confer with his gouty and irascible client, was stopped in his carriage as
it was going towards London across this dreaded wilderness. The highwaymen
fired at him, and he died of fright. Two other notable murders by
highwaymen took place here--in 1798 and 1802--and bear witness to the
degeneracy of the craft. The first was Mr. Mellish, who was fired upon and
killed as he was returning from a run with the King's hounds. A Mr. Steele
was the other victim, and his assailants, Haggarty and Holloway, who had
planned the crime at the "Turk's Head," Dyot Street, Holborn, it is
satisfactory to be able to add, were hanged. The execution took place at
the Old Bailey, when twenty-eight persons among the crowds who had come to
see the sight were crushed to death. Up to the year 1800, the Heath was a
most famous place for gibbets. "The road," as a writer of the period says,
"was literally lined with gibbets on which the carcases of malefactors
hung in irons, blackening in the sun." Du Vall had a successor in Twysden,
Bishop of Raphoe, collecting tithes in rather a promiscuous way, by
turning highwayman in 1752. His career was a short one, for one of the
first travellers he bade "Stand!" on the Heath shot him through the body,
from which he died a few days later, at the house of a friend, from
"inflammation of the bowels," as the contemporary report, jealous for the
reputation of the dignified clergy, put it.
Shall I weary you by recounting more of these highway crimes? There was
Dr. Shelton, a surgeon, who flourished in the early thirties of last
century, and, deserting lancet and scalpel, took to the road and that not
more lethal weapon, the horse-pistol; though, to be sure, it was more for
show than use, for not Du Vall himself could have been more courteous.
That the poet who wrote of Bagshot Heath as a place "where ruined gamblers
oft repay their loss" might with perfect propriety have substituted
"Hounslow" will be readily seen when we mention Parsons, nearly
contemporary with Shelton, who robbed at Hounslow that he might gamble in
London. Parsons was the son of a "Bart. of the B.K.," as the Tichborne
Claimant would have phrased it; an Eton boy, at one time an officer both
in the Army and Navy, and the husband of a beautiful heiress. He made an
edifying end at Tyburn.
Then there was Barkwith, a mere novice, whose first sally led to a like
exit. He was the son of a Cambridgeshire squire, and manager to a
Lincoln's Inn solicitor. He had "borrowed" trust moneys wherewith to
satisfy some debts of honour; and so the hour of four o'clock in the
afternoon of a November day found him on the Heath, with a pistol in his
hand and his heart in his mouth, "holding up" a coach. The booty was but a
miserable handful of silver; but, being captured, he died for it, all the
same. Let us trust he did "the young gentlemen who belong to Inns of
Court" an injustice when, in his dying speech and confession, he warned
his hearers against them as "the most wicked of any."
[Sidenote: _"DARE-DEVIL SIMMS"_]
Then there was Dare-devil Simms--"Gentleman Harry," as his friends called
him--a midshipman who came up from deserting his ship in the West Country.
First borrowing a saddle and bridle, and then stealing a horse, he
commenced his career by robbing a post-chaise and the Bristol Mail, and
coming to London, soon became a noted figure on this stage. One night he
relieved a Mr. Sleep of his purse. The despoiled traveller bewailed his
loss bitterly, but Harry comforted him with the assurance that he would
have been robbed in any case; if not by himself, certainly by one or other
of the two who were waiting for him down the road. "But if you meet them,"
said he, "sing out 'Thomas!' and they will let you pass." The unfortunate
man went on his way calling "Thomas!" to every one he met, and narrowly
escaped being severely handled by some gentlemen who conceived themselves
insulted.
Presently Tyburn claimed Gentleman Harry also, and a career which had been
begun by transportation, and continued through such stirring adventures
as being sold for a slave, becoming a sailor and a privateersman, was
finally extinguished by the halter. A short life and a merry.
Strawkins, Simpson, and Wilson, too, helped to keep up the stirring story
of the road. They intercepted the Bristol Mail and left the postboy, bound
with ropes, at the bottom of a ditch on the outskirts of Colnbrook. They
were tracked down by the Post Office, and, Wilson turning King's evidence,
the first two were hanged. The Mail was then given an escort of Dragoons,
but highway robbery had too strong a spice of adventure for one of these
fine fellows to resist it. He accordingly pillaged the Bath Stage, and
suffered the appointed end in due course.
This catalogue of mine does not close until 1820, in which year four
confederates plundered the Bristol Mail. They had booked the inside seats,
and during their journey through the night forced open the strong boxes
placed under the seats, decamped with their contents, and were never heard
of again.
