Beyond the cemeteries lies Brown’s Wells, in midst of what w_The Holyhead Road: The Mail-coach Road to Dublin. Vol. 1

Finchley Common. At Brown’s Wells, if anywhere, memories of that

ill-omened waste should be most easily recalled; for here, beside the

road, in the grounds of Hilton House, stands the massive trunk of

“Turpin’s Oak,” still putting forth leaves with every recurrent spring.

Did the conscience-stricken spirits of the dead revisit the scenes of

their crimes, then the garden of Hilton House might well be peopled o’

nights with remorseful spooks; for many another beside Turpin lurked

here and snatched purses, or held up coaches and horsemen crossing this

one-time lonely waste.

[Illustration:

HIGHGATE VILLAGE, 1826.

_From an Old Print._

]

Pennant, the antiquary, writing at the close of the eighteenth century,

talks of the great Common not as an antiquity but as a place he was

perfectly well acquainted with, travelling as he did the Holyhead Road

between Chester and London. “Infamous for robberies,” he calls it, “and

often planted with gibbets, the penalty of murderers.”

This aspect of Finchley Common was then no new thing, and if Pennant had

been minded to write an antiquarian exercise on its evil associations,

he would have found much material to his hand. But the most sinister

period of the Common’s unsavoury history began at the close of the long

struggle between King and Parliament in the mid-seventeenth century, and

for long years afterwards robbery and murder were to be feared by

travellers in these wilds.

William Cady was early among the highwaymen who made this a place of

dread. His was a short and bloody career of four years on the King’s

highway, ending in 1687, when he was hanged at Tyburn for the last of

his exploits, the murder of a groom on this then lonely expanse. He had

overtaken a lady riding for the benefit of the air, and, ignoring the

groom, tore the diamond ring from her finger, snatched a gold watch from

her pocket, and, threatening her with a pistol, secured a purse

containing eighty guineas. The groom, unarmed, could do nothing but

abuse the highwayman, who shot him dead with two bullets through the

brain and was just about making off when two gentlemen rode up with

pistols in their hands. Cady at once opened fire on them, and a lively

pistolling began, ending with the highwayman’s horse being shot and

himself seized and bound, and in due course taken to Newgate, whence he

only emerged for that last ride to Tyburn, which was the usual ending of

his kind. He did not make an edifying exit but cursed, drank, and

scoffed to the last, dying with profanity on his lips, at the early age

of twenty-five.

From the unrelieved vulgarity and brutality of Cady’s exploit it is a

relief to turn to that of a man of humour. Would that we knew his name,

so that it might be ranged with those of Du Vall and Captain Hind,

themselves spiced with an airy wit that occasionally eased the loss of a

watch or a purse to those suddenly bereft of them. This unknown worthy,

whose exploit is recorded in a contemporary newspaper, was a humorist,

if ever there was one. It was one evening in 1732, when he was

patrolling the Common, that a chariot and four horses approached from

the direction of London. Hopeful of a rich quarry, he spurred up and

thrust a pistol through the carriage window, demanding money and

jewellery. Now, unhappily for the highwayman’s hope of plunder, this was

the carriage of a Yorkshire squire returning home without him, and the

person sitting within was but a countryman to whom the coachman had

given a lift.

“I am very poor,” exclaimed the rustic, terrified at sight of the

pistol, “but here are two shillings; all I have got in the world.”

Cady, doubtless, in his disappointment, would have shot the yokel; but

this was a “highway lawyer” of a different stamp. “Poor devil!” said

that true Knight of the Road, withdrawing his pistol and waving the

proffered money aside; “here, take a shilling and drink my health!” And

so, tossing him a coin, he disappeared.

For accounts of other happenings upon this sombre Common, let the

curious refer to the pages of the GREAT NORTH ROAD, where they will be

found, duly set forth.

