SPRING. THROUGH THE HEART OF EAST ANGLIA
Some books consulted--"Murray" useless to motorists:
proceeds by rail and observes county boundaries--Arthur
Young's _Six Weeks' Tour_ dull--Leland's _Itinerary_ a
mass of undigested notes--_The Paston Letters_ full of
excellence--Start from Abingdon--The six-cylinder
Rolls-Royce--Freedom from trouble--Hopes and
Nemesis--Abingdon to Thame, a bad cross-country
route--Thame to Royston direct--The gate of East
Anglia--The "Cave"--Royston's broad hint to James I--To
Newmarket--Straight road and abundant game--The mystery
of the Hoodie Crow--Wild creatures and
motor-cars--Weather Heath--Appropriate name--Value of
tree "belts"--Scotch fir hedges--- Elvedon Hall and its
game--Best use for such land--Enter Norfolk--Warrens
and heaths--Thetford--Its story--Its Mound--Mr. Rye's
theory dissipated by the learned--Windmills in East
Anglia--Thomas Paine a Thetford man--Euston
unvisited--Attleborough--Wymondham's twin towers--Their
origin--Religious houses and popular risings--Kett's
Rebellion--Curious legend on a house--Stanfield
Hall--Its grim tragedy--A monograph quoted--Wholesale
murders and a famous trial--Extraordinary cunning of
the criminal--To Norwich and the "Maid's Head."
[Illustration: IPSWICH PORT]
During the interval between the first and second tours in East Anglia many
books, more or less promising of material, were read. Of these books it
will be prudent to say a little before recording an expedition in which
East Anglia was attacked, so to speak, amidships. Many of them it is
needless to mention, though some will come in for passing reference. The
first was Murray's Handbook to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire,
which is well-planned, having regard to the needs of its age, and well, no
less than learnedly, written; but it was published more than thirty years
ago, and is therefore rather out of date as to some of its facts, and for
motorists absolutely obsolete in its method. It proceeds, for the most
part, county by county; its routes are railway routes; it almost ignores
roadside scenery, and it enlarges, very usefully sometimes, upon the
internal details of churches and of other edifices, with which the motorist
can rarely be concerned; for, as it is not intelligent to hurry through the
country always, so it is not motoring to "potter" at every place. The good
"Murray" is really rather embarrassing to the motorist. Let me illustrate.
Scole, mentioned in the last chapter, is a little more than two miles from
Yaxley, on the Roman road. A brief account of Scole is found on p. 183. If
Yaxley were mentioned at all (and it is worth mentioning, for the sake of
its church, in a guide-book pure and simple) it would find a place in some
Suffolk route, for only very occasionally does the guide-book writer allow
even a railway to transport him across a county boundary. Amongst other
books studied were Leland's _Itinerary_, the _Paston Letters_, in five
stately quarto volumes, and Arthur Young's _Six Weeks' Tour_. These studies
were not quite in vain, for they will at least show a reader what to avoid.
Young's _Six Weeks' Tour_ is most consumedly dull, reeking of turnips,
sticky with marl, and the accounts of "the seats of the nobility and
gentry, and other objects worthy of notice, by the author of the _Farmers'
Letters_," are very rarely interesting. Some of them which are to our
purpose--for of course the tour was not confined to East Anglia--shall be
quoted in due season. To reading Leland, stimulated by many quaint
quotations in later works, I had looked forward for years, but the second
edition in nine volumes of "The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary,
Oxford; Printed at the Theatre, for James Fletcher, Bookseller in the Turl,
and Joseph Pott, Bookseller at Eton. 1745," was a grievous disappointment.
The plums seem all to have been picked out by guide-book writers; few of
them, if any, relate to East Anglia. The only things worthy of note were an
account, perfectly straightforward, and to be quoted in its place, of the
Dunmow Flitch, and some doggerel concerning the "properties of the counties
of England." The material ones for us are:--
Essex, ful of good hoswyves,
*....*....*....*
Northfolk, ful of wyles,
Southfolk, ful of styles,
Huntingdoneshyre corne ful goode,
*....*....*....*
Cambridgeshire full of pykes.
Leland, in fact, cannot be commended, but that is only because he planned
his _magnum opus_, like many a good man before him and after, without
regard to the allotted span of human life, not to speak of its uncertainty.
In his "Newe Yeare's Gyft to King Henry the viii in the XXXVII Yeare of his
Raygne," Leland talks of his studies, of his six years of travel, and then
sketches his plan. It is "to write an History, to the which I entende to
adscribe this Title, _De Antiquitate Britannica_ or els _Civilis Historia_.
And this Worke I entende to divide yn to so many Bookes as there be Shires
yn England and Sheres and greate Dominions in Wales. So that I esteme that
this Volume will include a fiftie Bookes, wherof each one severally shaul
conteyne the Beginninges Encreaces, and memorable Actes of the chief Tounes
and Castelles of the Province allottid to hit." Leland died when he was
forty-six, but if he had lived another century he could hardly have
achieved his self-imposed task, even if he had been miraculously endowed
with a Mercedes; and he cherished divers other projects. As it is, his
so-called _Itinerary_ is, at best, but a collection of rough notes, having
frequently no sort of coherence, often corrected or added to later in a
distant geographical connection. In spite of a taste for antiquity it may
be put down as stiff and heavy to read, and not sufficiently abounding in
quaintness to repay the trouble of the reader.
The _Paston Letters_ on the other hand, are the best of reading, giving a
wonderfully vivid idea of life in East Anglia at a singularly troublous
period, and there will be occasion to quote them more than once. The
edition by the worthy Sir John Fenn, stately as it is, and a joy to handle,
is far from being the best. Posterity owes to him a deep debt for rescuing
the letters from oblivion, but he omitted as uninteresting precisely the
little fragments upon private and domestic affairs which we value most now
in later editions. His notes, too, prove him to have been a rather dull dog
and lacking in a sense of humour. Sometimes he scents impropriety where
there is clearly none, at others he misconstrues the most obvious badinage.
Thus, where John Paston is addressed in the phrase, "Wishing you joy of all
your ladies," Fenn suggests a reference to the Virgin Mary, Heaven knows
why. Still, Fenn rescued the letters, and the latest edition--far more
complete than his--is at once one of the most entertaining and valuable of
historical documents and essential to the right understanding of life in
old Norfolk. In fact, the _Paston Letters_ is one of the few really old
books which a man not too studiously inclined may not prudently be
contented to take as read. It is vastly entertaining, but, it must be said,
it is not for the young person. A spade was not called a horticultural
implement in those days, and there are many spades, and some knaves of
spades too, in the _Paston Letters_.
Fortified with this literary foundation, and a good deal more of minor
importance, I left my Berkshire home near Abingdon on 9 March in a 30-h.p.
