interval, by John Arscott, the last of that name in Tetcott, and the
most famous. You will find him described with no small literary skill
on a following page. He was benevolent to poor children, and a generous
and attentive host. He kept open house, as they say, thinking more of
love than of money. An eager student of the laws of nature, and at the
same time a devoted follower of the chase, whether of stag, or fox,
or any other such beast, he was at once the enemy and the patron of
dumb animals. He used to keep a toad on the doorsteps of his house
with such care, that that hateful and loathsome animal, moved by such
unusual kindness, used to come out of its hiding place, when its master
called it, and take its food on the table before his astonished guests,
until it lost its life through the peck of a tame raven. This fact, I
believe, has escaped the notice of every writer on British reptiles.
May the toad be reverenced in Tetcott for ever. Not even the rapacious
spider was forgotten. For when one had spun its fatal toils in a
corner of a pew in the Church, our Knight used to bring a bottle full
of flies into the sacred building itself, that he might while away
the tediousness of Divine Service by feeding his Church pet. He used
to go in an old soiled coat into a wood where the ravens nested, and
the birds would come down and settle on his shoulder, looking for the
favours of a bountiful hand.
“When he had to go to the neighbouring town of Holsworthy on judicial
business, it was his custom to take a bag containing fighting cocks.
The present inhabitants would smile at such a proceeding, but a certain
simple rudeness is excusable in our forefathers.
“Nor may I be silent about an irreverence which an otherwise upright
man used to show in the House of God. He would accost the country
people he knew in a friendly manner. If a Clergyman was reading the
Bible badly [for it was customary for a Cleric to read the Lessons now
and then] when he finished with, ‘Here endeth the second lesson’--our
Knight would call out, ‘Thee’st better never begun it.’ He would throw
apples at the Priest in the middle of Divine Service.
“Like Ajax and Peleus and other heroes he was not ashamed to woo a
handmaid, and married one of his father’s servants. He died without
issue, most widely mourned. His estate went to his kinsman, William
Molesworth. The poor people, I believe, still cherish the memory of so
dear a man, and give his name to their little ones in Baptism, as they
might the name of a Saint.
“If in these brief narratives, gathered here and there, I have in any
way transgressed the rules of more classical Latin, I beg the kind
reader to pardon me. If in any way I have departed from the truth, I
have done so unwittingly. God be merciful.
* * * * *
[John Arscott died in 1788.]”
Sir Paul W. Molesworth has dealt with John Arscott more tenderly than
that man deserved.
A modern writer[3] thus describes the sort of man that John Arscott
was:--
“A familiar figure in the eighteenth century was the country squire,
familiar the long wig, long coat, silver buttons, breeches and
top-boots, the bluff, red face, the couple of greyhounds and the
pointer at heel. When not hunting the fox, the popular sport of the
day, he settled the disputes of the parish, or repaired to the nearest
ale-house to get drunk in as short a space of time as possible. Usually
he only drank ale, but on festive occasions a bowl of strong brandy
punch, with toast and nutmeg, added to his already boisterous spirits.
On Sundays he donned his best suit, which often descended from father
to son through several generations, repaired to the parish church, and
entered the family pew, where he slumbered during a great part of the
somewhat dismal service. He seldom went further than his own country
town, for a journey to London was still full of danger and discomfort.”
Who that has read Fielding and other novelists of the period does not
know the figure, full-blooded, coarse to brutality, with a certain
amount of kindliness in his disposition, whose talk is of bullocks or
horses or dogs, and who, after the ladies had withdrawn, spent the
rest of the evening at his hospitable table singing ribald songs and
telling obscene stories? I possess, myself, a little book in MS. of the
after-dinner stories told by a great-great-uncle, that has to be kept
under lock and key, so unfit is it for perusal by clean-minded persons.
The songs were from Tom D’Urfey’s _Pills to Purge Melancholy_, or other
collections of the sort. I had a collection of them that belonged to
an _ancestress_, or rather near kinswoman of an ancestor, engraved on
copper plate. I gave the volume to the British Museum. It was not a
book to be kept on one’s shelves when there were children in the house.
John Arscott was never married, or if he did marry, no trace of such a
ceremony is forthcoming. He lived with a certain Thomasine Spry as his
mistress. If he did “make an honest woman of her,” it was, as reported,
on his death-bed. She survived him, and was buried at Tetcott in 1796,
aged seventy-six. They had no issue.
