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EARLY ROADS
AND
MODES OF TRAVELLING.
――――♦――――
Artist Percival Skelton.
CHAPTER I.
OLD ROADS.
ROADS have in all
times been among the most influential agencies of society; and the
makers of them, by enabling men readily to communicate with each
other, have properly been regarded as among the most effective
pioneers of civilisation.
Roads are literally the pathways not only of industry, but of
social and national intercourse. Wherever a line of
communication between men is formed, it renders commerce
practicable; and, wherever commerce penetrates, it creates a
civilisation and leaves a history.
Roads place the city and the town in connection with the
village and the farm, open up markets for field produce, and provide
outlets for manufactures. They enable the natural resources of
a country to be developed, facilitate travelling and intercourse,
break down local jealousies, and in all ways tend to bind together
society and bring out fully that healthy spirit of industry which is
the life and soul of every nation.
The road is so necessary an instrument of social well-being,
that in every new colony it is one of the first things thought of.
First roads, then commerce, institutions, schools, churches, and
newspapers. The new country, as well as the old, can only be
effectually "opened up," as the common phrase is, by roads; and
until these are made, it is virtually closed.
Freedom itself cannot exist without free communication,—every
limitation of movement on the part of the members of society
amounting to a positive abridgment of their personal liberty.
Hence roads, canals, and railways, by providing the greatest
possible facilities for locomotion and information, are essential
for the freedom of all classes, of the poorest as well as the
richest.
By bringing the ends of a kingdom together, they reduce the
inequalities of fortune and station, and, by equalising the price of
commodities, to that extent they render them accessible to all.
Without their assistance, the concentrated populations of our large
towns could neither be clothed nor fed; but by their instrumentality
an immense range of country is brought as it were to their very
doors, and the sustenance and employment of large masses of people
become comparatively easy.
In the raw materials required for food, for manufactures, and
for domestic purposes, the cost of transport necessarily forms a
considerable item; and it is clear that the more this cost can be
reduced by facilities of communication, the cheaper those articles
become, and the more they are multiplied and enter into the
consumption of the community at large.
Let any one imagine what would be the effect of closing the
roads, railways, and canals of England. The country would be
brought to a deadlock, employment would be restricted in all
directions, and a considerable proportion of the inhabitants
concentrated in the large towns must at certain seasons inevitably
perish of cold and hunger.
In the earlier periods of English history, roads were of
comparatively less consequence. While the population was thin
and scattered, and men lived by hunting and pastoral pursuits, the
track across the down, the heath, and the moor, sufficiently
answered their purpose. Yet even in those districts
unencumbered with wood, where the first settlements were made—as on
the downs of Wiltshire, the moors of Devonshire, and the wolds of
Yorkshire— stone tracks were laid down by the tribes between one
village and another. We have given, at the beginning of this
chapter, a representation of one of those ancient track-ways still
existing in the neighbourhood of Whitby, in Yorkshire; and there are
many of the same description to be met with in other parts of
England. In some districts they are called trackways or
ridgeways, being narrow causeways usually following the natural
ridge of the country, and probably serving in early times as local
boundaries. On Dartmoor they are constructed of stone blocks,
irregularly laid down on the surface of the ground, forming a rude
causeway of about five or six feet wide.
The Romans, with many other arts, first brought into England
the art of road-making. They thoroughly understood the value
of good roads, regarding them as the essential means for the
maintenance of their empire in the first instance, and of social
prosperity in the next. It was their roads, as well as their
legions, that made them masters of the world; and the pickaxe, not
less than the sword, was the ensign of their dominion.
Wherever they went, they opened up the communications of the
countries they subdued, and the roads which they made were among the
best of their kind. They were skilfully laid out and solidly
constructed. For centuries after the Romans left England,
their roads continued to be the main highways of internal
communication, and their remains are to this day to be traced in
many parts of the country. Settlements were made and towns
sprang up along the old "streets;" and the numerous Stretfords,
Stratfords, and towns ending in "le-street"—as Ardwick-le-street, in
Yorkshire, and Chester-le-street, in Durham—mostly mark the
direction of these ancient lines of road. There are also
numerous Stanfords, which were so called because they bordered the
raised military roadways of the Romans, which ran direct between
their stations.
The last-mentioned peculiarity of the roads constructed by
the Romans, must have struck many observers. Level does not
seem to have been of consequence, compared with directness.
This peculiarity is supposed to have originated in an imperfect
knowledge of mechanics; for the Romans do not appear to have been
acquainted with the moveable joint in wheeled carriages. The
carriage-body rested solid upon the axles, which in four-wheeled
vehicles were rigidly parallel with each other. Being unable
readily to turn a bend in the road, it has been concluded that for
this reason all the great Roman highways were constructed in as
straight lines as possible.
On the departure of the Romans from Britain, most of the
roads constructed by them were allowed to fall into decay, on which
the forest and the waste gradually resumed their dominion over them,
and the highways of England became about the worst in Europe. We
find, however, that numerous attempts were made in early times to
preserve the ancient ways and enable a communication to be
maintained between the metropolis and the rest of the country, as
well as between one market town and another.
The state of the highways may be inferred from the character
of the legislation applying to them. One of the first laws on
the subject was passed in 1285, directing that all bushes and trees
along the roads leading from one market to another should be cut
down for two hundred feet on either side, to prevent robbers lurking
therein; [p.5] but nothing was
proposed for amending the condition of the ways themselves. In
1346, Edward III. authorised the first toll to be levied for the
repair of the roads leading from St. Giles's-in-the-Fields to the
village of Charing (now Charing Cross), and from the same quarter to
near Temple Bar (down Drury Lane), as well as the highway then
called Perpoole (now Gray's Inn Lane). The footway at the
entrance of Temple Bar was interrupted by thickets and bushes, and
in wet weather was almost impassable. The roads further west
were so bad that when the sovereign went to Parliament faggots were
thrown into the ruts in King-street, Westminster, to enable the
royal cavalcade to pass along.
In Henry VIII.'s reign, several remarkable statutes were
passed relating to certain worn-out and impracticable roads in
Sussex and the Weald of Kent. From the earliest of these, it
would appear that when the old roads were found too deep and miry to
be passed, they were merely abandoned and new tracks struck out.
After describing "many of the wayes in the wealds as so depe and
noyous by wearyng and course of water and other occasions that
people cannot have their carriages or passages by horses uppon or by
the same but to their great paynes, perill and jeopardie," the Act
provided that owners of land might, with the consent of two justices
and twelve discreet men of the hundred, lay out new roads and close
up the old ones. Another Act passed in the same reign, related
to the repairs of bridges and of the highways at the ends of
bridges.
But as these measures were for the most part merely
permissive, they could have had but little practical effect in
improving the communications of the kingdom. In the reign of
Philip and Mary (in 1555), an Act was passed providing that each
parish should elect two surveyors of highways to see to the
maintenance of their repairs by compulsory labour, the preamble
reciting that "highwaies are now both verie noisome and tedious to
travell in, and dangerous to all passengers and cariages;" and to
this day parish and cross roads are maintained on the principle of
Mary's Act, though the compulsory labour has since been commuted
into a compulsory tax.