Rolls-Royce car, six-cylindered and equipped with every luxury in the shape
of glass-screens and a cape hood, and driven by Mr. Claude Johnson. For
companions we had my two daughters, and for assistance, if it were needed,
a mechanic. As it happened there was not a particle of trouble with tires,
engine, or apparatus of any kind during the 300 miles and more of this
expedition, and we might have dispensed quite well with the mechanic, and
with his weight. Indeed, at the end of the little tour, and for that matter
after the next on another car, arose a feeling that the days of the
uncertainty of motor-cars were over. Need it be said that Nemesis was in
waiting for this sanguine feeling, and that, before my "travelling days
were o'er" in East Anglia, one of those extraordinary runs of misfortune
came, which, in motoring more than in any other pastime, justify the
sayings that troubles never come singly, that it never rains but it pours?
It is perhaps wise to make this statement now, for a record of motoring
wherein all was plain sailing--the metaphor is hardly mixed, for there is
kinship between the motion of a sailing craft running free and that of a
car in good tune--might run the risk of being dull. How our troubles were
turned into a positive pleasure, at the time as well as in retrospect, by
the skill, patience, and good humour of this same Mr. Claude Johnson, shall
be told in its proper place in another chapter.
One thing, however, may be said by way of preliminary to the account of
this particular tour. There was much controversy at the beginning of 1905
upon the question whether the movement of a six-cylinder petrol car is, or
is not, more luxurious than that of a four-cylinder car of first-rate
design and construction. A prolonged match, not entirely free from flukes,
the bane of motoring trials, has been held by way of attempt to decide the
issue; and it has ended in favour of six cylinders, as illustrated by the
identical car in which this tour was taken. The controversy will probably
go on for ever, none the less, for it is the old case of _de gustibus_
which can never be settled, and it is all but impossible to compare
memories of kindred sensations felt at different times. Who can say, for
example, which cigar, glass of old wine, sail on a strong breeze, gallop
over the Downs, run in a first-rate motor-car, dive into cool water,
which--almost what you will, so long as it be one of the pleasures
classified by old Aristotle as coming into being through the touch--was
absolutely the best of his life? Without scientific certainty, however,
there may be strong conviction, and mine is that a good six-cylinder,
whether Rolls-Royce or Napier, runs more smoothly than any four-cylinder
car, and I have tried nearly all the best of them. In fact, there is very
little to choose in point of smooth running, if indeed there be anything to
choose at all, between it and a White steam car, used on another East
Anglian tour. Tried by the, to me, infallible touchstone of my own spine, a
six-cylinder is a very little, but still distinctly, more luxurious than
the best four-cylinder car; but this is not to say that there are not a
round dozen of four-cylinder cars on the market which make their passengers
as comfortable as any man, or even delicate woman, can reasonably wish to
be in this world.
We started just after ten, on a windy and rainless morning, in an
atmosphere giving beautifully clear views of distant objects, and thereby
raising some reasonable apprehensions for the morrow among the
weather-wise. Our route lay outside my present manor until Royston was
reached, for it was through Dorchester, Thame, Aylesbury, Ivinghoe,
Dunstable, Luton, Hitchin, and Baldock; and the temptation to describe some
of it, especially the run along the Chilterns, is strong, but it must be
resisted. One observation, however, must be made. From Thame onwards, in
spite of the tendency of our road system to radiate from London obstinately
as in Roman times, much as our railways do, and as if cross-country
travelling were not a thing to be encouraged, there was little reason to
complain of want of directness in the road. But to journey from Abingdon to
Thame it is necessary to go round two sides of a rough but large triangle,
whether the route chosen be through Oxford, distant six miles, or through
Dorchester and Shillingford, which is rather longer. In either case the
traveller has been compelled to go a long way out of his true course, and
from the turning point to Thame is about the same distance in both cases.
To Royston the distance is, as nearly as may be, seventy miles, and the
last part of the run, where we followed the north-west edge of the
Chilterns, cutting in and out of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and
Cambridgeshire in bewildering succession, was very exhilarating. A pretty
sight too were the Chilterns, with their swelling undulations of down turf,
marked out near Royston for galloping grounds and showing here and there,
in the form of a flag and a carefully tended green, that the golfer has
found his way to Royston. Indeed, this close down turf, this "skin" of
grass catching the full force of northerly and westerly gales, is suitable
to the golfer's needs as any save that of seaside links.
At Royston we found an ancient and interesting inn, actually bisected by
the ancient boundary line of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, a kindly
welcome, most benign bulldogs, and last, but by no means least, a glorious
pie. The inn is there still no doubt; so probably are the bulldogs; so no
doubt is the kindly welcome; but the pie vanished in a manner almost
miraculous. It came in an ample dish, steaming, succulent, the crust
browned to a nicety. In a surprisingly short time the dish went out, empty,
almost clean as Jack Sprat's and his spouse's platter, and its exit was
accomplished by a gurgle of suppressed laughter from without. Was there
something of a rueful tone in that laughter? Perhaps there was. He who
would feed after March motorists have eaten their fill had best send in to
them a gigantic pasty, else will he go hungry.
At Royston, the gate of East Anglia, we strolled about a little, finding it
to be just a quiet town of the country--there is no sufficient reason to
believe it to be really ancient according to the standard of antiquity in
these islands--and the intersecting point of two great roads, that followed
by us, which went on to the eastward, and the road between Hertford and
Cambridge. Here, according to the antiquaries of yesterday, Icenhilde Way
and Erming Street crossed one another. The antiquaries of to-day question
the Icenhilde Way so far east as this, laugh at the philology which would
make Ickleton evidence of its existence, and make nothing of the authority
of the learned Dr. Guest. Perhaps they would treat with more respect Erming
Street, said to have led from Royston to Huntingdon, and to cross the Ouse
at Arrington, for there appears to be sound evidence that Edgar granted to
the monks of Ely the Earmingaford, or ford of the Earmings, or fenmen.
Walking eastward along the spacious street we found first the turning for
Newmarket, which was of present interest, and, quite by accident, a notice
"To the cave," leading us into a back yard and to a locked gate, and
provoking a little later research. We couldn't get in, of course. The
custodian, if there be one, was at his sacred dinner, as everybody in
Royston seemed to be; but Royston struck us as the kind of place in which
an obsolete notice might hang unmoved so long as the fibre of wood would
support its covering of paint. Investigation in books showed the "cave" to
have been discovered by a fluke in 1472, but the "cave," like a good many
others here and elsewhere, seems to have been merely an ancient boneshaft
or rubbish pit, afterwards excavated sufficiently to be used as a
subterranean chapel. Hence the sketches of saints carved on the chalk walls
which, candidly, I should like to have seen close at hand.
