is one of the prettiest.
Lady Cathcart, on marrying her fourth husband in 1713, had “If I survive
I will have five” engraved upon her wedding ring.
Since my young days the prices of many things have changed very
considerably indeed. On the whole the necessities of life have certainly
become cheaper, and its minor luxuries have been brought well within the
reach of those boasting but a slender purse. When I was a child we used
to burn mutton-fat candles in our nursery, and it was only in 1835, as I
find from a letter of my dear old governess, that we abandoned this form
of illumination for a little lamp trimmed with the best sperm oil. In
still older days candles made of deer-fat used, I believe, to be burnt
in country houses, where the whole problem of lighting was no easy
matter.
The cumbersome oil lamps of pre-electric light days were a great source
of trouble and expense, apart from the danger of fire which they
sometimes caused owing to careless handling. In large houses men had to
be specially told off to attend to the lamps. I remember the uncle of
the present Duke of Rutland showing me the lamp-room at Belvoir full of
gigantic barrels of oil; at the same time he told me that no less than
six men were kept constantly employed at nothing else but looking after
the lamps. This Duke of Rutland was very much devoted to hunting and had
several very severe falls. My husband and myself used often to go to
Belvoir, and I remember that on two occasions, when going to visit
there, we turned back at Grantham, it being there reported to us that
the Duke, having had a terrible fall, was hovering between life and
death; nevertheless he survived both these accidents. The late Duke
(Lord John Manners) I always considered one of the most
high-bred-looking men I ever saw in my life. I knew him in youth and in
old age, and in both he was ever the typical English aristocrat; his
polished and courteous address—the heritage of his race still preserved
in the present generation—will always linger pleasantly in my memory.
There was naturally something much more picturesque about old country
life than is the case to-day, when, owing to railways and motor cars,
people are kept in constant and close touch with town. The poacher,
perhaps, is now the sole anachronism, and even he, I fancy, has
discarded his old-world raiding ways in favour of more calculating and
scientific methods. Poaching in old days was regarded by the
country-folk much as smuggling had been by their forebears—that is,
with a certain sneaking feeling of sympathetic toleration.
Many years ago, when I lived in Sussex, stories of the smugglers who
formerly abounded along the coast were still told by those who had
actually witnessed and, in some cases, taken part in their operations.
Smuggling, as a matter of fact, hurting as it did no one but the
Revenue, was not regarded with any particular horror, and the long
trains of heavily loaded carts escorted by the smugglers were generally
interfered with by no one except the Revenue officers and the
coastguardsmen. One of the favourite haunts of the “Free Traders” was in
Parham Park, and old Baroness de la Zouche used to say that, when she
was a little girl, walking one day in the park with her governess, some
smugglers had made her open a gate in order to facilitate the passage of
a long train of pack-horses loaded with kegs, then on its way to a
remote part of the park near the heronry. In Eridge Park, also, caves
still exist where smugglers used to store their bales of goods. During
the eighteenth century the house was not inhabited, and the surrounding
park was practically a wilderness, so that these caves formed a most
excellent and secure retreat. There runs beneath the present Eridge
Castle a long passage, the entrance to which is far distant from the
house, and as its existence has never been accounted for it is not
improbable that smugglers may have had something to do with its
construction; it is almost certain, at least, that they knew of it and
kept it in repair.
The officers of the Customs, who were called “riding officers,” though
sometimes assisted by dragoons, could do but little against the
smugglers, who sometimes indulged in very savage reprisals. The last
occasion when life was lost in a smuggling affray was in 1838 at Camber
Castle, but it was some time before that date that the last great party
of smugglers passed through Petworth—sixty well-armed men, pistols in
their belts and cutlasses by their sides. They escorted two carts and a
number of horses loaded with tubs of brandy and hollands, whilst a few
of them also had bales of silk slung across their backs. This
picturesque procession—the funeral cortège, as it were, of
smuggling—came into the old town on a Sunday morning, whilst the
inhabitants were at church, and made its way through the streets in a
very leisurely fashion, some of the smugglers even halting at the inns
to have a drink, for it was in the days when licensing reform was as yet
a thing of the future. The last of the smugglers were armed chiefly with
“bats”—thick ash poles about six feet long. An old smuggler, Smithurst
by name, killed in a fight at Bexhill in 1828, was found with his bat
almost hacked to pieces but still grasped tightly in his hands.
