Perhaps in no respect have the changes of time been greater than in the political world, and yet there is a little of the per contra even here. Not only are political opinions freely uttered now for which a man would have found himself in Newgate a hundred years ago, but Bills of all kinds are introduced into Parliament with perfect safety to the person of the member proposing them, such as our forefathers would never have dreamed of advocating, even though they were sometimes called bad names for their advanced political views. In the old days the rural voter got a jollification, a drinking bout, and some hard cash for his vote; now he can almost obtain an Act of Parliament. Still, it is better than bribery, I suppose.
In writing this I do not in any sense hold a brief for the past as against the present, but in contrasting these different phases of life one is bound to acknowledge that we have lost a few things which would have been well worth preserving. We have gained untold social advantages, but we have in too many cases lost the priceless treasure of individual contentment; we have gained a great many things that have been labelled with the sacred name of freedom, but only too often to bow down to false notions of respectability; we have been emancipated as communities from the brutal display of sport and pastimes which have been referred to in the earlier part of these pages, but in too many cases only to substitute a more subtle form of gambling about names of things printed in the newspapers, without any such excuse for the interest taken as our forefathers had in the excitement which was actually before their eyes; we have gained untold advantage in the spread of knowledge, and the means of access to a wealth of intellectual treasures such as our forefathers never dreamed of, but have too often allowed our reading tastes to degenerate into nothing more solid than the newspaper and a few literary bon-bons.
There has been both a levelling up and a levelling down in the matter of education, for it is doubtful whether tradesmen and others called middle-class people are so well educated—I mean so thoroughly educated, for they know more things but fewer things well—as men were a generation ago, if we consider education on the abstract and intellectual side.
We are perhaps a little too apt to think that there is nothing for us of to-day, but to bless our stars that we were born in the 19th century; yet if we who carry "the torch of experience lighted at the ashes of past delusions" have escaped from the mists and the shadows along the way which our grandfathers toiled, the responsibility for bettering their work is all the greater.
We may not be able to close this wonderful 19th century with any practical realization of all the dreams of ideal citizenship which made up the last expiring breath of the 18th century. But we have gone a long way in that direction, and happily it has been along a roadway, toilsome and rough at times, upon which there is no need for going back to retrace our steps. Standing now, on the higher ground to which the exertions of our fathers, and the forces which their work set in motion for our benefit, have brought us, we see down into the valley, along the rugged way we have come, abundant reason why men often misunderstood each other—they could not see each other in any true and just light. But just as the heavy material roadway along which the old locomotion was shifting a hundred years ago, from horses' backs on to wheels, has become firmer, broader, lighter, and freer by the cutting down of hedge rows and hindrances which shut out the sweetening influence of light and air; so along the highways of men's thoughts and actions there has been an analogous process of cutting down boundaries and removing hindrances which divided men in the past, until we see one another face to face.
It may be that some few distinctions will be preserved after all the modern political programmes have been played out, but let us hope that the hedges which divide men will be kept well trimmed and low. For, after all, it is impossible to gather up these old voices of a past time, or to look back over such a period as that which has been passed in review by these sketches without recognizing that if men will only stand upright, whatever their station, and not stoop to narrow the horizon of their view, they must see how broad, and how fertile in all human, homely and kindly attraction, are the common heritage, the common work, the common rest and the common hopes of men, compared with the narrow paths within high party walls—whether of religious creeds, social grades, or false notions of what is respectable—within which men have too often in the past sought to hide themselves from one another. The hard lot of the village labourer to-day is not what it was, is not what it will be; the discomforts for all classes remaining from those of seventy years ago look now very small, and may yet look smaller; and history, even the local history of a country town and its neighbouring villages, though it moves slowly, shows foot-prints for the most part tending one way and justifying the old hopeful belief that—
Life shall on and upward go,
Th' eternal step of progress beats,
To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats.
THE END.
In the following table is given the population of 45 parishes in the Royston district, viz., of the Royston and Buntingford Poor-law Unions, situated in the counties of Herts., Cambs., and Essex, for each decade from 1801 to 1891. In them the reader will be able to trace the growth of the rural population during the middle of the century, and its remarkable decline during the last twenty years, the economic effects of which have led to the cry for bringing back the labourer on to the land, instead of his drifting away to aggravate the social problem in London and other populous centres.
ROYSTON SUB-DISTRICT.
* In the Census of 1801 and 1811 Royston, Cambs., was taken with Royston, Herts.
MELBOURN SUB-DISTRICT.
* Parts of these parishes are in the township of Royston.
BUNTINGFORD UNION.
* in the Census of 1891, Anstey and Meesden were taken together, and had a population of 574, or 6 less than the two parishes together in 1881.
** Throcking and Broadfield were also taken together, giving a population of 73, or 20 less than in 1881.
*** Wakeley has ceased to be a separate parish.
[Transcriber's note: there were no entries in the 1841 column.]
The population of the town of Royston can only be arrived at by adding together the number of the parts of surrounding parishes making up the township of Royston. At the last two Censuses these parts have been enumerated separately, but not in the earlier decades, with the exception of 1801 and 1831, particulars of which are given below.
