cousin Henry, Earl of Derby; the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a hundred
knights and sergeants were retired for safety to the Tower, whence they
issued by boat to receive the petitions of the insurgents. Ten thousand of
them waited at Rotherhithe, and by their fierce yells and threatening
appearance so terrified the king's attendants that, instead of permitting
him to land, they took advantage of the tide, and returned. This behaviour
disappointed Tyler, who saw no hope of concessions from the king's
advisers. He and his men burst into London, and, joined by the
discontented host from Essex and Hertfordshire, under the leadership of
one John Rakestraw (who has come down to us through the ages as Jack
Straw, and whose camping-ground on Hampstead Heath bears to this day the
old inn known as "Jack Straw's Castle"), plundered the town, burning the
Palace of the Savoy and all the buildings and records of the Temple. Fear
eventually led the Court party to grant the four chief demands of the
people: the abolition of slavery; the reduction of the rent of land to
fourpence an acre; free liberty of buying and selling in all fairs and
markets; and a general pardon for past offences. Had Tyler and Rakestraw
been content with these concessions, it is probable that all would have
been well; but their ambition had grown with success, and they trusted to
further violence for greater advantage. Rushing into the Tower at the head
of four hundred men, they murdered there the Archbishop of Canterbury and
five others, and, retaining no less than twenty thousand followers in the
City, intercepted the king as he rode out the following morning attended
only by sixty horsemen. With boorish insolence, Tyler lay hold of the
king's bridle, when Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, stabbed him in the
throat. Falling from his horse, the rebel leader was despatched by an
esquire. The courage and tact of the young king are historical, and the
way in which he quelled the hostility of the insurgents, and drew their
sympathies to himself, is well known; but the revocation of the charters
of emancipation was a piece of faithlessness which makes the inquirer
doubtful of the sincerity in which they were first granted, and the less
inclined to blame Wat the Tiler for his excesses.
Thus tamely ended this, at one time, most formidable rebellion. The south
gateway of London Bridge received its leader's head, and the lieges who
fared by that frowning archway, together with those others who felt no
loyalty, were invited to look upon the head of a traitor. But some day Wat
the Tiler of Dartford will have his monument, and, truly, there are few
figures in our history that so well deserve one, for he was one of the
first to stir a hand for the English people against the exactions of a
largely alien nobility.
Blackheath witnessed no other warlike gathering for the matter of seventy
years; but it was in the meanwhile the scene of many peaceful displays.
VIII
And here (says Stowe) came, in 1415, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of
London, with four hundred citizens in scarlet, and with white and red
hoods, to receive Henry the Fifth on his return from the victories in
France, of which that of Agincourt was the greatest. "The gates and
streets of the City were garnished and apparelled with precious cloths of
arras, containing the history, triumphs, and princely acts of the kings of
England, his progenitors, which was done to the end that the king might
understand what remembrance the people would hand to their posterity of
these his great victories and triumphs. The conduits in the City ran none
other but good sweet wines, and that abundantly. There were also made in
the streets many towers and stages, richly adorned, and on the height of
them sat small children, apparelled in semblance of angels, with
sweet-tuned voices, singing praises and lauds unto God: for the victorious
king would not suffer ditties to be made and sung of his history, for that
he would wholly have the praise given unto God; neither would he suffer to
be carried before him, nor showed unto the people, his helmet, whereupon
his crown of gold was broke and deposed in the field by the violence of
the enemy, and great strokes he had received, nor his other armour that in
that cruel battle was so sore broke."
[Sidenote: CARDINAL WOLSEY]
But perhaps the most remarkable meeting on Blackheath was that which
assembled to escort the cardinal's hat, designed for Wolsey. When that
particularly haughty prelate learnt that the insignia of his promotion was
on its way from Rome in charge only of an ordinary messenger, he deemed it
essential to his importance that a more imposing method of conveyance
should be provided. Previously, therefore, to the arrival of the Pope's
messenger on our shores, Wolsey caused him to be met and decked out with
robes and trappings suitable to so important an occasion. That glorified
pursuivant of Papal authority was, therefore, brought along the road from
Dover to Blackheath with the greatest show of deference and consideration,
and here, on this waste, the _hat_ was met by great numbers of the clergy
and nobility, who conducted it to London and to Westminster Abbey in great
triumph.
