Nearly four hundred miles by these measurements. This, at a shilling a mile for the posting, gives £20; but, including the postboys’ tips, “gates,” and expenses at the inns on the road, the journey could not have been done in this way under £30, at the most modest calculation. This list of post-stages was one drawn up for distances chiefly between the towns, but nothing is more remarkable along the Great North Road than the number of old posting-houses which still exist (although of course their business is gone) in wild and lonely spots, far removed from either town or village.
Another “branch” of posting was the horsing alone, by which a private carriage could be taken to or from town by hiring posters at every stage. This was a favourite practice with the gentry of the shires, who thus had all the éclat of travelling in private state, without the expense and trouble of providing their own horses. It is probably of this method that De Quincey speaks in the following passage:—
“In my childhood,” says he, “standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters at the front window of my mother’s carriage, I remember one unvarying set of images before us. The postillion (for so were all carriages then driven) was employed, not by fits and starts, but always and eternally, in quartering, i.e. in crossing from side to side, according to the casualties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length of lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a horse, filled to the brim with standing pools of rain-water; and the collateral chambers of these ruts kept from becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as the Romans called lirae, to maintain the footing upon which lirae, so as not to swerve (or as the Romans would say, delirare), was a trial of some skill, both for the horses and their postillion. It was, indeed, next to impossible for any horse, on such a narrow crust of separation, not to grow delirious in the Roman metaphor; and the nervous anxiety which haunted me when a child was much fed by this image so often before my eyes, and the sympathy with which I followed the motion of the docile creatures’ legs. Go to sleep at the beginning of a stage, and the last thing you saw—wake up, and the first thing you saw—was the line of wintry pools, the poor off-horse planting his steps with care, and the cautious postillion gently applying his spur whilst manoeuvring across the system of grooves with some sort of science that looked like a gipsy’s palmistry—so equally unintelligible to me were his motions in what he sought and in what he avoided.”
Before we leave Stevenage, we must pay a visit to the “Old Castle” inn, in whose stable the body of the eccentric Henry Trigg is deposited, in a coffin amid the rafters, plain for all to see; somewhat dilapidated and battered in the lapse of two centuries, and with a patch of tin over the hole cut in it by some riotous blades long ago, but doubtless still containing his bones. His Will sufficiently explains the circumstances.
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN.
I, Henry Trigg, of Stevenage, in the County of Hertford, Grocer, being very infirm and weak in body, but of perfect sound mind and memory, God be praised for it, calling into mind the mortality of my body, do now make and ordain this my last Will and Testament, in writing, hereafter following: that is to say:—Principally I recommend my soul into the merciful hands of Almighty God that first gave me it, assuredly believing and only expecting free pardon and forgiveness of all my sins, and eternal life in and through the only merits, death, and passion of Jesus Christ my Saviour; and as to my body I commit it to the West end of my Hovel, to be decently laid there upon a floor erected by my Executor, upon the purlin, for the same purpose; nothing doubting but at the general Resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mighty power of God; and as for and concerning such worldly substance as it hath pleased God to bless me with in this world, I do devise and dispose of the same in manner and form here following.
Imprimis. I give and devise unto my loving brother Thomas Trigg, of Letchworth, in the County of Hertford, Clerk, and to his Heirs and Assigns for ever, all those my Freehold Lands lying dispersedly in the several common fields in the parish of Stevenage aforesaid, and also all my Copyhold Lands, upon condition that he shall lay my body upon the place before mentioned; and also all that Messuage, Cottage, or Tenement at Redcoats Green in the Parish of Much Wymondly, together with those Nine Acres of Land (more or less) purchased of William Hale and Thomas Hale, Jun.; and also my Cottage, Orchard, and barn, with four acres of Land (more or less) belonging, lying, and being in the Parish of Little Wymondly, and now in the possession of Samuel Kitchener, labourer; and all my Cottages, Messuages, or Tenements situate and being in Stevenage, aforesaid: or, upon condition that he shall pay my brother, George Trigg, the sum of Ten Pounds per annum for life: but if my brother shall neglect or refuse to lay my body where I desire it should be laid, then, upon that condition, I will and bequeath all that which I have already bequeathed to my brother Thomas Trigg, unto my brother George Trigg, and to his heirs for ever; and if my brother George Trigg should refuse to lay my body under my Hovel, then what I have bequeathed unto him, as all my Lands and Tenements, I lastly bequeath them unto my nephew William Trigg and his heirs for ever, upon his seeing that my body is decently laid up there as aforesaid.
Item. I give and bequeath unto my nephew William Trigg, the sum of Five Pounds, at the age of Thirty years; to his sister Sarah the sum of Twenty Pounds; to his sister Rose the sum of Twenty Pounds; and lastly to his sister Ann the sum of Twenty Pounds; all at the age of Thirty Years: to John Spencer, of London, Butcher, the sum of One Guinea; and to Solomon Spencer, of Stevenage, the sum of One Guinea, Three Years next after my decease; to my cousin Henry Kimpton, One Guinea, One Year next after my decease, and another Guinea Two Years after my decease; to William Waby, Five Shillings; and to Joseph Priest, Two Shillings and Sixpence, Two Years after my decease; to my tenant Robert Wright the sum of Five Shillings, Two years next after my decease; and to Ralph Lowd and John Reeves, One Shilling each, Two Years next after my decease.
Item. All the rest of my Goods and Chattels, and personal Estate, and Ready Money, I do hereby give and devise unto my brother Thomas Trigg, paying my debts and laying my body where I would have it laid; whom I likewise make and ordain my full and sole Executor of this my last Will and Testament, or else to them before mentioned; ratifying and confirming this and no other to be my last Will and Testament, in witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this Twenty-eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty-four
Henry Trigg.
Read, signed, sealed, and declared by the said Henry Trigg, the Testator, to be his last Will and Testament, in the presence of us who have subscribed our names as witnesses hereto, in the presence of the said Testator.
John Hawkins, Sen.
John Hawkins, Jun.
× The mark of William Sexton.Proved in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, the 15th day of October, 1724, by the Executor Thomas Trigg.
The inn-signs of Stevenage afford some exercise for the contemplative mind. As the town is approached from London, the sign of “Our Mutual Friend” appears, nearly opposite a domestic Gothic building of red and white brick, originally a home for decayed authors, founded by Charles Dickens and the first Lord Lytton. The decayed authors did not take kindly to the scheme. Perhaps they did not like being patronised by authors of better fortunes than their own. The institution was a failure, and the building is now put to other uses. No doubt the sign of “Our Mutual Friend” derives from those times when Dickens and Lytton foregathered here and at Knebworth. At quite the other end of the town appears the obviously new sign of the “Lord Kitchener,” almost opposite that of another military hero, the “Marquis of Granby.”