A particularly ferocious murder committed by smugglers was that of some
Custom House officers in 1749, when five men actually robbed the Custom
House at Poole. The criminals were eventually caught, hung, and gibbeted
in chains, one only escaping this fate through dying of fright whilst
being measured for his irons. One of the leg-irons of William Carter, a
member of this gang, who was hung in chains near Rake on the Portsmouth
Road, came into my possession, and this I still retain.
The last example of hanging in chains took place when I was a child in
1834, in which year a man named Cook, a bookbinder, who had murdered a
Mr. Paas at Leicester, was hung and gibbeted in Saffron Lane outside the
town. So much disorder and rioting, however, prevailed that the body was
very soon removed, and in the same year hanging in chains was finally
abolished.
It has been sometimes declared that criminals were at one time actually
hung alive in chains, but this is pure fiction. Before being hung, a
criminal, it is true, was measured for his irons—an ordeal under which
many completely broke down. After the hanging, the body was taken down
and thrown into a cauldron of boiling pitch, on being taken out of which
it was placed in the chains, which were riveted around it, and then
slung up upon a gibbet, where it swung in the wind as long as the chains
held together. In some instances sacks took the place of chains.
At the last public execution in England, which took place in 1852 at
Northampton, the crowd which had assembled was exceedingly incensed at
finding that the day had been changed. Some of them, indeed, loudly
declared that if they could only get at the Under-Sheriff “they would
let him know what it was to keep honest folk in suspense,” whilst one
old lady, who was especially vociferous in her denunciation, announced
that she should certainly claim her expenses from the authorities. It
was also at Northampton in 1818 that the governor proudly described the
new drop set up at the county gaol as being admirably suited for the
hanging of twelve persons comfortably.
It may be observed that pictures of gibbets are exceedingly rarely to be
found, the greatest number, oddly enough, being in works illustrated by
Thomas Bewick. There are several gibbets in the tailpieces of his
_British Birds_, and also one or two in his _Quadrupeds_. I may add that
some sixteen years ago a very interesting little volume on the subject
of _Hanging in Chains_ was written by Mr. Albert Hartshorne, a gentleman
well known for his knowledge of old English glass and general love of
research into the past. The book in question, however, which is fully
illustrated, has now, unfortunately, become somewhat difficult to
procure.
On North Heath, north of Midhurst, a gallows once stood. From this, some
hundred and eight years ago, swung in chains the brothers Drewitt,
convicted of having robbed the mail on that spot. Their guilt,
nevertheless, does not appear to have been thoroughly proved, the real
criminal, it was thought by some, having been their father, who after
the execution used to be seen sitting at the foot of the gallows beneath
the bodies of his sons. A curious old Sussex tradition declared that a
dead man’s hand would cure any affection of the throat, and people would
walk great distances to put this cure to the test. Whilst the body of
the younger of the two Drewitts swung in the wind (which it did for a
long time, a further proof, it was pointed out, of his innocence),
children were brought from far away and held up in the air in order that
the dead man’s hand might swing across their throat. The younger
Drewitt, who to his last breath maintained that he was quite unconnected
with the robbery, was generally considered a martyr in the district, and
the tale of his unjust fate, together with numerous details of his
capture, “in a new pair of buckskin breeches,” was told at many a
cottage fireside long years after hanging in chains had become but a
memory of the past.
A far more barbarous method of punishment than hanging in chains was
“pressing to death,” the last recorded infliction of which took place in
Sussex, at Horsham gaol, in 1736. When a man, for no matter what reason,
refused to plead, he was ordered to be laid naked on his back on the
bare floor of a low dark chamber, and as great a weight of iron as he
could bear—and more—put upon him. From time to time he was questioned,
and should he continue to refuse to answer, heavier weights were added.
As the victims of this torture sometimes survived for days, the law very
humanely provided that on the first day they were to be allowed three
morsels of the “worst bread procurable,” whilst on the second three
draughts of “standing water” were allowed. This alternation of food and
drink was to continue from day to day till the prisoners answered or
till they died. The last man to suffer this horrible punishment was one
who was charged with robbery and with murdering a woman at Bognor, and
who refused to plead, not uttering a word. Many endeavours were made to
induce him to speak, but all of them proving useless, he was taken back
to Horsham gaol to be pressed to death. The weight which finally killed
him was some four hundred pounds, in addition to which the executioner,
a man turning the scale at sixteen stone, jumped upon the board and thus
administered the _coup de grâce_.
