century, although the trade and importance of Gravesend had greatly
increased. Troubles arose then on account of the disorderly hackmen,
"foreigners and strangers"--any one not a freeman or a burgess was a
"foreigner"--who plied between Gravesend and Rochester, and took away the
custom that belonged of right to members of Gravesend guilds. Two years
later the Corporation of Gravesend was distinctly Roundhead in its
sympathies, for in 1649 we find the town mace being altered, the Royal
arms removed, and those of the Commonwealth substituted, at a cost of L23
10_s._ 0_d._ In 1660, things wore a very different complexion, for in that
year the Gravesend people welcomed Charles the Second with every
demonstration of joy. They had the mace restored to its former condition
at a cost, this time, of L17 10_s._ 0_d._, and allowed the mayor and
another L2 5_s._ 7_d._ for going up to London to see that the work was
done properly. They paid L3 10_s._ 0_d._ for painting the king's arms;
14_s._ to one John Phettiplace for "trumpeters and wigs"; and 5_s._ to
Will Charley "for sounding about the country." Having done this, they all
got gloriously drunk at a total cost of L12 15_s._ 8_d._, of which sum L10
7_s._ 8_d._ was for wine, and L2 8_s._ 0_d._ for beer.
[Illustration: RIVERSIDE, GRAVESEND.]
It was, indeed, during this latter half of the seventeenth century that
Gravesend experienced one of its great periods of prosperity; and so the
loyalty was well rewarded. Of this date are many of the fine old red-brick
mansions in the older part of the town, together with the Admiralty House,
official residence of the Duke of York when Lord High Admiral. To
Gravesend he came as James the Second, a prisoner.
Embarking from Whitehall, on December 18, 1688, he reached here as late as
nine o'clock at night. The next morning he was conducted hence to
Rochester in the charge of a hundred of the Prince of Orange's Dutch
Guards, and a melancholy journey it must have been for him, if his memory
took him back to the time when, twenty-eight years before, he came up the
road with his brothers, Charles the Second and the Duke of Gloucester,
happily returning from exile.
To Gravesend came Royal and distinguished travellers on their way from
Dover to London, and hence they embarked for the City and Westminster,
escorted, if they were sufficiently Royal or distinguished by the Lord
Mayor, Aldermen, and the City Guilds, and fitly conducted in a long
procession of stately barges by this most impressive entrance to the
capital of England. And even ordinary travellers preferred this route. For
two reasons: the river-road was much more expeditious than the highway in
those pre-MacAdamite days, and by taking it they escaped the too-pressing
attentions that awaited them on Shooter's Hill and Blackheath at the hands
of Captains Gibbet and Pick-Purse.
XVI
[Sidenote: OLD TIME TRAVELLERS]
Many of these distinguished travellers on this old highway have left
written accounts of their doings, and very interesting readings they make.
Foremost among the "distinguished" company was Marshal de Bassompierre. He
came to England in 1626, on an Embassy from the King of France, and
arrived at Dover on the 2nd of October. There he stayed to recruit, for
the sea, as usual, had been unkind, until Sunday, the 4th, departing
thence on that day for "Cantorbery," where he slept the night, going on
the Monday as far as "Sitimborne," and on Tuesday to "Rocheter" and
Gravesend, where he was met by the Queen's barge. Three months later, and
he was returning home. On December 1st he began his farewells at the Court
of Saint James's, and bade adieu to, amongst others, such fearful wild
fowl as the Earl of Suffolc and the Duke of Boukinkam; this last the
dissolute "Steenie"--none other! On the 5th, imagine him at Dover with an
equipage of five hundred persons shivering on the brink of the Channel,
and stormbound there for fourteen days at a cost of 14,000 crowns.
This imposing company embarked at last, and, after braving winds and sea
for a whole day, were compelled to put back again. When they _did_ finally
set off, they were five days crossing to Calais, and it was found
necessary to jettison the Ambassador's two carriages _en route_, in which
was, alas! 40,000 francs' worth of clothes. Also this unfortunate diplomat
lost twenty-nine horses, which died of thirst on the voyage.
