Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century
Chapter III
CHAPTER III.
IN carrying out a purpose indicated in the first chapter of this
volume, I proceed to notice the historical localities with which I am acquainted, generally
in the order in which they present themselves in our national records. The earliest
monuments of the old British stock are Abury and Stonehenge. On a summer afternoon of 1834
I diverged from the road from Bath to Marlborough, to take the little village of Abury or
Avebury, on the bank of the Kennet. This was rarely visited except by antiquaries, who
could piece out some lumps of stone, scattered amidst ploughed fields, into circles and
avenues and altar-stones and cromlechs. Two centuries ago, it was so complete that
Charles the Second, not a very imaginative person,
went to look upon it. There is little now to see, for the plough has been as ruthless a
destroyer of antiquity in solitary fields as the trowel has been in ancient cities. I saw
Stonehenge early on a summer morning of 1842. I was then taking a pedestrian tour through
the New Forest and onward, with a young clergyman, the Rev.
William Scott, upon whom the awakening influences in the Church, a quarter
of a century ago, had produced an enthusiastic reverence for our ecclesiastical
antiquities, and necessarily a liberal curiosity with regard to the evidences of an earlier
civilisation. At Salisbury we
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 43 |
met with my friend John Britton, himself a piece of hoar antiquity, and with
him we went to Old Sarum and Stonehenge. The first impression of the traveller is that this
apparently boundless plain could never have been the seat of any considerable population;
that if, according to Spenser, British kings— “entombed lie at Stonehenge by the heath,” |
a desert must have witnessed their funeral obsequies. A branch railway, called the
Salisbury line, now traverses the plain for some miles, passing near the little town of
Amesbury, from which Stonehenge is most conveniently approached. This would of itself be
evidence that there is still a population there, as was most likely the case when Druidical
worshippers assembled in the “Choir of the Giants.” Although the eye that
ranges over Salisbury Plain may only see here and there such tokens of life as a flock and
a shepherd boy, there are hamlets nestling in the hollows between the ridges of the little
hills, with churches whose early dates proclaim the growth of a religion which in a few
centuries left Stonehenge a ruin.
The traces of the Roman dominion in England are much more distinctly
associated with historical evidence than are the monuments of the Druidical superstition.
Nevertheless, how obscure is the history of some of the works in Britain of the great
conquerors of the world. I went to Colchester in 1856 for the express purpose of looking at
the remains of its castle, respecting which a theory had been setup that it was
“built by a colony of Romans, as a temple to their deified Emperor, Claudius
44 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
Cæsar.” So runs the title of a book by the Rev. H. Jenkins. I spent a pleasant day walking about Colchester, vainly
endeavouring to come to some conclusion whether the site of Camulodunum was the present
Colchester, or the neighbouring hill Lexden; but nevertheless I had the conviction that
these spots, surrounded by waters and woods, were the scenes of some of those great
conflicts which finally placed the whole of south Britain under the dominion of Rome. As I
gazed upon the valley of Lexden, which was once a marsh overflowed by the Colne at every
return of the tide, images would arise of the indomitable queen who speaks her injuries in
the pages of Tacitus—a noble subject for verse, whether
of Cowper or Tennyson— “Far in the East Boadicea, standing
loftily charioted, Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility, Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune, Yell’d and shriek’d between her daughters o’er a wild
confederacy.” |
With the same intelligent friend who
accompanied me to Stonehenge, I have walked within the ruined walls of Silchester, and seen
in an area of an hundred acres the distinct traces of lines of building which had been long
before mapped out by our early topographers. I heard the dwellers in this once secluded
place call Silchester The City. Few visited it from the somewhat distant towns of Reading
and Basingstoke, but now the whistle of the railway engine comes very close, and the
“lapwing cries away” in places still solitary. The desolation of the
city of the Atrebatii was extreme, but remains of baths, of a temple, of a forum, attested
its once flourishing condition. The history of its ruin is buried in the deep
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 45 |
night of the period when the Roman Legions had withdrawn from
Britain. Richborough is within an easy distance of Ramsgate. Along the somewhat melancholy
road through the vast flat which skirts the sea between the two extremities of Pegwell Bay,
I walked with a friend who was well qualified to explain the former use of that long line
of wall, now covered with ivy, to which we were gradually approaching. Mr. Long and I passed several hours in the examination of
this remarkable ruin, some of whose walls are from twenty to thirty feet high, with their
outer masonry of tiles and stones perfect in their beautiful regularity, and wonderful for
their extreme thickness. We pass the postern gate and are in the interior of the Roman
castle, an area of five acres—a luxuriant piece of arable land, where the antiquary is
sometimes baffled in his researches by ripening com or beans yet unshrivelled by the summer
sun. Since the time of my first visit, antiquarian societies have been delving and digging,
but have arrived at no very satisfactory conclusion as to the purposes of a great platform
in the arable field, where the wheat and the beans refuse to grow. Again and again I have
come to this solitary place, but I was never more thoroughly impressed with its
associations than when, sitting here alone, I could meditate upon the vast changes that
have taken place since a large arm of the sea cut off the Isle of Thanet from the mainland
of Kent, and when this channel formed the readiest passage from the coast of Gaul to
London. Through this channel of the Wantsum the Roman vessels from Boulogne sailed direct
into the Thames, without going round the North Foreland; and the entrance to the estuary
was defended 46 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
by the great castle of Richborough at the one end, and
by the lesser castle of Reculver at the other. The nearest harbour of access from Gaul was
Dover, but when the wind was unfavourable for a direct passage thither, Lemanis (Lymne) and
Ritupæ (Richborough) afforded a shelter to early navigation in its access to the British
metropolis. When the poor fisherman of Richborough steered his oyster-laden bark to
Boulogne, the pharos of Dover lent its light to make his path across the channel less
perilous and lonely. At Boulogne there was a corresponding lighthouse of Roman work, an
octagonal tower, with twelve stages of floors, rising to the height of one hundred and
twenty-five feet. This tower is said to have been the work of Caligula. It once stood a bowshot from the sea; but in the course of
sixteen centuries the cliff was undermined, and it fell in 1644. The pharos of Dover has
had a somewhat longer date, from the nature of its position.
