with an air of some authority, came into the kitchen where several
others were. He was followed by a neatly and plainly attired young
woman, who sat down at a respectful distance, and seemed to shun
observation. I soon learned from the tenor of his conversation with
the landlord that he was a kind of deputy-constable in some of the
neighbouring townships, and that the young woman was going with him
before a magistrate, on a charge which would send her to prison, for
having become a mother without producing a legitimate father for her
offspring. This was enough to interest me in behalf of the girl, even
had not the coarse jokes of the constable and one or two others excited
my disgust and strong aversion. I once or twice put in a word of a
civil and rather exculpatory tendency, for which I almost got laughed
at by the men, but was repaid by the modest and grateful looks of the
poor girl. The son of the squire’s coachman had, as I understood, been
courting the damsel two or three years, but when she was in a way for
bringing a charge upon him, he had nearly ceased visiting her, and had
entirely given over talking about marriage. These circumstances, which
to the young woman must be matters of deep affliction and shame, were
to the country boors subjects for scornful and bitter joking, all of
which she bore very meekly and, what made me think better of her, with
a good sense and self-respectful manner which prevented her from making
the least reply. She sat with her head not entirely downcast, but with
an air of shame, indignation, and repentance, whilst blushes, paleness,
and tears were alternately visible on her cheeks. I ardently wished for
an opportunity for getting her out of the hands of these ruffians, and
particularly of the one who had charge of her, and as I had learned
the constable and she were going my way, I determined to avail myself
of any chance for that purpose. I therefore fell to cultivating a good
opinion with the functionary; I gave him some tobacco, and my glass
to drink from, and in a short time he was telling about the numerous
perils he had gone through in his apprehension of thieves, poachers,
and trespassers; on the sound judgment his office required, and the
courage and activity he had on sundry occasions displayed, whilst I
wondered how so rare a constable could have remained so long in a
humble country situation. At length he must go, and as he said he
should be glad of my company as far as we went, we all three left the
public-house.
[Sidenote: _ADVENTURE_]
“We had not got far ere a young fellow, apparently a farm labourer,
climbed over a stile from the fields and joined us. He was going to a
doctor, he said, having had his face, some weeks before, injured by a
young colt kicking him. His head and features were bandaged so that
none of them were visible save his eyes and part of his nose. He walked
with us, saying very little, but occasionally sighing, as it were from
pain. I observed the young woman glancing rather doubtfully towards
him once or twice, but neither she nor the constable seemed to know
him. After walking some distance the constable said he had to turn off
across the fields to a village. He said I might as well go that way,
as the foot-road led into the highway again, and was short, and there
was an excellent tap at the alehouse, where we could have a glass after
his business was done. I agreed, for I wanted to see something more of
this affair, and so I stepped with him, his prisoner and the young man
into the meadow path—for the doctor also lived in the same village.
We soon arrived at the little hamlet, and the constable inquired of a
servant in livery if ‘his worship was at home?’ He said he was, and
would be downstairs in half an hour, and if he called then he would
see him. We stepped into a public-house, where we ordered some ale,
and having found it very good, we began to smoke, having agreed, very
philosophically, that it was the wisest course to ‘take things easy in
this world.’ We had sat thus, blowing clouds for some time, and going
on our second jug, when the young fellow came suddenly into the room,
and, gazing wildly, said a person was killed just above, and the doctor
had sent him for a constable, as they could not remove the body until
one arrived. Our active officer then, potent with ale and authority,
laid down his pipe, pulled out his staff, took a huge draught, and
charging me with the custody of the young woman until he returned, he
hurried out of the house. As soon as he had disappeared, ‘here,’ I said
to the girl, ‘take that shilling, and run for thy life.’ The young
fellow at the same time pulled his bandages from his face; a scream
burst from the girl, he laid hold of her arm, I turned to light my
pipe, and the next instant they had disappeared.
[Sidenote: _COMEDY_]
“I then hastened up the lane in search of my active coadjutor, and met
him coming down swearing and brandishing his truncheon. ‘Where are
they?’ I said, for I thought I would be first to speak. ‘Where are
who?’ he asked. ‘Why, the young Jezebel and that fellow with the broken
face?’ ‘Where are they?’ he repeated, glaring on me with his two eyes
as if they would have started from his head. ‘Where are they indeed?’
‘You should know where one is at least.’ I then told him in a somewhat
deprecatory tone that I only turned to the fire to light my pipe, and
when I looked again both the prisoner and the young fellow were gone.
