HISTORIC INNS
It can be no matter for surprise that many inns have historic
associations. Indeed, when we consider that in olden times the hostelries
of town and country touched life at every point, and were once the centre
of local life, it becomes rather surprising that not more tragic events,
more treaties and conferences, and more plots and conspiracies are
associated with such places of public resort.
Strange, mysterious plotters, highwaymen, and great nobles resorted to
them, and, coming to things more domestic, there, under the inn’s
hospitable roof, town councils not infrequently met in those times before
ever “municipal buildings” were dreamed of, and conducted their business
over a cheering, and inebriating, cup. Your inn was, in short, then at
once your railway-station, club, hotel, reading-room and mart. There were
distinct advantages, in the social sense, in all this. It meant
good-fellowship when respectable townsfolk were not ashamed to spend a
winter evening in the parlour of a representative inn, or play a game of
bowls in summer on the bowling-green with which most such houses were once
furnished, and the man who now glowers in unneighbourly and solitary way
over his hearthstone, would expand, with such opportunities, into as
good-natured a fellow as any of the olden time.
[Illustration: THE “REINDEER,” BANBURY.]
The inns of Banbury make some historic figure. It was in one of them--the
chronicler says not which--that the dispute took place between the two
Yorkist commanders, which led to the battle of Danesmoor being lost by
their side, in July, 1469.
The occasion was the revolt of the great Earl of Warwick against Edward
the Fourth. To intercept Warwick at Northampton the Earl of Pembroke was
marching with a force from Gloucestershire, and was joined on the
Cotswolds by Lord Stafford of Southwick, newly raised a step in the
peerage by being created Earl of Devon. Lord Stafford’s troops numbered
six thousand good archers: a very welcome reinforcement; but, even so, the
combined forces dared not at once risk an engagement with the rebels at
Daventry, and fell back upon Banbury. There a quarrel took place between
Lord Stafford and the Earl of Pembroke, all on account of a pretty girl.
Says Hall: “The earle of Pembroke putt the Lorde Stafforde out of an Inne,
wherein he delighted muche to be, for the loue of a damosell that dwelled
in the house: contrary to their mutuall agrement by them taken, which was,
that whosoeaver abteined first a lodgyng should not be deceaved nor
remoued. After a greate many woordes and crakes, had betwene these twoo
capitaines, the lord Stafford of Southwyke, in greate dispite departed
with his whole compaignie and band of Archers, leauynge the erle of
Pembroke almost desolate in the toune.”
Accordingly, so weakened, the next day the Earl of Pembroke was defeated.
He took refuge in Banbury church, but, according to Hall, was dragged
forth by the fierce John Clapham, who beheaded him in the porch with his
own hands.
Possibly it was at the “Red Lion,” in the High Street, that the damosell
lived who caused all the strife between those great lords. If so, it
renders that fine old house the more interesting. Modern needs, and a not
unreasonable desire to keep incoming guests and their belongings dry, have
caused the picturesque courtyard to be roofed in with glass, thus hiding
many of its pictorial qualities; but you still enter from the street by a
fifteenth-century oaken portal, much blunted by wear and tear and many
successive coats of paint and varnish in all those succeeding centuries;
yet indubitably still fifteenth-century work.
But the most picturesque inn at Banbury is the “Reindeer.” History is
silent as to the why or the how of its acquiring that name, and is indeed
dumb in almost every other respect concerning the old house. The
“Reindeer,” both in itself and in its situation, is scarcely like the “Red
Lion,” an hotel. You look in at the “Reindeer” for a drink and for
curiosity only; for the house does not precisely invite guests, and
probably does most business on market days, when country folk from
neighbouring villages throng the strait and crooked streets of Banbury and
put up their traps in its yard and insist on liberally drinking the health
of one another. Parson’s Street, indeed, the situation of the “Reindeer,”
is a market-street and crowded shopping centre, where brazen-tongued
salesmen exhort housewives to “buy, buy, buy”; or indulge in rhapsodical,
exclamatory passages in praise of their goods. You are gazing, let us say,
outside the “original” Banbury-cake shop, opposite, upon the magpie black
and white of the “Reindeer” frontage, when a parrot-like voice is heard
exclaiming, in ecstatic rapture, “O what loverly heggs!” and, turning, you
perceive, not a grey parrot in a gilded cage, but a white-aproned
provision-dealer’s assistant, unfortunately at large. Fleeing into the
courtyard of the inn, you still hear faint cries of “_There’s_ ’am!” “O
mother! what butter!”
The neighbourhood, it will be perceived, does not in these days lend
itself to quiet residence, and although, by the evidence of its
architecture, the “Reindeer” was doubtless at one time one of the chief
hotels of the town, it has long ceased to hold anything like that
position.
The old oaken gates and the black-and-white timbering above appear to be
the oldest portions of the house: the gates themselves inscribed with the
date “1570” on one side, and on the other
“IHON · KNIGHT ◈ IHONE · KNIGHT ◈ DAVID HORN.”
