almshouses, and older, indeed, than anything else in
Poole, is that much-battered, much-altered building
now known as the Town Cellars. The Great Cellar, or
King’s Hall, or Woolhouse, to give it the various
names it was once known by, was in all probability,
as the names import, a place in which goods were
stored. It was always manor property, rented by the
Corporation in later years, but more likely originally
a place used by the lords of the manor of Canford to
store the dues levied in kind, to which they were
entitled by the charter of Longespée. On the inner
side stood a small prison called the Salisbury, also
belonging to the manor, and by this were the stocks,
still remembered by old people. Modern conjecture,
catching at the ecclesiastical appearance of the
pointed doorways and cusped windows, and ignoring
the fact that such features were common to sacred and
secular buildings alike, has imagined a monastery
here, but the utter absence of evidence, the absolute
silence of all records, the fact, too, that Leland,
who visited Poole, and mentions all of importance from
the antiquary’s point of view, has nothing to say of
any such institution, and, finally, the authority of
Abbot Gasquet, whose note on the subject may be given
in full—“Poole, ‘A Friary,’ _No friary: the grant 3
Edward VI. seems to have been of gild property_”—seem
to be conclusive against the theory. The place has
been cut right through by the street from St. James’
Church to the Quay, and is so shown on the revised
Ordnance Map, while the original block is entire in
a plan of Poole dated 1768. It must have been very
narrow in proportion to its width, and parts of the
work are very roughly executed. Possibly this is the
“fair town house of stone on the Kay” of which Leland
speaks, unmutilated in his day. Old and battered
as it is, no inhabitant of the town should view it
without reverence, for it is part of the long past.
Built about the end of Edward the Third’s reign, it
must have played its part in stirring times. Poole,
during the Hundred Years’ War, was a place of much
importance, and shared in the ups and downs of that
long war—now helping to take Calais, and again
destroyed in the great raid of John de Vienne, who
paid with fire and sword in the declining years of
Edward the score run up at Cressy and Calais and
Poitiers. The old building was the centre of a fierce
struggle about five hundred years ago. At that time
the port of Poole was a thorn in the side of Frenchman
and Spaniard, and its leader, Henry Paye, was the
dread of the Channel and of the shores of the Bay of
Biscay. The Drake of his age, half admiral and half
pirate, he was commander of the King’s ships one
year and raiding the Spanish coast the next. It is a
Spanish chronicle that lifts the veil for a moment and
shows us the Poole of the Plantagenets clustering
round the Church of St. James and along the Quay,
its inhabitants ready at a moment’s notice for war;
archers and men-at-arms mustering to the warcry; the
very doors so constructed that they could be used as
“pavaisses,” or large shields, against the murderous
cross-bow bolts—everything betokening a population
living in a state of war, and revealing a lively
picture of the coast towns when there was no regular
fleet, and self-help was the order of the day. We owe
this glimpse to the Spanish _Cronica del Conde D. Pero
Niño_, the substance of which, as far as it affects
Poole, is given by Southey in his _Naval History of
England_. The attack on Poole was a revenge raid in
consequence of Henry Paye’s doings on the Spanish
coast. Early in the morning the joint Spanish and
French fleet entered the harbour, and the Spaniards
landed. Taken by surprise, with their leader away, the
men of Poole proved their mettle. A large building
(which we, without hesitation, identify with the Town
Cellars), full of arms and sea-stores, was fiercely
defended, and when this had been carried by assault
and set on fire, the fighting was continued in the
streets. So terrible was the hail of shafts that the
Spaniards recoiled, and only the landing of fresh men
enabled them at last to drive back the English. Henry
Paye’s brother led the townsmen with great gallantry,
but was killed on the spot, and then, apparently, his
men drew off. The Spaniards and their French allies,
who at first held aloof, but came bravely to help when
the first repulse took place, then returned to their
ships with a few prisoners; and the curtain again
falls.
