BANK-NOTE FORGERIES.
CHAPTER I.
Viotti's division of violin-playing into two great classes--good playing
and bad playing--is applicable to Bank-note making. We shall now cover a
few pages with a faint outline of the various arts, stratagems, and
contrivances employed in concocting bad Bank-notes. The picture cannot
be drawn with very distinct or strong markings. The tableaux from which
it is copied, are so intertwisted and complicated with clever, slippery,
ingenious scoundrelism, that a finished chart of it would be worse than
morally displeasing--it would be tedious.
All arts require time and experience for their development. When
anything great is to be done, first attempts are nearly always failures.
The first Bank-note forgery was no exception to this rule, and its story
has a spice of romance in it. The affair has never been circumstantially
told; but some research enables us to detail it:--
In the month of August, 1757, a gentleman living in the neighborhood of
Lincoln's Inn Fields, named Bliss, advertised for a clerk. There were,
as was usual at that time, many applicants; but the successful one was a
young man of twenty-six, named Richard William Vaughan. His manners were
so winning and his demeanor so much that of a gentleman, (he belonged
indeed to a good county family in Staffordshire, and had been a student
at Pembroke Hall, Oxford,) that Mr. Bliss at once engaged him. Nor had
he occasion, during the time the new clerk served him, to repent the
step. Vaughan was so diligent, intelligent, and steady, that not even
when it transpired that he was, commercially speaking, "under a cloud,"
did his master lessen confidence in him. Some inquiry into his
antecedents showed that he had, while at College, been extravagant--that
his friends had removed him thence--set him up in Stafford as a
wholesale linen-draper, with a branch establishment in Aldersgate
Street, London--that he had failed, and that there was some difficulty
about his certificate. But so well did he excuse his early failings and
account for his misfortunes, that his employer did not check the regard
he felt growing towards him. Their intercourse was not merely that of
master and servant. Vaughan was a frequent guest at Bliss's table;
by-and-by a daily visitor to his wife, and--to his ward.
Miss Bliss was a young lady of some attractions, not the smallest of
which was a hansome fortune. Young Vaughan made the most of his
opportunities. He was well-looking, well-informed, dressed well, and
evidently made love well, for he won the young lady's heart. The
guardian was not flinty-hearted, and acted like a sensible man of the
world. "It was not," he said, on a subsequent and painful occasion,
"till I learned from the servants and observed by the girl's behavior,
that she greatly approved Richard Vaughan, that I consented; but on
condition that he should make it appear that he could maintain her. I
had no doubt of his character as a servant, and I knew his family were
respectable. His brother is an eminent attorney." Vaughan boasted that
his mother (his father was dead) was willing to re-instate him in
business with a thousand pounds--five hundred of which was to be settled
upon Miss Bliss for her separate use.
So far all went on prosperously. Providing Richard Vaughan could attain
a position satisfactory to the Blisses, the marriage was to take place
on the Easter Monday following, which, the Calendar tells us, happened
early in April, 1758. With this understanding, he left Mr. Bliss's
service, to push his fortune.
Months passed on, and Vaughan appears to have made no way in the world.
He had not even obtained his bankrupt's certificate. His visits to his
affianced were frequent, and his protestations passionate; but he had
effected nothing substantial towards a happy union. Miss Bliss's
guardian grew impatient; and, although there is no evidence to prove
that the young lady's affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep and
sincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses were
evidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the wedding
was fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done to
restore the young lady's confidence.
About three weeks before the appointed Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went to
his mistress in high spirits. All was right--his certificate was to be
granted in a day or two--his family had come forward with the money, and
he was to continue the Aldersgate business he had previously carried on
as a branch of the Stafford trade. The capital he had waited so long
for, was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and forty
pounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan then
produced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believe
her eyes. She examined them. The paper, she remarked, seemed thicker
than usual. "Oh," said Bliss, "all Bank bills are not alike." The girl
was naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprise Mistress Bliss
of the good news.
Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he had
placed so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secresy
from her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal--making
her swear that she would on no account open it till after their
marriage.
Some days after, that is, "on the twenty-second of March," (1758) we are
describing the scene in Mr. Bliss's own words--"I was sitting with my
wife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the same
room--which was a small one--and although they whispered, I could
distinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returned
which he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went away
in an angry mood. I then studied the girl's face, and saw that it
expressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I then
spoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and I
told her that until she did, I would not see her. The next day I asked
the same question of Vaughan--he hesitated. 'Oh' I said, 'I dare say it
is some ten or twelve pound matter--something to buy a wedding bauble
with.' He answered that it was much more than that--it was near three
hundred pounds! 'But why all this secrecy?' I said; and he answered that
it was not proper for people to know that he had so much money till his
certificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left the
notes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, he
designed to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, 'You
have demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as an
abatement of your affection towards her.'" Vaughan was again exceedingly
urgent in asking back the packet; but Bliss remembering his many
evasions, and supposing that this was a trick, declined advising his
niece to restore the parcel without proper consideration. The very next
day it was discovered that the notes were counterfeits.
This occasioned stricter inquiries into Vaughan's previous career. It
turned out that he bore the character in his native place of a
dissipated and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his mother
to assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss the
forged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter.
Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he was
arrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The "Annual Register"
says, that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing in
the newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was it
corroborated at Vaughan's trial.
When Vaughan was arrested, he thrust a piece of paper into his mouth,
and began to chew it violently. It was, however, rescued, and proved to
be one of the forged notes; fourteen of them were found on his person,
and when his lodgings were searched twenty more were discovered.
Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey on the seventh of April, before Lord
Mansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at the
trial:--On the first of March, (about a week before he gave the twelve
notes to the young lady,) Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, an
engraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved with
these words:--
"No. ----.
"I promise to pay to --------, or Bearer, ---- London ----."
There was to be a Britannia in the corner. When it was done, Mr. Sneed
(for that was the _alias_ Vaughan adopted) came again, but objected to
the execution of the work. The Britannia was not good, and the words "I
promise" were too near the edge of the plate. Another was in consequence
engraved, and on the fourth of March, Vaughan took it away. He
immediately repaired to a printer, and had forty-eight impressions taken
on thin paper, provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had ordered, on the
same morning, of Mr. Charles Fourdrinier, another engraver, a second
plate, with what he called "a direction," in the words, "For the
Governor and Company of the Bank of England." This was done, and about a
week later he brought some paper, each sheet "folded up," said the
witness, "very curiously, so that I could not see what was in them. I
was going to take the papers from him, but he said he must go upstairs
with me, and see them worked off himself. I took him up-stairs; he would
not let me have them out of his hands. I took a sponge and wetted them,
and put them one by one on the plate in order for printing them. After
my boy had done two or three of them, I went down-stairs, and my boy
worked the rest off, and the prisoner came down and paid me."
Here the Court pertinently asked, "What imagination had you when a man
thus came to you to print on secret paper, 'the Governor and Company of
the Bank of England?'"
The engraver's reply was:--"I then did not suspect anything; but I shall
take care for the future." As this was the first Bank-of-England-note
forgery that was ever perpetrated, the engraver was held excused.
It may be mentioned, as an evidence of the delicacy of the reporters,
that in their account of the trial, Miss Bliss's name is not mentioned.
Her designation is "a young lady." We subjoin the notes of her
evidence:--
"A young lady (sworn). The prisoner delivered me some bills; these are
the same (producing twelve counterfeit Bank notes sealed up in a cover,
for twenty pounds each;) said they were Bank bills. I said they were
thicker paper--he said all bills are not alike. I was to keep them till
after we were married. He put them into my hands to show he put
confidence in me, and desired me not to show them to anybody; sealed
them up with his own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to discover
them to anybody, and I did not till he discovered them himself; he was
to settle so much in Stock on me."
Vaughan urged in his defence that his sole object was to deceive his
affianced, and that he intended to destroy all the notes after his
marriage. But it had been proved that the prisoner had asked one John
Ballingar to change first one, and then twenty of the notes; but which
that person was unable to do. Besides, had his sole object been to
dazzle Miss Bliss with his fictitious wealth, he would most probably
have intrusted more, if not all the notes, to her keeping.
He was found guilty, and passed the day that had been fixed for his
wedding, as a condemned criminal.
On the 11th May, 1758, Richard William Vaughan was executed at Tyburn.
By his side, on the same gallows, there was another forger--William
Boodgere, a military officer, who had forged a draught on an army-agent
named Calcroft, and expiated the offence with the first forger of
Bank-of-England notes.