‘But you are not gone at any rate,’ he replied, ‘nor shall you go until
you have been before the justice to answer for this. Come along,’ he
said, ‘come this way,’ and laying hold of my arm he reconducted me to
the public-house. ‘Heigh ho!’ I said, ‘there’s nothing like taking
things easy in this world.’ ‘D—-- you and your easiness,’ he retorted,
quite in a rage. ‘John,’ he said to the ostler, ‘go and see if his
worship is astir yet.’ John went and soon returned with the tidings
that his worship was ready. My conductor and I then went into the
house of the worthy magistrate, and were met at the yard door by a
set of very cross pointers and cock-dogs, who made a general assault
as if they would have worried us, and myself in particular, for they
seemed to have barked at my companion before. We were conducted into
a neat carpeted room, where his worship and his clerk sat at a table
covered with a green cloth, and with a number of papers and writing
materials before them. ‘Well, Andrew!’ said the clerk, a thin, sallow,
suspicious-eyed person, ‘where is the girl you were to bring?’ ‘Lord
bless his honour’s worship,’ said Andrew, ‘I left her in the custody
of this here man and he’s let her run away.’ ‘How’s that?’ asked his
worship, lifting his eyes from a Game Act which he had been perusing.
‘How did you come to leave her in this man’s charge? I thought you
had been an older officer and had known better than that,’ said his
worship. ‘May it please your honour’s worship,’ said the constable, ‘I
and the girl and this said prisoner, that now is, were awaiting your
honour’s pleasure in the public-house, when in comes a scurvy knave as
was awaiting o’ the doctor, and said there was a person killed, and I
must go and take charge of the corpse; so I ’livered my prisoner into
this man’s charge, and away I went arter the corpse; and when I had
run up and down o’ the village, I couldn’t hear o’ no corpse, and the
people all, sir, a-laughing at me.’
[Sidenote: _MORE COMEDY_]
“The clerk gave a dark and bitter frown, the magistrate burst out
a-laughing heartily. I laughed too; in fact, I had been doing so in
my mind during the last half-hour. When the clerk saw the magistrate
laugh, he was suddenly taken with a like cheerful sensation, and we all
three laughed at Andrew, the constable.
“‘Well,’ said the magistrate, composing himself, ‘but what has this to
do with the loss of your prisoner?’
“‘Please your honour,’ said the constable, ‘before I went a-seeking
the corpse I left the girl in charge of this man, who I believe is no
better than he should be, and when I came back he tells me the girl had
run away whilst he was a-lighting of his pipe.’
“‘How was it?’ asked the magistrate, addressing me. I gave him the
same account I had given the constable, on which he first, and then
the clerk, burst into a hearty fit of laughter, to the apparently sore
puzzlement of the constable, who seemed to think it a subject of too
grave a nature for such light entertainment.
“‘What do you wish his worship to do in this case, Andrew?’ asked the
clerk.
“‘I wish his honour would send this here man to jail instead of the
girl,’ was the reply.
“‘Can we do that?’ asked the magistrate, half serious, half joking.
“‘We can hold him in sureties if Andrew undertakes to prefer a bill
against him at the assizes,’ was the reply in the same strain.
“‘Let it be done then,’ said his worship. ‘Andrew, you will be bound in
a bond of fifty pounds to prosecute this charge at the next assizes.’
“‘Please your honour’s worship, I’d rather be excused,’ said Andrew,
looking alarmed. ‘Who’s to pay expenses?’
“‘I rather think the prisoner won’t pay, at any rate,’ said his
worship; ‘those who prosecute will have the first chance of that.’
“‘Then I couldn’t do it,’ said the constable; ‘I’d rather not have any
hand in the affair.’
“‘Is the man to be discharged then?’ asked the magistrate.
“‘Yes, if your honour pleases,’ said the constable; ‘I don’t like them
’ere bonds.’
“The magistrate then asked me what I was and where I came from, and I
told him I was a weaver and came from Lancashire.
“He asked me where I was going to and for what purpose, and I told him
I was on my way to London in expectation of getting a place.
“Had I relatives in London, and what sort of a place did I expect to
obtain? I said I had not any relatives in London, but I had some good
friends, and I had little doubt of getting a situation under Government.
[Sidenote: _DISCHARGED_]
“‘Under Government,’ said he, with surprise; the clerk also elevated
his eyebrows.
“‘Yes, sir,’ said I, half laughing; ‘I’m going up in expectation of a
Government place.’
“‘The man is _non compos_,’ said the magistrate in an undertone.
“‘Very likely, sir,’ replied the clerk.
