"flail," because it is almost fifty years since that old-world
agricultural implement was in general use. Until steam was introduced as a
labour-saving appliance in agricultural work, corn was invariably threshed
out of the ear by wooden instruments like that pictured here, consisting
of two unequal lengths of rounded wood of the size of an ordinary
broomstick, connected by leathern loops.
[Illustration: OLD FLAIL, HARMONDSWORTH]
The farm hands who used this primitive contrivance grasped hold of the
longer stick, and, brandishing it about over their heads, brought the
hinged end down repeatedly on the wheat spread out on the threshing floor;
thus, with the expenditure of considerable time and muscular strength,
separating the grains from the ears. As the "business end" of the flail is
constructed so as to swing in every direction, it is obvious that the
mastery of it was only acquired with practice, and at the cost of sundry
whacks on the head brought on himself by the clumsy novice. Indeed, it is
an instrument requiring particular dexterity in manipulation.
Longford obtains its name from the marshy ford over one of the sluggish
branches of the Colne, which anciently spread over the road at this spot.
The ford was eventually replaced by the bridge, called "Queen's Bridge,"
which now carries the highway over the stream close by the old inn now
called the "Peggy Bedford," from a well-remembered landlady who kept the
house in coaching days, and died in 1859. The real name of it, however,
now almost forgotten, is the "King's Head." The spot is picturesque in the
grouping of gnarled old wayside trees with the quaint house and its
luxuriant garden; and more so, perhaps, because it comes as a surprise
from the hitherto unrelieved monotony of the flat road all the way from
Cranford Bridge.
[Sidenote: _COLNBROOK_]
In another mile and three-quarters the road reaches Colnbrook, in midst of
whose long street one of the numerous channels of the Colne divides the
counties of Middlesex and Bucks. The boundaries of English counties are
rarely marked for the information of wayfarers along the highways and
byeways of the country, but here the brick bridge over the Colne, built in
1777, has inscriptions which mark where the frontiers march together; and
when the Bath Road is crowded with cyclists on Saturday afternoons in
summer-time one or more can generally be found standing on the bridge with
one leg in each county.
There are no fewer than four channels of the Colne here, and the land all
round about is flat and waterlogged. The entrance to Colnbrook from London
is in fact quite a little Holland in appearance, where streams flow
sluggishly beside the road and are spanned by many footbridges that give
access to the gardens of the pleasant country cottages on either side. A
fine avenue of elms shades the road, and ahead is the cramped street of
Colnbrook with its mellowed red-brick houses and bright red-tiled roofs.
Colnbrook street is narrow to a degree, and it is surprising how the many
coaches that used to come tearing through at all hours of day and night
managed to escape accidents. There is reason for this narrowness, for
Colnbrook was originally built upon a stone causeway across the marshes of
the Colne, and nowhere else were there to be found solid foundations. The
original causeway may possibly have been Roman, for this is said to have
been the station of _Ad Pontes_, described by Antoninus in his
_Itineraries_. Staines, however, is more likely the site of it.
[Illustration: THE COUNTY BOUNDARY.]
[Sidenote: _THE "OSTRICH"_]
Colnbrook is probably the best example of a decayed coaching-town now to
be found in the Home Counties. Too remote from London for suburban
expansion to have affected it, the quaint street remains much as it was a
hundred, nay two hundred years ago. The last coach might have left
yester-year, so undisturbed appears to be the place. There are
coaching-inns here of vast size, ranging from the solid-looking "George"
with "eighteenth century" proclaimed plainly enough on its stolid face,
back to the "Ostrich," rambling, gabled, timber-framed, Elizabethan. They
would have you believe that this house stands on the site of one of the
old guesthouses established in the eleventh, twelfth, and succeeding
centuries along the roads by the good Churchmen of those times. The
original guesthouse here, however, appears to have been a secular
foundation, for it is recorded that in 1106, a certain Milo Crispin gave
it--"_quoddam hospitium in via Londoniae apud Colebroc_"--to the Abbot of
Abingdon. The sign of the "Ostrich" is therefore a lineal descendant of
"_Hospitium_," _via_ "Hospice" and "Ospridge;" for, as we have already
seen, the letter H has ever been a negligeable quantity.
