And now to Stonehenge and Salisbury Plain, up the steep road from Amesbury taken by the coaches. Unless you can see Stonehenge in such an awful thunderstorm as Turner shows in his picture of it, or can come upon the place at dead of night either by moonlight, or in the blackness of a moonless midnight, you will fail to be impressed; unless you are a literary pilgrim and can be moved to sentiment, not by thoughts of the mythical human sacrifices offered up here by imaginary Druids, but by the last scenes in the tragedy of poor Tess. Then the place has an immediate human interest which otherwise it lacks in the immeasurably vast space of time dividing us from the period of its building and of the heaping up of the sepulchral barrows that make a wide circle round it on the Plain. Solitary, with nothing to give it scale, even the brakes that convey irreverent excursionists help to confer a dignity on the spot, when seen afar upon the ridge where this Mystery, sphinx-like, offers an insoluble riddle to arch?ologists of all the ages.
No one, despite the affected archaisms and the
STONEHENGE
Image unavailable: THE GREAT SNOWSTORM OF 1836; THE EXETER ‘TELEGRAPH,’ ASSISTED BY POST-HORSES, DRIVING THROUGH THE SNOW-DRIFTS AT AMESBURY (AFTER JAMES POLLARD).
THE GREAT SNOWSTORM OF 1836; THE EXETER ‘TELEGRAPH,’ ASSISTED BY POST-HORSES, DRIVING THROUGH THE SNOW-DRIFTS AT AMESBURY (AFTER JAMES POLLARD).
sham arch?ology, has described Stonehenge so impressively as that ‘wondrous boy’ Chatterton:—
A wondrous pyle of rugged mountaynes standes,
Placed on eche other in a dreare arraie,
It ne could be the worke of human handes,
It ne was reared up by menne of claie.
Here did the Britons adoration paye
To the false god whom they did Tauran name,
Lightynge hys altarre with greate fyres in Maie,
Roasteyng theire victims round aboute the flame;
Twas here that Hengyst dyd the Brytons slee,
As they were met in council for to bee.
Stonehenge was probably standing when the Romans came to Britain, and doubtless astonished them when they first saw it as much as any one else. Its surroundings were not very different then from now. A farmstead, with ugly blue-slated roof, which has appeared on the ridge of the down of late years, and possibly a road which did not exist in days of old: these alone have changed the aspect of the vast solitude in which the hoary monument stands. No hedges, no gates, never a sheep upon the meagre grass. As Ingoldsby says of Salisbury Plain, in general:—
Not a shrub, nor a tree, nor a bush can you see;
No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles,
Much less a house or a cottage for miles.
This, saving that intrusive farmstead, still holds good here; and although every one is inevitably disappointed with Stonehenge, as first seen at a distance, looking so small and insignificant in the vastness of the bare downs in which it is set, the place, and not the great stones merely, impresses by its sadness and utter detachment from the living world, its loves and hates and interests. The birds forget to sing in this loneliness, which is awful in winter and not less awful in the emptiness visible under the blue sky and blazing sun of summer. Just the situation in which Stonehenge is placed, you understand, not Stonehenge itself, gives these feelings. ‘Do not we gaze with awe upon these massive stones?’ asks the high-falutin guide-book compiler. No, indeed we don’t. It is a pity, but it can’t be done, and the average description of Stonehenge which sets forth the grandeur and stupendous size of these stones, is pumped-up fudge and flapdoodle of the damnablest kind, which takes in no one. It is not merely the Philistine who thinks thus, but even the would-be marvellers, and those of light and leading are disquieted by secret thoughts that, had we a mind to it, and if there was money in it, we could build a better and a bigger Stonehenge by a long way.
The earliest account of this mystic monument is found in the writings of Nennius, who lived in the ninth century. The first-comer is entitled to respect, and when Nennius tells us that Stonehenge was erected by the surviving Britons, in memory of four hundred and sixty British nobles, murdered here at a conference to which the Saxon chieftain, Hengist, had invited King Vortigern and his Court, we are bound to pay some attention to the statement, although to place implicit reliance upon it would be rash, considering the fact that Nennius wrote four hundred years after the event.
Image unavailable: STONEHENGE (AFTER TURNER, R.A.).
STONEHENGE (AFTER TURNER, R.A.).
WHO BUILT STONEHENGE?
But there are, and have been, many theories which profess to give the only true origin of these stone circles. An antiquary formerly living at Amesbury went to the beginnings of creation and held that they were erected by Adam. If so, it is to be hoped for Adam’s sake that he finished the job in the summer, or that if it occupied him in winter time, he had clothed himself with something warmer than the traditional fig-leaf, in view of the rigours of these Wiltshire Downs. It would be interesting also to have Adam’s opinion as to the comparative merits of Salisbury Plain and the Garden of Eden.
Then a tradition existed that Merlin, the sorcerer, arranged the circles. Those who do not think much of this view may take more kindly to the legend of our old friends the Druids, who, according to Dr. Stukeley and others, made this their chief temple; while, according to other views, the Britons before and after the Roman occupation, and the Romans themselves, were the builders. Then there are others who conceive this to have been the crowning-place of the Danish kings. The Saxons, indeed, appear to be the only people who have not been credited with the work; although, curiously enough, its very name is of Saxon derivation, and the earliest writers refer to it as ‘Stanenges,’ from Anglo-Saxon words meaning ‘the hanging-stones.’ That the Saxons discovered Stonehenge, and were puzzled by it as greatly as it must have excited the wonder of the Romans, hundreds of years before, seems obvious from this name they gave the lonely place. Ignorant as to its use, they either saw in the upright stones and the imposts they carried a resemblance to a gallows, or else, not being themselves expert builders, marvelled that the great imposts should remain suspended in the air.
Much of the legitimate wonderment in respect of Stonehenge lies in the mystery of how the forgotten builders could have quarried and shaped these stones, and could have cut the tenons and mortice-holes that held the tall columns, and the flat stones above them, together. Camden, the old chronicler, has a ready way out of this puzzling question. Beginning with a description of this ‘huge and monstrous piece of work,’ he goes on to say that ‘some there are that think them to be no natural stones, hewn out of the rock, but artificially made out of pure sand, and, by some glue or unctuous matter, knit and incorporate together.’
THE ‘FRIAR’S HEEL’
Stonehenge is considered to have consisted, when perfect, of an outer circle of thirty tall stones, three and a half feet apart, and connected together by a line of imposts, in whose extremities mortice-holes were cut, fitting into corresponding tenons projecting from the upright stones. The height of this circular screen was sixteen feet. A second and inner circle consisted of smaller and rougher stones, some forty in number, and six feet in height. Within this circle, again, rose five tall groups of stone placed in an ellipse, each group consisting of two uprights, with an impost above. These stones were the largest of all, the tallest reaching to a height of twenty-five feet. They were named by Dr. Stukeley, impressively enough, the Great Trilithons. Each of these five groups would appear to have been accompanied on the inner side by a cluster of three small standing stones, while a black flat monolith, called the ‘Altar Stone,’ occupied the innermost position. A smaller trilithon seems to have once stood near its big brethren, but it and three of the great five are in ruins. Only six imposts of the outer circle are left in their place overhead, and but sixteen of its thirty upright stones are now standing. The smaller circles and groups are equally imperfect. Some of this ruin has befallen within the historical period; one of the Great Trilithons having been wrecked in 1620, in the absurd treasure-seeking expedition of the Duke of Buckingham, while another fell on the 3rd of January 1797, during a thaw.
These circles seem to have been surrounded by an earthen bank, with an avenue leading off towards the east. Very few traces of these enclosures now remain. In midst of the avenue lies the flat so-called ‘Stone of Sacrifice,’ with the rough obelisk of the ‘Friar’s Heel,’ as the most easterly outpost of all, beyond. To the Friar’s Heel belongs a legend which gives, by the way, an even more distinguished person than Adam as the builder of Stonehenge. The Devil, according to this story, was the architect, and when he had nearly finished his work, he chuckled to himself that no one would be able to tell how it was done. A wandering friar, however, who had been a witness of it all, remarked, ‘That’s more than thee can tell,’ and thereupon ran away, the Devil flinging one of the stones left over after him. It only just struck the friar on the heel, and stuck there in the turf, where it stands to this day.
The various stones of which Stonehenge is constructed derive from widely-sundered districts. The outer circle and the five Great Trilithons are said to have been fashioned from stones that came from Marlborough Downs, and the second circle and innermost ellipse belong to a rock formation not known to exist nearer than South Wales. The ‘Altar Stone’ is different from any of the others, and the circumstance lends some colour to the theory that it, coming from some unknown region, was the original stone fetish brought from a distance by the prehistoric tribe that settled here, around which grew by degrees the subsequent great temple. There are those who will have it that this was a temple of serpent-worshippers; and an argument not altogether unsupported by facts would have us believe that Stonehenge is really a Temple of the Sun. It is a singular accident (if it is an accident) that the ‘Friar’s Heel,’ as seen from the centre of the circle, is in exact orientation with the rising sun on the morning of the Longest Day of the year, 21st June. Every year, on this occasion, great crowds of people set out from Salisbury to see sunrise at Stonehenge. There have frequently been as many as three thousand persons present on this occasion. As the spot is nine miles from that cathedral city, and as the sun rises on this date at the early hour of 3.44 A.M., it requires some enthusiasm to rise one’s self for the occasion, if indeed the more excellent way is not to sit up all night. Great, therefore, is the disappointment when
SUNRISE AT STONEHENGE
Image unavailable: SUNRISE AT STONEHENGE.
SUNRISE AT STONEHENGE.
the morning is misty. If this sunrise phenomenon is not an accident, then Stonehenge, as the Temple of the Sun, is the earliest cathedral in Britain. But, as we have already seen, in these multitudes of guesses at the truth, no one can arrive at the facts, and all we can do is to say frankly, with old Pepys, who was here in 1668, ‘God knows what its use was.’