Royston is quiet enough in all conscience now, and it is doubtful whether
the motor-car, rapidly as it increases in the land, will bring much
prosperity to it, although it is placed at important cross-roads. Cambridge
is but 12-1/2 miles distant, and Cambridge is a good deal more interesting
than Royston, as well as a more certain find for refreshment, for pies may
not always be to the fore. Being at the cross-roads, however, Royston is
likely to see as much life passing through its midst and to like it as
little as it did in the days of James I. Nay, it may even like the bustle
less, for more dust will go with it. James, who really was an ardent, if
not a mighty, hunter, planted a hunting-box near Royston, his particular
object being probably to course the Chiltern hares--for this is a
first-rate coursing country, possessed, as is most down-land, of remarkably
stout hares; and, when hares are stout, the open prospect of the downs
makes coursing a very pretty sport. Deer, of course, there may have been;
but the country does not look like them; and as for the fox, of whom the
moderns have written and sung, "Although we would kill him we love him," he
was vermin in the days of King James. To hunt the hare either with
greyhound or harier, on the other hand, was a sport much loved of our
kings even in Saxon times, and in Downland of Berkshire, not dissimilar to
the Chilterns, there are examples of manors held on the condition that the
tenant should keep a pack of hariers for the king's hunting. Whether the
Royston folk had to keep hounds for the king is not clear, but "Murray" has
unearthed a lovely story of their catching his favourite hound and
attaching to his collar a scroll bearing the words "Good Mr. Jowler, we
pray you speak to the king, for he hears you every day and so doth he not
us, that it will please his Majesty to go back to London, for else the
country will be undone; all our provision is spent already, and we are not
able to entertain him longer." Here was a new way of conveying a broad
hint. "Baby Charles" visited Royston twice, immediately before his standard
was raised at Nottingham, and later as a prisoner.
The distinguishing feature of the road from Royston to Newmarket, which
crosses over the south-eastern end of the Gog Magog Hills, is its
undeviating straightness. It is plain from the map that it curves gently
here and there, having indeed almost a sharp turn to the left before it
ascends the Gog Magog Hills--which would be of little account as hills
elsewhere than near a fenny country--but the general impression left was of
wide prospects, Scotch firs, belts planted for partridge driving, and
abundant game birds. The feeling that this is an ideal shooting country,
and not half a bad one for motoring, was at its strongest when Six-Mile
Bottom, famous in the history of sport with the gun, was reached. It was a
day, as luck would have it, on which a bird-lover could take rapid
observations of bird-life as he swept along, for there were no vehicles to
distract him on the empty road, and there was no chance of his coming upon
them unawares. Partridges we saw galore, cock-pheasants strutting on the
ploughland, confident that they were safe from the gun by law till the next
October, and probably knowing quite well--for there are few things a wily
old cock-pheasant does not know--that there would be no serious danger,
away from boundary hedges, until the leaf was clear in November. Less
handsome than the cock-pheasants, but more interesting, because less
familiar to my eyes, were the hooded crows, in their sober suits of
drab-grey and glossy black, walking about in perfect amity with the
pheasants. This bird is a grey mystery. In shape and dimensions he is
identical with the carrion crow; carrion crows and hoodies (or Royston
crows) will interbreed on occasion; their nests and eggs are of identical
situation, structure, colour, and shape. Their common habits include a
partiality for young birds and young rabbits as well as for carrion--I have
heard a rabbit scream, looked in the direction of the noise, shot a carrion
crow which rose, and found it lying within a couple of yards of a
half-grown rabbit, quite warm, and with its skull split--and yet nobody
knows for certain whether the two species are distinct or not. The black
crows may be migrants; the grey crows certainly are. They come over to the
East Coast in hordes in the autumn, mostly from Russia, where they also
interbreed with the carrion crow. They come inland a little, and I have
seen one or two in Berkshire, but west of Berkshire they are certainly very
exceptional in England and Wales, though they are quite common and even
breed in Scotland and Ireland. In fact, they are birds, of whom one would
like to know more, attired in a Quakerish habit according ill with their
disposition. Still, when you have no game coverts of your own in the
vicinity, it is good to see them circling about over these wide spaces near
Royston, and to remember that they used to be called Royston crows. The
marshmen call them Danish crows also, and it is a great pity when
ornithologists omit to specify these local names of birds. Hoodie, Danish
crow, Royston crow are identical, and each of them at least as interesting
as _Corone cornix_. They are all, as Mr. Rowdler Sharpe says, ravens in
miniature, but it is open to doubt whether, as pets, they would be equally
amusing in their tricks. We saw them in great numbers as we swept along,
and, like many wild things, they took no notice of the car. It is strictly
irrelevant, of course, but it may be interesting to say that, since these
words were written, I have found that even a Highland stag is not afraid of
a motor-car, which shows a Highland stag to have far more sense than some
reasoning men.
Newmarket we have seen before, and since this time also it was passed
without a halt, whereas on a later visit we stopped for a while, it need
not detain us now. Our road, which kept to the high ground to the
south-east of Mildenhall Fen, took us first through characteristic environs
of Newmarket not seen on the former tour, past endless training grounds,
trim houses and carefully-built stables, and later through the wild heaths
known as Icklingham and Weather Heath, the latter actually 182 feet above
the sea-level. Right well, no doubt, that last-named heath has earned its
name, for it is easy to imagine, and much more comfortable to imagine than
to feel, how a gale from the north or west would have swept across the fens
over that heath. For that matter there is not a single eminence of more
than 200 feet between Weather Heath and the gales from the North Sea, so
the east wind swept it too. Here the hand of man has wrought a great and
beneficial alteration in the features of nature. Mention has been made
before of the belts, clearly planted for partridge driving, to be seen in
some parts of East Anglia, and they must be noticed more particularly a few
miles farther on, when we pass Elvedon. The landowners who planted them,
and the pheasant coverts, have improved the scenery and their own shooting
at the same time. They cannot, perhaps, be credited with absolute and
unalloyed altruism. And soon, on this naturally bleak upland, the road was
sheltered on either side by close hedges of fir, trimmed to a height of ten
feet or so, such as I never saw before, nor have seen since, out of
Norfolk. They cannot be meant for screens to conceal the guns from the
driven birds, for the British public has to stand a good deal of shooting
in illegal proximity to high roads, but it would hardly tolerate permanent
arrangements to that end, even in Norfolk or Suffolk, where game is
sacrosanct. There can be nothing of this kind here, nor, if there were,
would it have been necessary to plant both sides of the road. No--these
hedges, charming because of their quaintness, can have been planted in no
other spirit than that of humanity, in the widest sense of the word. They
break the monotony of the landscape, and that is something; close and
impervious, they must break also the force of the wind and must form an
effectual barrier to the slashing rain that the wind sends with terrible
force before its breath. They are an unmixed blessing, a wonderful
improvement to the conditions of wayfaring, and it only remains to be hoped
that there may arise no county surveyor who, using the arbitrary discretion
given to him by law, shall decree that these merciful shelters be laid low
in the season of the year when his word is law.
On we glided with supreme ease--the whole distance from Newmarket to
Thetford being eighteen miles, but the "going so good," as foxhunters would
say, that distance counts for little--and the evidence of the cult of St.
