of Fordingbridge looked askance upon one of their fellow-townsmen being
selected for so considerable a gift as a bag of tea was in those days, and
they probably plied him with awkward questions. At any rate, Diamond was
shortly afterwards arrested at Chichester, on suspicion of being concerned
in the raid at Poole, and Chater having acknowledged his acquaintance with
the man, the matter became the subject of local gossip and presently came
to the ears of the Collector of Customs for Southampton. At the same time,
a proclamation was issued, offering a reward for information as to the
persons implicated in the affair, and Chater, in an evil moment for
himself, offered to give evidence.
The shoemaker, then, in company of an Excise officer, William Galley by
name, set out for Chichester with a letter for Major Battin, a justice of
the peace for Sussex, who lived in that city, and before whom it was
proposed to examine Chater, in relation to what he knew of the affair, and
whether he could prove the identity of Diamond.
The two set out on horseback on Sunday, February 14, 1748, and, calling on
their way at Havant, were directed by a friend of Chater's to go by way of
Stanstead, near Rowlands Castle. They, however, lost their way, and
calling at the "New" Inn, at Leigh, to get their direction, were met by
three men, George Austin, Thomas Austin, and their brother-in-law, Mr.
Jenkes, who accompanied Galley and Chater to Rowlands Castle, where they
all drew rein at the "White Hart," a public-house kept by a Mrs. Elizabeth
Payne, a widow, who had two sons, blacksmiths, in the village; both grown
men, and reputed smugglers.
[Sidenote: _AN ATROCIOUS CRIME_]
And now commences the horrible story of the two most dreadful and
protracted murders that have ever set lonely folk shivering by their
firesides, or have ever made philosophers despair for the advancement of
the human race. It becomes the duty of the historian of the Portsmouth
Road to chronicle these things, but here duty and inclination part
company. The tale must be told; but for those who take a deeper interest
in the story, let them procure, if they can, any one of the several rare
editions of a dreadfully detailed pamphlet, entitled "A Full and Genuine
History of the Inhuman and Unparalleled Murders of Mr. William Galley, a
Custom-House Officer, and Mr. Daniel Chater, a Shoemaker, by Fourteen
Notorious Smugglers, with the Trials and Execution of Seven of the Bloody
Criminals, at Chichester." If a perusal of the gory details set forth in
these pages does not more than satisfy curiosity, why, then the reader's
stomach for the reading of ferocious cruelties must indeed be strong.
But to resume the account.
Shortly after the arrival of the party at the "White Hart," Mrs. Payne
took Mr. George Austin aside and whispered him her fears that these two
strangers were come with intent to do some injury to the smugglers. When
he replied that she need not believe that, for they were only carrying a
letter to Major Battin, the landlady's suspicions became more fully
aroused, for what other particular business could Galley, who was dressed
as a "riding officer" of the Excise, have with the Justice of the Peace?
But, to make sure, she sent one of her sons, who was in the house, for
William Jackson and William Carter, who lived within a short distance.
While he was gone, Chater and Galley wanted to be going, and called for
their horses, but the woman told them that the man who had the key of the
stable was gone out, and would be back presently. Meanwhile the
unsuspecting men remained, drinking and gossiping.
[Sidenote: _DRUNKEN QUARRELS_]
When the two arrived who had been sent for, Mrs. Payne drew them aside and
told them her suspicions, at the same time advising Mr. George Austin to
go away, as she respected him, and was unwilling that any harm should come
to him by staying. Mr. George Austin had the saving virtue of prudence. He
went away, as he was bid, and left his brother and his brother-in-law
behind, which seems to have been unnecessarily selfish on his part. Then
the other son came in and brought with him four more smugglers, and the
whole company drank together. After a while, Jackson took Chater aside
into the yard and asked him after Diamond, and the simple-minded shoemaker
let fall the secret of his journey. While they were talking, Galley,
uneasy about his companion, came out and asked him to rejoin them within,
whereupon Jackson struck Galley a violent blow in the face that knocked
him down. "I am a King's officer," said Galley, "and cannot put up with
such treatment!"
