Born April 11th 1785, died March 13th 1791. She was in form and
intellect most exquisite The unfortunate parents ventured their all
in this Frail bark, And the wreck was Total.
The melancholy reference to their having ventured their all bore upon
the separation between the father and mother, which immediately followed
the child's death.
The description of the monument reads as follows:
The figure of the child reclines on a pillowed mattress, her hands
resting one upon the other near her head. She is simply attired in a
frock, below which her naked feet are carelessly placed one over the
other, the whole position suggesting that in the restlessness of pain
she had just turned to find a cooler and easier place of rest.
[Illustration: PENELOPE.]
Her portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, her name appearing in
his "Book of Sitters" in July 1788, when she was just over three years
of age, and is one of the most famous child-pictures by that great
master. The picture shows Little Penelope in a white dress and a dark
belt, sitting on a stone sill, with trees in the background. Her
mittened hands are folded in her lap, and her eyes are demurely cast
down. She is wearing a high mob-cap, said to have belonged to Sir
Joshua's grandmother.
This picture was sold in 1859 to the Earl of Dudley for 1,100 guineas,
and afterwards exhibited at Burlington House, when it was bought by Mr.
David Thwaites for £20,060.
The model for the famous picture "Cherry Ripe," painted by Sir John
Everett-Millais, was Miss Talmage, who had appeared as Little Penelope
at a fancy-dress ball, and it was said in later years that if there had
been no Penelope Boothby by Sir Joshua Reynolds, there would have been
no "Cherry Ripe" by Sir John Everett-Millais.
Sir Francis Chantrey, the great sculptor, also visited Ashbourne Church.
His patron, Mrs. Robinson, when she gave him the order to execute that
exquisite work, the Sleeping Children, in Lichfield Cathedral, expressly
stipulated that he must see the figure of Penelope Boothby in Ashbourne
Church before he began her work. Accordingly Chantrey came down to the
church and completed his sketch afterwards at the "Green Man Inn,"
working at it until one o'clock the next morning, when he departed by
the London coach.
Ashbourne is one of the few places which kept up the football match on
Shrove Tuesday, a relic probably of the past, when the ball was a
creature or a human being, and life or death the object of the game. But
now the game was to play a stuffed case or the biggest part of it up and
down the stream, the Ecclesbourne, until the mill at either limit of the
town was reached.
The River Dove, of which it has been written the "Dove's flood is worth
a king's good," formed the boundary between Derbyshire and
Staffordshire, which we crossed by a bridge about two miles after
leaving Ashbourne. This bridge, we were told, was known as the Hanging
Bridge, because at one time people were hanged on the tree which stood
on the border between the two counties, and we might have fared badly if
our journey had been made in the good old times, when "tramps" were
severely treated. Across the river lay the village of Mayneld, where the
landlord of the inn was killed in a quarrel with Prince Charlie's men in
their retreat from Derby for resisting their demands, and higher up the
country a farmer had been killed because he declined to give up his
horse. They were not nearly so orderly as they retreated towards the
north, for they cleared both provisions and valuables from the country
on both sides of the roads. A cottage at Mayneld was pointed out to us
as having once upon a time been inhabited by Thomas, or Tom Moore,
Ireland's great poet, whose popularity was as great in England as in his
native country, and who died in 1852 at the age of seventy-three years.
The cottage was at that time surrounded by woods and fields, and no
doubt the sound of Ashbourne Church bells, as it floated in the air,
suggested to him one of his sweetest and saddest songs:
Those evening bells! those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth and home and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime.
Those joyous hours are passed away,
And many a heart that then was gay
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.
And so 'twill be when I am gone:
The tuneful peal will still ring on:
While other bards shall walk these dells
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.
We passed Calwick Abbey, once a religious house, but centuries ago
converted into a private mansion, which in the time of Handel
(1685-1759) was inhabited by the Granville family. Handel, although a
German, spent most of his time in England, and was often the guest of
the nobility. It was said that it was at Calwick Abbey that his greatest
oratorios were conceived, and that the organ on which he played was
still preserved. We ourselves had seen an organ in an Old Hall in
Cheshire on which he had played when a visitor there, and where was also
shown a score copy in his own handwriting. All that was mortal of Handel
was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his magnificent oratorios will
endure to the end of time.
On arrival at Ellastone we left our luggage at the substantially built
inn there while we went to visit Norbury Church, which was well worth
seeing, and as my foot had now greatly improved we were able to get over
the ground rather more quickly. Norbury was granted to the Fitzherberts
in 1125, and, strange as it may appear, the original deed was still in
the possession of that ancient family, whose chief residence was now at
Swynnerton at the opposite side of Staffordshire, where they succeeded
the Swynnerton family as owners of the estate. The black image of that
grim crusader Swynnerton of Swynnerton still remained in the old chapel
there, and as usual in ancient times, where the churches were built of
sandstone, they sharpened their arrows on the walls or porches of the
church, the holes made in sharpening them being plainly visible. Church
restorations have caused these holes to be filled with cement in many
places, like the bullet holes of the more recent period of the Civil
War, but holes in the exact shape of arrow heads were still to be seen
in the walls at Swynnerton, the different heights showing some of the
archers to have been very tall men. In spite of severe persecution at
the time of the Reformation this branch of the family of the
Fitzherberts adhered to the Roman Catholic Faith, Sir Thomas Fitzherbert
being one of the most prominent victims of the Elizabethan persecutions,
having passed no less than thirty years of his life in various prisons
in England.
