Corfe Castle. The decree was ruthlessly carried into effect, and far
more was, unfortunately, done than was sufficient to render the Castle
utterly untenable for the future. Most of the towers were undermined,
whilst others had the soil removed from the foundation preparatory to
a similar process. Some were blown up with gunpowder, whilst others,
perhaps, sank down by their own weight into the mines without the aid
of gunpowder.
The work of plunder throughout the Castle was soon accomplished; and
there are not a few of the fair mansions in Dorset which have been
constructed in large measure of the stone and timber carried away
from Corfe Castle. The rebels not only plundered the Castle, dividing
amongst them its sumptuous furniture (some of which was traced by Sir
Ralph Bankes, after the Restoration, to the houses of county gentlemen,
and some to dealers in London), but even timber and stone were found to
have been appropriated by some gentlemen of the county who supported
the cause of Parliament. Most of the lead was sold to a plumber of
Poole.
The halls, galleries, and other chambers throughout the building were
nobly decorated with rich tapestry and carpeting and furniture, most of
which had probably remained since the splendid days of Sir Christopher
Hatton. And as to furniture and tapestry which existed in the Castle,
it is not a mere matter of conjecture, as several of the things taken
away are still extant. A _Perticular_ (_sic_) of the goods viewed at
Colonel Bingham’s house gives a long list of beautiful tapestry, silk
quilts, and carpets, _e.g._—
One piece of fine Tapestry to hang behind my Lady’s bed.
A rich ebony Cabinet with gilded Fixtures &c.
It is but fair to add that though Colonel Bingham carried off this
furniture from Corfe Castle to his own private residence, he was by Act
of Parliament of 1644 not only ordered to confiscate property, but was
threatened with confiscation of his own if he failed or refused to act
as sequestrator.
Lady Bankes’ death, as recorded on a monument of white marble at
Rislip, took place on April 11th, 1661. So little was her death
expected, that her eldest son was married on the morning of the day on
which she died.
The following letters, in their quaint spelling, as to the missing
furniture from Corfe Castle, are characteristic:
For my noble friend Sir Ralph Bankes at Chettle.
From John Bingham Esq^{r}. Bingham’s Melcombe.
Nobel sir,
My being in phisicke made me not to send an answer to your servant’s
letter last Sunday. I beseech you let it plead my excuse.
Sir, I have a large bed, a single velvet red chair and a suite of fine
damask; had not the horse plague swept away my horses I would have
sent these to you. I beg that you’ll please to command one of your
servants to come to Blandford next Friday morning by 10 o’clock there
these things shall be ready for him at the Crowne Hotel.
That yet a continual gale of happinefs may ever blow on you here below
the stars and that you may yet enjoy heaven hereafter is the real wish
of
Sir
Your very hearty servant
John Byngham.
Sir I humbly entreat the tender of my humbel service to my Ladey
Bankes.
One other letter, having the same address, appears to have been written
within a few days of the date of the former letter:—
Nobel Sir,
I have sent to Blandford to be delivered your servant one large bed,
2 blankets; the bed for 12 years since was opened by a wench at my
then house at Byngham’s Melcombe when I was in the Isle of Guernsey
and feathers stolne out and divers other such tricks done by her in my
being out of the land.
I take the boldness to hint this trick to you likewise I have sent
to Blandford a full sute (that is as many as ever I had) of old fine
damask table cupboard cloths and napkins in particular two long table
cloths a large cupboard cloth, 2 towels long, a red velvet chaire.
Sir, had I more as I promised yourself I would have sent it.
Sir, the Linnen was but once used by me, but whited once in 2 years.
Your humble servant
John Byngham.
One large bed, minus the feathers, and one red velvet chair, appear to
constitute the amount of furniture recovered by Sir Ralph Bankes from
the hands of the sequestrators; and Sir Ralph ought to have considered
himself very fortunate inasmuch as these sequestrators had not made
away with the estates themselves.
