Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and Present Part 1

Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and Present.

by John Timbs.

PREFACE.

Pictures of the Domestic Manners of our forefathers, at some of the most attractive periods of English History, form the staple of the present volume. These Pictures are supplemented by Sketches of subordinate Scenes and Incidents which ill.u.s.trate great changes in Society, and tend to show, in different degrees, the Past as the guide for the Present and the Future.

The value and interest of Archaeological studies in bringing home to our very doors the information required of special localities, and their former life, have, it is hoped, been made available by the Author of this work, so far as to render it acceptable as well for the soundness of its information as for its entertaining character. The antiquary of old was but, in many instances, "a gatherer of other men's stuff;"

whereas the archaeologist of the present day adds to the worth of antiquarian studies by placing their results in new lights, and thus extending the utility and amus.e.m.e.nt which they afford.

The materials for writing English History are inexhaustible; and one of the aims of this work is to seize upon and group from such stores leading facts and transitions, and by means of condensation to present their narratives in a more tangible form than that in which they were originally written. In this task the Author has brought to bear, from a variety of accredited sources, evidences of the condition of the English people--in their "woods and caves, and painted skins"--their homes and modes of living, in cavern and castle, mansion and cottage; the origin of their Domestic Inventions and Contrivances in the several stages of comfort; House-furnis.h.i.+ng, Dress and Personal Ornament; Provisions and Olden Cookery, and Housewifery; Peasant Life, with its curious Customs, Laws, and Ceremonies; Fairs and Festivals and Amus.e.m.e.nts. To these succeed a few Historic Sketches: Traditions of Battle-fields, and other memorable sites; Mansions and their Families: romantic Narratives, Portraits of eminent Persons, &c.

The authorities and sources of information conveyed in the following pages, are fully acknowledged. "Quotation," said Johnson, "is a good thing; there is a community of mind in it;" although some writers seem to ride upon their readers, like Pyrrhus on his elephant, forgetting that "there is not so poor a book in the world, that would not be a prodigious effort, were it wrought out entirely by a single hand, without the aid of prior investigation." Real antiquarianism has been well defined as a lively knowledge of the Past, comprehending the spirit of a period through the details of its customs, events, and inst.i.tutions; the language of its writers, the movements of its sciences and arts; and, by keeping in view these points, the writer of the present volume hopes he has succeeded in producing a recreative result worthy of the acceptance of the reader.

I. Early English Life.

DWELLING-PLACES OF THE EARLY BRITONS.

It has been well observed that the structure of a house reveals much of the mode of life adopted by its inhabitants. The representations of the dwellings of the people of the less cultivated parts of Europe, contrasted with those of the more cultivated countries, should afford us the means of comparing their different degrees of civilization. In the same manner we may measure the growth of improvement in any one country by an attentive consideration of the structure and arrangement of the homes of the people at different periods.

The aboriginal Britons are described as dwelling in slight cabins of reeds and wattles, and in some instances in _caverns of the earth_, many sets of which, arranged with some degree of symmetry, antiquaries have recognised; but Caesar tells us that the maritime tribes had buildings in the fas.h.i.+on of the Gauls--that is, of wood, of a circular figure, and thatched. Such towns as they had were cl.u.s.ters of huts erected on a cleared portion of the forest, which covered the greater part of the island; and they were invariably surrounded by a rampart, constructed of felled trees strongly interlaced and wattled, and a deep fosse, which together formed a fortification. The site of the modern city of London, with the river Thames in front, the river Fleet on the west, and an almost inpenetrable forest in the rear, may be taken as a fair specimen of the locality usually selected for the residence of the British Chief.[1]

That our ancestors lived in caves is attested by the existence of a group of these abodes near Penzance, the most remarkable of all ancient British Caves. .h.i.therto discovered in Cornwall, and thus described by Mr.

J. Edwards, to the Royal Inst.i.tution of that county:--"Half of a mile W.S.W. of Caer Bran, and four and a half miles W. by S. of Penzance, there is, in the village of Chapel Euny, a cave, consisting for the most part of a deep trench, walled with stones, and roofed with huge slabs.