The great feature of the inn is, however, the noble oak-panelled chamber
known, for whatever inscrutable reason, as the “Globe Room.” Exterior and
interior views of it are the merest commonplaces in Banbury. There are, in
fact, three things absolutely necessary, nay, almost sacramental, for the
stranger to do in Banbury, without having performed the which he is a
scorn and a derision. The first of these indispensable performances is the
eating, or, at any rate, the buying of Banbury cakes. And here let me add
that the Banbury cakes of Banbury have a lightness and a toothsomeness
entirely lacking in the specious impostors made elsewhere. Just as
there are no other such pork-pies as those of Melton Mowbray, and as
Shrewsbury cakes can apparently only be made at Shrewsbury, so the
“Banburys” made in other towns are apt to lie as heavy on your chest as a
peccadillo upon a tender conscience. But in their native town they
disappear, to the accompaniment of cups of tea, with a rapidity alarming
to the pocket, if not to the stomach; for they cost “tuppence” apiece, and
a hungry pedestrian or cyclist finds no difficulty in demolishing half a
dozen of them.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE “REINDEER,” BANBURY.]
The second of these necessary observances is the viewing of Banbury Cross:
not the old original famous Banbury Cross of the nursery rhyme, to which
many generations of children have been invited to “ride a cock-horse” to
see the tintinnabulatory lady with bells on her fingers and bells on her
toes; _that_ cross was destroyed by the Puritans, and the modern one is
not even a copy of it, for no man knoweth what the original was like.
The third of these necessary rites is the viewing of the “Globe Room” at
the “Reindeer.” What the exterior of that room is like, let the
illustration of the courtyard show. The date of its building is still
faintly traceable in the figures “1637” on the masonry of the gable. They
charge you threepence to view the interior, and if so be you cannot frame
to admire the richly decorated plaster ceiling for yourself, the printed
notice that a cast has been taken from it, and is to be seen in South
Kensington Museum, is calculated to impress the intellectually snobbish.
For our own part, seeing things with our own eyes and judging of them
comparatively, there seems no very adequate reason for South Kensington
acquiring such a cast, unless, indeed, (which is unthinkable) the
Department of Science and Art is bent upon copies of all the old ceilings
in the country. This is, in short, to say that although the plaster
decoration of the “Globe Room” is fine, it is neither so intrinsically
fine, nor so original above all others, that it deserves so great an
honour. The really supremely fine feature of the room is the beautiful
Jacobean panelling in oak, now almost coal-black with age, covering the
walls from floor to ceiling, and designed and wrought in unusually
thorough and bold style. There is not a finer room of its period in the
country, and it may even be questioned (leaving the mere matter of size
alone) if there is even another quite so fine or in every detail so
perfect.
The reason of this magnificently panelled apartment being added to the
older and very much less ornate portion of the inn is obscure; and it will
be noted, as a matter of curiosity, that, entered as it is only by a
doorway from the open courtyard, the room is not, structurally a part of
the house. The name of the “Globe Room” given to it is not explained in
any way by the decorations or by its history, which is as obscure as its
origin. Tradition says Cromwell “held a council” here, and accordingly,
although history does not tell us anything specifically about it, a
picture, reproduced in a variety of ways, showing a number of stern and
malignant Roundheads interrogating an elegant and angelic-looking Royalist
clad in white, and bearing a very strong likeness to Charles the First
himself, is one of the commonplaces of the town.
[Illustration: THE GLOBE ROOM, “REINDEER” INN, BANBURY.]
For one of the most entertaining examples of history enacted at an inn, we
must shift the scene to Chester.
Among the ancient inns of that city, long since retired from the
innkeeping business is the “Blue Posts,” a house in its day historic by
reason of one dramatic incident: an incident so dramatic that it would
almost seem to have been borrowed from the stage. It was the year 1558,
the last of the reign of Queen Mary, of bloody memory, and Dr. Henry Cole,
Dean of St. Paul’s, was come to Chester on his way to Ireland, where he
had work to do, in the persecution of the Irish Protestants. He lodged for
the night at the “Blue Posts,” in Bridge Street, and in the evening the
Mayor of Chester called upon him there.
The Dean made no secret of his mission. To him it was a labour of love to
bring imprisonment and torture, fire and stake, to correct the religious
errors of those Protestants over sea. Had he not already distinguished
himself by a revolting and bloodthirsty sermon, on the occasion of
Cranmer’s sentence of martyrdom?
In conversation with the Mayor, he drew from his travelling valise the
Royal commission for his errand. “Here,” he exclaimed, with exultation,
“here is that will lash the heretics of Ireland!”
