared reflected upside down,
-and ghastly remains of human bodies were seen in the ooze when the
-tide ebbed. The sea assumed the colour of blood, and the strangest
-whisperings stirred the air. Many of the wealthier colonists, alarmed
-at these portents, discovered that their health needed a change of air,
-and went for a holiday into Gaul, on the other side of the Channel, and
-those who remained applied for military help. In answer to this appeal,
-a meagre force of two hundred men was sent, and immediately employed to
-fortify the Temple. But before these measures could be completed, the
-town was surrounded and taken; the houses burnt and the inhabitants all
-slain, the little garrison in the Temple meeting a like fate after a
-defence of two days.
-
-Meanwhile, Petilius Cerealis, commanding the Ninth Legion, which had
-been stationed on the Icenian frontier near where Mount Bures now
-stands, advanced to the aid of the doomed city. He, however, had moved
-too late, and met the victorious natives at Wormingford, where they
-almost entirely annihilated his forces. The evidences of that great
-disaster were discovered in 1836, when parallel rows of funeral urns,
-placed in order like streets, were unearthed, containing the bones
-of the lost legion gathered and burnt after the Roman sway had been
-reasserted.
-
-These events happened in A.D. 61. Suetonius Paulinus, the then
-Commander-in-Chief, was at that time vigorously prosecuting a war with
-the Druids in the Isle of Anglesey, but on hearing of these disasters
-he hurried back through Verulamium and Londinium, collecting an army
-of ten thousand as he went. The whole of the south was aflame, and a
-numerous enemy hung on his flanks. The Roman citizens of both those
-towns piteously begged for protection, but were left to their fate,
-which was not long in doubt, for no sooner had the flying column passed
-than the tribes fell upon and utterly destroyed them. Seventy thousand
-citizens perished in that general massacre.
-
-It is uncertain where the Roman army met the hordes commanded by that
-heroic Amazon, Boadicea, whom we should perhaps more correctly style
-"Boduoca." The British Queen is a deadly dull subject in the hands of
-the uninspired, who fail to render her "convincing." No one has done
-so well as Dion Cassius, who singularly resembles modern writers of
-"personal paragraphs" in what recent slang would term his "actuality."
-He says, "she was very tall, grim in appearance, keen-eyed,
-harsh-voiced, with a wealth of exceedingly yellow hair falling below
-her waist" (her golden hair was hanging down her back!), "wearing a
-highly-embroidered tunic and a thick cloak fastened with a buckle over
-it."
-
-Tacitus describes the scene of battle as flanked by two woods, on a
-site resembling a stretch of country at Haynes Green, near Messing; but
-the great fight must have raged on many miles of ground, and no doubt
-included Lexden Heath.
-
-The Britons were so sure of victory, that they had brought their women
-and children as spectators, and ranged them, seated in waggons, in a
-great semi-circle commanding the battlefield. The Roman historian says
-they were an "innumerable multitude." The British Queen, addressing
-her warriors from her chariot, called upon them to conquer or to die,
-resting her hopes on the strength of her forces and the justice of
-her cause; while Suetonius, on his part, urged his troops not to be
-dismayed either by the numbers of the enemy or their furious shouts.
-The British attacked, the Romans at first remaining on the defensive.
-When the fury of the first onslaught was exhausted, the foot soldiers
-of the Empire advanced in a wedge-like formation, the cavalry closing
-in on the flanks, driving the speedily disorganised enemy back upon the
-semi-circle of waggons, which cut off their retreat. Penned up in this
-way, the battle degenerated into a massacre, in which eighty thousand
-Britons were slain, including the women and children who had come out
-to witness the fortunes of the day. The unhappy queen, seeing all lost,
-poisoned herself.
-
-Thus ended the British rule over Norfolk and Suffolk. From this time
-date the existing walls of Colchester. The conquerors were determined
-not to risk a repetition of the destruction of their first colony,
-and, choosing a new site, one mile to the east of the former city,
-they planted their walls on the ridge on which Colchester now stands,
-overlooking the valley of the Colne. These walls, enclosing an area
-of 1000 by 600 yards, still remain, after the passing of more than
-eighteen hundred years, the most perfect Roman fortifications in
-Britain. Even in that wide space of time the town of Colchester has not
-extended very greatly beyond them. In some directions, indeed--notably
-to the north and north-east and on the west--the ramparts still look
-out upon the open country. The walls have a thickness of from seven to
-eight feet, and are built of red Roman tiles, alternating with courses
-of stones, brought with great labour from the coast near Harwich;
-the neighbourhood of Colchester, and Essex in general, being quite
-innocent of stone of any kind. Harwich and the seashore even to this
-day supply the boulders of limestone from which the building-stones of
-Colchester's walls were cut.
-
-Colchester was never again attacked during the period of more than
-three hundred years, in which the Romans ruled. In the events of A.D.
-61, they had learnt the double lesson of being armed and of treating
-a foe, once conquered, with generosity. In the period between these
-events and the year 410, when the Imperial forces were withdrawn from
-Britain to help save the heart of the Empire from ruin, conquered and
-conquerors had to live together, and made the best of the necessity.
-Roman colonists intermarried with the gradually Romanised British,
-and the race of Romano-Britons thus created, during three centuries,
-gradually grew to look upon Britain as their home and themselves as
-a nation. Thus, towards the end, usurpers of the Imperial authority
-are found setting up as independent sovereigns, and civilised British
-princes treating on equal terms with Roman statesmen. In this way
-the British in some measure came into their own again, and to these
-circumstances we owe the wild legends of that mysterious monarch, "old
-King Cole," who is to Colchester what King Arthur is to Cornwall,
-the great local hero. "Colking's Castle," on Colchester's walls, and
-the earthworks near Lexden known as "King Cole's Kitchen"; nay, the
-very name of Colchester itself--"Cole's Chester," or castle, derive,
-according to legends, from this scarce more than mythical personage.
-Those stories make him one Coel, or Collius, the last of a line of
-semi-independent British kings who were allowed to retain a nominal
-sovereignty after Cunobelin's death and the Roman conquest. The story
-goes on to tell how, on the death of the usurper Carausius, in A.D.
-293, Coel surrendered the country to the Emperor Constantius Chlorus,
-on that successor of the Cæsar's marrying his daughter Helena, who
-became the mother of Constantine the Great, and was also the discoverer
-of the true Cross at Jerusalem. The arms of Colchester still bear a
-ragged cross between four crowns, in allusion to this tale of the
-Empress Helena; and in earnest that this is a distinction which
-Colchester will not willingly lose, an effigy of her, holding a cross
-very plain to see, is newly set up on the very topmost point of the
-gorgeous new Town Hall, recently completed.
-
-To that most untruthful of chroniclers, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the
-legend of Coel is chiefly traced. He may either have imagined it, or
-have woven the story out of existing legends, which had in turn derived
-from the Saxons, who, after the departure of the Romans, had wrested
-the country from the Romanised British. They captured and burnt the
-town of Colonia, and wondering at its massive walls, took them to have
-been the work of some great king, after whom the place had been named.
-Legends of Cole soon sprang up, and by the time the Saxons themselves
-had been converted to Christianity he was fully provided with a history.
-
-"Old King Cole," as the founder of Cole's-ceaster, has been shabbily
-treated in modern times and made to figure merely as a jolly toper.
-That he was the most convivial of monarchs the song most emphatically
-assures us.
-
- "He called for his pipe, he called for his glass, he called for his
- fiddlers three."
-
-Nothing, if you please, more than the veriest pot-house potentate! The
-author of that nursery rhyme has degraded Cole as much as Mark Twain
-did the romantic wielder of Excalibur in that monument of vulgarity, _A
-Yankee at the Court of King Arthur_.
-
-
-XXVII
-
-
-THE entrance into Colchester is singular. From the straight, broad road
-leading past the trim modern villas and so into Crouch Street--the
-street outside the walls that takes its name from the vanished
-monastery of the Crutched, Crossed or Crouched Friars--the wayfarer
-suddenly comes to the sharpest of angles, and, turning abruptly to the
-left, enters Colchester by what has every appearance of being the back
-door into the town.
-
-Historically considered, the entrance by crooked Head Street, as the
-continuation of Crouch Street is called, really is a back way, and was
-in Roman times the site of a gate leading to one of the southern and
-less important roads. But ever since Saxon days this has been the only
-way to or from London into the town.
-
-How it happened that the original road and the Decuman Gate in
-Colchester's west wall fell into disuse, none can tell. It was so many
-ages ago that not even a pathway leads along the ancient way, now
-quite obliterated by houses. But if the road be gone, the Gate itself
-remains, though in ruins. Let us, before entering Colchester, attempt
-to find it. To do so, it will be necessary to retrace our steps a
-little distance along Crouch Street, and, so doing, to take a turning
-to the right-hand, down Balkerne Lane. The first sign of ancient Rome
-is seen where the Church of St Mary-at-the-Wall stands towering above
-a flight of steps leading up into the street beyond. There stands
-revealed a portion of the wall. The breach in it, through which the
-steps lead, was once a postern gate. Overhung with trees, the freshness
-of whose spring foliage with every recurrent April forms a romantic
-contrast with the almost immeasurably old of the riven wall, this is a
-place for thought. From the summit of that old defence, where once the
-legionaries lined the battlements in time of peril, or leaned gossiping
-in peaceful days, one looks down over roof-tops into the valley where
-the railway runs, and wishes for a momentary lifting of the veil and
-a glimpse of what the spot will be like in another eighteen hundred
-years. Close by, a hoary mass of brick and tile and weather-worn
-courses of septaria are the remains of the Roman Gate. Three arches can
-be traced; the middle arch of eleven feet span, the side ones, for foot
-passengers, less than half that width. Candour, however, compels the
-admission that of architectural character they have not the slightest
-trace. Over against this relic stands an inn known as the "Hole in the
-Wall," although that is not its actual sign; and through that hole the
-most prominent object in all Colchester looms red and horrid. "Jumbo"
-brutally dominates everything, and blasts the approach to Colchester
-far away on every road but that from London, for which small mercy
-thanks be given. Who, you ask, is Jumbo? He is not Roman, but he is
-very big, very ugly, and very prominent; and, unluckily, cannot fail
-to be seen. After him, even the Roman remains of Colchester pale their
-ineffectual efforts at pre-eminence. It is conceivable, although not
-very likely, that a stranger passing through Colchester might not
-notice its Roman antiquities, but Jumbo will not be denied. There he
-is, crowning the highest point in the town, shameless in brick of
-the most striking red and in attempts at decoration which, however
-well meant, only serve to render his hulking body more objectionable,
-with an effect as though a navvy were to adorn his rugged face with
-pearl-powder.
-
-Jumbo, let it be explained, is the modern water-tower of Colchester's
-waterworks. It was built in 1881, and cost close upon £10,500, and
-there are those who say it is the second largest of its kind in
-England. Where the largest may be we know not, but if it injures its
-surroundings as effectually as does Colchester's incubus, that unknown
-place has our sympathies. Jumbo is shameless and rejoices in his name,
-for, as the curious may see for themselves, his weather-vane bears the
-effigy of an elephant.
-
-Returning to Crouch Street, and so by Head Gate and along Head Street,
-the High Street is gained. It is one of the broadest and most spacious
-streets in the kingdom, as it had every occasion to be, for it was not
-only part of the great road leading into Suffolk, but in it was held
-the principal fair of the town. Here, too, close by where Colchester's
-new and gorgeous Town Hall stands, was the old Moot Hall, a building
-of Saxon, Norman and later periods, barbarously destroyed in 1843. In
-the Moot Hall the Mayor and justices dealt with offences of all kinds,
-from the selling of bad meat to charges of witchcraft, sorcery and
-heresy. Thus we may read in the borough records of things so diverse
-as the fining of Robert Barefot, butcher, in the sum of twelve pence
-for selling putrid meat, and may learn how William Chevelying, the
-first of the Colchester martyrs, was imprisoned here in the reign of
-Henry the Sixth until such time as it was convenient to burn him in
-front of Colkyng's Castle. Here the local Court of Pie Powder was held
-during the Corporation Fair Days, in October. Summary jurisdiction
-was the special feature of that Court, and it was needed, for in those
-times, when people of all sorts and conditions came from far and near,
-offences were many and various. In the legal jargon of the Middle Ages
-this tribunal is called the _Curia Regis Pedis Pulverizatis_, or, in
-the Norman-French then common, the "Cour Royal des Pieds Poudrés,"
-that is to say, the King's Court of Dusty Feet. Courts of Pie Powder
-obtained this eminently descriptive name from the original Fair
-Courts, held in the dusty streets long before buildings were erected
-for the purpose, and the name survived long after the necessity which
-originated it had disappeared. Imagine, therefore, the highwaymen, the
-cheats and thieves and those who came into disputation on the Fair Days
-being brought before the Mayor by the bailiffs, their cases arising and
-being heard, and judgments and sentences being delivered and executed,
-within the space of one day, amid the bleating of the flocks, the
-lowing of the herds, and all the noise and tumult of the Fair itself.
-We must not, however, suppose the High Street to have been absolutely
-clear of obstructions in days of old. In midst of it stood the Late
-Saxon or Early Norman church of that Saxon saint, St Runwald, which
-remained here until so recently as 1878, when it was pulled down and
-its site sold to the Corporation, to be thrown into the roadway.
-
-That Colchester stands on a considerably elevated site is evident to
-all who, having entered from the London road, turn out of Head Street
-into the High Street, and in doing so glimpse the long descent of
-North Hill at the corner. A further revelation is that of East Hill,
-which, in continuation of High Street, the traveller must long and
-steeply descend towards the Colne, on his way to Ipswich and Norwich.
-It was in High Street that Colchester's principal coaching inns were
-situated, and there yet remains--now the most picturesque feature of
-that thoroughfare--the "Red Lion," with old timber brackets supporting
-a projecting upper storey and a four-centred Tudor oak entrance
-curiously carved; its original and restored portions so thickly smeared
-with paint and varnish that all might be old, so far as the antiquary
-can tell, or all might be in the nature of Wardour Street antiques.
-The "Red Lion" figured as a rendezvous in the surrender of the town to
-Fairfax, after the siege of 1648. In its yard the vanquished laid down
-their swords.
-
-Another inn was the "White Hart," where Bank Passage leaves the High
-Street. The building, a highly respectable plaster-faced one, smug
-and Georgian, still stands, but it is an inn no longer. Another old
-inn, the "Three Cups," has been rebuilt. Older than any, but coyly
-hiding its antiquarian virtues of chamfered oaken beams and quaint
-galleries from the crowd, is the "Angel," in West Stockwell Street,
-whose origin as a pilgrim's inn is vouched for. Weary suppliants to,
-or returning from, the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, far away
-on the road through and past Norwich, housed here and misbehaved
-themselves in their mediæval way. It would be the gravest of mistakes
-to assume old pilgrims decorous. Modern Bank Holiday folks would,
-compared with them, seem to be of a severe monkish austerity. The
-shrine at Walsingham, second only in repute to that of the Blessed
-Thomas at Canterbury, drew crowds of every class, from king to beggar.
-The great Benedictine Abbey of St John at Colchester sheltered some
-in its guest-houses, while the late-comers inned at such hostelries
-as the "Angel," or, if the weather were propitious, lay in the woods.
-Ill fared the unsuspecting citizen who met any of these sinners on
-the way to be plenarily indulged and lightened of their load of sin.
-They would murder him for twopence or cudgel him out of high spirits
-and for the fun of the thing; arguing, doubtless, that as they were
-presently to turn over a new leaf, it mattered little how black the old
-one was. Drunkenness and crime, immorality, obscenity and license of
-the grossest kind were in fact accompaniments of pilgrimage, and the
-sin-worn wanderers who prayed devoutly at the niche, now empty of its
-statue, in the east end of All Saints' Church in the High Street, on
-their journey to and from Walsingham, would resume their foul jests and
-their evil courses so soon as the last bead was told and the ultimate
-word of dog-Latin glibly pattered off.
-
-
-XXVIII
-
-
-REMOVED from all the noise and bustle of the High Street, in a quiet
-nook away from the modern life of the town, stands Colchester Castle,
-on the site of the Temple of Claudius. The Keep, built by Eudo,
-"Dapifer," or High Steward of Normandy, under William the Conqueror
-and his two successors, alone remains, and has lost its upper storey,
-destroyed by a speculator who bought the building in 1683, and half
-ruined himself in his attempts to demolish it. It is perhaps not
-generally known that this is by far the largest keep in England,
-measuring 155 ft. by 113 ft. The Tower of London, built at the same
-period, and the next largest, measures only 116 ft. by 96 ft. There
-have been those who, looking at its massive walls, 12 ft. thick, with
-courses of Roman tiles conspicuous in them, have believed this to be
-the original Roman temple, and antiquaries who should have known better
-have written long treatises to support their views. Those, however,
-were the days before comparative archæology had come into being to
-prove that the peculiarities in the planning, noticeable here, are
-partaken of by the undoubted Norman keeps of the Tower of London and
-of Rochester Castle, known to have been designed by Gundulf, Bishop of
-Rochester. Freeman was very severe in his time on those who labelled
-the interior of Colchester keep with such names as "podium" and
-"adytum," in their belief of its Roman character.
-
-[Illustration: THE GRAND STAIRCASE, COLCHESTER CASTLE.]
-
-If its lack of height prevents Colchester Castle from being impressive
-without, certainly its gloomy dungeons and mighty walls compel the
-respect and wonder of all who enter. They look not so much as though
-they had been built up, as though cells and passages had been carved
-and burrowed out of a solid mass; so small are those passages and
-staircases, so thick the walls. In the chapel and the corridors that
-still remain roofed, the collections of the Essex Archæological Society
-have a home, and from other and roofless walls that are broad enough
-to afford the safest of pathways one may gaze down upon the surrounding
-grassy enclosures and see that spot where those two Royalist
-commanders, Lucas and Lisle, who held Colchester for seventy-six days
-against the besieging army of the Parliament in 1648, were barbarously
-shot by order of Fairfax, after having surrendered.
-
-That siege of Colchester is the most romantic incident that has
-survived in the history of the town. It is the story of a last
-desperate attempt of the Royalists to contend with the Parliamentary
-forces that had everywhere overwhelmed the King's supporters after a
-bitter warfare of over six years. It was a gallant attempt, and the
-more so because Essex was not a county favourable to the King's cause.
-Sir Charles Lucas, at the head of this enterprise, was a younger
-member of the Lucas family, seated at Colchester. In the beginning of
-June 1648, a Royalist rising under Colonel Goring had been checked at
-Blackheath by the Parliamentary general, Fairfax. A portion of Goring's
-force crossed the Thames into Essex, and lay at Brentwood. This was
-an opportunity which Essex sympathisers could not let slip. Lucas and
-his friends, gathering a body of adherents, galloped down the road
-to Chelmsford, where the Committee of Parliament was in session, and
-seized them, afterwards continuing their progress to Brentwood, where
-they effected a junction with Goring's band. Their forces thus united,
-a counter-march was made upon Chelmsford again, and continued to
-Colchester; Lord Capel, Sir George Lisle, and many others joining on
-the way. On June 12, Goring, in command of this body of four thousand
-Royalists, approached Colchester, and found the Head Gate closed
-against him by the unsympathetic citizens, but a slight skirmish soon
-enabled him to force an entrance. He had not intended to remain at
-Colchester, but the swift pursuit that Fairfax organised from London
-gave the Royalists no time to continue their projected march into the
-Midlands. The day after Goring had entered Colchester, Fairfax had
-assembled his forces on Lexden Heath, and immediately sent a trumpeter
-to demand surrender. The inevitable refusal was the signal for a battle
-outside the town, on the London Road; a contest which resulted in the
-retirement of the Royalists within the walls. The Head Gate still
-existed, its bolts and bars in perfect order, but as the Royalists fell
-back through it into the town, two hundred or more of the Parliamentary
-troops dashed through in pursuit. Their ardour cost them their lives,
-for Lord Capel at the head of a determined band pushed back the gate
-upon the bulk of the enemy, thrusting his walking-stick through the
-staples as the door closed. The eager advance-guard, thus cooped up
-within the walls, were all slain.
-
-Preparations were now made on both sides for a siege. Fairfax had
-already lost many men, and dared not attempt to carry the town by
-storm. His plan was to surround Colchester and imprison the Royalists
-there until such time as his heavy ordnance or starvation should
-compel them to surrender. With his command of reinforcements from
-London, and his ability thus to enclose the town with a cordon of
-troops, the position of the Royalists was hopeless, and it is to their
-honour and credit that, in order to contain Fairfax's large army and
-so give opportunities to the organisers of Royalist movements in the
-Midlands, they continued the defence in the face of starvation and
-despite the easy terms of capitulation at first offered them. Their
-domestic position (so to call it) in the town was unenviable, for the
-inhabitants were wholly opposed to their cause. They had with them,
-it is true, the members of the Parliamentary Committee whom they had
-kidnapped from Chelmsford, but those gentlemen were a nuisance and
-had to be civilly treated and fed while the Royalists themselves went
-hungry. The unfortunate inhabitants, too, were starving, and many of
-their houses and churches destroyed by the besiegers' cannon shot;
-while suburbs were burnt down outside the walls.
-
-The end of this long agony came on August 27, when the town was
-surrendered; the officers "surrendering to mercy," the lesser officers
-and rank and file with an assurance that their lives and personal
-belongings should be spared. Seventy-five superior officers accordingly
-gave up their arms at the "King's Head" inn. Four of them were to be
-tried by court-martial. One escaped, one was pardoned, and two--Sir
-Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle--condemned to be shot without
-delay, on a disproved charge of having once broken their parole when
-formerly prisoners of war. In vain asking for time to make some final
-disposition of their affairs, these two officers were executed the
-same evening, on a grassy spot a few paces clear of the north wall of
-the old castle. Sir Charles Lucas was the first to be shot, and met his
-end as a brave, gallant gentleman should. "I have often faced death
-on the field of battle," he said, "and you shall now see how I dare
-to die." Then he knelt in prayer, and, rising, threw open his vest,
-exclaiming, "See, I am ready for you. Now, rebels, do your worst!" The
-firing-party then fired and shot him in four places, so that he fell
-dead on the instant.
-
-Sir George Lisle was then brought to the same place, and viewing the
-dead body of his friend as it lay on the ground, knelt down and kissed
-him, praising his unspotted honour. After bidding farewell to some
-friends, he turned to the spectators, saying, "Oh! how many of your
-lives here have I saved in hot blood, and must now myself be most
-barbarously murdered in cold blood? But what dare not they do that
-would willingly cut the throat of my dear King, whom they have already
-imprisoned, and for whose deliverance, and peace to this unfortunate
-country, I dedicate my last prayer to Heaven?" Then, looking in the
-faces of those who were to execute him, and thinking they stood at too
-great a distance, he desired them to come nearer, to which one of them
-said, "I'll warrant, sir, we hit you." "Friend," he answered, "I have
-been nearer you when you have missed me!" And so, after a short prayer
-upon his knees, he rose up and said, "Now, traitors, do your worst!"
-Whereupon they shot him dead.
-
-The stone covering the graves of these unhappy soldiers may yet be seen
-in St Giles's Church, with an inscription stating that they were "by
-the command of Thomas Fairfax, the general of the Parliament Army, in
-cold blood barbarously murdered." A legend may still be occasionally
-met with in old books, which has it that the Duke of Buckingham, who
-had married Fairfax's daughter, approached Charles the Second with the
-object of having the passage erased that reflected so severely on his
-father-in-law's memory. The King conferred on the subject with Lord
-Lucas, who said that he would with pleasure obey the Royal command, if
-only His Majesty would allow him to place in its stead the statement
-that "Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were barbarously murdered
-for their loyalty to King Charles the First, and that his son, King
-Charles the Second, had ordered this memorial of their loyalty to be
-erased." The King then, we are told, commanded the already existing
-epitaph to be cut still deeper, and it will be readily observed by
-those who go to gaze upon it that the lettering is bolder and deeper
-than commonly is the case.
-
-The undertaking of Fairfax with respect to the surrendered soldiery
-was not respected. They were ruthlessly pillaged, and some sent to the
-plantations over seas. Lord Capel was eventually executed in London.
-For many years afterwards the spot where Lucas and Lisle fell was
-shown by the awe-struck people of Colchester, who told the legend
-that grass would not grow where that loyal blood had been spilled. In
-later times the story became an article of faith with one political
-party and a derision to the other. No grass grows there now; but for
-the commonplace reason that a well-kept gravel path occupies the site,
-which is duly marked by a small obelisk.
-
-[Illustration: OLD MAN-TRAP, COLCHESTER CASTLE.]
-
-Colchester was long in recovering itself after the rough treatment
-received during the siege; and in fact, it is only in recent years that
-the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall, battered down on that occasion,
-has been rebuilt; while the Norman minster of St Botolph remains the
-roofless ruin that cannonading and incendiarism left it. Evelyn in
-1656 found Colchester "a ragged and factious town, now swarming with
-sectaries," and if he had visited it nine years later would have
-witnessed a worse state, for the plague almost depopulated the place.
-
-"Sectaries"--that is to say, those who preferred to think for
-themselves on religious matters, and to worship in their own way--were
-treated with an unconscionable severity. One Parnell, a Quaker, was
-imprisoned in a cell within Colchester Castle, and died there, his
-story affording a sad example of barbarity in the authorities of that
-period.
-
-But the early nineteenth century was as savage in some ways as the late
-seventeenth, which so delighted in despitefully using Nonconformists.
-The antiquarian collections in the castle, for instance, include a
-particularly ferocious instrument devised for the protection of the
-squires' property and for the maiming of poachers. It is a man-trap;
-one of those devilish contrivances which, actuated by powerful springs
-and furnished with sharp steel teeth, would, when accidentally trodden
-on by the poacher, snap down upon his leg with force sufficient to
-injure the bone and probably mutilate him for life. It was thus the
-landed interests protected their rabbits, hares and pheasants. The
-existence of this man-trap, together with the spring guns also used at
-the same time, is a reproach to the England of the first quarter of the
-nineteenth century, just as its preservation here as a curiosity is a
-certificate of the progress achieved in humanity since then.
-
-The present prosperity of Colchester is reflected in many ways, but in
-none more strikingly than the condition of the castle, now a municipal
-property, and encircled with lawns and flower-beds, oddly at variance
-with its time-worn grandeur. The neatness of these surroundings and
-of the ornamental railings that fence off the enclosure is admirable
-from the everyday point of view, but the picturesque neglect and rural
-squalor of other years pointed the moral of the place and annotated
-its story, while present prettinesses blur the historic page. It
-is so everywhere throughout the land. When, a hundred years ago,
-Turner, Sandby, Prout and Girtin, our early water-colourists, roamed
-the country, making their picturesque sketches, they did not find
-themselves baulked by flower-beds, cursed by cast-iron fences, or
-requested not to walk on the grass. They had to pick their hazardous
-way through miry lanes, or adventure through the bottomless sloughs of
-farmyards. All these things were offensive to the wayfarer, but they
-generally meant picturesque compositions and exquisitely sketchable
-foregrounds. Nowadays the conscientious illustrator, unwilling to
-picturesquely exaggerate, and yet accursed with cast-iron railings new
-from Birmingham last week, is in a quandary.
-
-[Illustration: COLCHESTER CASTLE.]
-
-The once forlorn condition of Colchester Castle doubtless originated
-in 1726, when its then owner, Sir Isaac Rebow, left it by will to a
-detested grandson, on whom he thus conferred a useless encumbrance, a
-more exasperating bequest than even the proverbial cutting off with a
-shilling.
-
-A relic of those old days of picturesque neglect is found in the book
-of an auctioneer, who wrote an account of his "Professional Travels
-in England in the first half of the Nineteenth Century," modestly
-veiling his identity, and simply calling himself on his title-page, "An
-Auctioneer." Part One of his work was issued in 1843, but Part Two is
-yet to come, and as his first instalment shows little merit, the world
-can well afford to forego the second.
-
-Coming to the castle, he muses over its ruins, and weeps that cabbages
-and coriander employ the attention of the Colchester people, rather
-than the care of ancient fortresses. To him, thus contemplating "the
-sad remains of so many interesting scenes," enters from an adjoining
-farm one whom he is pleased to term "an Aborigine." By this he
-obviously names an Essex farm-labourer. It is an affectation, but
-he might have done worse. He _might_ have called him, seeing that
-Colchester is a place of oysters, a "native," in inverted commas,
-evidences of jocular intent, which would have been dreadful.
-
-"Ah! sir," says the Aborigine, "it was cruel work when them great
-Barons, as they call 'em, lived here."
-
-"True, my friend," replies the Auctioneer, "but it's a pity to see hogs
-and donkeys depasturing in their courts and gardens, and grubbing and
-kicking down their halls and chapels."
-
-"Lord! your honour," rejoins the son of the soil, "what's the use on
-'em in these days? I'd sooner see an acre of these 'ere swedes any day,
-than them there towers and dungeons. Them swedes afore you 'ool carry
-a score o' fine wethers any month in the year, and plaze ye to look at
-'em, but as for them flint walls, you may look at 'em for ever and a
-day 'fore you find enough o' green for a garnish"; which was indeed a
-practical rural way of looking at things.
-
-The summit of those old walls has nowadays a very charming green
-garnish of grass, rendered parti-coloured by wind- and bird-sown
-wallflowers and vigorous wildings; but more lusty than these are the
-young sycamores, that have struck deep roots into the walls and bid
-fair to grow into large trees.
-
-It is still possible to follow the greater part of Colchester's old
-walls along the queer alleys that run above or below them. Eld Lane,
-out of whose elevated course the steep descent of the old postern,
-now known as Scheregate Steps, goes, is situated along the summit
-of the south wall looking over towards St John's Green, where,
-facing a wilderness of scrubby grass, broken bottles, and the sordid
-house-sweepings of the modern town, the gatehouse stands, all that is
-left of the proud mitred Abbey of St John. By that green is the frowzy
-little church of St Giles, patched up in so atrocious a manner from the
-wreck it was after the siege of 1648 that to call its "architecture"
-merely "debased" is to deal kindly with it. A dilapidated boarded
-tower is a feature of the exterior; the interior provided with a flat
-plaster ceiling, like that of a dwelling-room, and filled with flimsy
-pine-wood pews, painted and grained. Dust and stuffiness reign within;
-dust and broken crockery without. And yet, although so unlovely, it is
-not altogether with satisfaction that an elaborate design is seen for
-rebuilding the church from its foundations, together with the notice,
-"It is earnestly hoped that contributions will be given toward the
-restoration fund." "Restoration" is not the word, for the design is
-alien and quite unlike anything that formerly stood on the ground.
-Rather let the place be repaired and cleansed and its unbeautiful
-details preserved as a characteristic and shocking example of how
-they looked upon ecclesiastical architecture in the dark days of
-churchwarden- and carpenter-Gothic. It is here, under the north aisle,
-that those two valiant captains, Lucas and Lisle, are laid.
-
-For the church-towers built of Roman bricks, and for other evidences
-of that ancient Empire, let the explorer seek, and, presently finding,
-think himself, if he will, an original investigator: it is a harmless
-attitude, if at the same time unwarranted by fact. Let us to other
-matters, and then, leaving the town, hie away for Ipswich.
-
-Colchester is, of course, famous for its oysters, and has been ever
-since the Roman occupation. In the estuary of the Colne, and the
-Crouch, and in the oozy creeks of the Essex shores, the Colchester
-"natives" still grow up from infancy to maturity and feed upon the
-semi-maritime slime, as they did close upon two thousand years ago, and
-doubtless long before that. If we may judge from the stupendous heaps
-of oyster-shells discovered on the sites of Roman towns and villas,
-near and far, to say merely that the Romans were fond of oysters would
-be far too mild a term. They must have almost lived on oysters, dreamt
-oysters, and thought oysters. No wonder Colchester, whence the finest
-and the largest supply came, was so prosperous a Roman colony.
-
-Although the fishery brings wealth to the town, it is more than a
-mile away and makes no sign. Those who might think that, because of
-it, Colchester should obtrude oysters at every turn and oyster-shells
-should strew every street, would be vastly disillusioned. But
-beside its oyster fishery, other Colchester trades are of secondary
-importance. Agricultural machinery is made here, and brewing and
-corn-milling carried on, but the once famed textile manufactures are
-gone. Among those old trades was the industry of baize-making, which
-left Colchester considerably over a century ago for other centres,
-after having given additional prosperity to the town for a period of
-a hundred and fifty years. It was shortly after 1570 that numbers
-of Dutch Protestants, fleeing from the Spanish persecutions in
-Holland, introduced the making of "bays and says," and, despite local
-jealousies, flourished amazingly for generations here.
-
-But Colchester will never be dull while it continues to be what it is
-now--a great military depôt. Those worthy representatives of the Roman
-legionaries at a distance in time of nineteen centuries or so, the
-Tommies and troopers of the British Army, are a prominent feature in
-every street, and bugles blow all round the clock, from _réveillé_ to
-the last post, when every good soldier goes home to his barracks down
-the Butt Road; while the King's bad bargains stay behind and fortify
-themselves against apprehensions of the morrow's "clink" with another
-glass, or, adventuring too rashly into the street, find themselves
-presently in charge of the military patrol that walks the town with
-measured step and slow.
-
-
-XXIX
-
-
-"FROM Colchester to Ipswitch is ten mile," says that
-seventeenth-century traveller, Celia Fiennes, in her diary. The
-milestones, however, tell quite a different tale and contradict the
-lady by making the distance between the two towns eighteen miles and a
-quarter.
-
-Seven miles of these bring the traveller from Colchester across the
-Stour and so into Suffolk. It is not an exciting seven miles. Passing
-the eastern outskirts of Colchester, where mud in the Colne and puddles
-beside the slattern streets offend the sense of propriety, as, having
-reversed their natural positions, the Fair Field is left on the right.
-"Left" is an expression used advisedly, for who would linger there?
-But the Fair Field cannot be passed unawares. If not seen, it will be
-heard, for on it camp the caravans, steam roundabouts and travelling
-circuses that still draw rustic crowds with their fat women, giants and
-dwarfs; or delight them with mechanical rides on wooden horses to the
-bellowing of a steam organ, whose music-hall airs follow the traveller
-in gusts of stentorian minstrelsy when the wind unkindly wills it so.
-The sounds nerve the cyclist to quickly put the miles between himself
-and those siren strains, and happily the road is a fast one, so that
-he need not be long about the business. It goes, as an old turnpike
-should, broad and straight and well-kept, for the matter of six miles,
-with little to vary the monotony of trim hedgerow and equi-distant
-telegraph poles.
-
-Let us therefore leave it awhile, and, journeying some three hundred
-yards along the Harwich Road, come across a railway level-crossing to
-the suburb of St Ann's, and the site of a spring and hermitage called
-Holy Well. The spring is now sealed up, but an inscription in the wall
-of a cottage still proclaims it to have been reopened in 1844. It seems
-strange that the Hermitage should have been placed, not on the main
-road where pilgrims were surely more plentiful, but on the seaward
-route. The explanation may probably be sought in the existence already
-of another establishment of the kind, long since forgotten. Here, then,
-the Hermitage of St Ann's was placed, and a holy well and an oratory
-made appeal to the piety or the superstition, as the case might be, of
-all who passed by. To these the hermit presented his leathern wallet,
-beseeching travellers, who would have gone without giving alms, to
-spare a trifle for the upkeep of the road, even though they valued not
-the Blessed Saints.
-
-For three hundred years the Hermitage lasted, and a long line of
-hermits lived here. Some were pious and industrious, keeping the road
-in repair; others had neither piety nor industry, spent their time
-in taverns, were smiters, and got drunk and fought, so that the road
-became scandalously neglected, and many Colchester worthies received
-apostolical black eyes from eremitical fists. Such an one must have
-been the hermit who lived here in the reign of Henry the Fifth, and
-was indicted in 1419 for having an unclean ditch. Finally, in 1535,
-when the dissolution of the monasteries took place, the Hermitage was
-closed, and the then occupant turned out, with a warning that if he
-solicited alms henceforward he would be regarded as a "sturdy beggar,"
-and dealt with accordingly.
-
-The road to Ipswich was the scene, in the second half of the
-seventeenth century, shortly after the first coaches had started
-running, of many highway robberies. The borough of Colchester was
-deeply concerned at this lawlessness, and in 1679 three men were
-rewarded with £6, 8s. between them "for apprehending those y^t robbed
-the Ipswich coach." Again, in September 1698, three men were rewarded
-"for pursuen hiewaymen," and for "going to Ardlegh" on that business;
-but as they received only two shillings each and an extra shilling for
-"drinck," it looks as though the pursuit was unsuccessful.
-
-[Illustration: COLCHESTER.]
-
-The high road, to which we have now returned, has already been
-described as an excellent highway, but Dilbridge, a hamlet, and a
-roadside inn on what was once Ardleigh Heath, alone break its solitude.
-It has, however, the advantage of commanding the best general view of
-Colchester, with the inevitable Jumbo prominent, and the new-risen Town
-Hall tower in rivalry with it.
-
-Suddenly, when six miles from Colchester, the road changes its
-character and drops sharply down by an almost precipitous descent, to
-where a lazy river is seen flowing picturesquely in loops and bends
-between the grey-green foliage of willows lining either bank. It flows
-through a land of rich green meadows and yellow cornfields; a land,
-too, of noble elms and oaks. In the far distance the waters of a salt
-estuary sparkle in the sun, while in between, from this Pisgah height,
-rises the tall tower of a church. The river is the Stour, dividing
-Essex and Suffolk, and the pleasant vale, the Vale of Dedham. The
-estuary is that of the Stour at Manningtree, and the church tower
-that of Dedham. This, indeed, is the Constable Country, and that fact
-explains the homelike and familiar look it wears, even to the stranger.
-Constable, born close by at East Bergholt, painted these scenes
-lovingly for over forty years, and remained constant to his native vale
-all his life. By the magic power that comes of sympathy, he transferred
-the spirit of these lanes and fields and trees to canvas as faithfully
-as he did their form and colour; with the result that the veriest
-stranger viewing them becomes reminiscent.
-
-Nor did Constable only _paint_ his native vale; he has described it in
-almost as masterly a way. To him it was "the most cultivated part of
-Suffolk, a spot which overlooks the fertile valley of the Stour, which
-river separates that county on the south from Essex. The beauty of the
-surrounding scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats
-sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated uplands, its woods
-and rivers, with numerous scattered villages and churches, farms and
-picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular spot an amenity
-and excellence hardly anywhere else to be found. He tells an amusing
-story of travelling home by coach down this very hill. He shared the
-vehicle with two strangers. "In passing the Vale of Dedham, one of
-them remarked, on my saying it was very beautiful, 'Yes, sir, this is
-Constable's Country.' I then told him who I was lest he should spoil
-it."
-
-From this hill-top to the left of the road, and in what are now the
-woodlands of Langham Hall, Constable painted his best-known Vale
-of Dedham. In one respect the scene has changed. The willows still
-fringing the Stour, formerly "cobbed" or pollarded, are now allowed
-to grow as they will, and the river is not so visible as it was once.
-Otherwise the Constable Country is little altered. Even on this hill,
-close by Langham church, Church Farm, the original of his "Glebe Farm,"
-remains as it was, thatched and gabled, close by the church tower. Only
-the foliage has changed, and the little guttering stream been drained
-away.
-
-[Illustration: THE VALE OF DEDHAM. _After Constable._]
-
-[Illustration: GUN HILL.]
-
-This steep road, shelving so abruptly to the Stour, is Dedham Hill,
-more often locally known as Dedham Gun Hill, from the "Gun" inn at the
-summit, now unhappily rebuilt, but until recently a most picturesque
-old inn, with the painted sign of a cannon hanging over the road. The
-sign has gone, and a pretentious house, which proclaims "Accommodation
-for Lady Cyclists," arisen in its stead. At the foot of the hill the
-road, turning abruptly to the left, begins a lengthy crossing of the
-Stour and its marshes by a bridge over the channel and a long series of
-flood-water arches across the oozy valley. The old toll-house, taking
-tolls no longer, still stands, a quaint building on the Essex side, and
-bears a cast-iron tablet with the inscription,--
-
-  THE DUMB ANIMALS' HUMBLE PETITION.
-
-  Rest, drivers, rest, on this steep hill,
-  Dumb beasts pray use with all good will;
-  Goad not, scourge not, with thongèd whips,
-  Let not one curse escape your lips,
-          God sees and hears.
-
-                             T. T. H., POSUIT.
-
-[Illustration: OLD TOLL-HOUSE, STRATFORD BRIDGE.]
-
-This is one of a number of similar tablets erected throughout the
-country in the early part of the nineteenth century, when the first
-glimmerings of humane treatment of animals began to show themselves.
-When drivers had perforce to halt here to pay toll, this was a notice
-they could scarce help seeing, but it only by rare chance attracts
-attention now.
-
-Across the bridge is the mill, long idle and empty. No picturesque
-building this, but a great hulking structure of that intolerable
-"white" Suffolk brick which is rather a grey-white than any other hue;
-a brick which, the older it is looks more shabby and crude, and by no
-chance ever helps the artist. The whole length of the Norwich Road is
-more or less bedevilled with it.
-
-This mill is the one blot on the beauty of Stratford St Mary, a village
-built along the flat road and continuing round the bend, and so up the
-hill to where the fine old church stands overlooking the highway. It
-is a remarkable church, built of black flint and stone, and covered on
-the side facing the road with inscriptions. It owed its rise, on the
-site of an older building, to the Mors family, wealthy clothworkers
-of this place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is perhaps
-a little difficult to imagine Stratford St Mary, in common with other
-East Anglian towns and villages, a busy seat of the weaving industry,
-just as there is a difficulty in realising that Sussex was once a
-grimy iron-mining country; but trades and places have their fates, and
-changes and romances of their own.
-
-From 1499 to 1530 two generations of the Mors family were busy in
-giving to their church and in directing its new features; and the
-chief of the inscriptions in stone and flint that curiously decorate
-its exterior in old English characters record the facts and beseech
-the wayfarer to pray for their souls. Vain request! The work had not
-been completed five years when the long and troubled story of the
-Reformation began and the souls of the dead were no longer prayed for.
-
-The most prominent inscription is that enjoining prayers for Thomas
-Mors and his wife Margaret, who built the north aisle:--
-
- Orate pro animabus Thome Mors et Margarete uxoris ejus qui istam
- alam ffieri fecerunt anno dni mcccc^m lxxxxviiii
-
-Edward Mors, son of Thomas and Margaret, is, together with his wife
-Alice, content with an English inscription. They are also a little less
-self-centred than their forbears, desiring prayers for "all Christian
-souls" in addition to supplications for their own especial benefit:--
-
- Praye for the soullys of Edward Mors and Alys hys wyfe and all
- crysten sowlys, Anno Domini 1530.
-
-Many other inscriptions and devices are seen, among them the letters,
-P B A E S, said to be the initials of an invocatory sentence,
-"_Propitiemini beati ad eternam salutem_," addressed to Saints Thomas
-and Margaret, the patron saints of Thomas and Margaret Mors. But,
-stranger than any, is the appearance of the entire alphabet on these
-walls. Many attempts have been made to explain the reason of this,
-among them the view that the object was to educate the villagers in the
-rudiments of spelling!
-
-
-XXX
-
-
-THE long rise out of Stratford on the way to Ipswich lies through a
-beautiful Gainsborough-like woodland, with ancient trees gripping sandy
-banks in a tenacious clutch of gnarled roots. It is a hollow road, and
-one in which, when the coaches were toiling up, the guards' hands went
-instinctively towards their blunderbusses and swordcases. One never
-knew what or who might be lurking in that shade.
-
-But if it was a chancy spot then, how very suspicious a place it must
-have been hundreds of years before. That it was so regarded may be
-learnt from the _Paston Letters_, the instructive correspondence of the
-Paston family in the fifteenth century. Therein we read how a rival of
-John Paston in the wardship of one of the Fastolf family, coming out
-of Suffolk to London, was escorted by a hundred retainers, all armed
-with bows and arrows in their hands, with saletts on their heads,
-well-padded jacks and rusty haubergeons on their bodies, and fear in
-their hearts of an ambush laid on the part of the Pastons in the hollow
-way where the trees meet overhead and a mid-day darkness broods under
-the dense foliage. This rival expressed himself as not being afraid of
-the Pastons or any of their friends; but if not, why did he go escorted
-with this motley crew, tricked out with all the ancient weapons and
-rusted armour they could find? Happily they were not attacked, but that
-it was possible for petty warfare of this kind to be plotted is proof
-that the Merry England of that period was no safe place for peaceful
-travellers.
-
-Now we are well within Suffolk, the "crack county of England," as
-Cobbett called it, the "sweet and civil county" of Bishop Hall; but a
-county to which the alliterative term "silly" has long been applied.
-It is probably by this time quite hopeless to scotch that nickname,
-for it is of a considerable age and has a specious and easy glibness
-that comes trippingly off the tongue. Suffolkers themselves--whom it
-most concerns--are at pains to explain that the real, and entirely
-flattering, solution of the phrase is found in "selig," the Anglo-Saxon
-for "holy" or "blissful;" a reference to the numerous and wealthy
-religious houses within the county, and to the East Anglian saints and
-the many places of pilgrimage. Another party advancing the theory that
-the epithet was originally "Sely Suffolk," observant of the seasons,
-would thus have us believe that Suffolk must have been more observant
-than other counties, which is not credible. True, Suffolkers still talk
-of the hay-harvest as "haysel," a survival of "hay sele," but this is
-not the only county that uses the phrase. It becomes evident that the
-nickname must go unexplained.
-
-Suffolk has its claims to recognition on other than historic grounds.
-"I'm told the dumplings is uncommon fine down there," said William,
-the coachman, to little David Copperfield. Perhaps they are, and
-certainly it was once the custom among the peasantry here, as indeed
-throughout England, to serve pudding, or "dumpling," before meat in
-order to take the edge off appetites with a kind of food cheaper than
-butcher's meat; but the improved circumstances of the peasantry scarce
-demand such a practice nowadays, and in any case, Norfolk is the county
-of dumplings, so Dickens was in error in putting that speech in the
-coachman's mouth. "Norfolk Dumplings," he should have known, are as
-proverbial as "Silly Suffolkers."
-
-Suffolk is deservedly esteemed all over the world for the "Suffolk
-Punch." This sounds convivial, but has no connection with punch-bowls;
-the reference being, as a matter of fact, to a breed of horses.
-
-"And the Punches! There's cattle!" said William, the Canterbury
-coachman, to David Copperfield. "A Suffolk Punch, when he's a good
-'un, is worth his weight in gold," he added; which is not a very great
-exaggeration. Keep an eye upon the fields or an observant glance
-along the road, and the Suffolk Punch will readily be noted in his
-native country, at plough, halted by the wayside inn, or dragging with
-indomitable spirit the heaviest loads that the stupidity of the most
-stupid of waggoners could put him to. If ever horse deserved the praise
-contained in the familiar copy-book maxim, that he is "a Noble Animal,
-the Friend of Man," it is to this breed that it most particularly
-applies. The Suffolk Punch is a sturdy and a willing brute, and will
-pull against a dead weight until exhausted. It has been said that the
-Suffolk Punch existed as a type of horse in early British times, and
-it has been supposed that his remote ancestors were the horses that
-drew Boadicea's war-chariots. If it were not that he is invariably
-a chestnut, it might be supposed that his fame in the county had
-originated the sign of the "Great White Horse" in Ipswich; but from
-chestnut the breed never varies. It may be of various shades, from the
-darkest mahogany to the lightest golden-brown, but never any other hue.
-It is, of course, not necessary to journey into East Anglia to see the
-Suffolk Punch. Many of his kind are at work in London, drawing heavy
-loads, and are to be seen expatriated to Russia, and on Canadian farms,
-thousand of miles away from their native claylands.
-
-The Suffolk dialect is kin to those of Essex and Norfolk, but the
-"Suffolk whine" is peculiar to the county; it is a rising inflection
-of the voice towards the end of words and sentences. In Suffolk speech
-"fowls" become "foals," and "foals," "fools"; and archaic words, heard
-occasionally in Essex, grow more common as the traveller advances.
-So also does an odd custom first noticed in the neighbourhood of
-Colchester--the custom of affixing the place-name to the sign of
-an inn in ordinary talk. The "Gun" inn at Dedham, for example, is
-always spoken of as "Dedham Gun," and here, at Bentley, the custom
-is emphasised by the sign of a roadside inn being inscribed "Bentley
-Tankard," and not merely "The Tankard."
-
-[Illustration: SPRING: SUFFOLK PLOUGHLANDS. _After Constable._]
-
-But to understand Suffolk ways and to hear Suffolk talk it is necessary
-to linger in the villages and to gossip with the sons of the soil. The
-agricultural villages are only articulate at eventide, when they give
-themselves up to play and gossip. Then, as the long summer day draws
-to its close, the children find romance in the lengthening shadows, in
-which their games of robbers and pirates seem much more convincing than
-they could be made to appear in the glare of the midday sun; the farm
-labourers slouch off to their evening, over quarts of "bellywengins,"
-at the pub, and the coy mawthers find the twilight a seasonable time
-for nannicking with the hudderens. This, which may seem unmeaning
-gibberish to those unacquainted with the peculiar dialect of East
-Anglia, merely signifies the girls flirting with the "other ones"--the
-young men, in short.
-
-But a mawther may be of any age. A baby girl is a mawther, and so
-is a grandame. It is a curiosity of speech which is apt to startle
-the stranger who first hears it applied to a girl who has hardly yet
-learned to toddle, in the maternal threat, to be heard any day in any
-Suffolk village, "Yow come 'ere, mawther, this instant moment, or I'll
-spank yow, so I 'ool." "Yow," of course, is the Essex, Suffolk and
-Norfolk shibboleth for "you," by which a native of these parts may be
-immediately distinguished anywhere.
-
-When the labourers have trudged over to their "shants o' gatter,"
-or quarts and pots of beer--the "bellywengins," or belly vengeance,
-aforesaid; when the children have been put to bed, and the mawthers
-and the hudderens have gone nannicking off together in the gathering
-dusk, then is the gossiping time, both of the housewives and of the
-labourers. The women talk at the doors of the "housen": the men mostly
-in the village inns. Hear, passing stranger, what the mawthers are
-saying:--
-
-"Good daa to 'ee, Mrs Potter, how are ye a-gettin' arn?"
-
-"I'm a-doin' good-tidily, thank'ee, better'n tew or tree weeks sin'.
-The doctor say I fare to be on the mend; but it hev bin a bad time wi'
-me sure."
-
-"Ay; owd bones 'on't be young agen, I'm thinkin'; but there, 'taint so
-much yer aige, 'tis yer sperrut what keep ye up or let ye down."
-
-"Ay, that be trew," says one of the group, "what be life wi'out
-sperrut? Nothin', in a manner o' speakin'."
-
-"Yar father, Mrs Cobbold, he had it, and he lived to be ninety."
-
-"What a man that wor! I mind him when he come to mine arter he'd walked
-from Ipswich, an' that's a good ten mile. He come to paiy a shullun he
-ew my ole man, and, barrin' a bit tirsty, he were as spry as a mavish
-and fresher'n a paigle."
-
-A mile distant, to the right hand, lies East Bergholt, Constable's
-birthplace, and between it and the road still stretch in summer those
-golden cornfields he loved so well. "The Cornfield," that crowning
-achievement of English landscape, how exquisite a thing it is, radiant
-in colour on the walls of the National Gallery, and how ineffectually
-the inadequate medium of black and white attempts to translate it.
-
-[Illustration: THE CORNFIELD. _After Constable._]
-
-The grumbling farmer, who has good cause for his growls, poor fellow,
-is careful to explain his cornfields away. When asked why, if it
-does not pay to grow wheat, he still continues to do so, he says he
-grows it for the straw. At any rate, times are changed from those when
-agricultural England was merry with high prices; those picturesque days
-when the Ipswich and Norwich coaches were hailed, as every traveller
-was hailed, at harvest-time by the reapers' cry of "Halloo, halloo,
-largesse," the largesse going at harvest-home in a saturnalia at the
-village inn. "Largesse" has gone with the going of the reaping-hook,
-and with it and many other things has gone the Lord of the Harvest,
-elected from among his fellow-reapers to preside over their labours and
-their harvest-supper in the great fragrant barn or in the farm kitchen.
-The line of red-cheeked peasants, working from early morning with their
-sickles in the fierce sun upon the diminishing fields of standing
-wheat, with halts for levenses and bever, and so home by the light of
-the harvest moon, is no more to be seen: reaping-machines do the work
-instead. It was astonishing, and, in the haymaking fields, still is,
-what long and continual draughts of beer can be disposed of in the
-intervals of such labour. Levenses, that is to say the eleven o'clock
-forenoon meal, and bever, the four o'clock in the afternoon halt, whose
-name came through the Norman-French "bevre" from the Latin "bibere,"
-to drink, reduced the contents of the barrels placed in the shady
-hedgerows, but quarts imbibed under such conditions were harmless.
-Almost solitary survivals of the old peasant life, the names of "bever"
-and "levenses" remain yet in the common speech of Norfolk and Suffolk
-as those of the hedgeside meals of ploughman and carter.
-
-Old country folk still talk, in their reminiscent moments, of coaching
-and posting days here, when, near the tiny hamlet known as Cross Green,
-and in a deep dip of the high road, where a byway goes, leading from
-Manningtree to Hadleigh and beyond, "Laddenford Stables" stood at the
-cross roads that went then by the name of the "Four Sisters." Four
-sisters, if one likes to accept the rustic belief, agreed to part here
-and went their several ways, but how they fared, or what was their
-social status, the story does not tell.
-
-Passing Capel St Mary and the level-crossing by Capel station, and so
-by Copdock, whose church tower has an odd weather-vane in the shape
-of King David playing his harp, Washbrook is reached at the foot of
-its steep hill. Copdock on the hill and Washbrook in the hollow,
-together with the broad and still marshy valley of the little Wash
-Brook, tell how that rivulet was once, in the far-off days when Saxons
-and Danes contended on this coast, a navigable creek, an arm of the
-Orwell. The road, in its sharp descent into and rise out of the valley,
-together with its acute bend, is also eloquent of bygone geographical
-conditions, leading as it does down to the place where a bridge now
-spans the stream on the spot where the creek was, in days of old, first
-fordable. Having thus crossed, the road went, and still goes, in a
-right-angle turn uphill, towards Ipswich.
-
-It was by no means necessary for travellers journeying between London
-and Norwich to touch Ipswich. The coaches did, for obvious commercial
-reasons, but the "chariots" and the post-chaises commonly went from
-Washbrook, through Sproughton and Bramford, and joined the coach
-route again at Claydon, thus taking the base of a triangle, instead
-of its two sides. There are those at Washbrook who can still tell of
-the coaches that halted at "Copdock White Elm"; of the time when a
-toll-gate (the house still existing) stretched across the way at the
-foot of the hill, and of the "aristocracks" who posted the long stage
-between "Stonham Pie" and "Washbrook Swan." They can point out the
-"Swan," facing up the road and looking squarely up at the hill-top, but
-now a private residence with its stables chiefly put to alien uses; and
-can show the places, in what are now meadows, where many houses and
-cottages stood in those wayfaring days, when the high-lying road to
-Ipswich, across the uplands between the valleys of the Stour and the
-Orwell, was not so unfrequented as now.
-
-
-XXXI
-
-
-THERE can be no doubt of Ipswich and its surroundings having thoroughly
-captured the heart of grumbling old Cobbett.
-
-"From the town itself," he says, "you can see nothing; but you can, in
-no direction, go from it a quarter of a mile without finding views
-that a painter might crave." This is not a little remarkable, for we do
-not generally attribute an artistic perception of scenic beauties to
-this practical farmer. Yet he was of one mind with Constable, of whom
-and his pictures he probably had never heard, although Constable had
-already for years been painting these very scenes.
-
-The practical farming mind appears in Cobbett's next remarks: "And
-then, the country round about is so well cultivated; the land in such
-a beautiful state, the farmhouses all white and all so much alike; the
-barns and everything about the homesteads so snug; the stock of turnips
-so abundant everywhere; the sheep and cattle in such fine order; the
-wheat all drilled; the ploughman so expert; the furrows, if a quarter
-of a mile long, as straight as a line, and laid as truly as if with
-a level; in short, here is everything to delight the eye and to make
-the people proud of their country; and this is the case throughout
-the whole of this county. I have always found Suffolk farmers great
-boasters of their superiority over others, and I must say that it is
-not without reason."
-
-Cobbett found the windmills on the hills round Ipswich so numerous
-that, while standing in one place, he counted no fewer than seventeen,
-all painted or washed white, with black sails. They are fewer to-day,
-and could Gainsborough, old Crome and Constable revisit the scenes of
-their artistic inspiration, they would sadly miss the picturesqueness
-they gave these woody scenes and fertile hills and vales. It is from
-the crest of one of these hills that Ipswich is first glimpsed. There
-it sprawls, prosperous, beside the broad Orwell; "doubtlesse one of
-the sweetest, most pleasant, well-built townes in England," as John
-Evelyn thought in 1656; but then swarming with "a new phanatic sect of
-dangerous principles." The reader will scarce guess aright who these
-fanatics were. They were neither sun-worshippers nor Mahometans, but
-merely Quakers.
-
-One obtains no glimpse of the broad estuary of the Orwell when
-descending into the town by the London road, and the crowded mass
-of the place rises confusedly up before the traveller as he steeply
-descends, and forms no picture. You must take Ipswich in detail to
-admire it, and the actual crossing of the river at the foot of the
-hill where the town begins is at a narrow canalised stretch before it
-widens out into the noble harbour that makes the fortune of the port.
-A sign of that accomplished fortune is the unlovely sight of the great
-railway sidings and goods yards spread out before the stranger's eye as
-he comes downhill. One may say that the town begins at the door of the
-"Ipswich Arms" inn, uninteresting in itself, but displaying the fine
-"old coat" of this famous seaport; a shield with a rampant golden lion
-on a red field on the sinister, and three golden demi-boats on blue on
-the dexter side.
-
-"A fine, populous, and beautiful place," says Cobbett, still harping on
-an unwonted string of praise. "The town is substantially built, well
-paved, everything good and solid, and no wretched dwellings to be
-seen on its outskirts." He knew no town to be compared with it, except
-it were Nottingham, which, after all, is not properly comparable,
-Nottingham standing high, while Ipswich is in a vale, and moreover,
-is situated on an arm of the sea. It is amusing to read Cobbett's
-remarks on the population of Ipswich, which stood in his time at twelve
-thousand. "Do you not," he asks, "think Ipswich was far larger and far
-more populous seven hundred years ago than it is at this hour?"--that
-hour being some time in March 1830. He remarked upon "the twelve large,
-lofty and magnificent churches," each of them seven hundred years old,
-one capable of holding from four to seven thousand persons, and came to
-the conclusion that, in fact, although he found Ipswich populous, it
-must, even thus, have been a mere ghost of its former self. That shrewd
-observer was right. Ipswich had grievously decayed even in Charles the
-Second's reign, when the Duke of Buckingham described it as "a town
-without inhabitants, a river without water, streets without names, and
-where the asses wore boots." The Duke, in speaking of "a river without
-water," was probably referring to the estuary of the Orwell at low
-tide, when mud-banks stretch vast, and the stream runs by comparison
-feeble and thread-like through them. In its then nameless streets,
-Ipswich was not singular, for many small provincial towns were in like
-case. The asses that wore boots were those employed in rolling the lawn
-of a neighbouring park, the object probably being to prevent their
-hoofs injuring the surface.
-
-"Yepysweche," as Margaret Paston, writing to her husband over
-four hundred years ago, spells the name, derives its title from
-the aboriginal Gippings, a tribe or clan who squatted down beside
-the Orwell, and not only established their primitive village of
-Gippingswick here, but contrived to foist their tribal name upon the
-non-tidal part of the river above the town, which therefore still
-generally bears this _alias_. The town probably saw its greatest
-prosperity in the time of Cardinal Wolsey, a native, and, according
-to legend, son of a butcher. This "butcher's dogge," as the envious
-nicknamed the great Cardinal, determined that his birthplace should
-be great in learning as well as in commerce, and to that end founded
-a College which he intended to be in some sort preparatory for his
-greater college of Christ Church at Oxford. That his foundation was
-reared on the spoliation of a religious house and its revenues,
-procured by him for the purpose, seemed but an ill omen for its
-prosperity to those who saw his buildings rising to completion, and the
-omen was speedily fulfilled, for the new-made abode of learning never
-sent forth a scholar, but was suppressed by Henry the Eighth almost
-before the mortar of its brick walls was dry; the buildings themselves
-torn down and the endowments confiscated. All that remains of Wolsey's
-College is one noble red-brick gateway in College Street.
-
-Daniel Defoe was a native of Ipswich and a curious contrast with
-Wolsey, his brother townsman of two hundred years before. In his day
-the old prosperity of the place had vanished, in the stress of Dutch
-competition and the virulence of the plague; but modern times have made
-amends for that temporary decay, and the town is now nearly four times
-larger than when, shortly after the first quarter of the nineteenth
-century had gone, Cobbett noted its many and empty churches and its
-scanty population. It numbers now over 58,000 souls, and its trades are
-numerous and prosperous. Whether it be in the making of agricultural
-and milling machinery, its corn markets, artificial manure making, or
-the manufacture of corsets, Ipswich is fortunate, with the good fortune
-of those who give heed to the ancient proverb and do not put all their
-eggs in one basket.
-
-[Illustration: WOLSEY'S GATEWAY.]
-
-Picturesqueness coyly hides itself from the traveller who merely
-passes through the chief streets. Not in the open square of Cornhill,
-where the cabs and flys stand on the site of the old Market Cross and
-the trams fly to and fro, and where the Post-office and the Town Hall
-rise, side by side, does it appear, nor in the long street beyond;
-but rather in the Butter Market and the lanes that conduct to the
-waterside. There be streets in that quarter with odd names, among them
-Silent Street; and almshouses, and churches, and the queerest inns.
-Among the almshouses are Smart's, on whose walls, unhappily rebuilt
-in modern times, the charitable Smart and his no less charitable
-coadjutor, Tooley, are commemorated:--
-
-  "Let gentle Smart sleep on in pious trust,
-  Behold his charity. Respect his dust."
-
-  "In peaceful silence lett great Toolie rest,
-  Whose charitable deeds bespeak him blest."
-
-It is to be feared that these eulogies raise a smile at the expense of
-great Tooley and gentle Smart.
-
-[Illustration: THE "LION AND LAMB," ANGEL LANE.]
-
-As to the inns, they include the odd conjunction of the "Lion and
-Lamb," pictured here, and the "Neptune" and the "Sea Horse," with a
-fine sound of the sea in their names. Some of these old hostelries yet
-retain their corner-posts: for example, that of the "Half Moon" in
-Foundation Street, where the post still keeps its mediæval carving of a
-fox, with uplifted sanctimonious eyes, preaching to three geese and a
-griffin; a satirical effort no doubt looked sourly upon by the clergy
-of St Mary Key Church, opposite, in days of old. A great gilt key
-serves as vane to that church and perpetuates the error in the name,
-which was originally, and rightly, St Mary-at-Quay: the custom-house
-quay and the harbour being close by, as the sight of certain
-corn-elevators, the rattling of chains and windlasses, and the sounds
-of throaty steam-sirens sufficiently proclaim. The custom-house stands
-in midst of coal-grit, laden steam vessels lying alongside the quay
-wall, bellowing steamily to be discharged, and railway-sidings, along
-whose maze of points and turn-tables fussy little locomotive engines,
-dragging jerky trucks, run, screaming intermittently, as though saying
-to the bellowing steam-vessels, "_You_ just wait; can't you see I'm
-coming as quick as I can?" It is a dignified custom-house, and seems,
-surrounded with dutiable goods, to be aristocratically sneering at
-the trade in whose midst it is necessarily placed, and with as great
-a consciousness of its Ionic peristyle as any high-born beauty of her
-Greek nose.
-
-Many of the old wool-staplers', clothiers' and merchants' fine mansions
-stood by the quay and in the by-lanes. They are mostly gone now, but
-traces of old doorways and stray fragments of stone and wood carvings
-remain, and here and there a courtyard, or a house that sheltered
-family circles in the amphibious half-mercantile, half-agricultural
-Ipswich of the sixteenth century.
-
-[Illustration: SPARROWE'S HOUSE.]
