Of the siege of Colchester during the Rebellion, and of the cruel vengeance

exacted by Fairfax, under the relentless influence of Ireton, on Lucas and

Lisle, mention has been made at an earlier point, but at the moment of

mention I was not aware that the populace of Colchester, like that of most

of East Anglia, was essentially in sympathy with the Parliament, and had

helped its cause over and over again. It was the necessity of war that

drove the Royalists--"undaunted Capel" was of their number too--into

Colchester, and it may well be that through familiarity with the place

Lucas was enabled to make exceptionally capable use of the outlines of the

town for purposes of defence. For the Lucases were tenants in fee of the

Abbey of St. John, the gate of which still remains, restored it is true.

"The last abbot," says Murray, "was hanged at his own gate for contumacy in

refusing to acknowledge the Royal Supremacy." The last owner, whose

ancestors had come in by purchase and not by force, faced death hard by

with equal resolution and cheerfulness for the cause which he held dear.

The defence had been a gallant but a hopeless enterprise. Reduced to the

last extremity for lack of provisions, "after feeding on the vilest

aliment," worn out by hunger and desperate sallies, surrounded by a hostile

population, the leaders must indeed have been weary of life. How they lost

it we know; but Ireton was not satisfied with the blood of the leaders. The

common soldiers were dispatched to the American plantations, were in fact

converted into white slaves by the champions of freedom and of religion;

and the unhappy townsfolk, who certainly had no wish to take the Royalist

side, although it is probable that many of them felt personal regard for

Lucas and his family, were mulcted in the sum of L12,000, a very large sum

in those days. "Soon after, a gentleman appearing in the King's presence,

clothed in mourning for Sir Charles Lucas; that humane Prince, suddenly

recollecting the hard fate of his friends, paid them a tribute, which none

of his own unparalleled misfortunes ever extorted from him; He dissolved

into a flood of tears." These words, with their peculiar punctuation and

their copious capitals, are those not of the stately and partisan Clarendon

but of David Hume, whom Adam Smith considered "as approaching as nearly to

the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of

human frailty will permit."

_Leviore plectro._ No wise man will go to Colchester without sampling the

oysters, for which Colchester has been famous since it was Camulodunum.

They are traditionally the best in the world, although perhaps something

may be urged in favour of the Marennes of France (but the green colour is

somewhat against them), or of the giant oysters of New Zealand, which were

unknown, as New Zealand was, when the tradition of Colchester natives was

already ancient.

Our Ipswich oysters most likely came from the celebrated layings in the

Colne, so there was no heresy in singing their praises. Many another place,

and Whitstable above all others, is famous for its oysters, but only at

Colchester are the layings the property of the Corporate body, only on the

Colne is the development of our old friend the "succulent bivalve"

officially watched from the time when it is no bigger than "a drop from a

tallow candle" to that at which it conforms to the dimensions of the

municipal model in silver. Only at Colchester is it eaten, or are they

eaten, with a just combination of civic ceremony and appreciative abandon.

Colchester oysters, indeed, have but one drawback. They are not, in these

days of rapid transport, so cheap as some epicures of scanty purse might

desire. For that matter good oysters are seldom to be found at a moderate

price in the old world. Australia is the oyster-lover's paradise. There, in

any little bay, rock-oysters may be broken off in blocks, opened, and eaten

out of hand; and one orders them not by the dozen, but by the plate, which

holds eighteen or twenty, at the modest price of one shilling.

Oysters were a distinct consolation during these manoeuvres--be it hoped

the military character of the starting point has not passed out of mind--to

those officers who mourned the futility and the cost of the operations by

land: they were a sheer joy to those who were indifferent on the military

question. But there were manoeuvres all the same, and they involved many

journeys by motor-car and by bicycle to all parts of the surrounding

district. The first journey I took by bicycle, fairly early in the morning,

to Clacton. A broiling sun poured down upon roads of yielding surface,

soaked by a night's rain, and one gained a respect for the little hills

which was completely lost in the Lanchester later. They are hills, though,

without doubt, and a car of low power would feel them. The descent from the

centre of Colchester is sharp, the ascent in returning necessarily the

same, and the termination of Wivenhoe spells hill as plainly as Plymouth

"Hoe" does, and for the same etymological reason. It is, in fact, a country

of pretty little hills, abundantly wooded, until the flat land by the

sea-coast is reached. It is to be feared that no halt was made on this or

any other occasion to notice the Roman tiles built into the wall of the

church at Wivenhoe. In the roadside scenery, however, an eye fresh from

Berkshire observed one pleasing characteristic appearing to be singular.

The hedgerow trees were, for the most part, elms, not very tall, for no

tree grows to a stately height near the sea in our islands, but very much

more beautiful than the loftier elms of Berkshire, save those planted for

ornament, in Windsor Park for example. These low elms spread their welcome

shade--true, it keeps the surface damp and renders road-preservation

difficult--well over the way from either side. There was no doubt they

looked better than the ordinary Berkshire elm that, newly mutilated, is

bare as a ship's mast for thirty or forty or fifty feet, and has a mere

tuft at the top like birch broom, or, clipped a year or two ago, supports

the same birch broom upon an apparently solid and most disproportionately

thick column of opaque green. The patulous elms, too, exercised their

little influence on the manoeuvres, but before explaining it, let the

word "patulous," suggested by memory of the first line of Virgil, and

incontinently looked for in a dictionary, be justified. It is not merely a

botanical term, nor of my coinage. No less a poet than P. Robinson, in no

less famous a poem than "Under the Sun," wrote, "The patulous teak, with

its great leathern leaves." Perhaps P. Robinson was not famous; it may be

noticed that courage is wanting to dub him Peter, Paul, or even Percival;

and "Under the Sun" may have been a very minor poem by a quite

insignificant writer; but P. Robinson at least knew where to go for a word

expressing his exact meaning, and mine, better than any other in the

English language. The patulous elms, then, exercised their influence on the

manoeuvres. How? Some days later, when General French, not having burned

his ships, was in full retreat for them his enemy, General Wynne, sent up a

balloon to spy out his movements and those of his troops. Espying that

balloon at a distance of some ten miles, we gave chase in the Lanchester

and came up to it, just after it had been brought down to earth in the

centre of one of the strange crops to be found in this part of Essex. (It

was a crop, as it turned out, of bird-seed, and marked as out of bounds,

but balloons as they descend know no law.) The officer of Royal Engineers

had been up 1000 feet or more in the balloon; he had scanned the whole

country with field-glasses from a bird's-eye point of view. The country

between him and the sea, Layer de la Haye, Layer Breton and the

vicinity--he was at Tiptree of jam fame--was full of French's soldiery.

They were marching in column of route within half a mile of him. Yet, by

reason of the patulous elms, he had seen nothing of them. We had; but we

were non-combatants and neutral, and therefore silent.

After Wivenhoe, the route to Clacton-on-Sea chosen that day, through

Thorrington and Great Clacton, seemed dull and was very flat. But

Clacton-on-Sea was a remarkable sight then, and is always, during the

season, a sight quite _sui generis_. Some of the things witnessed that day

will probably never be seen again. The long line of transports and cruisers

lying a couple of miles out and extending from Great Holland to Clacton,

the horse-boats being towed ashore, were both quite exceptional. Indeed,

the horse-boats will certainly never reappear at Clacton or anywhere else,

for a storm broke most of them up a day or two later, and the wreckage was

sold by auction on the spot. Nor again, most likely, shall we see the Duke

of Connaught and his General Staff, and a brilliant group of foreign

attaches, naval and military, standing on Clacton beach amidst a seething

crowd of East End trippers, and mountebanks, and nigger minstrels, and

shell-fish vendors. But Clacton-on-Sea and its casual visitors were true to

themselves none the less, and between them they made a quite wonderful

spectacle, needing to be seen by the uninitiated before it could be

realized, and certainly worth realizing by any easy-going student of human

nature.

My expeditions to Clacton-on-Sea were not taken by me in the capacity of

motorist simply; indeed, the first of them was made on a bicycle, and the

others, for there were several more to follow, in a car, when my knowledge

of motoring was embryonic. Yet I found in Clacton-on-Sea one of that

peculiar class of places which he who follows what may be called public

motoring learns to know through the motor-car, and would certainly not have

learned to know in any other way. Blackpool is another such place, visited

because in several successive years it has broken out into "speed trials,"

and Douglas in the Isle of Man is another, to which motorists go by reason

of the Tourist Trophy Race. Blackpool and Douglas are grander in their

kind than Clacton. They have more Winter Gardens--I am not sure that

Clacton boasts any at all--huge dancing-rooms, constructed and conducted by

municipal enterprise, in which the dancing is marked by a punctilious

decorum and, it may be added, by an excellence of execution, which would

put the most famous ball-rooms in London to shame. But all three have two

points in common. Every prospect, except that of the houses and public

buildings, pleases. At each the sea gleams in the sun or crashes on the

beach as the case may be. Each has its parade, esplanade, promenade, call

it what you will; and this is crowded, as the beach is also, in the season

of the year. At Clacton-on-Sea a few of the buildings are tolerable to the

eye, and there is one hotel, not the most pretentious of them, which is

more than endurable to look at, and quite reasonably comfortable. It stands

facing the sea, and its broad veranda is screened by a dense fig-tree

carefully trained. A better vantage ground for a weary wayfarer need not be

desired.

From that cool veranda, reflecting that it is every whit as comfortable to

sit under somebody else's fig-tree as under one's own, I looked on the

passing and re-passing crowd on the parade, like Dido gazing from her

watch-tower at the departing ships of Aeneas, but in a very different mood.

In truth the spectacle was both amusing and perplexing. At first sight it

seemed for all the world as if hundreds, and even thousands, of smart

ladies, of the kind one sees at Ascot or even at Goodwood, had cast aside

all prejudices of position, and were consorting with men whom the

conventions of society assign to a lower rank. Dresses and sunshades and

hats were all spotlessly clean, colours were subdued and delicate. Closer

inspection would no doubt have revealed to the trained eye of a woman that

the frocks were ill-made and badly "hung," that the materials were cheap,

which is bad, and that they looked cheap, which is worse. To a man it

revealed nothing of this, nothing more at first than a vast number of

girls, walking well, and some of them quite pretty, in the company of young

fellows who, worthy representatives of an excellent class as they may have

been, were clearly not gentlemen. Their dress alone betrayed that, not by

dint of shabbiness, but rather by its excessive and ill-judged smartness.

Then voices became clear; the twang of the male and female Cockney filled

the air as the so-called music of a Jew's-harp, or of an orchestra of

Jew's-harps; and finally a closer view revealed the gruesome fact that

these dainty creatures were consuming periwinkles, with the aid of a pin,

as they walked, were crunching shrimps between their pearly teeth, and

getting rid of the superfluous integument by--well, by the usual process of

the East End of London, without any help from the hand; in fact, by pure

propulsion from pouting lips. Half of the mystery was solved. The elegant

nymphs of Clacton-on-Sea were simply East End girls who had made the cheap

trip by sea. But the mystery of their attire remained, was indeed doubled.

Where were the "fevvers," the flowing ostrich plumes of many hues, without

which the traditional girl of the East End reckons herself disgraced?