The present historian has waited for the sun to rise here. Arriving at Amesbury village at half-past two in the morning, the street looked and sounded lively with the clustered lights of bicycles and conveyances gathered there; with the ringing of bicycle bells, the sounding of coach-horns, and the talk of those who had come to pay their devoirs to the rising luminary. The village inn was open all night for the needs of travellers journeying to this shrine, and ten minutes was allowed for each person, a policeman standing outside to see that they were duly turned out at the end of that time.
To one who arrived early on the scene, while the Plain remained shrouded in the grayness of the midsummer night, and the rugged stones of Stonehenge yet loomed vague and formless, the scene looking down towards Amesbury was an impressive one. Dimly the ascending white road up to the stones could be discerned by much straining of tired eyes, and along it twinkled brightly the lights of approaching vehicles, now dipping down into a hollow of this miscalled ‘Plain,’ now toiling slowly and painfully up a corresponding ascent. It is not to be supposed that it was a reverent crowd assembled here. Reverence is not a characteristic of the age, nor are cyclists as a rule, or agricultural folks, or provincials generally, inclined greatly to worship the immeasurably old. And of such this crowd was chiefly composed. It may very pertinently be asked, ‘Why, if they don’t reverence the place, do they come here at all?’ It is a question rather difficult to answer; but probably most people visit it on this occasion as an excuse for being up all night. There would seem to be an idea that there is something dashing and eccentric about such a proceeding which must have its charm for those to whom arch?ology, or those eternal and unsolvable questions, ‘Why was Stonehenge built, and by whom?’ have no interest. There were, for instance, two boys on the spot who had come over on their bicycles from Marlborough School, over twenty miles away. Without leave, of course! They hoped to get back as quietly as they had slipped away out of their bedroom windows. Had they any arch?ological enthusiasm? Not a bit of it, the more especially since it was evident they would have to hurry back before the sun was due to rise.
TRIPPERS AT STONEHENGE
There were no fewer than fifteen police at Stonehenge, sent on account of the disorderly scenes said to have taken place in previous years. But this crowd was sufficiently quiet. Patiently the throng waited the rising of the sun upon the horizon, and the coming of the shadow of the gnomon-stone across the Stone of Sacrifice. The sky lightened, showing up the tired faces, and transferring the Great Trilithons from the realms of romance to those of commonplace reality. The larks began to trill; puce-and purple-coloured clouds floated overhead; the brutal staccato notes of a banjo strummed to the air of a music-hall song stale by some three or four seasons; a cyclist struck a match on a sarsen stone; watches were consulted—and the sun refused to rise to the occasion. That is to say, for the twelfth time or so consecutively, according to local accounts, the morning was too cloudy for the sunrise to be seen. So, tired and disappointed, all trooped back to Amesbury, the snapshotters disgusted beyond measure, and breakfasted, or refreshed in various ways, according to individual tastes, at the unholy hour of half-past four o’clock in the morning.
Those who say that Stonehenge will remain a monument to all time speak without a knowledge of the facts. In reality the larger stones are disintegrating; slowly, perhaps, but none the less surely. They are weather-worn, and some of them very decrepit. Frosts have chipped and cracked them, and other extremes of climate have found out the soft places in the sandstone. Also, modern facilities for reaching such out-of-the-way spots as this used to be have brought so many visitors of all kinds here that, in one way and another Stonehenge is bound to suffer. It is now the proper thing for every one who visits Stonehenge to be photographed by the photographer who sits there for that purpose all day long and every day; and although there is no occasion for such insane fury, the picnic parties generally contrive to smash beer and lemonade bottles against the stones until the turf is thickly strewn with broken glass. Modernity also likes to range itself beside the unfathomably ancient, and so when the Automobile Club visited Stonehenge, on Easter Saturday 1899, all the cars and their occupants were photographed beside the stones, to mark so historic an occasion.
Away beyond Stonehenge stretches Salisbury Plain, in future to be vulgarised by military camps and man?uvres, and to become an Aldershot on a larger scale, but hitherto a solitude as sublime in its own way as Dartmoor and Exmoor. Dickens gives us his meed of appreciation of this wild country, and finds the boundless prairies of America tame by comparison.
‘Now,’ he says, writing when on his visit to America, ‘a prairie is undoubtedly worth seeing, but more that one may say one has seen it, than for any sublimity it possesses in itself.... You stand upon the prairie and see the unbroken horizon all round you. You are on a great plain, which is like a sea without water. I am exceedingly fond of wild and lonely scenery, and believe that I have the faculty of being as much impressed by it as any man living. But the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived idea. I felt no such emotions as I do in crossing Salisbury Plain. The excessive flatness of the scene makes it dreary, but tame. Grandeur is certainly not its characteristic ... to say that the sight is a
SALISBURY PLAIN
Image unavailable: ANCIENT AND MODERN: MOTOR CARS AT STONEHENGE, EASTER 1899.
ANCIENT AND MODERN: MOTOR CARS AT STONEHENGE, EASTER 1899.
landmark in one’s existence, and awakens a new set of sensations, is sheer gammon. I would say to every man who can’t see a prairie—go to Salisbury Plain, Marlborough Downs, or any of the broad, high, open lands near the sea. Many of them are fully as impressive; and Salisbury Plain is decidedly more so.’
Salisbury Plain is the very core and concentrated essence of the wild bleak scenery so characteristic of Wiltshire. An elevated tract of country measuring roughly twenty-four miles from east to west, and sixteen from north to south, and comprising the district between Ludgershall and Westbury, and Devizes and Old Sarum, it is by no means the Plain pictured by strangers, who, misled by that geographical expression, have a mind’s-eye picture of it as being quite flat. As a matter of fact, Salisbury Plain is not a bit like that. It is a long series of undulating chalky downs, ‘as flat as your hand’ if you like, because the hand is anything but flat, and the simile is excellently descriptive of a rolling country that resembles the swelling contours of an outstretched palm. Unproductive, exposed, and lonely, Salisbury Plain opposes even to this day a very effectual barrier against intercourse between north and south or east and west Wiltshire, and was the lurking-place, until even so late as 1839, of highwaymen and footpads, who shared the solitudes with the bustards, and attacked and robbed those travellers whose business called them across the dreary wastes. Many a malefactor has tried his prentice hand and learned his business in these wilds, and has, after robbing elsewhere, retired here from pursuit. Salisbury Plain, in short, bred a race of highwaymen who preyed upon the neighbourhood and levied contributions from all the rich farmers and graziers who travelled between the Cathedral City and other parts, and sometimes graduated with such honours that they became Knights of the Road at whose name travellers along the whole length of the Exeter Road would tremble.
Among them was William Davis, the ‘Golden Farmer,’ whom we have already met at Bagshot. His career was a long one, and was continued, here and in other parts of the country, for forty years. They hanged him, at the age of sixty-nine, in 1689. His most famous exploit was on the borders of the Plain, near Clarendon Park, when he attacked the Duchess of Albemarle, single-handed, and, in the presence of her numerous attendants, tore her diamond rings off her fingers, and would probably have had her watch and money as well, despite her cursing and torrents of full-flavoured abuse, had not the sound of approaching travellers warned him to fly.
‘Captain’ James Whitney, too, was another desperado who at times made the Plain his headquarters, and harried the Western roads, in the time of William the Third. He was probably a son of the Reverend James Whitney, Rector of Donhead St. Andrews. He raised a troop of highwaymen, and was captured at the close of 1692 after his band had been defeated in battle with the Dragoon Guards. He ‘met a most penitent end’ at Smithfield.
THOMAS BOULTER
Then there was Biss, perhaps a descendant of the Reverend Walter Biss, minister of Bishopstrow, near Salisbury, in the reign of Charles the First. Biss the highwayman was hanged at Salisbury in 1695, and was not succeeded by any very distinguished practitioner until Boulter appeared on the scene.
The distinguished Mr. Thomas Boulter was born of poor but dishonest parents at Poulshot, near Devizes, and ran a brief but brilliant and busy course which ended on the gallows outside Winchester. Mr. Boulter’s parentage and the deeds that he did form splendid evidence to help bolster up the doctrine of heredity. He came of a very numerous clan of Boulters and Bisses, whose names are even to this day common at Chiverell and Market Lavington, on the Plain. His father rented a grist mill at Poulshot, stole grain for years, and was publicly whipped in Devizes market-place for stealing honey from an old woman’s garden. Shortly after that unfortunate incident, in 1775, on returning from Trowbridge, he stole a horse, the property of a Mr. Hall, and riding it over to Andover sold it for ￡6, although worth at least ￡15. This injudicious deal aroused the suspicions of the onlookers, so that he was arrested, and being convicted was sentenced to death. But the Boulters and the Bisses made interest for him, so that his sentence was commuted to transportation for fourteen years.
Mrs. Boulter, the wife of this transported felon and the mother of the greater hero, is said to have also suffered a public whipping at the cart’s tail, and Isaac Blagden, his uncle, also did a little in the footpad line on Salisbury Plain between the intervals of agricultural labouring. He never attained eminence, having met in an early stage of his career with a sad check while attempting to rob a gentleman near Market Lavington. The traveller drew a pistol and lodged a couple of slugs in his thigh, leaving him bleeding on the highway. Some humane person passing by procured assistance, and had him conveyed to the village. The wound was cured, but he remained a cripple ever afterwards, and being unable to work was admitted into Lavington Workhouse. He was never prosecuted for the attempted crime.
Thomas Boulter, junior, the daring outlaw who shared with Hawkes the title of the ‘Flying Highwayman,’ and whose name for very many years afterwards was used as a bogey to frighten refractory children, was born in 1748. He worked with his father, the miller, in the grist-mill at Poulshot until 1774, when, his sister having opened a millinery business in the Isle of Wight, he joined her there, and embarked his small capital in a grocery business.
THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER
But the business did not flourish. Perhaps it could not be expected to do so in the hands of so roving a blade, for he only gave it a year’s perfunctory trial, and then, being pressed for money, set out to find it on the road. He went to Portsmouth, procured two brace of pistols, casting-irons for slugs, and a powder-horn, and, lying by a little while, started in the summer of 1775, on the pretence of paying his mother a visit at Poulshot. Setting out from Southampton, mounted on horseback, he made for the Exeter Road, near ‘Winterslow Hut.’ In less than a quarter of an hour the Salisbury diligence rewarded his patience and enterprise by coming in sight across the downs. The perspiration oozed out of his every pore, and he was so timid that he rode past the diligence two or three times before he could muster sufficient resolution to pronounce the single word ‘Stand!’ But at length he found courage in the thought that he must begin, or go home as poor as he came out, and so, turning short round, he ordered the driver to stop, and in less than two minutes had robbed the two passengers of their watches and money, saying that he was much obliged to them, for he was in great want; and so, wishing them a pleasant journey, departed in the direction of Salisbury and Devizes. By the time he reached Poulshot he had robbed three single travellers on horseback and two on foot, and had secured a booty of nearly ￡40 and seven watches.
This filial visit coming to an end, he returned home to Newport, Isle of Wight, by way of Andover, Winchester, and Southampton. On his way across Salisbury Plain he stopped a post-chaise, several farmers on horseback, one on foot, and two countrywomen returning from market, going in sight of the last person into Andover, and putting up his horse at the ‘Swan,’ where he stayed for an hour.
This successful beginning fired our hero for more adventures, and the autumn of the same year found him, equipped with new pistols, a fine suit of clothes, and a horse stolen at Ringwood, making his way to Salisbury, with the intention of riding into the neighbourhood of Exeter before commencing business. But between Salisbury and Blandford he could not resist the temptation of robbing a diligence and a gentleman on horseback, resulting in the rather meagre booty of a gold watch, two guineas, and some silver. He then pushed on through Blandford towards Dorchester, robbing on the way; all in broad daylight. When night was come he thought it prudent to break off from the Exeter Road and lie by at Cerne Abbas until the next afternoon, when he regained the highway near Bridport, very soon finding himself in company with a wealthy grazier who was jogging home in the same direction. The grazier found his companion so sociable that he not only expressed himself as glad of his society, but gossiped at length upon the successful day he had experienced at Salisbury market, where he had sold a number of cattle at an advanced price. He was well known, he said, for carrying the finest beasts to market, and could always command a better price than his neighbours.
Boulter broke in upon this self-satisfied talk with the wish that he had been so lucky in his way of business. Unhappily, repeated misfortunes had at last reduced him to distress, and he had taken to the road for relieving his distresses, and was glad he had had the fortune to fall in with a gentleman who appeared so well able to assist him. Suiting the action to his words, he pulled out a pistol, and begged he might have the pleasure of easing his companion of some of the wealth he had acquired at Salisbury market.
ROBBERY BY WHOLESALE
The grazier thought this was a joke and supposed that it was done to frighten him; whereupon Boulter clapped the pistol close to his breast and told him he should not advance a single step until he had delivered his money. In a few minutes his trembling victim had handed over, in bank-notes and cash, nearly ￡90. His watch, which he seemed to set a value upon for its antiquity, together with some bills of exchange, Boulter returned, and, wishing him good-day, and observing that he should return to London, continued, instead, his journey to Exeter. Altogether, in this trip, he secured a booty of ￡500, in money and valuables, and spent the winter and these ill-gotten gains among his relatives on Salisbury Plain.
He opened his next campaign in May 1776, having first provided himself with a splendid mare named ‘Black Bess,’ which he stole from Mr. Peter Delmé’s stables at Erle Stoke. This horse, scarce inferior to Turpin’s mare of the same name, is indeed supposed to have been a descendant of hers. Starting from Poulshot, he rode to Staines, reaching that place on the second night out. Rising at four o’clock the next morning, he was on the road, in wait for the Western coaches; but he was a prudent man, and at the sight of blunderbusses on their roofs, he concluded that to attack them would be a tempting of Providence. Accordingly, he confined his attentions to the diligences and the post-chaises, and was so active that day that he visited Maidenhead, Hurley, Wokingham, Hartley Row, Whitchurch, and Eversley, reaching Poulshot again the same night with nearly ￡200, and with the ‘Hue and Cry’ of five counties at his heels. His exploits on this occasion would not shame the first masters of the art of highway robbery, and the performances of his mare were worthy of her distinguished ancestry. At Hartley Row he called for a bottle of wine, drank a glass himself, and pouring the remainder over a large toast, gave it to his steed, repeating it at Whitchurch and Eversley.
Two months’ retirement at Poulshot seemed advisable after this, but during the latter part of the summer and through the autumn he was very busy, his operations extending as far as Bath and Bristol. To give an account of his many robberies would require a long and detailed biography. He did not always meet with travellers willing to resign their purses without a struggle, and on those occasions he generally came off second best; as in the case of the butcher whom he met upon the Plain. Although Boulter held a pistol at the heads of travellers, he never really meant to use it, and it was his boast, at his last hour, that he had never taken life. Perhaps the butcher knew this, for when our friend presented his firearm at his head, and asked him to turn his pockets out, he said, ‘I don’t get my money so easily as to part with it in that foolish manner. If you rob me, I must go upon the highway myself before I durst go home, and that I’d rather not do.’
What was a good young highwayman, with conscientious scruples about shedding blood, to do under those circumstances? It was an undignified situation, but he retreated from it as best he could, and with the words: ‘Good-night, and remember that Boulter is your friend,’ disappeared.
BOULTER AND PARTNER
In 1777 he took a journey up to York, and was laid by the heels there, escaping the hangman by enlisting, a course then left open to criminals by the Government, which did not tend to bring the Army into better repute. After three days in barracks he deserted, and made the best of his way southwards. Reaching Bristol, he found a fellow-spirit in one James Caldwell, landlord of the ‘Ship Inn,’ Milk Street, and with him entered upon a new series of robberies. But, first of all, he paid a visit to his relatives at Poulshot, doing some business on the way, and scouring the country round about that convenient retreat. He stopped the diligence again at ‘Winterslow Hut,’ emptying the pockets of all the passengers, and robbed a Salisbury gentleman near Andover, who, after surrendering his purse, lamented that he had nothing left to carry him home.
‘How far have you to go home?’ asked Boulter.
‘To Salisbury,’ said the traveller.
‘Then,’ rejoined the highwayman, ‘here’s twopence, which is quite enough for so short a journey.’
Boulter, according to his biographers, had the light hair and complexion of the Saxon. ‘His bonhomie, not untinctured with a quiet humour, fascinated and disarmed his victims, who felt that, had he been so disposed, he could have descended upon them like the hammer of Thor.’ His companion henceforward, Caldwell, was of a dark complexion and ferocious disposition. Together they visited the Midlands in 1777, and with varying success brought that season to a close, Boulter returning alone to Poulshot for a short holiday from professional cares. Riding on the Plain early one morning, he was surprised to meet a gentlemanly-looking horseman, who looked very hard at him, and who, after passing him about a hundred yards, turned round and pursued him at a gallop. ‘Well,’ thought Boulter, ‘this seems likely to prove a kind of adventure on which I never calculated. I am about to be stopped myself by a gentleman of the road. In what manner will it be necessary to receive the attack.’
The stranger came up rapidly, and whatever his intentions were, merely observed, ‘You ride a very fine horse; would you like to sell her?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied Boulter; ‘but for nothing less than fifty guineas.’
‘Can she trot and gallop well?’
‘She can trot sixteen miles an hour, and gallop twenty, or she would not do for my business,’ said Boulter, with a significant look.
By this time the stranger, becoming uneasy, desired to see her paces, probably thinking thus to rid himself of so mysterious a character.
‘With all my heart,’ rejoined the highwayman, ‘you shall see how she goes, but I must first be rewarded for it,’ presenting his pistol with the customary demand. That request having been complied with, Boulter wished him good-morning, saying, ‘Now, sir, you have seen my performance, you shall see the performance of my horse, which I doubt not will perfectly satisfy you’; and putting spur to her, was soon but a distant speck upon the Plain, leaving the stranger to bewail his foolish curiosity.
A HUE AND CRY
The winter of 1777 and the spring of 1778 were employed by Boulter and Caldwell in scouring Salisbury Plain and the neighbouring country. A reward had long been offered for the apprehension of the robber who infested the district, and the appearance of a confederate now alarmed Salisbury so greatly that private persons began to advertise in the local papers their readiness to supplement this sum. A public subscription, amounting to twenty guineas, was also raised at Devizes, so that there was every inducement to the peasantry to make a capture. Yet, strange to say, no one, either private or official persons, laid a hand on them, even though Boulter appears to have been identified with the daring horseman who robbed every one crossing the Plain. The following advertisement appeared 10th January 1778:—
Whereas divers robberies have been lately committed on the road from Devizes to Salisbury, and also near the town of Devizes: and as it is strongly suspected that one Boulter, with an accomplice, are the persons concerned in these robberies, a reward of thirty guineas is offered for apprehending and bringing to justice the said Boulter, and ten guineas for his accomplice, over and above the reward allowed by Act of Parliament:—to be paid, on conviction, at the Bank in Devizes. If either of these persons are taken in any distant part of the country, reasonable charges will also be allowed. Boulter is about five feet eleven inches high, stout made, light hair, crooked nose, brownish complexion, and about thirty years of age. His accomplice, about five feet nine inches high, thin made, long favoured, black hair, and is said to be about twenty-five years of age.
This publicity did not hinder their enterprises, and speaking of Boulter, a little later, the Salisbury Journal says: ‘The robberies he has committed about Salisbury, the Plain, Romsey, and Southampton, and the several roads to London, are innumerable.’
