The Bath Road Part 11

Church Speen pa.s.sed, an undulating road leads past a curiously castellated old toll-house to Hungerford.

XXVIII

It is at Hungerford, sixty-four miles from Hyde Park Corner, that one leaves Berks.h.i.+re and enters Wilts, coming into wilder and less pastoral country. Hungerford town, however, is just within the Berks.h.i.+re borders.

The constant Kennet flows across the road here, and is crossed by a substantial bridge, from whose parapets anglers may be seen patiently waiting to lure the wily trout from their swims. Fuller quaintly says: "Good and great trouts are found in the river of Kennet nigh Hungerford; they are in their perfection in the month of May, and yearly decline with the buck. Being come to his full growth, he decays in goodness, not greatness, and thrives in his head till his death. Note, by the way, that an hog-back and little head is a sign that any fish is in season."

The chief street of Hungerford lies along the road to Salisbury, and the cyclist who is intent upon "doing" the Bath Road without turning to thoroughly explore the places along its course, consequently sees little of the town beyond the few old mansions and cottages, and the old coaching inn, "The Bear," which front the highway. Not much, however, is in this case lost, for Hungerford contains little of interest, and were it not for its singular Hocktide customs, and for the fact that it was the first town to obtain the free delivery of letters between its post-office and the houses to which letters were addressed, would scarce demand an extended notice.

[Sidenote: _OLD POST-OFFICE CUSTOMS_]

The original plan of the General Post-Office, all over the country, was to allow postmasters of country towns to demand a fee for delivery. Those who expected letters were supposed to call for them. If they desired them to be delivered, the additional fee was a penny or twopence, according to the conscience or the cupidity of the postmaster, whose perquisites these fees were. This applied to houses quite near post-offices, and even next door to them. This extraordinary state of affairs was borne with for some time, until at last several towns brought actions against the Post-Office to decide if prepaid postage ought not to ensure delivery in the boundaries of post-towns. Hungerford was selected by the Courts as a typical case, and secured a judgment in its favour, Michaelmas, 1774.

Hocktide is a stirring time in this little town of less than three thousand inhabitants. It is determined by Eastertide, and generally falls in April. The odd observances derive their origin from the conditions imposed by John of Gaunt, father of Henry the Fourth, who, in the fourteenth century, conferred the rights and privileges of common-land and fis.h.i.+ng in the Kennet upon the town. To hand down the proof of his gift to posterity, he presented with the charter a bra.s.s horn which bears the inscription:--

"John a Gaun did giue and grant the Riall of Fis.h.i.+ng to Hungerford Toune from Eldren Stub to Irish stil excepting som Seueral mil Pound Jehosphat Lucas was Cunstabl."

Not this horn, but its seventeenth-century successor, is jealously preserved in the Town Hall. It has a capacity of one quart.

[Sidenote: _HOCK TIDE_]

As an unreformed borough, Hungerford still enjoys the old-time custom of appointing, in the place of Mayor and Corporation, a Constable, Portreeve, Bailiff, t.i.thing-men, Keeper of the Keys of the Coffers, Hayward, Water Bailiffs, Ale-tasters, and Bellman. The ceremonies begin on the Friday before Hock Tuesday with a "macaroni supper and punchbowl," and are held at the "John of Gaunt" inn. Tuesday, however, is the great day, when at an early hour the bellman goes round the borough commanding all those who hold land or dwellings within the confines of the town to appear at the Hockney, under pain of a poll-tax of one penny, called the "head-penny."

Lest this warning should be insufficient, he mounts to the balcony of the Town Hall, where he blows a blast upon the horn. Those who do not obey the summons and refuse the payment of the head-penny are liable to lose their rights to the privileges of the borough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUNGERFORD.]

