the High Street is gained. It is one of the broadest and most spacious
streets in the kingdom, as it had every occasion to be, for it was not
only part of the great road leading into Suffolk, but in it was held
the principal fair of the town. Here, too, close by where Colchester's
new and gorgeous Town Hall stands, was the old Moot Hall, a building
of Saxon, Norman and later periods, barbarously destroyed in 1843. In
the Moot Hall the Mayor and justices dealt with offences of all kinds,
from the selling of bad meat to charges of witchcraft, sorcery and
heresy. Thus we may read in the borough records of things so diverse
as the fining of Robert Barefot, butcher, in the sum of twelve pence
for selling putrid meat, and may learn how William Chevelying, the
first of the Colchester martyrs, was imprisoned here in the reign of
Henry the Sixth until such time as it was convenient to burn him in
front of Colkyng's Castle. Here the local Court of Pie Powder was held
during the Corporation Fair Days, in October. Summary jurisdiction
was the special feature of that Court, and it was needed, for in those
times, when people of all sorts and conditions came from far and near,
offences were many and various. In the legal jargon of the Middle Ages
this tribunal is called the _Curia Regis Pedis Pulverizatis_, or, in
the Norman-French then common, the "Cour Royal des Pieds Poudrés,"
that is to say, the King's Court of Dusty Feet. Courts of Pie Powder
obtained this eminently descriptive name from the original Fair
Courts, held in the dusty streets long before buildings were erected
for the purpose, and the name survived long after the necessity which
originated it had disappeared. Imagine, therefore, the highwaymen, the
cheats and thieves and those who came into disputation on the Fair Days
being brought before the Mayor by the bailiffs, their cases arising and
being heard, and judgments and sentences being delivered and executed,
within the space of one day, amid the bleating of the flocks, the
lowing of the herds, and all the noise and tumult of the Fair itself.
We must not, however, suppose the High Street to have been absolutely
clear of obstructions in days of old. In midst of it stood the Late
Saxon or Early Norman church of that Saxon saint, St Runwald, which
remained here until so recently as 1878, when it was pulled down and
its site sold to the Corporation, to be thrown into the roadway.
That Colchester stands on a considerably elevated site is evident to
all who, having entered from the London road, turn out of Head Street
into the High Street, and in doing so glimpse the long descent of
North Hill at the corner. A further revelation is that of East Hill,
which, in continuation of High Street, the traveller must long and
steeply descend towards the Colne, on his way to Ipswich and Norwich.
It was in High Street that Colchester's principal coaching inns were
situated, and there yet remains--now the most picturesque feature of
that thoroughfare--the "Red Lion," with old timber brackets supporting
a projecting upper storey and a four-centred Tudor oak entrance
curiously carved; its original and restored portions so thickly smeared
with paint and varnish that all might be old, so far as the antiquary
can tell, or all might be in the nature of Wardour Street antiques.
The "Red Lion" figured as a rendezvous in the surrender of the town to
Fairfax, after the siege of 1648. In its yard the vanquished laid down
their swords.
Another inn was the "White Hart," where Bank Passage leaves the High
Street. The building, a highly respectable plaster-faced one, smug
and Georgian, still stands, but it is an inn no longer. Another old
inn, the "Three Cups," has been rebuilt. Older than any, but coyly
hiding its antiquarian virtues of chamfered oaken beams and quaint
galleries from the crowd, is the "Angel," in West Stockwell Street,
whose origin as a pilgrim's inn is vouched for. Weary suppliants to,
or returning from, the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, far away
on the road through and past Norwich, housed here and misbehaved
themselves in their mediæval way. It would be the gravest of mistakes
to assume old pilgrims decorous. Modern Bank Holiday folks would,
compared with them, seem to be of a severe monkish austerity. The
shrine at Walsingham, second only in repute to that of the Blessed
Thomas at Canterbury, drew crowds of every class, from king to beggar.
The great Benedictine Abbey of St John at Colchester sheltered some
in its guest-houses, while the late-comers inned at such hostelries
as the "Angel," or, if the weather were propitious, lay in the woods.
Ill fared the unsuspecting citizen who met any of these sinners on
the way to be plenarily indulged and lightened of their load of sin.