"You a King's officer!" replies Jackson. "I'll make a King's officer of
you; and for a quartern of gin I'll serve you so again!"
The others interfered, and the whole party set to drinking again until
Galley and Chater were overcome by drunkenness and were sent to sleep in
an adjoining room. Thomas Austin and Mr. Jenkes, too, were beastly drunk;
but they had no interest in the smugglers, nor the smugglers in them, and
so they drop out of the narrative.
When Galley and Chater were asleep the compromising letters in their
pockets were found and read, and from that moment the doom of these
unfortunate men was sealed, and the only question seems to have been the
manner of putting an end to their lives. True, less ferocious proposals
were made, by which it was suggested to send them over to France; but when
it became evident that they would return, the thoughts of the company
reverted to murder. At this juncture the wives of Jackson and Carter, who
were both present during these consultations, cried out, "Hang the dogs,
for they came here to hang us!"
Another proposition that was made--to imprison the two in some safe place
until they knew what would be Diamond's fate, and for each of the
smugglers to subscribe threepence a week for their keep--was immediately
scouted; and instantly the brutal fury of these ruffians was aroused by
Jackson, who, going into the room where the unfortunate men were lying,
spurred them on their foreheads with the heavy spurs of his riding-boots,
and having thus awakened them, whipped them into the kitchen of the inn
until they were streaming with blood. Then, taking them outside, the gang
lifted them on to a horse, one behind the other, and tying their hands and
legs together, lashed them with heavy whips along the road, crying, "Whip
them, cut them, slash them, damn them!"
[Sidenote: _BURIED ALIVE!_]
From Rowlands Castle, past Wood Ashes, Goodthorpe Deane, and to Lady Holt
Park, this scourging was continued through the night until the wretched
men were three parts dead. At two o'clock in the morning this gruesome
procession reached the Portsmouth Road at Rake, where the foremost members
of the party halted before the "Red Lion," kept in those days by one
Scardefield, who was no stranger to their kind, nor unused to the purchase
and storing of smuggled spirits. Here they knocked and rattled at the door
until Scardefield was obliged to get out of bed and open to them. Galley,
still alive, was thrust into an outhouse while the band, having roused the
landlord and procured drink, caroused in the parlour of the inn. Chater
they carried in with them; and when Scardefield stood horrified at seeing
so ghastly a figure of a man, all bruised and injured and spattered with
blood, they told him a specious tale of an engagement they had had with
the King's officers: that here was one comrade, wounded, and another, dead
or dying, in his brew-house.
While it was yet dark they carried Galley to a place in Harting Coombe, at
some distance from the "Red Lion," and, digging a grave in a fox-earth by
the light of a lantern, they buried him, without inquiring too closely
whether or not their victim was dead. That he was not dead at that time
became evident when his body was found, with the hands raised to the face,
as though to prevent the dirt from suffocating him.
The whole of this day this evil company sat drinking in the "Red Lion,"
having disposed of their other prisoner for a time by chaining him by the
leg in a turf-shed near by. This was Monday, and at night they all
returned home, lest their absence might be remarked by their neighbours;
agreeing to meet again at Rake on the Wednesday evening, to consider how
they might best put an end to Chater. When Wednesday night had come, this
council of fourteen smugglers decided to dispatch him forthwith, and,
going down in a body to the turf-shed where he had lain all this while,
suffering agonies from the cruel usage to which he had already been
subjected, they unchained him, and with the most revolting barbarities,
set him across a horse and whipped him afresh all the way back to Lady
Holt Park, where there was a deep, dry well. Into this they threw the
wretched man, and by his cries and groans perceiving that he was not yet
dead, they collected a great number of large stones, which, together with
two great gate-posts, they flung down upon him, and then rode away.
