Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: King George III.]
FRAGMENTS OF TWO CENTURIES.
GLIMPSES OF COUNTRY LIFE
WHEN
GEORGE III. WAS KING.
ILLUSTRATED.
WITH AN APPENDIX SHOWING THE RISE AND FALL
OF THE RURAL POPULATION IN 45 PARISHES IN THE
ROYSTON DISTRICT, IN HERTS., CAMBS., AND
ESSEX, FROM 1801 TO 1891.
BY
ALFRED KINGSTON.
ROYSTON: WARREN BROTHERS.
1893.
PREFACE.
Though the town of Royston is frequently mentioned in the following
pages, it was no part of my task to deal with the general historical
associations of the place, with its interesting background of Court
life under James I. These belong strictly to local history, and the
references to the town and neighbourhood of Royston simply arise from
the accidental association with the district of the materials which
have come most readily to my hand in glancing back at the life of rural
England in the time of the Georges. Indeed, it may be claimed, I
think, that although, by reason of being drawn chiefly from local
sources, these "Fragments" have received a local habitation and a name,
yet they refer to a state of things which was common to all the
neighbouring counties, and for the most part, may be taken to stand for
the whole of rural England at the time. For the rest, these glimpses
of our old country life are now submitted to the indulgent
consideration of the reader, who will, I hope, take a lenient view of
any shortcomings in the manner of presenting them.
There remains for me only the pleasing duty of acknowledging many
instances of courteous assistance received, without which it would have
been impossible to have carried out my task. To the proprietors of the
_Cambridge Chronicle_ and the _Hertsfordshire Mercury_ for access to
the files of those old established papers; to the authorities of the
Cambridge University Library; to the Rev. J. G. Hale, rector of
Therfield, and the Rev. F. L. Fisher, vicar of Barkway, for access to
their interesting old parish papers; to Mr. H. J. Thurnall for access
to interesting MS. reminiscences by the late Mr. Henry Thurnall; to the
Rev. J. Harrison, vicar of Royston; to Mr. Thos. Shell and Mr. James
Smith, for access to Royston parish papers--to all of these and to
others my warmest thanks are due. All the many persons who have kindly
furnished me with personal recollections it would be impossible here to
name, but mention must be made of Mr. Henry Fordham, Mr. Hale Wortham,
Mr. Frederick N. Fordham, and especially of the late Mr. James
Richardson and Mr. James Jacklin, whose interesting chats over bygone
times are now very pleasant recollections.
A.K.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Introduction.--"The Good Old Times" . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER II.
Getting on Wheels.--Old Coaches, Roads and Highwaymen.--The
Romance of the Road . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
CHAPTER III.
Social and Public Life.--Wrestling and Cock-Fighting.--An
Eighteenth Century Debating Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
CHAPTER IV.
The Parochial Parliament and the Old Poor-Law . . . . . . . 32
CHAPTER V.
Dogberry "On Duty" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
CHAPTER VI.
The Dark Night of the Eighteenth Century.--The Shadow of
Napoleon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
CHAPTER VII.
Domestic Life and the Tax-Gatherer.--The Doctor and the
Body-Snatcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
CHAPTER VIII.
Old Pains and Penalties.--From the Stocks to the Gallows . . 83
CHAPTER IX.
Old Manners and Customs.--Soldiers, Elections and
Voters.--"Statties," Magic and Spells . . . . . . . . . . . 92
CHAPTER X.
Trade, Agriculture and Market Ordinaries . . . . . . . . . . 103
CHAPTER XI.
Royston in 1800-25.--Its Surroundings, its Streets,
and its People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
CHAPTER XII.
Public Worship and Education.--Morals and Music . . . . . . 117
CHAPTER XIII.
Sports and Pastimes.--Cricket, Hunting, Racing, and
Prize-Fighting.--The Butcher and the Baronet, and other
Champions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
CHAPTER XIV.
Old Coaching Days.--Stage Wagons and Stage Coaches . . . . . 142
CHAPTER XV.