Pheasant was more and more conspicuous. Were we not drawing near to Elvedon
Hall--an Italian house built in 1876 for the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, now
the property of Lord Iveagh--and have not fabulous "bags" been long a
tradition of Elvedon Hall estate? Let it not be supposed for a moment that
this fact is mentioned by way of pandering to the prejudice of protesting
Radicals, or of joining in the chorus of ignorant invective against
game-preservation, now happily seldom heard in the land. Looking at this
bleak upland, having regard to the recent and the probable future history
of British agriculture, and, if a personal allusion be permissible, to the
well-known character of the present owner of Elvedon Hall, it is plain that
this ground could not be better employed than as a game preserve, that as
such it probably produces more food and gives more employment than if it
were in the hands of farmers, and that, if this were not so, Lord Iveagh
would not be the man to preserve game. There is no East Anglian grievance
here, and East Anglia certainly feels none. If there be any grievance at
all it is that some of the money primarily made on the banks of the Liffey
is spent in East Anglia; but, no doubt, much of it comes indirectly from
East Anglia also, and there is no sort of doubt that Lord Iveagh does his
duty, and much more than his duty, by Ireland as well as by England, more
completely than most men.
Leaving Elvedon behind we sped to Thetford, passing, a mile or so beyond
the gates of Elvedon, across the county boundary and out of Suffolk into
Norfolk. The character of the scenery remained unchanged. We were in a land
of heaths, barren and pleasing, and of rabbit warrens, some of them very
ancient and famed for the quality of the skins and fur of the rabbits
reared among them. Arthur Young found this country from Northwold to
Thetford, and again from Thetford to Ingham, "an uncultivated sheep-walk,"
and as he made no suggestion for its improvement generally (in spite of the
success achieved in the neighbourhood by "one of the best farmers in
England [Mr. Wright]," through the use of marl, which was not even "the fat
soapy kind)," it may be taken that the case is a fairly hopeless one. The
rabbits probably pay as well as anything else would, and we have to thank
them, and the sterility of the soil, for the preservation of a fine tract
of wild and open land, and for the sense of freedom in passing through it.
As for Thetford, its motto certainly ought to be "Ichabod." There are few
places in England, possessed in their time of a substantial reputation,
whose glory has departed more completely. It was the scene of a fierce
battle between Dane and Saxon; it was the second city in Norfolk in point
of importance; it had a mint so late as the days of Henry II; its priory
was founded by Roger Bigod, but is now an uninteresting ruin; it had twenty
churches, five market-places, and twenty-four main streets in the time of
Edward III; it was the diocesan centre of East Anglia for nineteen glorious
years, from 1075 to 1094. Also it has always had its vast earthwork,
commonly known as the "mound," commonly believed also to be of enormous
antiquity, Roman at the latest, and by virtue of it Thetford has been
identified with the Roman Sitomagus. It is a little hard that, when all the
rest of the glory of Thetford is gone, even the Mound, which without
excavation is totally devoid of interest, should have the glamour taken
away from it and that investigators on scientific principles have exploded
the Sitomagus bubble. Mr. Rye says:--
"It has been guessed to be Sitomagus, and certainly many signs of Roman
occupation have been found here. But the great 'Castle Mound,' steep and
high, with its grass-grown sides, so difficult even in times of peace to
climb up, is the chief object of interest in the town. There are no traces
of buildings on it, and the platform at the top is so small that the
generally received theory that it was thrown up as a refuge against the
Danes is obviously untenable. The labour and energy necessary to create
such a mound would have been enormous, and surely would have been expended
in comparatively recent times, such as those in which the Pirate Danes
harried our country, to more practical use. That the mound is mainly
artificial I have little doubt; but whether it was a burial mound or not
cannot now be discovered without deeper excavations than are likely to be
allowed."
Considering that the earthwork is a hundred feet high and a thousand feet
in compass it would certainly be rather a large-sized burial mound. Let us
look at what Mr. Haverfield says. He relegates Thetford to an index of the
"principal places where Roman remains have been found, or supposed, in
Norfolk," but does not dignify it by a position in the text, which is
confined to "places where vestiges of permanent occupation have been
found." The "finds" at Thetford have been first Roman coins, according to
Sir Thomas Browne and Blomefield. But coins alone do not carry us far.
"Hoards of coins have their own value for the students of Political
Economy, since they often reveal secrets in the history of the Roman
currency. But they do not so often illustrate the occupation or character
of the districts in which they are found. Sometimes they occur in the
vicinity of dwellings, buried--for instance--in a back garden, which the
owner had constantly under his eye. But they occur no less often in places
remote from any known Romano-British habitation; they have been lost or
purposely hidden in a secluded and unfrequented spot."
This is a general remark on the test applicable to "sporadic finds," such
as those at Thetford, which are banished to the index. There another
sporadic "find," which if it had been real would have conveyed more
meaning, receives very short shrift. "A lamp is said by Dawson Turner to
have been found at Thetford in 1827 under the Red Mound, and the lamp he
figures is now in Norwich Museum." That sounds promising, does it not? Men
might bury hoards of money in odd places and forget them, or meet their
deaths before they unearthed them. They would hardly be likely so to
conceal their household lamps. Alas for this pretty piece of foundation for
an imaginative structure, "the curator tells me it was brought from
Carthage, and presented by Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, and it
certainly has the look of a foreign object." Finally, "Thetford has been
called Sitomagus by Camden and others, and also Iciani; but it does not
seem to be a Roman site at all; its earthworks are post-Roman. Camden's
'river Sit or Thet' is a piece of characteristically bad etymologising."
The learned scholar deigns to write no more than this of Thetford, and,
being concerned only with Romano-British Norfolk, sets up no positive
theory. But why was the Mound built? Exit Mr. Rye's _a priori_ view, that
it could not have been built in such comparatively recent times as those of
the Danish invasions, because the energy and labour would have been
expended to better purpose in those times, for the Mound is post-Roman. It
may have been raised between the date of the Roman "departure," in 410, and
that at which the kingdom of East Anglia was established. This is one of
the most delightful chapters of history, to a persistently boyish mind,
because next to nothing is known about it. There is no reason to suppose
that the Romanized Britons remaining in East Anglia, as it was to be,
welcomed the Saxons with open arms, and every reason to believe that the
Saxons were a thoroughly barbarous crew. The Britons may have raised it
against them. Or again, it may have been raised by the Saxons against the
Danes, as, in the opinion of Dr. Jessopp, were Castle Rising, Castle Acre,
Mileham, Elmham, and the Norwich Mound. The works at some of these places
are certainly post-Roman, and at none of them is there clear evidence of
Roman occupation; in fact, the chances are that they were all of later
date; and the chances are also that there was a great deal more fighting in
these parts between 410 and 800 A.D. than the muse of history has chosen to
reveal. But this problem is glanced at later. As for Mr. Rye's _a priori_
view that the exertion would have been better employed in those days, why,
bless the man, Offa's Dyke was made, from the mouth of the Dee to that of
the Wye, late in the eighth century, and it is a Cyclopean work.
