this ferocious ardour? The worst that can be said of him is that he
probably felt disgusted with a Government which sent him on an important
mission with an utterly inadequate force. His previous career had not been
without distinction, and that he was an incapable commander had never
before been hinted. He doubtless on this occasion felt aggrieved at the
inadequacy of a squadron of ten ships, poorly manned, and altogether
ill-found, which he was given to oppose the formidable French armament
then fitting at Toulon for the reduction of Minorca, and possibly for a
descent upon our own coasts in the event of its first object being
attained.
When Byng reached Gibraltar with his wallowing ships and wretched crews,
he received intelligence of the French having already landed on the
island, and laying siege to Port St. Philip. His duty was to set sail and
oppose the enemy's fleet, and thus, if possible, cut off the retreat of
their forces already engaged on the island. He had been promised a force
from the garrison of Gibraltar, but upon his asking for the men the
Governor refused to obey his instructions, alleging that the position of
affairs would not allow of his sparing a single man from the Rock. So Byng
sailed without his expected reinforcement, and arrived off Minorca too
late for any communication to be made with the English Governor, who was
still holding the enemy at bay. For as he came in sight of land the French
squadron appeared, and the battle that became imminent was fought on the
following day.
Byng attacked the enemy's ships vigorously: the French remained upon the
defensive, and the superior weight of their guns told so heavily against
the English ships that they were thrown into confusion, and several
narrowly escaped capture. The Admiral sheered off and held a council of
war, whose deliberations resulted four days later in a retreat to
Gibraltar, leaving Minorca to its fate. Deprived of outside aid the
English garrison capitulated, and Byng's errand had thus failed. He was
sent home under arrest, and confined in a room of Greenwich Hospital
until the court-martial that was now demanded could be formed.
[Illustration: A STRANGE SIGHT SOME TIME HENCE.]
The action at sea had taken place on May 20, 1756, but the court-martial
only assembled at Portsmouth on December 28, and it took a whole month's
constant attendance to hear the matter out. The court found Byng guilty of
negligence in not having done his utmost in the endeavour to relieve
Minorca. It expressly acquitted him of cowardice and disaffection, but
condemned him to death under the provisions of the Articles of War, at the
same time recommending him to mercy.
[Sidenote: _BYNG'S DEATH_]
But no mercy was to be expected of King, Government, or country, inflamed
with rage at a French success, and all efforts, whether at Court or in
Parliament, were fruitless. The execution was fixed for March 14, and
Byng's demeanour thenceforward was equally unaffected and undaunted. He
met his death with a calmness of demeanour and a fortitude of spirit that
proved him to be no coward of that ignoble type which fears pain or
dissolution as the greatest and most awful of evils. His personal friends
were solicitous to avoid anything that might give him unnecessary pain,
and one of them, a few days before the end, inventing a pitiful ruse, said
to him, "Which of us is tallest?" "Why this ceremony?" asked the Admiral.
"I know well what it means; let the man come and measure me for my
coffin."
At the appointed hour of noon he walked forth of his cabin with a firm
step, and gazed calmly upon the waters of Portsmouth Harbour, alive with
boats full of people who had come to see a fellow-creature die. He
refused at first to allow his face to be covered, lest he might be
suspected of fear, but upon some officers around him representing that his
looks might confuse the soldiers of the firing-party and distract their
aim, he agreed to be blindfolded; and thus, kneeling upon the deck, and
holding a handkerchief in his hand, he awaited the final disposition of
the firing-party that was to send him out of the world by the aid of
powder and ball, discharged at the range of half-a-dozen paces. At the
pre-arranged signal of his dropping the handkerchief, the soldiers fired,
and the scapegoat fell dead, his breast riddled with a dozen bullets.
The execution of Byng was (to adopt Fouche's comment upon the murder of
the Duc d'Enghien) worse than a crime; it was a blunder. The ministry
fell, and the populace, who had before his death regarded Byng with a
consuming hatred, now looked upon him as a martyr. The cynical Voltaire,
who had unavailingly exerted himself to save the condemned man (and had
thereby demonstrated that your cynic is at most but superficially
currish), resumed his cynicism in that mordant passage of "Candide" which
will never die so long as the history of the British Fleet is read: "_Dans
ce pays-ci_," he wrote, "_il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un Amiral
pour encourager les autres!_"
[Illustration: THE SHOOTING OF ADMIRAL BYNG.]