Passing through the little old-world village of Graveley, succeeded by the beautifully graded rise and fall of Lannock Hill, we come into the town of Baldock, with its great church prominent in front, and its empty streets running in puzzling directions. It was at Baldock that Charles the First, being conducted as a prisoner to London, was offered wine in one of the sacramental vessels by the vicar, Josias Byrd, and it was on the road outside the town, near where the old turnpike gate stood, that the Newcastle wagon, on its way to London, was plundered of £500 in coin by three mounted highwaymen, on a February morning in 1737.
Our old friend Mr. Samuel Pepys, journeying on August 6th, 1661, from Brampton, came into Baldock, and stayed the night, at some inn not specified. He says, “Took horse for London, and with much ado got to Baldwick. There lay, and had a good supper by myself. The landlady being a pretty woman, but I durst not take notice of her, her husband being there.”
Always some spoil-sport in the way!
Baldock, from its stunted extinguisher spire to its fine old brick houses and nodding plaster cottages, is characteristically Hertfordshire. Among other things of general interest, it has a row of almshouses, duly inscribed:—
“Theis Almes Howses are
the gieft of Mr. John Wynne
cittezen of London, Latelye
Deceased, who hath left a
Yeareley stipend to everey
poore of either howses to
the Worldes End. September
Anno Domini 1621.”
The worthy citizen reckoned without the Charity Commissioners, who may confidently be expected to propound a “scheme” some day long anterior to the final crash, by which his wishes will be entirely disregarded.
Away to the left of Baldock will be noticed a new town, and the factory chimneys of it. This is Letchworth, the “Garden City,” developed out of Letchworth, the little village of old. This “First Garden City,” founded in 1902, on a nominal capital of £300,000 actual £125,000, by the Garden City Association, itself founded in June, 1899, with a capital of about thirty shillings, represents a passionate quest of the ideal life on a 5 per cent. basis of profit. The problem of how to create an earthly paradise (plus industrial factories) was here to be tackled. The beginnings of such things are always the most charming; and Letchworth began ideally. But the factories and the five per cent. always have a way of overcoming ideals; and we shall see.
The stone outside Baldock, marking the thirty-ninth mile is milestone and upping-block as well.
Midway between Baldock and Biggleswade, at Topler’s Hill, the Bedfordshire border is crossed. We may perhaps be excused if we pass Topler’s Hill unwittingly, for the rises called “hills” on the Great North Road would generally pass unnoticed elsewhere. Biggleswade town and neighbourhood are interested wholly in cabbages and potatoes and other highly necessary, but essentially unromantic, vegetables. The surrounding country is in spring and summer one vast market-garden; at other times it is generally a lake of equal vastness, for the Ivel and the Ouse, that run so sluggishly through the flat lands, arise then in their might and submerge fields and roads for miles around.
As for Biggleswade itself, it is a town with an extraordinarily broad and empty market-place, a church with a spire of the Hertfordshire type, and two old coaching inns—the “White Swan” and the “Crown”—facing one another in an aggressive rivalry at a narrow outlet of the market-place. The “White Swan” was the inn at which the up “Regent” coach dined. It was kept at that time by a man named Crouch, “that long, sour old beggar,” in the words of Tom Hennesy. Here “the process of dining on a really cold day in winter,” to quote Colonel Birch Reynardson, “was carried on under no small amount of difficulty. Your hands were frozen, your feet were frozen, your very mouth felt frozen, and in fact you felt frozen all over. Sometimes, with all this cold, you were also wet through, your hat wet through, your coat wet through, the large wrapper that was meant to keep your neck warm and dry wet through, and, in fact, you were wet through yourself to your very bones. Only twenty minutes were allowed for dinner; and by the time you had got your hands warm enough to be able to untie your neck wrapper, and had got out of your great-coat, which, being wet, clung tenaciously to you, the time for feeding was half gone. By the time you had got one quarter of what you could have consumed, had your mouth been in eating trim and your hands warm enough to handle your knife and fork, the coachman would put his head in, and say: “Now, gentlemen, if you please; the coach is ready.” After this summons, having struggled into your wet greatcoat, bound your miserable wet wrapper round your miserable cold throat, having paid your two and sixpence for the dinner that you had the will, but not the time, to eat, with sixpence for the waiter, you wished the worthy Mr. Crouch good day, grudged him the half-crown he had pocketed for having dined so miserably, and again mounted your seat, to be rained and snowed upon, and almost frozen to death before you reached London.”
Leaving Biggleswade, the Ivel is crossed and Tingey’s Corner passed. Tingey’s Corner marks the junction of the old alternative route from Welwyn, by Hitchin to Lower Codicote, the route adopted by record-breaking cyclists. The hamlets of Lower Codicote and Beeston Green open up a view of Sandy, away to the right, with its range of yellow sand-hills running for some three miles parallel with the road, and seeming the more impressive by reason of the dead level on which they look. The canal-like, bare banks of the Ivel are passed again at Girtford, and the roadside cottages of Tempsford reached; the village and church lying off to the left, where the Ouse and the Ivel come to their sluggish confluence, and form a waterway which once afforded marauding Danes an excellent route from the coast up to Bedford. Even now the remains of a fortification they constructed to command this strategic point are visible, and bear the name of the “Dannicke”; that is to say, the “Danes’ work,” or perhaps the “Danes’ wick,” “wick” meaning “village.”
An infinitely later work—Tempsford turnpike-gate, to wit—has disappeared a great deal more effectively than those ancient entrenchments, and the way is clear and flat, not to say featureless, over the Ouse, past the outlying houses of Wyboston, and so into Little End, the most southerly limit of Eaton Socon.
Past Tempsford some of the coaches, notably the Stamford “Regent,” turned off into the loop road by St. Neots and Huntingdon. In the winter time, or when the spring rains were falling, they did this at some risk, for the low-lying land by the river Ouse was often awash. Two old ladies were on one occasion given a terrible fright, the road being deeply flooded and the water coming into the coach, so that they had to stand on the seats. They quite thought they were going to be drowned, and perhaps they would have been had the “Regent” been driven by one unused to the road. Had the coachman driven into a ditch—as he might easily have done with the floods covering all the landmarks—it would have been “all up” with the “insides” for certain and perhaps for the “outsides” as well.
The most prudent coachmen in winter time kept to the main road, which lies somewhat higher, and passed through Eaton Socon. Once—to judge by its name—a place of importance, this is now only a long village of one straggling street. At some undetermined period the head of a “soke,” or separate legal jurisdiction, all memories of the dignity implied are gone, save only the empty title, which Dickens makes fun of by calling the village in Nicholas Nickleby “Eton Slocomb.” The “White Horse,” a picturesque roadside inn, may be looked upon with interest by those keen on identifying Dickens landmarks. In later days it became a favourite resort of the North Road Cycling Club, and witnessed the beginning and ending of many a road race in the “eighties” and early “nineties,” when such things were.