-
-Certainly one of the finest things Ipswich has to show is the wonderful
-old place in the old Butter Market, known still as "Sparrowe's House,"
-although the last of the Sparrowes who inhabited here has long since
-gone to his home in the family vault within the Church of St Lawrence,
-where, over their tomb-house, may yet be read the punning motto,
-_Nidus Passerum_, "a nest of sparrows." These Sparrowes seem to have
-been endowed with some of the attributes of the cuckoo, for _they_
-did not build the house that bears their name. It owes its origin to
-a certain George Copping, who built it in 1567, but alterations and
-additions made in the Jacobean period give its architectural history
-a span of over a century. The woodwork of the bay windows and the
-grandly-projecting eaves, together with that of the shop premises, was
-added at the time. But the great glory of "Sparrowe's House" is its
-decorative plaster-work in high relief, which profusely covers the
-exterior with garlands of flowers and fruits and with quaint devices
-emblematic of the four quarters of the globe. Here Europa, cornucopia
-in one hand, book and sceptre in the other, sits with her bull, who
-might be taken for an elephant with half his trunk shorn off; here,
-on another bay, a podgy plaster relief typifies Asia, with palm-tree
-and a building of Oriental character in the background; followed by
-Africa, a nude nigger holding an umbrella over his head and sitting
-on a shark, at which four tiny figures at a respectful distance
-express astonishment, while nearer at hand a wicked-looking bird of
-quite uncertain family roosts on a something that greatly resembles
-a battered meat tin. America is typified by an Indian in a feather
-head-dress which represents his entire wardrobe. He stands with bow
-and arrows, attended by a dog with a damaged smile. A very beautiful
-representation of the Royal Arms occupies one of the spaces between
-the windows, and other devices show the pelican in her piety; Atlas
-supporting the world; a classical scene in which a shepherd bows as
-gracefully as the artist in plaster could make him to a rural nymph; St
-George and the Dragon, and several smaller subjects.
-
-
-XXXII
-
-
-THE most famous thing in Ipswich is a thing neither ancient nor
-beautiful, yet it is an object to which most visitors to the town turn
-their first attention: it is the "Great White Horse." The "Great White
-Horse" is an hotel, of a size, in the merry days of the road, justly
-thought enormous. It has been left for the present age to build many
-hotels in town and country capable of containing half-a-dozen or more
-hostelries of the size of the "Great White Horse," but in its own
-especial era that house fully justified the adjective in its sign.
-Especially did its bulk strike the imagination of the reporter of the
-London _Morning Chronicle_ who was dispatched to Ipswich in 1830 for
-the purpose of reporting a Parliamentary election in the town. He was
-a very young, a very impressionable and a very bright reporter, and
-although we may be quite sure that the business on which he was come to
-Ipswich was an arduous piece of work, calculated to fully occupy his
-time and thoughts, he carried away with him so accurate an impression
-of the big inn where he stayed, that when, some time afterwards, he
-wrote about it the description was as exact as though it had been
-penned within sight of the house. That reporter was Charles Dickens,
-and it is his description in the _Pickwick Papers_ which has made the
-place famous.
-
-[Illustration: THE "GREAT WHITE HORSE."]
-
-It was not a flattering description. Few more severe things have ever
-been said of inns than those Dickens wrote of the "Great White Horse."
-Indeed, if such things were nowadays printed of any inn or hotel, the
-writer might confidently expect to be made the defendant in an action
-for libel. Yet (such is the irony of time and circumstances) the house
-that Dickens so roundly abused is now eager in all its advertisements
-to quote the association; and the adventures of Mr Pickwick in the
-double-bedded room with the elderly lady in yellow curl-papers have
-brought many more visitors than the unfavourable notice of the
-"uncarpeted passages" and the "mouldy, ill-lighted rooms" has turned
-away. If, as has been thought, Dickens thus wrote of the house in order
-to be revenged for some slights and discomforts he may have experienced
-here, certainly fortune has played the cynic in converting his remarks
-into the best of all imaginable recommendations.
-
-The exterior of the house is much the same as it was when Dickens first
-saw it, "in the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the
-way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space
-fronting the Town Hall."
-
-It is the same plain, square building, constructed of a pallid kind of
-brick suggesting underdone pastry, and is still, although the coaches
-have disappeared and railways have supplanted them, "known far and
-wide by the appellation of the 'Great White Horse.'" Still, over the
-pillared entrance trots the effigy of the Great White Horse himself,
-perhaps the aboriginal ancestor of that famous breed of equines, the
-"Suffolk Punches," a very muscular race, more famous for their bulk
-and strength than for elegance, like those sturdy Flanders mares to
-which Henry the Eighth inelegantly likened his bride, Anne of Cleves.
-
-Dickens, using the usual licence of the novelist, describes this effigy
-as "a stone statue of some rampacious animal, with flowing mane and
-tail, distantly resembling an insane cart-horse, elevated above the
-principal door." Quite apart from the fact that the word "rampacious"
-is unknown to the English language, and is probably meant for
-"rampageous," the horse is really represented in the act of beginning a
-gentle trot, and looks as mild as the mildest milk that ever dewed the
-whiskers of a new-born kitten. His off fore-leg, broken at some period,
-has been restored of a size that does not match with the other three.
-Never, in the whole of his existence, has the Great White Horse gone
-on the rampage, and, like all the truly great, his manners have always
-been distinguished by their unobtrusiveness.
-
-"The 'Great White Horse,'" writes Dickens, "is famous in the
-neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county
-paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig--for its enormous size. Never
-were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy,
-ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or
-sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as are collected together between
-the four walls of the 'Great White Horse' at Ipswich." Further, he
-describes it as "an overgrown tavern," at whose door, when Mr Pickwick
-descended from the coach, stood a waiter whose description quite
-takes one's desire for dinner away. He was "a corpulent man with a
-fortnight's napkin under his arm and coeval stockings on his legs."
-
-Although that must have been in the best and most prosperous days of
-the highway, this waiter does not appear to have had anything more
-pressing to do than "staring down the road," while the account of
-the internal arrangements of the house does not indicate flourishing
-business. The private room into which the guests were shown was a
-"large, badly-furnished apartment, with a dirty grate, in which a
-small fire was making a wretched attempt to be cheerful, but was fast
-sinking under the dispiriting influence of the place." After this we
-are not surprised to read that it was only "after the lapse of an hour"
-that "a bit of fish and a steak," representing a dinner, appeared.
-When this was disposed of, Mr Pickwick and Mr Peter Magnus huddled up
-to the fire, and, "having ordered a bottle of the worst possible port
-wine, at the highest possible price, for the good of the house, drank
-brandy-and-water for their own."
-
-Certainly Dickens must have had some very bitter grudge against the
-"Great White Horse."
-
-Then come allusions to "tortuous passages," and the difficulty of
-a stranger's finding his way about the interminable corridors, or
-distinguishing between one "mouldy room" and another; difficulties
-which led to Mr Pickwick's comical predicament in the middle of
-the night. The rooms, not so mouldy now, and the passages, just as
-perplexing, remain, structurally unaltered to this day; but certain
-alterations have been made downstairs in the courtyard, now roofed in
-with glass and made very attractive, without spoiling the old-style
-character of the house. If you be a literary pilgrim, or an American,
-they will show you Mr Pickwick's bedroom; and can meet any of Dickens's
-criticisms by telling how Nelson stayed here with--ahem!--Lady
-Hamilton, and how Admiral Hyde-Parker and others of world-wide fame
-have occupied the "mouldy rooms."
-
-
-XXXIII
-
-
-LEAVING Ipswich and passing through the dusty roadside fringe of
-Whitton village, known as Whitton Street, Claydon, nondescript, and
-neither very beautiful nor quite commonplace, is reached in two
-and a half miles. Just before entering the village, an old mansion
-is glimpsed from the road, embowered in trees, a mansion which, on
-inquiry, the ingenuous youth of Claydon declare to be "Mockbeggar
-Hall." Claydon Hall is its true title; but the popular name has been
-handed down since many, many years ago, when the old house (not old
-then) long remained tenantless. Like the many other places named
-"Mockbeggar," it stands well within view of passing travellers, and
-must have induced many a sturdy rogue and vagabond to trudge wearily
-up the long approach in search of alms, only to find the windows dark,
-the chimneys innocent of smoke, the place, in fact, deserted of all
-but fluttering bats and screeching owls, whose shrill notes must have
-sounded like jeers to the disappointed vagrants. Inhabited now, Claydon
-Hall is a handsome old house bearing the date 1635 on its Dutch-like
-gables. It will probably never lose its popular name. Behind the old
-Hall winds the willow-fringed Orwell, coyly approaching within view
-of the road, and then, as it were, timorously retreating again; its
-brimming stream, although seen only in such fleeting glimpses, potent
-in its effect upon at least three miles' length of the road, from
-Claydon to Creeting All Saints, in the loveliest stretch of woodland,
-where the fierce mid-day sun is baffled by over-arching foliage,
-and twilight comes early in the afternoon through the dense masses
-of leaves. These are the woodlands of Shrubland Park. The Hall lies
-secluded to the right hand, somewhere away beyond the rather terrible
-lodges that confront the traveller, who wonders where he has seen their
-like before; until, like a flash, the memory of certain great London
-cemeteries and their mortuary chapels comes upon him in desolating
-fashion and blights the cheerful rustic surroundings of forest trees
-and the scurryings of white-tailed rabbits and gorgeous blue and brown
-pheasants that inhabit this domain of Lord de Saumarez. The lodges,
-built like the Hall, from designs by Sir Charles Barry, are of white
-brick and stone, in the Italian Renaissance style.
-
-[Illustration: MOCKBEGGAR HALL.]
-
-At no great distance from the entrance to this lordly domain, and
-noticeable from the road, in an exquisitely damp situation by the
-river, eminently calculated to foster rheumatism in old bones, is the
-Barham Union-house--the "Work'us" of peasant speech. It is quite an
-old-world building, and one of the earliest built under the new Poor
-Law Act of the early nineteenth century, when outdoor relief gave place
-to retirement within these prison-like buildings. Hodge well named them
-"Bastilles." They say who should know of what they speak, that life
-in Barham Union is nowadays quite desirable, but the design of the
-building, a quadrangular structure enclosing a courtyard, with outer
-walls blank or only provided with windows at a height from the ground,
-closely follows the prison, or restraining, idea.
-
-The little roadside sign of the "Sorrel Horse," standing in midst
-of these leafy bowers, is in pleasing contrast with the Campo Santo
-pretentiousness of Shrubland lodges or the prison-like style of the
-Union, now left behind on a rising road, where the scarped side of
-the highway reveals a momentary change from the prevailing claylands
-to chalk; a change so sudden and so strictly confined to this
-hillside that it at once attracts the attention of even the least
-geologically-inclined. Here the campions bloom that love the chalk
-and refuse to grow on clay. Below this hilltop, in the deep hollow
-scoured out ages ago, when the now insignificant stream that crosses
-the road was a considerable force, is Creeting Bottom, and Creetings of
-several sorts are set about the countryside, all hiding from the road
-that goes now up hill and down dale with as lonely an air as though
-the little town of Needham Market and the larger town of Stowmarket
-were not almost within sight, over the shoulders of the hills, on the
-highway parallel with this, that runs to Bury St Edmunds. To be on "on
-the road to Needham" is an obvious Suffolk saying, applied to those who
-are badly off for worldly gear, and it is a little curious that Needham
-itself was for many years, and until quite recently, a place of fallen
-fortunes, lamenting the decay of its textile trades in empty houses
-and an "irreducible minimum" of rent for those that were so fortunate
-as to find occupants at all. The name of "Hungry-gut Hall" that still
-clings to a farmhouse marks that depressed period to all time; but in
-the spicy odours of the tanneries and the chemical manure stores and
-other thriving industries and businesses that cluster round the railway
-station, the explorer finds evidences enough that Needham is reviving.
-
-[Illustration: "STONHAM PIE."]
-
-Not a sign of those towns or of the railway is seen on the road to
-Norwich, where the cottage outposts of Stonham Earls and Stonham
-Aspall alone tell of the villages in the hinterland. In their gardens,
-spread on bushes or waving in the summer breeze, intimate articles of
-underclothing are prominently displayed, in the society of old hats
-and coats, not so much for the exhibition of the family wardrobe as in
-desperate attempts--bringing up all the reserves--at scaring away the
-hungry birds from currants, cherries and gooseberries. These contests,
-the only warring incidents on the way, in which the birds are generally
-the victors, bring one to a level road where Little Stonham stands,
-its chief feature the "Magpie" Inn. "Stonham Pie" owns one of those
-old gallows signs, stretching across the road, that were at one time a
-common feature. The picture-sign, with a painting of that saucy bird,
-has been hung below the cross-beam instead of in its old ironwork
-frame above, now that the piled-up coaches that once passed beneath
-are gone. Shortly before their going, and while turnpikes and tolls
-appeared likely to last for ever, the toll-gate that stood at the
-succeeding village of Brockford was removed two miles onward, to Stoke
-Ash, where, at the beginning of the pretty avenue at Stoke Chapel, the
-later toll-house remains, just as does the earlier one at Brockford.
-Brockford, the "badger's ford" of a tiny affluent of the Waveney, is
-preceded by Brockford Green, where the quiet road is made narrow by its
-sides being encroached upon by grass. It is here that the accompanying
-sketch of tall poplars and bushy willows was taken.
-
-[Illustration: NEAR BROCKFORD.]
-
-Off to the left hand, in strong contrast with this level stretch of
-road, the country is tumbled into combes and rounded hills, where the
-River Gipping takes its rise in the village of that name, springing
-from the hill where the church tower stands solemn and grim, as though
-it held inviolate the story of the place, away from those days when the
-Gippings first settled here and gave it a title.
-
-But let not the hurried seek Gipping, along the winding by-roads. The
-way, if not far, is not easy, and passengers are few. Scattered and
-infrequent farmhouses there be, at whose back doors to inquire the way,
-but rustic directions are apt to mislead. In any case, it is little
-use approaching the front door of a farmhouse. No one will hear you
-knocking, unless indeed it be a watchful and savage dog, trained to be
-on the alert for tramps; and you are like to hear him snuffling and
-gasping on the other side in a ferociously suggestive manner which will
-render you thankful that the door is closed and bolted. And not only
-bolted on this occasion, but always. The steps, and the space between
-the door and the threshold, where stray straws and wind-blown rubbish
-have collected, are evidence of the fact that the farmer and his family
-do not use the front door, but make their exits and entrances by way
-of the kitchen. It is an old East Anglian custom, and although many of
-the farmers nowadays pretend to culture and set up to be as up-to-date
-as the retired tradesfolk and small squires they are neighbourly with,
-many others would no more think of using the principal entrance to
-their homes than they would make use of the "parlour," where massive
-and sombre furniture, covered with antimacassars, is disposed with
-geometric accuracy around the room, in company with the family Bible
-and the prizes taken at school by the farmer's children; the stale and
-stuffy atmosphere proclaiming that this state apartment is only used
-on rare and solemn occasions. In fact, the "best room" and the front
-door only came into use in the old days on the occasion of a funeral.
-Perhaps it is a custom originating in a laudable idea of paying the
-greatest possible respect to the dead, but it is one which certainly
-gives a gruesome mortuary significance to both the entrance and the
-room.
-
-[Illustration: "THWAITE LOW HOUSE."]
-
-Thwaite or "Twaite," as East Anglians, incapable of pronouncing "th,"
-call it, less than a mile beyond Brockford, numbers few cottages.
-Beyond it, where the hitherto flat road makes a descent, is in
-local parlance, "Thwaite Low House," not so called on account of
-any disreputable character it may once have earned, but from its
-situation. The name obviously entails the existence of a "High House,"
-which was, like the other, a coaching and posting inn. The last named,
-now a farmstead, was in those days the "Cock," the other the "Queen's
-Head." While the "Low House" has fallen upon times so irredeemably evil
-that it has been long untenanted and is now a veritable scarecrow of
-a house, with gaping holes in its walls and windows battened up, the
-"Cock," save that its sign is gone, still remains much as it was, to
-show a later generation what manner of place the roadside inn was in
-days of yore.
-
-[Illustration: THE "COCK," THWAITE.]
-
-Stoke Ash, or "Aish," as Suffolkers pronounce it, like many another
-village, makes no sign from the road. Its church tower seen to the
-right, dimly, amid a hilltop screen of trees, a square, box-like
-red-brick chapel by the way, and that pretty inn, "Stoke White Horse,"
-are the only other evidences of its being. The remaining six miles to
-the Norfolk border lead through Yaxley and Brome: Yaxley, where a
-branch railway runs under the road, on its way to Eye, and narrowly
-misses the old church: Brome, where the "Swan" stands for all the
-village to those who look to neither side of the road; church and
-houses skulking down a by-road on the way to Hoxne. There, down that
-pretty road, where the thatched cottages nestle under tall trees
-and the blue wood-smoke from rustic hearths curls upwards into the
-boughs and makes the sparrows cough and sneeze--there is the Rectory,
-approached in lordly fashion past a fine brick entrance and exquisite
-avenue, and, at a little greater distance the old black flint,
-round-towered church, restored and titivated out of all antiquity
-of tone: the stone sand-papered, and the flints polished with a
-handkerchief. The only thing missing--and, under the circumstances,
-it is missed--is a glass case, so that no damp, nor lichen, nor any
-effects of weather may come to spoil the housewifely neatness.
-
-It was along this road to Hoxne that those who sought the revered head
-of St Edmund, King and Martyr, in the miraculous legend, were led to
-it by the voice calling, "Here, here, here;" at length finding the
-sainted relic in charge of a wolf, who allowed it to be taken from
-between his paws. But the voice thus calling was probably a much less
-supernatural manifestation, and was doubtless the hooting of owls in
-the woods. They still mock the belated traveller, only, to ears untuned
-to the miraculous, they simply seem to ask, "Who, who, who?" Ingenuity,
-however, vainly seeks the basis in nature of the wolf incident.
-
-
-XXXIV
-
-
-NOW, crossing the River Waveney, winding with tree-fringed banks
-through a flat country, the road enters Norfolk at Scole. Coming over
-the little bridge, the village is seen huddled together on either side
-of a narrow rising road; village and church alike wholly dominated by
-a great building of mellow red brick whose panelled chimney-stacks and
-long row of beautiful gables give the impression of an historic mansion
-having by some strange chance been taken from its park and set down
-beside the highway. This, however, was at no time a private residence,
-but was built as an inn; and an inn it remains, after the passing of
-nearly two centuries and a half. Scole, or "Schoale," as the name was
-often spelled in old times (when, indeed, the village was not called
-by its _alias_ of Osmundeston), was by reason of this inn quite a
-celebrated place in the days of long ago. Every traveller in Eastern
-England had then either seen or heard of "Scole White Hart" and its
-famous sign that stretched completely across the road, and as a great
-many coaches halted here for changing teams, passengers had plenty of
-time for examining what Sir Thomas Browne thought to be "the noblest
-sighne-post in England." Both house and sign were built in 1655, for
-James Peck, described as a "Norwich merchant," whose initials, together
-with the date, are yet to be seen on the centre gable. The elaborate
-sign alone cost £1057. It was of gigantic size and loaded with
-twenty-five carved figures of classic deities and others. Chaste Diana,
-with bow and arrow and two hounds, had a place on the cross-beam, in
-company with Time in the act of devouring an infant, Actæon and his
-dogs, a huntsman, and a White Hart _couchant_. On a pediment above
-the White Hart, supported by Justice and Temperance, was the effigy
-of an astronomer "seated on a Circumferenter," who by "some Chymical
-Preparation is so Affected that in fine Weather He faces the North and
-against bad Weather He faces that Quarter from whence it is about to
-come." On either side of the dizzy height occupied by the astronomer
-were figures of Fortitude and Prudence, a position suitable enough for
-the first-named of those two virtues, but certainly too perilous for
-the last.
-
-Further suggestions of Olympus, with references to Hades and Biblical
-history, adorned the other portions of this extraordinary work.
-Cerberus clawed one side of the supporting post, while Charon dragged
-a witch to Hell on the other; and Neptune bestriding a dolphin, and
-Bacchic figures seated across casks alternated with the arms of
-twelve East Anglian noble and landed families. Two angels supported
-respectively the arms of Mr Peck and his lady and two lions those of
-Norwich and Yarmouth. On the side nearest the inn appeared a huge
-carving of Jonah coming out of the whale's mouth, while, suspended in
-mid-air, and surrounded by a wreath, was another White Hart.
-
-Although, as we have seen, Sir Thomas Browne was impressed with this
-work, an early nineteenth-century tourist (so early indeed as 1801)
-curtly dismisses it as "a pompous sign, with ridiculous ornaments," and
-shortly after that it seems to have been taken down, for the reason
-that it cost the landlord more to keep it in repair than the trade of
-the house permitted. Together with this, the once celebrated Great Bed
-of the White Hart has also disappeared. It was a round bed capable of
-holding twenty couples, and was therefore a good deal larger than the
-famous Great Bed of Ware. Perhaps it was because guests did not relish
-this co-operative method of seeking repose, or maybe because sheets,
-blankets and coverlets of sufficient size were unobtainable, that the
-Scole Great Bed was chopped up for firewood; but did anyone _ever_
-suppose beds of this wholesale capacity would be desirable?
-
-The accompanying old view of the gigantic sign shows one of the
-peculiar basket coaches of the second half of the eighteenth century,
-on its way to London.
-
-[Illustration: THE OLD SIGN OF SCOLE WHITE HART.]
-
-"Scole White Hart" must have been among the very finest of inns and
-posting-houses. Its wide staircases, of a width sufficient for the
-proverbial coach-and-four to drive up them, its large rooms and fine
-panelled doors, its great stone-flagged kitchen, all proclaim how great
-must have been its old prosperity; while the wide-spreading yard in
-the rear of the house, together with the outbuildings, gives some hint
-of how heavy the traffic was at this junction of the Lowestoft, Bungay,
-Diss and Thetford road with that from London to Norwich. Shrunken trade
-has caused portions of the inn to be let off; the stone and wooden
-porches seen in the old print have disappeared; the coach entrance has
-long since been blocked up and has become the bar-parlour, and the
-mullions of the windows have given place to sashes; but the building
-still retains a noble architectural character, and is perhaps more
-interesting in these latter days, now that its story is told, than ever
-it was when that story was in the making. Little or nothing is found in
-contemporary records of "Scole White Hart"; only one vivid flash in its
-later years, when indignant would-be coach passengers stood at the door
-on a day in October 1822 and saw the drivers of the "Norwich Times"
-and "Gurney's Original Day Coach," fired by rivalry, and reckless in
-their long race from Whitechapel, come pounding furiously down the road
-and over the bridge, pass the inn without stopping, and disappear in
-clouds of dust in the direction of Norwich. Do you know what it is to
-lose a train and to wait an hour for the next? You do? Then it will
-not be difficult to form some idea of the blind, stuttering fury that
-possessed those who had booked seats at Scole and saw the coaches dash
-away, to leave them with half a day's wait.
-
-Thorogood was driving the "Times." Both started from London at 5.30
-a.m. The "Day" coach reached Norwich at 5.20 p.m., and the "Times" ten
-minutes later, neither having stopped for changing horses during the
-last twenty-five miles. This was a "record" for that period, the usual
-time being fourteen hours.
-
-Probably the would-be passengers had to remain the night; a fate which
-no one who has done the like of late would be apt to complain of.
-The guest at the "White Hart," seated in solitary state in the lofty
-sitting-room, lit dimly by candles in antique plated candlesticks, and
-with two ox-eyed seventeenth-century beauties of the Lely type gazing
-down upon him from their sombre frames, presently feels oddly as though
-he were living in another era; a feeling that grows as he wanders
-upstairs to bed, almost losing himself in the roomy corridors. When
-he has closed the nail-studded bedroom door with a reverberant clang,
-and, creeping into the generous embraces of a damask-hung four-poster
-that may have been new a century and a half ago, gazes reflectively
-about the panelled room and on the curiously coffered ceiling, he drops
-off to sleep straightway into the times when the inn was new-built and
-dreams of how the news of the Restoration may have come to Scole in
-1661. Old times live again, faded flowers bloom once more, forgotten
-footsteps echo along the passages, and lo, the Has Been is enacted
-again, with all the convincing air of such visions. Post-chaises and
-chariots clatter up to the door and their noise wakens the sleeper
-to the consciousness that the sound is but that of a jolting rustic
-tumbril going down the road in the early morning; that this is the
-twentieth century, and the "White Hart" but a survival in a back
-eddy of life.
-
-[Illustration: STAIRCASE IN THE "WHITE HART."]
-
-Besides the "White Hart," there is little else at Scole. The plain
-flint tower of the church stands by the roadside, on the ascent that
-leads from the village; and other two or three inns, a few rustic shops
-and cottages, and a private residence or so make up the tale. Scole,
-in fact, has not grown greatly since when it was a Roman station, and
-when the Roman soldiers whose remains have been found near the river
-occupied the military post on the long road to Venta Icenorum.
-
-The legionaries first stationed in these East Anglian wastes must
-often have longed for their native Italy. When the sky sank almost to
-the level of the land in the long winter's rains and fogs, and the
-biting winds blew out of the east across the sandy scrub; when agues
-or the lurking enemy accounted for many of their comrades, and when
-some favoured few were recalled to the capital, they must have thought
-wistfully of a more congenial clime than this, situated on the edge of
-the Unknown. Rome, either as Empire or Republic, was a hard taskmaster,
-and when no fighting was in prospect employed the troops ingloriously
-as road-makers. The advanced garrisons in the wilderness cleared the
-enemy out of the tangled brush and boggy marshes, and working parties
-built roads under the protection of guards, or improved the rude
-trackways they found already in existence. Some fell by the way, and
-their skeletons have been found in these latter days, the teeth still
-clenched on the obolus placed in the dead man's mouth to pay Charon
-for ferrying him across the cold and darkling Styx; or, where the coin
-has perished, still stained with the metal's long decay. They perished,
-those pioneers, to found a civilisation, just as countless thousands of
-our own blood have laid their bones on distant shores, under burning
-skies or in the Arctic night, to make England what she is. Respect
-their long sleep, antiquaries, nor, as you honour your own creeds, take
-from the dead men their passage-money across that mystic river.
-
-
-XXXV
-
-
-THIS, as Dr Jessop charmingly names Norfolk, is Arcady. The scene
-is pleasant, but the stage waits: where are the actors? Gone, where
-and for what reasons beyond the substitution of rail for road shall
-presently be considered. But if the merry days of old are done and
-population dwindled, at least in East Anglia, and especially in
-Norfolk, dialect flourishes among those who remain. The "Norfolk drant"
-or drawl, is still heard, just as the "Suffolk whine"--that rising
-inflection of the voice towards the end of sentences--is even yet a
-mark of the sister county. They are, indeed, said to have originated
-the Yankee combined drawl and twang, for Norfolk and Suffolk were
-largely represented among the Pilgrim Fathers, the first colonists of
-North America. With these survivals, some of the old rustic simplicity
-is still met with, although the extraordinary ignorance of sixty years
-ago has disappeared, and the Norfolk labourer no longer thinks it
-possible to emigrate to America by driving over in a farm cart. The
-story is an East Anglian classic, how a farm labourer "didn't fare
-rightly to knaw" by what route they were going to the United States,
-"but we'm gwine ter sleep t' Debenham the fust night, so's to kinder
-break t' jarney." When railways came, and access to London grew easy,
-these simplicities gradually faded away. The young men took to "gettin'
-up the road," as the saying ran--otherwise, going to London--to "better
-themselves," and old illusions were soon dispelled; but in Arcady the
-mavis may still be seen knapping a dodman; the children of the rustic
-hamlets may be observed by the passing stranger gleefully sporting at
-the old game of tittymatorterin; the cowslips that in springtime turn
-the meadows to living gold are yet "paigles"; a small field remains,
-as ever, a "pightle," and when a countryman throws anything into a
-ditch, he "hulls" (or hurls) "it in t' holl," just as his ancestors
-did hundreds of years ago. Let some of the archaic words just noted be
-explained before we proceed any further. "Mavis" is the idyllic name
-of the thrush, and the "dodman," which he may be observed "knapping,"
-or breaking, is a snail; called in Essex, by the way, a "hodmadod."
-"Tittymatorterin" is just the simple game of "see-sawing." Besides
-these fleeting instances there are many other peculiarities. The
-Norfolk peasant will never pronounce the letter E if it be possible
-to avoid it. It becomes I in his mouth, and a head becomes a "hid,"
-while hens are "hins." Throughout the whole of the eastern counties,
-too, the elision of the final in the present tense is a feature of
-rustic talk. Examples of this peculiarity are found not only in
-modern speech, but in old epitaphs and inscriptions, dating back some
-hundreds of years. Thus, a bridge across the River Wensum, at Norwich,
-bears the sculptured effigy of a dragon's head with the words, "When
-dragon drink, Heigham sink." The meaning is that when the river rises
-and touches, or "rise" and "touch," as a Norfolk man would say, the
-dragon's mouth, the neighbouring Heigham becomes flooded. An older
-example still is seen on an inscription at Kimberley, to John Jenkin,
-in the words:--
-
-  "Under this stone rare Jenkin lie,"
-
-while a comparatively modern one may be found in Stratford St Mary
-church, in the concluding lines of an epitaph dated 1739:--
-
-  'The Night is gone, ye Stars Remain,
-  So man that die shall Live again."
-
-Dickens has caught the East Anglian dialect readily enough in _David
-Copperfield_, where he makes Mr Peggotty say, "Cheer up, old mawther"
-to Mrs Grummidge, and speak of "a couple of mavishes," while Ham talks
-to David as "Mas'r Davy, bor." The willing Barkis, too, who asks "do
-she now?" and speaks of the "stage-cutch," is a true product of the
-soil.
-
-For the benefit of those not to the manner born, let it be repeated
-that a "mawther" is not necessarily a parent. It is the generic name
-for a female. A "mawther" may therefore be a girl infant or a grown
-woman. "Bor" is, of course, a corruption of "neighbour," but need
-not, in fact, specifically mean a neighbour, and is practically the
-masculine of "mawther," and applicable to any man; friend close at hand
-or stranger from distant parts.
-
-The Norfolk dialect has attained the distinction of being made the
-subject of study, and glossaries and collections of local words have
-long been made by enthusiasts in these matters. Perhaps the most
-interesting and amusing of the examples of Norfolk talk is found in the
-East Anglian version of the _Song of Solomon_, published many years ago
-by Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte. It was taken down from a reading by a
-Norfolk peasant. A few verses will be instructive:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-1. The song o' songs, as is Sorlomun's.
-
-2. Lerr 'im kiss me wi' the kisses of his mouth; for yar love is better
-'an wine.
-
-3. Becaze o' the smell o' yar intements, yar name is as intements pored
-out, therefoor du the mawthers love yĕ.
-
-4. Dror mĕ, we'll run arter yĕ: the king he ha' browt me into his
-charmbers; we'll be glad and reījce in yĕ; we'll remahmber yar
-love more 'an wine: the right-up love yĕ.
-
-5. I em black, but tidy, O ye darters o' J'rusal'm, as the taents o'
-Kedar, as the cattins o' Sorlomun.
-
-6. Don't sin starrin' at me, cos I em black, 'ecos the sun t'have
-barnt mĕ; my mother's children wor snāsty wi' me; they made me
-keeper o' the winyerds, but m'own winyerd I han't kept.
-
-7. Tell onto me, yow hu my soul du love, where ye fade, where ye make
-yar flock to rest at nune: fur why shud I be as one tarn aside by yar
-cumrades' flock?
-
-8. If so bein' as yĕ don't know, O yow bootifullest o' women, go yer
-ways furth by the futtin' o' the flock, and feed yer kids 'eside the
-shepherds' taents.
-
-9. I ha' likened yow, O my love, to a taamer o' hosses in Pharer's
-charrits.
-
-10. Yar cheeks are right fine wi' ringes of jewiltry, yer neck wi'
-chanes o' gold.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The full flavour of this vernacular is only to be obtained by reading
-the original verses side by side with the above.
-
-Among the sports that obtained on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk
-of old was "camping." "Camping" was an old East Anglian game that,
-could it be revived, would please the footballing maniacs of our own
-day. It was a wild kind of football, played on these commons, often
-with a hundred players aside, and we are told that the roughest kind
-of Rugby football was child's play compared with it. If stories of old
-camping contests be true, it might almost seem that in ascribing the
-thinly-populated condition of Norfolk and Suffolk to the long-standing
-effects of the Black Death, and to mediæval insurrections and their
-resulting butcheries, we do an injustice to pestilence and the sword,
-and fail to make count of the casualties received in play. As the
-wondering Frenchman said, in witnessing a camping-match, "If these
-savages be at play, what would they be in war?"
-
-"These contests," says a Norfolk historian, "were not infrequently
-fatal to many of the combatants. I have heard old persons speak of
-a celebrated camping, Norfolk against Suffolk, on Diss Common, with
-three hundred on each side. Before the ball was thrown up, the Norfolk
-men inquired tauntingly of the Suffolk men if they had brought their
-coffins. The Suffolk men, after fourteen hours, were the victors. Nine
-deaths were the result of the conflict in a fortnight." Camping went
-out of favour about 1810, and the coroners had an easier time.
-
-
-XXXVI
-
-
-DICKLEBURGH, the next village after Scole, is in its way as imposing a
-place, only not an inn, but a church, is its chief feature. The great
-church of Dickleborough (as the name should be pronounced) charmingly
-screened from the street by a row of limes, but not so charmingly
-enclosed by a very long and very tall iron railing, stands end on to
-the road, its eastern wall looking down upon the pilgrims who once
-passed on their way to Our Lady of Walsingham; two tabernacles, one on
-either side of the east window, holding effigies of popular saints,
-and halting many a sinner for supplication. The saints are gone, torn
-down by Henry the Eighth's commissioners, or by the fanatical Dowsing.
-They lie, perhaps, in the mud of some horse-pond, or, broken up, serve
-the useful part of metalling the road. Adjoining the church stands the
-"King's Head," the sign perhaps rather a general idea of kings than
-intended as a portrait of any particular one. At any rate it resembles
-none of the long line of English sovereigns, nor even that one-time
-favourite, the King of Prussia, though old enough to have been painted
-in the hey-day of his popularity. Dickleburgh Church is absurdly large
-for the present size of the place and for the empty country side; but
-there is a reason for the solitudes, and there was one for these huge
-buildings, ten times too large for the present needs of the shrunken
-villages. Norfolk and Suffolk, once among the most thickly-peopled
-of English counties, were practically depopulated in 1348 by that
-dreadful scourge, the Black Death. One-third of the total population
-of England perished under that terrible plague. The working classes
-were the worst sufferers, and the agriculturists, the weavers and
-labourers died in such numbers that the crops rotted on the ground,
-industries decayed, and no man would work. When the pestilence was
-stayed, other parts of the country flourished in greater proportion,
-than this. Manufacturing industries arose elsewhere and attracted
-the large populations; while East Anglia, remaining consistently
-agricultural throughout the centuries, has never shared the increase;
-only the few and scattered towns showing industrial enterprise, in
-the form of weaving in mediæval and later times, and in the manufacture
-of agricultural machinery nowadays. In the last two decades, with the
-decay of agriculture and the rush of the peasantry to London and the
-great centres of population, the country, and the eastern counties in
-especial, has become almost deserted.
-
-[Illustration: DICKLEBURGH.]
-
-The present state of agriculture in Eastern England is made manifest
-in deserted farms, in broken gates left hanging precariously on one
-hinge, in decaying barns and cart-sheds left to rot; rusted ploughs
-and decrepit waggons standing derelict in the once fertile fields, now
-overrun with foul weeds and rank with docks, charlock, and thistles;
-and farms, long advertised "to let," remaining and likely to remain
-tenantless. Not to everyone is it possible to grow seeds and flowers,
-and market-gardening is profitable only in the lands more immediately
-surrounding the great towns. With wheat at its present price of thirty
-shillings a quarter, it does not pay to grow corn for the market, and
-the land is going out of cultivation. Where the farmer still struggles
-on, he lays down most of his holding in grass for sheep and cattle,
-and grows, grudgingly, as little wheat as possible, for sake of the
-straw. Things are not quite so bad as in 1894, when wheat was down to
-twenty shillings a quarter, and farmers fed their pigs on the harvest
-which cost them three pounds more per acre to grow than it would have
-brought in the market; but at thirty shillings it yields no profit.
-Agricultural England is, in short, ruined, and there seems no present
-hope of things becoming better. While the boundless, bountiful
-harvests of Argentina, of Canada, the United States, Russia and other
-wheat-producing countries can be cultivated, reaped, and carried to
-these shores at the prices that now rule, and while the stock-breeders
-of those lands can raise sheep and cattle just as advantageously, the
-English farmer must needs go without a living wage. As matters stand
-at present, we import fully seventy-five per cent. of the wheat used
-in the country; the acreage under corn having gone down from 4,058,731
-acres in 1852, to about half that at the present day. Meanwhile the
-population has increased by thirteen millions; so that, with many
-more mouths to fill, we grow only half the staple food these islands
-produced then. There are, of course, those who reap the advantage of
-cheap corn and cheap meat from over seas. The toiling millions of the
-towns and cities thrive on those benefits; but what if, through war, or
-from any other cause, those sea-borne supplies ceased? Of what avail
-would have been this generation of cheapness if at last the nation must
-starve? Extinguish agriculture and the farmer, and you cannot recall
-them at need, nor with magic wand bring back to cultivation a land
-which has long gone untilled.
-
-But the farmer cannot alone be ruined, any more than the walls of a
-house can be demolished and the roof yet left standing. It was the
-farmer who in prosperous times supported the country gentleman in one
-direction, and the agricultural labourer in the other. With wheat, as
-it was a generation ago, at seventy shillings a quarter, and other
-products of the land proportionately profitable, the farmer could
-afford to pay both high rent and good wages. Farms in those days were
-difficult to obtain, and there was great competition among farmers
-for holdings. To-day, even at a quarter of those rents, tenants are
-difficult to obtain, and the income of the landed proprietors has
-dwindled away. The results are painfully evident here, in the old
-families reduced or beggared, and their seats either in the market or
-let to stock-jobbers and successful business men, while the old owners
-have disappeared or live humbly in small houses once occupied by the
-steward or bailiff of the estate.
-
-While rents have thus, with the iron logic of circumstances, gone down
-to vanishing-point, and while farms have actually been offered rent
-free in order to prevent the disaster of the land being let go out
-of cultivation, the wages and the circumstances of the agricultural
-labourer have been, most illogically, improving. Instead of the
-miserable six to nine shillings a week he existed upon, at the
-beginning of the nineteenth century, he receives thirteen or fourteen
-shillings, lives in a decent cottage, instead of a wretched hovel,
-and finds the cost of food and clothing fifty per cent. cheaper than
-his grandfather ever knew it to be. Yet agricultural labourers are as
-difficult to get now as they were immediately after the Black Death had
-swept away three quarters of the working class, five hundred and fifty
-years ago. The crops went ungarnered then, as they have done of recent
-years in East Anglia--for lack of hands to gather them in. It was in
-1899 that standing crops at Tivitshall St Margaret's and adjacent
-parishes were sold by auction for a farmer who could find no labourer
-willing to be hired.
-
-What has been called the "rural exodus" is well named. London and
-the great towns have proved so attractive to the children of the
-middle-aged peasant that they despise the country. They can all read
-and write now, and at a pinch do simple sums in arithmetic; so off they
-go to the crowded streets. The ambitious aspire to a black coat and a
-stool in an office, and others become workmen of many kinds; but all
-are attracted by the higher wages to be earned in the towns, and by the
-excitement of living in the great centres of population, and only the
-aged and the aging will soon be left to till the fields.
-
-Farmers entertain the supremest contempt for the agricultural
-labourer's attempts to better himself. To them they are almost impious;
-but the farmer is himself tarred with the same brush of culture. He is
-a vastly different fellow from his grandfather, who actually helped to
-till the soil among his own men; whose wife and daughters were noted
-hands at milking and buttermaking; who lived in the kitchen, among
-the hams and the domestic utensils, and was not above eating the same
-food as, and at the same table with, his ploughmen and carters. He
-has, in fact, and so also have the landed proprietor and the labourer,
-undergone a process of levelling up. It is a process which had started
-certainly by 1825, when Cobbett noticed it.
-
-Hear him:--
-
- "When the old farmhouses are down (and down they must come in time)
- what a miserable thing the country will be! Those that are now erected
- are mere painted shells, with a mistress within who is stuck up in a
- place she calls the parlour, with, if she have children, the 'young
- ladies and gentlemen' about her; some showy chairs and a sofa (a
- _sofa_ by all means); half-a-dozen prints in gilt frames hanging up;
- some swinging book-shelves with novels and tracts upon them; a dinner
- brought in by a girl that is perhaps better 'educated' than she;
- two or three nick-nacks to eat, instead of a piece of bacon and a
- pudding; the house too neat for a dirty-shoed carter to be allowed to
- come into; and everything proclaiming to every sensible beholder that
- there is here a constant anxiety to make a _show_ not warranted by
- the reality. The children (which is the worst part of it) are all too
- clever to _work;_ they are all to be _gentlefolks_. Go to _plough_!
- Good God! What! 'young gentlemen' go to plough! They become _clerks_,
- or some skimming-dish thing or other. They flee from the dirty _work_
- as cunning horses do from the bridle. What misery is all this! What
- a mass of materials for proclaiming that general and _dreadful
- convulsion_ that must, first or last, come and blow this funding and
- jobbing and enslaving and starving system to atoms."
-
-The "convulsion" anticipated by Cobbett has not come about. This is
-not a country of earthquakes or of violent social upheavals. Free
-Trade has beggared the agricultural interests, but, on his way to
-the Bankruptcy Court, the farmer contrives to live in better style
-than possible three quarters of a century ago, while his pretensions
-to gentility certainly have not decreased. As for the "funding and
-jobbing," Cobbett could never, in his wildest dreams, have foreseen
-Limited Liability and the fungoid growth of Stock Exchange speculation,
-or the modern "enslaving and starving system" of the gigantic Trusts
-that, like vampires, feed on the blood of industry. We need look for
-no convulsions; not even, unhappily, for the hanging, or, at least,
-the taxing out of existence, of the millionaires. Our expectations of
-the future are quite different. The people will inhabit the towns, and
-the country will become a huge preserve of game for the sport of the
-millionaires aforesaid; a preserve broken here and there by the model
-farm or the training establishment of some colossus of wealth.
-
-
-XXXVII
-
-
-BEYOND Dickleburgh, past the solitary "Ram" inn, a fine, dignified
-house still lamenting its decadence from a posting-inn to a beerhouse,
-Tivetshall level-crossing marks where the railway runs to Bungay and
-Lowestoft. Maps make Pulham St Mary the Virgin quite near, with Pulham
-St Mary Magdalene close by; Tivetshalls of different dedications, and
-other villages dotted about like plums in a Christmas pudding, but no
-sign of them is evident. Only windmills, whirling furiously on distant
-ridges, break the pastoral solitudes. In this conflict of charts, a
-carter jogging along the road with his team is evidently the authority
-to be consulted.
-
-"Coom hather," says the carter to his sleek and intelligent horses; and
-they coom accordingly, with much jingling of harness, and stand in the
-shade of roadside trees while their lord takes his modest levenses and
-haffles and jaffles--gossips, that is to say--with the landlord of the
-"Ram."
-
-"Tivetshall?" asks the carter, echoing a question; "niver heerd of un."
-Then a light breaks in upon him. "Oh, ay! Tishell we allus call 'em;
-Tishell St Marget an' Tishell St Merry," and with, a sweep of the arm
-comprising the whole western horizon, "Theiy'm ower theer."
-
-"And Pulham St Mary the Virgin?"
-
-"Pulham St Merry the Wirgin? oh, yis! Pulham Maaket, yar mean, bor.
-Et edd'n on'y a moile, ower _theer_"--a comprehensive wave to the
-eastwards.
-
-And there, on a byroad, in an embrace of trees, it is found, a little
-forgotten town, the greater proportion of whose inhabitants appear
-to walk with two sticks. It is ranged round a green or market-place,
-with a great Perpendicular church, gorgeously frescoed within, and
-with a very good recent "Ascension" over the chancel arch, painted
-and stencilled timber roof, and elaborate stained-glass windows. The
-townlet and townsfolk sinking into decay, the church an object of such
-care and expense, afford a curious contrast.
-
-An old toll-house and the prison-like buildings of Depwade Union
-conspire to make desolate the road onwards. He who presses, hot-foot,
-along it, turning neither to the right nor to the left, may readily be
-excused a legitimate wonder as to what has become of the great feature
-of East Anglia, its spreading commons; for, strange to say, despite
-the fame they have long since attained, no vestige of them is glimpsed
-from the road itself. One has usually to turn aside to some of the
-villages lying near, but wholly hidden from the highway, to find the
-yet unenclosed common lands, the pasturage of geese, ducks and turkeys;
-but a striking exception to this now general rule is the huge common
-of Wacton lying off to the left of the road at the hundredth mile from
-London, where a cottage and a wayside inn, the "Duke's Head," alone
-represent Wacton village, a mile distant. Wacton Common, reputed to be
-the highest point in Norfolk, although of no less extent than three
-hundred and fifty acres, might perhaps be passed without being seen,
-for the reason that, although still wild and unenclosed, it is screened
-from the high road by a hedge and entered through an ordinary field
-gate. The inn and the cottage, obviously built on land fraudulently
-taken from the common in the long ago, serve with their gardens to hide
-that glorious expanse of grass and heather. Here roam those chartered
-vagabonds, the plump geese, that pick up a living on the grassy commons
-and wander, like free-booting bands of feathered moss-troopers upon the
-heaths, closing their careers with royal feasting in the August and
-September stubble, and a Michaelmas martyrdom.
-
-[Illustration: A DISPUTED PASTURAGE.]
-
-Norfolk and Suffolk are still famous for their geese, but those
-martyred fowls do not make their final journey to the London markets,
-between Michaelmas and Christmas, with the publicity they once
-attained. They go up to Leadenhall nowadays in the seclusion of railway
-vans. Seventy years ago they journeyed by coach, and in state, for the
-Norfolk coaches in Christmas week often carried nothing save geese and
-turkeys, beside the coachman and guard. Full inside and out with such
-a freight, the proprietors of fast coaches made a great deal more by
-carrying them than they would have taken by a load of passengers; so
-the fowls had the preference, while travellers had to take their chance
-of finding a seat in the slower conveyances. So long ago as 1793 the
-turkeys conveyed from Norwich to London between a Saturday morning
-and Sunday night in December numbered one thousand seven hundred, and
-weighed 9 tons, 2 cwt. 2 lbs. Their value was £680. They were followed
-on the two succeeding days by half as many more.
-
-A Norfolk common without its screaming and hissing flocks of geese
-would seem strangely untenanted. They, the turkeys, the ducks, the
-donkeys ("dickies" they call them in Norfolk) and the vagrom fowls are
-among the only vestiges of the wild life that once made Norfolk famous
-to the naturalist and not a little eerie to the traveller of old, who,
-startled on the lonely way that stretched by heath and common and fen
-between the habitations of men, shrank appalled at the lumbering
-flight of the huge bustards, quivered with apprehension at the sudden
-hideous whirring of the night-jar as the day closed in, dismayed,
-heard the bittern booming among the reeds, or with misgivings of the
-supernatural saw the fantastical ruff stalking on long legs, with
-prodigious beak, red eyes and spreading circle of neck feathers, like
-the creation of some disordered imagination. Wild Norfolk, the home
-of these and of many another strange creature, is no more, and these
-species, now chiefly extinct, are to be seen only in museums of natural
-history.
-
-[Illustration: LONG STRATTON.]
-
-What Wacton lacks along the high road the village of Long Stratton
-has in superabundance. They named it well who affixed the adjective,
-for it measures a mile from end to end. Beginning with modern and (to
-speak kindly) uninteresting cottages, it ends in a broad street where
-almost every house is old and beautiful in lichened brick or soft-toned
-plaster. Midway of this lengthy thoroughfare stands the church, one of
-the Norfolk round-towered kind, in the usual black flint, and beyond
-it the Manor House, red brick, with Adam scrolls and neo-classical
-palm branches in plaster for trimmings, set back at some distance
-behind a very newty, froggy and tadpoley moat. Beyond this again, the
-village street broadens out. Looking back upon it, when one has finally
-climbed uphill on the way to Norwich, Long Stratton is a place entirely
-charming. Its name, of course, derives from its situation on the Roman
-Road, and Tasburgh, that now comes in sight, keeps yet its Roman camp
-strongly posted above the River Tase. Tasburgh--what little there is
-of a village--occupies an acclivity on the further side of that river,
-across whose wide and marshy valley the mists rise early, seeing the
-sun to bed dull and tarnished, and attending the rising of the moon
-with ghostly vapours. The old Roman camp is oddly and picturesquely
-occupied by the parish church, another round-towered example. Excepting
-it, the vicarage and the Dutch-like building of the "Bird in Hand" Inn,
-there is little else.
-
-[Illustration: LONG STRATTON.]
-
-But what mean these sounds of anger and lamentation that drown the
-soothing, distant rattle of reaping machines on the hillside: a voice
-raised in reproach, and another--a treble one--in gusty shrieks of
-combined pain, fear and peevishness? Coming round a corner, the cause
-of the disturbance is revealed in a wet and muddy infant rubbing dirty
-knuckles into streaming eyes, and being violently reproached by an
-indignant woman.
-
-"You're a pretty article, I must say; a fine spettacle. I'll give
-yow a good sowsin', my lord; coom arn;" and the malefactor is pulled
-suddenly inside the cottage, the door slammed, and muffled yells heard,
-alternating with thumps. The offender is receiving that sowsing, or
-being "yerked," "clipped over the ear-hole," getting a "siseraring,"
-being "whanged" or "clouted," the striking Norfolk phrases for
-varieties of assault and battery.
-
-
-XXXVIII
-
-
-THE Tase is met with again on surmounting the hilly road out of
-Tasburgh and coming down hill into Newton Flotman. Here it is
-broad enough to require a long and substantial bridge, grouping in
-unaccustomed rightness of composition with the mingled thatched, tiled
-and slated cottages and the church that stands on a commanding knoll
-in the background. When Newton was really new it would be impossible
-to say; perhaps its novelty may have been measured against the hoary
-antiquity of, say, Caistor yonder, down the valley. For what says the
-folk-rhyme:--
-
-  "Caistor was a city when Norwich was none,
-  And Norwich was built of Caistor stone,"
-
-and if Norwich partook of Caistor's building materials, why not, in
-degree, Newton Flotman? But a whisper. Caistor was never more than a
-camp, and not at any time a place of houses, much less of stone ones.
-Stone is not to be found in this neighbourhood, and flint only, of
-which Norwich is principally built, is available for building materials.
-
-[Illustration: TASBURGH.]
-
-One object in Newton Flotman that puzzles the passing stranger is a
-little effigy of Bacchus fixed on the wall of the "Maid's Head" Inn,
-so thickly covered with successive coats of paint that it is difficult
-to give it a period. Remains of Roman antiquities are so many in this
-district that it is often mistaken for a work of that classic age,
-when it can really claim no higher antiquity than that of the late
-eighteenth century, a time when figures of the kind were a usual
-decoration of inn signs. Such an one still swings from the wrought-iron
-sign of the "Angel" at Woolhampton, on the Bath Road.
-
-In the woody valley of the Tase beyond Newton Flotman lies Dunston,
-trees casting a protecting and secretive shade over it, and the "Dun
-Cow" Inn its only roadside representative. That inn and the circular
-brick pound for strayed sheep and cattle redeem the last few miles into
-Norwich from absolute emptiness. When the pound last was used who shall
-say? The tramps have played havoc with it, and its wooden gate has
-gone. The ancient office of pound-keeper is here evidently fallen into
-disuse.
-
-Swainsthorpe's octagonal church tower is seen on the level to the left,
-but Caistor, in like manner with Dunston, is sunk deep in foliage, half
-a mile or more away in the valley, its church tower rising like a grey
-beacon from amid the trees, to tell the curious where its ancient camp
-may be found. Caistor St Edmunds, to give its full name, is the site of
-the great Roman camp established here to overawe the stronghold of the
-Iceni, four miles away on the banks of the Wensum, and now the site of
-Norwich.
-
-[Illustration: NEWTON FLOTMAN.]
-
-Caistor camp is a really satisfactory example of a Roman fortified
-_castrum_. For one thing, it has the largest area of any known relic
-of its kind in England, enclosing thirty-seven acres. If its fragments
-of flint walls have neither the thickness nor the height of those at
-Portus Rutupiæ, the old Roman port in Thanet, now known as Richborough,
-its deep ditch and massive embankment assist the laggard imagination
-of the layman in matters archæological, which refuses to be stirred
-before mere undulations in the sward. Here is a ditch that can be
-rolled into, an embankment that can be climbed and paced on three
-sides of the camp, if necessary, to put to physical test both height,
-depth and extent. The fourth side of this great enclosure, now a
-turnip-field, was bounded by the River Tase and was sufficiently
-defended by that stream, then a wide creek, so that no works are to be
-found there. How long it was before the Romans subdued the Iceni, whose
-great city is thought to have stood where Norwich does now, is not
-known. Nothing of that early time here, indeed, is _known_, and guesses
-are of the vaguest. Only it seems that the Roman advance into East
-Anglia, which had for its objective the principal stronghold of the
-tribes, here came to its military ending. To compare things so ancient
-and romantic with others modern and thought prosaic, the several Roman
-camps on the advance from London now to be sought at Uphall near
-Romford; Chipping Hill, near Witham, Lexden, and Tasburgh, are, with
-those that have disappeared, to be looked upon in the same light as the
-wayside stations on the railway to Norwich, a railway which originally
-came to a terminus at that city, and was only at a later date continued
-northward.
-
-[Illustration: THE OLD BRICK POUND.]
-
-Where the Romans and the Romano-British citizens of Venta lived when
-the tribes were reduced--where the Venta Icenorum of Roman rule really
-was, in fact--is a mystery, for, unlike most of our great cities,
-Norwich has furnished no relics of that age; while, beyond coins and
-odds and ends, Caistor camp has produced nothing. No vestiges of
-streets or houses have been found, here or elsewhere, and Venta might,
-for all there is to show of it, have been a city of dreams. The fact
-that the original capital of the Iceni was re-settled by the Danes
-when they came in a conquering flood, seems to point to the site of
-it having long been deserted; and that they called it after the North
-"wic" or creek, presupposes a "South wic" somewhere else, near or far.
-The position of that south creek is fixed by the ancient geography of
-these last few miles. In those times the ground on which Yarmouth, at
-the mouth of the Yare estuary, is now built, was under the waves of
-the sea, which ran up in a long navigable creek--the "Gariensis" of
-the Romans and the "North Wic" of the Danes--from a Roman fortified
-port where Caistor-by-Yarmouth stands, to the site of Norwich, which
-indeed, centuries later, was still a port. Where the River Tase is
-now confluent with the Yare and the Wensum, there then branched out
-a shorter and perhaps shallower creek, running almost due south; the
-"South wic" of those northern pirates. At its head stood Caistor, where
-the navigation ceased.
-
-[Illustration: CAISTOR CAMP.]
-
-It is far inland now, but the marshy valley of the Tase still bears
-signs of those old conditions, and perhaps the villas of wealthy Roman
-citizens, together with other relics of the vanished city, still lie
-preserved deep down in the mud and silt that have filled up the old
-channel.
-
-The lie of the land, in accord with these views, is plain to see when,
-returning to the high road, the journey to Norwich is continued to
-Hartford Bridge; bird's-eye views unfolding across the valley to the
-right. At Hartford Bridge, where there are several bridges, none of
-them sizeable, rivers, streams and runlets of sorts trickle, flow, and
-gurgle in their different ways through flat meadows, below the long
-rise where, two miles from Norwich, the road begins to grow suburban.
-It is on the summit that the Newmarket and Thetford route from London
-joins with this, and together they descend into the city.
-
-
-XXXIX
-
-
-THIS way came Queen Elizabeth into Norwich on her great "progress" of
-1578, by St Stephen's Plain and through St Stephen's Gate. Gates and
-walls are gone that once kept out the turbulent, or even condemned the
-belated citizen to lodge the night without the precincts of the city,
-in suburbs not in those times to be reckoned safe.
-
-Norwich long ago swept away her defences and modernised her outskirts,
-for this is no Sleepy Hollow, this cathedral city in the valley of the
-Wensum, but the capital of East Anglia, throbbing with industry and in
-every way in the forefront of modern life. To the entrance from London
-Norwich turns perhaps its most unattractive side. No general view of
-the city, lying in its hollow beside the winding Wensum, opens out, and
-the eye seeks the cathedral spire and finds it with some difficulty,
-modestly peering over tangled modern roof-tops. It is from quite the
-opposite direction, from the noble height of Mousehold Heath, that
-Norwich unfolds itself in a majestic picture of cathedral, churches
-and houses, with trees and gardens, such as no other city can show,
-displayed within its bounds. Norwich does not jump instantly to the
-antiquarian eye, and its electric tramways that are the first to greet
-the traveller who enters from the old coach road are not a little
-forbidding. The city grows gradually upon the stranger in all its
-wealth of beauty and interest, and becomes more and more lovable the
-better he becomes acquainted with it.
-
-Until these railway times, in the old days of slow, difficult,
-dangerous and expensive travelling, the capital of East Anglia was in
-a very high degree a capital, and sufficient to itself. Its shipping
-trade and weaving industries, and the famous Norwich School of artists,
-brought this exclusive attitude down from mediæval times to modern;
-and Norfolk county families until the era of political reform had
-almost dawned, still had their "town houses" in Norwich, just as, in
-bygone centuries, that typical old family, the Pastons, owned their
-town houses in Hungate and in what is now called King Street, formerly
-Conisford Street.
-
-The coaches coming to Norwich threaded the mazy streets to inns widely
-sundered. The original "Norwich Machine" of 1762 traversed the greater
-part of the city, to draw up at the "Maid's Head," in Tombland. On
-the other hand, the Mails, the "Telegraph" and the "Magnet," came to
-and started from the "Rampant Horse" in the street of the same name,
-standing not far from the beginnings of the city. The street is there
-still, but the oddly-named inn has given place to shops, and where
-the "Rampant Horse" ramped rampageously, in violent contrast with the
-mild-mannered "Great White Horse" of Ipswich, drapers' establishments
-now hold forth seductive announcements of "alarming sacrifices."
-
-Among other coaches, "Gurney's Original Day Coach" and the "Phenomenon"
-favoured the "Angel," in the Market Place, while the "Times" house was
-the "Norfolk Hotel," in St Giles's, and that of the "Expedition" the
-"Swan" Inn. Other inns, many of them huddled together under the lee of
-the castle mound, were then to be found in the Market Place and the
-Haymarket and in the narrow alley in the rear that still goes by name
-of "Back of the Inns." Others yet, many of mediæval age, are to be
-sought in old nooks of the city. The Pilgrim's Hostel, now the Rosemary
-Tavern, like the "Old Barge," belongs to the fourteenth century, the
-last named still standing between King Street and the river, with
-a picturesque but battered entrance. The steep and winding lane of
-Elm Hill, where the slum population of Norwich stew and pig together
-down ancient courts and dirty alleys, has more inns, ramshackle but
-unrestored; and in the wide open space by the cathedral, dolefully
-called Tombland, although it has not, nor ever had, anything to do
-with tombs, is the "Maid's Head," the one establishment in Norwich
-that stands pre-eminently for old times and good cheer. It is an
-"hotel" now, and has the modern conveniences of sanitation and electric
-light; but its restoration, effected through the enthusiasm of a
-local antiquary, with both the opportunity of purchasing the property
-and the means of doing so, has been carried through with taste and
-discrimination. The "Maid's Head" can with certainty claim a history
-of six hundred years, and is thought to have been built upon the site
-of a former Bishop's Palace. Heavily-raftered ceilings and masonry of
-evident antiquity may take parts of the present house back so far, or
-even a greater length, but the especial pride of the "Maid's Head" is
-its beautiful Jacobean woodwork. The old sign of the house was the
-"Molde Fish," or "Murtel Fish," a name that antiquaries still boggle
-at. It was long a cherished legend that this strange and unlovely name
-was changed to the present sign in complimentary allusion to Queen
-Elizabeth when she first visited the city, but later researches have
-proved the change to have been made at least a century earlier, and so
-goes another belief!
-
-The "Music House," facing the now disreputable King Street, has not
-for so very long been an inn. Its name tells of a time when it was the
-meeting-place of the "city music," old-time ancestors of modern town
-bands, but its story goes back to the Norman period, when the crypt
-that bears up the thirteenth-century building above was part of the
-home of Moyses, a Jew, and afterwards of Isaac, his nephew. "Isaac's
-Hall," as it was known, was seized by King John and given to one of
-his creatures; the unhappy Israelites doubtless, if they were allowed
-to live at all, finding cool quarters in the castle dungeons. A long
-succession of owners, including the Pastons, followed; last among them
-Coke, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, who resided here in 1633.
-
-It has already been hinted that the streets of Norwich are mazy. They
-are indeed the most perplexing of any town in England. Many roads
-run into the city, and from every direction. Glancing at a plan of
-it, these roads resemble the main strands of a spider's web, and the
-streets the cross webs. In midst of this maze is the great castle, like
-the spider himself; that cruel keep in whose dungeons old wrong-doing,
-religious and private spite, have immured many a wretched captive, like
-that unfortunate unknown "Bartholomew," who has left his name scratched
-on the walls, and the statement that he was here confined "saunz
-resun," a reason of the best in those times. Did he ever see the light
-of day again? Or did some midnight assassin murder him as many another
-had been done to death?
-
-"Blanchflower," that Bigod, Earl of Norwich who built the castle called
-his keep when it arose on its great mound, its stone new and white.
-He built upon the site of a castle thought to have been Saxon, and
-built so well that it became a fortress impregnable save to famine
-and treachery. It has, therefore, unlike weaker places that have been
-stormed again and again, little history, and even seven hundred years
-ago was little more than a prison. And a prison of sorts--for State
-captives first, and for common malefactors afterwards--it remained
-until so recently as 1883, when it was restored and then opened as the
-Museum and Art Gallery it now is.
-
-This is no place to speak at length of the cathedral that withdraws
-itself with such ecclesiastical reserve from the busy quarters of the
-city, and is approached decorously through ancient gateways in the
-walls of its surrounding close; the Ethelbert Gate, with that other,
-the Erpingham Gate, built in Harry the Fifth's time by Sir Thomas
-Erpingham, whose little kneeling effigy yet remains in its niche in
-the gable over the archway, and whose motto--variously held to be
-"Yenk," or "Think,"--"Denk," or "Thank"--is repeated many times on the
-stone work. Norman monastic gloom still broods over the close, for the
-cathedral, save the Decorated cloisters and the light and graceful
-spire in the same style, is almost wholly of that period, and the
-grammar school that was once a mediæval mortuary chapel and has its
-playground in the crypt, keeps a gravity of demeanour that, considering
-its history, is eminently proper.
-
-Through the Close lies the way to Bishop's Bridge and the steep road
-up to Mousehold Heath: the "Monk's Hold," or monastic property, of
-times gone by when it was common land of the manor belonging to the
-Benedictine priory.
-
-
-XL
-
-[Illustration: NORWICH, FROM MOUSEHOLD HEATH.]