The Mound is "wrop in mystery," that is all about it, and a heap of earth
whereof the meaning is not known to the learned is a precious dull
spectacle. So, to tell the plain truth, is Thetford. To us the most
interesting facts it provided were a substantial tea at the "Bell," itself
quite old enough to please. While tea was in preparation we saw quite as
much of Thetford as any reasonable man could wish to see; when tea came it
was marked by the appearance of weird things in the nature of tea-cakes,
combining something of the toughness of the muffin and the texture of dry
toast, not very new dry toast, with the shape of the crumpet. The other
memory of Thetford is of a strange old man, having toy windmills for sale
and attached to every part of his person, after the fashion of those street
musicians who, by dint of ingenious contrivances in string, can play, or at
any rate make a noise with, some half-dozen rude instruments at the same
time. This wandering toy seller was a blessing in disguise. He was, and is,
a providential reminder that windmills, here, there, and everywhere, are
striking objects in the East Anglian landscape. Travelling eastward from
the Midlands one sees them as far west as Buckinghamshire, and there not in
the Chilterns only, and in East Anglia proper their name is legion. In or
out of working order--and in a country of much wind travelling fast, of
water moving, as a rule, very slowly, they are mostly in working
order--they add picturesque character to the landscape. Moreover, in beauty
they have a distinct advantage over the watermill. The latter may be, often
is, exquisite at close quarters; its foaming stream, its dripping and moss
covered wheel, its gleaming pond with willow-shadowed or elder-girt bank,
are among the loveliest objects in England when seen at close quarters.
Your windmill, on the other hand, must in the nature of things be placed
either on an eminence or in a wide and open space. Not so beautiful,
perhaps, only perhaps, at close quarters, as the watermill, it is still
more than pleasing, and it can be seen for miles. It is as a beacon on the
coast which the mariner can see for many leagues before he passes it, as
the motor-car passes the windmill, at a safe distance. Constable, it is
worth while to remember, learned some of his skill in an East Anglian
watermill.
It was only afterwards that, consulting the faithful "Murray," I learned
that Thetford had been the birthplace of Thomas Paine, "the infamous
author of _The Age of Reason_," and that the house in which he was born was
standing thirty years ago. It would not, perhaps, have been very
interesting to discover whether it was still standing; but it was decidedly
quaint to learn that Tom Paine was the son of a Quaker staymaker. Could
there be anything more incongruous? That a Quaker should be the father of
Thomas Paine was bad enough; that a Quaker should make stays--let us hope
he never measured his fair customers for them, but made them in stock
sizes--was monstrous. Yet on investigation in other books it turned out to
be a true story, and from the investigation came an awakened memory, which
others may need also, that Thomas Paine was a really influential personage
among the founders of American Independence.
During tea and the consumption of the strange tea-cakes (which may, after
all, have been slices of the traditional Norfolk dumpling, more or less
toasted) rose a suggestion that we might turn southward for three or four
miles, cross the Waveney, enter Suffolk again, and take a motorist's view
of Euston Park. It would be the same Euston Park, planted with many of the
same trees, grown bigger, which surrounded the house, when Lord Ossory
heard the thunder of guns from the east and rode off, as has been recounted
before this, to be a spectator of the great sea-fight in Sole Bay. It would
be the same house, too, for it was acquired by the first Duke of Grafton,
with the property, by marrying Lord Arlington's daughter in the days of
Charles II, and the Dukes of Grafton from time to time hold it still. The
decision not to make a detour was reached partly because, as we meant to
make Norwich by way of Attleborough and Wymondham, it would have involved a
return by the same road as that taken on the outward journey, and partly
because the descriptions were unpromising. The reference here is distinctly
not to the description in "Murray." "It is a large, good, red-brick house,
with stone quoins, built by Lord Arlington in the reign of Charles II, and
without any pretensions to beauty, except from its position in a
well-timbered and well-watered park." That description, such is the
perversity of human nature, raised a suspicion that the house might, if it
were visible from the road, turn out to be a very satisfying structure,
conveying that idea of spacious comfort and substance which is completely
lacking in many a more imposing "mansion." Nor was I moved by the fact that
Walpole wrote "the house is large and bad," for it might have been possible
to disagree with Walpole, of Strawberry Hill, on a question of taste. But
Walpole went beyond matters of mere opinion. "It was built by Lord
Arlington, and stands, as all old houses do, for convenience of water and
shelter in a hole; so it neither sees nor is seen." That settled the
question. Euston might, or might not, be one of the stately homes of
England, whose owners permit them to be inspected by strangers on stated
days; this March day might have been such a day; but not even the prospect
of seeing "Euston's watered vale and sloping plains," or some fairly
interesting portraits, or Verrio's frescoes, would have induced me to avail
myself of the privilege, if indeed it had existed. I know what the
legitimate inmates of a great house feel on those occasions. Besides,
motorists are unpopular in ducal parks, and with good reason. It is
absolutely true that a duke, riding a bicycle in his own park, has been
abused, coarsely, violently, and recently, by a motorist who was enjoying
that park by the duke's grace. That park is now closed to motorists, and no
wonder; and the case is not exceptional in character.
So we glided onward--gliding is the true word for the onward movement of a
good car--over the open ground of Croxton Heath first, then past sundry
villages, not lying close up to the high road, between the houses of
Attleborough, and noticed, without halting, Attleborough's fine church.
After this, for quite a long while, there were no more villages, and then,
in front of us and dominating the view, rose a huge church, having two
towers, one at the west end. It stirred memory of pleasant browsings in
_Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries_. This could be, and in fact was,
none other than Wymondham, pronounced Windham, where the Benedictine monks
and the parishioners quarrelled over the parish church, which had been
appropriated to the abbey. So bitterly did they quarrel that the east end,
transepts, and part of the nave were walled off for the monks--they
certainly took the lion's share--in 1410, the parishioners being relegated
to a portion of the nave; and there, at the west end, they built them a
tower and hung bells in 1476.
A mighty religious house was this of Wymondham, entitled to all wrecks
between Eccles, Happisburgh, and Tunstead, and to a tribute of two thousand
eels every year from Elingley. This tribute, we may be sure, was paid in
Lent, for it is pretty clear from the _Paston Letters_ that, while herrings
were the stock food of the days of fasting, eels were the luxury that made
them tolerable. Mistress Agnes Paston writes to her husband in London that
she has secured the herrings--from Yarmouth, no doubt, as she lived hard by
at Caister-by-Yarmouth--but that the eels are delayed, which appears to be
accounted very sad. Just because this was a mighty religious house at
Wymondham it is not surprising to find that Kett, of the famous rebellion,
was a Wymondham man. Here, unfortunately, it is necessary to be at partial
variance with Mr. Walter Rye. He writes: "Lingard, as of late Professor
Rogers, has said that Kett's Rebellion had a religious origin; the former
so writing from religious bias, the latter from ignorance." That is rather
a brusque way of putting things, for, although Lingard, as a Roman
Catholic, was a little apt to think too ill of the effects of Henry VIII's
policy towards the religious houses, Professor Rogers deserved to be spoken
of with more respect. Enclosures were, of course, the main cause for Kett's
Rebellion in 1549, and Kett had a private grudge to avenge against one
Sergeant Flowerdew at the outset. But, as a Wiltshire labourer once said to
me, "where there's stoans there's carn," so, where there have been great
religious houses in England, the rebellious spirit manifests itself in the
pages of history before and after those houses came to an end. At Abingdon
and at Bury St. Edmunds--I quote the two places of which the story happens
to be fresh in my memory--conflicts were incessant, and there is no reason
to doubt that the state of things was the same at Wymondham. The religious
houses had become, with exceptions of course, corrupt within and
extortionate without the gates. They were oppressors of the poor, whose
best friends they had once been; there was no limit to the variety of the
tolls they demanded. They were by far the largest landowners in the
country. All this had ceased but a very few years before Kett's Rebellion,
but the spirit which it had created, the very men in whom that spirit had
been raised by extortion and injustice, were very much alive. If Kett's
Rebellion had not such a directly religious origin as Lingard supposed, it
is more than likely that it was indirectly due to the spirit of unrest and
discontent which always arose in the vicinities of religious houses.