In the reigns of Elizabeth and James, other road Acts were
passed; but, from the statements of contemporary writers, it would
appear that they were followed by very little substantial progress,
and travelling continued to be attended with many difficulties.
Even in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, the highways were in
certain seasons scarcely passable. The great Western road into
London was especially bad, and about Knightsbridge, in winter, the
traveller had to wade through deep mud. Wyatt's men entered
the city by this approach in the rebellion of 1554, and were called
the "draggle-tails" because of their wretched plight. The ways
were equally bad as far as Windsor, which, in the reign of
Elizabeth, is described by Pote, in his history of that town, as
being "not much past half a day's journeye removed from the
flourishing citie of London."
At a greater distance from the metropolis, the roads were
still worse. They were in many cases but rude tracks across
heaths and commons, as furrowed with deep ruts as ploughed fields;
and in winter to pass along one of them was like travelling in a
ditch. The attempts made by the adjoining occupiers to mend
them, were for the most part confined to throwing large stones into
the bigger holes to fill them up. It was easier to allow new
tracks to be made than to mend the old ones. The land of the
country was still mostly unenclosed, and it was possible, in fine
weather, to get from place to place, in one way or another, with the
help of a guide. In the absence of bridges, guides were
necessary to point out the safest fords as well as to pick out the
least miry tracks. The most frequented lines of roads were
struck out from time to time by the drivers of pack-horses, who, to
avoid the bogs and sloughs, were usually careful to keep along the
higher grounds; but, to prevent those horsemen who departed from the
beaten track being swallowed up in quagmires, beacons were erected
to warn them against the more dangerous places. [p.8]
In some of the older-settled districts of England, the old
roads are still to be traced in the hollow Ways or Lanes, which are
to be met with, in some places, eight and ten feet deep. They
were horse-tracks in summer, and rivulets in winter. By dint
of weather and travel, the earth was gradually worn into these deep
furrows, many of which, in Wilts, Somerset, and Devon, represent the
tracks of roads as old as, if not older than, the Conquest.
When the ridgeways of the earliest settlers on Dartmoor, above
alluded to, were abandoned, the tracks were formed through the
valleys, but the new roads were no better than the old ones.
They were narrow and deep, fitted only for a horse passing along
laden with its crooks, as so graphically described in the ballad of
"The Devonshire Lane." [p.9]
Similar roads existed until recently in the immediate
neighbourhood of Birmingham, now the centre of an immense traffic.
The sandy soil was sawn through, as it were, by generation after
generation of human feet, and by pack-horses, helped by the rains,
until in some places the tracks were as much as from twelve to
fourteen yards deep; one of these, partly filled up, retaining to
this day the name of Holloway Head. In the neighbourhood of
London there was also a Hollow way, which now gives its name to a
populous metropolitan parish. Hagbush Lane was another of such
roads. Before the formation of the Great North Road, it was
one of the principal bridle-paths leading from London to the
northern parts of England; but it was so narrow as barely to afford
passage for more than a single horseman, and so deep that the
rider's head was beneath the level of the ground on either side.
The roads of Sussex long preserved an infamous notoriety.
Chancellor Cowper, when a barrister on circuit, wrote to his wife in
1690, that "the Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond imagination.
I vow 'tis melancholy consideration that mankind will inhabit such a
heap of dirt for a poor livelihood. The country is a sink of
about fourteen miles broad, which receives all the water that falls
from two long ranges of hills on both sides of it, and not being
furnished with convenient draining, is kept moist and soft by the
water till the middle of a dry summer, which is only able to make it
tolerable to ride for a short time."
It was almost as difficult for old persons to get to church
in Sussex during winter as it was in the Lincoln Fens, where they
were rowed thither in boats. Fuller saw an old lady being
drawn to church in her own coach by the aid of six oxen. The
Sussex roads were indeed so bad as to pass into a by-word. A
contemporary writer says, that in travelling a slough of
extraordinary miryness, it used to be called "the Sussex bit of the
road;" and he satirically alleged that the reason why the Sussex
girls were so long-limbed was because of the tenacity of the mud in
that county; the practice of pulling the foot out of it "by the
strength of the ancle" tending to stretch the muscle and lengthen
the bone! [p.11]
But the roads in the immediate neighbourhood of London long
continued almost as bad as those in Sussex. Thus, when the
poet Cowley retired to Chertsey, in 1665, he wrote to his friend
Sprat to visit him, and, by way of encouragement, told him that he
might sleep the first night at Hampton town; thus occupying two days
in the performance of a journey of twenty-two miles in the immediate
neighbourhood of the metropolis. As late as 1736 we find Lord
Hervey, writing from Kensington, complaining that "the road between
this place and London is grown so infamously bad that we live here
in the same solitude as we would do if cast on a rock in the middle
of the ocean; and all the Londoners tell us that there is between
them and us an impassable gulf of mud."
Nor was the mud any respecter of persons; for we are informed
that the carriage of Queen Caroline could not, in bad weather, be
dragged from St. James's Palace to Kensington in less than two
hours, and occasionally the royal coach stuck fast in a rut, or was
even capsized in the mud. About the same time, the streets of
London themselves were little better, the kennel being still
permitted to flow in the middle of the road, which was paved with
round stones,—flag-stones for the convenience of pedestrians being
as yet unknown. In short, the streets in the towns and the
roads in the country were alike rude and wretched,—indicating a
degree of social stagnation and discomfort which it is now difficult
to estimate, and almost impossible to describe.
――――♦――――
CHAPTER II.
EARLY MODES OF CONVEYANCE.
SUCH being the
ancient state of the roads, the only practicable modes of travelling
were on foot and on horseback. The poor walked and the rich
rode. Kings rode and Queens rode. Judges rode circuit in
jack-boots. Gentlemen rode and robbers rode. The Bar
sometimes walked and sometimes rode. Chaucer's ride to
Canterbury will be remembered as long as the English language lasts.
Hooker rode to London on a hard-paced nag, that he might be in time
to preach his first sermon at St. Paul's. Ladies rode on
pillions, holding on by the gentleman or the serving-man mounted
before.
Shakespeare incidentally describes the ancient style of
travelling among the humbler classes in his 'Henry IV.' [p.13]
The party, afterwards set upon by Falstaff and his companions, bound
from Rochester to London, were up by two in the morning, expecting
to perform the journey of thirty miles by close of day, and to get
to town "in time to go to bed with a candle." Two are
carriers, one of whom has "a gammon of bacon and two razes of
ginger, to be delivered as far as Charing Cross; the other has his
panniers full of turkeys. There is also a franklin of Kent,
and another, "a kind of auditor," probably a tax-collector, with
several more, forming in all a company of eight or ten, who travel
together for mutual protection. Their robbery on Gad's Hill,
as painted by Shakespeare, is but a picture, by no means
exaggerated, of the adventures and dangers of the road at the time
of which he wrote.
