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THE NEWMARKET, BURY, THETFORD,
AND CROMER ROAD
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
--------------
The Brighton Road: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.
The Portsmouth Road, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old.
The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
The Bath Road: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.
The Exeter Road: The Story of the West of England Highway.
The Great North Road: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.
The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway.
The Holyhead Road: The Mail Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.
The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway.
Cycle Rides Round London.
Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore: A Picturesque History of the
Coaching Age. Two Vols.
The Ingoldsby Country: Literary Landmarks of the Ingoldsby Legends.
The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road.[_In the Press._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THE NORWICH MAIL IN A THUNDERSTORM ON THETFORD HEATH.
_From a print after J. Pollard._]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Newmarket,
Bury, Thetford,
and Cromer Road
SPORT AND HISTORY ON AN EAST
ANGLIAN TURNPIKE
By CHARLES G. HARPER
Author of “_The Brighton Road_,” “_The Portsmouth Road_,” “_The Dover
Road_,” “_The Bath Road_,” “_The Exeter Road_,” “_The Great North
Road_,” “_The Norwich Road_,” “_The Holyhead Road_,” “_The Cambridge,
Ely, and King’s Lynn Road_,” “_Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore_,”
and “_The Ingoldsby Country_.”
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
_Illustrated by the Author, and from Old-Time Prints and Pictures_
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL
LTD. 1904
[_All rights reserved_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
SIR WALTER GILBEY, BART.,
AS SOME
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF FAVOURS RECEIVED,
THESE RECORDS OF A ROAD
TO HIM
PECULIARLY INTIMATE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
PREFACE.
_I TELL the Tale of the Road, with scraps of gossip and curious lore,
With a laugh, or a sigh, and a tear in the eye for the joys and
sorrows of yore:
What were they like, those sorrows and joys, you ask, O Heir of the
Ages:
Read, then, mark, learn, and perpend, an you will, from these gossipy
pages._
_Here, free o’er the shuddery heath, where the curlew calls shrill to
his mate,
Wandered the Primitive Man, in his chilly and primitive state;
Unkempt and shaggy, reckless of razor, of comb, or of soap:
Hunted, lived, loved, and died, in untutored and primitive hope._
_For what did he hope, that picturesque heathen, hunter of fur and of
feather?
For a Better Land, with weapons to hand, much quarry, and fine hunting
weather.
Now white runs the devious road, o’er the trackless space that he trod,
Who hunted the heath, and died, and yielded his primitive soul unto
God._
_Briton and conquering Roman, Iceni, Saxon, piratical Dane,
Have marched where he joyously ranged, and peopled this desolate plain.
Dynasties, peoples, and laws have waxed, ruled, and faded, and gone,
But still spreads his primitive home, sombre, unfertile, and lone._
_Here toiled the wallowing coach, where the highway goes winding away:
Here the highwayman lurked in the shadow, impatiently waiting his prey:
There, where the turbulent river, unbridged, rolled fiercely in spate,
The wayfarer, seeking the deep-flooded ford, met a watery fate._
_I can show you the suicide’s grave, where bracken and bryony twine,
By cross-roads on the heath, where the breath of the breeze is like
wine;
And bees and butterflies flit in the sun, and life is joyous and sweet,
And takes no care for the tragedy there, where the suicide sleeps at
your feet._
_Dwellers in village and town, each contribute their tale to the store,
Peasants of valley and down, fishers by river and shore.
Thus I tell you the Tale of the Road, told with a laugh or a sigh;
Sought with a zest, told with a jest, wrought with a tear in the eye._
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM,
SURREY,
_February, 1904_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ROAD TO NEWMARKET, THETFORD,
NORWICH, AND CROMER.
London (General Post Office) to— MILES
Shoreditch Church 1½
Cambridge Heath 2½
Hackney Church 3½
Lower Clapton 4
Lea Bridge 5½
(Cross River Lea.)
Whip’s Cross 6¾
Snaresbrook (“The Eagle”) 8
Woodford (St. Mary’s Church) 9
Woodford Green 9¾
Woodford Wells (“Horse and Well” Inn) 10¼
Buckhurst Hill (“Bald-faced Stag”) 11
Loughton 13
Wake Arms 15
Epping 18
Thornwood Common 20¼
Potter Street 2½
Harlow 24½
(Cross River Stort: Stort Navigation,
Harlow Wharf.)
Sawbridgeworth 26¾
Spelbrook 28½
Thorley Street 29½
(Cross River Stort.)
Hockerill, Bishop Stortford 30½
Stansted Mountfitchet 33½
Ugley 35½
Quendon 36½
Newport 39
(Cross Wicken Water.)
Uttlesford Bridge, Audley End 40¼
(On right, Saffron Walden, 1½ mile; on
left, ½ mile, Wendens Ambo.)
Littlebury 42¼
Little Chesterford (Cross River Cam.) 43¾
Great Chesterford 44½
Stump Cross 45¼
Pampisford Station, Bourn Bridge 48½
(Cross Bourn Stream, or Linton River.)
Six Mile Bottom 54½
Level Crossing, Six Mile Bottom
Station.)
Devil’s Ditch 58½
Newmarket (Clock Tower) 60½
“Red Lodge” Inn 65½
(Cross River Kennett.)
Barton Mills 69¾
(Cross River Lark, Mildenhall, on
left, 1 mile.)