Indeed, the very success of Henry VIII's stern treatment of the
monasteries is proof positive that he was supported by popular opinion. As
for the enclosures, some may have been made by the new lords of manors;
others, and probably the vast majority, had been made by the grasping
"religious." Moreover, the petition sent up to the king when the rebellion
was at its height contained express allusions to religious grievances. It
asked "that parsons shall be resident, and all having a benefice worth more
than L10 a year shall, by himself or deputy, teach the poor parish children
the catechism and the primer." Not a very outrageous demand surely; and if
we scan the material grievances complained against--establishment of
numerous dovecots, and claims to exclusive rights of fishing, for
example--we see that they are essentially the grievances which the
religious houses had originated. How Kett and his men marched in due course
to Mousehold Heath, on the outskirts of Norwich, the grievous fighting
which followed in and about Norwich, how they killed Lord Sheffield by the
Palace Gates at a spot marked to this day by a stone with an S on it, how
Warwick, after many reverses, finally defeated Kett, who was hanged, drawn,
and quartered, shall not be told at length in this volume. These things are
an essential part of the history of England; they are far and away the most
exciting events in the history of Norwich, and, since they cannot be dealt
with fully here, they are best passed over with this slight mention.
At Wymondham is, or was, an old house having a very curious inscription,
"_Nec mihi glis servus, nec hospes hirudo_," which is not quite free from
difficulty even as it stands, for a verb is left to be understood, and it
may be "_sit_" or "_est_." In the one case the guest hopes, in the other
the house boasts, the servant to be no dormouse and the host no leech.
Things were worse when somebody read _hirudo_ as _hirundo_, though one
might make attractive translations of that too. But we cannot linger over
that when we are close to the scene of a tragedy far more recent, and
therefore a good deal more affecting, than that of Kett's Rebellion.
Stanfield Hall is close to Wymondham. It is the reputed birthplace of Amy
Robsart, who may or may not have been murdered at Cumner--Lady Warwick says
she was not--and Stanfield Hall was certainly the scene of a series of
remarkably cold-blooded murders in times which may still be counted recent.
Prefacing a frank confession that my personal interest in murders is small,
which seems to be a misfortune judging by the enraptured attention they
attract from many intelligent and cultivated persons, I endeavour to give
some account of these murders partly because I desire to please, partly
because a very old friend, now dead, devoted a vast amount of attention to
them. His meticulous care in studying the _locus in quo_ may serve to
compensate for my lukewarmness as a student of homicide; nay more, his
interest in the subject seems to have been infectious, for, having read his
monograph of some five-and-twenty octavo pages on the subject since the
foregoing sentence was penned, I am now distinctly conscious of being keen
on the subject and of finding interest in it.
Truth to tell, it was not the first time of reading. The late Sir Llewelyn
Turner, of Carnarvon, was one of those rare men who, inhabiting remote
corners of the provinces, escape provincialism and retain intelligent
appreciation of public affairs and a sympathetic interest in all sorts of
events. In the year 1902, having committed to paper his memories and
opinions upon a large number of subjects, and being all but eighty years
old, he entrusted me with the task of preparing his MS. for the printers;
and he had the satisfaction of seeing himself in print, to the extent of
some five hundred pages with illustrations, before he died. Among the
miscellaneous chapters of the book is one entitled "Stanfield Hall and its
Terrible Tragedies." It is, of course, far too long for quotation, but it
is also a treasure-house of nice points, some of them perhaps new even to
precise students of the history of crime.
"In the year 18-- I accepted an invitation from my valued friend,
connection, and old schoolfellow, Colonel Boileau, to pay him a visit in
this interesting old moated house, the scene of fearful murders and
bloodshed, viz., the murders of Mr. Isaac Jermy, the Recorder of Norwich,
of his son Mr. Isaac Jermy Jermy, and the shooting of Mrs. Jermy Jermy, the
son's wife, and her maid, by probably one of the greatest scoundrels that
ever disgraced humanity, James Bloomfield Rush." The quotation will serve
to show that my old friend's literary method is too leisurely and minute to
justify the repetition of the story in his own words. Truth to tell he
rambled somewhat and was not unduly particular about the sequence of
events. Still it may be possible after study of his monograph, to produce a
narrative of this crime having something more of freshness than would
follow from reference to the text-books of crime; for these murders, it
must be remembered, were on a colossal scale, and the case, although simple
enough in its legal aspect, has a place among the celebrated crimes by
virtue of its wholesale character, its beginnings in long-planned roguery,
and its culmination in thorough-paced brutality. The foundations of the
programme of crime which was finished on the 28th of November, 1848, were
laid many years before, and it is a curious study in the wickedness of
which human nature is capable to trace the evolution of the scheme.
In the second half of the eighteenth century the then head of the Jermy
family held Stanfield Hall and its estate as, probably, his predecessors of
the same name had held it for centuries. Jermiin is one of the Norfolk
names of early date for which Mr. Walter Rye claims a Danish origin, and he
was probably a Jermy (or letters to that effect) who, in Tudor times, built
Stanfield Hall, and moated it round and about. At any rate a Jermy held it
when our story opens. A poor relation of the name sold his reversionary
interest in the estate to a Mr. Preston, and Mr. Preston came into the
estate, "in the shoes of" the poor relation, and was able to settle down in
Stanfield Hall. Outside the lodge gates lay the Home Farm, having James
Rush for its tenant, a plausible fellow, it would seem, but a whole-souled
rascal at heart. Ascertaining that his landlord was going to London by
coach on a given day, Rush engaged the three remaining inside places for
himself, and so agreeable did he contrive to make himself to the old man on
the journey that he returned to Stanfield not merely as tenant of the Home
Farm, but also as accredited agent of the estate. As such he had access to
Mr. Preston's title-deeds, which he stole before Mr. Preston died.
So Mr. Preston the elder slept with his fathers, if he had any, and Mr.