A quarter of a century ago, the notion of preserving our ancient
ecclesiastical edifices, much less of restoring them, had scarcely entered into the minds
of any but the few who were termed enthusiasts, if they were not marked for scorn by some
derisive name, whose expression was thought to indicate the honest zeal of English
Protestantism. Most surprising is the change. Men, who differ materially upon points of
ritual observance with those who have chiefly forced on this change, have not only ceased
to oppose, but have agreed to welcome the theory that the House of God was meant to be a
house of beauty. The first influence of this altered feeling was to put a stop to the
general employment of whitewash and paint, for the purpose of concealing
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 47 |
the glowing colours and the rich carving of the periods before
Puritanism took into its head that mere utility was the truest characteristic of a pure and
reformed religion. Let me mention one example of this altered spirit—the church of St.
Martin at Canterbury. In 1842, I thus described this church; one of the highest antiquity
in the island: “Its windows belong to various periods of Gothic architecture; its
external walls are patched after the barbarous fashion of modern repairs; it is
deformed within by wooden boxes to separate the rich from the poor, and by ugly
monumental vanities, miscalled sculpture; but the old walls are full of Roman bricks,
relics, at any rate, of the older fabric where Bertha and Augustine ‘used
to pray.’” Three years ago, I looked again upon the lofty towers and
pinnacles of the great Cathedral from the gentle elevation on which stands the church of
St. Martin. I entered the church, and, whilst the western sun was streaming through the
windows, could surrender myself to the thought that, from this little hill, a sound went
through the land, which, in a few centuries, called up those glorious edifices which attest
the piety and magnificence of our forefathers. What a change had been wrought in this
primitive church since my previous visit. Without destroying the peculiar character of the
various windows, they had been filled with painted glass, some designed and executed by a
lady who is not a mere conventional glass-painter, but has a thorough knowledge of the
history and proper application of this beautiful art. Its wooden boxes had been swept away,
its monuments are not now obtrusive but subordinate to the general effect of the building.
Whether this were a 48 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
British, a Roman or a Saxon church it has been
restored in the purest taste, and the merit of this good work chiefly belongs to the
Hon. Daniel Finch, whose cultivated mind was
calculated to give an impulse to the great improvements which Canterbury now exhibits. When
I first saw its Cathedral, the crypt was a receptacle for the rubbish of generations; but
there was a far greater abomination within a short distance of the Cathedral Precincts. The
monastery of St. Augustine was a ruin, but one, whose beautiful gateways, however
dilapidated, still challenged admiration. The venerable place had been transformed into a
brewery, a public-house, and a bowling-green. Under the munificent care of Mr. Beresford Hope the brewery, the ale-house, and the
bowling-green have been swept away, and a College for the education of missionaries of the
Church of England more worthily takes their place.
The periods of the Roman occupation and of the introduction of Christianity
by Augustine belong to what we deem authentic
history. At Caerleon, near Newport, in> Monmouthshire, Giraldus
Cambrensis saw the vestiges of Roman architectural magnificence, temples and
theatres, aqueducts and hypocausts. In this little town there is now a museum of
antiquities, collected and preserved with a care highly honourable to the inhabitants. But
here is also the sacred ground of legendary history—the City of the Legions, where
Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon, Christian
king over all Britain, held court with his Knights of the Round Table. “The Idylls of the King,” brief as is
their mention of “old Caerleon, upon Usk,” have lent it an interest
which Geoffrey of Monmouth has failed to excite, in
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 49 |
our contempt of what we deem his fables. A few months before I
saw Caerleon, the poet of the Idylls had been there,
looking about him, as all poets and historians ought to do for local illustrations. He has
given us such touches of reality as a Turner would
introduce into a landscape to give value to the scenes of his imagination. Take an example— “Now thrice that morning Guinevere had climb’d The giant tower, from whose high crest, they say, Men saw the goodly hills of Somerset, And white sails flying on the yellow sea; But not to goodly hill or yellow sea Look’d the fair queen, but up the vale of Usk, By the flat meadow.” |
Those who have seen Caerleon and its neighbourhood well know that this is not a random
guess of an ordinary verse-maker.
Arthur’s birthplace was in fairyland. His deeds, whatever
foundation there may be for the legends connected with his name, are always associated with
the marvellous. But there was one whose real deeds may vie with the heroic actions of the
fabulous king. Alfred was born in a little town of my
own Berkshire, which I felt it something like a duty to visit when I was a very young man.