-
-HERE, on this famous Heath of Mousehold where the gorse and heather
-and the less common broom yet flourish, despite the electric tramways
-that bring up the crowds and the picnic parties, Nature, rugged and
-unconquerable, looks down upon the city, revealed as a whole. Even
-though the chimneys of great factories may intrude and smirch the sky
-when winds permit the smoke-wreaths to trail across the view, it is a
-view quite unspoilable. The cathedral, as is only proper, is the grand
-dominating feature, with its central tower and graceful crocketed spire
-rising to a height of 320 feet. Second to it, on its left hand, the
-huge bulk of the castle keep rears up; a time-ball on its battlements
-to give the time o' day to the busy citizens; those battlements where
-from a gibbet they hanged Robert Kett in 1549, when his rebellion was
-crushed and his army of 20,000 peasants who had encamped on Mousehold
-defeated. In similar fashion his brother William was hanged from
-Wymondham steeple. Between castle and cathedral the great tower of
-St Peter Mancroft looms up, and on the other side of the cathedral
-tower the twin spires of the Roman Catholic place of worship crown the
-sky-line. To the extreme right of the accompanying illustration is
-St Giles's, and on the extreme left, in company with the pinnacled
-tower of a modern church, the dark tower of St John-at-Sepulchre,
-Bracondale, which for shortness and simplicity the citizens call "Ber
-Street Church." For the rest, it is a mingling of town and country, of
-houses and gardens and churches in great number, that one sees down
-there; old Norwich, in short, exclusive of the modern suburbs that are
-flung everywhere around and cause the Norwich of to-day to outnumber
-the Norwich of coaching times by 80,000 inhabitants. It must be
-evident from those figures that the picturesque old Norwich numbering
-a population of only 30,000 has been in great degree improved away and
-borne under by that human deluge. It is delightful now, but what it
-was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Crome and De Wint
-and others sketched and painted its quaint bits, the picture-galleries
-of the Castle Museum can tell. Nay, even down to the mid-nineteenth
-century it was still very different, as a collection of early
-photographs in the castle proves. Then, before St Peter Mancroft was
-restored, before the old Fish Market was cleared away, Norwich had many
-more quaint nooks than now to show the stranger; even as, centuries
-before, it was yet more quaint and even more remarkable for its many
-churches than at the present time.
-
-"The nearer the church the further from God," says the old saw. How
-irreligious then should Norwich be, that has even yet a cathedral and
-thirty-four ancient churches, and modern places of worship fully as
-numerous! Let the citizens, therefore, as old Fuller suggested, "make
-good use of their churches and cross that pestilent proverb." These
-churches bear a close resemblance to one another, having nearly all
-been rebuilt in the Perpendicular period, some five hundred years ago,
-and all built of the black flint that gives a character to East Anglian
-architecture quite distinct from that of other districts. The time when
-they were thus rebuilt was not only a great period of church-building
-throughout England, but a time of especial prosperity in mercantile
-and trading Norwich; a time when guilds grew powerful and merchants
-wealthy in the flourishing industry of cloth-weaving introduced some
-time earlier by Flamand and Hollander immigrants. English wool that
-before had gone across the narrow seas for manufacture into stuffs
-was now weaved in the land of its growth. "Many thousands," says
-Blomefield, "that before could not get their bread could now by this
-means live handsomely." In that age, to become rich and prosperous was
-to become also a founder and benefactor of churches; hence the great
-ecclesiastical buildings that, according to the picturesque metaphor of
-an old writer, writing when there were no fewer than sixty-one churches
-in the city, "surrounded the cathedral as the stars do the moon."
-The old citizens sleep in the parish churches for which they did so
-much; their monuments in brass or marble, stone or alabaster curiously
-wrought, often with their "merchant's marks"--the distinctive signs
-with which they labelled their wares--engraved on them in lieu of coats
-of arms. It is as though a modern trader were to have the registered
-trade-mark of his speciality engraved on his tombstone. A typical
-memorial of an old Norwich trader is that of Thomas Sotherton, in the
-church of St John Maddermarket. He--
-
-  "Under this cold marbell sleeps,"
-
-and was no common fellow, mark you, but
-
-  "Of gentell blood, more worthy merrit,
-  Whose brest enclosed an humble sperryt."
-
-[Illustration: NORWICH MARKET PLACE.]
-
-Although the calendar of saints is a long one and more than
-sufficiently lengthy to have provided each one of the Norwich churches
-with a patron, yet so popular were some saints, that several churches
-to the same one are found in Norwich, as seen also in the city of
-London. As in old London, it was in those cases necessary to confer
-surnames, so to speak, upon those churches.
-
-They are surnames of the geographical sort and not a little curious.
-The four St Peters are, for example, St Peter Mancroft, the largest
-and most important in the city, so called from the Magna Croft, or
-large field of the castle; St Peter per Mountergate, in King Street,
-named from the road by the "montem," the hill or mount, that runs
-ridge-like in its rear; St Peter Hungate, the "hundred gate," or
-road, reminiscent of the time when Norwich was a hundred of itself,
-even as it is now by itself a county; and St Peter Southgate. St
-Michael-at-Thorn has still thorn trees growing in its churchyard; St
-Michael Coslany, with St Mary's of identical surname, was built in
-Coast Lane; and St Michael-at-Plea was named from its neighbourhood to
-an ecclesiastical court. St John Maddermarket is thus distinguished
-from other St Johns--St John Timberhill and St John-at-Sepulchre.
-In the neighbourhood of the first-named, madder for the dyers'
-use was marketed; while at Timberhill was the market in wood. St
-Martin-at-Palace, by the old Bishop's Palace, and St-Martin-at-Oak take
-up the tale, which might be continued at great length.
-
-[Illustration: NORWICH SNAP.]
-
-The business life of modern Norwich centres in the Market Place and the
-streets that immediately lead out of it: the mouldering signs of old
-commerce peer in peaked gables, clustered chimneys and old red-brick
-and plastered walls in the lanes and along the wharves of the Wensum.
-
-There trade hustles and elbows to the front, in many-storeyed piles
-of brick, stone and stucco, with great show of goods in plate-glass
-windows and bold advertisement of gilt lettering. All those signs of
-prosperity may be seen, and on a larger scale, in London, but not even
-in London are the electric tram cars so great a menace to life and
-limb as in these narrow and winding streets, where they dash along at
-reckless speed.
-
-The Market Place is not yet wholly spoilt. The huge bulk of St
-Peter Mancroft and a row of queer old houses beside it still avert
-that disaster, and form a picture from one point of view; while the
-flint-faced Guildhall stands at another corner of the great open place
-and in its Council Chamber, in use five hundred years ago as a Court of
-Justice, and still so used, proves the continuity of "our rough island
-story." In a dark and dismal cell of the Guildhall once lay the heroic
-martyr, Thomas Bilney, who "testified" at the stake in the Lollards'
-Pit, where many another had already yielded up his life. He wondered,
-as others before and after him had done and were to do, whether the
-tortured body could pass steadfast through the fiery ordeal; and on the
-eve of his martyrdom put that doubt to the test by holding his finger
-in the flame of a candle. That test sufficed, and he suffered with
-unshaken constancy when the morrow dawned.
-
-The Guildhall has less tragical memories than this, and was indeed the
-scene of many old-time municipal revelries in times before Corporations
-became reformed. But old revels and frolics have been discontinued,
-and "Snap," the Norwich dragon, a fearsome beast of gilded wickerwork,
-who was wont to be paraded from the Guildhall at the annual mayoral
-election, and last frolicked with his attendant beadles and whifflers
-in 1835, now reposes in the Castle Museum.
-
-The Market Place on Saturday, when the wide open square is close-packed
-with stalls, is Norwich at its most characteristic time and in its most
-characteristic spot. In it the story of the Norwich Road may fitly end.
-The city itself, glanced at in the immediately foregoing pages, could
-not yield its story in less space than that occupied by that of the
-road itself.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
-    Aldgate, 1, 8, 11, 13, 51
-
-    ---- Pump, 11
-
-
-    "Bacon End," 180
-
-    Boreham, 127-129
-
-    Bow, 6, 8, 75-80
-
-    ---- Bridge, 77-79
-
-    Brentwood, 23, 94-99, 132, 200
-
-    Brockford, 257
-
-    Brome, 261
-
-    Brook Street, 94
-
-    ---- Hill, 94, 132
-
-
-    Caistor St Edmunds, 4, 298, 301-303
-
-    Capel St Mary, 236
-
-    Chadwell Heath, 51, 83, 85, 86
-
-    ---- Street, 86
-
-    Chelmsford, 5, 40, 51, 52, 54, 57, 80, 114-121, 127, 167, 200
-
-    Chipping Hill, 133-139, 302
-
-    Claydon, 252
-
-    ---- Hall, 252
-
-    Coaches:--
-      "Confatharrat," 34
-      "Duke of Beaufort's Retaliator," 46, 140
-      "Expedition," 39, 306
-      "Gurney's Original Day Coach," 39, 267, 306
-      "Ipswich Blues," 23, 39, 132
-      "---- and Yarmouth Mail," 41, 45
-      "---- Post Coaches," 36
-      "---- Shannon," 39
-      "---- Umpire," 81
-      "Magnet," 39, 306
-      "New Colchester," 81
-      "Norwich Machine," 34-36, 306
-      "---- Mail," 39, 40, 43
-      "---- Post Coach," 39
-      "---- Times," 28, 39, 267
-      "Parcel Mail," 54-57, 111
-      "Phænomenon," 39, 306
-      "Telegraph," 306
-
-    Coaching, 30-51, 54-57, 81, 82, 97, 132, 142-151, 267
-
-    Coaching Notabilities:--
-      Alexander, Israel, 46, 140
-      Nelson, Mrs Ann, 19-25, 27, 81, 132
-      ----, George, 19
-      ----, John, 19, 25-27
-      ----, Robert, 19
-      Suggate (Norwich carrier), 34
-      Thorogood, John, 28, 267
-
-    Colchester, 5, 6, 43, 54, 56, 94, 156, 163, 165, 167, 177, 179-212,
-                                                                    217
-
-    Constable, John, R.A., 149, 154, 217-219, 232, 238
-
-    Copdock, 236
-
-    Copford, 175, 176
-
-    _Copperfield, David_, 28, 44, 45, 150, 226, 274
-
-    Creeting, All Saints, 253
-
-    Creetings, The, 255
-
-
-    Dedham, 217-221
-
-    Deodand, Law of, 50
-
-    Dickleburgh, 6, 277-279
-
-    Dilbridge, 217
-
-    Dunston, 298
-
-
-    Feering, 152, 153, 158
-
-    Forest Gate, 81
-
-
-    Goodmayes, 83
-
-    Gore Pit, 152, 176
-
-    Great Eastern Railway, 25, 46, 51-54, 83, 152, 158, 175
-
-
-    Hare Street, 94
-
-    Hartford Bridge, 304
-
-    Hatfield Peverel, 129, 131
-
-    Highwaymen, 29, 30, 41, 58-62, 85, 86, 87, 88, 99, 142, 143, 214
-
-    Highwaymen:--
-      Cratfield, Rev. Wm., 30
-      King, Matthew, 58
-      ----, Robert, 58
-      ----, Tom, 58, 61
-      Tapyrtone, Thomas, 30
-      Turpin, Richard, 57-62
-
-
-    Ilford, 6, 29, 80, 82, 83, 167
-
-    Ingatestone, 6, 56, 99, 105-110
-
-    Inns (mentioned at length):--
-      "Angel," Colchester, 196, 197
-      ----, Kelvedon, 140, 141, 147, 148, 162
-      ----, Norwich, 34, 306
-      "Belle Sauvage," Ludgate Hill, 19
-      "Black Boy," Chelmsford, 121
-      "Blossoms," Laurence Lane, 34
-      "Blue Boar," Whitechapel, 28
-      "---- Posts," Witham, 132
-      "Bull," Bishopsgate Street, 15, 37
-      ----, Leadenhall Street, 12, 15
-      ----, Whitechapel, 15, 19-28
-      "Bull and Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand, 15
-      "Cauliflower," Ilford, 83
-      "Coach and Horses," Upton, 81
-      "Cock," Thwaite, 260
-      "Cross Keys," Gresham Street, 15
-      "Duke's Head," Wacton, 288
-      "Fleece," Brook Street, 94
-      "Flower Pot," Bishopsgate Street, 15
-      "Four Swans," 34
-      "Golden Cross," Charing Cross, 15
-      "Good Woman," Widford, 111-114
-      "Grave Maurice," Whitechapel, 69
-      "Great White Horse," Ipswich, 36, 37, 228, 247-252, 306
-      "Gun," Dedham, 221, 228
-      "Half Moon," Ipswich, 243
-      "Horse and Leaping Bar," Whitechapel, 29
-      "King's Head," Dickleburgh, 278
-      "Lion and Lamb," Ipswich, 243, 244
-      "Magpie," Little Stonham, 256
-      "Maid's Head," Newton Flotman, 297
-      ---- ----, Norwich, 34, 35, 306, 307
-      "Music House," Norwich, 307
-      "Norfolk Hotel," Norwich, 306
-      "Old Red Lion," Whitechapel, 57
-      "Popinjay," Norwich, 34
-      "Queen's Head," Thwaite, 259, 260
-      "Rampant Horse," Norwich, 306
-      "Red Lion," Colchester, 196
-      ---- ----, Kelvedon, 140
-      ---- ----, Whitechapel, 57
-      "Rising Sun," Manor Park, 81
-      "Saracen's Head," Aldgate, 14, 16, 17, 18
-      ---- ----, Chelmsford, 117-120
-      "Spread Eagle," Gracechurch Street, 15-19
-      "Sun," Kelvedon, 152
-      "Swan," Washbrook, 237
-      "Swan-with-Two-Necks," Gresham Street, 15, 43
-      "Three Cups," Colchester, 37, 167, 196
-      ---- ----, Springfield, 122
-      "Three Nuns," Aldgate, 29
-      "Vine," Mile End, 73
-      "Wheatsheaf," Kelvedon, 152
-      "White Elm," Copdock, 237
-      "---- Hart," Brentwood, 37, 97, 98, 119
-      ---- ----, Colchester, 196
-      ---- ----, Scole, 262-271
-      ---- ----, Witham, 132
-      "White Horse," Fetter Lane, 15
-      ---- Horse, Widford, 112, 114
-
-    Ipswich, 54, 56, 132, 212, 237-252
-
-
-    Kelvedon, 5, 139-153, 162, 176
-
-
-    Langham, 218
-
-    Lexden, 52, 147, 177-181, 302
-
-    ---- Heath, 177-179, 187, 190, 201
-
-    Little Stonham, 6, 256
-
-    "London Stone," 4, 13
-
-    Long Stratton, 6, 292-295
-
-
-    Manor Park, 81
-
-    Margaretting, 57, 110, 111
-
-    Mark's Tey, 158, 175, 176
-
-    Martyr's Tree, 95, 96
-
-    Mile End, 70-74, 163
-
-    "Mockbeggar Hall," 252
-
-    Moulsham, 114
-
-    Mountnessing, 101-105
-
-
-    Needham Market, 255
-
-    New Hall, 123-127
-
-    Newton Flotman, 296-299
-
-    Norwich, 51, 52, 161, 301, 302-320
-
-
-    Old Ford, 6, 8, 76
-
-    Old-time travellers:--
-      Caroline of Brunswick, Princess, Queen of George IV., 165-168
-      Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Princess, Queen of George III.,
-                                                                162, 163
-      Kemp, Will, 79, 82, 161
-      Johnson, Samuel, 164, 165
-      Queen Elizabeth, 304, 307
-      William III., 140, 141, 161
-
-    Old-time travelling, 142-150, 159-168, 178, 225-237
-
-
-    Parcel Mail, 54-57, 111
-
-    Pulham St Mary Magdalene, 286, 287
-
-    ---- St Mary the Virgin, 286, 287
-
-    Puttels Bridge, 93, 94
-
-
-    Rivenhall End, 139
-
-    Romford, 5, 23, 29, 51, 82, 85, 88-93, 167
-
-
-    Scole, 6, 40, 262-272
-
-    Seven Kings, 51, 83-85
-
-    Shenfield, 99, 100
-
-    Shrubland Park, 253, 255
-
-    Springfield, 121-123
-
-    Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., 151
-
-    Stanway, 6, 174-178
-
-    Steam Coaches, 46
-
-    Stoke Ash, 257, 260
-
-    Stonham Aspall, 256
-
-    ---- Earls, 256
-
-    Stratford (Langthorne), 78, 80, 81
-
-    ----- -le-Bow, 6, 8, 75-80
-
-    ---- St Mary, 5, 6, 223-225, 274
-
-    Swainsthorpe, 298
-
-
-    Tasburgh, 292, 295, 296, 297, 302
-
-    Thwaite, 259
-
-    Tivetshall St Margaret, 6, 284, 287
-
-    ---- St Mary, 6, 287
-
-    Toll-gates, 40, 70, 71, 78, 87, 93, 94, 139, 179, 222, 237, 257, 288
-
-
-    Uphall, 5, 302
-
-    Upton Park, 81
-
-
-    Wacton, 288, 292
-
-    ---- Common, 288
-
-    Washbrook, 236
-
-    West Ham, 77, 81
-
-    Whalebone House, 86, 87
-
-    Whitechapel, 2, 12, 62-69
-
-    Whitton Street, 252
-
-    Widford, 111-114, 161
-
-    Witham, 23, 131-139, 163
-
-    Woodgrange, 81
-
-    Writtle, 5
-
-
-    Yaxley, 260
-
-
-
-
-  EDINBURGH
-  COLSTON AND COY, LTD.
-  PRINTERS
-
-
-
-
-         Transcriber's Notes:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation is retained.
-
-  Inconsistent punctuation is retained.
-
-  Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
-
-  Bold is shown thus: =strong=.
-
-  Small capitals have been capitalised.
-
-
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-.poem span.i2m  {display: block; margin-left:   2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
-.poem span.i12  {display: block; margin-left:   12em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
-
-/* Transcriber's notes */
-.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
-    color: black;
-     font-size:smaller;
-     padding:0.5em;
-     margin-bottom:5em;
-     font-family:sans-serif, serif; }
-
-@media handheld {
-  .pagenum {visibility: hidden; display: none;}
-  table {width: 96%; margin: 0 2%;}
-}
-
-    </style>
-  </head>
-<body>
-
-
-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Norwich Road, by Charles G. Harper
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Norwich Road
-       An East Anglian Highway
-
-Author: Charles G. Harper
-
-Release Date: January 3, 2020 [EBook #61087]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NORWICH ROAD ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow, Alan and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter1" id="pub">
-<img src="images/fig1.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">SCOLE WHITE HART.</p>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-<h1><span class="redtext large">
-THE NORWICH<br />
-ROAD:</span> <span class="gesperrt">AN EAST<br />
-ANGLIAN HIGHWAY</span></h1>
-
-<p class="c xlarge">By <span class="smcap">Charles G. Harper</span></p>
-
-<p class="c">Author of "<i>The Brighton Road</i>," "<i>The Portsmouth
-Road</i>,"<br /> "<i>The Dover Road</i>," "<i>The Bath Road</i>,"<br />
-"<i>The Exeter Road</i>," <i>and</i> "<i>The Great North Road</i>."</p>
-
-<p class="c little"><i>Illustrated by the Author, and from<br />
-Old-Time Prints and Pictures.</i></p>
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus25">
-<img src="images/fig2.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="c"><span class="smcap">London: <span class="redtext">Chapman &amp; Hall</span> ltd.</span> 1901</p>
-
-<p class="c little">[<i>All Rights reserved.</i>]
-</p>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus26">
-<img src="images/fig3.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">PREFACE</p>
-</div></div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<p><i><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE author of a little book published in 1818,
-called</i> <span class="smcap">A Journey to London</span>, <i>which is nearly
-all "London" with very little "journey," remarks
-that "it is as uncommon for a book to go into the
-world without a preface, as a man without a hat.
-They are both convenient coverings." Here, then, is
-the customary covering.</i></p>
-
-<p><i>Introducing this, the seventh in a series of books
-telling the story of our great highways, it may
-perhaps be as well to re-state the methods used, and
-objects aimed at. The chief intention is to provide
-a readable book which shall avoid the style either of
-a Guide-Book or a History. It is the better fortune
-to be in the reader's hands than in the dusty seclusion
-of those formidable works, the County Histories;
-or disregarded among the guide-books of forgotten
-holidays. To the antiquary it will, of course, be
-obvious that this and other volumes of the series
-"contain many omissions," as the Irish reviewer
-said; but such things as find no place here have, as
-a general rule, been disregarded because they not
-only do not help the Story of the Road along,
-but rather hinder its progression.</i></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
-
-<p><i>The</i> <span class="smcap">Norwich Road</span>, <i>in its one hundred and twelve
-miles, passes by many an historic site and through
-districts distinguished for their quiet pastoral
-beauty. In being historic it is not singular, for,
-as Oliver Wendell Holmes very truly said,
-"England is one vast museum," and the old road
-would be remarkable indeed, that, like Canning's</i>
-"<span class="smcap">Needy Knife Grinder</span>," <i>had no story to tell.
-It is, however, in the especial characteristics
-of East Anglian scenery, speech, customs, and
-architecture that this road stands apart and is
-highly individualised. "East Anglia" is no merely
-arbitrary and meaningless term, as those who travel
-it, if only on the highway, will speedily find.</i></p>
-
-<p><i>But this shall be no trumpet-blast; nor indeed do
-the charms of Eastern England require such a fanfare,
-for who has not yet heard of that lovely valley
-of the Stour, so widely known as "Constable's
-Country," by whose exquisite water-meadows and
-shady lanes the old turnpike passes? Scenery
-such as this; windmills, cornfields, tall elms,
-winding rivers, and commons populous with geese
-and turkeys, are typical of the</i> <span class="smcap">Norwich Road</span>,
-<i>which may, with this introduction, now be left to
-recommend itself</i>.</p>
-
-<p class="r large">
-CHARLES G. HARPER.</p>
-
-<p class="l"><span class="smcap">Petersham, Surrey</span>,</p>
-<p class="l3"><i>October</i> 1901.
-</p>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus27">
-<img src="images/fig4.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium sans"><span class="smcap">List of Illustrations</span></p>
-</div></div>
-
-
-
-<p class="c large p2">SEPARATE PLATES</p>
-
-<table class="hang">
-
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Scole White Hart</span></td>
-  <td class= "tdr"><a href="#pub"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><span class="half">PAGE</span></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Aldgate Pump.</span> (<i>From a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd</i>, 1854)</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus2">9</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Aldgate</span>, 1820</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus3">21</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">The "Old Red Lion," Whitechapel, where Turpin shot<br />
-Matthew King.</span> (<i>From a drawing by T. Hosmer</i><br />
-<i>Shepherd</i>, 1854)</td>
-  <td class="tdrb"><a href="#illus4">59</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Whitechapel Road in the Coaching Age</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus5">65</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Mile End Turnpike</span>, 1813. (<i>After Rowlandson</i>)</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus6">71</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Romford</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus7">91</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Mountnessing Windmill</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus8">103</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Ingatestone in Coaching Days.</span> (<i>From an Old Print</i>)</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus9">107</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">New Hall Lodges</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus10">125</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Chipping Hill</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus11">133</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>"<span class="smcap">Three Blind 'Uns and a Bolter.</span>" (<i>From a Print<br />
-after H. Alken</i>)</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus12">145</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Colchester</span> </td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus13">215</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span><span class="smcap">The Vale of Dedham.</span> (<i>After Constable</i>)</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus14">219</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Spring: Suffolk Ploughlands.</span> (<i>After Constable</i>)</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus15">229</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">The Cornfield.</span> (<i>After Constable</i>)</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus16">233</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">The Old Sign of Scole White Hart</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus17">265</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Staircase in the "White Hart"</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus18">269</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Dickleburgh</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus19">279</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">A Disputed Pasturage</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus20">289</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Long Stratton</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus21">293</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Newton Flotman</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus22">299</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Norwich, from Mousehold Heath</span> </td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus23">311</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="smcap">Norwich Market Place</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus24">315</a></td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-
-<p class="c large p2">ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT</p>
-
-<table class="hang">
-
-<tr>
-  <td>Vignette</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus25"><i>Title Page</i></a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><span class="half">PAGE</span></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Preface</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus26">vii</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>List of Illustrations: London Stone</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus27">ix</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Runaway 'Prentice</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus28">1</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Yard of the "Bull," Leadenhall Street. (<i>From a drawing</i><br />
-<i>by T. Hosmer Shepherd</i>, 1854</td>
-  <td class="tdrb"><a href="#illus29">12</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Front of the "Saracen's Head," Aldgate: Present Day</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus30">14</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Yard of the "Saracen's Head" in Coaching Days. (<i>From</i><br />
-<i>a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd</i>, 1854</td>
-  <td class="tdrb"><a href="#illus31">16</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Yard of the "Saracen's Head": Present Day</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus32">18</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Yard of the "Bull," Whitechapel, in Coaching Days</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus33">27</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Norwich Coach at Christmastide. (<i>After Robert<br />
-Seymour</i>, 1835</td>
-  <td class="tdrb"><a href="#illus34">38</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Whitechapel Old Church</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus35">63</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Bow</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus36">76</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Seven Kings</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus37">84</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Whalebone House</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus38">87</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Entrance to Romford</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus39">89</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Old Toll-house, Puttels Bridge</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus40">93</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The "Fleece," Brook Street</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus41">94</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Martyr's Tree, Brentwood</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus42">95</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Yard of the "White Hart," Brentwood</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus43">98</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Shenfield</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus44">100</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Mountnessing Church</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus45">102</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Gatehouse, Ingatestone Hall</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus46">106</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>At Margaretting</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus47">111</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>The "Good Woman" Sign</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus48">113</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Bridge: Entrance to Chelmsford</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus49">115</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Conduit, Chelmsford</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus50">116</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Tindal's Statue</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus51">117</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The "Three Cups" Sign</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus52">122</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Springfield Church</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus53">123</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Boreham</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus54">128</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The "Angel," Kelvedon</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus55">141</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Birthplace of Spurgeon</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus56">151</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Near Mark's Tey</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus57">176</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Lexden </td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus58">180</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Grand Staircase, Colchester Castle</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus59">199</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Old Man Trap, Colchester Castle</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus60">205</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Colchester Castle</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus61">207</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Gun Hill</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus62">221</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Old Toll-house, Stratford Bridge</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus63">222</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Wolsey's Gateway</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus64">242</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The "Lion and Lamb," Angel Lane</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus65">244</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Sparrowe's House</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus66">246</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The "Great White Horse"</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus67">248</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Mockbeggar Hall</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus68">253</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>"Stonham Pie"</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus69">256</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Near Brockford </td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus70">257</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>"Thwaite Low House"</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus71">259</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The "Cock," Thwaite</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus72">260</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Long Stratton</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus73">295</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Tasburgh</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus74">297</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>The Old Brick Pound</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus75">301</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Caistor Camp</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus76">303</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Norwich Snap</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus77">318</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>Norfolk Turkey, on his way to Leadenhall Market</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#illus78">320</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-
-</table>
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="c large p2">THE ROAD TO NORWICH</p></div>
-
-
-
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="">
-<tr><td class="tdl"></td><td class="tdr"><span class="half">MILES</span></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">London (Whitechapel Church) to Mile End</td><td class="tdr">1</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Stratford-le-Bow (Bow Church)</td><td class="tdr">2</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Lea).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Stratford (Broadway)</td><td class="tdr">4</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Forest Gate</td><td class="tdr">5</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Manor Park</td><td class="tdr">6</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Ilford</td><td class="tdr">6</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Roding).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Seven Kings</td><td class="tdr">7</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross "Seven Kings' Watering," or Fillebrook).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Chadwell Heath</td><td class="tdr">9</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Romford</td><td class="tdr">12</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Hare Street</td><td class="tdr">13</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Puttels Bridge</td><td class="tdr">15</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross Weald Brook).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Brook Street</td><td class="tdr">16</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Brentwood</td><td class="tdr">18</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Shenfield</td><td class="tdr">19</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Mountnessing Street</td><td class="tdr">21</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Ingatestone</td><td class="tdr">23</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Margaretting Street</td><td class="tdr">25</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Widford</td><td class="tdr">27</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Wid or Ash).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Moulsham</td><td class="tdr">28</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Chelmer).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Chelmsford</td><td class="tdr">29</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Springfield</td><td class="tdr">29</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Boreham</td><td class="tdr">32</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Ter).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Hatfield Peverel</td><td class="tdr">34</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Witham).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Witham</td><td class="tdr">37</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Rivenhall End</td><td class="tdr">39</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Kelvedon</td><td class="tdr">41</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Blackwater).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Gore Pit</td><td class="tdr">42</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Mark's Tey</td><td class="tdr">45</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Copford</td><td class="tdr">46</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Stanway</td><td class="tdr">47</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Lexden Heath</td><td class="tdr">48</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Lexden</td><td class="tdr">49</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Colchester</td><td class="tdr">51</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Colne).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Dilbridge</td><td class="tdr">52</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Stratford Bridge</td><td class="tdr">57</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Stour).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Stratford St Mary</td><td class="tdr">58</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Capel Railway Crossing. Capel Station. Capel St Mary.</td><td class="tdr">63</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Copdock</td><td class="tdr">65</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Washbrook</td><td class="tdr">66</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross Wash Brook).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Ipswich</td><td class="tdr">69</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Orwell)</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span>Whitton Street</td><td class="tdr">71</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Claydon</td><td class="tdr">72</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Creeting All Saints</td><td class="tdr">76</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Stonham Earls</td><td class="tdr">79</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Little Stonham</td><td class="tdr">79</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Brockford</td><td class="tdr">83</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Thwaite</td><td class="tdr">84</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Stoke Ash</td><td class="tdr">86</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Yaxley</td><td class="tdr">88</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Brome</td><td class="tdr">90</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Waveney).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Scole</td><td class="tdr">92</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Dickleburgh</td><td class="tdr">94</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Tivetshall Level Crossing</td><td class="tdr">97</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Wacton</td><td class="tdr">100</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Long Stratton</td><td class="tdr">101</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Tasburgh</td><td class="tdr">102</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Tase).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Newton Flotman</td><td class="tdr">104</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Tase).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Hartford Bridge</td><td class="tdr">109</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;(Cross River Yare).</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Norwich (Market Place)</td><td class="tdr">111</td><td class="tdl">�</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a><br /><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus28">
-<img src="images/fig5.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE NORWICH ROAD</p>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="c large">I</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the days before railways came, robbing the exits
-from London of all dignity and purpose, the runaway
-'prentice lads of the familiar legends, who were
-always half starved and continually beaten, revolting
-at length from their uncomfortable beds under the
-shop counters and their daily stripes and scorpions,
-were wont, according to the story-books, to steal at
-night out of their houses of bondage and make for
-the roads. Such an one, making in those days for
-Norwich, and standing at Aldgate in the grey of the
-morning, looking across the threshold of London,
-would have seen, in the long broad road stretching
-before him, the only means of escape. The shilling
-or so of which he would be the owner would scarce
-serve him for two or three days' keep; and so, although
-he might have longed for a place on the coach
-he could see starting from the "Spread Eagle," in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
-Gracechurch Street, at 4 a.m., there would have been
-for such as he no choice but to start afoot, with as
-light a heart as possible, and chance the offer of a
-lift on some waggon returning into Essex. Had he,
-in leaving Aldgate behind, asked some passer-by the
-way to Norwich, he might have been seized for what
-he was, a runaway; but, if he escaped suspicion,
-would have been answered readily enough, for everyone
-in those times knew the way to lie along the
-Whitechapel Road and by Mile End Turnpike. Has
-anyone in these enlightened and highly-educated
-times courage sufficient to ask his way to Norwich
-from Aldgate? and, assuming that dauntless courage,
-is it conceivable that anyone in that crowded street
-could tell him?</p>
-
-<p>There are no apprentices and no tyrannical
-masters of the old kind left now, and the only
-runaways of these days are the bad boys of precocious
-wits who would not think of tramping the
-highway while they could raise a railway fare or
-"lift" a bicycle. But the way still lies open to
-the explorer from Aldgate, and the old Norwich
-Road yet follows the line of the Roman way into
-the country of the Iceni.</p>
-
-<p>Between the era of our imaginary truant and
-that of the Romans, who originally constructed this
-road, there yawns a vast gulf of time; certainly not
-less than eighteen hundred years. The history of
-the road during that space has largely been forgotten;
-but, worst of all, we know perhaps less of
-it and its life in the times of Charles the First,
-onward to those of William and Mary, than we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
-can recover from Roman historians; and certainly
-its coaching history is in tatters and fragments, for
-those who made it did not live in the bright glow
-of publicity that surrounded the coachmen of roads
-north, south or west, and died unexploited by the
-sporting writers of the Coaching Age.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">II</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Nearly</span> seventeen centuries have passed since, in
-the great <i>Antonine Itinerary</i> of the Roman Empire,
-the first guide-book to the roads was compiled, and
-almost eighty years since Cary and Paterson&mdash;the
-rival Bradshaws and A.B.C.'s of the Coaching Age&mdash;issued
-the last editions of their <i>Travellers Companions</i>,
-which now, instead of being constantly in
-the travellers' hands, are treasured on the shelves of
-collectors interested in relics of days before railways.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Antonine Itinerary</i> was compiled, <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 200-300.
-Among other roads of which it purports to
-give an account is the road to Venta Icenorum;
-the Norwich Road, as we should say. Its statement
-is brief and to the point, if requiring no little explanation
-after this lapse of time:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="">
-<tr><td class="tdl">Iter a Venta Icenorum Londinio <i>m.p.</i>&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">cxxviii <i>sic.</i></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Sitomago</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">xxxii</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Combretonio</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">xxii</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Ad Ansam</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">xv</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>Camuloduno</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">vii</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Canonio</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">viiii</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">C�saromago</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">xii</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Durolito</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">xvi</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl">Londinio</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl">xv</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-
-<p>A hundred and twenty-eight miles, that is to
-say, between Venta and London. The Romans, of
-course, calculated all their mileages in Britain from
-that hoary relic, the still existing "London Stone,"
-which, from behind its modern iron grating in the
-wall of St Swithin's Church, still turns a battered
-face towards the heedless, hurrying crowds in
-Cannon Street, in the City of London.</p>
-
-<p>In coaching days the Norwich Road, in common
-with most East Anglian routes, was measured from
-Whitechapel Church, and the distance from that
-landmark to Norwich given as 111� miles. The
-apparent wide difference between those measurements
-of classic and modern times is very nearly reconciled
-when we add a mile for the distance between
-London Stone and Whitechapel Church to the 111�
-miles, and when we reduce the Roman miles to
-English. An English mile measures 5280 feet, while
-a Roman mile runs only to 4842 feet, this fact accounting,
-along the road to Norwich, for some 13
-miles of the discrepancy, and bringing the difference
-to the insignificant one of 3� miles; or, assuming
-the Roman ruins at Caistor, 3 miles short of Norwich,
-to mark the site of Venta Icenorum, 6� miles; no
-very wide margin of error.</p>
-
-<p>The compiler of that ancient itinerary is unknown.
-He, or they (for a survey of the Roman
-Empire cannot have been made by one man), are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
-quite hidden and lost to sight under the title of
-"Antonine," which was given in honour of the
-Emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla, father
-and son, who both owned the name Antoninus. By
-similarly honorary titles we are accustomed to
-christen our public buildings. Thus, in coming ages,
-when such earthworms as engineers and architects
-are forgotten, the "Victoria" Embankment,
-"Victoria" Station, the "Victoria and Albert"
-Museum, and the thousand and one other things
-thus entitled will serve to hand a Sovereign down to
-futurity, while the names of those who created them,
-good or ill, will have perished, like the leaves of
-autumn. Customs change, and fashions cease to be,
-but snobbery is more enduring than brass or marble,
-and outlasts the mummies of the Pharaohs.</p>
-
-<p>The compiler who drew up the list of places on
-the road between Londinium and Venta has chosen
-to reckon backwards. The "<i>m. p.</i>" is the abbreviation
-for <i>mille passus</i>, or paced Roman miles; the
-figures after the first line giving the distance from
-the place last mentioned. Setting out from London,
-we find "Durolitum" to be identified with the
-Roman earthworks of Uphall, near Romford;
-"C�saromagus" to be identical with Writtle, near
-Chelmsford; "Canonium" to stand for Kelvedon;
-"Camulodunum" for Colchester; and "Ad Ansam"
-for Stratford St Mary; while "Combretonium" and
-"Sitomagus" still puzzle antiquaries, who are reduced
-to the extremity of suggesting the opposite
-alternatives of Brettenham or Burgh for the one, and
-Dunwich or Thetford for the other; names with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
-specious resemblance, and on circuitous routes east or
-west of the direct road which would more than
-account for the Roman surveyor's overplus of miles.
-The direct road, however, is unmistakably Roman,
-and those who will may seek for the elusive "Sitomagus"
-and "Combretonium" along it. Haply they
-may discover them at Scole, Dickleburgh or Long
-Stratton.</p>
-
-<p>But along the whole length of the road, from
-London to Norwich, the wayfarer receives impressions
-of its true Roman character, whether in its appearance
-or in the place-names on the way. Old Ford
-and Stratford-at-Bow, where the Roman paved fords
-crossed the River Lea; that other "old ford" at
-Ilford, across the River Roding, which was already
-ancient when the Saxons came and so named it,
-"Eald Ford," leaving it for later times to corrupt the
-name into "Ilford" and for uninstructed historians
-to explain the meaning to have been that it was an
-"ill ford"; to which condition, indeed, many had
-descended in medi�val times: these are examples.
-Others are found at Ingatestone, the Saxon "Ing-atte-stone"
-= the "meadow at the stone," a Roman
-milestone that stood by the wayside; in the names
-of Stanway, Colchester, Stratford St Mary. Little
-Stonham, Tivetshall, and Long Stratton, places to be
-more particularly mentioned later in these pages.</p>
-
-<p>It has been aptly pointed out by East Anglian
-antiquaries that the circuitous route eastward or
-westward of the straight road between Stratford St
-Mary and Norwich, on which Sitomagus and Combretonium
-may have been situated, may probably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
-have been an early Roman way, constructed shortly
-after the conquest of the Iceni, along an old native
-trackway, and superseded in later and more settled
-times by the direct road, overlooked by the Antonine
-compilers who, working at Rome, the very centre of
-the Empire, may not have been fully informed of
-changes in countries like Britain, on the edge of the
-Unknown. This view, when we consider the long
-period stretching between the conquest of this part
-of the country and the final break up of the Romano-British
-civilisation, about <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 450, has much to recommend
-it. A period of some three hundred and
-eighty years of colonisation and development, equalling,
-for example, the great gulf of time between our
-own day and that of Henry the Eighth, the changes
-in its course must have rivalled, if not have surpassed,
-those in our roads between the sixteenth and nineteenth
-centuries. During those eras, between the
-first and the fifth centuries, many of the original
-winding tracks must have been straightened, or left
-to the secondary position of byways, while new and
-straight roads were engineered across country
-formerly, for one reason or another, avoided. Meanwhile,
-the Antonine Itinerary-makers must have relied
-for their surveys upon old and out-of-date information,
-just as, in our own time, we find many recent
-maps, printed from the Ordnance Survey of a hundred
-years ago, still indicating winding roads that have
-been non-existent for generations, and ignoring the
-direct highways made by Telford and others just
-before the opening of the Railway Era.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">III</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">London</span> made no remarkable growth between the
-Roman and medi�val periods, but this road had in
-that time slightly altered its course from its starting-point,
-and, instead of going from Cannon Street to
-Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Old Ford, left the
-City by way of Leadenhall Street and Aldgate,
-continuing down the Mile End and Bow Roads to
-Stratford.</p>
-
-<p>The traveller of Chaucer's day, coming to Ald Gate,
-in the City wall, had reached the country. That
-gate spanned the road at a point marked nowadays
-by the house, No 2 Aldgate High Street, standing
-at the boundary of the parishes of St Katharine
-Cree and St Botolph. In 1374 Chaucer took from
-the Corporation of London a lease for the remainder
-of his life of the rooms in this gate, which was
-pulled down and succeeded by another, built in
-1606, which in its turn disappeared in 1761.</p>
-
-<p>From his windows commanding the road Chaucer
-must often have seen that dainty gentlewoman, the
-Prioress of St Leonard's, Stratford, riding to or from
-London, escorted by a numerous train, and from her
-must have drawn that portrait of the prioress who
-spoke French with a Cockney accent:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"After the scole of Stratford-att�-Bowe,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">For French of Parys was to hire unknowe."</span><br />
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>In Chaucer's day they probably taught French, of
-sorts, at the Priory schools.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus2">
-<img src="images/fig6.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">ALDGATE PUMP. <span class="in5"><i>From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd</i>, 1854.</span>
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a><br /><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
-<p>At that time it was no little journey to Stratford,
-although by measurement less than four miles, and
-the lady went strongly escorted, as, indeed, did all
-of consequence, or those who had aught to lose.
-For the more common wayfarers who went alone
-on this desperate eastern trail there stood the Chapel
-and the Holy Well of St Michael the Archangel
-within the City, where the otherwise unprotected
-might seek the aid of the Saint's strong arm before
-leaving the walled City behind on their perilous
-faring. This chapel stood where Leadenhall Street,
-Fenchurch Street and Aldgate meet, on a site
-thrown into the roadway in 1876, when the street
-was widened. Until that year the crypt of this
-shrine had filled the prosaic functions of a cellar
-in the corner house, itself demolished, together with
-the beautiful Early English arches on which it stood.
-Adjoining was "Aldgate Pump," which had long
-before unromantically taken the place of the sanctified
-spring. That celebrated civic monument is seen
-in the accompanying illustration, taken in 1854.
-Many City wits have exercised their satirical powers
-upon it, and the expression long current of "a
-draft on Aldgate Pump," a once popular mercantile
-phrase for a bad note, goes back so far as the days
-of Fielding. Oddly enough, the water of the pump
-retained some repute until 1876, when, on being
-analysed, it was found impure, and the supply
-closed. The pump, however, is still in existence,
-rebuilt of its original stones, a few feet away from
-the old site, and yields water again; not, however,
-from the old saintly source, but from the strictly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
-secular filter-beds of the New River Water Company.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus29">
-<img src="images/fig7.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">YARD OF THE "BULL," LEADENHALL STREET. <span class="in5"><i>From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd</i>, 1854.</span>
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Having implored the protection of St Michael,
-travellers of old went, heartened, upon their way
-down what is now Whitechapel High Street, which
-Strype, writing in the time of James the First, calls
-a "spacious fair street," with "sweet and wholesome
-air." Past hedgerows of elm trees and rustic
-stiles and bridges, those old wayfarers went, and
-onward down the Whitechapel Road, where the
-country was a lovely solitude, with "nothing but
-the bounteous gifts of Nature and saint-like tokens
-of innocency," which, according to Sir Thomas
-More, in 1504, characterised the charming fields of
-Mile End, Shadwell, Stepney and Limehouse. This,
-it will be allowed, is scarcely descriptive of those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
-places to-day, whatever they may become when the
-People's Palace and the University Settlements have
-done their work.</p>
-
-<p>Thus far for sake of contrast. Let us return to
-Aldgate for a while, and, without following its
-fortunes throughout the centuries, glance at it in
-the Coaching Age, before the squalor of modern
-Whitechapel had invaded it from the east, or the
-extension of City business had come to destroy
-most of that picturesque assemblage of old inns
-and medi�val gabled houses, to replace them with
-the giant warehouses and "imposing" offices of
-modern London.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">IV</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Although</span>, as we have seen, the East Anglian
-roads were, in coaching days, measured from Whitechapel
-Church, the great actual starting-place was
-Aldgate, where many of the old inns were situated,
-as, in like manner, the ancient hostelries of the
-Borough clustered at the beginning of the road
-to Canterbury and Dover. Aldgate occupies a
-position midway between London Stone, the Roman
-starting-point in Cannon Street, and Whitechapel
-Church, and to and from this spot came and went
-the stage-coaches, post-chaises and waggons in
-the palmy days of the road. The mail-coaches,
-of course, had a starting-point of their own, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
-set out from the old General Post-Office in Lombard
-Street, or, in the last years of coaching, from St
-Martin's-le-Grand.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus30">
-<img src="images/fig9.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">FRONT OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD," ALDGATE: PRESENT DAY.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>It is true that one might have taken coach
-from many other and more central inns for Colchester,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>Ipswich and Norwich:&mdash;from the "Spread
-Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, a fine old galleried
-inn demolished at the close of 1865; from the
-"Cross Keys," in the same street; from the
-"Swan with Two Necks," in Lad Lane, anciently
-Lady Lane (that is to say, the Lane of Our Lady,
-the Blessed Virgin), now Gresham Street; or from
-the "Bull," 151 Leadenhall Street, which must
-by no means be confounded with its namesake
-in Aldgate High Street. Exactly what that
-Leadenhall Street hostelry was like let the
-picture of its old galleried courtyard show.</p>
-
-<p>There was also "another way" to Norwich;
-out of Bishopsgate, by way of Newmarket, Bury
-and Thetford. Taking this route, which, although
-2� miles shorter, no true sportsman considered
-to be the real Norwich Road, one started from
-the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross; from the
-"White Horse," in Fetter Lane (improved
-away in 1898); from the "Flower Pot," in
-Bishopsgate Street; from yet another "Bull," also
-in Bishopsgate Street; or from the "Bull and
-Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand. But when all
-these places have been duly set forth, it is to
-Aldgate that we must turn as the real starting-point.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus31">
-<img src="images/fig10.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD" IN COACHING DAYS. <span class="in5"><i>From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd</i>, 1854.</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Aldgate in the days before railways was quite
-unlike the Aldgate of to-day. Certain of the old
-buildings remain, but the "note" of the place is
-entirely altered. It is now a noisy, distracting
-ante-room to the City, in which tinkling tram-cars
-and costermongers' barrows jostle with elephantine
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>railway goods vans; where the Jewish second-hand
-clothes shop rubs a greasy shoulder with the
-"merchant tailor's" vulgar show of electric light,
-plate glass and wax models; and where the East
-End, in the person of the aproned, ringleted and
-ostrich-feathered factory girl, meets the West, in
-the shape of some City clerk strayed beyond his
-mercantile or financial frontiers, each regarding
-the other as a curiosity in these social marches.
-It is as the meeting of salt water and fresh, this
-mingling of the tides of City and East End, and
-to the observant not a little curious. Nothing
-like it&mdash;nothing so marked&mdash;is to be seen on any
-other of the borders of the City. There is, too,
-a smack of the sea, a certain air of romance, in
-the street, coming, perhaps, from the windows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
-of the nautical instrument-makers, where the
-binoculars, the quadrants, the sextants and the
-sea-faring tackle in general hint of distant climes
-and the coral reefs of South Pacific isles.</p>
-
-<p>These mariners' emporia were here and in the
-Minories before railways came, and so also were
-many fine old inns. For Aldgate, difficult though
-it may be to realise it to-day, was not only the
-place whence many of the Essex, Suffolk and
-Norfolk coaches set out, but was also the resting-place
-of travellers to London; and its inns were
-quite as well-appointed as those of the more
-central ones in the City, or those of Charing Cross,
-or the West End. As travellers by rail to London
-in modern times resort to the railway hotels, so
-did our great-grandfathers find rest at the coaching
-inns at whose thresholds they were set down at
-their journey's end.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus32">
-<img src="images/fig8.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD": PRESENT DAY.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The fragments merely of the last of Aldgate's
-old hostelries remain, in the bold front of Nos.
-6 and 7, forming two-thirds of the old frontage
-of the "Saracen's Head." No. 5, the other third,
-has been destroyed, and so also has the old appearance
-of the galleried courtyard, still named
-"Saracen's Head Yard," but now surrounded by
-warehouses. The old coach archway remains, and
-the gables at the back of the buildings are quaint
-reminiscences of other times. Coaches plied
-between the "Saracen's Head" and Norwich so
-far back as 1681, and Strype, the antiquary,
-born in the neighbourhood, in a court whose
-name now flaunts the horrid travesty of "Tripe
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>Court," referring to the inn, speaks of it as "very
-large and of a considerable trade." The existing
-fragment, with its handsome architectural elevation
-of richly-moulded plaster in the Renaissance style
-of the late seventeenth century, is part of the
-building mentioned by him. Small shops now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
-occupy the ground floor, and the upper rooms
-are let as tenements.</p>
-
-<p>But the "Bull" was perhaps the most famous
-of these old inns. From it Mr Pickwick set out
-for Ipswich, and from Sam Weller's remark on that
-occasion, "Take care o' the archway, gen'l'men,"
-as the coach started, it is evident that the "Bull"
-possessed a courtyard. At that palmy time of
-inns and coaches, the opening of the nineteenth
-century, the "Bull" was, and long had been, in
-the Nelson family, a noted race of inn and coach
-proprietors. At that particular time Mrs Ann
-Nelson, widow of the late host, who died about
-1812, was the presiding genius. Associated with
-her was her son John. Another son, Robert, had
-a business of his own, and was long proprietor of
-the "Belle Sauvage," on Ludgate Hill, and partner
-with others in many coaches. A third son, George,
-drove the Exeter "Defiance," horsed by his mother
-out of London.</p>
-
-<p>But to return to the "Bull" and Mrs Nelson,
-who had, as her husband had, and his father
-before him, some sort of interest in many coaches
-running into Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, on main
-or bye-roads. She also at one time leased the
-"Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, and extended
-her energies so far as to horse the Exeter
-"Telegraph" and the "Quicksilver" Devonport
-Mail out of London, together with the Exeter
-"Defiance" night coach, the Manchester "Telegraph,"
-the Oxford "Defiance," Brighton "Red
-Rover," and the Leeds "Courier." In their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
-coaching speculations the Nelson family were
-associated with a pastrycook whose little shop
-adjoined the gateway of the "Bull." Occasionally
-a new hand on one of the coaches would send
-his leaders' noses through the shop front, for that
-gateway was very narrow and Mrs Nelson's coachmen
-anything but deliberate. On the other side
-of the gateway was a whip-maker's shop, kept by
-one James Johnson, who throve mightily on the
-custom of the coachmen and others who frequented
-the "Bull."</p>
-
-<p>This most energetic of landladies and Napoleonic
-of coach proprietors developed and managed her
-extensive coaching interests long before her
-husband died. He, good, easy-going man, had
-been a fair whip in earlier days, but had long
-left the box, and had no head for business,
-although a very fine taste in wines and spirits:
-the lack of the first probably a corollary of the
-second. She spared neither herself nor her
-servants. Rising considerably before the lark,
-she saw the owls to bed, and was a martinet to
-her coachmen. Left a widow while in the prime
-of life, she still wore in old age the dress of her
-youth. The sketch of her in the picture of the
-"Bull" yard in coaching days shows exactly what
-her costume was like. A short skirt revealed high-heeled
-shoes with large buckles, the heels painted
-red. Black velvet was her winter wear, and fancy
-apron, lace neckerchief and frilled cap invariable
-items. Up to her seventieth year she was the
-last up at night, scouring the house to see that
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a><br /><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a><br /><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>all was safe; and the first up in the morning,
-looking after the stable people and seeing that the
-horses had their feeds and were properly cared
-for. Inside and outside the house, and down
-the eastern roads, her influence was despotic and
-would brook no defiance. Her "Ipswich Blues"
-had long been famous when an opposition coach
-was started. Opposition could not be allowed
-to live, and so the fares were reduced
-from eight shillings inside and sixteen shillings
-out, by regular stages until the point was
-reached when passengers were not only carried for
-nothing, but were presented with an excellent
-dinner at Witham. At that point the rivals discreetly
-retired, when fares rose again to their old
-level.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus3">
-<img src="images/fig11.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">ALDGATE, 1820.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Mrs Nelson insisted on the most rigid punctuality.
-Did the coachman of one of her crack
-coaches or one of her still more famous "Oppositions"
-bring his team down her yard five minutes
-over time, he was reprimanded; ten minutes, and
-he was fined half-a-crown; a quarter of an hour,
-and he stood a good chance of being dismissed.
-She ran a Southend "Opposition" every afternoon
-by Romford, Brentwood, Billericay, Wickford,
-Raleigh and Rochford, along Essex roads of a
-feather-bed softness of mud; but time must be
-kept. She provided good horses and would not
-hear of excuses. One day, when the roads were
-particularly heavy, the "Opposition" came in half
-an hour late from Southend. The coachman, after
-the manner of his kind, on driving into the yard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
-and pulling up at the coffee-room door, threw his
-whip across the wheelers' backs. Mrs Nelson had
-long been watching the clock, and, coming out,
-took the whip and hung it up, with the quiet
-remark, "That whip is no longer yours, Philpot&mdash;half
-an hour behind."</p>
-
-<p>"But the roads are so bad, ma'am," remonstrated
-poor Toby. "I'm sure, ma'am, the
-gentlemen knew I did my best; but I felt bound
-to spare the cattle."</p>
-
-<p>"<i>I</i> find the cattle and employ you to drive
-them," replied the inexorable landlady; "<i>you</i>
-have nothing to do but to keep time. Draw
-your wages and leave the yard."</p>
-
-<p>Under this iron rule it is no wonder that her
-coachmen were sometimes "pulled up" for furious
-driving. On one of these occasions she appeared
-in court in defence of her man. "I understand,
-Mrs Nelson," blandly remarked the Chairman of
-the Bench, "that you give your coachmen instructions
-to race the rival coach."</p>
-
-<p>"Not exactly," replied the lady; "my orders
-to them are simply that they are to get the
-road and keep it."</p>
-
-<p>But if a very dragon of strictness, she treated
-coachmen and guards very well. They had their
-especial room, and dined as well there, at reduced
-prices, as any of her coffee-room customers. This
-especial consideration reflected itself in those functionaries,
-who jealously preserved the privacy of
-their room; the amateur coachman who secured
-the invitation to join them (and to pay out of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
-own pocket for their wine and spirits) feeling
-himself greatly honoured.</p>
-
-<p>In other respects, the "Bull" was a model to
-other houses. No damp sheets in any one of
-its hundred and fifty beds, no drunken brawlers;
-nothing a minute out of time, or an inch out of
-place. Mrs Nelson's fine house was, indeed, nothing
-less than an institution. In later years her
-son John took more of the management upon his
-shoulders, and the business seemed likely to long
-outlast his time.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2">V</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">But</span> a whisper of coming changes disturbed the
-air as early as 1830. Coachmen and travellers
-talked in the stableyard and the cosy rooms of
-the "Bull" of men with strange instruments encountered
-along the road; "chaps with telescopes
-on three sticks, and other chaps with chains and
-things, measuring the fields." It was thus that
-they described the surveyors, with their theodolites
-and their staff of men, who were setting out the
-proposed route of the projected Eastern Counties
-Railway that was to run all the way from London
-to Colchester, Norwich and Yarmouth.</p>
-
-<p>John Nelson was too confident in the existing
-order of things to believe that a few pounds of
-coal and some boiling water would ever be a
-match for his horses, or that a time would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
-presently come when those passengers of his who
-now derided the railways would desert the coaches.
-The "Bull" had been in his family for more than
-a hundred and twelve years, as an inn and a
-coaching house, and he could as soon have
-imagined the end of the world as a day coming
-when the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk coaches
-should no longer enter or leave his yard. It was
-a good joke for a while, when the coaches came
-in, to ask "How they were getting on with that
-railway?" but when the surveys were completed
-and the prospectus of the "Grand Eastern Counties
-Railway" was issued in 1834, it was seen that
-the railway men meant business. The original
-proposal of the directors was to follow the road
-closely and to bring the line into Aldgate.
-When it was seen that the railway was really to
-be made, Nelson raised an opposition against the
-Aldgate terminus, and was successful in driving
-the Company into an out-of-the-way site in
-Shoreditch, where for many years that terminus
-remained.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus33">
-<img src="images/fig12.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE YARD OF THE "BULL," WHITECHAPEL, IN COACHING DAYS.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The Eastern Counties Railway was opened as
-far as Chelmsford in 1839, to Colchester in 1842,
-and communication to Norwich was opened up in
-1845. From the day of the first opening, the
-"Bull" declined. Old customers still found their
-way from the slums of Shoreditch to its hospitable
-door, but were not reinforced by the newer generation
-of travellers, to whom the road and its end
-in Aldgate were alike unknown. They went to the
-City inns, and later to the more central hotels,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>leaving the "Bull" to slowly sink into neglect.
-John Nelson made a big bid for success in another
-line, and ran the "Wellington" omnibuses with
-success from 1855 until his death, at the age of
-seventy-four, in June 1868. He had long resided
-in the West End, and was a man of ample fortune,
-so that the end of the "Bull's" coaching career
-hurt him only in sentiment. His mother, that most
-autocratic and business-like of women, had died ten
-years before, active almost to the last, although she
-had reached the age of eighty-five years. Towards
-the close of 1868 the old inn ended its long career.
-Its substantial, old-fashioned silver-plate and massive
-furniture were sold by auction, with the stock of
-rare old wines, laid in many years before, for that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
-old generation of travellers who delighted in port
-and sherry, and plenty of both.</p>
-
-<p>The very site of the "Bull" is now sought with
-pains and labour, and only to be discovered with
-difficulty by the present generation. It was
-numbered 25 Aldgate High Street, and stood where
-Aldgate Avenue, a modern alley rich in offices of
-"commission agents," and curious things of that
-kind, now cuts its way through where the old
-yard used to be.</p>
-
-<p>Close by the "Bull" was another old coaching
-inn, the "Blue Boar," now quite vanished, kept for
-a time by John Thorogood. The Thorogoods were
-in those days, and in these times of amateur
-coaching are still, a family of coachmen. "Old
-John," who owned the "Norwich Times," and
-actually drove it for two years without missing a
-journey the whole of that time, clearly deserved
-his patronymic, in thus handling the reins along
-a hundred and twelve miles of road for seven
-hundred and thirty consecutive days.</p>
-
-<p>It was to the "Blue Boar" that little David
-Copperfield came, on his miserable journey from
-Yarmouth:&mdash;"We approached London by degrees,
-and got, in due time, to the inn, in the Whitechapel
-district, I forget whether it was the 'Blue Bull'
-or the 'Blue Boar,' but I know it was the Blue
-Something, and that its likeness was painted upon
-the back of the coach." The sculptured effigy of a
-boar, with gilded tusks and hoofs, built into the
-wall of a tobacco factory, marks the site of the
-inn.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Among other noted inns, the "Three Nuns"
-must be named. From it set out the short stages
-to Ilford, Epping, Romford and Woodford, together
-with coaches for several of the Essex by-roads.
-The house owes its name to the Minoresses, or nuns,
-of St Clare, from whose religious establishment the
-Minories obtains its title. The inn was rebuilt
-in 1877, and is now nothing more than a huge
-public-house.</p>
-
-<p>Many other inns of consequence in their day
-have left nothing but their yards behind them to
-show where they stood:&mdash;George Yard, Spread
-Eagle Yard, Black Horse Yard, Boar's Head Yard,
-White Swan Yard, Half Moon Passage, and Kent
-and Essex Yard are such relics, bordering High
-Street, Whitechapel, where one curious sign survives,
-that of an inn called the "Horse and Leaping Bar."</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">VI</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">One</span> decided advantage the Chelmsford, Colchester
-and Ipswich route to Norwich possessed in old times
-over that by way of Newmarket and Thetford.
-Neither could have been considered safe in the bad
-old days, but while the traveller across the wild
-heaths of Newmarket and Thetford was almost
-certain to be "held up" on his lonely course, the
-other way, through Essex, passed by few such
-wildernesses, and had more towns and villages along<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
-its course, to give a sense of security. Briefly,
-robbery on one route was a probability, and on the
-other was regarded as certain. Margaret Paston,
-writing from Norfolk to her husband in London,
-so long ago as the fifteenth century, certainly gives
-even the way through Essex a bad name, for she
-asks him to pay a debt for one of their friends,
-because it was not safe, "on account of the robbers,"
-to send money up from the country; but at the
-very same time the Thetford route had a much
-more sinister reputation, and travellers versed in
-the gossip of the road avoided it if possible, or
-went in company and well armed, for in that era
-a certain William Cratfield, Rector of Wrotham, "a
-common and notorious thief and lurker on the roads,
-and murderer and slayer," lurked and robbed and
-slew on Newmarket Heath, in company with a
-certain "Thomas Tapyrtone, hosyer." He was at
-last laid by the heels, in 1416, and charged with
-robbing a Londoner of �12. This distinguished
-ornament of the Church died in Newgate, but of
-the villainous hosier we hear no more. Perhaps he
-had realised a fortune in the business and retired
-to enjoy the fruits of his industry. With the
-disappearance of this worthy couple, travellers
-breathed more freely, but for surety's sake continued
-to patronise the Essex route, and so by way
-of Ipswich to come to the City of Orchards, as
-Norwich was called of old.</p>
-
-<p>As time went on, a certain degree of security was
-found in the coaches that began to make an appearance
-with the second half of the seventeenth century.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
-They travelled at first no more quickly than a man
-could walk, but they provided company, which was,
-under the circumstances, highly desirable. Soon,
-however, they found it possible to do the journey
-in two days. Strype, we have already seen
-mentions the "Saracen's Head" in Aldgate as the
-centre of a considerable trade, and to it in 1681 a
-Norwich coach was running; an innovation which
-aroused the indignation of innkeepers on the way
-to almost as great a height as that of their descendants
-when, two hundred and forty years later,
-railways were depopulating the roads. When
-travellers began to go by coach instead of on
-horseback, and to reach London or Norwich in two
-days instead of three or four, those antique tapsters
-thought they saw their living going, and, strange to
-say, there were not wanting men who raised their
-voices against the innovation of being carried on a
-journey, instead of riding; although, for the most
-part, their outcry was the result only of innate conservatism.</p>
-
-<p>"Travelling in these coaches," said an anonymous
-pamphleteer, "can neither prove advantageous
-to men's health or business. For what
-advantage is it to men's health to be called out of
-their beds into these coaches an hour before day in the
-morning, to be hurried in them from place to place, till
-one hour, two, or three within night; insomuch that
-after sitting all day in the summer time stifled with
-heat, and choked with the dust, or the winter time
-starving and freezing with cold or choked with
-filthy fogs, they are often brought into their inns by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
-torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get
-supper; and next morning they are forced into the
-coach so early that they can get no breakfast. What
-addition is this to men's health or business? to ride
-all day with strangers, oftentimes sick, ancient,
-diseased persons, or young children crying; to
-whose humours they are obliged to be subject, forced
-to bear with, and many times are poisoned with
-their nasty scents, and crippled by the crowd of the
-boxes and bundles."</p>
-
-<p>Yet "these coaches" (one can almost hear the
-intonation of contempt in that phrase) were from
-the first a success. The greater that success the
-louder for a time was the outcry against them.
-Taylor, the Water Poet, was one of those who wrote
-vehemently against the new methods of travel.
-To him a coach was "a close hypocrite; for it hath
-a cover for knavery and curtains to vaile and shadow
-any wickedness. Besides, like a perpetual cheater,
-it wears two bootes, and no spurs, sometimes having
-two pairs of legs to one boote, and oftentimes
-(against nature) it makes faire ladies weare the
-boote; and if you note, they are carried back to
-back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in
-that miserable manner and thrown overboard into
-the sea. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs,
-in being drawn sideways as they are when
-they sit in the boot of the coach; and it is a
-dangerous kind of carriage for the commonwealth,
-if it be considered."</p>
-
-<p>The boot of which he speaks so contemptuously,
-was a method of packing the "outsides," of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
-we still find a survival in the Irish jaunting-car.
-There are those who trace the origin of the term
-from the French "<i>bo�te</i>," a box. Even now the
-coachman's seat is "the box," and the modern fore-boot
-is under it.</p>
-
-<p>Writers of that time seem almost unanimously to
-have taken sides against coaching; with, however, no
-effect; for, somewhat later than Taylor, that doughty
-Conservative, John Cresset, is found exclaiming
-furiously against the multitude of them. He
-favoured the suppression of all, or, at least&mdash;counsels
-of moderation prevailing&mdash;of most. They were, he
-said, mischievous to the public, destructive to trade
-and prejudicial to the land. Not only did they
-injure the breed of horses, but also that of watermen;
-which last objection goes further than the
-complaints of Taylor himself, who, writing at the
-same time, does not speak of his breed being debased,
-but only of his trade being crippled. Cresset
-thought the stage-coaches tempted the country
-gentry to London too often, and he accordingly
-proposed that these conveyances should be limited
-to one for every county town in England, to go
-backwards and forwards once a week.</p>
-
-<p>Vain hope! Coaches of sorts must already have
-appeared on the road to Norwich by the middle of
-the seventeenth century, for in a proclamation of July
-20th in the plague year, 1665, when all places were
-dreading infected London, it is ordained, that "from
-this daie all ye passage coaches shall be prohibited
-to goe from ye city to London and come from thence
-hither, and also ye common carts and wagons."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
-Already, in 1696, the "Confatharrat" coach was a
-well-known conveyance between London and
-Norwich, and the name of Suggate, the London and
-East Anglian carrier, a household word. Unhappily,
-nothing can be gathered as to when Suggate first
-began to jog along the road, or when the "Confatharrat"
-started to ply between Norwich and the
-"Four Swans," Bishopsgate Street. All particulars
-are lost. The odd name of that coach was probably
-a seventeenth-century way of spelling the word
-"confederate," and the selection of such a name
-proves both that it was carried on by an alliance
-or co-partnership, and that "confederate" had not
-then acquired its sinister modern connotation.