“‘You are discharged, then,’ said the magistrate. ‘We can’t do anything
with you unless there be an undertaking to prosecute.’
“I bowed respectfully to his worship, gave the clerk a questionable
smile, and quitting the room, I made the best of my way to the
public-house, where I had left my bundle and stick.
“Another person had come in whilst we were away, and the landlady had
told him about the girl running off and my being taken prisoner. This
person was an attorney’s clerk, and he took up my cause earnestly,
and advised me to prosecute the constable for a false imprisonment,
he was giving me that advice when the constable returned. I pretended
to entertain the project, and when the official became aware of the
subject on which we were deliberating, he became very uneasy, and
seemed almost willing to make any compromise rather than be under
the clutches of the other ‘limb of the law.’ At length, after I had
sufficiently tormented him, I agreed to a settlement, the terms
of which were that he should pay for a quantity of ale, I and the
attorney’s clerk, whom I found to be a queer, ironical fellow,
agreeing to pay for as much to come in after his was drunk.
“We had sat here rather a considerable time, and had got into high
good humour with each other and the liquor, when the sounds of voices
and a fiddle were heard approaching the house, and in a minute after
in walked the girl we had prisoner in the morning, arm in arm with
a young fellow, who, by his speech and dress, we recognised as the
one with the patched face; in short, they were the two runaways,
followed by some half a dozen young men, two young women, and an
elderly person fiddling. They had been at church and had got wed, the
banns having been published there some months before. They were now
all ready for dancing, singing, and mirth; I scarcely ever saw a set
of happier-looking countenances; the lad was in raptures; the bride
seemed to have more self-command than any in the place. She thanked
me most gratefully for the kindly feelings I had evinced; her husband
joined her, and I found it of no use offering to break up from the
wedding party. The constable was quite reconciled, as the charge, he
said, would be taken off the township, and the ratepayers would deem it
no bad day’s work of his. The attorney offered his friendly services
in reconciling the squire’s coachman to the match, and the landlady
brought in a posset of spiced ale for the wedding feast. The fiddler
rosined his bow afresh, and played up a jig that set all the lads
a-capering. In short, we ate and drank and danced the afternoon away.
Evening followed, night came, and then the noon of night; and the last
scenes I committed to memory were the fiddler falling from his chair
and smashing his viol, and the attorney painting the constable’s face
delicately with a blacking-brush whilst the latter person was fast
asleep.
[Sidenote: _THE HAUGHTY HOSTELRY_]
“The next morning I was at Newport Pagnell at an early hour. The place
had a most romantic appearance as I approached it. There must have
been heavy rains upwards, for the Ouse had overflowed its banks, and
numerous cattle were grazing on small green islets surrounded by the
flood. The weather continued all that a foot traveller could wish,
and I walked on leisurely, enjoying the cooling breeze, the odour of
flowers, and the music of birds some six or eight miles until I arrived
at the celebrated village of Woburn, where I stepped into the first
public-house I came to on the left-hand side—I think it was the sign of
the ‘Bedford Arms.’ The place seemed very fine, and the people I saw
moving about looked, I thought, in a strange supercilious way at me;
none of them stopped to ask what I wanted. At length I desired a woman
to bring me a glass of ale, intending it as a preliminary to breakfast.
She did not pause a moment to receive my order, but looking down, swept
past me. ‘Bless us,’ I thought, ‘what sort of a public-house have I got
into now?’ No one attended to me, and soon after I asked again for a
glass of ale; this servant also went away without speaking, but in a
short time a female of a superior appearance came and said they did
not entertain foot travellers. I expressed my surprise at that, and
assured her I was both able and willing to pay for whatever I called
for. She said she did not doubt it, but it was an invariable rule of
the house not to serve persons travelling on foot, and the rule could
not be departed from. Could I not have a draught of ale? I asked. No,
foot travellers could not have anything there. I accordingly rose,
and replacing my bundle on my shoulder, I begged her to inform her
employer that the rule of the house might bring trouble and humiliation
sometime, inasmuch as, if other engagements did not press me, I would
go before the nearest magistrate or the Duke of Bedford himself, and
prefer a complaint against the occupier for refusing to entertain a
traveller without sufficient cause. She smiled at my law (as well she
might, having scanned my appearance, and thence formed an opinion of my
purse), and said there were other places in the village where I might
have whatever refreshment I wanted; and then, probably thinking she had
wasted time enough on me, she turned and walked off, and I came out of
that inhospitable and pride-infected place. At another inn I met with a
reception the very reverse of the first; the people, both landlord and
servants, were very obliging and attentive. I made a good breakfast,
rested, chatted, and received an invitation to call there again if I
came that way.