Distinguished personages sometimes rode in horse-litters; but
riding on horseback was generally preferred. Queen Elizabeth
made most of her journeys in this way, [p.14]
and when she went into the City she rode on a pillion behind her
Lord Chancellor. The Queen, however, was at length provided
with a coach, which must have been a very remarkable machine.
This royal vehicle is said to have been one of the first coaches
used in England, and it was introduced by the Queen's own coachman,
one Boomen, a Dutchman. It was little better than a cart
without springs, the body resting solid upon the axles. Taking
the bad roads and ill-paved streets into account, it must have been
an excessively painful means of conveyance. At one of the
first audiences which the Queen gave to the French ambassador in
1568, she feelingly described to him "the aching pains she was
suffering in consequence of having been knocked about in a coach
which had been driven a little too fast, only a few days before." [p.15-1]
Such coaches were at first only used on state occasions.
The roads, even in the immediate neighbourhood of London, were so
bad and so narrow that the vehicles could not be taken into the
country. But, as the roads became improved, the fashion of
using them spread. When the aristocracy removed from the City
to the western parts of the metropolis, they could be better
accommodated, and in course of time they became gradually adopted.
They were still, however, neither more nor less than waggons, and,
indeed, were called by that name; but wherever they went they
excited great wonder. It is related of "that valyant knyght
Sir Harry Sidney," that on a certain day in the year 1583 he entered
Shrewsbury in his waggon, "with his Trompeter blowynge, verey
joyfull to behold and see." [p.15-2]
From this time the use of coaches gradually spread, more
particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters
which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and
others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback. The
first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon on the execrable
roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the
ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea.
That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of
Taylor, the waterpoet—who deplored the introduction of carriages as
a national calamity—that in the paved streets of London men and
women were "tossed, tumbled, rumbled, and jumbled about in them."
Although the road from London to Dover, along the old Roman
Watling-street, was then one of the best in England, the French
household of Queen Henrietta, when they were sent forth from the
palace of Charles I., occupied four tedious days before they reached
Dover.
But it was only a few of the main roads leading from the
metropolis that were practicable for coaches; and on the occasion of
a royal progress, or the visit of a lord-lieutenant, there was a
general turn out of labourers and masons to mend the ways and render
the bridges at least temporarily secure. Of one of Queen
Elizabeth's journeys it is said:—"It was marvellous for ease and
expedition, for such is the perfect evenness of the new highway that
Her Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk
of a base sort lifted it on with their poles."
Sussex long continued impracticable for coach travelling at
certain seasons. As late as 1708, Prince George of Denmark had
the greatest difficulty in making his way to Petworth to meet
Charles VI. of Spain. "The last nine miles of the way," says
the reporter, "cost us six hours to conquer them." One of the
couriers in attendance complained that during fourteen hours he
never once alighted, except when the coach overturned, or stuck in
the mud.
When the judges, usually old men and bad riders, took to
going the circuit in their coaches, juries were often kept waiting
until their lordships could be dug out of a bog or hauled out of a
slough by the aid of plough-horses. In the seventeenth
century, scarcely a Quarter Session passed without presentments from
the grand jury against certain districts on account of the bad state
of the roads, and many were the fines which the judges imposed upon
them as a set-off against their bruises and other damages while on
circuit.
For a long time the roads continued barely practicable for
wheeled vehicles of the rudest sort, though Fynes Morison (writing
in the time of James I.) gives an account of "carryers, who have
long covered waggons, in which they carry passengers from place to
place; but this kind of journeying," he says, "is so tedious, by
reason they must take waggon very early and come very late to their
innes, that none but women and people of inferior condition travel
in this sort."
The waggons of which Morison wrote, made only from ten to
fifteen miles in a long summer's day; that is, supposing them not to
have broken down by pitching over the boulders laid along the road,
or stuck fast in a quagmire, when they had to wait for the arrival
of the next team of horses to help to drag them out. The
waggon, however, continued to be adopted as a popular mode of
travelling until late in the eighteenth century; and Hogarth's
picture illustrating the practice will be remembered, of the
cassocked parson on his lean horse, attending his daughter newly
alighted from the York waggon.
A curious description of the state of the Great North Road,
in the time of Charles II., is to be found in a tract published in
1675 by Thomas Mace, one of the clerks of Trinity College,
Cambridge. The writer there addressed himself to the King,
partly in prose and partly in verse, complaining greatly of the
"wayes, which are so grossly foul and bad;" and suggesting various
remedies. He pointed out that much ground "is now spoiled and
trampled down in all wide roads, where coaches and carts take
liberty to pick and chuse for their best advantages; besides, such
sprawling and straggling of coaches and carts utterly confound the
road in all wide places, so that it is not only unpleasurable, but
extreme perplexin and cumbersome both to themselves and all horse
travellers." It would thus appear that the country on either
side of the road was as yet entirely unenclosed.
But Mace's principal complaint was of the "innumerable
controversies, quarrellings, and disturbances" caused by the
packhorse-men, in their struggles as to which convoy should pass
along the cleaner parts of the road. From what he states, it
would seem that these "disturbances, daily committed by uncivil,
refractory, and rude Russian-like rake-shames, in contesting for the
way, too often proved mortal, and certainly were of very bad
consequences to many." He recommended a quick and prompt
punishment in all such cases. "No man," said he, "should be
pestered by giving the way (sometimes) to hundreds of pack-horses,
panniers, whifflers (i.e. paltry fellows), coaches, waggons,
wains, carts, or whatsoever others, which continually are very
grievous to weary and loaden travellers; but more especially near
the city and upon a market day, when, a man having travelled a long
and tedious journey, his horse well nigh spent, shall sometimes be
compelled to cross out of his way twenty times in one mile's riding,
by the irregularity and peevish crossness of such-like whifflers and
market women; yea, although their panniers be clearly empty, they
will stoutly contend for the way with weary travellers, be they
never so many, or almost of what quality soever." "Nay," said
he further, "I have often known many travellers, and myself very
often, to have been necessitated to stand stock still behind a
standing cart or waggon, on most beastly and unsufferable deep wet
wayes, to the great endangering of our horses, and neglect of
important business: nor durst we adventure to stirr (for most
imminent danger of those deep rutts, and unreasonable ridges) till
it has pleased Mister Carter to jog on, which we have taken very
kindly."
Mr. Mace's plan of road reform was not extravagant. He
mainly urged that only two good tracks should be maintained, and the
road be not allowed to spread out into as many as half-a-dozen very
bad ones, presenting high ridges and deep ruts, full of big stones,
and many quagmires. Breaking out into verse, he said—
"First let the wayes be regularly brought
To artificial form, and truly wrought;
So that we can suppose them firmly mended,
And in all parts the work well ended,
That not a stone's amiss; but all compleat,
All lying smooth, round, firm, and wondrous neat." |
After a good deal more in the same strain, he concluded—
|
There's only one thing yet worth
thinking on—
Which is, to put this work in execution." [p.20] |
But we shall find that more than a hundred years passed
before the roads throughout England were placed in a more
satisfactory state than they were in the time of Mr. Mace.