The story of the London to York cycling record is fitly to be told in this page. It is not so long a tale as that of the famous one from London to Brighton and back, but it stands for greater efforts and for a vast amount of pluck and endurance. There have been those unsportsmanlike souls who, not finding sport an end in itself, have questioned the use of record making and breaking. But it has had its use, and even from this point of view has amply justified itself, for the continually increasing speed required out of cycles for these purposes has led to the perfecting of them within what is, after all, a comparatively short time; so that the sporting clubman has, after all, while strictly occupied within the range of his own ambitions, contributed to the general good by bringing about the manufacture of a vehicle which, used by many hundreds of thousands of people who never raced in their lives, and are probably incapable of a speed of more than twelve miles an hour, has brought the roads and lanes of the country within the knowledge of many to whom rural life was something new and strange.
The first recorded cycle ride to York in which speed was an object was that of C. Wheaton, September 1872. That pioneer took two days to perform the journey, making Stamford, a distance of eighty-nine miles, the end of his first day’s adventure, in 15½ hours, and on the second day reaching York in a further 26 hours 40 minutes: total, 42 hours 10 minutes. This, with the front-driving low cycle of those days, was an achievement. Wooden wheels and iron tyres did not conduce to either speed or ease, and that now historic figure, painfully crawling (as we should now think his progress) to York is heroic.
Perhaps this tale of hardship was calculated to deter others from trying their mettle, but at any rate it was not until July 9, 1874, that two others, Ian Keith-Falconer and J. H. Stanley Thorpe, followed, and they failed in the effort. After another two years had almost passed, on June 5, 1876, Thorpe made another attempt. Leaving Highgate Archway at 11.10 P.M., he arrived the next day at York at 9.40 P.M. = 22 hours 30 minutes; chiefly, of course, by favour of that then “improved” form of bicycle, the tall “ordinary.”
Thirteen years passed before this record was lowered, and the one that replaced it was not a remarkable performance, considering the further great improvements in cycles. This ride, in the summer of 1889, performed on a solid-tyred “safety,” took 21 hours 10 minutes, and was beaten in the same year by six minutes by H. R. Pope, riding a tricycle; himself displaced, shortly after, by F. T. Bidlake, also mounted on a tricycle, who did the 197 miles in 18 hours 28 minutes.
In 1890, and for several years following, records came and went with increasing rapidity. In 1890 J. M. James put the safety record at 16 hours 52 minutes, and T. A. Edge soon followed, reducing it to 14 hours 33 minutes, James regaining the record again in 1891 by a bare thirteen minutes. In the following year, S. F. Edge, on a front-driving safety, made a splendid record of 12 hours 49 minutes, but had the mortification to see it beaten the next day, June 27, by F. W. Shorland, in 39 minutes less. In this year there were several rival tricycle records: that of W. J. A. Butterfield, of 18 hours 9 minutes being lowered by F. T. Bidlake by nearly three hours, and beaten again, on September 29, Bidlake’s figures on this occasion being 13 hours 19 minutes. On the same day M. A. Holbein and F. W. Shorland rode to York on a tandem tricycle in exactly the same time.
C. C. Fontaine went for the safety record on August 29, 1894, when he put the figures down to 11 hours 51 minutes. Fontaine lowered his own record in the following year, on October 18, by 21 minutes 45 seconds, and this was disposed of by George Hunt on May 7, 1896, when he got well within the eleven hours, at 10 hours 48 minutes.
This was lowered by F. R. Goodwin on July 19, 1899, his time being 10 hours 16 minutes; the speed on this occasion averaging rather over nineteen miles an hour. Even this could not have been accomplished without the aid of the most perfect motor pace-making arrangements. Goodwin smashed all these previous records on his way to establish the London to Edinburgh record of 25 hours 26 minutes, in which the average was somewhat higher; nearly twenty miles an hour.
The next, and latest, safety cycle record to York was made, unpaced, in 1900; when H. Green performed the journey in 10 hours 19 minutes.
The tandem safety London to York records should be mentioned. The first two were set up on July 24, 1895, and October 2, 1896, respectively: by G. P. Mills and T. A. Edge; and T. Hobson and H. E. Wilson, the times being 12 hours 33 minutes, and 11 hours 35 minutes.
These were followed by:—
|
Hrs. |
Mins. |
|
1901. |
A. H. and P. S. Murray (unpaced) |
10 |
59 |
1905. |
R. L. I. Knipe and S. Irving (unpaced) |
10 |
52 |
1907. |
F. H. Wingrave and R. A. Wingrave (unpaced) |
9 |
30 |
The London to Edinburgh records are:
SAFETY BICYCLE.
|
Hrs. |
Mins. |
|
1889. |
F. W. Shorland |
44 |
49 |
1891. |
P. A. Ransom |
43 |
25 |
1892. |
R. H. Carlisle |
32 |
55 |
1894. |
G. P. Mills |
29 |
28 |
,, |
C. C. Fontaine |
28 |
27 |
1895. |
W. J. Neason |
27 |
38 |
1897. |
J. Hunt |
26 |
47 |
1899. |
F. R. Goodwin (motor-paced) |
25 |
26 |
1903. |
F. Wright (unpaced) |
31 |
48 |
1904. |
E. H. Grimsdell |
28 |
3 |
,, |
G. A. Olley |
27 |
10 |
1905. |
E. H. Grimsdell |
26 |
10 |
,, |
R. Shirley |
23 |
43 |
A tricycle record, unpaced, made by F. W. Wesley in 1905, at 32 hours 42 minutes yet stands.
Tandem safety records:—
|
Hrs. |
Mins. |
|
1894. |
E. Oxborrow and H. Sansom |
27 |
33 |
1905. |
E. Bright and P. H. Miles (unpaced) |
27 |
54 |
Eaton Socon, its long straggling street and beautiful church-tower, left behind, the road descends to the “river Kym,” as the guidebooks call the tiny stream which, bordered by marshes, crosses under the road at a point known as Cross Hall. The “river Kym” certainly is, or was, important enough to confer its name upon the neighbouring townlet of Kimbolton, but the country folk now only know it as Weston Brook. The descent to it has of late years acquired the name of “Chicken Hill,” given by the North Roaders, racing cyclists, who must often have run over the fowls kept by the people of a cottage at the bottom. This is succeeded by Diddington Bridge, a picturesque, white-painted timber structure spanning the little Diddington Brook, which has eaten its way deeply into the earth, and is romantically shaded by tall trees and bordered by the undergrowth that fills the pretty hollow.