And so we leave the old town while yet the smoke broods sullenly over
the Town Cellars, and the warcry of Spain yet echoes among the narrow
stone streets of the East Quay.
BRIDPORT
BY THE REV. R. GROSVENOR BARTELOT, M.A.
In the days when vikings, pirates, and roving sea-dogs ruled the waves
it was a decided advantage for the shipping merchant to reside in a
port which lay a mile or so up a river-mouth rather than on the coast
itself. Fourteenth century Weymouth folk knew this to their cost.
Dwellers they were in a growing hamlet on the sea-coast, with no church
of their own, so they had to walk over the hill to Mass at Wyke Regis.
Whilst thus employed in pious worship, down swooped the French ships on
their defenceless abodes, and when they returned to their Sunday dinner
their homesteads were a smouldering ash-heap. After that, they decided
to build a chapel of their own on high ground, whence the eye of the
watchman could sweep the horizon in search of strange craft.
Such a sudden surprise as this could never have occurred at Bridport.
Following Wareham’s good example, the builders of this ancient town had
an eye to communication by land and sea. They hugged the Roman Road,
and at the same time they lay snug up a river-mouth. The Brit, which
rises in the upland slopes of Axnoller Hill, amidst some of the finest
Wessex scenery, after a short course through Beaminster Town, past the
beautiful Tudor mansion of Parnham and the villages of Netherbury and
Melplash, unites with the Symene and the Asker streams at Bridport
Town, and thence flows into West Bay, a mile further on, at Bridport
Harbour.
Whether in Roman times this place had any importance cannot now
be definitely determined. If, however, the name of the station,
_Londinis_, on the Icen Way from Dorchester to Exeter, be but a
Latinised form of _Lyndaen_—_i.e._, “Broad Pool”—then there is reason
to believe that Bridport High Street, which runs along the edge of
Bradpole parish, is on the old Roman Road. That Bradpole was only a
hamlet of Bridport is shown by the fact that not until the year 1527
had the former parish any right to bury its parishioners anywhere
except in the churchyard of the latter place. The evidence of the name
of the town certainly favours Roman occupation; “port” in this case is
not derived from a personal source; this is the “door, or gate, of the
Brit.”
We have more clear evidence of its growing importance in the Saxon
period. The name of its western suburb, “Allington,” is always in
mediæval days written “Athelington,” “the town of the nobles.” Hence
the fashion in modern London of the aristocracy flocking to the “West
End,” is, after all, only an imitation of an example set by Bridport
long years ago. In Edward the Confessor’s reign one hundred and twenty
houses stood in this Dorset town, which, in comparison with the other
towns of the county, came next to Dorchester and Wareham. Bridport,
too, had a mint of its own, and its mint-master paid well for the
privilege of coining.
The Norman Conquest does not appear to have been an unmixed blessing
in these parts. In _Domesday Survey_ the town is shown to have gone
back considerably. Twenty houses are stated to be desolate, and the
people impoverished. All these bad times, however, had passed away
before the reign of King John, when Bridport was already famous for
its manufacture of rope, sailcloth, and nets, and these have been its
staple industries down to modern days. As early as the year 1211 the
Sheriff of Dorset paid the goodly sum of £48 9s. 7d. for 1,000 yards
“of cloth by the warp to make sails of ships, and for 3,000 weights of
hempen thread according _to Bridport weight_ for making ships’ cables,
and 39 shillings for the expenses of Robert the Fisher whilst he stayed
at Bridport to procure his nets.” Let us hope “Bridport weight” was, as
it is now, specially good for the price.
Residents in the town in these days are almost tired of the threadbare
witticism about the “Bridport dagger,” but, for the sake of the
uninitiated, it must be repeated here. When anyone wished to speak
tenderly of some person who died at the hangman’s hand, he described
him as being “stabbed with a Bridport dagger.” John Leland, the
itinerant chronicler of the days of Henry VIII., came here and heard
the joke, but it never penetrated his prosaic skull, so he gravely
recorded in his note-book: “At Bridporth be made good daggers.” Suffice
it to say that Newgate was duly supplied in those days (as the old
Morality play, _Hycke Scorner_, tells us) with:
Ones a yere some taw halters of Burporte.