The introduction of stage-coaches about the middle of the
seventeenth century formed a new era in the history of travelling by
road. At first they were only a better sort of waggon, and
confined to the more practicable highways near London. Their
pace did not exceed four miles an hour, and the jolting of the
unfortunate passengers conveyed in them must have been very hard to
bear. It used to be said of their drivers that they were
"seldom sober, never civil, and always late."
The first mention of coaches for public accommodation is made
by Sir William Dugdale in his Diary, from which it appears that a
Coventry coach was on the road in 1659. But probably the first
coaches, or rather waggons, were run between London and Dover, as
one of the most practicable routes for the purpose. M.
Sobrière , a French man of letters, who landed at Dover on his way
to London in the time of Charles II., alludes to the existence of a
stage-coach, but it seems to have had no charms for him, as the
following passage will show: "That I might not," he says, "take post
or be obliged to use the stage-coach, I went from Dover to London in
a waggon. I was drawn by six horses, one before another, and
driven by a waggoner, who walked by the side of it. He was
clothed in black, and appointed in all things like another St.
George. He had a brave montrero on his head and was a merry
fellow, fancied he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with
himself."
Shortly after, coaches seem to have been running as far north
as Preston in Lancashire, as appears by a letter from one Edward
Parker to his father, dated November, 1663, in which he says, "I got
to London on Saturday last; but my journey was noe ways pleasant,
being forced to ride in the boote all the waye. Ye company yt
came up with mee were persons of greate quality, as knights and
ladyes. My journey's expense was 30s. This traval hath
soe indisposed nee, yt I am resolved never to ride up againe in ye
coatch." [p.22-1] These
vehicles must, however, have considerably increased, as we find a
popular agitation was got up against them. The Londoners
nicknamed them "hell-carts;" pamphlets were written recommending
their abolition; and attempts were even made to have them suppressed
by Act of Parliament.
Thoresby occasionally alludes to stage-coaches in his Diary,
speaking of one that ran between Hull and York in 1679, from which
latter place he had to proceed by Leeds in the usual way on
horseback. This Hull vehicle did not run in winter, because of
the state of the roads; stage-coaches being usually laid up in that
season like ships during Arctic frosts. [p.22-2]
Afterwards, when a coach was put on between York and Leeds, it
performed the journey of twenty-four miles in eight hours; [p.22-3]
but the road was so bad and dangerous that the travellers were
accustomed to get out and walk the greater part of the way.
Thoresby often waxes eloquent upon the subject of his
manifold deliverances from the dangers of travelling by coach.
He was especially thankful when he had passed the ferry over the
Trent in journeying between Leeds and London, having on several
occasions narrowly escaped drowning there. Once, on his
journey to London, some showers fell, which "raised the washes upon
the road near Ware to that height that passengers from London that
were upon that road swam, and a poor higgler was drowned, which
prevented me travelling for many hours; yet towards evening we
adventured with some country people, who conducted us over the
meadows, whereby we missed the deepest of the Wash at Cheshunt,
though we rode to the saddle-skirts for a considerable way, but got
safe to Waltham Cross, where we lodged." [p.23-1]
On another occasion Thoresby was detained four days at
Stamford by the state of the roads, and was only extricated from his
position by a company of fourteen members of the House of Commons
travelling towards London, who took him into their convoy, and set
out on their way southward attended by competent guides. When
the "waters were out," as the saying went, the country became
closed, the roads being simply impassable. During the Civil
Wars eight hundred horse were taken prisoners while sticking in the
mud. [p.23-2] When rain
fell, pedestrians, horsemen, and coaches alike came to a standstill
until the roads dried again and enabled the wayfarers to proceed.
Thus we read of two travellers stopped by the rains within a few
miles of Oxford, who found it impossible to accomplish their journey
in consequence of the waters that covered the country thereabout.
A curious account has been preserved of the journey of an
Irish Viceroy across North Wales towards Dublin in 1685. The
roads were so horrible that instead of the Viceroy being borne along
in his coach, the coach itself had to be borne after him the greater
part of the way. He was five hours in travelling between St.
Asaph and Conway, a distance of only fourteen miles. Between
Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk, while his wife was borne
along in a litter. The carriages were usually taken to pieces
at Conway and carried on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants to be
embarked at the Straits of Menai.
The introduction of stage-coaches, like every other public
improvement, was at first regarded with prejudice, and had
considerable obloquy to encounter. In a curious book published
in 1673, entitled 'The Grand Concern of England Explained in several
Proposals to Parliament,' [p.24]
stage-coaches and caravans were denounced as among the greatest
evils that had happened to the kingdom, being alike mischievous to
the public, destructive to trade, and prejudicial to the landed
interest. It was alleged that travelling by coach was
calculated to destroy the breed of horses, and make men careless of
good horsemanship,—that it hindered the training of watermen and
seamen, and interfered with the public resources. The reasons
given are curious. It was said that those who were accustomed
to travel in coaches became weary and listless when they rode a few
miles, and were unwilling to get on horseback—"not being able to
endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields;" that
to save their clothes and keep themselves clean and dry, people rode
in coaches, and thus contracted an idle habit of body; that this was
ruinous to trade, for that "most gentlemen, before they travelled in
coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters,
pormanteaus, and hat-cases, which, in these coaches, they have
little or no occasion for: for when they rode on horseback, they
rode in one suit and carried another to wear when they came to their
journey's end, or lay by the way; but in coaches a silk suit and an
Indian gown, with a sash, silk stockings, and beaver-hats, men ride
in, and carry no other with them, because they escape the wet and
dirt, which on horseback they cannot avoid; whereas, in two or three
journeys on horseback, these clothes and hats were wont to be
spoiled; which done, they were forced to have new very often, and
that increased the consumption of the manufactures and the
employment of the manufacturers; which travelling in coaches doth in
way do." [p.25]
The writer of the same protest against coaches gives some
idea of the extent of travelling by them in those days; for to show
the gigantic nature of the evil he was contending against, he
averred that between London and the three principal towns of York,
Chester, and Exeter, not fewer than eighteen persons, making the
journey in five days, travelled by them weekly (the coaches running
thrice in the week), and a like number back; "which come, in the
whole, to eighteen hundred and seventy-two in the year."
Another great nuisance, the writer alleged, which flowed from the
establishment of the stagecoaches, was, that not only did the
gentlemen from the country come to London in them oftener than they
need, but their ladies either came with them or quickly followed
them. "And when they are there they must be in the mode, have
all the new fashions, buy all their clothes there, and go to plays,
balls, and treats, where they get such a habit of jollity and a love
to gaiety and pleasure, that nothing afterwards in the country will
serve them, if ever they should fix their minds to live there again;
but they must have all from London, whatever it costs."
