commemorate Princess Elizabeth, Charles I.’s deformed and sickly
daughter, buried in the old church 1650; but her tomb had been forgotten
till the accidental discovery of the coffin in 1793. She is represented
as found dead by her attendants, according to tradition, with her face
resting on the pages of an open Bible, the gift of her father; and a
happy touch of symbolism shows the iron bars of her life broken by
death. Along with this monument, Queen Victoria contributed two memorial
windows and a medallion of the Prince Consort by the same sculptor.
There is no room for a churchyard in St Thomas’s Square; but across
South Street will be found the old cemetery, close packed with graves.
One, seen from the path leading along it, hints at a story too common a
century ago, an ugly obelisk to the memory of Valentine Gray, “the
little sweep,” erected by public subscription “in testimony of the
general feeling for suffering innocence.” Here is buried John Hamilton
Reynolds, Keats’ friend, and Hood’s brother-in-law, who himself in youth
bid fair to earn poetic fame. He is understood to be part author of
Hood’s _Odes to Great People_; and he was to have collaborated with
Keats in a volume of Italian tales, not to speak of work of his own like
“a runaway ring at Wordsworth’s Peter Bell”; but after penning stanzas
not unsuccessfully, he had the singular fate of taking to engrossing as
a solicitor. He seems to have grown soured or sottish in his later
life, which he ended obscurely as an official of the Newport County
Court.
Of the few old buildings left in Newport, the most remarkable is the
Jacobean Grammar School at the corner of Lugley Street and the road
going down to cross Towngate bridge for Parkhurst and West Cowes. The
old portion, for a later addition has been made, is interesting not only
in itself, but as understood to have housed Charles I. during his last
abortive negotiations with the Parliament, at the end of which the king
was hurried away to his doom. Here, at that day, it was usual to receive
captains and other great men coming into the Island, with an oration
prepared by the schoolmaster and recited by a promising pupil; but one
fears that on his later appearances at Newport poor Charles was somewhat
scrimply treated in the way of loyal addresses.
Visitors to Newport nowadays come mainly for the sake of Carisbrooke
Castle, which is perhaps the chief attraction of the Island, drawing
thousands of excursionists on a holiday occasion. Carisbrooke, at one
time overshadowing the humble beginnings of Newport, is now almost one
of its suburbs, the distance being only a mile or so. From the end of
High Street, the way is by the Mall, a dignified parade that suggests
Bath or Clifton. The road divides at a memorial cross to Sir John
Simeon, Tennyson’s friend and neighbour at Swainston, notable as the
first Catholic to sit in a modern parliament, though he belonged to a
family whose theological associations were expressed by the Simeon Trust
for stocking pulpits with Evangelical divines. Either fork leads to
Carisbrooke, that to the right being the highway for the village, and
the other going more directly to the castle, under a height on which is
the cemetery.
The Windsor of Newport is in itself a place to delight our American
guests, a long, steep village street of true British irregularity,
giving off straggling lanes of rose-wreathed cottages, through which, in
the hollow, flows a clear and shallow brook, bordered by luxuriant
hedges, and by notices of “Teas Provided.” The main thoroughfare,
mounting up to the Church, shows an unusual number of hotels and other
places of entertainment; and the excursion vehicles that rendezvous here
in summer rather disturb the peaceful charm of Carisbrooke, which too
evidently lives on its visitors.
What is left of the Church, originally a double one divided between the
parish and a priory that stood here, still makes a spacious structure,
rearing the best tower in the Island, and enshrining some monuments and
relics, most notable among them the tomb of Sir Nicholas Wadham’s wife,
two generations before the founder of Wadham College. A quaint wooden
tablet recalls the career of William Keeling, one of the earliest of our
East Indian officials, whose name is preserved by the Keeling or Cocos
Islands discovered by him far out in the Indian Ocean, in our time to
be occupied by a Scottish family named Ross, who made this atoll group
into a thriving settlement. The churchyard has a good show of old
tombstones, including a weeping willow, railed in, as fanciful memorial
of a former vicar.