The gallows may seem hard measure to have meted out to Vaughan, when it
is considered that none of his notes were negotiated and no person
suffered by his fraud. Not one of the forty-eight notes, except the
twelve delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his possession; indeed
the imitation must have been very clumsily executed, and detection would
have instantly followed any attempt to pass the counterfeits. There was
no endeavor to copy the style of engraving on a real Bank note. That was
left to the engraver; and as each sheet passed through the press twice,
the words added at the second printing, "For the Governor and Company of
the Bank of England," could have fallen into their proper place on any
one of the sheets, only by a miracle. But what would have made the
forgery clear to even a superficial observer, was the singular omission
of the second "n" in the word England.[D]
[D] Bad orthography was by no means uncommon in the most important
documents at that period; the days of the week, in the day-books of
the Bank of England itself, are spelt in a variety of ways.
The criticism on Vaughan's note of a Bank clerk examined on the trial
was--"There is some resemblance to be sure; but this note" (that upon
which the prisoner was tried) "is numbered thirteen thousand eight
hundred and forty, and we never reach so high a number." Besides, there
was no water-mark in the paper. The note, of which a fac-simile appeared
in our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regular
design in the texture of the paper, showing that the water-mark is as
old as the Bank notes themselves.
Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But despite the unskillfulness of the
forgery, and the insignificant consequences which followed it, the crime
was considered of too dangerous a character not to be marked, from its
very novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hanging created at that time no
remorse in the public mind, and it was thought necessary to set up
Vaughan as a warning to all future Bank-note forgers. The crime was too
dangerous not to be marked with the severest penalties. Forgery differs
from other crimes not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may obtain
and of the injury it inflicts, than in the facilities attending its
accomplishment. The common thief finds a limit to his depredations in
the bulkiness of his booty, which is generally confined to such property
as he can carry about his person; the swindler raises insuperable and
defeating obstacles to his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain is so
considerable as to awaken close vigilance or inquiry. To carry their
projects to any very profitable extent, these criminals are reduced to
the hazardous necessity of acting in concert, and thus infinitely
increasing the risks of detection. But the forger need have no
accomplice--he is burdened with no bulky and suspicious property--he
needs no receiver to assist his contrivances. The skill of his own
individual right-hand can command thousands--often with the certainty of
not being detected, and oftener with such rapidity as to enable him to
baffle the pursuit of justice.
It was a long time before Vaughan's rude attempt was improved upon; but
in the same year, (1758,) another department of the crime was commenced
with perfect success, namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulent
purposes, of real Bank notes. A few months after Vaughan's execution,
one of the northern mails was stopped and robbed by a highwayman;
several Bank notes were comprised in the spoil, and the robber, setting
up with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post-office,
ordered a chaise-and-four, rattled away down the road, and changed a
note at every change of horses. The robbery was of course soon made
known, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised as
having been stopped at the Bank. To the genius of a highwayman this
offered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all the
figures "1" he could find, into "4's." These notes passed currently
enough; but on reaching the Bank, the alteration was detected, and the
last holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuable
consideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of the
amount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that
"any person paying a valuable consideration for a Bank note, payable to
bearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood-right to receive
the money of the Bank."
It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging Bank notes to
perfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentleman
named Mathison, a watch-maker, from the matrimonial village of Gretna
Green. Having learnt the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures,
he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with the
confidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected and
absconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he favored
the Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank-of-Scotland notes, and
regularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end of February
he took handsome lodgings in the Strand, opposite Arundel Street. His
industry was remarkable; for, by the 12th of March, he had planned and
polished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the water-mark,
printed, and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to travel and
to purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of shoe-buckles at
Coventry with a forged note, which was eventually detected at the Bank
of England. He had got so bold that he paid such frequent visits in
Threadneedle Street that the Bank clerks became familiar with his
person. He was continually changing notes of one for another
denomination. These were his originals, which he procured to make
spurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from the
Stamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, who
was present, though at some distance, declared, oracularly, that the
note was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicion
arose in the minds of the clerks; one trail led into another, and
Mathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged, that,
on the trial, an experienced Bank clerk declared he could not tell
whether the note handed him to examine, was forged or not. Mathison
offered to reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy were
shown to him; this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of his
crime.
Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than he
appeared in 1786. In that year perfection seemed to have been reached.
So considerable was the circulation of spurious paper-money that it
appeared as if some unknown power had set up a bank of its own. Notes
were issued from it, and readily passed current, in hundreds and
thousands. They were not to be distinguished from the genuine paper of
Threadneedle Street. Indeed, when one was presented there, in due
course, so complete were all its parts, so masterly the engraving, so
correct the signatures, so skillful the water-mark, that it was promptly
paid, and only discovered to be a forgery when it reached a particular
department. From that period forged paper continued to be presented,
especially at the time of lottery-drawing. Consultations were held with
the police. Plans were laid to help detection. Every effort was made to
trace the forger. Clarke, the best detective of his day, went like a
sluth-hound, on the track; for in those days the expressive word
"blood-money" was known. Up to a certain point there was little
difficulty; but beyond that, consummate art defied the ingenuity of the
officer. In whatever way the notes came, the train of discovery always
paused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements offering large rewards
were circulated; but the unknown forger baffled detection.
While this base paper was in full currency, there appeared an
advertisement in the Daily Advertiser for a servant. The successful
applicant was a young man, in the employment of a musical-instrument
maker, who, some time after, was called upon by a coachman, and informed
that the advertiser was waiting in a coach to see him. The young man was
desired to enter the conveyance, where he beheld a person with something
of the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy years old, apparently
troubled with the gout. A camlet surtout was buttoned round his mouth, a
large patch was placed over his left eye, and nearly every part of his
face was concealed. He affected much infirmity. He had a faint hectic
cough; and invariably presented the patched side to the view of the
servant. After some conversation--in the course of which he represented
himself as guardian to a young nobleman of great fortune--the interview
concluded with the engagement of the applicant, and the new servant was
directed to call on Mr. Brank, at 29 Titchfield Street, Oxford Street.
At this interview Brank inveighed against his whimsical ward for his
love of speculating in lottery tickets, and told the servant that his
principal duty would be to purchase them. After one or two meetings, at
each of which Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a forty and twenty
pound Bank note; told the servant to be very careful not to lose them,
and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at separate offices. The young
man fulfilled his instructions, and at the moment he was returning, was
suddenly called by his employer from the other side of the street,
congratulated on his rapidity, and then told to go to various other
offices in the neighborhood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase more
shares. Four hundred pounds in Bank-of-England notes were handed him,
and the wishes of the mysterious Mr. Brank were satisfactorily effected.
These scenes were continually enacted. Notes to a large amount were thus
circulated, lottery tickets purchased, and Mr. Brank--always in a coach,
with his face studiously concealed--was ever ready on the spot to
receive them. The surprise of the servant was somewhat excited; but had
he known that from the period he left his master to purchase the
tickets, one female figure accompanied all his movements, that, when he
entered the offices, it waited at the door, peered cautiously in at the
window, hovered round him like a second shadow, watched him carefully,
and never left him until once more he was in the company of his
employer--that surprise would have been greatly increased.[E] Again and
again were these extraordinary scenes rehearsed. At last the Bank
obtained a clue, and the servant was taken into custody. The directors
imagined that they had secured the actor of so many parts, that the
flood of forged notes which had inundated that establishment would at
length be dammed up at his source. Their hopes proved fallacious, and it
was found that "Old Patch" (as the mysterious forger was, from the
servant's description, nick-named,) had been sufficiently clever to
baffle the Bank directors. The house in Titchfield street was searched;
but Mr. Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a single implement of
forgery was to be seen.
[E] Francis's History of the Bank of England.
All that could be obtained was some little knowledge of "Old Patch's"
proceedings. It appeared that he carried on his paper-coining entirely
by himself. His only confidant was his mistress. He was his own
engraver. He even made his own ink. He manufactured his own paper. With
a private press he worked his own notes, and counterfeited the
signatures of the cashiers, completely. But these discoveries had no
effect, for it became evident that Mr. Patch had set up a press
elsewhere. Although his secret continued as impenetrable, his notes
became as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought to
have satisfied him--but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. His
genius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and a
constant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from a
newspaper of 1786, relates to the same individual:--
"On the 17th of December, ten pounds was paid into the Bank, for which
the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equal
value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the
cashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously added
an 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to the
cashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In the
evening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts, and on examining
the tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered to
have been obtained in the same manner. In one, the figure 1 was altered
to 4, and in another to 5, by which the artist received, upon the whole,
nearly one thousand pounds."