When I rested at the sign of the Alfred’s Head in Wantage, I doubt not that I felt a
glow of patriotism which I think becomes every youthful inheritor of our Saxon institutions
to feel and cherish. I rose early in the morning to gaze upon the White Horse, cut out on
the slope of the chalk hill in that ridge which extends from Wantage into Wiltshire. The
White Horse was then much overgrown by the springing turf, but I was told that there was
once an annual festival called Scouring the Horse, by which
50 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
this
memorial of some great event was kept fresh and entire. A writer of the present day has revived the memory of this ancient ceremonial
labour, in a little book written with the same spirit that marks the work by which he is
best known, “Tom Brown’s
Schooldays.” In the century which followed Alfred,
came another great Saxon king, whose deeds are as famous in song and legend as those of the
British Arthur. Athelstan is recorded to have been
buried in the Abbey of Malmesbury; but the antiquaries deny that the tomb, which is there
shewn, really belongs to him who “won life-long glory in battle, with edges of
swords, near Brunan-burh.” The people of Malmesbury look upon the recumbent
effigy of Athelstan with reverence; they keep the annual feast of
Athelstan with rejoicing. The hero-worship of Malmesbury is that
of Athelstan. When I visited the interesting little town, I was told
by a cottager that they owed their common rights to King Athelstan.
The name of “The Philosopher of
Malmesbury” was perhaps never heard amongst this simple and secluded
people. They knew nothing of him whom Warburton
called “the terror of the last age, as Tindall and Collins are of
this.” Every age has its peculiar terror of some thinker who has evoked the
spirit of free inquiry. It is the enduring merit of Hobbes that he was
the first great English writer on the science of government.
Malmesbury Abbey and Waltham Abbey are typical of the vast changes that a
century and a half had produced in the fortunes of the Anglo-Saxon race.
“Athelstan, king, of earls lord, of
beorns bracelet-giver,” was to be succeeded by weaker niters till the Danes
prevailed, and the Saxons of the
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 51 |
South and the Danes of the North
became a mixed race. But the memory of a far more important revolution is associated with
Waltham Abbey. Harold, “the noblest and the last Of Saxon kings; save one, the noblest he,— The last of all,” |
lies buried there. “He was buried,” says old Fuller, “where now the Earl of
Carlisle’s leaden fountain in his garden, then probably the end of
the choir, or rather some eastern chapel beyond it; his tomb of plain, but rich gray
marble.” Since Fuller was the rector of Waltham Abbey,
nearly two hundred years had elapsed when I saw his fine old church, greatly dilapidated
and parts of it a ruin. It is now partially restored, as befits its sacred character and
all the associations which belong to it. I went alone in 1843 from the neighbourhood of
London expressly to devote a day to Battle Abbey. I slept in the little town, and betimes
in the morning sought admission at the great gate, and found that the Abbey and the grounds
could only be seen on one day in the week. There was nothing for me but to go again on the
day prescribed, and in the mean time to content myself with a view from the Hastings road
of the battle-field where Harold fell on “the day stained
with the blood of the brave.” I went again to the Abbey of Bataille—a
disappointing place to those who seek it in a spirit even of moderate enthusiasm. The
desecration of Battle Abbey, founded by William the
Conqueror, began with the destruction of the monastic houses under Henry the Eighth. It was granted to Sir Anthony Browne, and 52 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
he at once set about pulling
down some of the principal ecclesiastical buildings. At the beginning of the last century
it was sold to the Webster family, and from that time the work of
demolition and change regularly went forward. When I saw the place, the remains of the fine
cloisters had been turned into a dining-room, and, to use the words of the Hastings
Guide-book, “part of the site of the church is now a parterre, which in summer
exhibits a fine collection of Flora’s greatest beauties.” This was the
very church, whose high altar was described by old writers to have stood on the spot where
the body of Harold was found covered with honourable wounds in the
defence of his tattered standard. Flora’s greatest beauties!
I have mentioned a walk through the New Forest with the intelligent
friend who accompanied me to Stonehenge. We had
seen Beaulieu Abbey, then in the wretched state of most of such edifices, and took our way
towards Lyndhurst. We were not inclined wholly to agree with the scepticism of Voltaire as to the received opinion that the Conqueror had depopulated the New Forest for the purposes of
a hunting-ground, or to accept the poetical exaggeration of Pope about “levell’d towns” and “fields
ravished from industrious swains.” Nevertheless the scenery of the New Forest
was intimately associated in our minds with the memory of the two first Norman kings. Those
few inhabitants of the interior of the forest that we met appeared to us to be unchanged in
this ancient woody tract. We came, in the low ground between Beaulieu and Denny Lodge, upon
two peasants gathering a miserable crop of rowan. To our questions as to the proper path,
they gave a
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 53 |
grin, which expressed as much cunning as idiotcy, and
pointed to a course which led us directly to the edge of a bog. They were low of stature,
and coarse in feature. The collar of the Saxon slave was not upon their necks, but they
were the descendants of the slave, through a long line who had been toiling in hopeless
ignorance for seven centuries. Their mental chains have never been loosened. A mile or two
farther we encountered a tall and erect man, in a peculiar costume, half peasant, half
huntsman. He had the frank manners of one of nature’s gentlemen, and insisted upon
going with us a part of the way which we sought to Lyndhurst. His family, too, had been
settled here, time out of mind. He was the descendant of the Norman huntsman, who had been
trusted and encouraged, whilst the Saxon churl was feared and oppressed. One of these
churls is associated with the traditions belonging to the death of the Red King. A
charcoal-burner, named Purkess, is recorded to have picked up the body
and conveyed it to Winchester, in the cart which he employed in his trade. In the village
of Minestead we saw the name of Purkess over the door of a little
shop. “And still, so runs our forest creed, Flourish the pious woodman’s seed Even in the selfsame spot: One horse and cart their little store, Like their forefathers’, neither more Nor less, the children’s lot.”* |
This is better historical evidence than the stirrup hanging in the hall of the manor
court of Lyndhurst,
54 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
which “immemorial tradition” asserts to have belonged to
the saddle, from which Rufus fell when struck by the
arrow of Walter Tyrrell;—perhaps even more trustworthy than the
“Fair Stone” erected in 1745, which recorded that there stood the oak tree
whose bark the arrow grazed.
