in seven years beyond the nearest market town; but the truth is that
the country squires were often upon the road, and few who lived within
five days’ journey of London failed to visit it occasionally. In
Derbyshire, from the end of November until the beginning of April, the
highways were impassable for wheels and very unpleasant for horsemen,
and even April is said in one of these letters to be “too soon, for
the ways will be bad.” Mr. Sitwell rode up to London every spring,
usually in the last-named month or in May, and he sometimes visited
it a second time in August. His plans were laid a month or six weeks
in advance, and a week or ten days before starting a box or trunk of
clothes was sent on by carrier. He left Renishaw at seven o’clock in
the morning, attired in a riding suit, top boots, a horseman’s cloak,
and a “mounteroe,” or Spanish travelling cap, of velvet. Pistols were
borne in the holsters, for Sherwood was a noted haunt of highwaymen,
and behind him rode a footman in livery, carrying his portmantle (it
contained clean linen, a nightdress, nightcap, and change of clothes)
and hatcase upon the saddle. The first night was spent at Nottingham,
after a ride of thirty miles through the forest; the second at
Harborough (twenty-eight miles); the third at Dunstable (thirty-five
miles); the fourth in London (thirty miles). The charges incurred by
himself, his man and horses, in riding up, amounted on one occasion to
£1 13s. 6d., and in returning to £1 1s. 6d., and one horse was killed
in the journey. In London, Mr. Sitwell frequented the “Greyhound” Inn
in Holborn, next door to “Furnival’s” Inn, and there he paid about
eight shillings and fourpence a week for chamber rent and washing, and
eighteen shillings and eightpence for hay and corn for his horses. Food
and minor expenses came to about £1 6s. 8d. a week. While in town, he
met his friends at the Royal Exchange, and dined with them at one of
the many taverns near it; strolled about in Gray’s Inn Walks; went
by water to Westminster—his cousin, Roger Allestry, was a Member of
Parliament; supplied himself with clothes, books, silver plate and
tobacco from the various shops; visited his son, the scapegrace John,
who was in the silk trade, being apprenticed to Nicholas Delves,
Esquire;[98] and on Sundays attended divine service at St. Andrew’s,
Holborn, or St. Paul’s. He had business also to attend to, for on one
occasion I find him paying a sum of £200 “att the Southe Porche of St.
Paule’s, London.” Sometimes, I suppose, he walked in Hyde Park, or
visited Whitehall, where the King and Queen dined in public; but there
is no evidence that he had any taste for the theatre, the cockpit,
or the coffee-houses. His stay in the “Metropolitan City” usually
lasted for a fortnight or three weeks, and the total cost of the visit
was about twelve pounds, though as much more was often laid out upon
various purchases.
[98] This Nicholas Delves is the person who put Titus Oates to school
as a free scholar at Merchant Taylors’ in 1664. See William Smith’s
_Intrigues of the Plot_, 1685, page 25.
Upon the ignorance and illiterateness of the country squires, Lord
Macaulay is never tired of dwelling. He tells us that their language
and pronunciation were “such as we should now expect to hear only from
the most ignorant clowns,” and that a gentleman “passed among his
neighbours for a great scholar if _Hudibras_ and _Baker’s Chronicle_,
_Tarlton’s Jests_, and the _Seven Champions of Christendom_ lay in his
hall window among the fishing rods and fowling pieces.”