Wolsey's hat, however, comes out of chronological sequence. Let us then
put back the clock of history again to the year 1450, when Jack Cade's
rebellion peopled Blackheath with a menacing host. These were the early
days of the quarrels of the rival Roses. England was losing--whether by
bad generalship or by trend of unavoidable circumstances it matters
not--the provinces of France won by Henry the Fifth whose feeble son now
reigned; the kinghead around whose ill-balanced kingship raged the
quarrels and family jealousies of the Dukes of York, Suffolk, Somerset,
and Buckingham. The king was unpopular with half his subjects, and all of
them raged with wounded pride and grief at the loss of France. The name of
Mortimer was a power in the land, and the head of that ancient family was
the Duke of York, who had probably the greatest following of feudatory
tenants in England. To take advantage both of the prevailing discontent
and of the Mortimer prestige came Jack Cade, an Irish adventurer, at the
head of twenty thousand followers, and encamped on Blackheath. Cade was
undoubtedly the Duke of York's catspaw, but his sudden success in gaining
adherents is something of a mystery; for, although he proclaimed himself a
cousin of the duke, he was an obviously ignorant clown, a fact seized upon
by Shakespeare with grand effect in _Henry VI_, part i, act 4, where he
makes Cade's companions to be Dick the Butcher, Smith the Weaver, and
others of a like humble estate, whose asides upon Cade's proclaiming
himself a Mortimer and his wife a descendant of the Lacies are very
amusing. "My father was a Mortimer," says Cade, to which Dick the Butcher
rejoins, whispering behind his hand, that "he was an honest man, and a
good bricklayer;" while as to his wife's descent from the Lacies, he
remarks that "she was, indeed, a pedlar's daughter, and sold many
laces"--a punning speech that, were it the work of a modern dramatist,
would be received with a howl of execration.
Cade retired from Blackheath to Sevenoaks on an equal force being sent to
oppose him, but there turned at bay upon his pursuers, and the Royal army
dispersed, leaving London at the mercy of this rabblement. There the
fickle mob wavered and Cade fled, presently to suffer the fate that befell
so many in those bloody days.
[Sidenote: THE RESTORATION]
The last occasion on which Blackheath has figured largely was really
romantic. The date 1660, the occasion the Restoration of His Gracious
Majesty King Charles the Second to the throne of his ancestors. Romantic
it was because of the home-coming of the interesting exile who had fled,
years before, for his life; and was now come, greatly daring, to meet, not
only his loyal citizen-subjects here, but to stand again face to face with
the veteran regiments of the army which had finally crushed the Royalist
hopes at Worcester Fight. No one knew how they would behave. Commanded by
Loyalist officers, they were drawn up here to meet the king, but, amid all
the rejoicings of the people, that Puritan soldiery looked on, scowling,
and not all the personal charm of the king, nor the enthusiasm of the
people, could chase away the sadness with which they looked upon the
undoing of that work in which they had gained their scars. Charles and his
brothers of York and Gloucester moved about, unarmed, graciously
acknowledging the shouts of "Long live King Charles!" and receiving old
supporters who saw this glorious Restoration with tears of joy running
down their cheeks; and their gay demeanour showed their courage, for
little was wanting to make the Ironsides declare for the Commonwealth,
and, spurring their horses, change this scene of rejoicing to one of blood
and dismay. But the moments of suspense were safely passed; the king
pressed on to London, and the Restoration was accomplished. It is in the
pleasant pages of Woodstock that one reads how the old cavalier, Sir Henry
Lee, of Ditchley, "having a complacent smile on his face and a tear
swelling to his eye, as he saw the banners wave on in interminable
succession," came here to witness the return of his sovereign. Here, too,
came Colonel Everard, and Alice, his wife; Joceline Joliffe, who wielded
quarterstaff so well, and with him Mistress Joceline; Wildrake, from
Squattlesea-mere, and Beavis, old and feeble, a shadow of the great
wolf-hound he had been. To this little company came Charles, and,
dismounting, asked for the old knight's blessing, who, having witnessed
this day, was content to die.