CAPTURE OF BOULTER
But what local law and order could not accomplish was effected at Birmingham, to which town the confederates had made a journey in the spring of 1778, for the purpose of selling some of the jewellery and watches they had accumulated. Boulter had approached a Jew dealer on the subject, and was arrested, together with Caldwell, and thrown into Birmingham Prison. They were sent thence to Clerkenwell, from which, having already secured by bribery a jeweller’s saw and cut through his irons, he escaped, with two other prisoners, carrying the irons away with him, and hanging them in triumph on a whitethorn bush at St. Pancras. With consummate impudence he took lodgings two doors away from Clerkenwell Prison, and, procuring a new outfit, set off down to Dover, to take ship across the Channel. But, unfortunately for him, the country was on the eve of a war with France, and an embargo had been laid upon all shipping. He could not even secure a small sailing-boat. Hurrying off to Portsmouth, he found the same difficulty, and could not even get across to the Isle of Wight. Thence to Bristol, haunted with a constant fear of being arrested; but not a single vessel was leaving that port. Then it occurred to him that the desolate Isle of Portland was the most likely hiding-place. Setting out from Bristol, he reached Bridport, and went to an inn to refresh himself and his horse. When he asked what he could have for dinner, he was told there was a family ordinary just ready. He accordingly sat down at table, beside the landlord and three gentlemen, one of whom eyed him with a searching scrutiny, until, becoming fully satisfied that this was none other than Boulter, the escaped prisoner, he beckoned the landlord out of the room, and reminded him of the duty and necessity which lay upon them of securing so notorious an offender. The landlord then returned to the dining-room and desired Boulter to accompany him to an adjoining parlour, where he revealed to him the perilous state of affairs; but added, ‘As you have never done me an injury, I wish you no harm, so just pay your reckoning, and be off as quick as you can.’
Boulter bade him tell the strangers that they were totally mistaken, that he was a London rider (that is to say, a commercial traveller), and that his name was White; but having no wish to be the cause of a disturbance in his house, he would take his advice and go on his way.
The landlord went back to his guests, and Boulter got on his horse with all possible expedition. Once fairly seated in the saddle, a single application of the spur would have launched him beyond the reach of these hungry pursuers, nor in such an emergency as this would his pistol be harmlessly pointed against those who thus sought to earn the rewards offered for his capture. Alas! he had but placed his foot in the stirrup when out rushed the false landlord and his guests. They secured him, and being handed over to the authorities, he was lodged in Dorchester Gaol. He was arraigned at Winchester with Caldwell (who had been removed from London) on 31st July, and both being found guilty, they were hanged at Winchester, 19th August 1778.
Soon after those two comrades had met their end, there arose a highway-woman to trouble the district. This was Mary Sandall, of Baverstock, a young woman of twenty-four years of age, who had borrowed a pair of pistols and a suit of his clothes from the blacksmith of Quidhampton, and, bestriding a horse, set out one day in the spring of 1779, and meeting Mrs. Thring, of North Burcombe, robbed her of two shillings and a black silk cloak. Mrs. Thring went home and raised an alarm, with the result that Mary Sandall was captured, and committed for trial at the next assizes. Although there seems to have been some idea that this was a practical joke, the authorities were thick-headed persons who had heard too much of the real thing to be patient with an amateur highway-woman, and so they sentenced Mary Sandall to death in due form, although she was afterwards respited as a matter of course.
WILLIAM PEARE
William Peare was the next notability of the roads, but it is not certain that he was the one who stopped Mr. Jeffery, of Yateminster, on his way home from Weyhill, 9th October 1780, and knocking him off his horse, robbed him of ￡500 in bank-notes and ￡37 in coin. It was the same unknown, doubtless, who during the same week robbed a Mrs. Turner, of Upton Scudamore, of ￡45, in broad daylight. He was a ‘genteelly-dressed’ stranger. Making a low bow, he requested her money, and that within sight of many people working in the fields, who concluded, from his polite manners, that he was a friend of the lady.
William Peare was only twenty-three years of age when he was executed, 19th August 1783. His first important act was the robbing of the Chippenham coach on the 2nd of February 1782. Captured, and lodged in Gloucester Gaol, he escaped on the 19th of April, and began a series of the most daring highway robberies. On the 8th of February 1783 he stopped the Salisbury diligence just beyond St. Thomas’s Bridge, smashed the window, and fired a shot into the coach, terrifying the lady and gentleman who were the only two passengers, so that they at once gave up their purses. He then went on to Stockbridge, where he stopped a diligence full of military officers; but finding the occupants prepared to fight for the military chest they were escorting, hurried off. After many other crimes in the West, he was captured in the act of undermining a bank at Stroud, in Gloucestershire. He was tried and sentenced at Salisbury, and executed at Fisherton, going to the gallows with the customary nosegay, which remained tightly held in his hand when his body was cut down. A set of verses, purporting to be by his sweetheart, was published that year, lamenting his untimely end:—
For me he dared the dangerous road,
My days with goodlier fare to bless;
He took but from the miser’s hoard,
From them whose station needed less.
Highwaymen continued numerous at the dawn of the nineteenth century, as may be judged from the executions at Fisherton Gaol, or on the scenes of their misdeeds, that continued to afford a spectacle for the mob. For highway robbery alone one man was hanged in 1806, one in 1816, two in 1817, and two in 1824; while three were sentenced to fifteen years’ transportation in 1839 for a similar offence near Imber, in the very centre of the Plain.
A TRAGEDY OF THE PLAIN
The spot was Gore Cross, a solitary waste; time and date, seven o’clock on the evening of 21st October 1839. Upon this wilderness entered Mr. Matthew Dean, of Imber, returning on horseback from Devizes Fair, when he was suddenly set upon by four men, dragged off his horse, and robbed of ￡20 in notes of the North Wilts Bank, and ￡3: 10s. in coin. The gang then made off, but Mr. Dean followed them on foot. On the way he met Mr. Morgan, of Chitterne; but being afraid that the men carried pistols they decided to get more help before pursuing them farther. So they called on a Mr. Hooper, who joined the chase on horseback, armed with a double-barrelled gun. Meeting a Mr. Sainsbury, he accompanied the party, and, pressing on, they presently came in sight of the men. One ran away for some miles at a great pace, and they could not overtake him until about midway between Tilshead and Imber, where he fell down and lay still on
Image unavailable: HIGHWAY ROBBERY MONUMENT AT IMBER.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY MONUMENT AT IMBER.
the grass. His pursuers thought this to be a feint, and were afraid to seize him, so they continued the chase of the other three, who were eventually captured. The next day the body of the unfortunate man was found where he had fallen, quite dead. He had died from heart disease. An inquest was held on him, and the curious verdict of felo-de-se returned, according to the law which holds a person a suicide who commits an unlawful act, the consequence of which is his death. Two memorial stones mark the spot where the robbery took place and the spot, two miles distant, where the man fell.
The times were still dangerous for wayfarers here, for a few weeks later, on the night of 16th November, between nine and ten o’clock P.M., a Mr. Richard Brown, of Little Pannel, driving a horse and cart, was attacked by two footpads near Gore Cross Farm. One seized the horse, while the other gave him two tremendous blows on the head with a bludgeon, which almost deprived him of his senses. Recovering, he knocked the fellow down with his fist. Then the two jumped into the cart and robbed him of ten shillings, running away when he called for help, and leaving him with his purse containing ￡14 in notes and gold.
With this incident the story of highway robbery on Salisbury Plain comes to an end, and a very good thing too.
A DREARY ROAD
If you want to know exactly what kind of a road the Exeter Road is between Salisbury and Bridport, a distance of twenty-two miles, I think the sketch facing page 238 will convey the information much better than words alone. It is just a repetition of those bleak seventeen miles between Andover and Salisbury—only ‘more so.’ More barren and hillier than the Andover to Salisbury section, and less romantically wild than the rugged stretches between Blandford, Dorchester, and Bridport, it is a weariness to man and beast. Buffeted by the winds which shriek across the rolling downs, or nipped by the keen airs of these altitudes, old-time travellers up to London or down to Exeter dreaded the passage, and prepared themselves, accordingly, at Bridport or at Salisbury, while exhausted nature was recruited at the several inns which found their existence abundantly justified in those old times.
Image unavailable: WHERE THE ROBBER FELL DEAD.
WHERE THE ROBBER FELL DEAD.
Passing through West Harnham, a suburb of Salisbury, the road immediately begins to climb the downs, descending, however, in three miles to the charming little village of Coombe Bissett, in the water-meadows of the Wiltshire Avon, which runs prettily beside the road. An ancient church, old thatched barns standing on stone staddles whose feet are in the stream, bridges across the water, and the inevitable downs closing in the view, make one of the rare picturesque compositions to be found along this dreary stretch of country.
Make much, wayfarer, of Coombe Bissett. Linger there, soothe your soul with its rural graces before proceeding; for the road immediately leaves this valley of the Avon, and the next bend discloses the unfenced rolling downs, going in a mile-long rise, and so continuing, with a balance in the matter of gradients against the traveller going westwards, all the way to Blandford.
At eight miles from Salisbury is situated the old ‘Woodyates Inn,’ placed in this lonely situation, far removed from any village, in the days when the coaching traffic made the custom of travellers worth obtaining. It was in those days thought that after travelling eight miles the passengers by coach or post-chaise would want refreshments. It was a happy and well-founded thought; and if all tales be true, the prowess of our great-grandfathers as trenchermen left nothing to be desired—nor anything remaining in the larder when they had done.
The curious, on the lookout for this old coaching inn, will scarcely recognise it when seen, for it has
WOODYATES
Image unavailable: COOMBE BISSETT.
COOMBE BISSETT.
been garnished and painted, and rechristened of late years by the title of the ‘Shaftesbury Arms.’ But there it is, and portions of it may be found to date back to the old times.