Another French traveller, Monsieur Jouvin de Rochefort, greatly daring,
visited our shores in 1670. He took the ordinary coach for "Gravesine," in
order, as he says, to embark thence for London, passing on his way from
Canterbury, Arburtoon, Baten, and Asbery; Grinsrit, Sitingborn,
Nieuvetoon, and Renem[2] and coming to Rochester through a strange place
called Schatenne, which I don't find anywhere on the map, but suppose he
means Chatham. All along the road he remarked a number of high poles, on
the top of which were small kettles, in which fires were lighted to warn
the countryside of the robbers who would come in bands and plunder the
villages, were it not for the courage of the villagers, who formed
themselves into guards. These poles were about a mile distant from each
other, and to every one there was a small hut for the person whose
business it was to keep the beacons burning. "God be praised," though, he
reached "Gravesine" safely!
Samuel de Sorbiere, Historiographer Royal to the King of France, visited
our shores in 1663. The normal passage from Calais was three hours, but on
this occasion seven hours were consumed in crossing, and although the
weather was very fair, the "usual Disorder which those who are not
accustomed to the sea are subject to"--but no matter! To make matters
worse, contempt and affronts were put upon him in Dover streets by some
sons of Belial in the shape of boys who ran after him shouting, "a
Monsieur, a Monsieur," and who, when they had retired to a safe distance,
proceeded to the extremely impolite depth of calling him a "French dog,"
"which," says M. de Sorbiere, sweepingly, "is the epithet they give us in
England."
Our traveller journeyed to London by wagon, rather than take a post-chaise
or even the stage-coach; an extremely undignified thing for an
Historiographer Royal to do, one would think. But then, 'twas the way to
note the strange customs of these English! The wagon was drawn by six
horses, one before another, and beside them walked the wagoner clothed in
black and appointed in all things like another Saint George. He had a
brave mounteero on his head, and was a merry fellow who fancied he made a
figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself. Arrived at Gravesend,
our traveller, for greater expedition, took boat to London, and so an end
of him, so far, at least, as these pages are concerned.
[Sidenote: M. GROSLEY]
But this little crowd of scribbling foreigners who visited England and
wrote accounts of their travels in these islands before the locomotive was
dreamed of, had much better opportunities of catching impressions than
the railway train affords. They came up this way to London, as slowly as
the poet's spring; and, as a rule, they used their opportunities very
well. For instance, here is the admirable M. Grosley, a kindly Frenchman
who came over from Boulogne in 1765. He gives a most interesting account
of his journey along the Dover Road on the 11th April. He embarked upon
Captain Meriton's packet, which arrived, in company with a prodigious
number of other ships, three hours before time, off Dover. Here they had
to anchor for the tide to serve their landing, and the boisterous winds
drove several vessels ashore, while Captain Meriton's passengers resigned
themselves to death. When at length they landed, half dead, an
Englishwoman with her very amiable daughter and a tall old Irishman, who
pretended to be an officer (and who doubtless "had a way with him"),
landed with our traveller, and contrived that he should pay part of their
fare, the only trick played upon M. Grosley (I am pleased to say) during
his stay in England. The customs officers looked like beggars, but treated
this foreigner like a gentleman, as indeed we may suppose he was, for he
belonged to the Academy.
However, a crown was levied on passing his luggage by an innkeeper who
held the _droit de viscomte_. All the inns were crowded with the miserable
travellers just landed, and he with whom we are particularly concerned
found it necessary to go into the kitchen of his inn and take off, with
his own hands, one of the _tranches de boeuf_ grilling on the coals.
After this exploit, he cautiously went to bed at six o'clock in the
afternoon, for there were not enough beds to go round, and possession was
ever nine points of the law! At three in the morning he was called upon to
turn out in favour of a new arrival; but, notwithstanding all the rout
they made, he held to his four-poster until five, when he was turned out
and the game of Box and Cox commenced.