Whence had the far more pleasing dresses come? Inquiry made, not of those

who wore them, since their powers of repartee are proverbial, elicited the

suggestion that all this pretty finery was hired for the day from one or

other of the many big drapers at the East End. If so, it can only be said

that the taste shown was, on the whole, excellent, and the general effect

very good and pleasing. So really was the spectacle. Laughing and talking,

eating endless shell-fish, and consuming really very little alcoholic

liquor, these young folks strutted and preened themselves in the sun all

the livelong day. They even found pennies, hard earned no doubt, to bestow

upon the Pierrots and the nigger-minstrels who assaulted the ear on all

sides. Of noise and jesting there was no end, of disorder no beginning.

Even when, on a later occasion, I slept at Clacton for a night or two to

watch the work of re-embarkation, which was as interesting as the

manoeuvres were silly, the sounds of revelry by night were few and far

between. In fact, Clacton serves its patrons well, and they conduct

themselves merrily and yet decently in it. It is a sight well worth seeing,

as Blackpool and Douglas are also, once in a while. It might even serve to

soothe some of the sympathetic anguish of those who mourn over the

monotonous lives of the poor. But this is not to say that, for quiet folk

who do not wish to take their pleasure in the East End way, Clacton-on-Sea

is a desirable place in which to spend a summer holiday. It is worth while

to drive there from Colchester for luncheon, and that is all.

Fortune and the good nature of a newly made friend favoured me. The

transports were discharging horse and foot simultaneously in a long line

extending from Clacton, indeed almost from St. Osyth, to a point beyond

Great Holland to the north-east. The very idea of a bicycle was repugnant

to me when, as luck would have it, I encountered another correspondent who

had a Napier at his disposal. Off we whirred, along conventional seaside

roads, and up, from the flat ground whereon Clacton-on-Sea stands, climbing

a sensible but not difficult acclivity until we had almost reached Great

Holland. A little farther on, but unvisited, was Walton-on-the-Naze,

another of those parts of the east coast which have suffered from the

relentless greed of the sea. Nay, in times past, the sea had gone very near

to sacrilege, for it has devoured the lands with which a prebend of St.

Paul's was endowed. But save for him who desires fossils, and coprolites

especially, the most uninteresting of all fossils, which may be found in

abundance in the cliff, a visit to Walton is not recommended. Walton may be

styled Walton-le-Soken, and Kirkby and Thorpe hard by are also finished off

by "le-Soken." The expression has its legal and historical interest, for it

shows that the lords of each possessed the power of "sac and soc," and, in

fact, a power of holding special courts. But this does not serve to make

the places themselves at all interesting and, to put it bluntly, this

country by the sea in these parts is not attractive. The rest of our day's

drive, before we returned to Colchester--the bicycle, I may say, remained

at Clacton unmourned until the time came for leaving the district--took us

near to a series of bivouacs, of no permanent interest, and as far as St.

Osyth, which lies on the opposite side to Brightlingsea of a little

tributary of the Colne, crossed by a ferry. Time was abundant, and it has

been matter for frequent regret since that, merely through ignorance of

that which was close at hand, I missed seeing the obviously interesting

remains of the Priory, in its restored form, and the church, said to date

back to St. Osyth herself, who was the wife of Suthred, King of the East

Angles. When Suthred flourished I know no more than I do any reason why

others should miss that which I, having then no project of this kind

formed, omitted. Brightlingsea over the ferry is, by all accounts, not

worth a visit, although it was one of the Cinque Ports.

So, as a matter of strict narrative, back I fared that evening to the

temporary home at the "Red Lion" and, as has been stated previously, I saw

something of the country in the immediate vicinity of Colchester to the

south-east by east, and of our soldiery, early the next morning. Later in

the day--for a day beginning at 4 a.m. is not short--there was abundant

opportunity for making preliminary study of Colchester, and during my stay

an immense number of places were seen and many routes were traversed at one

time or another. The places were seen and the routes were taken as the tide

of battle rolled, or as it was expected to roll, which did not always come

to the same thing; but that was an order of visitation dictated by outside

circumstances, and not to be recommended to those who are quite at liberty

to follow their own fancy. So, during a leisurely drive of a morning and an

afternoon, we will go in the spirit to a number of places, every one of

which has been inspected from a motor-car, although not necessarily in the

order named.

Between the estuaries of the Colne and the Stour lies a peninsula, part of

which has already been treated, and the rest of it is now our subject. It

is by no means a mountainous tract. According to a coloured contour map

lying before me no single eminence in it is more than two hundred and fifty

feet above the sea-level; but it would be a grave mistake to put down this

part of Essex as a flat country. It is, in fact, undulating, and if, to

carry on the metaphor, none of the waves are Atlantic rollers, a good many

of them are in the nature of short and choppy seas. The Lanchester, which

there need be the less hesitation in praising in that the makers in all

probability would not construct or deliver its sister machine now, made

merry with most of these hills, but of the other cars, of which the name

was legion in those days of sham-fighting, we passed many crawling up steep

little ascents and many others at a standstill. One such hill, at least,

we encounter in this drive, between Ardleigh and Manningtree, where the

gradient is 1 in 13; hardly a mere nothing even from the standpoint of

1906, but not long since quite worthy to be regarded as a serious obstacle.

Moreover the trees are abundant, the hedges thick and well kept, the land

highly cultivated, and the whole is entertaining and restful to the eye,

although the curvatures of the roads and the screening hedges call for the

exercise of exact care in driving.

We start then from Colchester at such time in the morning as may seem good,

and ask for the Ardleigh road. Five miles take us to Ardleigh, and here we

come at once upon the industry which has the indirect effect of giving to

the scenery of Essex peculiar characteristics of detail. Between Ardleigh

and Dedham--Constable's Dedham--lies the ground cultivated for special

purposes by Messrs. Carter, of Holborn, of whom it is but plain truth to

say that they are among the most prominent seed-growers of this country.

Many of my little tours in Essex were made in company with an officer whose

duty it had been to mark with flags fields which the foot of the soldier

must not trample upon, whose duty it would be afterwards to assess the

compensation to be given to farmers for damage done. One of our early

conversations ran somewhat to this effect:

_Author._ "It seems to me you might save a lot of expense next time by

placing flags where the troops may go, not in the forbidden ground. You

would not need nearly so many flags. How on earth are troops marching along

this road to learn anything? No sooner have they thrown out men to feel

their way for them and to protect them from being taken in flank, than the

men must come back to the road to avoid a patch of common swedes or

mangels."

_Compensation Officer._ "Yes, it looks like that; but you must remember

these are not ordinary swedes or mangles."

_Author._ "What do you mean? They look pretty commonplace. We should think

nothing of walking through roots as good, or better, after partridges at

home."

_Compensation Officer._ "Of course we should; but I tell you these are not

ordinary roots. They are all being grown for seed; they may be choice kinds

produced, for all I know, as the result of years of experiment. You never

know what you may come upon next in this seed-growing country. You will

find whole fields of Delphinium, Dahlia, Penstemon, Lupin, almost any

flowering plant, to say nothing of crops of strange plants, whose very

appearance is unknown to you."

_Author._ "Did the great men of the War Office know all this when they

decided to hold manoeuvres here? If so, it seems to me, they made a

foolish choice of their ground, because, while the value of the training is

reduced by the necessary cramping of movement, the compensation payable is

sure to be out of all reason."

And the Compensation Officer answered never a word, for the purposes of

this book, but probably he thought the more. His description of the country

was justified abundantly. The very grass might be, very likely was, being

grown for special lawn seed, and, over and over again, one passed acres of

early autumnal flowers in full bloom, which set an eager gardener (for man

may be gardener and motorist) thinking of additions to be made to his own

distant plot. On we fared, breasting that hill of 1 in 13, and in 2-3/4

miles we are at Manningtree. Now, Manningtree is ancient, and it has a

history.

"Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of

beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack,

that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted _Manningtree_ ox with the

pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father

ruffian, that vanity in years?"

Thus, in the first part of _King Henry IV_ (Act ii. scene 4), does Harry of

Monmouth, speaking of Falstaff, but himself in the character of his own

father, address himself. Argal, the cattle sold at Manningtree Fair had a

great name even in Shakespeare's day. Manningtree also was, as may be seen

from a memorial slab in the church, connected with Thomas Tusser, the

agricultural poet of the sixteenth century, who, after being educated at

King's College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, rejected music, for which he

had been trained, for farming on the banks of the Stour. This was "an

employment," says a superior person, "which he seems to have regarded as

combining the chief essentials of human felicity." Well, there are worse

occupations than farming, and the production of indifferent music is one of

them. It is pleasant to muse over Tusser's tablet at Manningtree, to

reflect that he probably was a practical and improving farmer, else a

tablet would hardly have been erected at Manningtree in memory of a man who

was buried at St. Paul's, and to hope that to him, at least in part, was

due that fame of the Manningtree oxen which made Shakespeare select them as

typical. That Shakespeare and Tusser ever met in the flesh is unlikely, for

Tusser died in 1580, and even that strange tribe the Baconians admit that

Shakespeare was born in 1564 and remained at Stratford Grammar School until

he was fifteen. Less creditably connected with Manningtree was Matthew

Hopkins, the "witchfinder," appointed as such by Parliament in 1644--by the

Parliament of Westminster presumably, not by that of Oxford, for Charles

held a Parliament at Oxford in that year--and celebrated in _Hudibras_. His

was the fate of Phalaris, for at last, having "hanged three-score of them

in a shire," he was tried in the same brutal fashion which he had applied

to others, and perished in like fashion. We have no right, after quite

modern experience in Ireland, to be very contemptuous towards our

forefathers in respect of their belief in witches; but still it is a little

startling to be compelled to realize that they set Hopkins and his

fellow-commissioners to their task in a year so full of grim realities as

that of Marston Moor, of Cropredy Bridge, and of the Duke of Newcastle's

departure in despair from the kingdom.

It has been well to reach Manningtree by the fairly good road from

Colchester; but we must go to the westward a little, and cross the Stour,

leaving Essex and our peninsula for a while if we would not miss perhaps

the most precious association of the valley of the Stour. It is East

Bergholt, the birthplace of John Constable, the miller's son, and here we

are in the country which he once had the pleasure of hearing described in

his presence by a complete stranger as "Constable's country." This was the

more strange in that, like many another artist before him and since his

day--the word "artist" is used in its widest sense--he was not appreciated

at his full worth while he lived among men. A few days or a week spent in

Constable's country, by painters or by those who aspire to know something

of the spirit of landscape painting, are now to be regarded as time spent

pleasantly, profitably, and naturally by men and women of cultivated taste;

but the stranger on the Ipswich coach who said in his hearing, "This is

Constable's country," was in advance of the average taste of his

generation, for, although Constable was appreciated in France before those

of his own race were awake to his merits, it is one of the cruel ironies of

fate that, when the great landscape painter died, his studio was full of

unsold pictures. His case, unlike that of Thomas Gainsborough, whom we

shall meet soon, was one in which a stolid parent did his best to choke the

spring of artistic spirit in its efforts to express itself in form and

colour. It was also one compelling the quotation, "God fulfils Himself in

many ways." He showed his leanings in early boy-hood, doubtless in the

usual manner, when he was a pupil in the grammar school at Dedham, in Essex

and close by--the tower of Dedham Church is a prominent object in many of

his landscapes. Again, what country-bred man does not remember how, when

the plumber was called in (he was usually painter and glazier too),

undiluted joy was to be obtained from watching him at work, from working

his divine putty into fantastic shapes, from unlicensed meddling with his

brushes and paints? John Constable, too, watched his father's plumber, one

Dunthune, to some purpose, and Dunthune was no ordinary plumber. He knew

something of landscape painting, and is said to have inspired the boy to

that habit of studying in the open air which, in all probability, stood in

little need of inspiration. In this is nothing of unnatural novelty. Was

not John Crome, of Norwich, apprenticed to a coach and sign-painter, or, as

some have it, to a house-painter? The wonder is rather that more

house-painters do not develop some measure of artistic proficiency.