Norbury church was not a large one, but the chancel was nearly as large
as the nave. It dated back to the middle of the fourteenth century, when
Henry of Kniveton was rector, who made the church famous by placing a
number of fine stained-glass windows in the chancel. The glass in these
windows was very chaste and beautiful, owing to the finely tinted soft
browns and greens, now probably mellowed by age, and said to rank
amongst the finest of their kind in England. The grand monuments to the
Fitzherberts were magnificently fine examples of the art and clothing of
the past ages, the two most gorgeous tombs being those of the tenth and
eleventh lords, in all the grandeur of plate armour, collars,
decorations, spurs, and swords; one had an angel and the other a monk to
hold his foot as he crossed into the unknown. The figures of their
families as sculptured below them were also very fine. Considering that
one of the lords had seventeen children and the other fifteen it was
scarcely to be wondered at that descendants of the great family still
existed.
Sir Nicholas, who died in 1473, occupied the first tomb, his son the
second, and his children were represented dressed in the different
costumes of their chosen professions, the first being in armour with a
cross, and the next as a lawyer with a scroll, while another was
represented as a monk with a book, but as the next had his head knocked
off it was impossible to decipher him; others seemed to have gone into
businesses of one kind or another.
The oldest monument in the church was a stone cross-legged effigy of a
warrior in armour, dating from about the year 1300; while the plainest
was the image of a female corpse in a shroud, on a gravestone, who was
named ... Elysebeth ...
The which decessed the yeare that is goone,
A thousand four hundred neynty and oone.
The church was dedicated to St. Barloke, probably one of the ancient
British Divines.
On returning to Ellastone we learned that the inn was associated with
"George Eliot," whose works we had heard of but had not read. We were
under the impression that the author was a man, and were therefore
surprised to find that "George Eliot" was only the _nom de plume_ of a
lady whose name was Marian Evans. Her grandfather was the village
wheelwright and blacksmith at Ellastone, and the prototype of "Adam
Bede" in her famous novel of that name.
[Illustration: GEORGE ELLIOT'S "DONNITHORPE ARMS," ELLASTONE.]
It has been said that no one has ever drawn a landscape more graphically
than Marian Evans, and the names of places are so thinly veiled that if
we had read the book we could easily have traced the country covered by
"Adam Bede." Thus Staffordshire is described as Loamshire, Derbyshire as
Stoneyshire, and the Mountains of the Peak as the barren hills, while
Oakbourne stands for Ashbourne, Norbourne for Norbury, and Hayslope,
described so clearly in the second chapter of _Adam Bede_, is Ellastone,
the "Donnithorpe Arms" being the "Bromley Arms Hotel," where we stayed
for refreshments. It was there that a traveller is described in the
novel as riding up to the hotel, and the landlord telling him that there
was to be a "Methodis' Preaching" that evening on the village green, and
the traveller stayed to listen to the address of "Dinah Morris," who was
Elizabeth Evans, the mother of the authoress.
[Illustration: ALTON TOWERS.]
Wootton Hall, which stands immediately behind the village of Ellastone,
was at one time inhabited by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the great French
writer, who, when he was expelled from France, took the Hall for twelve
months in 1776, beginning to write there his _Confessions_, as well as
his _Letters on Botany_, at a spot known as the "Twenty oaks." It was
very bad weather for a part of the time, and snowed incessantly, with a
bitterly cold wind, but he wrote, "In spite of all, I would rather live
in the hole of one of the rabbits of this warren, than in the finest
rooms in London."
We now hurried across the country, along old country lanes and over
fields, to visit Alton Towers; but, as it was unfortunately closed on
that day, it was only by trespassing that we were able to see a part of
the grounds. We could see the fine conservatories, with their richly
gilded domes, and some portion of the ground and gardens, which were in
a deep dell. These were begun by Richard, Earl of Shrewsbury, in the
year 1814, who, after years of labour, and at enormous expense,
converted them from a wilderness into one of the most extraordinary
gardens in Europe, almost baffling description. There was a monument
either to himself or the gardener, on which were the words:
He made the desert smile.
From the Uttoxeter Road we could see a Gothic bridge, with an embankment
leading up to it, and a huge imitation of Stonehenge, in which we were
much interested, that being one of the great objects of interest we
intended visiting when we reached Salisbury Plain. We were able to
obtain a small guide-book, but it only gave us the information that the
gardens consisted of a "labyrinth of terraces, walls, trellis-work,
arbours, vases, stairs, pavements, temples, pagodas, gates, parterres,
gravel and grass walks, ornamental buildings, bridges, porticos, seats,
caves, flower-baskets, waterfalls, rocks, cottages, trees, shrubs and
beds of flowers, ivied walls, moss houses, rock, shell, and root work,
old trunks of trees, etc., etc.," so, as it would occupy half a day to
see the gardens thoroughly, we decided to come again on some future
occasion. A Gothic temple stood on the summit of a natural rock, and
among other curiosities were a corkscrew fountain of very peculiar
character, and vases and statues almost without end.
We now followed the main road to the Staffordshire town of Uttoxeter,
passing the ruins of Croxden Abbey in the distance, where the heart of
King John had been buried, and where plenty of traces of the extreme
skill in agriculture possessed by the monks can be seen. One side of the
chapel still served as a cowshed, but perhaps the most interesting
features were the stone coffins in the orchard as originally placed,
with openings so small, that a boy of ten can hardly lie in one.