It extends 30 feet from N.N.W. to S.S.E., and then branches eastward, and probably also to the S. or S.W. So far it accords with the description of an ordinary British cave. But its floor (as I was informed by the miner who opened it about three years ago) was well paved with large granite blocks, beneath which, in the centre, ran a narrow gutter or bolt, made, I imagine, for admitting the external air into the innermost part of the building; from whence, after flowing back through the cave, it escaped by the cave's mouth--a mode of ventilation practised immemorially by the miners in this neighbourhood, when driving adits or horizontal galleries under ground.

"Another peculiarity is still more remarkable. Its higher or northern end consisted of a circular floor, 12 feet in diameter, covered with a dome of granite, two-thirds of which are still exposed to view; and my informant had observed a still greater portion of the dome-roofed chamber. Every successive layer of the stones forming the dome overhangs considerably the layer immediately beneath it; so that the stones gradually approach each other as they rise, until the top stones must originally have completed the dome; not, however, like the key-stones of an arch, but by resting horizontally on the immediately subjacent circular layer. The miner found no pottery, or anything else, in the cave. The height of the present wall of the dome is about 6 feet above the lowest part I could see; how much lower the original floor might have been, I could not ascertain.

"Another British cave, not even referred to in any publication, is to be seen at Chyoster, nearly three miles north of Penzance, the walls of which, instead of being perpendicular, are constructed on the same principle as the inmost part of the cave at Chapel Euny; so that the tops of these walls which support the huge slabs forming the roof, are much nearer each other than their bases. Each cave formed part of a British village, that of old Chyoster being decidedly in the best state of preservation of all the British villages in this neighbourhood."[2]

Both caves are built of uncemented stones unmarked by any tool. The cave at Chyoster extended originally, as appears from its remains and the rubbish left by its recent spoilers, fifty feet or more in a straight line up the sloping side of the hill. It is 6 feet high, 4 feet wide on the top, and 8 feet wide at the bottom, and is thought to have been originally a storehouse. It appears to have been built on the natural surface of the hillside, and then covered over with stones and earth, and planted with the evergreens which still abound there.

A few years subsequently to the above investigations, in one of those intellectual excursions by means of which our acquaintance with the early history of our island is so greatly extended, the following results were arrived at:--In the autumn of 1865, in an excursion made jointly by the Royal Inst.i.tution of Cornwall and the Penzance Natural History Society, they inspected on the north coast of the county, Gurnard's Head, a rocky promontory, jutting some distance into the sea, and bearing very distinct traces of having been fortified by the early Britons against an enemy attacking from the sea, this being the only specimen of an ancient British fortification where traces of sea defences have been found. In all other cases they seem to have been erected as a protection from an attack by the land side, and to have been evidently the last retreat of the natives.

Next was visited the Bosphrennis Bee-hive Hut, first brought to light by the Cambrian Archaeological Society: it was seen in cl.u.s.ters or villages by Caesar. And, on an eminence near the village of Porthemear, was found a large inclosed circle, now hidden by briars and thorns, which, on examination, showed the remains of several circular huts, leaving no doubt that here a considerable ancient British village had once existed.

Of the homes of the Picts, the most distinguished among the barbarous tribes inhabiting the woods and marshes of North Britain, there remain some specimens in the Orkneys: they are rude and miserable dwellings underground, but they are supposed to be calculated for the requirements of a more advanced state of society than that of the dwellers in Picts'

houses. A complete drawing of one of the Orkney specimens has been made, and was exhibited to the British Archaeological a.s.sociation in 1866.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PICTS' HOUSE.]

