THE DOWNES.
WE now make our ascent to the second elevation or the hill countrey,
known by the name of the Downes, or Salisbury Plaines; and they are the
most spacious plaines in Europe, and the greatest remaines that I can
heare of of the smooth primitive world when it lay all under water.
These downes runne into Hampshire, Berkshire, and Dorsetshire; but as
to its extent in this county, it is from Red-hone, the hill above
Urshfont, to Salisbury, north and south, and from Mere to Lurgershall,
east and west. The turfe is of a short sweet grasse, good for the
sheep, and delightfull to the eye, for its smoothnesse like a bowling
green, and pleasant to the traveller; who wants here only variety of
objects to make his journey lesse tedious: for here is “nil nisi campus
et aer”, not a tree, or rarely a bush to shelter one from a shower.
The soile of the downes I take generally to be a white earth or mawme.
More south, sc. about Wilton and Chalke, the downes are intermixt with
boscages that nothing can be more pleasant, and in the summer time doe
excell Arcadia in verdant and rich turfe and moderate aire, but in
winter indeed our air is cold and rawe. The innocent lives here of the
shepherds doe give us a resemblance of the golden age. Jacob and Esau
were shepherds; and Amos, one of the royall family, asserts the same of
himself, for he was among the shepherds of Tecua [Tekoa] following that
employment. The like, by God’s own appointment, prepared Moses for a
scepter, as Philo intimates in his life, when he tells us that a
shepherd’s art is a suitable preparation to a kingdome. The same he
mentions in his Life of Joseph, affirming that the care a shepherd has
over his cattle very much resembles that which a King hath over his
subjects. The same St. Basil, in his Homily de St. Mamme Martyre has,
concerning David, who was taken from following the ewes great with
young ones to feed Israel. The Romans, the worthiest and greatest
nation in the world, sprang from shepherds. The augury of the twelve
vultures plac’t a scepter in Romulus’s hand, which held a crook before;
and as Ovid sayes:-
“His own small flock each senator did keep.”
Lucretius mentions an extraordinary happinesse, and as it were divinity
in a shepherd’s life:—
“Thro’ shepherds’ care, and their divine retreats.”
And, to speake from the very bottome of my heart, not to mention the
integrity and innocence of shepherds, upon which so many have insisted
and copiously declaimed, methinkes he is much more happy in a wood that
at ease contemplates the universe as his own, and in it the sunn and
starrs, the pleasing meadows, shades, groves, green banks, stately
trees, flowing springs, and the wanton windings of a river, fit objects
for quiet innocence, than he that with fire and sword disturbs the
world, and measures his possessions by the wast that lies about him.
These plaines doe abound with hares, fallow deer, partridges, and
bustards. [The fallow deer and bustards have long since disappeared
from these plains; but hares and partridges abound in the vicinity of
gentlemen’s seats, particularly around Everleigh, Tidworth, Amesbury,
Wilbury, Wilton, Earl-Stoke, Clarendon, &c.—Vide ante, p.64.—J. B.] In
this tract is ye Earle of Pembroke’s noble seat at Wilton; but the
Arcadia and the Daphne is about Vernditch and Wilton; and these romancy
plaines and boscages did no doubt conduce to the hightening of Sir
Philip Sydney’s phansie. He lived much in these parts, and his most
masterly touches of his pastoralls he wrote here upon the spott, where
they were conceived. ’Twas about these purlieus that the muses were
wont to appeare to Sir Philip Sydney, and where he wrote down their
dictates in his table book, though on horseback.* For those nimble
fugitives, except they be presently registred, fly away, and perhaps
can never be caught again. But they were never so kind to appeare to
me, though I am the usufructuary:† it seemes they reserve that grace
only for the proprietors, to whom they have continued a constant
kindnesse for a succession of generations of the no lesse ingenious
than honorable family of the Herberts. These were the places where our
Kings and Queens used to divert themselves in the hunting season.
Cranbourn Chase, which reaches from Harnham Bridge, at Salisbury, near
to Blandford, was belonging to Roger Mortimer, Earle of March: his
seate was at his castle at Cranbourne. If these oakes here were vocall
as Dodona’s, some of the old dotards (old stagge-headed oakes, so
called) could give us an account of the amours and secret whispers
between this great Earle and the faire Queen Isabell.
*I remember some old relations of mine and [other] old men hereabout
that have seen Sir Philip doe thus.
†[Aubrey held the manor farm of Broad Chalk under a lease from the Earl
of Pembroke.—J. B.]
To find the proportion of the downes of this countrey to the vales, I
did divide Speed’s Mappe of Wiltshire with a paire of cizars, according
to the respective hundreds of downes and vale, and I weighed them in a
curious ballance of a goldsmith, and the proportion of the hill
countrey to the vale is as …. to …. sc. about 3/4 fere.