Not until the first few years of the nineteenth century had passed was

the place safe. It was an Alsatia wherein the most craven of footpads

might rob with impunity. Strange to say, there were those who did not

think it right to shoot highwaymen, and many of those who did so, lost

their nerve at the supreme moment and fired wildly into space. The

robbers’ risks were therefore not overwhelming. Dr. Johnson was

undecided about this matter of right, as we learn from one of those

semi-philosophical discussions into which Boswell led him; discussions

the indefatigable “Bozzy” has recorded at length. Three of them—Johnson,

Boswell, and Taylor—were disputing the question. “For myself,” said

Taylor, “I would rather be robbed than shoot highwaymen.”

Johnson—perhaps because he generally took the opposite view, from

“cussedness” or a love of disputation—argued that he would rather shoot

the man on the instant of his attempt than afterwards give such evidence

against him as would result in his execution. “I may be mistaken,” said

the great man, “as to him when I swear; I cannot be mistaken if I shoot

him in the act. Besides, we feel less reluctance to take away a man’s

life when we are heated by the injury, than to do it at a distance of

time by an oath after we have cooled.”

This seemed to Boswell rather as acting from the motive of private

vengeance than of public advantage; but Johnson maintained that in

acting thus he would be satisfying both. He added, however, that it was

a difficult point: “one does not know what to say: one may hang one’s

self a year afterwards from uneasiness for having shot a highwayman. Few

minds are to be trusted with so great a thing.” And we may add, seeing

how many highwaymen were shot at, and how few hit, few hands either.

Half a mile beyond Turpin’s Oak is North Finchley, a recent suburb of

smart shops, risen on the site of those gibbets mentioned by Pennant.

Those who affect to be more genteel and individualistic, name it

Torrington Park, and thus hope to be exquisitely distinguished from the

ruck of Finchleys that take their names from the four points of the

compass. The Park Road Hotel, rising at the angle where the road from

Child’s Hill joins the highway we are travelling, actually stands on the

site of a gibbet. As “Tally-ho Corner,” this is a spot familiarly known

to cyclists. Maps, however, know it as “Tallow Corner.”

Whetstone succeeds to North Finchley. It once groaned under the

oppression of a toll-gate—a gate that spanned the road by the “Griffin”

inn, where the old “whetstone” still remains. This gate, abolished

November 1st, 1863, was associated with a story of George Morland, the

artist, who, having received an invitation to Barnet, was journeying to

that town in company with two friends, when he was stopped here by a

cart containing two men, who were disputing with the toll-keeper. One

was a chimney-sweep, and the other one Hooper, a tinsmith and

prize-fighter, scarcely higher in the social scale; but they knew

Morland, who had often caroused with them at the low wayside taverns he

affected. Now, however, he was not in a mood for his old companions;

recent success had turned him respectable for a time. Accordingly, he

endeavoured to pass, when the tinsmith called out, “What, Mr. Morland,

won’t you speak to a body?”

It was of no use trying to escape, for the man began to roar out after

him, so that he was obliged to turn back and shake hands with his old

crony; whereupon Hooper turned to the chimney-sweep and said, “Why,

Dick, don’t you know this here gentleman? ’Tis my friend, Mr. Morland.”

The man of soot, smiling a recognition, forced his unwelcome black hand

upon his brother of the brush; then they whipped the horse up and went

off, much to Morland’s relief. He used afterwards to declare that the

sweep was a stranger to him; but the dissolute artist’s habits made the

story generally believed, and “Sweeps, your honour,” was a joke that

followed him all his days.

Barnet lies two miles ahead, crowning a ridge. Between this point and

that town the road goes sharply down Prickler’s Hill, and, passing under

a railway bridge, climbs upwards again, along an embanked road that,

steep though it be, takes the place of a very much steeper roadway. It

was constructed between 1823 and 1827, as a part of the general

remodelling of the Holyhead Road. The deserted old way, now leading

no-whither, may be seen meandering off to the left, immediately past the

railway bridge, down in the hollow. Passing the “Old Red Lion” and a row

of old houses that, fallen from their importance in facing the high

road, look dejectedly across one-half of the Fair Ground, it comes to an

end at the last house, whose projecting bay proclaims it to have once

been a toll-house.

[Illustration: THE OLD ROAD, BARNET.]