-Besides these aids to travel, a stage-waggon began
-to ply from the "Popinjay," Tombland, Norwich, at
-an early date; and another from the "Angel," in the
-Market Place, to the "Blossoms" Inn, Laurence
-Lane, London, was advertised in the <i>Norwich
-Mercury</i>, of March 29th, 1729, to "now go regularly
-every Thursday night," setting out on the following
-Wednesday from London, on the return journey.
-It will thus be seen that it was a five or six days'
-journey for those primitive affairs, and that they
-apparently did not run at regular intervals until
-that year.</p>
-
-<p>A London and Beccles coach was running in
-1707, but the first regular Norwich coach of which
-particulars remain was the "Norwich Machine,"
-which in 1762 set out for London three times a
-week from the "Maid's Head," according to the
-advertisement still extant. There is nothing in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
-that old coaching bill to show that 1762 was the
-first season of the "Norwich Machine." It may
-have been established some years before that date.</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p class="r">
-<i>Norwich, March 26, 1762.</i></p>
-
-<p class="c">SUSAN NASMITH and JAMES KEITH,<br />
-<br />
-Proprietors of the<br />
-<br />
-NORWICH MACHINE,<br />
-<br />
-Give Notice
-</p>
-
-<p>that their Machine will set out from the <span class="smcap">Maid's Head</span> Inn,
-in St Simon's Parish, in Norwich, on Monday, the 5th day
-of April next, at half-past eleven in the forenoon, and on
-the Wednesday and Friday in the same week, at the same
-time; and to be continued in like Manner, on those Days
-weekly, for the carrying four inside Passengers, at
-Twenty-five Shillings each, and outside at Twelve
-Shillings and Sixpence each. The inside Passengers to be
-allowed twenty pound Weight, and all above to be paid
-for at three half-pence per pound; and to be in London on
-the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday Evenings weekly.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p2"><i>N.B.</i>&mdash;A Machine will set out on the same days, at the
-same time, from the <span class="smcap">Green Dragon</span>, in Bishopsgate Street,
-London, for Norwich.</p></blockquote>
-
-<p>In the following year, the "Widow Nasmith"
-and James Keith advertised that they had built large
-and commodious machines, to carry six inside, and
-reduced the fares to twenty shillings and ten
-shillings respectively; but they had apparently not
-succeeded in performing the journey in less time than
-a day and a half, for no mention is made of speed
-being accelerated. But a remarkable feature in that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
-announcement is the extraordinary cheapness of the
-fares, little over twopence and a penny a mile for
-inside and outside passengers, at a time when prices
-on other roads ruled from twenty-five to fifty per cent.
-higher. This tells a tale of competition; but Time,
-the thief, has robbed us of all knowledge of those
-competitors.</p>
-
-<p>A year later the London and Ipswich Post Coaches
-were advertised to set out every week-day, and to
-perform the 69� miles in ten hours, an average pace
-of almost 7 miles an hour; a marvellous turn of
-speed for that age. As to whether those Post
-Coaches ever <i>did</i> cover that distance in ten hours, we
-may reasonably express a doubt; but there was the
-promise, and 011 the strength of it the proprietors
-charged threepence a mile. As will be seen by the
-advertisement, these coaches carried no outside
-passengers:&mdash;</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p class="r">
-<i>Ipswich, August 17th, 1764.</i></p>
-
-<p class="c">THE LONDON AND IPSWICH POST COACHES
-</p>
-
-<p>Set out on Monday, the 27th of August, at seven o'clock
-in the morning from the <span class="smcap">Black Bull</span>, in Bishopsgate,
-London, and at the same time from the <span class="smcap">Great White Horse</span>,
-in Ipswich, and continue every day (Sunday excepted), to
-be at the above places the same evening at five o'clock;
-each passenger to pay threepence per mile, and to be
-allowed eighteen pounds luggage; all above to pay one
-penny per pound, and so in proportion. The coaches, hung
-upon steel springs, are very easy, large and commodious,
-carry six inside but no outside passengers whatever; but
-have great conveniences for parcels or game (to keep them
-from the weather), which will be delivered at London and
-Ipswich the same night.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>As these coaches are sent out for the ease and expedition
-of gentlemen and ladies travelling, the proprietors
-humbly hope for their encouragement, and are determined
-to spare no pains to render it as agreeable as they can.</p>
-
-<p class="c">
-Performed (if God permits) by&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Pet. Sheldon</span>, at the Bull, Bishopsgate Street, London.</span><br />
-<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Thomas Archer</span>, at the White Hart, Brentwood.</span><br />
-<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Charles Kerry</span>, at the Black Boy, Chelmsford.</span><br />
-<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Geo. Reynolds</span>, at the Three Cups, Colchester; and</span><br />
-<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Chas. Harris</span>, at the Great White Horse, Ipswich.</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p><i>N.B.</i>&mdash;The proprietors will not be answerable for any
-money, plate, jewels, or writings, unless entered and paid
-for as such.</p></blockquote>
-
-<p>The reader will perhaps have observed that this
-advertisement especially mentions a convenience for
-carrying game, and, as a matter of fact, game and
-oysters were prominent from an early period in the
-history of Norwich Road conveyances, and, by the
-middle of the eighteenth century, the Norfolk and
-Suffolk coaches had already earned quite a distinctive
-character in two seasons of the year,
-Michaelmas and Christmas. East Anglia has always
-abounded in game, and its broad heaths and extensive
-commons have been the breeding-grounds
-of innumerable geese and turkeys whose careers
-have ended on London dinner-tables. In those two
-seasons it was often difficult to secure a seat on
-or in any of the "up" coaches from Norwich or
-Ipswich, for while every available inch of space on
-the mails was occupied by festoons of dead birds
-consigned by country cousins to friends in town, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
-whole of a stage-coach was frequently chartered
-for the purpose of despatching heavy consignments
-of these noble poultry to the London market.
-Christmas provided extraordinary sights along the
-Norfolk Road, in the swaying coaches, with parcels
-and geese and turkeys mountains high on the roof;
-with barrels of Colchester natives in the boot, and
-hampers swinging heavily between the axle-trees
-on a shelf called "the cellar"; while from every
-rail or projection to which they could be either
-safely or hazardously tied depended other turkeys
-or braces of fowls, booked at the last moment before
-starting. It was something in those days to be a
-turkey or a goose, before whose importance the
-claims of human passengers faded; but it was a
-fleeting elevation which the philosophic did not
-envy, thinking that here indeed the poet was
-justified in his sounding line&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus34">
-<img src="images/fig13.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE NORWICH COACH AT CHRISTMAS TIDE. <span class="in5"><i>After Robert Seymour, </i>1835.</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
-<p>That unfortunate genius, Robert Seymour, has
-left us a picture of the Norwich coach nearing
-London at Christmas time, with its feathered load.
-The drawing was made in 1835, at the very height
-of the Coaching Age, and shows from his own observation
-with what ingenuity every rail and projection
-was used to hang the birds from.</p>
-
-<p>Another highly specialised branch of traffic,
-which only left the road on the opening of the
-railway, was the constant service of fish waggons
-running between Harwich, Colchester and London,
-at the then express speed of 8 miles an hour.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">VII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Between</span> the early days of coaching and the end of
-that period, many changes took place on the Norwich
-Road. So late as 1798, the Mail, the "Expedition,"
-and the "Post Coach" were the only coaches to
-Norwich, supplemented by three road waggons; two
-of them doing the journey twice a week, the third
-setting out weekly. Later came the "Norwich
-Times," "Gurney's Original Day Coach," the
-"Ph�nomenon," as it was originally spelt; the
-"Magnet," the Ipswich "Shannon," and the
-Ipswich "Blue." With the object of serving as
-many places as possible, and, incidentally, securing
-heavier bookings, the "Times" and Gurney's
-coaches took a somewhat circuitous route, leaving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
-the direct road at Chelmsford, and going through
-Braintree, Halstead, Sudbury, Long Melford and Bury
-St Edmunds, rejoining the Norwich Road at Scole.</p>
-
-<p>But the lord of the road was the Mail Coach,
-beside which the stages were very commonplace
-affairs.</p>
-
-<p>The first mail-coach that ever ran the road between
-London and Norwich started in March 1785,
-and the service was from the beginning continued
-daily. Before that time the mails had been carried
-by post-boys, who began in 1741 to go six days a
-week instead of three, as they formerly had done.</p>
-
-<p>Mail-coaches are entirely things of the past, for
-the modern coaching revival has only brought back
-the smart stages and drags of the last years of the
-Coaching Age. The mails were expensive and exclusive
-affairs, constructed to carry only nine
-persons; four inside and five out, including coachman
-and guard. For the higher fares passengers
-paid they had not always the satisfaction of travelling
-faster than on the stages; but perhaps there was
-some dignity attaching to a seat on the mail which
-was lacking on ordinary coaches. And certainly
-they were surrounded by pomp and circumstance.
-The guard wore a scarlet coat and went armed with
-pistol, sword and blunderbuss; not, of course, for
-the protection of the passengers, but for the safe-guarding
-of His Majesty's mails. And everything
-gave place, as a matter of right and not merely
-courtesy, to the mail. Surly pikemen swung open
-their gates and asked no toll, for it was one of the
-privileges of the mail to go toll-free, and the high<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>waymen,
-if they walked in the ways of caution, left
-the gorgeous conveyance severely alone, reserving
-their best attentions for the plebeian stages. It was
-a much more serious thing to rob the mail than an
-ordinary coach, for a conviction was more certain to
-end in death, judges having hints from the Government
-how undesirable it was that mails should be
-ransacked and the robbers live. The rewards usually
-offered by the Post-office, too, were tempting to
-those who could inform if they would. �200 was
-the sum generally to be had for this service, together
-with the �40 reward by Act of Parliament for the
-apprehension of a highwayman; and if the mail was
-robbed within five miles of London, another �100.
-Courage, recklessness, and desperation&mdash;whichever
-we like to call it&mdash;often nerved the night-hawks
-to brave even so heavy a handicap as this, as this
-very road bears witness, in the daring robbery of
-the Ipswich Mail in 1822, when notes to the value
-of no less than �31,198 were stolen. In addition
-to the usual rewards, a sum of �1000 was offered
-by the losing firms of bankers, as shown in the
-accompanying old handbill, but without avail.
-This sum was afterwards increased to �5000,
-and a notification given that, in order to prevent
-the notes being changed, the ink on all new
-ones had been altered from black to red. But the
-robbers had the impudence to ask �6000 for the
-return of the notes. They had already passed
-�3000 worth, and naively said, in the negotiations
-they opened up, that the trouble they had taken
-and the risks they had run did not make it worth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
-while to accept a smaller "reward." The bankers,
-however, would not spring another thousand, for
-by that time everyone was too shy of an "Ipswich
-black note," and it was extremely unlikely that any
-more could be passed. Negotiations were broken
-off; but a month later notes to the value of �28,000
-were returned. The thieves were never traced, and
-although the bulk of their booty was useless to
-them, made the very substantial haul of over �3000
-by their lawless enterprise.</p>
-
-<p class="c b xxxlarge">�1000 Reward.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/fig81.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="c b p0 verybig">STOLEN</p>
-<p class="c b p0 xlarge">FROM THE IPSWICH MAIL</p>
-<p class="c p0">On its way from London, <i>on the Night<br />
-of the 11th Sept. Inst.</i> the following</p>
-<p class="c p0 b">COUNTRY BANK NOTES:</p>
-<p class="c p0 b large">Ipswich Bank, 5, &amp; 10<i>l.</i> Notes.</p>
-<p class="c p0"><i>ALEXANDERS &amp; Co.</i> on <i>HOARE &amp; Co.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/fig82.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="c p0 b large">Woodbridge Bank, 1, 5, &amp; 10<i>l.</i> Notes.</p>
-<p class="c p0"> <i>ALEXANDERS &amp; Co.</i> on <i>FRYS &amp; Co.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/fig82.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="c p0">Manningtree Bank, 1, 5, &amp; 10<i>l.</i> Notes.<br />
-<i>ALEXANDER &amp; Co.</i> on <i>FRYS &amp; Co.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/fig82.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="c p0 medium">Hadleigh Bank, 1, 5, &amp; 10<i>l.</i> Notes.<br />
-<i>ALEXANDER &amp; Co.</i> on <i>FRYS &amp; Co.</i></p>
-<p class="c p0 little">Particulars of which will be furnished at the different Bankers.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/fig82.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="c p0 little">Whoever will give Information, either at ALEXANDERS and Co.<br />
-or at FRYS and Co., <i>St Mildred's Court, Poultry</i>, so that the<br />
-Parties may be apprehended, shall on his or their Conviction,<br />
-and the Recovery of the Property, receive the above REWARD.</p>
-
-<p>We have said that mail-coaches were gorgeous.
-They were painted in black and red. Not a shy,
-unassuming red, but the familiar and traditional Post-office
-hue. Also they bore the Royal coat-of-arms
-emblazoned upon the door panels, and the
-insignia of the four principal orders of knight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>hood
-on the quarters. There was no mistaking a
-mail-coach.</p>
-
-<p>The Norwich Mail, which took fifteen and a
-half hours to do the journey so late as 1821, was
-greatly improved in later years; and finally, in
-the early forties, when the railway reached
-Norwich and superseded the roads, performed the
-journey in eleven hours, thirty-eight minutes, at
-the very respectable average speed of 9� miles
-an hour. It was not the only mail on the road,
-but shared the way so far as Ipswich with the
-Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail. This coach was unfortunate
-on two occasions between 1835 and
-1839. On September 28th in the first year,
-when the coachman was climbing on to his box
-in the yard of the "Swan with Two Necks," the
-horses started away on their own accord, tumbling
-the coachman off and knocking down the helper
-who had been holding their heads. Dashing into
-Cheapside, they flung themselves against the back
-of the Poole Mail with such force that the coachman
-of that mail was also thrown off. He was
-taken unconscious to the hospital. Continuing
-their furious rush, the horses of the Ipswich
-Mail at length ran the pole of the coach between
-the iron railings of a house, and so were
-stopped.</p>
-
-<p>The second happening, in 1839, was somewhat
-similar. The mail had arrived at Colchester, and
-the coachman, throwing down the reins, got off
-the box. No one was at the horses' heads, and
-they started away and galloped down the High<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
-Street, until the near leader fell and broke his
-neck, stopping the team.</p>
-
-<p>It was by the Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail
-that David Copperfield journeyed down to Yarmouth
-on his second visit to Mr Peggotty. In the
-ordinary course of things, he would have reached
-Ipswich at 3�12 a.m. But on this occasion the
-weather was a potent factor in causing delay.
-He occupied the box seat, and remarked upon the
-look of the sky to the coachman while yet on
-the first stage out of London.</p>
-
-<p>"Don't you think that a very remarkable
-sky?" he asked; "I don't remember to have seen
-one like it."</p>
-
-<p>"Nor I&mdash;not equal to it," said the coachman.
-"That's mist, sir. There'll be mischief done at
-sea, I expect, before long."</p>
-
-<p>The description of this stormy sky is very
-fine, and seems to have been drawn from observation;
-just as true and as effective in its way as
-Old Crome's billowy cloudscapes, in his <i>Mousehold
-Heath</i>, or as any of Constable's rain-surcharged
-Suffolk scenes.</p>
-
-<p>"It was a murky confusion&mdash;here and there
-blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke
-from damp fuel&mdash;of flying clouds tossed up into
-most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights
-in the clouds than there were depths below them
-to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth,
-through which the wild moon seemed to plunge
-headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws
-of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
-There had been a wind all day; and it was rising
-then, with an extraordinary great sound. In
-another hour it had much increased, and the sky
-was more overcast, and it blew hard.</p>
-
-<p>"But as the night advanced, the clouds closing
-in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then
-very dark, it came on to blow harder and harder.
-It still increased, until our horses could scarcely
-face the wind. Many times in the dark part of
-the night (it was then late in September, when
-the nights were not short) the leaders turned
-about, or came to a dead stop; and we were
-often in serious apprehension that the coach
-would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain
-came up before this storm, like showers of steel;
-and at those times, when there was any shelter
-of trees or lee-walls to be got, we were fain to
-stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the
-struggle.... We came to Ipswich very late,
-having had to fight every inch of ground since
-we were ten miles out of London; and found a
-cluster of people in the market-place, who had
-risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling
-chimneys. Some of these, congregating about
-the inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of
-great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high
-church tower and flung into a bye-street, which
-they then blocked up."</p>
-
-<p>At Ipswich the Yarmouth coaches left the
-Norwich Road, and so the further adventures of
-David Copperfield do not in this place concern us.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">VIII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Here</span>, as on the other roads, the early advent
-of the Motor Car, in 1826, caused much commotion.
-The steam coaches of that period never achieved
-any success on this route, but caricatures of what
-might be expected were plentiful, and pictures of
-the Colchester "Dreadful Vengeance," the Norwich
-"Buster," and other fanciful conveyances, in the
-act of exploding and distributing their passengers
-in little pieces over a wide stretch of country,
-were popular. The railway itself came in for much
-abuse, and misguided and fanatical coach proprietors
-wasted their substance in pitiful attempts to
-compete with it. Among these was Israel Alexander,
-that Jewish hero of the Brighton Road in the early
-forties, who, although a first-class whip, was
-perhaps chiefly associated with the many upsettings
-of the Brighton "Quicksilver." He fell out with
-his noble friends on that highway, and, coming to
-the Norwich Road, ran a well-appointed coach to
-Colchester for a little while, until even the Eastern
-Counties Railway, then the slowest on earth, made
-the pace too quick for him. His turn-out was
-given the extraordinary name of the "Duke of
-Beaufort's Retaliator," and might have continued
-much longer to carry those who were prejudiced
-against railways, had it not met with so many
-accidents.</p>
-
-<p>One who was contemporary with the coaching
-age has ingeniously divided coaching accidents<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
-into three classes:&mdash;1. Accidents to the coach;
-2. Accidents to the horses; 3. Accidents to the
-harness. The most common kind of mishap to
-the coach was, he says, the breaking of an axle.
-This was not, as a rule, due to any faulty construction
-of that most essential feature of a public
-conveyance, but to the overloading either of
-passengers or goods, to which coaches were continually
-subject. The sudden snapping of an axle
-at a high speed or on a down grade produced
-a tremendous crash which generally shot coachman,
-guard and "outsides" in all directions. Happy
-those who, in such a case, were received into the
-thorny arms of a quickset hedge or the soft
-embraces of a mud-heap.</p>
-
-<p>Another kind of mishap, not always accidental,
-was that of a wheel coming off; an incident often
-caused in early times, before the introduction of
-patent axle-boxes, by the mischievous removal of
-the lynch-pin by some unscrupulous rascal in the
-employ of the rival coach proprietor.</p>
-
-<p>The sudden snapping of a skid-chain while
-descending a hill, resulting in the coach running
-on to the horses and a general overthrow, in which
-horses' legs and passengers heads came into unwonted
-contact, was perhaps as uncomfortable a
-kind of disaster as could be imagined. Overloading,
-too, sometimes had the effect of rendering a coach
-top-heavy, when a slight lack of caution in running
-round curves would upset it.</p>
-
-<p>Accidents to the horses were:&mdash;casting a shoe,
-involving lameness, and perhaps a fall; tripping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
-and stumbling on loose stones and rolling over;
-slipping up in frosty weather; and kicking over
-the traces or the splinter-bar.</p>
-
-<p>Accidents to the harness usually happened to
-the traces, which commonly snapped under an uneven
-strain. To cobble them up with twine, and
-so complete a stage, was a common practice. In
-such cases, the thoughts of passengers during the
-remaining miles were, like those of the poet, "too
-deep for words." Most nerve-shaking of all these
-varied and untoward happenings, however, was
-the breaking of the reins. Rotted by age, by the
-sun's heat and the winter's frosts, they would
-"come away" in the coachman's hands at that
-worst of moments;&mdash;when he was holding in his
-horses downhill. In that contingency, says our
-ancient, who, in the modern slang phrase, has
-"been there," it was the approved thing to say
-your prayers first and then take a flying leap
-(result, a broken neck, or fractured leg: the bone
-protruding over the top of the Blucher).</p>
-
-<p>"Then shrieked the timid and stood"&mdash;or,
-rather, sat&mdash;"still the brave;" who had this consolation,
-that if they fared no better than those
-who jumped, the odds were that they fared no
-worse.</p>
-
-<p>To be dragged at hurricane pace by four runaway
-horses (for in such a case they generally <i>did</i> so run)
-with the broken reins trailing helplessly after them,
-was to acquire the knowledge of an inner meaning in
-the word "terror." In escapades of this kind the
-"insides" were in the most unenviable situation;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
-for the "outsides," including coachman and guard,
-took the better, if unheroic, part of crawling over the
-roof and slipping down the back of the coach into the
-road. The wisdom of their doing so would, in most
-cases, be proved a few seconds later by the sound of
-a distant crash as the coach hurtled against some
-roadside tree and dissolved into matchwork, while
-the "insides" were stuck as full of splinters as a
-"fretful porcupine" of quills.</p>
-
-<p>The "human boy" was as much the terror of the
-old coachman as he is of the modern cyclist. The
-sight of a boy with a hoop reduced him to a state of
-purple indignation or of quivering anxiety, according
-to temperament. Many an one of our great-grandfathers,
-attired in the odd costume of boys in that
-period, and trundling a hoop along the road, has felt
-the lash of the coachman's whip. The following little
-story will show us why.</p>
-
-<p>"When a very little boy," says one of our
-forebears, "I once upset a four-horse coach by losing
-control over my hoop, which, to my consternation,
-bowled among the legs of the team. I shall never
-forget the horror with which I for an instant saw
-the spirited horses floundering about with that
-hateful hoop among them, or heard the execrations
-of the coachman and the shouts of the passengers.
-Abandoning the wretched plaything to its fate, I
-took to my heels down a bye-lane, the portentous
-crash that followed only accelerating my speed."</p>
-
-<p>Coach proprietors were favourite targets for
-Fate's worst shafts. They were a hard-working,
-much-enduring class of men; up early and to bed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
-late, retiring in good circumstances and rising
-perhaps ruined through some unforeseen accident.
-They were "common carriers" in law, and bound
-under many Acts of Parliament to deliver goods
-uninjured at their destination. As carriers of
-passengers, it is true, they were only required to
-exercise all "due care and diligence" for the safety
-of their customers, and were exempt from liability
-in case of mishaps through the "act of God" or the
-unforeseen; but the observance of due precautions
-and a daily inspection of the coach had to be proved
-in case of injury to passengers, or in default they
-were held liable for damages.</p>
-
-<p>Thus, the carelessness of any one of his many
-servants might mean a very serious thing to a coach
-proprietor. In those days the old Anglo-Saxon Law
-of Deodand was not only in existence, but in a very
-nourishing and aggressive condition. Indeed, coaching
-had practically rescued it from neglect. It was
-a law which, in cases of fatal injuries, empowered the
-coroner's jury to levy a fine, which might vary from
-sixpence to a thousand pounds, upon the object that
-caused the mischief.</p>
-
-<p>The very multiplicity of tribunals before whom
-the personally unoffending coach proprietor was
-liable to be haled was in itself terrifying. There
-was the already-mentioned coroners jury; the
-jury on the criminal side in trials at the Assizes
-for manslaughter, and the other "twelve good
-men and true" who assessed damages in the
-Sheriff's Court.</p>
-
-<p>How even the most well-meaning of men might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
-thus suffer is evident in the case of a proprietor
-who was cast in damages from excess of caution.
-For additional security, and in order to protect
-it from road grit, he had a part of an axle incased
-in wood. One day this axle broke and a
-serious accident happened, resulting in an action
-against him for damages. He lost the day; the
-judge ruling that, although no proof of a defective
-axle was adduced, a flaw <i>might</i> have existed which
-a proper daily examination would have detected
-had the extra precaution for safety not been
-adopted.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">IX</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">What</span> Aldgate might now have been had the
-original intention of the Eastern Counties directorate
-to place their terminus there been successful,
-we need not stop to inquire. But, as a good deal
-has already been said on the subject of coaches
-and coaching, it will be of interest to learn what
-were the views of the projectors of the Eastern
-Counties Railway. With their original prospectus
-was issued a map of the proposed railway from
-London to Norwich and Yarmouth, by which it
-appears that, instead of going to the left of the
-road from London, as far as Seven Kings and
-Chadwell Heath, it was originally intended to
-construct the line on the right of the road so far.
-Between Romford and Chelmsford the line has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
-been made practically as first proposed, but onwards,
-from Chelmsford to Lexden, it is again on
-the other side of the highway; and, north of
-Colchester, goes wide of the original plan all the
-way to Norwich.</p>
-
-<p>In many ways this document is very much of
-a curiosity at this time, as also are the hopes and
-aspirations of the directors at the first General
-Meeting of the company. The chairman, for
-instance, confidently anticipated dividends of 22
-per cent., upon which one of the confiding shareholders
-replied that the report was most satisfactory
-and the prospects held out by no means
-overcharged. "If this understanding," said he,
-"fails in producing the dividend of 22 per
-cent., calculated upon in the report, then, I must
-say, human calculations and expectation can no
-longer be depended upon." O! most excellent
-man. But better is to come.</p>
-
-<p>"Should I live to see the completion of this
-and similar undertakings," he resumed, "I do
-believe I shall live to see misery almost banished
-from the earth. From the love I bear my species,
-I trust that I may not be too sanguine, and that
-I may yet witness the happy end that I have
-pictured to myself." His was, you think, the
-faith that might have moved mountains; but it
-did not produce that promised 22 per cent., nor,
-although we now have many thousands more miles
-of railway than he ever dreamed of, has the
-millennium yet arrived. Even the most far-seeing
-have not yet discovered any heralds of its approach.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>Let us drop the tribute of a tear to the
-sorrows of this excellent person, whose love of his
-species and touching anticipation of 22 per cent.
-dividends were so beautifully blended, and so
-cruelly disappointed.</p>
-
-<p>For some years small (very small) dividends
-were paid. Hudson, the "Railway King," paid
-them out of capital. "It made things pleasant,"
-he said, when charged with such financially immoral
-practices. Alas! poor Hudson, you lived
-before your time, and went to another world
-before such "dishonest" doings as yours were
-sanctified in principle by Acts of Parliament
-which authorise payments of dividends out of
-capital in the case of railways under construction.</p>
-
-<p>In 1848 the Eastern Counties Railway was in
-Chancery, and its very locomotives and carriages
-were seized for debt; while for years afterwards its
-name was a synonym for delay. The satirists of
-that period were as busy with the Eastern Counties
-as those of our own time are with the South-Eastern
-Railway. Every journey has an end; "even the
-Eastern Counties' trains come in at last," said
-Thackeray, very charitably.</p>
-
-<p>In 1862 it was amalgamated with several minor
-undertakings, and re-named the "Great Eastern
-Railway"; "great in nothing but the name," as the
-spiteful said.</p>
-
-<p>When matters were at their worst, the Lord
-Cranborne of that time was invited to accept the
-position of chairman and to help extricate the
-company from its difficulties. He accepted the post<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
-in January 1868 and held it until December 1871.
-In April 1868 he had succeeded to the title of
-Marquis of Salisbury. Thus the statesman and
-prime minister of later years was once a great figure
-in the railway world. His financial abilities helped
-to put the Great Eastern line on a firm basis, and
-when he left it the railway was already greatly
-improved in every respect. To-day, instead of being
-a "shocking example," it is a model to be copied by
-other lines.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2">X</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Although</span> the last of the old coaches was long ago
-broken up, and the Norwich Road is no longer lively
-with mail and stage travellers, it has, in common
-with several other roads out of London, witnessed a
-wholly unexpected revival, in the shape of the Parcel
-Mail service between London and Ipswich. When
-the Parcel Post came into being on the 1st August
-1883, it was speedily discovered by the General
-Post-office authorities that in paying, according to
-contract, 55 per cent. of the gross receipts to the
-railway companies for the mere carriage of parcels,
-they were paying too much. Accordingly, a system
-of Parcel Mail coaches was established on several of
-the old roads, commencing with the London to
-Brighton Parcel Mail, in June 1887. A London and
-Chelmsford four-horse mail was soon added, and this
-was shortly afterwards extended to Colchester, and
-thence to Ipswich by cart. This curious enterprise
-of the Post-office was immediately successful, and it has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a><br /><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
-ever since been found to effect a large saving over
-the railway charges. Nor is time lost in delivery.
-The down mail leaves London at a quarter to ten
-o'clock every night and the parcels arrive at
-Colchester and Ipswich in time for the first delivery
-the next morning; while the country parcels come
-up to London by an equally early hour. The way
-in which the service is worked will be gathered from
-the accompanying official way-sheet of the down mails.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/fig15.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">TIME-BILL OF THE CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER AND IPSWICH<br /> PARCEL MAIL.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<div class="figleft">
-<img src="images/fig83.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="c xlarge">GENERAL POST OFFICE</p>
-
-<p class="c large"><span class="smcap">The Most Noble the Marquis of Londonderry</span><br />
-Postmaster-General</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="c large"><b>LONDON, CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER, &amp; IPSWICH ROAD<br />
-PARCEL SERVICE.</b></p>
-
-<table cellpadding="1">
-<tr>
- <td class="tdc bt br" colspan="3">Guard's Remarks as<br /> to Delays, &amp;c.</td>
- <td></td>
- <td></td>
- <td class="tdc bt bl" colspan="2">Proper<br /> Times</td>
- <td class="tdc bt bl" colspan="2">Actual<br /> Times</td>
- <td class="tdc bt bl">This Column<br /> to be left blank</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="bb"></td>
-  <td class="bb"></td>
-  <td class="bb br"></td>
-  <td class="tdc">Date</td>
-  <td class="tdc">190 .</td>
-  <td class="tdcs bb bl">H.</td>
-  <td class="tdcs bb">M.</td>
-  <td class="tdcs bb bl">H.</td>
-  <td class="tdcs bb">M.</td>
-  <td class="bb bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="tdcs bl" colspan="2">P.M.</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="tdc br">Coach Service<br />between London<br />and Colchester.</td>
-  <td class="tdcs br" colspan="2">Distance</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Mount Pleasant<br />Parcel Office</td>
-  <td>dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">9</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">45</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdcs">M.</td>
-  <td class="tdcs br">F.</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="tdc br">Contractor&mdash;<br />C. Webster,<br />279 Whitechapel<br />Road, E. </td>
-  <td class="tdr">3</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">0</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Eastern District P.O.</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">10</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">8</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">10</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">10</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">11</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">3</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Romford</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">11</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">40</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">11</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">42</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="tdcs bl" colspan="2">A.M.</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">6</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">2</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Brentwood</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">12</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">29</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">12</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">31</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">5</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">0</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Ingatestone</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">1</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">9</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">1</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">11</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="tdc br">Cart between<br />Colchester &amp;<br />Ipswich.</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">6</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">0</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Chelmsford</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">2</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">0</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">2</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">5</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="tdc br">Contractor&mdash;<br />F. W. Canham,<br />Ipswich.</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">8</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">6</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Witham</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">3</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">13</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">3</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">15</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">3</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">2</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Kelvedon</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">3</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">41</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">3</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">43</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">9</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">6</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Colchester</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">5</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">0</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">5</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">5</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Stratford St. Mary</td>
-  <td>{arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">5</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">58</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td>{dep.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">6</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">0</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">18</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">2</td>
-  <td class="tdlb">Ipswich</td>
-  <td class="tdr">arr.</td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl">7</td>
-  <td class="tdrl">20</td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="tdc br">Signature of Guard&nbsp;</td>
-  <td class="bb"></td>
-  <td class="br bb"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="tdrl bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br"></td>
-  <td class="tdr">71</td>
-  <td class="tdr br">5</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl"></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl">&nbsp;</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl">&nbsp;</td>
-  <td></td>
-  <td class="bl">&nbsp;</td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class="fulla" />
-
-<blockquote>
-<p class="r little">T. E. SIFTON, Inspector-General of Mails.</p>
-
-<p class="little">The Guard in charge of the Coach must report the cause of any Delay.
-He must enter all Remarks and Times in the proper Columns. This Bill
-to be sent, as addressed, by First Post.</p>
-
-<p class="c little">TIME-BILL OF THE CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER AND IPSWICH<br />PARCEL MAIL.</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<hr class="fulla" />
-
-<p>The up service, starting with the mail-cart from
-Ipswich at 7�9 p.m. and continued from Colchester
-by four-horse van at 9�30 p.m., brings the country
-parcels to Mount Pleasant at 4�30 a.m., throughout
-the year. Up and down mails meet at Ingatestone
-at 1�9 a.m. On this service, as on all others, the
-vans go through, but the drivers and guards
-exchange places; the London men changing on to
-the van from Colchester at Ingatestone, and returning
-to London; the Colchester men taking over the
-down van and similarly returning whence they came.</p>
-
-<p>It is a curious and unexpected revival of old
-methods, but an entirely successful one. No highwayman
-has ever attempted to "hold up" the
-Parcel Mail, for the last of that trade has for
-generations mouldered in his grave; but should
-any amateurs essay to complete this revival of old
-coaching days by waylaying the mail, the guards
-would be found well armed. Their virgin steel and
-untried pistols have for years been carried without
-any excuse for using them; but there need be no
-doubt that, were the occasion to arrive, they would
-defend their parcels&mdash;the pounds of country butter,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
-the eggs, and wild flowers, or the miscellaneous
-consignment from London&mdash;with their hearts' blood.
-There are more romantic things in the world to die
-for than postal parcels of eggs, cheese and butter,
-but the ennobling word <span class="smcap">Duty</span> might glorify such a
-sacrifice for the sake of a pound's weight of "best
-fresh," or a dozen of "new laid."</p>
-
-<p>But although the possibility of attack is remote,
-a spice of danger and romance savours the conduct
-of the parcel mails.</p>
-
-<p>The up Colchester Parcel Mail had a mishap
-on the night of October 11, 1890, when, owing
-to the prevailing fog, it was driven into a ditch
-near Margaretting. Happily, both coachman and
-guard escaped injury, the heavy vehicle resting
-against the hedge. The coachman, mounting one
-of his team, and hurrying back to Chelmsford,
-succeeded in overtaking the down coach, which,
-returning to the scene of the accident, unloaded
-and transferred the parcels, and continued to London,
-leaving the down mail to be forwarded with local
-help. It eventually arrived at Colchester four hours
-late.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XI</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Coaching</span> days, old and new, having now been
-disposed of, we might set off down the road at
-once, were it not that our steps are at once arrested
-by the sight of the "Red Lion" Inn, at the corner
-of Whitechapel Road and Leman Street, which,
-together with the "Old Red Lion," adjoining, stands
-on a site made historic by Dick Turpin's lurid career.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It was in the yard of the old house that Turpin
-shot Matthew King in 1737. He had stolen a fine
-horse belonging to a Mr Major, near the "Green
-Man," Epping, and had been traced by means of
-the animal to the inn, where he was found by the
-Bow Street runners in company with Matthew
-and Robert King, birds of like feather with himself.
-The landlord endeavoured to arrest King,
-who fired at him without effect, calling to Turpin,
-"Dick! shoot him, or we are taken, by God!"</p>
-
-<p>Turpin had his usual extensive armoury on
-his person&mdash;three brace of pistols and a carbine
-slung across his back. He fired, and shot Matthew
-King, whether by accident or design is not known.
-King first exclaimed, "Dick! you have shot me;
-make off," but is said afterwards to have cursed
-him as he went, for a coward. King died a week
-later of his wounds, Turpin fleeing to a deserted
-mansion in Essex, and thence to a cave in Epping
-Forest. It is usually said that it was the more
-famous Tom King who met so dramatic an end,
-but original authorities give Matthew; and certainly
-we find <i>a</i> Tom King, highwayman, decorously executed
-at Tyburn eighteen years later.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus4">
-<img src="images/fig16.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "OLD RED LION," WHITECHAPEL, WHERE TURPIN SHOT MATTHEW KING.<br />
-<i>From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, 1854.</i>
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>We have met Turpin before, notably at York,
-where he made an end, two years after this exploit.
-This especial hero of the Penny Dreadful and the
-romantic imagination of the average errand boy
-belongs especially to this road, for he was an
-Essex man, born at Hempstead in 1705. Apprenticed
-to a Whitechapel butcher in his youth, he
-commenced his career of low villainy by stealing
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a><br /><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a><br /><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>some cattle from a Plaistow farmer, and then
-joined a band of smugglers and deer-stealers and
-housebreakers in Epping Forest, where they set
-up a storehouse of stolen goods in the cave just
-mentioned. This band became so notorious that
-a sum of fifty guineas was soon offered for their
-arrest; but it was not until the amount had been
-doubled that two of the ringleaders were caught
-and hanged. The gang thus broken up, Turpin
-was reduced to scouring the roads singly, and
-pursued a solitary career until one dreary February
-night in 1735, while patrolling the Cambridge Road,
-he saw a horseman approaching through the mist.
-At the time-honoured demand, "Your money or
-your life!" the stranger simply laughed.</p>
-
-<p>"What!" said he, "should dog eat dog? We
-are of a like trade."</p>
-
-<p>Thus Turpin and Tom King met, and struck up
-a partnership. If only one quarter of the deeds
-assigned to Turpin were true, his would be a very
-gallant, as well as phenomenally busy, figure on
-the roads of England. Although by no means a
-mythical person, the stories told of him nearly all
-belong to the regions of romance, and his true
-history shows him to have had few redeeming
-qualities. Many of the old knights of the road
-were courageous, and hand in hand with their
-courage went a humour not seldom kindly; but
-Turpin was a bloodthirsty ruffian whose courage
-is not an established fact, and whose humour, like
-the "tender mercies of the wicked," was cruel, not
-to say ferocious. It is quite hopeless to attempt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
-to finally destroy the great Turpin myth after
-this lapse of time: Harrison Ainsworth's romance
-has enjoyed too great and too long a popularity
-for that; but let the attempt here be made to paint
-him as the cowardly ruffian he was.</p>
-
-<p>Whitechapel, quite apart from memories of
-Turpin, owns an unenviable repute, and its very
-name is a synonym for villainy. Its bad savour,
-however, goes back no greater distance in time
-than the first half of the eighteenth century, for
-until that period it was not built upon, and indeed
-"Whitechapel Common" was spoken of so late as
-1761, maps proving the old church to have been
-quite rural at that date. Originally a chapel-of-ease
-to the great mother-parish of Stepney, the
-district was erected into a separate parish so far
-back as the fourteenth century and the original
-"white chapel"&mdash;doubtless so called from its
-medi�val coats of whitewash&mdash;made a church.
-But old names cling, and although it has been a
-church for over six hundred years, it has not been
-able to confer its more dignified title upon the parish
-itself. Thus the name of Whitechapel is doubly
-misleading nowadays, for it is no longer a chapelry
-and its stately church is in red brick; so that there
-is some force in the argument for re-christening the
-borough and dignifying it by a revival of the old
-name of Eastminster, owned by that not very
-fortunate Abbey of St Mary Grace, founded by
-Edward the Third in 1348, which formerly stood
-on the site of the Royal Mint.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus35">
-<img src="images/fig17.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">WHITECHAPEL OLD CHURCH.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>St Mary's, Whitechapel, is a beautiful church,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>built in 1877, burnt August 20, 1880, and since
-restored. It replaced the ugly old building, which
-was "taken down for the simple reason that it
-would not stand up." The ancient wrangling over
-its full title of St Mary Matfelon is not yet done,
-and rash would be he who voted for any particular
-one among the rival derivatives of the name.
-Matfelon, holds one school, was the name of a
-forgotten benefactor, whose particular benefactions
-are not stated. Who, then, would found, since
-benefits are thus forgot? "<i>Mari�, matri et filio</i>,"
-an ancient dedication, say others; while yet different
-parties find its source in a Syriac word meaning
-"mother of a son" = the Virgin Mary. Perhaps the
-most entertaining legend, however, is that which
-tells how it originated in the killing of a murderer,
-in 1429, by the women of Whitechapel. "Between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
-Estren and Witsontyd, a fals Breton mordred a
-wydewe in here bed, the which find hym for almasse
-withought Algate, in the suburbes of London, and
-bar away alle that sche hadde, and afterwards he
-toke socour of Holy Chirche in Suthwark; but
-at the last he took the crosse and forswore the
-kynge's land; and as he went hys waye, it happyd
-hym to come be the same place where he had don
-that cursed dede, and women of the same parysh
-comen out with stones and canell dong, and ther
-maden an ende of hym in the hyghe strete." These
-things seem quite in keeping with Whitechapel's
-evil fame.</p>
-
-<p>The old church, as it stood until well into the
-nineteenth century, is shown opposite this page,
-with one of the old road-waggons crawling past.
-In another view of the same date the High Street
-itself is seen, its long perspective fully bearing out
-the old description of spaciousness. At the same
-time, it is seen to be empty enough to resemble the
-street of a provincial town. The houses are exceedingly
-old, the road paved with knobbly stones, and
-the shop windows artfully constructed with the
-apparent object of obstructing instead of admitting
-the light. Very few of these old shop-fronts are
-now left, but a good specimen is that of a bell-founding
-firm at No. 34 Whitechapel Road.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus5">
-<img src="images/fig18.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">WHITECHAPEL ROAD IN THE COACHING AGE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>This old picture has long ceased to be representative
-of Whitechapel's everyday aspect. The
-coach has long ago whirled away into limbo, the
-elegantly-dressed groups have been gathered to
-Abraham's, or another's, bosom, and Whitechapel
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a><br /><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a><br /><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>knows their kind no more. Bustle, and a dismal
-overcrowding of carts, waggons, costermongers'
-barrows, tram-cars and omnibuses are more characteristic
-of to-day. Also, the Jewish element is very
-pronounced; chiefly foreign Jews, inconceivably
-dirty. Many of the shop-fronts bear the names
-of Cohen, Abraham, Solomon and the like, and
-others ending in "baum," or "heim." But on
-Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week the spacious
-street regains something of its old rural character,
-in the open-air hay and straw market held here, the
-largest in the kingdom. It fills the broad thoroughfare
-and overflows into the side streets: the
-countrymen who have come up on the great
-waggons by road from remote parts of Essex
-lounging picturesquely against the sweet-smelling
-hay or straw, attending to their horses, or refreshing
-in the old taverns. It is Arcady come again. The
-eyes are gladdened by the long vista of the hay-wains,
-and the nose gratefully inhales the rustic
-scent of their heaped-up loads. It is true that
-Central Londoners also have their so-called Haymarket,
-but hay is the least likely of articles to
-be purchased there in these days.</p>
-
-<p>What do they think, those countrymen, of the
-Whitechapel folks, the "chickaleary blokes," used,
-as a writer in the middle of the nineteenth century
-remarked, to "all sorts of high and low villainy,"
-from robbery with violence to "prigging a wipe,"
-and the selling of painted sparrows for canaries?
-Nor was Whitechapel a desirable place when Mr
-Pickwick travelled to Ipswich. "Not a wery nice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
-neighbourhood," said Sam, as they rumbled along the
-crowded and filthy street. "It's a wery remarkable
-circumstance," he continued, "that poverty and
-oysters go together.... The poorer a place is,
-the greater call there seems to be for oysters....
-An oyster-stall to every half-dozen houses. The
-street's lined vith 'em. Blessed if I don't think
-that ven a man's wery poor, he rushes out of his
-lodgings and eats oysters in regular desperation."
-Sam was a keen observer; but there is now a deeper
-depth than oysters. Periwinkles and poverty;
-whelks and villainy foregather in Whitechapel at
-the dawn of the Twentieth Century.</p>
-
-<p>But the poverty and the villainy of Whitechapel
-must not be too greatly insisted upon. They may
-easily be overdone. Loyal hearts and brave lives&mdash;all
-the braver that they are not flaunted in the face
-of the world&mdash;exist in the cheerless and unromantic
-grey streets that lead off the main road. The
-domestic virtues flourish here as well as&mdash;if not
-better than&mdash;in the West End. The heroes and
-heroines of everyday life&mdash;the greater in their
-heroism that they do not know of it&mdash;live in
-hundreds of thousands in the dingy and unrelieved
-dulness of the streets to right and left of Whitechapel
-Road and of the Mile End Road, that go with
-so majestic a breadth and purposeful directness to
-Bow.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Let</span> the Londoner who has never been "down East,"
-and so is given to speaking contemptuously of it,
-take a journey down the Whitechapel and Mile End
-Roads, and see with what an astonishing width, both
-in respect of roadway and foot-pavements, those
-noble thoroughfares are endowed. The London he
-has already known owns no streets so wide, save
-only in the isolated and unimportant instance of
-Langham Place; while, although it cannot be said
-that, taken individually, the houses of the great
-East-End thoroughfares are at all picturesque, yet
-there is a certain interesting quality in the roads as a
-whole, lacking elsewhere. This, doubtless, is partly
-explained by the strangeness of the East-ender's garb,
-and partly by the many Jewish and other foreigners
-who throng the pavements.</p>
-
-<p>A strangely-named public-house&mdash;the "Grave
-Maurice"&mdash;is one of the landmarks of the Whitechapel
-Road. Many have set themselves the task
-of finding the origin of that sign and its meaning;
-but their efforts have been baulked by the very
-multiplicity of historic Maurices, grave or otherwise.
-The sign may originally have been the "Graf Maurice,"
-Prince Maurice of Bohemia, brother of the better-known
-Prince Rupert, the dashing cavalier, but a
-difficulty arises from the fact that there was another
-"Graf Maurice" at the same time, in the person
-of the equally well-known Prince Maurice of Nassau,
-who died of grief when the Spanish overran Holland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
-and besieged Breda. Nor does the uncertainty end
-here, for Dekker uses the expression "grave maurice"
-in one of his plays, written at least thirty years
-before the time of those princes, in a passage which
-reads as though it were the usual nickname at that
-period for an officer.</p>
-
-<p>Beyond the house owning this perplexing sign
-we come to the beginning of the Mile End Road,
-one mile, as its name implies, from Aldgate, and
-for long the site of a turnpike-gate, only removed
-with the close of the Coaching Age. Rowlandson
-has left us an excellent view of Mile End Turnpike
-as it was in his time; with isolated blocks of houses,
-groups of rustic cottages and a background of trees,
-to show how rural were the surroundings towards
-the close of the eighteenth century; while maps
-of that period mark the road onwards, bordered by
-fields, with "Ducking Pond Row" standing solitary
-and the ducking-pond itself close behind, where the
-scolds and shrews of that age were soused.</p>
-
-<p>The Ducking-Pond as an institution is as obsolete
-as the rack, the thumb-screw, and other ingenious
-devices of the "good old times"; but most towns
-a hundred years ago still kept a cucking or ducking-stool;
-while, if they had no official pond for the
-purpose, any dirty pool would serve, and the dirtier
-it were the better it was esteemed.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus6">
-<img src="images/fig19.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">MILE END TURNPIKE, 1813. <span class="in5"><i>After Rowlandson.</i></span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>"The Way of punishing scolding Women is
-pleasant enough," says an old traveller. "They
-fasten an Arm Chair to the End of two Beams, twelve
-or fifteen Foot long, and parallel to each other: so
-that these two Pieces of Wood, with their two Ends
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a><br /><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a><br /><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>embrace the Chair, which hangs between them on a
-sort of Axel; by which Means it plays freely, and
-always remains in the natural horizontal Position in
-which a Chair should be, that a Person may sit conveniently
-in it, whether you raise it or let it down.
-They set up a Post upon the Bank of a Pond or River,
-and over this Post they lay, almost in Equilibrio, the
-two Pieces of Wood, at one End of which the Chair
-hangs just over the Water. They place the Woman in
-the Chair, and so plunge her into the Water as often
-as the Sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate
-Heat."</p>
-
-<p>One has only to go and look at the average rural
-pond to imagine the horrors of this punishment.
-The stagnant water, the slimy mud, the clinging
-green duckwood, common to them, must have made
-a ducking the event of a lifetime.</p>
-
-<p>The difference here, at Mile End, between those
-times and these is emphasised by the close-packed
-streets on either side, and by the crowded tram-cars
-that ply back and forth.</p>
-
-<p>Yet there are survivals. Here, for instance, in
-the little old-fashioned weather-boarded "Vine" Inn
-that stands by itself, in advance of the frontage of
-the houses, and takes up a goodly portion of the
-broad pavement, we see a relic of the time when
-land was not so valuable as now; when local
-authorities were easy-going, and when anyone who
-had the impudence to squat down upon the public
-paths could do so, and, remaining there undisturbed
-for a period of twenty-one years, could thus derive
-a legal title to the freehold. Here, then, is an ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>planation
-of the existence of the "Vine" in this
-position.</p>
-
-<p>Close by are the quaint Trinity Almshouses,
-built in 1695, for the housing of old skippers and
-shellbacks. Wren designed the queer little houses
-and the chapel that still faces the grassy quadrangle
-where the old salts walk and gossip unconcernedly
-while the curious passers-by linger to gaze at them
-from the pavement, as though they were some strange
-kind of animal. Nothing so curious outside the
-pages of fiction as this quiet haven in midst of
-the roaring streets, screened from them by walls
-and gates of curious architecture surmounted by
-models of the gallant old galleons that have long
-ceased to rove the raging main. It is a spot
-alien from its surroundings, frowned down upon by
-the towering breweries, which indeed would have
-bought the old place and destroyed it a few years
-ago, but for the indignation aroused when the proposal
-of the governing body of the almshouses to
-sell became known.</p>
-
-<p>There is nothing else to detain the explorer
-on his way into Essex. The People's Palace, it
-is true, is a remarkable place, the result of Sir
-Walter Besant's dream of a resort for those of the
-East who would get culture and find recreation,
-but it is a dream realised as an architectural nightmare,
-and is a very terrible example of what is
-done to this unhappy quarter in the names of Art
-and Philanthropy.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XIII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">At</span> last, by this broadest of broad roads, we come
-to Stratford-le-Bow and its parish church. In these
-hurried times, and for some centuries past, the
-old hyphenated place-name has been dropped, and
-as "Bow" alone it is familiar to all East-enders.
-The place is nowadays chiefly associated with Bryant
-&amp; May and matches, but there yet remain many
-old Queen Anne, and even earlier, mansions by
-the roadside, telling of days long before "patent
-safeties" were thought of, and when flint and steel
-and timber were the sole means of obtaining a light.</p>
-
-<p>"Bow," says the <i>Ambulator</i> of 1774, "is a
-village a little to the east of Mile End, inhabited
-by many whitsters and scarlet dyers. Here has
-been set up a large manufactory of porcelain, little
-inferior to that of Chelsea." That description is
-now somewhat out of date. The manufactory of
-porcelain has long disappeared and Bow china is
-scarce, and treasured accordingly. Whitsters&mdash;that
-is to say, bleachers of linen&mdash;and scarlet dyers, also,
-are to seek.</p>
-
-<p>Bow Church confronts the eastward-bound
-traveller in bold and rugged fashion; its time-worn
-tower standing midway of the road and
-challenging, as it were, the crossing of the little
-River Lea, just beyond, to Stratford and into Essex.
-Church and churchyard split the road up into
-two channels and thus destroy its width, which it
-never afterwards regains until the suburbs are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
-passed and the open country reached. A modern
-touch here is the bronze statue of Gladstone, in
-advance of the church, facing westwards in declamatory
-attitude from its granite pedestal, and
-erected in his lifetime; recalling the fervent hero-worshipping
-days of the "People's William." The
-outstretched hand is oddly crooked. Few be them
-that see statues raised to themselves, unless indeed
-they be made of finer clay than most mortals,
-kings and princes, and the like. Of recent years
-this bronze Gladstone has, in our vulgar way, been
-made to preside, as it were, over an underground
-public convenience, from whose too obtrusive midst
-he rises, absurdly eloquent.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus36">
-<img src="images/fig20.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">BOW.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Just how Stratford-le-Bow received its name
-is an interesting piece of history. Both here
-and at the neighbouring Old Ford the Lea was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
-anciently crossed by a paved stone ford of
-Roman construction, continuing the highway into
-Essex; but when that river's many channels,
-swollen by winter's rains, rolled in freshets toward
-the Thames, the low-lying lands of what we
-now call Hackney and West Ham marshes were for
-long distances converted into a sluggish lake. For
-months together the approaches to the Lea were lost
-in floods, and the real channels of the river became
-so deep that those who valued their lives and goods
-dared not attempt the passage. To the aid of poor
-travellers thus waterlogged came the good and pious
-Queen Matilda, consort of Henry the First. "Having
-herself been well washed in the water," as old
-Leland says, she fully appreciated the necessity
-for bridges, and accordingly directed the raising
-of a causeway on either side of the Lea and the
-building of two stone structures, of which one was
-the original "Bow" Bridge; "a rare piece of work,
-for before that time the like had never been seen
-in England." It seems to have been the stone
-arch that gave its name of "Bow," and if an arched
-stone bridge was so remarkable in those times that
-it should thus derive a name for its semi-circular,
-or "bow" shape, it must have been either the
-first, or among the earliest, of stone bridges
-built, in times when others were constructed of
-timber.</p>
-
-<p>The original name of the village that afterwards
-sprang up here, on the hither or Middlesex shore,
-was thus singularly contradictory; meaning "the
-street ford at the arched bridge." The Stratford<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
-on the Essex side was in those days known as
-Stratford Langthorne.</p>
-
-<p>The good queen not only built the bridges and
-causeways, but endowed them with land and a
-water-mill, conveying those properties to the Abbess
-of Barking, burdened with a perpetual charge for
-the maintenance of the works. Having done all
-this, she died. Some years afterwards a Cistercian
-monastery was founded close by, where the Abbey
-Mills now stand, and the then Abbess of Barking,
-of opinion that the Abbot of that house, being near,
-would find it easier to look after the bridges than
-herself, reconveyed the property, together with its
-obligations, to him. The trust was kept for a time
-and then delegated to a certain Godfrey Pratt, who
-had a house built for him on the causeway and
-enjoyed an annual grant, in consideration of keeping
-the works in repair. Pratt did so well with his
-annual stipend and the alms given him by wayfarers
-that the Abbot at length discontinued the
-grant. Accordingly, the wily Pratt set up a quite
-unauthorised toll-bar and levied "pontage" on all
-except the rich, of whom he was afraid. This went
-on for many years, until the scandal grew too great,
-and, in consequence of an inquisition held, the Abbot
-dispossessed Godfrey Pratt of his toll-bar and
-resumed the control himself.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, no repairs had been effected, and the
-road had been so greatly worn down that the feet
-of travellers and those of the horses often went
-through the arches. Bow Bridge had, consequently,
-to undergo an extensive cobbling process; a treatment,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>by the way, continued through the centuries
-until 1835, when it was finally pulled down.</p>
-
-<p>In its last state it was a nondescript patchwork
-of all ages. The property for its maintenance had,
-of course, been lost in the confiscation of monastic
-estates under Henry the Eighth, and its repair afterwards
-fell upon the local authorities, who always
-preferred to patch and tinker it so long as such a
-course was possible. On February 14, 1839, the
-existing bridge was opened, crossing the Lea in one
-seventy-foot span, in place of the old three arches.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XIV</p>
-
-
-<p>"<span class="smcap">Farewell</span>, Bowe, have over the bridge, where, I
-heard say, honest Conscience was once drowned."</p>
-
-<p>Thus says Will Kemp, in his <i>Nine Days'
-Wonder</i>, the account of a dance he jigged from
-London to Norwich in so many days, in 1600. It
-is hopeless to recover the meaning hidden in that
-old joke about the drowning of conscience here, and
-so we will also without delay "have over" the
-modern bridge of Bow and into Essex, past dingy
-flour mills, and crossing another branch of the Lea
-by Channelsea Bridge, come to Stratford.</p>
-
-<p>Here, then, begins the county of calves, according
-to the popular jest that to be a native of Essex is
-to be an "Essex Calf." It is not generally regarded
-as a complimentary title, for of all young animals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
-the calf is probably the clumsiest and most awkward.
-To this day in rural England the contemptuous
-exclamation "you great calf!" is used of an awkward,
-overgrown boy tied to his mother's apron-strings.
-Yet, if we may believe a seventeenth-century writer
-on this subject, the nickname had a complimentary
-origin, "for," said he, "this county produceth calves
-of the fattest, fairest and finest flesh in England."</p>
-
-<p>We have already seen that the French spoken at
-Stratford-le-Bow in Chaucer's time was a scoff and a
-derision. To-day, neither on the Middlesex nor the
-Essex shores of the Lea is the teaching of languages
-either a matter for praise or contempt. Mills of
-every kind, the making of matches that strike only
-on the box, the varied work of the Stratford and
-West Ham factories, fully occupy the vast populations
-close at hand; while the business of covering the
-potato-fields, the celery-beds and the grounds of the
-old suburban mansions with endless rows of suburban
-dwellings is engrossing attention down the road.
-Stratford and Maryland Point are now strictly urban,
-and Ilford far greater in these days than it ever was
-when its "great" prefix was never pretermitted.
-London, indeed, stretches far out along this road,
-and the country is reached only after many miles of
-that debatable land which belongs neither to country
-nor town. Heralds of the great metropolis appear
-to the London-bound traveller while he is yet far
-away, and even so far distant as Chelmsford "the
-dim presentiment of some vast capital," as De
-Quincey remarks, "reaches you obscurely like a
-misgiving."</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Stratford has not improved since coaches left
-the road. It has grown greatly, and grown dirty,
-squalid and extremely trying to noses that have
-not been acclimatised to bone-boiling works, manure
-factories and other odoriferous industries. But it
-is a place of great enterprises and great and
-useful markets, and when its introductory mean
-streets are passed, the Broadway, where the Leytonstone
-Road branches off to the left, looks by
-contrast quite noble. This brings one to Upton
-Park, Forest Gate, Woodgrange and Manor Park
-in succession, past a building which, whether as an
-institution or an example of beautiful architecture,
-would well grace the West. The West Ham Public
-Library and Technical Institute is here referred
-to. "Irish Row," on the way, marked on old
-maps, is a reference to old wayside cottages inhabited
-until recent years by a turbulent colony
-of London-Irish market-gardening labourers, subsidised
-by Mrs Nelson in times of coaching competition
-to impede hated rivals as they came past
-the "Rising Sun" at what is now the suburb of
-Manor Park; a house which, like the "Coach
-and Horses" at Upton, has declined from a
-legitimate coaching trade to something more in
-the gin-palace sort. This is not to say that the
-staid and decorous Mrs Nelson entered into direct
-negotiations with the Mikes and Patseys of Irish
-Row, but when the rival Ipswich "Umpire" or
-the "New Colchester" coaches developed much
-sporting competition and their coachmen evinced
-a dogged determination to be first over Bow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
-Bridge on the way up to London, and, by consequence,
-the first to arrive at their destination,
-why, an obscure hint or two on the part of one
-of her numerous staff, accompanied by the wherewithal
-for a drink, produced wonders in the way
-of highway obstruction. But such recollections
-are become unsubstantial as the fabric of which
-dreams are made, and fade before the apparitions
-of tramways and interminable rows of suburban
-shops that conduct to Ilford Bridge.</p>
-
-<p>Great Ilford lies on the other side of the
-sullen Roding, that rolls a muddy tide in aimless
-loops to lazily join the Thames at Barking
-Reach. The townlet has from time immemorial
-been approached by a bridge replacing the "eald,"
-or old, ford, whence its name derives and not
-from that crossing of the stream being an "ill"
-ford, as imaginative, but uninstructed, historians
-would have us believe; although the slimy black
-mud of the river-bed would nowadays make the
-exercise of fording an ill enough enterprise.
-Ilford is now in the throes of development and is
-fast losing all individuality and becoming a mere
-suburb. Let us leave it for places less sophisticated.</p>
-
-<p>The morris-dancing Will Kemp of 1600, leaving
-Ilford by moonshine, set forward "dauncing
-within a quarter of a mile of Romford, where two
-strong Jades were beating and byting either of
-other." We take this to mean two women fighting
-on the road, until the context is reached, where
-he says that their hooves formed an arch over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
-him and that he narrowly escaped being kicked
-on the head. It then becomes evident that he is
-talking of horses.</p>
-
-<p>Leaving the centre of Great Ilford behind, and
-in more decorous fashion than that of Will Kemp,
-we come, past an inn oddly named the "Cauliflower"&mdash;probably
-as a subtle compliment to the
-abounding market-gardens of the neighbourhood&mdash;to
-the long, straight perspective of the road
-across Chadwell Heath. Unnumbered acres of
-new suburban "villa" streets now cover the
-waste on either side, so that the beginnings of
-the plain are not so much heath as modern
-suburb, created by the Great Eastern Railway's
-suburban stations and by the far-reaching enterprises
-of land corporations, which here carry on
-the usual speculations of the speculative builder
-on a gigantic scale. In acre upon acre of closely-packed
-streets, each one with a horrible similarity
-to its neighbour, thousands of the weekly wage-earning
-clerks, mechanics and artisans of mighty
-London live and lose their individuality, and
-pay rent to limited companies. Where the highwayman
-of a century ago waited impatiently behind
-the ragged thickets and storm-tossed thorn trees of
-Chadwell Heath for the traveller, there now rises
-the modern township of Seven Kings, and midway
-between Ilford station and that of Chadwell
-Heath, the recent enormous growth of population
-on this sometime waste has led to the erection of
-the new stations of "Seven Kings" and "Goodmayes,"
-while widened lines have been provided
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>for the increased train services. "Seven Kings"
-is a romantic name, but who those monarchs
-were, and what they were ever doing on the
-Heath, which of old was a place more remarkable
-for cracked skulls than for crowned heads, is
-impossible to say. Many wits have been at work
-on the problem, but have been baffled. The
-natural assumption is that at this spot, marked
-on old maps as "Seven Kings Watering," the
-seven monarchs of the Heptarchy met. History, unhappily
-records no such meeting, but there was
-no <i>Court Circular</i> in those times, and so many
-royal foregatherings must have gone unremarked,
-except locally and in some fashion similar to this.
-So let us assume the kings met here and watered
-their horses at the "watering," which was a place
-where a little stream crossed the road in a watersplash.
-The stream still crosses the highway, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
-civilisation has put it in a pipe and tucked it
-away underground.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus37">
-<img src="images/fig21.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">SEVEN KINGS.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>A lane running across the Great Eastern Railway
-at this point, known as Stoup Lane ("stoup"
-meaning a boundary-post) marks the boundary of
-the Ilford and Chadwell wards of Barking parish.
-Here it was, in 1794, on a night of December,
-that a King's messenger, James Martin by name,
-was shot by five footpads. The register of St
-Edmund's, Romford, records the burial of this
-unfortunate man on the 14th of that month.</p>
-
-<p>Let us not, however, in view of the more or less
-grisly dangers that still await belated wayfarers on
-this road, enlarge too greatly on the lawlessness of
-old times; for the homeward-bound resident making
-for his domestic hearth in these new-risen suburbs
-towards the stroke of ten o'clock is not infrequently
-startled by the sinister figure of a footpad springing
-from the ragged hedges of Chadwell Heath and demanding&mdash;<i>not</i>
-his money or his life, as in the old
-formula, but&mdash;a halfpenny! This invariable demand
-of the nocturnal Chadwell Heath footpads, which
-argues a pitiful lack of invention on their part, is
-for half the price of a drink.</p>
-
-<p>"You haven't got a ha'p'ny about you, guv'nor?"
-asks the threatening tramp.</p>
-
-<p>"No," says the peaceful citizen, anxiously scanning
-the long perspective of the road for the policeman
-who ought to be within sight&mdash;but is not;
-"w-what do you want a halfpenny for?"</p>
-
-<p>"I've walked all the way from Romford and only
-got half the price of a glass o' beer," says the rascal.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The citizen is astonished and incredulous, and his
-astonishment gets the better of his fear. "Oh, come
-now," he rejoins, "no one walks three miles from
-Romford for a glass of beer; besides, all the houses
-here close at ten o'clock."</p>
-
-<p>"Oh, they do, do they?" replies the tramp,
-offensively. "'Ere, my mate Bill'll talk to you,"
-and, whistling, the ominous bulk of Bill emerges
-aggressively from the darkling hedge, and together
-they proceed to wipe the road with that respectable
-ratepayer, and, rifling his pockets, leave him, bruised
-and bleeding, to reflect on the blessings of civilisation
-and to be thankful that he was not born a
-hundred years ago, when he might have been shot
-dead instead of being felled to the ground by the
-half-brick in a handkerchief which he finds beside
-him and takes home as a trophy.</p>
-
-<p>Chadwell Street, a wayside hamlet, conducts past
-Beacontree Heath, on the right, to an open country
-of disconsolate-looking contorted elms and battered
-windmills, telling even in the noontide heats and
-still airs of summer of the winter winds that race
-across the watery flats of Rippleside and Dagenham
-Marshes, out of the shivering east. Lonely, until
-quite recent times, stood "Whalebone House,"
-beside the road, the two whalebones that even yet
-surmount its garden entrance the wonderment for
-more than two hundred years of chance travellers.