About the year 1853, there was discovered in Aberdeens.h.i.+re a Pict's house, in the parish of Tarland. It is a subterranean vault, nearly semicircular, and from five to six feet in height; the sides built with stones, and roofed with large stones, six or seven feet wide, and a kind of granite. These excavations have been found in various parishes of Aberdeens.h.i.+re, as well as in several of the neighbouring counties. In the parish of Old Deer, some sixty years back, a whole village was met with; and, about the same time, in a glen at the back of Stirlinghill, in the parish of Peterhead, one was discovered which contained some fragments of bones and several flint arrow-heads and battle-axes, in various stages of manufacture. Such buildings underground as those described as Picts' houses were not uncommon on the borders of the Tweed. A number of them, apparently constructed as above, were discovered in a field in Berwicks.h.i.+re about fifty years ago. They were supposed to have been made for the detention of prisoners taken in the frays during the border feuds; and afterwards they were employed to conceal spirits, smuggled either across the border or from abroad.

Professor Phillips, in his very able volume on Yorks.h.i.+re, describes the houses of the Brigantes (highlanders), inhabitants of the hilly country towards the north of Britain, and extending from the German Ocean to the Irish Sea. Of these huts there appear to be three varieties, of which we have only the foundations. The first occurs in north-eastern and south-eastern Yorks.h.i.+re; the ground is excavated in a circular shape, so as to make a pit from six to eight feet, or even sixteen or eighteen feet in diameter, with a raised border, and three to five feet in depth.

Over this cavity we must suppose the branches of trees placed to form a conical roof, which, perhaps, might be made weather-proof by wattling, a covering of rushes, or turf. The opening we may believe to have been placed on the side removed from the prevalent wind: fire in the centre of the hut thus constructed, has left traces in many of the houses examined. The pits in Westerdale are called "ref-holes," _i.e._ roof-holes, for our Saxon word _roof_ has the meaning of the Icelandic _raf_ and Swedish _ref_. In several places these pits are a.s.sociated in such considerable numbers as to give the idea of a village, or even town. On Danby Moor, the pits are divided in two parallel lines, bounded externally by banks, and divided internally by an open s.p.a.ce like a street; a stream divides the settlement into two parts; there are no walls at the end of the streets; in the most westerly part is a circular walled s.p.a.ce, thirty-five feet in diameter.

"A second type of these foundations of huts has been observed south of the village of Skipwith, near Riccall, south-east of York. These were oval or circular rings slightly excavated in the heathy surface, on the drier parts of the common. On digging into this area, marks of fire were found: they were concluded to be the foundation-lines of huts, mostly enclosed by single or double mounds or ditches.

"The third form of hut foundation, an incomplete ring of stone walls, has only yet been observed in Yorks.h.i.+re, on the summit of Ingleborough.

How strange to find at this commanding height," says Professor Phillips, "encircled by a thick and strong wall, and within this wall the unmistakeable foundations of ancient habitations! The Rev. Robert Cooke, in 1851, concluded Ingleborough to be a great hill-fort of the Britons, defended by a wall like others known in Wales, and furnished with houses like the 'Cittian,' of Gwynedd. The area inclosed is about 15 acres, in which s.p.a.ce are nineteen horse-shoe-shaped low foundations, evidently the foundations of ancient huts, the antecedent of the cottages of England,--a low wall foundation, a roof formed by inclined rafters, and covered by boughs, heath, rushes, gra.s.s, straw, or sods. The relative dates, surely, admit of no doubt. The huts and walls of Ingleborough exhibit principles of construction which remove them from the catalogue of barbarian works."[3]

The Britons, before the first Roman invasion, slept on skins spread on the floor of their rude dwellings. Rushes and heath were afterwards subst.i.tuted by the Romans for skins; and on the introduction of agriculture they slept upon straw, which, indeed, was used as a couch in the royal chambers of England at the close of the 14th century.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Annals of England_, vol. i. 1855.

[2] _Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_, N. S. No. 1, 1858.

[3] _The Rivers, Mountains, and Sea-Coasts of Yorks.h.i.+re_, 2d edit. 1855.

BRITAIN BEFORE THE ROMAN COLONIZATION.