Then there were the grievous discomforts of stage-coach
travelling, to be set against the more noble method of travelling by
horseback, as of yore. "What advantage is it to men's health,"
says the writer, waxing wroth, "to be called out of their beds into
these coaches, an hour before day in the morning; to be hurried in
them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summertime stifled with
heat and choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and
freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often
brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up
to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so
early that they can get no breakfast? What addition is this to
men's health or business to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes
sick, ancient, diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose
humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and
many times are poisoned with their nasty scents and crippled by the
crowd of boxes and bundles? Is it for a man's health to travel
with tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to
wade up to the knees in mire; afterwards sit in the cold till teams
of horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their
health to travel in rotten coaches and to have their tackle, perch,
or axle-tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours (sometimes
half a day) to have them mended, and then to travel all night to
make good their stage? Is it for a man's pleasure, or
advantageous to his health and business, to travel with a mixed
company that he knows not how to converse with; to be affronted by
the rudeness of a surly, dogged, cursing, ill-natured coachman;
necessitated to lodge or bait at the worst inn on the road, where
there is no accommodation fit for gentlemen; and this merely because
the owners of the inns and the coachmen are agreed together to cheat
the guests?" Hence the writer loudly called for the immediate
suppression of stage-coaches as a great nuisance and crying evil.
Travelling by coach was in early times a very deliberate
affair. Time was of less consequence than safety, and coaches
were advertised to start "God willing," and "about" such and such an
hour "as shall seem good" to the majority of the passengers.
The difference of a day in the journey from London to York was a
small matter, and Thoresby was even accustomed to leave the coach
and go in search of fossil shells in the fields on either side the
road while making the journey between the two places. The long
coach "put up" at sun-down, and "slept on the road." Whether
the coach was to proceed or to stop at some favourite inn, was
determined by the vote of the passengers, who usually appointed a
chairman at the beginning of the journey.
In 1700, York was a week distant from London, and Tunbridge
Wells, now reached in an hour, was two days. Salisbury and
Oxford were also each a two days' journey, Dover was three days, and
Exeter five. The Fly coach from London to Exeter slept
at the latter place the fifth night from town; the coach proceeding
next morning to Axminster, where it breakfasted, and there a woman
barber "shaved the coach." [p.28]
Between London and Edinburgh, as late as 1763, a fortnight was
consumed, the coach only starting once a month. [p.29]
The risks of breaks-down in driving over the execrable roads may be
inferred from the circumstance that every coach carried with it a
box of carpenter's tools, and the hatchets were occasionally used in
lopping off the branches of trees overhanging the road and
obstructing the travellers' progress.
Some fastidious persons, disliking the slow travelling, as
well as the promiscuous company which they ran the risk of
encountering in the stage, were accustomed to advertise for partners
in a postchaise, to share the charges and lessen the dangers of the
road; and, indeed, to a sensitive person anything must have been
preferable to the misery of travelling by the Canterbury stage, as
thus described by a contemporary writer:—
|
"On both sides squeez'd, how highly was I
blest,
Between two plump old women to be presst!
A corp'ral fierce, a nurse, a child that cry'd,
And a fat landlord, filled the other side.
Scarce dawns the morning ere the cumbrous load
Rolls roughly rumbling o'er the rugged road:
One old wife coughs and wheezes in my ears,
Loud scolds the other, and the soldier swears;
Sour unconcocted breath escapes 'mine host,'
The sick'ning child returns his milk and toast!" |
When Samuel Johnson was taken by his mother to London in
1712, to have him touched by Queen Anne for "the evil," he
relates,—"We went in the stage-coach and returned in the waggon, as
my mother said, because my cough was violent; but the hope of saving
a few shillings was no slight motive . . . She sewed two guineas in
her petticoat lest she should be robbed. . . . We were troublesome
to the passengers; but to suffer such inconveniences in the
stage-coach was common in those days to persons in much higher
rank."
Mr. Pennant has left us the following account of his journey
in the Chester stage to London in 1739-40: "The first day," says he,
"with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty miles;
the second day to the 'Welsh Harp;' the third, to Coventry; the
fourth, to Northampton; the fifth, to Dunstable; and, as a wondrous
effort, on the last, to London, before the commencement of night.
The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight, drew us
through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places. We were
constantly out two hours before day, and as late at night, and in
the depth of winter proportionally later. The single
gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trowsers,
up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded
against the mire, defied the frequent stumble and fall, arose and
pursued their journey with alacrity; while, in these days, their
enervated posterity sleep away their rapid journeys in easy chaises,
fitted for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of Sybaris."
No wonder, therefore, that a great deal of the travelling of
the country continued to be performed on horseback, this being by
far the pleasantest as well as most expeditious mode of journeying.
On his marriage-day, Dr. Johnson rode from Birmingham to Derby with
his Tetty, taking the opportunity of the journey to give his bride
her first lesson in marital discipline. At a later period
James Watt rode from Glasgow to London, when
proceeding thither to learn the art of mathematical
instrument-making. And it was a cheap and pleasant method of
travelling when the weather was fine. The usual practice was,
to buy a horse at the beginning of such a journey, and to sell the
animal at the end of it. Dr. Skene, of Aberdeen, travelled
from London to Edinburgh in 1753, being nineteen days on the road,
the whole expenses of the journey amounting to only four guineas.
The mare on which he rode, cost him eight guineas in London, and he
sold her for the same price on his arrival in Edinburgh.
Nearly all the commercial gentlemen rode their own horses,
carrying their samples and luggage in two bags at the saddle-bow;
and hence their appellation of Riders or Bagmen. For safety's
sake, they usually journeyed in company; for the dangers of
travelling were not confined merely to the ruggedness of the roads.
The highways were infested by troops of robbers and vagabonds who
lived by plunder. Turpin and Bradshaw beset the Great North
Road; Duval, Macheath, Maclean, and hundreds of notorious highwaymen
infested Hounslow Heath, Finchley Common, Shooter's Hill, and all
the approaches to the metropolis. A very common sight then,
was a gibbet erected by the roadside, with the skeleton of some
malefactor hanging from it in chains; and "Hangman's-lanes" were
especially numerous in the neighbourhood of London. [p.32]
It was considered most unsafe to travel after dark, and when the
first "night coach" was started, the risk was thought too great, and
it was not patronised.
Travellers armed themselves on setting out upon a journey as
if they were going to battle, and a blunderbuss was considered as
indispensable for a coachman as a whip. Dorsetshire and
Hampshire, like most other counties, were beset with gangs of
highwaymen; and when the Grand Duke Cosmo set out from Dorchester to
travel to London in 1669, he was "convoyed by a great many
horse-soldiers belonging to the militia of the county, to secure him
from robbers." [p.33-1]
Thoresby, in his Diary, alludes with awe to his having passed safely
"the great common where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the highwayman," and
he also makes special mention of Stonegate Hole, "a notorious
robbing place" near Grantham. Like every other traveller, that
good man carried loaded pistols in his bags, and on one occasion he
was thrown into great consternation near Topcliffe, in Yorkshire, on
missing them, believing that they had been abstracted by some
designing rogues at the inn where he had last slept. [p.33-2]
No wonder that, before setting out on a journey in those days, men
were accustomed to make their wills.