-Legends tell that they are relics of a whale stranded
-in the Thames in the year of Oliver Cromwell's
-death, and set up here in memory of him. However
-that may be, they certainly were here in 1698, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
-Ogilby's <i>Britannia</i> was published, for the house is
-marked on his map as "Ye Whalebone."</p>
-
-<p>These "rude ribs," it may shrewdly be suspected,
-have little longer yet to remain, for though apparently
-proof against decay, the house and grounds
-are, like those of the surrounding properties, for sale
-to the builders.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus38">
-<img src="images/fig22.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">WHALEBONE HOUSE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The sole historic or other vestige remaining of
-the "Whalebone" turnpike-gate, once standing
-here, is an account to be found in the newspapers
-of the time of an attack made upon George Smith,
-the toll-keeper, on a night in 1829. He was roused
-in the darkness by a voice calling "Gate!" and, going
-to open it, was instantly knocked down, in a manner
-somewhat similar to the treatment accorded the hero
-of that touching nursery rhyme, who tells how:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"Last night and the night before,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">Three tom-cats came knocking at my door.</span><br />
-<span class="i0">I went down to let them in,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">And they knocked me down with a rolling-pin."</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-<p>The two men who felled the unfortunate George
-Smith, alarmed by his cries of "Murder!" threatened
-to shoot him if he were not quiet, and, going over his
-pockets, were rewarded by a find of twenty-five
-shillings. While they were thus engaged in sorting
-him over, a third confederate, ransacking the house,
-discovered three pounds. With this booty and a
-parting kick, they left their victim, and disappeared
-as silently as they came.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XV</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Romford</span>, now approached, is but twelve miles from
-London, and has frankly given up the impossible and
-ceased all pretence of being provincial. At the same
-time, building-land having only just (in the speculator's
-phrase) become "ripe for development," the
-townlet has not yet lost all individuality in suburban
-extension.</p>
-
-<p>The place, say some antiquaries, derives its name
-from the "Roman ford" on the Rom brook, but it is
-a great deal more likely that the origin is identical
-with that of the first syllable in the names of Ramsgate,
-Ramsey and Romney, and comes from the Anglo-Saxon
-"ruim" = a marsh. Time was when the town<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
-was celebrated for its manufacture of breeches; an
-industry which gave rise to a saying still current in
-the less polished nooks and corners of Essex&mdash;"Go
-to Romford and get your backsides new bottomed."
-Breeches have long ceased to be a noted product of
-the town, which for many years past has bulked large
-in the annals of Beer. Barricades, avenues, mountains
-and Alpine ranges of barrels, hogsheads, firkins
-and kilderkins of Romford ale and stout proclaim
-that the Englishman's preference for his "national
-drink" has not abated, and that</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"Damn his eyes, whoever tries</span><br />
-<span class="i0">To rob a poor man of his beer"</span><br />
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>is still a popular sentiment; as both the brewers of
-arsenical compounds and the more rabid among teetotallers
-are some day likely to discover.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus39">
-<img src="images/fig23.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">ENTRANCE TO ROMFORD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>A French traveller in England some two hundred
-years ago wrote that "there are a hundred sorts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
-Beer made in England, and some are not bad: Art
-has well supplied Nature in this particular. Be that
-as it will, beer is Art and wine is Nature; I am for
-Nature against the world." That old fellow did not
-know how artful beer could be, and if he could re-visit
-his native France might discover that even wine is no
-longer the simple child of nature it once was.</p>
-
-<p>But although John Barleycorn is the tutelary
-deity of Romford, it is quite conceivable that the
-stranger bound for Norwich, and turning neither to
-right nor to left, might pass through the town without
-so much as a glimpse obtained of those Alpine
-ranges aforesaid. True, on entering Romford, he
-could scarce fail to observe certain weird structures
-ahead: odd towers like first cousins to lighthouses,
-springing into the sky line, with ranges of perpendicular
-pipes, like the disjointed fragments of some
-mammoth organ, beside them, the characteristic signs
-and portents of a great brewery; but the barrels are
-secluded, nor even are Romford's streets blocked, as
-might have been suspected, with brewers' drays.
-Romford, indeed, spells to the uninstructed stranger
-rather bullocks than beer; for the cattle-pens are the
-chief feature of its market-place, and sheep and hay
-and straw bulk more in the eye of the road-farer than
-the products of Ind, Coope &amp; Co., which are to be
-seen in all their vastness beside the railway station
-and on the sidings constructed especially for the
-trade in ale and stout.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus7">
-<img src="images/fig24.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">ROMFORD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The town in its most characteristic aspect is seen
-in the accompanying illustration taken from the doorway
-of that old inn, the "Windmill and Bells," the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a><br /><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a><br /><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
-broad road margined with granite setts and the
-pavements fenced with posts and rails; the re-built
-parish church prominent across the market-place.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus40">
-<img src="images/fig25.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">OLD TOLL-HOUSE, PUTTELS BRIDGE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Beyond Romford the road grows rural, and, by
-the same token, hilly. This, gentle reader, let it not
-be forgotten, is Essex, and we all know with what
-persistence that county is spoken of, and written of,
-as flat. If you would know what flatness is, try the
-Great North Road and its long levels between Baldock,
-Biggleswade and Alconbury, or search Bedfordshire,
-Lincolnshire or Hunts. <i>There</i> is flatness,
-beside which that of Essex is the merest superstition,
-started probably by some tired traveller of inconstant
-purpose, who, essaying to explore the county, gave
-up the enterprise when he had reached Wanstead
-Flats. Surveying that not highly romantic expanse,
-he took it as an exemplar of the rest of the shire, and
-so returned home to start this immortal myth on its
-career. Certainly no cyclist who knows his Essex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
-will subscribe to its flatness as an article of faith, and
-as such an one cycles from Romford, through the
-hamlet of Hare Street, over Puttels Bridge, where
-stands an old toll-house, to the other hamlet of Brook
-Street, the fact that he will actually have to <i>walk</i> his
-machine up the steep hill that conducts into the town
-of Brentwood will cause him to think hard things of
-myth-makers.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus41">
-<img src="images/fig26.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "FLEECE," BROOK STREET.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Brook Street Hill is the name of this eminence.
-Beside it stands a cemetery, convenient for brakeless
-cyclists who recklessly descend, and at its foot is a
-fine old inn, the "Fleece," a house of call for the fish-waggons
-that were once so great a feature of this
-road so far as Colchester and Harwich.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus42">
-<img src="images/fig27.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE MARTYR'S TREE, BRENTWOOD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Brentwood, on the crest of this hill, occupies an
-elevated table-land, with sharp descents from it on
-every side. The "burnt wood" town, destroyed in
-some forgotten conflagration, is now a long-streeted,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>old-fashioned place, apparently in no haste
-to bid good-bye to the past. It keeps the old Assize
-House of Queen Elizabeth's time in repair, and
-carefully sees to it that the Martyr's Tree, decayed
-though the old elm stump be and hollow, is saved
-from perishing altogether. It was in 1555 that
-William Hunter, in his twentieth year, suffered in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
-this place for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation.
-That staunch upholder of the Protestant faith
-scarce needed the modern memorial, close by, while
-this shattered trunk remained, its gaping rents
-carefully bricked up by pious hands; but let the
-venerable relic be doubly safe-guarded in these times,
-when that candle lit by Latimer and Ridley, close
-upon three centuries and a half ago, burns dim, and
-lawless and forsworn clergy within the Church of
-England are working towards Rome and the return
-of the famous days of fire and stake; when the blood
-of the martyrs has ceased to inspire a generation
-which demands to be shown some tangible object
-before it can realise the significance of that sacrifice.
-Here, then, is something that can be seen and
-touched, to bring the least imaginative back in fancy
-to those terrible days, when brave hearts of every
-class gave up their lives in fire and smoke rather
-than abjure their faith. The Romanising clergy of
-to-day are made of coarser fabric than the martyrs.
-<i>They</i> are not actuated by honesty, but take oaths
-they have no intention of observing to a Church
-whose bread they eat and whose trust they betray.</p>
-
-<p>Would you know something of that martyrdom
-at Brentwood? Then scan the inscription on the
-modern granite obelisk, and control, if you can, a
-righteous indignation when you perceive a modern
-Roman Catholic chapel standing, impudent in these
-days of an exaggerated tolerance, over against the
-Martyr's Tree itself, typifying the Scarlet Woman
-in midst of her blasphemies, exultant over the blood
-of the saints. "He being dead yet speaketh,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
-quotes that inscription; but what avails it to speak
-in the ears of the deaf, or to talk of honour to the
-perjured? "Learn from his example," continue
-those momentous words, "to value the privilege of
-an open Bible, and be careful to maintain it"; but
-the world goes by unheeding, and only when the
-danger again becomes acute and liberty of conscience
-is passing away will indifference be conquered and
-the folly of it revealed.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XVI</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Brentwood</span> still keeps a notable relic of coaching
-days in the old "White Hart" Inn, a curious
-specimen of the timbered and galleried type of
-hostelry familiar to our great-grandfathers. It turns
-a long plastered front to the street, but the great
-carved and panelled doorway leading into the coach-yard
-confirms the proud legend, "Established 1480."
-Full forty coaches passed through Brentwood in
-every twenty-four hours at the close of the Coaching
-Age, but the earlier days of coaching brought the
-"White Hart" more custom than came to it at the
-close of that era, when, in consequence of the roads
-being improved, travelling was quicker, and places
-once halted at were left behind without stopping.
-Innkeepers were considerable losers by this constant
-acceleration of coaches, and saw the smart, long-distance
-stages go dashing by where, years before,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
-the old slow coaches stayed the night, or, at the very
-least, halted for meals.</p>
-
-<p>The "White Hart" remains typical of the earlier
-times, and still keeps the old-world comfort regretted
-in other places by De Quincey, who lived long
-enough to witness the beginnings of the great
-changes that have come over the hotels of town
-and country since coaches gave place to railways.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus43">
-<img src="images/fig28.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">YARD OF THE "WHITE HART," BRENTWOOD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XVII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Brentwood</span> is no sooner left behind than the road
-descends steeply over what was once a part of
-Shenfield Common, an exceedingly wild and
-hillocky spot in days gone by, and probably the
-place where, in November 1692, those seven jovial
-Essex squires mentioned by Macaulay were themselves,
-while hunting the hare, chased and at last
-run down by nine hunters of a different sort, who
-turned their pockets out and then bade them good-day
-and be damned. The original chronicler of this
-significant incident, the diarist, Narcissus Luttrell,
-makes no especial feature of the event. He merely
-records it as having happened "near Ingerstone,"
-and then proceeds to chronicle other happenings
-in the same sort along the several approaches to
-London. Little wonder, therefore, that Macaulay
-should have drawn the conclusion that at this
-time a journey of fifty miles through the wealthiest
-and most populous shires of England was as dangerous
-as a pilgrimage across the deserts of Arabia.</p>
-
-<p>From the descending road or from Shenfield
-Church the country is seen spread out, map-like,
-below, over the valley of the Thames, to where
-the river empties itself into the broad estuary at
-the Nore. At least, there is the vale, and the
-map vouchsafes the information that the river flows
-thereby; but the compacted woodlands shut out
-the view of that imperial waterway. "I cannot
-see the Spanish fleet, because it's not in sight,"
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>says the disappointed searcher of the horizon in
-the poem, and it is precisely for the same reason
-that the Thames is not visible from Shenfield.
-But if one is denied a view of that imperial river,
-at least Shenfield Church itself and its churchyard,
-a prodigal riot of roses of every hue and habit,
-are worth seeing. The attenuated shingled spire,
-one of the characteristic features of Essex churches,
-beckons insistently from the road, and he who
-thereupon turns aside is well repaid, in a sight of
-the elaborately-carved timber columns of the interior,
-proving how in this county, where building stone is
-not found, thirteenth and fourteenth-century builders
-made excellent shift with heart of oak. This is,
-in fact, like so many other Essex churches, largely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
-wooden, and its timber is as sound now as it
-was six or seven hundred years ago.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus44">
-<img src="images/fig29.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">SHENFIELD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Mountnessing, known locally as "Money's End"
-lies two miles distant from Shenfield. As in the
-case of so many other places near the great roads,
-a comparatively recent settlement bearing the name
-of the old village sprang up, to catch the custom
-of travellers; but an additionally curious fact
-is the utter extinction of the original village, which
-lay a mile distant from the highway, where the
-parish church now stands lonely, save for a neighbouring
-farmstead. Explorers in the countryside
-are often astonished at the great distances between
-villages and their parish churches, and seek in
-vain in their guide-books or in talk with the
-"oldest inhabitant" an explanation of so curious
-a thing. Here, as in many cases, the root of the
-mystery is found in the enclosure of the surrounding
-common lands. The enclosure of commons has
-never been possible without the passing of special
-Acts, which have divided what should have been
-the heritage of the people for all time between
-the lord of the manor and the villagers, in their
-proper proportions. Thus the lord of the manor
-and the tenants would each obtain their share of
-the plunder, in the form of freehold land, with
-the obvious result that the villagers, instead of
-paying rent for their cottages clustering round the
-church in the original village, built themselves
-new and rent-free cottages on their share of the
-spoil of the commons. The old cottages being
-pulled down, or allowed to decay, it was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
-long before the last trace of the original village
-disappeared.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus45">
-<img src="images/fig30.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">MOUNTNESSING CHURCH.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Mountnessing was once the seat of the
-Mounteneys, who have long since vanished from
-their old home. The old church, largely red brick
-without and timber within, still preserves the
-fossil rib-bone of an elephant, long regarded with
-reverence by the country folk as the rib of a giant,
-and has for an additional curiosity the carving of
-a head on one of the pillars, a head fitted, perhaps
-by way of warning to Early English parishioners
-of shrewish tendencies, with a brank, or "scold's
-bridle." The red-brick west front of the church,
-masking the wooden belfry-frame from the weather,
-still bears the date, 1653, carved in the brick, but
-such is the fresh appearance of the brickwork that
-without that evidence of age it would be difficult
-to credit it with so long an existence. The iron ties<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a><br /><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a><br /><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
-in the shape of the letter S give the view a
-singular appearance. An apologetic epitaph in
-verse, beginning, "Reader, excuse the underwritten,"
-is a curiosity of Mountnessing churchyard.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus8">
-<img src="images/fig31.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">MOUNTNESSING WINDMILL.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Returning to the road, Mountnessing Street, as
-the modern settlement is named, is seen clustering
-on a hill-top, around four cross-roads and a wayside
-pond. The place may aptly be summarised as consisting
-of a dozen cottages, two public-houses, a
-general "stores" (our grandfathers would have been
-content with the less pretentious word "shop"), a
-tin tabernacle to serve those too infirm or too lazy to
-walk a mile to church; a sweep's shop, a tailor's, and
-a windmill situated on a knoll; a windmill that for
-picturesqueness might win the enthusiasm of a Crome
-or a Constable.</p>
-
-<p>From this point it is, as a milestone proclaims,
-two miles to "Ingatstone," the "Ingatestone" of
-customary spelling. The milestones are undoubtedly
-strictly correct in their orthography, if erring on the
-pedantic side, for that village derives its name from
-a settlement of the Anglo-Saxons by the "ing" or
-meadow, at the Roman milestone they found here,
-but has long since disappeared. "Ing-atte-stone"
-they called their village, which lies in the little valley
-of the River Wid, or Ash, trickling (for it is a stream
-of the smallest) hither and thither to give a perennial
-verdure to the meads along its course. "Ing" is,
-by consequence, a marked feature of the place-names
-successively met with along the River Wid.
-Mounteney's Ing we have already seen, and Fryerning,
-or Friars' Meadow, is not far away; while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
-Margaretting, the prettiest name of all, lies beyond
-Ingatestone.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus46">
-<img src="images/fig32.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE GATEHOUSE, INGATESTONE HALL.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Ingatestone's one street, fronting on to the highroad,
-is of the narrowest, and remains in almost
-every detail exactly as it is pictured in the old print
-reproduced here, with the red-brick tower of the
-church still rising behind. It is a tower which by
-no means looks its age of over four hundred years,
-so deceptive is the cheery ruddiness of the brick.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a><br /><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a><br /><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>Within, by the chancel, is the monument of that
-Sir William Petre who, emulating the accommodating
-qualities of the famous Vicar of Bray, bowed before
-the religious storms of the reigns of Henry the
-Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary and Elizabeth.
-"Made of the willow and not of the oak," those
-tempests not only left him unscathed, but brought
-him much plunder. Under Henry he was enriched
-with the manor of Ingatestone, plundered from the
-Abbey of Barking, together with much spoil elsewhere.
-How he managed to do it is a mystery, but
-during the reign of Mary this ardent Catholic (for
-such the Petres always have been) actually obtained
-a Papal Bull confirming him and his in these grants.
-One marvels, when gazing upon his high-nosed effigy,
-recumbent beside his wife, how one with that noble
-physiognomy could be so accomplished a time-server
-and truckler. His home, plundered from the nuns
-of Barking, and known for many years as Ingatestone
-Hall, is yet to be seen at a short distance from the
-road, down a beautifully-timbered country lane. The
-entrance is by a gatehouse with the motto, "<i>Sans
-Dieu Rien</i>," situated at the end of an avenue and
-framing in its archway a fine view of the romantic old
-red-brick turreted buildings of the fifteenth and
-sixteenth centuries. The Lord Petre of to-day does
-not reside here, but the place is still in the family,
-and the Roman Catholic chapel is even now in use.
-Miss Braddon is perhaps scarce to be numbered
-among those novelists whose literary landmarks are
-followed with interest, but it is claimed for Ingatestone
-Hall that it is the scene of her <i>Lady Audley's Secret</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
-The fish-ponds of old monastic times, the
-well in which Lady Audley thrust her husband,
-the lime-walk he haunted, together with such
-romantic accessories as terraced walks and a priest's
-hiding-hole, form items which would require the
-business enthusiasm of an eloquent auctioneer to
-fully enlarge upon. They <i>do</i> say&mdash;the "they" in
-question being the gossips of Ingatestone&mdash;that
-the guard and driver of the Parcel Mail, passing at
-1�15 a.m. the head of the avenue leading from the
-high road, once saw "a something" in white mysteriously
-sauntering beneath the trees, but whether it was
-the shade of an Abbess of Barking or one of the sisters
-thus bewailing the fate of their old home, or merely
-a white cow, remains an unsolved mystery, the
-Postmaster-General's regulations and time-sheets not
-allowing for time spent in psychical research.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus9">
-<img src="images/fig33.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">INGATESTONE IN COACHING DAYS. <span class="in5"><i>From an Old Print</i></span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The shingled spire of Margaretting Church is
-visible on the right, soon after leaving Ingatestone.
-Like the church of Mountnessing, it has its timbered
-belfry-framing, and like it again, is remote from the
-village, standing solitary, save for the vicarage and
-a farmhouse, beside a railway crossing&mdash;if, indeed,
-any building adjoining the main-line of a great
-railway may ever be called solitary. The Margaret
-thus honoured in the place-name is the Saint to
-whom the church is dedicated. Some traces of the
-"marguerite," or herbaceous daisy, painted on the
-old windows, in decorative allusion, remained
-until they were swept away for modern stained-glass
-in memory of a late vicar and his family;
-glass in which Saint Margaret has no place; so that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
-save for an inscription on one of the bells, she now
-remains unhonoured in her own church, deposed
-in favour of Isaiah and Jeremiah and subjects
-kept "in stock" by the modern ecclesiastical art
-furnisher. The only remaining ancient glass is that
-of the east window, a magnificent fifteenth-century
-"tree of Jesse."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus47">
-<img src="images/fig34.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">AT MARGARETTING.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Margaretting Street fringes the wayside at the
-twenty-fifth milestone, where a post-office and some
-few scattered cottages straggle picturesquely at the
-foot of an incline leading up to Widford. The
-odious wall of pallid brick that helps so materially
-to spoil some two miles of this road is the park
-wall of Hylands, a large estate purchased about
-1847 by one John Attwood, a successful ironmaster,
-who stopped up roads, pulled down cottages, and
-raised this eyesore to enclose his new-made park.
-Almost as soon as the last brick was put in its place,
-the autocratic Attwood became utterly ruined by
-railway speculations, and his walled-in Eden was
-sold. Nature in the meanwhile has done her best,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
-and a continuous fringe of trees now overhangs the
-ugly wall, while at a break in it, where the River
-Wid crosses beneath the road, water-lilies gem the
-stream and the wind sounds in the luxuriant
-Lombardy poplars with the sound of a waterfall.</p>
-
-<p>If it were not for its church, which has been
-re-built and has a very fine and tall spire, one might
-easily pass Widford and not know it, for the very
-few houses do not suffice to make a village. Such
-as it is, it stands on the crest of something not
-quite so much as a hill and rather more than an
-incline, and beside its large church has an equally
-fine and large and brand-new inn, the "White
-Horse." Time was, and that until three years since,
-when Widford was celebrated for its one other inn,
-the "Good Woman," or, as it was sometimes styled,
-the "Silent Woman"; a bitter jest emphasised by
-the picture-sign of a headless woman, with the
-inscription, <i>Fort Bone</i>, on one side, and a portrait
-of Henry the Eighth on the other. "<i>Fort Bone</i>"
-was commonly Englished by slangy cyclists as "good
-business." The sign, of course, was a pictorial and
-satiric allusion to Anne Boleyn, but it remains an
-open question whether or not in their present form
-this and the several other "Quiet Woman" and
-"Good Woman" signs throughout the country are
-perversions of the original legend, "<i>la bonne fame</i>"
-displayed on old inns in the distant past; an
-inscription laudatory of the hostelry, and matching
-the self-recommendation of "<i>la bonne r�nomm�e</i>,"
-found in modern France, or the more familiar "noted
-house for&mdash;" and "good pull up" inscriptions on inns<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
-in modern England. Virgil's description of Fame,
-walking the earth, her head lost to sight in the
-clouds, may have originated the pictorial sign of
-the headless woman in days of ancient learning;
-and the classic allusion becoming lost and the
-supposedly incorrect spelling of "<i>fame</i>" being
-altered to "<i>femme</i>," we thus obtain a very reasonable
-derivation. We may take it that many shrew-bitten
-folks, innkeepers and customers alike, readily
-agreed to forget the original meaning in order to
-adopt one so exactly fitting their opinion that the
-only quiet or good women were headless ones.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus48">
-<img src="images/fig35.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "GOOD WOMAN" SIGN.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Unhappily, in that senseless itch for change
-that is robbing places of all interest and distinction,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
-the sign of the "Good Woman" no longer swings
-from its accustomed place, and the bay-windowed
-inn opposite the "White Horse" has retired into
-private life. The picture sign is now housed inside
-the "White Horse."</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XVIII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Widford</span> almost immediately introduces the explorer
-to Moulsham (originally the "mole's home"),
-itself own brother&mdash;but a very out-at-elbows
-brother&mdash;to Chelmsford. If we wished to put the
-wind between our gentility and the somewhat
-fusty purlieu of Moulsham, we should turn to the
-left at the fork of the roads, half a mile short of
-the town, and so, proceeding along the "new
-London road," come into Chelmsford, half way
-down the High Street. Being, however, intent
-rather upon old roads than new, we will e'en
-endure the half-mile length of shabby, untidy
-street, and thus come bumpily into Chelmsford,
-the county town of Essex, the Metropolitan City
-of Calves, over the hunchbacked and narrow stone
-bridge across the Chelmer, the successor, at an
-interval of seven hundred years or so, of the original
-bridge built by Maurice, Bishop of London. That
-is a huge slice of time, but it was too late, even
-in Norman days, for the town to change its
-name from Chelmers<i>ford</i> to something more appropriate
-when the ford was thus superseded.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Straight ahead over this bridge goes the High
-Street of the town, the view closed by the Shire
-Hall and the church; the Norwich Road, however,
-turning abruptly to the right, by the Conduit, and
-refusing to make acquaintance with the town. It
-is the Conduit that is seen in this illustration of
-the High Street, its architecture scarce improved
-by the placing of an electric lamp, alleged to be
-ornamental, over its cupola.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus49">
-<img src="images/fig36.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE BRIDGE: ENTRANCE TO CHELMSFORD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Chelmsford church and the Shire Hall, seen at
-the end of this view, spoil one another, the Hall
-almost entirely hiding the church when looking
-down the High Street, and the dignified Perpendicular
-exterior of the church putting the clumsy
-architecture of the Hall to shame, as a pagan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
-upstart. The Shire Hall has its terrors for some,
-but its architecture, alleged to be classic, alone
-concerns the passing stranger, who feels so concerned
-by sight of it that he accordingly passes
-the quicker. A captured Russian gun and the
-seated bronze effigy of a native, a bygone Lord
-Chief Justice (who looks whimsically like an old
-apple-woman crouching over her basket, and drops
-green coppery stains over his nice stone pedestal)
-keep one another company in the open space fronting
-this building.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus50">
-<img src="images/fig37.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE CONDUIT, CHELMSFORD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The L.C.J. in question was Nicholas Tindal,
-whose career came to a close in 1806. The
-monument was erected in 1850, "to preserve for
-all time the image of a judge whose administration
-of English law, directed by serene wisdom, assisted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
-by purest love of justice, endeared by unwearied
-kindness, and graced by the most lucid style, will
-be held by his country in undying remembrance."
-His birthplace could hardly have said more than
-that.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus51">
-<img src="images/fig38.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">TINDAL'S STATUE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Chelmsford stands not upon the ancient ways,
-being indeed very severely bitten with a taste for
-modernity. Is it not famous as the first town in
-the kingdom to adopt electric lighting, and have
-not its streets been resolutely swept clear of
-antiquity? The town, in short, is scarce picturesque.
-It is busy in the agricultural way on Fridays, but
-on other occasions every house provokes a yawn,
-with perhaps the exception of the "Saracen's
-Head," an inn that, despite its modernised and
-stuccoed frontage, keeps some memories of old
-times. There was a "Saracen's Head" here certainly
-as far back as the fifteenth century, and probably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
-much earlier. Like all the signs of that name, it
-derived from Crusading times, when the knights
-and men-at-arms, returning from Palestine with
-wounds and spoils from the pagan; with monkeys,
-leprosy, tall stories, and other relics out of the
-Holy Land, found their fame come home before
-them, and the old inns they had known&mdash;the
-"Salutation," the "Peter's Finger," the "Catherine
-Wheel," and the like&mdash;often re-named in their
-honour. With little effort we can imagine the
-scenes at the "Saracen's Head" of that period,
-when exploits at Acre, Joppa and Jerusalem were
-told and re-told, and gained wonderfully in the repetition
-over sack and malvoysie. What bloody
-fellows they were, and with what zest they slew
-the Soldan's soldiers over and over again as they
-sat over their cups. It is, at the least of it, six
-hundred years ago, and the "Saracen's Head" has
-been rebuilt many times since then; but human
-nature remains the same though timber rot and
-brick perish, and again and again the same old
-talk has been heard in the bar-parlour of the
-inn. Those who fought at Agincourt and Cre�y;
-men of a later age who warred under Marlborough
-at Blenheim, Ramillies or Malplaquet; the lads of
-the Peninsula and Waterloo; survivors from the
-horrors of the Crimean winter, and heroes from
-a hundred fights on the burning South African
-veldt&mdash;all have had their circle of greedy listeners
-here.</p>
-
-<p>The "Saracen's Head" of to-day turns a sleek
-and stuccoed face to the street, and the house shows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
-signs of extensive rebuilding and remodelling, undertaken
-in the full flush of the great days of coaching
-prosperity, when so many old inns were rebuilt, in
-the belief that coaching, and the road as an institution,
-would last for ever. Fond belief! Has anyone
-ever stopped to consider the fact that the great
-coaching era of the 'twenties and the 'thirties had a
-great deal more to do with the pulling down of the
-old-fashioned galleried and timbered inns of country
-towns than ever railways have had? The average
-small country town felt in fullest measure the great
-increase in business incidental to the last years of the
-coaching age, and every innkeeper hastened to
-rebuild his inn and to call it an "hotel." Those who
-had, from one cause and another, deferred rebuilding
-until the dawn of the Railway Age, on seeing that
-the road would decay and travellers be carried to
-their journeys' ends without halting for rest and refreshment,
-promptly gave up any such ideas and were
-thankful that they had not begun the work of reconstruction
-and enlargement. Those who had were
-ruined, and to this day the huge hotels they reared
-may yet be often met with, a world too large, in
-country towns where once the mails and the stage-coaches
-passed, like a procession, day by day. It is
-quite by a happy chance that an old galleried house
-like the "White Hart" at Brentwood remains, and it
-is not too much to say that, had the Coaching Age
-lasted another ten years, it also would have been
-rebuilt.</p>
-
-<p>An amusing story, with Anthony Trollope for its
-central figure, belongs to the "Saracen's Head" at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
-Chelmsford. For some years after he had won fame
-as a novelist he still retained his position in the
-General Post Office, of which he was a travelling
-inspector. On one of these official journeys he
-happened to be staying here, at the time when his
-<i>Barchester Towers</i> was being issued, after the then
-prevailing fashion, in parts. He was seated in the
-coffee-room when two clergymen entered, one of
-them with the newly-issued part of the story. The
-cleric, cutting the pages, was soon immersed in the
-trials of the Bishop and the domineering ways of Mrs
-Proudie, who was rather a trial to Trollope's
-readers, as well as to the Bishop. Suddenly the
-clergyman put the book down. "Confound that Mrs
-Proudie!" he exclaimed, "I wish she were dead!"</p>
-
-<p>Trollope looked up. Introducing himself, he
-thanked the reader for thus accidentally telling him
-that the Bishop's wife had become wearisome, and
-undertook to have done with her. "Gentlemen,"
-said he, "she shall die in the next number;" and die
-she accordingly did. But in defence of Trollope's
-truthful character-drawing, let it be said that, in the
-opinion of those likely to be best informed, Mrs
-Proudies may yet be found in a goodly proportion of
-the episcopal palaces of England.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XIX</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Returning</span> now to the Conduit, and making for the
-open road once more, Chelmsford is left by way of
-Springfield, past the successor of Chelmsford's finest
-old inn, the "Black Boy," demolished in 1857. The
-old inn of that name had stood on the spot for five
-centuries, and had been the halting-place of many
-famous travellers, among them a long line of Earls
-of Oxford, journeying between their castle at Hedingham
-and London; but none of these associations
-sufficed to save the house. Fragments of its carved
-beams are preserved in the local museum, but recall
-it as little as does the skeleton of the mastodon
-bring back in his majesty that denizen of the earth
-in the dim �ons of the past. Chelmsford would
-dearly like many of its old buildings&mdash;wantonly
-demolished years ago&mdash;back again; but what is done
-cannot be undone, and there's an end on't. The
-"Cross Keys" remains, in a restored condition.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus52">
-<img src="images/fig39.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "THREE CUPS" SIGN
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The name of Springfield, the eastern suburb of
-Chelmsford, carries varying significances. To the
-mere newcomer it sounds idyllic; to the American
-from the New England States it recalls the Pilgrim
-Fathers and their settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts;
-and to the gaol-bird it means a "stretch"
-of longer or shorter duration. At Springfield, in
-fact, is situated the County Gaol, a gloomy building
-enlarged in recent years for the accommodation of
-the guests consigned to it at Assize time from the
-Shire Hall down yonder in the High Street. But,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>once past this depressing place, Springfield is pleasing
-and cheerful. Its long miscellaneous street, where
-the quaint sign of the "Three Cups" stands out,
-gives place to suburban villas situated in attractive
-grounds and designed to sound the ultimate note of
-picturesqueness. That this has been the aim of their
-architects is abundantly manifest in examples where,
-under a single roof, one may experience the mingled
-romantic feelings of inhabiting an Edwardian castle,
-a Tudor manor-house, a Jacobean grange, and a
-"Queen Anne" mansion; all done in red brick,
-gabled here and battlemented there, and, moreover,
-fitted with electric light and hot and cold water
-supply. To this end has castellated and domestic
-architecture unwound its long story during some five
-hundred years. It will be seen thereby that William<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
-of Wykeham, John Thorpe, and many another old-time
-architect did not live in vain.</p>
-
-<p>But if Springfield be modern as a suburb, it is
-ancient as a village. To see old Springfield, it is
-necessary to turn off the road to the left, and to
-journey a quarter of a mile, towards the old church,
-a noble building with mingled red brick and stone
-tower bearing the inscription, "Prayse God for al
-the good benefactors 1586." Oliver Goldsmith, it is
-quite erroneously said, took Springfield as the model
-for his <i>Deserted Village</i>. He certainly visited at an
-old cottage opposite the church, but the real Sweet
-Auburn is Lissoy, in Ireland.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus53">
-<img src="images/fig40.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">SPRINGFIELD CHURCH.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Beyond the village and facing the high road are
-the strangely impressive lodges of the historic estate
-of New Hall; new at the end of the fifteenth century,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
-but declined into a respectable age by now and
-cobwebbed with much history and many legends.
-The place, now and for a considerable number of
-years past an alien convent, has been owned
-during a period of four hundred years by an
-astonishing number of historic personages, who have
-succeeded one another like flitting phantoms. Here
-the solemn reminder, "shadows we are," peeps out
-spectrally at every turn of Fate's wrist in the
-handling of the historic kaleidoscope. Built by
-Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, whose daughter and
-heiress became the wife of Sir Thomas Boleyn and
-mother of the unfortunate Anne, New Hall thus
-eventually came into possession of Henry the Eighth,
-who occasionally resided here and re-named it
-"Beaulieu." Elizabeth gave Beaulieu to Thomas
-Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex. By this time it had
-resumed its name of New Hall. Later owners were
-George Villiers, the magnificent Duke of Buckingham,
-and Oliver Cromwell, who had it as a gift from
-Parliament and exchanged it so soon as he decently
-could for the more magnificent, convenient and king-like
-residence of Hampton Court Palace. To him
-succeeded another Duke of Buckingham, and to him
-that soldier and king-maker, the crafty Monk, Duke
-of Albemarle, who kept great state at the Hall and
-was visited here, when he was suffering from gout
-and dropsy, by that scribbling traveller, Cosmo,
-Grand Duke of Tuscany. With Monk the line of
-historic owners may be said to end, but constant
-change has ever been the lot of New Hall, and a
-succession of lesser lights followed him until the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a><br /><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a><br /><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>nuns set up their secluded life here and bade
-farewell to a vain world. That world passes by; the
-road on one side, the railway midway in the grounds,
-and if it gives them a thought at all, scorns them as
-morbid and idle malingerers from the work of the
-vineyard.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus10">
-<img src="images/fig41.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">NEW HALL LODGES
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>No glimpse of the Hall is gained from the road.
-All is emptiness, and the lichened brick and the
-crumbling stone vases of neighbouring boundary
-walls add to the melancholy air of failure and unfulfilled
-aims characteristic of the place.</p>
-
-<p>There is an air of romance about Boreham House,
-as seen from the tree-embowered road at a little
-distance from New Hall; an altogether deceptive air,
-let it be said, for the house is modern; a classic
-building of white brick. It is its situation at the
-head of a formal lake, fringed with stately elms,
-that confers the illusory distinction, but the explorer
-of old roads, who halts here and listens to the cawing
-rooks on the swaying tree-tops, or watches the water-fowl
-squattering on the lake, can weave his own
-romance to fit the scene. And if the house, though
-stately, be modern, yet it holds something of interest
-in the shape of the identical carriage used by the
-Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo.
-Greatly daring, they dragged it out in recent years
-to grace a Chelmsford holiday, when it was broken
-to pieces in an accident. Restored now to its
-original condition, it will need to be a great occasion
-indeed that brings it forth again.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus54">
-<img src="images/fig42.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">BOREHAM.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Boreham village lies hidden from the road, its
-old gabled cottages clustering round the still older
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>church, itself embowered in lime trees whose delightful
-scent weights the July air with an Arcadian
-languor. The explorer who adventures into Boreham
-has every likelihood of having his nerves
-startled by the sudden glimpse at a bend of the road
-of a great mausoleum in the churchyard, with the door
-open, and, if it be midday, the sight, apparently, of
-one of the inmates of the silent tomb making a
-hearty lunch of bread-and-cheese. High noon being
-an hour when the supernatural is not so terrifying
-as to daunt investigation, it becomes evident on
-drawing nearer that the old tomb-house has been
-converted into a tool-house and general lumber-room,
-and that the figure seated within is the sexton
-enjoying his lunch, screened from the noonday heats.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
-An inscription over the door of the ornate building&mdash;a
-copy of the Temple of the Winds at Athens&mdash;proclaims
-it the "Mausoleum Gentis Walthamian�,
-Anno 1764"; but the Walthams have disappeared,
-both from their mausoleum and the district. The
-body of the last appears to have been arrested for
-debt when on the road hither from Chelmsford.
-The sexton explains that the parish took over the
-Walthams' last home in consideration of repairing
-the ruinated roof. "We ha'n't the conwenience
-hee-ar, years ago," says this typical Essex rustic, and
-goes on to tell how the oil and coals and candles for
-church use were formerly stored in the Radcliffe
-Chapel, where the Sunday School was also held.
-Three Radcliffes, Earls of Sussex, 1542-1583, grandfather,
-father, and son, lie in effigy side by side on
-an altar-tomb in that chapel, "as like as my fingers
-are to my fingers." "Old wawriors," the sexton
-calls them, and explains that their broken noses
-are due to the "ruff" having fallen in, years since.</p>
-
-<p>Returning to what, in Essex parlance, is called
-the "mine" road, Hatfield Peverel is reached, past the
-great red-brick Georgian mansion of Crix, standing
-in its meadows where the little River Ter comes down
-from Terling, flows under the road, turns the wheels
-of Hatfield Mill, and then hurries off, as though
-belated, for a rendezvous with the Chelmer, two
-miles away. It is an old mill, fronting the road
-with whitewashed brick walls, a chimney bearing
-warranty of its age in the inscription, "A.A. 1715";
-but if that evidence were lacking it could be found
-in the position of the mill-house doorway, sunk into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
-an area with the raising of the road for the building
-of the bridge that long ago replaced the watersplash
-at this crossing of the stream.</p>
-
-<p>Hatfield Peverel nowadays shows few signs of the
-heaths that once gave the place its original forename
-of "Heathfield," and the Peverels, identical with the
-Derbyshire Peverels of the Peak, are so utterly
-vanished that they have left not the slightest vestige
-of themselves in the church&mdash;that last resort of the
-antiquary in search of old manorial lords. It is
-true that on modern tablets built into the west
-front of the church the founding of a Benedictine
-Priory here in 1100 by Ingelrica, mother of William
-Peverel, is alluded to, together with the rather
-scandalous story of the Peverel origin, but these things
-are decently wrapped in the combined obscurity of
-Latin and lichen-stains, so that both their monastic
-beneficence and their maternal origin are only dimly
-to be scanned by the vulgar or the hurried.</p>
-
-<p>It is the distance of half a mile from the high
-road to where Hatfield church lies secluded, adjoining
-the grounds of a mansion partly occupying the
-site of the Priory, and so named from that fact. It
-is here, if anywhere, that the "heaths" of Hatfield's
-original baptism must be sought, and accordingly
-some stretches of common-land may be discovered
-close by. But wayside Hatfield chiefly concerns us,
-though there be little enough to say of it, beyond
-the note that its closeness to the railway station has
-caused a certain growth and a certain amount of
-rebuilding, in alien and uncharacteristic style, of the
-old plaster cottages that were once the invariable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
-feature of its street, and admirably figured forth the
-Essex manner of decoratively treating plaster-work.
-There remain here but two such cottages, bearing
-the date 1703, and the initials M.R., with <i>fleur-de-lis</i>.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XX</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">A road</span> of almost unvarying flatness conducts in
-something under three miles to Witham, entered
-nowadays over an imposing bridge erected by the
-Essex County Council over a stream that luxuriates
-in no fewer than three separate and distinct names.
-As the River Witham, it confers a name upon the
-townlet; as the Brain, it performs the same
-sponsorial office for Braintree; but as the Podsbrook
-it is endowed with a title that smacks rather
-of the farcical sort. The traveller looking in
-summer-time over the railings of the bridge, down
-upon the mere thread of water oozing and stewing
-in the mud among the kitchen refuse of the
-neighbourhood, comes to the conclusion that it is
-not ill-named as the Podsbrook; but the Essex
-Council in bridging it so substantially think of it
-rather as the River Witham, which they have every
-right and cause to do, for the stream can avenge
-itself of those disfiguring potsherds and that contemptuous
-title in the most sardonic way when
-winter comes and the floods are out.</p>
-
-<p>The long street of Witham is remarkable for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
-the number of large and handsome mansions dating
-from the time of Queen Anne, through the period
-of the four Georges. The greater number of the
-professional men of Essex would, from the number
-of those houses, appear to have settled in the little
-town and to have medically attended it and legally
-represented it to such an effect that it is only now
-beginning to recover from them and from the
-coming of the railway, which dealt a death-blow
-to the thriving coaching interest of the early part
-of the nineteenth century.</p>
-
-<p>For Witham was the half-way house, the dining-place
-of Mrs Nelson's famous "Ipswich Blues," the
-crack coaches on the seventy miles of road, which
-started at eight in the morning and by extraordinary
-exertions made Ipswich in something under six
-hours. Such remarkable performances as these
-were possible only by establishing six-mile stages in
-place of the average ten miles on other roads, and
-by placing leaders in readiness at the foot of hills
-like Brook Street Hill at Brentwood. The "Blue
-Posts" is gone, but the "White Hart," where some
-of the principal coaches drew up, is still in existence;
-its sign, a pierced effigy of that animal
-projecting from the front of the house and looming
-weirdly against the sky-line. There are many
-"White Harts" on the road to Norwich, the sign
-being just as peculiarly a favourite one here as
-that of the "Bay Horse" is on the Great North
-Road; but of all the many examples to be met
-along these hundred and twelve miles this is the
-one that is most quaintly out of proportion, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a><br /><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a><br /><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
-a head and neck less than half the size demanded
-by body and legs, and a golden collar and chain
-of prodigious strength. This heraldic device was
-the favourite badge of Richard the Second, whose
-connection with East Anglia was too slight for
-assuming this herd of White Harts to be especially
-allusive to him, or indeed more than a curious preference
-on the part of innkeepers along the Norwich
-Road.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus11">
-<img src="images/fig43.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">CHIPPING HILL.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Those who would seek the site of the original
-Witham must turn aside from the high road the
-matter of half a mile, past the railway station, to
-Chipping Hill, where, within the earthworks of a
-camp successively occupied and wrought upon by
-the Britons, the Romans and the Saxons, it will
-be found. Chipping Hill overlooks the pleasant
-valley of that triply-named river already mentioned,
-in 1749 described by Walpole as "the prettiest little
-winding stream you ever saw." The "sweet meadows
-falling down a hill" of which he speaks are there to
-this day, and as sweet, and the by-road that comes
-up from the gravelly hollow and cuts through the
-earthy circumvallation of the ancient stronghold
-climbs up romantically under the blossoming limes
-into as pretty a picture in the rural sort as you
-shall easily find. It is a little piece of Old England
-before railways came, or science and the ten
-thousand plagues of modern life, and the cheap
-builder of hideous new cottages were let loose upon
-the old order of things. Not a jarring note is in
-the picture of yellow-plastered and red-roofed old
-dwellings, flint-built church tower and red-brick<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
-rectory, set in, upon and around the swelling grassy
-banks where Romans kept guard and Saxons had
-both their fortress and their market, as evidenced
-by the still surviving name of Chipping, or Market
-Hill.</p>
-
-<p>Old East Anglian cottages have their own
-special characteristics, arising from local conditions,
-but one feature they share in common with all old
-rustic dwellings; the great size and relative importance
-of their genial chimneys, suggesting warmth
-and the lavish laying on of logs. They tell the
-passer-by of old times when wood was the only fuel;
-when it was to be gathered for the mere labour of
-gathering, and plenty of it was piled upon the
-generous open hearth. Modern cottages, all over
-the kingdom, tell a different tale, in the look of their
-meagre chimney-pots&mdash;a tale of coal, dearly purchased,
-economised in tiny grates.</p>
-
-<p>But the special features of East Anglian cottage
-architecture? They are here, in the highways and
-byways, for all to see who will. It is a land without
-stone, this East of England, where timber and flint
-and brick play important constructional parts in
-church and hall and manor-house, and where timber
-framing, lath and plaster, parge-work, and a few
-bricks for the chimney stacks, are combined to build
-up the cottages.</p>
-
-<p>Out of their necessities our ancestors contrived
-dwellings that for durability, comfort and artistry
-put modern houses, whether halls or cottages, to
-shame. The stone cottages of Somersetshire,
-Rutland, Leicestershire; the cob and thatch of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
-Devon, the granite of Cornwall; the timber and
-plaster, or timber and brick noggin of Cheshire and
-Herefordshire are all evidence to this day of how
-skilfully our forbears employed the materials to
-their hands; and here in Essex you shall find a
-something in the art of cottage building hardly to
-be discovered elsewhere. This is the frequent use
-of parge-work, or pargetting, as it is sometimes
-called, on old cottage exteriors. Parge-work is the
-ornamental filling or surfacing of walls with plaster.
-The term is just as often applied to the elaborately-moulded
-and panelled plaster ceilings of Elizabethan
-and Jacobean halls as to the exterior decoration that
-forms so remarkable and pleasing a feature of Essex
-rustic cottage architecture. Few Essex villages
-that can claim to preserve many relics of old
-times are without examples of this peculiarly local
-style; although, to be sure, an ignorant want of
-appreciation has been the cause of much destruction
-of late years. The commoner forms of this decoration
-are frequently seen, in the easily incised patterns
-that even the unskilful can make in the plaster while
-still wet, by the aid of anything from a trowel to the
-finger-tips; just as a cook ornaments the dough of
-her uncooked pies. Many of these patterns are
-traditional; as much a matter of tradition, for instance,
-as are the needlework patterns wrought on
-the breast of an old smock-frock. The commonest
-is one produced by a process of combing the plaster
-in repetitions of a device resembling an elongated
-figure 8 laid flat, or perhaps more narrowly resembling
-a hank of worsted. Other patterns, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
-whorls or concentric circles, stars, triangles and the
-like, are produced by wooden stamps. But the really
-beautiful examples are not the products of to-day.
-These belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth
-centuries, and are lavish in decoration of a Renaissance
-character moulded in high relief. Architects
-with sufficient culture and understanding to enable
-them to appreciate local style have, in recent years,
-reintroduced decoration of this character when
-building residences in the country, but many a
-humble cottager lives within walls that display a
-profusion of artistic devices unapproached by the
-houses of the wealthy.</p>
-
-<p>Discoveries close by the church on Chipping
-Hill have led to the belief that the building stands
-on, or near, the site of a Temple of Diana, and
-certainly Roman bricks are still visible in great
-numbers in the walls of the tower. A memorial in
-the chancel to Sir Gilbert East, who died in 1828,
-reminds the historian of some strange survivals existing
-at that time. The Easts were owners of the
-tithes at Witham, and although they lived so far
-distant as Berkshire, always insisted on their right of
-being buried here. Sir Gilbert East's body was, by
-his express direction, buried beside his wife, with a
-band of brass encircling both, engraved with the
-words from the marriage service, "Whom God hath
-joined together let no man put asunder." His
-funeral was a three days' business, with knights
-bannerets accompanying, and much pomp and
-circumstance. In the family vault they laid him,
-wrapped in linen, returned to Berkshire for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
-reading of the will, when, to the dismay of the
-family, it was found that the knight had expressly
-wished to be buried in woollen. The family solicitor
-hurried back and, disinterring his defunct client, saw
-to it that he was comfortably tucked in as desired.</p>
-
-<p>Between Witham and Kelvedon, where the road
-runs level, there is but one hamlet, an offshoot of
-Rivenhall known as Rivenhall End, where a cottage
-close by the "Fox" inn, once a toll-house, bears its
-former history, plain to read, in the evidence of its
-windows commanding either approach, up or down
-the road. A mile and a half beyond begins Kelvedon,
-set down in the flats beside the River Blackwater;
-"Kelvedon Easterford, vulgo Keldon," as Ogilby
-calls it; "consisting," he continues, "chiefly of inns";
-a description which remains strikingly true to this
-day. This pronunciation, "Keldon," throws some
-light upon the following remarks of an old traveller
-who kept a diary of his wayfaring, and, writing in
-1744, says, "From Colchester in an hour or two, I
-came to an old Village call'd Kildane, where they tell
-you the famous Massacre of the Danes began; but
-the true Name of the Town is Kelvedon."</p>
-
-<p>How Kelvedon can ever have escaped being called
-"Long" Kelvedon is a mystery, for it straggles on
-and on and must be nearly a mile in length; a
-street of handsome old residences, of cottages and
-humble shops of all ages, and old broken-backed
-taverns where the Essex labourer gathers night by
-night and discusses the prospect of the carraway crop
-and the likelihood of the entire agricultural interest
-presently, going <i>en masse</i> to the "work'us." After<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
-which, with the courage of despair, and to drown his
-troubles, he will call for "another pot o' thrup'ny,
-missus," and, when closing time comes, slouch home
-through the mud and mist until the following evening,
-when the same programme is repeated. It is the
-agricultural labourer who supports the little wayside
-"publics" whose existence in such numbers puzzles
-the mid-day stranger, who, seeing them empty and
-apparently lifeless, wonders how they can possibly
-live. Business practically only begins when work in
-the fields is done, and the rent is not so high but
-that a few pots of beer a night represent a sufficient
-profit.</p>
-
-<p>It must not be supposed that Kelvedon has not its
-exquisite architectural relics of a bygone time, or that
-its inns are all of the rural beer-house type. Not at
-all. Chief among the inns of Kelvedon is the
-"Angel," which indeed is a house not only of considerable
-size and outstanding character, but of
-historic interest, as having been the favourite resting-place
-of William the Third on his journeys along this
-road. Its projecting porch is the first thing the
-traveller sees on entering the town from the direction
-of London, where the road swerves violently to the
-left, and again as violently to the right, forming a
-very awkward corner. "Angel Corner," said Alexander,
-of the "Retaliator" coach, "is the very devil
-of a corner." This remark was drawn from him on
-the occasion of his nearly driving into the porch,
-when trying conclusions with a rival charioteer.</p>
-
-<p>Almost opposite the still-existing "Angel" stood
-the equally extensive "Red Lion," long since retired<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
-from business and remodelled as a row of cottages.
-The histories of both houses, and of many another
-fine old inn, which might once have been written
-from the recollections of those who knew the old days
-of the road, are now in great part lost, and the world
-so much the poorer. Had scribblers then abounded,
-and the "personal" note of the modern journalist
-been sounded in those days, we should have known
-how King William came to and set out from his inn;
-how he looked, what he ate and drank, how many
-long clay pipes he smoked, and what comparisons he
-drew in conversation with Bentinck between the flat
-lands on the way from Kelvedon to Harwich and the
-still flatter lands of his native Holland. And besides
-such records of the great, we should then have been
-better furnished with the early history of coaching,
-which, if not indeed a sealed book, is at least a very
-short and fragmentary one.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus55">
-<img src="images/fig44.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "ANGEL," KELVEDON.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXI</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Early</span> coaching days are wrapped round with strange
-adventures and the oddest tales; some, doubtless, of
-the <i>ben trovato</i>, rather than the most truthful, nature.
-But those stories of coaching miseries and adventure
-that have been proved truthful are themselves so
-surprising and incredible to modern ears that even
-the most improbable of uncertified tales cannot be
-dismissed as mere romancing. The tale of the
-Sprightly Lady and the Anxious Gentleman should,
-for instance, surely be picturesquely written up some
-day and included in some English (and therefore
-strictly proper) kind of Thousand and One Nights'
-Entertainments.</p>
-
-<p>The coach was nearing the outskirts of London.
-The rheumy air hung in dank and foggy vapours
-on the countryside and transformed innocent roadside
-trees and hedges into all sorts of menacing
-shapes. The guard let off his blunderbuss at a
-pollard willow that loomed suspiciously like a highwayman
-out of the reeking air, and the passengers
-all began to automatically turn their pockets out.
-It proved a false alarm, and purses and trinkets were
-returned. But the travellers were uneasy. One
-gentleman, in especial, feared for ten guineas he
-carried, whereupon a lady advised him to hide the
-money in his boot. He had hardly done this when
-a hoarse voice was heard commanding the coachman
-to stop. When the unhappy insides had picked
-themselves up from the straw at the bottom of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
-coach, into which they had unceremoniously been
-thrown by the driver's prompt obedience to that
-behest, they found themselves covered with a pistol
-projected through the door, and were invited to
-deliver up their money and jewellery. Those who
-had little gave it and were thankful it was no more.
-The lady protested that she had nothing; "but,"
-said she, "if you look in this gentleman's boot you
-will find ten guineas." There was nothing for it
-but to take off that boot and hand over the coin;
-but when the highwayman had gone it was another
-matter, and the plundered traveller accused her, in
-no measured terms, of being the robber's accomplice.
-Bound to admit that appearances were against her,
-she (how like the Arabian Nights fashion!) invited
-the company to supper the following evening,
-when matters should be explained. They accepted,
-not, it is to be feared, very graciously. The time
-came, and, ushered into a splendidly-appointed room,
-with a supper laid, they were re-introduced to their
-acquaintance of the night before. When the repast
-was over she opened a pocket-book. "Here," she
-said, addressing the loser of the ten guineas, "in
-this book, which I had with me in the coach, are
-bank-notes to the amount of one thousand pounds.
-I judged it better for you to lose ten guineas than
-for me to be robbed of this valuable property. As
-you have been the means of my saving it, I entreat
-your acceptance of this bank bill of one hundred
-pounds."</p>
-
-<p>Much of the humour that went to lighten old
-road travelling was of an evanescent kind, and has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
-not survived, but a few examples, preserved in contemporary
-literature, keep their flavour. Among
-them is the narrative called "Three Blind 'Uns and
-a Bolter." "I recollect," said the Jehu who told
-the tale, "having a sanctified chap for a passenger,
-and nothing that was either said or done was at all
-to his mind. On that day I happened to have a
-very awkward team&mdash;three blind ones and a very
-shy off leader, and I confess that two or three times
-I lost my patience as well as temper. My near
-leader pulled to such a degree that I was obliged
-to get down and put up her bearing-rein up to the
-top of the bit, and curb her enough to break her
-jaw. After starting again, I could deal with her
-very well for about a mile, when her mouth got
-dead again, and I was wicked enough to let drive
-a few hearty damns at her, my pious companion all
-the while exhorting me to patience. 'Patience be
-damned,' at last said I, fairly sick of the two; upon
-which he bolted as if he had been galvanised.</p>
-
-<p>"'Pray, sir,' said he, 'did you ever hear of Job?'</p>
-
-<p>"'He can't keep out of the shop,' thought I,
-'but I won't have it;' so I answered, 'What coach
-does he drive?'</p>
-
-<p>"'Awful in the extreme,' said he, throwing up
-his hands, 'I fear you don't read your Bible; but
-I will tell you&mdash;he was the most patient man that
-ever existed.'</p>
-
-<p>"'But, sir,' said I, 'did he ever drive three
-blind 'uns and a bolter?'</p>
-
-<p>"'Certainly not,' replied he; 'he was not a
-coachman.'</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a><br /><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a><br /><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>"'Then it's accounted for,' said I, 'for if ever
-he had had four such horses to deal with as I
-have here, he would have had no more patience
-than myself.'"</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus12">
-<img src="images/fig45.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">"THREE BLIND UNS AND A BOLTER." <span class="in5"><i>From a Print after H. Alken.</i></span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Here, at Kelvedon, one of the old-time coachmen
-played a drunken trick that would have
-been impossible in the last years of coaching,
-when discipline was strict and drivers less eccentric
-than they had been. He had just driven the
-London stage from Ipswich, and having more by
-good luck than careful driving brought his
-passengers safely to dinner at the "Angel," turned
-into the bar for a jorum of that favourite drink
-of coachmen&mdash;rum. Emerging, he perceived one
-of the Harwich to London fish-waggons, fully
-laden, standing at the door, and, mounting on to
-the driver's seat, unobserved, he wheeled the
-waggon round and dashed off at top speed on
-the way to Colchester, coming to grief at Lexden
-Hill, where the huge conveyance was upset and
-two tons weight of fish strewed the king's highway.
-The mad coachman survived to repent his
-escapade, but he went on one leg for the remainder
-of his life.</p>
-
-<p>"Other times, other manners" is a saying that
-assumes an added force when contrasting the
-Coaching Age with the Age of Steam. Our fellow-travellers
-by railway, who glare at us, and we at
-them, like strange cats on a roof-top, have little
-idea of the chivalry that ruled on the road a hundred
-years ago. Glance, if you dare, at a lady who
-may be the only other occupant of a railway<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
-carriage with you, and she wonders whether she
-had not better call the guard; but it was, in the
-days of our great-grandfathers, almost the bounden
-duty of the gentlemen to see that the ladies in
-whose company the chances of the road might
-place them lacked nothing that courtesy could
-supply; whether it were merely the aid of an
-arm in walking up one of those hills the coaches
-could only climb unladen, or the more material
-attention involved in seeing that the dear
-creatures were duly supplied with refreshments.
-It was, for instance, long the chivalric custom
-of the gentlemen travelling by coach to pay for
-the breakfasts and dinners of the unprotected
-ladies who might be travelling by the same conveyance.
-"I vow," says one of these old travellers,
-"'tis a pleasure in a cavalier to do so; but, the
-Lord save us, what a prodigious appetite does not
-the swiftness of the travelling confer upon the
-fair, whose lassitude and vapours at other times
-render them incapable of more than drinking a
-dish of that noxious herb they call 'tay,' a thing
-which it is only fitting that the heathenish and
-phanatick peoples of the Indies should partake
-of. I protest that the ladies of the coach, when
-we alighted at the 'Angel' at Kelvedon, finding
-they could not be suited with tay, went to it
-with a right good will and left as good an
-account of the claret and the beef as if they had
-been going empty for a week. Spare me, I do
-beg, from your languishing creatures who would
-die of a surfeit of two biscuits at home, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
-compare with the most valiant of trenchermen
-abroad."</p>
-
-<p>This protesting gentleman might, had he thought
-of it, have exclaimed with Othello on the pity "that
-we can call these delicate creatures ours and not
-their appetites."</p>
-
-<p>He must have been particularly hard hit in
-the pocket by the robust appetites of his fellow-travellers,
-but did not, however, let his feelings
-appear, for he goes on to tell how he gave as
-a toast, "the ladies, bless them, whose bright
-eyes," etc., etc.&mdash;a toast we have many times heard
-of; and, indeed, rather flatters himself upon
-having "made an impression." He, in fact, seems
-to have been like Constable, in a way; for it was
-said of that painter that he was "a gentleman in
-a stage-coach; nay, more, a gentleman at a stage-coach
-dinner." "Then," said one, hearing that
-praise, "he must have been a gentleman indeed!"</p>
-
-<p>That is very significant. It was, then, only
-your very paragon among gentlemen who could
-sustain the character at a stage-coach dinner. His
-manners might survive the strain of the journey
-itself, and even the sight and sound of lovely
-Phyllis, adorable when awake, snoring, unlovely
-to eye and ear, with open mouth and suffocating
-gurgles; but when after the tedious stage had
-been accomplished and the passengers had descended,
-irritable, hungry and thirsty, to a dinner
-scarce to be eaten, even at express speed, in the
-short time allowed, then, ay <i>then</i>, my friends,
-came the test! No man so insensible to politeness
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>as a starving man, and few attentions were
-paid to the ladies by strangers whose sole chance
-of obtaining the dinner for which they had paid
-was the resolute determination to attend only to
-their own wants.</p>
-
-<p>The discomforts of travelling by coach certainly
-outweighed the pleasures of that old-world method.
-A pleasant day and the open country made a seat
-on the outside of stage or mail an eminence not
-willingly to be exchanged for any other mode of
-conveyance then known; but, as little David
-Copperfield found on his first coach journey, <i>night</i>
-on a coach was an experience once gained not
-willingly repeated. Being put between two gentlemen,
-to prevent his falling off, David found himself
-nearly smothered by their falling asleep, so that he
-could not help crying out, "Oh! if you please!"
-which they didn't like at all, because it woke them.
-With the rising of the sun David found his fellow-passengers
-sleeping easier than they had done during
-the night, when terrific gasps and snorts disturbed
-their midnight slumbers. As the sun rose higher, so
-their sleep became lighter and they gradually awoke,
-one by one, each one indignant when charged with
-having slept. During the rest of his career, David
-invariably observed "that of all human weaknesses,
-the one to which our common nature is the least disposed
-to confess (I cannot imagine why) is the weakness
-of having gone to sleep in a coach."</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXII</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus56">
-<img src="images/fig46.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">BIRTHPLACE OF SPURGEON.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Coaching</span> times and coaching inns have long kept
-us at the very threshold of Kelvedon, which has a
-modern claim to notice of which it is not a little
-proud. Spurgeon was born here. Although the
-figure of that great wielder of homely and untutored
-pulpit oratory is but one among several preachers
-in the same family, there is only one possible
-Spurgeon when that name is mentioned. Charles
-Haddon Spurgeon was born in a house still pointed
-out, on June 19, 1834; the eldest son of the Rev.
-John Spurgeon. The old cottage is now the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
-"Wheatsheaf" beer-house and has had a bay window
-and a brick frontage added since that time. Close by
-is a now highly respectable and not a little dignified
-private residence known still as the "Tommy shop,"
-although almost seventy years have passed since it
-was used as a kind of restaurant and canteen for the
-navvies then working on the construction of the
-Great Eastern Railway, which runs at the rear.</p>
-
-<p>The oldest house in Kelvedon is doubtless the
-"Sun," which dates from the middle of the fifteenth
-century and has within recent years had its carved
-woodwork, long covered with plaster, once more
-exposed to view. It stands, almost the last house
-in the town, by the bridge over the Blackwater, on
-the way to Gore Pit.</p>
-
-<p>Gore Pit is generally said to be the site of a
-battle. <i>What</i> battle, however, historians do not
-and cannot specify; and indeed this name, bloody
-though it may sound to modern ears, has, despite
-the popular legend of the derivation of Kelvedon
-from "Kildane," perhaps no such sanguinary
-association, and is probably a contraction of the old
-word "coneygore," or rabbit warren.</p>
-
-<p>It is, despite its name, a pretty and a peaceful
-hamlet, with a blacksmith's shop and a roadside
-horse-pond, and surrounded by the fruit-farms of a
-great jam-making company. The church of Feering
-can be seen across the flat fields, on the other side of
-the railway. Messing lies a mile away, in the other
-direction.</p>
-
-<p>Let the idle wayfarer, curious as to the name of
-Gore Pit, speak to the blacksmith on the subject,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
-and he will be told, with the seriousness of implicit
-belief, of the fighting of a great battle here, and
-that the blood ran down into "that there horse-pond."