But we missed a sight which as good churchmen we were afterwards told we
ought to have remembered. October 31st was All-Hallows Eve, "when ghosts
do walk," and here we were in a place they revelled in--so much so that
they gave their name to it, Duninius' Dale. Here the curious sights
known as "Will-o'-the-Wisp" could be seen magnificently by those who
would venture a midnight visit. But we had forgotten the day.
[Illustration: CROXDEN ABBEY.]
We stopped for tea at Uttoxeter, and formed the opinion that it was a
clean but rather sleepy town. There was little to be seen in the church,
as it was used in the seventeenth century as a prison for Scottish
troops, "who did great damage." It must, however, have been a very
healthy town, if we might judge from the longevity of the notables who
were born there: Sir Thomas Degge, judge of Western Wales and a famous
antiquary, was born here in 1612, and died aged ninety-two; Thomas
Allen, a distinguished mathematician and philosopher, the founder of the
college at Dulwich and the local Grammar School as well, born 1542, died
aged ninety; Samuel Bentley, poet, born 1720, died aged eighty-three;
Admiral Alan Gardner, born at the Manor House in 1742, and who, for
distinguished services against the French, was raised to the Irish
Peerage as Baron Gardner of Uttoxeter, and was M.P. for Plymouth, died
aged sixty-seven; Mary Howitt, the well-known authoress, born 1799, also
lived to the age of eighty-nine. A fair record for a small country town!
John Wesley preached in the marketplace, in the centre of which was a
fountain erected to the memory of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the distinguished
lexicographer. His father, whose home was at Lichfield, was a bookseller
and had a bookstall in Uttoxeter Market, which he attended on market
days. The story is told that on one occasion, not feeling very well, he
asked his son, Samuel, to take his place, who from motives of pride
flatly refused to do so. From this illness the old man never recovered,
and many years afterwards, on the anniversary of that sorrowful day, Dr.
Samuel Johnson, then in the height of his fame, came to the very spot in
the market-place where this unpleasant incident occurred and did
penance, standing bareheaded for a full hour in a pitiless storm of wind
and rain, much to the surprise of the people who saw him.
[Illustration: THE WHITE CATTLE OF CHARTLEY.]
We now bade good-bye to the River Dove, leaving it to carry its share of
the Pennine Range waters to the Trent, and walked up the hill leading
out of the town towards Abbots Bromley. We soon reached a lonely and
densely wooded country with Bagot's Wood to the left, containing trees
of enormous age and size, remnants of the original forest of Needwood,
while to the right was Chartley Park, embracing about a thousand acres
of land enclosed from the same forest by the Earl of Derby, about the
year 1248. In this park was still to be seen the famous herd of wild
cattle, whose ancestors were known to have been driven into the park
when it was enclosed. These animals resisted being handled by men, and
arranged themselves in a semi-circle on the approach of an intruder. The
cattle were perfectly white, excepting their extremities, their ears,
muzzles, and hoofs being black, and their long spreading horns were also
tipped with black. Chartley was granted by William Rufus to Hugh Lupus,
first Earl of Chester, whose descendant, Ranulph, a Crusader, on his
return from the Holy War, built Beeston Castle in Cheshire, with
protecting walls and towers, after the model of those at Constantinople.
He also built the Castle at Chartley about the same period, A.D. 1220,
remarkable as having been the last place of imprisonment for the
unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, as she was taken from there in 1586 to
be executed at Fotheringhay.
[Illustration: THE "BANK INN," CHARTLEY.]
[Illustration: BEGGARS' OAK, BAGOTS WOOD. "We soon reached a lonely and
densely wooded country with Bagots Wood to the left, containing trees of
enormous size--remnants of the original forest of Needham."]
We were interested in these stories of Chartley Castle, for in our own
county cattle with almost the same characteristics were preserved in the
Parks of Lyme and Somerford, and probably possessed a similar history.
That Ranulph was well known can be assumed from the fact that Langland
in his _Piers Plowman_ in the fourteenth century says:
I cannot perfitly my paternoster as the Priest it singeth.
But I can rhymes of Robin Hood and Randall Erie of Chester.
Queer company, and yet it was an old story that Robin did find an asylum
at Chartley Castle.
[Illustration: THE HORN DANCERS, ABBOTS BROMLEY.]
We overtook an elderly man on the road returning home from his day's
toil on the Bagot estate, and he told us of an old oak tree of
tremendous size called the "Beggar's Oak"; but it was now too dark for
us to see it. The steward of the estate had marked it, together with
others, to be felled and sold; but though his lordship was very poor, he
would not have the big oak cut down. He said that both Dick Turpin and
Robin Hood had haunted these woods, and when he was a lad a good many
horses were stolen and hidden in lonely places amongst the thick bushes
to be sold afterwards in other parts of the country.
The "Beggar's Oak" was mentioned in the _History of Staffordshire_ in
1830, when its branches were measured by Dr. Darwen as spreading 48 feet
in every direction. There was also a larger oak mentioned with a trunk
21 feet 4-1/2 inches in circumference, but in a decayed condition. This
was named the Swilcar Lawn Oak, and stood on the Crown lands at
Marchington Woodlands, and in Bagot's wood were also the Squitch, King,
and Lord Bagot's Walking stick, all fine trees. There were also two
famous oaks at Mavesyn Ridware called "Gog and Magog," but only their
huge decayed trunks remained. Abbots Bromley had some curious
privileges, and some of the great games were kept up. Thus the heads of
the horses and reindeers for the "hobby horse" games were to be seen at
the church.