Even in those times two men (and men who had set out upon public business)
could not disappear so utterly as Chater and Galley had done without
comment, and presently the whole country was ringing with the story of
this mysterious disappearance. That it was the work of smugglers none
doubted: the only question was, in what manner had they spirited these two
men away? Some thought they had been carried over to France, and others
thought, shrewdly enough, that they had been murdered. But no tidings nor
any trace of either Galley or Chater came to satisfy public curiosity or
official apprehensions until some seven months later, when an anonymous
letter sent to "a person of distinction," and probably inspired by the
hope of ultimately earning the large reward then being offered by the
Government for information, hinted that "the body of one of the
unfortunate men mentioned in his Majesty's proclamation was buried in the
sands in a certain place near Rake." And, sure enough, when the
authorities came to search they found the body of the Excise officer
"standing almost upright, with his hands covering his eyes." Another
letter followed, implicating one William Steel as concerned in the murder;
and when Steel was arrested the mystery was discovered, for, to save
himself, the prisoner turned King's evidence, and revealed the whole
dreadful story.
[Sidenote: _TRIALS AND EXECUTIONS_]
One after another seven of the murderers were arrested in different parts
of the counties of Hants and Surrey, and were committed to the gaols at
Horsham and Newgate, afterwards being sent to Chichester, where their
trial was held on January 18, 1749. They were all found guilty, and were
sentenced to be hanged on the following day. Six of them were duly
executed; William Jackson, the seventh, who had been in ill-health, died
in gaol a few hours after condemnation. The body of William Carter was
afterwards hanged in chains upon the Portsmouth Road, near the scene of
the crimes; three of the others were thrown into a pit on the Broyle, at
Chichester, the scene of the execution, and the rest were hanged in chains
along the sea-coast from Chichester to Selsea Bill, at points of vantage
whence they were visible for miles around. Another accomplice, Henry
Shurman, was indicted and tried at East Grinstead, and being sentenced to
death, was conveyed from Horsham Gaol by a strong guard of soldiers, and
hanged at Rake shortly afterwards.
And so an end to incidents as revolting as anything to be found in the
lengthy annals of crime. Country folk breathed more freely when these
daring criminals were "turned off"; and numerous other executions for
resisting the military and the Excise followed, thus breaking up the gangs
that terrorized law-abiding people.
But the Customs officers were still so intimidated that few possessed
hardihood sufficient to carry them on their duty into places beyond reach
of ready help. The more remote roads and lanes were patrolled at night by
the most daring fellows, who, despite the warnings visible on every side
in the dangling bodies of their dead comrades, dealt largely in many kinds
of crime beneath the very gallows-tree; smuggling, starting incendiary
fires, and assaulting and intimidating those wayfarers whose only fault
was being found on the road after night had fallen.
[Sidenote: _AT DEAD OF NIGHT_]
Few people cared to be out alone after the sun had set, for the more
daring among the "free-traders" were wont to appear then, and stopped and
interrogated every one they chanced upon, lest they might be Government
agents. If a peaceable villager, jogging home after sundown, failed to
give a good and ready account of himself and his business upon the highway
at that moment, he stood an excellent chance of a crack across the skull
with something heavy, in the nature of a pistol-butt, which rendered
further explanation impossible; and so, things being still in this pass,
we can afford sympathy for the wayfarer who, having missed his road,
found himself, when night was come and the moon risen, at some remote
cross-road, far removed from sight or sound of human beings, except the
ominous pit-a-pat of distant hoofs upon the hard road that heralded the
approach of the merry men who played hide-and-seek with death and the
gallows; to whom daylight was as unwelcome as to the predatory owl, and
whose high noontide stress of business fell at dead of night.
[Illustration: BENIGHTED.]
XXXIII
Chalton Downs is the ideal tract of country for so heart-stirring an
encounter. Never a considerable tree for miles in any direction: only
bushes and sparse clumps of saplings, and, for the rest, undulations of
chalk as bare as the back of your hand, save for the short and scanty
grass that affords not even a good mouthful for sheep. Here, where the
Downs are most barren, a rough country lane dips into the hollow that runs
parallel with the right-hand side of the highway, where a gaunt
finger-post points the way to "Catherington and Hinton." On the
corresponding ridge stands the small and scattered village, but large
parish, of Catherington, whose church, dedicated to St. Catherine, is the
parish church of modern Horndean and of other hamlets, a mile or more down
the road.