Sir Ralph Bankes did not live to witness another revolution, or to see
the final expulsion of the royal race in whose cause his family had
suffered so severely: he completed the mansion at Kingston Lacy, and
died when his son was under age.
* * * * *
The original MS. of the old Corfe Castle legend of the Christmas Pie
is still said to be in existence in the Muniment Room at Kingston Lacy
amongst the other Corfe Castle documents.
Lady Bankes’ grandmother, Mrs. Hawtrey, was happy in the birth of many
daughters, who were well instructed in all the maidenly duties of that
good and pious time. Of the use of the needle, and the Greek and Latin
tongues, none could surpass them; and as to playing on the virginals
and clavycorde, it was wonderful to listen to them. But Mistress
Hawtrey did most insist on every young maiden knowing the cookcraft
(for so did she style it) of the kitchen.
Beauty fadeth like a flower.
Music can little delight the husband
When he becometh hard of hearing,
she would say; and then solemnly add:
The best cook doth always secure the best husband.
Now, to preserve the early lessons so taught to her daughters, from the
day when they could first rest their little chins upon the dresser, she
did have them fully instructed in this art of cooking. And then did
she require of them all a promise, strictly to be observed, that on
every Christmas Day in every year these her daughters should themselves
prepare and set forth upon her table a number of mince-pies equalling
exactly in the sum of them the number of years since the day of her so
happy marriage; and so it was that when she had been married fifty-nine
years complete there did appear upon her table fifty-nine mince-pies.
But in the following year her daughters conspired how, for the yet
greater satisfaction and surprised pleasure of this their beloved
parent, they did, with great labour and curiosity of art, continue
one great and noble pie a born baby might rest therein; and this they
filled with those many and rare refections suitable to the great work
they had in hand: to complete the whole did they upraise on the crown
of the crust the letters L X—two letters large and noble—clearly
denoting thereby the three-score returns of that fertile marriage-day
from whence themselves were so happily sprung. The knowledge of this
rare structure is withheld from the good old dame until the hall is
decked with Christmas garnishings. The pie is placed upon the table,
and the old lady entereth and is seated, but the beholding of this pie
hath an effect on this good old lady far differing from that which then
her beloved offspring intended. Alas! she cannot touch a morsel. A
novelty so strange she cannot realise, nor can she digest the ancient
promise broken. Mayhap she did apprehend whether an ape should leap
forth, or a dwarf, or a Denmark owl, for such conceits had been known
at the banquets of persons of high condition. Be this as it may, the
old lady is carried to her chamber in a swoon; her daughters like
demented beings hurry to and fro—nothing is left unendeavoured on their
parts. The medicine chest is unclosed. Scores of healthful medicaments
are brought forth. They give to her of them all: yet did the good old
lady die, and was laid straight and quiet in her coffin, before the
mince-pie had sufficient time to cool.
POOLE
BY W. K. GILL
Some, even of those who know a little of Poole, may wonder at the
idea that a town so modern to all appearance should have anything of
antiquity about it. To the motorist, bound westward from Bournemouth,
Poole is a place with an irritating railway crossing at one end, and
an equally provoking bridge at the other. And even to a visitor it
will appear but as a commonplace business town—a town of tramcars and
electric lights, with a big gasworks on the most approved principles,
with wharves piled with timber and quays black with coal, where
the colliers come in and out through a fleet of red-sailed barges
and big white timber-ships; a town whose very Church and Guildhall
are modern, and to whose past only a neglected and mutilated stone
building on the Quay bears the slightest witness. But could we open
the jealously-guarded charter-chest, and unroll one ancient document
after another; could we summon the shadowy file of noble and royal
benefactors, from the famous Crusader, the Gordon of his age, who
granted the first charter, to that Queen of famous memory, who gave us
the last—then, indeed, we should have a pageant fit to compare with
that of any town in Dorset. But Poole’s true pageant would be on the
water, where, too, the harbour would give her an antiquity not her own.