They would murder him for twopence or cudgel him out of high spirits
and for the fun of the thing; arguing, doubtless, that as they were
presently to turn over a new leaf, it mattered little how black the old
one was. Drunkenness and crime, immorality, obscenity and license of
the grossest kind were in fact accompaniments of pilgrimage, and the
sin-worn wanderers who prayed devoutly at the niche, now empty of its
statue, in the east end of All Saints' Church in the High Street, on
their journey to and from Walsingham, would resume their foul jests and
their evil courses so soon as the last bead was told and the ultimate
word of dog-Latin glibly pattered off.
XXVIII
REMOVED from all the noise and bustle of the High Street, in a quiet
nook away from the modern life of the town, stands Colchester Castle,
on the site of the Temple of Claudius. The Keep, built by Eudo,
"Dapifer," or High Steward of Normandy, under William the Conqueror
and his two successors, alone remains, and has lost its upper storey,
destroyed by a speculator who bought the building in 1683, and half
ruined himself in his attempts to demolish it. It is perhaps not
generally known that this is by far the largest keep in England,
measuring 155 ft. by 113 ft. The Tower of London, built at the same
period, and the next largest, measures only 116 ft. by 96 ft. There
have been those who, looking at its massive walls, 12 ft. thick, with
courses of Roman tiles conspicuous in them, have believed this to be
the original Roman temple, and antiquaries who should have known better
have written long treatises to support their views. Those, however,
were the days before comparative archæology had come into being to
prove that the peculiarities in the planning, noticeable here, are
partaken of by the undoubted Norman keeps of the Tower of London and
of Rochester Castle, known to have been designed by Gundulf, Bishop of
Rochester. Freeman was very severe in his time on those who labelled
the interior of Colchester keep with such names as "podium" and
"adytum," in their belief of its Roman character.
[Illustration: THE GRAND STAIRCASE, COLCHESTER CASTLE.]
If its lack of height prevents Colchester Castle from being impressive
without, certainly its gloomy dungeons and mighty walls compel the
respect and wonder of all who enter. They look not so much as though
they had been built up, as though cells and passages had been carved
and burrowed out of a solid mass; so small are those passages and
staircases, so thick the walls. In the chapel and the corridors that
still remain roofed, the collections of the Essex Archæological Society
have a home, and from other and roofless walls that are broad enough
to afford the safest of pathways one may gaze down upon the surrounding
grassy enclosures and see that spot where those two Royalist
commanders, Lucas and Lisle, who held Colchester for seventy-six days
against the besieging army of the Parliament in 1648, were barbarously
shot by order of Fairfax, after having surrendered.
That siege of Colchester is the most romantic incident that has
survived in the history of the town. It is the story of a last
desperate attempt of the Royalists to contend with the Parliamentary
forces that had everywhere overwhelmed the King's supporters after a
bitter warfare of over six years. It was a gallant attempt, and the
more so because Essex was not a county favourable to the King's cause.
Sir Charles Lucas, at the head of this enterprise, was a younger
member of the Lucas family, seated at Colchester. In the beginning of
June 1648, a Royalist rising under Colonel Goring had been checked at
Blackheath by the Parliamentary general, Fairfax. A portion of Goring's
force crossed the Thames into Essex, and lay at Brentwood. This was
an opportunity which Essex sympathisers could not let slip. Lucas and
his friends, gathering a body of adherents, galloped down the road
to Chelmsford, where the Committee of Parliament was in session, and
seized them, afterwards continuing their progress to Brentwood, where
they effected a junction with Goring's band. Their forces thus united,
a counter-march was made upon Chelmsford again, and continued to
Colchester; Lord Capel, Sir George Lisle, and many others joining on
the way. On June 12, Goring, in command of this body of four thousand
Royalists, approached Colchester, and found the Head Gate closed
against him by the unsympathetic citizens, but a slight skirmish soon
enabled him to force an entrance. He had not intended to remain at
Colchester, but the swift pursuit that Fairfax organised from London
gave the Royalists no time to continue their projected march into the
Midlands. The day after Goring had entered Colchester, Fairfax had
assembled his forces on Lexden Heath, and immediately sent a trumpeter
to demand surrender. The inevitable refusal was the signal for a battle
outside the town, on the London Road; a contest which resulted in the
retirement of the Royalists within the walls. The Head Gate still
existed, its bolts and bars in perfect order, but as the Royalists fell
back through it into the town, two hundred or more of the Parliamentary
troops dashed through in pursuit. Their ardour cost them their lives,
for Lord Capel at the head of a determined band pushed back the gate
upon the bulk of the enemy, thrusting his walking-stick through the
staples as the door closed. The eager advance-guard, thus cooped up
within the walls, were all slain.