Now, whether the landlady was in the room at the time, or listening at the
keyhole--in a manner traditional among landladies--does not appear; but
she overheard the conversation, and, having a brother, a Protestant, in
Dublin, was alarmed for his safety in particular, and, let us hope, for
that of Protestants in general. So, that night, when the Dean was
doubtless dreaming of the shackles and gyves, the faggots and the rackings
he was bringing to the heretics of Ireland, Mrs. Mottershead, the landlady
with the sharp ears, abstracted the fateful commission, and in its stead
placed a pack of cards, with the knave of clubs showing satirically at the
top. O! daring and witty Mrs. Mottershead!
We may, if gifted with anything like a due sense of humour, well chuckle
at the outraged feelings of the Lord President of the Council of Ireland
when the Dean, all unconscious, presented him with this unconventional
authority. My Lord, however, summoned some humour of his own, wherewith to
meet the situation. “Let us,” said he, “have another commission, and we
will meanwhile shuffle the cards.”
Crestfallen, the emissary returned, and did actually obtain a new
commission, but when again arrived at Chester, and awaiting a fair wind
for Ireland, he heard of the Catholic Queen’s death and the accession of
her Protestant sister; and so found his way back to London once more.
[Illustration: THE “MUSIC HOUSE,” NORWICH.]
The episode would fitly end in the Dean being flung, loaded with chains,
into some loathsome dungeon; but although he was, in fact, committed to
the Tower in 1560, after having been deprived of all his preferments, such
dramatic completeness was lacking. But, at any rate, he was transferred to
the Fleet Prison, and, after a long captivity, seems to have died there in
1580.
Meanwhile, virtue was rewarded, in the person of Mrs. Mottershead, who was
granted a pension of £40 a year, representing perhaps £500 a year in our
own day.
The former “Blue Posts,” where this historic interlude was played, was
long since refronted in respectable, but dull, red brick, and is now, or
was recently, a boot-shop. But although no hint of its former self is
given to the passer-by, those who venture to make a request, are shown a
fine upstairs room, with elaborately pargeted ceiling, still known as the
“Card Room.”
The “Music House” inn, King Street, Norwich, situated in what is now a
poor and densely populated part of that city, has a vaulted cellar of
Norman masonry, a vestige of the time when the Norwich Jews were very rich
and numerous. The house of which it formed part was then the residence of
one Moyses, and afterwards of Isaac, his nephew, who in the reign of King
John seems to have come, like many of his race, to some mysterious and
uncomfortable end, probably in the dungeons of Norwich Castle. In the
course of time the famous Paston family came into possession of the house,
and in 1633 the great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, resided here. Shortly
afterwards it became the meeting-place of the “city music,” ancestors of
modern town bands, who seem to have practised the waits and other
performances within, until they had their parts sufficiently perfect to
dare inflict them on the city. Hence the sign of the “Music House.”
In the same neighbourhood we have the “Dolphin” inn at Potter Heigham, a
place sadly changed in modern times.
Potter Heigham is no longer rural, and the long, long and narrow street
leading to it, out of Norwich, is crowded with the waggons and
railway-lorries of the old city’s expanding commerce. In midst of all this
rumbling of wheels over uneven pavements stands the “Dolphin” inn, the
home in his declining days of Bishop Hall, who rented it for some ten
years, until his death there, in 1656, in his eighty-second year.
[Illustration: THE “DOLPHIN,” POTTER HEIGHAM.]
It was a comparatively new house then, for while you see the date, 1587,
over the entrance door and a merchant’s mark and the initials R B on
either side, a prominent gable shows the date 1629 done, very large, in
vitrified brick.
Still you come grandly into the house, though it be a humble tavern now,
between an old pillared entrance, and across a courtyard, and in the house
are Jacobean fireplaces, with a fine newel staircase carved in the manner
of an old church bench-end, with an heraldic lion and the Gothic foliage
known as a “poppy head.” The “Dolphin” would be capable, if it were
differently situated, of being converted into a handsome old-world hotel,
but the poor and crowded neighbourhood of Potter Heigham forbids anything
of that kind, and so it remains humble and unassuming.
A tragical little story belongs to the humble old “Nag’s Head” inn at
Thame, formerly the “King’s Head.” The old sign of it was used as a
gallows for a Parliamentary rebel who had deserted his side and joined the
King, and was so unlucky as to be captured. Those Puritans had a grim
humour. One of the condemned man’s executioners, before turning him off,
turned his face, bound with a handkerchief, to the sign, with the words:
“Nay, sir, you must speak one word with the King before you go. You are
blindfold, and he cannot see, and by and by you shall both come down
together.” And then he was hoisted up.
There is another historic house at Thame, for it was into the yard of the
“Greyhound” in that town that John Hampden came, lying mortally wounded
upon the neck of his horse, from the skirmish of Chalgrove Field, on June
18th, 1643. He had unwillingly taken arms against oppression and
iniquitous taxation, and was thus at the outset killed. No enemy’s bullet
laid him low: it was his own pistol, overloaded by a careless servant,
that, exploding, shattered his hand. He died, on the 24th, of lockjaw.
