hanged at Tyburn in 1773, for house-breaking, haunted the neighbourhood of
Putney Heath and Kingston, and robbed solitary pedestrians or children.
They were not of the fine flower of their profession, as one may judge
from the evidence given at their trial, by which it appeared that they
laid in wait for topers in wayside taverns, and robbed them upon their
coming out in a more or less helpless state. Two convivial fellows whom
they had seen carousing in the "Green Man" they waited for, and having
tied their hands behind their backs, relieved them of some twenty guineas,
together with such small odds and ends as knives and tobacco-boxes. A
little way further on, upon this occasion, they chanced upon a baker's
boy, and disdaining not even the merest trifles, they "persuaded" him to
hand over a few halfpence and a silver buckle he was carrying in a bag.
[Illustration: THE WINDMILL, WIMBLEDON COMMON.]
[Sidenote: _THE DUELLO_]
But Putney Heath and the adjoining Wimbledon Common were not notorious
only for highwaymen and footpads: they were the favourite meeting-grounds
of belligerent gentlemen with an exaggerated and altogether mistaken idea
of honour, who faced one another armed with swords or pistols, and fought
duels at an early hour of the morning, when courage was apt to be
insufficiently warmed. Their notions of honour and "satisfaction" were,
possibly, somewhat ridiculous, but it seems to me that a man who would get
up at an unearthly hour of the morning, perhaps in the coldest of weather,
to shoot at a fellow-creature, or to be shot at by him,--to be run through
the body with a rapier, or else to run his opponent through some vital
part,--must have been either singularly courageous or peculiarly
vindictive.
To either (or both) of these categories, then, must have belonged my Lord
Chandos and Colonel Compton, who were among the earliest to be "out" upon
this spot. The affair took place in 1652, and was fought with swords, the
Colonel being run through the body in a trice. In later times one of the
most extraordinary duels of the eighteenth century took place on Wimbledon
Common, between the Duke of York and Colonel Lennox, afterwards Duke of
Richmond and Viceroy of Ireland. It seems that the Duke of York, with his
brother the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), was insulted one
night at Vauxhall by two gentlemen and a lady, all three masked, whose
identity, although shrewdly suspected, could not be certainly ascertained
at the time. They were, as a matter of fact, Lady Charlotte Lennox, who
had some grievance against the Prince, and her two brothers, the Duke of
Grafton and Lieutenant-Colonel Lennox. Now, the latter being
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, of which regiment the Duke of
York was full Colonel, was thus in a position of considerable delicacy
when his commanding officer took the first opportunity that offered of
putting an affront upon him on parade; for if he challenged and killed a
Royal Duke in a duel, the severest penalties would no doubt be inflicted
upon him,[1] but if, on the other hand, he pocketed the insult, his
"honour" was indelibly stained. Colonel Lennox took what he thought the
best course, and challenged the Duke of York to a hostile meeting, which
duly came off in a dell near where that well-known landmark, the Wimbledon
Common windmill, now stands. The seconds were Lord Rawdon and the Earl of
Winchilsea, and the weapons chosen were pistols. On the word "Fire!" being
given, only the Colonel's pistol was discharged: the Duke not having
pulled the trigger, and the Colonel not being desirous of another shot,
honour was declared to have been satisfied; the only damage done,
according to a contemporary account, being the loss of a curl from his
Royal Highness's head. An historian of the duello, however, throws unkind
doubts upon this story, and insinuates that the seconds, mindful no less
of their own safety than that of the Duke of York, took very good care
that the pistols were primed without bullets.
[Sidenote: _VICARIOUS DUELLING_]
In 1798 Mr. Pitt and Mr. George Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, had a
bloodless set-to, and two other political antagonists--Lord Castlereagh
and the jocular George Canning--fought, without a scratch, in 1809. In the
same year Lord Paget and Captain Cadogan had a "hostile meeting" here, and
exchanged shots without effect, the cause being, not politics this time,
but that much more fruitful origin of discord--a woman. Lord Paget,
himself a married man, had eloped with Lady Charlotte Wellesley, the wife
of his friend Henry Wellesley, and the lady's brother (one would have
thought the injured husband should have given battle) decided to avenge
the outraged honour of his family. So, as related, the combatants faced
one another and fired. The Captain's bullet went wide: my lord's pistol
merely flashed, and he, with a spark of right feeling, declined to shoot
again at a man whose family he had wronged. Mr. Henry Wellesley, though
apparently pusillanimous, was a more formidable, if less romantic,
antagonist. That gentleman brought an action for _crim. con._ against Lord
Paget, and salved his wounded feelings effectually with a verdict carrying
damages to the tune of L20,000.
