It has been frequently remarked that the general decay of local
traditions, or the difficulty of obtaining particulars of events, or the
sites of the most remembered passages of history, is, year by year,
becoming more evident. It might be expected that in the vicinity of
great transactions, among a rude and ignorant peasantry, we should find
more frequent vestiges of the one memorable action which made their
locality famous; yet, it is astonishing to find how often these are
completely obliterated.
Much of this falling-off in tradition may be referred to the more rigid
test to which it is subjected by means of the printing-press; as well as
to the new class of materials for history. For a century or so, the
habit had prevailed of receiving implicitly the traditions and records
of past times, assuming them to have been substantiated at the date of
their publication. This mode of constructing history consisted merely of
breaking up and re-arranging the old materials, which have been compared
to stereotype blocks. The worthlessness of this mode of proceeding has
become apparent; and now the opposite error has come strongly into
vogue--that of going back to neglected documents of the same date as the
transaction, and, on their evidence, revoking the settled deliberate
verdict of past centuries. The vast accession of materials of this kind
obtained of late years, is truly surprising. There is likewise another
means of verifying the dates, places, and names, of great events: we
mean in the visits of archæologists to the sites, and the comparison of
the actual localities with recorded details; proceedings of the most
pleasurable and intellectual kind.
Nevertheless, the old traditional stock is not yet entirely exhausted.
There are no families in the British Islands more ancient than many of
those which are yet to be found among our yeomanry and peasantry. Every
now and then some proof comes to light of an antiquity of tenure on the
part of such families, far exceeding that of the Stanleys or Howards.
The Duke of York, for example, ejected from a farm at Chertsey a certain
Mr. Wapshott, who claimed lineal and accredited descent from Reginald
Wapshott, the armour-bearer of Alfred, who is said to have established
Reginald in this very farm. This personage was an example of the
tenacity with which tradition might be thus preserved, for his family
version of their origin derived them from Wapshott, the warrener, and
not the armour-bearer of Alfred.[68]
Again, we have recovered of late a series of instances, which show how
few individuals not uncommonly intervene between ourselves and the
eye-witnesses of remarkable men or actions. King William IV. had spoken
to a butcher at Windsor, who had conversed with Charles II. What is
still more remarkable, a person living in 1847, aged then about
sixty-one, was frequently assured by his father that, in 1786, he
repeatedly saw one Peter Garden, who died in that year at the age of 127
years; and who, when a boy, heard Henry Jenkins give evidence in a court
of justice at York, to the effect that, when a boy, he was employed in
carrying arrows up the hill before the battle of Flodden Field.