[Illustration: MARKET PLACE, ABBOT'S BROMLAY]
The owner of this region, Lord Bagot, could trace his ancestry back to
before the Conquest, for the Normans found one Bagod in possession. In
course of time, when the estate had become comparatively poor, we heard
that the noble owner had married the daughter of Mr. Bass, the rich
brewer of Burton, the first of the Peerage marriages with the families
of the new but rich.
We passed the Butter Cross and the old inn, reminiscent of stage-coach
days, as the church bell was tolling, probably the curfew, and long
after darkness had set in, for we were trying to reach Lichfield, we
came to the village of Handsacre, where at the "Crown Inn" we stayed the
night.
(_Distance walked twenty-five miles_.)
_Wednesday, November 1st._
Although the "Crown" at Handsacre was only a small inn, we were very
comfortable, and the company assembled on the premises the previous
evening took a great interest in our travels. We had no difficulty in
getting an early breakfast, and a good one too, before leaving the inn
this morning, but we found we had missed seeing one or two interesting
places which we passed the previous night in the dark, and we had also
crossed the River Trent as it flowed towards the great brewery town of
Burton, only a few miles distant.
[Illustration: WHERE OFFA'S DYKE CROSSES THE MAIS ROAD.]
[Illustration: LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL]
Daylight found us at the foot of the famous Cannock Chase. The Chase
covered about 30,000 acres of land, which had been purposely kept out of
cultivation in olden times in order to form a happy hunting-ground for
the Mercian Kings, who for 300 years ruled over that part of the
country. The best known of these kings was Offa, who in the year 757 had
either made or repaired the dyke that separated England from Wales,
beginning at Chepstow in Monmouthshire, and continuing across the
country into Flintshire. It was not a dyke filled with water, as for the
most part it passed over a very hilly country where water was not
available, but a deep trench sunk on the Welsh side, the soil being
thrown up on the English side, forming a bank about four yards high, of
which considerable portions were still visible, and known as "Offa's
Dyke." Cannock Chase, which covered the elevations to our right, was
still an ideal hunting-country, as its surface was hilly and
diversified, and a combination of moorland and forest, while the
mansions of the noblemen who patronised the "Hunt" surrounded it on all
sides, that named "Beau-Desert," the hall or hunting-box of the Marquis
of Anglesey, being quite near to our road.
We soon arrived at Lichfield, and on entering the town the three lofty
and ornamental spires of the cathedral, which from their smart
appearance were known as "The Three Ladies," immediately attracted our
attention. But for these, travellers entering Lichfield by this road
might easily have passed the cathedral without noticing it, as it stands
on low and rather swampy ground, where its fine proportions do not show
to advantage.
The Close of the cathedral, which partially surrounded it, was heavily
fortified in the time of the Civil War, causing the cathedral to be very
badly damaged, for it suffered no less than three different sieges by
the armies of the Parliament.
[Illustration: ST. CHAD'S WELL, LICHFIELD.]
The cathedral was dedicated to St. Chad, but whether he was the same St.
Chad whose cave was in the rocky bank of the River Don, and about whom
we had heard farther north, or not, we could not ascertain. He must have
been a water-loving saint, as a well in the town formed by a spring of
pure water was known as St. Chad's Well, in which the saint stood naked
while he prayed, upon a stone which had been preserved by building it
into the wall of the well. There was also in the cathedral at one time
the "Chapel of St. Chad's Head," but this had been almost destroyed
during the first siege of 1643. The ancient writings of the patron saint
in the early Welsh language had fortunately been preserved. Written on
parchment and ornamented with rude drawings of the Apostles and others,
they were known as St. Chad's Gospels, forming one of the most treasured
relics belonging to the cathedral, but, sad to relate, had been removed
by stealth, it was said, from the Cathedral of Llandaff.
The first siege began on March 2nd, 1643, which happened to be St.
Chad's Day, and it was recorded that during that siege "Lord Brooke who
was standing in the street was killed, being shot through the eye by
Dumb Dyott from the cathedral steeple." The cathedral was afterwards
used by Cromwell's men as a stable, and every ornament inside and
outside that they could reach was greatly damaged; but they appeared to
have tried to finish the cathedral off altogether, when in 1651 they
stripped the lead from the roof and then set the woodwork on fire. It
was afterwards repaired and rebuilt, but nearly all the ornaments on the
west front, which had been profusely decorated with the figures of
martyrs, apostles, priests, and kings, had been damaged or destroyed. At
the Restoration an effort was made to replace these in cement, but this
proved a failure, and the only perfect figure that remained then on the
west front was a rather clumsy one of Charles II, who had given a
hundred timber trees out of Needwood Forest to repair the buildings.
Many of the damaged figures were taken down in 1744, and some others
were removed later by the Dean, who was afraid they might fall on his
head as he went in and out of the cathedral.
[Illustration: "THE THREE LADIES"]
In those days chimney sweepers employed a boy to climb up the inside of
the chimneys and sweep the parts that could not be reached with their
brush from below, the method of screwing one stale to the end of another
and reaching the top in that way being then unknown. These boys were
often cruelly treated, and had even been known to be suffocated in the
chimney. The nature of their occupation rendered them very daring, and
for this reason the Dean employed one of them to remove the rest of the
damaged figures, a service which he satisfactorily performed at no small
risk both to himself and others.