By nine o'clock the jury are a.s.sembled in the Town Hall for the transaction of their annual business, and immediately after they are sworn in, the two t.i.thing-men start on their round of the town. It is in this part of the proceedings that most interest is taken, for the business of the t.i.thing-men is to take a poll-tax of twopence from every male inhabitant and a kiss from the wives and daughters of the burgesses. This is in recognition of the ancient powers of the Lord of the Manor, who had peculiar rights over the property and persons of his "chattels," as the people were once regarded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUNGERFORD TUTTI-MEN.]

The t.i.thing-men are known as tutti-men; tutti being the local word for pretty. They carry short poles as insignia of office, gaily bedecked with blue ribbons and choice flowers known as tutti-poles; while behind them walks a man groaning under the weight of the tutti oranges, it being the custom to bestow an orange upon every person who is kissed, as well as upon the school and workhouse children. The rights of office having been duly vested in them by means of strange customs and exhortation, the two favoured ones start off down the High Street on their kissing mission, followed by the orange-bearer and greeted with the cheers of the a.s.sembled people. One by one the houses are entered, and the custom observed both in spirit and letter; nor is it confined to the young and comely, for the old dames of Hungerford would deem themselves, if not insulted, at least sadly neglected, were the tutti-men to pa.s.s their houses unentered. Usually these officers find little difficulty in carrying out their pleasant duties, but sometimes the excitement is increased by some coy maiden, whose rustic simplicity prompts her to run away or hide. But as a general rule the ladies of Hungerford show very little objection to the observance of the ancient customs, so that the labours of the tutti-men are considerably lightened.

Thus, amid laughter, merriment, and mock-seriousness, the fun is continued until about half the borough is visited, by which time the tutti-men have taken care that all the duty kisses that should gratify the ancient inhabitants have been administered, as well as certain others that are more a pleasure than a duty. Certainly they deserve well of the town, for the tutti-men go through a good day's work by the time dinner is served.

Then, in accordance with the time-honoured precedent, the Chief Constable is elected into the chair; the great bowl of punch is placed on the table after dinner, and the various offices toasted and replied for. One is drunk in solemn silence--that of John of Gaunt, the town's benefactor.

All the townspeople seem satisfied with their day's carnival, save, perhaps, a crooning old burgher, who may occasionally be heard to extol the good old days when the punch was strong and the newly-elected officers went home in wheelbarrows.

XXIX

[Sidenote: _LITTLECOTE_]

From the everyday respectable dulness of Hungerford itself we will pa.s.s to the exciting scandals which make up much of the story of Littlecote, that gloomy and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become famous (or infamous, if you will have it so) through the crimes and debaucheries of Will Darell. There are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath Road. The most obvious way is by turning to the right when in the midst of Hungerford town; the other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mile further down the road. Either will bring the traveller to that secluded spot in the course of three and a half miles.

It stands, that h.o.a.ry pile, in a wide and well-wooded park, sheltered beneath the swelling Wilts.h.i.+re downs and close beside the gentle Kennet, whose stream has been fruitful of trout ever since "trouts" (as our ancestors quaintly called them, in the plural) were angled for.

Littlecote, as we now see it, was built by the Darells in the closing years of the fifteenth century, in whose early years it had pa.s.sed from the Colston family by the marriage of the heiress of the Colstons to William Darell, son of Sir William Darell, of Sesay, in Yorks.h.i.+re. A descendant of this emigrant from the North Riding, the "Wild Will Darell"

of this blood-boltered history was born into an estate comprising an ancestral home and many thousands of acres in the counties of Wilts, Berks, and Hants, and might have been accounted fortunate had it not been for the rather more than trifling circ.u.mstances of an unhappy up-bringing which included a shameful treatment of himself and his mother by an unnatural father; the paternal extravagances which had alienated much of the property; the heavy charge made on the estate for the benefit of the mistress of his brother, who preceded him in the estate; and, finally, the crop of lawsuits into which he was plunged immediately upon succeeding to this singularly-enc.u.mbered patrimony. At this interval of time it has become quite impossible for serious historians to discriminate between the facts and the--fancies, shall we call them?--of the Wild Darell story.