A late incumbent was the Rev. E. Boucher James, whose Archæological and
Historical Letters made valuable contributions to the annals of the
Island. He does not omit to dig up the buried renown of his predecessor,
the Rev. Alexander Ross, that erudite and voluminous Scot, now
remembered only by the luck of rhyme that made a “sage philosopher” to
have “read Alexander Ross over,” yet by his pen or his preaching, or
somehow, he seems to have gained a considerable fortune, part of which
he left to the poor of Carisbrooke. Any modern reader who cares to
tackle this once-esteemed author, might try a spell at his “Πανσεβεια:
View of all Religions,” which is still to be seen at libraries, if not
on railway bookstalls. Another Carisbrooke worthy commemorated by Mr
James was William Stephens, who, after losing his fortune and his seat
as member for Newport, took part in General Oglethorpe’s philanthropic
plan for settling Georgia, came to be president of the colony, and ended
his life rather miserably in squabbles with the disciples of Whitfield
and other discontented immigrants. Among this learned parson’s records
is the pretty story of Dorothy Osborne, who, travelling with her father
and brother in the days of the Civil War, at an inn hereabouts fell in
with the future Sir William Temple, and the beginning of their courtship
was through one of the young men scrawling on the window some
disrespectful words about the Parliament, which led to the whole party
being haled before the governor, to be released when Dorothy took the
offence on herself: those stern Ironsides did not war against ladies.
More than once the late vicar has to speak of his “friend and
parishioner,” Henry Morley, who here ended the labours on English
literature that made his name well known both in England and America.
Beside the parsonage is a sixpenny show of pavements, and other remains
of a Roman villa unearthed about half a century ago, but since thrown
into the shade by the larger one discovered at Brading. A more recent
sign of Roman invasion is the establishment here of foreign religious
communities, driven by French secularism into this pleasant exile. It is
no common village that clusters about the tower, looking down “from its
centuries of grey calm on the fitful stir and fret around it, and the
fevered hopes and fears that must end at last in the quiet green mounds
at its feet.”
The Castle stands across the valley, where its grey walls, buoyed by a
flagstaff, hardly peep out above the wooded slopes and the thick
greenery that floods the moat. This most picturesquely situated pile
represents a very ancient fortress, held by the Romans, as by ruder
warriors before them, then expanded and strengthened according to the
needs of different times, so as now in its half-dilapidated,
half-restored state, to form a charming medley of ruinous repair,
wreathed with various historic memories, and specially haunted by those
of the last year in which its walls were sternly guarded.
The oldest part is the Norman Keep, raised upon a mound that gives a
fine prospect over Newport and down the Medina. Beautiful views can also
be had from the moated walls within which Carisbrooke’s inner defences
were enclosed by an Italian engineer in the days of the Armada. His work
appears to have been stopped by the failure of that enterprise; had it
been completed after his designs, this would have made the strongest
fortress in Elizabethan England; and it enjoys the distinction of a
virgin stronghold with no record of capture, unless may be counted to
the contrary its honourable surrender by Lady Portland’s tiny garrison
to the Parliamentary forces. The outer entrance bears the date 1598. The
massive inner Gate-house, begun at the same time as the Keep, shows work
of different periods, including recent restoration. Here, as so often in
the Island, something has to be paid for admission; and there are
further small charges for what an irreverent mind might term the
side-shows. The main attraction is the remains of the royal prison that
gives this castle its special interest as scene of almost the latest
English romance in the history of such “grey and ivied walls where ruin
greenly dwells.” Its earliest note
[Illustration: CARISBROOKE CASTLE]
in more misty annals seems to be that here Sir Bevis of Hampton, having
overcome his wicked stepfather, Sir Murdour, caused that traitor to be
boiled to death in a caldron of pitch and brimstone, one of the facts
not now known to “every schoolboy.” But such a well-informed personage
is no doubt aware how the most famous event of this castle’s story was
King Charles’ confinement here.
After his escape from Hampton Court in November 1647, attended by three
gentlemen, the king made for the Solent, and crossed to the Isle of
Wight, believing the Governor, Colonel Hammond, to be favourable to him.
