in the Record Office, where, inscribed in crabbed Latin on parchment
rolls, they may be readily seen, if not so readily deciphered. From
them may be gathered the names of the masons and the sculptors engaged:
John de Bello being the chief architect of the crosses at Hardingstone,
Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, and St. Albans; and “Alexander le
Imaginator,” otherwise Alexander of Abingdon, and William of Ireland
the chief sculptors of the statues. Master Richard de Crundale was
principal “cementarius,” or master-mason.
A very special care that the Cross should be frequented is to be
observed in the remains of the stone-flagged pathway from Northampton,
constructed at the time when the Cross was built, for the purpose of
ensuring an easy journey to the spot, where the devout might pray for
the soul of the departed Queen. The cost of this is set down in the
accounts in payments of forty and sixty marks.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELEANOR CROSS.
_From a photograph taken before the restoration of 1881._]
In spite of the weathering of over six hundred years, and the
mischief wrought by thoughtless people, the Cross is still a finely
preserved work, and the graceful statues of the Queen under their
protecting canopies in the upper stage are yet beautiful. But more than
shoulder-high, the initials of the obscure, carved numerously in the
stone, bear witness to that passion for remembrance that belongs to
all classes, and has written itself deeply on venerable monuments such
as this, in tree-trunks, on the margins of books, on walls, and on
window-panes innumerable.
[Sidenote: _HOW NOT TO DO IT_]
Many restoring hands, and others that can scarcely be so described,
have been laid upon “Queen’s Cross,” as it is locally styled. In the
reign of Queen Anne, a good deal was done, and was complacently alluded
to in a long Latin inscription on a huge tablet which, together with
the Royal Arms, was actually affixed to the Cross, in company with a
sundial on each of the eight sides. We may judge of the self-sufficient
spirit of those “restorers” in this English version of the inscription:
“For the perpetual commemoration of conjugal affection, the honourable
Assembly of Magistrates, or Justices, of the County of Northampton,
resolved to restore this monument to Queen Eleanor, nearly falling into
ruins by reason of age, in that most auspicious year 1713, in which
Anne, the glory of her mighty Britain, the most powerful avenger of the
oppressed, the arbitress of peace and war, after that Germany had been
set free, Belgium made secure by garrisons, the French overthrown in
more than ten battles, by her own, and by the arms of her allies, made
an end of conquering, and restored peace to Europe, after she had given
it freedom.”
Dear me!
A charming afterthought, showing that the justices could descend from
Imperial heights to domestic levels, was the placing of a pair of
stocks at the base.
In 1762 it was thought necessary to have another shy at the venerable
relic, and evidence long remained of it, in another tablet, with the
words, “Again repaired and restored in the second year of King George
the Third, and of our Lord 1762.” The combination of loyalty and piety
is rich indeed.
Again, in 1832 a restoration was effected, at a cost of £300. Happily,
no more tablets were affixed, and more happily still, the existing
ones were removed. Further, in 1884, the restorations of earlier years
were re-restored at a cost of £320. The shattered cross crowning the
structure, destroyed at some remote period, has never been replaced.
XVIII
Whatever the truth of the old saying that the traveller might know, by
the smell of the leather and the noise of the lapstones, when he was
within a mile of Northampton, it scarcely holds good now, for although
bootmaking, the ancient and distinctive trade of the town, is still its
great staple industry, and is, as every one knows, infinitely larger
and more important than ever before, it is scarcely to be distinguished
at this distance.
[Sidenote: _NORTHAMPTON_]
Of course, as everywhere, the distant view of the town is nowadays
largely a prospect of gasometers, and unless the traveller already
knew of Northampton’s bootmaking trade he might, entering by the London
Road and Cotton End, well believe he was come to a town of breweries,
another Burton-on-Trent: for there, beside the railway level-crossing
and the river Nene, stands the great brewery of Phipps & Co.
“Northampton on the Nene”: that is a piece of school geography not
readily forgotten, but, however greatly that information may bulk in
the memory, both by reason of its alliteration and being so early
insisted upon, the river Nene is not, truth to tell, so very much in
evidence. The uninstructed might suppose it to be a canal, and a dirty
one at that.