Elveden 77
Thetford 80¾
(Cross Rivers Little Ouse and Thet.)
Larling Level Crossing 85¾
Larlingford 88¾
(Cross River Thet.)
Attleborough 94¾
Morley St. Peter Post Office 97
Wymondham 100¾
Hethersett 104¼
Cringleford 106¾
(Cross River Yare.)
Eaton 107¼
Norwich (loop road) 109¾
(Cross River Wensum.)
Upper Hellesdon 110½
Mile Cross 111
Horsham St. Faith 114¼
Newton St. Faith 115½
Stratton Strawless 117½
Hevingham 118
Marsham 120
Aylsham (loop road) 121½
(Cross River Bure.)
Ingworth 123½
Erpingham 125½
Hanworth Corner 126¾
Roughton 128½
Crossdale Street 131
Cromer 132
TO THETFORD, THROUGH BURY ST. EDMUNDS.
Newmarket (Clock Tower) 61¾
Kentford (Cross River Kennett.) 66
Higham Station 68½
Saxham White Horse 71½
Risby 73
Bury St. Edmunds 75½
Fornham St. Martin 77½
Ingham 79¾
Seven Hills 81¾
Barnham 85½
Thetford 87¾
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]
SEPARATE PLATES
PAGE
THE NORWICH MAIL IN A THUNDERSTORM ON _Frontispiece_
THETFORD HEATH. (_From a Print after
J. Pollard_)
THE NORWICH STAGE, ABOUT 1790. (_From a 5
Painting by an Artist unknown_)
THE “EXPEDITION,” NEWMARKET AND NORWICH 9
STAGE, ABOUT 1798. (_From the Painting
by Cordery_)
RYE HOUSE 21
THE “EAGLE,” SNARESBROOK: THE NORWICH 41
MAIL PASSING, 1832. (_From a Print
after J. Pollard_)
THE “WHITE HART,” WOODFORD. (_From a 45
Drawing by P. Palfrey_)
BIRTHPLACE OF CECIL RHODES 59
HENRY GILBEY 63
THE “CROWN,” HOCKERILL, DEMOLISHED 1903. 67
(_From a Drawing by P. Palfrey_)
THE “WHITE BEAR,” STANSTED. (_From a 71
Drawing by P. Palfrey_)
THE “OLD BELL,” STANSTED. (_From a 75
Drawing by P. Palfrey_)
LONDON LANE, NEWPORT: WHERE CHARLES THE 85
SECOND’S ROUTE TO NEWMARKET JOINED THE
HIGHWAY
THE DEVIL’S DITCH AND NEWMARKET HEATH, 125
LOOKING TOWARDS ELY
YARD OF THE “WHITE HART,” NEWMARKET 147
NEWMARKET: THE “RUTLAND ARMS” 153
“ANGEL HILL,” BURY ST. EDMUNDS 181
MILDENHALL 195
BARTON MILLS 199
THE “NUNS’ BRIDGES” ON THE ICKNIELD WAY, 217
THETFORD
THE “BELL INN,” THETFORD, AND ST. 221
PETER’S CHURCH
CASTLE HILL, THETFORD, IN 1848. (_From 229
an old Print_)
WYMONDHAM 279
THE “UNICORN,” NORWICH AND CROMER COACH. 295
(_From a Print after J. Pollard,
1830_)
“ST. FAY’S” 311
BLICKLING HALL 319
CROMER IN 1830.(_From a Print after T. 343
Creswick, R.A.)
CROMER 349
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
PAGE
Will Kemp and his Tabourer xvii
Ambresbury Banks 55
“Sapsworth” 56
Windhill, Bishop’s Stortford 62
Hockerill 66
Ugley Church 79
“Monks’ Barns” 83
Ancient Carving at “Monks’ Barns” 84
“Nell Gwynne’s House,” formerly the 91
“Horns” Inn
“Hospital Farm,” and “Newport Big Stone” 93
Wendens Ambo 96
Audley End 99
Saffron Walden 103
House formerly the “Sun” Inn 105
Arms of Saffron Walden 109
“Mag’s Mount” 122
Barclay of Ury on his Walking Match 134
The “Boy’s Grave” 169
Little Saxham Church 173
Marman’s Grave 189
Avenue near Newmarket 190
Elveden 203
Elveden Gap 207
Gateway, Thetford Priory 213
Castle Hill, Thetford 231
The “Old House,” Thetford 243
“Bridgeham High Tree” 245
The “Scutes,” Peddar’s Way 249
The Ruined Church of Roudham 251
Larlingford 253
Wilby Old Hall 255
Attleborough 258
Wymondham Church 270
Hethersett Vane 286
Cringleford 288
Eaton “Red Lion” 292
St. Peter Mancroft, and Yard of the 298
“White Swan”
Gateway, Strangers’ Hall 302
The Strangers’ Hall 303
Caricature in Stone, St. Andrew’s Hall 306
Caricature in Stone, St. Andrew’s Hall 307
Tombland Alley 308
Stratton Strawless Lodges 314
“Woodrow” Inn, and the Hobart Monument 325
Ingworth 327
Felbrigg Hall 330
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THE NEWMARKET, BURY, THETFORD, and CROMER ROAD]
I
THE road to Newmarket, Thetford, Norwich, and Cromer is 132 miles in
length, if you go direct from the old starting-points, Shoreditch or
Whitechapel churches. If, on the other hand, you elect to follow the
route of the old Thetford and Norwich Mail, which turned off just
outside Newmarket from the direct road through Barton Mills, and went
instead by Bury St. Edmunds, it is exactly seven miles longer to
Thetford and all places beyond.