The slight rise from this spot is succeeded by an easy descent into narrow-streeted Buckden, one of those old “thoroughfare” coaching villages which imagined themselves on the way to becoming towns in the fine, free-handed old days. The huge bulk of the “George” is eloquent of this, with its fifteen windows in a row, and the signs still noticeable in the brickwork, showing where the house was doubled in size at the period of its greatest prosperity. Nowadays the “George” is all too large for its trade, and a portion of it is converted into shops. As for the interminable rooms and passages above, they echo hollow to the infrequent footfall, where they were once informed with a cheerful bustle and continuous arrival and departure. There was a period, a few years ago, when the North Road Club’s road-racing events brought crowds of cyclists and busy times once more to the “George,” but they are irretrievably gone.
To and from Buckden and Welwyn in coaching times drove every day the notable Cartwright, of the York “Express”; a day’s work of about seventy miles. Cartwright was something more than a coachman, being himself landlord of the “George” at Buckden, and horsing one or two of the stages over which he drove. “Peter Pry,” one of the old Sporting Magazine’s coaching critics, waxes eloquent over him. It was a vile day when, to sample Cartwright’s quality, he set out by the York “Express” from London for Grantham; but neither the weather nor the scenery, nor anything in Heaven or Earth drew his attention from Cartwright. He starts at once with being struck at Welwyn with Cartwright’s graceful and easy way of mounting the box, and then proceeds to make a kind of admiring inventory of his person. Thus, he might have been considered to be under fifty years of age, bony, without fat; healthy looking, evidently the effect of abstemiousness; not too tall, but just the size to sit gracefully and powerfully. His right hand and whip were beautifully in unison; he kept his horses like clock-work, and to see the refinement with which he managed the whip was well worth riding many hours on a wet day. But the occasions on which he used the whip were rare, although the tits were only fair, and not by any means first-rate. No dandy, but equipped most respectably and modestly, and with good taste, he was the idol of the road, both with old and young; while his manners on the box were respectful, communicative without impertinence, and untarnished with slang. Acquainted with everybody and every occupation within his sphere, he was an entertaining companion even to an ordinary traveller; but he enchanted the amateur of coaching with his perfect professional knowledge, which embraced all niceties. His excellent qualities, we are glad to notice, in conclusion, had gained their reward; he was well-to-do, lived regularly, had a happy family, and envied neither lord nor peasant.
Welwyn, the road to Buckden, and Buckden itself seem quite lonely without this figure of all the virtues and the graces.
Spelt “Bugden” in other times, the inhabitants still pronounce its name in this way. There is a well-defined air of aristocracy about this village, due partly to the ruined towers of the old palace of the Bishops of Lincoln, and to the sturdy old red-brick walls that enclose the grounds in which they stand. They are walls with a thickness and lavish use of material calculated to make the builder of “desirable villa residences” gasp with dismay at such apparently wanton extravagance. But the Bishops of Lincoln, who built those walls in the fifteenth century, had not obtained their land on a building lease; and, moreover, they were building for their own use, which makes a deal of difference, it must be conceded.
You cannot help noticing these walls, for they run for some distance beside the road. Through a gateway is seen a pleasant view of lawns and the front of a modern mansion. The Bishops have long left Buckden, and have gone to reside at their palace at Lincoln, Buckden Palace having been wantonly demolished when the Order in Council, authorising these Right Reverend Fathers in God to alienate the property, was obtained. The church adjoins their roofless old gatehouse, and is a fine old place of worship, with a stone spire of the Northants type.
In this church will be found a singular example of modesty. It is an epitaph without the name of the person:—
“Sacred to the memory of
AN OFFICER,
who sincerely regarded this
his native village
and caused an asylum to be erected, to protect
Age, and to reward Industry.
Reader, ask not his name.
If thou approve a deed which succours
the helpless, go and emulate it.
Obiit 1834, aet 65.”
The tiny hamlet of Hardwick, dignified with mention on the Ordnance map, is passed without its existence being noticed, and the road, flat as though constructed with the aid of a spirit-level, proceeds straight ahead for the town of Huntingdon, swinging acutely to the left for York. Beyond, at the cross-roads, stands Brampton Hut, the modern vivid red-brick successor of the old inn of that name. Brampton village lies down the cross-road to the right, and is the place where Samuel Pepys, it is thought, was born in 1632. [117] The registers afford no information, for they do not begin until twenty-one years later, and the old gossip himself makes no mention of the fact. His father and mother lived here, and both lie in the church. Their home, his birthplace, stands even now, but so altered that it is practically without much interest. It was in its garden, in October, 1666, that Samuel caused his £1,300 to be buried when the Dutch descent upon London was feared. A timorous soul, poor Samuel! sending his father and his wife down from London to Brampton with the gold, and with £300 in a girdle round where his waist should have been, but was not, for Samuel was a man of “full habit,” as the elegant phrase, seeking to disguise the accusation of exceeding fatness, has it. Great was his anxiety when, the national danger over, he came down to disinter his hoard. “My father and I with a dark lantern, it being now night, into the garden with my wife, and there went about our great work to dig up my gold. But Lord! what a tosse I was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was; but by and by, poking with a spit, we found it, and then begun with a spudd to lift up the ground.”
But they had not been cautious in their work. “Good God!” says he, “to see how sillily they hid it, not half a foot under ground, in sight of passers-by and from the neighbours’ windows.” Then he found the gold all loose, and the notes decaying with the damp, and all the while, routing about among the dirt for the scattered pieces, he was afraid lest the neighbours should see him, and fancy the Pepys family had discovered a gold mine; so he took up dirt and all, and, carrying it to his brother’s bedroom, washed it out with the aid of several pails of water and some besoms, with the result that he was still over a hundred pieces short. This “made him mad.” He could not go out in the garden with his father, because the old man was deaf, and, in shouting to him, all the neighbours would get to know. So he went out with W. Hewer, and by diligent grubbing in the mould, made the sum nearly tally. The day after, leaving his father to search for the remainder, we find him setting out for London, with his belongings; the gold in a basket in the coach, and he coming to look after it every quarter of an hour.
Something over a mile distant from Brampton cross-roads, and passing over two little bridges, we come to a third bridge, spanning one of the lazy rivulets that trickle aimlessly through the flats. It is just an old red-brick bridge, braced with iron and edged with timber; an innocent-looking, although dull and lonely spot, with the water trickling along in its deeply worn bed, and no sound save the occasional splash made by a frightened water-rat. Yet this is “Matcham’s Bridge,” and the scene of an infamous murder.
Matcham’s Bridge, spanning the little river Wey, obtained its name from the murder of a drummer-boy here by Gervase (or Jarvis) Matcham, on the 19th of August 1780. The murder was a remarkable one, and is made additionally memorable by the after-career of the murderer, whose bloody deed and subsequent confession, six years later, form the subject of the Dead Drummer, one of Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends.