“I wonder whether the people of the Duke’s Arms are yet in business?
and if they are, whether, like scores of their arrogant brotherhood,
they have not been so far humbled by those great levellers, the
railways, that if a wayfaring man now enters their house he can have a
cup of ale for money?
[Sidenote: _JOURNEY ENDED_]
“I walked to Redbourn to dinner, which consisted of a plain but
delicious repast at a very humble pothouse. Here I remarked a horseshoe
nailed inside the weather board of the door, and on my pretending
ignorance of its purpose, and asking what it was for, an old wrinkled
dame, seemingly the mother of the household, told me with perfect
seriousness that it was to keep all witches and bewitched persons and
things out of the place, and that so long as it remained there nothing
under the influence of witchcraft could enter.
“At St. Albans I walked amid the ruins of the Old Abbey, having
previously passed a fragment of a wall in the meadows below,
undoubtedly a part of the remains of the British city of Verulam. I
lingered rather long with these scenes, and it was getting dark when
I passed the Obelisk at Barnet, where the famous battle was fought in
the Wars of the Roses. Every step I advanced to-day, the people, their
houses, and their manners, became more Londonish; and it will not then
appear surprising that at the first public-house I went into I was
made welcome to comfortable quarters, and so remained there during the
night. The next morning I walked into London, and took my breakfast at
a coffee-house.”
XI
Islington is but a mile and a quarter from the General Post Office.
Even eighty years ago it was only semi-rural. London, in fact, is
really after all a slow-moving monster, and although there are, here
and there, instances of swift extension, the Great City enlarges itself
as a rule with elephantine deliberation. At Islington, in the heyday of
the coaching era, you first experienced the sensation of being on the
road to anywhere in particular; for there, on Islington Green, stood
the first turnpike gates. On the hither side was London: once through
them, and you were definitely in the country. As the illustration
shows, characteristically urban streets of houses had then begun to
appear, but the cocks and hens and the drove of sheep in the road
present a rural appearance, and in the distance the church seems to
stand amid rustic bowers.
Beyond the village of Islington lay the open road again, and travellers
still, as they came to Ring Cross, spoke fearfully of the gibbet that
had stood there, and hoped the memory of such things had not died out,
nor ceased to be a warning to malefactors.
[Illustration: ISLINGTON GREEN, 1825.]
Ring Cross has long since disappeared from the map. It stood, according
to such careful cartographers as John Rocque and his coadjutors
in 1746, at a point three and a half miles from London, now to be
identified with the junction of the Holloway Road and the Benwell
and Hornsey Roads, which then, under the fearful name of “Devil’s
Lane,” led to the remote hamlet of Crouch End.
[Sidenote: _SCENES OF DREAD_]
The neighbourhood was of ill omen. There many a tattered body, slowly
disintegrating, had hung in chains; most notable among them that of
John Price, the hangman, who on May 31st, 1718, was himself hanged
for robbing and murdering one Elizabeth White in Bunhill Fields, his
body being afterwards suspended here. The horror of it was revived in
1827, when a skeleton with the gibbet-irons was found at “Catherine
Street, near the main road, Holloway”; the gibbet and the remains
being afterwards exhibited at the “Coach and Horses” public-house near
by, perhaps to be identified with the house of that name now at 214,
Holloway Road.
Highgate formed in those times another settled spot, where London
citizens lived a rural life and cultivated the virtues and ruddy
cheeks, amid villainously ill-reputed wastes to north and south.
Finchley Common and its fringing Alsatias stretched north, as far as
that other civilised interval, Barnet; and through the great common
of Finchley ran the road which all who travelled north must pass, as
messieurs the highwaymen knew full well.
In days before any kind of coach travelled the road, it was the usual
thing for a traveller to get astride his own horse and so, bumping in
the saddle, to come to his destination. Others, who, although owning
no horses, had a good eye for horseflesh and were good at a bargain,
would often purchase a mount and at the end of a long journey sell him
to advantage. It was one of these travellers who, having bought a fine
horse in London at a very moderate price, found when he had come to
Finchley Common that he had acquired a very singular bargain indeed.
Riding across the lonely waste, he saw another horseman advancing;
whereupon his own horse, in the most curious manner, edged up to the
stranger and pushed in so threatening a way against him that he, with
every sign of fear, handed over his purse. The horse had obviously been
the property of a highwayman.