Barnet is famous for two things: for its Battle and for its Fair. The

Battle is a thing of the dim and distant past: the Fair belongs to the

present—the poignant present, as you think who venture within ear-shot

of its Michaelmas hurly-burly, what time the horse-copers are rending

the air with raucous cries, steam-organs bellowing, and, in fact, “all

the fun of the Fair” in progress. It is, according to your taste and to

the condition of your nerves, a pleasure or a martyrdom to be present at

the great Fair of Barnet: that three days’ Pandemonium to which come all

the lowest of the low, whom, paradoxically enough, that “noble animal,

the friend of man,” attracts to himself. For Barnet is, above all other

things, a Horse Fair. For love of the Horse, and with the hope of

selling horses—and incidentally swindling the purchasers of them—such

widely different characters as the horsey East-ender, the sly and crafty

Welshman, the blarneying Irishman, and Sandy from Scotland, come greater

or smaller distances with droves of cart-horses, cobs, hunters, and, in

fact, every known variety of the Noble Animal; and to this nucleus of a

Fair innumerable other trades attach themselves, like parasites. Barnet

Fair dates back to the time of Henry II. It is, therefore, of a very

respectable antiquity. This antiquity is, indeed, the only respectable

thing left to it. The rest is riot; and if the Barnet people had their

will, there is little doubt that it would, in common with many other

fairs, be abolished. When originally established, by Royal Charter, it

lasted three weeks. From three weeks it was successively whittled down,

in course of time, to sixteen days, and then to three days. From it, in

other times, the Lord of the Manor, the Earl of Stratford, derived a

splendid revenue; for his tolls, rigorously exacted by his stewards,

were eightpence for every bull or stallion entering the Fair; fourpence

for every horse, ass, or mule; and for every cow or calf, twopence.

The Fair Ground extends to either side of the long embankment, on whose

steep slope the high road is carried up into Barnet Town; but the chief

part of it centres around High Barnet station, on the right hand. The

Fair begins on the first Monday in September, but at least a week before

that date Barnet town and the roads leading into it, usually so quiet,

are thronged with droves of horses and herds of cattle, and with the

caravans of the showmen who hope to “make a good thing” out of the

thousands of visitors to the Fair. Whatever private residents in Barnet

may think of it, and however much they would like to see it abolished,

its lasting success is assured as a popular holiday for certain classes

of Londoners. The typical ’Arry of Hendon or of Epping would no more

think of not visiting Barnet Fair than he would think of abstaining from

deep drinking when he reached the place. For, now that all other fairs

within reach of London have been suppressed, this is pre-eminently the

Cockney’s outing. To deprive him of it would savour not a little of

cruelty: it would certainly cut off from the travelling showmen and the

proprietors of the giddy steam roundabouts a goodly portion of their

incomes, while the pickpockets would miss one of the greatest chances in

the year.

Let those who know of fairs only from idyllic descriptions of such

things in the England of long ago, visit this of Barnet. Nothing in it

is poetic, unless indeed the language common to those who attend upon

the Noble Animal may be so considered; and certainly that is full of

imagery, of sorts. It is wonderful what a power of debauching mankind

the Horse possesses. Your ordinary cattle-drover is no saint, but he is

a Bayard and a carpet-knight beside these fellows with straws in their

mouths, and novel and vivid language on their tongues.

Here, as side-shows away from the horses, are the boxing-booths, the

swings, and the trumpet-tongued merry-go-rounds, roaring like Bulls of

Bashan and glittering with Dutch metal and cheap mirrors like

Haroun-al-Raschid’s palace just come out of pawn and much the worse for

wear. Ladies clad in purple velvet dresses, and with a yard and a half

of ostrich feather in their hats patronise these delights; and lunch

oleaginously on the fried fish cooking on a stall near by (which by the

way, you may scent a quarter of a mile off). For those with nicer

tastes, an itinerant confectioner makes sweets on the spot. For those

who are sportively inclined there are several methods of dissipating

their money: by shooting at bottles; shying at cocoanuts (all warranted

milky ones) or by guessing under which of three thimbles temporarily

resides the elusive pea. The furtive and nervous young man who presides

over this show is more than itinerant. Ghostlike, he flits from group to

group, harangues them with a phenomenal glibness and swiftness:

discloses the pea under the _other_ thimble; takes his gains, and so

departs: the tail of his eye seeking, and hoping not to find, any one

who may chance to be a detective. An ancient—a million times

exposed—fraud, and still a very remunerative one!