-Moreover, that at Kelvedon&mdash;"Killdane they used
-to call it&mdash;they killed the Danes; at Feering they
-feared 'em, and at Messing they made a mess of it";
-which seems to very correctly reflect the views of the
-neighbourhood on local history in ancient times, as
-reflected in place-names!</p>
-
-<p>Rural Essex, in the aspect of its fields and
-meadows, is revealed along these miles in its most
-characteristic form. It is, in many respects, unlike
-other counties. In some ways the unhappy industry
-of farming has fared worse here than elsewhere, and
-many holdings have for years past gone uncultivated,
-and the dock, the thistle and other lusty weeds have
-resumed an evil possession of fields once kept clean
-and trim. But in the smaller operations of
-husbandry Essex has always been, and in some
-districts still is, remarkably successful; while,
-although the farmer protests that it does not pay
-to grow any kind of grain, the yellowing seas of
-autumnal cornfields are still a prominent feature
-of the landscapes of Essex and of its neighbouring
-Suffolk. Essex and Suffolk are old-world, far beyond
-the rest of England, and in growing wheat in these
-times, when a cornfield is a rare sight in other
-parts of the country and when "our daily bread"
-is chiefly compounded of grain grown in North
-America, Russia, or the Argentine, they maintain
-their singularity. It does the heart good to see the
-ripening wheatfields of East Anglia, to see the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
-gathered stooks in the reaped perspectives, and to
-hear the hum of the threshing machine; for the
-sights and sound seem to carry us back to that
-England of a bygone age, when Constable painted
-such fields, and when they were numerous enough
-throughout the land to feed the population. Here
-and there one may still find fields of that famous
-grain, the "Essex Great Wheat," which grows at
-least two feet higher than the ordinary varieties,
-and is greatly prized for the length and stoutness of
-its straw; but it is a few miles to the north-eastward,
-in the light lands around Harwich, that the Great
-Wheat may be found. Seed and herb-growing are
-the most prominent industries between the Blackwater
-and the Colne, and the roadside fields are
-striped to wonderment in summer with the rainbow
-colours of the seedsman's trial-grounds. The heavy
-perfume of stocks and mignonette, the claret colour
-of that gorgeous flower, the "sops-in-wine," the gay
-and varied displays of asters, marguerites, marigolds
-and a hundred others make a midsummer fairyland
-of the levels that loom so drear and misty in the
-long months of winter. Nor is it only for the
-flower-garden that the Essex seedsman labours.
-With the sights and scents of the flaunting beauties
-of the garden are mingled the homelier ones of
-mint, grey-green sage and other dowdy kitchen
-herbs, together with the subtle beauty and piercing
-odour of wide-spreading, blue-grey lavender-fields.
-Even the unromantic mangold, running to seed in
-bush-like shape, sends forth a sweet and pleasing
-aroma, while the yellow mustard contributes its share.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The byways of farming are now, as we have
-already said, the most&mdash;some would say the only&mdash;profitable
-kind of husbandry in Essex. Some forms
-of cultivation have largely migrated to other counties,
-but others remain. The growing of the clothiers'
-teasel was discontinued with the decay of the Colchester
-and Norwich baize industry, and is now
-carried on in other parts of the country, close to
-districts where textile fabrics are still manufactured;
-but there was a time when, along this road between
-Chelmsford and Colchester, the fields of teasels were
-quite as much a feature as those of mustard are even
-yet. The clothiers' teasel, greatly prized in the
-East Anglian baize manufacture, was nothing but
-a weed, found useful and cultivated accordingly. An
-aristocratic relation of the less spiky burrs that have
-not been rescued from the hedges and ditches and
-are still allowed to grow wild, the clothiers' teasel
-was cultivated so far back as the reign of Richard
-the First, but the "common" burr will have to be
-contented with its lowly estate to the end of time,
-unless something unexpected happens.</p>
-
-<p>To "stick like a burr" is proverbial, and the cultivated
-teasels have an even more pronounced clinging
-property. Furnished as they are with natural hooks,
-they were used in baize-making, and are still employed
-in the cloth trade for raising the nap of the
-material. The dried heads are fixed to cylinders,
-between which the fabric is passed, and their sharp
-spines, re-curved like so many minute fish-hooks, draw
-up the surface of the cloth. Thus the teasel was
-raised from its character of a worthless weed, and for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
-many years Essex farmers devoted large portions of
-their holdings to its cultivation. It was hoed and
-kept clear of other vagrom weedlings; its heads were
-cut by hand and dried with every care, and eventually
-were eagerly competed for by manufacturers at �12
-a load. When the old cloth manufacturers left East
-Anglia, a goodly portion of the Essex farmers' livelihood
-went with them.</p>
-
-<p>Around Colchester, too, is cultivated that other
-weed, the colewort, for cole or rape-seed, which has
-the quadruple properties of feeding cage-birds, yielding
-rape-oil, making cake for cattle, and of manuring
-the fields. Coriander and carraway seeds, too, help
-to prop the husbandman's fortunes. Corianders and
-carraways are what "the faculty" knows as "carminatives,"
-curative of flatulency; like the once popular
-"eringo root," a candied preparation of the root of
-the sea holly that grows by the estuaries of Essex
-rivers. Eringo root was once a favourite specific for
-lung troubles, but its popularity waned at last, and
-the preparation of it gradually died out and became
-extinct about 1865, when the only manufacturer was
-an elderly spinster who supplied a chemist in High
-Street, Colchester. Corianders are still used in the
-making of k�mmel and other liqueurs, and carraway
-seeds, which look like commas, are those familiar
-denizens of "seed cake" that stick in the teeth and
-refuse to be dislodged, and are the central feature of
-"carraway comfits."</p>
-
-<p>Farmers who do not occupy themselves with
-seed-growing have passed through evil times, but
-prosperity beams cheerfully from the seedsman's well-tilled
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>land, and fruit-farming has come to render
-cultivation profitable. Still, to the shiftless farmer,
-who cannot adapt himself to new conditions, agricultural
-depression in Essex is a very real thing.
-Here, shambling along the road, comes such a one,
-a small cultivator, a son of the soil. He does not
-hurry. Who, indeed, would hurry in rural Essex, in
-these times, when the Bankruptcy Court and the
-Workhouse are said to close every vista? Besides,
-he has been hard at work in the fields, and much of
-that kind of labour takes all the lamb-like friskiness
-out of the limbs.</p>
-
-<p>A conversation, leaning over a field-gate very
-badly in need of repair, elicits the fact that he has
-just come away, worsted, from another bout in the
-eternal conflict between Man and Nature. No conflict
-with wild beasts, but a struggle, really just as fierce,
-for life or a livelihood, with weeds&mdash;the sorry heritage
-of the present occupier from the slovenly or bankrupt
-farmer before him. A bookmaker, gazing upon
-the weedy scene, would back Nature pretty heavily
-against the cultivator.</p>
-
-<p>"Farmin'?" says our rustic friend; "no great
-shakes, I tell 'ee. It don't pay to grow nawthen now,
-an' it gets wusser'n wusser. All the fields goin'
-under grass, for ship'n cattle. An' the land's fair
-pisoned with weeds. Yow see them 'ere beece, in
-that there close down along o' the chutch? There's
-a mort o' docks in that 'ere close. More docks'n
-grass, an' I thinks warsley o' the chanst of cattle
-gettin' a fair bite off'n it. Don't know what docks
-is? Wish I didden! I've bin a-pullin' of 'em till<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
-my back's pretty nigh broke, and I'm fair dunted
-with 'em. Last year there worn't ne'er a one: t'yen
-there's a mort on 'em. Where do they come from?
-God A'mighty knows. <i>They</i> don't want no cultivation,
-bless 'ee. There ain't no land so chice but
-what'll grow docks." Here he pulls out his "muckinger,"
-that is to say, his handkerchief&mdash;the Essex
-dialect is not the most elegant form of speech&mdash;and,
-trumpeting on it like an elephant, with indignation,
-goes his way.</p>
-
-<p>The "chutch" in question is that of Feering,
-on the other side of the Great Eastern Railway,
-along whose embankment go the frequent
-Prussian-blue-painted locomotives with long trains at
-their tail, past Mark's Tey Junction, whose forest of
-signal-masts is visible ahead, into Colchester. With
-the raising of that embankment went the life of this
-highway, only now experiencing a revival.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXIII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> cyclists, the pedestrians, the motor-men, who
-adventure along the road rejoice at its smooth
-surface, and find little incident to mark their
-journey. A punctured tyre, a defective valve alone
-hinder those mechanical travellers; while the pedestrian
-finds a limit set to his progress only by
-his walking powers. Even so, he may obtain to
-Norwich long before the others, for the railway<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
-hugs the road closely for three parts of the distance,
-and stations are frequent.</p>
-
-<p>In any case, the curtain has long since been
-rung down upon the Romance of the Road. If this
-were the place to do it, that romance might be
-recounted at great length; sometimes rising to
-tragical height, again sinking to comedy or farce.
-But we must take our romance as it comes, and,
-reading as we run, be content to act a vicarious
-part in the long story. And we may well be so
-content, for to have essayed the journey in days
-of old often meant a "speaking with strangers in
-the gates" that entailed fighting on unequal terms,
-with the possibility of a roadside grave and the
-tolerable certainty of being robbed of anything and
-everything worth the taking.</p>
-
-<p>Nowadays, the trim suburbs of the towns
-stretch out on either side along the old highway
-and join hands with the villages; so that when
-travellers of the speedier sort spurn the dust from
-their flying wheels, they think the country is
-becoming one vast town, and are depressed and
-regretful accordingly. But when the road was the
-sole means of travelling and the towns were still
-girdled by their walls and entered only by fortified
-gates, the wayfarer welcomed the sight of a house
-in the lonely country between town and village.
-Even to the rich these perils came home, and in
-the more lawless times they were beset with
-troubles of their own.</p>
-
-<p>Royal progresses were not infrequent along the
-Norwich Road, and they have elsewhere been duly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
-chronicled, but they are things apart and give no
-glimpse of old wayfaring life. If we are at all in
-the way of conjuring up that old-time traffic, we
-must certainly not forget the odd processions that
-trailed their slow length after my lord and my
-lady, changing residence from one castle or manor-house
-to another. My Lord Duke of Norfolk in
-Elizabeth's time had an exquisite palace, of which
-Macaulay has told us, in Norwich, and the Earls of
-Oxford no doubt kept great state in their castle at
-Hedingham, but, for all their magnificence, they
-were obliged to take many of their household goods
-with them when flitting from place to place; for
-the very excellent reason that they did not,
-certainly up to less than three hundred years
-ago, possess more than one fully-equipped establishment.
-When the nobility of old left one of their
-manor-houses for another they commonly took
-their bedding and a good deal of their furniture
-with them. In even more remote days they removed
-the glass from their windows as well, and
-stored it carefully away until their return. <i>That</i>,
-of course, was a custom of very long ago, when even
-the most luxurious were content with&mdash;or, at any-rate,
-had to endure&mdash;things which nowadays would
-drive the inmates of a casual ward to rebellion;
-but, even when the Stuarts reigned, the great ones
-of the land moved from home to home with long
-baggage-trains and with their entire staff of
-domestics. No board-wages, then! The whole
-establishment took the road, down to the scullery-maids
-and the hangers-on of the kitchen who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
-took charge of the domestic pots and pans. My
-lord's pages and the dignitaries of his household
-formed the advance-guard; the lowest in the scale,
-who travelled with the culinary utensils and even
-took the coals with them, were, appropriately
-enough, the "black guard." The black guard were
-probably a very rough lot indeed, at odds with
-soap and water, and on every count deserving of
-their name, which has in the course of centuries
-obtained a different application, as a term of reproach
-to individuals of moral rather than physical
-uncleanliness.</p>
-
-<p>Turning from general conditions of travelling
-to particular travellers, there comes tripping along
-the road an antic fellow, one Will Kemp, who
-danced from London to Norwich in the year 1600;
-a frolic he undertook for a wager, afterwards
-writing and publishing a book about it, which he
-called <i>Kemp's Nine Days' Wonder</i>. Will Kemp
-was accompanied by a drummer whose play upon
-parchment helped to sustain his flagging energies
-as he skipped it to Widford and thence by a route
-of his own through Braintree to Norwich.</p>
-
-<p>Sprightly, irresponsible Kemp, cracking weak
-jokes and playing the fool, is succeeded in the
-memories of the road, after an interval of some
-eighty years, by a very grave and responsible figure
-indeed; no less an one than that of King William
-the Third, on his frequent journeys between his dear
-Holland and his little-loved Kingdom of England.
-Burdened with the care of an alien realm, that
-saturnine little figure with the hooked nose was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
-familiar sight at Kelvedon, where, travelling to and
-from Harwich, he was wont to stay at the "Angel"
-inn, which still confronts the wayfarer on entering
-the village from London. When the "little gentleman
-in black" had done his work and King William
-of blessed Protestant memory was no more, the
-Norwich Road, so far as Colchester, was still graced
-with Royal travellers, for, with the coming of the
-Hanoverians, Harwich became more than ever a
-favourite port of entry and departure, and the
-choleric early Georges knew this Essex landscape
-well. This way, too, came the Schwellenburgs, the
-Keilmanseggs and the other vulgar and grotesque
-figures of that grotesque and vulgar Court.</p>
-
-<p>Among these figures comes that of the Princess
-Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, arrived for the first
-time in England, in 1761, to marry George the
-Third. One German princess is very like another
-in the pages of history, and the likeness remains
-even when they become queens, so that it is not
-a little difficult to disentangle a Caroline from a
-Charlotte. Their virtues are of the same drab
-domestic order, and their faces partake of the
-common fund of unilluminated dulness distributed
-between the Mecklenburg-Strelitzes, the Sonderburg-Augustenburgs,
-and the dozens of other twopenny-halfpenny
-principalities made familiar by German
-princely marriages and intermarryings. On their
-mere merits, these personages would find no place
-here, though they travelled all their lives up and
-down the road; but in the circumstances of this
-particular Princess Charlotte's journey there are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
-some incidents worth mentioning. She landed at
-Harwich, and comes into our road at Colchester,
-September 7, 1761. At Colchester she was presented
-with a box of eringo-root, the famous local
-production highly valued for the cure of pulmonary
-diseases, prepared from the root of the sea holly.
-Graciously receiving this in a box "parfumed and
-guilt," her carriage swept on towards Witham, where
-she stayed the night at a seat then owned by Lord
-Abercorn, supping with open doors so that all who
-would might gaze upon their future Queen. Next
-day the journey to London was resumed. The
-King's coach was in readiness at Romford, and into
-it she changed. At Mile End a squadron of Life
-Guards was in waiting as an escort, and from that
-point the procession was viewed by thousands. But
-by this time the September day was closing. The
-Duchess of Hamilton, who accompanied the Princess,
-looked at her watch. "We shall hardly have time
-to dress for the wedding," she said.</p>
-
-<p>"The wedding?"</p>
-
-<p>"Yes, madam; it is to be at twelve."</p>
-
-<p>On that the Princess fainted, as well she might.
-It really took place at 9 p.m., instead of three hours
-later. The King, it is upon record, was a little
-disappointed at the first sight of his bride; but that
-has generally been the way with our Royal marriages.
-The eldest son of this amiable pair, George the Fourth,
-similarly saw his bride for the first time practically
-on the steps of the altar, and his disappointment was
-keen. "No sooner," we read, "had he approached
-her than, as if to subdue the qualms of irrepressible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
-disgust, he desired the dignified envoy to bring him
-a glass of brandy." The Princess, we are told,
-"expressed surprise," which statement requires no
-credulity for belief. Henry the Eighth's disappointment
-when he saw Anne of Cleves was reflected in
-the words in which he likened her to a "Flanders
-mare."</p>
-
-<p>Two years later, in 1763, we find Dr Johnson
-and his inevitable Boswell journeying down the
-road; Boswell on his way to Harwich for Utrecht,
-and the Doctor good-naturedly accompanying him as
-far as that seaport. They set out by coach on the 5th
-of August, early in the morning; among their fellow-travellers
-a fat, elderly gentlewoman and a young
-Dutchman, both inclined to conversation. Dining
-at an inn on the way, the lady remarked that she
-had done her best to educate her children, and
-particularly that she never suffered them to be a
-moment idle.</p>
-
-<p>"I wish, madam," said Johnson, "you would
-educate me too; for I have been an idle fellow all
-my life."</p>
-
-<p>"I am sure, sir," said she, "you have not been
-idle;" which was a mere empty compliment, for she
-had not the least idea whom she was addressing.</p>
-
-<p>"Nay, madam," rejoined the Doctor, "it is very
-true; and that gentleman there," pointing to Boswell,
-"has been idle. He was idle at Edinburgh. His
-father sent him to Glasgow, where he continued to
-be idle. He then came to London, where he has
-been very idle; and now he is going to Utrecht,
-where he will be as idle as ever."</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>At this, Boswell was very wroth, and asked
-Johnson, in an aside, how he could expose him so.</p>
-
-<p>"Pooh, pooh," retorted the immortal Samuel,
-"they know nothing about you, and will think of
-it no more." Nor, in all probability, did they.</p>
-
-<p>In this manner they travelled, the gentlewoman
-talking violently against the Roman Catholics and
-the horrors of the Inquisition; Johnson, to the
-astonishment of all the passengers, save Boswell, who
-knew his ways, defending the Inquisition and its
-methods with "false doctrines." This would appear
-to have annoyed the rest of the company, for
-Boswell relates that Johnson presently appeared
-to be very intent upon ancient geography. Not so
-intent, however, but that he noticed Boswell giving
-a shilling to the coachman at the end of one of the
-stages, when it was the custom to give only sixpence.
-The great man took Boswell aside and scolded him
-for it, saying that what he had done would make
-the coachman dissatisfied with all the rest of the
-passengers, who had given him no more than his
-due.</p>
-
-<p>They stopped at Colchester a night, at an inn
-unfortunately not specified, Johnson talking of the
-town with veneration for having stood a siege for
-Charles the First.</p>
-
-<p>The last great occasion on the road, before
-railways took its traffic away, was the funeral, in
-1821, of George the Fourth's Queen. Caroline of
-Brunswick had landed at Greenwich twenty-seven
-years before: her body was embarked for Brunswick
-on August 16, 1821, after a hurried three days'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
-journey from Kensington. So many years have
-passed by since the stormy times when the nation
-was divided between partisans of the King on one
-side and the Queen on the other&mdash;both parties
-equally violent&mdash;that the long and bitter quarrels
-between the "First Gentleman in Europe" and the
-most vulgar and indiscreet princess of modern times
-have become historic, and no longer divide families,
-or cause fathers to cut their sons off with a shilling,
-as they did when the trial of the Queen was a recent
-event. George, Prince Regent and King, was no
-saint; Caroline, Princess and Queen, was at least
-odiously vulgar and utterly wanting in dignity and
-the commonest dictates of prudence. They were not
-worth quarrelling about, but their feuds were taken
-up by parties and made political missiles of, so that
-even the occasion of the Queen's funeral was made
-the excuse for a riot by her followers, who were
-indignant at seeing her remains hurried out of the
-country, as they thought, without proper respect.
-The Queen died on the 7th of August, and it was
-decided to take her body to Brunswick. "Indecent
-haste" was the expression used by the <i>Times</i> of that
-day in describing the funeral arrangements for the
-14th, but that journal was a most violent enemy of
-the then Government and had always supported the
-Queen and vilified the King as far as it could safely
-be done.</p>
-
-<p>It was proposed to complete the journey of eighty
-miles between Kensington and Harwich in two days,
-and the <i>Times</i> furiously bellowed in its reports that
-the procession was hurried through London at a trot.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
-However that may be, certainly the pace was decently
-slow when on the open road. Ilford was reached, for
-instance, at 6�15 that afternoon, but Romford, only
-five and a half miles further on, not until 7�45; an
-extravagantly slow rate of progression, even for a
-funeral. At Romford the cort�ge was met by
-sympathisers with blazing torches, who stood on
-guard round the coffin, while the wearied escort and
-the few mourners refreshed at a roadside inn.</p>
-
-<p>At eleven o'clock the journey was resumed by
-the light of a full moon which shone in splendour
-from a cloudless summer sky. Throughout the night
-they travelled, coming into Chelmsford at four o'clock
-in the morning. Here the coffin was placed in the
-church until a start was made again, seven hours later.
-At last Colchester was reached, at five o'clock in the
-afternoon, the famished escort leaving the hearse
-unguarded in the High Street, while they took their
-fill at the "Three Cups." Thus, in its squalor and
-irreverence, the passing of this Queen of England
-resembled the funeral of a pauper, without kith or
-kin.</p>
-
-<p>It had been proposed to complete the journey to
-Harwich that day, but, after violent disputes in the
-street between opposing factions, it was agreed to
-defer the departure until the next morning, and to
-deposit the coffin meanwhile in St Peter's Church.
-Inside that sacred building, disputes broke out
-afresh, one party wishing to affix a plate on the
-coffin-lid, bearing the inscription, "Caroline of
-Brunswick, the injured Queen of England," while
-the other vehemently objected. The quarrel was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
-finally settled by agreeing to postpone fixing the
-plate until after the embarkation.</p>
-
-<p>With the start made the following morning at
-half-past five, this melancholy procession leaves the
-Norwich Road, and history goes with it. The tale
-is done, the colophon reached.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXIV</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">If</span> we seek some touchstone by which to test the
-progress of a century or so in civilisation, there is
-scarce a better than found in comparison between
-the condition of the roads in old and modern times.
-That Waller could, in all sincerity, speak of "vile
-Essexian roads" is not remarkable: he was a poet, dealt
-in superlatives and lived in the seventeenth century.
-But that Arthur Young, a hundred years later, could
-with equal sincerity, and in more emphatic language,
-describe Essex roads as "rocky lanes, with ruts of
-inconceivable depth," is startling. It was in 1768 he
-penned that indictment, adding that they were
-so overgrown with trees as to be impervious to the
-sun, and strewn with stones "as big as a horse,
-and full of abominable holes." It were, he concludes,
-a misuse of language to call them turnpikes,
-for they were rich in ponds of liquid dirt; while
-loose flints and vile grips cut across to drain off
-the water made the traveller's pilgrimage a
-weariness.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The modern reader, perusing all these manifold
-sins and wickednesses of the roads, rather wonders
-how they could all have been crowded on to such
-truly vile ways, and if a stone were as big as a
-horse, how room could have been found beside it
-for holes, ponds and other objectionable features.
-But Arthur Young was a truthful man in general.</p>
-
-<p>To-day the Essex high roads are as near perfection
-as any in the home counties, even though
-the byways be steep and rough and more than
-usually winding.</p>
-
-<p>It is in these byways that he who seeks rural
-Essex shall find. The dramatic suddenness and
-completeness with which, a few hundred yards from
-the high road, the sophisticated wayside towns and
-hamlets are exchanged for the unspoiled rusticity
-of the original villages is surprising. In these lanes
-the older rustics talk and think much as their grandfathers
-did, but the rising generation unhappily do
-not, and the Essex rustic in general, like his fellows
-elsewhere, has almost wholly discarded the old dress
-of the peasantry. Only the very old or the more
-remote yet wear the smock-frock&mdash;the "round frock,"
-or the "gaberdine," as they called it&mdash;that was
-once as honourable a distinction of the ploughmen,
-herds, or carters as are the uniforms of our soldiers
-and sailors.</p>
-
-<p>The time is long past since a clean smock-frock,
-corded breeches, worsted stockings and well-greased
-lace-up boots formed the approved rural costume for
-Sundays or holidays, just as the same articles of
-apparel in a "second-best" condition made the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
-workaday wear. The Sunday costume of the agricultural
-labourer is now a cheap and clumsy travesty
-of the clothes worn by townsfolk, and in hideous
-contrast with his surroundings. Exactly what it is
-like may be seen on any advertisement hoarding in
-the outskirts of Chelmsford, Colchester and lesser
-towns, where pictorial posters bid Giles go to
-Shoddy's for cheap outfits. Sunday mornings find
-him flaunting his finery in the village street; his
-would-be stylish boots creaking, his every article of
-wear writ large with vulgarity. Often he carries
-gloves in those large hands of his, rough with
-honest week-day toil, and a pair may thus last him
-for years&mdash;for he dare not attempt to put them on.
-Would that he equally purchased his cheap cigars
-for show and refrained from smoking them!</p>
-
-<p>But there the village dandy is. Often his pocket-handkerchief
-is scented; generally his hair is glossy
-with grease; and he would not consider himself fully
-equipped without watch and chain, scarf-pin, ring
-and walking stick. To grease his boots he would
-be ashamed. <i>They</i> must be brightly polished, even
-though his manners are not, and his language defiles
-the village street what time the bells are ringing to
-church. Such is Young England in the villages at
-the dawn of the Twentieth Century. These things
-may spell Progress, but they are rather pitiful.</p>
-
-<p>It is a little difficult, in presenting a sketch of his
-ancestor of a hundred years or more ago, to avoid
-drawing too favourable a view of him; but the rustic
-in old times certainly seems to have matched much
-better with his surroundings than is the case nowadays.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>He made no attempts to dress up to town
-standards, and if he wanted to shine above his
-fellows did so by virtue of superior neatness only.
-Perhaps he had the finer instincts of the two, or
-more likely lacked the opportunities for bad taste
-that surround his descendants. Certainly, if we are
-to believe in the origin of the smock-frock, as put
-forward by some antiquaries, we must sorrowfully
-admit that the rustic's remote ancestor had as great
-a longing for unsuitable display in dress as can
-possibly be charged to the present generation. The
-smock-frock is, in fact, traced back by some to the
-ecclesiastical garments worn at Mass by deacons and
-sub-deacons, at the time when the Reformation swept
-vestments out of every village church in the land.
-Those who are familiar with genuine old smock-frocks
-have noticed the elaborate and often beautiful needlework
-on collar and breast. The devices appear to
-have a traditional likeness, all over the country, and
-consist either of Celtic-looking whorls, or of semi-decorative
-flower forms, or of lozenge patterns. The
-comparative simplicity or elaboration of this needlework
-depended solely upon the fancy, or the time at
-command, of the wearer's women-folk whose work it
-was. Whence came this tradition? It is thought
-from the tunicles of the minor clergy, which were
-certainly decorated in the same position, if not in
-similar patterns. When the minor belongings of the
-Church became the spoil of the villages, Hodge and
-Giles found themselves the proud possessors of the
-strange garments, for which they could find at first
-no better use than for Sunday wear. A striking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
-appearance they must have made in them, down the
-village street, the envy of their less fortunate fellows.</p>
-
-<p>When the looted vestments grew shabby they
-must have been used for everyday wear, and so have
-set the fashions in smock-frocks, both in shape and
-decoration, for centuries to come. If it be thought
-that the costume was rather extravagant, it can only
-be asked, is not that of the modern Sunday morning
-yokel extravagant also?</p>
-
-<p>The rustic of long ago was a man of dense ignorance
-and dark superstitions. No one county was
-then more guilty than another in that respect, but
-East Anglians, and perhaps especially the Essex
-bucolics, are still, despite their veneer of civilisation,
-sunk in uncanny beliefs. Witches still "overlook"
-folks in Essex hamlets, and spells are cast on cattle
-and horses, or unhappy fowls are blighted by the
-Evil Eye. Consequently the learned professions of
-Witch-Doctor and Wise Women are not yet extinct.
-Their existence is not likely to be discovered by the
-stranger, but they thrive, in limited numbers, even
-in these days of pills and patent medicines.</p>
-
-<p>Board Schools are supposed to be educating
-Young England into a dead monotony of speech,
-but it will be long before they complete the horrid
-work. In Essex, indeed, we may not unreasonably
-think it a task beyond the power of teachers and inspectors,
-who if they have not succeeded, after thirty
-years working of the Elementary Education Act, in
-inducing the lower-class Londoners to say "yes" for
-"yuss," together with other linguistic enormities, are
-not likely to be successful in abolishing the very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
-marked and stubborn Essex shibboleths. It may
-not generally be known that much of the so-called
-"Cockney" talk derives from the Essex
-dialect. From Essex especially comes that curious
-perversity of the unruly member which in many
-cases insists upon pronouncing the letter A as I.
-The lower-class Londoner and the Essex peasant
-are unanimous in enunciating A as I in all words
-where that letter retains its open sound and its
-individuality. Thus, in the words "baby"
-"favourite," "made" and "native," for instance, the
-letter becomes I; and the Fleet Street newsboy,
-shouting his "spusshul uxtry piper," can legitimately
-call cousins, if he wishes it, with the Essex lad at the
-plough-tail.</p>
-
-<p>Where A is sounded broadly, or in cases like the
-word "was," in which it masquerades as O, or where
-the letter is absolutely silent, or not fully pronounced,
-as in "beast" and "maternal," this peculiarity does
-not appear.</p>
-
-<p>The effect is sometimes grotesque, as, for example,
-near Colchester, where the villages of Layer
-Marney, Layer Breton, and Layer de la Hay are
-always spoken of as Liyer, the last mentioned
-becoming Liyer de la High.</p>
-
-<p>Nor is pronunciation the only singular feature
-of Essex talk, as those who keep their ears alert
-in these parts will soon find. The oddest phrases
-are matters of everyday use, and the Essex peasant
-can no more help using the word "together," in
-season and out, than he can help being hungry
-before meals or sleepy by bedtime. "Together," as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
-employed by the Essex peasant, is a word absolutely
-meaningless; a kind of linguistic excrescence which,
-like a wart or a boil, is neither useful nor beautiful.
-When a ploughman says he is going to plough
-"that there field together," he does not mean to
-imply that he is about to plough it together with
-some other land, or with a party of other ploughmen.
-He simply adds the word from force of habit, and
-from hearing his father and grandfather before him
-so use it, in almost every sentence, as a sort of
-verbal makeweight. The present writer has had
-the good fortune to hear a supremely ludicrous
-use of this B&oelig;otian habit of speech. It was market-day
-at Colchester, and Stanway village had emptied
-itself in the direction of the town. A dog rolled
-dustily in the sunny road, and the historian of
-these things luxuriously quaffed his "large lemon"
-on the bench outside the village inn. As Artemus
-Ward might have said, "orl was peas," when there
-entered upon the scene a countryman, evidently
-known to the landlord. He walked into the bar,
-and, surprised to find mine host in solitary state,
-exclaimed, "What, all alone together, bor?"</p>
-
-<p>"Yes," replied the landlord, in no wise astonished
-at this extraordinary expression, "the missus has
-gone to Colchester together."</p>
-
-<p>"Did my missus go with her?" asked the
-rustic.</p>
-
-<p>"No," rejoined the landlord, "she went by
-herself."</p>
-
-<p>In this countryman's talk we find a word belonging
-more especially to Norfolk and Suffolk.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
-This is the word, "bor," a diminutive for
-neighbour.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXV</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Stanway</span> is approached along a flat stretch, past
-Mark's Tey, which, without being itself quite on
-the road, has sent out modern and extremely ugly
-brick tentacles to line the way. For an incredible
-distance along the flat the timber tower of Mark's
-Tey church is visible, amid an inchoate mass
-of railway signal masts and puffs of smoke.
-Whistlings, screechings, crashings and rumblings
-proceed from that direction, for this is a junction
-of the Great Eastern with the Colne Valley Railway,
-and the station, by the way, where the lady in
-Thackeray's <i>Lamentable Ballad of the Foundling
-of Shoreditch</i> appeared with the baby which she
-eventually left behind her. It is this busy junction
-that has caused the hideous outcrop of mean houses
-along the road to render the village of the old De
-Marcas something new and strange. Mark's Tey
-is at a junction of roads as well as of rails, for the
-road from Braintree and Bishop's Stortford falls in
-here.</p>
-
-<p>Copford's solitary houses by the way give scarce a
-hint of the village nearly a mile off, whose little
-church formerly owned a terrifying relic, in the
-shape of a human skin nailed on its door; a skin
-that had been the personal property of some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
-unfortunate straggler from the hordes of marauding
-Danes that once infested the district, of
-whom we have already heard legends at Kelvedon
-and Gore Pit. His Saxon captors must have flayed
-him with a ferocious delight and nailed up his
-cuticle with precisely the same satisfaction as that
-of the gamekeeper who wages war upon stoats and
-weazels and other vermin, and hangs their bodies
-on the barn door. But there must have been a
-bitter day of reckoning for those Saxons when the
-sea-rovers came this way again and saw in what
-fashion that doorway was decorated.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus57">
-<img src="images/fig47.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">Near Mark's Tey.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Copford and its outlying houses lie at the crest
-of a gentle descent into the valley of a rivulet
-which finds its way into the Colne. It stands, as
-its name implies, overlooking some ford which,
-once important, has, in the gradual draining of
-the country and the shrinkage of streams, now
-lost all significance. Stanway adjoins it, and lies
-along the descent, in the hollow and up the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
-corresponding rise on the other side, where its
-church stands in a forbidding loneliness. The name
-of Stanway is sufficient warranty of this being, thus
-far, the Roman road. It is, however, not so certain
-that the remaining four miles of the existing highway
-from this point into Colchester follow the course
-taken by the Romans; and, indeed, the later researches
-of arch�ologists go far to prove that the
-original way into Roman Colchester avoided the intervening
-village of Lexden altogether, and, curving
-eastwards, avoided what may then have been a
-marsh, to take the higher ground over a portion of
-Lexden Heath; bending westwards again and
-crossing the site of the present road between where
-the grammar school and the hospital now stand.
-From this point it seems to have crossed by where
-the Lordsland Nursery grounds stood until recently
-built over, to the ancient Roman gateway and
-bastion in the western wall of the town, long known
-as Colking's, or King Coel's Castle, but originally the
-Decuman Gate of Roman times. The course
-followed by this old Roman way is lined on either
-side with sepulchral remains, and seems to have
-once been a great cemetery. Wherever the ground
-is disturbed the relics of some soldier or citizen of
-Colonia are found, some dating back to the foundation
-of the colony, nearly nineteen centuries ago.
-The most remarkable among them are to be seen in
-the museum at Colchester Castle. There&mdash;the most
-human relic of them all&mdash;is the touching monument
-to M. Favonius, a Centurion of the Twentieth Legion,
-discovered in 1871 between the hospital and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
-grammar school, at a depth of 3 feet below the
-surface, and at a distance of 10 feet from the old
-Roman road. It is a sculptured stone, 4 feet in
-height, with the figure of the Centurion himself
-carved on it, in high relief. It is evidently a
-portrait of him. He stands in full military costume,
-his cloak hanging from his shoulders, his sword and
-dagger by his side. The inscription, almost as sharp
-as on the day when it was cut, nearly nineteen
-hundred years ago, tells us that the monument was
-erected by two of his servants, Verecundus and
-Novicius. They call him "facilis," the "easy" or
-"good-natured." It is surely a sweet and touching
-thing that when all other record of that soldier has
-perished, we should yet know him to have been a
-kindly creature.</p>
-
-<p>But to return to Stanway, which keeps, as sole
-vestige of its heath, a little space of the greenest
-turf, perhaps half an acre in extent, beside the insignificant
-stream in the hollow, and opposite the
-"Swan" Inn. The heath that formerly spread out
-across the elevated but flat table-land between this
-village and the succeeding one of Lexden was, in its
-different parts, variously named after them. On
-Stanway Heath, in Ogilby's <i>Britannia</i> of 1697, a
-picture map shows a beacon standing between the
-forty-seventh and forty-eighth milestones from
-London, on the right-hand side of the road. It
-appears to have been a post some 30 feet in height,
-crowned with a fire-bucket, and climbed by means
-of slats nailed across. The beacon, thus easily
-lighted, was provided for the benefit of travellers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
-going to or coming from Colchester across the
-desolate heath, whose dangers may be guessed from
-the existence of a "Cut-throat Lane" even in the
-comparative security of Lexden village. The heath
-by the highway is a thing of the past, for those
-portions not brought under cultivation by the farmer
-have been grabbed by the builder, and the so-called
-Lexden Heath of to-day is a quite recent row of
-houses, with a post-office, and shops, and everything
-complete and modern. At the forty-eighth milestone,
-amid all this modern upheaval, stands a
-disused toll-house, and, close by, something much
-more ancient; the deep, pre-historic hollow, smothered
-in dense woods and shrubs, known as "King Cole's
-Kitchen," and now&mdash;figure to yourself the shame of
-it!&mdash;overshadowed by a cottage, new built, and
-named from it "King Cole's Cottage."</p>
-
-<p>Turning off to the right, the curious in things
-pre-historic may lose themselves in the solitudes of
-the real Lexden Heath, where the Devil, the Trinobantes,
-the Romans, or Fairfax, the Parliamentary
-General&mdash;according to varying legends&mdash;threw up
-the entrenchments, and delved the ditches, found
-there in plenty. The Devil, we say advisedly, for
-"Gryme," or "Grim," whose name is attached to
-the dyke across the heath, was none other, in the
-minds of the Saxons. "Lexden Straight Road"
-follows for an unconscionable distance a line of
-Roman entrenchments, and is straight and dull
-beyond belief. Followed long enough, it leads to
-"Bottle End," which may originally have been
-"Battle End," the scene of some traditional legend<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
-of Boadicea's defeat at the hands of the Romans.
-Or, again, it perhaps marks some forgotten connection
-with St Botolph, whose ruined Abbey stands outside
-Colchester's walls, and whose honoured name is pronounced
-"Bottle" by Colcestrians. Anything is
-possible in a district where Beacon End, the site
-of the old beacon already mentioned, has become
-Bacon End.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus58">
-<img src="images/fig48.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">LEXDEN.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Lexden village now claims attention. It is a
-place in which one school of antiquaries finds the
-original Roman station of Camulodunum, established
-on the site of the royal city of Cunobelin, King of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
-the Trinobantes; a finding strenuously contested by
-another following. Certainly, among the tall elms
-and rolling surface of Lexden Park there are remains
-in plenty of huge defensive earthworks, telling in no
-uncertain manner that this must have been a place of
-enormous strength, by whomsoever held. The surroundings
-are weird and impressive to a degree.</p>
-
-<p>The village skirting the road is one of the
-prettiest on the way. Going towards Colchester,
-the road drops down the hill, where old cottages
-stand high above the pathway, with steep little
-gardens in front, kept from sliding down into the
-road itself by lichened retaining-walls sprouting
-with house-leek and draped with climbing plants.
-Lower still, hard by the church whose carpenter-Gothic
-atrocities are hung about with ivy and
-creepers until they are transfigured into a dream
-of beauty, the grouping of the 'Sun' Inn and
-neighbouring houses is exquisite. Beyond this
-point begins the suburban approach to Colchester,
-a town it behoves the stranger to approach with a
-proper respect, for here was the first Roman colony
-in Britain. The history of Colchester, indeed,
-begins so far back as <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 44, and there was already
-a pre-historic native city in existence before then;
-the royal city of that ancient British king, Cunobelin,
-the monarch famous in the pages of Shakespeare as
-"Cymbeline."</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXVI</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Cunobelin</span>, Lord of the Trinobantes, ruler of that
-part of the country now divided into Middlesex,
-Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hunts, Cambridgeshire
-and Essex, was the successor of his father
-Cassivelaunus, who had warred, not ingloriously,
-with Julius C�sar. He transferred his capital from
-his native town on the site of St Albans to where
-Colchester now stands. He appears to have been a
-powerful ruler, and, if little is known of him,
-certainly he is no myth, for the vague legends
-that held the name of the Buckinghamshire villages
-of Great and Little Kimble to be a corrupted form
-of his own were strikingly proved correct some years
-ago, when a hoard of gold coins was ploughed up in
-their neighbourhood, bearing his title.</p>
-
-<p>We do not know by what name Colchester was
-then styled. After Cunobelin had died, full of
-years and worn by grief at the revolts of his sons,
-Caractacus, Adminius and Togodumnus, the end of
-the native State over which he had ruled speedily
-came. Adminius, in a fury against his brothers,
-fled from Britain to seek the aid of the Romans,
-and if no immediate result came, certainly his
-invitation must have revived the old C�sarian
-dream of conquest. The real cause of the Roman
-invasion that took place shortly after the death of
-Cunobelin was the solicitation of a certain Bericus,
-a British Prince of whom nothing appears to be
-known beyond this one fact.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The invasion took place in <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 43, under that
-able general, Aulus Plautius, who threw the Trinobantes
-back from Hertfordshire and Middlesex,
-across the Lea and into the Essex marshes, where
-for a time they could not be followed. This was
-the position at the close of the year. Detached
-portions of the invading forces had overrun the
-south of Britain as far as Gloucester and had
-defeated the tribes on the way; leaving a garrison
-in the west. But the island was little known and
-held many mysteries. None could tell the real
-strength of the natives, who disappeared in the
-forests and marshes that covered the face of the
-land, and by their irregular warfare disconcerted
-the Roman plans of campaign. Plautius was at
-last driven to act on the defensive on the Essex
-borders. His soldiers were dying in the ague-stricken
-morasses between the Thames and the Lea,
-and had the enemy possessed powers of combination
-and military skill, he might well have been cut off
-here, at the end of the known world. A retirement
-with his sick and dying was impossible. Nothing
-remained but to go into camp during the winter,
-and meanwhile to send for reinforcements. He
-accordingly sent for forces from Gaul. They came
-with commendable promptitude, commanded by the
-Emperor Claudius in person. With these new
-legions came an elephant corps, brought from
-Africa to carry the heavy baggage. But they acted
-a better part than this, for their strange appearance
-terrified the astonished Trinobantes a great deal
-more than any increase of the Roman soldiery could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
-have done. We may imagine this corps, crashing
-irresistibly through the thickets, the forests and
-marshes on that march into the Unknown, along
-this line of country now traversed by the Norwich
-Road, and can readily understand little resistance
-being met with on the way. The tribes were dispersed
-and their territory occupied as far as the
-Stour, and a colony was founded in the opening of
-the new year, <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 44, on the site of Cunobelin's city&mdash;Colonia
-Camulodunum, the first Roman settlement
-in Britain.</p>
-
-<p>The Romans had so easily overcome the resistance
-of the natives that they were soon lulled into a
-feeling of security. For an uninterrupted space of
-sixteen years Colonia grew and prospered. It
-became a pleasant town, inhabited by veteran soldiers
-grown grey in the service of the Empire, and
-spending their later years in retirement. The
-Emperor Claudius, flushed with his success, had
-assumed the dignity of a god and had caused a
-Temple to be erected in the market-place to his
-honour, with attendant priests and altars. The
-governors and consuls were lesser gods, and treated
-with contempt and ill-judged severity the natives
-who had been overcome with such ease. The
-soldiery were uniformly brutal. Degeneracy and
-luxury flourished together with this attitude of
-oppression, and the town wholly lacked defences.
-It is not surprising that these colonists were bitterly
-hated by their vassals, who in especial looked upon
-the priests as so many harpies living upon their
-substance, and were so in fact, just as all priesthoods<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
-and all clergy have been from the beginning, and
-will be to the end. In this last respect these poor
-Trinobantes, these wretched barbarians, exhibited a
-quite surprising discernment, not equalled by the
-priest-ridden centuries of culture and enlightenment
-that have since passed.</p>
-
-<p>These down-trodden natives were already ripe
-for revenge when a more than usually unjust proceeding
-of the Roman officials precipitated a rising.
-The Iceni, who inhabited Norfolk and Suffolk, and
-whose frontiers marched with those of the conquered
-province, had been ruled over by a certain King
-Prasutagus. Dying, he had hoped to propitiate the
-goodwill of the Roman officials by dividing the vast
-wealth he had accumulated, leaving one half to the
-Roman Emperor and the other moiety to his two
-daughters. But he was no sooner dead than his
-country was invaded. His widow, the famous
-Boadicea, resisted. She was publicly scourged, her
-daughters suffering the worst indignities, and her
-relatives sold into slavery. The whole nation rose
-in arms at these outrages, and their cousins, the
-Trinobantes, on the hither side of the Stour, joined
-them. The Romans saw their folly when too late.
-No more eloquent account is possible than that
-given by Tacitus of the premonitions of evil. The
-statue of Victory fell to the ground, and turned its
-back where the face had been, as if it fled before
-an enemy. Women were seen and heard singing
-mad, wild songs, prophesying disaster. Strange and
-unaccountable noises were heard in the house of
-assembly, and loud howlings in the theatre. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
-the estuary of the river the buildings of the city
-appeared reflected upside down, and ghastly remains
-of human bodies were seen in the ooze when the tide
-ebbed. The sea assumed the colour of blood, and
-the strangest whisperings stirred the air. Many of
-the wealthier colonists, alarmed at these portents,
-discovered that their health needed a change of air,
-and went for a holiday into Gaul, on the other side
-of the Channel, and those who remained applied for
-military help. In answer to this appeal, a meagre
-force of two hundred men was sent, and immediately
-employed to fortify the Temple. But before these
-measures could be completed, the town was surrounded
-and taken; the houses burnt and the inhabitants
-all slain, the little garrison in the Temple
-meeting a like fate after a defence of two days.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, Petilius Cerealis, commanding the
-Ninth Legion, which had been stationed on the
-Icenian frontier near where Mount Bures now
-stands, advanced to the aid of the doomed city.
-He, however, had moved too late, and met the
-victorious natives at Wormingford, where they
-almost entirely annihilated his forces. The evidences
-of that great disaster were discovered in
-1836, when parallel rows of funeral urns, placed in
-order like streets, were unearthed, containing the
-bones of the lost legion gathered and burnt after the
-Roman sway had been reasserted.</p>
-
-<p>These events happened in <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 61. Suetonius
-Paulinus, the then Commander-in-Chief, was at that
-time vigorously prosecuting a war with the Druids
-in the Isle of Anglesey, but on hearing of these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
-disasters he hurried back through Verulamium and
-Londinium, collecting an army of ten thousand as
-he went. The whole of the south was aflame, and
-a numerous enemy hung on his flanks. The Roman
-citizens of both those towns piteously begged for
-protection, but were left to their fate, which was not
-long in doubt, for no sooner had the flying column
-passed than the tribes fell upon and utterly destroyed
-them. Seventy thousand citizens perished
-in that general massacre.</p>
-
-<p>It is uncertain where the Roman army met the
-hordes commanded by that heroic Amazon, Boadicea,
-whom we should perhaps more correctly style
-"Boduoca." The British Queen is a deadly dull
-subject in the hands of the uninspired, who fail to
-render her "convincing." No one has done so well
-as Dion Cassius, who singularly resembles modern
-writers of "personal paragraphs" in what recent
-slang would term his "actuality." He says, "she
-was very tall, grim in appearance, keen-eyed, harsh-voiced,
-with a wealth of exceedingly yellow hair
-falling below her waist" (her golden hair was
-hanging down her back!), "wearing a highly-embroidered
-tunic and a thick cloak fastened with a
-buckle over it."</p>
-
-<p>Tacitus describes the scene of battle as flanked by
-two woods, on a site resembling a stretch of country
-at Haynes Green, near Messing; but the great fight
-must have raged on many miles of ground, and no
-doubt included Lexden Heath.</p>
-
-<p>The Britons were so sure of victory, that they
-had brought their women and children as spectators,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
-and ranged them, seated in waggons, in a great
-semi-circle commanding the battlefield. The Roman
-historian says they were an "innumerable multitude."
-The British Queen, addressing her warriors
-from her chariot, called upon them to conquer or to
-die, resting her hopes on the strength of her forces
-and the justice of her cause; while Suetonius, on his
-part, urged his troops not to be dismayed either by
-the numbers of the enemy or their furious shouts.
-The British attacked, the Romans at first remaining
-on the defensive. When the fury of the first
-onslaught was exhausted, the foot soldiers of the
-Empire advanced in a wedge-like formation, the
-cavalry closing in on the flanks, driving the speedily
-disorganised enemy back upon the semi-circle of
-waggons, which cut off their retreat. Penned up in
-this way, the battle degenerated into a massacre, in
-which eighty thousand Britons were slain, including
-the women and children who had come out to witness
-the fortunes of the day. The unhappy queen, seeing
-all lost, poisoned herself.</p>
-
-<p>Thus ended the British rule over Norfolk and
-Suffolk. From this time date the existing walls
-of Colchester. The conquerors were determined not
-to risk a repetition of the destruction of their first
-colony, and, choosing a new site, one mile to the
-east of the former city, they planted their walls on
-the ridge on which Colchester now stands, overlooking
-the valley of the Colne. These walls, enclosing
-an area of 1000 by 600 yards, still remain,
-after the passing of more than eighteen hundred
-years, the most perfect Roman fortifications in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
-Britain. Even in that wide space of time the town
-of Colchester has not extended very greatly beyond
-them. In some directions, indeed&mdash;notably to the
-north and north-east and on the west&mdash;the ramparts
-still look out upon the open country. The walls
-have a thickness of from seven to eight feet, and
-are built of red Roman tiles, alternating with courses
-of stones, brought with great labour from the coast
-near Harwich; the neighbourhood of Colchester, and
-Essex in general, being quite innocent of stone of
-any kind. Harwich and the seashore even to this
-day supply the boulders of limestone from which
-the building-stones of Colchester's walls were cut.</p>
-
-<p>Colchester was never again attacked during the
-period of more than three hundred years, in which
-the Romans ruled. In the events of <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 61, they
-had learnt the double lesson of being armed and of
-treating a foe, once conquered, with generosity. In
-the period between these events and the year 410,
-when the Imperial forces were withdrawn from
-Britain to help save the heart of the Empire from
-ruin, conquered and conquerors had to live together,
-and made the best of the necessity. Roman colonists
-intermarried with the gradually Romanised British,
-and the race of Romano-Britons thus created, during
-three centuries, gradually grew to look upon Britain
-as their home and themselves as a nation. Thus,
-towards the end, usurpers of the Imperial authority
-are found setting up as independent sovereigns, and
-civilised British princes treating on equal terms with
-Roman statesmen. In this way the British in some
-measure came into their own again, and to these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
-circumstances we owe the wild legends of that
-mysterious monarch, "old King Cole," who is to
-Colchester what King Arthur is to Cornwall, the
-great local hero. "Colking's Castle," on Colchester's
-walls, and the earthworks near Lexden known as
-"King Cole's Kitchen"; nay, the very name of
-Colchester itself&mdash;"Cole's Chester," or castle, derive,
-according to legends, from this scarce more than
-mythical personage. Those stories make him one
-Coel, or Collius, the last of a line of semi-independent
-British kings who were allowed to retain a nominal
-sovereignty after Cunobelin's death and the Roman
-conquest. The story goes on to tell how, on the
-death of the usurper Carausius, in <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 293, Coel
-surrendered the country to the Emperor Constantius
-Chlorus, on that successor of the C�sar's marrying
-his daughter Helena, who became the mother of
-Constantine the Great, and was also the discoverer
-of the true Cross at Jerusalem. The arms of
-Colchester still bear a ragged cross between four
-crowns, in allusion to this tale of the Empress
-Helena; and in earnest that this is a distinction
-which Colchester will not willingly lose, an effigy
-of her, holding a cross very plain to see, is newly
-set up on the very topmost point of the gorgeous
-new Town Hall, recently completed.</p>
-
-<p>To that most untruthful of chroniclers, Geoffrey
-of Monmouth, the legend of Coel is chiefly traced.
-He may either have imagined it, or have woven the
-story out of existing legends, which had in turn
-derived from the Saxons, who, after the departure
-of the Romans, had wrested the country from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
-Romanised British. They captured and burnt the
-town of Colonia, and wondering at its massive walls,
-took them to have been the work of some great king,
-after whom the place had been named. Legends
-of Cole soon sprang up, and by the time the Saxons
-themselves had been converted to Christianity he
-was fully provided with a history.</p>
-
-<p>"Old King Cole," as the founder of Cole's-ceaster,
-has been shabbily treated in modern times and made
-to figure merely as a jolly toper. That he was the
-most convivial of monarchs the song most emphatically
-assures us.</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"He called for his pipe, he called for his glass, he called for</span><br />
-<span class="i2m">his fiddlers three."</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Nothing, if you please, more than the veriest pot-house
-potentate! The author of that nursery rhyme
-has degraded Cole as much as Mark Twain did the
-romantic wielder of Excalibur in that monument of
-vulgarity, <i>A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur</i>.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXVII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> entrance into Colchester is singular. From the
-straight, broad road leading past the trim modern
-villas and so into Crouch Street&mdash;the street outside
-the walls that takes its name from the vanished
-monastery of the Crutched, Crossed or Crouched Friars&mdash;the
-wayfarer suddenly comes to the sharpest of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
-angles, and, turning abruptly to the left, enters
-Colchester by what has every appearance of being
-the back door into the town.</p>
-
-<p>Historically considered, the entrance by crooked
-Head Street, as the continuation of Crouch Street is
-called, really is a back way, and was in Roman times
-the site of a gate leading to one of the southern and
-less important roads. But ever since Saxon days
-this has been the only way to or from London into
-the town.</p>
-
-<p>How it happened that the original road and the
-Decuman Gate in Colchester's west wall fell into
-disuse, none can tell. It was so many ages ago that
-not even a pathway leads along the ancient way,
-now quite obliterated by houses. But if the road
-be gone, the Gate itself remains, though in ruins.
-Let us, before entering Colchester, attempt to find
-it. To do so, it will be necessary to retrace our
-steps a little distance along Crouch Street, and, so
-doing, to take a turning to the right-hand, down
-Balkerne Lane. The first sign of ancient Rome is
-seen where the Church of St Mary-at-the-Wall stands
-towering above a flight of steps leading up into the
-street beyond. There stands revealed a portion of
-the wall. The breach in it, through which the steps
-lead, was once a postern gate. Overhung with trees,
-the freshness of whose spring foliage with every recurrent
-April forms a romantic contrast with the
-almost immeasurably old of the riven wall, this is a
-place for thought. From the summit of that old
-defence, where once the legionaries lined the battlements
-in time of peril, or leaned gossiping in peaceful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
-days, one looks down over roof-tops into the valley
-where the railway runs, and wishes for a momentary
-lifting of the veil and a glimpse of what the spot will
-be like in another eighteen hundred years. Close
-by, a hoary mass of brick and tile and weather-worn
-courses of septaria are the remains of the Roman
-Gate. Three arches can be traced; the middle arch
-of eleven feet span, the side ones, for foot passengers,
-less than half that width. Candour, however,
-compels the admission that of architectural character
-they have not the slightest trace. Over against
-this relic stands an inn known as the "Hole in
-the Wall," although that is not its actual sign; and
-through that hole the most prominent object in all
-Colchester looms red and horrid. "Jumbo" brutally
-dominates everything, and blasts the approach to
-Colchester far away on every road but that from
-London, for which small mercy thanks be given.
-Who, you ask, is Jumbo? He is not Roman, but he
-is very big, very ugly, and very prominent; and,
-unluckily, cannot fail to be seen. After him, even
-the Roman remains of Colchester pale their ineffectual
-efforts at pre-eminence. It is conceivable,
-although not very likely, that a stranger passing
-through Colchester might not notice its Roman
-antiquities, but Jumbo will not be denied. There
-he is, crowning the highest point in the town, shameless
-in brick of the most striking red and in attempts
-at decoration which, however well meant, only serve
-to render his hulking body more objectionable, with
-an effect as though a navvy were to adorn his rugged
-face with pearl-powder.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Jumbo, let it be explained, is the modern water-tower
-of Colchester's waterworks. It was built in
-1881, and cost close upon �10,500, and there are
-those who say it is the second largest of its kind in
-England. Where the largest may be we know not,
-but if it injures its surroundings as effectually as
-does Colchester's incubus, that unknown place has
-our sympathies. Jumbo is shameless and rejoices in
-his name, for, as the curious may see for themselves,
-his weather-vane bears the effigy of an elephant.</p>
-
-<p>Returning to Crouch Street, and so by Head
-Gate and along Head Street, the High Street is
-gained. It is one of the broadest and most spacious
-streets in the kingdom, as it had every occasion to
-be, for it was not only part of the great road leading
-into Suffolk, but in it was held the principal fair of
-the town. Here, too, close by where Colchester's
-new and gorgeous Town Hall stands, was the old
-Moot Hall, a building of Saxon, Norman and later
-periods, barbarously destroyed in 1843. In the
-Moot Hall the Mayor and justices dealt with offences
-of all kinds, from the selling of bad meat to charges
-of witchcraft, sorcery and heresy. Thus we may
-read in the borough records of things so diverse as
-the fining of Robert Barefot, butcher, in the sum of
-twelve pence for selling putrid meat, and may learn
-how William Chevelying, the first of the Colchester
-martyrs, was imprisoned here in the reign of Henry
-the Sixth until such time as it was convenient to
-burn him in front of Colkyng's Castle. Here the
-local Court of Pie Powder was held during the
-Corporation Fair Days, in October. Summary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
-jurisdiction was the special feature of that Court,
-and it was needed, for in those times, when people
-of all sorts and conditions came from far and near,
-offences were many and various. In the legal jargon
-of the Middle Ages this tribunal is called the <i>Curia
-Regis Pedis Pulverizatis</i>, or, in the Norman-French
-then common, the "Cour Royal des Pieds Poudr�s,"
-that is to say, the King's Court of Dusty Feet.
-Courts of Pie Powder obtained this eminently descriptive
-name from the original Fair Courts, held in
-the dusty streets long before buildings were erected
-for the purpose, and the name survived long after
-the necessity which originated it had disappeared.
-Imagine, therefore, the highwaymen, the cheats and
-thieves and those who came into disputation on the
-Fair Days being brought before the Mayor by the
-bailiffs, their cases arising and being heard, and judgments
-and sentences being delivered and executed,
-within the space of one day, amid the bleating of the
-flocks, the lowing of the herds, and all the noise and
-tumult of the Fair itself. We must not, however,
-suppose the High Street to have been absolutely
-clear of obstructions in days of old. In midst of
-it stood the Late Saxon or Early Norman church of
-that Saxon saint, St Runwald, which remained here
-until so recently as 1878, when it was pulled down
-and its site sold to the Corporation, to be thrown
-into the roadway.</p>
-
-<p>That Colchester stands on a considerably elevated
-site is evident to all who, having entered from the
-London road, turn out of Head Street into the High
-Street, and in doing so glimpse the long descent of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
-North Hill at the corner. A further revelation is
-that of East Hill, which, in continuation of High
-Street, the traveller must long and steeply descend
-towards the Colne, on his way to Ipswich and
-Norwich. It was in High Street that Colchester's
-principal coaching inns were situated, and there yet
-remains&mdash;now the most picturesque feature of that
-thoroughfare&mdash;the "Red Lion," with old timber
-brackets supporting a projecting upper storey and a
-four-centred Tudor oak entrance curiously carved; its
-original and restored portions so thickly smeared
-with paint and varnish that all might be old, so far
-as the antiquary can tell, or all might be in the
-nature of Wardour Street antiques. The "Red
-Lion" figured as a rendezvous in the surrender of
-the town to Fairfax, after the siege of 1648. In its
-yard the vanquished laid down their swords.</p>
-
-<p>Another inn was the "White Hart," where Bank
-Passage leaves the High Street. The building, a
-highly respectable plaster-faced one, smug and
-Georgian, still stands, but it is an inn no longer.
-Another old inn, the "Three Cups," has been rebuilt.
-Older than any, but coyly hiding its antiquarian
-virtues of chamfered oaken beams and quaint galleries
-from the crowd, is the "Angel," in West Stockwell
-Street, whose origin as a pilgrim's inn is vouched
-for. Weary suppliants to, or returning from, the
-shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, far away on the
-road through and past Norwich, housed here and
-misbehaved themselves in their medi�val way. It
-would be the gravest of mistakes to assume old
-pilgrims decorous. Modern Bank Holiday folks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
-would, compared with them, seem to be of a severe
-monkish austerity. The shrine at Walsingham,
-second only in repute to that of the Blessed Thomas
-at Canterbury, drew crowds of every class, from
-king to beggar. The great Benedictine Abbey of
-St John at Colchester sheltered some in its guest-houses,
-while the late-comers inned at such hostelries
-as the "Angel," or, if the weather were propitious,
-lay in the woods. Ill fared the unsuspecting citizen
-who met any of these sinners on the way to be
-plenarily indulged and lightened of their load of sin.
-They would murder him for twopence or cudgel him
-out of high spirits and for the fun of the thing;
-arguing, doubtless, that as they were presently to
-turn over a new leaf, it mattered little how black
-the old one was. Drunkenness and crime, immorality,
-obscenity and license of the grossest kind
-were in fact accompaniments of pilgrimage, and the
-sin-worn wanderers who prayed devoutly at the
-niche, now empty of its statue, in the east end of
-All Saints' Church in the High Street, on their
-journey to and from Walsingham, would resume
-their foul jests and their evil courses so soon as
-the last bead was told and the ultimate word of
-dog-Latin glibly pattered off.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXVIII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Removed</span> from all the noise and bustle of the High
-Street, in a quiet nook away from the modern life of
-the town, stands Colchester Castle, on the site of the
-Temple of Claudius. The Keep, built by Eudo,
-"Dapifer," or High Steward of Normandy, under
-William the Conqueror and his two successors, alone
-remains, and has lost its upper storey, destroyed by a
-speculator who bought the building in 1683, and half
-ruined himself in his attempts to demolish it. It is
-perhaps not generally known that this is by far the
-largest keep in England, measuring 155 ft. by 113 ft.
-The Tower of London, built at the same period, and
-the next largest, measures only 116 ft. by 96 ft.
-There have been those who, looking at its massive
-walls, 12 ft. thick, with courses of Roman tiles
-conspicuous in them, have believed this to be the
-original Roman temple, and antiquaries who should
-have known better have written long treatises to
-support their views. Those, however, were the days
-before comparative arch�ology had come into being
-to prove that the peculiarities in the planning, noticeable
-here, are partaken of by the undoubted Norman
-keeps of the Tower of London and of Rochester
-Castle, known to have been designed by Gundulf,
-Bishop of Rochester. Freeman was very severe in
-his time on those who labelled the interior of
-Colchester keep with such names as "podium" and
-"adytum," in their belief of its Roman character.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus59">
-<img src="images/fig49.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE GRAND STAIRCASE, COLCHESTER CASTLE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>If its lack of height prevents Colchester Castle
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>from being impressive without, certainly its gloomy
-dungeons and mighty walls compel the respect and
-wonder of all who enter. They look not so much as
-though they had been built up, as though cells and
-passages had been carved and burrowed out of a solid
-mass; so small are those passages and staircases, so
-thick the walls. In the chapel and the corridors that
-still remain roofed, the collections of the Essex
-Arch�ological Society have a home, and from other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
-and roofless walls that are broad enough to afford the
-safest of pathways one may gaze down upon the
-surrounding grassy enclosures and see that spot
-where those two Royalist commanders, Lucas and
-Lisle, who held Colchester for seventy-six days
-against the besieging army of the Parliament in
-1648, were barbarously shot by order of Fairfax,
-after having surrendered.</p>
-
-<p>That siege of Colchester is the most romantic
-incident that has survived in the history of the
-town. It is the story of a last desperate attempt of
-the Royalists to contend with the Parliamentary
-forces that had everywhere overwhelmed the King's
-supporters after a bitter warfare of over six years.
-It was a gallant attempt, and the more so because
-Essex was not a county favourable to the King's
-cause. Sir Charles Lucas, at the head of this enterprise,
-was a younger member of the Lucas family,
-seated at Colchester. In the beginning of June
-1648, a Royalist rising under Colonel Goring had
-been checked at Blackheath by the Parliamentary
-general, Fairfax. A portion of Goring's force crossed
-the Thames into Essex, and lay at Brentwood. This
-was an opportunity which Essex sympathisers could
-not let slip. Lucas and his friends, gathering a body
-of adherents, galloped down the road to Chelmsford,
-where the Committee of Parliament was in session,
-and seized them, afterwards continuing their progress
-to Brentwood, where they effected a junction with
-Goring's band. Their forces thus united, a counter-march
-was made upon Chelmsford again, and continued
-to Colchester; Lord Capel, Sir George Lisle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
-and many others joining on the way. On June 12,
-Goring, in command of this body of four thousand
-Royalists, approached Colchester, and found the Head
-Gate closed against him by the unsympathetic
-citizens, but a slight skirmish soon enabled him to
-force an entrance. He had not intended to remain
-at Colchester, but the swift pursuit that Fairfax
-organised from London gave the Royalists no time
-to continue their projected march into the Midlands.
-The day after Goring had entered Colchester, Fairfax
-had assembled his forces on Lexden Heath, and
-immediately sent a trumpeter to demand surrender.
-The inevitable refusal was the signal for a battle outside
-the town, on the London Road; a contest which
-resulted in the retirement of the Royalists within the
-walls. The Head Gate still existed, its bolts and bars
-in perfect order, but as the Royalists fell back through
-it into the town, two hundred or more of the Parliamentary
-troops dashed through in pursuit. Their
-ardour cost them their lives, for Lord Capel at the
-head of a determined band pushed back the gate
-upon the bulk of the enemy, thrusting his walking-stick
-through the staples as the door closed. The
-eager advance-guard, thus cooped up within the
-walls, were all slain.</p>
-
-<p>Preparations were now made on both sides for a
-siege. Fairfax had already lost many men, and
-dared not attempt to carry the town by storm. His
-plan was to surround Colchester and imprison the
-Royalists there until such time as his heavy ordnance
-or starvation should compel them to surrender.