And England was "merry England" again. The maypole reappeared upon the
village green, ginger was hot i' the mouth once more, cakes and ale
disappeared down hungry and thirsty throats, and none declared eating and
drinking to be carnal sins; folks sang songs and danced where had been
only the singing of psalms in nasal tones and walking circumspectly;
close-cropped polls grew love-locks again, and sad raiment gave place to
the revived glories of ancient doublet and hose whose colours mocked the
sun for splendour. For ten years had the people gone in a penitential gait
that allowed neither gaiety nor enjoyment of any kind to pass unreproved,
and now that all England was rejoicing that a pharisaical Puritanism had
been overthrown, what wonder that young men and maidens who were too young
to recollect the old England that existed before the Commonwealth plunged
now into the wildest excesses, aided and abetted by old and middle-aged
alike. The pendulum had swung back, and from whining religiosity the
people turned to the extreme of licentiousness.
And so at last to leave the historic aspect of Blackheath, which I had
begun to fear would detain me until a volume had been made of it. Leaving
the heath by the Dover Road, which still follows the old Watling Street,
the way is bordered by apparently endless rows of villas, and the
outskirts of Kidbrook and Charlton village are passed before one comes to
where the fields, bordered by hedgerows, first come in sight, and even
these are disfigured by great boards, offering land to be let for
building-plots. This is, indeed, a neighbourhood where the incautious
stranger takes a villa overlooking meadows, for the sake of the view, and
finds, on waking up one fine morning, the builders putting in the
foundations of a new house which will eventually hide his prospect; or
where, having taken a month's holiday, he returns, to find a new street
round the corner, with a brand new public-house, and a piano-organ
playing the latest comic song, where (_eheu, fugaces!_) meads and orchards
gladdened his eyes a few short weeks before.
IX
[Sidenote: SHOOTER'S HILL]
As one proceeds through Charlton village, past an oddly-named
public-house, "The Sun in the Sands," and the uncharted wilderness of
Kidbrook, Shooter's Hill comes into view, and the long line of "villas"
ends. Just beyond the seventh milestone from London is another little
public-house, the "Fox under the Hill," followed shortly by the "Earl of
Moira," overlooked by the great buildings of the new Fever Hospital which
the London County Council has set up here, to the disgust of all the
dwellers round about. Next to this come the great dismal buildings of the
Military Hospital, where soldier-invalids crawl about the courtyards, or,
happily convalescent, lean over the balconies, smoking and chatting the
hours away. Funerals go frequently hence, for here are always many poor
fellows struggling with death, invalided home from the cruel heats of
India, and many are the sad little processions that go with slow step and
rumbling of gun-carriages to the God's Acres of East Wickham and
Plumstead.
But up among the young oak coppices, the lush grass, and the perennial
springs of Shooter's Hill, all is peaceful and pleasant. You can hear the
Woolwich bugles sing softly through the summer air; birds twitter
overhead, the robustious crowings of arrogant cocks, the sharp ring of
jerry-builders' trowels comes up from below, the winds whisper among the
oaks and rustle like the frou-frou of silk through the foliage of the
silver-beeches--while London toils and moils beyond. Distant smoke drives
before the wind in earnest of those metropolitan labours, and kindly
obscures many vulgar details; but if you cannot see Jerusalem or
Madagascar from here, nor even Saint Paul's, you can at least view that
most commanding object in the landscape near by, Beckton Gasworks, and on
another quarter of the horizon shines the Crystal Palace, glittering afar
off like a City of the Blest, which indeed it is not, nor anything like
it. Directly in front, the sky-line is formed by the elevated table-land
of Blackheath, while in mid-distance the few remaining fields of Charlton
are seen to be making a gallant stand before the advances of villadom.
Shooter's Hill was not always a place whereon one could rest in safety.