Hitherto we have but glanced at the dwelling-places of our ancestors, chiefly from existing evidences. Of the general condition of the people before the Roman Conquest, we find this picturesque account in Lappenberg's able work on the Anglo-Saxon Kings. The earliest inhabitants of Britain, as far as we know, were probably of that great family, the main branches of which, distinguished by the designation of Celts, spread themselves so widely over middle and western Europe. They crossed over from the neighbouring country of Gaul. At a later period, the Belgae, actuated by martial restlessness or the love of plunder, a.s.sailed the southern and western coasts of the island, and settled there, driving the Celts into the inland country. Lappenberg's life-like picture of the condition of these people is as follows:--

"In the southern parts of England, which had become more civilized through commerce, the cultivation of grain, to which the mildness of the climate was favourable, had been greatly improved by the art of marling.

The daily consumption was taken from the unthrashed corn, preserved in caves, which they prepared for food, but did not bake as bread.

Horticulture was not in use among them, nor the art of making cheese; yet the great number of buildings, of people, and of cattle, appeared striking to the Romans. Copper and bits of iron, according to weight, served as money. Their custom of painting themselves with blue and green, for the purpose of terrifying their enemies, as well as that of tattooing, was retained till a later period by the Picts of the North.

At certain sacrifices, even the women, painted in a similar manner, resembling Ethiopians, went about without clothing. Long locks and mustachios were general. Like the Gauls, they decorated the middle finger with a ring. Their round simple huts of reeds or wood resembled those of that people; and the Gaulish chequered coloured mantles are still in common use in the Scottish Highlands. Their clothing, more especially that of the Belgic tribes of the south, enveloped the whole body; a girdle encircled the waist, and chains of metal hung about the breast. The hilts of their huge pointless swords were adorned with the teeth of marine animals; their s.h.i.+elds were small. The custom of fighting in chariots, on the axles of which scythes were fastened, and in the management of which they showed great skill, was peculiar to this and some other of the Celtic nations, in a generally level country, and where the horses were not sufficiently powerful to be used for cavalry.

The charioteer was the superior person; the servant bore the weapons.

They began their attacks with taunting songs and deafening howls. Their fortresses or towns consisted in the natural defence of impenetrable forests. In the interior of the country were found only the more rugged characteristics of a people engaged in the rearing of cattle; which, together with the chase, supplied skins for clothing, and milk and flesh for food. The northern part of the country seems in great measure to have been abandoned to the shaft and javelin of the roving hunter, as skilful as he was bold. Simplicity, integrity, temperance, with a p.r.o.neness to dissension, are mentioned as the leading characteristics of the nation. The reputation of bravery was more especially ascribed to the Norman races."

The only persons in Britain who possessed any knowledge before the Roman invasion, and even for some considerable time after it, were the Druids: the real extent of their attainments is, however, doubtful and superficial, from the fact that, though they were acquainted with the Greek letters, they taught almost entirely by memory, and committed little or nothing to writing. A summary of what is known concerning Druidical knowledge is contained in the following particulars:--Concerning the universe, they believed that it should never be entirely destroyed or annihilated, though it was expected to suffer a succession of violent changes and revolutions, by the predominating powers of fire and water. They professed to have great knowledge of the movements of the heavens and stars; indeed, their religion required some attention to astronomy, since they paid considerable regard to the changes of the moon. Their time was computed by nights, according to very ancient practice, by moons or months; and by years, when the planet had gone the revolutions of the seasons. That at least they knew the reversion of the seasons, as adapted to agricultural purposes, is evident from the fact, that Caesar landed in Britain on the 26th day of August, when he states that the harvest was all completed, excepting one field, which was more backward than the rest of the country.

The sacred animal of the Druids' religion was the milk-white bull; the sacred bird, the wren; the sacred tree, the oak; the sacred plant, the mistletoe; the sacred herbs, the trefoil and the vervain; the sacred form, that of three divine letters or rays, in the shape of a cross, symbolizing the triple aspect of G.o.d. The sacred herbs and plant, with another plant, hyssop, the emblem of fort.i.tude in adversity, were gathered on the sixth day of the moon. The great festivals of Druidism were three: the solst.i.tial festivals of the rise and fall of the year, and the winter festival. At the spring festival, the baltan, or sacred fire, was brought down by means of a burning-gla.s.s from the sun. No hearth in the island was held sacred till the fire on it had been relit from the baltan. The baltan became the Easter festival of Christianity, as the mid-winter festival, in which the mistletoe was cut with the golden sickle from the sacred oak, became Christmas. The mistletoe, with its three berries, was the symbol of the Deity in his triple aspect--its growth on the oak, of the incarnation of the Deity in man.