Equally ill-founded, as far as I can judge, is the historian’s attack
upon the “gross uneducated country gentleman,” and his assertion that
in Charles the Second’s time a knight of the shire had seldom a library
as good as may now be found in a servants’ hall or a tradesman’s back
parlour. For the class of which he writes was at least well schooled,
and few country houses were without a little collection of books upon
the classics, divinity, law, and current politics. Mr. Sitwell had
received an excellent education, as is evidenced by a Latin manuscript
in his handwriting upon the art of logic, and several Greek and Latin
schoolbooks still preserved at Renishaw. In his will, he thought his
“printed books” equally worthy of mention with the pictures and maps,
the wainscot, ceiling, and glass in his house at Renishaw. From the
books still remaining there, and from an old catalogue taken in 1753,
it is possible to reconstruct his library, and to form an opinion upon
his tastes and the extent and limits of his reading. Upon the shelves
in the study cupboards, Homer and Aristotle, and most, if not all, of
the greater Latin writers, were represented. For divinity, there were
Fox’s _Acts and Monuments_; Usher’s _Chronology_, _Annals_, and _Body
of Divinity_; the Works of Tertullian, Polycarp, Eusebius, Ignatius,
Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, and St. Augustine; Leigh’s _Critica Sacra_;
Corneille’s _Livre de l’imitation de Jesus Christ_; _Meditationes
de vita Christi_, by Vincentius Brunus; the _Methoda Theologiæ_ of
Andreas Hyperius; Justus’ _Lipsius De Cruce_; Crellius’ _Of one God_;
Culverwell _On the Light of Nature_; Hakewell’s _Apology_; Jewel’s
_Apologia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_; Durell’s _View of the Reformed Church_;
_A Defence of the Catholic Faith_, by Grotius; Dr. Fenton’s _Six
Sermons against the Church of Rome_; Spencer _On Prodigies_; Hammond’s
_Fundamentals_, and his volume on _God’s Grace and Decrees_; a _History
of the Inquisition_; Whittaker’s _Controversial Tracts of 1588_;
Bilson’s _Anti-Christian Rebellion of 1585_; Wigand’s _Jack of both
Sides_, published in 1591; and Fuller’s _History of the Holy War_.
Law was represented by Coke’s _Institutes_; Pulton’s _Statutes_, and
his works on the _King’s Peace_ and on _Offences and Misdemeanours_;
Scobell’s _Acts of Parliament_; Rastell’s _Statutes_; the _Institutes
of Justinian_; an _Explicatio Juris inter Gentes_, and the _Civiles
Doctrinæ_ of Lipsius; History by Daniel’s _Wars of York and Lancaster_;
Rushworth’s _Historical Collections_; Sleidan’s _History of the Four
Empires of Antiquity_; and a _Historia Universale_, published at
Venice in 1605. Literature by Bacon’s _Essays_ and his _Latin Works_;
the _Colloquies_ and _Praise of Folly_ of Erasmus; the _Princeps
of Machiavelli_; Milton’s _Defensio Populi Anglicani_; and King
Charles’ _Works_. Other books worth mentioning were Boquet’s _Discours
execrable des Sorciers_, and his _Histoire de Faust_; a _Life of
Tycho Brahe_; Galen’s _Medicine_; Descartes’ _Philosophy_; Galileo’s
_Systema Cosmicum_; Harvey’s _De Generatione Animalium_ and _De Cordis
et Sanguinis Motu_; Burgersdijck’s _Philosophia Moralis_; Gassend’s
_Astronomy_; Alsted’s _Physica Harmonia_; Baker’s _Arithmetic of
1607_; Tacquet’s _Mathematics_; Oughtred’s _Trigonometry_; Butler’s
_Rethorick_; Keckerman’s _Logic_, and the _Logic of Molinæus_; Wright’s
_Theory of Navigation_; Bosse’s _L’Art de Perspective_; Mendez Pinto’s
_Voyages_, translated by Cogan; _Hornus de Originibus Americanis_;
Corderio’s _Colloquies_; an _Introduction to Geography_; a book on
the Art of Speaking, and another, published in 1639, on the Actions
of Gunnery. Tied up in parcels were a number of pamphlets relating to
the Civil War and Restoration, and including the Bishop of Worcester’s
_Sermon on the Coronation of Charles II._, Cotton’s _Panegyrick on
the King_, _A Noble Salutation to Charles Stewart_, and _A Plea for a
Limited Monarchy_, published in the same year. Dr. Gardiner’s _Assize
Sermon_ of 1653 must not be forgotten, in which he speaks of his
“honoured friend and patron,” Mr. Sitwell, as a “cordial friend to
Religion and Learning, Piety and Sobriety”; nor Evelyn’s _Sylva_, in
which the owner of Renishaw is once mentioned, for he had supplied the
author with information concerning the giant oaks of the Rivelin and
Sherwood. The library as a whole is that of a practical man who wished
to make the best of both worlds, and to whom the classics, divinity,
law, politics and science were the only subjects worthy of serious
attention. Milton had not yet published his _Paradise Lost_, and to the
country squire of that day literature meant the classics, and English
poetry and prose were a world unknown.