Executions in quite modern times were horrible affairs. Within my own
lifetime the skin of more than one murderer has been taken from his
body, tanned, and used to bind a book. Such a thing happened after the
execution of William Corder, who was hung at Bury St. Edmunds in the
year 1828, having been found guilty of murdering Maria Martin. On this
occasion the Bury coach on its way to London was stopped in order that
the passengers might witness the execution. Macready used to say that
during the performance of _Macbeth_ the same evening at Drury Lane the
actor who impersonated Duncan was interrupted at the words, “Is
execution done on Cawdor?” by a man in the gallery who shouted out,
“Yes! He was hung this morning at Bury.” In connection with books bound
in human skin it may be mentioned that a copy of the Poetical Works of
John Milton in the Exeter Museum is said to be bound in the skin of
George Cudmore, a Devonshire murderer executed in 1830, whilst I believe
there is also a large quarto volume preserved at Bristol which is bound
in the skin of a murderer executed as recently as 1843.
During the Reign of Terror in France, it has been stated, several pairs
of ladies’ white kid gloves were made from the same gruesome material.
In my childhood also, “resurrection men,” as those who stole dead bodies
for sale to the surgeons were called, were much dreaded, extraordinary
methods of protecting corpses from being carried away being often
employed. Such things seem quite of another age to-day, but the evil in
question was only ended in 1832 when the Anatomy Act was passed.
In the eighteenth century the Sussex roads were notorious for their bad
condition, and little effort was made to improve them, partly owing to
an idea that better means of communication would bring many cut-throats,
pickpockets, and other undesirable folk down from London. Indeed, when
the road to Brighton through Cuckfield was first made, the inhabitants
of Hurstpierpoint became so alarmed at the proposal to run it through
that place that they petitioned Parliament, and were successful in
having it diverted. So bad were some of these Sussex roads that there
are records of people having habitually used oxen to draw their coaches.
Defoe, for instance, travelling in Sussex in the eighteenth century,
came upon a lady, whom he describes as “of very good quality,” being
drawn to church in a village near Lewes by six oxen.
It was largely owing to the isolation produced by faulty means of travel
that Sussex villages, up to comparatively recent times, retained so much
of old-world quaintness and charm. Many of the labourers of a past
generation never moved out of their own district during the whole of
their lives. A story used to be told of a Heathfield labourer who, after
a quarrel with his wife, deserted his home and went to another village a
few miles away. Home sickness, however, soon overcame him, and, coming
back to his family, he declared that he had had quite enough of “furrin
parts”—nothing like Old England after all! An old lady of the village
of Ditchling, who was going up to London, being asked what sort of place
she thought she was about to see, replied that she expected it would be
“about like the bustling part of Ditchling.”
The old cottages in the villages were formerly full of Sussex ironwork,
and of this I made a collection, which includes some very good
specimens—fire-dogs and backs, rush-light holders, tongs, and the
like—of this extinct industry. At that time I lived in the very centre
of what was formerly a great iron-producing district, for near
Heathfield were many furnaces which at one time kept half the population
in full employ. Many Sussex families owed their fortunes to the
ironworks, amongst them the Fullers, one grateful member of which set up
the inscription “Carbone et Forcipibus” on the house. The old hammer
ponds still existing are extremely picturesque, in many cases having
clear rippling streams, containing brook trout, flowing out of them. The
last furnace in Sussex—Ashburnham Furnace—was only finally blown out
in 1825, having been worked by Lord Ashburnham up to that time; the iron
produced there was at one time said to be the best in the world. As the
iron industry decayed hop-growing was introduced, which gave some
measure of employment to the population which began to find its old
occupation gone.
Some time before I began collecting Sussex ironwork I used to live in
quite another part of the county bordering upon Hampshire, and here also
I found much of great antiquarian interest. Not many miles distant from
our house, for instance, stood the crumbling walls of Cowdray, the
beautiful seat which once belonged to the Brownes, and was destroyed by
fire in 1793. I have several relics and pictures of this old mansion. At
the time of the fire the young owner, Lord Montague, was away on the
Continent, and the house was being renovated in view of his return. In
the disastrous conflagration perished many valuable relics of art and
pictures, for the house being under repair at the time, everything had
been stored in the north gallery, which was difficult of access. A
picture of Charles I. at Woburn is said to have been one of the few
saved, another being a painting of the two brothers Fitzwilliam lying
dead in armour. Many relics from Battle Abbey were also destroyed, among
them, it is said, the sword of the Conqueror, his coronation robe
ornamented with gold and rare gems, and, most interesting perhaps of
all, the Roll of Battle Abbey. These had been removed to Cowdray when
the seventh Lord Montague sold Battle Abbey in 1717.
