The Natural History of Wiltshire Part 22

INCLOSING.- Anciently, in the hundreds of Malmesbury and Chippenham were but few enclosures, and that near houses. The north part of Wilts.h.i.+re was in those dayes admirable for field-sports. All vast champian fields, as now about Sherston and Marsfield. King Henry the 7 brought in depopulations, and that inclosures; and after the dissolution of the abbeys in Hen. 8 time more inclosing. About 1695 all between Easton Piers and Castle Comb was a campania, like Coteswold, upon which it borders; and then Yatton and Castle Combe did intercommon together. Between these two parishes much hath been enclosed in my remembrance, and every day more and more. I doe remember about 1633 but one enclosure to Chipnam-field, which was at the north end, and by this time I thinke it is all inclosed. So all between Kington St. Michael and Dracot Cerne was common field, and the west field of Kington St. Michael between Easton Piers and Haywood was inclosed in 1664. Then were a world of labouring people maintained by the plough, as they were likewise in Northamptons.h.i.+re. 'Tis observed that the inclosures of Northamptons.h.i.+re have been unfortunate since, and not one of them have prospered.

Mr. Toogood, of Harcot, has fenced his grounds with crab-tree hedges, which are so thick that no boare can gett through them. Captain Jones, of Newton Tony, did the like on his downes. Their method is thus: they first runne a furrow with the plough, and then they sow the cakes of the crabbes, which they gett at the verjuice mill. It growes very well, and on many of them they doe graffe.

Limeing of ground was not used but about 1595, some time after the comeing in of tobacco. (From Sir Edw. Ford of Devon.)

Old Mr. Broughton, of Herefords.h.i.+re, was the man that brought in the husbandry of soap ashes. He living at Bristoll, where much soap is made, and the haven there was like to have been choak't up with it, considering that ground was much meliorated by compost, &c. did undertake this experiment, and having land near the city, did accordingly improve it with soap ashes. I remember the gentleman very well. He dyed about 1650, I believe near 90 yeares old, and was the handsomest, well limbed, strait old man that ever I saw, had a good witt and a graceful elocution. He was the father of Bess Broughton, one of the greatest beauties of her age.

Proverb for apples, peares, hawthorns, quicksetts, oakes:

"Sett them at All-hallow-tyde, and command them to grow; Sett them at Candlema.s.s, and entreat them to grow."

b.u.t.ter and Cheese. At Pertwood and about Lidyard as good b.u.t.ter is made as any in England, but the cheese is not so good. About Lidyard, in those fatt grounds, in hott weather, the best huswives cannot keep their cheese from heaving. The art to keep it from heaving is to putt in cold water. Sowre wood-sere grounds doe yield the best cheese, and such are Ches.h.i.+re. Bromefield, in the parish of Yatton, is so - sower and wett - and where I had better cheese made than anywhere in all the neighbourhood.

Somerset proverb:

"If you will have a good cheese, and hav'n old, You must turn'n seven times before he is cold."

Jo. Shakespeare's wife, of Worplesdowne in Surrey, a North Wilts.h.i.+re woman, and an excellent huswife, does a.s.sure me that she makes as good cheese there as ever she did at Wraxhall or Bitteston, and that it is meerly for want of art that her neighbours doe not make as good; they send their b.u.t.ter to London. So it appeares that, some time or other, when there in the vale of Suss.e.x and Surrey they have the North Wilts.h.i.+re skill, that halfe the cheese trade of the markets of Tedbury and Marleborough will be spoiled.

Now of late, sc. about 1680, in North Wilts.h.i.+re, they have altered their fas.h.i.+on from thinne cheeses about an inch thick, made so for the sake of drying and quick sale, called at London Marleborough cheese, to thick ones, as the Ches.h.i.+re cheese. At Marleborough and Tedbury the London cheese-mongers doe keep their factors for their trade. [At the close of the last century Reading was the princ.i.p.al seat of the London cheese factors, who visited the different farms in Wilts.h.i.+re once in each year to purchase the cheese, which was sent in waggons to Reading: often by circuitous routes in order to save the tolls payable on turnpike roads. - J. B.]