It was given the name of ‘Woodyates’ from its position standing at the entrance to the wooded district of Cranborne Chase; the name meaning ‘Wood-gates.’ It also stands on the border-line dividing the counties of Wilts and Dorset.
Bokerley Dyke, a prehistoric boundary consisting of a bank and ditch, intersects the road as you approach the inn, and goes meandering over the downs among the gorse and bracken. Built, no doubt, more than fifteen hundred years ago by savages, solely with the aid of their hands and pointed sticks, it has outlasted many monuments of costly stones and marbles, and when civilisation comes to an end some day, like the blown-out flame of a candle, it will still be there, with the existing, but more recent, Roman road still beside it. That road goes across the open country like a causeway, or a slightly raised railway embankment.
The Dyke may have sheltered the fugitive Duke of Monmouth on his flight in 1685. The reading of that melancholy story of how the handsome and gay Duke of Monmouth, a haggard fugitive from Sedgemoor Fight, accompanied by his friend, Lord Grey, and another, left their wearied horses near this spot, and, disguising themselves as peasants, set out for the safe hiding-places of the New Forest, only to fall prisoners to James’s scouts, paints the road and the downs with an impasto of tragedy. All the countryside was being searched for him, and watchers were stationed on the hills, looking down upon this open country where the movement of a rabbit almost might be noted from afar. So he doubtless skulked along in the shadow of the Dyke from the shelter of Cranborne Chase down to Woodlands, where he was caught, under the shadow of a tree still standing, called Monmouth Ash.
Scattered all around are the inevitable barrows. The industry of a byegone generation of antiquaries has explored them all. Pick and shovel have scattered the ashes and the cinerary urns of the Britons or Saxons who were buried here, and the only relics likely to be found by any other ghouls are the discs of lead deposited by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, or W. Cunnington, with the initials ‘R. C. H. 1815,’ or some such date; or, ‘Opened by W. Cunnington 1804’ on them.
George the Third always used to change horses at ‘Woodyates Inn’ when journeying to or from Weymouth, and the room built for his use on those occasions is still to be seen, with its outside flight of steps. When the coaches were taken off the road, the inn became for a time the training establishment of William Day.
The road near this old inn is the real scene of the Ingoldsby legend of the Dead Drummer, and not Salisbury Plain, on ‘one of the rises’ where
An old way-post shewed
Where the Lavington road
Branched off to the left from the one to Devizes.
Image unavailable: THE EXETER ROAD, NEAR ‘WOODYATES INN.’
THE EXETER ROAD, NEAR ‘WOODYATES INN.’
A HIGHWAY MURDER
It was on Thursday, 15th June 1786, that two sailors, paid off from H.M.S. Sampson, at Plymouth, and walking up to London, came to this spot. Their names were Gervase (or Jarvis) Matcham, and John Shepherd. Near the ‘Woodyates Inn’ they were overtaken by a thunderstorm, in which Matcham startled his companion by showing extraordinary marks of horror and distraction, running about, falling on his knees, and imploring mercy of some invisible enemy. To his companion’s questions he answered that he saw several strange and dismal spectres, particularly one in the shape of a female, towards which he advanced, when it instantly sank into the earth, and a large stone rose up in its place. Other large stones also rolled upon the ground before him, and came dashing against his feet. He confessed to Shepherd that, about seven years previously, he had enlisted as a soldier at Huntingdon, and shortly afterwards was sent out from that town in company with a drummer-boy, seventeen years of age, named Jones, son of a sergeant in the regiment, who was in charge of some money to be paid away. They quarrelled because the lad refused to return and drink at a public-house on the Great North Road which they had just passed, four miles from Huntingdon. Matcham knocked him down, cut his throat, and taking the money (six guineas) made off to London, leaving the body by the roadside. He now declared that, with this exception, he had never in his life broken the law, and that, before the moment of committing this crime, he had not the least design of injuring the deceased, who had given him no other provocation than ill-language. But from that hour he had been a stranger to peace of mind; his crime was always present to his imagination, and existence seemed at times an insupportable burden. He begged his companion to deliver him into the hands of Justice in the next town they should reach. That was Salisbury. He was imprisoned there, brought to trial, found guilty, and hanged.
Barham in his legend of the Dead Drummer has taken many liberties with the facts of the case, both as regards place and names, and makes the scene of the murderer’s terror identical with the site of the crime, which he (for purely literary purposes) places on Salisbury Plain, instead of the Great North Road, between Buckden and Alconbury.
Three more inns were situated beside the road between this point and Blandford in the old days. Of them, two, the ‘Thorney Down Inn,’ and the ‘Thickthorn Inn’ (romantic and shuddery names!), have disappeared, while the remaining one,—the ‘Cashmoor Inn’—formerly situated between the other two, ekes out a much less important existence than of old, as a wayside ‘public.’
Then comes a village—the first one since Coombe Bissett was passed, fifteen miles behind, and so more than usually welcome. A pretty village, too, Tarrant Hinton by name, lying in a hollow, with its little
CRANBORNE CHASE
Image unavailable: TARRANT HINTON.
TARRANT HINTON.
street of cottages, along a road running at right angles to the Exeter highway, with its church tower peeping above the orchards and thick coppices, and a sparkling stream flowing down from the hillside. In this and other respects, it bears a striking similarity to Middle and Over Wallop.
The quiet, not to say sleepy, Dorsetshire villager who, lounging at the bend of the road, replies to your query by saying that this is ‘Tarnt Hinton,’ is the peaceable descendant of very desperate and bloody-minded men, and the like circumstances that, a mere hundred years ago, rendered them savages, would do the same by him, were they revived. The peasantry are what the law and social conditions make them. Oppress the sturdy rustic and you render him a brutal and resentful rebel, who, having an unbroken spirit, will give trouble. Treat him fairly, and he will live a life of quiet industry, tempered by gossipy evenings in the village ‘pub.’; and although he will never rise to be the mincing Strephon imagined by the eighteenth-century poets of rurality, he will raise gigantic potatoes, and cultivate flowers for the local Horticultural Society, and do nothing more tragical in all his life than the sticking of the domestic porker, or the twisting of a fowl’s neck.
The civilising of the rustic in these parts dates from the disfranchising of Cranborne Chase in 1830. The Chase, which took its name from the town of Cranborne, eight miles distant from this spot, was originally a vast deer-forest, extending far into Hants, Wilts, and Dorset. The great western highway entered it at Salisbury and did not pass out of its bounds until Blandford was reached; while Shaftesbury to the north, and Wimborne to the south, marked its extent in another direction. Belonging anciently to great feudal lords or to the Sovereign, it was Crown property from the time of Edward the Fourth to the reign of James the First. James delighted in killing the buck here, but that Royal prig granted the Chase to the Earl of Pembroke, from whom, shorn of its oppressive laws, it has descended to Lord Rivers; while the Earl of Shaftesbury also owns great tracts of woodlands here. But, singularly enough, that part of the Chase which still retains the wildest and densest aspect lies quite away from Cranborne, and in the county of Wilts, around Tollard Royal. The nature of the country and the character of the soil must needs always keep this vast tract wild, and, in an agricultural sense, unproductive. Game will always abound here in the thickets, and indeed the weird-looking hill-top plantations, called by the rustics ‘hats of trees,’ are especially planted as cover, wherever the country is open and unsheltered.
DEER-STEALERS
The severity of the laws which governed a Chase and punished deer-stealers was simply barbarous. Cranborne had its courts and Chase Prison where offenders and deer-stealers were punished by mutilation, imprisonment, or fine, according to the crime, the status of the offender, or the comparative state of civilisation of the period in which the offence was committed. But whether the punishment for stealing deer was the striking off of a hand, or imprisonment in a noisome dungeon, or merely being mulcted in a larger or smaller sum, there were always those who unlawfully killed the buck in these romantic glades. Sometimes, for the devilment of it, the dashing young blades of the countryside—sons of the squires and others—would hunt the deer.
‘From four to twenty assembled in the evening, dressed in cap and jack and quarter-staff, with dogs and nets. Having set the watchword for the night and agreed whether they should stand or run if they should meet the keepers, they proceeded to the Chase, set their nets, and let slip their dogs to drive the deer into the nets; a man standing at each net, to strangle the deer as soon as they were entangled. Frequent desperate and bloody battles took place; the keepers, and sometimes the hunters, were killed.’
Other law-breakers were of a humbler stamp, and ferocious enough to murder keepers at sight. Thus, in 1738, a keeper named Tollerfield was murdered on his way home from Fontmell Church; and another at Fernditch, near ‘Woodyates Inn.’ For the latter crime a man named Wheeler was convicted, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law; his body being hanged in chains at the scene of the murder. His friends, however, in the course of a few nights cut the body down, and threw it into a very deep well, some distance away. The weight of the irons caused it to sink, and it was not discovered until long afterwards.
One of the most exciting of these encounters between the deer-stealers and the keepers took place on the night of 16th December 1781. Chettle Common, away at the back of the ‘Cashmoor Inn,’ was the scene of this battle. The stealers, assembling in disguise at Pimperne, marched up the road through the night, and headed by a Sergeant of Dragoons, then quartered at Blandford, poured through the Thickthorn Toll-gate, armed with weapons called ‘swindgels,’ which appear to have been hinged cudgels, like flails. It would seem that the object of this expedition was the bludgeoning of a few keepers, rather than the stealing of deer. At any rate, the keepers expected them, and armed with sticks and hangers, awaited the attack. The fight was by no means a contemptible one, for in the result one keeper was killed and several disabled, while the stealers were so badly knocked about that the whole expedition surrendered, together with the Sergeant of Dragoons, who had a hand sliced off at the wrist by a hanger. The hand was subsequently buried, with military honours, in Pimperne churchyard.