To that princely felony, Old Patch, as will be seen in the sequel, added
smaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice,
except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility of
his genius for fraud.
At that period the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate, and
many experiments were made to evade it. Among others one was invented by
a Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which,
for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in great
style, gave splendid dinners, and did everything on the grandest scale.
Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so
much as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, what
he was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuous
entertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, and
left the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One of
these notes having proved a forgery, was traced to Mr. Charles Price;
and Mr. Charles Price was not to be found at that particular juncture.
Although this excited no surprise--for he was often an absentee from his
office for short periods--yet, in due course and as a formal matter of
business, an officer was sent to find him, and to ask his explanation
regarding the false notes. After tracing a man whom he had a strong
notion was Mr. Charles Price, through countless lodgings and innumerable
disguises, the officer (to use his own expression) "nabbed" Mr. Charles
Price. But, as Mr. Clark observed, his prisoner and his prisoner's lady
were even then "too many" for him; for although he lost not a moment in
trying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered that
Mr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentrated
in the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed every
trace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left; not
the point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silver
paper, nor a scrap of anybody's handwriting, was to be met with.
Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. Charles
Price had not the courage to face a jury, and eventually he saved the
judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging
himself in Bridewell.
The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed, and even
after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries--which dates from
the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will be
treated of in the succeeding chapter--"Old Patch" was still remembered
as the Cæsar of Forgers.
CHAPTER II.
In the history of crime, as in all other histories, there is one great
epoch by which minor dates are arranged and defined. In a list of
remarkable events, one remarkable event more remarkable than the last,
is the standard around which all smaller circumstances are grouped.
Whatever happens in Mohammedan annals, is set down as having occurred so
many years after the flight of the Prophet; in the records of London
commerce a great fraud or a great failure is mentioned as having come to
light so many months after the flight of Rowland Stephenson. Sporting
men date from remarkable struggles for the Derby prize, and refer to
1840, as "Bloomsbury's year." The highwayman of old dated from Dick
Turpin's last appearance on the fatal stage at Tyburn turnpike. In like
manner, the standard epoch in the annals of Bank-Note Forgery, is the
year 1797, when (on the 25th of February) one-pound notes were put into
circulation instead of golden guineas; or, to use the City idiom, 'cash
payments were suspended.'
At that time the Bank-of-England note was no better in appearance--had
not improved as a work of art--since the days of Vaughan, Mathison, and
Old Patch; it was just as easily imitated, and the chances of the
successful circulation of counterfeits were increased a thousand-fold.
Up to 1793 no notes had been issued even for sums so small as five
pounds. Consequently all the Bank paper then in use, passed through the
hands and under the eyes of the affluent and educated, who could more
readily distinguish the false from the true. Hence, during the fourteen
years which preceded the non-golden and small-note era, there were only
three capital convictions for the crime. When, however, the
Bank-of-England notes became "common and popular," a prodigious
quantity--to complete the quotation--was also made "base," and many
persons were hanged for concocting them.
To a vast number of the humbler orders, Bank Notes were a rarity and a
"sight." Many had never seen such a thing before they were called upon
to take one or two-pound notes in exchange for small merchandise, or
their own labor. How were they to judge? How were they to tell a good
from a spurious note?--especially when it happened that the officers of
the Bank themselves, were occasionally mistaken, so complete and perfect
were the imitations then afloat. There cannot be much doubt that where
one graphic rascal was found out, ten escaped. They snapped their
fingers at the executioner, and went on enjoying their beef-steaks and
porter--their winter treats to the play--their summer excursions to the
suburban tea-gardens--their fashionable lounges at Tunbridge Wells,
Bath, Margate, and Ramsgate--doing business with wonderful unconcern,
and "face" all along their journeys. These usually expensive, but to
them profitable enjoyments, were continually coming to light at the
trials of the lesser rogues who undertook the issue department; for,
from the ease with which close imitation was effected, the manufacture
was more readily completed than the uttering. The fraternity and
sisterhood of utterers played many parts, and were banded in strict
compact with the forgers. Some were turned loose into fairs and
markets, in all sorts of appropriate disguises. Farmers, who could
hardly distinguish a field of standing wheat from a field of
barley--butchers, who never wielded more deadly weapons than two-prong
forks--country boys, with cockney accents, bought gingerbread, and
treated their so-called sweethearts with ribbons and muslins, all by the
interchange of false "flimseys." The better-mannered disguised
themselves as ladies and gentlemen, paid their losings at cards or
hazard, or their tavern bills, their milliners, and coachmakers, in
motley money, composed of part real and part base bank paper. Some went
about in the cloak of the Samaritan, and generously subscribed to
charities wherever they saw a chance of changing a bad "five" for three
or four good "ones." Ladies of sweet disposition went about doing good
among the poor--personally inquired into distress, relieved it by
sending out a daughter or a son to a neighboring shop for change, and
left five shillings for present necessities, walking off with fifteen.
So openly--in spite of the gallows--was forgery carried on, that whoever
chose to turn utterer found no difficulty in getting a stock-in-trade to
commence with. Indeed, in the days of highwaymen, no traveling-gentleman's
pocket or valise was considered properly furnished without a few forged
notes wherewith to satisfy the demands of the members of the "High
Toby." This offence against the laws of the road, however, soon became
too common, and wayfarers who were stopped and rifled, had to pledge
their sacred words of honor that their notes were the genuine promises
of Abraham Newland, and that their watches were not of the factory of
Mr. Pinchbeck.
With temptations so strong, it is no wonder that the forgers' trade
flourished, with only an occasional check from the strong arm of the
law. It followed, therefore, that from the issue of small notes in
February, 1797, to the end of 1817--twenty years--there were no fewer
than eight hundred and seventy prosecutions connected with Bank-Note
Forgery, in which there were only one hundred and sixty acquittals, and
upwards of three hundred executions! 1818 was the culminating point of
the crime. In the first three months there were no fewer than one
hundred and twenty-eight prosecutions by the Bank; and by the end of
that year, two-and-thirty individuals had been hanged for Note Forgery.
So far from this appalling series of examples having any effect in
checking the progress of the crime, it is proved that at, and after that
very time, base notes were poured into the Bank at the rate of _a
hundred a day_!
The enormous number of undetected forgeries afloat, may be estimated by
the fact, that from the 1st of January, 1812, to the 10th April, 1818,
one hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred and thirty-one pieces
of paper were ornamented by the Bank officers with the word
"Forged"--upwards of one hundred and seven thousand of them were
one-pound counterfeits.
Intrinsically, it would appear from an Hibernian view of the case, then,
that bad notes were nearly as good, (except not merely having been
manufactured at the Bank,) as good ones. So thoroughly and completely
did some of them resemble the authorized engraving of the Bank, that it
was next to impossible to distinguish the false from the true. Countless
instances, showing rather the skill of the forger than the want of
vigilance in Bank officials, could be brought forward. Respectable
persons were constantly taken into custody on a charge of uttering
forgeries, imprisoned for days and then liberated. A close scrutiny
proving that the accusations were made upon genuine paper. In September,
1818 Mr A. Burnett, of Portsmouth, had the satisfaction of having a
note which had passed through his hands, returned to him from the Bank
of England, with the base mark upon it. Satisfied of its genuineness, he
re-inclosed it to the cashier, and demanded its payment. By return of
post he received the following letter:--
"_Bank of England, 16 Sept., 1818._
"SIR,--I have to acknowledge your letter to Mr. Hase, of the 13th
inst., inclosing a one-pound note, and, in answer thereto, I beg
leave to acquaint you, that on inspection it appears to be a
genuine Note of the Bank of England; I therefore, agreeably to your
request, inclose you one of the like value, No. 26, 276, dated 22nd
August, 1818.
"I am exceedingly sorry, sir, that such an unusual oversight should
have occurred to give you so much trouble, which I trust your
candor will induce you to excuse when I assure you that the
unfortunate mistake has arisen entirely out of the hurry and
multiplicity of business.
"I am, sir,
"Your most obedient servant,
"J. RIPPON.
"A. BURNETT, ESQ.
"7 Belle Vue Terrace.
"Southsea, near Portsmouth."