The merest glance at the famous sites of English history would be
manifestly deficient if I were to omit all mention of our Cathedrals. There is not one of
these that does not present some general record of the progress of our civilization; which
does not offer to the instructed eye some peculiar memorial of events and persons with
which it must be ever associated. Wonderful monuments of beauty, erected in ages which we
have been ignorantly accustomed to call “dark!” The scholar and the artist may
spend years in the study of their architectural details; whilst he who cherishes thoughts
far higher than those of antiquarian curiosity and æsthetical gratification, may surrender
himself to the holy influences which they inspire, and forget all the foolish strifes
engendered in past times by their altars, their tombs, and their painted windows. If the
Norman soldiers ejected the earlier possessors of the soil from their castles and granges,
the Norman prelates did not wholly waste the fatness of the land in luxurious
gratification. Very soon after the Conquest they built Cathedrals. The Cathedral of Durham
has stood during eight centuries, since the first stone was laid by one of the second William’s bishops. How grandly it looks down
upon the river Wear sweeping round the peninsula upon which the Cathedral and the Castle
stand. How solemn is the interior with its round arched columns “looking
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 55 |
tranquillity.” The impressions produced by the majestic
simplicity of the earlier architecture might almost make us regret that at Winchester,
whose date is as early as Durham, the characteristic of the Norman period has been to a
great extent obliterated by the pointed arch. Durham, Salisbury, and York have left the
strongest impressions upon my memory, perhaps from some accidental circumstances connected
with my first view of them. Such was the grandeur of Durham from the opposite bank of the
river soon after sunrise. Such the solemnity of the nave of York, where I sat alone as the
setting sun was streaming through the west window. Such the magical lights and shadows of
the interior of Salisbury, as, with one or two friends, I silently trod the sacred aisles
by moonlight. It would be tedious were I to attempt to connect my own feelings and thoughts
upon visiting them with any further mention of Canterbury, Rochester, Exeter, Ely,
Gloucester, Hereford, Norwich, Chichester, or Winchester. As historical localities, these,
and many of the smaller ecclesiastical edifices, have associations with the past which will
render every excursion through our land interesting to the student—perhaps more so than the
warder’s tower and the donjon keep of the feudal castles, which tell their tale of
what we call chivalry, but which after all is near akin to barbarism.
In the British Museum may be seen by all one of the most precious
documents of English History—Magna Charta. It is written in
Latin, and the concluding Attestation may be thus translated: “Given under our
hand, in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines.”
That meadow entered as fully into my early associa-
56 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
tions as the regal
towers of Windsor. It was with no strained enthusiasm that I wrote, “Dear plain! never my feet have pass’d thee by, At sprightly morn, high noon, or evening still, But thou hast fashion’d all my pliant will To soul-ennobling thoughts of liberty.” |
It was not necessary for me in those youthful days very accurately to know the exact
nature of the freedom secured to me by the Great Charter of John, nor to trace how much more remained to be won before I, and every
other plebeian, should inherit a great deal more than the privileges which were wrested
from the crown by a feudal aristocracy. From the 15th of June in the memorable year 1215,
“a new soul was infused into the people of England.” So writes the
historian of our Constitution. On the long
narrow strip of fertile meadow, bounded on one side by the Thames and on the other by
gentle hills, there was no battle fought for the partial liberty there practically secured.
But there was to be many a bloody field before the whole commonalty could claim to be
partakers of the rights reluctantly conceded to the Fitz-Walters and
De Mowbrays. Even these had again and again to battle for the
possession of every inch of the ground they had won.
From the leads of the Castle of Lewes I look upon downs where flocks are
peacefully nibbling the thymy grass. The Norman Keep and the adjacent Priory are ruins; but
in the year 1264 they were a stronghold of the royal army against which Simon de Montfort had marched from London, to complete the
work which Runnymede had failed to secure. The “Protector gentis
Angliæ” had discovered that
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 57 |
something
more than mailed knights was necessary to constitute a State. He led his soldiers to Lewes
to fight not only for feudal rights, but for the interests of all freemen. He conquered.
Where the railway now runs beneath the Castle walls there was a fearful slaughter.
De Montfort issued writs for an assembly of knights, citizens, and
burgesses. These summonses are the first in which we see the real beginnings of an English
Parliament. In another year, the great earl was slain in a narrow valley near Evesham.
These places are localities full of deep interest; for they have associations of
long-lasting and wide-spreading political importance, and of picturesque traditions, which
ballad and chronicle have preserved in the simplicity that is the enduring element of
historical narrative, as well as of romantic fiction. In the story of Simon de
Montfort, the democratic element combines with the heroic. The barber who
went up to the top of the high tower of Evesham, and came down pale and trembling to
proclaim that the banners of the royal army were near, and the Earl of
Leicester who exclaimed “God have our souls all, our days are all
done,” are equally historical personages.
The Prince Edward, whose banner carried dismay into
the ranks of the confederate army at Evesham, is now the King
Edward, the conqueror of Wales. Conway is a monument of that period when an
ancient nationality was destroyed, to form an integral portion of a more powerful realm. I
spent an evening and a morning there, with the most delightful of companions, in June 1849.