Whilst an Act of Parliament of 1528 says that “time out of mind they
had used to make within the town for the most part all the great
cables, ropes, hawsers, and all other tackling for the Royal Navy.”
This industry has left its mark upon the architecture of the place.
The streets are broad, to allow every house its “rope walk.” Some fine
examples of mediæval domestic architecture are extant, notably the one
now used as the Conservative Club on the east side of South Street,
evidently a merchant’s house of Tudor days.
Few country towns were so rich in ecclesiastical foundations as was
Bridport in the Middle Ages. It possessed the present Parish Church of
St. Mary, which then had seven altars and numerous chantries; after
much restoration (during which the tomb of a great-grandson of Edward
I. perished), it is even now a noble example of the piety of prosperous
merchants. There were, besides, the churches of St. Andrew, where now
the Town Hall stands, and St. Swithun, in Allington. Other religious
foundations included the Priory, now the rope factory; the double
chantry chapel of St. Michael, where now is extant only the lane of
that name; the Hospital of St. John, at the East Bridge; the Mawdelyn
Leper House, in Allington; and the Chapel of St. James, in Wyke’s Court
Lane. One can well imagine that clerical interests might sometimes
clash amidst such a galaxy of places for worship. In fact, in the reign
of Henry VIII. Sir John Strangwayes, Steward of the Borough, lodged
a complaint with the Chancellor of the Diocese “against the disorder
of certain chantry priests residing at Bridport.” This was evidently
a harbinger of the coming dissolution of monastic foundations, which
confined the worship of the town to two churches under one rector.
By far the greatest interest of old Bridport is centred in its
immensely valuable Borough Records. These include a vast collection of
old deeds of Plantagenet times more or less connected with the history
of the whole county, whilst the copies of sixty-five mediæval wills,
ranging from 1268 to 1460, are of unique interest and importance,
dating, as so many of them do, before 1383, when the Records of the
Prerogative Wills of Canterbury commence. In addition to these, a very
complete series of borough charters is preserved amongst these records.
Bridport was a self-governing town, with the privileges of a Royal
Borough, long before 1252, when its first charter was granted by King
Henry III. This was probably soon lost, for the same King, on May 5th,
1270, affixed his seal to another, which recites its predecessor thus:
The King, having inspected the rolls of his Chancery, finds that at
the time when Peter de Chacepoler was keeper of his wardrobe, the men
of Bridport paid thirty marks, and in return received a charter, etc.
From that time onward each Sovereign seems to have extorted a nice
little donation for renewing the charter, each document growing in
size and verbosity compared with the one which it supplanted, right
down to the reign of James II.
Amongst the books possessed by the Corporation, the most ancient
carries us back to old Bridport from a legal point of vision. It is
the law-book of Richard Laurence, M.P., who lived from about 1300 to
1361. In it he has recorded copies of all the Acts of Parliament which
would be likely to come in useful to him in his legal profession.
Beginning from Magna Charta itself, he could turn to this volume, and
at a glance see what punishments were enacted against coin-clippers,
false measurers, brewers of too mild ale, or even against bigamists.
Many are the entries referring to nautical affairs, showing how often
he must have been consulted by busy Dorset mariners. How many a six
and eightpence this worthy lawyer of six centuries ago made out of
this book! On one page he records a matter less prosaic—his daughter’s
birthday. There were no parish registers then, so he writes:
Laurentia, the second daughter of Richard and Petronel Laurencz, was
born on the vigil of Saint Petronilla, being Whitsun Eve, in the 12th
year of King Edward III. (1338).
He who so often made other people’s wills at last made his own on July
26th, 1361, which is duly preserved amongst the muniments.