The sole inhabitants of Dover (says our traveller) were sailors, ships'
captains, and innkeepers. The height of the triumphal arches, on which the
vast signboards of the inns spanned the narrow streets, and the ridiculous
magnificence of the ornaments that headed them, were wonderful as compared
with the little post-boys, children of twelve and thirteen years of age,
who were starting every minute in sole charge of post-chaises. The great
multitude of travellers with which Dover was crowded afforded a reason for
dispensing with a police regulation which forbade public conveyances to
travel on Sundays, and on that day he set out with seven other passengers
in two carriages called ("called," you notice, like that street in
Jerusalem that was "called" straight) "flying machines." There were six
horses to a machine, and they covered the distance to London in one day
for one guinea each person; passengers' servants carried outside at
half-price. The coachmen, who were most kindly disposed towards their
horses, carried whips, certainly, but they were no more in their hands
than the fan is in winter in the hand of a lady; they only served to make
a show with, for their horses scarcely ever felt them, so great was the
tenderness of the English coachman with his cattle.
But see the peculiar advantages of travelling on Sunday. There were no
excisemen anywhere on duty, and even the highwaymen had ceased their
labours during the night. The only knights of the road our travellers
encountered were dangling from gibbets by the wayside in all the glories
of periwigs and full-skirted coats. Unfortunately, the pace was marred by
the frequent stoppages made to unload the brandy-kegs at the roadside inns
from the boots of the coaches, where they had been stowed away in the
absence of the gaugers.
[Sidenote: FOREIGNERS ON ENGLAND]
Upon their way to Canterbury, the travellers, and our foreigner in
particular, had for some time perceived that they were no longer in
France, and when at length they reached that bourne of pilgrims they were
still further impressed with that fact by observing a fat man, who was
just arisen from bed, standing at a bay window during the whole time the
flying machines changed their Pegasuses; and, as they were unexpected the
delay was considerable. But all this while the fat man stood there in his
night-shirt, with a velvet cap on his head, contemplating them with folded
arms and knitted brow, and with an expression which (in France) was to be
seen only on the faces of them that had just buried their dearest friends.
Also, the "young persons" of both sexes stood and stared--not to mince
matters--like stuck pigs.
The country which they travelled through from Dover to London was (so our
traveller thought) in general a bad mixture of sand and chalk. They
skirted some lovely woods as well furnished as the best-stocked forests of
France--alas! where are those woods now?--and presently passed over
commons covered with heath and stray broom, very high and flourishing all
the year round. Those wild shrubs were left to the use of the poor of the
several different parishes, but their vigour and thickness gave reason to
conjecture that there were but few poor people in those parishes. The best
lands were then, as now, laid out in hop-gardens.
The wayside inns appealed strongly to our traveller. They were given,
whether in town or country, to the making of large accounts, but then see
how rich was the English lord who, as a class, frequented them. Anyway,
they were possessed of a cleanliness far beyond that to be found in the
majority of the best private houses in France. There was only one inn on
the road from Paris to Boulogne to be mentioned in the same breath with
the English houses, and that was one at Montreuil, frequented by English
travellers.
Between Canterbury and Rochester the coaches encountered an obstacle which
savours rather of Don Quixote's adventures than of Sunday travelling in
this unromantic country. This was nothing less than a windmill which the
country-folk, taking advantage of that usually coachless day, were moving
entire. Less fiery than the Don, the travellers outflanked the gigantic
obstacle by dragging the coaches into the field beside the road. And of
that road, M. Grosley has to say that it was excellent; covered with
powdered flints, and well kept, in spite of the exemption from forced
labour which the countrymen enjoyed; and here he quotes what Aurelius
Victor has to say of the Emperor Vespasian's vast roadworks in Britain.
The roadways had not long been in this enviable condition; only, indeed,
so recently as the days of George the Second had they been rescued from
the bad state into which they had been suffered to fall during the civil
wars, and, generally speaking, the English knew little or nothing of the
art of road-making.
The repairing of the high-roads was at the expense of them that used them.
Neither rank nor dignity was exempted from the payment of tolls; the king
himself was subject to them, and the turnpike would have been shut against
his equipage if none of his officers paid the money before passing by.