The front of the house has been rebuilt, and the yard somewhat altered,
since the patriot rode in at that tragical time; but the house is in
essentials the inn of his day. Long since ceased to be an inn, it is now
occupied as a furnishing ironmonger’s shop and warehouse.
[Illustration: THE “NAG’S HEAD,” THAME.]
The “Crown and Treaty House” inn at Uxbridge, long known to would-be beery
rustics by the affectionately wistful name of the “Crown and Treat Ye,” is
a genuinely historic house. It stands away beyond the tramway terminus,
facing the road at the very extremity of Uxbridge town, as you cross
canal and river and so leave Middlesex for Buckinghamshire; and although
very much of its real antiquity is disguised by modern paint and plaster,
it is in fact the surviving portion of the great mansion built in 1575 by
one of the Bennet family, and, at the opening of the war between King and
Parliament, in the occupation of one “Mr. Carr.”
The meeting here of leading spirits on either side of the contending
forces was well meant. It began January 20th, 1645, and was convened for
the purpose of “taking into consideration the grievances of which each
party complained, and to propose those remedies which might be mutually
agreeable.” Unfortunately, little sincerity attended the actual meeting.
The King’s party were unyielding, and the military successes of the
Parliament rendered the leaders of that side ill-disposed to give away in
talk that which they had won in the field. Moreover, like most conferences
in which religious as well as political questions were the subjects of
discussion, those debates only further inflamed mutual hatreds and further
sundered the already wide points of disagreement.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE “GREYHOUND,” THAME.]
There were sixteen commissioners on either side, and for three weeks they
argued without coming to any settlement. Neither side would give way, for
either was convinced of its ability to finally crush the other by force of
arms. Much blood had already been shed, indecisively, and passions ran
high. Uxbridge was selected as a kind of half-way house between London,
held strongly by the Parliament, and Oxford, as strongly held for the
King; and when the empty verbiage was done, the propositions put forth
scouted, and the pretensions disallowed, the parties separated, falling
back respectively to London and to Oxford, to recommence those hostilities
for which they were spoiling. Treaty, therefore, there was not: only an
ominous truce between Right Divine and People’s Will.
The Earl of Clarendon, in his _History of the Rebellion_, gives an
interesting account of these fruitless meetings:
“There was,” he says, “a good house at the end of the town which was
provided for the Treaty. Above was a fair room in the middle of the house,
handsomely dressed up for the Commissioners to sit in; a large square
table being placed in the middle with seats for the Commissioners; one
side being sufficient for those of either party: and a rail for those who
should be thought necessary to be present, which went round. There were
many other rooms on either side of this great room for the Commissioners
to retire to, when they thought fit to consult by themselves, and there
being good stairs at either end of the house they never went through each
other’s quarters, nor met, but in the great room.”
Neither side used the house, except for these meetings, the Royalists
being appropriately accommodated at the “Crown,” which then stood in the
middle of the High Street, in the centre of the town, opposite the
still-existing “White Horse,” and the Parliament people at the “George.”
[Illustration: THE “CROWN AND TREATY,” UXBRIDGE.]
In those times the highway out of Uxbridge, ceasing to be broad and
straight, left the High Street of Uxbridge by a sharp turning to the right
and went in a narrow way called Johnson’s Row to the crossing of the
Colne, which was effected to the north of the present bridge and was made
in two stages by wooden bridges, using the still-surviving island in the
middle of the river as a kind of natural pier or abutment. The road
therefore crossed, in a more or less direct fashion, from immediately in
front of the “Swan and Bottle” inn to where the present flour-mill stands,
cautiously using that very considerable island on the way. The modern
road, with its bridge of seven arches, on the other hand, boldly spans the
river at its widest part, and seeks no help midway. It is all very clear
and palpable to you who stand on the bridge and see how the road across it
swoops round, at a very noticeable angle, to join the older road at the
flour-mill; but Johnson’s Row was demolished 1905-6, to make an approach
to the new railway-station, and the old landmarks are growing obscured. It
was the making of this road in 1785 that changed the fortunes of the
Treaty House. The new highway was cut through its gardens, and the house
itself brought from private life and a dignified seclusion to face the
wayfaring world. What else, then, could it do but become an inn?
[Illustration: THE “TREATY ROOM,” “CROWN AND TREATY,” UXBRIDGE.]