There are few roads so wild and desolate, and no other main road so
lonely, in the southern half of this country. There are even those who
describe it as “dreary,” but that is simply a description due to
extrinsic circumstances. Beyond question, however, it must needs have
been a terrible road in the old coaching days, and every one who had a
choice of routes to Norwich did most emphatically and determinedly elect
to journey by way of that more populated line of country leading through
Chelmsford, Colchester, and Ipswich. Taken nowadays, however, without
the harassing drawbacks of rain or snow, or without head-winds to make
the cyclist’s progression a misery, it is a road of weirdly interesting
scenery. It is not recommended for night-riding to the solitary rider of
impressionable nature, for its general aloofness from the haunts of man,
and that concentrated spell of sixteen miles of stark solitudes between
Great Chesterford and Newmarket, where you have the bare chalk downs all
to yourself, are apt to give all such as he that unpleasant sensation
popularly called “the creeps.” By day, however, these things lose their
uncanny effect while they keep their interest.
There are in all rather more than fifty miles of chalk downs and furzy
heaths along this road, and they are all the hither side of Norwich. You
bid good-bye to the chalk downs when once Newmarket is gained, and then
reach the still wild, but kindlier, country of the sandy heaths.
Cromer was not within the scheme of the London coach-proprietors’
activities in the days of the road. It was scarce more than a fishing
village, and the traveller who wished to reach it merely booked to
Norwich, and from thence found a local coach to carry him forward. To
Norwich by this route it is exactly two miles shorter than by way of
Colchester and Ipswich. Let us see how public needs were studied in
those old days by proprietors of stage-coach and mail.
II
THE Newmarket and Thetford route was not a favourite one with the
earliest coachmasters. Its lengthy stretches of unpopulated country
rendered it a poor speculation, and the exceptional dangers to be
apprehended from Highway-men kept it unpopular with travellers. The
Chelmsford, Colchester, and Ipswich route on to Norwich was always the
favourite with travellers bound so far, and on that road we have details
of coaching so early as 1696. Here, however, although there were early
conveyances, we only set foot upon sure historic ground in 1769, when a
coach set out from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate, Mondays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays at 7 a.m., and conveyed passengers to Norwich at £1 2_s._ each.
In that same year a “Flying Machine,” in one day, is found going from
the “Swan with Two Necks” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in summer
at 12 o’clock noon. For this express speed of Norwich in one day the
fare was somewhat higher; £1 8_s._ was the price put upon travelling by
the “Flying Machine”; but in winter, when it set forth on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Fridays, at the unearthly hour of 5 a.m., the price was
3_s._ lower.
In 1782 a Diligence went three times a week, at 10 p.m., from the “White
Horse,” Fetter Lane; as also did a “Post Coach,” at 10 p.m., from the
“Swan with Two Necks,” the “Machine” at midnight, and “a coach,” name
and description not specified, from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at
10 p.m. There were thus at this time four coaches to Norwich. In 1784
the “Machine” disappears from the coach-lists of that useful old
publication, the _Shopkeepers’ Assistant_, and in its stead appears for
the first time the “Expedition” coach. This new-comer started thrice a
week—Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays—from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate
Street, at the hour of 9 p.m. Evidently there were stout hearts on this
route in those times, to travel thus through the terrors of the darkling
roads.
In 1788 the “Expedition” is found starting one hour earlier: in 1790,
another two hours. In 1798 it set out from the “White Horse,” Fetter
Lane, so early as 3.45 p.m., and had begun to go every day. Calling on
the way at its original starting-point, the “Bull,” it left that house
at 4 p.m., and continued on its way without further interruption.
What the “Expedition” was like at this period we may judge from the very
valuable evidence of the accompanying illustration, drawn in _facsimile_
from a contemporary painting by Cordery. It was one of the singular
freaks that had then a limited vogue, and is a “double-bodied” coach,
designed to suit the British taste for seclusion. How the passengers in
the hinder body entered or left the coach is not readily seen, unless we
may suppose that the artist was guilty of a technical mistake, and
brought the hind wheels too far forward. The only alternative is to
presume a communication between fore and hind bodies.
[Illustration: THE NORWICH STAGE, ABOUT 1790.
_From a painting by an artist unknown._]
This illustration, so deeply interesting to students of coaching
history, was evidently, as the long inscription underneath suggests,
designed in the first instance as a pictorial advertisement, and
doubtless hung in the booking-office of the coach at the “Bull” in
Bishopsgate Street. That quaintly-mispelled programme shows its speed,
inclusive of stops for changing and supper, to have been six miles an
hour.
The difficulties in the way of the coaching historian are gravely
increased by the omissions and inaccuracies that plentifully stud the
reference books of the past. Thus, although the _Shopkeepers’ Assistant_
omits all notice of the “Expedition” after 1801, we cannot admit it to
have been discontinued, for it is referred to in a Norwich paper of
1816, in which we learn that it left Norwich at 3 p.m. and arrived at
London at 9 a.m., a performance slower by half an hour than that of
eighteen years earlier. From this notice we also learn the fares, which
were 35_s._ for insides and 20_s._ out.