When Mrs. Calderwood, of Coltness, travelled from Edinburgh
to London in 1756, she relates in her Diary that she travelled in
her own postchaise, attended by John Rattray, her stout serving man,
on horseback, with pistols at his holsters, and a good broad sword
by his side. The lady had also with her in the carriage a case
of pistols, for use upon an emergency. Robberies were then of
frequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of Bawtry, in Yorkshire;
and one day a suspicious-looking character, whom they took to be a
highwayman, made his appearance; but "John Rattray talking about
powder and ball to the postboy, and showing his whanger, the fellow
made off." Mrs. Calderwood started from Edinburgh on the 3rd
of June, when the roads were dry and the weather was fine, and she
reached London on the evening of the l0th, which was considered a
rapid journey in those days.
The danger, however, from footpads and highwaymen was not
greatest in remote country places, but in and about the metropolis
itself. The proprietors of Bellsize House and gardens, in the
Hampstead-road, then one of the principal places of amusement, had
the way to London patrolled during the season by twelve "lusty
fellows;" and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh advertised
similar advantages. Foot passengers proceeding towards
Kensington and Paddington in the evening, would wait until a
sufficiently numerous band had collected to set footpads at
defiance, and then they started in company at known intervals, of
which a bell gave due warning. Carriages were stopped in broad
daylight in Hyde Park, and even in Piccadilly itself, and pistols
presented at the breasts of fashionable people, who were called upon
to deliver up their purses. Horace Walpole relates a number of
curious instances of this sort, he himself having been robbed in
broad day, with Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Lady Albemarle,
and many more. A curious robbery of the Portsmouth mail, in
1757, illustrates the imperfect postal communication of the period.
The boy who carried the post had dismounted at Hammersmith, about
three miles from Hyde Park Corner, and called for beer, when some
thieves took the opportunity of cutting the mail-bag from off the
horse's crupper and got away undiscovered!
The means adopted for the transport of merchandise were as
tedious and difficult as those ordinarily employed for the
conveyance of passengers. Corn and wool were sent to market on
horses' backs, [p.35] manure was
carried to the fields in panniers, and fuel was conveyed from the
moss or the forest in the same way. During the winter months,
the markets were inaccessible; and while in some localities the
supplies of food were distressingly deficient, in others the
superabundance actually rotted from the impossibility of consuming
it or of transporting it to places where it was needed. The
little coal used in the southern counties was principally sea-borne,
though pack-horses occasionally carried coal inland for the supply
of the blacksmiths' forges. When Wollaton Hall was built by
John of Padua for Sir Francis Willoughby in 1580, the stone was all
brought on horses' backs from Ancaster, in Lincolnshire, thirty-five
miles distant, and they loaded back with coal, which was taken in
exchange for the stone.
The little trade which existed between one part of the
kingdom and another was carried on by means of pack-horses, along
roads little better than bridle-paths. These horses
travelled in lines, with the bales or panniers strapped across their
backs. The foremost horse bore a bell or a collar of bells,
and was hence called the "bell-horse." He was selected because
of his sagacity; and by the tinkling of the bells he carried, the
movements of his followers were regulated. The bells also gave
notice of the approach of the convoy to those who might be advancing
from the opposite direction. This was a matter of some
importance, as in many parts of the path there was not room for two
loaded horses to pass each other, and quarrels and fights between
the drivers of the pack-horse trains were frequent as to which of
the meeting convoys was to pass down into the dirt and allow the
other to pass along the bridleway. The pack-horses not only
carried merchandise but passengers, and at certain times scholars
proceeding to and from Oxford and Cambridge. When Smollett
went from Glasgow to London, he travelled partly on packhorse,
partly by waggon, and partly on foot; and the adventures which he
described as having befallen Roderick Random are supposed to have
been drawn in a great measure from his own experiences during the
journey.
A cross-country merchandise traffic gradually sprang up
between the northern counties, since become pre-eminently the
manufacturing districts of England; and long lines of pack-horses
laden with bales of wool and cotton traversed the hill ranges which
divide Yorkshire from Lancashire. Whitaker says that as late
as 1753 the roads near Leeds consisted of a narrow hollow way little
wider than a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle
drawn in a single line; this deep narrow road being flanked by an
elevated causeway covered with flags or boulder stones. When
travellers encountered each other on this narrow track, they often
tried to wear out each other's patience rather than descend into the
dirt alongside. The raw wool and bale goods of the district
were nearly all carried along these flagged ways on the backs of
single horses; and it is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil,
and the perils by which the conduct of the traffic was attended.
On horseback before daybreak and long after nightfall, these hardy
sons of trade pursued their object with the spirit and intrepidity
of foxhunters; and the boldest of their country neighbours had no
reason to despise either their horsemanship or their courage. [p.38]
The Manchester trade was carried on in the same way. The
chapmen used to keep gangs of pack-horses, which accompanied them to
all the principal towns, bearing their goods in packs, which they
sold to their customers, bringing back sheep's wool and other raw
materials of manufacture.
The only records of this long-superseded mode of
communication are now to be traced on the signboards of wayside
public-houses. Many of the old roads still exist in Yorkshire
and Lancashire; but all that remains of the former traffic is the
pack-horse still painted on village sign-boards—things as retentive
of odd bygone facts as the picture-writing of the ancient Mexicans.
[p.39]
――――♦――――
CHAPTER III.
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS INFLUENCED
BY THE STATE OF THE ROADS.
WHILE the road
communications of the country remained thus imperfect, the people of
one part of England knew next to nothing of the other. When a
shower of rain had the effect of rendering the highways impassable,
even horsemen were cautious in venturing far from home. But
only a very limited number of persons could then afford to travel on
horseback. The labouring people journeyed on foot, while the
middle class used the waggon or the coach. But the amount of
intercourse between the people of different districts—then
exceedingly limited at all times—was, in a country so wet as
England, necessarily suspended for all classes during the greater
part of the year.
The imperfect communication existing between districts had
the effect of perpetuating numerous local dialects, local
prejudices, and local customs, which survive to a certain extent to
this day; though they are rapidly disappearing, to the regret of
many, under the influence of improved facilities for travelling.
Every village had its witches, sometimes of different sorts, and
there was scarcely an old house but had its white lady or moaning
old man with a long beard. There were ghosts in the fens which
walked on stilts, while the sprites of the hill country rode on
flashes of fire. But the village witches and local ghosts have
long since disappeared, excepting perhaps in a few of the less
penetrable districts, where they may still survive.
It is curious to find that down even to the beginning of the
seventeenth century, the inhabitants of the southern districts of
the island regarded those of the north as a kind of ogres.
Lancashire was supposed to be almost impenetrable—as indeed it was
to a considerable extent,—and inhabited by a half-savage race.
Camden vaguely described it, previous to his visit in 1607, as that
part of the country "lying beyond the mountains towards the Western
Ocean." He acknowledged that he approached the Lancashire
people "with a kind of dread," but determined at length "to run the
hazard of the attempt," trusting in the Divine assistance.
Camden was exposed to still greater risks in his survey of
Cumberland. When he went into that county for the purpose of
exploring the remains of antiquity it contained for the purposes of
his great work, he travelled along the line of the Roman Wall as far
as Thirlwall castle, near Haltwhistle; but there the limits of
civilisation and security ended; for such was the wildness of the
country and of its lawless inhabitants beyond, that he was obliged
to desist from his pilgrimage, and leave the most important and
interesting objects of his journey unexplored.
