DOVER--THE CASTLE AND ROMAN PHAROS--“QUEEN ELIZABETH’S
POCKET-PISTOL”--THE WESTERN HEIGHTS
The great and growing town of Dover looks forward to a greater fame
than even the historic past has conferred upon it. The measure of
Dover’s greatness is not the usual measurement, that of population, for
the town numbers only some 44,000. Rather does it lie in its defensible
and strategic situation. Dover has ever, from Roman times, been a place
of arms, and was, an old chronicler tells us, the “lock and key of the
whole kingdom.” That being so, it has always behoved us to make it one
of the most strongly fortified places on our coasts. On either side
of the deep and narrow valley in which the town lies, the great chalk
downs and cliffs rise steeply and massively, and all are in military
occupation. The morning drum-beat reverberates from the Western Heights
to welcome the rising sun, and the Last Post from the Castle sounds
the requiem of the departed day; and in between them the tootling and
the fifing, the words of command, the gun-firing, and all the military
alarms and excursions of a garrison-town help to convince even the
most timid that we are being taken care of.
Dover offered more opportunities for the artist in those far-away days
when Hollar made his view of it from near the castle heights. At that
time the river Dour flowed visibly into the sea, through a valley
so sparsely settled that the ancient church of St. Mary, now almost
hidden amid the clustered houses of the thronged town, stood out with a
cathedral-like prominence. Hollar shows us the ships clustered at the
river mouth, but at an earlier time they ascended far up the valley
and anchored where the busiest streets are now found. Leland, somewhat
earlier than Hollar, speaking of the Dour and the ancient inland haven,
says, “The ground which lyeth up betwixt the hilles is yet, in digging,
found wosye”--by which he meant “oozy”; and in modern times there
have been discovered, in the course of excavations, relics of Roman
occupation, when the inhabitants of the Dour Valley crossed the river
and the marshes by boats and wooden causeways.
[Illustration: DOVER CASTLE.
_After W. Daniell, R.A._
]
No one who has not viewed Dover from the sea can have a full
appreciation of the majesty of its site. But you must not merely
glimpse it from the pier-heads or from a boat. Nothing less than the
home-coming from continental travel, when the sentiment of “home” gives
an added value to the impressive scene, will serve.
The “white cliffs of Albion” have rightly been the subject of comment
and description from the earliest times, for there is nothing in the
rest of the whole wide world in the least resembling them. Except for
a little of the same chalk formation on the other side of the Channel,
at this narrow pass, we in England have a world-monopoly of chalk,
and a brave show of bastioned chalky heights the Kentish coast makes.
Nowhere else are they so stately as at Dover, for here military art has
crowned and set a seal upon the defensible works of nature. But to see
those white walls at their best, in whiteness and in rugged grandeur,
you must see them from the Channel. Coming across from France, they do
indeed gleam milk-white, and the Castle and the Roman pharos beside it
seem to be neighbours almost with the clouds. But, examined close at
hand, the cliffs of Dover have been plentifully smirched, and I think,
from personal observation, that the chalk cliffs of the South Coast are
actually at their natural whitest at Seaford, in Sussex.
[Illustration: COLTON’S TOWER, DOVER CASTLE.]
Dover Castle, that “great fortress, reverend and worshipful,” sits
regally on the lofty cliffs and looks (what it has several times proved
not to be) impregnable. It occupies a site of thirty-five acres within
its ceinture of curtain-walls, studded at intervals with twenty-six
defensible towers, of every size and shape. The chief entrance to the
Castle precincts is by the great “Constable’s Tower,” also variously
styled Fiennes, or Newgate Tower, to distinguish it from the Old Tower,
formerly the principal entrance. The others have, for the most part,
names sounding as strangely as those of Arthurian romance: Abrancis,
or Rokesley Tower; Colton’s; Arthur’s, or North Gate; Armourer’s; Well
Tower; Harcourt’s; Chilham, or Culderscot; Hurst; Arsic, or Sayes
Tower; Gatton; Peveril’s Gate, also called Beauchamp, or Marshal’s
Tower; Porth’s, Gasting’s, or Mary’s Tower; Clopton’s; God’s-foe;
Crevecœur’s, Craville’s, or the Earl of Norfolk’s Tower; Fitzwilliam or
St. John’s; Avranches, or Maunsel’s; Veville, or Pincester; Ashfordian
Tower; Mamimot, or Mainmouth Tower; Palace, or Subterranean Gate;
Suffolk Tower; and the Arsenal Tower. Besides this imposing array there
were, and there remain still, profoundly deep ditches outside the
walls. In midst of all these outworks, rising bold and massive as the
great keep of the Tower of London itself, is the Palace Tower, or Keep.