The church of Catherington, so far as outward appearance goes, may be
taken as amongst the most representative of Hampshire village churches,
standing on the hill-brow, its graveyard separated from ploughed fields
only by a hedge, its tombs overshadowed by two great solemn yew trees, its
situation, no less than its shape and style, suggesting thoughts of Gray's
"Elegy," and the peaceful rural lives of them that sleep beneath the skies
in this retired God's acre. It is, therefore, with nothing less than a
start of surprise that the wayfarer, weighted with obvious moralizings,
discovers first the tomb of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and then the
resting-place of Charles Kean, his mother, and his wife. What do they
here, who lived so greatly in the eye of the world? Here is the epitaph
"to the memory of Mary, relict of the late Edmund Kean, who departed this
life March 30, 1849, in or about the 70th year of her age"; and from her
grave one can view the ridge along which runs the road to Portsmouth,
tramped by Edmund Kean in 1795, when he, as a boy of eight or nine years,
ran away from his home in Ewer street, Southwark, and shipped as cabin-boy
on a vessel bound for Madeira. He lies at Richmond: his widow was buried
here, close to the small estate upon which she had lived in retirement for
years.
[Illustration: CATHERINGTON CHURCH.]
In "Charles John Kean, F.R.G.S.," whose epitaph occupies one side of this
monument, it is difficult at first to recognize the famous actor, who,
after playing well his varied parts in Shakespearean plays, and in
melodrama, died in 1868, in his fifty-seventh year. His widow, Eleonora,
survived him until 1880, when, at the age of seventy-three, she died, and
"now lies with her loving husband."
[Sidenote: _ADMIRAL NAPIER_]
The Admiral, after his eventful career, rests near at hand beneath an
altar-tomb in an obscure corner of the graveyard, where ashes from the
heating apparatus of the church are heaped, and defile, together with the
miscellaneous dirt and foul rubbish of a neglected corner, his memorial,
that sets forth his rank and a _precis_ of his varied achievements. When
the present writer visited the spot, a bottomless pail and the remains of
an old boot placed on his tomb formed a hideous commentary upon the pride
and enthusiasm of a grateful country, and preached a sermon, both painful
and forcible, on the fleeting consideration of men for the distinguished
dead. It is thirty-five years ago since "Charley Napier," as his
contemporaries (brother-officers, or Tom, Dick, and Harry) called him,
died, after having performed many services for his country in many parts
of the world. It may seem, at the first blush, ungenerous to say so, but
the fact remains that, had he quitted this scene but seven years earlier,
his reputation had been brighter to-day, and this through no shortcoming
of his own. He had achieved many important, if somewhat too theatrical,
victories in his earlier days, when ordnance was comparatively light, and
when the old line-of-battle ship was at its highest development; and so,
when he was, in his old age, sent in command of the Baltic Fleet to reduce
the heavily-armed sea-forts of Cronstadt and Bomarsund, the uninstructed
but enthusiastic mob of his countrymen anticipated merely a naval
promenade, ending with the capitulation of those fortresses of the North.
When the Baltic Fleet cruised ingloriously for years in that icy sea, and
the Russian strongholds yet remained unreduced, the disappointment of the
million knew no bounds, and the Admiral's fame became tarnished. He was
ridiculed, and he had himself to thank in some measure for this, because,
in his characteristically reckless way, he had vowed to be either in
Cronstadt or Heaven within a month, and Heaven had not claimed him nor
Cronstadt submitted when the war was done.
[Sidenote: _AN UNCOUTH FIGURE_]
But if, like General Trochu, of some sixteen years later, he had "a plan"
and became the butt of witlings when that plan failed, he had the
Englishman's infallible refuge and court of public appeal--the "Times,"
and in the columns of that paper he stormed and thundered from time to
time, a great deal more effectively than ever he had done in the Baltic.