XIII
[Sidenote: _A STORY OF THE ROAD_]
One of the most diverting stories of Hounslow Heath, which serves to
relieve its sombre repute, is that which the late Mr. James Payn tells, in
one of his reminiscences. "The story goes," he says, "that early in the
century the landlord of Skindle's, at Maidenhead, was a strong Radical,
and could command a dozen votes; but his prosperity had a sad drawback in
the person of his son, a good-for-naught. During a certain Berkshire
election, a Tory solicitor was staying at this inn, and had occasion to go
to London for the sinews of war. His gig was stopped on his way back, on
Hounslow Heath, by a gentleman of the road.
"I have no money," said the lawyer, with professional readiness, "but
there is my watch and chain."
"You have a thousand pounds in gold in a box under the seat," was the
unexpected reply; "throw back the apron!"
The lawyer obeyed, but as the horseman stooped to take the box, the lawyer
knocked the pistol out of his hand and drove off at full gallop. He had a
very quick-going mare, and before the highwayman could find his weapon,
which had fallen into some furze, was beyond pursuit.
The next morning the lawyer sent for the landlord. "Yesterday," he said,
"I was stopped on Hounslow Heath. The man had a mask on, but I recognized
him by his voice, which I can swear to. I knew him as well as he knew me.
You had better speak to your son about it, and then we will resume our
conversation."
The landlord was quite innocent of his son's intended crime, but he had
reason to believe him capable of it. He went out with a heavy heart, and
when he came back his face showed it. "Well," he said, with a sort of calm
despair, "what steps do you intend to take, sir, in the matter?"
"None to hurt an old friend, you may be sure," answered the lawyer; "only
those twelve votes you boasted about must be given to our side instead of
yours;" which was accordingly arranged.
In those days, as will already have been seen, Hounslow Heath was a very
real place indeed. There was (as the journalistic slang of to-day has it)
"actuality" about that then solitary and barren waste, which is not a
little difficult to realize nowadays. The cyclist who speeds over the
level roads and past the smiling orchards and market gardens, finds it
difficult to believe that this was the sinister place of eighty years ago;
and, since there is no Heath to-day, is apt to come to the conclusion that
it must have been the very "Mrs. Harris" of heaths; a figment, that is to
say, of romantic writers' imaginations. Such, however, was by no means the
case. Where cultivated lands are now, and where suburban villas stand,
there stretched, less than eighty years since, a veritable scene of
desolation. Furze-bushes, swampy gravel-pits in which tall grasses and
bulrushes grew, and grassy hillocks, the homes of snipe and frogs, and the
haunts of the peewit, were the features of the scene by day; while, when
night was come, the whole place swarmed with footpads and highwaymen.
[Sidenote: _LORD BERKELEY'S ADVENTURES_]
At that time Lord Berkeley used frequently to stay at his country house at
Cranford, close by, from Saturdays to Mondays, and had twice been stopped
and robbed on his way before a third and last encounter, in which he shot
his assailant dead. On the second occasion, the door of his travelling
carriage was opened, and a footpad, dressed as a sailor, pointed a
fully-cocked pistol at him. The man's hand trembled violently, and while
my lord was producing what money he had about him, the trigger was pulled,
more, it would seem, from accident than intention. Happily, the pistol
missed fire. The man then exclaimed, "I beg your pardon, my lord," and,
recocking his pistol, retreated with his plunder.
After this escape, Lord Berkeley swore he would never be robbed again, and
always travelled at night with a short carriage-gun and a brace of
pistols. Thus armed, it was on a November night in 1774 that he was
attacked for the last time. He was going to dine with Mr. Justice
Bulstrode, who lived in an old house surrounded by a brick wall, near
where Hounslow's modern church now stands, and as the carriage was nearing
the town, a voice called to the postboy to halt, and a man rode up to the
carriage window on the left-hand side, thrusting in a pistol, as the glass
was let down. With his left hand Lord Berkeley seized the weapon and
turned it away, while with his right he pushed the short double-barrelled
gun he had with him against the robber's body, and fired once. The man was
severely wounded, and his clothes were set on fire, but he managed to ride
away some fifty yards, and then fell dead. Two accomplices then appeared,
but Lord Berkeley, and a servant on horseback who rode behind the
carriage, made for them, and they fled. It was then discovered that the
gang were all amateur highwaymen, and youths from eighteen to twenty years
of age, in good positions in London.
