This inscription records another item of vanishing England. Before the Inclosure Acts at the beginning of the last century there were in all parts of the country large stretches of unfenced land, and cattle often strayed far from their homes and presumed to graze on the open common lands of other villages. Each village had its pound-keeper, who, when he saw these estrays, as the lawyers term the valuable animals that were found wandering in any manor or lordship, immediately drove them into the pound. If the owner claimed them, he had certain fees to pay to the pound-keeper and the cost of the keep. If they were not claimed they became the property of the lord of the manor, but it was required that they should be proclaimed in the church and two market towns next adjoining the place where they were found, and a year and a day must have elapsed before they became the actual property of the lord. The possession of a pound was a sign of dignity for the village. Now that commons have been enclosed and waste lands reclaimed, stray cattle no longer cause excitement in the village, the pound-keeper has gone, and too often the pound itself has disappeared. We had one in our village twenty years ago, but suddenly, before he could be remonstrated with, an estate agent, not caring for the trouble and cost of keeping it in repair, cleared it away, and its place knows it no more. In very many other villages similar happenings have occurred. Sometimes the old pound has been utilized by road surveyors as a convenient place for storing gravel for mending roads, and its original purpose is forgotten.

It would be a pleasant task to go through the towns and villages of England to discover and to describe traces of these primitive implements of torture, but such a record would require a volume instead of a single chapter. In Berkshire we have several left to us. There is a very complete set at Wallingford, pillory, stocks, and whipping-post, now stored in the museum belonging to Miss Hedges in the castle, but in western Berkshire they have nearly all disappeared. The last pair of stocks that I can remember stood at the entrance to the town of Wantage. They have only disappeared within the last few years. The whipping-post still exists at the old Town Hall at Faringdon, the staples being affixed to the side of the ancient "lock-up," known as the Black Hole.

At Lymm, Cheshire, there are some good stocks by the cross in that village, and many others may be discovered by the wandering antiquary, though their existence is little known and usually escapes the attention of the writers on local antiquities. As relics of primitive modes of administering justice, it is advisable that they should be preserved.

Yet another implement of rude justice was the cucking or ducking stool, which exists in a few places. It was used principally for the purpose of correcting scolding women. Mr. Andrews, who knows all that can be known about old-time punishments, draws a distinction between the cucking and ducking stool, and states that the former originally was a chair of infamy where immoral women and scolds were condemned to sit with bare feet and head to endure the derision of the populace, and had no relation to any ducking in water. But it appears that later on the terms were synonymous, and several of these implements remain. This machine for quieting intemperate scolds was quite simple. A plank with a chair at one end was attached by an axle to a post which was fixed on the bank of a river or pond, or on wheels, so that it could be run thither; the culprit was tied to the chair, and the other end of the plank was alternately raised or lowered so as to cause the immersion of the scold in the chilly water. A very effectual punishment! The form of the chair varies. The Leominster ducking-stool is still preserved, and this implement was the latest in use, having been employed in 1809 for the ducking of Jenny Pipes, alias Jane Corran, a common scold, by order of the magistrates, and also as late as 1817; but in this case the victim, one Sarah Leeke, was only wheeled round the town in the chair, and not ducked, as the water in the Kenwater stream was too shallow for the purpose. The cost of making the stool appears in many corporation accounts. That at Hungerford must have been in pretty frequent use, as there are several entries for repairs in the constable's accounts.[55] Thus we find the item under the year 1669:—

"Pd for the Cucking stoole 01,10,00"

and in 1676:—

"Pd for nailes and workmanship about the stocks and cucking stoole 00,07,00"

[55] The corporation of Hungerford is peculiar, the head official being termed the constable, who corresponded with the mayor in less original boroughs.

At Kingston-upon-Thames in 1572 the accounts show the expenditure:—

"The making of the cucking-stool . 8s. 0d. Iron work for the same . . . 3s. 0d. Timber for the same . . . 7s. 6d. Three brasses for the same and three wheels 4s. 10d. —————— L1 3s. 4d."

We need not record similar items shown in the accounts of other boroughs. You will still find examples of this fearsome implement at Leicester in the museum, Wootton Bassett, the wheels of one in the church of St. Mary, Warwick; two at Plymouth, one of which was used in 1808; King's Lynn, Norfolk, in the museum; Ipswich, Scarborough, Sandwich, Fordwich, and possibly some other places of which we have no record.

We find in museums, but not in common use, another terrible implement for the curbing of the rebellious tongues of scolding women. It was called the brank or scold's bridle, and probably came to us from Scotland with the Solomon of the North, whither the idea of it had been conveyed through the intercourse of that region with France. It is a sort of iron cage or framework helmet, which was fastened on the head, having a flat tongue of iron that was placed on the tongue of the victim and effectually restrained her from using it. Sometimes the iron tongue was embellished with spikes so as to make the movement of the human tongue impossible except with the greatest agony. Imagine the poor wretch with her head so encaged, her mouth cut and bleeding by this sharp iron tongue, none too gently fitted by her rough torturers, and then being dragged about the town amid the jeers of the populace, or chained to the pillory in the market-place, an object of ridicule and contempt. Happily this scene has vanished from vanishing England. Perhaps she was a loud-voiced termagant; perhaps merely the ill-used wife of a drunken wretch, who well deserved her scolding; or the daring teller of home truths to some jack-in-office, who thus revenged himself. We have shrews and scolds still; happily they are restrained in a less barbarous fashion. You may still see some fearsome branks in museums. Reading, Leeds, York, Walton-on-Thames, Congleton, Stockport, Macclesfield, Warrington, Morpeth, Hamstall Ridware, in Staffordshire, Lichfield, Chesterfield (now in possession of the Walsham family), Leicester, Doddington Park, Lincolnshire (a very grotesque example), the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Whitchurch, Market Drayton, are some of the places which still possess scolds' bridles. Perhaps it is wrong to infer from the fact that most of these are to be found in the counties of Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, that the women of those shires were especially addicted to strong and abusive language. It may be only that antiquaries in those counties have been more industrious in unearthing and preserving these curious relics of a barbarous age. The latest recorded occasion of its use was at Congleton in 1824, when a woman named Ann Runcorn was condemned to endure the bridle for abusing and slandering the churchwardens when they made their tour of inspection of the alehouses during the Sunday-morning service. There are some excellent drawings of branks, and full descriptions of their use, in Mr. Andrews's Bygone Punishments.

Another relic of old-time punishments most gruesome of all are the gibbet-irons wherein the bones of some wretched breaker of the laws hung and rattled as the irons creaked and groaned when stirred by the breeze. Pour l'encouragement des autres, our wise forefathers enacted that the bodies of executed criminals should be hanged in chains. At least this was a common practice that dated from medieval times, though it was not actually legalized until 1752.[56] This Act remained in force until 1834, and during the interval thousands of bodies were gibbeted and left creaking in the wind at Hangman's Corner or Gibbet Common, near the scene of some murder or outrage. It must have been ghostly and ghastly to walk along our country lanes and hear the dreadful noise, especially if the tradition were true

That the wretch in his chains, each night took the pains, To come down from the gibbet—and walk.

In order to act as a warning to others the bodies were kept up as long as possible, and for this purpose were saturated with tar. On one occasion the gibbet was fired and the tar helped the conflagration, and a rapid and effectual cremation ensued. In many museums gibbet-irons are preserved.

Punishments in olden times were usually cruel. Did they act as deterrents to vice? Modern judges have found the use of the lash a cure for robbery from the person with violence. The sight of whipping-posts and stocks, we learn, has stayed young men from becoming topers and drunkards. A brank certainly in one recorded case cured a woman from coarse invective and abuse. But what effect had the sight of the infliction of cruel punishments upon those who took part in them or witnessed them? It could only have tended to make cruel natures more brutal. Barbarous punishments, public hangings, cruel sports such as bull-baiting, dog-fighting, bear-baiting, prize-fighting and the like could not fail to exercise a bad influence on the populace; and where one was deterred from vice, thousands were brutalized and their hearts and natures hardened, wherein vicious pleasures, crime, and lust found a congenial soil. But we can still see our stocks on the village greens, our branks, ducking-stools, and pillories in museums, and remind ourselves of the customs of former days which have not so very long ago passed away.

[56] Act of Parliament 25 George II.



CHAPTER XIV

OLD BRIDGES

The passing away of the old bridges is a deplorable feature of vanishing England. Since the introduction of those terrible traction-engines, monstrous machines that drag behind them a whole train of heavily laden trucks, few of these old structures that have survived centuries of ordinary use are safe from destruction. The immense weight of these road-trains are enough to break the back of any of the old-fashioned bridges. Constantly notices have to be set up stating: "This bridge is only sufficient to carry the ordinary traffic of the district, and traction-engines are not allowed to proceed over it." Then comes an outcry from the proprietors of locomotives demanding bridges suitable for their convenience. County councils and district councils are worried by their importunities, and soon the venerable structures are doomed, and an iron-girder bridge hideous in every particular replaces one of the most beautiful features of our village.