Gervase Matcham, the son of a farmer living at Frodingham, in Yorkshire, had a varied and adventurous career. When in his twelfth year, he ran away from home and became a jockey. In the course of this employment he was sent to Russia in charge of some horses presented by the Duke of Northumberland to the Empress, and returning to London well supplied with money, dissipated it all in evil courses. He then shipped as a sailor on board the Medway man-of-war, but after a short experience of fighting, managed to desert. He had no sooner landed in England than he was seized by one of the prowling pressgangs that then scoured the seaports, and was shipped aboard the Ariadne, fitting out on an expedition to destroy the pirate, Paul Jones. Succeeding in an attempt to escape when off Yarmouth, he enlisted in the 13th Regiment of Foot, and deserting again, near Chatham, set out to tramp through London to York, visiting Huntingdon on the way. The 49th Regiment was then recruiting in the district, and Matcham promptly enlisted in it.
From Huntingdon, on the 19th of August 1780, he was sent to Major Reynolds at Diddington, to draw some subsistence-money, amounting to between £6 and £7. With him was a drummer-boy, Benjamin Jones, aged about sixteen years, the son of the recruiting sergeant. The boy having drawn the money, they returned along the high road, Matcham drinking on the way. Instead of turning off to Huntingdon, Matcham induced the boy to go on with him in the direction of Alconbury, and picking a quarrel with him at the bridge, seized him and cut his throat, making off with the money. He then fled across country to the nearest seaport, and shipped again to sea. For six years he continued in the Navy and saw hard fighting under Rodney and Hood, being at last paid off H.M.S. Sampson at Plymouth, on June 15, 1786. From Plymouth he set out with a messmate—one John Shepherd—to walk along the Exeter Road to London. Near the “Woodyates Inn” they were overtaken one afternoon by a thunderstorm in which Matcham startled his shipmate by his abject terror of some unseen apparition. Eventually he confessed his crime to Shepherd, and begged his companion to hand him over to the nearest magistrate, so that Justice might be satisfied. He was accordingly committed at Salisbury, and, inquiries as to the truth of his confession having been made, he was brought to trial at Huntingdon, found guilty, and executed on the 2nd of August 1786, his body being afterwards hanged in chains on Alconbury Hill.
The summit of this convenient Golgotha is the place where the North Road and the Great North Road adjust their differences, and proceed by one route to the North. Not a very terrible hill, after all, despite the way in which it figures in the letters and diaries of old travellers; but nowadays a very lonely place, although it is the meeting-point of two main roads and that of a branch one. It was once different indeed, and the great “Wheatsheaf” inn and posting-house, which stood a hundred yards or so away from the junction, used commonly to send out thirty pairs of post-horses a day. This establishment was kept in its prime by John Warsop, who lived long enough to see his business ruined by railways. Let no one imagine the “Wheatsheaf” public-house, standing where the roads meet, to be the representative of that old posting-house. Face north, and you will see a private house of considerable size standing on the east side of the road, behind a hedge and lawn. Not a beautiful house; in fact, an ugly house of a dingy whitey-buff brick, the colour of pastry taken out of the oven before it is properly baked. Approaching nearer, it will be observed that this building is now divided into two private residences. This was once the “Wheatsheaf.” In the bygone days it possessed a semicircular approach from the road, and afforded all the year round, and round the clock of every day and night, a busy scene; with the postboys, whose next turn-out it was, sleeping with spur on heel, ready to mount and away at a minute’s notice, north, south, east, or west. Those times and manners are as absolutely vanished as though they never had existed, and even although there are yet living those who remember the old “Wheatsheaf” of their youthful days, perhaps not one wayfarer in a hundred has any idea of that once busy era on Alconbury Hill. How many of all those who pass this way have ever noticed that pathetic relic of the “Wheatsheaf’s” bygone prosperity, the old post from which its sign used to hang? It is still to be seen, by those who know where to look for it, facing the road, a venerable and decrepit relic, now thickly covered with ivy, and somewhat screened from the casual glance by the shrubs and trees growing close beside it.
Travellers coming south could have a choice of routes to London from Alconbury Hill, as the elaborate old milestone still standing at the parting of the ways indicates, showing sixty-four miles by way of Huntingdon, Royston, and Ware, and four miles longer by the way we have come. This monumental milestone, now somewhat dilapidated, railed round, and with some forlorn-looking wall-flowers growing inside the enclosure, is a striking object, situated at a peculiarly impressive spot, where the left-hand route by Huntingdon is seen going off on the level to a vanishing-point lost in the distant haze, rather than by any dip or curve of the road to right or left; the right-hand road diving down the hill to Alconbury Weston and Alconbury at its foot.
The descent, going north, is known as Stangate Hill, and leads past the lonely churchyard of Sawtry St. Andrews, whose church has disappeared as utterly as Sawtry Abbey, which, less wealthy than the great abbeys of Ramsey, Thorney, Crowland, or Peterborough, stood beside the road, and was besieged by mediæval tramps:
“Sawtry-by-the-Way, that old Abbaye,
Gave more alms in one day than all they.”
Thus ran the old rhyme. To-day, the only vestiges of that vanished religious house are in the names of Monk’s Wood, to the right of the road, descending the hill, and of the Abbey Farm.
The foot of Stangate Hill is no doubt the place called by Thoresby and others “Stangate Hole,” where highwaymen were confidently to be expected. De Foe, writing about 1720 of this road, says: “Some Parts are still paved with stone, which strengthens the conjecture that the Name Stangate was given it from thence. It traverses great woods between the Two Saltries.”
In his spelling of “Sawtry,” in that last line, although he does not follow the invariable form, he has hit upon the original. For “Sawtry” was in the beginning “Salt Reeth.” Salt marshes and creeks crept inland even as far as this, past Ely and Ramsey.
Stilton lies some three miles ahead, and, two miles before reaching it, the old “Crown and Woolpack,” a very large red-brick posting-house, part of it still occupied as an inn, the rest used as cottages, while the stables are given over to spiders and lumber.
Passing this, the road presently begins to rise gently, and then, level again, widens out to almost treble its usual width, where a long street of mingled old houses and cottages, a medley of stone, brick, and plaster, stands, strangely silent. This is Stilton, dreaming of bygone busy times. Had the railway touched here, things would have worn a very different aspect at Stilton to-day. Let us, therefore, thank the shades of that Marquis of Exeter, and of the others who resisted the railway, and by causing it to describe a wide loop instead of hugging the road, unwittingly contributed to the preservation in a glass case, as it were, of this old coaching centre.
Night and day the coaches kept Stilton awake, and if for a few minutes there was no coach, the post-chaises at one end of the social scale, and the fly-wagons at the other, kept the inns busy. Stilton buzzed with activity then. From the far North came the drovers, doing twenty miles a day, with their sheep and cattle, their pigs and geese; animal creation marching, martyrs in their sort, to Smithfield. At Stilton they shod the cattle, like horses, and one blacksmith’s business here consisted of nothing else than this.