[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT.]
One of the very few serious encounters that took place here happened to be
also the last. This was the duel between General Lorenzo Moore and Mr.
Miles Stapylton, fought with pistols on February 13, 1832. The General
wounded the civilian, who was seen to fall to the ground by the passengers
in the Godalming coach, which happened to be passing at the time. Some of
them came to his assistance, conveyed him off in a carriage, and desired
the General to consider himself under arrest. General Moore was
ignominiously marched off by a police-constable (so unromantic had the
times grown!), and was charged at Kingston. His antagonist, however,
becoming better, the man of war was released on bail, and no more was ever
heard of the affair.
[Sidenote: _PITT_]
Mr. Pitt, "the Great Commoner," who fought here without a scratch, was, if
not upon his "native heath" (for he was born at Hayes, in Kent), at least
within sight of his home. In fact, he practically went forth to do battle
at the very gates of Bowling Green House, where he lived--and died,
broken-hearted at Napoleon's successes, in later years. The house still
stands, altered, 'tis true, but not rebuilt; and the trees that shade its
lawn and make beautiful its rearward gardens have in their ranks some that
grew here when Pitt was resident under this roof. To call him "master"
here were to use the wrong expression, for the private conduct, and the
in-comings and out-goings of this great man, who made continental
alliances and whose political ascendancy set vast armies in motion all
over Europe, were very fully ordered by his eccentric and imperious niece,
Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept his bachelor household, acted as a
secretary, and filled by her own appointment the post of candid friend and
adviser. If Pitt endured uncomplainingly all this frank criticism under
his own roof-tree, the fact says much for the natural sweetness of his
temper; if he followed the advice of his volatile and irresponsible niece,
then he must have been weak-minded indeed. But the things that she did and
said, and he endured, are written by Lady Hester herself, and no less
reliable witness could be cited than she of her uncle's domestic life.
The "Telegraph" inn, that stands so short a distance from Bowling Green
House, marks the site of one of the old Admiralty telegraph-towers that
were placed in a line between London and Portsmouth, and whence signals
were transmitted by semaphores before the introduction of the electric
telegraph. Here it was that the anxious politicians gathered while Pitt
lay a-dying up the road in January 1806, in his forty-seventh year, struck
down by an attack of gout brought on by news of Austerlitz. He received
the "heavy news" while at Bath, sent in haste by courier; and shortly
afterwards he journeyed home to Putney, whence he was never fated to go,
only to his grave. It was on January 12 that he arrived at Bowling Green
House, and the first thing that met his gaze when he entered was the map
of Europe, hanging in the hall. The sight of it struck the dying man like
the thrust of a dagger, for of what use were political divisions and
boundaries, now that Napoleon was master? "Roll up that map," he
exclaimed; "it will not be wanted these ten years!" On January 23 he was
dead, and his last words, "My country, how I leave my country!" show the
mental agonies of his passing.
Thus died the greatest statesman of the eighteenth century, and the most
precocious in our annals. His opponents held it truth that he died of port
wine; his colleagues and his admirers of our own times say his wounded
patriotism dealt him the fatal blow; and this last, with some
modification, seems the correct view. Port he drank in prodigious
quantities: in his childhood it saved his life, and it probably enabled a
weakly constitution to hold out for forty-seven years. But save for the
coloration of his face, which in later days had a port-wine complexion,
his appearance showed nothing of the _viveur_. He was tall, angular, and
emaciated, and his features were cast in a most irregular mould. His nose
was long and tip-tilted, his face thin and spare, and his upper lip,
according to George III. (who certainly should have been an excellent
judge of obstinacy, seeing that he was perhaps the most self-willed and
unreasonable man of his time), was "d----d long and obstinate." But Pitt's
unprepossessing and even mean appearance was redeemed by the fire and
brilliancy of his eyes, and the dignity and lofty bearing he assumed in
public transfigured the awkward figure that was so severely commented upon
in private life.