SHEEP. As to the nature of our Wiltshire sheep, negatively, they are
not subject to the shaking; which the Dorsetshire sheep are. Our sheep
about Chalke doe never die of the rott. My Cos. Scott does assure me
that I may modestly allow a thousand sheep to a tything, one with
another. Mr. Rogers was for allowing of two thousand sheep, one with
another, to a tything, but my Cosin Scott saies that is too high.
SHEPHERDS. The Britons received their knowledge of agriculture from the
Romans, and they retain yet many of their customes. The festivalls at
sheep-shearing seeme to bee derived from the Parilia. In our western
parts, I know not what is done in the north, the sheep-masters give no
wages to their shepherds, but they have the keeping of so many sheep,
pro rata; soe that the shepherds’ lambs doe never miscarry. I find that
Plautus gives us a hint of this custome amongst the Romans in his time;
Asinaria, Act III. scene i. Philenian (Meretrix):
“Etiam opilio, qui pascit (mater) alienas ovis,
Aliquani habet peculiarem qua spem soletur suam.”
Their habit, I believe, (let there be a draught of their habit) is that
of the Roman or Arcadian shepherds; as they are delineated in Mr. Mich.
Drayton’s Poly-olbion; sc. a long white cloake with a very deep cape,
which comes halfway down their backs, made of the locks of the sheep.
There was a sheep-crooke (vide Virgil’s Eclogues, and Theocritus,) a
sling, a scrip, their tar-box, a pipe or flute, and their dog. But
since 1671, they are grown so luxurious as to neglect their ancient
warme and useful fashion, and goe a la mode. T. Randolph in a Pastoral
sayes;-
“What clod-pates, Thenot, are our British swaines,
How lubber-like they loll upon the plaines.” *
* [See “Plays and Poems, by Thomas Randolph, M.A.” 12mo. 1664, p. 90.
The lines quoted are at the commencement of a dialogue between Collen
and Thenot; which is described as “an Eglogue on the noble assemblies
revived on Cotswold Hills by Mr. Robert Dover”. An able criticism of
Randolph’s works, with extracts, will be found in the sixth volume of
the “Retrospective Review”.—J. B.]
Before the civill warres I remember many of them made straw hatts,
which I thinke is now left off, and our shepherdesses of late yeares
(1680) doe begin to worke point, whereas before they did only knitt
coarse stockings. (Instead of the sling they have now a hollow iron or
piece of horne, not unlike a shoeing horne, fastened to the other end
of the crosier, by wch they take up stones and sling, and keep their
flocks in order. The French sheperdesses spin with a rocque.—J.
EVELYN.)
Mr. Ferraby, the minister of Bishop’s Cannings, was an ingenious man,
and an excellent musician, and made severall of his parishioners good
musicians, both for vocall and instrumentall musick; they sung the
Psalmes in consort to the organ, which Mr. Ferraby procured to be
erected.
When King James the First was in these parts he lay at Sir Edw.
Baynton’s at Bromham. Mr. Ferraby then entertained his Majesty at the
Bush, in Cotefield, with bucoliques of his own making and composing, of
four parts; which were sung by his parishioners, who wore frocks and
whippes like carters. Whilst his majesty was thus diverted, the eight
bells (of which he was the cause) did ring, and the organ was played on
for state; and after this musicall entertainment he entertained his
Majesty with a foot-ball match of his own parishioners. This parish in
those dayes would have challenged all England for musique, foot-ball,
and ringing. For this entertainment his Majesty made him one of his
chaplains in ordinary.
When Queen Anne† returned from Bathe, he made an entertainment for her
Majesty on Canning’s-down, sc. at Shepherds-shard,‡ at Wensditch, with
a pastorall performed by himself and his parishioners in shepherds’
weeds. A copie of his song was printed within a compartment excellently
well engraved and designed, with goates, pipes, sheep hooks,
cornucopias, &c. [Aubrey has transcribed it into his manuscript. It
appears that it was sung as above mentioned on the llth of June 1613;
being “voyc’t in four parts compleatly musicall”; and we are told that
“it was by her Highnesse not only most gratiously accepted and
approved, but also bounteously rewarded; and by the right honourable,
worshipfull, and the rest of the generall hearers and beholders,
worthily applauded”. See this also noticed in Wood’s “Fasti
Oxonienses”, under “Ferebe”, and in Nichols’s Progresses, &c. of King
James the First, ii. 668. In this curious chapter, Aubrey has further
transcribed “A Dialogue between two Shepherds uttered in a Pastorall
shew at Wilton”, and written by Sir Philip Sidney. See the Life of
Sidney, prefixed to an edition of his Works in three volumes, 8vo,
1725.—J. B.]
†[Anne of Denmark, Queen of James I. was married to that monarch in
1589, and died in 1619.—J. B.]
‡[Shard is a word used in Wiltshire to indicate a gap in a hedge.
Ponshard signifies a broken piece of earthenware.—J. B.]