The Earl of Berkeley seems to have been somewhat unduly twitted about this
encounter. Society was quite resigned to seeing highwaymen hanged,
although it made heroes of them while they were waiting in the "stone jug"
at Newgate for that fatal morning at Tyburn; but it appears to have
considered the shooting of one of them an unsportsmanlike act.
Lord Chesterfield, however, should have been quite the last man to sneer
at the Earl on this score, for he himself was under a very well-deserved
public censure for having prosecuted Dr. Dodd, his son's tutor, for
forgery, with the result that the Doctor was hanged. Accordingly, when he
sarcastically asked Lord Berkeley "how many highwaymen he had shot
lately," it is pleasing to record that he was readily reduced to silence
by the retort, "As many as you have hanged tutors; but with much better
reason for doing so."
XIV
[Sidenote: _CRANFORD_]
It is just beyond Cranford Bridge that the pumps which are so odd a
feature of the Bath Road begin. They line the highway on the left-hand
side going from London, and are all situated in the same position as shown
in the illustration. They are of uniform pattern, and are placed at
regular intervals. These pumps are relics of the coaching age, but are
peculiar to the Bath and some stretches of the Exeter roads. Placed here
for keeping the highway well watered in the old days of road-travel, they
have evidently long been out of use; in fact, their handles are all
chained up. They recur so regularly that they might almost form part of a
new table of measurement, as thus:--
63 paces equal 1 telegraph-post.
19 telegraph-posts " 1 mile.
2 miles " 1 pump.
1-1/2 pumps " 1 pub.
[Illustration: A BATH ROAD PUMP.]
[Illustration: THE "BERKELEY ARMS."]
Cranford is a more picturesquely romantic place than any one has a right
to expect in the Middlesex of these latter days. That outlying portion of
the village which borders the high-road still wears the air of a tentative
settlement of civilization amid the wilds of the rolling prairie, and
might form a ready object-lesson for any untravelled Englishman who
desires "local colour" for the writing of an American romance in the
_genre_ of Bret Harte. And, indeed, the houses grouped around Cranford
Bridge were, some seventy years ago, built on the very borders of Hounslow
Heath, whose dreary and dangerous wastes only found a boundary here,
beside the still waters of the placid Crane. At Cranford Bridge stands
that fine old coaching inn, the "Berkeley Arms," and opposite the "White
Hart," which must have been in those times very havens of refuge in that
wild spot; and away up the lane to the right hand lies the village and
park, as pretty a spot as you shall find in a long day's march. Cranford
village is rich in beautiful old mansions set in midst of walled gardens
whose formal precincts are entered through massive wrought-iron gates.
Beside this lane is the village "lock-up," or "round-house," built in
1810, and now the only one of its kind left anywhere near London. The
rest have all been demolished, but "once upon a time" no village could
have been considered complete without one, or without the whipping-post
and stocks which were generally erected close at hand. Cranford, of
course, being situated in the midst of the alarums and excursions caused
by the highwaymen who infested the vicinity and kept the inhabitants in a
state of terror every night, had a peculiarly urgent need for such a
place, and it is, perhaps, because those gentry were such expert
prison-breakers, that this example is more than usually strong, the door
being plated with iron, and the small square window filled with sheet iron
pierced with small holes.
[Sidenote: _CRANFORD ROUND HOUSE_]
Cranford Park, near by, was a seat of the Earls of Berkeley, and is now
the residence of Lord Fitzhardinge, who is _de facto_ "Earl of Berkeley."
But the romantic scandals which arose from the fifth Earl having
eventually married a servant in his household, after she had borne him
several children, caused so much litigation about the succession to the
title that, although one of his sons, the Hon. Thomas Moreton
Fitzhardinge-Berkeley, was declared by a decision of the House of Lords to
be legitimate, he never assumed the title, for the reason that the barring
of his elder brother reflected upon his mother's good name. The whole
affair is exceedingly involved and mysterious, and it is therefore quite
in order that Cranford House should have the reputation of being haunted.
The house is a large rambling pile in the midst of the Park, overlooking
the sullen ornamental waters formed from the river Crane. The ancient
parish church stands close by. The chief or garden front of the house is
curiously like one of the old-fashioned houses that give so distinctive a
character to Park Lane, in London; having a double-bayed front with
verandahs. The aspect of such a house standing in the open country is
weird in the extreme.
[Illustration: CRANFORD HOUSE.]