Mr. Hawker, in his _Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall_, has told
several stories of John Arscott’s favourite, the last of the jester
dwarfs, Black John, one of whose jokes, that entertained the company
after dinner, was to tie together by the legs several live mice and
swallow them one by one, and then, by means of a string, pull them up
from his interior parts again. Another of his tricks was to mumble a
sparrow. The living bird was gripped by the legs by his teeth, and then
with his lips and teeth he would rip off the feathers, till he had
plucked the unfortunate sparrow bare. A couple of projecting fangs were
of especial value as sparrow-holders to Black John. His hands all the
while were knotted or tied behind his back.
One evening he fell asleep by the hearth in the hall at Tetcott.
Suddenly he started up with a cry, “Oh, Master,” said he, “I was in a
sog [sleep] and I thought I was dead and in hell.”
“Well, John,” said Arscott, “and what did you see there?”
“Sir, everything very much like what it is here in Tetcott Hall, the
gentlefolks nearest the fire.”
John Arscott had, as already related, an enormous tame toad that came
out on the doorstep to be fed every morning, and went by the name of
“Old Dawty.” The country people thought that it was John Arscott’s
“familiar.” When he whistled, the creature would hop up to him, and
leap to his hand or to his knee. One day a visitor with his stick
killed it; but seeing this Black John flew at him and knocked him down
and belaboured him soundly. John Arscott came out, and when he heard
what the visitor had done, turned on his heel, and when the gentleman
had picked himself up and drew near, slammed the house door in his face.
This is Mr. Hawker’s version of the story of the end of the pet toad,
which is at variance with that related by the Rev. P. W. Molesworth,
whose authority is more trustworthy than that of Mr. Hawker, a
gentleman given to romancing.
“Black John’s lair was a rude hut, which he had wattled for a snug
abode close to the kennels. He loved to retire to it, and sleep near
his chosen companions, the hounds. When they were unkennelled he
accompanied and ran with them on foot, and so sinewy and so swift was
his stunted form that he was very often in their midst at the death.”
John Arscott had another follower called Dogget. “My son Simon”
or simply “Simon” he was wont to call him. He also ran after the
foxhounds.
There exists a fine ballad on the “Hunting of Arscott, of Tetcott,” in
which Simon is mentioned. Mr. Frank Abbott, gamekeeper at Pencarrow,
but born at Tetcott, informed me, concerning Dogget:--
“Once they unkennelled in the immediate neighbourhood of Tetcott,
and killed at Hatherleigh. This runner was in at the death, as was
his wont. John Arscott ordered him a bed at Hatherleigh, but to his
astonishment, when he returned to Tetcott, his ‘wife’ told him all the
particulars of the run. ‘Then,’ said Arscott, ‘this must be the doing
of none other than Dogget: where be he?’”
Dogget was soon found in the servants’ hall, drinking ale, having
outstripped his master and run all the way home.
The ballad above mentioned begins as follows:--
In the month of November, in the year fifty-two,
Three jolly Fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue,
Came o’er from Pencarrow, not fearing a wet coat,
To take their diversion with Arscott of Tetcott.
Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol, etc.
The daylight was dawning, right radiant the morn
When Arscott of Tetcott he winded his horn;
He blew such a flourish, so loud in the hall,
The rafters resounded, and danced to the call.
Sing fol-de-rol, etc.
In the kitchen the servants, in kennel the hounds,
In the stable the horses were roused by the sounds,
On Black-Bird in saddle sat Arscott, “To-day
I will show you good sport; lads, hark, follow, away!”
Sing fol-de-rol, etc.
To return to Black John. His wonted couch when he could not get back to
Tetcott at night was a bed among the reeds or fern of some sheltering
brake or wood, and he slept, as he himself used to express it, “rolled
up, as warm as a hedge-boar, round his own nose.” One day he was
covered with snow, and found to all appearance dead. He was conveyed
to Tetcott and put in a coffin. But as he was about to be buried, and
whilst the service was proceeding, a loud thumping noise was heard
within the coffin. The lid was removed, and he sat up. He had been in
a long trance, but the funeral ride and jolting had revived him, and,
said he, “When I heard the pa’sson say ‘Earth to earth and dust to
dust,’ I thought it high time to bumpy.”