With Douglas Jerrold I penetrated the recesses of
the ruined castle; climbed the towers, and lingered on the terrace
58 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
which overlooks the river; wandered round the walls, that in their enormous extent and
massive character furnish a notion of the grandeur of a mediaeval fortified town, that
probably no other English example can furnish—a visit ever to be remembered. Had I gone
here alone I might have surrendered myself to the romance of the scene; but
Jerrold was a friend whose sympathy heightened every charm of the
picturesque, and whose cultivated mind could fully appreciate the associations with which
history and poetry have invested Conway—“the most romantic town in the
kingdom.”* With him there was no ennui in the longest railway journey.
Perhaps even the solitary tourist might feel less of the monotony of the train, if the
merest glimpse of such a place as Conway would call up images of the great Past.
More than fifty years have passed since I first saw Warwick Castle. I have
visited it again and again, and at every renewed visit have derived fresh remembrances of
its exquisite combination of grandeur and beauty. That castle is equalled by few monuments
of the ages of chivalric splendour and feudal violence. Those grounds are surpassed by none
in the artistical refinement which has created such a landscape garden as England only can
shew, beneath the towers which fable has invested with silly legends, not half as
interesting as historic truth. In Guy’s tower sat, four centuries and a half ago, the
terrible earl of Warwick—“the black dog of
the wood”—to pronounce judgment of death upon Piers Gaveston, the unhappy favourite of the luxurious
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 59 |
king, who by the death of Edward
I. had succeeded to a power for which he was unfitted. About a mile from
Warwick is Blacklow hill, on which Gaveston was beheaded. When I first
climbed the little knoll, where a stone was placed to record this judicial murder, it was
an open spot by the side of the high-road. It is now thickly planted, and the inelegant
monument can scarcely be reached by the passing traveller. He will easily forget his
disappointment in the gratification of an hour by the side of the Avon, amidst the
exquisite scenery of Guy’s Cliff. Here he will be surrounded by legends which tell of
the piety and tenderness of the knightly days—their “faithful loves,”
which seem to atone for their “fierce wars.”
It did not require the nationality of a Scottish man to be moved to a glow
of admiration for the heroic, as I looked upon the field of Bannockburn from the noble
height of Stirling. The great victory, which sent the second Edward a fugitive from the
country he came to conquer, was a passing humiliation for England; but in “the
process of the suns” five centuries are but as a day. The name of Bruce is worthily invoked in Scotland as the war-cry for
liberty. Long may it remain so. The time is gone by when the remembrance of Bannockburn was
suggestive of border-strifes and more enduring jealousies. The Wallace and the Bruce seem to be of kin to us of the
South, and to harmonize with the memories of other struggles for freedom which have been
made by our common country. Even the wars of ambition which were waged on the continent by
the third Edward have an interest for an intelligent
Scot, although the English defeat at Bannockburn
60 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
was succeeded by the
victory of Nevill’s Cross. In 1855 I stood upon “the little
windmill-hill” which overlooks the field of Cressy. A Scottish pedestrian
came up, and we long discoursed of that great day, when the English yeomen asserted their
island strength over the iron-clad knights of France, and moved not a foot though opposed
by ten times their number. In that “solidarity” have Scots and English fought
together in many a battle, since the days when victories were won by bow and bill.
The Border country of England and Scotland is a land of romance. The old
ballad-maker and the modern novelist have clothed it with those beauties of imagination
which hide the grim realities of centuries of bloodshed. Even so, Nature throws her veil
over battle-fields, and we seek in vain for the traces of devastation, except where a skull
is unearthed to proclaim “it was a glorious victory.” Newcastle, the
chief fortified town of the English Border, has almost lost its antique aspect, in its
grand railway works and its smart new streets and useful public buildings. It is a change
for the better; but the lover of the picturesque would have preferred to have seen more of
the rude and incommodious dwellings, such as were crowded within the walls when Newcastle
was filled with the English men at arms, marching to or from the Scottish wars. I have seen
a few of these around the Black Gate, but I believe they are now swept away. Even the last
twenty years have produced a marked change. I presume that I should not now find a public
coach from Newcastle to Edinburgh, rapid as that on which I took my seat on a bright
morning of Spring, to be carried through a country made doubly interest-
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 61 |
ing by the minstrelsy of three centuries. The road by the Cheviots to Jedburgh may now be
little travelled, for the rail by Berwick has superseded it. I chanced to sit by the side
of a most intelligent fellow-traveller—a Scottish man of rank—when he said to me
“This is Otterbourne.” My thoughts instantly went to him who said, “I never heard the old song of
Percy and Douglas, that I found not my
heart moved more than with a trumpet;” and I could identify the scenes by the
picturesque narrative of Froissart as we came upon
the marshy valley where the Douglas was encamped, and the
Percy led up his archers, with the moon shining bright as day.
This border-feud has its grand poetical aspect. The chivalry of England and Scotland fought
with all courtesy at Chevy Chace; but there was nothing but sheer barbarism when the
captains of Henry VIII. burnt Kelso and Jedburgh.
A few years later, the Percy and the
Douglas were leagued together in a common hatred of him whom they
deemed an usurper and an ingrate. The aspiring house of Lancaster was in grievous peril
when Hotspur led his Northumbrian archers to the walls of Shrewsbury. I walked over Hateley
field with Peter Cunningham, whose knowledge of
antiquities was something higher than that of “tombstone” learning. We looked
upon “the busky hill” of Shakspere, and
explored the little chapel which Henry IV. built and
endowed, that mass might be chanted for the souls of the men who died in the great battle,
in which half of those engaged were killed or wounded. Young
Harry has to fight even a more doubtful battle than that of Shrewsbury. I
have followed him over the ground of Agincourt—saw
62 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
him marching with
his few and exhausted men up the little hill from Blangy, to behold the French filling a
very wide field, “as if with an innumerable host of locusts”—and marked
how favourable was the ground for a daring attack, when the hundred and fifty thousand of
his enemies were cooped up between two woods. I have seen the inclosed potato ground where
the flower of the chivalry of France was buried, and have heard in a little neighbouring
inn a discussion about projects for raising a monument to their memory on the fatal plain.