A more extraordinary case is on record:--A note was traced to the
possession of a tradesman, which had been pronounced by the Bank
Inspectors to have been forged. The man would not give it up, and was
taken before a magistrate, charged with "having a note in his
possession, well knowing it to be forged." He was committed to prison on
evidence of the Bank Inspector, but was afterwards released on bail to
appear when called on. He was _not_ called on; and, at the expiration of
twelve months, (having kept the note all that time,) he brought an
action against the Bank for false imprisonment. On the trial the note
was proved to be genuine! and the plaintiff was awarded damages of one
hundred pounds.
It is a fact sufficiently dreadful that three hundred and thirty human
lives should have been sacrificed in twenty-one years; but when we
relate a circumstance which admits the merest probability that
some--even one--of those lives may have been sacrificed in innocence of
the offence for which they suffered, the consideration becomes
appalling.
Some time after the frequency of the crime had in other respects
subsided, there was a sort of bloody assize at Haverfordwest, in Wales;
several prisoners were tried for forging and uttering, and thirteen were
convicted--chiefly on the evidence of Mr. Christmas, a Bank Inspector,
who swore positively, in one case, that the document named in the
indictment, "was not an impression from a Bank-of-England plate--was not
printed on the paper with the ink or water-mark of the Bank--neither was
it in the handwriting of the signing clerk." Upon this testimony the
prisoner, together with twelve participators in similar crimes, were
condemned to be hanged!
The morning after the trial, Mr. Christmas was leaving his lodging, when
an acquaintance stepped up and asked him, as a friend, to give his
opinion on a note he had that morning received. It was a bright day; Mr.
Christmas put on his spectacles, and carefully scrutinized the document
in a business-like and leisurely manner. He pronounced it to be forged.
The gentleman, a little chagrined, brought it away with him to town. It
is not a little singular that he happened to know Mr. Burnett, of
Portsmouth, whom he accidentally met, and to whom he showed the note.
Mr. Burnett was evidently a capital judge of bank paper. He said
nothing, but slipping his hand into one pocket, handed to the
astonished gentleman full change, and put the note into another. "It
cannot be a good note," exclaimed the latter, "for my friend Christmas
told me at Haverfordwest that it is a forgery!" But as Mr. Burnett had
backed his opinion to the amount of twenty shillings, he declined to
retract it; and lost no time in writing to Mr. Henry Hase (Abraham
Newland's successor) to test its accuracy.
It was lucky that he did so; for this little circumstance saved thirteen
lives!
Mr. Christmas's co-inspectors at the Bank of England actually reversed
his non-official judgment that the note was a forgery. It was officially
pronounced to be a good note; yet upon the evidence of Mr. Christmas as
regards other notes, the thirteen human beings at Haverfordwest were
trembling at the foot of the gallows. It was promptly and cogently
argued that as Mr. Christmas's judgment had failed him in the deliberate
examination of one note, it might also err as to others, and the
convicts were respited.
The converse of this sort of mistake often happened. Bad notes were
pronounced to be genuine by the Bank. Early in January, 1818, a
well-dressed woman entered the shop of Mr. James Hammond, of 40
Bishopsgate Street Without, and having purchased three pounds worth of
goods, tendered in payment a ten-pound note. There was something
hesitating and odd in her manner; and, although Mr. Hammond could see
nothing the matter with the note, yet he was ungallant enough to
suspect--from the uncomfortable demeanor of his customer--that all was
not right. He hoped she was not in a hurry, for he had no change; he
must send to a neighbor for it. He immediately dispatched his shopman to
the most affluent of all his neighbors--to her of Threadneedle Street.
The delay occasioned the lady to remark, "I suppose he is gone to the
Bank!" Mr. Hammond having answered in the affirmative, engaged his
customer in conversation, and they freely discussed the current topics
of the day; till the young man returned with ten one pound
Bank-of-England Notes. Mr. Hammond felt a little remorse at having
suspected his patroness, who departed with the purchases with the utmost
dispatch. She had not been gone half an hour before two gentlemen rushed
into the shop in a state of grievous chagrin; one was the Bank clerk who
had changed the note. He begged Mr. Hammond would be good enough to give
him another for it. "Why?" asked the puzzled shopkeeper. "Why, sir,"
replied the distressed clerk, "it is forged!" Of course his request was
not complied with. The clerk declared that his dismissal was highly
probable; but Mr. Hammond was inexorable.
The arguments in favor of death-punishments never fail so signally as
when brought to the test of the scaffold and its effect on Bank
forgeries. When these were most numerous, although from twenty to thirty
persons were put to death in one year, the gallows was never deprived of
an equal share of prey during the next. As long as simulated notes could
be passed with ease, and detected with difficulty, the Old Bailey had no
terrors for clever engravers and dexterous imitators of the hieroglyphic
autographs of the Bank-of-England signers.
At length public alarm at the prevalence of forgeries, and the
difficulty of knowing them as such, arose to the height of demanding
some sort of relief. In 1819 a committee was appointed by the Government
to inquire into the best means of prevention. One hundred and eighty
projects were submitted. They mostly consisted of intricate designs such
as rendered great expense necessary to imitate. But none were adopted
for the obvious reason that ever so indifferent and easily executed
imitation of an elaborate note is quite sufficient to deceive an
uneducated eye, as had been abundantly proved in the instance of the
Irish "black note." The Bank had not been indifferent or idle on the
subject, for it had spent some hundred thousand pounds in projects for
inimitable notes. At last--not long before the Commission was
appointed--they were on the eve of adopting an ingenious and costly
mechanism for printing a note so precisely alike on both sides as to
appear as one impression, when one of the Bank printers imitated it
exactly by the simple contrivance of two plates and a hinge. This may
serve as a sample of the other one hundred and seventy-nine projects.
Neither the gallows nor expensive and elaborate works of art having been
found effectual in preventing forgery, the true expedient for at least
lessening the crime was adopted in 1821:--the issue of small notes was
wholly discontinued, and sovereigns were brought into circulation. The
forger's trade was nearly annihilated. Criminal returns inform us that
during the nine years after the resumption of gold currency the number
of convictions for offences having reference to the Bank-of-England
notes were less than one hundred, and the executions only eight. This
clinches the argument against the efficacy of the gallows. In 1830
death-punishments were repealed for all minor offences, and, although
the cases of Bank-Note Forgeries slightly increased for a time, yet
there is no reason to suppose that they are greater now than they were
between 1821 and 1830.
At present, Bank-paper forgeries are not numerous. One of the latest was
that of the twenty-pound note, of which about sixty specimens found
their way into the Bank. It was well executed in Belgium by foreigners,
and the impressions were passed among the Change-agents in various
towns in France and the Netherlands. The speculation did not succeed;
for the notes got into, and were detected at the Bank, a little too soon
to profit the schemers much.
The most considerable frauds now perpetrated are not forgeries; but are
done upon the plan of the highwayman mentioned in our first chapter. In
order to give currency to stolen or lost notes which have been stopped
at the Bank, (lists of which are supplied to every banker in the
country,) the numbers and dates are fraudulently altered. Some years
since, a gentleman, who had been receiving a large sum of money at the
Bank, was robbed of it in an omnibus. The notes gradually came in, but
all were altered. The last was one for five hundred pounds, dated the
12th March, 1846, and numbered 32109. On the Monday (3rd June) after the
last "Derby Day," amid the _twenty-five thousand pieces_ of paper that
were examined by the Bank Inspectors, there was one note for five
hundred pounds, dated 12th March, 1848, and numbered 32409. At that note
an inspector suddenly arrested his rapid examination of the pile of
which it was one. He scrutinized it for a minute, and pronounced it
"altered." On the next day, that same note, with a perfect one for five
hundred pounds, is shown to us with an intimation of the fact. We look
at every letter--we trace every line--follow every flourish; we hold
both up to the light--we undulate our visuals with the waves of the
water-mark. We confess that we cannot pronounce decisively, but we have
an opinion derived from a slight "goutiness" in the fine stroke of the
figure 4 that No. 32409 is the forgery! so indeed it was. Yet the Bank
Inspector had picked it out from the hundred genuine notes as
instantaneously--pounced upon it as rapidly as if it had been printed
with green ink upon card-board.
This, then, O gentlemen forgers and sporting-note alterers, is the kind
of odds which is against you. A minute investigation of the note assured
us of your exceeding skill and ingenuity; but it also convinced us of
the superiority of the detective ordeal which you have to blind and to
pass. In this instance you had followed the highwayman's plan, and had
put with great cunning, the additional marks to the 1 in 32109 to make
it into a 4. To hide the scraping out of the top or serif of the figure
1--to make the angle from which to draw the fine line of the 4--you had
artfully inserted with a pen the figures "£16 16," as if that sum had
been received from a person bearing a name that you had written above.