VII
One of the earliest records we have of Portsmouth Road travellers is that
which relates to three sixteenth-century inspectors of ordnance:
"July 20th, 1532--Paid to X pofer Morys, gonner, Cornelys Johnson, the
Maister Smythe, and Henry Johnson for their costs in ryding to
Portismouthe to viewe the King's ordenaunce there, by the space of X
dayes at Xs' the daye--V li."
[Sidenote: _MONMOUTH_]
So runs the record. But the business of most of them that fared this way
whose faring has been preserved was of a very doleful character. I except,
of course, royal personages, who, as previously noted in these pages,
"progressed," and did nothing so plebeian as to "travel." Monmouth, who,
though of royal birth, had failed to achieve a throne in his ill-fated
rebellion of 1685, "travelled," "unfriended, melancholy, slow," on that
fatal journey from Ringwood to London in a carriage guarded by a strong
body of troops and militia-men. Poor fellow! the once gay and handsome
Duke of Monmouth, the prettiest fellow and courtliest gallant of a courtly
age, was conveyed, a prematurely grey and broken man, to his death, the
due reward, it is true, of rebellion, but none the less pathetic. The
mournful _cortege_ halted a night on the road at Guildford, where, in a
room over the great entrance-gateway of Abbot's Hospital, the
prisoners--the wretched Monmouth and the undaunted Lord Grey--were lodged,
until daylight should come again and their road to execution be resumed.
A more lightsome tour must have been that undertaken by the four Indian
kings who, in 1710, came to pay their devoirs to Queen Anne, and journeyed
up to London, much to the wonderment of the country-folk, to whose lurid
imaginations their copper-coloured countenances represented everything
that was evil. Twenty years later seven chiefs of the Cherokees came this
way, on a mission to the English Court; but the first pedestrian of whom
we have any account who walked the whole distance between London and
Portsmouth was a Mr. John Carter, who, having witnessed the proclamation
of George I. in London on August 1, 1714, in succession to Queen Anne, set
forth immediately for Portsmouth on foot. It is an emphatic comment upon
contemporary social conditions to note that when Carter reached
Portsmouth, on August 3, he was the first to bring the news. His zeal
might conceivably have been attended with serious consequences had the
Jacobites been more active; but as it was, Gibson, the Governor of
Portsmouth, an ardent adherent of the Stuarts, threatened the newsmonger
with imprisonment for what he was pleased to term "a false and seditious
report."
A journey quite in keeping with the sombre history of this road was that
by which the body of General Wolfe, the victor of Quebec, was brought to
London. The remains of the General were landed at Portsmouth on Sunday,
November 17, 1759, and were escorted by the garrison to the outskirts of
the town. He was buried at Greenwich on the night of the 20th.
For the rest the history of travel upon the Portsmouth Road in olden times
is chiefly made up of accounts of felons condemned to death for crimes
ranging from petty larceny to high treason. The halo of a questionable
kind of romance has perpetuated the enormities of the greater malefactors,
but the sordid histories of the sheep-stealers and cattle-lifters, the
miserable footpads, and contemptible minor sneaks and rogues who suffered
death and were gibbeted with great profusion and publicity by the
wayside, are clean forgotten.
[Sidenote: _NICHOLAS NICKLEBY_]
Modern times of road travel, that range from the reign of George IV. to
the beginning of the Railway Era, are chiefly filled with stories of the
Allied Sovereigns, who ate and drank a great deal too much on their way
down to Portsmouth to celebrate the Peace of 1814; of the Duke of
Wellington, who followed them in a carriage drawn by eight horses, and ate
sparingly and drank little; and of all sorts of naval and military bigwigs
and left-handed descendants of Royalty who held fat offices in army or
navy, and lorded it grandly over meaner, but more legitimate, mortals. No
literary or artistic annals belong to this time, saving only the
well-known scenes in "Nicholas Nickleby."
It was on the Portsmouth Road that Nicholas Nickleby and Smike met that
redoubtable _impresario_, Mr. Vincent Crummles. Nicholas, it may be
remembered, had fallen upon evil times. His capital "did not exceed, by
more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings," and so he and
Smike were compelled to foot it from London.