[Sidenote: _THE CRANFORD GHOST_]
It was the Hon. Grantley Berkeley who first drew attention to the
"haunted" character of the house. He tells, in his "Recollections," how
one night when he and his brother had returned home late, they went down
into the kitchen in search of some supper, all the rest of the household
having retired to rest long before, and distinctly saw the tall figure of
an elderly woman walk across the kitchen. Thinking it was one of the
maids, they spoke to her, but she vanished into thin air, and a search
discovered nothing at all. The obvious comment here is that people
returning home late at night in those times very frequently saw things
that had no existence. The narrator's father, however, used to describe
how he saw a man in the stable-yard, and thinking he was some unauthorized
visitor in the Servants' Hall, asked him what he was doing there. The man
"vanished" without a reply; to which the rejoinder may well be made that
he might do so and yet be no ghost; the motive force being a sight of the
horsewhip which the Earl was carrying.
Cranford deserves notice from the literary pilgrim from the circumstance
that Dr. Thomas Fuller, the Fuller of the much-quoted "Worthies of
England," was chaplain to George, Lord Berkeley, who presented him to the
rectory in 1658. He lies buried in the chancel of the church.
Harlington Corner is the name of the spot, half a mile down the road,
where one of the many old roadside hostelries stands by a branch road
leading on the right to Harlington, and on the left to East Bedfont, on
the Exeter Road. The Corner, besides leading to Harlington, was also the
"junction" for Uxbridge, and here the slow stages set down or took up
passengers for that town. The fast coaches did not stop here, or were
supposed not to do so. Some of them, however, in defiance of time-bills,
halted at the "Magpies"--by arrangement, of course, with the
innkeeper--much to the profit of that house. One of these venal drivers
was neatly caught by Mr. Chaplin, of the once well-known coaching firm of
Chaplin and Horne. The coachman had with him on the box seat that day a
particularly genial passenger, who proved also to have a very intimate
knowledge of horseflesh. Pulling up at the "Magpies," where tables were
spread, showing that the coach was expected as a matter of course, he
winked at his passenger and invited him to refresh. Then, when all was, as
the poet would say, "merry as a marriage-bell," the unknown, like another
"Hawkshaw the Detective," revealed himself. He was Chaplin! The coachman
drove that coach no more!
[Illustration: THE "OLD MAGPIES."]
[Sidenote: _"ARLINGTON OF HARLINGTON"_]
Harlington, up the road to Uxbridge, was once the seat of the Bennets, one
of whom, Henry Bennet, was created Viscount Thetford and Earl of Arlington
in 1663, and lives in history as the "Arlington" of the Cabal. He selected
this village for one of his titles, but the 'eralds' College (as it
surely should have been called) made out his patent of nobility without
the "H," and so "Arlington" he had to become. Arlington Street,
Piccadilly, remains to this day, and the Dukes of Grafton, in whose
numerous titles this is merged, are still Barons "Arlington of Harlington,
in Middlesex."
After which we will hasten on, passing Sipson (a corruption of
"Shepiston") Green. Here we come upon the trail of messieurs the footpads
again, for the road between this inn and the humbler "Old Magpies," a few
hundred yards further on, is sad with the story of highway murder.
XV
The times of the highwaymen are, fortunately for the wayfarer, if
unhappily for romance, long since past, and many of the once-notorious
haunts of Sixteen-string Jack, Claude du Vall, Dick Turpin, and their
less-famed companions have disappeared before the ravages of time and the
much more destructive onslaughts of the builder. A hundred years ago it
would have been difficult to name a lonely suburban inn that was not more
or less favoured and frequented by the "Knights of the Road." Nowadays the
remaining examples are, for those interested in the old story of the
roads, all too few.
Perhaps this queer little roadside inn, the "Old Magpies," is the most
romantic-looking among those that are left. For one thing, it possesses a
thick and beetle-browed thatch which impends over the upper windows like
bushy eyebrows, and gives those windows--the eyes of the house--just that
lowering and suspicious look which heavy and bristling eyebrows confer
upon a man.
But it is not only its romantic appearance that gives the "Old Magpies" an
interest, for it is a well-ascertained fact that outside this house, so
near to the once terrible Hounslow Heath, the brother of Mr. Mellish, M.P.
for Grimsby, was murdered by highwaymen in April, 1798, when returning
from a day's hunting with the King's hounds.