Maulting and Brewing. It is certain that Salisbury mault is better than any other in the West; but they have no more skill there than elsewhere. It is the water there is the chiefest cause of its goodnesse: perhaps the nitrousnesse of the maulting floores may something help.

[Aubrey devotes several pages to these subjects. He particularly commends "The History of Malting, or the method of making Malt, practised at Derby, described for R. T. Esq. by J. F. (John Flamsteed), January 1682-3", which was printed in "A Collection of Letters for ye Improvement of Husbandry and Trade", No. 7, Thursday, June 15, 1682. This paper by Flamsteed, which is of considerable length, is inserted by Aubrey in both his ma.n.u.scripts: a printed copy in the original at Oxford, and a transcript in the Royal Society's fair copy. - J. B.]

It may be objected how came that great astronomer, Mr. John Flamsteed, to know so much the mystery of malsters. Why, his father is a maulster at Derby; and he himself was a maulster, and did drive a trade in it till he was about twenty yeares of age, at what time Sir Jonas Moore invited him to London. [The best memoir of Flamsteed will be found in "An Account of the Rev. John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, compiled from his own ma.n.u.scripts and other authentic doc.u.ments never before published. To which is added his British Catalogue of Stars, corrected and enlarged. By Francis Baily, Esq. &c. &c. Printed by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. London, 1835". Such is the t.i.tle of a large quarto volume which my late esteemed friend and neighbour Mr. Baily edited and wrote, con amore; and which contains not only a curious autobiography of the first Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, but numerous letters, doc.u.ments, and miscellaneous information on the science of astronomy as it was known in Flamsteed's time, and up to the time of the publication of the volume. This work was printed at the expense of the government, and presented to public colleges and societies, to royal and public libraries, and to many persons distinguished in science and literature. Hence it may be regarded as a choice and remarkable literary production. Some curious particulars of Flamsteed's quarrel with Sir Isaac Newton, respecting the printing of his "Historia Coelestis", are given in Mr. Baily's volume, which tend to shew that the latter, in conjunction with Halley and other persons, perseveringly annoyed and injured Flamsteed in various ways, and for a considerable time. Some of the admirers of Newton's moral character having attempted to extenuate his conduct, Mr. Baily published a Supplement to his work, in which he shews that such attempts had completely failed. - J. B.]

PART II. - CHAPTER VIII.

THE DOWNES.

WE now make our ascent to the second elevation or the hill countrey, known by the name of the Downes, or Salisbury Plaines; and they are the most s.p.a.cious plaines in Europe, and the greatest remaines that I can heare of of the smooth primitive world when it lay all under water.

These downes runne into Hamps.h.i.+re, Berks.h.i.+re, and Dorsets.h.i.+re; but as to its extent in this county, it is from Red-hone, the hill above Urshfont, to Salisbury, north and south, and from Mere to Lurgershall, east and west. The turfe is of a short sweet gra.s.se, good for the sheep, and delightfull to the eye, for its smoothnesse like a bowling green, and pleasant to the traveller; who wants here only variety of objects to make his journey lesse tedious: for here is "nil nisi campus et aer", not a tree, or rarely a bush to shelter one from a shower.

The soile of the downes I take generally to be a white earth or mawme.

More south, sc. about Wilton and Chalke, the downes are intermixt with boscages that nothing can be more pleasant, and in the summer time doe excell Arcadia in verdant and rich turfe and moderate aire, but in winter indeed our air is cold and rawe. The innocent lives here of the shepherds doe give us a resemblance of the golden age. Jacob and Esau were shepherds; and Amos, one of the royall family, a.s.serts the same of himself, for he was among the shepherds of Tecua [Tekoa] following that employment. The like, by G.o.d's own appointment, prepared Moses for a scepter, as Philo intimates in his life, when he tells us that a shepherd's art is a suitable preparation to a kingdome. The same he mentions in his Life of Joseph, affirming that the care a shepherd has over his cattle very much resembles that which a King hath over his subjects. The same St. Basil, in his Homily de St. Mamme Martyre has, concerning David, who was taken from following the ewes great with young ones to feed Israel. The Romans, the worthiest and greatest nation in the world, sprang from shepherds. The augury of the twelve vultures plac't a scepter in Romulus's hand, which held a crook before; and as Ovid sayes:-

"His own small flock each senator did keep."