But Hammond, a connection of Cromwell, and son-in-law of John Hampden,
received Charles as a prisoner rather than a sovereign,--at first,
indeed, treated with respect and allowed to ride out hunting about
Parkhurst Forest, with the governor in his train. Carisbrooke was so
slightly guarded, that the king judged it easy to escape when he
pleased. At the end of the year, he did propose to escape to Southampton
down the Medina, but found himself baffled by a change of wind to the
north. After that, he was kept in closer restraint, most of his faithful
attendants being dismissed, and the Castle made a real prison. One
Captain Burley tried to raise a rescue for him at Newport, but was taken
prisoner, to be with legal mockery tried and executed for treason
against the king in his parliament.
Poor Charles was soon stripped of what royal ceremonial had been left
him. For exercise he walked up and down the Tilt Yard turned into a
bowling-green, or round the ramparts, looking sadly out on the green
slopes that bounded his view. He spent much time in reading, writing,
and gloomy meditation. Now, according to a discredited tradition, he
finished that _Eikon Basilike_ which has been almost conclusively shown
to be the work of Dr Thomas Gauden. Nor should his admirers press a
dubious title for him as poet, in the verses entitled _Majesty in
Misery_, that begin by a rather lame invocation--
Great Monarch of the world, from whose power springs
The potency and power of kings,
Record the royal woe my suffering brings,
And teach my tongue that ever did confine
Its faculties in truth’s seraphic line,
To track the treasons of Thy foes and mine.
As sympathising attendants he had Harrington, author of _Oceana_, and
Thomas Herbert, who stuck by him to the end; while one Osborne, put near
him as a spy for the Parliament, seems to have been so far won by the
captive’s woes, that he is found helping an attempt at escape. The most
authentic occupation for the king’s too much leisure was intriguing with
his friends, by means of letters in cipher and other communications
through the trusty servants left him, till this secret correspondence
was tapped by his custodians.
His cause was not yet lost. While Cromwell strove to trim the
captainless ship of State between the extreme Presbyterians and
Levellers, there were signs of reaction in the king’s favour. Fresh
civil war broke out from the still smouldering embers in different
parts. Hamilton with his army of Scots invaded England. Prince Charles
with a loyal section of the fleet hovered upon the east coast from his
base in Holland; and it seems strange that he made no attempt to rescue
his father by a landing on the Island, even when Parliamentary ships
guarded the Solent. The queen, on the continent, was hatching war
against the distracted government _de facto_, which had good reason for
holding her husband fast, lest he should place himself at the head of
any of these movements.
In March a plot had nearly succeeded, by which Charles should have
broken out and ridden away with a band of loyal gentlemen of the Island,
as Mary did from Loch Leven. But he was not so lucky as his bewitching
grandmother. He stuck fast in a barred window, and had to give up the
attempt. Two months later, the bar having been filed or eaten away with
acid, he tried again, but being more closely watched, found Hammond on
the alert and double guards posted on the walls. Now confined in closer
quarters, the king seems to have lost heart. His uncrowned head turned
grey, he let his beard grow, and the once trim cavalier became careless
of his dress. Nor had his gaoler Hammond a happy time of it, who is
found complaining to Cromwell of the “sad and heavy burden” laid upon
him, when he had hoped for peace and quiet in retiring from active
service to this backwater of civil strife.
Yet still Charles might have been saved by a little more of the craft
that had brought him to ruin. In September he was moved to Newport for a
last effort at negotiation between himself and the Parliament, which now
saw reason to dread the army as a more formidable tyrant. But hopes of
an understanding stuck upon the point of religion, the “conscientious
and untrustworthy” king proving firm in his devotion to prelacy. He once
again seems to have thought of escaping, in spite of having given his
word to remain at Newport. Then, while the treaty dragged itself on, the
soldiers, exasperated by renewed bloodshed, raised a cry for sharper
measures. Cromwell began to talk loudly of justice. A band of his
troopers appeared in the Island to “guard” the residence of Charles, who
now refused to escape, as bound by his parole. On the last night of
November, the shifty and irresolute king was forcibly carried off to
Yarmouth by two troops of horse, to be ferried across to Hurst Castle,
and thence, before Christmas, taken to Windsor as prisoner of the army,
that meanwhile, by “Pride’s Purge,” had got rid of the moderate party in
Parliament, putting England under martial law.