It is not a prepossessing entrance, this narrow street of old and
grimy, but not ancient, houses and third-rate shops, that leads up
into the town, but many surprises await the explorer who, primed with
armchair knowledge, sets out upon the road to correct his reading by
his own observation. Such an one would find that only strangers speak
of “Northampton” as spelled, giving full value to the “North.” To the
townspeople it is “N’Thampton.” Each style seems quaint to those who
favour the other.
The stranger would expect to find Northampton, as a factory town,
a place of squalor and grime; but coming here, and emerging
into the market-place from the not very pleasing entrance, his
expectations are utterly shattered. There are few towns of the size
of Northampton—whose population is now considerably over 89,000—that
are so bright and clean, and prosperous-looking, as this; and the
stranger, to whom its Radical politics are familiar, and to whom its
choice for many years of such Parliamentary representatives as Mr.
Henry Labouchere and Bradlaugh argued (reasonably or not I will not
declare) brutality and atheism, is pleasurably surprised at not finding
the ancient and beautiful churches of the town become “temples of
Reason,” lecture-halls, or other things in the secular way. Nor does he
perceive, as he had half-anticipated, scowling Radical-Atheists engaged
in violence, or shouting insults after the clergy and every person
with a good coat upon his back. The picture thus drawn seems farcical,
but it does by no means belie the ideas of a great many people who
have never been in Northampton and instinctively form a picture of it
from tales of its ancient election turbulence and from its choice of
representatives in modern times. Northampton is nothing like that:
dignity and beauty characterise its chief streets, and municipal
effort so long ago as 1864 sought to beautify the town with a splendid
Guildhall. Poetry springs—albeit unconsciously—even in the breasts of
its Town Councillors and Poor Law Guardians: where none would seek it.
Sir William Gilbert makes Bunthorne suspect, in _Patience_, that
Nature, in all thy works
Something poetic lurks,
Even in colocynth and calomel
[Sidenote: _POETRY_]
How true that is! Even in the prosaic person of a Poor Law Guardian,
the fount of true poesy may be bubbling, all unknown; as in that of
a member of the Board of Guardians at Northampton, who, in January
1907, challenged the workhouse master’s expenditure of £6 10s. on
marking-ink. Said he (he bore the great name of Dickens), lisping in
numbers:
I want to speak to you and the Board very plain;
I trust my appeal will not be in vain;
I hope you will pause and seriously think
Before ordering any more marking-ink.
It does not quite scan, but to a man who speaks poetry unawares,
inspired by such a domestic detail as marking-ink, a little practice
should make perfect. To what heights might he not rise on the subject
(say) of baths or drains!
The Guildhall, already referred to, is a building of extremely ornate
character, designed by Godwin, with a florid, many-niched and canopied
front, furnished with statues of the chief makers of Northampton’s
history, and with even the capitals of its columned vestibule carved
after the mediæval manner with groups of tiny figures. But in 1864
architectural sculptors had but begun to recover the forgotten arts of
the mediæval craftsman, and the execution of the designs is at once
coarse and feeble. The interior, except the light and very fine, but
barbarically coloured great hall, is of a truly Gothic gloom.
We first find mention of “Hamtune,” as it was originally styled, in
the Saxon Chronicle, when the Middle Angles occupied this district
of the kingdom of Mercia. Then the Danes, who came first to ravage,
settled in this part of the country, and the history of the town, which
even then was a considerable place, for very many years remained one
of fighting, and the victories of first one and then another. So often
as it was burned, it was again rebuilt: no difficult matter then, when
the houses were chiefly of timber. In 1065, the year before the coming
of the Conqueror, it was again burnt, in the jealous struggles between
the Saxon rulers; and there can be little doubt that, wearied of being
ground to powder between the upper and the nether millstones of these
ambitions, the people of Hampton were not altogether averse from being
ruled by a stronger hand, in whose time a little peace might be assured.
Certain it is that Northampton flourished under Norman rule, perhaps
more than any other provincial town. The great castle then built has
utterly disappeared, but other signs of great expansion remain, in the
ancient Norman churches; and history tells us how favourite a place
this was with the Norman and the Plantagenet sovereigns, who hunted
in the vast surrounding forests, and held council in the great hall
of the castle. The most famous of these councils was that of 1164,
when Becket’s ultimate fate was foreshadowed. The fierce contest for
the supremacy of the Church, or of its subordination to the State in
the person of the monarch, had for some time past been in progress.