Isaac Preston his son reigned in his stead, Rush remaining agent and tenant
of the Home Farm; and, as Mr. Isaac Preston was Recorder of Norwich, the
beautiful old house within easy access of the great town suited his needs
admirably. He settled down in it at once, and later, as we shall see, he
began to think of adding to the estate. When exactly the Recorder
discovered that the title-deeds were missing my authority does not relate,
but probabilities seem to point to an early discovery, coupled with a
suspicion, which was perhaps difficult to bring home, that Rush had
annexed them. That would give Rush a hold over the Recorder, and it is only
on that hypothesis that the Recorder's subsequent conduct in relation to
Rush can be explained. At one and the same time we find Rush practically
bankrupt, and the heirs of the original Jermys egged on by Rush into an
attempt to recover the family estate in the Court of Chancery. The Recorder
really was in rather a tight place, for the simple reason that he could not
have proved his title without the deeds, and that he could not bring the
theft of them home to Rush. Still he was Recorder of Norwich and a person
of consideration, and when the claimants, weary of the delays of the Court
of Chancery, organized a small army of emergency men in Norwich, took
possession of the house by force and held it, barricading the windows and
the bridge over the moat, the dragoons then quartered in Norwich soon
restored the peace. In so acting the claimants were but following an
ancient precedent of the county of Norfolk, for, early in the fifteenth
century, the Duke of Norfolk besieged Caister Castle, built by "that
renowned knight and valiant soldier" Sir John Falstolf, then deceased, and
occupied, on what ground does not appear clearly from the _Paston Letters_,
by Sir John Paston's family. There were, however, material differences
between the two cases: the first of them being that the Duke had apparently
at least a show of title to Caister Castle through the Courts, while in
this case the claimants were anticipating the judgment of the Court, and
the next being a trifle of four centuries, for it was so recently as April,
1839, that John Larner, Daniel Wingfield, and eighty others, the emergency
army in fact, were indicted for riot at Stanfield Hall. Still it is not
easy to understand how, after so lawless a proceeding at so recent a date,
the presiding judge could have passed, as he did, a series of sentences of
from three months' to one week's imprisonment. True it is that the Recorder
recommended them to mercy as ignorant persons "actuated by a mistaken
notion of property"; but the sentences are still hard to understand. So,
for that matter, are many sentences in these days.
At about the same time the Recorder brought a suit (Preston _v._ Rush)
against Rush for breach of covenant, no doubt in relation to the Home Farm,
and it was clearly after this that the Recorder went through the process,
expensive in those days, of taking the name of Jermy because he "found that
it was necessary by the old settlements of the estate that the owner should
bear the name of Jermy."
A year earlier than the riot, so far as I can make out the dates, some land
called the Potash Farm came into the market, and it is clear from the
Recorder's conduct over this matter that he felt himself to be very much at
the mercy of Rush. He must have known Rush to be practically insolvent, he
knew that the title-deeds were missing, and he probably suspected Rush; yet
he sent out Rush as his agent to bid for the Potash Farm, which adjoined
Stanfield Park. Rush came back from the auction, having bought the farm,
not for his master, but for himself, at a price greater than that to which
his master had limited him; and the Recorder actually lent him L5000,
repayable in ten years and secured by mortgage, wherewith to complete the
purchase. Of course the price may have been considerably more than L5000,
and the bargain may have seemed on the face of it as promising as that
which the original Preston made with the "poor relation"; but it all sounds
as if Rush had a stronger hold of the Recorder than even the possession of
the title-deeds would give him, or as if the Recorder were a strangely
nervous and foolish man.
Eight years passed away, one knows not how so far as these persons are
concerned, and the end of them found Rush a widower, with several children,
occupying the Potash Farm and holding another at Felmingham, fourteen miles
off, also from the Recorder, now Mr. Isaac Jermy, by due form of law. At
the end of those eight years Rush advertised for a governess, engaged one
Emily Sandford, who replied to the advertisement, and betrayed her; but she
continued to live with him. Then came November of 1848, on the last day of
which the L5000 was payable, and the Recorder, often entreated, would not
give Rush time. It does not appear that the Chancery suit had failed
utterly and hopelessly, but it is clear from the sequel that the original
Jermys had fallen very low in the world, and the Recorder, recognizing that
they were no longer dangerous, may have found courage. If so, it cost him
his life. The day of fate and blood was the 28th of November. On the
evening of that day Mr. Jermy, according to his usual custom, one no doubt
familiar to Rush, went to the hall door at half-past eight to look at the
prospects of the weather; and the night was fine for the time of year, for
five persons, servant girls and their sweethearts, were, as the evidence at
the trial showed, gossiping by the gate beyond the moat, only thirty-five
yards from the hall door. No sooner did Mr. Jermy come out than Rush, who
was disguised, shot him dead with a pistol, the muzzle of which must almost
have touched his body. "The fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs were shattered,
the entire body of the heart was carried away." The loiterers on the bridge
ran away in terror. Mr. Jermy the younger, rushing from the drawing-room to
see what was the matter, was met, and shot dead on the spot, by Rush in the
corridor. Mrs. Jermy the younger, hurrying into the hall, saw her husband's
body, ran to call the butler, Watson, and was met by her maid Eliza
Chastney. Rush encountered them both in a passage, shot Mrs. Jermy in the
arm and the maid in the thigh and groin. Mrs. Jermy's daughter and the cook
ran out by the back door and took refuge in the coach-house; the coachman
jumped into the moat, swam across, and rode to Wymondham for help. As for
the butler, he heard the first shot, went into the passage, "saw an armed
man with a cloak and mask who motioned him to keep off," and--well, he kept
off.
Rush was arrested at Potash Farm before three o'clock the next morning; his
trial, at which Emily Sandford was a most valuable witness for the Crown
and a most deadly one to him, attracted immense attention. Sir Llewelyn
says: "The excitement throughout the nation exceeded anything of the kind
ever known, and _The Times_ actually sent down a printing press to Norwich
to report daily the incidents of the magisterial and coroner's inquiries."
Perhaps it need hardly be said that inquiry has shown the statement about
_The Times_ and the printing press to be entirely without foundation: for,
since _The Times_ as a whole has always been printed in London, and London
has always been its place of publication, nothing could have been gained by
sending a printing press to Norwich. It would have been just as wise to
send a piano, a plough, or a pump. But it does not follow that Sir Llewelyn
Turner is to be distrusted in other matters because he knew nothing of the
mechanical technicalities of journalism. What happened, no doubt, was that
_The Times_ secured and published a very full report, and good folks,
wondering how the miracle was performed, hit upon the idea of a special
dispatch of a printing press, and were satisfied because an explanation
which they could not understand had been set up. Suggestions quite as
impossible are made in these days. A correspondent, who very likely cannot
write shorthand, is frequently asked whether he hands his shorthand notes
directly to the printers or to the telegraphists, neither of whom would be
able to cope with the notes if he were capable of making them. Huge crowds
attended the funeral of the victims at Wymondham. Immense excitement also
was caused by the trial of Rush at Norwich Assizes, although the issue
cannot have been in doubt for a moment after the evidence of Emily
Sandford. Indeed, the report of the trial is only interesting now as
showing, by comparison with discoveries made later, how little the police
had found out, and as bearing, especially with reference to the violence of
Rush at the trial, upon the kinship of homicidal crime and madness. The
attraction of the case consisted then, and consists now, in its sheer
brutality and prodigality of bloodshed and in the long series of cunning
plots, to be outlined shortly, by which it was preceded. Within the space
of a very few minutes Rush had murdered two persons and had grievously
wounded two others; he had shown himself to be quite an exceptional paragon
of villainy, and public curiosity to see so hardened a ruffian was natural.