-With his command of reinforcements from London,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
-and his ability thus to enclose the town with a
-cordon of troops, the position of the Royalists was
-hopeless, and it is to their honour and credit that,
-in order to contain Fairfax's large army and so
-give opportunities to the organisers of Royalist
-movements in the Midlands, they continued the
-defence in the face of starvation and despite the easy
-terms of capitulation at first offered them. Their
-domestic position (so to call it) in the town was
-unenviable, for the inhabitants were wholly opposed
-to their cause. They had with them, it is true, the
-members of the Parliamentary Committee whom
-they had kidnapped from Chelmsford, but those
-gentlemen were a nuisance and had to be civilly
-treated and fed while the Royalists themselves went
-hungry. The unfortunate inhabitants, too, were
-starving, and many of their houses and churches
-destroyed by the besiegers' cannon shot; while
-suburbs were burnt down outside the walls.</p>
-
-<p>The end of this long agony came on August
-27, when the town was surrendered; the officers
-"surrendering to mercy," the lesser officers and rank
-and file with an assurance that their lives and
-personal belongings should be spared. Seventy-five
-superior officers accordingly gave up their arms at
-the "King's Head" inn. Four of them were to be
-tried by court-martial. One escaped, one was
-pardoned, and two&mdash;Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George
-Lisle&mdash;condemned to be shot without delay, on a
-disproved charge of having once broken their parole
-when formerly prisoners of war. In vain asking for
-time to make some final disposition of their affairs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
-these two officers were executed the same evening,
-on a grassy spot a few paces clear of the north wall
-of the old castle. Sir Charles Lucas was the first to
-be shot, and met his end as a brave, gallant gentleman
-should. "I have often faced death on the field
-of battle," he said, "and you shall now see how I dare
-to die." Then he knelt in prayer, and, rising, threw
-open his vest, exclaiming, "See, I am ready for you.
-Now, rebels, do your worst!" The firing-party then
-fired and shot him in four places, so that he fell dead
-on the instant.</p>
-
-<p>Sir George Lisle was then brought to the same
-place, and viewing the dead body of his friend as it
-lay on the ground, knelt down and kissed him,
-praising his unspotted honour. After bidding farewell
-to some friends, he turned to the spectators,
-saying, "Oh! how many of your lives here have
-I saved in hot blood, and must now myself be
-most barbarously murdered in cold blood? But
-what dare not they do that would willingly cut
-the throat of my dear King, whom they have already
-imprisoned, and for whose deliverance, and peace to
-this unfortunate country, I dedicate my last prayer
-to Heaven?" Then, looking in the faces of those
-who were to execute him, and thinking they stood at
-too great a distance, he desired them to come nearer,
-to which one of them said, "I'll warrant, sir, we hit
-you." "Friend," he answered, "I have been nearer
-you when you have missed me!" And so, after a
-short prayer upon his knees, he rose up and said,
-"Now, traitors, do your worst!" Whereupon they
-shot him dead.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The stone covering the graves of these unhappy
-soldiers may yet be seen in St Giles's Church, with
-an inscription stating that they were "by the command
-of Thomas Fairfax, the general of the
-Parliament Army, in cold blood barbarously
-murdered." A legend may still be occasionally met
-with in old books, which has it that the Duke of
-Buckingham, who had married Fairfax's daughter,
-approached Charles the Second with the object of
-having the passage erased that reflected so severely
-on his father-in-law's memory. The King conferred
-on the subject with Lord Lucas, who said that he
-would with pleasure obey the Royal command, if
-only His Majesty would allow him to place in its
-stead the statement that "Sir Charles Lucas and Sir
-George Lisle were barbarously murdered for their
-loyalty to King Charles the First, and that his son,
-King Charles the Second, had ordered this memorial
-of their loyalty to be erased." The King then, we
-are told, commanded the already existing epitaph to
-be cut still deeper, and it will be readily observed
-by those who go to gaze upon it that the lettering is
-bolder and deeper than commonly is the case.</p>
-
-<p>The undertaking of Fairfax with respect to the
-surrendered soldiery was not respected. They were
-ruthlessly pillaged, and some sent to the plantations
-over seas. Lord Capel was eventually executed in
-London. For many years afterwards the spot where
-Lucas and Lisle fell was shown by the awe-struck
-people of Colchester, who told the legend that grass
-would not grow where that loyal blood had been
-spilled. In later times the story became an article<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
-of faith with one political party and a derision to
-the other. No grass grows there now; but for the
-commonplace reason that a well-kept gravel path
-occupies the site, which is duly marked by a small
-obelisk.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus60">
-<img src="images/fig50.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">OLD MAN-TRAP, COLCHESTER CASTLE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Colchester was long in recovering itself after the
-rough treatment received during the siege; and in
-fact, it is only in recent years that the church of
-St Mary-at-the-Wall, battered down on that occasion,
-has been rebuilt; while the Norman minster of St
-Botolph remains the roofless ruin that cannonading
-and incendiarism left it. Evelyn in 1656 found
-Colchester "a ragged and factious town, now swarming
-with sectaries," and if he had visited it nine
-years later would have witnessed a worse state, for
-the plague almost depopulated the place.</p>
-
-<p>"Sectaries"&mdash;that is to say, those who preferred
-to think for themselves on religious matters, and to
-worship in their own way&mdash;were treated with an
-unconscionable severity. One Parnell, a Quaker,
-was imprisoned in a cell within Colchester Castle,
-and died there, his story affording a sad example of
-barbarity in the authorities of that period.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>But the early nineteenth century was as savage
-in some ways as the late seventeenth, which so
-delighted in despitefully using Nonconformists.
-The antiquarian collections in the castle, for instance,
-include a particularly ferocious instrument
-devised for the protection of the squires' property
-and for the maiming of poachers. It is a man-trap;
-one of those devilish contrivances which, actuated
-by powerful springs and furnished with sharp steel
-teeth, would, when accidentally trodden on by the
-poacher, snap down upon his leg with force sufficient
-to injure the bone and probably mutilate him for
-life. It was thus the landed interests protected their
-rabbits, hares and pheasants. The existence of this
-man-trap, together with the spring guns also used
-at the same time, is a reproach to the England of the
-first quarter of the nineteenth century, just as its
-preservation here as a curiosity is a certificate of the
-progress achieved in humanity since then.</p>
-
-<p>The present prosperity of Colchester is reflected
-in many ways, but in none more strikingly than the
-condition of the castle, now a municipal property,
-and encircled with lawns and flower-beds, oddly at
-variance with its time-worn grandeur. The neatness
-of these surroundings and of the ornamental railings
-that fence off the enclosure is admirable from the
-everyday point of view, but the picturesque neglect
-and rural squalor of other years pointed the moral of
-the place and annotated its story, while present
-prettinesses blur the historic page. It is so everywhere
-throughout the land. When, a hundred years
-ago, Turner, Sandby, Prout and Girtin, our early<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
-water-colourists, roamed the country, making their
-picturesque sketches, they did not find themselves
-baulked by flower-beds, cursed by cast-iron fences,
-or requested not to walk on the grass. They had to
-pick their hazardous way through miry lanes, or
-adventure through the bottomless sloughs of farmyards.
-All these things were offensive to the
-wayfarer, but they generally meant picturesque
-compositions and exquisitely sketchable foregrounds.
-Nowadays the conscientious illustrator, unwilling to
-picturesquely exaggerate, and yet accursed with cast-iron
-railings new from Birmingham last week, is in a
-quandary.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus61">
-<img src="images/fig51.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">COLCHESTER CASTLE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The once forlorn condition of Colchester Castle
-doubtless originated in 1726, when its then owner,
-Sir Isaac Rebow, left it by will to a detested grandson,
-on whom he thus conferred a useless encumbrance,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>a more exasperating bequest than even the
-proverbial cutting off with a shilling.</p>
-
-<p>A relic of those old days of picturesque neglect
-is found in the book of an auctioneer, who wrote an
-account of his "Professional Travels in England in
-the first half of the Nineteenth Century," modestly
-veiling his identity, and simply calling himself on
-his title-page, "An Auctioneer." Part One of his
-work was issued in 1843, but Part Two is yet to
-come, and as his first instalment shows little merit,
-the world can well afford to forego the second.</p>
-
-<p>Coming to the castle, he muses over its ruins,
-and weeps that cabbages and coriander employ the
-attention of the Colchester people, rather than the
-care of ancient fortresses. To him, thus contemplating
-"the sad remains of so many interesting scenes,"
-enters from an adjoining farm one whom he is
-pleased to term "an Aborigine." By this he
-obviously names an Essex farm-labourer. It is an
-affectation, but he might have done worse. He
-<i>might</i> have called him, seeing that Colchester is a
-place of oysters, a "native," in inverted commas,
-evidences of jocular intent, which would have been
-dreadful.</p>
-
-<p>"Ah! sir," says the Aborigine, "it was cruel
-work when them great Barons, as they call 'em,
-lived here."</p>
-
-<p>"True, my friend," replies the Auctioneer, "but
-it's a pity to see hogs and donkeys depasturing in
-their courts and gardens, and grubbing and kicking
-down their halls and chapels."</p>
-
-<p>"Lord! your honour," rejoins the son of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
-soil, "what's the use on 'em in these days? I'd
-sooner see an acre of these 'ere swedes any day,
-than them there towers and dungeons. Them
-swedes afore you 'ool carry a score o' fine wethers
-any month in the year, and plaze ye to look at 'em,
-but as for them flint walls, you may look at 'em for
-ever and a day 'fore you find enough o' green for a
-garnish"; which was indeed a practical rural way of
-looking at things.</p>
-
-<p>The summit of those old walls has nowadays a
-very charming green garnish of grass, rendered parti-coloured
-by wind- and bird-sown wallflowers and
-vigorous wildings; but more lusty than these are
-the young sycamores, that have struck deep roots
-into the walls and bid fair to grow into large trees.</p>
-
-<p>It is still possible to follow the greater part of
-Colchester's old walls along the queer alleys that
-run above or below them. Eld Lane, out of whose
-elevated course the steep descent of the old postern,
-now known as Scheregate Steps, goes, is situated
-along the summit of the south wall looking over
-towards St John's Green, where, facing a wilderness
-of scrubby grass, broken bottles, and the sordid
-house-sweepings of the modern town, the gatehouse
-stands, all that is left of the proud mitred Abbey of
-St John. By that green is the frowzy little church
-of St Giles, patched up in so atrocious a manner
-from the wreck it was after the siege of 1648 that
-to call its "architecture" merely "debased" is to deal
-kindly with it. A dilapidated boarded tower is a
-feature of the exterior; the interior provided with a
-flat plaster ceiling, like that of a dwelling-room, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
-filled with flimsy pine-wood pews, painted and
-grained. Dust and stuffiness reign within; dust
-and broken crockery without. And yet, although
-so unlovely, it is not altogether with satisfaction
-that an elaborate design is seen for rebuilding the
-church from its foundations, together with the
-notice, "It is earnestly hoped that contributions
-will be given toward the restoration fund."
-"Restoration" is not the word, for the design is
-alien and quite unlike anything that formerly stood
-on the ground. Rather let the place be repaired
-and cleansed and its unbeautiful details preserved
-as a characteristic and shocking example of how
-they looked upon ecclesiastical architecture in the
-dark days of churchwarden- and carpenter-Gothic.
-It is here, under the north aisle, that those two
-valiant captains, Lucas and Lisle, are laid.</p>
-
-<p>For the church-towers built of Roman bricks,
-and for other evidences of that ancient Empire, let
-the explorer seek, and, presently finding, think
-himself, if he will, an original investigator: it is a
-harmless attitude, if at the same time unwarranted
-by fact. Let us to other matters, and then, leaving
-the town, hie away for Ipswich.</p>
-
-<p>Colchester is, of course, famous for its oysters,
-and has been ever since the Roman occupation.
-In the estuary of the Colne, and the Crouch, and in
-the oozy creeks of the Essex shores, the Colchester
-"natives" still grow up from infancy to maturity
-and feed upon the semi-maritime slime, as they did
-close upon two thousand years ago, and doubtless
-long before that. If we may judge from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
-stupendous heaps of oyster-shells discovered on the
-sites of Roman towns and villas, near and far, to
-say merely that the Romans were fond of oysters
-would be far too mild a term. They must have
-almost lived on oysters, dreamt oysters, and thought
-oysters. No wonder Colchester, whence the finest
-and the largest supply came, was so prosperous a
-Roman colony.</p>
-
-<p>Although the fishery brings wealth to the town,
-it is more than a mile away and makes no sign.
-Those who might think that, because of it, Colchester
-should obtrude oysters at every turn and oyster-shells
-should strew every street, would be vastly
-disillusioned. But beside its oyster fishery, other
-Colchester trades are of secondary importance.
-Agricultural machinery is made here, and brewing
-and corn-milling carried on, but the once famed
-textile manufactures are gone. Among those old
-trades was the industry of baize-making, which left
-Colchester considerably over a century ago for other
-centres, after having given additional prosperity to
-the town for a period of a hundred and fifty years.
-It was shortly after 1570 that numbers of Dutch
-Protestants, fleeing from the Spanish persecutions
-in Holland, introduced the making of "bays and
-says," and, despite local jealousies, flourished
-amazingly for generations here.</p>
-
-<p>But Colchester will never be dull while it continues
-to be what it is now&mdash;a great military dep�t.
-Those worthy representatives of the Roman legionaries
-at a distance in time of nineteen centuries or
-so, the Tommies and troopers of the British Army,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
-are a prominent feature in every street, and bugles
-blow all round the clock, from <i>r�veill�</i> to the last
-post, when every good soldier goes home to his
-barracks down the Butt Road; while the King's
-bad bargains stay behind and fortify themselves
-against apprehensions of the morrow's "clink" with
-another glass, or, adventuring too rashly into the
-street, find themselves presently in charge of the
-military patrol that walks the town with measured
-step and slow.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXIX</p>
-
-
-<p>"<span class="smcap">From</span> Colchester to Ipswitch is ten mile," says
-that seventeenth-century traveller, Celia Fiennes,
-in her diary. The milestones, however, tell quite
-a different tale and contradict the lady by making
-the distance between the two towns eighteen miles
-and a quarter.</p>
-
-<p>Seven miles of these bring the traveller from
-Colchester across the Stour and so into Suffolk. It
-is not an exciting seven miles. Passing the eastern
-outskirts of Colchester, where mud in the Colne and
-puddles beside the slattern streets offend the sense
-of propriety, as, having reversed their natural
-positions, the Fair Field is left on the right.
-"Left" is an expression used advisedly, for who
-would linger there? But the Fair Field cannot be
-passed unawares. If not seen, it will be heard, for
-on it camp the caravans, steam roundabouts and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
-travelling circuses that still draw rustic crowds with
-their fat women, giants and dwarfs; or delight them
-with mechanical rides on wooden horses to the
-bellowing of a steam organ, whose music-hall airs
-follow the traveller in gusts of stentorian minstrelsy
-when the wind unkindly wills it so. The sounds
-nerve the cyclist to quickly put the miles between
-himself and those siren strains, and happily the
-road is a fast one, so that he need not be long about
-the business. It goes, as an old turnpike should,
-broad and straight and well-kept, for the matter of
-six miles, with little to vary the monotony of trim
-hedgerow and equi-distant telegraph poles.</p>
-
-<p>Let us therefore leave it awhile, and, journeying
-some three hundred yards along the Harwich Road,
-come across a railway level-crossing to the suburb
-of St Ann's, and the site of a spring and hermitage
-called Holy Well. The spring is now sealed up,
-but an inscription in the wall of a cottage still
-proclaims it to have been reopened in 1844. It
-seems strange that the Hermitage should have been
-placed, not on the main road where pilgrims were
-surely more plentiful, but on the seaward route.
-The explanation may probably be sought in the
-existence already of another establishment of the
-kind, long since forgotten. Here, then, the
-Hermitage of St Ann's was placed, and a holy
-well and an oratory made appeal to the piety or
-the superstition, as the case might be, of all who
-passed by. To these the hermit presented his
-leathern wallet, beseeching travellers, who would
-have gone without giving alms, to spare a trifle for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
-the upkeep of the road, even though they valued
-not the Blessed Saints.</p>
-
-<p>For three hundred years the Hermitage lasted,
-and a long line of hermits lived here. Some were
-pious and industrious, keeping the road in repair;
-others had neither piety nor industry, spent their
-time in taverns, were smiters, and got drunk and
-fought, so that the road became scandalously neglected,
-and many Colchester worthies received
-apostolical black eyes from eremitical fists. Such
-an one must have been the hermit who lived here
-in the reign of Henry the Fifth, and was indicted in
-1419 for having an unclean ditch. Finally, in
-1535, when the dissolution of the monasteries took
-place, the Hermitage was closed, and the then
-occupant turned out, with a warning that if he
-solicited alms henceforward he would be regarded
-as a "sturdy beggar," and dealt with accordingly.</p>
-
-<p>The road to Ipswich was the scene, in the
-second half of the seventeenth century, shortly
-after the first coaches had started running, of many
-highway robberies. The borough of Colchester was
-deeply concerned at this lawlessness, and in 1679
-three men were rewarded with �6, 8s. between them
-"for apprehending those y<sup>t</sup> robbed the Ipswich
-coach." Again, in September 1698, three men
-were rewarded "for pursuen hiewaymen," and for
-"going to Ardlegh" on that business; but as they
-received only two shillings each and an extra
-shilling for "drinck," it looks as though the
-pursuit was unsuccessful.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus13">
-<img src="images/fig52.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">COLCHESTER.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The high road, to which we have now returned,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a><br /><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a><br /><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
-has already been described as an excellent highway,
-but Dilbridge, a hamlet, and a roadside inn on what
-was once Ardleigh Heath, alone break its solitude.
-It has, however, the advantage of commanding the
-best general view of Colchester, with the inevitable
-Jumbo prominent, and the new-risen Town Hall
-tower in rivalry with it.</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly, when six miles from Colchester, the
-road changes its character and drops sharply down
-by an almost precipitous descent, to where a lazy
-river is seen flowing picturesquely in loops and
-bends between the grey-green foliage of willows
-lining either bank. It flows through a land of rich
-green meadows and yellow cornfields; a land, too,
-of noble elms and oaks. In the far distance the
-waters of a salt estuary sparkle in the sun, while
-in between, from this Pisgah height, rises the tall
-tower of a church. The river is the Stour, dividing
-Essex and Suffolk, and the pleasant vale, the Vale
-of Dedham. The estuary is that of the Stour at
-Manningtree, and the church tower that of Dedham.
-This, indeed, is the Constable Country, and that
-fact explains the homelike and familiar look it
-wears, even to the stranger. Constable, born close
-by at East Bergholt, painted these scenes lovingly
-for over forty years, and remained constant to his
-native vale all his life. By the magic power that
-comes of sympathy, he transferred the spirit of these
-lanes and fields and trees to canvas as faithfully as
-he did their form and colour; with the result
-that the veriest stranger viewing them becomes
-reminiscent.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Nor did Constable only <i>paint</i> his native vale;
-he has described it in almost as masterly a way.
-To him it was "the most cultivated part of Suffolk,
-a spot which overlooks the fertile valley of the
-Stour, which river separates that county on the
-south from Essex. The beauty of the surrounding
-scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow
-flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated
-uplands, its woods and rivers, with
-numerous scattered villages and churches, farms
-and picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular
-spot an amenity and excellence hardly
-anywhere else to be found. He tells an amusing
-story of travelling home by coach down this very
-hill. He shared the vehicle with two strangers.
-"In passing the Vale of Dedham, one of them remarked,
-on my saying it was very beautiful, 'Yes,
-sir, this is Constable's Country.' I then told him
-who I was lest he should spoil it."</p>
-
-<p>From this hill-top to the left of the road, and
-in what are now the woodlands of Langham Hall,
-Constable painted his best-known Vale of Dedham.
-In one respect the scene has changed. The willows
-still fringing the Stour, formerly "cobbed" or
-pollarded, are now allowed to grow as they will,
-and the river is not so visible as it was once.
-Otherwise the Constable Country is little altered.
-Even on this hill, close by Langham church, Church
-Farm, the original of his "Glebe Farm," remains as
-it was, thatched and gabled, close by the church
-tower. Only the foliage has changed, and the little
-guttering stream been drained away.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus14">
-<img src="images/fig53.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE VALE OF DEDHAM. <span class="in5"><i>After Constable.</i></span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a><br /><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus62">
-<img src="images/fig54.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">GUN HILL.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>This steep road, shelving so abruptly to the
-Stour, is Dedham Hill, more often locally known
-as Dedham Gun Hill, from the "Gun" inn at the
-summit, now unhappily rebuilt, but until recently
-a most picturesque old inn, with the painted sign of
-a cannon hanging over the road. The sign has gone,
-and a pretentious house, which proclaims "Accommodation
-for Lady Cyclists," arisen in its stead.
-At the foot of the hill the road, turning abruptly
-to the left, begins a lengthy crossing of the Stour and
-its marshes by a bridge over the channel and a long
-series of flood-water arches across the oozy valley.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
-The old toll-house, taking tolls no longer, still
-stands, a quaint building on the Essex side, and
-bears a cast-iron tablet with the inscription,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="c">
-THE DUMB ANIMALS' HUMBLE PETITION.</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">Rest, drivers, rest, on this steep hill,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">Dumb beasts pray use with all good will;</span><br />
-<span class="i0">Goad not, scourge not, with thong�d whips,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">Let not one curse escape your lips,</span><br />
-<span class="i3">God sees and hears.</span><br />
-<span class="i12"><span class="smcap">T. T. H., Posuit.</span></span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus63">
-<img src="images/fig55.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">OLD TOLL-HOUSE, STRATFORD BRIDGE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>This is one of a number of similar tablets erected
-throughout the country in the early part of the
-nineteenth century, when the first glimmerings of
-humane treatment of animals began to show themselves.
-When drivers had perforce to halt here to
-pay toll, this was a notice they could scarce help<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
-seeing, but it only by rare chance attracts attention
-now.</p>
-
-<p>Across the bridge is the mill, long idle and empty.
-No picturesque building this, but a great hulking
-structure of that intolerable "white" Suffolk brick
-which is rather a grey-white than any other hue; a
-brick which, the older it is looks more shabby and
-crude, and by no chance ever helps the artist. The
-whole length of the Norwich Road is more or less
-bedevilled with it.</p>
-
-<p>This mill is the one blot on the beauty of
-Stratford St Mary, a village built along the flat road
-and continuing round the bend, and so up the hill
-to where the fine old church stands overlooking the
-highway. It is a remarkable church, built of black
-flint and stone, and covered on the side facing the
-road with inscriptions. It owed its rise, on the site
-of an older building, to the Mors family, wealthy
-clothworkers of this place in the fifteenth and
-sixteenth centuries. It is perhaps a little difficult
-to imagine Stratford St Mary, in common with other
-East Anglian towns and villages, a busy seat of the
-weaving industry, just as there is a difficulty in
-realising that Sussex was once a grimy iron-mining
-country; but trades and places have their fates, and
-changes and romances of their own.</p>
-
-<p>From 1499 to 1530 two generations of the Mors
-family were busy in giving to their church and in
-directing its new features; and the chief of the inscriptions
-in stone and flint that curiously decorate
-its exterior in old English characters record the facts
-and beseech the wayfarer to pray for their souls.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
-Vain request! The work had not been completed
-five years when the long and troubled story of the
-Reformation began and the souls of the dead were no
-longer prayed for.</p>
-
-<p>The most prominent inscription is that enjoining
-prayers for Thomas Mors and his wife Margaret, who
-built the north aisle:&mdash;</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p class="oldeng hang xxlarge">Orate pro animabus Thome Mors et Margarete<br />
-uxoris ejus qui istam alam ffieri fecerunt<br />
-anno dni mcccc<sup>m</sup> lxxxxviiii</p></blockquote>
-
-<p>Edward Mors, son of Thomas and Margaret, is, together
-with his wife Alice, content with an English
-inscription. They are also a little less self-centred
-than their forbears, desiring prayers for "all Christian
-souls" in addition to supplications for their own
-especial benefit:&mdash;</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p class="oldeng hang xxlarge">Praye for the soullys of Edward Mors and Alys<br />
-hys wyfe and all crysten sowlys, Anno<br />
-Domini 1530.</p></blockquote>
-
-<p>Many other inscriptions and devices are seen,
-among them the letters, <span class="large">P B A E S</span>, said to be the
-initials of an invocatory sentence, "<i>Propitiemini beati
-ad eternam salutem</i>," addressed to Saints Thomas
-and Margaret, the patron saints of Thomas and
-Margaret Mors. But, stranger than any, is the appearance
-of the entire alphabet on these walls. Many
-attempts have been made to explain the reason of
-this, among them the view that the object was to
-educate the villagers in the rudiments of spelling!</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXX</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> long rise out of Stratford on the way to Ipswich
-lies through a beautiful Gainsborough-like woodland,
-with ancient trees gripping sandy banks in a tenacious
-clutch of gnarled roots. It is a hollow road,
-and one in which, when the coaches were toiling up,
-the guards' hands went instinctively towards their
-blunderbusses and swordcases. One never knew
-what or who might be lurking in that shade.</p>
-
-<p>But if it was a chancy spot then, how very
-suspicious a place it must have been hundreds of
-years before. That it was so regarded may be learnt
-from the <i>Paston Letters</i>, the instructive correspondence
-of the Paston family in the fifteenth century.
-Therein we read how a rival of John Paston in the
-wardship of one of the Fastolf family, coming out of
-Suffolk to London, was escorted by a hundred retainers,
-all armed with bows and arrows in their
-hands, with saletts on their heads, well-padded jacks
-and rusty haubergeons on their bodies, and fear in
-their hearts of an ambush laid on the part of the
-Pastons in the hollow way where the trees meet overhead
-and a mid-day darkness broods under the dense
-foliage. This rival expressed himself as not being
-afraid of the Pastons or any of their friends; but if
-not, why did he go escorted with this motley crew,
-tricked out with all the ancient weapons and rusted
-armour they could find? Happily they were not
-attacked, but that it was possible for petty warfare
-of this kind to be plotted is proof that the Merry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
-England of that period was no safe place for peaceful
-travellers.</p>
-
-<p>Now we are well within Suffolk, the "crack
-county of England," as Cobbett called it, the "sweet
-and civil county" of Bishop Hall; but a county to
-which the alliterative term "silly" has long been
-applied. It is probably by this time quite hopeless
-to scotch that nickname, for it is of a considerable
-age and has a specious and easy glibness that comes
-trippingly off the tongue. Suffolkers themselves&mdash;whom
-it most concerns&mdash;are at pains to explain that
-the real, and entirely flattering, solution of the phrase
-is found in "selig," the Anglo-Saxon for "holy" or
-"blissful;" a reference to the numerous and wealthy
-religious houses within the county, and to the East
-Anglian saints and the many places of pilgrimage.
-Another party advancing the theory that the epithet
-was originally "Sely Suffolk," observant of the
-seasons, would thus have us believe that Suffolk
-must have been more observant than other counties,
-which is not credible. True, Suffolkers still talk of
-the hay-harvest as "haysel," a survival of "hay sele,"
-but this is not the only county that uses the phrase.
-It becomes evident that the nickname must go unexplained.</p>
-
-<p>Suffolk has its claims to recognition on other than
-historic grounds. "I'm told the dumplings is uncommon
-fine down there," said William, the coachman,
-to little David Copperfield. Perhaps they are, and
-certainly it was once the custom among the peasantry
-here, as indeed throughout England, to serve pudding,
-or "dumpling," before meat in order to take the edge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
-off appetites with a kind of food cheaper than
-butcher's meat; but the improved circumstances of
-the peasantry scarce demand such a practice nowadays,
-and in any case, Norfolk is the county of
-dumplings, so Dickens was in error in putting that
-speech in the coachman's mouth. "Norfolk Dumplings,"
-he should have known, are as proverbial as
-"Silly Suffolkers."</p>
-
-<p>Suffolk is deservedly esteemed all over the world
-for the "Suffolk Punch." This sounds convivial, but
-has no connection with punch-bowls; the reference
-being, as a matter of fact, to a breed of horses.</p>
-
-<p>"And the Punches! There's cattle!" said
-William, the Canterbury coachman, to David Copperfield.
-"A Suffolk Punch, when he's a good 'un, is
-worth his weight in gold," he added; which is not
-a very great exaggeration. Keep an eye upon the
-fields or an observant glance along the road, and the
-Suffolk Punch will readily be noted in his native
-country, at plough, halted by the wayside inn, or
-dragging with indomitable spirit the heaviest loads
-that the stupidity of the most stupid of waggoners
-could put him to. If ever horse deserved the praise
-contained in the familiar copy-book maxim, that he
-is "a Noble Animal, the Friend of Man," it is to this
-breed that it most particularly applies. The Suffolk
-Punch is a sturdy and a willing brute, and will pull
-against a dead weight until exhausted. It has been
-said that the Suffolk Punch existed as a type of horse
-in early British times, and it has been supposed that
-his remote ancestors were the horses that drew
-Boadicea's war-chariots. If it were not that he is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
-invariably a chestnut, it might be supposed that his
-fame in the county had originated the sign of the
-"Great White Horse" in Ipswich; but from chestnut
-the breed never varies. It may be of various shades,
-from the darkest mahogany to the lightest golden-brown,
-but never any other hue. It is, of course,
-not necessary to journey into East Anglia to see the
-Suffolk Punch. Many of his kind are at work in
-London, drawing heavy loads, and are to be seen
-expatriated to Russia, and on Canadian farms,
-thousand of miles away from their native claylands.</p>
-
-<p>The Suffolk dialect is kin to those of Essex and
-Norfolk, but the "Suffolk whine" is peculiar to the
-county; it is a rising inflection of the voice towards
-the end of words and sentences. In Suffolk speech
-"fowls" become "foals," and "foals," "fools"; and
-archaic words, heard occasionally in Essex, grow
-more common as the traveller advances. So also
-does an odd custom first noticed in the neighbourhood
-of Colchester&mdash;the custom of affixing the place-name
-to the sign of an inn in ordinary talk. The
-"Gun" inn at Dedham, for example, is always
-spoken of as "Dedham Gun," and here, at Bentley,
-the custom is emphasised by the sign of a roadside
-inn being inscribed "Bentley Tankard," and not
-merely "The Tankard."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus15">
-<img src="images/fig56.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">SPRING: SUFFOLK PLOUGHLANDS. <span class="in5"><i>After Constable.</i></span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>But to understand Suffolk ways and to hear
-Suffolk talk it is necessary to linger in the villages
-and to gossip with the sons of the soil. The
-agricultural villages are only articulate at eventide,
-when they give themselves up to play and gossip.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a><br /><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a><br /><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
-Then, as the long summer day draws to its close, the
-children find romance in the lengthening shadows,
-in which their games of robbers and pirates seem
-much more convincing than they could be made to
-appear in the glare of the midday sun; the farm
-labourers slouch off to their evening, over quarts of
-"bellywengins," at the pub, and the coy mawthers
-find the twilight a seasonable time for nannicking
-with the hudderens. This, which may seem unmeaning
-gibberish to those unacquainted with the
-peculiar dialect of East Anglia, merely signifies the
-girls flirting with the "other ones"&mdash;the young
-men, in short.</p>
-
-<p>But a mawther may be of any age. A baby girl
-is a mawther, and so is a grandame. It is a curiosity
-of speech which is apt to startle the stranger who
-first hears it applied to a girl who has hardly yet
-learned to toddle, in the maternal threat, to be
-heard any day in any Suffolk village, "Yow come
-'ere, mawther, this instant moment, or I'll spank
-yow, so I 'ool." "Yow," of course, is the Essex,
-Suffolk and Norfolk shibboleth for "you," by which
-a native of these parts may be immediately distinguished
-anywhere.</p>
-
-<p>When the labourers have trudged over to their
-"shants o' gatter," or quarts and pots of beer&mdash;the
-"bellywengins," or belly vengeance, aforesaid; when
-the children have been put to bed, and the mawthers
-and the hudderens have gone nannicking off together
-in the gathering dusk, then is the gossiping
-time, both of the housewives and of the labourers.
-The women talk at the doors of the "housen":<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
-the men mostly in the village inns. Hear, passing
-stranger, what the mawthers are saying:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>"Good daa to 'ee, Mrs Potter, how are ye a-gettin'
-arn?"</p>
-
-<p>"I'm a-doin' good-tidily, thank'ee, better'n tew
-or tree weeks sin'. The doctor say I fare to be
-on the mend; but it hev bin a bad time wi' me
-sure."</p>
-
-<p>"Ay; owd bones 'on't be young agen, I'm
-thinkin'; but there, 'taint so much yer aige, 'tis yer
-sperrut what keep ye up or let ye down."</p>
-
-<p>"Ay, that be trew," says one of the group,
-"what be life wi'out sperrut? Nothin', in a
-manner o' speakin'."</p>
-
-<p>"Yar father, Mrs Cobbold, he had it, and he
-lived to be ninety."</p>
-
-<p>"What a man that wor! I mind him when he
-come to mine arter he'd walked from Ipswich, an'
-that's a good ten mile. He come to paiy a shullun
-he ew my ole man, and, barrin' a bit tirsty, he were
-as spry as a mavish and fresher'n a paigle."</p>
-
-<p>A mile distant, to the right hand, lies East
-Bergholt, Constable's birthplace, and between it
-and the road still stretch in summer those golden
-cornfields he loved so well. "The Cornfield," that
-crowning achievement of English landscape, how
-exquisite a thing it is, radiant in colour on the
-walls of the National Gallery, and how ineffectually
-the inadequate medium of black and white
-attempts to translate it.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus16">
-<img src="images/fig57.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE CORNFIELD. <span class="in5"><i>After Constable.</i></span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The grumbling farmer, who has good cause for
-his growls, poor fellow, is careful to explain his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a><br /><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a><br /><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
-cornfields away. When asked why, if it does not
-pay to grow wheat, he still continues to do so, he
-says he grows it for the straw. At any rate, times
-are changed from those when agricultural England
-was merry with high prices; those picturesque days
-when the Ipswich and Norwich coaches were hailed,
-as every traveller was hailed, at harvest-time by the
-reapers' cry of "Halloo, halloo, largesse," the largesse
-going at harvest-home in a saturnalia at the village
-inn. "Largesse" has gone with the going of the
-reaping-hook, and with it and many other things
-has gone the Lord of the Harvest, elected from
-among his fellow-reapers to preside over their
-labours and their harvest-supper in the great
-fragrant barn or in the farm kitchen. The line
-of red-cheeked peasants, working from early morning
-with their sickles in the fierce sun upon the
-diminishing fields of standing wheat, with halts for
-levenses and bever, and so home by the light of
-the harvest moon, is no more to be seen: reaping-machines
-do the work instead. It was astonishing,
-and, in the haymaking fields, still is, what long and
-continual draughts of beer can be disposed of in the
-intervals of such labour. Levenses, that is to say
-the eleven o'clock forenoon meal, and bever, the
-four o'clock in the afternoon halt, whose name came
-through the Norman-French "bevre" from the Latin
-"bibere," to drink, reduced the contents of the
-barrels placed in the shady hedgerows, but quarts
-imbibed under such conditions were harmless.
-Almost solitary survivals of the old peasant life,
-the names of "bever" and "levenses" remain yet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
-in the common speech of Norfolk and Suffolk as
-those of the hedgeside meals of ploughman and
-carter.</p>
-
-<p>Old country folk still talk, in their reminiscent
-moments, of coaching and posting days here, when,
-near the tiny hamlet known as Cross Green, and in
-a deep dip of the high road, where a byway goes,
-leading from Manningtree to Hadleigh and beyond,
-"Laddenford Stables" stood at the cross roads that
-went then by the name of the "Four Sisters." Four
-sisters, if one likes to accept the rustic belief, agreed
-to part here and went their several ways, but how
-they fared, or what was their social status, the story
-does not tell.</p>
-
-<p>Passing Capel St Mary and the level-crossing
-by Capel station, and so by Copdock, whose church
-tower has an odd weather-vane in the shape of King
-David playing his harp, Washbrook is reached at
-the foot of its steep hill. Copdock on the hill and
-Washbrook in the hollow, together with the broad
-and still marshy valley of the little Wash Brook,
-tell how that rivulet was once, in the far-off days
-when Saxons and Danes contended on this coast, a
-navigable creek, an arm of the Orwell. The road,
-in its sharp descent into and rise out of the valley,
-together with its acute bend, is also eloquent of
-bygone geographical conditions, leading as it does
-down to the place where a bridge now spans the
-stream on the spot where the creek was, in days of
-old, first fordable. Having thus crossed, the road
-went, and still goes, in a right-angle turn uphill,
-towards Ipswich.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It was by no means necessary for travellers
-journeying between London and Norwich to touch
-Ipswich. The coaches did, for obvious commercial
-reasons, but the "chariots" and the post-chaises
-commonly went from Washbrook, through Sproughton
-and Bramford, and joined the coach route again at
-Claydon, thus taking the base of a triangle, instead
-of its two sides. There are those at Washbrook
-who can still tell of the coaches that halted at
-"Copdock White Elm"; of the time when a toll-gate
-(the house still existing) stretched across the
-way at the foot of the hill, and of the "aristocracks"
-who posted the long stage between "Stonham Pie"
-and "Washbrook Swan." They can point out the
-"Swan," facing up the road and looking squarely
-up at the hill-top, but now a private residence with
-its stables chiefly put to alien uses; and can show
-the places, in what are now meadows, where many
-houses and cottages stood in those wayfaring days,
-when the high-lying road to Ipswich, across the
-uplands between the valleys of the Stour and the
-Orwell, was not so unfrequented as now.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXI</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">There</span> can be no doubt of Ipswich and its surroundings
-having thoroughly captured the heart of
-grumbling old Cobbett.</p>
-
-<p>"From the town itself," he says, "you can see
-nothing; but you can, in no direction, go from it a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
-quarter of a mile without finding views that a
-painter might crave." This is not a little remarkable,
-for we do not generally attribute an artistic
-perception of scenic beauties to this practical farmer.
-Yet he was of one mind with Constable, of whom
-and his pictures he probably had never heard,
-although Constable had already for years been
-painting these very scenes.</p>
-
-<p>The practical farming mind appears in Cobbett's
-next remarks: "And then, the country round about
-is so well cultivated; the land in such a beautiful
-state, the farmhouses all white and all so much
-alike; the barns and everything about the homesteads
-so snug; the stock of turnips so abundant
-everywhere; the sheep and cattle in such fine order;
-the wheat all drilled; the ploughman so expert; the
-furrows, if a quarter of a mile long, as straight as a
-line, and laid as truly as if with a level; in short,
-here is everything to delight the eye and to make
-the people proud of their country; and this is the
-case throughout the whole of this county. I have
-always found Suffolk farmers great boasters of their
-superiority over others, and I must say that it is not
-without reason."</p>
-
-<p>Cobbett found the windmills on the hills round
-Ipswich so numerous that, while standing in one
-place, he counted no fewer than seventeen, all
-painted or washed white, with black sails. They
-are fewer to-day, and could Gainsborough, old
-Crome and Constable revisit the scenes of their
-artistic inspiration, they would sadly miss the
-picturesqueness they gave these woody scenes and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
-fertile hills and vales. It is from the crest of one
-of these hills that Ipswich is first glimpsed. There
-it sprawls, prosperous, beside the broad Orwell;
-"doubtlesse one of the sweetest, most pleasant, well-built
-townes in England," as John Evelyn thought in
-1656; but then swarming with "a new phanatic sect
-of dangerous principles." The reader will scarce guess
-aright who these fanatics were. They were neither
-sun-worshippers nor Mahometans, but merely Quakers.</p>
-
-<p>One obtains no glimpse of the broad estuary of
-the Orwell when descending into the town by the
-London road, and the crowded mass of the place rises
-confusedly up before the traveller as he steeply
-descends, and forms no picture. You must take
-Ipswich in detail to admire it, and the actual
-crossing of the river at the foot of the hill where
-the town begins is at a narrow canalised stretch
-before it widens out into the noble harbour that
-makes the fortune of the port. A sign of that
-accomplished fortune is the unlovely sight of the
-great railway sidings and goods yards spread out
-before the stranger's eye as he comes downhill. One
-may say that the town begins at the door of the
-"Ipswich Arms" inn, uninteresting in itself, but displaying
-the fine "old coat" of this famous seaport;
-a shield with a rampant golden lion on a red field on
-the sinister, and three golden demi-boats on blue on
-the dexter side.</p>
-
-<p>"A fine, populous, and beautiful place," says
-Cobbett, still harping on an unwonted string of
-praise. "The town is substantially built, well
-paved, everything good and solid, and no wretched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
-dwellings to be seen on its outskirts." He knew no
-town to be compared with it, except it were Nottingham,
-which, after all, is not properly comparable,
-Nottingham standing high, while Ipswich is in a
-vale, and moreover, is situated on an arm of the sea.
-It is amusing to read Cobbett's remarks on the
-population of Ipswich, which stood in his time at
-twelve thousand. "Do you not," he asks, "think
-Ipswich was far larger and far more populous seven
-hundred years ago than it is at this hour?"&mdash;that
-hour being some time in March 1830. He remarked
-upon "the twelve large, lofty and magnificent
-churches," each of them seven hundred years old,
-one capable of holding from four to seven thousand
-persons, and came to the conclusion that, in fact,
-although he found Ipswich populous, it must, even
-thus, have been a mere ghost of its former self.
-That shrewd observer was right. Ipswich had
-grievously decayed even in Charles the Second's
-reign, when the Duke of Buckingham described
-it as "a town without inhabitants, a river without
-water, streets without names, and where the asses
-wore boots." The Duke, in speaking of "a river
-without water," was probably referring to the
-estuary of the Orwell at low tide, when mud-banks
-stretch vast, and the stream runs by comparison
-feeble and thread-like through them. In its
-then nameless streets, Ipswich was not singular, for
-many small provincial towns were in like case. The
-asses that wore boots were those employed in rolling
-the lawn of a neighbouring park, the object probably
-being to prevent their hoofs injuring the surface.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>"Yepysweche," as Margaret Paston, writing to
-her husband over four hundred years ago, spells
-the name, derives its title from the aboriginal
-Gippings, a tribe or clan who squatted down
-beside the Orwell, and not only established their
-primitive village of Gippingswick here, but contrived
-to foist their tribal name upon the non-tidal
-part of the river above the town, which therefore
-still generally bears this <i>alias</i>. The town probably
-saw its greatest prosperity in the time of Cardinal
-Wolsey, a native, and, according to legend, son of a
-butcher. This "butcher's dogge," as the envious
-nicknamed the great Cardinal, determined that his
-birthplace should be great in learning as well as
-in commerce, and to that end founded a College
-which he intended to be in some sort preparatory
-for his greater college of Christ Church at Oxford.
-That his foundation was reared on the spoliation of
-a religious house and its revenues, procured by him
-for the purpose, seemed but an ill omen for its
-prosperity to those who saw his buildings rising to
-completion, and the omen was speedily fulfilled, for
-the new-made abode of learning never sent forth
-a scholar, but was suppressed by Henry the Eighth
-almost before the mortar of its brick walls was
-dry; the buildings themselves torn down and the
-endowments confiscated. All that remains of
-Wolsey's College is one noble red-brick gateway in
-College Street.</p>
-
-<p>Daniel Defoe was a native of Ipswich and a
-curious contrast with Wolsey, his brother townsman
-of two hundred years before. In his day the old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
-prosperity of the place had vanished, in the stress
-of Dutch competition and the virulence of the plague;
-but modern times have made amends for that
-temporary decay, and the town is now nearly four
-times larger than when, shortly after the first
-quarter of the nineteenth century had gone, Cobbett
-noted its many and empty churches and its scanty
-population. It numbers now over 58,000 souls,
-and its trades are numerous and prosperous.
-Whether it be in the making of agricultural and
-milling machinery, its corn markets, artificial
-manure making, or the manufacture of corsets,
-Ipswich is fortunate, with the good fortune of those
-who give heed to the ancient proverb and do not
-put all their eggs in one basket.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus64">
-<img src="images/fig58.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">WOLSEY'S GATEWAY.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Picturesqueness coyly hides itself from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
-traveller who merely passes through the chief streets.
-Not in the open square of Cornhill, where the cabs
-and flys stand on the site of the old Market Cross
-and the trams fly to and fro, and where the Post-office
-and the Town Hall rise, side by side, does
-it appear, nor in the long street beyond; but rather
-in the Butter Market and the lanes that conduct
-to the waterside. There be streets in that quarter
-with odd names, among them Silent Street; and
-almshouses, and churches, and the queerest inns.
-Among the almshouses are Smart's, on whose walls,
-unhappily rebuilt in modern times, the charitable
-Smart and his no less charitable coadjutor, Tooley,
-are commemorated:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"Let gentle Smart sleep on in pious trust,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">Behold his charity. Respect his dust."</span>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"In peaceful silence lett great Toolie rest,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">Whose charitable deeds bespeak him blest."</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>It is to be feared that these eulogies raise a smile
-at the expense of great Tooley and gentle Smart.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus65">
-<img src="images/fig59.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "LION AND LAMB," ANGEL LANE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>As to the inns, they include the odd conjunction
-of the "Lion and Lamb," pictured here, and the
-"Neptune" and the "Sea Horse," with a fine sound
-of the sea in their names. Some of these old
-hostelries yet retain their corner-posts: for example,
-that of the "Half Moon" in Foundation Street,
-where the post still keeps its medi�val carving of
-a fox, with uplifted sanctimonious eyes, preaching
-to three geese and a griffin; a satirical effort no
-doubt looked sourly upon by the clergy of St Mary
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>Key Church, opposite, in days of old. A great gilt
-key serves as vane to that church and perpetuates
-the error in the name, which was originally, and
-rightly, St Mary-at-Quay: the custom-house quay
-and the harbour being close by, as the sight of
-certain corn-elevators, the rattling of chains and
-windlasses, and the sounds of throaty steam-sirens
-sufficiently proclaim. The custom-house stands in
-midst of coal-grit, laden steam vessels lying alongside
-the quay wall, bellowing steamily to be discharged,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>and railway-sidings, along whose maze of
-points and turn-tables fussy little locomotive engines,
-dragging jerky trucks, run, screaming intermittently,
-as though saying to the bellowing steam-vessels,
-"<i>You</i> just wait; can't you see I'm coming as quick
-as I can?" It is a dignified custom-house, and
-seems, surrounded with dutiable goods, to be
-aristocratically sneering at the trade in whose midst
-it is necessarily placed, and with as great a consciousness
-of its Ionic peristyle as any high-born beauty
-of her Greek nose.</p>
-
-<p>Many of the old wool-staplers', clothiers' and
-merchants' fine mansions stood by the quay and in
-the by-lanes. They are mostly gone now, but traces
-of old doorways and stray fragments of stone and
-wood carvings remain, and here and there a courtyard,
-or a house that sheltered family circles in the
-amphibious half-mercantile, half-agricultural Ipswich
-of the sixteenth century.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus66">
-<img src="images/fig60.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">SPARROWE'S HOUSE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Certainly one of the finest things Ipswich has to
-show is the wonderful old place in the old Butter
-Market, known still as "Sparrowe's House," although
-the last of the Sparrowes who inhabited here has
-long since gone to his home in the family vault within
-the Church of St Lawrence, where, over their tomb-house,
-may yet be read the punning motto, <i>Nidus
-Passerum</i>, "a nest of sparrows." These Sparrowes
-seem to have been endowed with some of the attributes
-of the cuckoo, for <i>they</i> did not build the house
-that bears their name. It owes its origin to a
-certain George Copping, who built it in 1567, but
-alterations and additions made in the Jacobean
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>period give its architectural history a span of over a
-century. The woodwork of the bay windows and
-the grandly-projecting eaves, together with that of
-the shop premises, was added at the time. But the
-great glory of "Sparrowe's House" is its decorative
-plaster-work in high relief, which profusely covers the
-exterior with garlands of flowers and fruits and with
-quaint devices emblematic of the four quarters of the
-globe. Here Europa, cornucopia in one hand, book
-and sceptre in the other, sits with her bull, who
-might be taken for an elephant with half his trunk
-shorn off; here, on another bay, a podgy plaster
-relief typifies Asia, with palm-tree and a building of
-Oriental character in the background; followed by
-Africa, a nude nigger holding an umbrella over his
-head and sitting on a shark, at which four tiny<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
-figures at a respectful distance express astonishment,
-while nearer at hand a wicked-looking bird of quite
-uncertain family roosts on a something that greatly
-resembles a battered meat tin. America is typified
-by an Indian in a feather head-dress which represents
-his entire wardrobe. He stands with bow and arrows,
-attended by a dog with a damaged smile. A very
-beautiful representation of the Royal Arms occupies
-one of the spaces between the windows, and other
-devices show the pelican in her piety; Atlas supporting
-the world; a classical scene in which a shepherd
-bows as gracefully as the artist in plaster could make
-him to a rural nymph; St George and the Dragon,
-and several smaller subjects.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> most famous thing in Ipswich is a thing neither
-ancient nor beautiful, yet it is an object to which
-most visitors to the town turn their first attention:
-it is the "Great White Horse." The "Great White
-Horse" is an hotel, of a size, in the merry days of the
-road, justly thought enormous. It has been left for
-the present age to build many hotels in town and
-country capable of containing half-a-dozen or more
-hostelries of the size of the "Great White Horse,"
-but in its own especial era that house fully justified
-the adjective in its sign. Especially did its bulk
-strike the imagination of the reporter of the London<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
-<i>Morning Chronicle</i> who was dispatched to Ipswich
-in 1830 for the purpose of reporting a Parliamentary
-election in the town. He was a very young, a very impressionable
-and a very bright reporter, and although
-we may be quite sure that the business on which he
-was come to Ipswich was an arduous piece of work,
-calculated to fully occupy his time and thoughts, he
-carried away with him so accurate an impression of
-the big inn where he stayed, that when, some time
-afterwards, he wrote about it the description was as
-exact as though it had been penned within sight
-of the house. That reporter was Charles Dickens,
-and it is his description in the <i>Pickwick Papers</i>
-which has made the place famous.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus67">
-<img src="images/fig61.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "GREAT WHITE HORSE."
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>It was not a flattering description. Few more
-severe things have ever been said of inns than those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
-Dickens wrote of the "Great White Horse." Indeed,
-if such things were nowadays printed of any inn or
-hotel, the writer might confidently expect to be made
-the defendant in an action for libel. Yet (such is the
-irony of time and circumstances) the house that
-Dickens so roundly abused is now eager in all its
-advertisements to quote the association; and the
-adventures of Mr Pickwick in the double-bedded
-room with the elderly lady in yellow curl-papers
-have brought many more visitors than the unfavourable
-notice of the "uncarpeted passages" and the
-"mouldy, ill-lighted rooms" has turned away. If, as
-has been thought, Dickens thus wrote of the house in
-order to be revenged for some slights and discomforts
-he may have experienced here, certainly fortune
-has played the cynic in converting his remarks into
-the best of all imaginable recommendations.</p>
-
-<p>The exterior of the house is much the same as it
-was when Dickens first saw it, "in the main street
-of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short
-distance after you have passed through the open
-space fronting the Town Hall."</p>
-
-<p>It is the same plain, square building, constructed
-of a pallid kind of brick suggesting underdone
-pastry, and is still, although the coaches have disappeared
-and railways have supplanted them,
-"known far and wide by the appellation of the
-'Great White Horse.'" Still, over the pillared
-entrance trots the effigy of the Great White Horse
-himself, perhaps the aboriginal ancestor of that
-famous breed of equines, the "Suffolk Punches," a
-very muscular race, more famous for their bulk and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
-strength than for elegance, like those sturdy Flanders
-mares to which Henry the Eighth inelegantly likened
-his bride, Anne of Cleves.</p>
-
-<p>Dickens, using the usual licence of the novelist,
-describes this effigy as "a stone statue of some
-rampacious animal, with flowing mane and tail,
-distantly resembling an insane cart-horse, elevated
-above the principal door." Quite apart from the
-fact that the word "rampacious" is unknown to the
-English language, and is probably meant for
-"rampageous," the horse is really represented in
-the act of beginning a gentle trot, and looks as mild
-as the mildest milk that ever dewed the whiskers of
-a new-born kitten. His off fore-leg, broken at some
-period, has been restored of a size that does not
-match with the other three. Never, in the whole
-of his existence, has the Great White Horse gone
-on the rampage, and, like all the truly great, his
-manners have always been distinguished by their
-unobtrusiveness.</p>
-
-<p>"The 'Great White Horse,'" writes Dickens, "is
-famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree
-as a prize ox, or county paper-chronicled turnip, or
-unwieldy pig&mdash;for its enormous size. Never were
-such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters
-of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of
-small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one
-roof, as are collected together between the four walls
-of the 'Great White Horse' at Ipswich." Further,
-he describes it as "an overgrown tavern," at whose
-door, when Mr Pickwick descended from the coach,
-stood a waiter whose description quite takes one's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
-desire for dinner away. He was "a corpulent man
-with a fortnight's napkin under his arm and coeval
-stockings on his legs."</p>
-
-<p>Although that must have been in the best and
-most prosperous days of the highway, this waiter
-does not appear to have had anything more pressing
-to do than "staring down the road," while the
-account of the internal arrangements of the house
-does not indicate flourishing business. The private
-room into which the guests were shown was a "large,
-badly-furnished apartment, with a dirty grate, in
-which a small fire was making a wretched attempt
-to be cheerful, but was fast sinking under the dispiriting
-influence of the place." After this we are
-not surprised to read that it was only "after the
-lapse of an hour" that "a bit of fish and a steak,"
-representing a dinner, appeared. When this was disposed
-of, Mr Pickwick and Mr Peter Magnus huddled
-up to the fire, and, "having ordered a bottle of the
-worst possible port wine, at the highest possible price,
-for the good of the house, drank brandy-and-water
-for their own."</p>
-
-<p>Certainly Dickens must have had some very
-bitter grudge against the "Great White Horse."</p>
-
-<p>Then come allusions to "tortuous passages," and
-the difficulty of a stranger's finding his way about
-the interminable corridors, or distinguishing between
-one "mouldy room" and another; difficulties which
-led to Mr Pickwick's comical predicament in the
-middle of the night. The rooms, not so mouldy
-now, and the passages, just as perplexing, remain,
-structurally unaltered to this day; but certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
-alterations have been made downstairs in the courtyard,
-now roofed in with glass and made very
-attractive, without spoiling the old-style character
-of the house. If you be a literary pilgrim, or an
-American, they will show you Mr Pickwick's bedroom;
-and can meet any of Dickens's criticisms
-by telling how Nelson stayed here with&mdash;ahem!&mdash;Lady
-Hamilton, and how Admiral Hyde-Parker and
-others of world-wide fame have occupied the
-"mouldy rooms."</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXIII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Leaving</span> Ipswich and passing through the dusty roadside
-fringe of Whitton village, known as Whitton Street,
-Claydon, nondescript, and neither very beautiful nor
-quite commonplace, is reached in two and a half miles.
-Just before entering the village, an old mansion is
-glimpsed from the road, embowered in trees, a mansion
-which, on inquiry, the ingenuous youth of Claydon
-declare to be "Mockbeggar Hall." Claydon Hall is
-its true title; but the popular name has been handed
-down since many, many years ago, when the old house
-(not old then) long remained tenantless. Like the
-many other places named "Mockbeggar," it stands
-well within view of passing travellers, and must have
-induced many a sturdy rogue and vagabond to trudge
-wearily up the long approach in search of alms, only
-to find the windows dark, the chimneys innocent of
-smoke, the place, in fact, deserted of all but flutter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>ing
-bats and screeching owls, whose shrill notes must
-have sounded like jeers to the disappointed vagrants.
-Inhabited now, Claydon Hall is a handsome old house
-bearing the date 1635 on its Dutch-like gables. It
-will probably never lose its popular name. Behind
-the old Hall winds the willow-fringed Orwell, coyly
-approaching within view of the road, and then, as it
-were, timorously retreating again; its brimming
-stream, although seen only in such fleeting glimpses,
-potent in its effect upon at least three miles' length
-of the road, from Claydon to Creeting All Saints, in
-the loveliest stretch of woodland, where the fierce
-mid-day sun is baffled by over-arching foliage, and
-twilight comes early in the afternoon through the
-dense masses of leaves. These are the woodlands of
-Shrubland Park. The Hall lies secluded to the right<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
-hand, somewhere away beyond the rather terrible
-lodges that confront the traveller, who wonders where
-he has seen their like before; until, like a flash, the
-memory of certain great London cemeteries and their
-mortuary chapels comes upon him in desolating
-fashion and blights the cheerful rustic surroundings
-of forest trees and the scurryings of white-tailed
-rabbits and gorgeous blue and brown pheasants that
-inhabit this domain of Lord de Saumarez. The
-lodges, built like the Hall, from designs by Sir
-Charles Barry, are of white brick and stone, in the
-Italian Renaissance style.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus68">
-<img src="images/fig62.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">MOCKBEGGAR HALL.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>At no great distance from the entrance to this
-lordly domain, and noticeable from the road, in an
-exquisitely damp situation by the river, eminently
-calculated to foster rheumatism in old bones, is the
-Barham Union-house&mdash;the "Work'us" of peasant
-speech. It is quite an old-world building, and one
-of the earliest built under the new Poor Law Act of
-the early nineteenth century, when outdoor relief
-gave place to retirement within these prison-like
-buildings. Hodge well named them "Bastilles."
-They say who should know of what they speak, that
-life in Barham Union is nowadays quite desirable,
-but the design of the building, a quadrangular
-structure enclosing a courtyard, with outer walls
-blank or only provided with windows at a height
-from the ground, closely follows the prison, or restraining,
-idea.</p>
-
-<p>The little roadside sign of the "Sorrel Horse,"
-standing in midst of these leafy bowers, is in pleasing
-contrast with the Campo Santo pretentiousness of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
-Shrubland lodges or the prison-like style of the
-Union, now left behind on a rising road, where the
-scarped side of the highway reveals a momentary
-change from the prevailing claylands to chalk; a
-change so sudden and so strictly confined to this hillside
-that it at once attracts the attention of even the
-least geologically-inclined. Here the campions bloom
-that love the chalk and refuse to grow on clay.
-Below this hilltop, in the deep hollow scoured out
-ages ago, when the now insignificant stream that
-crosses the road was a considerable force, is Creeting
-Bottom, and Creetings of several sorts are set about
-the countryside, all hiding from the road that goes
-now up hill and down dale with as lonely an air as
-though the little town of Needham Market and the
-larger town of Stowmarket were not almost within
-sight, over the shoulders of the hills, on the highway
-parallel with this, that runs to Bury St Edmunds.
-To be on "on the road to Needham" is an obvious
-Suffolk saying, applied to those who are badly off for
-worldly gear, and it is a little curious that Needham
-itself was for many years, and until quite recently,
-a place of fallen fortunes, lamenting the decay of its
-textile trades in empty houses and an "irreducible
-minimum" of rent for those that were so fortunate as
-to find occupants at all. The name of "Hungry-gut
-Hall" that still clings to a farmhouse marks that
-depressed period to all time; but in the spicy odours
-of the tanneries and the chemical manure stores and
-other thriving industries and businesses that cluster
-round the railway station, the explorer finds evidences
-enough that Needham is reviving.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus69">
-<img src="images/fig63.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">"STONHAM PIE."
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Not a sign of those towns or of the railway is
-seen on the road to Norwich, where the cottage outposts
-of Stonham Earls and Stonham Aspall alone
-tell of the villages in the hinterland. In their
-gardens, spread on bushes or waving in the summer
-breeze, intimate articles of underclothing are prominently
-displayed, in the society of old hats and
-coats, not so much for the exhibition of the family
-wardrobe as in desperate attempts&mdash;bringing up all
-the reserves&mdash;at scaring away the hungry birds from
-currants, cherries and gooseberries. These contests,
-the only warring incidents on the way, in which the
-birds are generally the victors, bring one to a level
-road where Little Stonham stands, its chief feature
-the "Magpie" Inn. "Stonham Pie" owns one of
-those old gallows signs, stretching across the road,
-that were at one time a common feature. The
-picture-sign, with a painting of that saucy bird,
-has been hung below the cross-beam instead of in its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
-old ironwork frame above, now that the piled-up
-coaches that once passed beneath are gone. Shortly before
-their going, and while turnpikes and tolls appeared
-likely to last for ever, the toll-gate that stood at the
-succeeding village of Brockford was removed two miles
-onward, to Stoke Ash, where, at the beginning of the
-pretty avenue at Stoke Chapel, the later toll-house
-remains, just as does the earlier one at Brockford.
-Brockford, the "badger's ford" of a tiny affluent of
-the Waveney, is preceded by Brockford Green, where
-the quiet road is made narrow by its sides being encroached
-upon by grass. It is here that the accompanying
-sketch of tall poplars and bushy willows was
-taken.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus70">
-<img src="images/fig64.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">NEAR BROCKFORD.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Off to the left hand, in strong contrast with this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
-level stretch of road, the country is tumbled into
-combes and rounded hills, where the River Gipping
-takes its rise in the village of that name, springing
-from the hill where the church tower stands solemn
-and grim, as though it held inviolate the story of the
-place, away from those days when the Gippings first
-settled here and gave it a title.</p>
-
-<p>But let not the hurried seek Gipping, along the
-winding by-roads. The way, if not far, is not
-easy, and passengers are few. Scattered and infrequent
-farmhouses there be, at whose back doors
-to inquire the way, but rustic directions are apt to
-mislead. In any case, it is little use approaching
-the front door of a farmhouse. No one will hear
-you knocking, unless indeed it be a watchful and
-savage dog, trained to be on the alert for tramps;
-and you are like to hear him snuffling and gasping
-on the other side in a ferociously suggestive manner
-which will render you thankful that the door is
-closed and bolted. And not only bolted on this
-occasion, but always. The steps, and the space
-between the door and the threshold, where stray
-straws and wind-blown rubbish have collected, are
-evidence of the fact that the farmer and his family
-do not use the front door, but make their exits and
-entrances by way of the kitchen. It is an old
-East Anglian custom, and although many of the
-farmers nowadays pretend to culture and set up
-to be as up-to-date as the retired tradesfolk and
-small squires they are neighbourly with, many
-others would no more think of using the principal
-entrance to their homes than they would make use of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
-the "parlour," where massive and sombre furniture,
-covered with antimacassars, is disposed with geometric
-accuracy around the room, in company with
-the family Bible and the prizes taken at school by
-the farmer's children; the stale and stuffy atmosphere
-proclaiming that this state apartment is only
-used on rare and solemn occasions. In fact, the
-"best room" and the front door only came into use
-in the old days on the occasion of a funeral.
-Perhaps it is a custom originating in a laudable idea
-of paying the greatest possible respect to the dead,
-but it is one which certainly gives a gruesome mortuary
-significance to both the entrance and the room.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus71">
-<img src="images/fig65.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">"THWAITE LOW HOUSE."
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Thwaite or "Twaite," as East Anglians, incapable
-of pronouncing "th," call it, less than a mile beyond
-Brockford, numbers few cottages. Beyond it,
-where the hitherto flat road makes a descent, is
-in local parlance, "Thwaite Low House," not so
-called on account of any disreputable character it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
-may once have earned, but from its situation. The
-name obviously entails the existence of a "High
-House," which was, like the other, a coaching and
-posting inn. The last named, now a farmstead,
-was in those days the "Cock," the other the
-"Queen's Head." While the "Low House" has
-fallen upon times so irredeemably evil that it has
-been long untenanted and is now a veritable scarecrow
-of a house, with gaping holes in its walls and
-windows battened up, the "Cock," save that its
-sign is gone, still remains much as it was, to show
-a later generation what manner of place the roadside
-inn was in days of yore.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus72">
-<img src="images/fig66.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE "COCK," THWAITE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Stoke Ash, or "Aish," as Suffolkers pronounce
-it, like many another village, makes no sign from
-the road. Its church tower seen to the right, dimly,
-amid a hilltop screen of trees, a square, box-like
-red-brick chapel by the way, and that pretty inn,
-"Stoke White Horse," are the only other evidences
-of its being. The remaining six miles to the
-Norfolk border lead through Yaxley and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
-Brome: Yaxley, where a branch railway runs
-under the road, on its way to Eye, and narrowly
-misses the old church: Brome, where the "Swan"
-stands for all the village to those who look to
-neither side of the road; church and houses skulking
-down a by-road on the way to Hoxne. There,
-down that pretty road, where the thatched cottages
-nestle under tall trees and the blue wood-smoke
-from rustic hearths curls upwards into the boughs
-and makes the sparrows cough and sneeze&mdash;there
-is the Rectory, approached in lordly fashion past
-a fine brick entrance and exquisite avenue, and,
-at a little greater distance the old black flint,
-round-towered church, restored and titivated out
-of all antiquity of tone: the stone sand-papered, and
-the flints polished with a handkerchief. The only
-thing missing&mdash;and, under the circumstances, it
-is missed&mdash;is a glass case, so that no damp, nor
-lichen, nor any effects of weather may come to
-spoil the housewifely neatness.</p>
-
-<p>It was along this road to Hoxne that those
-who sought the revered head of St Edmund, King
-and Martyr, in the miraculous legend, were led
-to it by the voice calling, "Here, here, here;"
-at length finding the sainted relic in charge of
-a wolf, who allowed it to be taken from between
-his paws. But the voice thus calling was probably
-a much less supernatural manifestation, and
-was doubtless the hooting of owls in the woods.