The glory of Stilton has departed, and the “Bell” and the “Angel” face one another, dolefully wondering in what channels the tide of business now flows. The “Bell” is more racy of the soil than the “Angel,” just as it is also much older. We are here in a stone district, and the “Bell” is a building of that warm yellowish stone characteristic of these parts. Built at the very beginning of the seventeenth century, it was already of a respectable age when the brick “Angel” opposite began to rise from its foundations. The older house is the feature of Stilton, its great sign, with the mazy quirks and curls of its wrought-iron supports, projecting far out towards the road, and arresting the eye on first entering the street. The sign itself is painted on copper, for the sake of lightness, but has long been supported by a crutch, in the shape of a post. With this ornamental iron-work, incomparably the finest sign on the road, it was in the old days the subject of many wagers made by coachmen and guards with unwary strangers who did not, like those artful ones, know its measurements. It measures in fact 6 ft. 2¾ inches in height.
The old “Talbot” inn still has its coach gallery, or balcony, in front.
The “Angel,” in the best days of posting, became the principal house at Stilton, and the little public-house of that name next door to the commanding brick building which is now a private residence was only the tap of the hotel. But the “Bell,” that has seen the beginning and the end of the “Angel,” still survives, with memories of the days when the delicacy which renders the name of Stilton world-famous had its origin. Allusion is hereby made—need one explain it?—to “Stilton” cheese. They say those old stagers who knew it when its local reputation first began to be dispersed throughout the country—that Stilton cheese is not what it was. What is? The “English Parmesan,” they called it then, when their palates first became acquainted with it, but it deserved better of them than that. It was a species of itself, and not justly comparable with aught else. But Stilton cheese is not, nor ever was, made at Stilton, or anywhere near it. It originated with Mrs. Paulet of Wymondham, near Melton Mowbray, who first supplied it to Cooper Thornhill, the once celebrated landlord of the “Bell,” for the use of the table provided for the coach passengers and other travellers who dined there. Mrs. Paulet’s cheeses immediately struck connoisseurs as a revelation, and they came into demand, not only on Thornhill’s table, but were eagerly purchased for themselves or friends by those who travelled this way. Thornhill was too business-like a man to give away the secret of the make, and he did very well for himself, charging as he did half-a-crown a pound. Then the almost equally famous Miss Worthington, of the “Angel,” began to supply “Stilton” cheeses, so that scarce any one came through the place but was asked to buy one. Nor did travellers usually wait to be asked. If it happened that they did not want any for themselves, they were usually charged by friends with commissions to purchase as they passed through. Smiling waiters and maidservants, Miss Worthington herself, rosy, plump, benevolent-looking, asked travellers if they would not like to take away with them a real Stilton cheese. Miss Worthington, the kindly, whose lavender-scented beds were famed along the whole length of the Great North Road—there she stood, declaring that they were real Stilton cheeses! Nor were travellers for a long while any the wiser. Stilton folks kept the secret well. But it gradually leaked out. A native of those parts, too, was the traitor. “Pray, sir, would you like a nice Stilton cheese to take away with you?” asked the unsuspecting landlady, as the coach on whose outside he was seated drew up.
“Do you say they are made at Stilton?” he asked in reply.
“Oh, yes,” said she.
Then came the crushing rejoinder. “Why, Miss Worthington, you know perfectly well that no Stilton cheese was ever made at Stilton; they’re all made in Leicestershire, and as you say your cheeses are made at Stilton, they cannot be good, and I won’t have one.” The secret was then, of course, exploded.
Which of these two inns could it have been to which Mrs. Calderwood of Coltness refers in her diary when, travelling from Scotland to London in the middle of the eighteenth century, she mentions at Stilton a “fine large inn,” where the linen was “as perfit rags as ever I saw: plain linen with fifty holes in each towell.” It would be interesting to know, but it is hopeless now to attempt to identify it.
Up-hill from Stilton, three-quarters of a mile away, but well within sight, stands the Norman Cross inn, where the Peterborough, Louth, Lincoln, and Hull coaches turned off to the right.
Norman Cross! how many have been those old-time cyclists who have partaken of the hospitality of the inn here! Not always, though, has it been a place of welcome memories. For years, indeed, during the long struggles between England and France, this was the site of one of the largest of the prisons in which captured French soldiers were incarcerated. Over three thousand were placed here, officers and privates, some remaining captive for more than ten years. Happy those who, through influence or by mere luck, were selected to be exchanged for our soldiers, prisoners in France.
It was a weary time for those poor fellows. Many of them died in the great insanitary sheds in which they were confined, and others lost their reason. Desperate men sometimes succeeded in escaping to the coast, where friends were awaiting them. Others, wandering over the lonely flats, perished miserably in the dykes and drains into which they fell when the mists shrouded the countryside. There were, again, those who stabbed the sentries and made off. Such an one was Charles François Marie Bonchew, an officer, who had wounded, but had not killed, a sentry named Alexander Halliday. Being captured, he was sentenced to death at Huntingdon, and was brought back to Norman Cross to be executed, September 1808. All the prisoners were turned out to witness the execution, and the garrison was under arms.
But it was not all savagery and horror here among those military captives, for they were often allowed out on parole, within certain hours and well-defined bounds. It was understood that no prisoner out on parole should leave the highroad, nor was he to be at large after sunset. If he disregarded these rules he was liable to be shot at sight by any one who had a gun handy. He was an Ishmael against whom every hand was turned, and, indeed, the Post Office offered a reward of £5 to any mail guard who, seeing a prisoner breaking parole, should shoot him. After several inoffensive farm-labourers, going home after dusk, had been peppered with shot in mistake by guards anxious to secure this reward, the village streets and roads adjacent became singularly desolate when a coach was heard approaching.
There were exceptions to these strict rules, and officers of high rank—and consequently assumed to have a nicer sense of honour than that obtaining among subalterns and the rank and file—were permitted to take private lodgings at Stilton. Those were the fortunate ones. Most of the prisoners, unhappily, were penniless, and after a time even their own Government refused supplies for their maintenance. Accordingly, they obtained some few little luxuries, and employed the time that hung so heavily on their hands, by carving toys and artistic nick-nacks out of fragments of wood, or from the bones left from their rations, and selling them to the crowds of country folks who came to gaze at them on certain days. Straw-plaiting, too, was a prisoners’ industry, until it was stopped by some of the military in charge.
In March, 1812, Sergeant Ives, of the West Essex Militia, was stopped on the highway between Stilton and Norman Cross by a number of persons unknown, who, after having knocked him down and robbed him of his money and watch, wrenched open his jaws, and with savage cruelty, cut off a piece of his tongue. It was supposed that this outrage was in revenge for his having been concerned in suppressing the plait trade at Norman Cross barracks.
The prisoners were not entirely without spiritual consolation, for the good Bishop de Moulines appointed himself their chaplain, and, of his own free will leaving France, took up residence at Stilton. He attended them in sickness, and helped them out of his own resources.