When the Sonning bridges that span the Thames were threatened a few years ago, English artists, such as Mr. Leslie and Mr. Holman-Hunt, strove manfully for their defence. The latter wrote:—

"The nation, without doubt, is in serious danger of losing faith in the testimony of our poets and painters to the exceptional beauty of the land which has inspired them. The poets, from Chaucer to the last of his true British successors, with one voice enlarge on the overflowing sweetness of England, her hills and dales, her pastures with sweet flowers, and the loveliness of her silver streams. It is the cherishing of the wholesome enjoyments of daily life that has implanted in the sons of England love of home, goodness of nature, and sweet reasonableness, and has given strength to the thews and sinews of her children, enabling them to defend her land, her principles, and her prosperity. With regard to the three Sonning bridges, parts of them have been already rebuilt with iron fittings in recent years, and no disinterested reasonable person can see why they could not be easily made sufficient to carry all existing traffic. If the bridges were to be widened in the service of some disproportionate vehicles it is obvious that the traffic such enlarged bridges are intended to carry would be put forward as an argument for demolishing the exquisite old bridge over the main river which is the glory of this exceptionally picturesque and well-ordered village; and this is a matter of which even the most utilitarian would soon see the evil in the diminished attraction of the river not only to Englishmen, but to Colonials and Americans who have across the sea read widely of its beauty. Remonstrances must look ahead, and can only now be of avail in recognition of future further danger. We are called upon to plead the cause for the whole of the beauty-loving England, and of all river-loving people in particular."

Gallantly does the great painter express the views of artists, and such vandalism is as obnoxious to antiquaries as it is to artists and lovers of the picturesque. Many of these old bridges date from medieval times, and are relics of antiquity that can ill be spared. Brick is a material as nearly imperishable as any that man can build with. There is hardly any limit to the life of a brick or stone bridge, whereas an iron or steel bridge requires constant supervision. The oldest iron bridge in this country—at Coalbrookdale, in Shropshire—has failed after 123 years of life. It was worn out by old age, whereas the Roman bridge at Rimini, and the medieval ones at St. Ives, Bradford-on-Avon, and countless other places in this country and abroad, are in daily use and are likely to remain serviceable for many years to come, unless these ponderous trains break them down.

The interesting bridge which crosses the River Conway at Llanrwst was built in 1636 by Sir Richard Wynn, then the owner of Gwydir Castle, from the designs of Inigo Jones. Like many others, it is being injured by traction-trains carrying unlimited weights. Happily the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings heard the plaint of the old bridge that groaned under its heavy burdens and cried aloud for pity. The society listened to its pleading, and carried its petition to the Carmarthen County Council, with excellent results. This enlightened Council decided to protect the bridge and save it from further harm.

The building of bridges was anciently regarded as a charitable and religious act, and guilds and brotherhoods existed for their maintenance and reparation. At Maidenhead there was a notable bridge, for the sustenance of which the Guild of St. Andrew and St. Mary Magdalene was established by Henry VI in 1452. An early bridge existed here in the thirteenth century, a grant having been made in 1298 for its repair. A bridge-master was one of the officials of the corporation, according to the charter granted to the town by James II. The old bridge was built of wood and supported by piles. No wonder that people were terrified at the thought of passing over such structures in dark nights and stormy weather. There was often a bridge-chapel, as on the old Caversham bridge, wherein they said their prayers, and perhaps made their wills, before they ventured to cross.

Some towns owe their existence to the making of bridges. It was so at Maidenhead. It was quite a small place, a cluster of cottages, but Camden tells us that after the erection of the bridge the town began to have inns and to be so frequented as to outvie its "neighbouring mother, Bray, a much more ancient place," where the famous "Vicar" lived. The old bridge gave place in 1772 to a grand new one with very graceful arches, which was designed by Sir Roland Taylor.

Abingdon, another of our Berkshire towns, has a famous bridge that dates back to the fifteenth century, when it was erected by some good merchants of the town, John Brett and John Huchyns and Geoffrey Barbour, with the aid of Sir Peter Besils of Besselsleigh, who supplied the stone from his quarries. It is an extremely graceful structure, well worthy of the skill of the medieval builders. It is some hundreds of yards in length, spanning the Thames and meadows that are often flooded, the main stream being spanned by six arches. Henry V is credited with its construction, but he only graciously bestowed his royal licence. In fact these merchants built two bridges, one called Burford Bridge and the other across the ford at Culham. The name Burford has nothing to do with the beautiful old town which we have already visited, but is a corruption of Borough-ford, the town ford at Abingdon. Two poets have sung their praises, one in atrocious Latin and the other in quaint, old-fashioned English. The first poet made a bad shot at the name of the king, calling him Henry IV instead of Henry V, though it is a matter of little importance, as neither monarch had anything to do with founding the structure. The Latin poet sings, if we may call it singing:—

Henricus Quartus quarto fundaverat anno Rex pontem Burford super undas atque Culham-ford.

The English poet fixes the date of the bridge, 4 Henry V (1416) and thus tells its story:—

King Henry the fyft, in his fourthe yere He hath i-founde for his folke a brige in Berkshire For cartis with cariage may goo and come clere, That many wynters afore were marred in the myre.

Now is Culham hithe[57] i-come to an ende And al the contre the better and no man the worse, Few folke there were coude that way mende, But they waged a cold or payed of ther purse; An if it were a beggar had breed in his bagge, He schulde be right soone i-bid to goo aboute; And if the pore penyless the hireward would have, A hood or a girdle and let him goo aboute. Culham hithe hath caused many a curse I' blyssed be our helpers we have a better waye, Without any peny for cart and horse.

Another blyssed besiness is brigges to make That there the pepul may not passe after great schowres, Dole it is to draw a dead body out of a lake That was fulled in a fount stoon and felow of owres.

[57] Ferry.

The poet was grateful for the mercies conveyed to him by the bridge. "Fulled in a fount stoon," of course, means "washed or baptized in a stone font." He reveals the misery and danger of passing through a ford "after great showers," and the sad deaths which befell adventurous passengers when the river was swollen by rains and the ford well-nigh impassable. No wonder the builders of bridges earned the gratitude of their fellows. Moreover, this Abingdon Bridge was free to all persons, rich and poor alike, and no toll or pontage was demanded from those who would cross it.

Within the memory of man there was a beautiful old bridge between Reading and Caversham. It was built of brick, and had ten arches, some constructed of stone. About the time of the Restoration some of these were ruinous, and obstructed the passage by penning up the water above the bridge so that boats could not pass without the use of a winch, and in the time of James II the barge-masters of Oxford appealed to Courts of Exchequer, asserting that the charges of pontage exacted on all barges passing under the bridge were unlawful, claiming exemption from all tolls by reason of a charter granted to the citizens of Oxford by Richard II. They won their case. This bridge is mentioned in the Close Rolls of the early years of Edward I as a place where assizes were held. The bridge at Cromarsh and Grandpont outside Oxford were frequently used for the same purpose. So narrow was it that two vehicles could not pass. For the safety of the foot passenger little angles were provided at intervals into which he could step in order to avoid being run over by carts or coaches. The chapel on the bridge was a noted feature of the bridge. It was very ancient. In 1239 Engelard de Cyngny was ordered to let William, chaplain of the chapel of Caversham, have an oak out of Windsor Forest with which to make shingles for the roofing of the chapel. Passengers made offerings in the chapel to the priest in charge of it for the repair of the bridge and the maintenance of the chapel and priest. It contained many relics of saints, which at the Dissolution were eagerly seized by Dr. London, the King's Commissioner. About the year 1870 the old bridge was pulled down and the present hideous iron-girder erection substituted for it. It is extremely ugly, but is certainly more convenient than the old narrow bridge, which required passengers to retire into the angle to avoid the danger of being run over.

These bridges can tell many tales of battle and bloodshed. There was a great skirmish on Caversham Bridge in the Civil War in a vain attempt on the part of the Royalists to relieve the siege of Reading. When Wallingford was threatened in the same period of the Great Rebellion, one part of the bridge was cut in order to prevent the enemy riding into the town. And you can still detect the part that was severed. There is a very interesting old bridge across the upper Thames between Bampton and Faringdon. It is called Radcot Bridge; probably built in the thirteenth century, with its three arches and a heavy buttress in the middle niched for a figure of the Virgin, and a cross formerly stood in the centre. A "cut" has diverted the course of the river to another channel, but the bridge remains, and on this bridge a sharp skirmish took place between Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Marquis of Dublin, and Duke of Ireland, a favourite of Richard II, upon whom the King delighted to bestow titles and honours. The rebellious lords met the favourite's forces at Radcot, where a fierce fight ensued. De Vere was taken in the rear, and surrounded by the forces of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Derby, and being hard pressed, he plunged into the icy river (it was on the 20th day of December, 1387) with his armour on, and swimming down-stream with difficulty saved his life. Of this exploit a poet sings:—

Here Oxford's hero, famous for his boar, While clashing swords upon his target sound, And showers of arrows from his breast rebound, Prepared for worst of fates, undaunted stood, And urged his heart into the rapid flood. The waves in triumph bore him, and were proud To sink beneath their honourable load.