These high-roads had all along them a little raised bank, two or three
feet broad, with a row of wooden posts whose tops were whitewashed so that
the coachmen should see them at night. This was for the conveniency of
foot-passengers. In places where the road was too narrow to admit of this
arrangement, the proprietors of lands adjoining were obliged to give
passage through their fields, which were all enclosed with tall hedges or
with strong hurdles about four feet high, over which passengers leapt or
climbed. Custom had so habituated the village girls to this exercise that
they acquitted themselves in it with a peculiar grace and agility. The
great attention of the English to the conveniency of foot-passengers had
several causes. Firstly, they set the highest value upon the lives of
their fellow-creatures, and in that peculiar circumstance they sacrificed
to pleasure and conveniency. Secondly, their laws were not exclusively
made and executed by persons who rode in their chariots. Thirdly, as the
English carriages moved as swiftly in the country as slowly in the town,
the meeting with persons who were so foolish or so ill-geared as to walk
a-foot would have been disastrous to those wayfarers; and in so democratic
a country as this the chariot-riders would have had a bad time in store
for them for so small a matter as playing, as it were, the secular
Juggernaut with pedestrians.
Eventually this moralising Frenchman reached London through Rochester,
which place was one long street inhabited solely by ships' carpenters and
dockyard men. At Greenwich, the shores of Thames loomed upon his
enraptured gaze, agreeably confounded with long lines of trees and the
masts of ships, and then came delightful London, and that haven where he
would be--ah! you guess it, do you not? It was Leicester Fields, _le
Squarr de Leicesterre_ of a later generation of Frenchmen.
XVII
[Sidenote: MILTON]
Having thus disposed of this company of scribbling foreigners, I will get
on to Milton-next-Gravesend, which immediately adjoins the town;
especially will I do so because, when the old waterside lanes have been
explored, little remains to see besides Gordon's statue and the little
cottage where he used to live. The high-road is not at all interesting,
unless indeed a Jubilee clock-tower and a number of private houses of the
Regent's Park order of architecture may be considered to lend a charm to
it. Just beyond these houses comes Milton: a school, a church, and a
public-house standing next one another. The church belongs to the
Decorated period, and has a tower built of flints, stone, and chalk.
During the last century the churchwardens had the repairing of the nave
roof under consideration, and, in order to save twenty pounds on an
estimate, they decided to remove the battlements, and to have a slated
roof, spanning nave and aisles, and ending in eaves. The thing was done,
against the wish of the Vicar and with the approval of the then Bishop of
Rochester, and all who pass this way can see how barbarous was the deed.
It had not even the merit of economy, for, by the time the work was
completed, it had cost the churchwardens several hundreds of pounds more
than had been anticipated.
"Trifle not, your time's but short," says a very elaborate and complicated
sundial over the south porch, looking down upon the road; and, taking the
hint, we will proceed at once from Milton Church to the public-house next
door. But not for carnal joys; oh no! Only in the interests of this book
will we make such a sudden diversion; for, at the rear of the house, on
the old bowling-green, is an interesting memorial of one of the jolly
fellows who once upon a time gathered here on summer evenings and played a
game of bowls when business in the neighbouring town of Gravesend was done
for the day.
TO THE MEMORY
OF MR. ALDERMAN NYNN,
An honeft Man, and an Excellent Bowler.
_Cuique est sua Fama._
Full forty long Years was the ALDERMAN feen,
The delight of each Bowler, and King of this Greene.
As long he remember'd his Art and his Name,
Whofe hand was unerring, unrival'd whofe Fame.
His Bias was good, and he always was found
To go the right way and to take enough ground.
The JACK to the uttermoft verge he would fend
For the ALDERMAN lov'd a full length at each End.
Now mourn ev'ry Eye that hath feen him difplay
The Arts of the Game, and the Wiles of his play;
For the great Bowler, DEATH, at one critical Cast
Has ended his length, and clofe rubb'd him at laft.
F. W. pofuit, MDCCLXXVI.
And having duly noted this elegy of a truly admirable man, we may leave
Milton, pausing but to look down upon the estuary of the Thames, where the
great liners pass to and fro the most distant parts of the world, and also
to consider the humours of a hundred years ago, when, as now, Milton was
in the corporate jurisdiction of Gravesend, and when it sufficed both to
employ one watchman between them. This watchman was also Common Crier, and
was supported, not by a salary, but (like a hospital) by voluntary
contributions. And he did not do badly by the grateful Gravesenders, for
he collected, one year with another, L60, which, added to the
market-gardening business he also carried on, must have made quite a
comfortable income.