Another volume—the old dome-book of the borough—contains amidst solemn
minutes of meetings of the Corporation back in the days of the Edwards,
many quaint little quibbles. The writer evidently jotted down on a
fly-leaf the following as being a very good witticism which, in the
relaxation following a heavy session, some worthy Bridport alderman of
old told to beguile away the weariness of his fellow civic fathers:
“I will cause you to make a cross, and, without any interference, you
will be unable to leave the house without breaking that cross.” This
is how it was to be done: “Clasp a post fixed in the house, and make
a cross with your extended arms, and then how can you go out without
breaking that cross.” Here is another, after the “blind beggar’s
brother” pattern: “A pear tree bore all the fruit that a pear tree
ought to bear, and yet it did not bear pears. What is the answer?”
“Well, it only bore one pear.” Somewhat childish, certainly, but such
little “catches” as these delighted the mediæval conversationalist;
and do they not show that human nature has ever been the same? An
interesting sidelight is thrown upon the clock trade of those days by
a document dated 1425, whereby Sir John Stalbrygge, priest, was paid
three shillings and fourpence for “keeping the clock on St. Andrew’s
Church.” Matters horological in the Middle Ages were almost entirely in
the hands of the church. The clergy and monks were the clock-makers and
menders; witness the Glastonbury Clock in Wells Cathedral, the Wimborne
Clock, and others. Was not Pope Sylvester himself, when a priest, the
inventor of an improved timepiece? Hence it appears that for nearly six
centuries the townsmen have turned their eyes towards that same spot
where still the town clock chimes out the fleeting hours.
A word about the Bridport Harbour and its vicissitudes. In early days
there were numerous contentions between the citizens and the monks of
Caen, who owned the manor of Burton; at other times they were disputing
with the Abbot of Cerne or the Prior of Frampton, who apparently
wished to debar them from salving their own ships when wrecked outside
the harbour. Vessels were small enough to be beached in those days;
when ships were increased in size, the Haven was built, in the year
1385, but it proved not such a success as was anticipated. Apparently
during most of the next century every county in the south of England
was canvassed for subscriptions towards Bridport Harbour; all sorts
of expedients were devised to raise money. In 1446 was drawn up a
portentous document, still extant, known as an indulgence, granting
pardons to all those who should contribute to this object. It was
signed by one archbishop, two cardinals, and twelve bishops. Armed with
this deed, John Greve, Proctor for the town, started round collecting.
He writes a pitiful letter on May Day, 1448, from Dartford, in Kent,
detailing how his sub-collector, John Banbury, “sumtime bellman of
Lodres,” had decamped with six weeks’ collections, besides stealing his
“new chimere of grey black russet, and a crucifix with a beryl stone
set therein.” Nor could he find the rogue, for he says, “He took his
leave on St. George’s Day, and so bid me farewell, and I have ridden
and gone far to seek him—more than forty miles about—and I cannot hear
of him.”
A few interesting survivals of old Bridport have come down to modern
times in the shape of place-names. “Bucky Doo” passage, between the
Town Hall and the “Greyhound,” is suggestive of the rustic rabbit or
the rural roebuck; but it is simply the old name, “Bocardo,” originally
a syllogism in logic, which was here, as at Oxford, applied to the
prison because, just as a Bocardo syllogism always ended in a final
negative, so did a compulsory visit to the Bocardo lock-up generally
mean a closer acquaintance with the disciplinary use of “the Bridport
dagger,” and a final negative to the drama of life. Stake Lane has
been altered to Barrack Street in modern times. Gyrtoppe’s House, in
Allington, carries us back to the year 1360, when Sir Nicholas Gyrtoppe
was Chantry Priest of St. Michael’s, Bridport. It may be mentioned that
a pretty but utterly groundless story of the origin of this name has
been told, viz., that King Charles II., when a fugitive from Worcester
fight, had to “girth up” Miss Juliana Coningsby’s saddle trappings at
this spot in 1652: hence the term “girth up.”