"'Now listen to me, Smike,' said Nicholas, as they trudged with stout
hearts onwards. 'We are bound for Portsmouth.'
"Smike nodded his head and smiled, but expressed no other emotion; for
whether they had been bound for Portsmouth or Port Royal would have been
alike to him, so they had been bound together.
"'I don't know much of these matters,' resumed Nicholas; 'but Portsmouth
is a seaport town, and if no other employment is to be obtained, I should
think we might get on board some ship. I am young and active, and could be
useful in many ways. So could you.'...
"'Do we go all the way to-day?' asked Smike, after a short silence.
"'That would be too severe a trial, even for your willing legs,' said
Nicholas, with a good-humoured smile. 'No. Godalming is some thirty and
odd miles from London--as I found from a map I borrowed--and I purpose to
rest there. We must push on again to-morrow, for we are not rich enough to
loiter.'...
"To Godalming they came at last, and here they bargained for two humble
beds, and slept soundly. In the morning they were astir: though not quite
so early as the sun: and again afoot; if not with all the freshness of
yesterday, still, with enough of hope and spirit to bear them cheerily on.
"It was a harder day's journey than that they had already performed, for
there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it
is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on,
with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to
heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.
"They walked upon the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl; and Smike listened
with greedy interest as Nicholas read the inscription upon the stone
which, reared upon that wild spot, tells of a foul and treacherous murder
committed there by night. The grass on which they stood had once been dyed
with gore; and the blood of the murdered man had run down, drop by drop,
into the hollow which gives the place its name. 'The Devil's Bowl,'
thought Nicholas, as he looked into the void, 'never held fitter liquor
than that!'"
VIII
[Sidenote: _WANDSWORTH_]
And now, having disposed of this batch of travellers, let us ourselves
proceed, through Kennington and past Battersea Rise, to Wandsworth. There
is, doubtless, much to be said of Kennington, seeing that its name is
supposed to derive from _Koeningtun_, or "the King's town," but that is no
affair of ours; and while its history is much too remote for inclusion in
these pages, its present-day appearance does not invite us to linger. But
with Wandsworth the case is very different.
Wandsworth is set down at the mouth of a little river whose confluence
with the greater Thames determined the precise locality of the first
village established on what were, in the far-off days of Wandlesworth, the
sedgy banks of the little Wandle. This stream, taking its source from
Croydon, "flows ten miles and turns forty mills," and is in our own times
perhaps the most despitefully-used river within the London area.
For, at the very beginning of its brief career, the Wandle now rises from
a brick culvert beneath a railway embankment, where once its source
bubbled up freely in the light of day; and, flowing through Beddington
and Carshalton, comes through Mitcham and Earlsfield to its outlet at
Wandsworth, a muddy river, defiled with sewage and the refuse of factories
and mills whose produce ranges from linoleum and snuff, to paper, copper,
and chemicals of every noxious variety.
There would have been no Wandsworth, either in fact or in name, had there
been no Wandle, for the water-power that brought prosperity to the mills
also provided a natural outlet for the manufacturers; and so there early
grew up a series of wharves by the river's mouth that have done a great
quantity of business at any period during these last two hundred years.
Aubrey, indeed, says that in his time there were many factories here, and
that here were made "brass plates for kettles, skellets, and frying-pans,
by Dutchmen, who kept it a mystery." Many of these old Dutchmen's places
of business lasted until comparatively recent years, and were known as the
"Frying Pan Houses." The greater part, however, of old Wandsworth is gone.
Gone, too, is the hamlet of Garratt, whose mock elections of a Mayor
caused such convivial excitement a century ago. But a few old houses of a
Dutch style of architecture still remain to show what manner of place this
was before it had become suburban and its spacious old architecture
destroyed to make way for the interminable back streets where City
clerkdom dwells in houselets composed of slack-baked bricks built on
ash-heaps, "comprising" four cupboards, miscalled "rooms," with what the
estate-agent magniloquently terms "the usual domestic offices."
Here and there in the High Street and on Wandsworth Plain stand these
remains of Old Wandsworth, and they give a distinct _cachet_ to "the
village." But the fury of the dabblers in bricks and mortar continues
unabated, and they will not last long. One of the oldest houses here was
destroyed some years back, and on its site stands a new police-station.