For the rest, a very vulgar and disheartening show to those who preach

culture to whom the cultured term “the masses.” How to leaven the lump

in that direction when you find it obstinately set upon such gross

things of earth as penny shows, including six-legged calves and

realistic scenes of the latest murders? Sons of Belial, indeed, are

those who find delight herein: and many are they who do so take their

pleasure.

On the crest of the steep ascent we come to Barnet, crowning its

“monticulus, or little hill,” as the county historian has it. With the

town we have already made some acquaintance, in the pages of the “GREAT

NORTH ROAD.”

It stands too well within the suburban radius of London for it to escape

modern influences, and although, as Dickens said, in _Oliver Twist_,

every other house was a tavern, inns are fewer nowadays and shops more

numerous; and many of the surviving inns have been rebuilt. The original

“Green Man,” a very much larger and altogether more important house than

the existing one, is no more. Sir Robert Peel—the great Sir Robert,

statesman and originator of “Peelers”—often stayed there from Saturday

to Monday, and it was beneath its roof that Lord Palmerston received the

news of his succession to the title. The “Mitre,” one of the most

important of Barnet’s inns at the close of the seventeenth century, has

wholly disappeared, and the little house of that name, at the London end

of the town, does but stand on a very small portion of its site; the

rest of the ground being occupied by a large and exceedingly hideous

building belonging to a firm of grocers. The disappearance of the

“Mitre” is the more to be regretted, because it was a house of historic

importance, General Monk, on his march up to London in 1660, having

rested there, while his army encamped about the town. The country was

tired of the Commonwealth, and Monk at the head of 14,000 men, was

master of the situation. No one knew his intentions. Appointed by

Parliament, and yet with a commission from the King in his pocket, his

advance from the north was the cause of the liveliest hopes and

apprehensions to both sides. Accompanying him were two “Councellors of

State and Abjurers of the King’s Family,” a worthy pair named Scot and

Robinson, who were really acting as the spies of the Parliament. Staying

with him at the “Mitre,” they secured a room adjoining his, and either

found or made a hole in the wainscot, to see and hear anything that

might pass. The imagination readily pictures them peeping through the

chinks and the secretive Monk, probably well aware of their doings,

smiling as he undressed and went to bed. How he marched to London and

thence, declaring for Charles II., to Dover, belongs to other than local

history.

The “Red Lion” remains the most prominent house. What has rightly been

called a “ghastly story” is that told of it in coaching days. An officer

and his daughter, on their way to London to attend a funeral, only

succeeded after a great deal of trouble in obtaining accommodation here.

On retiring to her room, the young lady chanced to turn the handle of a

cupboard, when to her horror the door burst open and a corpse toppled

out, almost felling her to the floor. The “accommodation” had been made

by hastily removing the body from the bed and placing it where it would

not have been found, except for that feminine mingled curiosity and

precautionary sense which impels our womenkind to peer agitatedly under

every bed, to leave no cupboard unexplored, and no drawer not

scrutinised.

This Bluebeard kind of a story was long a current anecdote in the

posting days, and implicitly believed. It is probably safe to assume

that it did the business of the “Red Lion” enormous damage, and that

those travellers who subsequently stayed there approached all cupboards

with dread.

The “Red Lion” possessed a queer character in the person of its ostler,

James Ripley, who in 1781 published a little book of _Select Letters on

Various Subjects_. On the title-page he states that he was then, and had

been “for thirty years past,” ostler, and in his dedication to “the Hon.