This difficulty does not arise from lack of patient research on the part of Darell commentators, who have ransacked the Record Office to prove that he was _not_ a villain of the most lurid kind, or the industry of others who have searched among musty muniment chests to determine that he _was_.

It would, considering the fact of the records in the Littlecote muniment room not having yet been explored for the benefit of these historic doubts, be rash indeed for any one to p.r.o.nounce definitely for either of the very diverse views held of Darell as Villain, or Darell as Good Young Man.

The story, which first became widely known through a footnote appended to Sir Walter Scott's "Rokeby," is of a midwife summoned from the village of Shefford, seven miles away, on a false pretence of attending Lady Knyvett, of Charlton, near by, and of her being blindfolded and led on horseback in the darkness of the night to quite another house, in one of whose stately rooms lay a mysterious masked lady for whom her services were required.

The horrid legend then goes on to say that a tall, slender gentleman, a lowering and ferocious-looking man, "havinge uppon hym a goune of blacke velvett," entered the room with some others, and, without a word, took the child from her arms and threw it upon a blazing fire in an ante-room, crus.h.i.+ng it into the flaming logs with his boot-heel, so that it was presently consumed.

A prime horror, this, and rich in ferocity, mystery, and all the incert.i.tude that comes of age and conflicting testimony. Masked lady, blindfolded nurse, burnt baby, taciturn and horrible stranger, what lurid figures are these! and how royally abused for the possession of an over-imaginative mind would be that novelist who should dare conceive incidents so romantic!

[Sidenote: _WILD DARELL_]

Scott gleaned his traditions from the weird legends current in the country-side. They had, when he first printed them, been the fireside gossip of that district for over two hundred years, and of course in that length of time had lost nothing in the repet.i.tion. For that reason we are asked nowadays to discredit them altogether. We cannot, however, do that, because there came to light some years ago the actual deposition to the facts made by the midwife, Mrs. Barnes of Shefford, taken down on her deathbed by a Mr. Bridges of Great Shefford, a magistrate, who was also a cousin of Darell, and would not, it may well be supposed, be inclined to spread any baseless gossip to the hurt of a family with which he was connected. This deposition tells the story as already narrated. It does not identify Darell or Littlecote, nor does it even hint the ident.i.ty of _any_ person or place. But the sinister discovery, some twenty years ago, at Longleat, of an original letter from Sir H. Knyvett, of Charlton, to Sir John Thynne, of Longleat, dated January 2, 1578/9 (about the time of the midwife's confession), brings us to the original rumours pointing to Darell's being the man and Littlecote the place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLECOTE.]

[Sidenote: _DEATH OF DARELL_]

There was then residing at Longleat a Mr. Bonham, whose sister was well known to be living with Darell as his mistress, and this letter requests that "Mr. Bonham will inquire of his sister touching her usage at Will.

Darell's, the birth of her children, how many there were, and what became of them: for that the report of the murder of one of them was increasing foully, and would touch Will. Darell to the quick." To that letter there is no reply, and it remains uncertain whether Darell was ever arraigned for murder and acquitted (as the story goes), or whether the rumours simply were never crystallized into a definite charge against him. The probability seems to be that he never was called upon to stand his trial.

It is quite certain, however, that the legend of his being haunted along the roads by the apparition of a burning infant which startled his horse so that Wild Darell was thrown and killed is a more or less pleasing invention. Darell died quite peacefully in his bed, at Littlecote, eleven years after the midwife's death, and was buried in the Darell Chapel at Ramsbury, where he was laid to rest, October 1st, 1589. Notwithstanding these well-ascertained facts, Darell is now, if we are to credit the stories of the country-side, an apparition himself, and superst.i.tious rustics still fear to face the roads o' nights because of a Burning Babe and a Spectral Horseman, who comes das.h.i.+ng down them at a terror-stricken gallop, mounted on a horse of coal-black hue, with a breath like steam and eyes like burning coals!