The house, although even now not small, was once much larger. Its least
imposing front is turned to the street and is not improved by the modern
appointments of a public-house. The great feature of the building is the
room on the first floor, called, with what appears to be insufficient
warranty, the “Treaty Room,” the real place of meeting having been,
apparently, the front room, now divided by a partition into two. It was
doubtless its being immeasurably the finest room in the house that led to
the so-called “Treaty Room” being selected for that honour. It is, in
fact, a noble apartment, greatly neglected for these many years past, but
grand in spite of indifference and decay. There are smeary
picture-postcards of it to be purchased in Uxbridge, and it has been
photographed by enthusiastic visitors times without number, generally
without success; for it is a dark interior, and the wood-carving is
shallow and does not yield sufficient pictorial light and shade for the
cameras to do it justice. It should be added, by way of comparative
criticism, that, although this panelling is itself so fine, it does not
for a moment compare with the bold and effective work of the “Globe Room”
at the “Reindeer,” Banbury. There you have a massiveness of construction
and a breadth of design almost architectural: here there are no bold
projections, and the recurrent flat pilasters are covered with an
intricate Renaissance scroll and strap-work, which, although in itself
good, is too small in scale to be highly effective.
[Illustration: THE “RED LION,” HILLINGDON.]
The “Red Lion” at Hillingdon, near Uxbridge, has its small share in the
troubled story of the Stuarts, although, to be sure, its plastered front
is a thought too modern-looking. Here Charles the First, escaping from
the besieged city of Oxford, lay the first night of his distracted
wanderings through England that led him eventually to the end of his armed
resistance, at Southwell.
[Illustration: THE “THREE CROWNS,” CHAGFORD.]
The “Three Crowns” at Chagford, South Devon, now a favourite old-world
haunt of tourists visiting Dartmoor, illustrates still another incident in
that internecine warfare. It was originally a manor-house built in the
time of Henry the Eighth by Sir John Whyddon, a native of Chagford, who
went to London to seek his fortune, and, as a lawyer, found it. He became
a Judge of the King’s Bench, was knighted, and we are gravely told that he
was the first judge to ride to Westminster on a horse: his predecessors,
and his learned contemporary brethren, had gone on mules.
In the troubled times of the Civil War, when Royalist and Roundhead
disturbed even these remote nooks of the country, Chagford was attacked by
the Royalists under Sir John Berkeley. In the street-fighting, according
to Clarendon, “they lost Sidney Godolphin, a young gentleman of
incomparable parts. He received a mortal shot by a musket, a little above
the knee, of which he died on the instant, leaving the misfortune of his
death upon a place which could never otherwise have had a mention in the
world.” Ay! but that was written in days long before the appreciation of
picturesque scenery had brought troops of visitors to Chagford.
Young Godolphin bled to death on a stone seat of what is now, as Charles
Kingsley wrote, “a beautiful old mullioned and gabled Perpendicular inn.”
What was once the “great hall” of the old mansion is now a schoolroom.
Both face the church, on the other side of the narrow street, as an old
manor-house should do, and in summer time the gossipers lounge and talk,
and interpolate their gossiping with loud horse-laughs, far into the
night, greatly to the annoyance of visitors. Have I not heard, with these
ears, the raising of a sash at some incredible hour, and the voice of some
native of Bawston or N’York, exclaiming indignantly, “See yur, you darned
skunks, clear out of it!” whereupon, with cat-calls and insults in the
_patois_ of Devonshire, fortunately not with ease to be understood by
strangers from the U.S., that village convention has dispersed.
Many historic memories linger around that ancient and beautiful house, the
“Saracen’s Head” at Southwell, in the Sherwood Forest district of
Nottinghamshire. Southwell, whose hoary Minster has in modern times become
a cathedral, has fallen into a dreamless slumber since the last of the
coaches left the road, and as the traveller comes into its quiet streets,
in whose midst the great Norman church stands solemnly, like some grey
architectural ghost, he feels that he has come into a place whose last
days of activity ended considerably over half a century ago.
The “Saracen’s Head” was built in that interesting, but vague, period of
“ever so long ago”; the nearest attempt at determining its age to which
most chroniclers dare commit themselves. Whether the existing house is the
same building as that of this name conveyed by the Archbishop of York in
1396 to John Fysher and his wife Margaret, does not appear, but there
seems very little reason to doubt that, although greatly altered and added
to from time to time, the present “Saracen’s Head” is, essentially, in its
ancient timbering, the identical structure.
The frontage of the inn, now as ever the chief inn of Southwell, little
indicates its great age, for it is covered with a coat of grey plaster,
and, were it not for the enormously substantial oaken doors of the
coach-entrance, and the peep through the archway of the old courtyard,
the casual wayfarer might pass the historic house by.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE “SARACEN’S HEAD,” SOUTHWELL.]
For it is historic, in an intimate and a melancholy way. Dismissing in a
word the remote visits paid by Edward the First and Edward the Third to
Southwell, when they are stated to have lodged at the “Saracen’s Head,” we
come to the harassed wanderings of Charles the First over the distracted
England of his time. That unhappy King well knew Southwell and the
“Saracen’s Head.” They were associated with the opening and the closing
scenes of his fight with Parliament and people, for he rested at the inn
on August 17th, 1642, on the way to raise the Royal Standard at Nottingham
on the 22nd; and at last, on May 5th, 1646, he abandoned the nearly four
years’ struggle against fate, surrendering himself here to the Scottish
Commissioners. Between those two fateful days he was certainly once at
Southwell, and possibly more often.