Roman bireme and Saxon keel, Danish longship and Norman galley, quaint
craft of Plantagenet and Tudor, strong-stemmed Newfoundlander, and
raking privateer of the great French War—the shipping that has sailed
in that harbour would bring us down from the Roman period to the long
black destroyers of our own day which sometimes lie in main channel
from Stakes to Saltern’s Pier. The memories of Poole are not in her
ruins, but in her records; for the swift keel leaves no mark, and there
is no more trace of the destroyers that lay there last year than of
Knut’s long ships that lay there nine hundred years ago.
[Illustration: THE TOWN CELLARS, POOLE.]
But let us stroll slowly through the town from the railway station,
not by the High Street, but by way of the Guildhall and the Church of
St. James the Apostle, down to the Quay, noting, as we go, the signs
and vestiges of past days. A few paces from the station is the old
town boundary, denoted by a boundstone let into the wall, and this is
all that remains to mark the position of the embattled gate erected
by charter from Henry VI., and destroyed by order of Charles II.—the
embattled gate recorded by Leland that turned back Prince Maurice in
the great Civil War. It is amusing to note how Clarendon “veils his
wrath in scornful word” as he tells how “in Dorsetshire the enemy
had only two little fisher towns, Poole and Lyme.” Here was the main
entrance from the north through the fortified gate that gave the name
of Towngate Street. (The southern entrance was by ferry, and this way
came Leland, the great Tudor antiquary.) There was a sharp fight at
this point during the Civil War, mementos of which in the shape of
three small cannon-balls were dug up last year, and are now in the
local Museum. The story may be summarised thus: Poole as a seaport
was of great importance, and the King’s party were most anxious
to get hold of it. Attempts were made to corrupt a dashing young
partisan leader, Captain Francis Sydenham, of Wynford Eagle (brother
of the famous doctor, also a soldier then), who was constantly out on
raiding expeditions. Sydenham pretended to yield, but arranged with
the Governor, Captain John Bingham, of Bingham’s Melcombe, to have a
little surprise for the cavaliers. Accordingly, when Lord Crawford with
horse and foot came by night to the outworks that guarded the causeway
over the fosse, he was admitted within the half-moon, but found the
gates fast, while the cannon and musketry opened on him from the wall.
The darkness favoured him, however, and he escaped, but with some loss
of men, and more of horses. The small cannon-balls above mentioned
were in all probability some of those fired at the Royalists from the
wall. This wall, as has been said, was razed by order of Charles II., a
retaliation, possibly, for the part Poole had played in the destruction
of Corfe Castle. The fosse long remained, and, having been deepened
in fear of Prince Charlie as late as 1745, some portion was traceable
within the memory of living persons.
A few years after, the King had an opportunity of seeing how his order
had been carried out—for, the Court being at Salisbury, to avoid
the Plague in 1665, he and some of the courtiers went touring about
East Dorset, and one day was spent at Poole. So on September 15th a
brilliant company rode into the town by the old causeway. There was the
King himself, harsh-featured indeed, but easy and gracious in bearing;
Lauderdale, with his coarse features and lolling tongue; Ashley, with
his hollow cheeks and keen eyes; Arlington, another of the afterwards
infamous Cabal; and, among the rest, but the centre of all attraction,
the handsome, boyish face of Monmouth. Ashley was well known in Poole,
and many a grim Puritan soldier must have muttered Scriptural curses on
his old commander, who had turned courtier for the nonce, but who could
not foresee the day when the flags in the port should be half-mast for
him, and when his body should be brought from his place of exile in
Holland, and the hearse should pass along the very road he had just
ridden so gallantly to the old church of Wimborne St. Giles. Still
less could young Monmouth foresee the day when, twenty years later,
turning and doubling like a hunted hare, he should cross that road in
his desperate and vain effort to reach the shelter of the great Forest.