You had with extraordinary neatness cut out the "6" from 1846, and
filled up the hole with an 8, abstracted from some note of lesser value.
You had fitted it with remarkable precision--only you had not got the 8
quite upright enough to pass the shrewd glance of the Bank Inspector.
We have seen a one-pound note made up of refuse pieces of a hundred
other Bank notes, and pasted on a piece of paper, (like a note that had
been accidentally torn,) so as to present an entire and _passable_
whole.
To alter with a pen a 1 into a 4 is an easy task--to cut out the numeral
from the _date_ in one note and insert it into another needs only a tyro
in paper-cutting; but to change the special _number_ by which each note
is distinguished, is a feat only second in impossibility to trumping
every court-card of every suit six times running in a rubber of whist.
Yet we have seen a note so cleverly altered by this expedient, that it
was actually paid by the Bank cashiers. If the reader will take a Bank
note out of his purse, and examine its "number," he will at once
appreciate the combination of chances required to find, on any other
note, any other figure that shall displace any one of the numerals so
as to avoid detections. The "number" of every Bank note is printed twice
on one line--first, on the words "I promise," secondly, on the words,
"or bearer." Sometimes the figures cover the whole of those
words--sometimes they only partly obscure them. No. 99066 now lies
before us. Suppose we wished to substitute the "0" of another note for
the first "9" of the one now under our eye; we see that the "9" covers a
little bit of the "P," and intersects in three places the "r," in
"Promise." Now, to give this alteration the smallest chance, we must
look through hundreds of other notes till we find an "0" which not only
covers a part of the "P" and intersects the "r" in three places, but in
precisely _the same_ places as the "9" on our note does; else the
strokes of those letters would not meet when the "0" was let in, and
instant detection would ensue. But even then the job would only be half
done. The second initial "9" stands upon the "or" in "or bearer," and we
should have to investigate several hundred more notes, to find an "0"
that intersected that little word exactly in the same manner, and then
let it in with such mathematical nicety, that not the hundredth part of
a hair's breath of the transferred paper should fail to range with the
rest of the letters and figures on the altered note; to say nothing of
hiding the joins in the paper. This is the triumph of ambi-dexterity; it
is a species of patch-work far beyond the most sublime achievements of
"Old Patch" himself."
Time has proved that the steady perseverance of the Bank--despite the
most furious clamor--in gradually improving their original note and thus
preserving those most essential qualities, simplicity and
uniformity--has been a better preventive to forgery than any one of the
hundreds of plans, pictures, complications, chemicals, and colors, which
have been forced upon the Directors' notice. Whole-note forgery is
nearly extinct. The lives of Eminent Forgers need only wait for a single
addendum; for only one man is left who can claim superiority over
Mathison, and he was, unfortunately for the Bank of England, born a
little too late, to trip up his heels, or those of the late Mr. Charles
Price. He can do everything with a note that the patchers, and alterers,
and simulators can do, and a great deal more. Flimsy as a Bank note is
to a proverb, he can split it into three perfect continuous, flat, and
even leaves. He has forged more than one design sent into the Bank as an
infallible preventive to forgery. You may, if you like, lend him a
hundred-pound note; he will undertake to discharge every trace of ink
from it, and return it to you perfectly uninjured and a perfect blank.
We are not quite sure that if you were to burn a Bank note and hand him
the black cinders, that he would not bleach it, and join it, and conjure
it back again into a very good-looking, payable piece of currency. But
we _are_ sure of the truth of the following story, which we have from
our friend the transcendent forger referred to, and who is no other than
the chief of the Engraving and Engineering department of the Bank of
England:--
Some years ago--in the days of the thirty-shilling notes--a certain
Irishman saved up the sum of eighty-seven pounds ten, in notes of the
Bank of Ireland. As a sure means of securing this valuable property, he
put it in the foot of an old stocking, and buried it in his garden,
where Bank-note paper couldn't fail to keep dry, and to come out, when
wanted, in the best preservation.
After leaving his treasure in this excellent place of deposit for some
months, it occurred to the depositor to take a look at it, and see how
it was getting on. He found the stocking-foot apparently full of the
fragments of mildewed and broken mushrooms. No other shadow of a shade
of eighty-seven pounds ten.
In the midst of his despair, the man had the sense not to disturb the
ashes of his property. He took the stocking-foot in his hand, posted off
to the Bank in Dublin, entered it one morning as soon as it was opened,
and, staring at the clerk with a most extraordinary absence of all
expression in his face, said,
"Ah, look at that, sir! Can ye do anything for me?"
"What do you call this?" said the clerk.
"Eighty-siven pound ten, praise the Lord, as I'm a sinner! Ohone! There
was a twenty as was paid to me by Mr. Phalim O'Dowd, sir, and a ten as
was changed by Pat Rielly, and a five as was owen by Tim; and, Ted
Connor, ses he to ould Phillips----"
"Well!--never mind old Phillips. You have done it, my friend!"
"Oh, Lord, sir, and it's done it I have, most com-plate! Oh, good luck
to you, sir; can you do nothing for me?"
"I don't know what's to be done with such a mess as this. Tell me, first
of all, what you put in the stocking, you unfortunate blunderer?"
"Oh yes, sir, and tell you true as if it was the last word I had to
spake entirely, and the Lord be good to you, and Ted Conner ses he to
ould Phillips, regarden the five as was owen by Tim, and not includen of
the ten which was changed by Pat Rielly----"
"You didn't put Pat Rielly or ould Phillips into the stocking did you?"
"Is it Pat or ould Phillips as was ever the valy of eighty-sivin pound
ten, lost and gone, and includen the five as was owen by Tim, and Ted
Connor----"
"Then tell me what you _did_ put in the stocking, and let me take it
down. And then hold your tongue, if you can, and go your way, and come
back to-morrow."
The particulars of the notes were taken, without any reference to ould
Phillips, who could not, however, by any means be kept out of the story;
and the man departed.
When he was gone, the stocking-foot was shown to the then Chief Engraver
of the notes, who said, that if anybody could settle the business, his
son could. And he proposed that the particulars of the notes should not
be communicated to his son, who was then employed in his department of
the Bank, but should be put away under lock and key; and that if his
son's ingenuity should enable him to discover from these ashes what
notes had really been put in the stocking, and the two lists should
tally, the man should be paid the lost amount. To this prudent proposal
the Bank of Ireland readily assented, being extremely anxious that the
man should not be a loser, but, of course, deeming it essential to be
protected from imposition.
The son readily undertook the delicate commission proposed to him. He
detached the fragments from the stocking with the utmost care, on the
fine point of a pen-knife--laid the whole gently in a basin of warm
water, and presently saw them, to his delight, begin to unfold and
expand like flowers. By and by, he began to "teaze them" with very light
touches of the ends of a camel's-hair pencil, and so, by little and
little, and by the most delicate use of the warm water, the camel's-hair
pencil, and the pen-knife, got the various morsels separate before him,
and began to piece them together. The first piece laid down was faintly
recognizable by a practiced eye as a bit of the left-hand bottom corner
of a twenty-pound note; then came a bit of a five--then of a ten--then
more bits of a twenty--then more bits of a five and ten--then, another
left-hand bottom corner of a twenty--so there were two twenties!--and so
on, until, to the admiration and astonishment of the whole Bank, he
noted down the exact amount deposited in the stocking, and the exact
notes of which it had been composed. Upon this--as he wished to see and
divert himself with the man on his return--he provided himself with a
bundle of corresponding new, clean, rustling notes, and awaited his
arrival.
He came exactly as before, with the same blank staring face, and the
same inquiry, "Can you do anything for me, sir!"
"Well," said our friend, "I don't know. Maybe I _can_ do something. But
I have taken a great deal of pains, and lost a great deal of time, and I
want to know what you mean to give me!"
"Is it give, sir? Thin, is there anything I wouldn't give for my
eighty-sivin pound tin, sir; and it's murdered I am by ould Phillips."
"Never mind him; there were two twenties, were there not?"