The story of his last visit has a pathos of its own that we need not be
Royalist to perceive. In March, 1646, the King at length saw his hopes to
be desperately failing everywhere, even in the loyal West; garrisons of
towns, castles, and fortified houses had been compelled to yield, and
himself reduced to fleeting, the embarrassed head of an impossible cause,
from place to place; bringing upon places and persons devoted to him a
common ruin. Friends began to despair of his shifty and untrustworthy
policy towards themselves and in negotiations with the enemy, and although
their loyalty was hardly ever in doubt, for they were fighting, after all,
not merely for the King personally, but for an order of things in which
their interests were involved, they had by this time exhausted energies
and wealth in a vain effort, and perhaps thought peace at almost any price
to be by this time preferable to the uncertainties of civil war, in which
the only certainty seemed to be that, whoever eventually won, they must
needs in the meanwhile be continually making further sacrifices.
The King was at Oxford when he at length came to a decision by some means
to end the struggle; by flight over sea, or by surrendering himself to the
enemy: in the hope, in that alternative, that the sanctity of Kingship
would enable him by some means to snatch an advantage out of the very jaws
of defeat and ruin. The first thought was to take flight from the country,
by the port of King’s Lynn, but that was at length abandoned for the
idea--a fatal _tertium quid_, as it proved--of surrendering, not to the
English army and the Parliament, but to the Scots, who, he thought, were
likely to make better terms for him. The Scottish army was at that time
engaged upon the siege of the Royalist castle of Newark, near Southwell;
and to Southwell the King, therefore, went from Oxford, in disguise. He
left Oxford on April 26th, and, to the last incapable of being
straightforward, even toward his own, gave out to his council that he was
going to London, to treat with Parliament. On May 3rd he was at Stamford,
and came to the “Saracen’s Head” at Southwell at seven o’clock in the
morning of May 5th, accompanied by Ashburnham and his chaplain, Dr.
Hudson, but travelling with them as Ashburnham’s servant. At the inn he
was received by Montreuil, the French Ambassador to Scotland, who had been
advised of his coming. The King, believing himself in every sense free,
invited the Scottish Commissioners over to dinner at the inn, from the
Bishop’s Palace, where they had their quarters; and in what is now the
Coffee Room, the negotiations took place that ended in the King’s yielding
to the Scots. It would, in any case, have so ended, for the Commissioners
came by invitation, as guests to dinner, but were so astonished at
finding the King so tamely coming within their grasp that they had not the
remotest idea of letting him go again, and would, if needs were, have
forcibly detained him. He was removed the same day to the neighbouring
Kelham Hall, where he formed the richest prize and the bitterest source of
contention between the English and the Scots, and all but caused a further
warfare. Eventually, the Scottish Commissioners, true to the national love
of money, sold their principles and their prisoner for £400,000 and
withdrew themselves and their forces across the border. The story ends
tragically, in Westminster, with the execution of the King on January
30th, 1649.
The Coffee Room of the “Saracen’s Head” is a beautiful apartment, formed
out of two rooms, and rich in panelling and deeply recessed windows. The
bedroom upstairs, where the King is said to have slept, is, in the same
manner, formed by abolishing the partition that once made two rooms of it;
and there they still show the pilgrims after things of sentimental and
historic interest the ancient four-poster bed on which the King slept.
This history seems to have greatly upset Dr. Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand
and afterwards of Lichfield, who stayed at the “Saracen’s Head” in 1858,
and slept--or rather, failed to sleep--in this historic bed. For my part,
although a pilgrim--and a sentimental one at that--I found the
four-poster, despite its associations, as inviting to slumber as any
other; but then, I had cycled eighty-one miles that day, and--not being a
bishop--had nothing on my conscience.
[Illustration: KING CHARLES’ BEDROOM, “SARACEN’S HEAD,” SOUTHWELL.]
Dr. Selwyn was so obsessed with the memories of that room and the house
that he arose in the middle of the night, and lighted his bedroom candle
and wrote a long set of couplets, sentimental, pietistic, and very jingly
and inferior. I have a mental picture of him sitting up in bed, or perhaps
at the dressing-table in his night-shirt, gruesomely cold on that March
night, running his fingers through his hair and gazing at the ceiling for
the inspiration which does not seem to have come; for a more uninspired
set of verses it would be difficult to find. But you shall judge:
I cannot rest--for on the spot where I have made my bed,
O’erwearied with the strife of State, a King hath laid his head.
Thy sacred head, ill-fated Charles, hath lain where now I lie;
And thou hast passed, in Southwell Inn, as sleepless night as I.
