are proverbial for stupidity; but, like the fatuous behaviour of the
Wiltshire “moonrakers” of Bishop’s Cannings, the childish simplicity of
the original Gotham wiseacres was merely assumed. Their great exploit
was to plant a hedge round a cuckoo perched on a bush, in order to
keep him in; and on a hill one mile distant may to this day be found
the “Cuckoo Bush,” pointed out as the scene of their efforts. It is an
ivy-grown circular bank in a plantation enclosing a group of trees.
[Sidenote: _THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM_]
But for the most circumstantial account of the doings of these rude
forefathers of the hamlet, we must have recourse to the legend
preserved by Thoroton, in the pages of his history of Nottinghamshire.
It seems, then, that King John, passing through Gotham towards
Nottingham, and intending to go through the meadows, was prevented
by the villagers, who imagined that the ground once travelled by a
king would for ever become a public road. The King, furious at their
proceedings—and the tantrums of a Norman sovereign were something
fearful—sent some of his retinue to learn the reason of this strange,
not to say highly temerarious, conduct; but during the interval the men
of Gotham had been able to reflect, and had come to the conclusion that
something terrible in the way of punishment awaited them, unless they
could prove themselves exceptional fools.
Accordingly, when the messengers arrived, they found the villagers
engaged in all manner of fantastic employments. Some were endeavouring
to drown an eel; others were occupied in dragging carts on to the roof
of a barn, to shade the wood from the sun; yet others were tumbling
their cheeses downhill, to find their way to Nottingham market; and
some were busily engaged in hedging in a cuckoo which had perched
itself upon an old bush. In short, they were all busy in some foolish
way or another; and their folly was duly reported to the King; who,
however, shrewdly remarked that “we ween there be more fools pass
through Gotham than remain in it.”
The folly of the Gothamites, according to this version, was more
apparent than real; but it is the name for folly, rather than that
for cunning, which has survived. So early as 1568 appeared the book
entitled “The Merry Tales of the Mad-men of Gottam,” and other ancient
allusions are plentiful; among them that to “Gotham College,” an
imaginary institution for the training of simpletons. A rhyme, of
unknown antiquity, celebrates another exploit of the villagers, in a
delicately allusive way:
Three Wise Men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.
The tragedy of the voyage we can vividly picture for ourselves.
There is, however, a rival Gotham, disputing these doubtful honours.
It is a place called Gotham Marsh, situated in the neighbourhood of
Pevensey, and the identical tales are told of it; but if any place may
be said to be the real original, the Nottinghamshire village is the
one, although it must not be forgotten that many places are credited
with similar stupidity. Of the village of Towednack, in Cornwall, in
the neighbourhood of St. Ives, the identical cuckoo story is told;
the people of Coggeshall, in Essex, are said to have chained up a
wheelbarrow, after it was bitten by a mad dog, for fear it should
develop hydrophobia; and in the ancient world Bœotia and Phrygia were
notoriously considered the home of the dunderheaded. We are familiar,
too, with the taunt in the Scriptures, “Can any good come out of
Nazareth?”
[Illustration: GOTHAM.]
[Sidenote: _ASSORTED FOLLY_]
This is all very highly uncomplimentary and interesting, and Gotham
seems eminently a place to be visited; but travellers meet with strange
disappointments. Gotham is a furiously ugly village of extraordinarily
wide and empty roads, and smelling violently of pigs; gypsum mines and
soap-works still further render it undesirable. A commonplace inn, the
“Cuckoo Bush,” displays a double-sided pictorial sign, very faded,
exhibiting on one side the cuckoo and on the other a group of the
wiseacres aforesaid, attempting to build him in.
It is indeed, by selecting the fine church, possible to make an
illustration of Gotham that shall not be commonplace; and the interior,
being in part Transitional Norman, is even finer than the exterior. A
singular uncouth carving on the chancel arch, popularly supposed to
represent “Toothache,” was probably intended to typify the Divine “gift
of speech.”
Resuming the road at Kegworth, the fag-end of Leicestershire is soon
ended. Lockington, on the left hand, with a very dilapidated church,
being the last village in this angle of the shire, where it joins Notts
and Derbyshire, was once considered a remote and out-of-the-way place:
hence the old rustic saying, “Put up your pipes and go to Lockington
Wake”: _i.e._ “Be quiet and go away with you.”