In 1821 it left London at 5.30 p.m., and in 1823 at 5 p.m. We have no
record of its appearance at this time, but the double-bodied coach had
probably by then been replaced by one of ordinary build. The
old-established concern seems, however, to have lost some of its
popularity, for on April 10th, the following year, 1824, the proprietors
discontinued it, and started the “Magnet”—so named, probably, because
they conceived such a title would have great powers of attraction. If
the mere name could not have brought much extra custom, at least the
improved speed was calculated to do so. The year 1824 was the opening of
the era of fast coaches all over the country, and the “Magnet” was
advertised to run from the “White Swan” and “Rampant Horse,” Norwich, at
4 p.m., and arrive at London 7 a.m. These figures give a journey of
fifteen hours, a considerable improvement upon the performances of the
old “Expedition,” but the return journey was one hour better. Leaving
the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at 7 p.m., the coach was at Norwich by 9
o’clock the next morning.
The “Magnet,” unfortunately, was no sooner started than it met with a
mishap. On the midnight of May 15th the up coach, crossing the bridge
over the Cam at Great Chesterford, about midnight, ran into a swamp, and
the passengers who did not wish to drown had to climb on to the roof and
remain there, while the water flowed through the windows. Eventually the
coach was dragged out by cart-horses. The swamp is still there, beside
the road.
[Illustration: _THIS COACH from NORWICH to LONDON by Newmarket every Day
Convey 8 Insides 4 in Each Body & 6 Outsides in the most Pleasant And
Agreeable Stile of any COACH yet offer’d to the Public it Travels
108^{MILES} in 17 hours & half Including half an hour for Supper & the
time Of Changeing Horses on the Different Stages the Above Vehicle Is At
Present drove by a Coachman who has drove this & others for the Above
PROPRIETORS upwards of 19 Years without Overturning Or Any Material
Accident happening to any Passengers or Himself._ THE “EXPEDITION,”
NEWMARKET AND NORWICH STAGE, ABOUT 1798. _From the painting by Cordery._
_This was made, apparently, as an advertisement of the coach._]
Meanwhile, the down coach came along, and had only just crossed the
bridge when the arch, forced out by the swollen state of the river,
burst, with a tremendous crash. Another coach, approaching, received
warning from the guard of the “Magnet” swinging his lantern. Had it not
been for his timely act, a very grave disaster must have happened, and
the passengers of the coach very properly set afoot a subscription for
him.
Meanwhile the Royal Mail was going every week-day night, at 7 p.m. from
the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, and from the “Flower Pot,”
Bishopsgate Street, an hour later. It ran to the “King’s Head,” Norwich,
and went by Bury St. Edmunds, continuing that route until January 6th,
1846, when—the last of the coaches on this road—it ceased to be.
In 1821 the “Times” day coach left the “Blue Boar,” Whitechapel, at 5.45
every morning, going by Bury; the “Telegraph” day coach, by Barton Mills
and Elveden, started from the “Cross Keys,” Wood Street, at 6.45 a.m.,
and got to Norwich in 13 hours; a coach from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate
Street, travelling by Bury, left at 7 a.m.; from the “White Horse,”
Fetter Lane, a “Light Post” coach set out, by Barton Mills and Elveden,
at 5.30 p.m., arriving at the “White Swan,” Norwich, in 15½ hours, at 9
a.m.; and a coach by the same route from the “Golden Cross,” Charing
Cross, at 6.30 a.m., arriving at 8 p.m.
In addition to these were the so-called “single” coaches: _i.e._, those
not running a down and an up coach, but going down one day and returning
the next. These were the conveyance from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street,
at 5.30 a.m., on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, by Barton Mills and
Elveden, reaching the “White Swan,” Norwich, in 12½ hours (the best
performance of all); and the “Norwich Safety,” by Bury, on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, from the “Bull and Mouth” at 7.30 p.m.; a very
slow, as well as a self-styled “safe” coach, for it only reached Norwich
at 11 a.m.; thus lagging 15½ hours on the road.
The “Phenomenon,” or “Phenomena,” as it was variously styled, left the
“Boar and Castle,” 6, Oxford Street, where the Oxford Music Hall now
stands, at 5.30 a.m., and the “Bull,” Whitechapel, at 6.30, and went a
route of its own, by Chelmsford, Braintree, Sible and Castle Hedingham,
Sudbury, Bury, and Scole, to Norwich. To Bury, especially, went three
coaches, two of them daily, and one thrice a week.
The Norwich Mail, by Newmarket and Bury, had in the meanwhile been
abandoned by Benjamin Worthy Horne, of the “Golden Cross,” and had been
taken over by Robert Nelson, of the “Belle Sauvage.” It was the only
mail he had. He horsed it as far as Hockerill, and it is eminently
unlikely that he and his partners down the road did much more than make
both ends meet. For Post Office purposes the Mail was bound to go by
Bury, which involved seven miles more than by the direct route, and it
had to contend with the competition of the “Telegraph” day coach, going
direct, and at an hour more convenient for travellers. So this Mail
never loaded well, and coachmasters were not eager to contract for
running it. The Post Office, accustomed to pay the quite small amounts
of 2_d._ and 3_d._ a mile, paid 8_d._, and then 9_d._, per mile for
this, to induce any one to work it at all, and it was contemplated to
entrust the mail-bags to stage-coaches along this route, when the
railway came and cut off stage and mail alike.