The Manchester Mail changed horses at the “Old White Lion,” Finchley,
as the print after James Pollard shows; and whether or not Pollard
intended to convey any such idea, it looks distinctly a hostelry and
a neighbourhood in which it would not be prudent for a stranger with
much money about him to linger long after the mail had duly changed and
driven off. What an astonishing change is that which has now come upon
the scene!
[Illustration: THE MANCHESTER MAIL CHANGING HORSES AT THE “OLD WHITE
LION,” FINCHLEY, 1835.
[_After James Pollard._
]
Change, in fact, looms large upon the home stretches of the road, and
even Barnet Fair is threatened with extinction. Threatened men and
threatened institutions live long, but at last some one or something
puts a period to their existence; and they are in the end, when people
have almost come to consider them immortal, cut off with suddenness.
Barnet Fair will doubtless in the near future follow most other fairs
into the past tense; but meanwhile, although considered moribund
by many, it is without doubt extremely lively. And it is just this
lusty liveliness that will, paradoxically, cause its abolition; for
the crowds of horse-dealers, and East-End and low-life Londoners in
general, who are attracted to it for its annual three days, commencing
on the first Monday in September, are not favourably regarded by
the “residential” classes of Barnet and the district; although the
tradespeople seem to look upon them with tolerably friendly eyes.
Opinions are divided, as they must needs be when such opposite
ideals of life prevail. The “residents” want peace and quietness:
the tradespeople want trade, and they apparently have the ear of the
vestry, which so long since as 1888 passed a resolution that as the
fair at that time brought over 20,000 people into the district and
was the means of some £10,000 to £12,000 being spent there, it would
be a great hardship to the commercial classes in Barnet if it were
abolished. A memorial was presented to the then Home Secretary praying
that the fair should be continued, and the petition proved successful.
[Sidenote: _BARNET FAIR_]
“Improvements” have not been lacking of late in Barnet. That they are
improvements admits of no doubt, for they have caused the widening of
the roadway at a narrow point, and have disclosed the noble parish
church to view, It was built in at its eastern end, at some bygone
period, with a quaint old house and shop; a picturesque jumble, and
one which has, to some, left an aching void in its disappearance. This
odd excrescence was an old-world baker’s shop, with carpenter-Gothic
stuccoed little house above: not (as may be gathered) admirable for
the purity of its style. Like the fly in amber, it was neither rich
nor rare, but one speculated on what brought it in such a strange
conjunction, built on to the end of the church in such a manner
that the uninstructed stranger was at a loss to tell where the
ecclesiastical building ended and the merely secular one began.
[Illustration: MONKEN HADLEY CHURCH.]
Barnet has been already fully treated of in the pages of the GREAT
NORTH ROAD and the HOLYHEAD ROAD, and there remains little else to say
of it; but it, among other places, cherishes the diverting story of the
postmaster’s wife handing out her husband’s leathern breeches from the
bedroom window to the up night mail, instead of the postal bags. The
guard did not discover the mistake until Highgate was reached, when he
returned on horseback to exchange the wearing apparel for His Majesty’s
mails.
The mail-bags themselves were once stolen here. The incident happened
in February, 1810, whiles the horses were being changed. Thieves made
off with the bags for places from Hatfield to Grantham, and thence to
Spilsby and Boston, and although the notice issued on March 1st by
the Postmaster-General offered a reward of one hundred pounds for the
apprehension of the robber, no one was ever captured, nor did the bags
ever reappear.
XII
[Sidenote: _COCKFOSTERS_]
A weird place-name, prominent upon the signposts along the road,
irresistibly invites to a further exploration. “To Cockfosters,” says
the signposts. Certainly, by all means. You cannot choose but go to see
what manner of place this may be; but after all—as in countless other
instances—nothing so very remarkable meets the explorer’s gaze. It is,
in fact, a little woodland hamlet on the borders of the three parishes
of Hadley, East Barnet, and Enfield; and the name, in the lack of any
actual evidence, is presumed to derive from the ancient French phrase,
_Bicoque forestière_, a little settlement amid unenclosed forest land.
[Sidenote: _MONKEN HADLEY_]
More meets the eye at Monken Hadley, a village not yet overwhelmed
by the suburban tide. The centre of local interest is, of course, as
usual, in the church, and the interest of the church itself is centred
on the tower.
The date of the tall tower is readily fixed by the quaint arabic
figures over the doorway, which, deciphered, give the year 1494.
But the great curiosity of Monken Hadley church is, of course, the
fire-pot, or beacon, which arouses such speculation on the part of
strangers at a distance.
[Illustration: THE FIRE-POT, MONKEN HADLEY.]