Preparations were now made on both sides for a siege. Fairfax had
already lost many men, and dared not attempt to carry the town by
storm. His plan was to surround Colchester and imprison the Royalists
there until such time as his heavy ordnance or starvation should
compel them to surrender. With his command of reinforcements from
London, and his ability thus to enclose the town with a cordon of
troops, the position of the Royalists was hopeless, and it is to their
honour and credit that, in order to contain Fairfax's large army and
so give opportunities to the organisers of Royalist movements in the
Midlands, they continued the defence in the face of starvation and
despite the easy terms of capitulation at first offered them. Their
domestic position (so to call it) in the town was unenviable, for the
inhabitants were wholly opposed to their cause. They had with them,
it is true, the members of the Parliamentary Committee whom they had
kidnapped from Chelmsford, but those gentlemen were a nuisance and
had to be civilly treated and fed while the Royalists themselves went
hungry. The unfortunate inhabitants, too, were starving, and many of
their houses and churches destroyed by the besiegers' cannon shot;
while suburbs were burnt down outside the walls.
The end of this long agony came on August 27, when the town was
surrendered; the officers "surrendering to mercy," the lesser officers
and rank and file with an assurance that their lives and personal
belongings should be spared. Seventy-five superior officers accordingly
gave up their arms at the "King's Head" inn. Four of them were to be
tried by court-martial. One escaped, one was pardoned, and two--Sir
Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle--condemned to be shot without
delay, on a disproved charge of having once broken their parole when
formerly prisoners of war. In vain asking for time to make some final
disposition of their affairs, these two officers were executed the
same evening, on a grassy spot a few paces clear of the north wall of
the old castle. Sir Charles Lucas was the first to be shot, and met his
end as a brave, gallant gentleman should. "I have often faced death
on the field of battle," he said, "and you shall now see how I dare
to die." Then he knelt in prayer, and, rising, threw open his vest,
exclaiming, "See, I am ready for you. Now, rebels, do your worst!" The
firing-party then fired and shot him in four places, so that he fell
dead on the instant.
Sir George Lisle was then brought to the same place, and viewing the
dead body of his friend as it lay on the ground, knelt down and kissed
him, praising his unspotted honour. After bidding farewell to some
friends, he turned to the spectators, saying, "Oh! how many of your
lives here have I saved in hot blood, and must now myself be most
barbarously murdered in cold blood? But what dare not they do that
would willingly cut the throat of my dear King, whom they have already
imprisoned, and for whose deliverance, and peace to this unfortunate
country, I dedicate my last prayer to Heaven?" Then, looking in the
faces of those who were to execute him, and thinking they stood at too
great a distance, he desired them to come nearer, to which one of them
said, "I'll warrant, sir, we hit you." "Friend," he answered, "I have
been nearer you when you have missed me!" And so, after a short prayer
upon his knees, he rose up and said, "Now, traitors, do your worst!"
Whereupon they shot him dead.
The stone covering the graves of these unhappy soldiers may yet be seen
in St Giles's Church, with an inscription stating that they were "by
the command of Thomas Fairfax, the general of the Parliament Army, in
cold blood barbarously murdered." A legend may still be occasionally
met with in old books, which has it that the Duke of Buckingham, who
had married Fairfax's daughter, approached Charles the Second with the
object of having the passage erased that reflected so severely on his
father-in-law's memory. The King conferred on the subject with Lord
Lucas, who said that he would with pleasure obey the Royal command, if
only His Majesty would allow him to place in its stead the statement
that "Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were barbarously murdered
for their loyalty to King Charles the First, and that his son, King
Charles the Second, had ordered this memorial of their loyalty to be
erased." The King then, we are told, commanded the already existing
epitaph to be cut still deeper, and it will be readily observed by
those who go to gaze upon it that the lettering is bolder and deeper
than commonly is the case.
The undertaking of Fairfax with respect to the surrendered soldiery
was not respected. They were ruthlessly pillaged, and some sent to the
plantations over seas. Lord Capel was eventually executed in London.
For many years afterwards the spot where Lucas and Lisle fell was
shown by the awe-struck people of Colchester, who told the legend
that grass would not grow where that loyal blood had been spilled. In
later times the story became an article of faith with one political
party and a derision to the other. No grass grows there now; but for
the commonplace reason that a well-kept gravel path occupies the site,
which is duly marked by a small obelisk.