I cannot rest--for o’er my mind come thronging full and fast,
The stories of the olden time, the visions of the past.
’Twas here he rested ere he raised his standard for the fight;
Here called on Heaven to help his cause, My God, defend the right!
Here gather’d round him all the flow’r of England’s chivalry;
And here the vanquished Monarch closed his days of liberty.
I cannot rest--for Cromwell’s horse are neighing in mine ear;
E’en in the Holy House of God their ringing hoofs I hear.
Lord! wilt Thou once again endure it stable vile to be?
The proud usurper’s charger rein’d fast by Thy sanctuary.
I cannot rest--for Wolsey’s pride, and Wolsey’s deep disgrace--
The pomp, the littleness of man--speak from this ancient place.
Here gloriously his summer days he spent in kingly state;
Here his last summer sadly pined, bow’d by the stroke of Fate.
How mighty was he when he rul’d from Tweed to Humber’s flood!
How lowly when he came to die, forsaken by his God!
I cannot rest--for holier thoughts the lingering night beguile,
Of the glad days when gospel light went forth o’er Britain’s Isle.
’Twas here the Bishop of the North, Paulinus, pitch’d his tent,
Here preached the living Word of God, baptizing in the Trent.
Hence have the preachers’ feet gone forth thro’ all the country wide;
And daughter-churches have sprung up, nursed at their mother’s side.
Here have the clerks of Nottingham, and yeomen bold and true,
Held yearly feasts at Whitsuntide, and paid their homage due.
Here many a mitred head of York, and priests and men of peace,
Have lived in penitence and prayer, and welcomed their release.
And hence the daily choral song, the gospel’s hopes and fears,
Have sounded forth to Christian hearts, beyond a thousand years.
’Tis thus, o’er England’s hill and dale, have passed by Heaven’s decree,
A changing light, a chequer’d shade, a mingled company.
The good, the bad, have had their day, the Lord hath worked His will;
And England keeps her ancient faith, purer and brighter still.
Where are they now, the famous men who lived in olden time?
They never see the noonday sun, nor hear the midnight chime.
They sleep within their narrow cell, waiting the trumpet’s voice;
Lord! grant that I may rest in peace, and when I wake--rejoice.
_Saracen’s Head, Southwell, 5th March, 1858._
Byron had stayed often at the inn, many years before, and in 1807 wrote an
impromptu on the death of a local carrier, John Adams, who travelled to
and from the house, and lived drunk and died drunk:
John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell,
A _Carrier_ who _carried_ his can to his mouth well;
He _carried_ so much and he _carried_ so fast,
He could _carry_ no more--so was _carried_ at last:
For the liquor he drank, being too much for one,
He could not _carry_ off--so is now _carri_-on.
It will already have been noticed that the Stuarts and their troubles
contributed most of the historic associations belonging to our old
hostelries; and we have not yet quite done with them. The incidents of
Charles the Second’s flight in 1651, after the battle of Worcester,
include a halt of one night at the “Sun,” Cirencester, the well-known
escape from the “Queen’s Arms,” an inn--that is an inn no longer--at
Charmouth, and visits to the “George” at Bridport, and a house of the same
name at Broadwindsor. The “King’s Arms” at Salisbury is associated with
meetings and conferences of the King’s supporters, who, while he lay in
hiding at Heale House, considered there the best way of conducting him to
the coast and safety. The route chosen lay through Mere, where, at the
“George” inn (rebuilt in the eighteenth century) Colonel Phelips and
Charles, travelling as his servant, Will Jackson, called. The Colonel, an
acquaintance of the landlord, descended into the cellar of the inn, to
sample the liquors of the house, while “Will Jackson” stood respectfully
aside. Mine host, however, was an hospitable man, and, turning to the
servant, with jug and glass, said, “Thou lookest an honest fellow--here’s
a health to the King!” The “honest fellow,” whether taken aback by the
suddenness of it, or acting an unwilling part, made some difficulty in
replying; whereupon the landlord mildly took the Colonel to task for the
kind of man he had brought.
[Illustration: THE “COCK AND PYMAT.”]
From another “George”--the “George” at Brighthelmstone, in after years
styled the “King’s Head”--the King escaped to France.
Nor even yet have we quite done with the hapless Stuarts, of whom
undoubtedly Charles the Second was the most fortunate.
One of the most historic of inns was the famous “Cock and Pymat” at
Whittington, near Chesterfield. It is now only to be spoken of in the past
tense because, although there is still an inn of that name at
Whittington, it is not the famous “Revolution House” itself, but only a
modern building to which the old sign of the “Cock and Magpie”--for that
is the plain English of “Pymat”--has been transferred.