Constable's father, however, had no sympathy for his son's budding genius.

The boy, leaving school early, as we reckon now, was set to the task of

watching a windmill, and here was one of the many ways in which God

fulfilled Himself. Compelled to study the face of the sky with minutest

care, the boy acquired that intimate familiarity with it, that joy "in

gleaming showers, and breezy sunshine after rain, and grey mists of summer

showers" (to quote Mr. H. W. Nevinson's words in an article he has most

likely forgotten), which was the basis of his fame. Fuseli might sneer at

the painter of "great-coat weather," but Fuseli had the reputation of a

cynical wit to keep up. Englishmen will hail Constable for all time now as

the faithful translator and revealer of the inner spirit of landscape.

Still excuses may be made for the father. Parents have a pardonable habit

of considering ways and means, of preferring the certain to the

problematic, in planning careers for their sons. The apprehensions of

Constable the elder were so far justified by results that Constable the

younger was by no means immediately successful. He went to London in 1795,

being then not twenty years of age. He came back, beaten, to the windmill

and the counting house in 1797. From 1799 to 1816, married, struggling,

unappreciated, he fought the desperate battle against poverty in London

once more. Only in the latter year, when he was forty years of age, and his

father died leaving him L4000, was he able to live in any approach to

comfortable circumstances. Perhaps the deliverance from _res angusta domi_

helped him to paint better. Few men are so cheerfully constituted that,

like Mr. Shandon in the Fleet and in _Pendennis_--in a novel, of course,

but Mr. Shandon is a living reality--can produce good imaginative work amid

squalid surroundings and domestic anxieties--perhaps he was really late in

development. Certain it is that, except _A Lock on the Stour_ and _Dedham

Vale_, few of Constable's better known pictures were painted before he was

forty; and it is equally certain that, to the very end, he was never

properly valued by his generation.

For us he is the inspired revealer of the tranquil beauties of a district

beloved and studied by him dearly and closely as the most ardent of Scots

ever loved and studied Caledonia stern and wild, or the "banks and braes o'

bonny Doon," and he has expressed his affection for his birthplace in

words, not perhaps of fire, but of placid truth, which exactly express the

character of the scenery. Of East Bergholt he writes: "The beauty of the

surrounding scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats

sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated uplands, its woods and

rivers, with numerous scattered villages and churches, farms and

picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular spot an amenity and

elegance hardly anywhere else to be found." Reflecting thus we return to

Manningtree and our peninsula.

Manningtree lies at the very easternmost part of the estuary of the

Stour--all these estuaries would be fjord-like if they had but higher

banks--and is really quite close to our pretty Stratford St. Mary, on the

Roman road between Ipswich and Colchester, as well as to Dedham and East

Bergholt. From it we turn due east, and, the road following the estuary,

proceed through Lawford, Mistley, and Bradfield, seven miles to Dovercourt

and Harwich. There is a fairly sharp hill of 1 in 13 between Mistley and

Bradfield, and another of 1 in 15 between Bradfield and Dovercourt. Mistley

is part of the port of Manningtree, and its park, praised by Walpole, still

survives sufficiently for the district to be most pleasantly clothed with

trees. Dovercourt bulks large in the history of superstition, its church

having possessed a peculiarly holy rood, to which pilgrimages used to be

made. Now it is a suburb of Harwich, and Harwich, after many ups and downs,

and in spite of the inroads of the sea, is doing fairly well. It was

certainly a Roman station, it is, like Sole Bay, one of the few places on

land from which naval battles of importance have been seen--one between

Alfred and the Danes, and another against De Ruyter; it was the starting

point of Frobisher on his voyage to find the North West Passage, and of Dr.

Johnson for Leyden. All this, to render unto Caesar the things which are

his, I learn from "Murray." From the same source, too, it is gathered that

the introduction of steamboats lost the port much of its trade, and that

railways revived it. But this particular "Murray" is old (1875). Its views

of commerce need bringing up to date; its views of the aspect of a seaport

are not mine. One does not expect "sweetness and light," concerning the

absence of which complaint is made, in a seaport devoted to fishing-boats

and passenger traffic. I can see more of the picturesque in the narrow and

struggling streets, in spite of some dirt, than the writer of 1875; but on

me a port or a dock exercises a special and peculiar fascination, and that

all the more when, as in the case of Harwich, its waters are the

head-quarters of a Yacht Club.

To the annals of this Yacht Club (the Royal Harwich) I am able to

contribute some little crumbs, probably not generally known, from the

_Memories of Sir Llewelyn Turner_, a book already mentioned in another

connection. Would that he were alive to give permission, as he would have

given it with eager kindness, to reproduce a passage out of his genial work

which gives a vivid impression of a Harwich Regatta of 1846, throws in one

or two useful observations, and recalls some valuable associations, and

leaves a very vivid impression of the manner in which the yachtsmen of

those days enjoyed themselves when the day's sport was over. For

preliminary, it need only be said that the owner of the _Ranger_, a fast

racing yacht, had asked Mr. Turner (as he was then), a resident in North

Wales, and Mr. Parker Smith, an Irish barrister, to race the _Ranger_ for

him at Harwich during his illness. The rest may be told in Sir Llewelyn's

own words, only, beforehand, it must be noted that the yachtsman from

Wales, new to the water as he was, taught the east coast men a useful

lesson. Sir Llewelyn Turner's remarks concerning ignorant interference with

tidal action, too, deserve serious attention.

"We joined the yacht at Gravesend late in the evening, and at once set sail

for Harwich, where we arrived next morning after a rapid run. A more

agreeable and satisfactory companion than Smith I could not have desired,

and we both agreed that we felt as if we had known each other for years.

Soon after our arrival we took up our quarters at the Three Cups Hotel, as

the cabin would be required for the spare top-sails and jibs to be ready

for shifting canvas in the race.

"There was a fine display of racing yachts and others whose owners came to

enjoy the sport. Several of them had come over from the Ostend Regatta, one

of them bringing an enormous silver cup, by far the largest I ever saw in

the numerous regattas in which I was a participator. Most of the yachts'

cabins were given up for the sails to be ready for shifting, and the Three

Cups Hotel was crammed with yachtsmen. Taking it all together, it was one

of the pleasantest yachting proceedings I ever enjoyed. Like too many

harbours on our coast, Harwich had been a terrible sufferer by the

lamentable interference with tidal laws by men entirely ignorant of the

science, and interested workers. The harbour is, or rather was, entered in

a straight line, and then diverges inside up the bed of the River Stour to

the left, and to the right of that river the tide ascends the River Orwell

to Ipswich. Above the right bank of the Orwell is the residence of the man

whose memory every lover of his country should adore--_Philip Bowes Vere

Broke_--the gallant captain of the _Shannon_, who, in less than fifteen

minutes captured by boarding a frigate of superior force. There were on the

Orwell two schooner yachts belonging to Sir Hyde Parker, whose ancestor

commanded the _Tenedos_ frigate which was sent away by Broke that he might

fight the _Chesapeake_ on equal terms.

"Dredging for personal gain was permitted to the westward outside the

harbour, with the result that the deep-water channel was diverted no less

than two thousand feet from the east to the west side, a large sand-bank

forming on the east side below Landguard Fort, and a corresponding

destruction of Beacon's Cliff ensued on the opposite side.

"Four yachts in our class started from a point on the harbour between the

town and Walton Marsh. We had a soldier's wind (side). A brand new yacht,

the name of which I forget, was on our weather-side, and the two others to

leeward; and we three leeward-most vessels headed rather towards the

projecting bank before Landguard Point, the weathermost yacht pressing us

to leeward as much as possible; I kept my eye most of the time on the

weather yacht, the master of which kept his eye on us, taking advantage of

every opportunity of pressing us to leeward. So near was he that I could

see his eyes most distinctly, but he outwitted himself, as he got the whole

four yachts so far to leeward that unless we could cross the bank a tack

would be inevitable.

"I asked the pilot if we could venture to cross the bank, the limits of

which were plainly seen by the broken water. He replied, 'If you don't

mind two or three bumps I will guarantee her crossing,' and Smith agreeing

to my proposal, I said, 'We are an iron vessel, let her go.' We passed

safely over with about three bumps, and our weather companion having gone

too far to leeward in pressing us down, and drawing more water, had to

tack. The two others to leeward funked the bank, and tacked also; we were

then safe out of the harbour into the 'rolling ground' outside, and

spanking before a very strong wind towards the Cork lightships some miles

dead to leeward. My plan of crossing the bank, which we were not prohibited

from doing, gave us an enormous advantage, as in tacking with a side wind

the three yachts had a smooth dead beat to get to windward of the bank.

When we rounded the Cork lightships the other three were, I fancy, about a

mile or more astern of us. We had then to beat up to windward, passed the

mouth of Harwich Harbour, and up to a flag-vessel under the lee of

Walton-on-the-Naze, a long low promontory which gave us the full force of

the wind, but lessened what would have been, I fancy, too heavy a sea for

us. When we had got about half a mile to windward of the Cork lightships,

some one called out 'Look at the----' (name forgotten). And there, far

astern of us, was our weathermost competitor (at starting) dismasted, with

the water rolling in and out of her scuppers. The lower mast had broken

about ten or twelve feet above the decks, as far as we could judge, and we

had the satisfaction of seeing her taken in tow of a large sailing-yacht

that was not racing. In a few minutes we saw another of our competitors in

the same state, her lower mast having gone apparently about the same

distance from the deck. This left us with only one to compete with in the

dead beat up against a very strong breeze, but, as stated, the sea was

mitigated by the Walton projection, and the more so as we approached it. We

rounded that mark, and after a long run before the wind round the flagship

in the harbour whence we had started, and as our single competitor was good

four miles astern, the Rear-Commodore hailed that he would not trouble us

any further, and he stopped the race; the course was twice round, with

power to shorten, which we were glad was done. I was less surprised to see

the first yacht dismantled, as, being a new vessel, her rigging probably

stretched, and left the strain of the sails upon the mast, but in the other

case it was rather odd. I have been at vast numbers of regattas and have

seen many topmasts carried away in races, and in one case a lower mast

_head_ with the topmast, but two lower masts out of four in a class was a

unique experience."

As to the next extract some doubts are felt, on the ground of relevancy

only, but still the "Battle of Harwich," as my old friend liked to call it,

was fought there, and the manner of fighting was eminently characteristic

of the age, after all only sixty years ago; and, if relevance be granted,

the little yarn is, at any rate, entertaining.

"THE BATTLE OF HARWICH.

"There was a fine show of yachts at Harwich at this time, and there was a

great assemblage of yachtsmen in the prime of life, many, like myself,

young fellows of about twenty-three. As there was time before the next port

we were to visit, Yarmouth, we had an idle day at Harwich, and, as Dr.