This is not the actual “castellum Dofris” which Harold, under stress
and durance, was made to swear on the bones of the saints that he would
yield to William Duke of Normandy, “with the well of water in it,” but
a later array of buildings; the Keep being Norman work of about 1153.
The actual well is the one now arched over and covered up in the north
angle of the Keep.
The last occasion on which Dover Castle was the scene of warlike
operations was when it was captured from the Royalists on August 1st,
1642. This successful enterprise was the work of a mere merchant, one
Drake, and a dozen men, who at dead of night, by means of ropes and
scaling-ladders, climbed the cliffs at an “inaccessible” point; as such
left unguarded. Seizing the sentinel, the gates were thrown open, and
the officer on duty, thinking the invading party was a much larger one,
surrendered.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY-IN-THE-CASTLE, WITH THE ROMAN
PHAROS, DOVER.]
The most ancient and venerable object here--it is the oldest building
in England, supposed to have been built A.D. 49--is the Roman
pharos, or lighthouse, one of two that once guided the ships of the
Roman emperors into the haven that was situated where the Market-place
of Dover now stands. The other, of which only the platform and one
fragment of stone have been found, was situated on the western heights.
The fellow-tower at Boulogne, the _Gessoriacum_ of the Romans, still
remains. The rugged, roofless tower of this venerable beacon curiously
neighbours the quaint early church of St. Mary-within-the-Castle,
itself of great and uncertain age, and both contrast strangely with the
modern evidences of casemated batteries and the sentry-go of soldiers.
Many generations have tinkered and repaired the Roman pharos, whose
original tufa blocks and courses of red tiles still defy the elements
and the ravages of mischievous hands, while the casing of flint and
pebbles set in concrete, added some two centuries ago, long since began
to decay. The Roman windows were altered by Gundulf, and the upper
story would seem to be the work of Sir Thomas Erpingham, Constable of
Dover Castle in the reign of Henry the Fifth, for his sculptured shield
of arms appears on it.
The church of St. Mary in 1860 experienced a narrow escape from
complete destruction by the War Office, and was only with difficulty
rescued by dint of urgent protests from antiquaries. The Department has
experienced the like elsewhere, and doubtless wishes all antiquaries at
the devil. The building had at that time been reduced to the condition
of a coal-bunker, a process begun about a hundred and fifty years
before, when it had been ruthlessly cleared out and converted into a
storehouse. Among other ejected objects was the monument of the Earl
of Northampton, already noticed at Greenwich. The building was opened
again in 1862, after restoration.
The twenty-four-foot long brass cannon within the castle grounds, known
as “Queen Elizabeth’s Pocket-pistol,” is by far the best-known and
most popular object here. It is not given to every one to appreciate
the Roman pharos or the Norman architecture of the keep, but this
long, slender piece of ordnance makes a direct and easily understood
appeal to the sympathies of the crowd, largely on account of the rhyme
associated with it, supposed to be a translation of the inscription in
Low Dutch that is to be seen on the cannon itself, amid the arabesque
devices that decorate its whole length. This familiar jingle runs thus:
“Load me well and keep me clean,
And I’ll carry a ball to Calais Green.”