There is a very fine view in the interior of the cathedral looking from
west to east, which extends to a distance of 370 feet, and of which Sir
Gilbert Scott, the great ecclesiastical architect, who was born in 1811,
has written, "I always hold this work to be almost absolute perfection
in design and detail"; another great authority said that when he saw it
his impressions were like those described by John Milton in his "Il
Penseroso":
Let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embossed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below.
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies.
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
We had not much time to explore the interior, but were obliged to visit
the white marble effigy by the famous Chantrey of the "Sleeping
Children" of Prebendary Robinson. It was beautifully executed, but for
some reason we preferred that of little Penelope we had seen the day
before, possibly because these children appeared so much older and more
like young ladies compared with Penelope, who was really a child.
Another monument by Chantrey which impressed us more strongly than that
of the children was that of Bishop Ryder in a kneeling posture, which we
thought a very fine production. There was also a slab to the memory of
Admiral Parker, the last survivor of Nelson's captains, and some fine
stained-glass windows of the sixteenth century formerly belonging to the
Abbey of Herckrode, near Liège, which Sir Brooke Boothby, the father of
little Penelope, had bought in Belgium in 1803 and presented to the
cathedral.
[Illustration: THE WEST DOOR, LICHFIELD.]
The present bishop, Bishop Selwyn, seemed to be very much loved, as
everybody had a good word for him. One gentleman told us he was the
first bishop to reside at the palace, all former bishops having resided
at Eccleshall, a town twenty-six miles away. Before coming to Lichfield
he had been twenty-two years in New Zealand, being the first bishop of
that colony. He died seven years after our visit, and had a great
funeral, at which Mr. W.E. Gladstone, who described Selwyn as "a noble
man," was one of the pall-bearers. The poet Browning's words were often
applied to Bishop Selwyn:
We that have loved him so, followed and honour'd him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Caught his clear accents, learnt his great language,
Made him our pattern to live and to die.
There were several old houses in Lichfield of more than local interest,
one of which, called the Priest's House, was the birthplace in 1617 of
Elias Ashmole, Windsor Herald to King Charles II, and founder of the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. When we got into the town, or city, we found
that, although St. Chad was the patron saint of the cathedral, there was
also a patron saint of Lichfield itself, for it was Johnson here,
Johnson there, and Johnson everywhere, so we must needs go and see the
house where the great Doctor was born in 1709. We found it adjoining the
market-place, and in front of a monument on which were depicted three
scenes connected with his childhood: the first showing him mounted on
his father's back listening to Dr. Sacheverell, who was shown in the act
of preaching; the second showed him being carried to school between the
shoulders of two boys, another boy following closely behind, as if to
catch him in the event of a fall; while the third panel represents him
standing in the market-place at Uttoxeter, doing penance to propitiate
Heaven for the act of disobedience to his father that had happened fifty
years ago. When very young he was afflicted with scrofula, or king's
evil; so his mother took him in 1712, when he was only two and a half
years old, to London, where he was touched by Queen Anne, being the last
person so touched in England. The belief had prevailed from the time of
Edward the Confessor that scrofula could be cured by the royal touch,
and although the office remained in our Prayer Book till 1719, the
Jacobites considered that the power did not descend to King William and
Queen Anne because "Divine" hereditary right was not fully possessed by
them; which doubtless would be taken to account for the fact that
Johnson was not healed, for he was troubled with the disease as long as
he lived. When he was three years old he was carried by his father to
the cathedral to hear Dr. Sacheverell preach. This gentleman, who was a
Church of England minister and a great political preacher, was born in
1672. He was so extremely bitter against the dissenters and their Whig
supporters that he was impeached before the House of Lords, and
suspended for three years, while his sermon on "Perils of False
Brethren," which had had an enormous sale, was burnt by the common
hangman! It was said that young Johnson's conduct while listening to the
doctor's preaching on that occasion was quite exemplary.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO SAMUEL JOHNSON, LICHFIELD.]
Johnson was educated at the Lichfield Grammar School under Dr. Hunter,
who was a very severe schoolmaster, and must have been one of those who
"drove it in behind," for Johnson afterwards wrote: "My Master whipt me
very well. Without that I should have done nothing." Dr. Hunter boasted
that he never taught a boy anything; he whipped and they learned. It was
said, too, that when he flogged them he always said: "Boys, I do this to
save you from the gallows!" Johnson went to Oxford, and afterwards, in
1736, opened a school near Lichfield, advertising in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ for young gentleman "to be boarded and taught the Latin and
Greek languages, by Samuel Johnson." He only got eight pupils, amongst
whom was David Garrick, who afterwards became the leading tragic actor
of his time. Johnson had for some time been at work on a tragedy called
_The Tragedy of Irene_, though whether this decided Garrick to become a
tragedy actor is not known; the play, however, did not succeed with the
play-going public in London, and had to be withdrawn. Neither did the
school succeed, and it had to be given up, Johnson, accompanied by David
Garrick, setting off to London, where it was said that he lived in a
garret on fourpence-halfpenny per day. Many years afterwards, when
Johnson was dining with a fashionable company, a remark was made
referring to an incident that occurred in a certain year, and Johnson
exclaimed: "That was the year when I came to London with
twopence-halfpenny in my pocket."