This was the well-known "Sword House," which took its name, not from the
making of swords, but from a _chevaux de frise_ of claymores, of which, up
to the beginning of the present reign, some few vestiges were left. The
story goes that the occupant of the house was a retired officer of the
army who had taken part in the defeat of the Scotch rebels at Culloden,
and had collected a number of claymores for the protection of his house at
Wandsworth, at that time a secluded place round whose outskirts hung a
number of footpads. He defended the outer walls of his residence with
these weapons, but they gradually disappeared, being stolen, one by one,
by timid and peaceable wayfarers as some sort of protection against the
gentry who rendered the suburbs dangerous o' nights.
[Sidenote: _A PIOUS BENEFACTOR_]
But if these purlieus were infested by a rascally crew who rendered all
the outlying districts notorious for violence and robbery, Wandsworth can
at least boast one conspicuously good man. This was that Alderman Henry
Smith whose tomb and effigy are so conspicuous in the parish church. The
Alderman was one of the greatest benefactors of the seventeenth century,
and left his large estate in trust for the purchase of lands "for setting
the poor people a-worke," and in bequests to parishes in Surrey. Henry
Smith was a native of Wandsworth, an Alderman of the City of London, and a
silversmith. He died in 1627; but in 1620, having neither wife nor
children, made a disposition of his property, reserving for himself only
sufficient for his personal needs. It is said that every parish in the
county of Surrey benefits by his charity, with the sole exception of
Mitcham, which owes this unenviable distinction to his having been whipped
through its bounds as a common beggar. But how or why came so wealthy and
well-considered a man as this respected Alderman of London City to be
whipped as a rogue and vagabond? It is an old story which professes to
explain this, and it is a story to which so respectable a gentleman as
John Evelyn, the diarist, lends his authority, in Aubrey's "Surrey." It
is, however, entirely apocryphal. According, then, to John Evelyn, the
benefactor was known as "Dog Smith," and was a beggar who wandered through
the country accompanied by his dog, and received alms in money and in
kind. By this means was his vast fortune supposed to have been amassed.
But this tale is too grotesque for belief, put beside the well-known facts
of his membership of the Silversmiths' Company, and of his friendship with
the Earls of Essex and Dorset, who were also two of the executors of his
will. The story of Mitcham may be dismissed when it is learned that the
parishes of Surrey certainly owed their bequests to Henry Smith, but that
the incidence of them was at the discretion of the trustees.
IX
The parish of Wandsworth extends up to Putney Heath, to which we come
up-hill past the singularly-named "Tibbets' Corner." Research has failed
to discover who or what was Tibbets, after whom or which the Corner was
named; but a familiarity with the old-time character of the neighbourhood
suggests that "Tibbets" is merely a corruption of "Gibbets," which were at
one time the chiefest features of the landscape in these parts.
[Sidenote: _JERRY ABERSHAWE_]
Putney Heath was the scene of the notorious Jerry Abershawe's exploits in
highway robbery. Where Veitch's nurseries now stand, at the corner of Stag
Lane, in Putney Bottom, just before you come to the Beverley Brook,
formerly stood the "Bald-faced Stag," or "Half-way House," at one time a
notorious house of call for this youthful but daring desperado, who with
numerous lesser lights infested the neighbourhood, in the latter half of
last century, lurking in the remotenesses of Coombe Wood, and plundering
unhappy wayfarers.
There is a story told of this lawless and picturesque figure to the effect
that on a dark and inclement night of November, after having stopped every
passenger along the road, he was suddenly taken ill and compelled to
retire to the shelter of this public-house, standing lonely upon the
roadside. His comrades--"pals," he would, doubtless, have called
them--sent for a doctor, and a Dr. William Roots attended. He was bled,
and the doctor was about to return home, when his patient, with a great
appearance of earnestness, said, "You had better, sir, have some one to go
back with you, as it is a very dark and lonesome journey." This, however,
the doctor declined, remarking that "he had not the least fear, even
should he meet with Abershawe himself," little thinking to whom he was
speaking. This story was a favourite with Abershawe: it afforded him a
reliable criterion of his unholy prowess.