This Norwich Mail was not without its adventures. It was nearly wrecked
in the early morning of June 15th, 1817, when close to Newmarket, by a
plough and harrow, placed in the middle of the road by some unknown
scoundrels. The horses were pitifully injured. A year or so later it
came into collision on the Heath with a waggon laden with straw. A lamp
was broken by the force of the impact, and straw and waggon set ablaze
and destroyed.
Beside the coaches, there were many vans and waggons plying along the
road, and some comparatively short-distance coaches. Thus there was the
“Old Stortford” coach, daily, between London and Bishop’s Stortford, and
the Saffron Walden coach, twice daily, from the “Bull,” Whitechapel;
together with the Saffron Walden “Telegraph,” from the “Belle Sauvage,”
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Gilbey & Co.” had a coach plying
the twelve miles between Bishop’s Stortford and Saffron Walden, twice
daily. Coaching between London and Bishop’s Stortford ended when the
“Northern and Eastern Railway”—long since amalgamated with the Great
Eastern—was opened to that point, in 1841. All coaches between London
and Norwich ceased to run early in 1846.
III
ALTHOUGH the road to Newmarket lay, as we have seen, chiefly through
Epping, Chesterford, and Bishop’s Stortford from the earliest days of
coaching, this route was, in earlier times of travel, but one of
several. A favourite way was along the Old North Road, through Enfield,
Ware, Puckeridge, and Royston, whence wayfarers might branch off to the
right, by way of Whittlesford and Pampisford, or might go through
Melbourn, Harston, and Cambridge. Travellers were shy of venturing into
the glades of Epping Forest, infested beyond the ordinary run with
dangerous characters, and rather braved the rigours of the open downs
than encounter the terrors of the shrouded woodlands. James I., with his
passion for the chase and his hunting-palace at Royston, early
established a fox-hunting lodge at Newmarket, and had, with his
magnificent palace of Theobalds, at Cheshunt, a series of reasons for
travelling this route. The road was bad, of course, in those times: they
all were. The only difference in them was that when all were bad others
were merely worse. But when any particular road became a kingly route,
attempts were made to improve it, and thus we read that so early as 1609
one Thomas Norton, “way-maker” to his Majesty, was at work on the
problem of repairing “the highewayes leadinge to and from the Citty of
London to the towns of Royston and Newmarkett, for his Ma^{ties} better
passage in goeing and cominge to his recreations in those parts.” No
silly nonsense, you will observe, about public benefit, nor anything in
the way of excusing the thing on the ground of the King’s business
demanding it. His Majesty’s amusements, we are frankly allowed to see,
were at stake, and that was reason sufficient.
Mr. Thomas Norton was not, after all, paid very much for his services.
In 1609 he received £29 10_s._, and a pittance continued afterwards to
be doled out to him.
The way to Newmarket, however, still continued to be a matter of
individual taste and fancy. When James was visited there in February,
1615, by Mr. Secretary Winwood on State business, he journeyed by
Epping, Chesterford, and Bishop’s Stortford, returning the same way. He
travelled with a wondrous rapidity, too, when we consider what
travelling then was; and although he _did_ complain of “a sore journey,
as the wayes are,” did actually succeed in returning to London in one
day, by dint of having on his way down made arrangements for coaches to
be “laid for him” at three several places. Two years later the Swedish
Ambassador travelled to Newmarket to pay his respects to the King. He
went by Royston in two days, sleeping at Puckeridge the first night, and
returned by Cambridge, Newport (where he stayed the night), and Waltham.
In 1632 the surveyor of highways is found solemnly adjuring the parishes
and the roadside landowners to perform the duties laid upon them by the
General Highway Act of 1555, and to repair the “noyous” ways by which
Charles I. was proposing to travel to Royston and Newmarket. The malt
traffic, which thirty years later had grown so heavy on this road that
toll-gates became necessary to keep it in repair, appears already to
have been a great feature, for the surveyor urged the restriction on
this occasion of the number of malt-carts, and prohibited waggons drawn
by more than five horses.
We gain from the pages of Samuel Pepys a glimpse of what these royal
journeys were like in the time of Charles II. When you have read it you
will conclude that even a modern penny tramway ride has more majesty,
and certainly seems to be safer. He notes in his diary, under March 8th,
1669, that he went “to White Hall, from whence the King and the Duke of
York went, by three in the morning and had the misfortune to be overset
with the Duke of York, the Duke of Monmouth, and the Prince (Prince
Rupert) at the King’s Gate in Holborne, and the King all dirty, but no
hurt. How it came to pass, I know not, but only it was darke, and the
torches did not, they say, light the coach as they should do.”
It would puzzle most Londoners in these days to tell where the King’s
Gate was situated. The last landmark that stood for it was swept away in
1902, when the east side of Southampton Row was demolished, and with it
the narrow thoroughfare of Kingsgate Street, in the rear, to make way
for the new street from Holborn to the Strand. The student of Dickens
will recollect that Mrs. Gamp lived in Kingsgate Street: “which her name
is well-beknown is S. Gamp, Midwife, Kingsgate Street, High Holborn”;
but in the time of James I. and the Stuart kings it was a narrow, and it
would also seem, by Pepys’ account, a muddy, lane leading from the
pleasant country road of Holborn to another and longer lane called then
as now, when it is a lane no more, “Theobalds Road.” The lane was
provided with a barred gate, and was used exclusively by the King and a
few privileged others on the way to Theobalds Palace and Newmarket.