Garrick overheard the remark, and exclaimed: "Eh, what do you say? with
twopence-halfpenny in your pocket?"
"Why, yes; when I came with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket, and thou,
Davy, with three-halfpence in thine."
Poverty haunted Johnson all through life until 1762, when he was granted
a pension of £300 a year by King George III, on the recommendation of
Lord Bute, the Prime Minister, who, in making the offer, said: "It is
not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done."
In the meantime Johnson had brought out his great Dictionary, at which
he had worked for years in extreme poverty, and in the progress of which
he had asked Lord Chesterfield to become his patron, in the hope that he
would render him some financial assistance. When he went to see him,
however, he was kept waiting for over an hour, while his lordship amused
himself by conversing with some second-rate mortal named "Colley
Cibber," and when this man came out, and Johnson saw who it was for whom
he had been kept waiting, he hurriedly and indignantly took his
departure. When his Dictionary was nearly ready for publication and
likely to become a great success, his lordship wrote to Johnson offering
to become his patron; but it was now too late, and Johnson's reply was
characteristic of the man, as the following passages from his letter
show:
Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on with my work through Difficulties, of which it is useless
to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
encouragement, or one-smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
expect, for I never had a Patron before. The notice you have been
pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but
it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till
I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want
it. I hope it is no cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself!
[Illustration: LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT.]
Johnson's name is often associated with London taverns, but it would be
wrong to assume on that account that he had bibulous tendencies, for
although he described Boswell, who wrote his splendid biography, as a
"clubable" man, and the tavern chair as the throne of human felicity, it
should be remembered that there were no gentlemen's clubs in London in
those days, hence groups of famous men met at the taverns. Johnson had
quite a host of friends, including Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith, Savage
(whose biography he wrote), Sheridan, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. When Sir
Joshua Reynolds and Johnson were dining at Mrs. Garrick's house in
London they were regaled with Uttoxeter ale, which had a "peculiar
appropriate value," but Johnson's beverage at the London taverns was
lemonade, or the juice of oranges, or tea, and it was his boast that
"with tea he amused the evenings, with tea solaced the midnight hour,
and with tea welcomed the morning." He was credited with drinking
enormous quantities of that beverage, the highest number of cups
recorded being twenty-five at one time, but the size of the cups were
very much smaller in those days.
Johnson, who died in 1784 at the age of seventy-five, was buried in
Westminster Abbey, and, mainly through the exertions of his friend Sir
Joshua Reynolds, a statue of him was erected in St. Paul's Cathedral.
Other eminent men besides Dr. Johnson received their education at
Lichfield Grammar School: Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean Museum
at Oxford, Joseph Addison the great essayist, whose father was Dean of
Lichfield, and David Garrick the actor, were all educated at the Grammar
School. There were five boys who had at one period attended the school
who afterwards became judges of the High Court: Lord Chief Justice
Willes, Lord Chief Justice Wilmot, Lord Chief Baron Parker, Mr. Justice
Noel, and Sir Richard Lloyd, Baron of the Exchequer.
Leaving Lichfield, we passed along the racecourse and walked as quickly
as we could to Tamworth, where at the railway station we found our box
awaiting us with a fresh change of clothing. In a few minutes we were
comfortably rigged out for our farther journey; the box, in which my
brother packed up the stones, was then reconsigned to our home address.
I was now strong enough to carry my own luggage, which seemed to fit
very awkwardly in its former position, but I soon got over that. There
was at Tamworth a fine old church dedicated to St. Editha which we did
not visit. We saw the bronze statue erected in 1852 to the memory of the
great Sir Robert Peel, Bart., who represented Tamworth in Parliament,
and was twice Prime Minister, and who brought in the famous Bill for the
Abolition of the Corn Laws. These Laws had been in operation from the
year 1436. But times had changed: the population had rapidly grown with
the development of industries, so that being limited to home production,
corn reached such a high price that people came to see that the laws
pressed hardly upon the poorer classes, hence they were ultimately
abolished altogether. The Bill was passed in 1846, Cobden, Bright, and
Villiers leading the agitation against them, and after the Corn Laws
were abolished a period of great prosperity prevailed in England.
[Illustration: SIR ROBERT PEEL. _From the portrait by Sir Thomas
Lawrence_.]
Sir Robert Peel died from the effect of an accident sustained when
riding on horseback in Hyde Park, on June 25th, 1850; he fell from his
horse, dying three days afterwards, and was buried in his mausoleum, in
the Parish Church of Drayton Bassett, a village about two miles from
Tamworth.
It was the day of the Municipal Elections as we passed through Tamworth,
but, as only one ward was being contested, there was an almost total
absence o f the excitement usual on such occasions.
[Illustration: TAMWORTH CASTLE.]
Tamworth Castle contains some walls that were built by the Saxons in a
herringbone pattern. There was a palace on the site of the castle in the
time of Ofta, which was the chief residence of the Kings of Mercia; but
William the Conqueror gave the castle and town of Tamworth and the Manor
of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire to his dispensor, or royal steward, Robert
of Fontenaye-le-Marmion in Normandy, whose family were the hereditary
champions of the Dukes of Normandy:
These Lincoln lands the Conqueror gave,
That England's glove they might convey
To Knight renowned amongst the brave--
The Baron bold of Fontenaye.
[Illustration: THE "LADY" BRIDGE, TAMWORTH.]