Religious communities, monasteries and priories, often constructed bridges. There is a very curious one at Croyland, probably erected by one of the abbots of the famous abbey of Croyland or Crowland. This bridge is regarded as one of the greatest curiosities in the kingdom. It is triangular in shape, and has been supposed to be emblematical of the Trinity. The rivers Welland, Nene, and a drain called Catwater flow under it. The ascent is very steep, so that carriages go under it. The triangular bridge of Croyland is mentioned in a charter of King Edred about the year 941, but the present bridge is probably not earlier than the fourteenth century. However, there is a rude statue said to be that of King Ethelbald, and may have been taken from the earlier structure and built into the present bridge. It is in a sitting posture at the end of the south-west wall of the bridge. The figure has a crown on the head, behind which are two wings, the arms bound together, round the shoulders a kind of mantle, in the left hand a sceptre and in the right a globe. The bridge consists of three piers, whence spring three pointed arches which unite their groins in the centre. Croyland is an instance of a decayed town, the tide of its prosperity having flowed elsewhere. Though nominally a market-town, it is only a village, with little more than the ruins of its former splendour remaining, when the great abbey attracted to it crowds of the nobles and gentry of England, and employed vast numbers of labourers, masons, and craftsmen on the works of the abbey and in the supply of its needs.



All over the country we find beautiful old bridges, though the opening years of the present century, with the increase of heavy traction-engines, have seen many disappear. At Coleshill, Warwickshire, there is a graceful old bridge leading to the town with its six arches and massive cutwaters. Kent is a county of bridges, picturesque medieval structures which have survived the lapse of time and the storms and floods of centuries. You can find several of these that span the Medway far from the busy railway lines and the great roads. There is a fine medieval fifteenth-century bridge at Yalding across the Beult, long, fairly level, with deeply embayed cutwaters of rough ragstone. Twyford Bridge belongs to the same period, and Lodingford Bridge, with its two arches and single-buttressed cutwater, is very picturesque. Teston Bridge across the Medway has five arches of carefully wrought stonework and belongs to the fifteenth century, and East Farleigh is a fine example of the same period with four ribbed and pointed arches and four bold cutwaters of wrought stones, one of the best in the country. Aylesford Bridge is a very graceful structure, though it has been altered by the insertion of a wide span arch in the centre for the improvement of river navigation. Its existence has been long threatened, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has done its utmost to save the bridge from destruction. Its efforts are at length crowned with success, and the Kent County Council has decided that there are not sufficient grounds to justify the demolition of the bridge and that it shall remain. The attack upon this venerable structure will probably be renewed some day, and its friends will watch over it carefully and be prepared to defend it again when the next onslaught is made. It is certainly one of the most beautiful bridges in Kent. Little known and seldom seen by the world, and unappreciated even by the antiquary or the motorist, these Medway bridges continue their placid existence and proclaim the enduring work of the English masons of nearly five centuries ago.

Many of our bridges are of great antiquity. The Eashing bridges over the Wey near Godalming date from the time of King John and are of singular charm and beauty. Like many others they have been threatened, the Rural District Council having proposed to widen and strengthen them, and completely to alter their character and picturesqueness. Happily the bridges were private property, and by the action of the Old Guildford Society and the National Trust they have been placed under the guardianship of the Trust, and are now secure from molestation.



We give an illustration of the Crane Bridge, Salisbury, a small Gothic bridge near the Church House, and seen in conjunction with that venerable building it forms a very beautiful object. Another illustration shows the huge bridge at Huntingdon spanning the Ouse with six arches. It is in good preservation, and has an arcade of Early Gothic arches, and over it the coaches used to run along the great North Road, the scene of the mythical ride of Dick Turpin, and doubtless the youthful feet of Oliver Cromwell, who was born at Huntingdon, often traversed it. There is another fine bridge at St. Neots with a watch-tower in the centre.

The little town of Bradford-on-Avon has managed to preserve almost more than any other place in England the old features which are fast vanishing elsewhere. We have already seen that most interesting untouched specimen of Saxon architecture the little Saxon church, which we should like to think is the actual church built by St. Aldhelm, but we are compelled to believe on the authority of experts that it is not earlier than the tenth century. In all probability a church was built by St. Aldhelm at Bradford, probably of wood, and was afterwards rebuilt in stone when the land had rest and the raids of the Danes had ceased, and King Canute ruled and encouraged the building of churches, and Bishops Dunstan and AEthelwold of Winchester were specially prominent in the work. Bradford, too, has its noble church, parts of which date back to Norman times; its famous fourteenth-century barn at Barton Farm, which has a fifteenth-century porch and gatehouse; many fine examples of the humbler specimens of domestic architecture; and the very interesting Kingston House of the seventeenth century, built by one of the rich clothiers of Bradford, when the little town (like Abingdon) "stondeth by clothing," and all the houses in the place were figuratively "built upon wool-packs." But we are thinking of bridges, and Bradford has two, the earlier one being a little footbridge by the abbey grange, now called Barton Farm. Miss Alice Dryden tells the story of the town bridge in her Memorials of Old Wiltshire. It was originally only wide enough for a string of packhorses to pass along it. The ribbed portions of the southernmost arches and the piers for the chapel are early fourteenth century, the other arches were built later. Bradford became so prosperous, and the stream of traffic so much increased, and wains took the place of packhorses, that the narrow bridge was not sufficient for it; so the good clothiers built in the time of James I a second bridge alongside the first. Orders were issued in 1617 and 1621 for "the repair of the very fair bridge consisting of many goodly arches of freestone," which had fallen into decay. The cost of repairing it was estimated at 200 marks. There is a building on the bridge corbelled out on a specially built pier of the bridge, the use of which is not at first sight evident. Some people call it the watch-house, and it has been used as a lock-up; but Miss Dryden tells us that it was a chapel, similar to those which we have seen on many other medieval bridges. It belonged to the Hospital of St. Margaret, which stood at the southern end of the bridge, where the Great Western Railway crosses the road. This chapel retains little of its original work, and was rebuilt when the bridge was widened in the time of James I. Formerly there was a niche for a figure looking up the stream, but this has gone with much else during the drastic restoration. That a bridge-chapel existed here is proved by Aubrey, who mentions "the chapel for masse in the middest of the bridge" at Bradford.



Sometimes bridges owe their origin to curious circumstances. There was an old bridge at Olney, Buckinghamshire, of which Cowper wrote when he sang:—

That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the flood.

The present bridge that spans the Ouse with three arches and a causeway has taken the place of the long bridge of Cowper's time. This long bridge was built in the days of Queen Anne by two squires, Sir Robert Throckmorton of Weston Underwood and William Lowndes of Astwood Manor. These two gentlemen were sometimes prevented from paying visits to one another by floods, as they lived on opposite sides of the Ouse. They accordingly built the long bridge in continuation of an older one, of which only a small portion remains at the north end. Sir Robert found the material and Mr. Lowndes the labour. This story reminds one of a certain road in Berks and Bucks, the milestones along which record the distance between Hatfield and Bath? Why Hatfield? It is not a place of great resort or an important centre of population. But when we gather that a certain Marquis of Salisbury was troubled with gout, and had frequently to resort to Bath for the "cure," and constructed the road for his special convenience at his own expense, we begin to understand the cause of the carving of Hatfield on the milestones.



The study of the bridges of England seems to have been somewhat neglected by antiquaries. You will often find some good account of a town or village in guide-books or topographical works, but the story of the bridges is passed over in silence. Owing to the reasons we have already stated, old bridges are fast disappearing and are being substituted by the hideous erections of iron and steel. It is well that we should attempt to record those that are left, photograph them and paint them, ere the march of modern progress, evinced by the traction-engine and the motor-car, has quite removed and destroyed them.



CHAPTER XV

OLD HOSPITALS AND ALMSHOUSES

There are in many towns and villages hospitals—not the large modern and usually unsightly buildings wherein the sick are cured, with wards all spick and span and up to date—but beautiful old buildings mellowed with age wherein men and women, on whom the snows of life have begun to fall thickly, may rest and recruit and take their ease before they start on the long, dark journey from which no traveller returns to tell to those he left behind how he fared.

Almshouses we usually call them now, but our forefathers preferred to call them hospitals, God's hostels, "God huis," as the Germans call their beautiful house of pity at Luebeck, where the tired-out and money-less folk might find harbourage. The older hospitals were often called "bede-houses," because the inmates were bound to pray for their founder and benefactors. Some medieval hospitals, memorials of the charity of pre-Reformation Englishmen, remain, but many were suppressed during the age of spoliation; and others have been so rebuilt and restored that there is little left of the early foundation.

We may notice three classes of these foundations. First, there are the pre-Reformation bede-houses or hospitals; the second group is composed of those which were built during the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I. The Civil War put a stop to the foundation of almshouses. The principal landowners were impoverished by the war or despoiled by the Puritans, and could not build; the charity of the latter was devoted to other purposes. With the Restoration of the Church and the Monarchy another era of the building of almshouses set in, and to this period very many of our existing institutions belong.