[Illustration: OLD MAN-TRAP, COLCHESTER CASTLE.]
Colchester was long in recovering itself after the rough treatment
received during the siege; and in fact, it is only in recent years that
the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall, battered down on that occasion,
has been rebuilt; while the Norman minster of St Botolph remains the
roofless ruin that cannonading and incendiarism left it. Evelyn in
1656 found Colchester "a ragged and factious town, now swarming with
sectaries," and if he had visited it nine years later would have
witnessed a worse state, for the plague almost depopulated the place.
"Sectaries"--that is to say, those who preferred to think for
themselves on religious matters, and to worship in their own way--were
treated with an unconscionable severity. One Parnell, a Quaker, was
imprisoned in a cell within Colchester Castle, and died there, his
story affording a sad example of barbarity in the authorities of that
period.
But the early nineteenth century was as savage in some ways as the late
seventeenth, which so delighted in despitefully using Nonconformists.
The antiquarian collections in the castle, for instance, include a
particularly ferocious instrument devised for the protection of the
squires' property and for the maiming of poachers. It is a man-trap;
one of those devilish contrivances which, actuated by powerful springs
and furnished with sharp steel teeth, would, when accidentally trodden
on by the poacher, snap down upon his leg with force sufficient to
injure the bone and probably mutilate him for life. It was thus the
landed interests protected their rabbits, hares and pheasants. The
existence of this man-trap, together with the spring guns also used at
the same time, is a reproach to the England of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, just as its preservation here as a curiosity is a
certificate of the progress achieved in humanity since then.
The present prosperity of Colchester is reflected in many ways, but in
none more strikingly than the condition of the castle, now a municipal
property, and encircled with lawns and flower-beds, oddly at variance
with its time-worn grandeur. The neatness of these surroundings and
of the ornamental railings that fence off the enclosure is admirable
from the everyday point of view, but the picturesque neglect and rural
squalor of other years pointed the moral of the place and annotated
its story, while present prettinesses blur the historic page. It
is so everywhere throughout the land. When, a hundred years ago,
Turner, Sandby, Prout and Girtin, our early water-colourists, roamed
the country, making their picturesque sketches, they did not find
themselves baulked by flower-beds, cursed by cast-iron fences, or
requested not to walk on the grass. They had to pick their hazardous
way through miry lanes, or adventure through the bottomless sloughs of
farmyards. All these things were offensive to the wayfarer, but they
generally meant picturesque compositions and exquisitely sketchable
foregrounds. Nowadays the conscientious illustrator, unwilling to
picturesquely exaggerate, and yet accursed with cast-iron railings new
from Birmingham last week, is in a quandary.
[Illustration: COLCHESTER CASTLE.]
The once forlorn condition of Colchester Castle doubtless originated
in 1726, when its then owner, Sir Isaac Rebow, left it by will to a
detested grandson, on whom he thus conferred a useless encumbrance, a
more exasperating bequest than even the proverbial cutting off with a
shilling.
A relic of those old days of picturesque neglect is found in the book
of an auctioneer, who wrote an account of his "Professional Travels
in England in the first half of the Nineteenth Century," modestly
veiling his identity, and simply calling himself on his title-page, "An
Auctioneer." Part One of his work was issued in 1843, but Part Two is
yet to come, and as his first instalment shows little merit, the world
can well afford to forego the second.
Coming to the castle, he muses over its ruins, and weeps that cabbages
and coriander employ the attention of the Colchester people, rather
than the care of ancient fortresses. To him, thus contemplating "the
sad remains of so many interesting scenes," enters from an adjoining
farm one whom he is pleased to term "an Aborigine." By this he
obviously names an Essex farm-labourer. It is an affectation, but
he might have done worse. He _might_ have called him, seeing that
Colchester is a place of oysters, a "native," in inverted commas,
evidences of jocular intent, which would have been dreadful.
"Ah! sir," says the Aborigine, "it was cruel work when them great
Barons, as they call 'em, lived here."
"True, my friend," replies the Auctioneer, "but it's a pity to see hogs
and donkeys depasturing in their courts and gardens, and grubbing and
kicking down their halls and chapels."
"Lord! your honour," rejoins the son of the soil, "what's the use on
'em in these days? I'd sooner see an acre of these 'ere swedes any day,
than them there towers and dungeons. Them swedes afore you 'ool carry
a score o' fine wethers any month in the year, and plaze ye to look at
'em, but as for them flint walls, you may look at 'em for ever and a
day 'fore you find enough o' green for a garnish"; which was indeed a
practical rural way of looking at things.