A number of charges had been preferred against the Archbishop, and he
was summoned to Northampton to meet them. He arrived and was refused
the ceremonial kiss of peace by the King: his bishops renounced his
authority, and when he marched to the hall of the castle, carrying his
own archiepiscopal cross, the King and court withdrew, leaving him and
a few faithful attendants alone. Dwell upon the scene for a moment,
and picture the ominous and dramatic grandeur of it. Becket, already
threatened with exile or death, fled to the coast and expatriated
himself for six years; returning at last to his martyrdom at Canterbury.
[Sidenote: _HISTORY_]
The battles of Northampton in after years carried on the early warlike
associations of the town: the first in 1264, when the revolting barons
shut themselves up here, and the town and castle were besieged and
taken by Prince Edward; the second in 1460, when the Yorkists defeated
the Lancastrians with great slaughter, in the Delapré meadows outside
the town, and captured the person of Henry VI. himself. By all historic
precedents Northampton should have been the scene of a contest in the
long struggle between King Charles and his Parliament; but, fortunately
for the burgesses, who were commercial folk and not greatly interested,
the castle was too far gone in decay to be useful to either side, and
the great Northamptonshire battle of Naseby was fought twelve miles
away.
Boots and shoes were Northampton’s chief interest, and whoso would
might fight for King or Parliament, so only the business of the
town were let alone; but in 1648 the town supplied Cromwell’s army
with fifteen hundred pairs. The beginnings of this ancient trade go
deep down into history. King John bought a pair of boots described
as “single-soled.” The transaction is recorded in Latin—“pro 1 pari
botarum singularum,” and the price was twelve pence, probably for cash,
for no one who could possibly help himself would have thought of giving
credit to so shabby a fellow as King John.
And so throughout the centuries. Scarce a war happened but Northampton
benefited by the increased demand for shoe-leather. Old Fuller in the
long ago declared that it “may be said to stand chiefly on other men’s
legs,” and there is probably a deep-seated conviction in the minds
of the townsfolk that the state of the boot-and-shoe trade is a more
sure index of the prosperity of the nation than that of the iron and
shipbuilding trades, usually regarded as the chief indicators of the
national welfare.
This conviction of the prime importance of foot-gear has in its
time led to some quaint doings; notably when Queen Victoria and the
Prince Consort came through the town in 1844, when the Mayor gave the
Prince—who did not want them—a pair of boots. I suspect there have been
many thousands of wayfarers through the town who _did_ sorely want a
pair, and never had the offer.
[Illustration: NORTHAMPTON: MARKET PLACE AND ALL SAINTs’ CHURCH.]
Thousands of pairs of mud-boots were despatched hence to the Army
in the Crimea; but whence came the brown paper and cardboard boots
supplied by contractors to our poor fellows in that mismanaged
campaign? Not from Northampton, I trust.
[Sidenote: “_VOTE EARLY, AND OFTEN_”]
Of the Northampton Parliamentary elections, famed in the long ago for
the bitterness with which they were fought, none are more celebrated
than the “great spendthrift election,” waged in 1761 between my lords
Northampton, Spencer, and Halifax, for the privilege of nominating a
member. The enormous expenses incurred were not the most remarkable
thing about this contest, although they were unprecedented; nor was
the fourteen days’ duration of the poll a thing unheard of. The really
startling feature was the heaviness of that poll. Northampton had not
only voted its full strength of 930 electors, but 217 over. A petition
followed, and was settled, in the sporting manner of the age, by a
toss. Lord Spencer won, and nominated his man—who resided in India.
The old churches of Northampton are very fine, and highly interesting
in their several ways. There are four of them: St. Peter’s, St.