He had nearly always possessed a pet grievance, and had, ere this,
obtained election to Parliament to air the injustice of the hour; and in
the House he was wont to hold forth in a fine old quarter-deck manner that
amused many, and let off the steam of his wrath in an entirely harmless
way. Betweenwhiles he resided at Horndean, on a small estate he had
purchased years before, and in a house he had re-christened "Merchistoun,"
from the place of that name in Scotland where he was born. Here he, a
modern Cincinnatus, farmed his own land and pottered about, a singular
combination of sailor and agriculturist, and one of the most extraordinary
figures of his time. "He is," said one who wrote of his personal
appearance, "stout and broad built; stoops, from a wound in his neck;
walks lame, from another in his leg; turns out one of his feet, and has a
most slouching, slovenly gait; a large round face, with black, bushy
eyebrows, a double chin, scraggy, grey, uncurled whiskers and thin hair,
always bedaubed with snuff, which he takes in immense quantities; usually
his trousers far too short, and wears the ugliest pair of old shoes he can
find." He became quite an authority upon sheep and turnips, and so died,
after a busy life, on November 6, 1860.
Another great man lies at Catherington, within the church; Sir Nicholas
Hyde, Lord Chief Justice of England, and uncle of the still greater
Clarendon. His splendid monument, with recumbent marble effigies of
himself and his wife, occupies the east wall of the Hyde Chapel. Hinton
House--the seat of the Hydes near here, and the scene of the marriage
between James, Duke of York (afterwards James II.), and Anne Hyde,
daughter of the Chancellor, Clarendon, in 1660--has long since been
rebuilt.
From Catherington, one may either retrace one's steps to the Portsmouth
Road above Horndean, or else continue on the by-lanes that bring the
pedestrian to the highway below that wayside hamlet.
Horndean stands at the entrance to the Forest of Bere, and at the junction
of roads that lead to Rowlands Castle and Havant. It is just a neat and
comparatively recent place, like most of the wayside settlements that now
begin to dot the highway between this and Portsmouth. An old house or two
by way of nucleus, with some few decrepit cottages--the remainder of
Horndean is made up of a great red-brick brewery and some rural-looking
shops.
The Forest of Bere is at this day the most considerable remnant of that
vast tract of woodland (computed at some ninety thousand acres) which
formerly covered the face of southern Hants. It follows on either side of
the roadway from this point to within a short distance of Purbrook, and
extends for many miles across country, including Waltham Chase. Outlying
woodlands still occur plentifully; among them the leafy coverts of Alice
Holt (== _Axe-holt_, the Ash Wood), Liss Wood, Hawkley Hangers, and the
green glades of Avington, Old Park, and Cheriton.
XXXIV
[Sidenote: _WATERLOOVILLE_]
Presently the road becomes singularly suburban, and the beautiful glades
of the old Forest of Bere, that have fringed the highway from Horndean,
suddenly give place to rows of trim villas and recent shops. The highway,
but just now as lonely as most of the old coach-roads are usually become
in these days of steam and railways, is alive with wagons and tradesmen's
carts, and neatly-kept footpaths are bordered with lamp-posts, furnished
with oil-lamps.
This is the entirely modern neighbourhood of Waterlooville, a settlement
nearly a mile in length, bordering the Portsmouth Road, and wearing not so
much the appearance of an English village as that of some mushroom
township in the hurried clearings of an American forest. The inns, past
and present, of Waterlooville, have all been named allusively--the
"Waterloo" Hotel, the "Wellington" Inn, the "Belle Alliance."
Waterlooville, as its ugly name would imply, is modern, but with a
modernity much more recent than Wellington's great victory. The name,
indeed, was only bestowed upon the parish in 1858, and is a dreadful
example of that want of originality in recent place-names, seen both here
and in America. Why some descriptive title, such as our Anglo-Saxon
forebears gave to their settlements, could not have been conferred upon
this place, is difficult to understand. Certainly "Waterlooville" is at
once cumbrous and unmeaning, as here applied.
The history of Waterlooville is soon told. It was originally a portion of
the Forest of Bere, and its site was sold by the Commissioners of Woods
and Forests early in the present century. A tavern erected shortly
afterwards was named the "Heroes of Waterloo," and became subsequently the
halting-place for the coaches on this, the first stage out of Portsmouth
and the last from London. Around the tavern sprang up four houses, and
this settlement, some seven or eight miles from Portsmouth, was called
Waterloo until 1830, when, a rage for building having set in, resulting in
a church and some suburban villas, the "ville" was tacked on to the
already unmeaning and sufficiently absurd name.