Though “noe politition nor statesman,” Mr. Sitwell took a keen
interest in home and foreign affairs. News books, papers of news,
letters diurnal, gazettes, royal declarations and speeches, and Acts
of Parliament, were constantly forwarded to him by his cousin, Ralph
Franceys, who resided in London. Franceys frequented the Exchange,
and the taverns and coffee-houses about it, and kept him informed of
“what is said in the City”; and, in addition to the items of news thus
supplied, Captain Mazine (well known by sight to all who have studied
the engravings in the Duke of Newcastle’s book on horsemanship), Peter
Pett, the naval commissioner, and other correspondents in London told
him what they heard, and he had occasionally a “particular relation” of
some important occurrence, a confirmation “by one who lives neare the
Court,” or a copy of “a letter to the Mayor of Hull which a friend of
myne saw.” He was thus better acquainted than most of his neighbours
with what was going on in the world, and it is curious to find that
in February, 1660–1, the loyal Marquess of Newcastle owed to him the
first intimation of the date of the elections. “His Excellency,” writes
Sir Francis Topp, the secretary, “hath commanded me to let you know
that he will not expect you until your own occasions may give you the
opportunity, and then you shall be very welcome. We presume you writt
about the choosinge of Knights and bourgesses, which we conceave is by
some directions of the Councell, for we have noe newes got here of y^e
writts.”
[Illustration: Guest Arriving on Horseback.]
The owner of the letter-book describes himself as “one of those fooles
of the world who love to be busie,” and, in spite of his age, led an
active and in many respects a useful life. His duty as a commissioner
for the royal subsidies took him frequently to Chesterfield and Derby,
and at the latter town, as became one who had served as Sheriff, he
attended the Assizes, and sometimes served upon the Grand Jury. He
often “waited,” either upon public or private business, or merely to
“tender his service,” upon the famous Duke of Newcastle at Welbeck,
the Earl of Devonshire at Hardwick, and Lord Scarsdale at Sutton, and
more rarely upon Lords Deincourt, Frecheville, and Byron. On Tuesdays,
when Sheffield market drew in the neighbouring gentry, he sometimes
met his acquaintances at the “Angel” Inn, near the Irish Cross; and on
Saturdays, as already explained, he dined at the eightpenny ordinary
at Chesterfield on fish, mutton, chicken, and ale, and when dinner was
over, joined his friends, Cornelius Clarke, of Norton Hall, Samuel
Clarke, of Ashgate, and Mr. Watkinson, of Brampton, in the enjoyment
of a game of shovel-board and a bottle of sack. He visited the fairs
at Sheffield, Rotherham, and Chesterfield; rode up to London at
least once a year; and at intervals paid visits of a few days to his
“son Revell,” at Ogston Hall; to Doncaster, where he stayed with his
daughter at Nether Hall, or with his wife’s brother, Mr. Childers, of
Carr House; and to Nottingham, whence I have no doubt he ran over to
see his “brother Sacheverell” at Barton. All these excursions were
on horseback, and a start was made from Renishaw as early as seven
o’clock in summer and eight in winter, as is shown by appointments to
be at Chesterfield “before eight oth’ clock” in June, and at Whitwell
“between eight and nine oth’ clock” in February. This hour, however,
was not too early for letters to be written before mounting, as may be
seen by one which concludes—“So breifly, for I am just putting foot
into stirrop, I remaine your freind to serve you.”