Giles’s, Holy Sepulchre, and All Saints’. It seems strange, considering
how ancient is the distinctive trade, that there is no church dedicated
to St. Crispin, the patron saint of bootmakers and cobblers. Of all
these churches that of the Holy Sepulchre is the most archæologically
interesting; but to most people it is the great church of All Saints,
in the Market Square, that stands for Northampton. And rightly
so, for it is not merely in the centre of the town, but in a most
striking and emphatic position; it is also the church selected by the
Corporation for its state attendance of Divine worship, as the fine
Mayor’s Chair in it—inscribed “Anno Majoratus 2ᵈᵒ Ricardi White, Anno
Dom. 1680”—proves; and its curious architectural appearance gives to
Northampton a distinct personality among English towns. This is in its
present form no mediæval building, but a very remarkable structure of
the time of Charles the Second, as we may readily perceive from the
statue of him, clad in flowing wig and Roman toga, that surmounts the
pillared west front.
Along the entablature above the imposing Ionic colonnade runs the
insertion: “This statue was erected in memory of King Charles II., who
gave a thousand tun of timber toward the rebuilding of this church and
to this town.” The circumstance that made the rebuilding necessary and
prompted the gift of timber (which came from the neighbouring Forest of
Whittlebury) was the almost complete destruction of the old building in
the great fire of 1675, when six hundred houses were also burnt. The
tall tower, cased, bell-turreted, and balustraded, is a relic of the
incinerated church.
[Illustration: INTERIOR, CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.]
[Sidenote: _THE TEMPLARS’ CHURCHES_]
St. Sepulchre’s—properly the “Church of the Holy Sepulchre”—generally
known as “Pulker’s Church,” or “St. Pulker’s,” one of the four round
churches in England—or five if we may include the round chapel in
Ludlow Castle—is ascribed to the influence of the Templars, whose
churches were avowedly built on the model of the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem. Like the Temple Church and others, it is the nave portion
of the building that is circular; the choir and presbytery branching
eastwards from it. It is in a massive and gloomy Transitional Norman
style, the eight huge pillars surmounted by pointed arches. It is
magnificent in its austerity and in the warm golden-brown hue of the
stone.
St. Giles’s, of nearly all styles from Norman to Perpendicular, and
St. Peter’s, a fine late Norman work, built about 1160, complete the
ancient churches of the town, with the exception of the mouldering old
St. John’s Hospital, now used as a French Catholic church.
XIX
The electric tramways, without which no town nowadays considers itself
fully furnished, run far out to the north, through the extended
boundaries of “Greater Northampton” to the village of Kingsthorpe: the
prosperity of the town certified to every beholder in the long lines of
newly completed streets butting on to the fields, and in the new boot
and shoe factories, from which you do not indeed hear the noise of the
lapstones—such things being obsolete in these days of machinery—but the
purr and the humming of wheels.
Just outside the borough boundaries are even more factories, built
there for the frugal purpose of avoiding the borough rates; and so,
in one way and another, Kingsthorpe, which was not so long since a
rural village, with quiet village green, has now been invaded by the
restless spirit of the age. Even the village inn has been rebuilt by
the inevitable Phipps & Co., and might now, to all appearance, save
for the sign of it, be a Jacobean mansion, renovated.
[Sidenote: _A PUZZLING MONUMENT_]
The apparent prodigality of the highway authorities at Kingsthorpe,
in the matter of milestones, is a standing wonder to all wayfarers,
for there, side by side, are two cast-iron “stones,” each giving
sixty-seven miles to London, with distances to other places. The
explanation of this singularity is that here, in the old days, the
Kingsthorpe and Welford Trust and the Northampton and Market Harborough
Trust met. The “stone” erected by the first gives thirteen miles to
Welford, twenty-nine to Leicester, and one to Northampton: the other
indicates sixteen miles to Market Harborough and one to Northampton.
To the right of the road on to Brixworth rises among a group of trees
on the skyline a tall obelisk that piques curiosity. Traversing muddy
lanes to the base of it, the explorer afflicted with an inquiring mind
discovers, to his disgust, that it bears no inscription, and local
inquiries result only in vague rustic talk of its being a monument
to the great Duke of Wellington. Research proves it to be to a Duke
of Devonshire; but although the rustics are thus proved to be wrong,
the attitude of mind that leads them astray is, it will be allowed,
entirely in order. From father to son the story has been handed down
that it is in memory of a Duke: what other Duke, therefore, should
be possible than the great warrior who still bulks so large in their
imagination? They rightly cannot conceive that a Duke who has merely
succeeded to a dukedom, and just existed in that state, has a claim
to such recognition. But the thing is not without its sardonic irony.