He had started with two others from the "Castle" Hotel, at Salt Hill, for
London, after dinner, and the carriage in which the party was seated was
passing near the "Old Magpies" at about half-past eight, when it was
attacked by three footpads. One held the horses' heads while the other two
guarded the windows, firing a shot through, to terrify the occupants. They
then demanded money. No one offered any resistance, purses and bank-notes
being handed over as a matter of course. Then the travellers were allowed
to go, a parting shot in the dark being fired into the carriage. It struck
Mr. Mellish in the forehead. Coming to another inn near by, called the
"Magpies," the wounded man was taken upstairs and put to bed, while a
surgeon was sent for.
He came from Hounslow, and was robbed on the way by the same gang.
Additional medical assistance was called in, but this late victim of
highway robbery died within forty-eight hours.
[Sidenote: _SIR JOSEPH BANKS_]
The assassins were never apprehended, although Bow Street sent its
cleverest officers to track them down. Bow Street caught the smaller fry
readily enough, who snatched handkerchiefs and such petty booty, and
hanged them out of hand, while the more desperate villains generally
escaped. This is not to say that the Bow Street Runners were not vigilant
and zealous. Indeed, their zeal sometimes outran their discretion, as
instanced in their bold capture of Sir Joseph Banks, who was collecting
natural history specimens in the wilds. Sir Joseph, distinguished man of
science though he was, and a gentleman, was singularly ill-favoured, and
in this fact lies the chief sting of Peter Pindar's witty verses on the
subject--
"Sir Joseph, fav'rite of great Queens and Kings,
Whose wisdom weed- and insect-hunter sings;
And ladies fair applaud, with smile so dimpling;
Went forth one day amid the laughing fields
Where Nature such exhaustless treasure yields--A-simpling!
It happened on the self-same morn so bright
The nimble pupils of Sir Sampson Wright,
A-simpling too, for plants called Thieves, proceeded;
Of which the nation's field should oft be weeded."
They seize Sir Joseph.
"'Sirs, what d'ye take me for?' the Knight exclaimed--
'A thief,' replied the Runners, with a curse;
'And now, sir, let us search you, and be damn'd'--
And then they searched his pockets, fobs, and purse,
But, 'stead of pistol dire, and death-like crape,
A pocket-handkerchief they cast their eye on,
Containing frogs and toads of various shape,
Dock, daisy, nettletop, and dandelion,
To entertain, with great propriety,
The members of his sage Society;
Yet would not alter they their strong belief
That this their pris'ner was a thief.
"'Sirs, I'm no highwayman,' exclaimed the Knight--
'No--there,' rejoined the Runners, 'you are right--
A footpad only. Yes, we know your trade--
Yes, you're a pretty babe of grace;
We want no proofs, old codger, but your face;
So come along with us, old blade.'
* * * * *
"Sir Joseph told them that a neighb'ring Squire
Should answer for it that he was no thief;
On which they plumply damn'd him for a liar,
And said such stories should not save his beef;
And, if they understood their trade,
His _mittimus_ should soon be made;
And forty pounds be theirs, a pretty sum,
For sending such a rogue to Kingdom Come."
To the Squire, however, they took that distinguished member of Society,
who, of course, identified him at once, and bade them beg his pardon. This
they did--according to "Peter Pindar"--with a resolution in future not to
judge of people by their looks!
XVI
Just before reaching the roadside hamlet of Longford, fifteen miles from
Hyde Park Corner, a lane leads on the right hand to Harmondsworth, a short
mile distant across the wide flat cabbage and potato fields.
"Harm'sworth," as the rustics call it, is mentioned in Domesday Book,
under the name of "Hermondesworde;" that is to say, Hermonde's sworth or
sward, the pasture-land of some forgotten Hermonde.
[Sidenote: _THE "GOTHIC BARN"_]
Few ever turn aside from the dusty high-road to visit this old-fashioned
village, rich in old timber-framed houses, and possessing an ancient
tithe-barn which, standing next the church, was once part of an obscure
Priory established here. The "Gothic Barn" is built precisely on
ecclesiastical lines, with nave and aisles, and is the largest of the
tithe-barns now remaining in England, being 191 feet in length and 38
feet, in breadth. The walls are built of a rough kind of conglomerate
found in the locality, and called "pudding-stone," the flints and pebbles
distributed through the rock resembling to a lively imagination the
currants and raisins in plum-puddings. The interior of the barn is a vast
mass of oak columns and open roofing.
[Illustration: THE "GOTHIC BARN," HARMONDSWORTH.]
A relic of old country life may be seen hanging in this barn, in the
shape of a flail, now occasionally used for threshing out beans.