XXV
And thus we come to the Trent, but before crossing at Cavendish Bridge
and into Derby, we will leave the modern high road, and, striking off
to the left, through Castle Donington, come, in something like six
miles, to Stanton-by-Bridge and the long causeway that leads up to
the famous bridge of Swarkestone. The present line of road between
Derby and London, by way of Loughborough, did not come into great use
until 1771, when Cavendish Bridge was built. Until that time, the
broad and swift Trent, at the best of times not easily crossed, and
always peculiarly subject to flooding, was without a bridge anywhere
else than at Swarkestone in all those twenty-four miles or so between
Nottingham and Burton, and much of the traffic of horsemen, pedestrians
and pack-horses, instead of crossing the Trent here, at Wilne Ferry,
went southward of Derby by Osmaston, Chellaston, and across the river
at Swarkestone, and thence past Stanton-by-Bridge and King’s Newton,
coming into a choice of roads for London at Ravenstone, whence one
went, at discretion, either by Hinckley and Towcester, or else by Groby
and so into Leicester.
[Sidenote: _THE RIVER TRENT_]
The Trent was thus, in those ancient days when bridges were few, a
barrier of high strategical importance, and whoso held those infrequent
bridges commanded the military situation in the midlands: hence the
high importance, from an early period, of the castle, town, and bridge
of Nottingham.
[Sidenote: _SWARKESTONE BRIDGE_]
Between Stanton and Swarkestone, on either side of the Trent, the
land stretches out perfectly flat for nearly a mile, and is at this
day a fertile expanse of water-meadows in summer. In winter, or in
wet seasons, it becomes a vast inland sea, not, even now, altogether
without its dangers, but anciently extremely hazardous.
[Illustration: THE CAUSEWAY, SWARKESTONE BRIDGE.]
To build a causeway from the comparatively high ground of Stanton on
one side, and Swarkestone on the other, with little bridges spanning
the intermediate rills, and a large bridge crossing the Trent itself,
became early the good work of some pious founder, whose identity has,
in the way usual with such things, become involved in legends. The
chief legend of Swarkestone Bridge tells us that it was built by two
maiden sisters, whose lovers were drowned in the passage, before ever
a bridge or causeway existed. They expended all their fortune upon,
and devoted their lives to, the work, and built a chapel on the bridge
itself, wherein wayfarers might give thanks for their safety, and pray
for the souls of those who had been drowned, and those of the pious
benefactors. Another version says that the two ladies were daughters of
the Countess of Bellomont, and that they expended all their fortune on
the work, and were reduced to spinning for a livelihood.
But if we seek the real origin of this early work, thought to have
been originally undertaken in the twelfth century, we must look to
the neighbouring Priory of Repton, which built it and kept it in
repair, just as many other religious houses undertook similar works of
practical Christianity on behalf of wayfarers, all over the country;
making roads, bridging rivers, and providing hostels for all and sundry
whose evil fate compelled them to travel in those days when the best
place in the world was a man’s own fireside.
In the chapel they placed on the bridge a brother of the Priory
officiated, at the same time receiving offerings from grateful
travellers for maintenance and repairs of the structure. And so
the combined chapel and toll-house remained, until all religious
institutions suffered a thorough change, under Henry the Eighth. We
know what then became of it, for in the report of the Church Goods
Commissioners in 1552 it is stated: “We have a chapell edified and
buylded uppon Trent in ye mydest of the greate streme annexed to
Swerston bregge, the whiche had certayne stuffe belongyng to it; ii
desks to knell in, a table of wode, and certayne barres of yron and
glasse in the wyndos, which Mr. Edward Beamont, of Arkeston, hath
taken away to his owne use, and we saye that if the chappell dekeye,
the bridge wyll not stande.”
The chapel was, however, allowed to “dekeye,” and yet the bridge stood,
having been rebuilt so late as 1796. It says much for the excellence of
the monks’ work that their bridge remained until 1795, when, not floods
merely, but floods aided by a heavy lot of timber from a yard upstream,
came and overthrew it.