X
From here, where Pitt died, it is a long and gentle descent to Kingston
Vale and the Robin Hood Gate. As you go down, the eye ranges over the
hills of Surrey, blue in the distance, and the picturesquely-broken waste
of Wimbledon Common appears in the foreground, now all innocent of the
bustle and turmoil, the business and the pleasure of the Wimbledon
Meeting. Alas! for the days, and still more alas! for the nights, of
Wimbledon Camp.
At the foot of the hill, going down from the Heath to Kingston, there
used to stand, beside the road, a mounting-block for assisting horsemen in
alighting from or mounting their horses. On it was carved the name of
Thomas Nuthall, Surveyor of Roehampton, 1654, with the curious jingle:--
"From London towne to Portse downe
They say 'tis miles three score."
This has disappeared, like many another quaint roadside relic, and there
comes now nothing but evidence of suburban activity until Kingston is
reached, save indeed the ruined Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, now a
school-house, beside the footpath.
[Sidenote: _KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES_]
Kingston-on-Thames is still provincial in appearance, though now the
centre of a great growth of modern suburbs. Here we are eleven miles from
the Borough, and at the end of the first stage out of London in the old
days of the mail-coaches. Modern drags, like the "Rocket" Portsmouth coach
of some years back, changed at the "Robin Hood," in Kingston Vale, but the
coachmen of coaching times made longer stages.
The story of Kingston is a great deal too long for me to dwell upon in
these pages, which are not intended for a topographical dictionary. I am,
indeed, not at all sure but that a book might not be written upon this old
town, both to the advantage of the writer and the inhabitants of this
truly royal borough; and here is the suggestion, generously offered to any
one who wishes a subject!
Kingston-upon-Thames is so explicitly named in order to distinguish it
from the many other Kingstons which loyalty or snobbery (please to take
your choice) has created all over England. There is a Kingston near
Portsmouth, and the town of Hull was always known as Kingston-upon-Hull
until conveniency and democracy conspired together (much, I should
imagine, to the delight of Citizen Carnegie, the Almighty Millionaire and
Astounding Autocrat of Homestead) to dock it of two-thirds of its name.
But the list of Kingstons is too long for this place, and so you are
referred to the "Gazetteer" for the rest, while I proceed to delve amid
antiquarian matter in respect of the kings whose coronations took place
here.
It seems, then, that before their Saxon majesties had conferred this
undying distinction upon the town it was (or what little there was of it)
called Moreford, from the ford by which Julius Caesar and his hosts crossed
the Thames; if, indeed, they did not cross at quite a different place, as
some antiquaries contend, called Coway Stakes, by Shepperton. When
ninth-century Unification prevailed, and the Heptarchy was knocked into a
cocked hat, Egbert (only the late Mr. Freeman would have preferred to call
him "Ecgbehrt") held a great council here; but that first great Bretwalda
was crowned elsewhere, and the Kingston coronations begin in A.D. 900 with
Edward the Elder, who sat upon a big stone in the market-place and
received his crown amid the acclamations of the people and the
confoundedly rough horse-play of the chiefs, who bore him aloft upon a
buckler, and (I assure you it was so) tossed him vigorously in the air
until the new king became sick and silly, and was devoutly thankful that
a Coronation came only once in a lifetime!
[Sidenote: _SAXON KINGS AND MODERN CYCLISTS_]
I trouble you with these details merely because the stone upon which these
kings received their crowns is still in existence in the market-place,
enclosed by and mounted on a modern seven-sided pedestal, upon whose every
face is carved the name of one of those Seven Kings, fearfully and
wonderfully spelled, to the amazement of the thousands of cyclists who
pass by and darkly remember to have heard of Edward the Elder and his
successors. When they come and read of Eadweard and similar perversions,
they go away, more than ever determined to forget all about the pre-Norman
monarchs and to confine their attention to those nineteenth-century
bounders, the idols of their little purview--I name the "Makers'
Amateurs."