Col. Blaithwate and the rest of the officers of the Royal Regiment of

Horse Guards Blue,” after saying that this dedication is “a grateful

acknowledgement for the generous treatment always received for his

unmerited services in the stable,” proceeds to grovel in the most abject

manner. “I shall always esteem it an honour,” says he, “to rub down your

horses’ heels, so long as I am able to stoop to my feet.”

[Illustration: JAMES RIPLEY, OSTLER OF THE “RED LION.”]

This remarkable person, if we may judge from the curious frontispiece to

his _Select Letters_, appears to have doubled the parts of ostler at the

“Red Lion” and Postmaster of Barnet; while he would also seem to have

embarked in the newspaper trade, according to the little heaps of papers

seen in the pigeonholes in the background, labelled “Whitehall Evening

Post,” “Craftsman,” and “Gazetteer.” Here we perceive him, apparently

inditing his _Letters_, a man with a decidedly Johnsonian cast of

features, and clad in what looks more like a cast-off suit of an old

Tower of London headsman than an ostler’s everyday clothes. He is

evidently at a loss for a word, or is perhaps (and rightly) surprised at

the gigantic size of his quill, plucked from an ostrich, at the very

least of it. A sieve, a curry-comb, and other articles of stable

equipment, lie beside him, or are more or less artistically displayed in

the foreground. If it were not for the title, we might almost suppose

this to be a representation of some notorious criminal writing his last

dying speech and confession in the condemned hold of Newgate. The

picture appears to have been drawn from several points of view at once,

productive of results more curious than pleasing to professors of

perspective drawing.

Mr. James Ripley’s letters range from scathing denunciations of postboys

and advice to gentlemen how to treat such rascals, to the humane

treatment of horses, the construction of stage waggons, and the

villainous practice of writing more or less offensive remarks on

window-panes. We are, in fact, after perusing his improving literature,

led to the belief that he missed his vocation and ought to have been a

clergyman of evangelistic views, instead of an ostler. But to let him

speak for himself:—

“I can justly say that I am no mercenary writer, and that all my views

are centred in reforming the vices, follies, and errors of this depraved

age. At present I shall confine myself to those nimble-fingered

Gentlemen who leave specimens of their wit or folly, in trying the

goodness of their diamonds upon the glass windows of every place they

visit, or lodge at; curiosity often draws the fair sex to the window in

expectation of meeting with some innocent piece of wit, or quotation

from some eminent author; but how cruel the disappointment when she

finds some indecent allusion, or downright obscenity.”

Thus the ostler-moralist of the “Red Lion.” What added terrors the roads

would have acquired for giddy travellers had there been others like him!

Among other inns is the “Old Salisbury,” familiarly known to cyclists of

northern clubs as the “Old Sal.” It was originally a drovers’ and

teamsters’ house, and called the “Royal Wagon.” Many years ago, when the

grasping proprietors of the “Green Man” and the “Red Lion” charged 1_s._

6_d._ a mile for posting, the Lord Salisbury of that day, being a frugal

man, transferred his custom here and saved 3_d._ a mile. Pepper, the

then landlord, at once changed his sign to its present style.

The modern Holyhead Road, made in the Twenties is seen midway in Barnet,

branching off to the left by what remains of the once-famous “Green

Man.” Broad and well-engineered though it be, it has little of interest

in the three miles between here and South Mimms; its sole features,

indeed, being a fine view of Wrotham Park, to the right, and a glimpse

of the gateway of Dyrham Park, on the left. It can scarce be said that

that heavy stone entrance—a classic arch flanked by Tuscan columns—is

beautiful, but it has an interest all its own, for it was originally the

triumphal arch erected in 1660 in London Streets, to celebrate the

“joyfull Restoracion” of Charles II.

Taking then, by preference, the old road, the way lies across Hadley

Green, where, among the ragged fir-trees that are scattered on its

western side, stand the remains of the old stocks. The stone obelisk,

famous in all the country round about as “Hadley Highstone,” is

presently seen ahead, at a parting of the ways. To the right hand goes

the Great North Road: to the left the old road to Holyhead. “Eight miles

to St. Albans” is the legend on the hither face of the monument, whose

Beyond the cemeteries lies Brown’s Wells, in midst of what was once