A survey, rapid even as that which I was able to take of Agincourt, gives a precision to
our notion of great battlefields, which cannot be derived from plans and verbal
explanations. Profitably has Mr. Carlyle been
engaged in examining the sites of Frederick’s
battles! What materials they furnish for his unrivalled power of local description! The
London artisan, who is desirous to understand our English history whilst he breathes a
fresher air, could not better employ an Easter holiday than in walking a mile or two from
the railway to Barnet. When he has stood beneath the column by the road-side beyond Barnet,
which has this record: “Here was fought the famous battle between Edward the 4th and the Earl of
Warwick, April the 14th, anno 1471;” let him carefully examine
the ground on which the quarrel of the White and Red Roses was principally determined. He
may follow the army of Edward, marching at night-fall on Easter eve up
the hill of Barnet, past the ancient church, and so on to the open plain where
Warwick was encamped. He would see how the ground suddenly falls
to the east from the elevated plain, and how the king, having in the darkness taken up this
position, escaped the Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 63 |
cannonade which Warwick
carried on almost all the night, for “they always overshot the king’s
host.” There is a description of the battle, by an eye-witness, and these
little circumstances prove its accuracy. On that terrible morning of April there was
“a great mist,” and the contending armies fought at random for three
hours. When I saw this battlefield there was such a mist rising from the clay lands below
Barnet. Four centuries of cultivation had not wholly changed the character of the country.
With the wars of the Roses terminated the age of castle building, and of
reliance upon the fortified walls of the times of the Plantagenets.
The semblance of strength was kept up in the general architectural character of great
mansions, but, except under peculiar circumstances, they were incapable of offering a
prolonged resistance to the assaults of an enemy provided with artillery. The physical
strength of man to man, as they battled on the ramparts, or held fast the gates of the
inner court, no longer decided the issue of a siege. The moat was not a secure protection.
The internal comfort of a baronial dwelling ceased to be sacrificed to the necessity of
lighting its chambers by loopholes, through which, if no arrow could enter, no ray of the
sun could penetrate. A new era of architecture had arisen, such as may be seen in the
beautiful ruin of Hurstmonceaux, in Sussex. It was “a gallant building for
lodging,” as Leland described
Nottingham Castle, although it had seventeen octagon towers and a machicolated gateway. Its
builder, in the reign of Henry VI, obtained a licence
“to embattle and fortify his manor-house,” yet the use of brick in
all its parts is perhaps a sufficient proof that it was not fortified to resist
64 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
the attacks of an army, but rather to keep out the predatory bands of
an unsettled period. The story of Lord Dacre of the South, the unhappy
young man who was executed in the time of Henry VIII. for
his participation in the death of a gamekeeper, who resisted the attempt of himself and
some wild companions to take a deer in a neighbouring park, gives a semi-historical
interest to Hurstmonceaux. The age of legal violence had succeeded that of feudal contest,
for Camden says that Lord Dacre
was put to death at the instigation of courtiers, who expected to get possession of his
estates upon his forfeiture. Although this tragedy is the subject of a very clever drama, I
was less interested in its remembrance than in the literary associations of Hurstmonceaux.
Harriet Martineau and I visited this place
together, and we talked more about Julius Hare, its
rector, and John Sterling, its curate, than of the
old histories connected with the castle, and with the flat marsh of Pevensey, of which it
commands a view.
The old manor-house of Hever, in Kent, has historical associations of more
recent date and of more lasting interest than those suggested by its castellated character,
its lofty gatehouse with flanking towers, its portcullis, and its moat. The hall has been
restored, and fitted up with some of the original family furniture of antique chairs
covered with needlework. Tradition says that the unhappy lady, who has made this ancestral
seat famous, herself worked some of these faded relics of early luxury. Here dwelt
Anne Boleyn. A bare and rugged apartment is the
long gallery or ball-room, with a rough oak floor. Here Anne was led
out by her royal lover to join hands in a French brawl. Here from the
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 65 |
bay window which commanded the adjacent hill she waved her handkerchief when she first
heard the sound of his bugle. Such are the fond tales which tradition hands down to divert
our thoughts from “the little neck” and fatal block. If “Gospel light first beam’d from Boleyn’s eyes,” |
there was a period of darkness before the perfect day. What England had to bear in
that transition period, may be inferred when we linger amidst any of the exquisite ruins of
the conventual houses, whether it be Fountains Abbey, or Tintern, or Glastonbury, or
Bolton. The presence of the beautiful, in its solemn decay, must ever inspire a melancholy
feeling; especially when we consider that so great a good as the Reformation could not have
been accomplished without so much destruction, in which it is difficult to say whether
private rapacity or public benefit were the moving principle.