New Wine and Old Bottles.--A Parochial Revolution.--The Old
Poor-House and the New "Bastille" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
CHAPTER XVI.
When the Policeman Came.--When the Railway Came.--Curious
and Memorable Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
CHAPTER XVII.
Then and Now.--Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
ERRATA--Page 16, lines 9 and 29, for _Dr. Monsey_, read _Dr. Mowse_.
[Transcriber's note: These changes have been incorporated into this
e-book.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Portrait of King George III. . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Old Stage Wagon, A.D. 1800 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The "Fox and Hounds," Barley, Herts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Lady in Reign of George III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Old Jockey House--King James' Stables--Near Royston . . . . . 22
Staircase into Royston Cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Illustration of a portion of the Interior of Royston Cave . . 37
Dogberry "On Duty" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Napoleon Buonaparte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Tinder-Box, Flint, Steel, and Matches . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
A Lady of the Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
The Old Parish Stocks at Meldreth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Reading the News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
The Hunt Breakfast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Third-Class to London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
A Cambridge Election Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Triumphal Arch at Buntingford .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Triumphal Arch at Royston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Wimpole Mansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
{1}
FRAGMENTS OF TWO CENTURIES.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.--"THE GOOD OLD TIMES."
The Jubilee Monarch, King George III., and his last name-sake, had
succeeded so much that was unsettled in the previous hundred years,
that the last half of the 18th Century was a period almost of
comparative quiet in home affairs. Abroad were stirring events in
abundance in which England played its part, for the century gives, at a
rough calculation, 56 years of war to 44 years of peace, while the
reign of George III. had 37 years of war and 23 years of peace--the
longest period of peace being 10 years, and of war 24 years
(1793-1816). But in all these stirring events, there was, in the
greater part of the reign, at least, and notwithstanding some
murmurings, the appearance of a solidity in the Constitution which has
somehow settled down into the tradition of "the good old times." A
cynic might have described the Constitution as resting upon empty
bottles and blunder-busses, for was it not the great "three-bottle
period" of the British aristocracy? and as for the masses, the only
national sentiment in common was that of military glory earned by
British heroes in foreign wars. In more domestic affairs, it was a
long hum-drum grind in settled grooves--deep ruts in fact--from which
there seemed no escape. Yet it was a period in which great forces had
their birth--forces which were destined to exercise the widest
influence upon our national, social, and even domestic affairs. Adam
Smith's great work on the causes of the wealth of nations planted a
life-germ of progressive thought which was to direct men's minds into
what, strange as it may seem, was almost a new field of research, viz.,
the relation of cause and effect, and was commercially almost as much a
new birth and the opening of a flood gate of activity, as was that of
the printing press at the close of the Middle Ages; and, this once set
in motion, a good many other things seemed destined to follow.
What a host of things which now seem a necessary part of our daily
lives were then in a chrysalis state! But the bandages were visibly
cracking in all directions. Literature was beginning those {2}
desperate efforts to emerge from the miseries of Grub Street, to go in
future direct to the public for its patrons and its market, and to
bring into quiet old country towns like Royston at least a newspaper
occasionally. In the political world Burke was writing his "Thoughts
on the present Discontents," and Francis, or somebody else, the
"Letters of Junius." Things were, in fact, showing signs of commencing
to move, though slowly, in the direction of that track along which
affairs have sometimes in these latter days moved with an
ill-considered haste which savours almost as much of what is called
political expediency as of the public good.
Have nations, like individuals, an intuitive sense or presentiment of
something to come? If they have, then there has been perhaps no period
in our history when that faculty was more keenly alive than towards the
close of the last century. From the beginning of the French Revolution
to the advent of the Victorian Era constitutes what may be called the
great transition period in our domestic, social, and economic life and
customs. Indeed, so far as the great mass of the people were
concerned, it was really the dawn of social life in England; and, as
the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so were the earlier
years of the above period to the people of these Realms. Before the
people of England at the end of the 18th century, on the horizon which
shut out the future, lay a great black bank of cloud, and our great
grandfathers who gazed upon it, almost despairing whether it would ever
lift, were really in the long shadows of great coming events.