[Sidenote: DENTON]
A little way beyond Milton, where the road curves round to the right,
there will be seen on the left an eighteenth-century mansion, standing in
extensive grounds. Immediately within the lodge-gates is what looks like a
small church, surrounded by trees. It is older and far more interesting
than it seems to be. Until 1901 it was, in fact, a roofless ruin; but it
was then restored by Mr. George M. Arnold, who then owned Denton Court,
the name of the house. The church, now used as a private chapel by the
owner of Denton Court, was in fact Denton Chapel, the place of worship of
the parish of Denton, which was ecclesiastically separate from Milton
until 1879. Denton is a place so small that few maps condescend to notice
it, but it is an ancient place, first named in A.D. 950, as "Denetune,"
when the manor was given by one Byrhtric to the Priory of St. Andrew at
Rochester, which built this chapel of St. Mary. It was on the dissolution
of the monasteries in the time of Henry the Eighth that it fell into ruin.
[Illustration: DENTON CHAPEL.]
The chapel is of literary interest, for it is the original of Barham's
"Ingoldsby Abbey." In travelling between Canterbury and London by coach,
Barham noticed the ruined walls standing up, silhouetted against the sky,
and looking far more important than intrinsically they were; for this was
then a cleared space, the new road near by having in 1787 been cut
actually through the little churchyard.
Commentators in various editions of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ have stated
sceptically "the remains of Ingoldsby Abbey will be found--if found at
all--among the 'Chateaux en Espagne.'" That is not so; for here it is.
Barham himself, in a note to the legend "The Ingoldsby Penance," remarks
the ruins are "still to be seen by the side of the high Dover road, about
a mile and a half below the town of Gravesend."
... near
The great gate Father Thames rolls sun-bright and clear,
Cobham woods to the right--on the opposite shore
Laindon Hills in the distance, ten miles off, or more;
Then you've Milton and Gravesend behind--and before
You can see almost all the way down to the Nore.
In Domesday Book Denton is written "Danitune," and it is generally held
that the name comes from the raiding Danes, who certainly troubled this
estuary; but it is probably "Dene-town," the place in the vale; perhaps in
contradistinction to Higham, which is not far off.
[Illustration: JOE GARGERY'S FORGE.]
[Sidenote: CHALK]
Chalk is the next place on the road, and Chalk is quite the smallest and
most scattered of villages, beginning at the summit of the hill leading
out of Milton and ending at Chalk church, which stands on a hillock
retired behind a clump of trees nearly a mile down the road, and far away
from any house. All the way the road commands long reaches of the Thames
and the Essex marshes, and on summer days the singing of the larks high in
air above the open fields can be heard.
At Chalk, in 1836, Charles Dickens rented a honeymoon cottage, on his
marriage with Catherine Hogarth. Great controversies arose some years ago,
following upon what is said to be a wrong identification of the place with
a residence called the "Manor House"; and it was stated that the real
dwelling in question was the weather-boarded and much humbler cottage at
the fork of the old and new roads between Gravesend and Northfleet, still
standing, and with a commemorative tablet on it. Opposite is "Joe
Gargery's Forge."
[Illustration: ANCIENT CARVING--CHALK.]
Chalk church is a very much unrestored building of flint and rubble,
dating from the thirteenth century. Its south aisle was pulled down at
some remote period. There still remains, and in very good preservation,
too, a singular Early English carving over the western door representing a
grinning countryman holding an immense flagon in his two hands and gazing
upward towards a whimsically-contorted figure that seems to be nearly all
head and teeth. Between the two is an empty tabernacle which at one time
before the destruction of "idolatrous statues" would have held a figure of
the Virgin. The two remaining figures probably illustrate the celebration
of "Church ales," a yearly festival formerly common to all English
villages, and held on the day sacred to the particular saint to whom the
church was dedicated. On these occasions there was used to be general
jollity; feasting and drinking; manly sports, such as boxing, wrestling,
and games at quarter-staff, would be indulged in, and the day was held as
a fair, to which came jugglers and players of interludes and itinerant
vendors from far and near. The Church, of course, being the original
occasion of the merry-making, looked benignly upon it, and provided the
funds for the malt from which the so-called "Church ales" were brewed.
[Illustration: SAILORS' FOLLY. (_After Julius Caesar Ibbetson_).]
[Illustration: JACK COME HOME AGAIN.]
[Sidenote: THE "LORD NELSON"]