The bridge has been the scene of some military exploits. Here the
redoubtable Sir John Gell of Hopton, commanding the Parliamentary
forces, routed a force of Cavaliers on January 5th, 1643; and held the
approaches during all that troubled time. In 1745, too, when Prince
Charles and his Highlanders came so near to overthrowing the House of
Hanover, and regaining the crown of England for the feckless Stuarts,
he made, as any invader from the north was bound to do, for this
essential position.
The story of “the Forty-five” is closely involved with the course of
the Manchester and Glasgow Road, from this point onwards, and therefore
requires some brief historical summary.
[Sidenote: “_THE FORTY-FIVE_”]
In 1745, Prince Charles, the “Young Pretender,” son of James, the “Old
Pretender,” who in 1715 had made an ineffectual attempt to secure
the crown his father, James the Second, had lost, determined on a
bold throw for fortune. Setting out from France, July 2nd, on the
_Doutelle_, a little brig of 18 guns, engaged in privateering against
English shipping, he landed eventually at Erisca, in the Hebrides. He
had not voyaged without adventure. Accompanying the _Doutelle_ was a
French warship, the _Elizabeth_, which carried 68 guns and 700 men.
The precise connection of the French government with this attempt of
Prince Charles is obscure; but it would appear to have been an elastic
arrangement, by which the French could disclaim any hand in the rising,
if it proved a failure, while sympathetic enough to secretly aid, and
to be prepared for further help if the prospects of the enterprise were
sufficiently hopeful. Off the Lizard, the two ships were challenged by
an English man-o’-war, the _Lion_, which engaged the _Elizabeth_, with
the result that both were disabled and compelled to put back to their
respective ports; while the brig bearing the Prince, his few followers,
his supplies of money and arms, made away to Scotland.
Prince Charlie, the darling of many a romantic tale and legend, the
hero of numberless pathetic Scots ballads, was at this time twenty-five
years of age: tall above the average, comely and courteous: every inch
a Prince, so his admirers declared. The Highland chieftains who had
been so lavish of promises when he was away, across the water, were not
at first so ready with their help when he appeared among them. A good
deal of time was wasted, and he raised his white standard with the red
cross at Glenfinnan only on August 19th. Thereafter, the clans poured
in to his aid; but it was not until September 16th that he appeared
before Edinburgh and summoned the city to surrender. Edinburgh, let
it be acknowledged, placed no obstacles in his way, for it submitted
very tamely, and Charles, in all the glory of a costume which seems to
the present generation, that goes clad in so sombre a fashion, to have
been extravagantly theatrical, had the satisfaction of proclaiming his
father at the High Cross, as King James the Eighth of Scotland, and
Third of England.
Let us see what figure of romance he presented to the loyal eyes of
the clansmen, and the melting glances of the ladies. He stood straight
as a lance, and wore breeches of red velvet, military boots, and a
short tartan coat crossed with a blue silk sash, edged with gold. On
his head was a blue velvet bonnet, bound with gold lace, and with a
white cockade, the badge of his party. On his breast depended the star
of the order of St. Andrew, and at his side swung a basket-hilted
broadsword. The hair of this very picture of a Prince of romance was
of an auburn tint, but it was generally concealed from view by a white
wig. Altogether, this was a display that may be thought more suitable
for ceremonial occasions than for the serious business of campaigning.
[Sidenote: _THE INCOMPLETE LETTER-WRITER_]
To modern censorious minds the picture formed by this gay figure
suffers in the letters he wrote. They were written, let it be said,
in the loftiest sentiments, but the spelling of them was abominable.
When every one—among those who were sufficiently accomplished to write
at all—spelled according to personal predilection, this mattered
little or nothing; but in these days, when every Board School boy can
at least spell simple words, it seems shocking, and tarnishes romance
with a smear of vulgarity, to read Prince Charlie’s references to
“muney” and “munishuns.” When he draws his “sord,” we laugh, instead
of being thrilled, and when he writes of his father as “gems,” we with
difficulty understand that he means “James.”
[Illustration: SWARKESTONE BRIDGE.]
This is no place to follow his advance step by step. He gained a
complete victory at Prestonpans on September 21st and, the way then
cleared, he should have pressed forward. But a lack of sufficient
recruits, and, much more certainly, the wish to pose and dazzle
Edinburgh, as the victor in this first conflict, led the Prince to
delay. Had he made a dash into England on the morrow of Prestonpans,
his cousin, King George, would in all likelihood have been overthrown.