Of the earliest group we have several examples left. There is the noble hospital of St. Cross at Winchester, founded in the days of anarchy during the contest between Stephen and Matilda for the English throne. Its hospitable door is still open. Bishop Henry of Blois was its founder, and he made provision for thirteen poor men to be housed, boarded, and clothed, and for a hundred others to have a meal every day. He placed the hospital under the care of the Master of the Knights Hospitallers. Fortunately it was never connected with a monastery. Hence it escaped pillage and destruction at the dissolution of monastic houses. Bishop Henry was a great builder, and the church of the hospital is an interesting example of a structure of the Transition Norman period, when the round arch was giving way to the Early English pointed arch. To this foundation was added in 1443 by Cardinal Beaufort an extension called the "Almshouse of Noble Poverty," and it is believed that the present domestic buildings were erected by him.[58] The visitor can still obtain the dole of bread and ale at the gate of St. Cross. Winchester is well provided with old hospitals: St. John's was founded in 931 and refounded in 1289; St. Mary Magdalen, by Bishop Toclyve in 1173-88 for nine lepers; and Christ's Hospital in 1607.

[58] Mr. Nisbett gives a good account of the hospital in Memorials of Old Hampshire, and Mr. Champneys fully describes the buildings in the Architectural Review, October, 1903, and April, 1904.

We will visit some less magnificent foundations. Some are of a very simple type, resembling a church with nave and chancel. The nave part was a large hall divided by partitions on each side of an alley into little cells in which the bedesmen lived. Daily Mass was celebrated in the chancel, the chapel of hospital, whither the inmates resorted; but the sick and infirm who could not leave their cells were able to join in the service. St. Mary's Hospital, at Chichester, is an excellent example, as it retains its wooden cells, which are still used by the inmates. It was formerly a nunnery, but in 1229 the nuns departed and the almswomen took their place. It is of wide span with low side-walls, and the roof is borne by wooden pillars. There are eight cells of two rooms each, and beyond the screen is a little chapel, which is still used by the hospitallers.[59]

[59] The Treasury, November, 1907, an article on hospitals by Dr. Hermitage Day.

Archbishop Chichele founded a fine hospital at Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire, which saw his lowly birth, together with a school and college, about the year 1475. The building is still in existence and shows a good roof and fine Perpendicular window, but the twelve bedesmen and the one sister, who was to be chosen for her plainness, no longer use the structure.

Stamford can boast of a fine medieval hospital, the foundation of Thomas Browne in 1480 for the accommodation of ten old men and two women. A new quadrangle has been built for the inmates, but you can still see the old edifice with its nave of two storeys, its fifteenth-century stained glass, and its chapel with its screen and stalls and altar.

Stamford has another hospital which belongs to our second group. Owing to the destruction of monasteries, which had been great benefactors to the poor and centres of vast schemes of charity, there was sore need for almshouses and other schemes for the relief of the aged and destitute. The nouveaux riches, who had fattened on the spoils of the monasteries, sought to salve their consciences by providing for the wants of the poor, building grammar schools, and doing some good with their wealth. Hence many almshouses arose during this period. This Stamford home was founded by the great Lord Burghley in 1597. It is a picturesque group of buildings with tall chimneys, mullioned and dormer windows, on the bank of the Welland stream, and occupies the site of a much more ancient foundation.

There is the college at Cobham, in Kent, the buildings forming a pleasant quadrangle south of the church. Flagged pathways cross the greensward of the court, and there is a fine hall wherein the inmates used to dine together.

As we traverse the village streets we often meet with these grey piles of sixteenth-century almshouses, often low, one-storeyed buildings, picturesque and impressive, each house having a welcoming porch with a seat on each side and a small garden full of old-fashioned flowers. The roof is tiled, on which moss and lichen grow, and the chimney-stacks are tall and graceful. An inscription records the date and name of the generous founder with his arms and motto. Such a home of peace you will find at Quainton, in Buckinghamshire, founded, as an inscription records, "Anno Dom. 1687. These almshouses were then erected and endow'd by Richard Winwood, son and heir of Right Hon'ble Sir Ralph Winwood, Bart., Principal Secretary of State to King James y'e First." Within these walls dwell (according to the rules drawn up by Sir Ralph Verney in 1695) "three poor men—widowers,—to be called Brothers, and three poor women—widows,—to be called Sisters." Very strict were these rules for the government of the almshouses, as to erroneous opinions in any principle of religion, the rector of Quainton being the judge, the visiting of alehouses, the good conduct of the inmates, who were to be "no whisperers, quarrelers, evil speakers or contentious."

These houses at Quainton are very humble abodes; other almshouses are large and beautiful buildings erected by some rich merchant, or great noble, or London City company, for a large scheme of charity. Such are the beautiful almshouses in the Kingsland Road, Shoreditch, founded in the early part of the eighteenth century under the terms of the will of Sir Robert Geffery. They stand in a garden about an acre in extent, a beautiful oasis in the surrounding desert of warehouses, reminding the passer-by of the piety and loyal patriotism of the great citizens of London, and affording a peaceful home for many aged folk. This noble building, of great architectural dignity, with the figure of the founder over the porch and its garden with fine trees, has only just escaped the hands of the destroyer and been numbered among the bygone treasures of vanished England. It was seriously proposed to pull down this peaceful home of poor people and sell the valuable site to the Peabody Donation Fund for the erection of working-class dwellings. The almshouses are governed by the Ironmongers' Company, and this proposal was made; but, happily, the friends of ancient buildings made their protest to the Charity Commissioners, who have refused their sanction to the sale, and the Geffery Almshouses will continue to exist, continue their useful mission, and remain the chief architectural ornament in a district that sorely needs "sweetness and light."

City magnates who desired to build and endow hospitals for the aged nearly always showed their confidence in and affection for the Livery Companies to which they belonged by placing in their care these charitable foundations. Thus Sir Richard Whittington, of famous memory, bequeathed to the Mercers' Company all his houses and tenements in London, which were to be sold and the proceeds distributed in various charitable works. With this sum they founded a College of Priests, called Whittington College, which was suppressed at the Reformation, and the almshouses adjoining the old church of St. Michael Paternoster, for thirteen poor folk, of whom one should be principal or tutor. The Great Fire destroyed the buildings; they were rebuilt on the same site, but in 1835 they were fallen into decay, and the company re-erected them at Islington, where you will find Whittington College, providing accommodation for twenty-eight poor women. Besides this the Mercers have charge of Lady Mico's Almshouses at Stepney, founded in 1692 and rebuilt in 1857, and the Trinity Hospital at Greenwich, founded in 1615 by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton. This earl was of a very charitable disposition, and founded other hospitals at Castle Rising in Norfolk and Clun in Shropshire. The Mercers continue to manage the property and have built a new hospital at Shottisham, besides making grants to the others created by the founder. It is often the custom of the companies to expend out of their private income far more than they receive from the funds of the charities which they administer.



The Grocers' Company have almshouses and a Free Grammar School at Oundle in Northamptonshire, founded by Sir William Laxton in 1556, upon which they have expended vast sums of money. The Drapers administer the Mile End Almshouses and school founded in 1728 by Francis Bancroft, Sir John Jolles's almshouses at Tottenham, founded in 1618, and very many others. They have two hundred in the neighbourhood of London alone, and many others in different parts of the country. Near where I am writing is Lucas's Hospital at Wokingham, founded by Henry Lucas in 1663, which he placed in the charge of the company. It is a beautiful Carolian house with a central portion and two wings, graceful and pleasing in every detail. The chapel is situated in one wing and the master's house in the other, and there are sets of rooms for twelve poor men chosen from the parishes in the neighbourhood. The Fishmongers have the management of three important hospitals. At Bray, in Berkshire, famous for its notable vicar, there stands the ancient Jesus Hospital, founded in 1616 under the will of William Goddard, who directed that there should be built rooms with chimneys in the said hospital, fit and convenient for forty poor people to dwell and inhabit it, and that there should be one chapel or place convenient to serve Almighty God in for ever with public and divine prayers and other exercises of religion, and also one kitchen and bakehouse common to all the people of the said hospital. Jesus Hospital is a quadrangular building, containing forty almshouses surrounding a court which is divided into gardens, one of which is attached to each house. It has a pleasing entrance through a gabled brick porch which has over the Tudor-shaped doorway a statue of the founder and mullioned latticed windows. The old people live happy and contented lives, and find in the eventide of their existence a cheerful home in peaceful and beautiful surroundings. The Fishmongers also have almshouses at Harrietsham, in Kent, founded by Mark Quested, citizen and fishmonger of London, in 1642, which they rebuilt in 1772, and St. Peter's Hospital, Wandsworth, formerly called the Fishmongers' Almshouses. The Goldsmiths have a very palatial pile of almshouses at Acton Park, called Perryn's Almshouses, with a grand entrance portico, and most of the London companies provide in this way homes for their decayed members, so that they may pass their closing years in peace and freedom from care.



Fishermen, who pass their lives in storm and danger reaping the harvest of the sea, have not been forgotten by pious benefactors. One of the most picturesque buildings in Great Yarmouth is the Fishermen's Hospital, of which we give some illustrations. It was founded by the corporation of the town in 1702 for the reception of twenty old fishermen and their wives. It is a charming house of rest, with its gables and dormer windows and its general air of peace and repose. The old men look very comfortable after battling for so many years with the storms of the North Sea. Charles II granted to the hospital an annuity of L160 for its support, which was paid out of the excise on beer, but when the duty was repealed the annuity naturally ceased.