Through the veil which was hiding the new order of things,
occasionally, a sensitive far-seeing eye, here and there caught
glimpses from the region beyond. The French, driven just then
well-nigh to despair, caught the least glimmer of light and the whole
nation was soon on fire! A few of the most highly strung minds caught
the inspiration of an ideal dream of the regeneration of the world by
some patent process of redistribution! All the ancient bundle of
precedents, and the swaddling bands of restraints and customs in which
men had been content to remain confined for thousands of years, were
henceforth to be dissolved in that grandiose dream of a society in
which each individual, left to follow his unrestrained will, was to be
trusted to contribute to the happiness of all without that security
from wrong which, often rude in its operation, had been the fundamental
basis of social order for ages! The ideal was no doubt pure and noble,
but unfortunately it only raised once more the old unsolved problem of
the forum whether that which is theoretically right can ever be
practically wrong. The French Revolution did not, as a matter of fact,
rest with a mere revulsion of moral forces, but as the infection
descended from moral heights into the grosser elements of the national
life, men soon {3} began to fight for the new life with the old
weapons, until France found, and others looking on saw, the beautiful
dream of liberty tightening down into that hideous nightmare, and
saddest of all tyrannies, the tyranny of the multitude! Into the great
bank of cloud which had gathered across the horizon of Europe, towards
the close of the 18th century, some of the boldest spirits of France
madly rushed with the energy of despair, seeking to carve their way
through to the coming light, and fought in the names of "liberty,
equality and fraternity," with apparent giants and demons in the mist
who turned out to be their brother men!
It would be a total misapprehension of the great throbbing thought of
better days to come which stirred the sluggish life of the expiring
century, to assume, as we often do, that that cry of "liberty,
equality, and fraternity," was merely the cry of the French, driven to
desperation by the gulf between the nobility and the people. In truth,
almost the whole Western world was eagerly looking on at the unfolding
of a great drama, and the infection of it penetrated almost into every
corner of England. No glimpses even of our local life at this period
would be satisfactory which did not give a passing notice to an event
which literally turned the heads of many of the most gifted young men
in England.
Upon no individual mind in these realms had that aspiration for a
universal brotherhood a more potent spell than upon a youthful genius
then at Cambridge, with whom some notable Royston men were afterwards
to come in contact. That glorious dream, in which the French
Revolution had its birth, had burnt itself into the very soul of young
Wordsworth who found indeed that--
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times
In which the meagre, stale forbidding ways
Of custom, law and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
In the Autumn of 1789, young Wordsworth, and a fellow student left
Cambridge and crossed the Channel to witness that
Glorious opening, the unlooked for dawn,
That promised everlasting joy to France!
The gifted singer caught the blissful intoxication and has told us--
Meanwhile prophetic harps,
In every grove were ringing, war shall cease.
* * * * * *
Henceforth whate'er is wanting in yourselves
In others ye shall promptly find--and all
Be rich by mutual and reflected wealth!
{4} So the poet went out to stand by the cradle of liberty, only to
come back disenchanted, came back to find his republican dreams
gradually giving way to a settled conservatism, and the fruit of that
disappointed first-love of liberty received with unmeasured opposition
from the old school in literary criticism represented by Jeffrey and
the _Edinburgh Review_, with the result that those in high places for
long refused to listen to one who had the magical power of unlocking
the sweet ministries of Nature as no other poet of the century had.
Other ardent spirits had their dreams too, and for a short time at
least there was a sympathy with the French, among many of the English,
which left its traces in local centres like Royston--quite an
intellectual centre in those days--and was in striking contrast with
that hatred of the French which was so soon to settle over England
under the Napoleonic _régime_. But, if many of the English people,
weary of the increasing burdens which fell upon them, had their dreams
of a good time coming, they, instead of following the mere glimmer of
the will-o'-the-wisp, across the darkness of their lot, responded
rather to signs of coming activities. Through the darkness they saw
perhaps nothing very striking, but they _felt_ occasionally the thrill
of coming activities which were struggling for birth in that pregnant
mother-night which seemed to be shrouding the sunset of the
century--and they were saved from the immediate horrors of a
revolution. Feudalism and the Pope had left our fathers obedience, _en
masse_, and Luther had planted hope through the reformation of the
individual. So the great wave of aspiration after a patent scheme of
universal brotherhood passed over the people of these realms with only
a wetting of the spray. Here and there was a weak reflection of the
drama, in the calling of hard names, and the taunt of "Jacobin," thrown
in the teeth of those who might have sympathised with the French in the
earlier stages of the Revolution, was sometimes heard in the streets of
Royston for many years after the circumstances which called it forth
had passed away.