After the burning of Cowdray no care appears to have been taken to
safeguard any of the contents which remained undamaged. Things, indeed,
saved from the fire were taken away to Midhurst by any one who cared to
take the trouble, the whole neighbourhood being allowed to roam through
the ruins. I myself, indeed, as has been said, possess some relics of
Cowdray—several good pieces of carved woodwork (the decoration of the
salon) which I purchased near Midhurst from a man whose grandfather, I
am very much afraid, had in all probability annexed them without leave.
It was in the Abbots’ Hall at Battle that the curse of fire and water
was pronounced against Sir Anthony Browne, who was holding his first
great feast there after the spoliation of the monasteries by Henry
VIII., the abbey having been granted to him by that king, in whose
favour he stood very high. Striding through the crowd of guests and
retainers, a monk is said to have made his way to the daïs where Sir
Anthony sat, and, raising his voice, to have solemnly cursed him and his
posterity. “By fire and water thy line shall come to an end; thus shall
it perish out of the land.”
The fact that the eighth Lord Montague was drowned when attempting to
shoot the falls of Laufenburg at the very time that Cowdray (then being
renovated in view of his coming of age) was consumed by fire has been
regarded by many as the fulfilment of the curse, but it must not be
forgotten that Sir Anthony Browne himself and his descendants lived
quite free from misfortune for some two hundred years. As is well known,
the two sons of Lord Montague’s only sister, Mrs. Poyntz, were drowned
in the very flower of their youth, before the eyes of their parents, in
a boating accident at Bognor in 1815—another sad catastrophe also
attributed to the curse. On the death of Mr. Poyntz the Cowdray estate
passed out of the Browne family, being divided amongst his sisters, and
in 1843 it was sold to the sixth Earl of Egmont for some three hundred
thousand pounds. The new possessors of the place made no attempt to
restore the ruins of the noble old mansion, a splendid example of
domestic architecture, but built a new house on the site of the keeper’s
lodge which was pulled down.
In West Sussex we had many pleasant neighbours, amongst them the Rev.
Mr. Knox, a most amusing man and a great authority on birds. He lived in
an ancient manor-house which belonged to my husband—Trotton Place, a
quaint old house still the property of my eldest son. Trotton, a small
village on the Petersfield Road, possesses some claim to attention in
having been the birthplace of the unfortunate Otway, who was the son of
the rector of the adjacent parish of Woolbeding. Educated at Winchester
and Oxford, Otway, when twenty years old, betook himself to London and
became an actor, and, some five years later, a playwright. Obtaining a
cornet’s commission in a regiment about to proceed to Flanders, his
military career was short and unfortunate, lasting only about a year.
The force to which he was attached never reached its destination, the
money voted for transport having been diverted by King Charles II., who
preferred the worship of Venus to that of Mars, to more peaceful and
congenial purposes. In his comedy of _The Soldiers Fortune_ Otway
clearly alludes to his disappointment:—
Fortune made me a soldier, a rogue in red (the grievance of the
nation). Fortune made the peace—just as we were on the brink of
war; then Fortune disbanded us and lost us two months’ pay.
Fortune gave us debentures instead of ready money; and by very
good fortune I sold mine and lost heartily by it, in hopes the
grinding, ill-natur’d dog that bought it may never get a
shilling for’t.
After his retirement from the army the young poet wrote several plays,
amongst them _The Orphan_, and in 1685 the powerful and beautiful
_Venice Preserved_, which, as Dr. Johnson wrote, though the work of a
man not attentive to decency or zealous for virtue, yet shows that the
author was a man of great force and originality, and had consulted
nature in his own breast.
At thirty-four years of age Otway died, choked, it is said, by a roll
which he too hastily swallowed after a long fast. The unfortunate poet,
almost naked, starving, and fearfully harassed by creditors, was given a
guinea by a friendly gentleman in a coffee-house where he had asked for
a shilling. Out of this guinea he purchased the piece of bread which
caused his death. Another account declares that Otway, desirous of
avenging the death of a friend who had been shot in the street, pursued
the assassin as far as Dover on foot, which brought on a fever from
which he died in the “Bull Inn” on Tower Hill. Pope corroborates this
version of Otway’s death, but says his friend had been merely robbed and
not murdered.