The old hospital at King's Lynn was destroyed during the siege, as this quaint inscription tells:—

THIS HOSPITAL WAS BURNT DOWN AT LIN SEGE AND REBULT 1649 NATH MAXEY MAYOR AND EDW ROBINSON ALDMAN TREASURER PRO TEM P.R.O.

Norwich had several important hospitals. Outside the Magdalen gates stood the Magdalen Hospital, founded by Bishop Herbert, the first bishop. It was a house for lepers, and some portions of the Norman chapel still exist in a farm-building by the roadside. The far-famed St. Giles's Hospital in Bishopsgate Street is an ancient foundation, erected by Bishop Walter Suffield in 1249 for poor chaplains and other poor persons. It nearly vanished at the Reformation era, like so many other kindred institutions, but Henry VIII and Edward VI granted it a new charter. The poor clergy were, however, left out in the cold, and the benefits were confined to secular folk. For the accommodation of its inmates the chancel of the church was divided by a floor into an upper and a lower storey, and this arrangement still exists, and you can still admire the picturesque ivy-clad tower, the wards with cosy ingle-nooks at either end and cubicles down the middle, the roof decorated with eagles, deemed to be the cognizance of Queen Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II, the quaint little cloister, and above all, the excellent management of this grand institution, the "Old Man's Hospital," as it is called, which provides for the necessities of 150 old folk, whose wants are cared for by a master and twelve nurses.



Let us travel far and visit another charming almshouse, Abbot's Hospital, at Guildford, which is an architectural gem and worthy of the closest inspection. It was founded by Archbishop Abbot in 1619, and is a noble building of mellowed brick with finely carved oak doors, graceful chimneys with their curious "crow-rests," noble staircases, interesting portraits, and rare books, amongst which is a Vinegar Bible. The chapel with its Flemish windows showing the story of Jacob and Esau, and oak carvings and almsbox dated 1619, is especially attractive. Here the founder retired in sadness and sorrow after his unfortunate day's hunting in Bramshill Park, where he accidentally shot a keeper, an incident which gave occasion to his enemies to blaspheme and deride him. Here the Duke of Monmouth was confined on his way to London after the battle of Sedgemoor. The details of the building are worthy of attention, especially the ornamented doors and doorways, the elaborate latches, beautifully designed and furnished with a spring, and elegant casement-fasteners. Guildford must have had a school of great artists of these window-fasteners. Near the hospital there is a very interesting house, No. 25 High Street, now a shop, but formerly the town clerk's residence and the lodgings of the judges of assize; no better series in England of beautifully designed window-fasteners can be found than in this house, erected in 1683; it also has a fine staircase like that at Farnham Castle, and some good plaster ceilings resembling Inigo Jones's work and probably done by his workmen.

The good town of Abingdon has a very celebrated hospital founded in 1446 by the Guild of the Holy Cross, a fraternity composed of "good men and true," wealthy merchants and others, which built the bridge, repaired roads, maintained a bridge priest and a rood priest, and held a great annual feast at which the brethren consumed as much as 6 calves, 16 lambs, 80 capons, 80 geese, and 800 eggs. It was a very munificent and beneficent corporation, and erected these almshouses for thirteen poor men and the same number of poor women. That hospital founded so long ago still exists. It is a curious and ancient structure in one storey, and is denoted Christ's Hospital. One of our recent writers on Berkshire topography, whose historical accuracy is a little open to criticism, gives a good description of the building:—

"It is a long range of chambers built of mellow brick and immemorial oak, having in their centre a small hall, darkly wainscoted, the very table in which makes a collector sinfully covetous. In front of the modest doors of the chambers inhabited by almsmen and almswomen runs a tiny cloister with oak pillars, so that the inmates may visit one another dryshod in any weather. Each door, too, bears a text from the Old or New Testament. A more typical relic of the old world, a more sequestered haven of rest, than this row of lowly buildings, looking up to the great church in front, and with its windows opening on to green turf bordered with flowers in the rear, it could not enter into the heart of man to imagine."[60]

[60] Highways and Byways in Berkshire.

We could spend endless time in visiting the old almshouses in many parts of the country. There is the Ford's Hospital in Coventry, erected in 1529, an extremely good specimen of late Gothic work, another example of which is found in St. John's Hospital at Rye. The Corsham Almshouses in Wiltshire, erected in 1663, are most picturesque without, and contain some splendid woodwork within, including a fine old reading-desk with carved seat in front. There is a large porch with an immense coat-of-arms over the door. In the region of the Cotswolds, where building-stone is plentiful, we find a noble set of almshouses at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, a gabled structure near the church with tall, graceful chimneys and mullioned windows, having a raised causeway in front protected by a low wall. Ewelme, in Oxfordshire, is a very attractive village with a row of cottages half a mile long, which have before their doors a sparkling stream dammed here and there into watercress beds. At the top of the street on a steep knoll stand church and school and almshouses of the mellowest fifteenth-century bricks, as beautiful and structurally sound as the pious founders left them. These founders were the unhappy William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk, and his good wife the Duchess Alice. The Duke inherited Ewelme through his wife Alice Chaucer, a kinswoman of the poet, and "for love of her and the commoditie of her landes fell much to dwell in Oxfordshire," and in 1430-40 was busy building a manor-place of "brick and Tymbre and set within a fayre mote," a church, an almshouse, and a school. The manor-place, or "Palace," as it was called, has disappeared, but the almshouse and school remain, witnesses of the munificence of the founders. The poor Duke, favourite minister of Henry VI, was exiled by the Yorkist faction, and beheaded by the sailors on his way to banishment. Twenty-five years of widowhood fell to the bereaved duchess, who finished her husband's buildings, called the almshouses "God's House," and then reposed beneath one of the finest monuments in England in the church hard by. The almshouses at Audley End, Essex, are amongst the most picturesque in the country. Such are some of these charming homes of rest that time has spared.

The old people who dwell in them are often as picturesque as their habitations. Here you will find an old woman with her lace-pillow and bobbins, spectacles on nose, and white bonnet with strings, engaged in working out some intricate lace pattern. In others you will see the inmates clad in their ancient liveries. The dwellers in the Coningsby Hospital at Hereford, founded in 1614 for old soldiers and aged servants, had a quaint livery consisting of "a fustian suit of ginger colour, of a soldier-like fashion, and seemly laced; a cloak of red cloth lined with red baize and reaching to the knees, to be worn in walks and journeys, and a gown of red cloth, reaching to the ankle, lined also with baize, to be worn within the hospital." They are, therefore, known as Red Coats. The almsmen of Ely and Rochester have cloaks. The inmates of the Hospital of St. Cross wear as a badge a silver cross potent. At Bottesford they have blue coats and blue "beef-eater" hats, and a silver badge on the left arm bearing the arms of the Rutland family—a peacock in its pride, surmounted by a coronet and surrounded by a garter.



It is not now the fashion to found almshouses. We build workhouses instead, vast ugly barracks wherein the poor people are governed by all the harsh rules of the Poor Law, where husband and wife are separated from each other, and "those whom God hath joined together are," by man and the Poor Law, "put asunder"; where the industrious labourer is housed with the lazy and ne'er-do-weel. The old almshouses were better homes for the aged poor, homes of rest after the struggle for existence, and harbours of refuge for the tired and weary till they embark on their last voyage.



CHAPTER XVI

VANISHING FAIRS

The "oldest inhabitants" of our villages can remember many changes in the social conditions of country life. They can remember the hard time of the Crimean war when bread was two shillings and eightpence a gallon, when food and work were both scarce, and starvation wages were doled out. They can remember the "machine riots," and tumultuous scenes at election times, and scores of interesting facts, if only you can get them to talk and tell you their recollections. The changed condition of education puzzles them. They can most of them read, and perhaps write a little, but they prefer to make their mark and get you to attest it with the formula, "the mark of J——N." Their schooling was soon over. When they were nine years of age they were ploughboys, and had a rough time with a cantankerous ploughman who often used to ply his whip on his lad or on his horses quite indiscriminately. They have seen many changes, and do not always "hold with" modern notions; and one of the greatest changes they have seen is in the fairs. They are not what they were. Some, indeed, maintain some of their usefulness, but most of them have degenerated into a form of mild Saturnalia, if not into a scandal and a nuisance; and for that reason have been suppressed.

Formerly quite small villages had their fairs. If you look at an old almanac you will see a list of fair-days with the names of the villages which, when the appointed days come round, cannot now boast of the presence of a single stall or merry-go-round. The day of the fair was nearly always on or near the festival of the patron saint to whom the church of that village is dedicated. There is, of course, a reason for this. The word "fair" is derived from the Latin word feria, which means a festival, the parish feast day. On the festival of the patron saint of a village church crowds of neighbours from adjoining villages would flock to the place, the inhabitants of which used to keep open house, and entertain all their relations and friends who came from a distance. They used to make booths and tents with boughs of trees near the church, and celebrated the festival with much thanksgiving and prayer. By degrees they began to forget their prayers and remembered only the feasting; country people flocked from far and near; the pedlars and hawkers came to find a market for their wares. Their stalls began to multiply, and thus the germ of a fair was formed.