Indeed, it bore for long years a particularly bad name as being the
lurking-place of ferocious footpads, cutpurses, highwaymen, cut-throats,
and gentry of allied professions who rushed out from these leafy coverts
and took liberal toll from wayfarers. Six men were hanged hereabouts, in
times not so very remote, for robbery with murder upon the highway; the
remains of four of them decorated the summit of the hill, while two others
swung gracefully from gibbets beside the Eltham Road. The "Bull" inn,
standing at the top of the hill, was in coaching days the first post-house
at which travellers stopped and changed horses on their way from London to
Dover. The "Bull" has been rebuilt in recent years, but tradition says
(and tradition is not always such a liar as some folks would have us
believe) that Dick Turpin frequented the road, and that it was at this old
house he held the landlady over the fire in order to make her confess
where she had hoarded her money. The incident borrows a certain
picturesqueness from lapse of time, but, on the whole, it is not to be
regretted that the days of barbecued landladies are past.
Our old friend Pepys has something to say of what he did or what was done
to him on Shooter's Hill, under date of April 11, 1661; but it was, at any
rate, not a happening of any great note, and moreover, Mr. Pepys' prattle
sometimes becomes tiresome, and so we will pass him by for once in a way.
His fellow diarist, Evelyn, was here in 1699, for he writes, under August,
"I drank the Shooter's Hill waters." A very much more important person,
Queen Anne, to wit (who, alas! is dead), is also said to have partaken of
the mineral spring which made Shooter's Hill a minor spa long years ago.
The spring is still here, and it is this which makes the summit of
Shooter's Hill so graciously green and refreshing. People no longer come
to drink the waters, but he who thirsts by the wayside and sports the blue
ribbon, may, an he please, instead of calling at the "Bull," or the "Red
Lion," across the road, quench his thirst at a drinking-fountain, which is
something between a lich-gate and a Swiss chalet, erected here in recent
years.
[Sidenote: HIGHWAYMEN]
So long ago as 1767 a project was set afoot for building a town on the
summit of Shooter's Hill, but it came to nothing, which is not at all
strange when one considers how constantly the dwellers there would have
been obliged to run the gauntlet of the gentlemen whom Americans happily
call "road-agents." And here is a sample of what would happen now and
again, taken, not from the romantic pages of "Don Juan," nor from Dickens'
"Tale of Two Cities," but from the sober and truthful columns of a London
paper, under date of 1773. "On Sunday night," we read, "about ten o'clock,
Colonel Craige and his servant were attacked near Shooter's Hill by two
highwaymen, well mounted, who, on the colonel's declaring he would not be
robbed, immediately fired and shot the servant's horse in the shoulder. On
this the footman discharged a pistol, and the assailants rode off with
great precipitation." That they rode off with nothing else shows how
effectually the colonel and his servant, by firmly grasping the nettle
danger, plucked the flower safety.
[Sidenote: DON JUAN]
It was by similarly bold conduct that Don Juan put to flight no fewer than
four assailants on this very spot. Arrived thus far from Dover, he had
alighted, and was meditatively pacing along the road behind his carriage
when---- But there! It had best be read in Byron's verse, and let no one
cry out upon me for quoting "Don Juan," and say the thing is nothing new,
lest I, in turn, call fie upon him for an undue acquaintance with that
"wicked" poem--
... Juan now was borne,
Just as the day began to wane and darken,
O'er the high hill which looks, with pride or scorn,
Toward the great city. Ye who have a spark in
Your veins of Cockney spirit, smile or mourn,
According as you take things well or ill;
Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!
* * * * *
A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping
Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amidst the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown
On a fool's head--and there is London Town!
* * * * *
Don Juan had got out on Shooter's Hill:
Sunset the time, the place the same declivity
Which looks along that vale of good and ill
Where London streets ferment in full activity;
While everything around was calm and still,
Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he
Heard; and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum
Of cities, that boil over with their scum.
I say Don Juan, wrapt in contemplation,
Walk'd on behind his carriage, o'er the summit,
And lost in wonder of so great a nation,
Gave way to it, since he could not o'ercome it.