Nor need it be matter for surprise that the public execution of Rush at
Norwich, where the remains of the Norman castle on the Mound in the heart
of the city were then the gaol and the place of execution, was attended by
a vast concourse of people. If ever there was a good excuse for gloating
over a wretch ignominiously done to death it was present in the case of
James Rush the wholesale murderer.
In all these thoughts stirred by the sight of Stanfield Hall there is, it
may be, little of novelty to students of crimes and criminals, even though
many of the details may have been forgotten. But my old friend's monograph
has a peculiar interest and value because, although he wrote with the
failing memory of one well-stricken in years, it is possible to follow in
it an elaborate development of criminal cunning almost, if not quite,
without parallel in the history of crime. Also it enables one to see a long
string of earlier crimes, probably committed by Rush, which, while they
could not have been mentioned at his trial, would have well qualified him
for admission to the roll of "unmitigated miscreants," disgracefully
distinguished by "pre-eminence in ill-doing," whom Mr. Thomas Seccombe and
his associates gibbeted in _Twelve Bad Men_ (Fisher Unwin, 1894). His
preparations for the crime were of the most elaborate character; his plans
for taking the most complete advantage of it when it had been committed,
and for so perpetrating it that suspicion might fall upon others, were of
an absolutely diabolical ingenuity. Let some of the details of those plans
be enumerated. He had provided numerous disguises, some of which were not
discovered until long after he had been hanged. He had covered with straw,
as if for cattle, his most convenient path to the Hall, and his footsteps
could not be traced on the straw. He had made Emily Stanford drive with him
towards the Hall, so that she might be seen with him by a turnpike-keeper
and the lodge-keeper, on the 10th of October, 1848, and the 21st of
November, 1848. He had forged documents of both those dates, which were
afterwards found under the floor of a cupboard in Potash Farm. The first
was an agreement between the Recorder and himself whereby the Recorder gave
him three more years for the payment of the L5000; the next was an
agreement between the same parties that, if Rush gave up the missing
title-deeds, the Recorder would burn the mortgage deed of Potash Farm and
give Rush a lease of the Felmingham estate. It was further agreed that Rush
should do all he could to assist the Recorder in retaining possession.
There was also a forged lease of Felmingham to Rush. To all these Emily
Sandford had signed her name as witness without knowing the contents. To
the efficacy of them all the death of the Recorder was indispensable, for
of course he would have denounced the forgery at once, and the death of Mr.
Jermy the younger, who knew his father's affairs intimately, would be a
decided help. But Rush, although he had no scruples at all about taking
life, as he proved very conclusively, had a very considerable regard for
the skin of his own neck. The new Jermys were to be ruthlessly
exterminated; the old Jermys, or some of them (he did not care how many),
were to be hanged, and Rush was to become a rich man. He inveigled some of
the old Jermys into the vicinity of Stanfield Hall on the day of the
murders; he left on the floor of one of the passages in the Hall a warning
in printed letters:--
"There are seven of us here, three of us outside and
four inside the hall, all armed as you see us here. If
any of you servants offer to leave the premises or to
folloo (_sic_) you will be shot dead. Therefore all of
you keep in the servants' hall, and you nor anybody
else will take any arme (_sic_), for we are only come
to take possession of the Stanfield Hall property.
"THOMAS JERMY, the Owner."
The very illiteracy of this document may have been designed, for the
original Jermys, having come down in the world, had, as Rush well knew,
come down with a run to the very bottom. Indeed, one of them, probably this
Thomas, swore at the trial that he did not know how to write. If he had
been in the dock, instead of in the witness-box, as Rush had planned, his
mouth would have been closed and, with the Recorder and his son dead, with
the memory of the riot of 1839 fresh in the minds of the jury, things might
have been very awkward for Thomas and others of the true Jermy family. They
had been seen about the Hall on the day of the murders; the murderer had
disguised himself, most likely so that he might be taken for one of the
true Jermys; he had not been careful to go unseen, though he had avoided
observation in leaving Potash Farm; the rude warning, printed on the cover
of a book, was just the kind of missive an illiterate person might be
expected to produce; and Thomas Jermy would have stood in quite measurable
peril of that last interview with Calcraft which Rush went through with
callous effrontery. Of the penmanship of the other forged documents it is
not possible to speak, but their phraseology is sufficiently clear, and
they might have passed muster. The question whether they would have done so
or not has, however, no bearing on the character of Rush. He had laid his
plan with devilish ingenuity; he had made all things ready in such fashion
as to satisfy his knowledge of what legal documents ought to be. It was a
plan as complete, cunning, and merciless as it was possible for man to
devise.
Sir Llewelyn Turner had little doubt that, if Rush had escaped scot-free,
and the forged documents, or either of them, had been effectual, Rush would
have murdered Emily Sandford also; and, in the circumstances, the view can
hardly be stigmatized as uncharitable. She would have had Rush at her
mercy; she would have been in his way; and Rush had no scruples in dealing
with those who were in his way. It was believed locally that he got rid of
his mother and forged a codicil in his own favour to her will. That
forgery at any rate succeeded, for he obtained L1500 by it; and the
circumstantial story of his stepfather's death, by which the money came to
the mother, raises a strong suspicion that Rush murdered his stepfather
also. It shall be told in Sir Llewelyn Turner's words:--
"His stepfather was shot in 1844. He had gone to sleep after dinner, which,
I believe, was his custom, and from that sleep he was not allowed to wake.
His mother was ill upstairs, and Rush's account was that he (Rush) had gone
upstairs, leaving his gun on a table; that, hearing a shot, he went
downstairs and found the gun and his stepfather on the floor, the gun
having exploded and killed the latter."
Rush himself gave the intelligence to the coroner, and he was the only
witness. His story was believed and a verdict of accidental death was
returned, but the subsequent career of Rush leaves little doubt that the
guilt of this murder also lay upon so much of conscience as he possessed.
Stanfield Hall, then, a very beautiful building still, although full of
tragic memories, may justly claim to have been the scene of crimes as
brutal, planned by a brain as devilish and ruthless, as ever were committed
in England or found in man.
From Wymondham we swung on to Norwich easily, and without difficulty or
incident of any kind, and at half-past six or thereabouts passed under an
archway into the Court of the "Maid's Head"; and the "Maid's Head" is an
absolute reason for ending one chapter and beginning another.