The original house is said by persistent traditions to have been the scene
of a dreadful series of abominable murders something of the "Sweeny Todd"
order. The West of England, even so far back as five hundred years ago,
was famous for its cloth, and along this road, with their bales and
pack-horses, journeyed the rich clothiers to and from the London market,
halting in their tedious travels at the inns on the way. The "Ostrich" was
one of these, and prospered exceedingly by the patronage of those jolly
merchants. The gold they carried, however, aroused the cupidity of the
innkeeper and his wife, who devised a murder-trap in one of the upstairs
bedrooms, by which the bed, which was placed above a trap-door, was tilted
up in the middle of the night, so that its slumbering occupant was shot
into a huge copper of boiling water, and so scalded to death. According to
this tradition, which itself is some hundreds of years old, thirteen
victims were thus disposed of, and the innkeeper waxed rich. There must
have been other accomplices, for, according to the story, the bodies were
kept until they formed a cartload, when they were heaped up, driven away
to the Thames at Wraysbury and thrown in. One, however, had fallen out by
the way, and whilst the criminals were disputing by the river-bank as to
what had become of it, they were observed by a fisherman who had been
hidden in the rushes while engaged in setting eel-bucks. He suggested that
the best thing for them to do was to throw in one of themselves, to make
up the number; to which sprightly wit they replied with a shower of
arrows. The fisherman then rowed away, with one of the arrows sticking in
his boat, and went with it into Colnbrook the following day. Outside the
"Ostrich" he was espied by the innkeeper's little son, who exclaimed, "You
have got one of my father's arrows!" The man and his wife were missing,
but were afterwards captured and hanged.
[Illustration: COLNBROOK, A DECAYED COACHING TOWN.]
This gory legend does not render Colnbrook the more attractive to the
stranger, but the Colnbrook folks are proud of it. Like the Fat Boy in
"Pickwick," they "wants to make yer flesh creep," and would have one
believe that the present "Ostrich" is the identical building--which it
isn't.
Another cherished tradition of Colnbrook is that King John stayed here on
his journey to Runneymede to sign the famous Magna Charta, the "Palladium
of English Liberties," as phrase-makers are pleased to call it. They still
show the stranger "King John's Palace," a quaint house which looks on to
the road, and is not so old as John's time by some three hundred years.
That, however, by no means discredits the story to the good folks of
Colnbrook.
A better ascertained historical event is the rising in favour of the
deposed Richard the Second in 1400, when forty thousand men from the West
Country lay encamped by the Colne, prepared to descend upon Windsor and
London, to seize the usurper, Henry the Fourth. But Henry, fleeing from
Windsor, raised an army in London; and between the rumours of his coming
and treachery in their own ranks, the partisans of Richard faded away.
XVII
[Sidenote: _TO SLOUGH_]
The long stretches of the Bath Road between this and Slough are nowadays
enlivened by few incidents or interesting places, although during the last
century, and well on into this, the highway was lively enough with
Royalties and their escorts, journeying between Windsor and St. James's.
The route taken on these occasions was generally through Datchet, and so
on to the Bath Road just here. An old print of this period shows us how
George the Third used to travel on this road to London, or to the unkingly
domestic life at Kew Palace, where the farmer-like reputation of that not
very brilliant monarch was sustained on boiled mutton and turnips, and
improving books.
[Illustration: ALMSHOUSES, LANGLEY.]
The hamlet of Langley Broom, one and a half miles on the way, is the
uninteresting offshoot, of the pretty village of Langley Marish (or
"Marshy Langley"), that lies just within sight of the road, and has some
delightful old red-brick almshouses, which, together with the ancient
library and painted room of Renaissance period in the church, render the
place worthy a visit. This is all there is to interest the stranger, with
the exception of a pretty peep towards Windsor Castle on the left hand,
within two miles of Slough, and near where Cary of the _Itinerary_ places
a spot he calls "Tetsworth Water," which does not appear to exist
nowadays.
[Illustration: THE STOLEN FOUNTAIN.]