"Oh, holy mother, sir, there was! Two most illigant twenties! and Ted
Conner--and Phalim--which Rielly----"
He faltered, and stopped as our friend, with much ostentatious rustling
of the crisp paper, produced a new twenty, and then the other twenty,
and then a ten, and then a five, and so forth. Meanwhile, the man
occasionally murmuring an exclamation of surprise or a protestation of
gratitude, but gradually becoming vague and remote in the latter as the
notes reappeared, looked on, staring, evidently inclined to believe that
they were the real lost notes, reproduced in that state by some chemical
process. At last they were all told out, and in his pocket, and he still
stood staring and muttering, "Oh, holy mother, only to think of it!
Sir, it's bound to you forever, that I am!"--but more vaguely and
remotely now than ever.
"Well," said our friend, "what do you propose to give me for this?"
After staring and rubbing his chin for some time longer, he replied with
the unexpected question--
"Do you like bacon?"
"Very much," said our friend.
"Then it's a side as I'll bring your honor to-morrow morning, and a
bucket of new milk--and ould Phillips----"
"Come," said our friend, glancing at a notable shillelah the man had
under his arm, "let me undeceive you. I don't want anything of you, and
I am very glad you have got your money back. But I suppose you'd stand
by me, now, if I wanted a boy to help me in a little skirmish?"
They were standing by a window on the top storey of the Bank, commanding
a court-yard, where a sentry was on duty. To our friend's amazement, the
man dashed out of the room without speaking one word, suddenly appeared
in the court-yard, performed a war-dance round this astonished
soldier--who was a modest young recruit--made the shillelah flutter,
like a wooden butterly, round his musket, round his bayonet, round his
head, round his body, round his arms, inside and outside his legs,
advanced and retired, rattled it all around him like a firework, looked
up at the window, cried out with a high leap in the air, "Whooroo! Thry
me!"--vanished--and never was beheld at the Bank again from that time
forth.
Part XIX.
THE DOOM OF ENGLISH WILLS.
CATHEDRAL NUMBER ONE.
There are few things in this beautiful country of England, more
picturesque to the eye, and agreeable to the fancy, than an old
Cathedral town. Seen in the distance, rising from among cornfields,
pastures, orchards, gardens, woods, the river, the bridge, the roofs of
ancient houses, and haply the ruins of a castle or abbey, the venerable
Cathedral spires, opposed for many hundred years to the winter wind and
summer sun, tower, like a solemn historical presence, above the city,
conveying to the rudest mind associations of interest with the dusky
Past. On a nearer approach, this interest is heightened. Within the
building, by the long perspectives of pillars and arches; by the earthy
smell, preaching more eloquently than deans and chapters, of the common
doom; by the praying figures of knights and ladies on the tombs, with
little headless generations of sons and daughters kneeling around them;
by the stained-glass windows, softening and mellowing the light; by the
oaken carvings of the stalls, where the shorn monks told their beads; by
the battered effigies of archbishops and bishops, found built up in the
walls, when all the world had been unconscious, for centuries, of their
blunt stone noses; by the mouldering chapter-room; the crypt, with its
barred loopholes, letting in long gleams of slanting light from the
Cloisters where the dead lie, and where the ivy, bred among the broken
arches, twines about their graves; by the sound of the bells, high up
in the massive tower; by the universal gravity, mystery, decay, and
silence. Without, by the old environing Cathedral-close, with its
red-brick houses and staid gardens; by the same stained glass, so dark
on that side though so bright within; by the pavement of
half-obliterated tombstones; by the long echoes of the visitors'
footsteps; by the wicket-gate, that seems to shut the moving world out
of that retirement; by the grave rooks and jackdaws that have built
their nests in steeple crevices, where the after-hum of the chimes
reminds them, perhaps, of the wind among the boughs of lofty trees; by
the ancient scraps of palace and gateway; by the ivy again, that has
grown to be so thick and strong; by the oak, famous in all that part,
which has struck its mighty root through the Bishop's wall; by the
Cathedral organ, whose sound fills all that space, and all the space it
opens in the charmed imagination.
There may be flaws in this whole, if it be examined, too closely. It may
not be improved by the contemplation of the shivering choristers on a
winter morning, huddling on their gowns as they drowsily go to scamper
through their work; by the drawling voice, without a heart, that
drearily pursues the dull routine; by the avaricious functionary who
lays aside the silver mace to take the silver pieces, and who races
through the Show as if he were the hero of a sporting wager. Some
uncomfortable doubts may, under special circumstances, obtrude
themselves, of the practical Christianity of the head of some particular
Foundation. He may be a brawler, or a proud man, or a sleek, or an
artful. He may be usually silent, in the House of Lords when a Christian
minister should speak, and may make a point of speaking when he should
be silent. He may even be oblivious of the truth; a stickler by the
letter, not the spirit, for his own purposes; a pettifogger in the
supreme court of GOD'S high law, as there are pettifoggers in the lower
courts administering the laws of mortal man. Disturbing recollections
may arise, of a few isolated cases here and there, where country curates
with small incomes and large families, poor gentlemen and scholars, are
condemned to work, like blind horses in a mill, while others who do not
work get their rightful pay; or of the inconsistency and indecorum of
the Church being made a Robe and Candlestick question, while so many
shining lights are hidden under bushels, and so many black-cloth coats
are threadbare. The question may present itself, by remote chance,
whether some shovel-hats be not made too much on the model of the
banker's shovel with which the gold is gathered on the counter, and too
little in remembrance of that other kind of shovel that renders ashes
unto ashes, and dust to dust. But, on the whole, the visitor will
probably be content to say, "the time was, and this old Cathedral saw
it, when these things were infinitely worse; they will be better; I will
do all honor to the good that is in them, (which is much), and I will do
what in me lies for the speedier amendment of the bad."
In this conclusion, we think the visitor of the old Cathedral would be
right. But, it is important to bring to the knowledge of all visitors of
old Cathedrals in England, and of all who stay at home too, the most
gigantic and least known abuse, attaching to those establishments. It is
one which affects, not only the history and learning of the country, and
that powerfully, but the legal rights and titles of all classes--of
every man, woman, and child, rich and poor, great and small, born into
this English portion of this breathing world.
For the purpose of the object on which we now enter, we have consulted a
great mass of documents, and have had recourse to the personal
experience of a gentleman who has made this kind of research his
business. In every statement we make, we shall speak by the card, that
equivocation may not undo us. The proof of every assertion, is ready to
our hand.
The public have lately heard some trifling facts relative to Doctors'
Commons, through the medium of a young gentleman who was articled, by
his aunt, to a proctor there. Our readers may possibly be prepared to
hear that the Registry of the Diocese of Canterbury, in which are
deposited all the wills proved in that large, rich, and populous
district, is a job so enormous as to be almost incredible. That the
Registrars, with deputies, and deputies' deputies, are sinecurists of
from sixteen to seventeen thousand pounds, to seven or eight thousand
pounds, a-year; that the wills are not even kept secure from fire; that
the real working men are miserably paid out of the rich plunder of the
public; that the whole system is one of greed, corruption, and
absurdity, from beginning to end. It is not, however, with the Registry
of Canterbury that our business lies at present, but with the Registries
and Peculiars of other dioceses, which are attached to the old
Cathedrals throughout Great Britain, and of which our readers may be by
no means prepared to hear what we shall have to tell.
Let us begin by setting forth from London on a little suppositious
excursion--say with Mr. William Wallace, of the Middle Temple and the
Royal Society of Antiquaries.
Mr. William Wallace, for the purpose of a literary pursuit in which he
is engaged, involving the gratification of a taste he has for the
history of old manners and old families, is desirous, at his own proper
cost and charge, to search the registers in some Cathedral towns, for
wills and records. Having heard whispers of corruption in these
departments, and difficulty of search, Mr. Wallace arms himself with
letters from the Bishops of those places. Putting money in his purse
besides, he goes down, pretty confidently.
Mr. William Wallace arrives at Cathedral number one; and, after being
extremely affected, despite a heavy shower of rain, by the contemplation
of the building, inquires for the Registrar. He is shown a very handsome
house in the Cathedral-close--a house very superior to the
Bishop's--wherein the Registrar resides. For, the Registrar keeps a
first rate roof over his own head, though he keeps his deeds in a
dilapidated Gate-house; at which he takes toll to the amount of seven
thousand a-year; and where, as at other toll-houses, "no trust" is the
rule; for he exacts his fees beforehand.