-They still mock the belated traveller, only, to ears
-untuned to the miraculous, they simply seem to
-ask, "Who, who, who?" Ingenuity, however,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
-vainly seeks the basis in nature of the wolf
-incident.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXIV</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Now</span>, crossing the River Waveney, winding with tree-fringed
-banks through a flat country, the road enters
-Norfolk at Scole. Coming over the little bridge,
-the village is seen huddled together on either side
-of a narrow rising road; village and church alike
-wholly dominated by a great building of mellow
-red brick whose panelled chimney-stacks and long
-row of beautiful gables give the impression of an
-historic mansion having by some strange chance
-been taken from its park and set down beside the
-highway. This, however, was at no time a private
-residence, but was built as an inn; and an inn it
-remains, after the passing of nearly two centuries
-and a half. Scole, or "Schoale," as the name was
-often spelled in old times (when, indeed, the village
-was not called by its <i>alias</i> of Osmundeston), was by
-reason of this inn quite a celebrated place in the
-days of long ago. Every traveller in Eastern
-England had then either seen or heard of "Scole
-White Hart" and its famous sign that stretched
-completely across the road, and as a great many
-coaches halted here for changing teams, passengers
-had plenty of time for examining what Sir Thomas
-Browne thought to be "the noblest sighne-post in
-England." Both house and sign were built in 1655,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
-for James Peck, described as a "Norwich merchant,"
-whose initials, together with the date, are yet to
-be seen on the centre gable. The elaborate sign
-alone cost �1057. It was of gigantic size and loaded
-with twenty-five carved figures of classic deities
-and others. Chaste Diana, with bow and arrow
-and two hounds, had a place on the cross-beam, in
-company with Time in the act of devouring an
-infant, Act�on and his dogs, a huntsman, and a
-White Hart <i>couchant</i>. On a pediment above the
-White Hart, supported by Justice and Temperance,
-was the effigy of an astronomer "seated on a
-Circumferenter," who by "some Chymical Preparation
-is so Affected that in fine Weather He faces
-the North and against bad Weather He faces that
-Quarter from whence it is about to come." On
-either side of the dizzy height occupied by the
-astronomer were figures of Fortitude and Prudence,
-a position suitable enough for the first-named of
-those two virtues, but certainly too perilous for
-the last.</p>
-
-<p>Further suggestions of Olympus, with references
-to Hades and Biblical history, adorned the other
-portions of this extraordinary work. Cerberus
-clawed one side of the supporting post, while Charon
-dragged a witch to Hell on the other; and Neptune
-bestriding a dolphin, and Bacchic figures seated
-across casks alternated with the arms of twelve
-East Anglian noble and landed families. Two angels
-supported respectively the arms of Mr Peck and
-his lady and two lions those of Norwich and
-Yarmouth. On the side nearest the inn appeared a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
-huge carving of Jonah coming out of the whale's
-mouth, while, suspended in mid-air, and surrounded
-by a wreath, was another White Hart.</p>
-
-<p>Although, as we have seen, Sir Thomas Browne
-was impressed with this work, an early nineteenth-century
-tourist (so early indeed as 1801) curtly
-dismisses it as "a pompous sign, with ridiculous
-ornaments," and shortly after that it seems to have
-been taken down, for the reason that it cost the
-landlord more to keep it in repair than the trade of
-the house permitted. Together with this, the once
-celebrated Great Bed of the White Hart has also
-disappeared. It was a round bed capable of holding
-twenty couples, and was therefore a good deal larger
-than the famous Great Bed of Ware. Perhaps it
-was because guests did not relish this co-operative
-method of seeking repose, or maybe because sheets,
-blankets and coverlets of sufficient size were unobtainable,
-that the Scole Great Bed was chopped
-up for firewood; but did anyone <i>ever</i> suppose beds
-of this wholesale capacity would be desirable?</p>
-
-<p>The accompanying old view of the gigantic sign
-shows one of the peculiar basket coaches of the
-second half of the eighteenth century, on its way to
-London.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus17">
-<img src="images/fig67.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE OLD SIGN OF SCOLE WHITE HART.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>"Scole White Hart" must have been among the
-very finest of inns and posting-houses. Its wide
-staircases, of a width sufficient for the proverbial
-coach-and-four to drive up them, its large rooms
-and fine panelled doors, its great stone-flagged
-kitchen, all proclaim how great must have been its
-old prosperity; while the wide-spreading yard in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a><br /><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a><br /><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
-the rear of the house, together with the outbuildings,
-gives some hint of how heavy the traffic was at
-this junction of the Lowestoft, Bungay, Diss and
-Thetford road with that from London to Norwich.
-Shrunken trade has caused portions of the inn to be
-let off; the stone and wooden porches seen in the
-old print have disappeared; the coach entrance has
-long since been blocked up and has become the bar-parlour,
-and the mullions of the windows have given
-place to sashes; but the building still retains a noble
-architectural character, and is perhaps more interesting
-in these latter days, now that its story is told,
-than ever it was when that story was in the making.
-Little or nothing is found in contemporary records
-of "Scole White Hart"; only one vivid flash in its
-later years, when indignant would-be coach passengers
-stood at the door on a day in October 1822 and saw
-the drivers of the "Norwich Times" and "Gurney's
-Original Day Coach," fired by rivalry, and reckless
-in their long race from Whitechapel, come pounding
-furiously down the road and over the bridge, pass
-the inn without stopping, and disappear in clouds of
-dust in the direction of Norwich. Do you know
-what it is to lose a train and to wait an hour for
-the next? You do? Then it will not be difficult
-to form some idea of the blind, stuttering fury that
-possessed those who had booked seats at Scole and
-saw the coaches dash away, to leave them with half
-a day's wait.</p>
-
-<p>Thorogood was driving the "Times." Both
-started from London at 5.30 a.m. The "Day"
-coach reached Norwich at 5.20 p.m., and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
-"Times" ten minutes later, neither having stopped
-for changing horses during the last twenty-five miles.
-This was a "record" for that period, the usual time
-being fourteen hours.</p>
-
-<p>Probably the would-be passengers had to remain
-the night; a fate which no one who has done the
-like of late would be apt to complain of. The guest
-at the "White Hart," seated in solitary state in
-the lofty sitting-room, lit dimly by candles in antique
-plated candlesticks, and with two ox-eyed seventeenth-century
-beauties of the Lely type gazing down upon
-him from their sombre frames, presently feels oddly
-as though he were living in another era; a feeling
-that grows as he wanders upstairs to bed, almost
-losing himself in the roomy corridors. When he has
-closed the nail-studded bedroom door with a reverberant
-clang, and, creeping into the generous
-embraces of a damask-hung four-poster that may
-have been new a century and a half ago, gazes
-reflectively about the panelled room and on the
-curiously coffered ceiling, he drops off to sleep
-straightway into the times when the inn was new-built
-and dreams of how the news of the Restoration
-may have come to Scole in 1661. Old times live
-again, faded flowers bloom once more, forgotten
-footsteps echo along the passages, and lo, the Has
-Been is enacted again, with all the convincing air
-of such visions. Post-chaises and chariots clatter
-up to the door and their noise wakens the sleeper
-to the consciousness that the sound is but that of
-a jolting rustic tumbril going down the road in the
-early morning; that this is the twentieth century,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a><br /><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a><br /><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
-and the "White Hart" but a survival in a back eddy
-of life.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus18">
-<img src="images/fig68.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">STAIRCASE IN THE "WHITE HART."
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Besides the "White Hart," there is little else at
-Scole. The plain flint tower of the church stands
-by the roadside, on the ascent that leads from the
-village; and other two or three inns, a few rustic
-shops and cottages, and a private residence or so make
-up the tale. Scole, in fact, has not grown greatly
-since when it was a Roman station, and when the
-Roman soldiers whose remains have been found near
-the river occupied the military post on the long road
-to Venta Icenorum.</p>
-
-<p>The legionaries first stationed in these East
-Anglian wastes must often have longed for their
-native Italy. When the sky sank almost to the level
-of the land in the long winter's rains and fogs, and
-the biting winds blew out of the east across the sandy
-scrub; when agues or the lurking enemy accounted
-for many of their comrades, and when some favoured
-few were recalled to the capital, they must have
-thought wistfully of a more congenial clime than
-this, situated on the edge of the Unknown. Rome,
-either as Empire or Republic, was a hard taskmaster,
-and when no fighting was in prospect employed the
-troops ingloriously as road-makers. The advanced
-garrisons in the wilderness cleared the enemy out of
-the tangled brush and boggy marshes, and working
-parties built roads under the protection of guards, or
-improved the rude trackways they found already in
-existence. Some fell by the way, and their skeletons
-have been found in these latter days, the teeth still
-clenched on the obolus placed in the dead man's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
-mouth to pay Charon for ferrying him across the cold
-and darkling Styx; or, where the coin has perished,
-still stained with the metal's long decay. They
-perished, those pioneers, to found a civilisation, just
-as countless thousands of our own blood have laid
-their bones on distant shores, under burning skies or
-in the Arctic night, to make England what she is.
-Respect their long sleep, antiquaries, nor, as you
-honour your own creeds, take from the dead men
-their passage-money across that mystic river.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXV</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">This</span>, as Dr Jessop charmingly names Norfolk, is
-Arcady. The scene is pleasant, but the stage waits:
-where are the actors? Gone, where and for what
-reasons beyond the substitution of rail for road shall
-presently be considered. But if the merry days of
-old are done and population dwindled, at least in
-East Anglia, and especially in Norfolk, dialect
-flourishes among those who remain. The "Norfolk
-drant" or drawl, is still heard, just as the "Suffolk
-whine"&mdash;that rising inflection of the voice towards
-the end of sentences&mdash;is even yet a mark of the sister
-county. They are, indeed, said to have originated
-the Yankee combined drawl and twang, for Norfolk
-and Suffolk were largely represented among the
-Pilgrim Fathers, the first colonists of North America.
-With these survivals, some of the old rustic simplicity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
-is still met with, although the extraordinary ignorance
-of sixty years ago has disappeared, and the
-Norfolk labourer no longer thinks it possible to
-emigrate to America by driving over in a farm cart.
-The story is an East Anglian classic, how a farm
-labourer "didn't fare rightly to knaw" by what route
-they were going to the United States, "but we'm
-gwine ter sleep t' Debenham the fust night, so's to
-kinder break t' jarney." When railways came, and
-access to London grew easy, these simplicities gradually
-faded away. The young men took to "gettin'
-up the road," as the saying ran&mdash;otherwise, going to
-London&mdash;to "better themselves," and old illusions
-were soon dispelled; but in Arcady the mavis may
-still be seen knapping a dodman; the children of the
-rustic hamlets may be observed by the passing stranger
-gleefully sporting at the old game of tittymatorterin;
-the cowslips that in springtime turn the
-meadows to living gold are yet "paigles"; a small
-field remains, as ever, a "pightle," and when a countryman
-throws anything into a ditch, he "hulls" (or
-hurls) "it in t' holl," just as his ancestors did hundreds
-of years ago. Let some of the archaic words just
-noted be explained before we proceed any further.
-"Mavis" is the idyllic name of the thrush, and the
-"dodman," which he may be observed "knapping,"
-or breaking, is a snail; called in Essex, by the way,
-a "hodmadod." "Tittymatorterin" is just the simple
-game of "see-sawing." Besides these fleeting instances
-there are many other peculiarities. The Norfolk
-peasant will never pronounce the letter E if it be
-possible to avoid it. It becomes I in his mouth, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
-a head becomes a "hid," while hens are "hins."
-Throughout the whole of the eastern counties, too,
-the elision of the final in the present tense is a
-feature of rustic talk. Examples of this peculiarity
-are found not only in modern speech, but in old
-epitaphs and inscriptions, dating back some hundreds
-of years. Thus, a bridge across the River Wensum,
-at Norwich, bears the sculptured effigy of a dragon's
-head with the words, "When dragon drink, Heigham
-sink." The meaning is that when the river rises and
-touches, or "rise" and "touch," as a Norfolk man
-would say, the dragon's mouth, the neighbouring
-Heigham becomes flooded. An older example still
-is seen on an inscription at Kimberley, to John
-Jenkin, in the words:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"Under this stone rare Jenkin lie,"</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>while a comparatively modern one may be found in
-Stratford St Mary church, in the concluding lines of
-an epitaph dated 1739:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">'The Night is gone, ye Stars Remain,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">So man that die shall Live again."</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Dickens has caught the East Anglian dialect
-readily enough in <i>David Copperfield</i>, where he
-makes Mr Peggotty say, "Cheer up, old mawther" to
-Mrs Grummidge, and speak of "a couple of mavishes,"
-while Ham talks to David as "Mas'r Davy, bor."
-The willing Barkis, too, who asks "do she now?"
-and speaks of the "stage-cutch," is a true product
-of the soil.</p>
-
-<p>For the benefit of those not to the manner born,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
-let it be repeated that a "mawther" is not necessarily
-a parent. It is the generic name for a female. A
-"mawther" may therefore be a girl infant or a grown
-woman. "Bor" is, of course, a corruption of "neighbour,"
-but need not, in fact, specifically mean a
-neighbour, and is practically the masculine of
-"mawther," and applicable to any man; friend close
-at hand or stranger from distant parts.</p>
-
-<p>The Norfolk dialect has attained the distinction
-of being made the subject of study, and glossaries
-and collections of local words have long been made
-by enthusiasts in these matters. Perhaps the most
-interesting and amusing of the examples of Norfolk
-talk is found in the East Anglian version of the
-<i>Song of Solomon</i>, published many years ago by Prince
-Louis Lucien Bonaparte. It was taken down from a
-reading by a Norfolk peasant. A few verses will be
-instructive:&mdash;</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>1. The song o' songs, as is Sorlomun's.</p>
-
-<p>2. Lerr 'im kiss me wi' the kisses of his mouth;
-for yar love is better 'an wine.</p>
-
-<p>3. Becaze o' the smell o' yar intements, yar
-name is as intements pored out, therefoor du the
-mawthers love y&#277;.</p>
-
-<p>4. Dror m&#277;, we'll run arter y&#277;: the king he ha'
-browt me into his charmbers; we'll be glad and re&#299;jce
-in y&#277;; we'll remahmber yar love more 'an wine: the
-right-up love y&#277;.</p>
-
-<p>5. I em black, but tidy, O ye darters o' J'rusal'm,
-as the taents o' Kedar, as the cattins o' Sorlomun.</p>
-
-<p>6. Don't sin starrin' at me, cos I em black, 'ecos<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
-the sun t'have barnt m&#277;; my mother's children wor
-sn&#257;sty wi' me; they made me keeper o' the winyerds,
-but m'own winyerd I han't kept.</p>
-
-<p>7. Tell onto me, yow hu my soul du love, where ye
-fade, where ye make yar flock to rest at nune: fur why
-shud I be as one tarn aside by yar cumrades' flock?</p>
-
-<p>8. If so bein' as y&#277; don't know, O yow bootifullest
-o' women, go yer ways furth by the futtin' o' the
-flock, and feed yer kids 'eside the shepherds' taents.</p>
-
-<p>9. I ha' likened yow, O my love, to a taamer o'
-hosses in Pharer's charrits.</p>
-
-<p>10. Yar cheeks are right fine wi' ringes of jewiltry,
-yer neck wi' chanes o' gold.</p>
-
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>The full flavour of this vernacular is only to be
-obtained by reading the original verses side by side
-with the above.</p>
-
-<p>Among the sports that obtained on the borders of
-Norfolk and Suffolk of old was "camping." "Camping"
-was an old East Anglian game that, could it be revived,
-would please the footballing maniacs of our own
-day. It was a wild kind of football, played on these
-commons, often with a hundred players aside, and
-we are told that the roughest kind of Rugby football
-was child's play compared with it. If stories of
-old camping contests be true, it might almost seem
-that in ascribing the thinly-populated condition of
-Norfolk and Suffolk to the long-standing effects of
-the Black Death, and to medi�val insurrections and
-their resulting butcheries, we do an injustice to
-pestilence and the sword, and fail to make count
-of the casualties received in play. As the wondering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
-Frenchman said, in witnessing a camping-match, "If
-these savages be at play, what would they be in
-war?"</p>
-
-<p>"These contests," says a Norfolk historian, "were
-not infrequently fatal to many of the combatants.
-I have heard old persons speak of a celebrated camping,
-Norfolk against Suffolk, on Diss Common, with
-three hundred on each side. Before the ball was
-thrown up, the Norfolk men inquired tauntingly of
-the Suffolk men if they had brought their coffins.
-The Suffolk men, after fourteen hours, were the
-victors. Nine deaths were the result of the conflict
-in a fortnight." Camping went out of favour about
-1810, and the coroners had an easier time.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXVI</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Dickleburgh</span>, the next village after Scole, is in its
-way as imposing a place, only not an inn, but a
-church, is its chief feature. The great church of
-Dickleborough (as the name should be pronounced)
-charmingly screened from the street by a row of
-limes, but not so charmingly enclosed by a very
-long and very tall iron railing, stands end on to the
-road, its eastern wall looking down upon the pilgrims
-who once passed on their way to Our Lady of
-Walsingham; two tabernacles, one on either side
-of the east window, holding effigies of popular
-saints, and halting many a sinner for supplication.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
-The saints are gone, torn down by Henry the
-Eighth's commissioners, or by the fanatical Dowsing.
-They lie, perhaps, in the mud of some horse-pond,
-or, broken up, serve the useful part of metalling the
-road. Adjoining the church stands the "King's
-Head," the sign perhaps rather a general idea of
-kings than intended as a portrait of any particular
-one. At any rate it resembles none of the long line
-of English sovereigns, nor even that one-time
-favourite, the King of Prussia, though old enough
-to have been painted in the hey-day of his
-popularity. Dickleburgh Church is absurdly large
-for the present size of the place and for the empty
-country side; but there is a reason for the solitudes,
-and there was one for these huge buildings, ten times
-too large for the present needs of the shrunken
-villages. Norfolk and Suffolk, once among the most
-thickly-peopled of English counties, were practically
-depopulated in 1348 by that dreadful scourge, the
-Black Death. One-third of the total population
-of England perished under that terrible plague.
-The working classes were the worst sufferers, and
-the agriculturists, the weavers and labourers died
-in such numbers that the crops rotted on the ground,
-industries decayed, and no man would work. When
-the pestilence was stayed, other parts of the country
-flourished in greater proportion, than this. Manufacturing
-industries arose elsewhere and attracted
-the large populations; while East Anglia, remaining
-consistently agricultural throughout the centuries,
-has never shared the increase; only the few and
-scattered towns showing industrial enterprise, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a><br /><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a><br /><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
-the form of weaving in medi�val and later times,
-and in the manufacture of agricultural machinery
-nowadays. In the last two decades, with the
-decay of agriculture and the rush of the peasantry
-to London and the great centres of population, the
-country, and the eastern counties in especial, has
-become almost deserted.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus19">
-<img src="images/fig69.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">DICKLEBURGH.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The present state of agriculture in Eastern
-England is made manifest in deserted farms, in
-broken gates left hanging precariously on one hinge,
-in decaying barns and cart-sheds left to rot; rusted
-ploughs and decrepit waggons standing derelict in
-the once fertile fields, now overrun with foul weeds
-and rank with docks, charlock, and thistles; and
-farms, long advertised "to let," remaining and likely
-to remain tenantless. Not to everyone is it possible
-to grow seeds and flowers, and market-gardening is
-profitable only in the lands more immediately surrounding
-the great towns. With wheat at its
-present price of thirty shillings a quarter, it does
-not pay to grow corn for the market, and the land
-is going out of cultivation. Where the farmer still
-struggles on, he lays down most of his holding in
-grass for sheep and cattle, and grows, grudgingly,
-as little wheat as possible, for sake of the straw.
-Things are not quite so bad as in 1894, when wheat
-was down to twenty shillings a quarter, and farmers
-fed their pigs on the harvest which cost them three
-pounds more per acre to grow than it would have
-brought in the market; but at thirty shillings it
-yields no profit. Agricultural England is, in short,
-ruined, and there seems no present hope of things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
-becoming better. While the boundless, bountiful
-harvests of Argentina, of Canada, the United States,
-Russia and other wheat-producing countries can be
-cultivated, reaped, and carried to these shores at the
-prices that now rule, and while the stock-breeders
-of those lands can raise sheep and cattle just as
-advantageously, the English farmer must needs go
-without a living wage. As matters stand at present,
-we import fully seventy-five per cent. of the wheat
-used in the country; the acreage under corn having
-gone down from 4,058,731 acres in 1852, to about
-half that at the present day. Meanwhile the population
-has increased by thirteen millions; so that,
-with many more mouths to fill, we grow only half
-the staple food these islands produced then. There
-are, of course, those who reap the advantage of cheap
-corn and cheap meat from over seas. The toiling
-millions of the towns and cities thrive on those
-benefits; but what if, through war, or from any other
-cause, those sea-borne supplies ceased? Of what
-avail would have been this generation of cheapness if
-at last the nation must starve? Extinguish agriculture
-and the farmer, and you cannot recall them at need,
-nor with magic wand bring back to cultivation a
-land which has long gone untilled.</p>
-
-<p>But the farmer cannot alone be ruined, any more
-than the walls of a house can be demolished and the
-roof yet left standing. It was the farmer who in
-prosperous times supported the country gentleman
-in one direction, and the agricultural labourer in
-the other. With wheat, as it was a generation ago,
-at seventy shillings a quarter, and other products of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
-the land proportionately profitable, the farmer could
-afford to pay both high rent and good wages. Farms
-in those days were difficult to obtain, and there was
-great competition among farmers for holdings. To-day,
-even at a quarter of those rents, tenants are
-difficult to obtain, and the income of the landed
-proprietors has dwindled away. The results are
-painfully evident here, in the old families reduced or
-beggared, and their seats either in the market or let
-to stock-jobbers and successful business men, while
-the old owners have disappeared or live humbly in
-small houses once occupied by the steward or bailiff
-of the estate.</p>
-
-<p>While rents have thus, with the iron logic of
-circumstances, gone down to vanishing-point, and
-while farms have actually been offered rent free in
-order to prevent the disaster of the land being let
-go out of cultivation, the wages and the circumstances
-of the agricultural labourer have been, most
-illogically, improving. Instead of the miserable six
-to nine shillings a week he existed upon, at the
-beginning of the nineteenth century, he receives
-thirteen or fourteen shillings, lives in a decent cottage,
-instead of a wretched hovel, and finds the cost of food
-and clothing fifty per cent. cheaper than his grandfather
-ever knew it to be. Yet agricultural labourers
-are as difficult to get now as they were immediately
-after the Black Death had swept away three quarters
-of the working class, five hundred and fifty years
-ago. The crops went ungarnered then, as they
-have done of recent years in East Anglia&mdash;for
-lack of hands to gather them in. It was in 1899<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
-that standing crops at Tivitshall St Margaret's and
-adjacent parishes were sold by auction for a farmer
-who could find no labourer willing to be hired.</p>
-
-<p>What has been called the "rural exodus" is well
-named. London and the great towns have proved
-so attractive to the children of the middle-aged
-peasant that they despise the country. They can
-all read and write now, and at a pinch do simple
-sums in arithmetic; so off they go to the crowded
-streets. The ambitious aspire to a black coat and a
-stool in an office, and others become workmen of
-many kinds; but all are attracted by the higher
-wages to be earned in the towns, and by the excitement
-of living in the great centres of population,
-and only the aged and the aging will soon be left
-to till the fields.</p>
-
-<p>Farmers entertain the supremest contempt for
-the agricultural labourer's attempts to better himself.
-To them they are almost impious; but the
-farmer is himself tarred with the same brush of
-culture. He is a vastly different fellow from his
-grandfather, who actually helped to till the soil
-among his own men; whose wife and daughters were
-noted hands at milking and buttermaking; who
-lived in the kitchen, among the hams and the
-domestic utensils, and was not above eating the
-same food as, and at the same table with, his
-ploughmen and carters. He has, in fact, and so
-also have the landed proprietor and the labourer,
-undergone a process of levelling up. It is a process
-which had started certainly by 1825, when Cobbett
-noticed it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Hear him:&mdash;</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>"When the old farmhouses are down (and
-down they must come in time) what a miserable
-thing the country will be! Those that are now
-erected are mere painted shells, with a mistress
-within who is stuck up in a place she calls the
-parlour, with, if she have children, the 'young
-ladies and gentlemen' about her; some showy
-chairs and a sofa (a <i>sofa</i> by all means); half-a-dozen
-prints in gilt frames hanging up; some
-swinging book-shelves with novels and tracts upon
-them; a dinner brought in by a girl that is perhaps
-better 'educated' than she; two or three nick-nacks
-to eat, instead of a piece of bacon and a
-pudding; the house too neat for a dirty-shoed
-carter to be allowed to come into; and everything
-proclaiming to every sensible beholder that there
-is here a constant anxiety to make a <i>show</i> not
-warranted by the reality. The children (which is
-the worst part of it) are all too clever to <i>work;</i>
-they are all to be <i>gentlefolks</i>. Go to <i>plough</i>! Good
-God! What! 'young gentlemen' go to plough!
-They become <i>clerks</i>, or some skimming-dish thing
-or other. They flee from the dirty <i>work</i> as cunning
-horses do from the bridle. What misery is all this!
-What a mass of materials for proclaiming that
-general and <i>dreadful convulsion</i> that must, first
-or last, come and blow this funding and jobbing
-and enslaving and starving system to atoms."</p></blockquote>
-
-<p>The "convulsion" anticipated by Cobbett has
-not come about. This is not a country of earthquakes
-or of violent social upheavals. Free Trade<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
-has beggared the agricultural interests, but, on his
-way to the Bankruptcy Court, the farmer contrives
-to live in better style than possible three quarters
-of a century ago, while his pretensions to gentility
-certainly have not decreased. As for the "funding
-and jobbing," Cobbett could never, in his wildest
-dreams, have foreseen Limited Liability and the
-fungoid growth of Stock Exchange speculation, or
-the modern "enslaving and starving system" of
-the gigantic Trusts that, like vampires, feed on
-the blood of industry. We need look for no convulsions;
-not even, unhappily, for the hanging, or,
-at least, the taxing out of existence, of the
-millionaires. Our expectations of the future are
-quite different. The people will inhabit the towns,
-and the country will become a huge preserve of
-game for the sport of the millionaires aforesaid; a
-preserve broken here and there by the model farm
-or the training establishment of some colossus of
-wealth.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXVII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Beyond</span> Dickleburgh, past the solitary "Ram" inn,
-a fine, dignified house still lamenting its decadence
-from a posting-inn to a beerhouse, Tivetshall level-crossing
-marks where the railway runs to Bungay
-and Lowestoft. Maps make Pulham St Mary the
-Virgin quite near, with Pulham St Mary Magdalene
-close by; Tivetshalls of different dedications, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
-other villages dotted about like plums in a Christmas
-pudding, but no sign of them is evident. Only
-windmills, whirling furiously on distant ridges,
-break the pastoral solitudes. In this conflict of
-charts, a carter jogging along the road with his team
-is evidently the authority to be consulted.</p>
-
-<p>"Coom hather," says the carter to his sleek and
-intelligent horses; and they coom accordingly, with
-much jingling of harness, and stand in the shade of
-roadside trees while their lord takes his modest
-levenses and haffles and jaffles&mdash;gossips, that is to
-say&mdash;with the landlord of the "Ram."</p>
-
-<p>"Tivetshall?" asks the carter, echoing a question;
-"niver heerd of un." Then a light breaks in upon
-him. "Oh, ay! Tishell we allus call 'em; Tishell
-St Marget an' Tishell St Merry," and with, a sweep
-of the arm comprising the whole western horizon,
-"Theiy'm ower theer."</p>
-
-<p>"And Pulham St Mary the Virgin?"</p>
-
-<p>"Pulham St Merry the Wirgin? oh, yis! Pulham
-Maaket, yar mean, bor. Et edd'n on'y a moile, ower
-<i>theer</i>"&mdash;a comprehensive wave to the eastwards.</p>
-
-<p>And there, on a byroad, in an embrace of trees, it
-is found, a little forgotten town, the greater proportion
-of whose inhabitants appear to walk with two sticks.
-It is ranged round a green or market-place, with a
-great Perpendicular church, gorgeously frescoed
-within, and with a very good recent "Ascension" over
-the chancel arch, painted and stencilled timber roof,
-and elaborate stained-glass windows. The townlet
-and townsfolk sinking into decay, the church an object
-of such care and expense, afford a curious contrast.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>An old toll-house and the prison-like buildings
-of Depwade Union conspire to make desolate the
-road onwards. He who presses, hot-foot, along it,
-turning neither to the right nor to the left, may
-readily be excused a legitimate wonder as to what
-has become of the great feature of East Anglia, its
-spreading commons; for, strange to say, despite the
-fame they have long since attained, no vestige of
-them is glimpsed from the road itself. One has
-usually to turn aside to some of the villages lying
-near, but wholly hidden from the highway, to find
-the yet unenclosed common lands, the pasturage of
-geese, ducks and turkeys; but a striking exception
-to this now general rule is the huge common of
-Wacton lying off to the left of the road at the
-hundredth mile from London, where a cottage and a
-wayside inn, the "Duke's Head," alone represent
-Wacton village, a mile distant. Wacton Common,
-reputed to be the highest point in Norfolk, although
-of no less extent than three hundred and fifty acres,
-might perhaps be passed without being seen, for the
-reason that, although still wild and unenclosed, it is
-screened from the high road by a hedge and entered
-through an ordinary field gate. The inn and the
-cottage, obviously built on land fraudulently taken
-from the common in the long ago, serve with their
-gardens to hide that glorious expanse of grass and
-heather. Here roam those chartered vagabonds,
-the plump geese, that pick up a living on the
-grassy commons and wander, like free-booting
-bands of feathered moss-troopers upon the heaths,
-closing their careers with royal feasting in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a><br /><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a><br /><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
-August and September stubble, and a Michaelmas
-martyrdom.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus20">
-<img src="images/fig70.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">A DISPUTED PASTURAGE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Norfolk and Suffolk are still famous for their
-geese, but those martyred fowls do not make their
-final journey to the London markets, between
-Michaelmas and Christmas, with the publicity they
-once attained. They go up to Leadenhall nowadays
-in the seclusion of railway vans. Seventy years ago
-they journeyed by coach, and in state, for the Norfolk
-coaches in Christmas week often carried nothing save
-geese and turkeys, beside the coachman and guard.
-Full inside and out with such a freight, the proprietors
-of fast coaches made a great deal more by
-carrying them than they would have taken by a load
-of passengers; so the fowls had the preference, while
-travellers had to take their chance of finding a seat
-in the slower conveyances. So long ago as 1793 the
-turkeys conveyed from Norwich to London between
-a Saturday morning and Sunday night in December
-numbered one thousand seven hundred, and weighed
-9 tons, 2 cwt. 2 lbs. Their value was �680. They
-were followed on the two succeeding days by half as
-many more.</p>
-
-<p>A Norfolk common without its screaming and
-hissing flocks of geese would seem strangely untenanted.
-They, the turkeys, the ducks, the donkeys
-("dickies" they call them in Norfolk) and the vagrom
-fowls are among the only vestiges of the wild life
-that once made Norfolk famous to the naturalist and
-not a little eerie to the traveller of old, who, startled
-on the lonely way that stretched by heath and
-common and fen between the habitations of men,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
-shrank appalled at the lumbering flight of the huge
-bustards, quivered with apprehension at the sudden
-hideous whirring of the night-jar as the day closed
-in, dismayed, heard the bittern booming among the
-reeds, or with misgivings of the supernatural saw the
-fantastical ruff stalking on long legs, with prodigious
-beak, red eyes and spreading circle of neck feathers,
-like the creation of some disordered imagination.
-Wild Norfolk, the home of these and of many another
-strange creature, is no more, and these species, now
-chiefly extinct, are to be seen only in museums of
-natural history.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus73">
-<img src="images/fig71.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">LONG STRATTON.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>What Wacton lacks along the high road the
-village of Long Stratton has in superabundance.
-They named it well who affixed the adjective, for it
-measures a mile from end to end. Beginning
-with modern and (to speak kindly) uninteresting
-cottages, it ends in a broad street where almost every
-house is old and beautiful in lichened brick or soft-toned
-plaster. Midway of this lengthy thoroughfare
-stands the church, one of the Norfolk round-towered
-kind, in the usual black flint, and beyond it the
-Manor House, red brick, with Adam scrolls and
-neo-classical palm branches in plaster for trimmings,
-set back at some distance behind a very newty,
-froggy and tadpoley moat. Beyond this again, the
-village street broadens out. Looking back upon it,
-when one has finally climbed uphill on the way to
-Norwich, Long Stratton is a place entirely charming.
-Its name, of course, derives from its situation on the
-Roman Road, and Tasburgh, that now comes in
-sight, keeps yet its Roman camp strongly posted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a><br /><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a><br /><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
-above the River Tase. Tasburgh&mdash;what little there
-is of a village&mdash;occupies an acclivity on the further
-side of that river, across whose wide and marshy valley
-the mists rise early, seeing the sun to bed dull and
-tarnished, and attending the rising of the moon with
-ghostly vapours. The old Roman camp is oddly and
-picturesquely occupied by the parish church, another
-round-towered example. Excepting it, the vicarage
-and the Dutch-like building of the "Bird in Hand"
-Inn, there is little else.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus21">
-<img src="images/fig72.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">LONG STRATTON.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>But what mean these sounds of anger and lamentation
-that drown the soothing, distant rattle of reaping
-machines on the hillside: a voice raised in
-reproach, and another&mdash;a treble one&mdash;in gusty
-shrieks of combined pain, fear and peevishness?
-Coming round a corner, the cause of the disturbance
-is revealed in a wet and muddy infant rubbing dirty
-knuckles into streaming eyes, and being violently reproached
-by an indignant woman.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>"You're a pretty article, I must say; a fine
-spettacle. I'll give yow a good sowsin', my lord;
-coom arn;" and the malefactor is pulled suddenly
-inside the cottage, the door slammed, and muffled
-yells heard, alternating with thumps. The offender
-is receiving that sowsing, or being "yerked,"
-"clipped over the ear-hole," getting a "siseraring,"
-being "whanged" or "clouted," the striking Norfolk
-phrases for varieties of assault and battery.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXVIII</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Tase is met with again on surmounting the
-hilly road out of Tasburgh and coming down hill into
-Newton Flotman. Here it is broad enough to require
-a long and substantial bridge, grouping in unaccustomed
-rightness of composition with the mingled
-thatched, tiled and slated cottages and the church
-that stands on a commanding knoll in the background.
-When Newton was really new it would be
-impossible to say; perhaps its novelty may have been
-measured against the hoary antiquity of, say, Caistor
-yonder, down the valley. For what says the folk-rhyme:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"Caistor was a city when Norwich was none,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">And Norwich was built of Caistor stone,"</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>and if Norwich partook of Caistor's building materials,
-why not, in degree, Newton Flotman? But a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
-whisper. Caistor was never more than a camp, and
-not at any time a place of houses, much less of stone
-ones. Stone is not to be found in this neighbourhood,
-and flint only, of which Norwich is principally
-built, is available for building materials.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus74">
-<img src="images/fig73.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">TASBURGH.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>One object in Newton Flotman that puzzles the
-passing stranger is a little effigy of Bacchus fixed on
-the wall of the "Maid's Head" Inn, so thickly
-covered with successive coats of paint that it is
-difficult to give it a period. Remains of Roman
-antiquities are so many in this district that it is
-often mistaken for a work of that classic age, when
-it can really claim no higher antiquity than that of
-the late eighteenth century, a time when figures of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
-the kind were a usual decoration of inn signs. Such
-an one still swings from the wrought-iron sign of
-the "Angel" at Woolhampton, on the Bath Road.</p>
-
-<p>In the woody valley of the Tase beyond Newton
-Flotman lies Dunston, trees casting a protecting and
-secretive shade over it, and the "Dun Cow" Inn its
-only roadside representative. That inn and the
-circular brick pound for strayed sheep and cattle
-redeem the last few miles into Norwich from
-absolute emptiness. When the pound last was used
-who shall say? The tramps have played havoc with
-it, and its wooden gate has gone. The ancient
-office of pound-keeper is here evidently fallen into
-disuse.</p>
-
-<p>Swainsthorpe's octagonal church tower is seen on
-the level to the left, but Caistor, in like manner with
-Dunston, is sunk deep in foliage, half a mile or more
-away in the valley, its church tower rising like a
-grey beacon from amid the trees, to tell the curious
-where its ancient camp may be found. Caistor St
-Edmunds, to give its full name, is the site of the
-great Roman camp established here to overawe the
-stronghold of the Iceni, four miles away on the
-banks of the Wensum, and now the site of Norwich.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus22">
-<img src="images/fig74.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">NEWTON FLOTMAN.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Caistor camp is a really satisfactory example of
-a Roman fortified <i>castrum</i>. For one thing, it has
-the largest area of any known relic of its kind in
-England, enclosing thirty-seven acres. If its
-fragments of flint walls have neither the thickness
-nor the height of those at Portus Rutupi�, the old
-Roman port in Thanet, now known as Richborough,
-its deep ditch and massive embankment assist the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a><br /><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a><br /><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>laggard imagination of the layman in matters
-arch�ological, which refuses to be stirred before
-mere undulations in the sward. Here is a ditch
-that can be rolled into, an embankment that can be
-climbed and paced on three sides of the camp, if
-necessary, to put to physical test both height, depth
-and extent. The fourth side of this great enclosure,
-now a turnip-field, was bounded by the River Tase
-and was sufficiently defended by that stream, then a
-wide creek, so that no works are to be found there.
-How long it was before the Romans subdued the
-Iceni, whose great city is thought to have stood
-where Norwich does now, is not known. Nothing
-of that early time here, indeed, is <i>known</i>, and guesses
-are of the vaguest. Only it seems that the Roman
-advance into East Anglia, which had for its objective<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
-the principal stronghold of the tribes, here came to
-its military ending. To compare things so ancient
-and romantic with others modern and thought
-prosaic, the several Roman camps on the advance
-from London now to be sought at Uphall near
-Romford; Chipping Hill, near Witham, Lexden, and
-Tasburgh, are, with those that have disappeared, to
-be looked upon in the same light as the wayside
-stations on the railway to Norwich, a railway which
-originally came to a terminus at that city, and was
-only at a later date continued northward.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus75">
-<img src="images/fig75.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">THE OLD BRICK POUND.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Where the Romans and the Romano-British
-citizens of Venta lived when the tribes were reduced&mdash;where
-the Venta Icenorum of Roman rule really
-was, in fact&mdash;is a mystery, for, unlike most of our
-great cities, Norwich has furnished no relics of that
-age; while, beyond coins and odds and ends, Caistor
-camp has produced nothing. No vestiges of streets
-or houses have been found, here or elsewhere, and
-Venta might, for all there is to show of it, have been
-a city of dreams. The fact that the original capital
-of the Iceni was re-settled by the Danes when they
-came in a conquering flood, seems to point to the
-site of it having long been deserted; and that they
-called it after the North "wic" or creek, presupposes
-a "South wic" somewhere else, near or far.
-The position of that south creek is fixed by the
-ancient geography of these last few miles. In those
-times the ground on which Yarmouth, at the mouth
-of the Yare estuary, is now built, was under the
-waves of the sea, which ran up in a long navigable
-creek&mdash;the "Gariensis" of the Romans and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
-"North Wic" of the Danes&mdash;from a Roman fortified
-port where Caistor-by-Yarmouth stands, to the site
-of Norwich, which indeed, centuries later, was still
-a port. Where the River Tase is now confluent with
-the Yare and the Wensum, there then branched out
-a shorter and perhaps shallower creek, running
-almost due south; the "South wic" of those
-northern pirates. At its head stood Caistor, where
-the navigation ceased.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus76">
-<img src="images/fig76.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">CAISTOR CAMP.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>It is far inland now, but the marshy valley of
-the Tase still bears signs of those old conditions, and
-perhaps the villas of wealthy Roman citizens, together
-with other relics of the vanished city, still lie preserved
-deep down in the mud and silt that have
-filled up the old channel.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The lie of the land, in accord with these views,
-is plain to see when, returning to the high road, the
-journey to Norwich is continued to Hartford Bridge;
-bird's-eye views unfolding across the valley to the
-right. At Hartford Bridge, where there are several
-bridges, none of them sizeable, rivers, streams and
-runlets of sorts trickle, flow, and gurgle in their
-different ways through flat meadows, below the long
-rise where, two miles from Norwich, the road begins
-to grow suburban. It is on the summit that the
-Newmarket and Thetford route from London joins
-with this, and together they descend into the city.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XXXIX</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">This</span> way came Queen Elizabeth into Norwich on
-her great "progress" of 1578, by St Stephen's
-Plain and through St Stephen's Gate. Gates and
-walls are gone that once kept out the turbulent, or
-even condemned the belated citizen to lodge the
-night without the precincts of the city, in suburbs
-not in those times to be reckoned safe.</p>
-
-<p>Norwich long ago swept away her defences and
-modernised her outskirts, for this is no Sleepy
-Hollow, this cathedral city in the valley of the
-Wensum, but the capital of East Anglia, throbbing
-with industry and in every way in the forefront
-of modern life. To the entrance from London
-Norwich turns perhaps its most unattractive side.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
-No general view of the city, lying in its hollow
-beside the winding Wensum, opens out, and the eye
-seeks the cathedral spire and finds it with some
-difficulty, modestly peering over tangled modern
-roof-tops. It is from quite the opposite direction,
-from the noble height of Mousehold Heath, that
-Norwich unfolds itself in a majestic picture of
-cathedral, churches and houses, with trees and
-gardens, such as no other city can show, displayed
-within its bounds. Norwich does not jump
-instantly to the antiquarian eye, and its electric
-tramways that are the first to greet the traveller
-who enters from the old coach road are not a little
-forbidding. The city grows gradually upon the
-stranger in all its wealth of beauty and interest,
-and becomes more and more lovable the better
-he becomes acquainted with it.</p>
-
-<p>Until these railway times, in the old days of
-slow, difficult, dangerous and expensive travelling,
-the capital of East Anglia was in a very high
-degree a capital, and sufficient to itself. Its
-shipping trade and weaving industries, and the
-famous Norwich School of artists, brought this
-exclusive attitude down from medi�val times to
-modern; and Norfolk county families until the era
-of political reform had almost dawned, still had
-their "town houses" in Norwich, just as, in bygone
-centuries, that typical old family, the Pastons,
-owned their town houses in Hungate and in what
-is now called King Street, formerly Conisford
-Street.</p>
-
-<p>The coaches coming to Norwich threaded the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
-mazy streets to inns widely sundered. The original
-"Norwich Machine" of 1762 traversed the greater
-part of the city, to draw up at the "Maid's Head,"
-in Tombland. On the other hand, the Mails, the
-"Telegraph" and the "Magnet," came to and
-started from the "Rampant Horse" in the street
-of the same name, standing not far from the
-beginnings of the city. The street is there still,
-but the oddly-named inn has given place to
-shops, and where the "Rampant Horse" ramped
-rampageously, in violent contrast with the mild-mannered
-"Great White Horse" of Ipswich, drapers'
-establishments now hold forth seductive announcements
-of "alarming sacrifices."</p>
-
-<p>Among other coaches, "Gurney's Original Day
-Coach" and the "Phenomenon" favoured the
-"Angel," in the Market Place, while the "Times"
-house was the "Norfolk Hotel," in St Giles's, and
-that of the "Expedition" the "Swan" Inn. Other
-inns, many of them huddled together under the lee
-of the castle mound, were then to be found in the
-Market Place and the Haymarket and in the narrow
-alley in the rear that still goes by name of "Back
-of the Inns." Others yet, many of medi�val age,
-are to be sought in old nooks of the city. The
-Pilgrim's Hostel, now the Rosemary Tavern, like the
-"Old Barge," belongs to the fourteenth century,
-the last named still standing between King Street
-and the river, with a picturesque but battered
-entrance. The steep and winding lane of Elm
-Hill, where the slum population of Norwich stew
-and pig together down ancient courts and dirty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
-alleys, has more inns, ramshackle but unrestored;
-and in the wide open space by the cathedral, dolefully
-called Tombland, although it has not, nor ever
-had, anything to do with tombs, is the "Maid's
-Head," the one establishment in Norwich that stands
-pre-eminently for old times and good cheer. It is
-an "hotel" now, and has the modern conveniences
-of sanitation and electric light; but its restoration,
-effected through the enthusiasm of a local antiquary,
-with both the opportunity of purchasing the property
-and the means of doing so, has been carried
-through with taste and discrimination. The "Maid's
-Head" can with certainty claim a history of six
-hundred years, and is thought to have been built
-upon the site of a former Bishop's Palace. Heavily-raftered
-ceilings and masonry of evident antiquity
-may take parts of the present house back so far,
-or even a greater length, but the especial pride
-of the "Maid's Head" is its beautiful Jacobean
-woodwork. The old sign of the house was the
-"Molde Fish," or "Murtel Fish," a name that
-antiquaries still boggle at. It was long a cherished
-legend that this strange and unlovely name was
-changed to the present sign in complimentary
-allusion to Queen Elizabeth when she first visited
-the city, but later researches have proved the
-change to have been made at least a century earlier,
-and so goes another belief!</p>
-
-<p>The "Music House," facing the now disreputable
-King Street, has not for so very long been an inn.
-Its name tells of a time when it was the meeting-place
-of the "city music," old-time ancestors of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
-modern town bands, but its story goes back to the
-Norman period, when the crypt that bears up the
-thirteenth-century building above was part of the
-home of Moyses, a Jew, and afterwards of Isaac, his
-nephew. "Isaac's Hall," as it was known, was
-seized by King John and given to one of his
-creatures; the unhappy Israelites doubtless, if they
-were allowed to live at all, finding cool quarters in
-the castle dungeons. A long succession of owners,
-including the Pastons, followed; last among them
-Coke, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, who resided
-here in 1633.</p>
-
-<p>It has already been hinted that the streets of
-Norwich are mazy. They are indeed the most perplexing
-of any town in England. Many roads run
-into the city, and from every direction. Glancing at a
-plan of it, these roads resemble the main strands of
-a spider's web, and the streets the cross webs. In
-midst of this maze is the great castle, like the spider
-himself; that cruel keep in whose dungeons old
-wrong-doing, religious and private spite, have immured
-many a wretched captive, like that unfortunate
-unknown "Bartholomew," who has left his name
-scratched on the walls, and the statement that he
-was here confined "saunz resun," a reason of the
-best in those times. Did he ever see the light
-of day again? Or did some midnight assassin
-murder him as many another had been done to
-death?</p>
-
-<p>"Blanchflower," that Bigod, Earl of Norwich who
-built the castle called his keep when it arose on its
-great mound, its stone new and white. He built<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
-upon the site of a castle thought to have been
-Saxon, and built so well that it became a fortress
-impregnable save to famine and treachery. It has,
-therefore, unlike weaker places that have been
-stormed again and again, little history, and even
-seven hundred years ago was little more than a
-prison. And a prison of sorts&mdash;for State captives
-first, and for common malefactors afterwards&mdash;it
-remained until so recently as 1883, when it was
-restored and then opened as the Museum and Art
-Gallery it now is.</p>
-
-<p>This is no place to speak at length of the cathedral
-that withdraws itself with such ecclesiastical reserve
-from the busy quarters of the city, and is approached
-decorously through ancient gateways in the walls of
-its surrounding close; the Ethelbert Gate, with that
-other, the Erpingham Gate, built in Harry the
-Fifth's time by Sir Thomas Erpingham, whose little
-kneeling effigy yet remains in its niche in the gable
-over the archway, and whose motto&mdash;variously held
-to be "Yenk," or "Think,"&mdash;"Denk," or "Thank"&mdash;is
-repeated many times on the stone work. Norman
-monastic gloom still broods over the close, for the
-cathedral, save the Decorated cloisters and the light
-and graceful spire in the same style, is almost
-wholly of that period, and the grammar school
-that was once a medi�val mortuary chapel and has
-its playground in the crypt, keeps a gravity of
-demeanour that, considering its history, is eminently
-proper.</p>
-
-<p>Through the Close lies the way to Bishop's Bridge
-and the steep road up to Mousehold Heath: the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
-"Monk's Hold," or monastic property, of times gone
-by when it was common land of the manor belonging
-to the Benedictine priory.</p>
-
-
-<p class="c large p2 gesperrt">XL</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus23">
-<img src="images/fig77.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">NORWICH, FROM MOUSEHOLD HEATH.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Here</span>, on this famous Heath of Mousehold where the
-gorse and heather and the less common broom yet
-flourish, despite the electric tramways that bring up
-the crowds and the picnic parties, Nature, rugged
-and unconquerable, looks down upon the city, revealed
-as a whole. Even though the chimneys of
-great factories may intrude and smirch the sky when
-winds permit the smoke-wreaths to trail across the
-view, it is a view quite unspoilable. The cathedral,
-as is only proper, is the grand dominating feature,
-with its central tower and graceful crocketed spire
-rising to a height of 320 feet. Second to it, on its
-left hand, the huge bulk of the castle keep rears up;
-a time-ball on its battlements to give the time o' day
-to the busy citizens; those battlements where from a
-gibbet they hanged Robert Kett in 1549, when his
-rebellion was crushed and his army of 20,000
-peasants who had encamped on Mousehold defeated.
-In similar fashion his brother William was
-hanged from Wymondham steeple. Between castle
-and cathedral the great tower of St Peter Mancroft
-looms up, and on the other side of the cathedral
-tower the twin spires of the Roman Catholic place of
-worship crown the sky-line. To the extreme right of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a><br /><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a><br /><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>the accompanying illustration is St Giles's, and on the
-extreme left, in company with the pinnacled tower of
-a modern church, the dark tower of St John-at-Sepulchre,
-Bracondale, which for shortness and
-simplicity the citizens call "Ber Street Church." For
-the rest, it is a mingling of town and country, of
-houses and gardens and churches in great number,
-that one sees down there; old Norwich, in short,
-exclusive of the modern suburbs that are flung everywhere
-around and cause the Norwich of to-day to
-outnumber the Norwich of coaching times by 80,000
-inhabitants. It must be evident from those figures
-that the picturesque old Norwich numbering
-a population of only 30,000 has been in great
-degree improved away and borne under by that
-human deluge. It is delightful now, but what it was
-at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when
-Crome and De Wint and others sketched and painted
-its quaint bits, the picture-galleries of the Castle
-Museum can tell. Nay, even down to the mid-nineteenth
-century it was still very different, as a
-collection of early photographs in the castle proves.
-Then, before St Peter Mancroft was restored, before
-the old Fish Market was cleared away, Norwich had
-many more quaint nooks than now to show the
-stranger; even as, centuries before, it was yet more
-quaint and even more remarkable for its many
-churches than at the present time.</p>
-
-<p>"The nearer the church the further from God,"
-says the old saw. How irreligious then should
-Norwich be, that has even yet a cathedral and thirty-four
-ancient churches, and modern places of worship<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
-fully as numerous! Let the citizens, therefore, as
-old Fuller suggested, "make good use of their
-churches and cross that pestilent proverb." These
-churches bear a close resemblance to one another,
-having nearly all been rebuilt in the Perpendicular
-period, some five hundred years ago, and all built of
-the black flint that gives a character to East Anglian
-architecture quite distinct from that of other districts.
-The time when they were thus rebuilt was not only a
-great period of church-building throughout England,
-but a time of especial prosperity in mercantile and
-trading Norwich; a time when guilds grew powerful
-and merchants wealthy in the flourishing industry of
-cloth-weaving introduced some time earlier by
-Flamand and Hollander immigrants. English wool
-that before had gone across the narrow seas for
-manufacture into stuffs was now weaved in the land
-of its growth. "Many thousands," says Blomefield,
-"that before could not get their bread could now by
-this means live handsomely." In that age, to become
-rich and prosperous was to become also a founder and
-benefactor of churches; hence the great ecclesiastical
-buildings that, according to the picturesque metaphor
-of an old writer, writing when there were no fewer
-than sixty-one churches in the city, "surrounded the
-cathedral as the stars do the moon." The old citizens
-sleep in the parish churches for which they did so
-much; their monuments in brass or marble, stone or
-alabaster curiously wrought, often with their
-"merchant's marks"&mdash;the distinctive signs with
-which they labelled their wares&mdash;engraved on them
-in lieu of coats of arms. It is as though a modern
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a><br /><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a><br /><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>trader were to have the registered trade-mark of his
-speciality engraved on his tombstone. A typical
-memorial of an old Norwich trader is that of
-Thomas Sotherton, in the church of St John
-Maddermarket. He&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"Under this cold marbell sleeps,"</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>and was no common fellow, mark you, but</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">"Of gentell blood, more worthy merrit,</span><br />
-<span class="i0">Whose brest enclosed an humble sperryt."</span>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus24">
-<img src="images/fig78.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">NORWICH MARKET PLACE.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Although the calendar of saints is a long one and
-more than sufficiently lengthy to have provided each
-one of the Norwich churches with a patron, yet so
-popular were some saints, that several churches to
-the same one are found in Norwich, as seen also in
-the city of London. As in old London, it was in
-those cases necessary to confer surnames, so to speak,
-upon those churches.</p>
-
-<p>They are surnames of the geographical sort and
-not a little curious. The four St Peters are, for
-example, St Peter Mancroft, the largest and most
-important in the city, so called from the Magna
-Croft, or large field of the castle; St Peter per
-Mountergate, in King Street, named from the road
-by the "montem," the hill or mount, that runs
-ridge-like in its rear; St Peter Hungate, the
-"hundred gate," or road, reminiscent of the time
-when Norwich was a hundred of itself, even as it is
-now by itself a county; and St Peter Southgate.
-St Michael-at-Thorn has still thorn trees growing in
-its churchyard; St Michael Coslany, with St Mary's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
-of identical surname, was built in Coast Lane; and
-St Michael-at-Plea was named from its neighbourhood
-to an ecclesiastical court. St John Maddermarket
-is thus distinguished from other St Johns&mdash;St
-John Timberhill and St John-at-Sepulchre. In
-the neighbourhood of the first-named, madder for the
-dyers' use was marketed; while at Timberhill was
-the market in wood. St Martin-at-Palace, by the
-old Bishop's Palace, and St-Martin-at-Oak take up
-the tale, which might be continued at great length.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus77">
-<img src="images/fig79.jpg" alt="" />
-<p class="caption center medium">NORWICH SNAP.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The business life of modern Norwich centres in
-the Market Place and the streets that immediately
-lead out of it: the mouldering signs of old commerce
-peer in peaked gables, clustered chimneys and
-old red-brick and plastered walls in the lanes and
-along the wharves of the Wensum.</p>
-
-<p>There trade hustles and elbows to the front, in
-many-storeyed piles of brick, stone and stucco, with
-great show of goods in plate-glass windows and bold
-advertisement of gilt lettering. All those signs of
-prosperity may be seen, and on a larger scale, in
-London, but not even in London are the electric<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
-tram cars so great a menace to life and limb as in
-these narrow and winding streets, where they dash
-along at reckless speed.</p>
-
-<p>The Market Place is not yet wholly spoilt. The
-huge bulk of St Peter Mancroft and a row of queer
-old houses beside it still avert that disaster, and form
-a picture from one point of view; while the flint-faced
-Guildhall stands at another corner of the great
-open place and in its Council Chamber, in use five
-hundred years ago as a Court of Justice, and still so
-used, proves the continuity of "our rough island
-story." In a dark and dismal cell of the Guildhall
-once lay the heroic martyr, Thomas Bilney, who
-"testified" at the stake in the Lollards' Pit, where
-many another had already yielded up his life. He
-wondered, as others before and after him had done
-and were to do, whether the tortured body could
-pass steadfast through the fiery ordeal; and on the
-eve of his martyrdom put that doubt to the test by
-holding his finger in the flame of a candle. That
-test sufficed, and he suffered with unshaken constancy
-when the morrow dawned.</p>
-
-<p>The Guildhall has less tragical memories than this,
-and was indeed the scene of many old-time municipal
-revelries in times before Corporations became reformed.
-But old revels and frolics have been discontinued,
-and "Snap," the Norwich dragon, a fearsome
-beast of gilded wickerwork, who was wont to be
-paraded from the Guildhall at the annual mayoral
-election, and last frolicked with his attendant beadles
-and whifflers in 1835, now reposes in the Castle
-Museum.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The Market Place on Saturday, when the wide
-open square is close-packed with stalls, is Norwich
-at its most characteristic time and in its most
-characteristic spot. In it the story of the Norwich
-Road may fitly end. The city itself, glanced at in
-the immediately foregoing pages, could not yield its
-story in less space than that occupied by that of the
-road itself.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="illus78">
-<img src="images/fig80.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="c xlarge p2 gesperrt">INDEX</p></div>
-
-<ul class="index"><li class="ifrst">  Aldgate, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Pump, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  "Bacon End," <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Boreham, <a href="#Page_127">127-129</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Bow, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75-80</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Bridge, <a href="#Page_77">77-79</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Brentwood, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94-99</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Brockford, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Brome, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Brook Street, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Hill, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Caistor St Edmunds, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301-303</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Capel St Mary, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Chadwell Heath, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Street, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Chelmsford, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114-121</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Chipping Hill, <a href="#Page_133">133-139</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Claydon, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Hall, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Coaches:--</li>
-<li class="isub2">"Confatharrat," <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Duke of Beaufort's Retaliator," <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Expedition," <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Gurney's Original Day Coach," <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Ipswich Blues," <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- and Yarmouth Mail," <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Post Coaches," <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Shannon," <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Umpire," <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Magnet," <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"New Colchester," <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Norwich Machine," <a href="#Page_34">34-36</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Mail," <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Post Coach," <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Times," <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Parcel Mail," <a href="#Page_54">54-57</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Ph�nomenon," <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Telegraph," <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Coaching, <a href="#Page_30">30-51</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54-57</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142-151</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Coaching Notabilities:--</li>
-<li class="isub2">Alexander, Israel, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Nelson, Mrs Ann, <a href="#Page_19">19-25</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, George, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, John, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25-27</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, Robert, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Suggate (Norwich carrier), <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Thorogood, John, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Colchester, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179-212</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Constable, John, R.A., <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217-219</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Copdock, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Copford, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  <i>Copperfield, David</i>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Creeting, All Saints, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Creetings, The, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Dedham, <a href="#Page_217">217-221</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Deodand, Law of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Dickleburgh, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-279</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Dilbridge, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Dunston, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Feering, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Forest Gate, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Goodmayes, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Gore Pit, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Great Eastern Railway, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51-54</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Hare Street, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Hartford Bridge, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Hatfield Peverel, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Highwaymen, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58-62</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Highwaymen:--</li>
-<li class="isub2">Cratfield, Rev. Wm., <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">King, Matthew, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, Robert, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, Tom, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Tapyrtone, Thomas, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Turpin, Richard, <a href="#Page_57">57-62</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Ilford, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Ingatestone, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105-110</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Inns (mentioned at length):--</li>
-<li class="isub2">"Angel," Colchester, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, Kelvedon, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, Norwich, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Belle Sauvage," Ludgate Hill, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Black Boy," Chelmsford, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Blossoms," Laurence Lane, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Blue Boar," Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Posts," Witham, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Bull," Bishopsgate Street, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, Leadenhall Street, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">----, Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19-28</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Bull and Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Cauliflower," Ilford, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Coach and Horses," Upton, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Cock," Thwaite, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Cross Keys," Gresham Street, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Duke's Head," Wacton, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Fleece," Brook Street, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Flower Pot," Bishopsgate Street, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Four Swans," <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Golden Cross," Charing Cross, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Good Woman," Widford, <a href="#Page_111">111-114</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Grave Maurice," Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Great White Horse," Ipswich, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247-252</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Gun," Dedham, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Half Moon," Ipswich, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Horse and Leaping Bar," Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"King's Head," Dickleburgh, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Lion and Lamb," Ipswich, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Magpie," Little Stonham, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Maid's Head," Newton Flotman, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Norwich, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Music House," Norwich, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Norfolk Hotel," Norwich, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Old Red Lion," Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Popinjay," Norwich, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Queen's Head," Thwaite, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Rampant Horse," Norwich, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Red Lion," Colchester, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Kelvedon, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Rising Sun," Manor Park, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Saracen's Head," Aldgate, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Chelmsford, <a href="#Page_117">117-120</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Spread Eagle," Gracechurch Street, <a href="#Page_15">15-19</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Sun," Kelvedon, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Swan," Washbrook, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Swan-with-Two-Necks," Gresham Street, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Three Cups," Colchester, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>,  <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Springfield, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Three Nuns," Aldgate, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Vine," Mile End, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"Wheatsheaf," Kelvedon, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"White Elm," Copdock, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"---- Hart," Brentwood, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Colchester, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Scole, <a href="#Page_262">262-271</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- ----, Witham, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">"White Horse," Fetter Lane, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">---- Horse, Widford, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Ipswich, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237-252</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Kelvedon, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139-153</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Langham, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Lexden, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177-181</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Heath, <a href="#Page_177">177-179</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Little Stonham, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  "London Stone," <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Long Stratton, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292-295</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Manor Park, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Margaretting, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Mark's Tey, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Martyr's Tree, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Mile End, <a href="#Page_70">70-74</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  "Mockbeggar Hall," <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Moulsham, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Mountnessing, <a href="#Page_101">101-105</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Needham Market, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  New Hall, <a href="#Page_123">123-127</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Newton Flotman, <a href="#Page_296">296-299</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Norwich, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302-320</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Old Ford, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Old-time travellers:--</li>
-<li class="isub2">Caroline of Brunswick, Princess, Queen of George IV., <a href="#Page_165">165-168</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Princess, Queen of George III., <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Kemp, Will, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Johnson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Queen Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">William III., <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Old-time travelling, <a href="#Page_142">142-150</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159-168</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225-237</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Parcel Mail, <a href="#Page_54">54-57</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Pulham St Mary Magdalene, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- St Mary the Virgin, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Puttels Bridge, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Rivenhall End, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Romford, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88-93</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Scole, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262-272</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Seven Kings, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83-85</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Shenfield, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Shrubland Park, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Springfield, <a href="#Page_121">121-123</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Stanway, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174-178</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Steam Coaches, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Stoke Ash, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Stonham Aspall, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Earls, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Stratford (Langthorne), <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ----- -le-Bow, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75-80</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- St Mary, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223-225</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Swainsthorpe, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Tasburgh, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Thwaite, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Tivetshall St Margaret, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- St Mary, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Toll-gates, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Uphall, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Upton Park, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Wacton, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  ---- Common, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Washbrook, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  West Ham, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Whalebone House, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62-69</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Whitton Street, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Widford, <a href="#Page_111">111-114</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Witham, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131-139</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Woodgrange, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">  Writtle, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">  Yaxley, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li></ul>
-
-
-
-
-
-<p class="c medium">
-EDINBURGH<br />
-COLSTON AND COY, LTD.<br />
-PRINTERS
-</p>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="transnote">
-
-<p class="c">Transcriber's Notes:</p>
-
-<p>Inconsistent hyphenation is retained.</p>
-
-<p>Inconsistent punctuation is retained.</p>
-
-
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-27 19:35:44 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-27 19:35:44 -0800
commit	38fd49e3b47ed6bddbcb53059d0baa56d1418095 (patch)
tree	cd05b4603c2331978e5cb93cfe553ef46ec47d29
parent	9ec65ae9c7e90726a057b66fca7f00134d6722d0 (diff)