But he wasted precious time, and only left Edinburgh on October 31st,
for the advance upon England, He was at Carlisle on November 9th.
The opposition there was feeble, and he took the city and passed on.
Meanwhile, large forces were moving up from the south to meet him and
his Highlanders. Marshal Wade was in Staffordshire with an army, and
the Duke of Cumberland was advancing with another. King George in
person was proposing to leave London with a third. Many of these troops
had been landed from the scene of war with the French in Flanders, in
the interval of inaction after Prestonpans.
Prince Charles decided to give battle to Wade in Staffordshire, and
advanced through Lancaster and Manchester, to Stockport. News then
arrived of the presence of the Duke of Cumberland with his army divided
between Lichfield, Coventry, Stafford, and Newcastle-under-Lyme,
and the ingenious ruse was contrived of detaching a small column of
Highlanders to Congleton, while the main body of the Prince’s force
slipped quietly by the English army, on the road to Derby. It was a
master-stroke of manœuvring and was entirely successful. The Duke
of Cumberland, thus cleverly deceived, hurried up his forces on the
evening of December 2nd, going north, while the invaders pushed south,
and were installed at Derby on the 4th, where they were rejoined by the
detached column.
[Sidenote: _IN THE BALANCE_]
At this juncture the third English army was just setting out from
London and had reached Finchley Common. London was thoroughly alarmed:
shops were closed, the banks experienced an uneasy time, and more than
one of King George’s ministers anxiously debated the problem of whether
it were safest to declare for the Stuarts, or to remain loyal to the
House of Hanover. King George himself, according to popular rumour,
had made every preparation for leaving the country in haste, if it
were found necessary. Above all, the French were expected to attempt a
landing. All these terrors and doubts resulted in a panic on a day long
after remembered as “Black Friday.”
Prince Charles came very near success. He had five thousand men at
Derby, and although his ragged Highlanders were looked upon with
contempt by the English people, and although his cause by no means met
with the popular support he had anticipated, the people, if indeed they
did not help him, at any rate did not very actively oppose. Scottish
sentiment had, in a manner truly remarkable, survived the fact that
the Prince was a Roman Catholic, and that he was quite ignorant, at
the time of his landing, of Scottish costume and manners; but the
English people looked with disfavour upon one who was almost as much
a foreigner as George the Second himself. They loved neither the
Hanoverians nor the Stuarts, and were heartily tired of both their
houses, whose ambitions were for ever hindering honest men in their
business and their pleasures.
Had Prince Charles made haste to advance beyond Derby, he would have
been running grave risks, but, with two hostile forces already near
him, the position could scarce have been more dangerous; while it was
busily rumoured that either the courage or the loyalty, or perhaps
both, of the King’s army on Finchley Common were in doubt; and that on
the appearance of the invaders they would promptly lay down their arms.
Prince Charles, to do him justice, was eager to advance. To retreat,
even for a while, would be, he clearly saw, to strike dismay into his
supporters, and to weaken his cause. Already his outposts were six
miles south of Derby, holding the approaches to Swarkestone Bridge.
He was for risking everything. “Rather than go back,” he said, “I
would wish to be twenty feet underground.” But the faint-hearts were
numerous around him. Not among the clansmen, but amid the leaders did
prudence—to call it no worse name—show itself; and prudence prevailed.
After heated councils of war, the outposts were withdrawn, and on
December 5th the retreat from Derby began.
The historian who is also a sentimentalist, and looks upon history as a
romance, at this point feels keenly disappointed. He cares little for
Stuart or Hanoverian, but he feels defrauded of the stirring chapters
that would have been added to English history, had Prince Charles
pressed on and reached London. Three, at least, of the Georges were
so deadly dull, alike in their vices and their less frequent virtues,
that a Stuart, even though he developed afterwards all the defects of
his race, would have been welcome. But it was not to be, and, after
marching into the very middle of England, the invaders marched all
the weary way back again; and met disaster miserably in the midst of
Scotland. They could have fared no worse, and would have ended more
gloriously, in the advance.