But this Anglo-Saxon line of kings, from Edward the Elder to Edmund the
Martyr and Ethelred, is a great deal more interesting than the
professional cyclist. True, you cannot well lay a wager about Athelstan or
Edred, who have been dead a considerable time, something, in fact, a
little under a thousand years,--and they never played things low down for
"records" or took sordid cheques or shared in "gate-money"; but they are
still interesting, and made things so lively in their days that some of
their doings have been handed down through ten centuries--and _that_ is a
kind of "record" in itself!
The Saxons managed to defeat the Danes here in some great battle, half
mythical, half historic, and the old Shrovetide game of football that used
to be indulged in, within the town, is supposed to have been derived from
the (certainly unchivalric) way in which the townsfolk of that dim era
indulged in the sport of kicking the decapitated head of the Danish leader
about their streets.
However that may have been, here was the chosen spot of Saxon coronation,
and here stands the stone within a modern iron railing which is fondly
believed to be of Saxon character. This stone is supposed to have been one
of thirteen, originally forming a Druidical circle, and invested with a
sacred character, if not a godlike power. Indeed, the connection between
sacred stones and coronation stones is very close, for at one time kings
were heirs of the gods, and not only pretended to Divine right, but were
actually regarded as themselves divine. People, however, shed this last
superstition, and began to disregard sacred stones at a comparatively
early date, and the other twelve deities or sacred objects of Kingston
soon disappeared, for when the townsfolk set about rebuilding their
original wooden houses with more enduring materials, they quickly broke up
the gods and built walls of their fragments.
[Sidenote: _KINGSTON LOYALTY_]
Kingston has ever been a place of importance, and its castle (than which
no other stronghold in England has so utterly passed away and vanished,
even its site being a mere matter of conjecture) was several times
captured and recaptured by opposing hosts in the Middle Ages. In later
times Kingston became celebrated much in the same way as Yankee Boston
leaped into fame; for it was here that the first armed force assembled in
the Civil War between Charles I. and his Parliament. Colonel Lunsford and
other Royalist officers attempted to seize for the King the store of arms
in the town, intending to proceed afterwards to Portsmouth, to hold that
fortress in the Royal cause. The King was at that time at Hampton Court.
But Lunsford's enterprise failed, for the Parliament got wind of it and
speedily arrested him. By a singular coincidence, Kingston was also the
scene of one of the last stands of the Royalists, for, in July 1648, a
body of some six hundred men was assembled here under the commands of Lord
Holland, the second Duke of Buckingham, and his brother, Lord Francis
Villiers.
They set out for Carisbrooke, with the object of releasing the King, who
was imprisoned there, but a superior force met them at Reigate, and in the
last skirmish that followed their retreat to Kingston, Lord Francis
Villiers was slain, in a road between the town and Surbiton Common, at a
spot long marked by the tree against whose trunk he stood and fought
single-handed a hopeless fight against six Roundheads.
"Here," says Aubrey, the historian of Surrey, "was slain the beautiful
Francis Villiers, at an elm in the hedge of the east side of the lane;
where, his horse being killed under him, he turned his back to the elm,
and fought most valiantly with half-a-dozen. The enemy, coming on the
other side of the hedge, pushed off his helmet and killed him, July 7,
1648, about six or seven o'clock in the afternoon. On the elm, cut down in
1680, was cut an ill-shaped =V= for Villiers, in memory of him."
Indeed, Kingston has always been a loyal town, and its people High Tories
of a kind that warms my heart towards them when I think of their bravery.