I have referred thus fully to what may seem a general rather than a
local question, because the town of Royston, then full of aspirations
after reform, was looked upon almost as a hot-bed of what were called
"dangerous principles" by those attached to the old order of things,
and because it may help us to understand something of the excitement
occasioned by the free expression of opinions in the public debates
which took place in Royston to be referred to hereafter.
But though the "era of hope," in the particular example of its
application in France, failed miserably and deservedly of realising the
great romantic dream-world of human happiness without parchments and
formularies, it had at least this distinction, that it was in a sense
the birth-hour of the individual with regard to civil life, just as
Luther's bursting the bonds of Monasticism had been the birth-hour of
the {5} individual in religious life. The birth, however, was a feeble
one, and in this respect, and for the social and domestic drawbacks of
a trying time, it is interesting to look back and see how our fathers
carried what to them were often felt to be heavy burdens, and how
bravely and even blithely they travelled along what to us now seems
like a weary pilgrimage towards the light we now enjoy. Carrying the
tools of the pioneer which have ever become the hands of Englishmen so
well, they worked, with such means as they had, for results rather than
sentiment, and, cherishing that life-germ planted by Adam Smith,
earned, not from the lips of Napoleon as is commonly supposed, but from
one of the Revolutionary party--Bertrand Barrère in the National
Assembly in 1794, when the tide of feeling had been turned by events
the well-known taunt--"let Pitt then boast of his victory to a nation
of shop-keepers." The instinct for persistent methodical plodding work
which extracted this taunt, afterwards vanquished Napoleon at Waterloo,
and enabled the English to pass what, when you come to gauge it by our
present standard, was one of the darkest and most trying crises in our
modern history. We who are on the light side of that great cloud which
brooded over the death and birth of two centuries may possibly learn
something by looking back along the pathway which our forefathers
travelled, and by the condition of things and the actions of men in
those trying times--learn something of the comparative advantages we
now enjoy in our public, social, and domestic life, and the
corresponding extent of our responsibilities.
In the following sketches it is proposed to give, not a chapter of
local history, as history is generally understood, but what may perhaps
best be described by the title adopted--glimpses of the condition of
things which prevailed in Royston and its neighbourhood, in regard to
the life, institutions, and character of its people, during the
interesting period which is indicated at the head of this sketch--with
some fragments illustrative of the general surroundings of public
affairs, where the local materials may be insufficient to complete the
picture. Imperfect these "glimpses" must necessarily be, but with the
advantage of kindly help from those whose memories carry their minds
back to earlier times, and his own researches amongst such materials,
both local and general, as seemed to promise useful information, the
writer is not without hope that they may be of interest. The interest
of the sketches will necessarily vary according to the taste of the
reader
From grave to gay,
From lively to severe.
The familiar words "When George III. was King," would, if strictly
interpreted, limit the survey to the period from 1760 to 1820, but it
may be necessary to extend these "glimpses" up to the {6} commencement
of the Victorian Era, and thus cover just that period which may be
considered of too recent date to have hitherto found a place in local
history, and yet too far away for many persons living to remember. Nor
will the sketches be confined to Royston. In many respects it is hoped
they may be made of equal interest to the district for many miles
round. The first thing that strikes one in searching for materials for
attempting such a survey, is the enormous gulf which in a few short
years--almost bounded by the lifetime of the oldest individual--has
been left between the old order and the new. There has been no other
such transition period in all our history, and in some respects perhaps
never may be again.