[Illustration: OLD TETCOTT HOUSE]
After that he had no love for parsons of the Church or indeed ministers
of any denomination, for every one of them, he said, would bury him
alive, if they could. Once an itinerant Methodist preacher came across
him and asked his way. Black John volunteered to show him a short cut
across the park, and led him to a paddock, in which his master kept a
favourite bull. He thrust the preacher into it and fastened the gate.
What ensued is matter of guess-work. A yell and a bellow were heard,
and some object was seen projected into the air over the hedge. Soon
after Black John appeared at the Hall with a white tie in his hands,
which he gave to his master, and said, “This be the vag-ends of the
minister--all I could recover.”
“When gout and old age had imprisoned Mr. Arscott in his easy chair,
Black John nuzzled among the ashes of the vast wood fires of the
hearth, or lay coiled upon his rug like some faithful mastiff watching
every look and gesture of his master; starting up to fill the pipe or
tankard of old ale, and then crouching again. At the squire’s death and
funeral, the agony of the misshapen retainer was unappeasable. He had
to be removed by force from the door of the vault, and then he utterly
refused to depart from the neighbourhood of the grave. He made himself
another lair, near the churchyard wall, and there he sobbed away the
brief remnant of his days.”
The story goes that on one long and tremendous chase, Dogget running by
his master’s horse--
“How far do you make it?” said Simon the son.
“The day that’s declining will shortly be done.”
“We’ll follow till Doomsday,” quoth Arscott,--before
They hear the Atlantic with menacing roar.
On this occasion the chase continued to Penkenner.
Through Whitstone, and Poundstock, St. Genny’s they run,
Like a fire-ball, red, in the sea set the sun.
Then out on Penkenner--a leap, and they go,
Full five hundred feet to the ocean below.
In this memorable run, the fox went over the cliffs and the hounds
after him; but Arscott and the rest of the hunters drew up, and
though he lost his hounds, he did not lose his life. Penkenner is
a magnificent and sheer cliff, west of St. Genny’s Church. A deep
cleft is on one side, and Crackington Cove on the other. There was no
possible escape for the fox. As to the “sons of the Blue” who were in
this memorable run with Arscott, of Tetcott, opinions differ.
The versions of the ballad vary greatly. I have had a copy, written in
1820, with explanatory notes. The date of the song is sometimes set
down as 1752, sometimes as 1772. The “sons of the Blue” are taken to
have been Sir John Molesworth, of Pencarrow, Bart., William Morshead,
of Blisland, and Braddon Clode, of Skisdon. But neither Sir John
Molesworth nor Mr. Morshead was, as it happens, a naval man. If the
date were either 1652 or 1672, it would fit an earlier John Arscott,
of Tetcott, who died in 1708; and Sir John Molesworth of the period
was Vice-Admiral of Cornwall; and the sons of the blue were his sons,
Hender, Sparke, and John. The second John Molesworth married Jane,
daughter of the elder John Arscott, in 1704. It seems probable,
accordingly, that the ballad belonged originally to the earlier John
Arscott, and that it was adapted a century later to the last John
Arscott. The melody to which it is still sung at the rent-audit of the
Molesworth estate at Tetcott is a very ancient one, which was employed
by Tom D’Urfey, in his _Pills to Purge Melancholy_, 1719, for a song
entitled “Dear Catholic Brother.” I have given it in my _Songs of the
West_.
Since the death of Arscott, he still hunts.
When the full moon is shining as clear as the day,
John Arscott still hunteth the country, they say;
You may see him on Black-Bird, and hear in full cry,
The pack from Pencarrow to Dazzard go by.
When the tempest is howling, his horn you may hear,
And the bay of his hounds in their headlong career;
For Arscott of Tetcott loves hunting so well,
That he breaks for the pastime from Heaven or Hell.
The belief that he is to be heard winding his horn and in full gallop
in chase through the park at Tetcott is still prevalent, and there are
those alive who assert positively that they have heard and seen him.
Curiously enough much the same belief adheres to Dunsland, and there
one of the Bickfords is thought to be the Wild Huntsman. I know of one
who is so convinced that he and his hounds rushed past her through the
grounds along a certain drive, that nothing afterwards would induce her
on any consideration to go along that drive at night.