Much could be written of the Civil War days concerning this place. How
the Roundheads voted £10 (November 29th, 1642) to fortify (!) the town.
How the Corporation met, and voted as follows:—
1642, 14th December.—It is agreed that the inhabitants that have
muskets shall watch at night in turn; that a watch house shall be
erected at each bridge; that eight of the Commoners shall watch at
night and eight by day, two at each of the three bridges, one in Stake
Lane, and one in Weak’s Lane.
On June 10th, 1643, Lieutenant Lee garrisoned the place for the
Parliament; on March 16th following, Captain Pyne, with a party from
Lyme, captured the town and took 140 horse. Waller was here six months
later (September 24th) raising the posse with 2,000 horse and 1,500
dragoons. Suffice it to say that Bridport preferred to keep as clear as
possible from civil turmoil.
As for the romantic story of the escape of Charles II. after the battle
of Worcester, and how he was nearly captured here, the reader is
referred to Chapter I. for the full account.
The Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion brings us to the end of our interest
in Old Bridport. It was on Sunday morning, June 13th, 1685, that the
whole place was thrown into a ferment by a surprise attack on the town
delivered by three hundred of Monmouth’s rebels from Lyme Regis. Lord
Grey commanded them, and after a night march and on arrival at dawn
having at the first volley routed the Dorset militia of 1,200 foot
with 100 horse, they started making prisoners of the officers who were
lodging at the “Bull” hotel. In this latter work, two Dorset men of
good family fell victims—Edward Coker and Wadham Strangwayes—being
slain by the rebels, who, after the first flush of victory, disregarded
ordinary precautions, and when the King’s troops rallied they had
to beat an ignominious retreat to Lyme. Judge Jeffreys finished
the work by ordering twelve of the condemned rebels to be executed
at Bridport. To any student of that period of history the unique
collection of autographs, broadsides, songs, and portraits, including
the pre-Sedgemoor letter from Lord Dumblane to his father, the Duke
of Leeds—all which are contained in the library of Mr. Broadley, of
Bridport—are absolutely indispensable.
SHAFTESBURY
BY THE REV. THOMAS PERKINS, M.A.
Shaston, the ancient British Palladour, was, and is, in itself the
city of a dream. Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its
magnificent apsidal abbey, the chief glory of South Wessex, its twelve
churches, its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled free-stone
mansions—all now ruthlessly swept away—throw the visitor, even against
his will, into a pensive melancholy, which the stimulating atmosphere
and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. The spot
was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots and abbesses,
saints and bishops, knights and squires. The bones of King Edward “the
Martyr,” carefully removed thither for holy preservation, brought
Shaston a renown which made it the resort of pilgrims from every part
of Europe, and enabled it to maintain a reputation extending far
beyond English shores. To this fair creation of the great Middle-Ages
the Dissolution was, as historians tell us, the death-knell. With
the destruction of the enormous abbey the whole place collapsed in a
general ruin; the martyr’s bones met with the fate of the sacred pile
that held them, and not a stone is now left to tell where they lie.
So does Thomas Hardy describe the ancient town of Shaftesbury.[55]
Truly, it is a town that appears to have seen its best days. Its
market-place is almost deserted, save on market-days, and when
some travelling wild beast show visits the town. On fair days the
round-abouts with galloping horses do a lively business, and their
steam-driven organs emit energetic music that may be heard far and
wide; and when a good circus pitches its tent on Castle Hill,
vehicles of every description stream in by hundreds from all the
surrounding villages, for there is nothing that the country folk
love better than a circus. But at other times Shaftesbury would be
considered by a stranger passing through it, fresh from city life,
as a quiet if not sleepy town. It has little to boast of save its
splendid site, its pure health-giving breezes, and the magnificent
views of the surrounding hills and downs and valleys that may be
obtained from several points of vantage. Of its four remaining
churches one only is of mediæval date; the three others are all
quite modern, entirely destitute of architectural interest, and with
little beauty to recommend them. All the others which once stood
here have disappeared, leaving nothing to remind us of their former
existence save, in some few cases, the name of a street or lane. Of
the glorious Abbey, probably the wealthiest nunnery that ever existed
in the kingdom, nothing but the walls that once enclosed the precincts
on the south-east, and the foundations of the church, long entirely
hidden from sight by surface soil, now happily opened out by recent
excavations, remain.