Leader and followers alike were committed to Dorchester Gaol, and were eventually sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, reduced to a nominal term, in consideration of the severe wounds from which they were suffering. One wonders how far mercy, and to what extent the wish not to be at the expense of medically attending the prisoners, influenced this decision. As for the Dr. Jameson of this raid, he retired from the Dragoons on half-pay, and, coming to London, set up shop as a dealer in game and poultry!
WILTSHIRE MOONRAKERS
Ten years later, a keeper killed a stealer, and another murderous encounter took place on 7th December 1816 near Tarrant Gunville, at a gate in the woods which the melodramatic instincts of the peasantry have named ‘Bloody Shard,’ while the wood itself is known as ‘Blood-way Coppice.’
Cranborne Chase was also at this time a haunt of smugglers, who found its tangled recesses highly convenient for storing their ‘Free Trade’ merchandise on its way up from the sea-coast. Whether or not the original ‘Wiltshire moonrakers’ belonged to the Wilts portion of the Chase or to some other part of the county, tradition does not say.
That Wiltshire folk are called ‘moonrakers’ is generally known, and it is usually supposed that they obtained this name for stupidity, according to the story which tells how a party of travellers crossing a bridge in this county observed a number of rustics raking in the stream in which the great yellow harvest-moon was shining. Asked what they were doing, the reply was that they were trying to rake ‘that cheese’ out of the water. The travellers went on their way, laughing at the idiotcy of the yokels. One tale, however, only holds good until the other is told. The facts seem to be that the rustics were smugglers who were raking in the river for the brandy-kegs they had deposited there in the gray of the morning, and that the ‘travellers’ were really revenue-officers; those ‘gaugers,’ or ‘preventive men’ who were employed to check the smuggling which was rife a hundred years ago. It may be thought that the seaside was the only place where smuggling could be carried on, but a moment’s reflection will show that the goods had to be conveyed inshore for inland customers. Smuggling, in fact, was so extensive, and brought to such a perfection of system that forwarding agents were established everywhere. Kegs of spirits, being bulky, were hidden for the day in ponds and watercourses, wherever possible, and removed at night for another stage towards their destination, being deposited in a similar hiding-place at the break of day, and so forth until they reached their consignees. Thus the ‘moonrakers’ by this explanation are acquitted of being monumental simpletons, at the expense of losing their reputation in another way. But everyone smuggled, or received or purchased smuggled goods, in those times, and no one was thought the worse for it.
At the distance of a mile up the bye-road from Tarrant Hinton, in Eastbury Park, still stands in a lonely position the sole remaining wing of the once-famed Eastbury House, one of those immense palaces which the flamboyant noblemen and squires of a past era loved to build. Comparable for size and style with Blenheim and Stowe, and built like them by the ponderous Vanbrugh, the rise and fall of Eastbury were as dramatic as the building and destruction of Canons, the seat of the ‘princely Chandos’ at Edgware. Of Canons, however, no stone remains, while at Eastbury a wing and colonnade are left, standing sinister, sundered and riven, the melancholy relics of a once proud but hospitable mansion.
DODINGTON
Eastbury was begun on a scale of princely magnificence by George Dodington, a former Lord of the Admiralty, who, having presumably made some fine pickings in that capacity, determined to spend them on becoming a patron of the Arts and an entertainer of literary men, after the fashion of an age in which painters were made to fawn upon the powerful, and poets to sing their praises in the blankest of blank verse. Every rich person had his henchmen among the followers of the Muses, and they were petted or scolded, indulged or kept on the chain, just as the humour of the patron at the moment decreed. Unfortunately, however, for this eminently eighteenth-century ambition of George Dodington, he died before he could finish his building. All his worldly goods went to his grand-nephew, George Bubb, son of his brother’s daughter, who had married a Weymouth apothecary named Jeremias Bubb. Already, under the patronage of his uncle, a member of Parliament, and an influential person, George on coming into this property assumed the name of Dodington; perhaps also because the obvious nickname of ‘Silly Bubb’ by which he was known might thereby become obsolete.
George Bubb Dodington, as he was now known, immediately stopped the works on his uncle’s palace, and thus the unfinished building remained gaunt and untenanted from 1720 to 1738. Then, as suddenly as the building was stopped, work was resumed again. The vast sum of ￡140,000 was spent on the completion. Tapestries, gilding, marbles, everything of the most costly and ornate character was employed, and the grounds which had been newly laid out eighteen years before, and in the interval allowed to subside into a wilderness, were set in order again. The reason of this sudden activity was that Dodington had become infected with that same ‘Patron’ mania which had caused his uncle to lay the foundation stones of these marble halls. He was at this period forty-seven years of age, and in those years had filled many posts in the Government, and about the rival Whig and Tory Courts of the King and the Prince of Wales. Scheming and intriguing from one party to the other, he had always been ambitious of influence, and now that even greater accumulations of wealth had come to him, he set up as the host of birth, beauty, and intellect in these Dorsetshire wilds.
The gossips of the time have left us a picture of the man. Fat, ostentatious, extravagant, with the love of glitter and colour of a barbarian, he was yet a wit of repute, and had undoubtedly some learning. He possessed, besides, a considerable share of shrewdness. If he lent ￡5000 to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and never got it back, we are not to suppose that he ever expected to be repaid. That was, no doubt, regarded as practically an entrance-fee to the exalted companionship of a prince of whom it was written, when he came to an untimely end:—
But since it’s Fred who is dead, there’s no more to be said.
A WHIMSICAL FIGURE
That same Fred thought himself the clever man when he remarked ‘Dodington is reckoned clever, but I have borrowed ￡5000 of him which he will never see again’; but Dodington doubtless imagined the sum to have been well laid out; which, indeed, would have been the case had not the prince died early. M?cenas was, in fact, working for a title, and this was then regarded as the ready way to such a goal. They say the same idea prevails in our own happy times; but that ￡5000 would not go far towards the realisation of the object. But, be that as it may, Dodington did not win to the Peerage as Lord Melcombe until 1761, and as he died in the succeeding year, his enjoyment of the ermine was short. As, however, the working towards an object and its anticipation are always more enjoyable than the attainment of the end, he is perhaps not to be regarded with pity, or thought a failure.
One who partook of his hospitality at Eastbury, and did not think the kindness experienced there a sufficient reason for silence as to his host’s eccentricities and failings, has given us some entertaining stories. The State bed of the gross but witty Dodington at Eastbury was covered with gold and silver embroidery; a gorgeous sight, but closer inspection revealed the fact that this splendour had been contrived at the expense of his old coats and breeches, whose finery had been so clumsily converted that the remains of the pocket-holes were clearly visible. ‘His vast figure,’ continues this reminiscencing friend, ‘was always arrayed in gorgeous brocades, and when he paid his court at St. James’s, he approached to kiss the Queen’s hand, decked in an embroidered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat and breeches; the latter in the act of kneeling down, forgot their duty and broke loose from their moorings in a very indecorous and uncourtly manner.’ That must have been a sore blow to the dignity of one who possessed, as we are told, ‘the courtly and profound devotion of a Spaniard towards women, with the ease and gaiety of a Frenchman to men.’
Rolling down the Exeter Road, from his London mansion, or from his suburban retreat of ‘La Trappe,’ at Hammersmith, in his gilded, old-fashioned chariot, he gathered a variety of literary men at what Young calls ‘Pierian Eastbury.’ Johnson, sick of the Chesterfields and the whole gang of literary patrons, scornfully refused Dodington’s proffered friendship; but Fielding, Thomson, Bentley, Cumberland, Young, Voltaire, and others were not slow to revel in these more or less Arcadian delights. Christopher Pitt wrote to Young, congratulating him on his stay here:—
Where with your Dodington retired you sit,
Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit;
Where a new Eden in the wild is found,
And all the seasons in a spot of ground.
While Thomson, moved to it by the Burgundy or the more potent punch, has celebrated palace and park in his Autumn.
RUINED EASTBURY
Dodington had either no stomach for fighting, or else was a good fellow beyond the common run, as the following affair proves. Eastbury marches with Cranborne Chase, and one day the Ranger found one of Dodington’s keepers with his dogs in a part of the Chase called Burseystool Walk. The keeper was warned that if he was found there again, his dogs would be shot and himself prosecuted; but despite this warning he was found near the same spot a few days later, when the Ranger, having a gun in his hand, put his threat into execution and shot the three dogs as they were drinking in a pool, with their heads close together, in one of the Ridings. Dodington, in a first outburst of fury, sent a challenge to the Ranger over this affair, and the Ranger bought a sword and sent a friend to call on the challenger to fix time and place for the encounter; but by that time Dodington had thought better of it, and instead of making arrangements to shed the enemy’s gore, invited both him and his friend to dinner. They met and had a jovial time together, and the sword remained unspotted.
On Dodington’s death his estates passed to Earl Temple, who could not afford to keep up the vast place. He accordingly offered an income of ￡200 a year to anyone who would live at Eastbury and keep it in repair. No one came forward to accept these terms; and so, after the pictures, objects of art, and the furniture had been sold, the great house was pulled down, piecemeal, in 1795, with the exception of this solitary fragment.
There is room for much reflection in Eastbury Park to-day, by the crumbling archway with the two large fir-trees growing between the joints of its masonry; by the remaining wing, or the foundations of the rest of the vanished house, which can still be distinctly traced in the grass during dry summers. The stories of ‘Haunted Eastbury’ and of the headless coachman and his four-in-hand are dying out, but the panelled room in which Doggett, Earl Temple’s fraudulent steward, shot himself is still to be seen. Doggett had embezzled money, and when discovered found this the only way out of his trouble.
When the church of Tarrant Gunville, just outside the Park gates, was rebuilt in 1845 the workmen found his body, the legs tied together with a yellow silk ribbon which was as bright and fresh as the day it was tied.