Robert Marmion, therefore, was the first "King's Champion of England,"
an honour which remained in his family until the death of the eighth
Lord, Philip Marmion, in 1291. This man was one of the leading nobles at
the Court of Henry III, and the stubborn defender of Kenilworth Castle,
acting as King's Champion at the Coronation of Edward I on August 19th,
1274. The duty of the King's Champion on the day of Coronation was to
ride completely armed on a barbed horse into Westminster Hall, and there
to challenge to combat any who should gainsay the king's title. On the
death of Philip de Marmion the Castle of Tamworth passed by marriage to
the Trevilles, Sir Alexander Treville, as owner of the castle,
officiating; as Royal Champion at the Coronation of Edward III in 1327;
but at the Coronation of Richard II, in 1377, the right of the Treville
family to act as champion was disputed by Sir John Dymoke, to whom the
Manor of Scrivelsby had descended by marriage from another relative of
Phillip Marmion. It was decided that the office went with the Manor of
Scrivelsby, and the Dymokes had acted as King's Champion ever since,
their coat of arms bearing in Latin the motto, "I fight for the king."
As we passed over what is known as the Lady Bridge spanning the River
Tame, just where it joins the River Anker at the foot of the castle, we
saw a stone built in the bridge called the Marmion Stone, and remembered
Sir Walter Scott's "Tale of Flodden Field" and his famous lines:
"Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!"
Were the last words of Marmion.
But we found other references in Sir Walter's "Marmion":
Two pursuivants, whom tabards deck,
With silver scutcheon round their neck
And there, with herald pomp and state,
They hail'd Lord Marmion:
They hail'd him Lord of Fontenaye,
Of Lutterward, and Scrivelsbaye,
Of Tamworth tower and town.
and in the Fifth Canto in "Marmion," King James of Scotland is made to
say:
"Southward I march by break of day;
And if within Tantallon strong.
The good Lord Marmion tarries long,
Perchance our meeting next may fall
At Tamworth, in his castle-hall."--
The haughty Marmion felt the taunt,
And answer'd, grave, the royal vaunt:
"Much honour'd were my humble home,
If in its halls King James should come.
* * * * *
And many a banner will be torn,
And many a knight to earth be borne,
And many a sheaf of arrows spent.
Ere Scotland's King shall cross the Trent."
Sir Walter described Marmion as having been killed in the battle
together with one of his peasants, and that as both bodies had been
stripped and were covered with wounds, they could not distinguish one
from the other, with the result that the peasant was brought and buried
at Lichfield instead of his lord.
Short is my tale:--Fitz-Eustace' care
A pierced and mangled body bare
To moated Lichfield's lofty pile;
And there, beneath the southern aisle,
A tomb, with Gothic sculpture fair,
Did long Lord Marmion's image bear,
(Now vainly for its sight you look;
'Twas levell'd when fanatic Brook
The fair cathedral storm'd and took;
But, thanks to Heaven, and good Saint Chad,
A guerdon meet the spoiler had!)
There erst was martial Marmion found,
His feet upon a couchant hound,
His hands to heaven upraised:
And all around, on scutcheon rich,
And tablet carved, and fretted niche,
His arms and feats were blazed.
And yet, though all was carved so fair,
And priest for Marmion breathed the prayer,
The last Lord Marmion lay not there.
[Illustration: MEREVALE ABBEY.]
[Illustration: "KING DICK'S WELL."]
The Marmion stone on the bridge has five unequal sides, and at one time
formed the base for a figure of the Virgin and the Child, which stood on
the bridge. The ancient family of Basset of Drayton, a village close by,
were in some way connected with this stone, for on one side appeared the
arms of the family, on another the monogram M.R. surmounted by a crown,
and on the two others the letters I.H.C. About two miles farther on we
entered the village of Fazeley, purposely to see a house where a
relative of ours had once resided, being curious to know what kind of a
place it was. Here we were only a short distance away from Drayton
Manor, at one time the residence of the great Sir Robert Peel. Having
gratified our curiosity, we recrossed the River Tame, passing along the
great Watling Street, the Roman Road which King Alfred used as a
boundary in dividing England with the Danes, towards Atherstone in
search of "fields and pastures new," and in a few miles reached the
grounds of Merevale Abbey, now in ruins, where Robert, Earl Ferrers, was
buried, long before coffins were used for burial purposes, in "a good ox
hide." Here we reached the town of Atherstone, where the staple
industry was the manufacture of hats, the Atherstone Company of
Hat-makers being incorporated by charters from James I and Charles II.
Many of the chiefs on the West Coast of Africa have been decorated with
gorgeous hats that have been made at Atherstone. When the Romans were
making their famous street and reached the spot where Atherstone now
stands, they came, according to local tradition, to a large stone that
was in their way, and in moving it they disturbed a nest of adders,
which flew at them. The stone was named Adders' Stone, which gradually
became corrupted to Athers' Stone, and hence the name of the town. The
Corporation of the Governors embodied this incident in their coat of
arms and on the Grammar School, which was endowed in 1573: a stone
showed the adders as springing upwards, and displaying the words,
"Adderstonien Sigil Scholæ." We called at the "Old Red Lion Inn," and,
going to explore the town while our refreshments were being prepared,
found our way to a church, once part of a monastery, where the old
fourteenth-century bell was still tolled. It was in the chancel of this
church that Henry, Earl of Richmond, partook of Holy Communion on the
eve of his great victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth
Field, by which he became King Henry VII. He had also spent a night at
the "Three Tuns Inn" preparing his plans for the fight, which occurred
two days later, August 22nd, 1485. There was on the site of the battle a
well named "King Dick's Well," which was covered with masonry in the
form of a pyramid, with an entrance on one of its four sides, and which
covered the spring where Richard, weary of fighting, had a refreshing
drink before the final charge that ended in his death. He, however, lost
the battle, and Henry of Richmond, who won it, was crowned King of
England at Stoke Golding Church, which was practically on the
battlefield, and is one of the finest specimens of decorated
architecture in England. But what an anxious and weary time these kings
must have had! not only they, but all others. When we considered how
many of them had been overthrown, assassinated, taken prisoners in war,
executed, slain in battle, forced to abdicate, tortured to death,
committed suicide, and gone mad, we came to the conclusion that
Shakespeare was right when he wrote, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a
crown." In his _King Richard II_ he makes the King say:
"And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd."