After Charles’ execution, Carisbrooke received two more royal prisoners,
Princess Elizabeth and the little Duke of Gloucester, kept in hand as
possible figure-head of a constitutional monarchy, now that his two
elder brothers were out of the Commonwealth’s power. The treatment of
these young captives makes a pleasant contrast to the fate of Louis
XVI.’ss children in their harsh prison, though some extremists had
proposed that the young malignants should be “apprenticed to honest
trades.” A yearly £1000 was granted for their support, £5000 having been
the king’s allowance. But almost at once the poor princess caught cold
through getting wet at a game of bowls, and a month later was laid, as
we saw, in Newport Church. The little duke, addressed as “Master Harry,”
was kept here for two years, then allowed by the Protector to join his
family on the continent, England being by this time provided with a
ruler who made more than a figure-head. This young prince died of
small-pox, just as the Restoration was opening brighter prospects for
his house. A later captive at Carisbrooke was Sir Henry Vane, a man too
good for those troubled times, whose fate was to offend all parties,
driven out of his governorship in Massachusetts, imprisoned by Cromwell,
and executed under Charles II. Sir William Davenant is said also to have
spent part of his imprisonment here.
The scenes traditionally connected with that moving story are shown to
visitors. Relics of the unfortunate Charles and his family are preserved
in a museum above the gateway, a part of the castle restored by way of
memorial to her husband by Princess Henry of Battenburg, who, as
Governor of the Island, is _châtelaine_, her deputy occupying a
habitable portion as keeper. The ruined chapel of St Nicholas in the
courtyard has also been restored, in memory of the king whom modern
historians make not so much of a saint and a martyr. Another sight of
the Castle is its deep well, from which water is drawn by a wheel worked
by a dynasty of donkeys that have the reputation of enjoying longer life
than falls to the lot of most monarchs.
Carisbrooke has a station, a little to the north, on the Freshwater
line. Beyond this, the westward high-road is edged by a front of dark
firs that mark the enclosure of Parkhurst or Carisbrooke Forest, compact
fragment of a once more extensive woodland, swelling up into eminences
of two or three hundred feet. This is Government property, but ways
through it are open for shady rambles, very pleasant on a hot day. A
field-path from Newport, starting by a footbridge beside a prominent
block of brewery buildings just below the station, leads to the
south-east corner of the forest, where workhouse, prison, and barracks
adjoin one another to make up a little town. Parkhurst Prison, whose
inmates one has seen engaged in the idyllic occupation of haymaking
within a fence of fixed bayonets, ranks as a sort of sanatorium among
our convict depôts, to which delicate criminals are sent rather than to
the bleak heights of Portland or Dartmoor.
The soldiers at the barracks are kept in better order than that Scots
regiment that proved such a curse and corruption to the quiet Wight
parishes in Oglander’s time. He represents them as billeted in the
Island “because they should not run away, being constrained for the most
part to serve contrary to their wills”--_volunteers_, as he elsewhere
calls them “a proud, beggarly nation, and I hope we shall never be
troubled with the like [again], especially the red-shanks, or the
Highlanders, being as barbarous in nature as their clothes.” These
strangers, “insolent by reason of their unanimous holding together,”
brought about so many “inconveniences,” murders, rapes, robberies, and
so forth, that when at length they were shipped off to the siege of La
Rochelle, after being reviewed by Charles on Arreton Down, the worthy
knight can record how “we were free from our Egyptian thraldom, or like
Spain from the Moors, for since the Danish slavery never were these
Islanders so oppressed.” In the outspoken fashion of his day, he notes
how the Scots left behind them a considerable strain of northern blood,
which may have been not altogether an evil for a too closely connected
neighbourhood, where, if all tales are true, marrying in and in has
generated a good deal of physical and mental feebleness.