[Illustration: “THE BALCONY,” SWARKESTONE.]
[Sidenote: _DISASTER IN RETREAT_]
Some admiration must needs be felt for the villagers near Swarkestone.
The Derby militia and amateur soldiers made a strategic movement to the
rear on the advance of the Highlanders, but the men of Weston presented
an embattled front. In the records of that village we learn the
villagers held a council and furbished up their arms for resistance.
They sent forth one John Pritchard, as scout, to Derby, to see if the
rebels were coming, and despatched on his heels Francis Henshaw and
William Dawson, made valiant with three quarts of ale each. William
Rose, blacksmith, was paid one shilling “for mending ye towne musquet,”
and a further sum of one shilling-and-sixpence was expended upon
ammunition for this weapon. Doubtless, the men of Weston would have
given a good account of themselves, and it is to be remarked that it
was the day after these warlike preparations that Prince Charles began
his retreat! Weston rejoiced, and appointed a day of thanksgiving, the
village constable contributed half-a-crown thank-offering, and the
community got as drunk as funds permitted.
Thus, for many reasons, we look upon Swarkestone Bridge with interest.
Causeway and bridge combined extend for three-quarters of a mile; the
Trent itself spanned in five arches of 414 feet in all. The causeway,
with its many Gothic-arched openings, is obviously very old, and is not
improved in appearance by the recent repairs done in blue brick. On
the Swarkestone side stands the fine substantial old coaching inn, the
“Crewe and Harpur’s Arms,” with the many-quartered shield of arms of
the family of Harpur-Crewe, of Calke, near by, prominent over the door,
surmounting the motto, _Degenerante genus opprobrium_—“Lineage becomes
a disgrace to him who degenerates from it.”
The Harpurs, who settled at Swarkestone in the fifteenth century, came
originally from Warwickshire, and flourished here exceedingly, as their
monuments in the church, hard by, prove. One, Sir Richard Harpur, 1577,
lies in effigy, robed as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and his
son, Sir John Harpur, near by. Their old mansion is in ruins close by
the church, but in a meadow, still called the “Balcony Field,” remains
a curious Jacobean pavilion that would appear to have been the spot
whence the ladies of the family and their guests safely watched the
sports: the bull-and bear-baiting and other vanished pastimes of a
brutal era.
XXVI
[Sidenote: _CAVENDISH BRIDGE_]
Returning to Cavendish Bridge, and crossing it, we enter Derbyshire,
whose people have long been unjustly made the subject of the old
folk-rhyme:
Derbyshire born,
Derbyshire bred,
Strong i’ th’ arm,
An’ thick i’ th’ ’ead.
The tolls levied at Cavendish Bridge long remained at an almost
prohibitive figure. The crossing of the Trent, before the bridge was
completed in 1771 at a cost of £3,333, was by means of a ferry-barge,
large enough to take vehicles, and the fare for a post-chaise was
half-a-crown, which remained the charge for the bridge, as Bray in his
tour of 1776 notes.
[Illustration: CAVENDISH BRIDGE.]
Although the bridge was long since freed, the toll-house stands, and
on it may still be seen the old notice-board which it seems to have
been nobody’s business, in particular, to remove. I am grateful for the
fact, for it enables the following particulars to be gleaned:
Tolls taken at this BRIDGE by Virtue of an Act of Parliament being
the fame that were taken at the Ferry, viz.:—
_s._ _d._
Coaches, Chariots, Landaus, etc., with 4 wheels, each 2 6
Chaise, Chair, etc.; with 2 wheels 1 0
Waggon, Wain, etc.; with 4 wheels 1 6
Horse, Mule, or Ass, not drawing 0 1
And so forth, through the various classes of traffic, ending with:
_d._
Foot passengers 1
Soldiers (favour’d) 1/2
The Trent, broad and strong, borders the road for the half-mile between
the bridge and the village of Shardlow, where the Trent and Mersey
Canal runs across the way, and the “Holden Arms,” a church built in
the unsatisfactory Gothic of 1838, the “Navigation,” the “Dog and
Duck,” and the “Old Crown” inns are huddled; together with a fine old
red-brick mansion dated 1686, and bearing the initials R.B.L.
[Sidenote: _APPROACH TO DERBY_]