Not resting content with appearing in arms against the Parliament, they
petitioned in behalf of their King, thereby incurring considerable danger
of being "remembered" in no kindly wise by my lords and commons of Puritan
sympathies. Their High Toryism and hatred of modernity have been seen in
recent times by their objection to having their Corporation reformed, and
even in the persecution of cyclists has their bias been shown; but
centuries ago these traits took a much less pleasing shape: the whipping
and despiteful using of beggars, the ducking of scolds and the plentiful
hangings of petty criminals; although, to be sure, there were some kindly
souls in the town, as evidenced by the entries given in the parish
registers of alms bestowed instead of scourgings, and we have here no such
record of brutality as Godalming registers afford. Kingston, being on a
well-worn road and itself a considerable place, was in receipt of much
custom from wayfarers of every class, travelling to the sea. Here came
sea-salts, men-of-war, personages of the highest station, and Dick, Tom,
and ragged Harry. The fine old inns that Kingston boasted afford proof of
the amount of custom the town enjoyed. Of these, alas! only the "Castle"
is left, and that well-known house, going back to Elizabethan times, is
cut up into separate tenements.
The travellers who "put up" here must have made a goodly crowd, and were,
doubtless, the source of much prosperity to this ancient borough,
"A praty town, by Tamise ripe."
[Sidenote: _MENDICANTS_]
Another kind of mediaeval wayfarers (who took away what others brought)
were those who went from place to place, collecting alms for the relief of
their distresses. These beggars were "briefed" or authorized by the
Ecclesiastical Courts to collect alms and solicit aid at any church they
might think fit, even at great distances away from their homes.
Thus the country was, before the passing of the Poor Laws, infested with
certificated beggars and tramps who, coming with pitiful tales of robbery,
disease, and spoliation, worked upon the charitable feelings of country
churchwardens, who listened to the woeful tales of mendicants both native
and from over sea, and relieved them with a few pence and a "God be with
you," passing them over to the next parish, where the process would be
repeated. The roads leading to and from the sea-board would be
particularly favoured by these unfortunates, and the Portsmouth Road, in
especial, must have witnessed at times quite a procession of dolorous
alms-seekers telling of sad mishaps on land and sea in foreign climes.
Some of the items given in this way are recorded in old parish registers
and churchwardens' accounts. Here are some significant extracts from
Kingston-upon-Thames records:--
"June 25, 1570. Sonday was her Iho Jinkin by pattin w{ch} was robbid
on the sea by Spanyards.
"February 1571.
"10 Sonday was her a man for his Father who was robbed on the Sey by
Lycence from my Lord Admirall."
Here we are not to assume, from the absence of punctuation, that this
unfortunate man was robbed by licence from the Admiral, but that this was
a variety of licence from the ecclesiastical kind--a kind of secular
recommendation to all and sundry, subscribed by the man's commanding
officer.
"10 Item was here the proctor of Kingsland beside Knightbrig.
"24 Sonday was here ij weman the mother and dowghter owte of Ireland
she called Elynor Salve to gather upon the deathe of her howsbande a
gentlman slayne amongst the wylde Iryshe being Captain of Gallyglasses
and gathered xviij_d_.
"May 26 Item her was a man from Dorkinge whose howse was brent.
"August 20 Item the proctor of Kingsland was here the Sonday being the
20 of August. In the same day was here ij men being robbid on the
Seye."
This licensed mendicancy was finally suppressed by the Act of Parliament,
passed in the thirty-ninth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, "For the
Suppressing of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars." It begins by
setting forth in detail all those who were considered to come under these
designations. These were:--"Persons calling themselves scholars, going
about begging; all idle persons going about in any country either begging
or using any subtil craft or unlawful games or plays, or feigning
knowledge in physionomy or palmestry; patent-gatherers; common players of
interludes, other than players belonging to any Baron of the Realm;
juglers, tinkers, pedlers, and petty chapmen; and generally all wandering
persons using, loytering, and refusing to work for reasonable wages, or
pretending to be Egyptians. These are to be taken, adjudged, and deemed
rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and on apprehension to be, by
appointment of any justice of the peace, &c., being assisted therein with
the advice of the minister and one other of the parish, stripped naked,
from the middle upward, and openly whipped until his or her body be
bloody; and then sent from parish to parish to his or her last residence,
and in default of going there within a time limited, to be eftsoons taken
and whipped again."
This statute was continued and altered in subsequent reigns, and not
repealed until the twelfth year of Queen Anne.
There is an entry in Godalming parish registers, on this very road, which
shows that this was no disregarded law. On April 26, 1658, the Godalming
authorities seem to have inflicted a peculiarly brutal scourging:--