A brass affixed to the wall of Trotton church within comparatively
recent years commemorates the memory of the unfortunate young man, but
Otway himself lies in a vault under the church of St. Clement Danes.
Trotton church is an interesting old building, which contains a tomb of
great archæological interest—the sarcophagus of Sir John Camoys and the
Lady Elizabeth, his wife. This church has, like many village churches,
suffered more or less from the restorations to which it has been
subjected. One alteration which particularly annoyed me was the removal
of an old door which bore the mark of many a Cromwellian bullet upon its
exterior side. Within the last few years, however, some attempt has been
made to repair the ravages of the restorer—the old wooden altar-rails
having been replaced in their original position, whilst certain very
curious mural paintings have been once more exposed to view. In the
’sixties and ’seventies the fiend of restoration may be said to have
stalked rampant through the land, and rectors vied with one another in
renovating and vulgarising the sacred edifices committed to their
charge. At a Sussex church in a village quite close to where we lived,
great indignation was, I remember, aroused by workshops being erected
all over the churchyard, in which workmen fashioned modern Gothic
pinnacles and other architectural gewgaws wherewith to decorate the
stately old church. Tombstones were temporarily taken up, no particular
attention being paid to their exact position, and in consequence no one
felt at all certain that they were ever replaced in their old
position—the tombstone of “John Smith” being in many cases placed over
the grave of “Thomas Brown,” and _vice versa_, a proceeding not entirely
satisfactory to their families, some of whom were very annoyed. The
rector, however, who was delighted at his vulgarised church, thought
little of such a trifle as this, and organised an ornate service of
reopening at which his parishioners somewhat ruefully returned thanks
for the blessings of the restoration.
Not very far from Trotton is the town of Midhurst, for which Charles
James Fox, when only nineteen years of age, was returned in 1768. He
actually had two encounters in debate with Burke before he attained his
majority. On one of these occasions, it is said, when Fox had set the
Treasury Bench in a roar of laughter at Burke’s expense, the latter was
much nettled, and turning on the youthful member, exclaimed, “You may
speak if you like, but being a minor you have no right to vote.”
At one time Midhurst was a great place for the manufacture of quilts,
and from this, no doubt, originated the weaver’s shuttle which was
stamped on the town pieces or tokens about 1670. These were known as
Midhurst farthings, issued, as the legend on one side of them said, “For
ye use of ye Poor.”
Midhurst and Rye were the only two places in Sussex which issued town
tokens, that is, one token struck for the use of the whole town. The
custom of striking tokens—small coins of the value of farthings,
halfpennies, and pennies—only prevailed from about 1648 till 1672. As a
rule, these were issued by tradesmen, but in some cases towns struck
them. In Somersetshire, for instance, there were thirteen town tokens;
in Dorsetshire, eight; in Devonshire, five; in Kent, one; and in Sussex
the two which have just been mentioned. In Yorkshire there were none at
all.
Midhurst has more than once been somewhat closely associated with great
political orators, for not far away, at Dunford, lived Mr. Cobden, whom
I often used to go and hear speak in the House of Commons, where his
oratory never failed to secure the appreciation which it deserved. In
West Sussex, however, he did not excite any extraordinary attention
either as an orator or politician, many regarding his political views
with extreme distrust, whilst others did not understand them. Very often
it is the case that politicians of quite European reputation are but
lightly esteemed in their own part of the country, a state of affairs
which is sometimes caused by their talking over the heads of the
audiences whom they address. Country-folk as a rule do not (or did not)
appreciate highly cultured oratorical efforts, but prefer speeches, not
devoid of humour, dealing with matters of local interest.
I once heard a peculiarly apt criticism of a speech made by a politician
of profound learning and knowledge, but one not very much in sympathy
with the more frivolous side of life. This orator, having to address a
meeting in a country town, had beforehand been begged to remember that
his audience was not remarkable for any great intellectual culture, and
was consequently unlikely to appreciate historical allusions or erudite
criticism—a chatty, sparkling speech judiciously peppered with anecdote
and chaff would be the sort of thing to arouse enthusiasm and capture
its sympathies. The evening having come, the speaker, determined to
profit by these hints, attempted to enliven his discourse by here and
there interpolating remarks of a less serious kind than those which his
speeches usually contained. Well satisfied with the result, and driving
away with an old friend, he said to him: “Well, I hope that suited you;
at any rate no one could say I spoke too seriously.” “It was a capital
speech,” came the reply, “only, to tell you the truth, it rather
reminded me of an article from the _Quarterly Review_ out for a lark.”