Keats, who seems to have written part of _Endymion_ at Carisbrooke,
denounces the barracks at Parkhurst as a “nest of debauchery.” But at
the worst, they may have been an Arcadian nook compared to that East
India Company’s recruits depôt near Ryde, described by Scott, in _The
Surgeon’s Daughter_, as a gaol of adventurous scum of society swept
together by crimps and kidnappers. Sir Walter must have visited or at
least coasted “the shore of that beautiful island, which he who once
sees never forgets,” when in 1807 he stayed with his friend Stewart Rose
at Gundimore on the Hampshire coast. Since his day, the Island has seen
various samples of Highland soldiers, and found them not too barbarous
either in dress or manners.
By Parkhurst there is a pleasant way to Gurnard Bay, the nearest
bathing-place on the coast. Cowes, under half a dozen miles off, may be
gained by roads on either side the river, or by boat when the tide
serves. The well-shod and wary explorer might trace the Medina upwards
through the Downs, and among the peaty bogs of the “Wilderness” on to
its obscure source behind the Undercliff. On either side the “quarried
downs of Wight” offer fine airy walks with valley villages for goal, or
such points as the ancient British settlement, whose pit dwellings may
be traced by an antiquary’s eye in the hollow below Rowborough Downs,
near the road leading south from Carisbrooke. On the other side of the
Medina, by St George’s Down, is mounted the ridge of chalk stretching to
Brading and Bembridge.
In fact Newport, too much neglected by tourists, unless as a
halting-place, would make an excellent station for visiting the whole
Island. I must be content with taking the reader on by the central
railway to the Undercliff. This goes out from Newport with the line to
Sandown, threading the Downs into the Yar Valley; then at Merston
Junction it turns off towards the southern heights swelling up beyond
Godshill station. But one must not forget to mention Shide, on the
outskirts of Newport, not only as a station for its golf-links on Pan
Down, but as a spot in wider touch with the world than any other on the
Island, for here Dr John Milne, F.R.S., has his Seismological
Observatory, if that be a fit title for an installation of instruments
by which earthquakes, thousands of miles away, are recorded long before
they get into newspapers--some indeed that never get into further
notice, spending their force at the bottom of the sea or in wildernesses
beyond the ken of “our own correspondent.”
Godshill is one of the prettiest of the Island villages, claiming its
name from that oft-told legend of supernatural interference with the
building of a church, which by miraculous power was moved to its present
site on an eminence, where it holds up its tower as a conspicuous
landmark. This church is often visited both for the prospect from it,
and for its architectural merits and interesting memorials. Besides a
sixteenth century altar tomb of Sir John Leigh and monuments of the
Worsley family, it contains a specimen of their once famous art
collection in a picture of _Daniel in the Lion’s Den_, said to be in
part by Rubens, or at least after his style. An older patron is recorded
by a tablet praising one of the benefactors of the Newport Grammar
School.
Here lies the mortal part of Richard Gard,
While his freed spirit meets with heaven’s reward;
His gifts endowed the schools, the needy raised
And by the latest memory will be praised.
And may our Isle be filled with such a name,
And be like him whom virtue clothed with fame;
Blessed with the poor, the scholars too were blest
Through such a donor that is gone to rest.
A strange commentary on the truthfulness of epitaphs is the account of
that late lamented given by his contemporary Oglander, declaring him the
knavish son of a French refugee, whose father, Pierre Garde, had been
executed for treason in his own country. An extract on this head makes a
good specimen of Sir John’s random jottings, that open such curious
peeps into the state of his native Island at that date. One takes the
liberty of correcting his spelling; but the style seems past mending.
Richard, the father, was a notable sly fellow, dishonest and given
to filching; he brought some tricks out of France with him.
_Vide_--he would steal a cow, and putting a loaf of bread hot out
of the oven on her horns, make her horns so supple that they would
turn any way he pleased, so as to disfigure the beast that the
owner might not know her again. Many other shifts he had, being a
man of no great conscience, by which means he recovered some
wealth, and died. His sons, Richard and Peter, did not degenerate;
Richard was as crafty a knave as any (except his brother) in a
whole country; he was good at reading and understanding of old
evidences, whereby he got many into his hands, and so forced the
owners to a composition. He was indifferently skilled in law, a
most penurious base fellow, and of little religion; he died about
1616, and in his will gave Richard, the eldest son of Peter, the
better part of his estate, having no children of his
[Illustration: GODSHILL]