The officers in charge of these prisoners were often brutal, but that there were some who sympathised with their sorrows is evident from the tablet still to be seen in Yaxley Church, a mile distant, which tells of the gratitude of the prisoners for the kindness shown them by Captain John Draper, R.N., who died after being in charge of the prison for only eighteen months.
Norman Cross Prison, or “Yaxley Barracks”—Norman Cross being in the parish of Yaxley—built in 1796; was demolished in 1816, and no vestige of it is left.
And so all recollection of these things might in time have faded away had it not been for the monument erected by the wayside in the fateful year 1914. Let us pause to consider that moment. Events were hurrying towards the beginning of the Great War of 1914–18, and the nation in general was wholly ignorant of what was coming. Stupidly ignorant, for there were many omens. It was at this moment, afterwards seen to be so full of tragedy, that the memorial pillar on, or near, the site of Yaxley Barracks, to the memory of those French prisoners of war, was unveiled, July 28th, 1914, by Lord Weardale. A gilded bronze French Imperial eagle stoops on the crest of a handsome pillar, and on the plinth is a tablet stating that this is a memorial to 1770 French prisoners who died in captivity.
French Prisoners of War Monument, Norman Cross
These incidents, “picked from the wormholes of long vanished days,” give romance to the otherwise featureless road onwards to Kate’s Cabin and Water Newton. The “Kate’s Cabin” inn is mentioned by every road-book of coaching-times, but no one ever condescended to explain the origin of this curious sign, and the inn itself, once standing in the receipt of custom at the cross-roads, three miles and a half from Norman Cross, is now a pretty cottage.
Sculptured figure, Water Newton Church Nearly two miles onward, Water Newton comes in sight, standing, dry and secure, on its knoll above the water-meadows on the river Nene. On the western face of its church tower, which originally, before Wansford bridge was built and the road diverted, faced the highway, may yet be seen a tabernacle containing an ancient effigy of a man in semi-ecclesiastical attire, his hands clasped in prayer. An inscription in Norman French may with some difficulty be deciphered beneath it, inviting the passer-by to pray for the soul of Thomas Purden:—
“VOVS KE PAR
ISSI PASSEZ
POVR LE ALME
TOMAS PVR
DEN PRIEZ.”
Read aloud, we perceive this to be intended for rhyme.
No one prays for the soul of Thomas Purden nowadays, for these two very excellent and individually sufficient reasons—that prayers for the dead are not customary in the Church of England, and that, since the road has been diverted, there are no passers-by.
This brings us to the reason why Thomas Purden should have expected wayfarers to intercede for his soul. That he expected them to do this out of gratitude seems obvious; but it is not at first evident for what they should be so grateful. We are, however, to bear in mind that a road passed down beside this church tower in those days, where no road—only a meadow—exists to-day. The meadow slopes steeply to the river, and doubtless a ford, a ferry, or some primitive bridge was established here by Thomas Purden long before even a wooden bridge existed at Wansford. In providing some safe method by which travellers might pass this river, even now subject to dangerous floods, Purden would have been a benefactor in the eyes alike of men and of Holy Church, and fully entitled to the prayers and intercessions of all.
For many years the head of the figure had disappeared, but when the church was restored, some years since, an ingenious mason fitted him with another which had, in the usual careless fashion of restorers, been knocked off something else. And it is a simple truth that since its “restoration,” Water Newton church is sadly bare.
By the wayside, on the left, against the wall of a farm-house residence, will be noticed an old milestone and horseman’s upping-block combined. It marks the 81st mile from London, and bears the initials “E. B.,” together with the date, 1708. This is perhaps the only survivor of a series which, according to De Foe, in his “Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain,” a Mr. Boulter was projecting “to London, for the general benefit.”
Edmund Boulter was one of the family who were then seated at Gawthorp Hall, near Leeds, and who, not much later, sold that property to Henry Lascelles, father of the first Lord Harewood.
At the hamlet of Sibson, on the left hand in descending toward the level-crossing at Wansford station, may still be seen the stocks and whipping-post beside the road. To the right flows the winding Nene, through illimitable oozy meadows, its course marked in the far distance by the pollard willows that line its banks. The Nene here divides the counties of Huntingdonshire and Northants, Wansford itself lying in the last-mentioned county and Stibbington on the hither side of the river. The famous Wansford Bridge joins the two, and helps to render Wansford and Stibbington one place in the eyes of strangers. Both places belong to the Duke of Bedford, Stibbington bearing the mark of its ownership distinctly visible in its severe and uncomfortable-looking “model” modern-gothic stone houses, with the coroneted “B” on their gables. In this manner the accursed Russells have bedevilled many of the villages and townlets unhappily owned by them, and the feelings of all who live in their earmarked houses must be akin to those of paupers who inhabit workhouses and infirmaries, with the important exception that the Duke’s tenants pay rent and taxes. Wansford, fortunately, has not been rebuilt, and it is possible for the villagers to live without an uncomfortable sense of belonging, body and soul, to the Dukes of Bedford.
The famous “Haycock” inn, usually spoken of as at Wansford, is, in fact, on the Huntingdonshire side of the bridge, and in Stibbington. Its sign alludes to the supposed origin of the curious nick-name of “Wansford-in-England,” first mentioned in that scarce little early eighteenth-century book, Drunken Barnaby’s Four Journeys to the North of England. In its pages he describes being carried off by a flood:—
“On a haycock sleeping soundly,
Th’ River rose and took me roundly
Down the current: People cry’d;
Sleeping, down the Stream I hy’d:
‘Where away,’ quoth they, ‘from Greenland?’
‘No, from Wansforth-brigs in England.’”
This “in England” has puzzled many. It really refers to the situation of Wansford in Northamptonshire, near, but not in, “Holland”—the Holland division of Lincolnshire.
Wansford’s peculiar fame is thus more than local. Perhaps the queer picture-sign of the grand old inn, representing Drunken Barnaby on his haycock, helped to disperse it over England in days when it could not fail to be seen by every passing traveller. The “Haycock” ceased to be an inn, and is now occupied as a hunting-box. It affords a pleasing relief from the Duke of Bedford’s almshouse-looking cottages, and is a building not only of considerable age, but of dignified architectural character. Stone-built, with handsome windows and steep slated roof, and carefully designed, even to its chimneys, it is, architecturally speaking, among the very finest of the houses ever used as inns in England, and has more the appearance of having been originally designed as a private mansion than as a house of public entertainment. The sign is now hung in the hall of the house, the corbels it rested on being still visible beside the present door, replacing the old archway by which the coaches and post-chaises entered and left the courtyard of the inn of old.