There was also much local business to be attended to in Eckington
and the neighbourhood. In April, 1661, just after the elections were
over, Mr. Sitwell was intrusted with the proceeds of the subsidy which
had been imposed upon the township for the buying of trophies, in
order that he might convey it to the Sessions. A little later, being
commanded upon the news of Lambert’s rising to march to Derby with
whatever force could be raised, he advanced money to honest poor men
his neighbours, who walked as far as Chesterfield before they learnt
that their services would not be required. At another time we find him
endeavouring to procure men and horses for Lord Ogle’s troop. In 1665,
the bridge at Renishaw being so decayed with age that any little flood
made it impassable, Mr. Sitwell applied to the Court at the Sessions
for money, as it was required for the work of repair. The bridge was
of stone, and approached at either end by a causeway supported upon
small arches; and he supervised the rebuilding of it from the very
foundations, and, partly at his own expense, made it “soe that for many
generations the country will not need to be att further charge.” There
is a letter to the jury in a local lawsuit, and two others, requesting
the Justices to discharge or bail prisoners before trial. In January,
1663–4, when a doubt has arisen as to the proper manner of collecting
hearth money in the parish, he writes to Sir Simon Degg, asking the
latter to direct the constable what he is to do therein; and in
December, 1665, a pauper who had been sent by warrant of two Justices
from Eckington to Treeton having been returned by Sir Francis Fane, a
letter is carried to Treeton by several persons who are ready to swear
that the unfortunate man had no settlement in Eckington.
The owner of the letter-book had a warm and somewhat arbitrary temper,
and when roused could “speak plaine English” (not, indeed, as Macaulay
would have led one to expect, in oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous
terms of abuse, uttered in the broadest accent of his province, but
pure, nervous, incisive English) with force and directness. In other
respects, he was a good Christian, who believed that it was the “duty
of every man to be careful in the service of God,” but abhorred the
cloak and the mask of pretentious piety; supported the institution of
Bishops and the “decent, harmless ceremonies” of the Church of England,
but “meddled not with controverted points of faith.”
In disposition, the writer was a kind-hearted man, and in spite of
a great deal of public and private business, he found time to help
other people in their troubles. He twice redeems a debtor out of the
House of Correction at Chesterfield, and endeavours to assist him when
imprisoned there for the third time. He writes on behalf of “Whittles’
boy”—“a poore ffatherless and Motherless boy, an object of pitty to
move one, if not to releeve him, yet to helpe him to right from those
who would doe him wrong”—to the Rector of Aston and Sir Francis Fane,
begging them to hear and determine the differences between the lad and
his “knavish uncles”; provides him with clothes and other necessaries,
and finds money to release him from a cruel master and to keep him from
starving. He sets himself to help Mr. Leigh, of Coldwell Hall, who had
lately fallen into a sad condition of poverty; pays £4 in order to have
a son, Joseph Leigh, apprenticed to a tailor in Sheffield, and urges
another son in London to “write by the next post after this comes to
you, to hould up the hartt of the ould man.” Later on, he drafts a
petition on behalf of the father applying for a place in the Duke of
Norfolk’s Hospital or Almshouse, at Sheffield. He urges a spendthrift
husband to make a settlement of his property upon his wife, who had
brought him a little fortune in marriage, and was willing upon such
terms to free him from his debts and to maintain his children. He
endeavours to incline to mercy the creditors of a former maidservant
at Renishaw, who had married a man already deeply in debt, seeing that
she was willing, in her own phrase, “to part with all they had, quick
and dead, to pay theire debts, soe that they might have the freedome
to beginn the world new and to live by theire labor.” It was a common
practice at this time for litigants to avoid the cost and delay of a
lawsuit by referring their quarrel to some neighbouring gentleman for
his “doom and award,” and Mr. Sitwell, believing arbitration in such
cases to be a “very charitable good worke,” both rendered such services
himself, and made arrangements also on behalf of others. He was “shy
of his reputation” in Derbyshire, where he was “well known in his
country”; anxious to do his duty by his children, and not, as he puts
it, “to bringe trouble on those I leave behinde me”; and considered
the possession of a good estate carried with it “an ingagement thereby
to be regardfull of the welfare of one’s Country.” It may be inferred
from the use of certain phrases in the letter-book that then, as now,
public spirit, truthfulness, and courtesy were considered to be the
distinguishing marks of the class to which he belonged.