There were no inhabitants in Melbourn parish, Royston, at the above Census of ninety years ago, and it will be seen that all the inhabitants within 153 were in Royston parish proper.
1811.—The Census of this period showed very little difference from the figures for 1801, and of that of 1821, I have only the particulars for the two parishes of Royston, Herts., and Cambs., which gave 1,479 persons against 1,331 for these two parishes in 1801.
The most interesting and complete Census of the town was that of the year
The following are the Census returns for the township of Royston for 1881 and 1891.
The interest of the foregoing figures lies in the fact that there was during the first thirty years of the century a great increase in the Hertfordshire part of the town, and scarcely any increase in the Cambridgeshire part, whereas the tendency has now been reversed in so remarkable a manner that against only 9 persons in Kneesworth parish, Royston, in 1801, there are now 682.
Allotments, 114
Andrews, Hy., astronomer, 34, 107
Anstey Fair, Rural Sports at, 100
Arrington, coaching at, 144
Arrington-hill, 154
"Bacca" and snuff for paupers, 41
Banks stopping payment, 56
Barkway, Day School at, 121
—Volunteers of, 68
—Whipping post at, 83
—Workhouse at, 40
Barley, "Fox and Hounds" at, 18
—Incendiary fires at, 170
—Strange narrative of horse-stealing at, 89
—Volunteers of, 71
Beadle, dignity and duties of, 53, 54
—The, and Bastardy laws, 163
—Emoluments of, 55
Beldam, Joseph, senr., 28
—Valentine, 27
Biggleswade, dreadful fire at, 179
Bishop Stortford, Volunteers of, 71
Blucher at Cambridge, 72
Body-snatching, horrors of, 81
Bow Street Runner, 170
Buntingford, Bridewell at, 93
—Mails from, 115
—Pauper Weddings at, 50
—Queen & Prince Albert at, 187
—Roads, 12
Burying at four cross-roads, 86
Butler, Henry, woolstapler, 105
—John, 27
—W. Warren, and his rhymes, 132-135
Butcher, the, and the Baronet, 136
Cambridge "Chronicle," 15
—Coach, 10
—Undergraduates and village rows, 138, 139
Cambridgeshire Members of Parliament, 157
Cannon, Mrs., Old Matt and the Burglars, 182
Capital punishment, painful case of, 91
—Sentence of death for theft at Melbourn, 91
Carter, Valentine, stage-coach driver, 150
Caxton, 71
—Coaching to, 144
—Gibbet, 13
—Mail robbery, 48
Census, manner of taking, 116
—Returns of, in Appendix, 195, 196, 197
Charles I. at Royston, 7
Chartism at Royston, 127
Chimney sweeps' climbing boys, 78
Chipping, 12
Cholera-morbus, the, alarm in Royston 60 years ago, 182, 183
Coaches, begging from, 152
—London to Edinburgh, 145
—Palmy days and speed of, 146
Coals brought from Cambridge to Royston, 75
Cock-fighting, 23
Cooper Thornhill's Ride, 178
Cottage homes of England, dilapidation of, 192
Crabb Robinson's Diary, 27
Cricket in the 18th Century, 130
Cross, Thos, stage-coach driver, 150
—Autobiography of, 136-141
Cruikshank, 67
Dacre, Lord, 110
—Lord and Lady, 121
Daintry, Mrs. and Thomas, 115
Day Schools, 120
Death Sentences 100 years ago, 88
Dogberry, Marrying the Paupers, 49, 50, 51
Dogs and Pedlars' Carts, 153
Education in Villages, 117
Electioneering in Herts., 156
Farmers and the Labourers, 58
—and Famine prices, 59
Fire Brigade of last Century, 44
Fly Wagons, 6
—Journey to London, by, 143
Flower, Benjamin, 27
Food, Prices of, 75
Fordham, E. K., 70
—Edward Snow, 75
Forgery, Death sentences for, 92
Fowlmere, Riot at, 169
Foxton, Volunteers at, 71
Free Trade, First meetings in Royston, 112
French prisoners, 71
Gallows, The, 88
Gamlingay, Overseers and paupers at, 162
Gas, first prices of, 114
Gatward, James, and the Gibbet, 12, 13
George III., his reign, 1
—Fashions in times of, 76
—Hooted and mobbed, 56
—Jubilee of, 181
George IV., and his Queen —Kingites and Queenites, 127
Gransden, Pauper tyranny at, 166
Guilden Morden, incendiary fires at, 167
Hall, Robert, at Royston, 27
Hardwicke, the Earl of, and the Queen's visit, 188, 189, 190
—and Royston Races, 133
Harston, enclosure riot at, 180, 181
Hatfield, Royal Review at, 70
Hauxton, sheep stealing at, 89
Hertford, pillory at, 83
Heydon Grange, prize-fighting near, 137
Highwaymen, 151
Highway robbery, 90
Hinxton, burning Pain's effigy at, 26
Hinxworth, labourers' earnings, 59
Hitchin, awful visitation at, 179
Hue and cry, 48
Influenza, following great frost in 1836, 186
Inoculation, 80
Jacklin, James, 72
James I. at Royston, 8
"John Ward, beadle," 55
Kellarman, alchemist of Lilley, 102
Kneesworth and Caxton toll proceeds of, 154