And little did his father think that Antony Etricke, “learned in the
laws of England,” whom he appointed Recorder of Poole, should be the
man before whom his favourite son would be brought for identification.
Down the street rode the gay cavalcade—plumed hats, curled wigs,
velvets and laces, gallant horses and all—over the open ground that
extended halfway down the town, till they came to the house of Peter
Hiley, which then stood about opposite where now is the National and
Provincial Bank. The house has long since gone, but there they were
entertained by Peter Hall, the Mayor; and afterwards the King went on
the water to Brownsea, “and took an exact view of the said island,
castle, bay, and this harbour, to his great contentment.” For many a
day this visit was remembered, and the cause of the hapless Monmouth
was popular in Poole, so that before his final attempt to reach the
Forest he had entertained the idea of escaping to Poole, and there
taking ship for Holland. A ghastly little note from the Deputy-Mayor of
Poole, instructing the tything-men of Higher Lytchett to take delivery
of certain heads and quarters of rebels executed in Poole, and to set
them up at the cross-roads, is still in existence, and testifies to the
executions of the Bloody Assize.
Further down the street comes a cluster of houses that belong to a
widely different period, both in the history of the town and of the
country. The almshouses, dated 1812, with Nile and Trafalgar Rows on
one side, and Wellington Row, 1814, a little way below on the other,
recall the great French War, when the open ground at this end of
Poole, still called The Parade, though now built over, was the place
of exercise for the troops constantly quartered here. In 1796, the
33rd, then Colonel Wellesley’s, regiment was here, and the Colonel’s
quarters were over the water at the old manor-house at Hamworthy.
But the almshouses, built by a famous Newfoundland merchant, George
Garland, bring back quite a different set of memories. Curiously
enough, the well-known trade with Newfoundland was at its zenith
during the later years of the great war. The English fleet had swept
the foreign flag off the seas, and the trade had fallen to the Union
Jack. But the trade dated from the time of Queen Elizabeth, and lasted
till the middle of the Victorian age. At first the little ships went
out year by year, in the season, and returned with their cargoes of
oil and fish and skins, without making any stay on the island—little
ships of forty to fifty tons, but manned by daring seamen, who faced
the Atlantic storms and the Turkish pirates, as well as French or
Spanish enemies, year in, year out, with no record save now and then
an incidental mention, as when the Mayor of Poole complains to the
Privy Council in 1625 of the danger that the fishing fleets ran from
the Turkish pirates, Sallee rovers, and the like. In after years
settlements were made, and the Poole merchants had their establishments
on the island, from which they supplied the fishermen; but the truck
system was the only one in vogue, and the oils and fish and seal-pelts
were paid for in goods only, the value of which was fixed by the
merchant, who thus got his cargoes at his own price, and, buying his
supplies wholesale in England, made, naturally, very large profits.
For many years Poole and Newfoundland were intimately connected,
but the trade gradually fell off as other countries entered into
competition, and the carelessness, bred by monopoly, made the Poole
merchants far too independent and unenterprising.
Not far down the street lived a merchant of another sort. Sir Peter
Thompson, born in Poole, but for the greater part of his life residing
in London, where he carried on a large trade with Hamburg, built for
his retirement the fine old Georgian house long used as a hospital.
The carved doorway, with its crest and motto, “_Nil conscire sibi_”
(not, by-the-bye, the one usually assigned to Sir Peter, which is
“_Nulla retrorsum_”); the arms and crest displayed above the doorway,
and the height and proportion of the street front, give an air of
dignity to the building strangely in contrast with the neat little
villas recently put up opposite. The house dates from the time
of Prince Charlie, who, indirectly, was the cause of Sir Peter’s
knighthood. As High Sheriff of Surrey, the fine old Whig presented
a loyal address to George II. when the throne was in danger after
Prestonpans, and received the honour of knighthood as a mark of the
King’s appreciation. It was in the next year, the year of Culloden,
that Sir Peter began the house in which he meant to spend the close
of an honourable life in the company of early friends, and in the
collection of rare manuscripts and objects of interest, scientific and
antiquarian, for he was both an F.R.S. and an F.A.S.; he also aided
Hutchins in his monumental _History of Dorset_. Respected for his
talents and loved for his kindness, he lived there for some years in
dignified ease, and died in 1770.