The summit of those old walls has nowadays a very charming green
garnish of grass, rendered parti-coloured by wind- and bird-sown
wallflowers and vigorous wildings; but more lusty than these are the
young sycamores, that have struck deep roots into the walls and bid
fair to grow into large trees.
It is still possible to follow the greater part of Colchester's old
walls along the queer alleys that run above or below them. Eld Lane,
out of whose elevated course the steep descent of the old postern,
now known as Scheregate Steps, goes, is situated along the summit
of the south wall looking over towards St John's Green, where,
facing a wilderness of scrubby grass, broken bottles, and the sordid
house-sweepings of the modern town, the gatehouse stands, all that is
left of the proud mitred Abbey of St John. By that green is the frowzy
little church of St Giles, patched up in so atrocious a manner from the
wreck it was after the siege of 1648 that to call its "architecture"
merely "debased" is to deal kindly with it. A dilapidated boarded
tower is a feature of the exterior; the interior provided with a flat
plaster ceiling, like that of a dwelling-room, and filled with flimsy
pine-wood pews, painted and grained. Dust and stuffiness reign within;
dust and broken crockery without. And yet, although so unlovely, it is
not altogether with satisfaction that an elaborate design is seen for
rebuilding the church from its foundations, together with the notice,
"It is earnestly hoped that contributions will be given toward the
restoration fund." "Restoration" is not the word, for the design is
alien and quite unlike anything that formerly stood on the ground.
Rather let the place be repaired and cleansed and its unbeautiful
details preserved as a characteristic and shocking example of how
they looked upon ecclesiastical architecture in the dark days of
churchwarden- and carpenter-Gothic. It is here, under the north aisle,
that those two valiant captains, Lucas and Lisle, are laid.
For the church-towers built of Roman bricks, and for other evidences
of that ancient Empire, let the explorer seek, and, presently finding,
think himself, if he will, an original investigator: it is a harmless
attitude, if at the same time unwarranted by fact. Let us to other
matters, and then, leaving the town, hie away for Ipswich.
Colchester is, of course, famous for its oysters, and has been ever
since the Roman occupation. In the estuary of the Colne, and the
Crouch, and in the oozy creeks of the Essex shores, the Colchester
"natives" still grow up from infancy to maturity and feed upon the
semi-maritime slime, as they did close upon two thousand years ago, and
doubtless long before that. If we may judge from the stupendous heaps
of oyster-shells discovered on the sites of Roman towns and villas,
near and far, to say merely that the Romans were fond of oysters would
be far too mild a term. They must have almost lived on oysters, dreamt
oysters, and thought oysters. No wonder Colchester, whence the finest
and the largest supply came, was so prosperous a Roman colony.
Although the fishery brings wealth to the town, it is more than a
mile away and makes no sign. Those who might think that, because of
it, Colchester should obtrude oysters at every turn and oyster-shells
should strew every street, would be vastly disillusioned. But
beside its oyster fishery, other Colchester trades are of secondary
importance. Agricultural machinery is made here, and brewing and
corn-milling carried on, but the once famed textile manufactures are
gone. Among those old trades was the industry of baize-making, which
left Colchester considerably over a century ago for other centres,
after having given additional prosperity to the town for a period of
a hundred and fifty years. It was shortly after 1570 that numbers
of Dutch Protestants, fleeing from the Spanish persecutions in
Holland, introduced the making of "bays and says," and, despite local
jealousies, flourished amazingly for generations here.
But Colchester will never be dull while it continues to be what it is
now--a great military depôt. Those worthy representatives of the Roman
legionaries at a distance in time of nineteen centuries or so, the
Tommies and troopers of the British Army, are a prominent feature in
every street, and bugles blow all round the clock, from _réveillé_ to
the last post, when every good soldier goes home to his barracks down
the Butt Road; while the King's bad bargains stay behind and fortify
themselves against apprehensions of the morrow's "clink" with another
glass, or, adventuring too rashly into the street, find themselves
presently in charge of the military patrol that walks the town with
measured step and slow.
XXIX
"FROM Colchester to Ipswitch is ten mile," says that
seventeenth-century traveller, Celia Fiennes, in her diary. The
milestones, however, tell quite a different tale and contradict the
lady by making the distance between the two towns eighteen miles and a
quarter.