The post went in those times from London to Newmarket by way of
Shoreditch, Kingsland, Waltham, Ware, Royston, and Cambridge. In 1660
Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, went by Epping. Sleeping at Bishop’s
Stortford overnight, he was at Newmarket next day. In October the
following year Evelyn travelled by Epping, with six horses, changing
three times only in the sixty-one miles—at Epping, Bishop’s Stortford,
and Chesterford.
Ogilby in 1675, when the first edition of his _Britannia_ was published,
mapped out the road to Newmarket as part of the Old North Road as far as
Puckeridge, and thence took it to Barley, Whittlesford, and Pampisford;
yet Charles II. is not found travelling that way. He occasionally went
by Epping, but chiefly through Waltham Cross and Hoddesdon, and thence
by an obscure route past the Rye House, Hunsdon Street, Widford, Much
Hadham, Hadham Ford, Patmore Heath, Stocking Pelham, Berden, Rickling
Church End, and into Newport by a lane still known locally as “London
Lane.” A house at Newport now known as “Nell Gwynne’s House,” and once
the “Horns” inn, was at that time a halting-place often used by Nell,
the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Rochester on
their way to or from Newmarket races.
The very remoteness and obscurity of this route gave the conspirators of
the Rye House Plot of 1683 their opportunity. Those plotters were not
the thorough-paced scoundrels historians would have us believe, but men
who, with a passionate hatred of Popish doctrines, and with a keen
recollection of the approximation to civil and religious liberty enjoyed
under the Commonwealth of more than twenty years earlier, viewed the
growing absolutism of Charles’s rule and the advances of Popery with
fear and rage. The King as a man, with his romantic story, his airy wit,
his genial cynicism and lack of affectation, has always commanded
affection, but as a ruler deserved hatred and contempt. The original
conspiracy was comparatively harmless, and cherished the idea of a
constitutional revolution. With dreamy eyes fixed upon the ideal of a
Utopian Republic, it included such visionaries as Algernon Sidney, Lord
William Russell, the Earls of Essex and Shaftesbury, John Hampden
(grandson of the patriot), and Lord Howard of Escrick.
But an inner circle of less distinguished but more desperate men formed
within this movement had other, and secret, designs. It was their
intention to place the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, Charles’s natural
son, upon the throne, and, as a preliminary, to “remove” the King. “No
one would kill me to make you king,” Charles had once said to his
brother James, Duke of York; but the intention of the Rye House
conspirators was to assassinate both. These physical-force men worked
long and silently, without the knowledge of the others. At their head
was one Rumbold, a maltster, a colonel in Cromwell’s army, and with him
Walcot, a brother officer in those old times. Rumbold was the occupier
of a farm, the Rye House, an ancient building whose walls ranged with
the narrow lane, miscalled a road, which ran—and still runs, as a
lane—along the sloppy valley of the river Lea. The house had been built
by a certain Andrew Ogard, who in the reign of Henry VI. had been
licensed to construct a fortified dwelling here. The beautiful
Gatehouse, in red brick, with picturesquely twisted chimneys and a fine
oriel window, yet remains.
[Illustration: RYE HOUSE.]
The best description of the place as it was at that time is the
following, extracted from the trial of the conspirators in 1683:—
“The Rye House in Hertfordshire, about eighteen miles from
London, is so called from the ‘Rye,’ a meadow near it. Just
under it there is a bye-road from Bishop’s Strafford to
Hoddesden, which was constantly used by the King when he went to
or from Newmarket; the great road winding much about on the
right hand, by Stanstead. The House is an old strong building
and stands alone, encompassed with a moat, and towards the
garden has high walls, so that twenty men might easily defend it
for some time against five hundred. From a high tower in the
House all that go or come may be seen both ways, for nearly a
mile’s distance. As you come from Newmarket towards London, when
you are near the House, you pass the meadow over a narrow
causeway, at the end of which is a toll-gate, which having
entered, you go through a yard and a little field, and at the
end of that, through another gate, you pass into a narrow lane,
where two coaches at that time could not go abreast. This narrow
passage had on the left hand a thick hedge and a ditch, and on
the right a long range of buildings used for corn-chambers and
stables, with several doors and windows looking into the road,
and before it a pale, which then made the passage so narrow, but
is since removed. When you are past this long building, you go
by the moat and the garden wall, that is very strong, and has
divers holes in it, through which a great many men might shoot.
Along by the moat and wall, the road continues to the Ware
River, which runs about twenty or thirty yards from the moat,
and is to be past by a bridge. A small distance from thence,
another bridge is to be past, over the New River. In both which
passes a few men may oppose great numbers. In the outer
courtyard, which is behind the long building, a considerable
body of horse and foot might be drawn up, unperceived from the
road; whence they might easily issue out at the same time into
each end of the narrow lane, which was also to be stopt by
overturning a cart.”
Here the conspirators, assembled to the number of fifty, hoped
to make short work of the Royal brothers, in the darkness of
night and the confusion of the sudden stoppage, and would in all
probability have been successful had it not been for the fire of
March 22nd, which burnt half the town of Newmarket and put the
Court there to such inconvenience that the King hurriedly
decided to return to London some days before he was expected
back. Rumbold and his men were unprepared and the plot
miscarried. The unforeseen had happened, and all their extensive
armament was useless. We must spare a little admiration for the
thoroughness of their equipment, which included six
blunderbusses, twenty muskets, and between twenty and thirty
pairs of pistols. These deadly articles were afterwards found to
be referred to in the conspirators’ correspondence under the
innocent pseudonyms of quills, goosequills, and crowquills.