The “Haycock,” even in its days as an inn, was a noted hunting centre. Situated in the country of the Fitzwilliam Hunt, it afforded, with its splendid accommodation for guests and for horses, headquarters for those who had not a hunting-box of their own, and in those days stabled as many as a hundred and fifty horses.
“Young Percival” kept the “Haycock” from about 1826, and drove the “Regent” between Wansford and Stamford, in place of “old John Barker.” At that time he had more valour than discretion in driving, and on one occasion at least nearly brought disaster upon the coach at the famous bridge by “punishing” a spirited team which had given some trouble at starting. At the steep and narrow entrance to the bridge they took it in their heads to resent his double-thonging, the leaders turning round, and the whole team presently facing towards London instead of Stamford. They had to be driven back to the “Haycock,” and Barker took them on to Stamford.
That bridge would have been an exceedingly awkward place for a coach accident. It is picturesqueness itself, and by consequence not the most convenient for traffic. Originally built in 1577, with thirteen arches, it was repaired in 1674, as a Latin inscription carved midway on it informs the inquiring stranger. In the winter of 1795 an ice-flood destroyed some of the southernmost arches, which were replaced the following year by two wider spans, so that Wansford Bridge has now only ten openings. The northern approach to it from Stamford leads down in a dangerous, steep, sudden, and narrow curve, intersected by a cross-road. Now that there is no longer a turnpike gate at this point to bring the traffic to a slow pace, this descent is fruitful in accidents, and at least one cyclist has been killed here in an attempt to negotiate this sharp curve on the descent into the cross-road. An inoffensive cottage standing at the corner opposite the “Mermaid” inn has received many a cyclist through its window, and the new masonry of its wall bears witness to the wreck caused by a heavy wagon hurtling down the hill, carrying away the side of the house.
The five miles between Wansford and Stamford begin with this long rise, whose crest was cut through in coaching days, the earth taken being used to fill up a deep hollow which succeeded, where a little brook trickled across the road, the coaches fording it. Thence, by what used to be called in the old road-books “Whitewater Turnpike,” past the few cottages of Thornhaugh, and so to where the long wall of Burghley Park begins on the right hand. Here the telegraph poles, that have hitherto so unfailingly followed the highway, suddenly go off to the right, and into Stamford by the circuitous Barnack road, in deference to the objections, or otherwise, of the Marquis of Exeter, against their going through his park.
The famous Burghley House by Stamford town is not visible from the road, and is indeed situated a mile within the park, only the gate-house to the estate being passed in the long descent into that outlying portion of the town known as Stamford Baron.
There is, amid the works of Tennyson, a curiously romantic poem, “The Lord of Burleigh,” which on the part of the literary pilgrim will repay close examination; and this examination will yield some astonishing results. It is, briefly stated, the story of an Earl masquerading as a landscape painter and winning the heart and hand of a farmer’s daughter. He takes her, after the wedding, to see—
“A mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before;
Many a gallant gay domestic
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
‘All of this is mine and thine.’
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.”
The original person from whose doings this poem was written was, in fact, Henry Cecil, tenth Earl, and afterwards first Marquis, of Exeter. He was the lord of Burghley House (not “Burleigh Hall”), by Stamford town, and his descendants are there yet.
Not a landscape painter, but a kind of London man about town and Member of Parliament for Stamford, 1774–1780, 1784–1790, and then plain Mr. Henry Cecil (for he did not succeed his uncle in the title until December, 1793), he is found rather mysteriously wandering about Shropshire in 1789, calling himself (there is never any accounting for taste) “Mr. Jones.” He was then a man who had been married fourteen years, and was thirty-six years of age.
The scene opens (thus to put it in dramatic form) on an evening towards the end of June, 1789, when a stranger knocked at the door of Farmer Hoggins at Great Bolas in Shropshire, and begged shelter for the night. He was obviously a gentleman, but called himself by the very plebian name of “John Jones.” He made himself so agreeable that his stay “for the night” lasted some weeks, and he returned again in a month or so, taking up his residence in the village. The attraction which brought him back to Great Bolas was evidently Sarah Hoggins, the farmer’s daughter, at that time a girl of sixteen, having been born in June, 1773. He proposed for Sarah, and on April 17th, 1790, they were married in Great Bolas Church, the register showing that he married in the name of “John Jones.” Meanwhile he had purchased land in the village, and built a house which he called “Bolas Villa.” Gossip grew extremely busy with this mysterious stranger who had thus descended upon the place, and it was generally suspected that he was a highwayman in an extensive way of business, especially as some notable highway robberies happened coincidently with his appearance.
Early in 1794, “Mr. John Jones,” living thus at Great Bolas, learnt that his uncle, the ninth Earl of Exeter, had died in December. Telling his wife they must journey into Northamptonshire, where he had business, they set out and arrived at “Burghley House, by Stamford town,” and there he disclosed to her for the first time that he was not “John Jones,” but Henry Cecil, and now Earl of Exeter.
At what time he broke the news to her that he was already a married man there is no evidence to show. Strictly speaking, he had made a bigamous marriage, because, although his wife, one of the Vernons of Hanbury, in Worcestershire, had eloped on June 14, 1789, with the Reverend William Sneyd, curate of that place, he had at the time taken no steps to obtain a divorce.
Burghley House, by Stamford Town
But he had every excuse. He had honestly fallen in love with Sarah Hoggins after thus meeting her while wandering about the country a few days after his wife’s flight; and he obtained a divorce by Act of Parliament in March, 1791. Having done this, he married Sarah Hoggins secondly some six months later (October 3) in the City of London Church of St. Mildred, Bread Street, in whose register his name appears as “Henry Cecil, bachelor.”
Tennyson’s poem is, therefore, rather more romantic than truthful; and the lines which tell us how she murmured—
“Oh! that he
Were again that landscape painter
Who did win my heart from me,”
have no authority. Nor is there any evidence to warrant the statement that—
“A trouble weighed upon her
And perplexed her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.”
The poet continues—
“So she droop’d and droop’d before him,
Fading slowly from his side;
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.”
The Countess of Exeter, in fact, died on January 18, 1797, not quite twenty-four years of age; but not from “the burthen of an honour unto which she was not born.” Happily, accession to the ranks of the titled nobility is not fatal, as the marriage of many distinguished ornaments of the musical comedy stage assure us; and so we must charge the Poet Laureate with the flunkey thought that blue blood is a kind apart, and not to be admixed with other strains. This from the poet who wrote—
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”
is unexpected.
She left two sons and one daughter. Her eldest son became second Marquis of Exeter, his father, the Earl, having been raised a step in the peerage in 1801.
The enterprising Earl married, thirdly, in 1800, the divorced wife of the eighth Duke of Hamilton, and died May 1, 1804, aged fifty; but his third wife survived until January 17, 1837. In the billiard-room of Burghley House is a portrait-group of “the Lord of Burleigh” and his wife, Sarah Hoggins, by Sir Thomas Lawrence.