As yet it will be observed that we have had comparatively modern
memories of Poole; but as we go nearer to the Quay, which is the most
important element in Poole past and present, we come to older and
older buildings, or rather parts of buildings, for it is a feature in
the town that the constant, active life of the place has renewed, and
so covered up, the old buildings, unlike places whose vigour has long
ebbed away and left them with their antiquities unaltered to sleep away
the remainder of their allotted time,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose.
And so we pass the modern Guildhall—the old Guildhall was very
suitably placed in Fish Street, on the other side of the town, with
the gaol, in which John Wesley’s grandfather was imprisoned, under
it—and down the market till we pause before the oldest almshouses,
where the authorities have put up an inscription which tells all
that is certainly known of the buildings, viz., that they were first
erected about the time of Henry IV., were the property of one of the
mediæval religious guilds, the Guild of St. George, and were seized
by the Crown in the time of Edward VI., and afterwards sold to the
Corporation. The lower portion and the old wall at the back—in fact,
the stonework—may be as old as the days of Joan of Arc, but there has,
of course, been a great deal of alteration and rebuilding. Speaking of
Joan of Arc, it may be mentioned that John, Duke of Bedford, Regent
of France, under whose rule she was burned, was Lord of Canford and
of Poole, and a few years ago his seal was dug up in cleaning out a
ditch on the Hamworthy-Lytchett road. St. James’ Church is, of course,
new, though built on the site of the old church, a print of which,
with its “handsome tower, covered with a cupola of tin, quite round,
in the fashion of a cup,” is given in Sydenham’s _History of Poole_,
a work of special merit, written by a competent antiquary, and full
of information. Some of the old monumental inscriptions are preserved
in the church, notably one to Captain Peter Joliffe. This worthy
representative of the old Poole seamen distinguished himself in a
sea-fight off Purbeck as follows:—Cruising with only two men in a small
vessel, the “Sea Adventurer,” he saw a French privateer make prey of
a Weymouth fishing-boat. Though the Frenchman was vastly superior in
strength, he boldly attacked him, drove him off, recovered the prize,
and then, following up his first success, manœuvred so skilfully as
to drive him ashore near Lulworth, where the vessel was broken to
pieces and the crew made prisoners. King William III., hearing of this
brave deed, sent Captain Peter a gold medal and chain, with a special
inscription. This was not his only exploit, and in later years George
I. made him military commander of the town. His great-grandson, the
Rev. Peter Joliffe, of Sterte, is still remembered as the pattern of a
good rector.
Old Poole, as we have noted, clustered round St. James’ Church and
the old Guildhall, and, as the remains testify, was mainly of stone,
with the stone-flag roofs, that remind one of their Purbeck home.
Very near to the church, in the yard of the St. Clement’s Inn, is a
small battlemented gateway, supposed to have been a water-gate, a view
which has been lately confirmed by the traces of seaweed revealed
in digging. This is very probably the piece of wall of which Leland
speaks as having been built by Richard III., who “promised large
things to the town of Poole.” Hence, when “Richmond was on the seas,”
and his storm-driven ship appeared off Sandbanks, an attempt was made
to inveigle him on shore; but a warier man than Henry Tudor did not
breathe, and, to the disappointment of the authorities, “he weighed
up his anchor, halsed up his sails, and having a prosperous and
streeinable wind, and a fresh gale sent even by God to deliver him from
that peril, arrived safe in Normandy.”