As for the elaborate embroideries added to the Wild Darell story from time to time, there are many. According to these ingenious fictions, the midwife counted the stairs of the strange house, and cut a piece out of the bed curtains, which she carried away. By these means; by finding the number of the stairs at Littlecote to tally with her counting, and by fitting her piece of tapestry to a hole in the curtains of a bed at Littlecote, we are told to believe the truth of the story. The singular thing, however, is that Mrs. Barnes made absolutely no mention of these things in her deposition. There remains, it is true, the fact already alluded to, that the magistrate who took down the woman's statement was a connection of Darell's, and might possibly have suppressed facts which could point to his relative being concerned in the affair. Another story is that upon Darell being arraigned (which in itself is uncertain), he made interest with Sir John Popham, the Chief Justice, to procure an acquittal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HAUNTED CHAMBER.]

Now it is quite certain that Popham did not become Chief Justice until 1592, when Darell had been in his grave nearly three years, and could not therefore have done so. He was, it is true, Attorney-General at the time of Darell's supposed crime, and, _had_ there been a trial, and _had_ he been bribed, could possibly have procured a _nolle prosequi_.

But Darell certainly made over the reversion of Littlecote to Popham in 1586, and Popham took possession upon Darell's decease. The story of this transaction being the bribe in question we owe to Aubrey, the county historian (or rather, the county gossip), who actually gives an account of the trial and says, "Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but being a great person and a favourite, he p.r.o.nounced a _noli prosequi_."

More to the point is the fact that Darell, in 1583, offered Lord Chancellor Bromley the then large sum of 5000 to be "his good friend."

Those who are interested in the Darell story are equally divided as to his general character. One would have us believe that he was a Model Squire, who fished for trout, took an enthralling interest in his flower-garden, and if he did not always come home to tea (because tea not having at that period been introduced, it was impossible to do so), was content with a modest pint of claret at dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in reading what improving literature was to be had in the Elizabethan age; which, I fear, judging from the general character of the time, was of a somewhat meagre nature.

[Sidenote: _THE REAL DARELL_]

The real Darell was not quite like that picture. We already know that he had one mistress at Littlecote, and then there was Lady Anne Hungerford, an elderly charmer, whom by some means Wild Will had seduced from her husband, and whose letters, still preserved, to her "deare Dorrell" are not so improving as the recipient's other reading. One learns from these choice communications that Lady Anne had been accused of murder, adultery, and trying to poison her husband; and, under the circ.u.mstances, it seems quite likely that all these charges were well-founded, even though she says that "luker and gaine makes many dissembling and hollow hearts"

(which sounds like one of the admirable copy-book maxims of our youth), and that she antic.i.p.ates being cleared from suspicion of these "vill and abomynabell practiscis." Add to these hot-blooded intrigues the extravagances which, together with his litigious disposition, served to ruin his estate and to bring him into disfavour with his neighbours, and we obtain the genesis of all the ill-favoured legends of this picturesque figure of the Elizabethan era.

x.x.x

[Sidenote: _THE GREAT REBELLION_]

Littlecote had not done with stirring scenes when Darell was dead and the Pophams took possession. The Great Hall, hung round with pikes, leather jerkins, helmets, and cuira.s.ses of Cromwellian times, serves to tell, in its warlike array, of how the place became a rendezvous of the Roundheads of this vicinity. These relics are the arms and accoutrements of the Popham Horse, raised by Colonel Alexander Popham, whose own suit of armour is still suspended here, over one of the doorways. A fitting place this, then, for that gathering of the King's Commissioners who came to Littlecote in December, 1688. The occasion was an historic one. James the Second was tottering upon his throne, and the Prince of Orange, invited to these sh.o.r.es to protect the civil and religious liberties of the nation, had marched up with his Dutchmen from his landing in the West Country. No man knew what would be the course of events, because not one of those concerned in that memorable crisis knew his own mind, from the King and his adherents on the one side, to the Prince and his partisans on the other.