Built to keep alive the memory of an obscure dead Duke, it is known in
all the countryside as a monument to one whose fame will not die, and
needs no such memorial.
This monument that has missed its mark stands at the parish of Boughton
(locally pronounced “Bowghton”), famous, together with the adjoining
Boughton Green, for the exploits of “Captain Slash.” There was once
a church, dedicated to St. John Baptist, at Boughton Green, but the
tower and spire fell in 1785, and the district becoming gradually
depopulated, the body of the church has long been a roofless ruin.
The green is nowadays, except for one annual occasion, merely a
desolate common. In former days, however, it was bordered by the
cottages of more or less virtuous and contented peasantry, who did
so excellently well during the old three-days’ horse-fair held here
in June that they lived in comfort all the rest of the year. To the
old horse-fair resorted horsey blackguards from many a shire, who
swindled the innocent and each other, and fought and got drunk and
slept in the ditches, whereupon the simple rustics, recognising that it
was harvest-time, promptly went over their pockets. But the good old
days are done. The police established a lock-up on the ground for the
drunken and for other offenders, and then by degrees the fair itself
decayed, until to-day it is but a one-day ghost of itself. The brick
hut used as a lock-up still stands on the green.
[Sidenote: “_CAPTAIN SLASH_”]
But we must not forget “Captain Slash,” whose real name was George
Catherall, a desperado of the highwayman type, who did a little
rick-burning and general rural outraging in the ’20’s of the nineteenth
century, and brought his lawless career to a dramatic close in 1826.
He attempted, with the gang he captained, to let loose the lions in
the menagerie on the fairground, hoping in the confusion to make away
with a rich haul; but this desperate proposal was defeated on the eve
of accomplishment. Very ancient gaffers at Boughton still tell the
tale of dread as they heard it in their youthful days: how “Haaron
Gardner ‘it’n auver th’ yed with a nedge stake,” and so brought about
his capture, and how “Slash” was sentenced to death, and on July 21st
was duly executed at Northampton Gaol, and the land had peace. It
was certainly very late in the day for outlaws, but not too late for
superstition, for newspaper reports of the execution tell how “a number
of females immediately ascended the drop and had their wens rubbed.”
And so, passing the site of the old “Bowden” or Boughton Inn of
coaching days, to Brixworth, meeting, possibly, on the way, a straining
field of the Pytchley Hunt, in whose country we now are. You must be
careful how you enunciate “Pytchley.” John Bright once mentioned it in
the House of Commons. He called it the “Pitchley,” and stood aghast
at the howl of derision which arose from the assembled fox-hunters
masquerading as legislators. It was a fox-hunting House then, and
“Labour” (_i.e._ well-paid agitators acting the part) was not dreamt
of. P_y_tchley is your only way, although to be sure there are heretics
who call it the “Patchley.” But they are worse barbarians than Bright,
who knew no better.
Brixworth is an old, old place, truly “old arnshunt,” as the rustics
say; but the latter-day discovery that it is profitable to work the
ironstone beds situated here is just beginning to hustle the grey Roman
and Saxon antiquity of it, with a fringe of red-brick cottages. Red
brick in a country where building stone is of the plentifullest!
Many evidences of the presence here of the Romans have been discovered,
and the great grim church of Brixworth, built largely of Roman brick
and tile, has been thought by antiquaries to be, in fact, a Roman
basilica. Roman coins have also been found in fairly large numbers;
but history tells of no camp or town of that people here; and this is
no Roman road. The church, locally said to be the “oldest in England,”
appears to have been built or adapted by the Saxons so far back as
A.D. 690, and thus “Briclesworde,” as it is styled in Domesday Book,
was of a hoary antiquity even when that genuine antique, William the
Conqueror, “came over.” The church was then a dependency of the great
monastery of Medehamsted—the “Peterborough” of to-day—and until the
vicarage was rebuilt, some fifty years since, remains of a monastic
house were visible in its cellars.
[Illustration: BRIXWORTH CHURCH.]
[Sidenote: _BRIXWORTH_]