It could, of course, do nothing of the kind, nor anything like it; and
the inscription says nothing of the sort. Here it is, in its original
grotesqueness:
“Breeck scuret al muer ende wal bin ic geheten,
Deor berch en dal boert minen bal van mi gesmetem.”
The literal translation is:
“I am bid break all earthworks and walls.
Through hill and dale bores the ball flung by me.”
But it has been well put metrically, without departing to any degree
from exactness:
“O’er hill and dale I throw my ball;
Breaker, my name, of mound and wall.”
This beautiful work, enriched, together with its wheels, with
elaborate ornament, was cast at Utrecht in 1544, and presented by the
States-General of the Netherlands to Queen Elizabeth, defender of the
reformed religion.
It is fitting in the completest degree that Dover should have figured
in the quarrel that sent the patriot Englishman Earl Godwin, into
revolt and exile. The true story of Godwin and his stand for the rights
and liberties of Englishmen is well known to history, but it has never
been made sufficiently intimate, and the memory of that great man,
blackened by lying Norman monks, suffers to this day. The fame of the
weak and alien-loving King Edward the Confessor, has, on the other
hand, been well cared for, and he has long been regarded as a saint.
The trouble arose from a visit in 1051 of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, a
brother-in-law of the King, one of the arrogant Normans who even thus
early conceived themselves able to insult and ill-treat the people of
that Saxon England they were destined to conquer in the succeeding
reign. The outrage was deliberate. Halting his party within a mile of
Dover, the Count of Boulogne left the saddle of his travelling palfrey,
and, putting on his armour and his helmet adorned with the two long
whalebone aigrettes that marked his authority along the seashores of
Boulogne, he mounted his war-horse, and, with his followers armed in
like manner, entered the town. Arrived there, they thrust themselves,
uninvited and undesired guests, upon the chief burgesses. Such was
the custom in feudal Normandy, but it was unknown in England, and as
greatly resented as unknown. One indignant Englishman promptly thrust
out one of these unwelcome guests who had taken veritable “French
leave.” In return, the stranger drew his sword and wounded his “host,”
but was promptly set upon and slain. When this incident became known
Eustace and his party stormed the house, and the brave defender of
the sanctity of his hearth was murdered. An armed foray through the
town followed, in which the foreigners fared ill, for nineteen of
them were slain by the infuriated townsfolk, and the departure of the
remainder across sea was prevented. The King was at Gloucester, and to
that city Eustace and those who remained of his retinue hastened, to
seek revenge. Edward was enraged, and ordered Godwin to waste the town
of Dover with fire and sword. That, you perceive, was the quality of
the Confessor’s saintliness! Godwin, one of the greatest in the land,
himself father-in-law of the King, who had married his daughter Edith,
refused to punish without a hearing the men who had merely resented
insolence. They should be tried lawfully, and punished only if guilty.
This refusal led directly to Godwin and his son Harold being outlawed,
to the raising of rebellion, and eventually to the larger issue, after
the death of Edward the Confessor, of the invasion and conquest of
England by William of Normandy.
Dover Castle is in most respects, with its pierced and honeycombed
cliffs, an up-to-date fortress, but it was realised over a hundred
years ago that the corresponding cliffs on the other side of the town
required to be fortified; and thus the gun-galleries, the barracks,
and the many military developments of the “Western Heights” came into
being. One reaches these lofty altitudes most conveniently, but up
infinite staircases, by that extremely dirty and dismal specimen of
engineering skill, “the Shaft,” in Snargate Street. Some three hundred
(or is it 3,000?) steps lead up to those heights, where the Romans had
a companion pharos to that on the castle cliffs, and where the Knights
Templar founded a twelfth-century church with a round nave, built in
imitation of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Here are the foundations,
all now left, of that church, the smallest of the “round churches” in
England, carefully preserved by the Office of Works, and here King
John’s shameful homage to the Pope was made, “Apud Domum Militiæ Templi
juxta Doveriam,” May 15th, 1213.
The spot is not, nowadays, of romantic appearance. Modern military
barracks are utilitarian rather than beautiful. Sometimes they have
even a note of squalor.