England abounds with historical localities that call up the memory of the
daughter of Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. The presiding associations of Kenilworth are
the sumptuous Leicester and Elizabeth, weak only in her vanity and her fancied affections. We muse upon
the intellectual refinements of her court, and all the graces of the latter chivalry, when
we sit at Penshurst under Sidney’s Oak, which
Ben Jonson has celebrated as—
“That taller tree, which of a nut was set, At his great birth, where all the Muses met.” |
As we stand upon the Hoe at Plymouth, we think more of the high-born Howards, and the Drakes and Frobishers who had fought
their way upwards from 66 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
before the mast,—all with the heartiest
good-will going forth with their little pinnaces to fight the great Armada coming up the
Channel—than of the vast arsenals of modern times, from which ships are turned out that
would sink the largest galleon by a few broadsides. The hearty patriotism that was then
animating the gentlemen and yeomen of England has been our country’s safety, even to
the present hour. A few years ago, a master of fiction gave me a new interest in the heroes
of Plymouth and the land of Raleigh and Cavendish, for Charles
Kingsley had written his “Westward Ho.” With the reign of Elizabeth there are many painful as well as patriotic
associations. Without yielding to the exaggerated admiration with which it has been
attempted to invest the character of Mary Stuart,
when I went over Hardwick Hall, and was shown “Mary Queen of
Scots’ Apartment,” I could not but feel that her long
imprisonment, with all its hopes and fears, was a heavy penalty for her errors. I did not
then know that she never had an “apartment” in “Proud Hardwick Hall More windows than wall.” |
The present house was not built until after her death. The older mansion, in which she
was confined, is an adjacent ruin.
When we arrive at the regnal period of the Stuarts, we may care very
little to look upon the remaining walls of Theobalds, for the memory of that palace is
associated with James the First, who, for England’s
misdeeds towards Scotland, was sent to plague us by his pedantry and his despotic
tendencies. He passes away, and then comes a revival of that period of
Ch. III.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 67 |
intense national interest, when every county has some association with that struggle for
civil and religious liberty, which was fought out in the middle of the seventeenth century.
If the tourist desires to dwell upon the memories of the great intellects who, by the sword
or the pen, made the despised of the people a real power in the state, let him go to the
beech-woods of Hampden, and look upon the house where he dwelt who roused the nation by his
resistance to Ship-Money; or let him spend a contemplative hour beneath the yew-trees of
the churchyard of Horton, in the same county of Buckingham, where the young Milton was training himself to contend for the liberty of
“Unlicensed Printing.” If he would encourage a glow of admiration
for the spirit of the Cavaliers, he would traverse the battle-field of Newbury, where
Falkland fell, or he would go to Basing House—the
house called “Loyalty,” which endured siege after siege of the
Parliamentarians, and surrendered not till Cromwell
battered it from the higher ground, beneath which the South-Western Railway now runs. If he
would connect this period with the sorrows of Charles the
First, let him visit Carisbrook. If he would remember what we have escaped
from since the second Charles was restored, let him
visit the old building upon the banks of the Lea, which was the scene of the Rye House
Plot, for a pretended participation in which Russell
and Algernon Sidney were sacrificed.
In 1824, I explored Lady Place, in the village of Hurley, on the Berkshire
side of the Thames. This Elizabethan mansion was built on the site of a Benedictine
Monastery, and in the vaults, over which the Tudor building was erected, a modern
inscription
68 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. III. |
recorded that this house of “Our Lady” was
founded at the time of the great Norman revolution, and that “In this place, six
hundred years afterwards, the revolution of 1688 was begun.” The mansion is
now a ruin, but the vaults and the inscription remain. I read it in companionship with one
of the foremost of those “representative men,” who, from one generation to
another, have grown up to prove how much constitutional liberty has to do with that vigour
of thought and freedom of action, by which England’s sons have built up her wealth,
her power, and her happiness. That friend was Rowland
Hill.
Saint Augustine (354-430)
Bishop of Hippo (395), author of
Confessions and
The City of God.
Bertha, consort of Æthelberht (565-601 c.)
The daughter of the Frankish king Charibert and spouse of Æthelberht, she assisted the
Christian mission to the Anglo-Saxons.
Boadicea (d. 61 c.)
Queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the Romans.
Anne Boleyn (1500 c.-1536)
The second queen of Henry VIII, to whom she was secretly married in 1533; she was the
mother of Queen Elizabeth.
John Britton (1771-1857)
English autodidact, antiquary, and topographer; he published
Beauties
of Wiltshire (1801) and
Autobiography, 2 vols (1850,
1857).
Caligula, emperor of Rome (12-41)
Roman emperor (37-41 AD) who succeeded Tiberius and, following his assassination, was
succeeded by Claudius.
William Camden (1551-1623)
English antiquary, author of
Britannia (1586), a Latin history of
Britain; he founded a professorship of history at Oxford.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Scottish essayist and man of letters; he translated Goethe's
Wilhelm
Meister (1824) and published
Sartor Resartus
(1833-34).
Thomas Cavendish (1560-1592)
English explorer and privateer who circumnavigated the globe in 1586-88; he died during a
second expedition.
King Charles I of England (1600-1649)
The son of James VI and I; as king of England (1625-1649) he contended with Parliament;
he was revered as a martyr after his execution.
Anthony Collins (1676-1729)
Educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, he was a philosopher, friend of
John Locke, and author of
A Discourse of Free-Thinking
(1713).
William Cowper (1731-1800)
English poet, author of
Olney Hymns (1779),
John
Gilpin (1782), and
The Task (1785); Cowper's delicate
mental health attracted as much sympathy from romantic readers as his letters, edited by
William Hayley, did admiration.
Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)
English general and statesman; fought with the parliamentary forces at the battles of
Edgehill (1642) and Marston Moor (1644); led expedition to Ireland (1649) and was named
Lord Protector (1653).
Peter Cunningham (1816-1869)
Son of the poet and biographer Allan Cunningham; he was a miscellaneous writer and chief
clerk in the Audit Office.
Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596)
The first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe (1577-80) in expeditions against the
Spanish, and who participated in the destruction of the Armada (1588).
King Edward IV of England (1442-1483)
He was leader of the York party and king of England 1461-70 during the Wars of the
Roses.
Hon. Daniel Finch (1789-1868)
A younger son of the fourth earl of Aylesford; educated at the Middle Temple, he was a
painter and auditor of Canterbury Cathedral.
Frederick II of Prussia (1712-1786)
King of Prussia (1740-86) and military commander in the War of the Austrian Succession
and Seven Years War.
Jean Froissart (1337 c.-1404 c.)
French courtier and poet; author of
Chronicles (1373-1400).
Sir Martin Frobisher (1535 c.-1594)
English mariner who sailed with Sir Walter Raleigh to the West Indies and made three
attempts to discover a north-west passage.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
English divine and biographer whose
Worthies of England was
posthumously published in 1662.
Giraldus Cambrensis (1146 c.-1223 c.)
The son of an Anglo-Norman baron in Wales, he was a biographer and historian.
Henry Hallam (1777-1859)
English historian and contributor to the
Edinburgh Review, author
of
Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 4 vols (1837-39) and
other works. He was the father of Tennyson's Arthur Hallam.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855)
The son of Francis Hare-Naylor; educated at Charterhouse, Trinity College, Cambridge and
the Middle Temple, he was a writer, Archdeacon of Lewes, and liberal churchman.
Henry IV, king of England (1366-1413)
Son of John of Gaunt; after usurping the throne from Richard II he was king of England
(1399-1413).
Henry VI, king of England (1421-1471)
The unhappy king during the Wars of the Roses (1422-1461, 1470-71); his consort was
Margaret of Anjou.
Sir Rowland Hill (1795-1879)
The son of Thomas Wright Hill; he was a civil servant who instituted the penny postage in
1840.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
English political philosopher and man of letters; author of
Leviathan (1651) and other works.
Thomas Hughes (1822-1896)
The of John Hughes (1790–1857), he was educated at Rugby, Oriel College, Oxford,
Lincoln's Inn and was a social reformer, MP, and author of
Tom Brown's
School Days (1856).
Henry Jenkins (1786 c.-1874)
The son of the Rev. David Jenkins; educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he was an
antiquary and rector of Stanway in Essex (1830-74).
Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857)
English playwright and miscellaneous writer; he made his reputation with the play
Black-eyed Susan (1829) and contributed to the
Athenaeum,
Blackwood's, and
Punch.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
English dramatist, critic, and epigrammatist, friend of William Shakespeare and John
Donne.
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
English clergyman and novelist educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge; he published
Westward Ho! (1855) and
The Water-Babies
(1873).
John Leland (1503 c.-1552)
English poet and antiquary; his
Collectanea were published by
Thomas Hearne in 1716.
George Long (1800-1879)
After education at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was professor of classical languages at
the University of Virginia (1824-28) and University College, London (1828-31,
1842-46).
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
English writer and reformer; she published
Illustrations of Political
Economy, 9 vols (1832-34) and
Society in America
(1837).
Queen Mary of Scotland (1542-1587)
The controversial queen of Scotland (1561-1567) who found a number of champions in the
romantic era; Sir Walter Scott treats her sympathetically in
The
Abbott (1820).
John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of
Comus (1634),
Lycidas (1638),
Areopagitica (1644),
Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618)
English soldier, courtier, poet, and historian; after a long imprisonment he was executed
at the behest of Spain.
William Stewart Rose (1775-1843)
Second son of George Rose, treasurer of the navy (1744-1818); he introduced Byron to
Frere's
Whistlecraft poems and translated Casti's
Animale parlante (1819).
Lord William Russell (1639-1683)
Rye-house plotter, the son of the first Duke of Bedford; after his execution for high
treason he was celebrated as a martyr to liberty.
William Scott (1813-1872)
Educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Queen's College, Oxford, he was the high-church
vicar of St Olave Jewry and a founder of the
Saturday Review.
Algernon Sidney (1623-1683)
English republican writer executed in connection with the Rye-House plot; he was
respected as a martyr by the Whig party; author of
Discourses concerning
Government (1698).
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
English poet, courtier, and soldier, author of the
Arcadia (1590),
Astrophel and Stella (1591) and
Apology for
Poetry (1595).
Edmund Spenser (1552 c.-1599)
English poet, author of
The Shepheards Calender (1579) and
The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).
John Sterling (1806-1844)
An ‘apostle’ at Cambridge, he conducted the
Athenaeum with F. D.
Maurice and contributed to
Blackwood's and the
London and Westminster Review.
Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892)
English poet who succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he published
Poems, chiefly Lyrical (1830) and
Idylls of the
King (1859, 1869, 1872).
James Thorne (1815-1881)
Originally an artist, he was an antiquary and topographer who wrote for
The Mirror and
Penny Magazine and contributed to
The Land we Live in, 4 vols (1847-50).
Matthew Tindal (1657-1733)
Educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, he was a libertine, deist, and author of
Christianity as Old as the Creation (1731).
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
English landscape and history painter who left his collection to the National Gallery and
Tate Gallery.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
French historian and man of letters; author of, among many other works,
The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and
Candide (1759).
Sir William Wallace (1272 c.-1305)
Scottish hero in the conflict with Edward I, whom he defeated at the battle of Stirling
in 1297; he was afterwards captured and brutally executed in London.
William Warburton (1698-1779)
English Divine and man of letters; he was bishop of Gloucester (1759); he was the friend,
annotator, and executor of Alexander Pope.