One good result of the Battle of Bosworth Field was that it ended the
"Wars of the Roses," which had been a curse to England for thirty years.
[Illustration: BULL BAITING STONE, ATHERSTONE.]
Bull-baiting was one of the favourite sports of our forefathers, the
bull being usually fastened to an iron ring in the centre of a piece of
ground, while dogs were urged on to attack it, many of them being killed
in the fight. This space of land was known as the Bull-ring, a name
often found in the centre of large towns at the present day. We knew a
village in Shropshire where the original ring was still to be seen
embedded in the cobbled pavement between the church and the village inn.
But at Atherstone the bull had been fastened to a large stone, still to
be seen, but away from the road, which had now been diverted from its
original track.
The ancient whipping-post, along with the stocks, which had
accommodation for three persons, had found their last resting-place
inside the old market-hall. They must have been almost constantly
occupied and used in the good old times, as Atherstone was not only on
the great Watling Street, but it had a unique position on the other
roads of the country, as an old milestone near our hotel, where we found
our refreshments waiting our arrival, informed us that we were a hundred
miles from London, a hundred miles from Liverpool, and a hundred miles
from Lincoln, so that Atherstone could fairly claim to be one of the
central towns in England, though the distance to Lincoln had been
overstated.
[Illustration: STOCKS IN ATHERSTONE MARKET-HALL.]
We continued walking along the Watling Street for a short distance,
until we reached the end of the town, and then we forked on to the right
towards Nuncaton; but in a very short distance we came to the village of
Mancetter, where there was a fine old church, apparently the Parish
Church of Atherstone. When the Romans were here they protected their
"Street" by means of forts, and one in a small chain of these was at
Mancetter, the Manduesdum of the Romans, their camp appearing in the
form of a square mound, with the "Street" passing through the centre.
Inside the church were quite a number of very old books, in one of which
we were shown a wood-cut representing the burning of Robert Glover and
Cornelius Bongley at Coventry in 1555. Glover was a gentleman who lived
at the Manor House here, and was one of the Mancetter Martyrs, the other
being Mrs. Lewis, a tenant of his who lived at the Manor House Farm. She
was burnt in 1557, two years later. A large tablet was placed in the
church to their memories, both of them having suffered for their
adherence to the Protestant Faith. The east-end window was a curiosity,
for it contained a large quantity of thirteenth-century stained glass
which had been brought here from Merevale Abbey. It was probably damaged
both there and in transit, as it seemed to have a somewhat rough
appearance; the verger informed us, when pointing out several defects
in the figures, that a local glazier had been employed to erect it who
did not understand such work, and though he had no doubt done his best,
he had made some awkward mistakes. Why David's sword appeared behind his
back the verger could not explain, so my brother suggested that either
the head or the body had been turned the wrong way about.
[Illustration: THE MANOR HOUSE, MANCETTER.]
There were five bells in the church tower, the largest of which was, of
course, the tenor bell, weighing thirty-three hundredweight, and the
words that had been cast on it set us a-thinking:
My soaring sound does warning give
That a man on earth not only lives.
There were usually some strange records in these country churchyards,
and we generally found them in the older portions of the burial-grounds;
but we had very little time to look for them as the night was coming on,
so we secured the services of the verger, who pointed out in the new
part of the churchyard a stone recording the history of Charles Richard
Potter in the following words:
Born--May 11, 1788.
Married--May 11, 1812.
Died--May 11, 1858.
So the eleventh day of May was a lucky or an unlucky day for Mr.
Potter--probably both; but one strange feature which we only thought of
afterwards was that he had lived exactly the allotted span of three
score years and ten. In the old part of the yard were the following
epitaphs:
The Earth's a City
Full of crooked streets
Death is ye market-place
Where all must meet
If life was merchandise
That man could buy
The rich would always live
Ye poor must die.
In bygone times it was no unusual thing to find dead bodies on the road,
or oftener a short distance from it, where the owners had laid
themselves down to die; we ourselves remembered, in a lonely place, only
a field's breadth from the coach road to London, a pit at the side of
which years ago the corpse of a soldier had been found in the bushes.
Here, apparently, there had been a similar case, with the exception that
the man had been found by the side of the Watling Street instead of the
fields adjoining. No one in the district knew who the stranger was, but
as sufficient money had been found on him to pay the cost of the burial,
his corpse was placed in Mancetter Churchyard, and as his name was
unknown, some mysterious initials, of which no one now living knew the
meaning, appeared on the headstone.
Here lieth interr'd the Body of
I.