[Sidenote: _A STOLEN FOUNTAIN_]
Slough is quite modern and unremarkable, but it is rapidly building up
legends of its own. There have, for instance, been many strange thefts on
the roads, from time to time, but none perhaps stranger than the
purloining, two years ago, of the drinking-fountain which used to stand at
the entrance to Slough, where the road branches off to Uxbridge. Until
some unusually acquisitive folk came along and carried it away with them,
there was at that corner a fountain of bronze and marble, fourteen feet in
height, the bronze upper part weighing nearly half a ton. It acted also as
a finger-post, directing strayed cyclists in the way they should go. The
good folks of Slough went to bed one night and saw their fountain standing
where it had been used to stand for years past; but in the morning, when
they arose and went forth about their business, the fountain was gone!
Nothing but the plinth was left. Some mad wag suggested that one of the
many cyclists who frequent the Bath Road had taken it home with him as a
memento of Slough; but it seems that a gang of original-minded thieves
made away with it for the sake of the bronze, which, when broken up, must
have brought them a good sum. At any rate, it seems quite beyond the
bounds of possibility that Slough will ever see its fountain again.
[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE ROAD NEAR SLOUGH.]
XVIII
It requires the specialized knowledge of a district surveyor to determine
where Slough ends and Salt Hill begins, although probably it would be a
shrewd guess to say that the roads which cross the Bath Road in the midst
of Slough, and go respectively left and right to Windsor and Stoke Poges,
form the dividing line. For all practical purposes, however, the places
are one. Salt Hill has decayed, rather than grown, while the town of
Slough (unlovely name!) is almost wholly a creation of the railway. Not
only strangers have noted the unpleasing name of the place, but some of
the inhabitants even endeavoured to change it a few years ago. The
proposition was to rechristen it "Upton Royal," Upton being a hamlet near
by, the "Royal" a bright idea of the local boot-lickers, who wanted to
emphasize the fact of their proximity to Windsor. The project fell
through.
[Sidenote: _A TRAGICAL DINNER_]
Many of the crack coaches halted at Salt Hill, where, at the "Castle" or
the "Windmill," they found accommodation of the very best. Salt Hill, in
fact, was a place which thrived solely on coaching, and the glories of it
are now departed. A tragical event clouded over the fair fame of the
"Castle" in 1773. It seems that on the 29th of March in that year, a
number of gentlemen forming the Colnbrook Turnpike Commission met there,
when the Hon. Mr. O'Brien, Capt. Needham, Edward Mason, Major Mayne, Major
Cheshire, Walpole Eyre, Capt. Salter, Mr. Isherwood, Mr. Benwell, Mr.
Pote, senr., and Mr. Burcombe attended and dined together. The dinner
consisted of soup, jack, perch, and "eel pitch cockt" (whatever that may
have been), fowls, bacon, and greens, veal cutlets, ragout of pigs' ears,
chine of mutton and salad, course of lamb and cucumbers, crawfish, pastry,
and jellies. The wines were Madeira and Port of the very best quality;
but, notwithstanding this elaborate spread, the company, we are told, ate
and drank moderately, nor was there excess in any respect. Before dinner,
several paupers were examined, and among them one most remarkably
miserable object. In about ten or eleven days afterwards, every one of the
company, except Mr. Pote, who had walked in the garden during the
examination of the paupers, was taken ill, and five of them soon died. It
was, at the time, supposed that some infection from the paupers had
occasioned this fatality, more especially as Mr. Pote, who was absent from
the examination, was the only person who escaped unaffected, although he
had dined in exactly the same manner as the others.
Some persons have compared this affair with the mortality arising from the
Black Assizes, but it should seem, by another account, that these
unfortunate gentlemen had partaken of soup that had been allowed to stand
in a copper vessel, and that, therefore, they died of mineral poisoning.
They lie buried in the little churchyard of Wexham, two miles distant,
where an inscription records the facts. That sad business quite ruined the
"Castle" Hotel.
But all the Salt Hill hotels were ruined when the Great Western Railway
was constructed. The first section was opened, from Paddington to Taplow,
on June 4, 1838, and those old hostelries at one blow found most of their
patrons taken from them. It is true that this disaster had been impending
since 1833, when the route for the new railway was first surveyed; but
after the victory of the opponents of the first Bill, when a public
meeting was held at Salt Hill to rejoice in the defeat of the railway
project, the innkeepers seemed to think that they could not come to much
harm. They were, however, bitterly disillusioned.