Watts says, 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.' As the

yachts' cabins had the sails, etc., in them ready for changing jibs,

top-sails, etc., we were almost all living ashore at the Three Cups Hotel,

and there this memorable battle was fought under these circumstances. My

pleasant companion, Michael Parker Smith, and I went for a long walk up

country, and on our return were met in front of the hotel by some of our

brother yachtsmen, who said they had been in search of us to see if we

would join and make a party of eleven, and they had ordered dinner for that

number, calculating that we would join, which we gladly did. Another lot of

nine had just sat down to dinner in an adjoining room, and the windows of

both rooms, which were upstairs, looked over a lower part of the hotel, so

that any one going out of the window of one room could go along the roof of

the lower building to the window of the other room. It was somewhat curious

that not only were we numerically superior, but we were all the biggest

men. While we were at dinner, one of the nine going out of their window

crept under ours, and threw a squib right along our table. He was a man

with a curious head of hair, and was known amongst us as 'Old Frizzlewig,'

_alias_ 'Door-mat.' Frizzlewig beat a retreat after delivering his shot,

two of us lay in wait for him on each side of our window, and while he was

launching another squib we got hold of him; a detachment of the other army

got out on the lower roof, and it was soon a case of 'pull devil, pull

baker.' We had his upper half inside the room, and his party the lower end

outside. As the other side were being reinforced, the cry on our side was,

'Shut the window,' the result being that to avoid the guillotining of poor

Frizzlewig in the centre, the other side had to let go his legs. We took

him prisoner, and fastened the window, and the other army going back

through their room came to the rescue through our door. Then arose the din

of this memorable engagement, recorded in humorous lines soon after, but

now lost by me. My chum Smith was very neatly dressed, so much so that I

had a light suit made afterwards like it for myself. When the battle

commenced the puddings and pies were on the table. The blood was apparently

pouring down the neat shirt front, pretty waistcoat and white trousers with

the blue stripes of Smith, the ball with which he was struck in the chest

and which called the scarlet overflow being nothing less in size than a

thirty-two pounder. This ball had a minute before graced the head of our

table in the form of a fine red-currant pudding, which one of the attacking

force had seized with both hands, and hurled it into Smith's bosom, and the

red-currant juice gave Smith the bloody look that crimsoned his attire. In

a few minutes the crockeryware and glass had all left the table for the

floor, or been smashed, excepting one big jug. Not to harrow the minds of

the readers by a further account of so sanguinary an engagement, I conclude

by saying that the mortality was _nil_, and the whole of the enemy had to

surrender, the eleven being too much for the nine. Our principal prisoner

was Rear-Commodore Knight, who was not very big, one of the smallest of his

army. We treated our captives with all consideration and humanity, and did

not hang any of them. We then rang the bell for the landlord, and told him

to estimate the damage, and as luckily the crockery, etc., was not of a

costly kind, the whole cost of this great battle only came to 3s. 8d. or

3s. 10d. per head. As far as I saw, the whole thing was conducted with the

greatest good humour, and I heard not a cross word; but my friend Smith

told me afterwards, when I spoke of everybody's good humour, that he and a

namesake of his very nearly got to blows. Those were days when rough jokes

were practised more, I fancy, than now. Every one of us had squibs and

crackers _ad lib._; but a better-humoured lot I never met, the great

battle notwithstanding. After the racing the yachtsmen all dined pleasantly

together at the Three Cups, after a hard day's racing, and some one said

there was a ball to which we could go, and off we went, finding to our

amazement that we had got into a low-class place, where there were a lot of

most disreputable men and women, and on our attempting to beat a retreat we

found the door we had entered by was barricaded. We then burst open

another, and going down stairs found the bottom of that barricaded. Sir

Richard Marion Wilson, who was with his yacht at Harwich, but not racing,

vaulted over the banisters into the middle of a lot of fellows who vowed we

should not go out without paying our footing as they called it. I

immediately vaulted over, and stood by Sir Richard Wilson, and was followed

by the adjutant of the Flintshire Militia. Sir R. Wilson ordered the

ruffians to open the door, saying, 'Any man who touches me will have reason

to repent it.' There was little room for reinforcements from our side as

the place we had jumped into was small, but as there were a lot more

yachtsmen on the stairs, the bargees showed some desire for a compromise,

and said if we would order some liquor the door should be opened. Sir R.

Wilson said, 'Not one drop of anything will we give you, or do anything

else, excepting on our own terms. Bring a flat wash tub, if there is one at

hand,' and they at once found a large shallow wooden one, the place being,

it seems, used for washing. He then told them to bring him a gallon of

beer, which they quickly did. 'Now,' he said, 'pour it into the tub.' He

paid for the ale, and the door was opened, and he said, 'Now let the pigs

drink'; and while they were all struggling for the liquor we all walked

into the street, having been completely sold by whoever gave out that there

was a ball. I never was in such another blackguard assembly in my life."

I am tempted to proceed because Sir Llewelyn gives us a new view of the

Suffolk coast.

"We sailed from Harwich to Yarmouth in company with two of the fastest

25-tonners afloat, viz., the _Ino_, and the _Prima Donna_; the third, the

_Seiont_, though she went to Yarmouth, did not sail in our company. I have

seen every one of the three beat the others at East Coast regattas, and I

fancy yachting men will appreciate the following curious statement.

"The _Seiont_ and _Ino_ were singularly well matched in beating to

windward, and up to the turning-point of a race they were always close

together, but the _Seiont_ had an ugly trick in running before a strong

breeze of cocking up her stern, and the _Ino_ would pass and leave her far

behind in a long run.

"The _Prima Donna_ was not nearly equal on the wind to either of the two

others, but if (which is not often the case) she had a long run without

being close-hauled she beat both, and thus I saw each of the three

successful over the others.

"Our trip from Harwich to Yarmouth was delightful; the land is so low that

farm-carts in the fields looked as if we were higher than they, the gentle

wind was on the land, and the sea was as smooth as a pond with only the

gentlest ripple. We laid a plot to seize the _Ino_ and navigate her into

Yarmouth, we being the largest party; and we thought if we could get aboard

when they were at lunch, and the bulk of the crew at dinner, we could do

it. The wind fell to a dead calm two or three times; but luckily for us--as

will be seen--before we could get our boat ready to board a gentle breeze

arose, and we were all soon doing seven or eight knots. I often think our

beating up the narrow entrance of the river at Yarmouth at low water

against a dead head wind was a masterpiece in sailing, the space being

exceedingly confined to tack in. All the yachtsmen had agreed at Harwich to

dine together at the Star Hotel at Yarmouth, where dinner had been ordered

by letter beforehand, and a most pleasant evening we had. Now my readers

will learn why it was lucky for us that we could not board the _Ino_. I

told them at dinner of our piratical design at sea that day, and they soon

had the laugh against us: they had a powerful machine for wetting the sails

at regattas, that would send water up to the topsail; and the owner said,

'Do you think after the experience we had of you fellows at Harwich that we

would have let a lot of you aboard of us? We had a careful watch kept upon

you, and whenever you were seen to be getting a boat ready the machine was

ready for you, and we would have filled your boat with water in a short

time.' What a pickle we should have been in! We were again successful at

Yarmouth, coming in first and winning a cup.

"It was painful to witness the large number of people in deep mourning at

this curious old town, with its quaint narrow lanes the names of which I

forget ('wynds,' I think). The cause of all this mourning was a most

extraordinary one. A short time previous to our advent some large

travelling show had visited the town, and the clown gave out that at a

particular hour on a day named he would go down the River Yare (a

fresh-water river running from Norwich) in a tub drawn by two geese. A very

large concourse of people assembled on both banks of the river, which is

very narrow, and was spanned by a light iron suspension bridge. The bridge

collapsed, and more than seventy lives were lost. I looked at the place in

absolute amazement, and wondered had anything like a tithe of the loss

have taken place; one lot must have suffocated the others."

No apology is offered for having conveyed some information concerning

Harwich and its yachting memories of the past in the words of a pleasant

gossip who has passed away. But my old friend was not terse, and he had a

rooted objection while he lived, which shall be respected still, to

curtailment by another hand, and so, if we want to proceed with our little

cruise upon wheels of a single day and to finish it, let us take luncheon

at Harwich, without throwing raspberry tarts at one another, and go on our

way. Luncheon over, not being of the type of motorists who cannot endure to

stand on their own feet or to be at rest for a moment, let us look across

the estuary to Landguard Point and, with the aid of the books, think a

little over the astonishing metamorphosis brought about, partly by the

sweep of the tides, partly perhaps by the hand of man, not thoughtless so

much as too confident of knowledge, in the outlines of this part of the

coast during historical times.

"Murray" sets one thinking and no more. "Landguard Fort (mounting 36 guns),

on a spit of land now joined to the Suffolk coast (it is said that the

Stour once passed on the north side of it), was built in the reign of James

I." To say thus much and no more is merely to excite curiosity without

sating it. To consult Lord Avebury (_The Scenery of England_) is to obtain

satisfaction on the general problem and to learn that details are of quite

minor significance. He who has once realized the character, the untiring

and irresistible, but in some respects irregular force, of the influences

at work, will soon see how the outline of the coast may vary from year to

year, even from day to day, in the future as in the past. "One of the

finest spreads of shingle in the United Kingdom is on the left side of the

Ore or Alde in Suffolk, reaching north-eastward to Aldeburgh, and which is

still increasing by the deposit of shingle at its south-western end. A

chart of the time of Henry VIII shows distinctly that the mouth of Orford

Haven was then opposite Orford Castle, whilst a chart of the time of

Elizabeth shows a considerable south-westerly progression. When the

Ordnance map was made (published 1838), North Weir Point, as the end of the

spit is called, was about east of Hollesley. It" (the spread of shingle, of

course) "consists of a series of curved concentric ridges, or 'fulls,'

sweeping round and forming a projecting cape or 'Ness' in advance of the

general coastline." Seen in diagram, from a bird's-eye point of view, these

"fulls" closely resemble a vastly long and narrow field ridged up for the

reception of Cyclopean potatoes. (In passing, the bird's-eye view,

involving an effort of the imagination, is out of date, and there is every

prospect that very soon not one man or woman in a thousand, but a large

percentage, will be in a position to speak without affectation of tracts of

country as seen from a balloon.) This particular bird's-eye prospect,

however, is that of a bird perched on the high lighthouse and looking

south-west over Hollesley Bay and the adjacent land to the Naze, and it

gives a very vivid idea of the struggles of the sluggish Suffolk streams

before they reach the sea.

"The triangular projection encloses salt marshes, and extends from

Aldeburgh to Landguard Point. Successive ridges or waves of shingle are,

indeed, a marked characteristic of such headlands. Under ordinary

circumstances, and when the shore line is stationary, each succeeding tide

obliterates the ridge made by the last; but when the shore is encroaching

on the sea, some great storm will throw up the shingle in the form of a

ridge, after which another accumulation commences, and eventually forms

another ridge. The development of this beach, however, has not been

invariably progressive, breaches made by storms having sometimes given a

temporary exit for the waters of the Ore and of the Butley River at the

Upper Narrows, where the part of the channel to the south would be

partially closed. The Ordnance map of 1831 shows separate knolls of shingle

for a mile southwards from North Weir Point. The point no longer exists as

there shown, the knolls having been united into a continuous bank, as

marked on the Geological Survey map, which has been corrected from a later

survey."