[Illustration: SHAFTESBURY.]
Left high and dry upon its hill-top it can watch the trailing steam
of the locomotives in the deep valley to the north as they hurry by,
taking no heed of the once royal burgh, the chief mint of Dorset in the
days of the West Saxon Kings, the burial-place of murdered Eadward, and
of Eadmund’s wife, Ealdgyth or Elgefu, the site of the nunnery founded
by Ælfred, and ruled at first by his “midmost daughter” Æthelgede or
Æthelgeofu. And yet this town has a real history that can be traced
back for more than 1,000 years, and a legendary one that carries us
back well-nigh to the days of King Solomon, for we read in a British
Brut or chronicle: “After Lleon came Rhun of the Stout Spear, his son,
and he built the Castle of Mount Paladr, which is now called Caer
Sefton, and there while he was building this stronghold there was
an Eryr that gave some prophecies about this island.” In Powell’s
_History of Cambria_ it is said:
... Concerning the word of Eryr at the building of Caer Septon on Mt.
Paladour in the year after the creation of the world 3048 some think
that an eagle did then speak and prophesie; others are of opinion
that it was a Brytaine named Aquila (Eryr in British) that prophesied
of these things and of the recoverie of the whole ile again by the
Brytaines.[56]
The Brut quoted was evidently written after Dorset was occupied by the
Saxons, because it says that the town was called Septon (a form of
Shafton), and implies that it was not so called when Rhun built it. It
is pretty certain that Caer Paladr was the Celtic name, and that the
Saxon name Sceaftesbyrig is a translation of it, the modern form of
which is Shaftesbury. If it was called after the name of the King who
built it, it was after part of his surname Baladr or Paladr (spear),
Bras (stout). Others think the spear or shaft was suggested by the long
straight hill on the point of which the town was built. At a later
date the name was contracted into Shaston, but this has become nearly
obsolete, save in municipal and other formal documents, where the
various parishes are called Shaston St. Peter’s, Shaston St. James’,
etc. The name also appears on the milestones, and the inhabitants of
the town are called Shastonians. No doubt the Romans captured this
Celtic hill-stronghold, and as proof of this, the finding of some Roman
coins has been alleged; but no written record of this period has come
down to us. The real history begins in Saxon times. Ælfred came to the
West Saxon throne in 871, and in 888 he founded a Benedictine Nunnery
at Shaftesbury, setting over it his “medemesta-dehter” as first Abbess.
This we learn from Asser, Ælfred’s friend, who tells us that he built
the Abbey near the eastern gate of the town. This shows that by this
time Shaftesbury was a walled town. An inscription on a stone in the
Abbey Chapterhouse, so William of Malmesbury tells us, recorded the
fact that the town was built by Ælfred in 880, by which he probably
means rebuilt after its partial or complete destruction by the Danes.
Shaftesbury was counted as one of the four royal boroughs of Dorset
(Wareham, Dorchester, and Bridport being the other three), and at the
time of the Norman Conquest it was the largest of the four. Æthelstan
granted the town the right of coining, and several scores of pennies
struck here in his reign were found in excavating a mediæval house
near the Forum in 1884-5. In the reign of Eadward the Confessor three
coiners lived in the town, each paying 13s. 4d. annually to the Crown,
and a fine of £1 on the introduction of a new coinage. The names, Gold
Hill and Coppice (that is, Copper) Street Lane, still speak of the old
mints of Shaftesbury.