About a century later, in 1700, the Rev. Mr. Brome, rector of
Cheriton in Kent, entered upon a series of travels in England as if
it had been a newly-discovered country. He set out in spring
so soon as the roads had become passable. His friends convoyed
him on the first stage of his journey, and left him, commending him
to the Divine protection. He was, however, careful to employ
guides to conduct him from one place to another, and in the course
of his three years' travels he saw many new and wonderful things.
He was under the necessity of suspending his travels when the winter
or wet weather set in, and to lay up, like an arctic voyager, for
several months, until the spring came round again. Mr. Brome
passed through Northumberland into Scotland, then down the western
side of the island towards Devonshire, where he found the farmers
gathering in their corn on horse-back, the roads being so narrow
that it was impossible for them to use waggons. He desired to
travel into Cornwall, the boundaries of which he reached, but was
prevented proceeding farther by the rains, and accordingly he made
the best of his way home. [p.42]
The vicar of Cheriton was considered a wonderful man in his
day,—almost as adventurous as we should now regard a traveller in
Arabia. Twenty miles of slough, or an unbridged river between
two parishes, were greater impediments to intercourse than the
Atlantic Ocean now is between England and America.
Considerable towns situated in the same county, were then more
widely separated, for practical purposes, than London and Glasgow
are at the present day. There were many districts which
travellers never visited, and where the appearance of a stranger
produced as great an excitement as the arrival of a white man in an
African village. [p.43]
The author of 'Adam Bede' has given us a poet's picture of
the leisure of last century, which has "gone where the
spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons,
and the pedlars who brought bargains to the door on sunny
afternoons." Old Leisure "lived chiefly in the country, among
pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the
fruit-tree walls, and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by
the morning sunshine, or sheltering himself under the orchard boughs
at noon, when the summer pears were falling." But this picture
has also its obverse side. Whole generations then lived a
monotonous, ignorant, prejudiced, and humdrum life. They had
no enterprise, no energy, little industry, and were content to die
where they were born. The seclusion in which they were
compelled to live, produced a picturesqueness of manners which is
pleasant to look back upon, now that it is a thing of the past; but
it was also accompanied with a degree of grossness and brutality
much less pleasant to regard, and of which the occasional popular
amusements of bull-running, cock-fighting, cock-throwing, the
saturnalia of Plough-Monday, and such like, were the fitting
exponents.
People then knew little except of their own narrow district.
The world beyond was as good as closed against them. Almost
the only intelligence of general affairs which reached them was
communicated by pedlars and packmen, who were accustomed to retail
to their customers the news of the day with their wares; or, at
most, a newsletter from London, after it had been read nearly to
pieces at the great house of the district, would find its way to the
village, and its driblets of information would thus become diffused
among the little community. Matters of public interest were
long in becoming known in the remoter districts of the country.
Macaulay relates that the death of Queen Elizabeth was not heard of
in some parts of Devon until the courtiers of her successor had
ceased to wear mourning for her. The news of Cromwell's being
made Protector only reached Bridgewater nineteen days after the
event, when the bells were set a-ringing; and the churches in the
Orkneys continued to put up the usual prayers for James II. three
months after he had taken up his abode at St. Germains.
There were then no shops in the smaller towns or villages,
and comparatively few in the larger; and these were badly furnished
with articles for general use. The country people were
irregularly supplied by hawkers, who sometimes bore their whole
stock upon their back, or occasionally on that of their pack-horses.
Pots, pans, and household utensils were sold from door to door.
Until a comparatively recent period, the whole of the Pottery-ware
manufactured in Staffordshire was hawked about and disposed of in
this way. The pedlars carried frames resembling camp-stools,
on which they were accustomed to display their wares when the
opportunity occurred for showing them to advantage. The
articles which they sold were chiefly of a fanciful kind—ribbons,
laces, and female finery; the housewives' great reliance for the
supply of general clothing in those days being on domestic industry.
Every autumn, the mistress of the household was accustomed to
lay in a store of articles sufficient to serve for the entire
winter. It was like laying in a stock of provisions and
clothing for a siege during the time that the roads were closed.
The greater part of the meat required for winter's use was killed
and salted down at Martinmas, while stockfish and baconed herrings
were provided for Lent. Scatcherd says that in his district
the clothiers united in groups of three or four, and at the Leeds
winter fair they would purchase an ox, which, having divided, they
salted and hung the pieces for their winter's food. [p.45]
There was also the winter's stock of firewood to be provided, and
the rushes with which to strew the floors—carpets being a
comparatively modern invention; besides, there was the store of
wheat and barley for bread, the malt for ale, the honey for
sweetening (then used for sugar), the salt, the spiceries, and the
savoury herbs so much employed in the ancient cookery. When
the stores were laid in, the housewife was in a position to bid
defiance to bad roads for six months to come. This was the
case of the well-to-do; but the poorer classes, who could not lay in
a store for winter, were often very badly off both for food and
firing, and in many hard seasons they literally starved. But
charity was active in those days, and many a poor man's store was
eked out by his wealthier neighbour.
When the household supply was thus laid in, the mistress,
with her daughters and servants, sat down to their distaffs and
spinning-wheels; for the manufacture of the family clothing was
usually the work of the winter months. The fabrics then worn
were almost entirely of wool, silk and cotton being scarcely known.
The wool, when not grown on the farm, was purchased in a raw state,
and was carded, spun, dyed, and in many cases woven at home: so also
with the linen clothing, which, until quite a recent date, was
entirely the produce of female fingers and household
spinning-wheels. This kind of work occupied the winter months,
occasionally alternated with knitting, embroidery, and tapestry
work. Many of our country houses continue to bear witness to
the steady industry of the ladies of even the highest ranks in those
times, in the fine tapestry hangings with which the walls of many of
the older rooms in such mansions are covered.
Among the humbler classes, the same winter's work went on.
The women sat round log fires knitting, plaiting, and spinning by
fire-light, even in the daytime. Glass had not yet come into
general use, and the openings in the wall which in summer-time
served for windows, had necessarily to be shut close with boards to
keep out the cold, though at the same time they shut out the light.
The chimney, usually of lath and plaster, ending overhead in a cone
and funnel for the smoke, was so roomy in old cottages as to
accommodate almost the whole family sitting around the fire of logs
piled in the reredosse in the middle, and there they carried on
their winter's work.
Such was the domestic occupation of women in the rural
districts in olden times; and it may perhaps be questioned whether
the revolution in our social system, which has taken out of their
hands so many branches of household manufacture and useful domestic
employment, be an altogether unmixed blessing.
Winter at an end, and the roads once more available for
travelling, the Fair of the locality was looked forward to with
interest. Fairs were among the most important institutions of
past times, and were rendered necessary by the imperfect road
communications. The right of holding them was regarded as a
valuable privilege, conceded by the sovereign to the lords of the
manors, who adopted all manner of devices to draw crowds to their
markets. They were usually held at the entrances to valleys
closed against locomotion during winter, or in the middle of rich
grazing districts, or, more frequently, in the neighbourhood of
famous cathedrals or churches frequented by flocks of pilgrims.