Lucretius mentions an extraordinary happinesse, and as it were divinity in a shepherd's life: -

"Thro' shepherds' care, and their divine retreats."

And, to speake from the very bottome of my heart, not to mention the integrity and innocence of shepherds, upon which so many have insisted and copiously declaimed, methinkes he is much more happy in a wood that at ease contemplates the universe as his own, and in it the sunn and starrs, the pleasing meadows, shades, groves, green banks, stately trees, flowing springs, and the wanton windings of a river, fit objects for quiet innocence, than he that with fire and sword disturbs the world, and measures his possessions by the wast that lies about him.

These plaines doe abound with hares, fallow deer, partridges, and bustards. [The fallow deer and bustards have long since disappeared from these plains; but hares and partridges abound in the vicinity of gentlemen's seats, particularly around Everleigh, Tidworth, Amesbury, Wilbury, Wilton, Earl-Stoke, Clarendon, &c. - Vide ante, p.64.

- J. B.] In this tract is ye Earle of Pembroke's n.o.ble seat at Wilton; but the Arcadia and the Daphne is about Vernditch and Wilton; and these romancy plaines and boscages did no doubt conduce to the hightening of Sir Philip Sydney's phansie. He lived much in these parts, and his most masterly touches of his pastoralls he wrote here upon the spott, where they were conceived. 'Twas about these purlieus that the muses were wont to appeare to Sir Philip Sydney, and where he wrote down their dictates in his table book, though on horseback.* For those nimble fugitives, except they be presently registred, fly away, and perhaps can never be caught again. But they were never so kind to appeare to me, though I am the usufructuary: it seemes they reserve that grace only for the proprietors, to whom they have continued a constant kindnesse for a succession of generations of the no lesse ingenious than honorable family of the Herberts. These were the places where our Kings and Queens used to divert themselves in the hunting season. Cranbourn Chase, which reaches from Harnham Bridge, at Salisbury, near to Blandford, was belonging to Roger Mortimer, Earle of March: his seate was at his castle at Cranbourne. If these oakes here were vocall as Dodona's, some of the old dotards (old stagge- headed oakes, so called) could give us an account of the amours and secret whispers between this great Earle and the faire Queen Isabell.

*I remember some old relations of mine and [other] old men hereabout that have seen Sir Philip doe thus.

[Aubrey held the manor farm of Broad Chalk under a lease from the Earl of Pembroke. - J. B.]

To find the proportion of the downes of this countrey to the vales, I did divide Speed's Mappe of Wilts.h.i.+re with a paire of cizars, according to the respective hundreds of downes and vale, and I weighed them in a curious ballance of a goldsmith, and the proportion of the hill countrey to the vale is as .... to .... sc. about 3/4 fere.

SHEEP. As to the nature of our Wilts.h.i.+re sheep, negatively, they are not subject to the shaking; which the Dorsets.h.i.+re sheep are. Our sheep about Chalke doe never die of the rott. My Cos. Scott does a.s.sure me that I may modestly allow a thousand sheep to a tything, one with another. Mr. Rogers was for allowing of two thousand sheep, one with another, to a tything, but my Cosin Scott saies that is too high.

SHEPHERDS. The Britons received their knowledge of agriculture from the Romans, and they retain yet many of their customes. The festivalls at sheep-shearing seeme to bee derived from the Parilia. In our western parts, I know not what is done in the north, the sheep-masters give no wages to their shepherds, but they have the keeping of so many sheep, pro rata; soe that the shepherds' lambs doe never miscarry. I find that Plautus gives us a hint of this custome amongst the Romans in his time; Asinaria, Act III. scene i. Philenian (Meretrix):

" Etiam opilio, qui pascit (mater) alienas ovis, Aliquani habet peculiarem qua spem soletur suam.''