The canonicals of the Arch-Druid were extremely gorgeous. On his head he wore a tiara of gold, in his girdle the gem of augury, on his breast the _ior morain_, or breast-plate of judgment; below it, the _glan neidr_, or draconic egg: on the forefinger of the right hand, the signet ring of the order; on the forefinger of the left, the gem of inspiration. Before him were borne the volume of esoteric mysteries, and the golden implement with which the mistletoe was gathered. His robe was of a white linen, with a broad purple border.

The sickle with which the mistletoe was cut could not have been of gold, though so described. Stukeley maintains that the Druids cut the mistletoe with their upright hatchets of bra.s.s, called celts, put at the end of their staffs. The kind of mistletoe found to this day in Greece is the same with that found in England; and Sir James Smith, the distinguished botanist, contends that when the superst.i.tions of the East travelled westward, our Druids adopted the Greek mistletoe as being more holy or efficacious than any other. The Druids, doubtless, dispensed the plant at a high price: "as late as the seventeenth century peculiar efficacy was attached to it, and a piece hung round the neck was considered a safeguard against witches." (_W. Sandys, F.S.A._)

It is concluded that the Druids possessed some knowledge of arithmetic, using the Greek characters as figures, in the public and private computations mentioned by Caesar; they were not unacquainted with mensuration, geometry, and geography, because, as judges, they decided disputes about the limits of fields, and are even said to have been engaged in determining the measure of the world. Their mechanical skill, and particularly their acquaintance with the lever, is generally argued from the enormous blocks of Stonehenge, and the numerous other ma.s.sive erections of rude stone which are yet remaining in many parts of the kingdom, and which are commonly attributed to these times.

The remains of the mystic monument of Stonehenge, which stands in the midst of Salisbury Plain, have been variously explained, as to the purpose for which Stonehenge was reared. When perfect, it consisted of two circles and two ellipses of upright stones, concentric, and environed by a bank and ditch; and outside this boundary, of a single upright stone, and a sacred way, _via sacra_, or cursus. One writer has beheld in Stonehenge a work of antediluvians, and another, a sanctuary of the Danes; and Inigo Jones, a temple of the Romans. By the Saxons it was termed _Stonhengist_, the hanging stones; and thence came Stonehenge, of which we have this terrible historic legend:--

Ebusa, brother of Hengist, with his brother Octa, landed on the Frith of Forth with an armament of five hundred vessels. The Britons flew to arms. A conference was proposed by Hengist, and accepted by Vortigern.

It was held at Stonehenge (Hengist's Stones), and attended by most of the n.o.bility of Britain. On the sixth day, at the high feast, when the sun was declining, was perpetrated the "Ma.s.sacre of the Long Knives,"

the blackest crime, with the exception of that of St. Bartholomew, in the annals of any nation. The signal for the Saxons to prepare to plunge their knives, concealed in their boots and under their military cloaks, into the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their gallant, unsuspicious conquerors was, "Let us now speak of friends.h.i.+p and love." The signal for action were the words, "Nemet your Saxas," ("Out with your knives,") and the raising of the banner of Hengist--a white horse on a red field--over the head of Vortigern. Four hundred and eighty of the Christian chivalry of Britain fell before sunset by the hand of the pagan a.s.sa.s.sins; three only of name--Eidol Count of Gloucester, and the Princes of Vendotia and Cambria--escaping, the first by almost superhuman courage and presence of mind. Priests, amba.s.sadors, bards, and the boyish scions of many n.o.ble families, were piled together in one appalling spectacle on the site of the banquet, "Moel OEore"--the Mound of Carnage, about three hundred yards north of the great Temple.