One more short passage is quoted here, as tending to round off the subject

under discussion, although, perhaps, it might have been quoted when we were

at Yarmouth. Still, the shifting shore did not thrust itself upon our

attention then, and now it is pushing itself forward as steadily as North

Weir Point has made its progress on the maps. "The sands of Yarmouth, like

those of Lowestoft, have, in recent years, been comparatively stationary.

The town of Yarmouth stands on a spot of sea-driven sand, thrown up in 1008

A.D."--it is no use therefore to look for Roman remains at Yarmouth

itself--"and which crosses the outfalls of the Waveney and the Yare,

enclosing a large mere--Breydon Water--the outlet of which, like that of

other Suffolk rivers, is being constantly forced southwards by the

accumulating sand from the north." All this is due to the steady trend of

the beach from the north to the south, tending to form a barrier across all

harbours and estuaries, to denude outlying capes, to fill up hollows in the

coastline; and less calculable than the influence of the tide is the

spasmodic influence of storms. What, then, is the moral? Of a truth there

are many morals. He who buys a promontory may become a landless man. His

neighbour in a hollow of the coast to the south may find himself endowed

with salt marshes, whereon the sheep of his posterity will attain a flavour

of supreme excellence. A port may become an inland community. River beds,

the boundary of many an inland county and of many an estate out of reach of

the sea, because they are accepted as eternal and immutable, are the most

unstable of metes and bounds in the low ground by the side of the North

Sea. Lastly, when we find the old maps failing to tally with the

configuration of the land to-day, we shall only be exposing ourselves to

ridicule if we laugh at those who made them.

So we have mused, looking at Landguard Point; and the indulgence has been

taken without hesitation, since travel without thought is mere waste of

time and of the opportunities of amusement. The motorist is not an

infatuated adjunct of a hurtling machine; rather is he one who, passing

through scenes rapidly, learns to observe and to think more quickly than

others, storing, as on a photographic film, memories to be unfolded and

developed later, and by no means averse to linger in here and there a spot

promoting easy reflection. Only he is a motorist still, and, until the

rudimentary device of the starting handle has been improved upon, he will

make his long halts for looking round at leisure simultaneously with

luncheon or tea, or some other reason for stopping the engine.

Home then to Colchester we will go through Dovercourt again, Little Oakley,

Great Oakley, Weeley, and Elmstead. It is no great distance, and there is

no reason why we should not pause for tea on the way in a village inn; for

the inns of these parts are not half bad, the silvan scenery and the hedges

are delightful, and there is no occasion to hurry. Besides, the roads are

exceeding curly, apt to be greasy under the trees also, and altogether the

peninsula between the Stour and the Colne is no place for fast travelling.

It cannot honestly be said that, apart from the tranquil scenery of the

country, combining abundant leafage with plenty of little ups and downs and

a freshness of atmosphere due to the adjacent sea, which is in view

frequently, this drive of the afternoon is worth taking for the sake of any

antiquities or associations which may be taken into account. That is not to

say that there are none such. Personally, perhaps, I should never have

explored this peninsula but for the soldiery, who, I remember, had a great

camp at one time in a park near Great Bentley, and a fierce battle at

another time in the same district. It was rather an interesting battle,

since it exhibited the difficulties of hedgerow fighting, and, still more,

those of umpires compelled to adjudicate upon its results when cartridges

were blank. But to me the most amusing part of it was to come at one point

upon scouts of both armies, theoretically foes to the death, stealing green

apples in brotherly amity from the same orchard. Still, I think, if the

opportunity came without much trouble, I would explore that peninsula again

in early autumn, for, apart from associations in literature or history,

apart from architecture, about which it is far easier to rhapsodize in

print sometimes than it is to spend many interested minutes over it in

practice, there is an undying charm in these green lanes, in the oaks and

elms, in the heavy laden orchards, and in the luxuriant blackberries of the

wayside. They are just England, or one of the features of England, at its

best; and those who have travelled most of this world of ours will agree

that any feature of England, at its best, takes a very great deal of

beating.

CHAPTER VIII

COLCHESTER AND GAINSBOROUGH'S COUNTRY

An afternoon's drive--Lexden--Close to

Colchester--Earlier visit assumed--Probable site of

Cunobelin's city--Position described by the

_Quarterly_--Boadicea's revenge--Stoke by Nayland--A

commanding hill--The church--Constable's

praise--Gainsborough at Sudbury--"Damn your nose,

madam!"--Gainsborough at school--"Tom

Peartree"--Gainsborough's Suffolk landscapes--Long

Melford--A halt for an exceptional

church--Seventeenth-century monograph on--Inscriptions

in flint--Long Melford a centre of the cloth trade--The

Martins, or Martyns, and the church--Its past

glories--Its splendid treasures--Ancient customs--The

Cordells--Cavendish, the home of the Cavendish

family--Clare and "the illustrious family of

Clare"--Strongbow--The Valley of the Colne--The De

Veres and Castle Hedingham--Macaulay on their

fame--Their end--Little Maplestead--A round

church--Back to Colchester.

A nice little drive, with a pause for tea and antiquarianism, of forty or

fifty miles may be taken from Colchester any fine summer's afternoon by

following something like the route here laid down. Thirty years ago this

sentence would have been held to be proof positive of lunacy in the writer;

now it is a conspicuous illustration of his willingness to be contented

with moderately long journeys. It is a willingness, save the mark, which

grows on the motorist with experience and familiarity with the new

locomotion.

We will start by way of Lexden, but we will not halt there, full of

interest as it is; for Lexden is but two miles from the heart of

Colchester, and it shall be assumed that, at some time or other, the

motorist will walk these two miles for the sake of his health and of his

figure, and spend a little time in examining a spot of real interest. Still

he shall be told its story now. Not many pages back there was occasion to

mention the colony planted near Colchester, as it now is, by Claudius, and

of the lethargy of the veterans who were the first colonists. They ought to

have settled themselves as a community ready for defence at once.

Historians agree that, instead of doing this, they found the dwellings

hitherto occupied by the British sufficiently comfortable for their

purpose, and never troubled themselves upon the question of defensive

position. Those ancient British dwellings, due to Cunobelin's migration

from St. Albans (which is historical, whereas much concerning Cunobelin is

mystery), probably stood where Lexden stands now. Such, at any rate, was

the opinion of a _Quarterly_ Reviewer, who thought the surroundings fitted

in well with his theory, as in fact they do. "To the north of it flows the

Colne in a deep, and what must have been in those days a marshy valley,

while on the south it is flanked by a smaller stream still called the Roman

River, which probably made its way through dense forests. These two

streams, meeting in the estuary of the Colne, enclose on three sides the

peninsula on which Lexden stands, and across this neck of land, or such

part of it as was not occupied by marsh or wood, two or perhaps three

parallel lines of ramparts may now be traced for two or more miles,

supposed to be British, from the flint celts which have been found about

them." (This last sentence would certainly not be permitted in the

_Quarterly Review_ of these days, but its meaning is quite clear.) "...

Near the centre of these lines a conspicuous mound still exists, which we

would gladly believe to be the sepulchre of the great Cunobelin. A small

Roman camp, or more properly a _castellum_, is still well preserved at no

great distance from the south-west angle of this British fortification."

The comment of "Murray," probably in this instance the late Mr. Augustus

Hare, is "Whatever may be thought of these arguments, the suggestion is

interesting and gives a certain importance to Lexden." As to Cunobelin,

obviously there is no attempt at argument, nothing more than a pious

aspiration; the rest of the argument is, on the whole, rather better than

the English in which it is expressed, and perhaps as little of it rests on

mere supposition as we have a right to expect in a case of this kind. The

only weak part of the hypothesis appears to be that the august _Quarterly_

Reviewer assumes marsh or forest where he does not find the lines of the

ancient rampart. It would be safer, it is suggested, to assume marsh only

or, where the elevation of the ground is against marsh and there is no

rampart, vanished rampart, rather than vanished forest. The "celts," to one

who does not profess to have made a profound study of British antiquities,

seem to be neither here nor there in the argument. South-eastern Britons

had some civilization even before Caesar came. They were tillers of the soil

and, apparently, had commerce with the Continent, even in metals. They

resisted Caesar by force, and their scythe-chariots (afterwards the model

for the Roman travelling carriages) were not without their effect upon the

legions. A people who could make these scythe-chariots, who severed the

mistletoe with a golden sickle, were hardly likely to use flint knives in

daily life. It follows, or at any rate seems to follow, that the "celts,"

if they are evidence of any period at all, as of course they must be, are

evidence of men who lived near Lexden long before Cunobelin.

Still, on the whole, the argument that Lexden represents the Camulodunum of

the Britons (I wonder what they really called it, for Camulodunum is about

as unBritish as it well can be) is fairly strong. It is strong enough at

any rate to warrant the belief that here "the British warrior Queen,"

letting her barbarian troops loose on the panic-stricken and defenceless

colonists, avenged her wrongs ruthlessly and in a wild abandon of cruelty.

Sluggish Colne and the Roman river really did, we may take it for almost

certain, run with the blood of Romans; and this is no figure of speech, as

it usually is when battles are so described. Camulodunum was not a battle

but a massacre; Boadicea was _furens femina_ with a vengeance, and with

good cause. She really had bled from the Roman rods, her daughters had been

outraged, her just possessions had been stolen; the Iceni were, clearly, in

a wild ecstasy of murderous madness. If ever there was slaughter grim and

great in this world, Lexden saw it in the year of grace 61. Another place,

some say Messing, not far off and near Kelvedon, saw the tables turned a

little later. Then, said the Romans, eighty thousand British fell, and

Boadicea anticipated the vengeance of her foes by taking poison before they

reached her. Still, if she in any way resembled her sisters of to-day, she

had enjoyed at least some measure of satisfaction.

From Lexden, a Roman road runs all the way to Haverhill, at the south-west

corner of Suffolk; but Haverhill is just beyond our route of to-day, and is

certainly not worth a detour. We are going now almost due north, through

Wake's Colne and Bures St. Mary to Stoke by Nayland, in Suffolk and across

the Stour. Wake's Colne is reserved for the return journey to which, since

that journey follows the downward course of the Colne for some considerable

distance, it belongs more properly. Bures St. Mary appears to be far more

probably than Bury St. Edmunds the place of the coronation of King Edmund

of East Anglia; but that and his canonization, as we noted in connection

with Bury St. Edmunds, were long ago, so long indeed, that if Bures St.

Mary fails to attract otherwise, the legend does not matter. For us, at any

rate, Bures St. Mary is but a place passed on one side in entering the

valley of the Stour and Gainsborough's country. Whether any of the views

"near Sudbury" included the remarkably striking hill on which Stoke by

Nayland stands ignorance prevents me from stating, but certainly, that

house-crowned hill, rising as it does from the very flat land below and the

leisurely Stour, makes, as a valued picture in my possession proves to

demonstration, an ideal subject for a modern artist. Its value is due to

abruptness of contrast. At Bridgnorth from the Severn, and at Durham, the

hills with their clusters of old roofs, rise more abruptly and to a greater

height, are more rugged, not necessarily therefore more truly picturesque.

At Durham, however, and at Bridgnorth, we are in country where hills are

many; at Stoke by Nayland a commanding hill seems all the more commanding

in that it is unlike anything in the neighbourhood. No wonder artists love

this quiet riverside scene. Of that scene, apart from the hill and the

ancient houses, the grand Perpendicular church is the conspicuous glory. It

"ranks with the great churches of the Eastern Counties." These are

Constable's words, and they may be trusted the more in that he was not

merely a mighty artist in landscape, a native of these parts, and devotedly

attached to his native county (which, indeed, might make for prejudice),

but also, as his "Salisbury Cathedral" shows, thoroughly and appreciatively

versed in ecclesiastical architecture.