Powder was “ink,” and bullets “sand.”
That inevitable feature of every plot, the informer, was soon in
evidence, and the greater number of the conspirators, constitutional and
otherwise, were seized. After an unfair trial, Sidney and Russell, among
the constitutionalists, were executed; Lord Howard of Escrick had turned
evidence and so escaped punishment, the Earl of Essex committed suicide
in prison, Shaftesbury had prudently, at an early stage, fled abroad,
and Hampden was fined £44,000. The physical-force men were hanged.
Rumbold escaped for awhile to Holland, but incautiously joined a later
insurrection under the Duke of Argyle in the north, and was wounded and
taken prisoner at the same time as his leader. It was the desire of the
Government that, as one of the principals of the plot, he should be
brought to England for execution, but it was feared that he would not
survive the journey, and he was executed, under circumstances of
revolting barbarity, at Edinburgh, being hoisted up by a pulley and
hanged awhile, and then, still alive, let down, his heart torn out and
carried on the point of a bayonet by the hangman.
Bishop Sprat, in his “True Account of the Horrid Conspiracy,” says
Rumbold made a statement that he and some of his friends had resolved to
cut off the King and his brother on their way to or from Newmarket, more
than ten years earlier, and had lain some time in ambush for that
purpose: “but his Majesty and his Royal Brother went the other way
through the Forest; which, as the Wretch himself could not but observe,
they have seldom or never done, before or since.”
We can find much subject for speculation in considering what would have
happened had the Rye House Plot been successful and the King and his
brother slain under the fire of Rumbold’s battery. There would still
have been a James II.; not the sour bigot who bore that title, but
James, Duke of Monmouth. And there would certainly have been no William
III., and no Georges, and—but those historic Might Have Beens, how they
can run away with the imagination, to be sure!
As for the Rye House; at the beginning of the nineteenth century it had
become a work-house, and so continued until 1840, when, under the Poor
Law Amendment Act, it became necessary to provide less make-shift
accommodation. To-day it is the resort of beanfeasters innumerable, who
are set down at the Rye House station, and guzzle and swill at the
gimcrack Rye House inn, where the Great Bed of Ware is the staple
attraction; or take tea in the earwiggy arbours of the genuine Rye
House, where there is a “Barons’ Hall” calculated to astonish any baron
who might chance to come back from the wrack of centuries gone. There
is, too, a would-be fearsome “dungeon” affair, with stalactites
dependent from the roof, and looking, superficially, at least a thousand
years old; but a confidential chat over a glass of ale with an informing
stranger reveals the man who made them, and _he_ is not yet even a
centenarian
IV
IT behoves us now, after tracing this truly Royal route, to return and
plod the plebeian path. Let us start from whence the road of old was
measured, from busy Shoreditch.
Here the ordinary traffic of London streets is complicated by that of
the heavy railway vans and trollies to and from the great neighbouring
goods station of Bishopsgate, and the din and confusion are intensified
by the stone setts that here have not been replaced by wood paving.
Upon all this maze of traffic the church of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch,
looks down with an eighteenth-century gravity. It is not old, as
churches go, and looks, like all its fellows in the classic Renaissance
of a hundred and fifty years ago, something alien and inhospitable. It
marks the extension of London at that time, past the old bounds of
Bishopsgate, Norton Folgate—whose name is supposed to be a corruption of
Norton ’Fore the-gate, outside the City—and the ancient “Sordig,”
“Sorditch,” or “Shordych,” an open sewer outside the walls. Popular
legend, in this particular instance at fault, still ascribes the name to
Jane Shore, the fallen favourite of Edward IV., who, in the words of a
doleful old ballad, is said to have ended here:—
Thus, weary of my life at length,
I yielded up my vital strength
Within a ditch of loathsome scent,
Where carrion dogs did much frequent.
The which now since my dying day
Is Shoreditch call’d, as authors say;
Which is a witness of my sin
For being concubine to a king.
By the church the road turns acutely to the right, along the Hackney
Road, to Mare Street and Cambridge Heath, where, at the junction of the
roads, the first turnpike from London stood.
The ’Ackney Road—for it is thus that the inhabitants know it—is a broad
artery athwart those wilds of Bethnal Green and Haggerston, where the
Hooligans live—those sprightly hobbledehoys who find life all too dull
and tame, and so spice it with the uncivilised frays that keep the
police so actively employed. Boot and buckled strap play their part in
the street-war between Hooligan and Hooligan, a warfare varied by
unprovoked assaults upon unoffending citizens, who find themselves
unexpectedly floored and their ears and noses being savaged off by the
Hooligan teeth.