[Sidenote: _OPENING OF THE G.W.R._]
It is curious, nowadays, to look back upon the time when the Great Western
Railway was first built. The authorities of Eton College, together with
the Court, had effectually driven the railway from Windsor and Eton, and
the College people had also secured the insertion of a clause in the
Company's Act forbidding the erection of a station at Slough.
Notwithstanding this, however, trains stopped at Slough from the very
first. The Company did this by an ingenious evasion of the spirit, if not
the letter, of their Parliamentary obligations. By their Act they were
forbidden to _build a station_ at Slough, but nothing had been said about
trains stopping there! Accordingly, two rooms were hired at a public house
beside the line where Slough station now stands, and tickets were issued
there, comfortably enough. The Eton College authorities were maddened by
this smart dodge, and applied for an injunction against the Company, which
was duly refused.
This is not the only railway romance belonging to Slough, for the Slough
signal-box has had a romance of its own. The cabin was erected in 1844,
and one of the earliest messages the signalman wired to London by the then
wonderful new invention of the electric telegraph, was intelligence of the
birth of the Duke of Edinburgh. The following year a man named Tawell
committed a murder at Salt Hill, and escaped by the next train to London;
but information was telegraphed to town, and being arrested as he stepped
from the carriage at Paddington, he was subsequently tried and hanged. The
telegraphist warned the officials at Paddington to look out for a man
dressed like a Quaker. It is a singular circumstance that the original
telegraphic code did not comprise any signal for the letter "Q;" but the
telegraphist was not to be beaten. He spelled the word "Kwaker." Sir
Francis Head has recorded how he was travelling along the line, months
after, in a crowded carriage. "Not a word had been spoken since the train
left London, but as we neared Slough Station, a short-bodied,
short-necked, short-nosed, exceedingly respectable-looking man in the
corner, fixing his eyes on the apparently fleeting wires, nodded to us as
he muttered aloud, "Them's the cords that hung John Tawell!"[2]
XIX
It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the history of Bath,
and the crowds of rich travellers who travelled thither, to learn that
Hounslow Heath had not long been left behind before another highwayman's
territory was entered upon. This stretched roughly from Salt Hill, on the
east, to Maidenhead Thicket, on the west. It would, of course, have been
ill gleaning after the harvest had been reaped by the pick of the
profession on the Heath, and, as a matter of fact, the gangs who infested
Maidenhead Thicket and Salt Hill confined their attention to travellers
_returning_ from Bath. Hawkes was the chief of them, and his was a name of
dread.
[Sidenote: _THE "FLYING HIGHWAYMAN"_]
Hawkes, the "Flying Highwayman," who obtained that eminently descriptive
name from the rapidity with which he moved from place to place, levying
tribute from the frequenters of the Bath Road, was a darkly prominent
figure in the days of George the Third. His name perhaps is not so well
known as that of the more than half-mythical Dick Turpin, but it deserves
especial mention from the circumstance of his keeping the whole country
side between Hounslow and Windsor in terror for some years, and from the
cleverness of the disguises he assumed. Disguised now as an officer, or a
farmer; or again, as a Quaker, he despoiled the King's liege subjects very
effectively. His most notable exploit was enacted at Salt Hill.
A vapouring fellow, apparently from the sister island, who, according to
his own account of his antecedents, had been too frequently in action
with hosts of enemies to care for footpads and such scum, alighting from a
post-chaise, entered the wayside sign of the Plough, and laying down a
pair of large horse-pistols, called loudly for brandy-and-water.
Only one guest was in the room--a broad-hatted and drab-suited
Quaker--who, in the most sedate manner, was satisfying his appetite with a
modest meal. The traveller, swaggering in and laying down his weapons on
the table in such close proximity to the edibles, startled the man of
peace, who shrank from them in very terror.
"Oh, my friend," says the traveller, "'tis folks who fear to carry arms
give opportunities to the highwaymen. If they went protected as I do, what
occasion would there be to fear any man, even Hawkes himself?" And then,
with an abundance of oaths, he protested that not half a dozen highwaymen
should avail to deprive him of a single sixpence. The Quaker, meanwhile,
continued his humble refection, now and again glancing from his bread and
cheese at his most noisy and demonstrative companion, who drank his
brandy-and-water stalking up and down the apartment.