WIFE-SALES
There is no myth relative to the manners and customs of the English
that in my experience is more tenaciously held by the ordinary
Frenchman than that the sale of a wife in the market-place is an
habitual and an accepted fact in English life.
It is--so far as my experience goes--quite useless to assure a
Frenchman that such transfer of wives is not a matter of everyday
occurrence, and is not legal: he replies with an expression of
incredulity, that of course English people endeavour to make light of,
or deny, a fact that is “notorious.”
In a book by the antiquary Colin de Plancy, on _Legends and
Superstitions connected with the Sacraments_, he gives up some pages to
an account of the prevalent English custom. I heard a country curé once
preach on marriage, and contrast its indissolubility in Catholic France
with the laxity in Protestant England, where “any one, when tired of
his wife, puts a halter round her neck, takes her to the next market
town and sells her for what she will fetch.” I ventured to call on this
curé and remonstrate, but he answered me he had seen the fact stated
in books of the highest authority, and that my disputing the statement
did not prove that his authorities were wrong, but that my experience
was limited, and he asked me point blank whether I had never known such
cases. There, unhappily, he had me on the hip. And when I was obliged
to confess that I _did_ know of one such case, “Mais, voilà, mon
Dieu,” said he, and shrugged his shoulders with a triumphant smile.
Now it must be allowed that such sales have taken place, and that
this is so is due to rooted conviction in the rustic mind that such a
transaction is legal and morally permissible.
The case I knew was this.
When I was a boy there lived a tall, thin man in the parish who was
the village poet. Whenever an event of any consequence took place
within the confines of the parish, such as the marriage of the squire’s
daughter, he came down to the manor-house with a copy of verses he had
composed on the occasion, and was then given his dinner and a crown.
Now this man had actually bought his wife for half a crown. Her husband
had led her into Okehampton and had sold her there in the market. The
poet purchased her for half the sum he had received for one of his
poems, and led her home with him a distance of twelve miles, by the
halter, he holding it in his hand, she placidly, contentedly wearing
the loop about her neck.
The report that Henry Frise was leading home his half-crown wife
preceded the arrival of the couple, and when they entered the village
all the inhabitants turned out to see the spectacle.
Now this arrangement was not very satisfactory to my grandfather, who
was squire, or to my uncle, who was rector of the parish, and both
intervened. Henry Frise maintained that Anne was his legitimate wife,
for “he had not only bought her in the market, but had led her home,
with the halter in his hand, and he’d take his Bible oath that he never
took the halter off her till she had crossed his doorstep and he had
shut the door.”
The parson took down the Bible, the squire opened Burns’ _Justice of
the Peace_, and strove to convince Harry that his conduct was warranted
by neither Scripture nor the law of the land. “I don’t care,” he said,
“her’s my wife, as sure as if we was spliced at the altar, for and
because I paid half a crown, and I never took off the halter till her
was in my house; lor’ bless yer honours, you may ask any one if that
ain’t marriage, good, sound, and Christian, and every one will tell you
it is.”
Mr. Henry Frise lived in a cottage that was on lives, so the squire
was unable to bring compulsion to bear on him. But when Anne died,
then a difficulty arose: under what name was she to be entered in
the register? The parson insisted that he could not and he would not
enter her as Anne Frise, for that was not her legal name. Then Henry
was angry, and carried her off to be buried in another parish, where
the parson was unacquainted with the circumstances. I must say that
Anne proved an excellent “wife.” She was thrifty, clean, and managed a
rough-tempered and rough-tongued man with great tact, and was generally
respected. She died in or about 1843.
Much later than that, there lived a publican some miles off, whom I
knew very well; indeed, he was the namesake of and first cousin to
a carpenter in my constant employ. He bought his wife for a stone
two-gallon jar of Plymouth gin, if I was informed aright. She had
belonged to a stonecutter, but as he was dissatisfied with her, he put
up a written notice in several public places to this effect:--
NOTICE
This here be to hinform the publick as how James Cole be dispozed
to sell his wife by Auction. Her be a dacent, clanely woman, and be
of age twenty-five ears. The sale be to take place in the New Inn,
Thursday next at seven o’clock.