Such, in real life, were the Tory squires upon whose memory Lord
Macaulay has heaped the coarsest epithets of a not very refined
vocabulary, the falsest coin of a not very sterling rhetoric; for
I have no reason to believe that the owner of the letter-book was
otherwise than an average specimen of the class to which he belonged,
neither better nor worse than his neighbours who sat next him at the
market ordinary, discussed the Dutch War with him over a quart of sack
and a pipe of tobacco at the “Redd Lyon,” or rode over to a mid-day
dinner and a game of bowls at Renishaw. The impression left upon the
mind by such documents as the letter-book is not one of rudeness, but
rather of comfort, education, and refinement. Of the ignorance and
uncouthness, the drunkenness, the pig-handling, the low habits and
gross phrases, the oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse,
the vulgar taste which aimed at ornament, but could produce nothing
but deformity, there is not a trace; and instead of meeting with “the
deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a carter,” and the
manners of “rustic millers or alehouse keepers,” we find a class of men
useful in their generation, public-spirited and intellectual, courteous
in their dealings with each other and compassionate towards the poor,
and better judges of taste in architecture and gardening than at least
one of their critics.
[Illustration: A Gentleman and his Servant on the Road.]
DERBYSHIRE FOLK-LORE
By S. O. Addy, M.A.
Every English county, one might almost say every English village,
has preserved some fragments of a vast body of traditional lore
which, before the age of printing, was common to the whole people.
Such fragments may still, like coins on the sites of Roman towns, be
picked up, some in better condition than others. Unfortunately, those
who have written on this subject have preferred for the most part
to limit their researches to old books. For instance, Brand, in his
_Observations on Popular Antiquities_, first published in 1777, has
given us a collection of scraps drawn from a thousand authors. It was
very entertaining, no doubt, but the work would have been more valuable
had its author collected from the lips of the people the ballads,
legends, tales, and other portions of belief and custom which in the
eighteenth century were far more abundant than they are to-day. It was
a great opportunity neglected. But in the eighteenth century there
was excuse for such neglect, because the value of such things was not
then understood. Nor was their importance seen until the publication
of such works as Scott’s _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ in 1802,
and an English translation of Grimm’s _Popular Stories_ in 1823. Even
then English students did not begin to collect traditional remains
systematically.
Although in these days the word folk-lore has become part of the
common speech, and the subject is in some degree familiar to everybody,
little original research is done. Even the Folk-lore Society, instead
of collecting fresh material—and there is plenty to be had—has been
printing, under the name of _County Folk-lore_, a farrago of material
from local histories and guide-books, of which not one item in twenty
was worth reproducing. Far different is the work of such men as
Kristensen, whose labours in Denmark should have been taken as a model
of what should be done in England. Not every day could a man be found
to dine on potatoes or sleep on the table of a workman’s cottage, as
Kristensen has done, in order to secure a ballad or a tradition. But
at least it should be possible to make some effort to collect the lore
which is passing away from us for ever. The old books are not likely to
perish; the men and women who know the old tales are dying every year.
But where you have one man ready and willing to collect folk-lore or
dialect, you find a hundred who want to advance theories or to write
little grammars. The armchair of the study is so much more comfortable
than a rush-bottomed chair in a cottage.