Presently, his drink exhausted, and his eloquence thrown away upon friend
Broadbrim--who he at once conceived to be so quiet because he had nothing
to lose--he unceremoniously turned his back and sat down upon a chair to
examine the valuables he carried about his person. Having satisfied
himself of their safety, he snatched up his pistols, and, with an
impatient exclamation, strode off to the bar, and was paying for his
liquor and gossiping, when the silent Quaker, who had by this time
finished his repast, passed out hurriedly and disappeared down the road.
[Sidenote: _THE HIGHWAYMAN AND HIS PREY_]
The boisterous traveller continued his conversation for a while with the
landlord, and then, re-entering his post-chaise, bade the postboy drive
fast, and holloa when a suspicious person approached. He threw himself
upon the seat after he had closed the door, stretched his legs as wide as
possible, and, planting his feet firmly, cocked his pistols, holding them
at arm's length with their barrels resting on the open windows.
The horses went on for about a mile, when the chaise entered upon a
heath--a very desolate-looking place, with never a house visible in any
direction: with nothing, indeed, to enliven the perspective save a
gallows, if such an object, with a rattling skeleton swinging in chains
from the cross-beam, can be so considered. The traveller gazed with a grim
satisfaction at this spectacle, for it seemed to him, as to the
shipwrecked sailor in the old story--an earnest of civilization.
But while he was musing on the long arm of the law, the rapid sounds of
horse's hoofs, sounding over the ragged turf of the heath, were heard, and
a voice was presently raised, commanding the postboy to stop. The chaise
was stopped suddenly, with a jolt and a crash, and a face, black-masked,
mysterious, horrible, appeared at the window, together with the still more
alarming apparition of the grinning muzzle of a horse-pistol. Then
followed the inevitable, "Your money or your life!"
The traveller had his weapons ready. Raising the muzzle of one to the
highwayman's head, he pulled the trigger, while his unexpected assailant
stood and laughed. Beyond a snap and some sparks from the bruised flint,
nothing happened. With a curse, he levelled the other pistol, and with the
same result. The man in the mask laughed louder. "No good, friend Bounce,
trying that game," said he, coolly; "the powder was carefully blown out of
each of thy pans, almost under thy nose. If thou dost not want a bullet
through thy head, just hand me over the repeater in thy boot, the purse in
thy hat, the bank-notes in thy fob, the gold snuffbox in thy breast, and
the diamond ring up thy sleeve. Out with them," he added, "in less time
than thee took when I saw thee put 'em there, or I'll send thee to Davy
Jones, and take 'em myself."
The muzzle of the highwayman's pistol was at his head--the trigger at full
cock. The flashing eyes that sparkled behind the mask showed the
unfortunate traveller that here was no man to be trifled with. He dropped
his useless weapon, and with considerable trepidation drew, one by one,
from their places of security the valuables mentioned by the highwayman,
who, when he had received them all, drew half a crown from the purse, and,
flinging it into the chaise, said, casting off his Quaker speech, "There
is enough to pay your turnpikes. And, harkee!" he added, in a more
peremptory tone, "for the future, don't brag quite so much." Turning his
horse's head, he disappeared, leaving the chaise and its occupant to
continue their journey. The latter speedily recognized that the Quaker was
none other than Hawkes himself.
[Sidenote: _AN ALE-HOUSE FIGHT_]
But this was the last exploit of Captain Hawkes. On the evening of the
same day a man in a heavy topcoat and riding-boots, splashed, and with
every appearance of having come off a long journey, entered the "Rising
Sun," at a village about twenty miles away. In one compartment of the
tap-room, on either side of a painted table, sat two ploughmen, in
smock-frocks, their shock heads resting on their arms, which were spread
out on the table near an empty quart pot. They were both snoring loudly.
The new-comer, having been served with a glass of gin and water, and a
long clay pipe, took no notice of the sleepers. In a few minutes one of
the rustics awoke, and, glancing vacantly about him, scratching his
carroty head, seized the empty pot.
He put it down, and, giving his companion a push that nearly sent him off
his seat, exclaimed, "Ye greedy chap! blest if ye ain't been and drunk up
all the beer while I were a-sleeping."
"Then ye shouldn't have been a-sleeping, ye fool," retorted the other,
grinning from ear to ear.
"I'll gi' ye a dowse o' the chaps if ye grin at me," shouted the man,
angrily.