Mr. William Wallace now learns that, locally, the Registrar is a person
of almost inordinate power; besides his seven thousand-pound-per-annum
place, he is Chapter Clerk, Town Clerk, Clerk to the Magistrates--a
Proctor, moreover, in boundless practice. He lives in great state; he
keeps horses, carriages, dogs, and a yacht; he is--could he be anything
else?--a staunch tory; he generally proposes the tory members for the
county, and has been known to pay the entire electioneering expenses of
a favorite tory candidate. Mr. Wallace, although fortified with a letter
bearing the mitred seal of the Bishop of the diocese, feels that he is
about to come in contact with a great power; an awful something that is
not to be trifled with; one of the noblest institutions of our land, who
is a very Miller of Dee, and accountable to nobody.
With a due sense of the importance of this outside buttress of the
Church, Mr. Wallace presents himself with the Bishop's letter. The
Registrar storms, and takes it extremely ill. He appears to confound Mr.
Wallace with his own foot-boy. He says the Bishop has no power to
interfere with _him_, and he won't endure it. He says the Bishop don't
know what harm may come of showing wills. He can't make out, what people
want to see wills for. He grudgingly concedes some obstructed search, on
the usual terms; namely, two guineas per day for all the days a
clerk--not fond of any sort of fatigue--may choose to take in making any
particular search. "But perhaps you will allow me to look at the
indexes?" asks Mr. Wallace. "_That's_ of no use," is the reply, "for a
great many of the years are missing; and in those we have got, a great
many wills are not entered. We often have to spend two months in finding
a will." Our friend then performs a little mental arithmetic:--two
months--or, even say fifty days--means one hundred guineas, to ferret
out one will. Complete indexes would only occasion ten minutes' search,
equal to one day, or, according to the Registrar's tariff, two guineas.
Mr. Wallace then draws the inevitable conclusion, that bad indexes
partly occasion the inordinate income of the Registrar, whose manifest
interest it is to keep them as imperfect as possible. One little trait
of the very early volumes (the earliest wills are dated A. D. 1180,) is
as quaint, as it is productive to the Registrar: the names of the
testators are arranged--alphabetically, it is true--but under the
Christian instead of the Surnames. Imagine the number of days, or
couples of guineas, that would drop into the Registrar's coffers, for
picking out one particular John Smith from the thousands of "Johns,"
under the letter "J!" Since the year 1800, the index is better: indeed
it is almost as available as the old catalogues of the British Museum,
though not quite so perfect.
All this was despair to Mr. William Wallace, who modestly hinted that
his archæological necessities pressed him to ask admission to the actual
depository of the wills. The Registrar was petrified with astonishment.
His figure expanded with a burst of indignation, which presently
exploded in the interrogative interjection, "What?" that went off, like
the sharp crack of a rifle.
What? Exhibit, to any living soul, the dilapidative neglect, the hideous
disorder, the wilful destruction of documents, involving the transfer of
the property, personal and landed, of seven counties; and which he, the
Registrar, obtains seven thousand pounds per annum for preserving
carefully, and arranging diligently! Why, only last year the
Archæological Institute of Great Britain, itself, was peremptorily
refused admission; and was it likely that the Registrar would allow Mr.
William Wallace--the friend of a mere Bishop--to be turned loose, to
browse at will upon the waste the Registrar and his predecessors had
committed and permitted?
But what will not an enthusiastic antiquary dare, in his loved pursuit?
Mr. Wallace was bold enough to hint that a Bishop had perhaps some power
in his diocese--even over a Registrar. This appeared in a degree to lull
the tempest; and after all storms there is a calm. The Registrar
reflected. There was nothing very formidable in the applicant's
appearance; he had not the hungry look of a legacy or pedigree hunter--a
foolish young fellow, perhaps, with a twist about old manners and
customs: and, in short, he _may_ take a look at the repositories.
Up a narrow stair, under the guidance of a grumpy clerk, our persevering
Middle Templar wends. In a long room, over the arches of the gateway, he
sees parallel rows of shelves laden with wills: not tied up in bundles,
not docketed, not protected in any way from dust or spiders by the
flimsiest covering. Only the modern wills are bound up; but--not to
encroach upon the Registrar's hard earnings--the backings of the
bindings are composed of such original wills as were written on
parchment. These are regularly cut up--that is, wilfully destroyed--for
bookbinding purposes!
Mr. Wallace sees, at a glance, that he may as well try to find a lost
shell on a sea-shore, or a needle in a haystack, as attempt to discover
what he is desirous of picking out of this documentary chaos. He looks
round in mute grief; his archaic heart is heavy; he understands,
exactly, how Rienzi felt amidst the Ruins of Rome, or the daughters of
Jerusalem when they wept. Wherever he turns his eyes, he sees black,
barbarous Ruin. In one corner, he observes decayed boxes filled with
rotten wills; in another, stands a basket, containing several lumps of
mediæval mortar, and a few brick-bats of the early pointed style--the
edges, possibly, of some hole in the wall too large for even poor seven
thousand a-year to shirk the stopping of. Despite the hints of the clerk
that his time is valuable, Mr. Wallace is contemplating these relics
with the eager gaze of an F.S.A., when he descries, hanging over the
edge of the basket, something like an ancient seal. He scrutinizes it
intensely--there is a document attached to it. He rescues it from the
rubbish.
"What can this be?" asks Mr. Wallace with glistening eye.
"Oh!" answers the clerk, with listless indifference, "nothing of any
consequence, _I'm_ sure."
By this time, Mr. Wallace has found out that this "nothing of any
consequence," is a Charter of King William the Conqueror; _the identical
instrument by which the See of Dorchester was transferred to
Lincoln_--that's all! The broken seal is not of "much consequence"
either. Oh, no!
Now it happens that there is only one impression of the great seal of
the Great Norman extant, and that is in the British Museum, broken in
half; this, being a counterpart, supplies the entire seal! Such is the
priceless historical relic found in the year 1850, by chance, in a
lime-basket, in the very place where it ought to have been as zealously
preserved as if it had been the jewel of a diadem!
But, other treasures--equally of "no consequence," and about to be
carried off by bricklayers' laborers, to where rubbish may be shot--are
dug out by Mr. William Wallace:--Item, a bundle of pardons from King
John to certain barons and bishops: Item, a Confession of the Protestant
Faith made on his death-bed by Archbishop Toby Matthew, hitherto
supposed by his biographers to have died a Catholic: Item, a
contemporary poem on the Battle of Bosworth. The Registrar's clerk is of
opinion, when these are shown to him, that "they an't worth much," but
growlingly saves them, on remonstrance, and bundles them into his desk;
where we trust they still remain; and whence we hope they may be rescued
by the proper authorities.
As Mr. Wallace follows his surly guide up the stairs of the Gate-house,
the rain patters sharply against the casements, and a fusty, damp odor
emerges from the upper story. Under a broken roof, and a ceiling being
unplastered in huge patches by time and rain, in the top room, lie--or,
more correctly, rot--the wills of the Archdeaconry of Blowe; a
"Peculiar" of the diocese. The papers below stairs are merely
worm-eaten, spider-woven, dusty, ill-arranged; but, compared with those
which Mr. Wallace now sees--and smells--are in fastidious glass-case
order. After dodging the rain-drops which filter through the ceiling,
down among the solemn injunctions of the dead, Mr. Wallace is able to
examine one or two bundles. Mildew and rot are so omnipotent in this
damp depository, that the shelves have, in some places, broken and
crumbled away. A moment's comparison between the relative powers of wood
and paper, in resisting water, will give a vivid idea of the condition
of the wills in this Archdiaconal shower-bath. The comers of most of the
piles are as thoroughly rounded off, as if a populous colony of water
rats (the ordinary species could not have existed there) had been dining
off them since the days of King Stephen. Others are testamentary
agglomerations, soddened into pulp,--totally illegible and inseparable;
having been converted by age, much rain, and inordinate neglect, into
_post-mortem_ papier maché.
All these, are original wills: no such copies of them--which Registrars
are enjoined to provide--having been made by the predecessors of the
present pluralist. In order that the durability of parchment should be
of no avail in arresting the most complete destruction within the scope
of possibility, it is the sheepskin testaments of this collection that
are regularly shredded to bind up the modern wills ranged in books
below.
The very sight of this place, shows the futility of anything like
research. Mr. Wallace examines a few of the documents, only to see their
extreme historical as well as local importance; turns away; and descends
the stairs.