It is no new thoroughfare, the Hackney Road, and is merely the modern
development of the country lane that once upon a time led into the
fields immediately after Shoreditch church was passed. It follows
exactly the same route as when Hackney was a pleasant country village,
when Cambridge Heath really was a heath, and when the sheep grazed in
the meadows of Hoxton. But it was a dangerous as well as a pretty road
in those times, the scene during the long series of years between 1718
and 1756 of so many robberies and murders that the village residents of
Hackney, weary of being clubbed separately, at last clubbed together and
offered handsome rewards for the arrest of any of those footpads and
Highway-men who rendered it unsafe to stir abroad. That it was not in
1732 a desirable place for an evening stroll may readily be gathered
from the adventures that befell a worthy tradesman who, returning to
London from Hackney about six o’clock in the evening, was set upon by
two fellows, who robbed him of his money and pocket-book. He pleaded
earnestly for the book to be restored to him, and happening to recognise
one of the rogues, said, “Honest friend, one good turn deserves another.
I was one of the jurymen who took compassion upon you last sessions at
the Old Bailey, when you were tried for robbery and acquitted, although
we all believed you to be guilty.”
To this the thief ungratefully replied, “Curse your eyes, you son of a
bitch, learn to do justice another time and be damned”; and, knocking
their unfortunate victim backwards into a slimy ditch, they both
decamped.
The papers of the time, reporting this little incident, seem astonished
at the violence of the language, but we moderns feel inclined to ask,
“Is that all?” It is mildness itself compared with the foul language,
the damning and cursing that may be heard to-day, without any
provocation, at every street-corner.
But if the foodpads who infested the Hackney Road were the merest tyros
in swearing, they seem to have been proficients in assassination, for
many bodies, shot and stabbed, were continually found beside the road,
and it was not until about 1756 that any degree of safety could be
obtained. On January 15th, in that year, the way between Shoreditch and
Hackney was lighted with lamps for the first time, and a military guard,
with muskets loaded and bayonets fixed, patrolled the distance.
The original “pleasant village” of Hackney, thought to have derived from
“Hacon’s Ey,” the island settlement of some Danish landowner on the
wide-spreading waters of the river Lea, has disappeared under many
millions of tons of brick and stone. Of this Hacon we know nothing, and
his very existence is deduced, perhaps wrongly, from the place-name. The
same person is perhaps commemorated in the name of that City church, St.
Nicholas Acon, in Lombard Street, whose origin is unknown. Stow tells us
it was sometimes written Hacon, “for so I have read it in records”; and
there was ever much uncertainty in words beginning with A or H.
Hackney is not a name of pleasant savour. The word is associated with
everything trite, threadbare, flat, stale, and unprofitable. Hackneyed
subjects, hackney authors, hackney horses, and hackney carriages occur
at once to the mind; but we must do Hackney the justice to acknowledge
that they have no connection with the place, and that those who long ago
sought to prove such a connection were utterly wrong. “The village,”
says one, “being anciently celebrated for numerous seats of the nobility
and gentry, people of all kinds resorted to it from the City, and so
great a number of horses were daily hired that they became known as
Hackney horses. Hence the term spread to public conveyances.”
Unfortunately for so neat and four-square an origin, the word
“haquenée,” meaning a slow-paced nag, is as old as Chaucer, whose
typical young gentleman had a hackeney. This, however, was not at all in
the nature of a cab-horse, for we are told in the next line, he “loved
wel to have a horse of prise.”
It is singular, in view of this mistaken idea of derivation, that the
chief street of Hackney should be Mare Street, but any attempt to
connect that name with the supposed origin of Hackney would only result
in a mare’s nest for the too-ingenious. That street, originally “Meare”
Street, had nothing to do with horses. Its name probably marked the line
of some forgotten boundary.
V
THE place is now a busy suburb, like every other in most respects, and
remarkable only for the extraordinary number and variety of its places
of worship. Every brand of religion is represented here, but all that
remains of the old parish church is the venerable mediæval tower, hard
by where the North London Railway crosses over the road. The body of the
old building was demolished, on the plea that it was dangerous, in 1798:
really, the times were out of sympathy with Gothic architecture, and any
excuse was made to serve for the building of the hideous, nondescript
pagan church that now stands close at hand. The old tower keeps watch
and ward, beside the thronged modern street, over that great graveyard
where the dead of 900 years lie, and pious hands, with the first year of
the present century, have erected a tall Celtic cross of Kilkenny
marble, in memory of “all who died in faith.”
It is a hard-working population that lives at Hackney, whose by-streets
and alleys are very grey and mean; but somewhere in this very
neighbourhood the hero of Mr. Gus Elen’s song had his “pretty little
garden.” That was supposed to be a comic song, but it was one with a
certain amount of pathos in it. It is not a pathos discernible by the
builder, who finds his greatest satisfaction in pushing London still
further out into the country, but it is there all the same. That Hackney
hero was as fond of his backyard garden and of his somewhat
problematical neighbourhood to the country as many an owner of vast
estates, and took a greater personal delight in them. Thus went the
refrain to one of the verses:—
It was a very pretty little garden,
And Epping from the ’ousetops might be seen,
With the aid of op’ra-glasses you could see to ’Ackney Marshes,
If it wasn’t for the ’ouses in between.
Ay! if it wasn’t for the houses in between: there’s the tragedy of it!
Do you not perceive the broad basis of pathos beneath the fun: that
pitiful craving of the natural man for the country, and his
heart-sickness of the pavements, while the fresh, green countryside is
practically so remote, and is growing still more distant?
Lower Clapton Road leads out of Hackney, and in half a mile brings us,
past the site of Lower Clapton toll-gate, to the beginning of the Lea
Bridge Road, one of the very few routes by which London and the Essex
suburbs can join hands, across the river Lea and its marshy fringes.