Returning to the road at Tarrant Hinton, a steep hill leads up to the wild downs again, with a corresponding descent in three miles into the village of Pimperne whose chief part is situated in the same manner, along a byeway at a right angle to the coachroad. There is a battered cross on an open space near the church, and the church itself has been severely restored. Christopher Pitt was Rector of Pimperne, and it requires no great stretch of imagination to conjure up a vision of him pacing the road to Eastbury, and composing laudatory verses on Dodington and his ‘flowing wit’; rendered, perhaps, the more eloquent by anticipations of the flow of Burgundy already quoted. He died in 1748, fourteen long years, alas! before the wine had ceased to flow at that Pierian spot.
BLANDFORD
From this haunt of the Muses it is two miles to the town of Blandford Forum, whose name it is sad to be obliged to record is nowadays shamefully docked to ‘Blandford,’ although the market, whence the distinctive appellation of ‘Forum’ derived, is still in existence.
One comes downhill into Blandford, all the way from Pimperne, and it remains a standing wonder how the old coachmen managed to drive their top-heavy conveyances through the steep and narrow streets by which the town is entered from London, without upsetting and throwing the ‘outsides’ through the first-floor windows.
If the outskirts of Blandford town are of so medi?val a straitness, the chief streets of it are spacious indeed and lined with houses of a classic breadth and dignity, as classicism was understood in the days of George the Second, when the greater part of the town was burnt down and rebuilt. One needs not to be in love with classic, or debased classic, architecture to love Blandford. The town is stately, and with a thoroughly urban air, although its streets are so quiet, clean, and well-ordered. Civilisation without its usual accompaniments of rush and crowded pavements would seem to be the rule of Blandford. You can actually stand in the street and admire the architectural details of its houses without being run over or hustled off the pavement. In short, Blandford can be seen, and not, like crowded towns, glimpsed with intermittent and alternate glances at the place and at the traffic, for fear of jostling or being jostled.
Who, for instance, really sees London. You can stand in Hyde Park and see that, or in St. Paul’s and observe all the details of it; but does anyone ever really see Cheapside, Fleet Street, or the Strand, when walking? The only way to make acquaintance with these thoroughfares is to ride on the outside of an omnibus, where it is possible to give an undivided attention to anything else than the crowds that throng the pavements.
The progress of Blandford seems to have been quietly arrested soon after its rebuilding in 1731, and so it remains typical of that age, without being actually decayed. So far, indeed, is it from decay that it is a cheerful and prosperous, though not an increasing, town. Red moulded and carved brick frontages to the houses prevail here, and dignity is secured by the tall classic tower of the church, which, although not in itself entirely admirable, and although the stone of it is of an unhealthy green tinge, is not unpleasing, placed to advantage closing the view at one end of the broad market-place, instead of being aligned with the street.
Most things in Blandford date back to ‘the fire,’ which forms a red-letter day in the story of the town. This may well be understood when it is said that only forty houses were left when the flames had done their worst, and that fourteen persons were burnt, while others died from grief, or shock, or injuries received. Blandford has been several times destroyed by fire. In Camden’s time it was burned down by accident, but was rebuilt soon after in a handsome and substantial form. Again in 1677 and in 1713 the place was devastated in the same manner. The memorable fire of 1731 began at a soap-boiler’s shop in the centre of the town.
A pump, placed in a kind of shrine under the
GIBBON
Image unavailable: BLANDFORD.
BLANDFORD.
churchyard wall, bears an inscription recounting this terrible happening:—
In remembrance
Of God’s dreadful visitation by Fire,
Which broke out the 4th of June, 1731,
and in a few Hours not only reduced the
Church, but almost the whole Town, to Ashes,
Wherein 14 Inhabitants perished,
But also two adjacent Villages;
And
In grateful Acknowledgement of the
Divine Mercy,
That has since raised this Town,
Like the Ph?nix from its Ashes,
To its present flourishing and beautiful State;
and to prevent,
By a timely Supply of Water,
(With God’s Blessing) the fatal
Consequences of Fire hereafter:
This Monument
Of that dire Disaster, and Provision
Against the like, is humbly erected
By
John Bastard
A considerable Sharer
In the great Calamity,
1760
Between 1760 and 1762 Gibbon, the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was constantly in the neighbourhood of Blandford, camping on the downs which surround the town, and enjoying all the pomp and circumstance which may have belonged to his position as a Captain of Hants Militia.
Of these amateur soldierings he speaks as a ‘wandering life of military service,’ a very amusing view of what everybody else but that pompous historian regarded as mere picnics.
But Gibbon, although his person was not precisely that of an ideal military commander, and although the awkward squads he accompanied were not easily comparable with the legions of old Rome, affected to believe that the military knowledge he thus acquired among the hills and woodlands of Hants and Dorset was of the greatest use in helping him to understand the strategic feats of C?sar and Hannibal in Britain or across the Alps. Let us smile!
In after years, when living at Lausanne, amid the eternal hills and mountains of Switzerland, he looked back upon those days with regret, alike for the good company of his brother officers, the jovial nights at the ‘Crown’ in ‘pleasant, hospitable Blandford,’ and for the interference those happy times caused to his studies; when, instead of burning the midnight oil, he drank deeply of the two-o’clock-in-the-morning punch-bowl.
Many of Blandford’s natives have risen to more than local eminence. Latest among her distinguished sons is Alfred Stevens, that fine artist who designed the Wellington Monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral, as yet, unhappily, incomplete. He came into contact with governments and red-tape, and broken in spirit and in health by disappointments, died in 1875. A tablet on the wall of his birthplace in Salisbury Street records the fact that he was born in 1817.
WINTERBORNE WHITCHURCH
Sixteen and a quarter miles of very varied road brought the old coachmen with steaming horses clattering from Blandford into Dorchester, past the villages of Winterborne Whitchurch, Milborne St. Andrew, and the village of Piddletown, which is by no means a town, and never was.
It is a long, long rise out of Blandford, past tree-shaded Bryanstone and over the Town Bridge, to the crest of Charlton Downs, a mile out; where, looking back, the town is seen lying in a wooded hollow almost surrounded by park-like trees in dense clumps—the woods of Bryanstone. From this point of vantage it is clearly seen how Blandford is entered downhill from east or west.
Very hilly, very open, very white and hot and dusty in summer, and covered with loose stones and flints after any spell of dry weather, the road goes hence steeply down into Winterborne Whitchurch, where the ‘bourne,’ from which the place takes the first half of its name, goes across the road in a hollow, and the church stands, with its neighbouring parsonage and cottages, in a lane running at right angles to the high-road, for all the world like Tarrant Hinton and Little Wallop. John Wesley, the grandfather of the founder of the ‘Wesleyans’—or the ‘Methodys,’ as the country people call Methodists—was Vicar of Winterborne Whitchurch for a time during the Commonwealth; but as he seems never to have been regularly ordained, he was thrown out at the Restoration by ‘malignants’ and began a kind of John the Baptist life amid the hills and valleys of Dorsetshire, an exemplar for the imitation of his grandsons in later days. Itineracy and a sturdy independence thus became a tradition and a duty with the Wesleys. Thus are sects increased and multiplied, and no more sure way exists of producing prophets than by the persecution and oppression of those who, left judiciously alone, would live and die unknown to and unhonoured by the world.
Milborne St. Andrew, close upon three miles onward, is placed in another of these many deep hollows which, with streams running through them, are so recurrent a feature of the Exeter Road; only the hollow here is a broader one and better dignified with the title of valley. The stream of the ‘mill-bourne,’ from which the original mill has long since vanished (if, indeed, the name of the place is not, more correctly, ‘Melbourne,’ ‘mell’ in Dorsetshire meaning, like the prefix of ‘lew’ in Devon, a warm and sheltered spot), is a tributary of the river Piddle, which, a few miles down the road gives name to Piddletown, and along its course to Aff-Piddle, Piddletrenthide, Piddlehinton, Tolpiddle, and Turner’s Piddle.
MILBORNE ST. ANDREW
Milborne St. Andrew is a pretty place, and those who know Normandy may well think it, with its surrounding meads and feathery poplars, like a village in that old-world French province. Almost midway along the sixteen and a quarter miles between Blandford and Dorchester, it still keeps the look of an old coaching and posting village, although the last coach and the days of road-travel are beyond the recollection of the oldest inhabitant. Here, in the midst of the village, the street widens out, where the old ‘White Hart,’ now the Post Office, with a great effigy of a White Hart, and a number of miniature cannons on the porch roof, waits for the coaches that come no more, and for the dashing carriages and post-chaises that were driven away with their drivers and their gouty red-faced occupants to Hades, long, long ago. Is the ‘White Hart,’ standing like so many of these old hostelries beside the highway, waiting successfully for the revival of the roads, and will it live over the brave old days again with the coming of the Motor Car?
Meanwhile, given fine weather, there are few pleasanter places to spend a reminiscent afternoon in than Milborne St. Andrew.
The old church is up along the hillside, reached with the aid of a bye-road. Its tower, like that of Winterborne Whitchurch, shows the curious and rather pleasing local fashion of building followed four hundred years or so back, consisting of four to six courses of nobbled flints alternating with a course of ashlar. A stone in the east wall of the chancel to the memory of William Rice, servant to two of the local squires here for more than sixty years, ending in 1826, has the curious particulars:—
He superintended the Harriers, and was the first Man who hunted a Pack of Roebuck Hounds.
At a point a mile and a half farther used to stand Dewlish turnpike gate, where the tolls were taken before coming down into Piddletown.
This large village is the ‘Weatherbury’ of some of Mr. Thomas Hardy’s Wessex stories, and the Jacobean musicians’ gallery of the fine unrestored church is vividly reminiscent of many humorous passages between the village choir in Under the Greenwood Tree. An organ stands there now, but the ‘serpent,’ the ‘clar’net,’ and the fiddles of Mr. Hardy’s rustic choir would still seem more at home in that place.