Some large fragments of concrete, reared up on end in the Drop
Redoubt, form what is called the Bredenstone, or Braidenstone, once
sometimes called the “Kissing Stone,” for ages an object of traditional
veneration; why, none knew. They combined something of the majesty of
the unknown, like that belonging to the Coronation Stone in Westminster
Abbey, with a good deal of the half-humorous importance of the famous
Blarney Stone. Really, they were, and are, after all, remaining
portions of the vanished Roman pharos buried in the eighteenth century,
when the Drop Redoubt was constructed, on the spot called the “Devil’s
Drop.” From time immemorial the Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports had
been sworn in upon this Ara Cæsaris, as antiquaries styled it; and
after the platform and the “Bredenstone” were exhumed, about 1854,
Palmerston was sworn in on the spot, in 1861; and Lord Dufferin in
1891. Lord Salisbury, however, and later holders of the office, were
installed in the town, in the grounds of Dover College, on the site
of the ancient Priory of St. Martin; but on July 18th, 1914, the old
traditional site was resumed, when the new Lord Warden, Earl Beauchamp,
was installed on these heights.
In 1823 Cobbett found Dover “like other seaport towns; but really much
more clean, and with less blackguard people in it than I ever observed
in any seaport before.” Things have changed since then, in a woeful
way, and with Dover’s growth has come squalor and dirt.
He visited the Western Heights, to see with his own eyes, as he tells
us, “something of the sorts of means that had been made use of to
squander away countless millions of money. Here,” he continues, “is a
hill containing, probably, a couple of square miles or more, hollowed
like a honeycomb. Here are line upon line, trench upon trench, cavern
upon cavern, bomb-proof upon bomb-proof; in short, the very sight of
the thing convinces you that either madness the most humiliating, or
profligacy the most scandalous must have been at work here for years.
The question that every man of sense asks, is: What reason had you to
suppose that the _French would ever come to this hill_ to attack it,
while the rest of the country was so much more easy to assail? However,
let any man of good, plain understanding, go and look at the works that
have here been performed, and that are now all tumbling into ruin. Let
him ask what this cavern was for; what that ditch was for; what this
tank was for; and why all these horrible holes and hiding-places at an
expense of millions upon millions? Let this scene be brought and placed
under the eyes of the people of England, and let them be told that Pitt
and Dundas and Perceval had these things done to prevent the country
from being conquered; with voice unanimous the nation would instantly
exclaim: Let the French, or let the devil take us, rather than let us
resort to means of defence like these.
“This is, perhaps, the only set of fortifications in the world ever
framed for mere _hiding_. There is no appearance of any intention
to annoy an enemy. It is a parcel of holes made in a hill, to hide
Englishmen from Frenchmen. Just as if the Frenchmen would come to this
hill! Just as if they would not go (if they came at all) and land in
Romney Marsh, or on Pevensey Level, or anywhere else, rather than come
to this hill; rather than come to crawl up Shakespeare’s Cliff. All
the way along the coast, from this very hill to Portsmouth, or pretty
nearly all the way, is a flat. What the devil should they come to this
hill for, then? And when you ask this question, they tell you that it
is to have an army here _behind_ the French, after they had marched
into the country! And for a purpose like this; for a purpose so stupid,
so senseless, so mad as this, and withal, so scandalously disgraceful,
more brick and stone have been buried in this hill than would go to
build a neat new cottage for every labouring man in the counties of
Kent and Sussex!”
Cobbett here gives way to a fit of senseless vituperation; the more
obviously senseless since this rabid tirade comes only two days later
than his ride along the coast from New Romney to Hythe and Folkestone,
where of course he encountered the martello towers; erected there for
the purpose of guarding those levels against a threatened invasion. He
raves at them equally as he raves at the works on the Western Heights,
and, in short, behaves on the principle of the Irishman who acted
on the policy of “whenever you see a head, hit it.” It is very fine
fighting form, but it is the very negation of logic.