"Thus, then," says Mr. William Wallace solemnly, as he takes a parting
look at the ancient Gate-house, "are documents, involving the personal
and real property of Seven English Counties, allowed to crumble to
destruction; thus, is ruin brought on families by needless litigation;
thus, do Registrars roll in carriages, and Proctors grow rich; thus, are
the historical records of the great English nation doomed--by an officer
whom the nation pays the income of a prince to be their conservator--to
rottenness, mildew, and dust."
Mr. Wallace having added nothing to the object of his pursuits and
inquiries, in the Registry of this Cathedral number one, departed at
once for Cathedral number two. How he fared there, the reader shall soon
learn.
CATHEDRAL NUMBER TWO.
Mr. William Wallace, having taken some repose in the bosom of his
family, and having recruited his nervous system, impaired for the moment
by the formidable demonstrations made in unimpeachable Ecclesiastical
Registry number one, resolved on making a visit to unimpeachable
Ecclesiastical Registry number two; upheld by the consideration that,
although an Ecclesiastical Registry is a fine Institution, for which any
Englishman would willingly die; and without which he could, in no
patriotic acceptation worth mentioning, be an Englishman at all; still,
that the last wills and testaments of Englishmen are not exactly
waste-paper, and that their depositaries ought, perhaps to be kept as
dry--say as skittle grounds, which are a cheaper luxury than Registries,
with the further advantage that no man need frequent them unless he
likes: whereas, to Registries he _must_ go.
The literary object which Mr. Wallace had in view, in this second
expedition, beckoned him to the North of England. "Indeed," said Mr.
Wallace, pausing. "Possibly, to the second city of England; an
Archbishopric; giving one of the princes of the blood his title;
enjoying the dignity of a Lord Mayor of its own; an ancient and notable
place; renowned for its antiquities; famous for its Cathedral;
possessing walls, four gates, six posterns, a castle, an assembly-room,
and a Mansion House; this is surely the place for an unimpeachable
Registry!"
He arrived at the venerable city of his purpose, at ten minutes past
three P. M., according to Greenwich, or at three-ten, according to
Bradshaw.
Our traveler's first proceeding, was, to take a walk round the walls,
and gratify his fancy with a bird's-eye-view of the unimpeachable
registry. He could hardly hit upon the roof of that important building.
There was a building in a severe style of architecture--but it was the
jail. There was another that looked commodious--but it was the mansion
house. There were others that looked comfortable--but they were private
residences. There appeared to be nothing in the way of Registry,
answering to the famous monkish legend in a certain Chapter-House:
As shines the rose above all common flowers,
So above common piles this building towers.
Yet such a building must be somewhere! Mr. Wallace went into the town
and bought a Guide-book, to find out where.
He walked through the quiet narrow streets, with their gabled houses,
craning their necks across the road to pry into one another's affairs;
and he saw the churches where the people were married; and the
habitations where the doctors lived, who were knocked up when the people
were born; and he accidentally passed the residence of Mrs. Pitcher, who
likewise officiated on those occasions; and he remarked an infinity of
shops where every commodity of life was sold. He saw the offices of the
lawyers who made the people's wills, the banks where the people kept
their money, the shops of the undertakers who made the people's coffins,
the church-yards where the people were buried, but _not_ the Registry
where the people's wills were taken care of. "Very extraordinary!" said
Mr. Wallace. "In the great city of a great ecclesiastical see, where all
kinds of moving reverses and disasters have been occurring for many
centuries, where all manner of old foundation and usage, piety, and
superstition, were, and a great deal of modern wealth is, a very
interesting and an unimpeachable Registry there must be, somewhere!"
In search of this great public edifice, the indefatigable Mr. Wallace
prowled through the city. He discovered many mansions; but he _could
not_ satisfy himself about the Registry.
The uneasiness of Mr. Wallace's mind increasing with the growth of his
suspicion that there must surely be a flaw in the old adage, and that
where there was a will (and a great many wills) there was no way at all,
he betook himself to the Cathedral-close. Passing down an uncommonly
pure, clean, tidy little street, where the houses looked like a tasteful
sort of missionary-subscription-boxes, into which subscribers of a
larger growth were expected to drop their money down the chimneys, he
came by a turnstile, into that haven of rest, and looked about him.
"Do you know where the Registry is?" he asked a farmer-looking man.
"The wa'at!" said he.
"The Registry; where they keep the wills?"
"A'dinnot know for shower," said the farmer, looking round. "Ding! If I
shouldn't wondther if _thot_ wur it!"
Mr. Wallace concealed his disparaging appreciation of the farmer's
judgment, when he pointed with his ash-stick to a kind of shed--such as
is usually called a lean-to--squeezing itself, as if it were (with very
good reason) ashamed, into the south-west corner of the cross, which the
ground-plan of the cathedral forms, and sticking to it like a dirty
little pimple. But, what was his dismay, on going thither to inquire, to
discover that this actually WAS the unimpeachable Registry; and that a
confined den within, which would have made an indifferent chandler's
shop, with a pestilent little chimney in it, filling it with smoke like
a Lapland hut, was the "Searching Office."
Mr. Wallace was soon taught that seven thousand pounds per annum is,
after all, but a poor pittance for the Registrar of a simple bishopric,
when calculated by the ecclesiastical rule of three; for the registry of
Cathedral number two, produces to its fortunate patentees twenty
thousand per annum; about ten thousand a year for the Registrar who does
nothing, and the like amount for his Deputy who helps him.
The portentous personage to whom Mr. Wallace was accredited, received
him in state in the small office surrounded by a Surrogate (apparently
retained on purpose to cross-examine Mr. Wallace) and the clerks. Mr.
Wallace mentioned that he believed the Archbishop had written to the
Deputy-Registrar to afford him every facility in consulting the
documents under his charge. The Deputy Registrar owned that the
Archbishop had done so, but declared that the Archbishop had no
jurisdiction whatever over him; and, claiming as he did, complete
immunity from, and irresponsibility to, all human control, he begged to
say that his Grace the Archbishop, in presuming to write to the
high-authorities of that unimpeachable Registry on such a subject, had
taken a very great liberty. Mr. William Wallace inquired if that was to
be the answer he was expected to convey to the Archbishop? bowed, and
was about to retire, when the awful Deputy recalled him. What did he
want to search for? Mr. Wallace repeated that his object was wholly
literary and archæological. The chief clerk who here came in as a
reinforcement, was so good as to intimate that he "didn't believe a word
of it." Whereupon a strong opinion was added that Mr. Wallace wanted
surreptitiously to obtain pedigrees, and to consult wills. A powerful
battery of cross-questionings was then opened by the heavier
authorities, aided by a few shots from the light-bob, or skirmishing
party--the clerk. But had Mr. William Wallace been his great ancestor,
he could not have held his position against such odds more firmly. At
length the preliminaries of a treaty were proposed by the enemy, the
terms of which were that Mr. Wallace should be allowed to consult any
records dated before the year one thousand four hundred! This was
demured to as utterly useless. Negotiations were then resumed, and the
authorities liberally threw in another century, out of the fullness of a
respect for the Archbishop, which they had refrained from condescending
to express;--Mr. Wallace might consult documents up to the year fifteen
hundred.
With this munificent concession, Mr. Wallace was obliged to be
satisfied, and proceeded to venture on another stipulation:--
The researches which he had proposed to himself at this Cathedral number
two, were elaborate and complicated; they would require such facilities
as had been asked on his behalf by the Archbishop. Could he have access
to the documents themselves?
The effect which this simple request produced in the office, was
prodigious! A small schoolboy who should, at dinner, ask for a piece of
the master's apple-pie; or a drummer on parade, who should solicit from
his captain a loan of five shillings, could not produce a more sublime
degree of astonishment, than that which glared through the smoke from
the faces of the deputy-registrar, the surrogate, the chief clerk, and
all the junior clerks, then and there assembled. The effect produced
amounted to temporary petrefaction; the principals neither spoke nor
moved; the subordinates left off writing and poking the fire. So
superlative was the audacity of the request, that it paralyzed the
pendulum of that small, rusty, dusty, smoky old ecclesiastical clock,
and stopped the works!
Refusal in words was not vouchsafed to Mr. William Wallace; neither did
he need that condescension. The silent but expressive pantomine was
enough. As the Eastern culprit receives his doom by the speechless
gesture of the judge's hand across his own neck; so Mr. William Wallace
fully understood that, access to the record depositories of the province
appertaining to Cathedral number two, was nearly equivalent to getting
into a freemason's lodge after it has been "tiled," or to obtaining
admission to St. Paul's cathedral without two-pence.