To me, however, Gainsborough has greater charm than Constable, partly,

perhaps, because of the extraordinary fascination of his portraits of

persons. The reference here is not to the fashionable portrait painter of

Bath, but to the later days wherein he limned the features of Georgiana,

Duchess of Devonshire (Heaven forbid that I should enter into the obvious

pitfall of discussion which yawns for the unwary here), of Maria Linley and

her brother (it is at Knole and a proud possession of Lord Sackville), of

Mrs. Sheridan, of Mrs. Siddons, and of the Blue Boy. The model for the Blue

Boy, I learn from Mr. Walter Armstrong's monograph, was the son of a

wholesale ironmonger named Buttall in Greek Street, Soho. An excellent

reproduction of the Mrs. Siddons, in the same monograph (Seeley 1894), lies

under my eye now, and as I look at those wonderfully clean-cut and strong

features, I can almost hear the painter saying, in his comic wrath, "Damn

your nose, madam, there is no end to it." The story, retailed by Mr.

Armstrong, makes one feel that Thomas Gainsborough was a man and a brother,

and here at Sudbury it is a delight to follow the story of his early days.

"He was the youngest of a family of nine, all brought up reputably and well

by his father, a thrifty tradesman variously described as a milliner, a

crape manufacturer and a shroud maker, who, no doubt, combined all these

avocations and, said scandal, occasionally helped them out with a little

quiet smuggling." The shroud-making industry was introduced by Gainsborough

the elder, from Coventry, and he seems to have enjoyed a monopoly of it;

"crape manufacture," as Mr. Armstrong explains, simply meant dealer in the

woollen trade introduced with the Flemish weavers by Edward III into

Sudbury. The house of Gainsborough's birth, once the "Black Horse," is

gone. Stories of his odd but clever brothers and of his pranksome youth

survive and give delight. John was an inventor in many kinds, all but a

genius, never practical. Humphrey began as an inventor, but degenerated or

rose to be a dissenting minister. Still, he invented a novel sundial,

preserved in the British Museum, and a tide-mill for which the Society of

Arts awarded him a prize of L50.

Thomas, England's Gainsborough, went to the Sudbury Grammar School, cut his

name in the woodwork like other boys, covered his books with sketches. Art

was bubbling in him and would not be denied. His holidays were all spent in

sketching, and it is related that he once took in his schoolmaster, who was

also his uncle, with an exact imitation of his father's familiar request

"Give Tom a holiday." At Sudbury it was, too, that he drew a lightning

portrait, afterwards known as "Tom Peartree," of a peasant whom he saw

gazing wistfully at his father's pear trees, which had been sadly lightened

of their burden in the preceding days, and that portrait led at once to the

identification of the thief who, confronted with it, confessed.

Thomas Gainsborough was not a thwarted genius. He was sent to London at

fourteen to study under Hayman, an indifferent artist and a hard liver.

From fourteen to eighteen he was loose about London, under a bad influence

to start with, and that he sowed a fine lot of wild oats was no wonder. But

at eighteen he returned to Sudbury and to landscape, and worked very hard

at it. Here again let Mr. Armstrong be quoted, because his authority is

real: "In his early years Gainsborough painted landscape with the minutest

care. I know pictures dating probably from about 1748 which excel any

Dutchman in the elaboration with which such things as the ruts in a country

road, and the grasses beside it, or the gnarled trunk and rough bark of

some ancient willow, are made out. In the National Gallery of Ireland we

have one such picture. It represents just such a characteristic bit of

Suffolk scenery as Wynants would have chosen had he carried his Batavian

patience over the North Sea. Across a sand-pit in the foreground a deep

country road winds away into the distance, where the roofs of a village

suggest its objective. An old horse, a silvery sky with a fine _arabesque_

of windy clouds, and a few old weather-stunted trees complete the picture.

The execution is so elaborate that the surface is fused into one unbroken

breadth of enamel. The _Great Cornard Wood_," (Suffolk of course) "in the

National Gallery, cannot have been painted very much later than this. Its

colour has the same gray coolness, its tone is as high, and its execution

almost as elaborate." Gainsborough may or may not have been, as Reynolds

said, the greatest living landscape painter. Reynolds probably said it to

annoy Wilson, who was present. But Horace Walpole pronounced one of his

pictures to be "in the style of Rubens, and by far the best landscape ever

painted in England, and equal to the great masters." For us the truly

interesting point is that this was said of Sudbury's greatest man, and that

the valley of the Stour gave to this man, Thomas Gainsborough, all his

early inspiration, all his early subjects in landscape. By the way, in

stating that Thomas Gainsborough was Sudbury's greatest man I had forgotten

Simon of Sudbury, who probably never uttered a coarse oath, nor drank too

much wine, nor was, to quote Gainsborough of himself, "deeply read in

petticoats." But let any reader who has persevered thus far lay his hand on

his heart and reflect honestly whether he can say offhand who Simon of

Sudbury was. Well, he was an archbishop of Canterbury who was hanged during

Wat Tyler's rebellion. His fate leaves me, and probably the reader also,

quite unmoved.

Now let us hie, climbing a hill of 1 in 14, to Long Melford, and tea, and

really fine architecture, for Long Melford is grand and, when one halts

for any long time a-motoring, a good cause must needs be offered.

Assuredly after the 3-1/4 miles to Long Melford, so called from the length

of its street, have been accomplished the excuse needs no making. The

village on one side of the green, the spreading trees of Melford Hall,

itself a typical Elizabethan mansion, the exceptionally stately church and,

last of all, the hill which lends dignity and variety to the whole,

combined to make an ideal halting-place. By all means order tea at one of

the village inns and, after it, make a thorough inspection of the church,

for the interesting particulars concerning which acknowledgment is due to a

monograph, undated and probably published for private circulation,

apparently by the Rev. R. Francis, some time rector. The author, whosoever

he may have been, transcribes much from certain MSS. of 1688 onwards

concerning the former state of the church, and from this we may borrow a

little. "Much about the middle of the Parish of Melford, al's Long Melford,

in Suffolk, upon an hill, most pleasant for air and prospect, there

standeth a large and beautiful Church called Trinity Church, because

dedicated to the Holy and undivided Trinity.... Part of it was an old

erection, viz. the whole North Ile, the Steeple, a great part of the Porch

and p'haps the East End of the South Ile. All the other parts are of a much

later erection, as by the different sort of building, and the several

inscriptions still extant round and about the said Church may most

evidently appear.... The Middle Ile, from the Steeple, exclusive, to the

East End of the Chancell, hath one entire advanced roof, in length 152 ft.

and 6 inches, distant from the pavement beneath 41 feet and 6 inches,

supported on each side with ten arched Pillars, separating the said Middle

Ile from the 2 other Iles, which are in height 24 feet, and in length 135

feet and 4 inches.... The pious Benefactors concerned in the building the

advanced Ile may be known, and let their memories never perish, by the

inscriptions under the Battlements, without the Church, and by like

inscriptions in the windows, undemolished, within the Church." Of this last

sentence an antiquary no doubt could give an exact translation into modern

English, but I must be content to follow the general sense, which is indeed

pretty clear. The reference is to very curious inscriptions, in flints let

into the walls, which, notwithstanding restoration and because it has been

carried out with taste and reverence, still remain in part. The names of

the benefactors follow, amongst them being many Martins, or Martyns, who

are here mentioned to the exclusion of others partly because, when the

church was restored in 1869, the Rev. C. J. Martyn, their patron, bore much

of the expense and their clothmark, a token of the former greatness of Long

Melford and its cause, is frequently mentioned; but most of all because the

monograph, like many another treasure, has been lent to me out of sheer

goodwill by Mr. Paulin Martin, of Abingdon, my neighbour, antiquary and

healer of men. Long Melford "stood by clothing," as the saying went in the

fifteenth century. So did its people, and this majestic Perpendicular

church, built of flint and stone, is an abiding monument of their wealth

and of their piety.

The beautiful church suffered during the Reformation. Roger Martin, of that

date, speaks of many ornaments in the past tense. "There was a goodly

mount, made of one great Tree, and set up at the foot of the window there"

(behind the High Altar), "carved very artificially, with _The Story of

Christ's Passion_.... There was also in my Ile, called Jesus Ile, at the

back of the Altar, a table with a crucifix on it, with the two thieves

hanging, on every side one, which is in my house decayed, and the same I

hope my heires will repaire, and restore again, one day." Other vanished

ornaments good Roger enumerates, and then sundry ceremonies in the church

and customary celebrations of the village, whereof some examples may be

given.

"Upon Palm Sunday, the Blessed Sacrament was carried in procession about

the Church-yard, under a fair Canopy, borne by four Yeomen; the Procession

coming to the Church Gate, went westward, and they with the Blessed

Sacrament, went Eastward; and when the procession came against the door of

Mr. Clopton's Ile" (the Cloptons were large benefactors), "they, with the

Blessed Sacrament, and with a little bell and singing, approached at the

East end of our Ladie's Chappell, at which time a Boy, with a thing in his

hand, pointed to it, signifying a Prophet, as I think, sang, standing upon

the Tyrret that is on the said Mr. Clopton's Ile doore, _Ecce Rex tuus

venit_, &c.; and then all did kneel down, and then, rising up, went and met

the Sacrament, and so then, went singing together, into the Church, and

coming near the Porch, a Boy, or one of the Clerks, did cast over among the

Boys flowers, and singing cakes, &c."

Some there be, doubtless, whose gorge will rise at this account of ancient

usage in and about the church, but surely none can object to the next

extract, pointing as it does to a feeling of real friendship between rich

and poor.

"_Memorand._ On St. James's Even, there was bonefire, and a tub of ale, and

bread then given to the poor, and, before my doore, there were made, three

other bonefires, viz. on Midsummer Even, on the Even of St. Peter and St.

Paul, when they had the like drinkings, and on St. Thomas's Even, on

which, if it fell not on the fish day, they had some long pyes of mutton,

and peasecods, set out upon boards, with the aforesaid quantity of bread,

and ale; and, in all these bonefires, some of the friends and more civil

poor neighbours were called in, and sat at the board, with my Grandfather,

who had, at the lighting of the bonefires, wax tapers, with balls of wax,

red and green, set up, all the breadth of the Hall, lighted then, and

burning there, before the image of _St. John the Baptist_; and after they

were put out, a watch candle was lighted, and set in the midst of the said

Hall, upon the pavement, burning all night."

A list of utensils, furniture, jewels, ornaments and relics follows that

would make a collector's mouth water, but it may not all be quoted.

Thirteen chalices there were, "the best Chalice, gilt," weighing 133-1/2

ounces. Amongst other objects were "a relique of the Pillar that our

Saviour Christ was bound to," several examples of the Pax (a piece of metal

with the picture of Christ on it, to be kissed by all after Mass, typical

of the Kiss of Peace), several silver ships, many rings and jewels,

gorgeous coats for "Our Lady," copes and vestments belonging to the Church

and like articles in great number, but the list is of immense length.