In such primitive fairs the traders paid no toll or rent for their stalls, but by degrees the right of granting permission to hold a fair was vested in the King, who for various considerations bestowed this favour on nobles, merchant guilds, bishops, or monasteries. Great profits arose from these gatherings. The traders had to pay toll on all the goods which they brought to the fair, in addition to the payment of stallage or rent for the ground on which they displayed their merchandise, and also a charge on all the goods they sold. Moreover, the trades-folk of the town were obliged to close their shops during the days of the fair, and to bring their goods to the fair, so that the toll-owner might gain good profit withal.

We can imagine, or try to imagine, the roads and streets leading to the market-place thronged with traders and chapmen, the sellers of ribbons and cakes, minstrels and morris-dancers, smock-frocked peasants and sombre-clad monks and friars. Then a horn was sounded, and the lord of the manor, or the bishop's bailiff, or the mayor of the town proclaimed the fair; and then the cries of the traders, the music of the minstrels, the jingling of the bells of the morris-dancers, filled the air and added animation to the spectacle.

There is a curious old gateway, opposite the fair-ground at Smithfield, which has just recently narrowly escaped destruction, and very nearly became part of the vanished glories of England. Happily the donations of the public poured in so well that the building was saved. This Smithfield gateway dates back to the middle of the thirteenth century, the entrance to the Priory of St. Bartholomew, founded by Rahere, the court jester of Henry I, a century earlier. Every one knows the story of the building of this Priory, and has followed its extraordinary vicissitudes, the destruction of its nave at the dissolution of monasteries, the establishment of a fringe factory in the Lady Chapel, and the splendid and continuous work of restoration which has been going on during the last forty years. We are thankful that this choir of St. Bartholomew's Church should have been preserved for future generations as an example of the earliest and most important ecclesiastical buildings in London. But we are concerned now with this gateway, the beauty of which is partially concealed by the neighbouring shops and dwellings that surround it, as a poor and vulgar frame may disfigure some matchless gem of artistic painting. Its old stones know more about fairs than do most things. It shall tell its own history. You can still admire the work of the Early English builders, the receding orders with exquisite mouldings and dog-tooth ornament—the hall-mark of the early Gothic artists. It looks upon the Smithfield market, and how many strange scenes of London history has this gateway witnessed! Under its arch possibly stood London's first chronicler, Fitzstephen, the monk, when he saw the famous horse fairs that took place in Smithfield every Friday, which he described so graphically. Thither flocked earls, barons, knights, and citizens to look on or buy. The monk admired the nags with their sleek and shining coats, smoothly ambling along, the young blood colts not yet accustomed to the bridle, the horses for burden, strong and stout-limbed, and the valuable chargers of elegant shape and noble height, with nimbly moving ears, erect necks, and plump haunches. He waxes eloquent over the races, the expert jockeys, the eager horses, the shouting crowds. "The riders, inspired with the love of praise and the hope of victory, clap spurs to their flying horses, lashing them with their whips, and inciting them by their shouts"; so wrote the worthy monk Fitzstephen. He evidently loved a horse-race, but he need not have given us the startling information, "their chief aim is to prevent a competitor getting before them." That surely would be obvious even to a monk. He also examined the goods of the peasants, the implements of husbandry, swine with their long sides, cows with distended udders, Corpora magna boum, lanigerumque pecus, mares fitted for the plough or cart, some with frolicsome colts running by their sides. A very animated scene, which must have delighted the young eyes of the stone arch in the days of its youth, as it did the heart of the monk.

Still gayer scenes the old gate has witnessed. Smithfield was the principal spot in London for jousts, tournaments, and military exercises, and many a grand display of knightly arms has taken place before this priory gate. "In 1357 great and royal jousts were then holden in Smithfield; there being present the Kings of England, France, and Scotland, with many other nobles and great estates of divers lands," writes Stow. Gay must have been the scene in the forty-eighth year of Edward III, when Dame Alice Perrers, the King's mistress, as Lady of the Sun, rode from the Tower of London to Smithfield accompanied by many lords and ladies, every lady leading a lord by his horse-bridle, and there began a great joust which endured seven days after. The lists were set in the great open space with tiers of seats around, a great central canopy for the Queen of Beauty, the royal party, and divers tents and pavilions for the contending knights and esquires. It was a grand spectacle, adorned with all the pomp and magnificence of medieval chivalry. Froissart describes with consummate detail the jousts in the fourteenth year of Richard II, before a grand company, when sixty coursers gaily apparelled for the jousts issued from the Tower of London ridden by esquires of honour, and then sixty ladies of honour mounted on palfreys, each lady leading a knight with a chain of gold, with a great number of trumpets and other instruments of music with them. On arriving at Smithfield the ladies dismounted, the esquires led the coursers which the knights mounted, and after their helmets were set on their heads proclamation was made by the heralds, the jousts began, "to the great pleasure of the beholders." But it was not all pomp and pageantry. Many and deadly were the fights fought in front of the old gate, when men lost their lives or were borne from the field mortally wounded, or contended for honour and life against unjust accusers. That must have been a sorry scene in 1446, when a rascally servant, John David, accused his master, William Catur, of treason, and had to face the wager of battle in Smithfield. The master was well beloved, and inconsiderate friends plied him with wine so that he was not in a condition to fight, and was slain by his servant. But Stow reminds us that the prosperity of the wicked is frail. Not long after David was hanged at Tyburn for felony, and the chronicler concludes: "Let such false accusers note this for example, and look for no better end without speedy repentance." He omits to draw any moral from the intemperance of the master and the danger of drunkenness.

But let this suffice for the jousts in Smithfield. The old gateway heard on one occasion strange noises in the church, Archbishop Boniface raging with oaths not to be recited, and sounds of strife and shrieks and angry cries. This foreigner, Archbishop of Canterbury, had dared to come with his armed retainers from Provence to hold a visitation of the priory. The canons received him with solemn pomp, but respectfully declined to be visited by him, as they had their own proper visitor, a learned man, the Bishop of London, and did not care for another inspector. Boniface lost his temper, struck the sub-prior, saying, "Indeed, doth it become you English traitors so to answer me?" He tore in pieces the rich cope of the sub-prior; the canons rushed to their brother's rescue and knocked the Archbishop down; but his men fell upon the canons and beat them and trod them under foot. The old gateway was shocked and grieved to see the reverend canons running beneath the arch bloody and miry, rent and torn, carrying their complaint to the Bishop and then to the King at Westminster. After which there was much contention, and the whole city rose and would have torn the Archbishop into small pieces, shouting, "Where is this ruffian? that cruel smiter!" and much else that must have frightened and astonished Master Boniface and made him wish that he had never set foot in England, but stayed quietly in peaceful Provence.

But this gateway loved to look upon the great fair that took place on the Feast of St. Bartholomew. This was granted to Rahere the Prior and to the canons and continued for seven centuries, until the abuses of modern days destroyed its character and ended its career. The scene of the actual fair was within the priory gates in the churchyard, and there during the three days of its continuance stood the booths and standings of the clothiers and drapers of London and of all England, of pewterers, and leather-sellers, and without in the open space before the priory were tents and booths and a noisy crowd of traders, pleasure-seekers, friars, jesters, tumblers, and stilt-walkers. This open space was just outside the turreted north wall of the city, and was girt by tall elms, and near it was a sheet of water whereon the London boys loved to skate when the frost came. It was the city playground, and the city gallows were placed there before they were removed to Tyburn. This dread implement of punishment stood under the elms where Cow Lane now runs: and one fair day brave William Wallace was dragged there in chains at the tails of horses, bruised and bleeding, and foully done to death after the cruel fashion of the age. All this must have aged the heart of the old gateway, and especially the sad sight of the countless burials that took place in the year of the Plague, 1349, when fifty thousand were interred in the burial ground of the Carthusians, and few dared to attend the fair for fear of the pestilence.

Other terrible things the gateway saw: the burning of heretics. Not infrequently did these fires of persecution rage. One of the first of these martyrs was John Bedley, a tailor, burnt in Smithfield in 1410. In Fox's Book of Martyrs you can see a woodcut of the burning of Anne Ascue and others, showing a view of the Priory and the crowd of spectators who watched the poor lady die. Not many days afterwards the fair-folk assembled, while the ground was still black with her ashes, and dogs danced and women tumbled and the devil jeered in the miracle play on the spot where martyrs died.

We should need a volume to describe all the sights of this wondrous fair, the church crowded with worshippers, the halt and sick praying for healing, the churchyard full of traders, the sheriff proclaiming new laws, the young men bowling at ninepins, pedlars shouting their wares, players performing the miracle play on a movable stage, bands of pipers, lowing oxen, neighing horses, and bleating sheep. It was a merry sight that medieval Bartholomew Fair.