"And here," he cried, "is Freedom's chosen station;
Here peals the people's voice, nor can entomb it
Racks, prisons, inquisitions; resurrection
Awaits it, each new meeting or election.
"Here are chaste wives, pure lives; here people pay
But what they please; and, if that things be dear,
'Tis only that they love to throw away
Their cash, to show how much they have a year.
Here laws are all inviolate; none lay
Traps for the traveller; every highway's clear:
Here"--here he was interrupted by a knife,
With,--"Damn your eyes! Your money or your life!"
These freeborn sounds proceeded from four pads,
In ambush laid, who had perceived him loiter
Behind his carriage; and, like handy lads,
Had seized the lucky hour to reconnoitre,
In which the heedless gentleman who gads
Upon the road, unless he prove a fighter,
May find himself, within that isle of riches,
Exposed to lose his life as well as breeches.
Juan did not understand a word
Of English, save their shibboleth, "God damn!"
And even that he had so rarely heard,
He sometimes thought 'twas only their "Salaam,"
Or "God be with you!" and 'tis not absurd
To think so; for, half English as I am
(To my misfortune), never can I say
I heard them wish "God with you," save that way.
But if he failed to understand their speech, he interpreted their actions
accurately enough, and, drawing a pocket-pistol, shot the foremost in the
stomach, who, writhing in agony on the ground, and unable to discriminate
between Continental nationalities, called out that "the bloody Frenchman"
had killed him. His three companions did not wait to discover that it was
not a Frenchman, but a Spaniard. No, they promptly ran away, and left
their fellow to die, which he presently did, and Don Juan, after an
interview with the coroner, proceeded on his road in wonderment.
"Perhaps," he thought, "it is the country's wont to welcome foreigners in
this way."
Shooter's Hill is pictured excellently well in _A Tale of Two Cities_; the
time, "a Friday night, late in November, in the year of our Lord one
thousand seven hundred and seventy-five," the occasion the passing of the
Dover Mail. The coachman was "laying on" to the horses like another
Macduff, and the near leader of the tired team was shaking its head and
everything upon it, as though denying that the coach could be got up the
hill at all; while the passengers, having been turned out to walk up the
road and ease the horses, splashed miserably in the slush. The time was
"ten minutes, good, past eleven," and the coachman had but just finished
addressing the horses in such strange exclamations as "Tst! Yah! Get on
with you! My blood!" and other picturesque, not to say lurid, phrases,
when sounds were heard along the highway. Sounds of any sort on the road
could not at this hour be aught than ominous, and so the passengers, who
were just upon the point of re-entering the coach, shivered and wondered
if their purses and watches were quite safe which were lying snugly
_perdu_ in their boots.
"Tst! Joe!" calls the coachman, from his box, warningly to the guard.
"What do you say, Tom?"
"I say a horse at a canter coming up," replies Tom.
"I say a horse at a gallop, Tom," rejoins the guard, entrenching himself
behind his seat, and cocking his blunderbuss, calling out to the
passengers at the same time, "Gentlemen, in the King's name, all of you!"
The mail stopped. The hearts of the passengers within thumped audibly, and
if one could not see how they blenched, it was only owing to the obscurity
of the mildewy inside of the old Mail. There they sat, in anxious
expectancy, amid the disagreeable smell arising from the damp and dirty
straw, and the relief they experienced when it was not a highwayman who
rode up to them, but only a messenger for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, who sat
shivering among the rest, may (in the words of a certain class of
novelists) "be better imagined than described."
There is but one criticism I have to make of this; but it is a serious
point. There was no Dover Mail coach in 1775, for the earliest of all mail
coaches, that between Bristol and London, was not established before 1784.
The mails until then were carried by post-boys on horse-back.
Of Severndroog Castle, built on the crest of Shooter's Hill during the
last century, I shall say nothing, because, for one thing, it is of little
interest, and, for another, whatever has to be said about it belongs to
the province of the Guide Books, upon whose territory I do not propose to
infringe. I want to give a modicum of information with the maximum of
amusement, with which declaration of policy I will proceed along the road
to Dover.