Celebrated in the church were many Cloptons and Martins, and "Sir William

Cordell, Knt. of Melford Hall, Speaker of the House of Commons and Master

of the Rolls, in the time of Philip and Mary, and Queen Elizabeth," who

married Mary, the daughter of Richard Clopton, Esq., of Fore Hall. His

epitaph contained the lines--

_Pauperibus largus, victum, vestemque ministrans

Insuper Hospitii condidit ille domum._

Here, to avoid insult to those who have Latin, and to afford them an

opportunity of laughing at me, while at the same time the unlearned may

follow the meaning, let me attempt the rare venture of a translation into

English Elegiacs:

Good to the poor was Sir William, a giver of food and of raiment,

And of his own good will founded an Hospital home.

Of the foundation referred to a full account may be found in Sir William

Cordell's will (A.D. 1580) recorded in extracts from the _Visitation of

Suffolk_, edited by Joseph Jackson Howard, LL.D. (printed by S. Tymms,

Lowestoft, 1867). It included a building, a warden, and twelve almsmen, and

it was to be continued--for it had been founded in good Sir William's

lifetime--after his death. It was, in effect, the kind of foundation which

Anthony Trollope took and gave pleasure in describing; nor, as the long

will shows plainly enough, was the benefaction made at his expense of

leaving the testator's relations at all pinched for money. In fact, his

widow, Dame Mary Cordell, in 1584, "being sikelye in body, and nevertheless

of good and p'fecte remembrance," made a will in which she disposed of much

property, devoting some of it to this very hospital, and some, almost as a

matter of course, to Long Melford Church. Dame Mary was prescient. The will

made in 1584 was proved in October 1585.

So thoroughly comfortable were the people of Long Melford in the days of

old that the temptation to mention the fact that a "Long Melford" was once

a name for a purse is irresistible, because the conjunction is so

appropriate. The temptation ought, perhaps, to be resisted because,

although the fact has been read and remembered, it appears to be unfamiliar

to Suffolk natives, and the source of information cannot be traced. It has

eluded fairly diligent search; but the fact has certainly been noticed

since this book was undertaken. I can remember no more than that it was a

purse of some peculiar make; and it would seem fairly safe to imply that it

was of capacious dimensions. Still, as the inscriptions already mentioned

show, those long purses were always laid under contribution for the

adornment of the church which was Long Melford's pride, and among the most

prosperous and the most generous benefactors of it were the Martins or

Martyns. The first of them came from Dorsetshire to Melford and was buried

there in 1438. How the family made its money the "clothmark" proves; and

the _Visitation_ shows how they spread over the county and made their mark

in the country. Roger, who died in 1543, was a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn;

Sir Roger, who died in 1573, had been Lord Mayor of London; Roger, born

1639, was created a baronet; daughters married into good families all over

East Anglia. But it was a tradition of the family that all should be

brought back to Long Melford for burial; and it was also a tradition to do

something for the church. It was a tradition which lasted till 1851 at any

rate, and it may very likely still be held in honour; for we read in

"Murray" that there was, at that time, very large expenditure on the

chantries chancel by Sir William Parker and the Rev. C. J. Martyn, the

patron of the living. Sir William Parker, it may be added, was the owner of

Melford Hall, which formerly belonged to the Cordells and, being

Elizabethan, was no doubt built by the Sir William Cordell already named,

who flourished in the reign of Elizabeth.

At Cavendish, a few miles to the westward, we are at the original home of a

family better known than the Cordells or the Martins, and of real note in

history. "In the chancel of the Church was buried Chief Justice Sir John

Cavendish, beheaded by Wat Tyler's mob. His younger son, John, and Esquire

to Richard II is said to have slain this sturdy rebel." So "Murray," but

the last statement, standing alone, is merely irritating. What is the sense

of saying this, and no more, to a generation taught by painstaking

historians to believe that Walworth, the Lord Mayor, struck Wat Tyler to

the ground "where he was instantly dispatched by others of the King's

attendants"? Of course young John Cavendish may have been one of these

attendants; but in any case Walworth was the protagonist, and should have

been mentioned at least. According to the just custom of Indian sport the

credit belongs to him who gets in the first spear, and in the Highlands the

sportsman who lays the stag low, not the gillie who grallochs him,

possesses the honour of the day.

The story of the Cavendish family shall not be told here, for it is long,

and not free from controversial points, and, of course, they are still in

the land and of far greater consequence now than they ever were when

Cavendish was their chief home. The glory of the village has waned and

theirs has waxed. Of both the next village, Clare, and of the family who

gave it their name or took theirs from it, Ichabod may be written without

reserve. The Earls of Clare flourished from the days of the Conquest to

those of Bannockburn, where the last of the race lost his life, and during

that period of nearly two hundred and fifty years they clearly held high

sway in these parts of East Anglia. Their great seat was at Clare, in a

castle long desecrated by a railway station, the castle itself being built

in connection with one of those great and mysterious mounds, like that of

Thetford, concerning which the ancients were far more willing than the

moderns are to write with assurance. The names of several adjacent places,

Stoke by Clare, for example, serve at once to show how wide was the area

of the Clare influence and to raise the suspicion that the place was named

after them and not they after the place. Not, perhaps, the greatest of

them, but certainly the one whose memory has lasted longest, was "Richard,

surnamed Strongbow, Earl of Strigul," who came to the assistance of Dermot

Macmorrogh, King of Leinster, in 1172. Dermot, it may be remembered, had

carried off the wife of a brother Prince, named Ororic of Breffny, who,

with the assistance of the King of Connaught, Roderic, had invaded Leinster

and had expelled Dermot. Dermot then laid his case before our Henry II,

offering to hold his kingdom in vassalage for Henry, if help to recover it

were forthcoming, and Henry, being busy in Guienne, but having an eye for

the main chance, gave him letters patent authorizing subjects of the Crown

of England to assist him in his efforts. At Bristol Dermot met Strongbow,

and Hume, citing the not unduly truthful Giraldus Cambrensis as his

authority, proceeds: "This nobleman, who was of the illustrious house of

Clare, had impaired his fortune by expensive pleasures, and being ready for

any desperate undertaking, he promised assistance to Dermot, on condition

that he should espouse Eva, daughter of that Prince, and be declared heir

to all his dominions." How Strongbow eventually conquered the Irish princes

in one great battle, how Henry, jealous of Strongbow's power, crossed to

Ireland and made a Royal progress, and how the island was not fully subdued

until Elizabeth's time, are more or less matters of history, so far as the

history of those days in Ireland can really be ascertained. But the most

striking part of the passage quoted is, in these days, the simple

confidence with which the historian speaks of "the illustrious family of

Clare." How little that confidence would be justified now is plain to me

from inquiries addressed in apparently artless curiosity to more than one

highly cultivated man and woman about the time of writing. Macaulay's

schoolboy, the omnipresent paragon of marvellous memory, would no doubt

have known all about this famous family; but it flourished, and perished,

so long ago that the "man on the road" is not likely to be hurt by a

reminder of the associations properly belonging to that valley of the Stour

which was beloved of Gainsborough and of Constable.

On we go through Stoke by Clare, Ridgewell, and Tilbury-juxta-Clare (how

these old place-names serve to stimulate historical curiosity!) to another

valley, that of the Colne, full of memories of another family, bulking

fully as large in the annals of England as the Clares, and lasting far

longer. The valley of the Colne, which we follow on our return journey to

Colchester, was the De Vere country. They were the Earls of Oxford of

course, and in this case there is no affectation of confidence in the

standard of average knowledge in the use of the words "of course." Rather

are they employed in regret, for a good long stretch of my course might be

accomplished at a comfortable canter (or "on my highest gear" over the open

road, if this metaphor be preferred), by mentioning only a few of the great

occasions between the Conquest and the eighteenth century in which this

magnificent House played its part in shaping the destinies of England.

Still, by way of kindly relief to the reader, Macaulay's sonorous passage

summarizing the grandeur of the De Veres must needs be quoted. It was

written by him as the first comment on the list of Lords Lieutenant, who

"peremptorily refused to stoop to the odious service which was required of

them" by James II, that is to say, the service of revising the Commission

of the Peace with the view to retaining upon it only those gentlemen who

were prepared to support the King's policy of packing a Parliament in 1687.

"The noblest subject in England, and indeed, as Englishmen loved to say,

the noblest subject in Europe, was Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last of

the old Earls of Oxford. He derived his title through an uninterrupted male

descent, from a time when the families of Howard and Seymour were still

obscure, when the Nevilles and the Percies enjoyed only a provincial

celebrity, and when even the great name of Plantagenet had not yet been

heard in England. One chief of the house of De Vere had held high command

at Hastings; another had marched, with Godfrey and Tancred, over heaps of

slaughtered Moslem, to the sepulchre of Christ. The first Earl of Oxford

had been minister of Henry Beauclerc. The third Earl had been conspicuous

among the Lords who extorted the Great Charter from John. The seventh Earl

had fought bravely at Cressy and Poictiers. The thirteenth Earl had,

through many vicissitudes of fortune, been chief of the party of the Red

Rose, and had led the van on the decisive day of Bosworth. The seventeenth

Earl had shone at the Court of Elizabeth, and had won for himself an

honourable place among the early masters of English poetry. The nineteenth

Earl had fallen in arms for the Protestant religion and for the liberties

of Europe under the walls of Maestricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the

longest and most illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of

loose morals, but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord

Lieutenant of Essex and Colonel of the Blues. His nature was not factious;

and his interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the Court; for his

estate was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned

to the Royal Closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was

demanded from him. 'Sir,' answered the Earl of Oxford, 'I will stand by

Your Majesty against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is

a matter of conscience and I cannot comply.' He was instantly deprived of

his Lieutenancy and of his regiment."

A parenthesis forces itself forward here. The line of the true De Veres, of

the house that earned the motto, _Vero nil Verius_, from the Virgin Queen

in recognition of its steadfast loyalty, of the family concerning whom it

was said, "Let the name and dignity of De Vere stand so long as it pleaseth

God," came to an absolute end in 1703. Yet the last century saw an Aubrey

de Vere of distinguished family and of no mean distinction as a poet. It

will probably occur to others, as it has occurred to me, to wonder whether

the nineteenth-century poet De Vere was a descendant or a kinsman of the

Elizabethan peer and poet. A rapid reference would seem to show that he may

have been--the cautious phrase is used by one who does not aspire to be a

genealogist. The first of the Irish De Veres was, it is true, the son of

the first Sir Vere Hunt, baronet, and assumed the name of De Vere by Royal

License in 1832. But the Irish De Veres have the same motto--_Vero nil

Verius_--as the Essex De Veres of old; their crest is the boar of the Essex

De Veres; the mullet of the Essex De Veres appears in their arms. Heaven

forbid that I should venture into the thickets of genealogy, that I should

attempt to conceal an absolute ignorance of heraldry. But surely, after all

this, it may be assumed to be probably more than a happy coincidence that

Aubrey Thomas De Vere, bearing the Christian name of him who came with the

Conqueror and the surname of the Elizabethan poet, was a poet of

exceptional sincerity and sweetness, albeit little known to "the general

reader." No doubt the whole truth is known to genealogists and to students

of heraldry; but a stranger to their mysteries is too well aware of the

disputatious quality of their temper, and of the existence of doubts

concerning the title to arms of this or that family, to assume that because

crest and motto and arms are described and illustrated in Burke or in

Debrett there is therefore any historical connection between the arms and

those who bear them.