We still have Cloth Fair, a street so named, with a remarkable group of timber houses with over-sailing storeys and picturesque gables. It is a very dark and narrow thoroughfare, and in spite of many changes it remains a veritable "bit" of old London, as it was in the seventeenth century. These houses have sprung up where in olden days the merchants' booths stood for the sale of cloth. It was one of the great annual markets of the nation, the chief cloth fair in England that had no rival. Hither came the officials of the Merchant Tailors' Company bearing a silver yard measure, to try the measures of the clothiers and drapers to see if they were correct. And so each year the great fair went on, and priors and canons lived and died and were buried in the church or beneath the grass of the churchyard. But at length the days of the Priory were numbered, and it changed masters. The old gateway wept to see the cowled Black Canons depart when Henry VIII dissolved the monastery; its heart nearly broke when it heard the sounds of axes and hammers, crowbars and saws, at work on the fabric of the church pulling down the grand nave, and it scowled at the new owner, Sir Richard Rich, a prosperous political adventurer, who bought the whole estate for L1064 11s. 3d., and made a good bargain.

The monks, a colony of Black Friars, came in again with Queen Mary, but they were driven out again when Elizabeth reigned, and Lord Rich again resumed possession of the estate, which passed to his heirs, the Earls of Warwick and Holland. Each Sunday, however, the old gate welcomed devout worshippers on their way to the church, the choir having been converted into the parish church of the district, and was not sorry to see in Charles's day a brick tower rising at the west end.

In spite of the changes of ownership the fair went on increasing with the increase of the city. But the scene has changed. In the time of James I the last elm tree had gone, and rows of houses, fair and comely buildings, had sprung up. The old muddy plain had been drained and paved, and the traders and pleasure-seekers could no longer dread the wading through a sea of mud. We should like to follow the fair through the centuries, and see the sights and shows. The puppet shows were always attractive, and the wild beasts, the first animal ever exhibited being "a large and beautiful young camel from Grand Cairo in Egypt. This creature is twenty-three years old, his head and neck like those of a deer." One Flockton during the last half of the eighteenth century was the prince of puppet showmen, and he called his puppets the Italian Fantocinni. He made his figures work in a most lifelike style. He was a conjurer too, and the inventor of a wonderful clock which showed nine hundred figures at work upon a variety of trades. "Punch and Judy" always attracted crowds, and we notice the handbills of Mr. Robinson, conjurer to the Queen, and of Mr. Lane, who sings:

It will make you to laugh, it will drive away gloom, To see how the eggs will dance round the room; And from another egg a bird there will fly, Which makes all the company all for to cry, etc.

The booths for actors were a notable feature of the fair. We read of Fielding's booth at the George Inn, of the performance of the Beggar's Opera in 1728, of Penkethman's theatrical booth when Wat Taylor and Jack Straw was acted, of the new opera called The Generous Free Mason or the Constant Lady, of Jephthah's Rash Vow, and countless other plays that saw the light at Bartholomew Fair. The audience included not only the usual frequenters of fairs, but even royal visitors, noblemen, and great ladies flocked to the booths for amusement, and during its continuance the playhouses of London were closed.

I must not omit to mention the other attractions, the fireproof lady, Madam Giradelli, who put melted lead in her mouth, passed red-hot iron over her body, thrust her arm into fire, and washed her hands in boiling oil; Mr. Simon Paap, the Dutch dwarf, twenty-eight inches high; bear-dancing, the learned pig, the "beautiful spotted negro boy," peep-shows, Wombell's royal menagerie, the learned cats, and a female child with two perfect heads.

But it is time to ring down the curtain. The last days of the fair were not edifying. Scenes of riot and debauch, of violence and lawlessness disgraced the assembly. Its usefulness as a gathering for trade purposes had passed away. It became a nuisance and a disgrace to London. In older days the Lord Mayor used to ride in his grand coach to our old gateway, and there proclaim it with a great flourish of trumpets. In 1850 his worship walked quietly to the accustomed place, and found that there was no fair to proclaim, and five years later the formality was entirely dispensed with, and silence reigned over the historic ground over which century after century the hearts of our forefathers throbbed with the outspoken joys of life. The old gateway, like many aged folk, has much on which to meditate in its advanced age.



Many other fairs have been suppressed in recent years, but some survive and thrive with even greater vigour than ever. Some are hiring fairs, where you may see young men with whipcord in their caps standing in front of inns ready to be hired by the farmers who come to seek labourers. Women and girls too come to be hired, but their number decreases every year. Such is the Abingdon fair, which no rustic in the adjoining villages ever thinks of missing. We believe that the Nottingham Goose Fair, which is attended by very large crowds, is also a hiring fair. "Pleasure fairs" in several towns and cities show no sign of diminished popularity. The famous St. Giles's Fair at Oxford is attended by thousands, and excursion trains from London, Cardiff, Reading, and other large towns bring crowds to join in the humours of the gathering, the shows covering all the broad space between St. Giles's Church and George Street. Reading Michaelmas Pleasure Fair is always a great attraction. The fair-ground is filled from end to end with roundabouts driven by steam, which also plays a hideous organ that grinds out popular tunes, swings, stalls, shows, menageries, and all "the fun of the fair." You can see biographs, hear phonographs, and a penny-in-the-slot will introduce you to wonderful sights, and have your fortune told, or shy at coco-nuts or Aunt Sally, or witness displays of boxing, or have a photograph taken of yourself, or watch weird melodramas, and all for a penny or two. No wonder the fair is popular.



There is no reverence paid in these modern gatherings to old-fashioned ways and ancient picturesque customs, but in some places these are still observed with punctilious exactness. The quaint custom of "proclaiming the fair" at Honiton, in Devonshire, is observed every year, the town having obtained the grant of a fair from the lord of the manor so long ago as 1257. The fair still retains some of the picturesque characteristics of bygone days. The town crier, dressed in old-world uniform, and carrying a pole decorated with gay flowers and surmounted by a large gilt model of a gloved hand, publicly announces the opening of the fair as follows: "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The fair's begun, the glove is up. No man can be arrested till the glove is taken down." Hot coins are then thrown amongst the children. The pole and glove remain displayed until the end of the fair.

Nor have all the practical uses of fairs vanished. On the Berkshire downs is the little village of West Ilsley; there from time immemorial great sheep fairs are held, and flocks are brought thither from districts far and wide. Every year herds of Welsh ponies congregate at Blackwater, in Hampshire, driven thither by inveterate custom. Every year in an open field near Cambridge the once great Stourbridge fair is held, first granted by King John to the Hospital for Lepers, and formerly proclaimed with great state by the Vice-Chancellor of the University and the Mayor of Cambridge. This was one of the largest fairs in Europe. Merchants of all nations attended it. The booths were planted in a cornfield, and the circuit of the fair, which was like a well-governed city, was about three miles. All offences committed therein were tried, as at other fairs, before a special court of pie-poudre, the derivation of which word has been much disputed, and I shall not attempt to conjecture or to decide. The shops were built in rows, having each a name, such as Garlick Row, Booksellers' Row, or Cooks' Row; there were the cheese fair, hop fair, wood fair; every trade was represented, and there were taverns, eating-houses, and in later years playhouses of various descriptions. As late as the eighteenth century it is said that one hundred thousand pounds' worth of woollen goods were sold in a week in one row alone. But the glories of Stourbridge fair have all departed, and it is only a ghost now of its former greatness.

The Stow Green pleasure fair, in Lincolnshire, which has been held annually for upwards of eight hundred years, having been established in the reign of Henry III, has practically ceased to exist. Held on an isolated common two miles from Billingborough, it was formerly one of the largest fairs in England for merchandise, and originally lasted for three weeks. Now it is limited to two days, and when it opened last year there were but few attractions.

Fairs have enriched our language with at least one word. There is a fair at Ely founded in connexion with the abbey built by St. Etheldreda, and at this fair a famous "fairing" was "St. Audrey's laces." St. Audrey, or Etheldreda, in the days of her youthful vanity was very fond of wearing necklaces and jewels. "St. Audrey's laces" became corrupted into "Tawdry laces"; hence the adjective has come to be applied to all cheap and showy pieces of female ornament.

Trade now finds its way by means of other channels than fairs. Railways and telegrams have changed the old methods of conducting the commerce of the country. But, as we have said, many fairs have contrived to survive, and unless they degenerate into a scandal and a nuisance it is well that they should be continued. Education and the increasing sobriety of the nation may deprive them of their more objectionable features, and it would be a pity to prevent the rustic from having some amusements which do not often fall to his lot, and to forbid him from enjoying once a year "all the fun of the fair."



CHAPTER XVII

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD DOCUMENTS

The history of England is enshrined in its ancient documents. Some of it may be read in its stone walls and earthworks. The builders of our churches stamped its story on their stones, and by the shape of arch and design of window, by porch and doorway, tower and buttress you can read the history of the building and tell its age and the dates of its additions and alterations. Inscriptions, monuments, and brasses help to fill in the details; but all would be in vain if we had no documentary evidence, no deeds and charters, registers and wills, to help us to build up the history of each town and monastery, castle and manor. Even after the most careful searches in the Record Office and the British Museum it is very difficult oftentimes to trace a manorial descent. You spend time and labour, eyesight and midnight oil in trying to discover missing links, and very often it is all in vain; the chain remains broken, and you cannot piece it together. Some of us whose fate it is to have to try and solve some of these genealogical problems, and spend hours over a manorial descent, are inclined to envy other writers who fill their pages currente calamo and are ignorant of the joys and disappointments of research work.