In Derbyshire we have folk-lore which is common to other parts of Great
Britain, just as Great Britain has folk-lore which is common to other
parts of Europe. But every country has preserved items which are to
be found in no other, or which, if found elsewhere, appear in such
a modified shape that they contain much that is new. For folk-lore
has been compared to a mosaic which has been broken and scattered,
some fragments lying here and others there. In Derbyshire we have the
garland or ceremony of the May King, which is performed at Castleton
on the 29th of May—an ancient rite which seems to have survived in no
other part of Great Britain.[99] And then we have the Derby Ram or
Old Tup, which may occur in other counties, but which, at all events,
is so much associated with Derby as to have taken its name from that
town. It is remarkable that these ceremonies are connected with ancient
boroughs, for there were burgage tenements both in Castleton and Hope
in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.[100] In Castleton there was
Peak Castle, older than the Norman Conquest; in Hope there was the
Roman town of Burgh or Brough.
[99] First mentioned in literature by Dr. Cox, _Churches of
Derbyshire_, ii., 132; see _Folk-lore_, xii., p. 394 _seq._
[100] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_, Nos. 560, 1429.
In giving the title “Hugh of Lincoln” to the Derbyshire version of
the ballad which follows, regard has been had to the precedent set by
others, for the ballad is usually so entitled. The Derbyshire version,
here first printed, is valuable not only for the literary beauty which
two or three of its lines display, but for the association of the story
of the Golden Ball with that of the Maid saved from the Gallows. I have
added the words “Or the Rain Charm” to the title, because I believe
that such is the subject of the ballad. But the reader will be able
to distinguish tradition from inference, and to form his own opinion.
I would add that a better version of the ballad may yet exist at
Wirksworth or in some other part of the county. We may regret that in
its present form it is corrupt; indeed, no two versions are alike. But
it is the duty of the collector to write down such things as he finds
them, without altering a syllable. He may conjecture, if he likes, that
such a phrase as “playing at ice and ball” requires emendation, but he
is not at liberty to alter the spoken words.
Hugh of Lincoln; or the Rain Charm
In the summer of 1901 the following fragment of a ballad was dictated
to me by Mrs. Johnston, then aged 55, the wife of the landlord of the
“Peak” Hotel at Castleton, in Derbyshire. Mrs. Johnston says that she
learnt it from her mother, Mrs. Fletcher, who resided at Wirksworth,
in the same county, when she was young, and died in 1904. Mrs. Johnston
does not remember that the ballad had any title, or was sung to any
tune:—
It rains, it rains in merry Scotland,
It rains both thick and small:
There were three little playfellows
Playing at ice and ball.
They threw it high, they threw it low,
They threw it rather too high,
They threw it into the Jew’s garden,
And there the ball must lie.
“Come in, come in, thou little palarp,[101]
And thou shalt have thy ball.”
“I won’t come in, I daren’t come in,
Without my playmates all.”
They showed him apples as green as grass,
They gave him sugar so sweet,
[101] My informant did not know the meaning of this word. It is
accented on the final syllable.
* * * * *
They put him on a dresser ta’
To stab him like a sheep.
* * * * *
“O hangman, hangman, stay thy hand,
A little before I die,
I think I see my father coming,
Hastening through yonder sty [path].
O father hast thou brought my ball,
Or hast thou bought me free,
Or art thou come to see me hung
Upon the gallows-tree?”
“I have not brought thy ball, my dear,
I have not bought thee free,
But I have come to see thee hung
Upon the gallows-tree.”
[The father and the mother then appear upon the “sty,” when the same
request is made to the hangman in respect of each of them, and when
they both declare that they have not brought the ball, etc. At last
comes the sweetheart, who says:—]
“I have brought thy ball, my dear,
And I have bought thee free,
And I have brought a coach and six
To take thee away with me.”
During the same summer, I heard in Castleton this fragment of a story:—