What the De Veres of Essex did for England and for Europe we have seen in

some measure, and this penultimate part of our afternoon's drive takes us

through the country in which they were really at home. Castle Hedingham,

passed on the left a few miles south of Great Yeldham of the famous oak,

was their principal seat. It had been the seat of a Saxon magnate before

the Conqueror granted it and wide lands to his follower, Alberic De Vere.

It was built on "an high hill," which, like most of the knolls in East

Anglia, had probably felt the tramp of martial feet long before the

beginning of authentic history. It was moated, and the moat was crossed by

a bridge, still visible; the Norman keep, of extraordinary solidity and

strength, still looks out, to use the words of White, the topographer of

Eastern England, on "rural beauty of the quiet order, a beauty produced by

centuries of planting and tillage." In many a neighbouring church, at

Earl's Colne and Cole Eugaine, for example, but only for example, the

mullet of the De Veres may be found shaped in enduring stone.

South of Castle Hedingham the wise man will turn some three or four miles

out of his direct route, which runs through Halstead, to see the church of

Little Maplestead, and will even make a halt when he is there, for good

reason. The motorist will, perhaps almost must, be content with a passing

glance at many a church rich in ancient brasses or in the carved bench

heads for which the churches of East Anglia are celebrated; but he can

hardly play the part of the Levite towards one of the very small number of

Round Churches, similar in design and origin to the Temple Church, to be

found in all the length and breadth of England. After this he will probably

be best advised to wend his way to Colchester via Halstead, Earl's Colne,

Fordham and Lexden. His road will follow the course of the Colne pretty

closely all the way, and between Fordham and Lexden he will pass quite

close to West Bergholt, which he saw as he went forth for his afternoon's

drive. If, after travelling by road through so much of these two valleys of

the Stour and the Colne he is not satisfied with this restful beauty of

smiling and undulating country, if he does not feel some measure of

interest when he knows that he has traversed the places which were familiar

to Strongbow and Gainsborough, to Constable and to a splendid series of

Earls of Oxford, then is he no true motorist, but rather the "road hog"

before whom it is futile to cast pearls of any kind. Such "road hogs" are,

in truth, few and far between. It is in the belief, based upon very wide

experience, that the average motorist is interested in antiquities no less

than in ascents, in scenery more than in sprockets, in castles at least

equally with carburettors, that these attempts are made to save him from

the labour of research.

CHAPTER IX

FROM COLCHESTER WESTWARDS--COGGESHALL, BRAINTREE, WITHAM, INGATESTONE,

MARGARETTING, DANBURY HILL, MALDON, TIPTREE, MESSING, AND COLCHESTER

Coggeshall--Pleasant site occupied by Romans first and

Cistercians later--Braintree--General Wynne as

Cunctator--Braintree for motorists having daily work in

London--The plan discussed--Middleton Hub makes

journeys certain--Routes

considered--Witham--Ingatestone--Scene of desolation in

1897--Ingatestone Hall the grange of a Nunnery--How it

came to the Petre family--"Murray" shows

malice--Courageous farmers--Margaretting--A church

tower of wood--Danbury Hill and Camp--Theories

concerning--The wolf hypothesis--Edward the Elder "puts

a bridle on East Anglia"--Maldon fortified--Battle at

Maldon--Tiptree and its jams--Strange crops--Mr. Mechi

of _Profitable Farming_--Messing--_Quaere_ whether site

of Boadicea's defeat--Mr. Jenkins describes

position--Compare Jenkins, Merivale and

Tacitus--Merivale fanciful--Tacitus merely a literary

gentleman at Rome--Battle may have been anywhere, but

amusing to localize here--The fight described--Heckford

Bridge--Lovely country and bad roads--Good run to

Colchester.

It has, be it hoped, been made sufficiently clear that Colchester and its

immediate environs, Lexden and the Roman river for example, will amply

repay many mornings or afternoons spent away from the car, or with the car

used as an auxiliary only; and so the next drive suggested is one of some

sixty miles only, leaving a morning free. It is a circuitous drive like the

last, beginning and ending at the inn yard at Colchester. Our first

objective is Coggeshall, by way of Marks Tey, which we reach by taking the

left fork at Lexden. It is a straight road and good, but Marks Tey, said to

mean Mark's enclosure, does not tempt a halt by its appearance. It is, in

fact, a commonplace village, noteworthy only for fine timber in the

vicinity. Coggeshall would be a prettier village if it were less

prosperous, but it possesses ancient interest as well as some modern

prosperity, and it has not lacked its _vates sacer_ in the shape of the

Rev. E. L. Cutts, who once discoursed upon it to the Essex Archaeological

Society. Here, where a farmhouse now stands, was a Cistercian Abbey

reached, as the farmhouse is now, by a thirteenth-century brick bridge

across the Blackwater. At the top of a hill is a little and very ancient

chapel, once desecrated as a barn, but restored during the last century to

sacred uses. Nor were the monks the first men possessing discernment enough

to see the amenities of Coggeshall as a place of settlement. Situate as it

was on the high road between Camulodunum and Verulamium, otherwise

Colchester and St. Albans, it was the settlement of Romans, _post_ Claudian

Romans no doubt, of whom the customary traces have been found in sufficient

abundance to leave no doubt of permanent occupation. In truth, with its

river, its grove and its hill, Coggeshall is still so pleasant a place that

its early occupation occasions no surprise.

On we go to Braintree, accomplishing a rise of all but a hundred feet in a

couple of miles, a considerable ascent for Essex. I climbed this hill, or

rather my car did, at least a dozen times during my stay at Colchester, for

it happened that General Wynne, upon whom, it may be remembered, the duty

of resisting the invader fell, made the vicinity of Braintree his

head-quarters. Indeed, following the classical example of Fabius, the

gentleman who _cunctando restituit rem_, he abode so long in the

neighbourhood of Braintree that he was laughingly described as the Marquis

of Braintree. His tactics were no doubt correct, for his army held a strong

line in the face of a superior force, and, if his inaction made the

manoeuvres somewhat dull and sterile of incident, he might perhaps be

heard to plead that manoeuvres are not carried on solely for purposes of

entertainment. Be that as it may, I went to Braintree very often, and found

it always wearing an appearance of respectable and middle-aged prosperity.

No building in it made any very definite impression on the memory, but the

air of place and people seemed to me to be one of vigorous contentment, a

result due very likely to the considerable elevation at which the town

stands, relatively to the surrounding country. It is a very old town,

indeed it is the Raines of Domesday, and it is not too densely populated.

It has a fair provision of apparently comfortable houses, well provided

with gardens and the like appurtenances; it is fairly accessible from

London by rail, and there are several good routes from it to London by

road. On the whole it is somewhat strange that, in days of travelling

facilities increased beyond the wildest dreams of our forefathers, more

persons have not followed the example of those bygone Bishops of London who

had in Braintree a palace which has long vanished.

Let us pause for a minute or two to follow the roads by which one living in

Braintree might travel by car to London, every day if need be, remembering

that this mode of living and travelling up and down to business is working

a gradual revolution in the social habits of Englishmen. That revolution

will cease to be gradual and will become rapid when the danger of a burst

or punctured tire becomes, as it surely will become soon, a thing of the

past. It has become more rapid of quite recent years owing to the marked

increase of the trustworthiness of cars. And here, even at the risk of

giving a free advertisement, nothing shall deter me from specific

recommendation of a device which unquestionably has solved the tire

problem, if the users of motor-cars for ordinary purposes, that is to say

the persons who are content with thirty miles an hour or so, had but the

sense to adopt it generally. That device is the Middleton Pneumatic Hub, in

which I have no interest direct or indirect, the owners of which are merely

acquaintances, no more. I have tried it, and sundry other mechanical

devices over very rough roads. Of it alone among substitutes is the

statement possible that, if one had not known beforehand, the absence of

pneumatic tires would not have been noticed. It passed through a

four-thousand-mile club trial at an expense of ten shillings and sixpence

in repairs. The judges made also sundry observations, more or less

critical, of no interest to me because I had made my own trial on the

question of comfort, and my impressions were clear. Finally I write thus

boldly because I know the difficulties which the Middleton Hub has to fight

to be entirely distinct from its structure or from any defects which it may

possess. So long as persons who sell motor-cars are interested in pneumatic

tires, or persons who sell the latter are possessed of substantial

influence over those who sell or make the former, it is simply idle to hope

that the seller of a car will always give disinterested advice to the buyer

who, in these still infant days of motoring, is more often than not a mere

novice, if even that. Again let me say, _Honi soit qui mal y pense_; the

advice to adopt the Middleton Hub and to acquire a mind free from

apprehension of puncture or burst, without any loss of personal comfort, is

given because it is needed. An alternative is the Stepney wheel, which is

capable of being adjusted in a very short time in case of tire trouble. Of

this I cannot speak from personal trial, but amateur friends testify that

it adds immensely to the traveller's peace of mind. One thing, at least, is

certain. He who trusts to pneumatic tires when he is on an important

journey must always allow a margin of time unless he is to be liable to

sudden disappointment and, perhaps, to grave inconvenience and loss of

time.

Let us look then for the routes open to our hypothetical slave of London in

the day who hates trains and would fain breathe country air at night. Ten

miles and a quarter will take him to Bishop's Stortford and to the

easternmost of the great trunk roads out of London, cutting through part of

Herts, of which the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire spoke with so much

feeling in his evidence before the Royal Commission. There he will be

32-3/4 miles from Marble Arch via Sawbridgeworth, Harlow, Epping, Loughton,

and Woodford Green, and 4-1/2 miles less from Shoreditch, and he will have

but a few miles to travel in Herts. That, in the present state of the law,

is a consideration, for the account given by Colonel Daniell of his

picketed zone is rather alarming. It goes a long way indeed to explain that

apparent instinct of motorists which leads them to avoid Hertfordshire and

its magnificent roads as much as possible, even when they are northward

bound. Another, and the more obvious route is along the great high-road

through Chelmsford, which is about the same distance; but it has the

disadvantage of entering London through Romford, Ilford, Stratford, and

Whitechapel, and the last ten miles from Ilford to Marble Arch, or 3-1/2

miles less if the City be the destination, are unpleasant and difficult. It

would be a better plan to turn off at Shenfield, ten miles nearer to London

than Chelmsford, to the right and to proceed via Bentley and Chigwell, or

even to turn off at Chelmsford and go on via Chipping Ongar and Epping.

Both routes are a little longer, but both are through exquisite scenery,

and both involve an easier access to the heart of London.

From Braintree on our present expedition we proceed to Witham, a long and

straggling place, half village and half town, which was fortified, and

perhaps saw fighting, in the days of Edward the Elder, that is to say early

in the tenth century, and heard the crackling of musketry during the last

Essex manoeuvres. Witham, however, strikes me as a place of no special

interest, but the drive should most certainly be extended to Ingatestone.

Nearly ten years have passed since my first visit to Ingatestone, which

needless to say was not made in a motor-car, and I have traversed its

high-road many a time since. It charmed me the first time I saw it, its

charm still survives for me, and, never having seen it in pre-railway days,

I am totally at a loss to understand what the author of "Murray" can mean

by the sentence "The town is small, and has been much injured by the

railway." Improved, in the sense of beautified, by a railway no town could

ever be expected to be. Still Ingatestone and its surrounding district made

a very favourable impression on me, and that in circumstances which

produced a very high opinion of the English courage of the inhabitants of

the district.