Between this and Dorchester, past that end of Piddletown called ‘Troy Town,’ is Yellowham—one had almost written ‘Yalbury’—Hill, crowned with the lovely woodlands described so beautifully under the name of ‘Yalbury Woods’ in that story, and drawn again in the opening scene of Far from the Madding Crowd, where Gabriel Oak, invisible in his leafy eyrie above the road, perceives Bathsheba’s feminine vanities with the looking-glass.
Descending the western side of the hill and passing the broad park-lands of Kingston, we enter the town of Dorchester along the straight and level road running through the water-meadows of the river Frome. Until a few years ago this approach was shaded and rendered beautiful by an avenue of stately old elms that enclosed the distant picture of the town as in a frame; but they were cut down by the Duchy of Cornwall officials, in whose hands much of the surrounding property is placed, and only the pitiful stumps of them, shorn off close to the ground, remain to tell of their existence. As Dorchester is approached the road is seen in the distance becoming a street, and going, as straight as ever, and with a continuous rise,
‘CASTERBRIDGE’
Image unavailable: THE ‘WHITE HART,’ DORCHESTER.
THE ‘WHITE HART,’ DORCHESTER.
through the town, with the square tower of St. Peter’s and the spiky clock-tower of the Town Hall cresting the view in High West Street, and in High East Street the modern Early English spire of All Saints nearer at hand. The particular one among the many bridges and culverts that carry the rivulets under the road here, mentioned by the novelist in his Mayor of Casterbridge as the spot where Henchard, the ruined mayor, lounged in his aimless idleness, amid the wastrels and ne’er-do-weels of Casterbridge, is the bridge that finally brings the road into the town, by the old ‘White Hart Inn.’ It is the inevitable lounging-stock for Dorchester’s failures, who mostly live near by at Fordington, the east end of the town, where the ‘Mixen Lane’ of the story, ‘the mildewed leaf in the sturdy and flourishing Casterbridge plant’ was situated.
It is a transfigured Dorchester that is painted by the novelist in that story; or, perhaps more exactly, the Dorchester of fifty years ago. ‘It is huddled all together; and it is shut in by a square wall of trees, like a plot of garden-ground by a box-edging,’ is the not very apt comparison with the tall chestnuts and sycamores of the surviving avenues. ‘It stood, with regard to the wide fertile land adjoining, clean-cut and distinct, like a chess-board on a green tablecloth. The farmer’s boy could sit under his barley-mow and pitch a stone into the window of the town-clerk; reapers at work among the sheaves nodded to acquaintances standing on the pavement corner; the red-robed judge, when he condemned a sheep-stealer, pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in at the window from the remainder of the flock browsing hard by.’
This peculiarity of Dorchester, a four-square clearly-defined appliqué of town upon a pastoral country, has been gradually disappearing during many years past, owing to an increase of population that has burst the ancient bounds imposed by the town being almost completely surrounded by the Duchy of Cornwall lands. This property, known by the name of Fordington Field (and not the existence at any time of a ford on the Frome), gives the eastern end of Dorchester its title. The land, let by the Duchy in olden times, in quarters or ‘fourthings’ of a carucate, gave the original name of ‘Fourthington.’ A great deal of this property has now been sold or leased for building purposes, and so the avenues that once clearly defined with their ramparts of greenery the bounds of Dorchester are now of a more urban character.
THE BLOODY ASSIZE
Dorchester shares with Blandford and with Marlborough a solid architectural character of a sober and responsible kind. As in those towns, imaginative Gothic gables and quaint medi?val fancies are somewhat to seek amid the overwhelming proportion of Renaissance, or neo-classic, or merely Queen Anne and Georgian red-brick or stone houses. The cause of this may be sought in the recurrent disastrous fires that on four occasions practically swept the town out of existence, as in the case of Marlborough and Blandford. The earliest of these happened in 1613. Over three hundred houses were burnt on that occasion, and property amounting to nearly a quarter of a million sterling lost. This insistent scourge of the West of England thatched houses visited the town again, nine years later, and also in 1725 and 1775. Little wonder, then, that medi?val Dorchester has to be sought for in nooks and corners. But if like those other unfortunate towns in these circumstances, it is very different in appearance, the streets being comparatively narrow and the houses of a more stolid and heavy character; so that only in sunny weather does Dorchester strike the stranger as being at all a cheerful place.
JUDGE JEFFREYS’ CHAIR.
All the incidents in Dorchester’s history seem insignificant beside the tremendous melodrama of the ‘Bloody Assize.’ The stranger has eyes and ears for little else than the story of that terrible time, and longs to see the Court where Jeffreys sat, mad with drink and disease, and sentenced the unhappy prisoners to floggings, slavery, or death. Unhappily, that historic room has disappeared, but ‘Judge Jeffreys’ chair’ is still to be seen in the modern Town Hall, and one can approach in imagination nearer to that awful year of 1685 by gazing at ‘Judge Jeffreys’ Lodgings,’ still standing in High West Street, over Dawes’ china shop.
It must have been with a ferocious satisfaction that Jeffreys arrived here to open that Assize, for Dorchester had been a ‘malignant’ town and a thorn in the side of the Royalists forty years before. A kind of wild retribution was to fall upon it now, not only for the share that this district of the West had in Monmouth’s Rebellion in this unhappy year, but for the Puritanism of a bygone generation.
Jeffreys reached here on 2nd September and the Assize was opened on the following day, lasting until the 8th. Macaulay has given a most convincing picture of it:—
‘The Court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. It was also rumoured that when the clergyman, who preached the assize sermon, enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was distorted by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what was to follow.
GEORGE THE THIRD
‘More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons who put themselves on their country, and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire amounted to seventy-four.’
It is a relief to turn from such things to the less tragical coaching era. The ‘King’s Arms,’ which was formerly the great coaching hostelry of Dorchester, still keeps pride of place here, and its capacious bay-windows of old-fashioned design yet look down upon the chief street. Instead, however, of the kings and princes and the great ones of the earth who used to be driven up in fine style in their ‘chariots’ a hundred years ago, and in place of the weary coach-travellers who used to alight at the hospitable doors of the ‘King’s Arms,’ the commercial travellers of to-day are deposited here by the hotel omnibus from the railway station with little or no remains of that pomp and circumstance which accompanied arrivals in the olden time. King George the Third was well acquainted with this capacious house, for his horses were changed here on his numerous journeys through Dorchester between London, Windsor, and Weymouth. He kept a commonplace Court in the summer at Weymouth for many years, and thus made the fortune of that town, while his son, the Prince of Wales, was similarly making Brighthelmstone popular. If we are to believe the story of the Duchesse d’Abrantes, Napoleon had conceived the very theatrical idea of kidnapping the King on one of these journeys. The exploit was planned for execution in the wild and lonely country between Dorchester and Weymouth: possibly beneath the grim shadow of sullen Maumsbury, or of prehistoric Maiden Castle. The King and his escort were to have been surprised by a party of secretly-landed French sailors, and his Majesty forthwith hustled on board an open boat which was then to be rowed across the Channel to Cherbourg. According to this remarkable statement, the English coastguards had been heavily bribed to assist in this affair. It was magnificent, but it was not war—nor even business. As an elaborate joke, the project has its distinctly humorous aspects, as one vividly conjures up a picture of ‘Farmer George,’ helplessly sea-sick, leaning on the gunwale of the row-boat, with the equally unhappy sailors toiling away at rowing those seventy miles of salt water. Then, too, the thought of that essentially unromantic King compelled to cut a ridiculous figure as a kind of modern travesty of the imprisoned Richard Lionheart, raises a smile. But, although Napoleon, who was not a gentleman, may very possibly have entertained this rather characteristic notion, he certainly never attempted to put it into execution, and the road to Weymouth is by so much the poorer in incident.
But to return to the ‘King’s Arms,’ which figures in Mr. Thomas Hardy’s story. Here it was, looking in with the crowd on the street, that Susan saw her long-lost husband presiding as Mayor at the banquet, the beginning of all his troubles.
Although the stranger who has no ties with Dorchester to help paint it in such glowing colours as those used by that writer, who finds it ‘one of the cleanest and prettiest towns in the West of England,’ cannot subscribe to that description, the town is of a supreme interest to the literary pilgrim, who can identify many spots hallowed by Mr. Hardy’s genius.
THE ROMAN ROAD
Image unavailable: DORCHESTER.
DORCHESTER.
There are those in Dorsetshire who bitterly resent the Tony Kytes, the Car Darches, the Bathshebas, and in especial poor Tess, who flit through his unconventional pages, and hold that he deprives the Dorset peasant of his moral character; but if you hold no brief for the natives in their relation to the Ten Commandments, why, it need matter little or nothing to you whether his characters are intended as portraitures, or are evolved wholly from a peculiar imagination. It remains only to say that they are very real characters to the reader, who can follow their loves and hatreds, their comedy and tragedy, and can trace their footsteps with a great deal more personal interest than can be stirred up over the doings of many historical personages.
The Exeter Road begins to rise immediately on leaving Dorchester. Leaving the town by a fine avenue of ancient elms stretching for half a mile, the highway runs, with all the directness characteristic of a Roman road, on a gradual incline up the bare and open expanse of Bradford Down, unsheltered as yet by the stripling trees newly planted as a continuation of the dense avenue just left behind. The first four miles of road from the town are identical with the Roman Via Iceniana, the Icen Way or Icknield Street; and on the left rises, at the distance of a mile away, the sombre Roman earthwork of Maiden Castle crowning a hill forming with the earthen amphitheatre of Poundbury on the right hand, evidence, if all else in Dorchester were wanting, of the importance of the place at that remote period.
At the fourth milestone the Exeter Road leaves that ancient military way, and, turning sharply to the left, goes down steeply, amid loose gravel and rain-runnels, to Winterborne Abbas, with an exceedingly awkward fork to the road to Weymouth on the left hand half-way down. Bold and striking views of the sullen ridge of Blackdown, with Admiral Hardy’s pillar on the ridge, are unfolded as one descends.