[Illustration: THE "GREEN MAN," PUTNEY HEATH.]
Louis Jeremiah Avershawe--to give him his proper name--was born in 1773,
and ended his career with a hempen cravat round his neck on August 3,
1795. He was tried at Croydon Assizes, on July 30, for the murder of
David Price, an officer sent to apprehend him in Southwark, whom he had
shot; wounding at the same time another officer with a second pistol. A
flaw in the indictment acquitted him on the first count, but he was
convicted on the charge of feloniously shooting at one Barnaby Taylor.
With all his crimes, he was no coward, for, as a contemporary account of
his trial says, "When Mr. Baron Penryn put on the black cap, the prisoner,
regardless of his sad situation, at the same time put on his own hat,
observing the judge with contemptuous looks while he was passing the awful
sentence of the law."
He was executed on Kennington Common. Arriving at the gallows, he kicked
off his boots and died unshod, to disprove the letter, if not the spirit,
of an old warning of his mother's, that he was a bad lad and would die in
his shoes. His body was subsequently hanged in chains in Putney Bottom,
the scene of his exploits; and the satisfaction with which the passers-by
beheld his tattered skeleton, swinging in its iron cage from the gibbet,
may well be imagined; although it was not unlikely that, before they had
reached the streets of Kingston, or the High Street of Putney, some
surviving member of the malefactor's fraternity would exact his
unauthorized tolls.
[Sidenote: _GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD_]
Imagine how palpitating with incertitude the breasts of eighteenth-century
travellers must have been when once the oil-lit streets of the towns were
left behind. The stage-coach passengers sat glum and nervous,--each
suspecting his fellow,--with their money in their boots, their watches in
the lining of their hats, and other light valuables secreted in unlikely
parts of their persons, in the fond hope that the fine fellow, mounted on
a mettlesome horse, and bristling with weapons, who would presently bring
the coach to a stop in some gloomy bend of the road, might be either too
unpractised or in too great a hurry to think of those very obvious
hiding-places. Rarely, at one time, did the mails or the stages escape the
highwayman's unwelcome attentions, for, during a lengthy period, the wide,
unenclosed waste lands in the neighbourhood of London were the nocturnal
resorts of all who desired to better their fortunes at the expense of
whoever happened to be travelling upon these lonely roads after nightfall.
All the ruined gamesters and unconventional or reckless ne'er-do-wells who
could manage to buy, hire, or steal a horse, took to the exciting
occupation of highway robbery. This diversion promised at once to be
remunerative, and satisfying to the Englishman's sporting instincts, and
if the end of it was identical with a rope's end and a morning dance upon
nothing, why, the sportsman was unlucky,--and so an end. For although
death was the penalty for highway robbery, yet the pursuit of it does not
seem to have been looked upon as so very disgraceful; and the bold
gentlemen (!) who, well-armed and not ill-horsed, lurked upon Putney Heath
or Barnes Common, or any other of the many wildernesses that surrounded
London in the midst of last century, were accounted somewhat romantic,
even by the contemporaries whose pockets they occasionally lightened.
[Sidenote: _THE ROMANCE OF ROBBERY_]
Believe me, these rascals who hung by the dark roadside, and, disguised
in black crepe or velvet masks, cried hoarsely in the ears of travellers,
"Stand and deliver!" were not the social pariahs they would be to-day,
could they revisit their suburban haunts. These fellows robbed the mails
"with the utmost regularity and dispatch," and despoiled every one who was
not sufficiently well armed to withstand them, without distinction of
class or sex. "Purses," says one, who recounts his memories of these
times, "rings, watches, snuff-boxes, passed from their owners to the
attentive highwayman, almost as soon as the muzzle of his pistol obtruded
through the window"; and when at last the poor fellow was lagged, and
languished in the stone jug of Newgate, the ladies whom he had relieved,
with much politeness, of their money and jewels came and condoled with
him, and flaunted their handkerchiefs out of window as he passed one fatal
morning to Tyburn in a tumbril, seated on his coffin, with the chaplain
beside him, preaching of kingdom-come.
Jerry Abershawe was a hero of this stamp, only he did not make his last
appearance on so fashionable a stage as Tyburn. Croydon was the scene of
his trial, and Wandsworth, as we have seen, was the place of his taking
off.