Whittington in these times is a very grim and unlovely village, in the
dismal colliery district of Chesterfield, whose wicked-looking crooked
spire gives an air of _diablerie_ to its immediate surroundings; but two
centuries and a quarter ago, when James the Second was on the throne, and
busily engaged in undermining the religious and Parliamentary liberties of
the realm, it was a tiny collection of houses on a lonely moor, and an
ideal place for meetings of conspirators. There and then those very mild
and constitutional plotters who, despite their mildness, did actually
succeed in overturning that already insecure monarch, met and formulated
their demands.
The house in which they gathered was then an inn so noted for its fine
home-brewed ale that packmen and others made it a regular place of call,
and often, we are told, went considerable distances out of their way,
rather than miss a draught of the genuine Whittington nut-brown.
The bold men who met in the room still known as the “Plotting Parlour” had
nothing in common with such plotters as Guy Fawkes. Their methods were
rather those of debating societies than of misguided persons with dark
lanthorns and slow matches; but those were times when even the mildest
debater who ever rose to a point of order would have been in danger of
his life; and so undoubtedly the little gathering that met here in
1688--William, fourth Earl of Devonshire, Sir Thomas Osborne, Earl of
Danby, afterwards Duke of Leeds, and John D’Arcy--were bold men and brave.
They drew up a complaint, moderately worded, and appended to it a sturdy
resolution. They declared that “invasions had been made of late Years on
our Religion and Laws, without the consent of Parliament, freely and duly
chosen,” and begged King James to grant again the constitutional right,
hardly won by our forefathers, of a free Parliament. “But,” they added,
“if, to the great Misfortune and Ruin of these Kingdoms it prove
otherwise, we further declare that we will to our utmost defend the
Protestant religion, the Laws of the Kingdom, and the Rights and Liberties
of the People.”
The Stuarts, although a romantic, were a wrong-headed and a stiff-necked
race. They must needs for ever be trying conclusions with their stubborn
heads against every brick wall within reach, and would never bow before
the storms of their own raising. James, true to his blood, would no more
yield than would any other of his house; and in that same year came the
Prince of Orange and brushed him lightly aside.
The chair in which the Earl (afterwards Duke) of Devonshire presided at
the “Cock and Pymat” was long since transferred to Hardwick Hall, and in
the course of years the greater part of the old inn was demolished, the
remaining portion being now a private house.
[Illustration: PORCH OF THE “RED LION,” HIGH WYCOMBE.]
The porch of that chief hotel of High Wycombe, the “Red Lion,” has become
in these last generations historic; but while we may find, throughout the
country, inns associated with the entirely fictitious incidents of novels
displaying notices of their fame, there is not yet even the most modest of
tablets affixed to the front of the “Red Lion,” to inform the present
generation that from the roof of the projecting portico Benjamin Disraeli,
afterwards Prime Minister of England, made his first political speech.
Thrice, and every time unsuccessfully--twice in 1832, and in 1834--he
sought to enter Parliament as Member for this town. He made a public entry
on June 3rd, 1832, and spoke from beside the lion that, still very red and
fierce, stands to this day on the roof of the portico. He appeared there
in the dandified costume of his youth--tightly strapped trousers,
frock-coat very tight in the waist and very full and spreading in the
skirts--and made a picturesque figure as, in the excitement of his
harangue to the free and independent electors, he from time to time flung
back the long black curls of his luxuriant hair. Mr. D’Israeli--as he then
spelled his name--appeared as an independent candidate, and was proposed
by a Tory and seconded by a Radical. He polled little more than half the
number of votes cast for his opponent, and how small was the electorate in
those days of a restricted franchise we may see from this election return:
Grey 23
D’Israeli 12
--
Majority 11
Among inns of highly dubious historic associations may be mentioned the
“White Hart” at Somerton, Somerset: that gaunt and cold-looking town built
of the local grey-blue limestone that so utterly destroys the summery
implication of the place-name.
[Illustration: THE “WHITE HART,” SOMERTON.]
The inn claims to have been partly built of the stones of Somerton Castle,
and a tiny opening, about the size of a pocket-handkerchief, in the gable
of the small and not otherwise particularly interesting house, is pointed
out as the window of “King John’s Prison.” The “King John” in question was
not our own shabby and lying Lackland, but an infinitely finer fellow--if
one may so greatly dare as to name a king a “fellow”--King John of France,
taken prisoner at the battle of Poictiers and held to ransom in England.
But there appears to be a considerable deal of confusion in the statement
that the French King was ever in custody in Somersetshire, for it was from
the Castle of Hertford to Somerton Castle in Lincolnshire that he was
removed, for greater security, in 1359. But those grave authorities, the
county histories of Somerset and Lincolnshire, alike claim to have had the
custody of that illustrious prisoner, in the 33rd year of Edward the
Third, at their respective Somertons, and the antiquaries of either
narrate how one Sir Saier de Rochford was granted two shillings a day for
the keeping of him.
Apart from this unfounded claim, the “White Hart” is pictorially
remarkable for its White Hart effigy, of an enormous size in proportion to
that of the house.