In the making of the history of England patient research and the examination of documents are, of course, all-important. In the parish chest, in the municipal charters and records, in court rolls, in the muniment-rooms of guilds and city companies, of squire and noble, in the Record Office, Pipe Rolls, Close Rolls, royal letters and papers, etc., the real history of the country is contained. Masses of Rolls and documents of all kinds have in these late years been arranged, printed, and indexed, enabling the historical student to avail himself of vast stores of information which were denied to the historian of an earlier age, or could only be acquired by the expenditure of immense toil.

Nevertheless, we have to deplore the disappearance of large numbers of priceless manuscripts, the value of which was not recognized by their custodians. Owing to the ignorance and carelessness of these keepers of historic documents vast stores have been hopelessly lost or destroyed, and have vanished with much else of the England that is vanishing. We know of a Corporation—that of Abingdon, in Berkshire, the oldest town in the royal county and anciently its most important—which possessed an immense store of municipal archives. These manuscript books would throw light upon the history of the borough; but in their wisdom the members of the Corporation decided that they should be sold for waste paper! A few gentlemen were deputed to examine the papers in order to see if anything was worth preserving. They spent a few hours on the task, which would have required months for even a cursory inspection, and much expert knowledge, which these gentlemen did not possess, and reported that there was nothing in the documents of interest or importance, and the books and papers were sold to a dealer. Happily a private gentleman purchased the "waste paper," which remains in his hands, and was not destroyed: but this example only shows the insecurity of much of the material upon which local and municipal history depends.

Court rolls, valuable wills and deeds are often placed by noble owners and squires in the custody of their solicitors. They repose in peace in safes or tin boxes with the name of the client printed on them. Recent legislation has made it possible to prove a title without reference to all the old deeds. Hence the contents of these boxes are regarded only as old lumber and of no value. A change is made in the office. The old family solicitor dies, and the new man proceeds with the permission of his clients to burn all these musty papers, which are of immense value in tracing the history of a manor or of a family. Some years ago a leading family solicitor became bankrupt. His office was full of old family deeds and municipal archives. What happened? A fire was kindled in the garden, and for a whole fortnight it was fed with parchment deeds and rolls, many of them of immense value to the genealogist and the antiquary. It was all done very speedily, and no one had a chance to interfere. This is only one instance of what we fear has taken place in many offices, the speedy disappearance of documents which can never be replaced.

From the contents of the parish chests, from churchwardens' account-books, we learn much concerning the economic history of the country, and the methods of the administration of local and parochial government. As a rule persons interested in such matters have to content themselves with the statements of the ecclesiastical law books on the subject of the repair of churches, the law of church rates, the duties of churchwardens, and the constitution and power of vestries. And yet there has always existed a variety of customs and practices which have stood for ages on their prescriptive usage with many complications and minute differentiations. These old account-books and minute-books of the churchwardens in town and country are a very large but a very perishable and rapidly perishing treasury of information on matters the very remembrance of which is passing away. Yet little care is taken of these books. An old book is finished and filled up with entries; a new book is begun. No one takes any care of the old book. It is too bulky for the little iron register safe. A farmer takes charge of it; his children tear out pages on which to make their drawings; it is torn, mutilated, and forgotten, and the record perishes. All honour to those who have transcribed these documents with much labour and endless pains and printed them. They will have gained no money for their toil. The public do not show their gratitude to such laborious students by purchasing many copies, but the transcribers know that they have fitted another stone in the Temple of Knowledge, and enabled antiquaries, genealogists, economists, and historical inquirers to find material for their pursuits.

The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary's, Thame, and some of the most interesting in the kingdom, are being printed in the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Archaeological Journal. The originals were nearly lost. Somehow they came into the possession of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society. The volume was lent to the late Rev. F. Lee, in whose library it remained and could not be recovered. At his death it was sold with his other books, and found its way to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. There it was transcribed by Mr. Patterson Ellis, and then went back to the Buckinghamshire Society after its many wanderings. It dates back to the fifteenth century, and records many curious items of pre-Reformation manners and customs.

From these churchwardens' accounts we learn how our forefathers raised money for the expenses of the church and of the parish. Provision for the poor, mending of roads, the improvement of agriculture by the killing of sparrows, all came within the province of the vestry, as well as the care of the church and churchyard. We learn about such things as "Gatherings" at Hocktide, May-day, All Hallow-day, Christmas, and Whitsuntide, the men stopping the women on one day and demanding money, while on the next day the women retaliated, and always gained more for the parish fund than those of the opposite sex: Church Ales, the Holy Loaf, Paschal Money, Watching the Sepulchre, the duties of clerks and clergymen, and much else, besides the general principles of local self-government, which the vestrymen carried on until quite recent times. There are few books that provide greater information or more absorbing interest than these wonderful books of accounts. It is a sad pity that so many have vanished.

The parish register books have suffered less than the churchwardens' accounts, but there has been terrible neglect and irreparable loss. Their custody has been frequently committed to ignorant parish clerks, who had no idea of their utility beyond their being occasionally the means of putting a shilling into their pockets for furnishing extracts. Sometimes they were in the care of an incumbent who was forgetful, careless, or negligent. Hence they were indifferently kept, and baptisms, burials, and marriages were not entered as they ought to have been. In one of my own register books an indignant parson writes in the year 1768: "There does not appear any one entry of a Baptism, Marriage, or Burial in the old Register for nine successive years, viz. from the year 1732 till the year 1741, when this Register commences." The fact was that the old parchment book beginning A.D. 1553 was quite full and crowded with names, and the rector never troubled to provide himself with a new one. Fortunately this sad business took place long before our present septuagenarians were born, or there would be much confusion and uncertainty with regard to old-age pensions.

The disastrous period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth caused great confusion and many defects in the registers. Very often the rector was turned out of his parish; the intruding minister, often an ignorant mechanic, cared naught for registers. Registrars were appointed in each parish who could scarcely sign their names, much less enter a baptism. Hence we find very frequent gaps in the books from 1643 to 1660. At Tarporley, Cheshire, there is a break from 1643 to 1648, upon which a sorrowful vicar remarks:—

"This Intermission hapned by reason of the great wars obliterating memorials, wasting fortunes, and slaughtering persons of all sorts."

The Parliamentary soldiers amused themselves by tearing out the leaves in the registers for the years 1604 to the end of 1616 in the parish of Wimpole, Cambridgeshire.

There is a curious note in the register of Tunstall, Kent. There seems to have been a superfluity of members of the family of Pottman in this parish, and the clergyman appears to have been tired of recording their names in his books, and thus resolves:—

"1557 Mary Pottman nat. & bapt. 15 Apr. Mary Pottman n. & b. 29 Jan. Mary Pottman sep. 22 Aug. 1567 From henceforw^{d} I omitt the Pottmans."

Fire has played havoc with parish registers. The old register of Arborfield, Berkshire, was destroyed by a fire at the rectory. Those at Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, were burnt in a fire which consumed two-thirds of the town in 1676, and many others have shared the same fate. The Spaniards raided the coast of Cornwall in 1595 and burnt the church at Paul, when the registers perished in the conflagration.

Wanton destruction has caused the disappearance of many parish books. There was a parish clerk at Plungar in Leicestershire who combined his ecclesiastical duties with those of a grocer. He found the pages of the parish register very useful for wrapping up his groceries. The episcopal registry of Ely seems to have been plundered at some time of its treasures, as some one purchased a book entitled Registrum causarum Consistorii Eliensis de Tempore Domini Thome de Arundele Episcopi Eliensis, a large quarto, written on vellum, containing 162 double pages, which was purchased as waste paper at a grocer's shop at Cambridge together with forty or fifty old books belonging to the registry of Ely. The early registers at Christ Church, Hampshire, were destroyed by a curate's wife who had made kettle-holders of them, and would perhaps have consumed the whole parish archives in this homely fashion, had not the parish clerk, by a timely interference, rescued the remainder. One clergyman, being unable to transcribe certain entries which were required from his registers, cut them out and sent them by post; and an Essex clerk, not having ink and paper at hand for copying out an extract, calmly took out his pocket-knife and cut out two leaves, handing them to the applicant. Sixteen leaves of another old register were cut out by the clerk, who happened to be a tailor, in order to supply himself with measures. Tradesmen seem to have found these books very useful. The marriage register of Hanney, Berkshire, from 1754 to 1760 was lost, but later on discovered in a grocer's shop.

Deplorable has been the fate of these old books, so valuable to the genealogist. Upon the records contained there the possession of much valuable property may depend. The father of the present writer was engaged in proving his title to an estate, and required certificates of all the births, deaths, and marriages that had occurred in the family during a hundred years. All was complete save the record of one marriage. He discovered that his ancestor had eloped with a young lady, and the couple had married in London at a City church. The name of the church where the wedding was said to have taken place was suggested to him, but he discovered that it had been pulled down. However, the old parish clerk was discovered, who had preserved the books; the entry was found, and all went well and the title to the estate established. How many have failed to obtain their rights and just claims through the gross neglect of the keepers or custodians of parochial documents?