The devotion of the people being turned to account, many of the
fairs were held on Sundays in the churchyards; and almost in every
parish a market was instituted on the day on which the parishioners
were called together to do honour to their patron saint.
The local fair, which was usually held at the beginning or
end of winter, often at both times, became the great festival as
well as market of the district; and the business as well as the
gaiety of the neighbourhood usually centred on such occasions.
High courts were held by the Bishop or Lord of the Manor, to
accommodate which special buildings were erected, used only at fair
time. Among the fairs of the first class in England were
Winchester, St. Botolph's Town (Boston), and St. Ives. We find
the great London merchants travelling thither in caravans, bearing
with them all manner of goods, and bringing back the wool purchased
by them in exchange.
Winchester Great Fair attracted merchants from all parts of
Europe. It was held on the hill of St. Giles, and was divided
into streets of booths, named after the merchants of the different
countries who exposed their wares in them. "The passes through
the great woody districts, which English merchants coming from
London and the West would be compelled to traverse, were on this
occasion carefully guarded by mounted 'serjeants-at -arms,' since
the wealth which was being conveyed to St. Giles's-hill attracted
bands of outlaws from all parts of the country." [p.48]
Weyhill Fair, near Andover, was another of the great fairs in the
same district, which was to the West country agriculturists and
clothiers what Winchester St. Giles's Fair was to the general
merchants.
The principal fair in the northern districts was that of St.
Botolph's Town (Boston), which was resorted to by people from great
distances to buy and sell commodities of various kinds. Thus
we find, from the 'Compotus' of Bolton Priory, [p.49]
that the monks of that house sent their wool to St. Botolph's Fair
to be sold, though it was a good hundred miles distant; buying in
return their winter supply of groceries, spiceries, and other
necessary articles. That fair, too, was often beset by
robbers, and on one occasion a strong party of them, under the
disguise of monks, attacked and robbed certain booths, setting fire
to the rest; and such was the amount of destroyed wealth, that it is
said the veins of molten gold and silver ran along the streets.
The concourse of persons attending these fairs was immense.
The nobility and gentry, the heads of the religious houses, the
yeomanry and the commons, resorted to them to buy and sell all
manner of agricultural produce. The farmers there sold their
wool and cattle, and hired their servants; while their wives
disposed of the surplus produce of their winter's industry, and
bought their cutlery, bijouterie, and more tasteful articles of
apparel. There were caterers there for all customers; and
stuffs and wares were offered for sale from all countries. And
in the wake of this business part of the fair there invariably
followed a crowd of ministers to the popular tastes—quack doctors
and merry andrews, jugglers and minstrels, singlestick players,
grinners through horse-collars, and sportmakers of every kind.
Smaller fairs were held in most districts for similar
purposes of exchange. At these the staples of the locality
were sold and servants usually hired. Many were for special
purposes—cattle fairs, leather fairs, cloth fairs, bonnet fairs,
fruit fairs. Scatcherd says that less than a century ago a
large fair was held between Huddersfield and Leeds, in a field still
called Fairstead, near Birstal, which used to be a great mart for
fruit, onions, and such like; and that the clothiers resorted
thither from all the country round to purchase the articles, which
were stowed away n barns, and sold at booths by lamplight in the
morning. [p.50]
Even Dartmoor had its fair, on the site of an ancient British
village or temple near Merivale Bridge, testifying to its great
antiquity; for it is surprising how an ancient fair lingers about
the place on which it has been accustomed to be held, long after the
necessity for it has ceased. The site of this old fair at
Merivale Bridge is the more curious, as in its immediate
neighbourhood, on the road between Two Bridges and Tavistock, is
found the singular-looking granite rock, bearing so remarkable a
resemblance to the Egyptian sphynx, in a mutilated state. It
is of similarly colossal proportions, and stands in a district
almost as lonely as that in which the Egyptian sphynx looks forth
over the sands of the Memphean Desert. [p.51]
The last occasion on which the fair was held in this secluded
spot was in the year 1625, when the plague raged at Tavistock; and
there is a part of the ground, situated amidst a line of pillars
marking a stone avenue—a characteristic feature of the ancient
aboriginal worship which is to this day pointed out and called by
the name of the "Potatoe market."
But the glory of the great fairs has long since departed.
They declined with the extension of turnpikes, and railroads gave
them their deathblow. Shops now exist in every little town and
village, drawing their supplies regularly by road and canal from the
most distant parts. St. Bartholomew, the great fair of London,
[p.52] and Donnybrook, the great
fair of Dublin, have been suppressed as nuisances; and nearly all
that remains of the dead but long potent institution of the Fair, is
the occasional exhibition at periodic times in country places, of
pig-faced ladies, dwarfs, giants, double-bodied calves, and
such-like wonders, amidst a blatant clangour of drums, gongs, and
cymbals. Like the sign of the Pack-Horse over the village inn
door, the modern village fair, of which the principal article of
merchandise is gingerbread-nuts, is but the vestige of a state of
things that has long since passed away.
There were, however, remote and almost impenetrable districts
which long resisted modern inroads. Of such was Dartmoor,
which we have already more than once referred to. The
difficulties of road-engineering in that quarter, as well as the
sterility of a large proportion of the moor, had the effect of
preventing its becoming opened up to modern traffic; and it is
accordingly curious to find how much of its old manners, customs,
traditions, and language has been preserved. It looks like a
piece of England of the Middle Ages, left behind on the march.
Witches still hold their sway on Dartmoor, where there exist no less
than three distinct kinds—white, black, and grey, [p.53]—and
there are still professors of witchcraft, male as well as female, in
most of the villages.
As might be expected, the pack-horses held their ground in
Dartmoor the longest, and in some parts of North Devon they are not
yet extinct. When our artist was in the neighbourhood,
sketching the ancient bridge on the moor and the site of the old
fair, a farmer said to him, "I well remember the train of
pack-horses and the effect of their jingling bells on the silence of
Dartmoor. My grandfather, a respectable farmer in the north of
Devon, was the first to use a 'butt' (a square box without wheels,
dragged by a horse) to carry manure to field; he was also the first
man in the district to use an umbrella, which on Sundays he hung in
the church-porch, an object of curiosity to the villagers." We
are also informed by a gentleman who resided for some time at South
Brent, on the borders of the Moor, that the introduction of the
first cart in that district is remembered by many now living, the
bridges having been shortly afterwards widened to accommodate the
wheeled vehicles.
The primitive features of this secluded district are perhaps
best represented by the interesting little town of Chagford,
situated in the valley of the North Teign, an ancient stannary and
market town backed by a wide stretch of moor. The houses of
the place are built of moor stone—grey, venerable-looking, and
substantial—some with projecting porch and parvise room over, and
granite-mullioned windows; the ancient church, built of granite,
with a stout old steeple of the same material, its embattled porch
and granite-groined vault springing from low columns with
Norman-looking capitals, forming the sturdy centre of this ancient
town clump. |