In this case I do not give the name of the purchaser, as the woman is,
I believe, still alive. I believe--so I was told--that the foreman of
the neighbouring granite-works remonstrated, and insisted that such
a sale would be illegal. He was not, however, clear as to the points
of law, and he believed that it would be illegal unless the husband
held an auctioneer’s licence, and if money passed. This was rather a
damper. However, the husband was desirous to be freed from his wife,
and he held the sale as had been advertised, making the woman stand on
a table, and he armed himself with a little hammer. The biddings were
to be in kind and not in money. One man offered a coat, but as he was a
small man and the seller was stout, when he found that the coat would
not fit him, he refused it. Another offered a “phisgie,” i.e. a pick,
but this also was declined, as the husband possessed a “phisgie” of his
own. Finally, the landlord offered a two-gallon jar of gin, and down
fell the hammer with “Gone.”
I knew the woman; she was not bad-looking. The new husband drank, and
treated her very roughly, and on one occasion she had a black eye when
I was lunching at the inn. I asked her how she had hurt herself. She
replied that she had knocked her face against the door, but I was told
that this was a result of a domestic brawl. Now the remarkable feature
in these cases is that it is impossible to drive the idea out of the
heads of those who thus deal in wives that such a transaction is not
sanctioned by law and religion. In Marytavy parish register is the
following entry:--
1756. Robert Elford was baptized, child of Susanna Elford by her
sister’s husband. She was married with the consent of her sister,
the wife, who was at the wedding.
In this instance there is no evidence of a _sale_, but we may be sure
that money did pass, and that the contractor of the new marriage
believed it was a right and proper union, although perhaps irregular;
and the first wife unquestionably believed that she was acting in
observance of a legal right in transferring her husband to her sister.
There are instances in which country people have gone before a local
solicitor and have had a contract of sale drawn up for the disposal
of their wives. The Birmingham police court in 1853 had to adjudicate
on such a case, and the astounding thing in this instance was that a
lawyer could be found to draw up the contract. It is no wonder that
the magistrates administered a very severe reprimand. But there was a
far earlier case than this, that of Sir William de Paganel; the lady
stoutly and indignantly resisted the transfer and appealed against the
contract to the law, which declared the sale to be null and void.
Mr. Whitfeld, in his _Plymouth and Devonport, in Times of War and
Peace_, mentions a case that occurred at the former, but without giving
the date, of one John Codmore, who was indicted for burglary and for
having married without his father’s consent, and then tiring of his
wife, having sold her for five pounds--which was a large sum as the
price of wives went--to a miller. In December, 1822, the Plymouth crier
announced to all and singular: Oh yes! Oh yes! that James Brooks was
about to dispose of his wife by public auction. The lady was advertised
as young and handsome, and as likely to succeed to an inheritance of
£700.
Expectation was whetted by the intimation that the lady would attend
the sale herself, that all might judge of her personal charm, and
that she would be mounted on horseback. A curious and babbling crowd
assembled to witness the transaction, and precisely at midday,
according to the announcement, she rode up, attended by the ostler
of the “Lord Exmouth.” The husband, James Brooks, officiated as
auctioneer. The first bid was five shillings, then the sums offered
mounted to ten and to fifteen; but none rose, and that slowly, over two
pound. Whereupon the ostler called out “Three pounds,” and she would
have been knocked down to him had not at this conjuncture a couple of
watchmen intervened, one laying hands on the husband and the other
on the wife, and escorted the pair to the Guildhall, followed by the
rabble.
When the mayor took them to task, the husband declared that for the
life of him he could not see that he was doing wrong. He and his wife
had agreed to the sale, as they had not lived together for long, and
were ill-assorted, and therefore desired fresh partners. The ostler
was prepared to pay twenty pounds for her--three pounds down and the
balance at Christmas--and the woman was quite agreeable. What, then,
was wrong? He assured the mayor that there was nothing “below board” in
the transaction; the auction had been “called” three times in Modbury
Market, and the wife also considered that she ought and would like to
be sold in a public fair.
The mayor now examined the woman. She admitted that the ostler was
buying her in at a reserved price, at which she had valued herself.
There was a gentleman, a Mr. K., who she expected would have attended
and bid for her, and with whom she had intended to go. But Mr. K. had
not turned up, much to her annoyance. “I was very much annoyed,” said
she, “to find that he had not kept his promise. But I was so determined
to be loosed from Mr. Brooks, that when Mr. K. did not attend, I asked
the ostler to buy me with my own money, unless I went for more than
twenty pounds.”