Their habit, I believe, (let there be a draught of their habit) is that of the Roman or Arcadian shepherds; as they are delineated in Mr.

Mich. Drayton's Poly-olbion; sc. a long white cloake with a very deep cape, which comes halfway down their backs, made of the locks of the sheep. There was a sheep-crooke (vide Virgil's Eclogues, and Theocritus,) a sling, a scrip, their tar-box, a pipe or flute, and their dog. But since 1671, they are grown so luxurious as to neglect their ancient warme and useful fas.h.i.+on, and goe a la mode. T. Randolph in a Pastoral sayes;-

" What clod-pates, Thenot, are our British swaines, How lubber-like they loll upon the plaines." *

* [See "Plays and Poems, by Thomas Randolph, M.A." 12mo. 1664, p. 90.

The lines quoted are at the commencement of a dialogue between Collen and Thenot; which is described as "an Eglogue on the n.o.ble a.s.semblies revived on Cotswold Hills by Mr. Robert Dover". An able criticism of Randolph's works, with extracts, will be found in the sixth volume of the "Retrospective Review". - J. B.]

Before the civill warres I remember many of them made straw hatts, which I thinke is now left off, and our shepherdesses of late yeares (1680) doe begin to worke point, whereas before they did only knitt coa.r.s.e stockings. (Instead of the sling they have now a hollow iron or piece of horne, not unlike a shoeing horne, fastened to the other end of the crosier, by wch they take up stones and sling, and keep their flocks in order. The French sheperdesses spin with a rocque.

- J. EVELYN.)

Mr. Ferraby, the minister of Bishop's Cannings, was an ingenious man, and an excellent musician, and made severall of his paris.h.i.+oners good musicians, both for vocall and instrumentall musick; they sung the Psalmes in consort to the organ, which Mr. Ferraby procured to be erected.

When King James the First was in these parts he lay at Sir Edw.

Baynton's at Bromham. Mr. Ferraby then entertained his Majesty at the Bush, in Cotefield, with bucoliques of his own making and composing, of four parts; which were sung by his paris.h.i.+oners, who wore frocks and whippes like carters. Whilst his majesty was thus diverted, the eight bells (of which he was the cause) did ring, and the organ was played on for state; and after this musicall entertainment he entertained his Majesty with a foot-ball match of his own paris.h.i.+oners. This parish in those dayes would have challenged all England for musique, foot-ball, and ringing. For this entertainment his Majesty made him one of his chaplains in ordinary.

When Queen Anne returned from Bathe, he made an entertainment for her Majesty on Canning's-down, sc. at Shepherds-shard, at Wensditch, with a pastorall performed by himself and his paris.h.i.+oners in shepherds' weeds. A copie of his song was printed within a compartment excellently well engraved and designed, with goates, pipes, sheep hooks, cornucopias, &c. [Aubrey has transcribed it into his ma.n.u.script. It appears that it was sung as above mentioned on the llth of June 1613; being "voyc't in four parts compleatly musicall"; and we are told that "it was by her Highnesse not only most gratiously accepted and approved, but also bounteously rewarded; and by the right honourable, wors.h.i.+pfull, and the rest of the generall hearers and beholders, worthily applauded". See this also noticed in Wood's "Fasti Oxonienses", under "Ferebe", and in Nichols's Progresses, &c. of King James the First, ii. 668. In this curious chapter, Aubrey has further transcribed "A Dialogue between two Shepherds uttered in a Pastorall shew at Wilton", and written by Sir Philip Sidney. See the Life of Sidney, prefixed to an edition of his Works in three volumes, 8vo, 1725.-J. B.]

[Anne of Denmark, Queen of James I. was married to that monarch in 1589, and died in 1619.-J. B.]

[Shard is a word used in Wilts.h.i.+re to indicate a gap in a hedge.

Ponshard signifies a broken piece of earthenware.-J. B.]

PART II-CHAPTER IX.