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Title: The Manchester and Glasgow Road -- Volume II. (of II)
       This Way to Gretna Green

Author: Charles G. Harper

Release Date: December 16, 2018 [EBook #58482]

Language: English

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THE MANCHESTER AND
GLASGOW ROAD

CONTENTS

WAITING TO CHANGE.

[By J. F. Herring.

THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

THIS WAY TO GRETNA GREEN

By CHARLES G. HARPER

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR, AND FROM OLD-TIME PRINTS AND PICTURES

Vol. II.—MANCHESTER TO GLASGOW

LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
1907

PRINTED AND BOUND BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

vii

xi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1

THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

I

London Road Railway Station nowadays marks the beginning of central Manchester. Hitherto the long, long approach, although busy and crowded, has been, if not a thought suburban, at least busy chiefly on the retail scale. Here, however, where the railway brings travellers in from London, you see Manchester as the great city of immense warehouses: the place that no longer manufactures but deals in bulk and by wholesale with the goods produced in a dependent circle of towns.

From London Road you come immediately into Piccadilly, which is not in the least like the Piccadilly in London; and there you find yourself at the very hub of Manchester’s hurly-burly. There is perhaps not much significance in2 all this to the commercial man who travels down by express from London, and merely rouses himself from his newspaper to alight and then to take a cab from this railway terminus to one of the others, or to his business appointments; but to trace the road down from London on a bicycle and thus enter Manchester is to understand the great metropolis of cotton as it really is in relation to the rest of the country. To such a traveller the noise, the crowds, the furious energy, and the great sooty piles of buildings are not a little terrible. There is much good modern architecture in Manchester’s streets, but a black cloak covers it all. And yet the sky, though generally overcast, for the climate of Manchester is tearful, is not scored with smoke-wreaths, and factory-chimneys are not a feature of Manchester itself. The sooty deposit comes insensibly in the air from the outer ring of towns, and although it is not evident in the sky, it very soon tones down brick and stone and terra-cotta to one dull monotone. For all the rain that washes the city, it does not suffice to cleanse away its coating of soot. The blackness of Manchester is the first characteristic that impresses itself upon the stranger. It greatly impressed the first Shah of Persia who visited England: Nasr-ed-din, who came in 1873, and afterwards wrote an account of his travels. “The City of Manchester,” he wrote, “by reason of its exceeding number of manufactures, has its houses, doors, and walls black as coal, and the complexions, visages, and3 the dress of people are all black. The whole of the ladies of that place at most times wear black clothing, because no sooner do they put on white or coloured garments, than they are suddenly black!”

This not without its picturesque exaggerations, and the citizens of Manchester will hardly recognise themselves in that inky complexion, but it will serve as a traveller’s tale, and puts a keener edge on the unsharpened blade of truth. The blackest blackness of all, however, is that of the great Infirmary building, in Piccadilly, whose sable hue is own brother to darkest night. Only long years have brought it to this richness of tint. Art could not produce such a black; dull, light-absorbing as it is, the building looks like an etching against the sky, and its Doric architecture in this coating would probably astonish any ancient Greek who might be privileged to revisit the earth and see what modern times had made of ancient models. But the Infirmary, ill-placed in these days amidst the roar of the streets, is presently to be removed, and this, the finest site in the city, is to be the home of an Art Gallery and Public Library.

There are statues on the broad pavement in front of the Infirmary, and very fine ones too. But the latest addition to their number, that of Queen Victoria, is not a success. Manchester people do not—and rightly they do not—like it. The bronze seated figure of the Queen is a poor copy by Onslow Ford of the well-known statue4 by Alfred Gilbert at Winchester, and is set in a great canopied chair-like throne that forms a ridiculous object, seen along the street, resembling a gigantic grandfather’s-chair. The figure is the very picture of senility. Was Onslow Ford, after all, a bitter satirist of the age and of the Empire? The horrible thing looks as though he had successfully striven to typify the decay that had set in during the last years of the Victorian Era: that glorious, world-moulding era of which the second Jubilee, in 1897, was really the monument and epitaph. Here you see the tired, aged face, the hands nervelessly holding orb and sceptre; and you cannot but think that this is really typical of that time. Given another ten years of Victorian recluse rule, with old-established abuses clustering around a long-occupied throne, cobwebbed methods hugged jealously, outrageous Prime Ministers, whether of the Old Man Eloquent type or the equally harmful man of the Blazing Indiscretions, and the slowly built Empire would swiftly have sped down the road to disintegration. A more fitting monument than this for modern Manchester, which lives in the present and for the future, would be a statue of the patriot King, under whose rule in the new century the nation and the Empire shall, please God, have a new birth.

Piccadilly gives place to Market Street, and then to Victoria Street, and Deansgate, which, although it forms one of the approaches to the Cathedral, is not named after any decanal dignitary but from a dene or dean—i.e. a hollow—once sloping5 to the confluence here of the rivers Irwell and Irk. Here, by those affronted rivers, once troutful streams but now of Stygian blackness, and running in tunnels and under innumerable bridges, is the very core of Manchester, whose long story contains little of the doings of kings and queens, or of the romantic ways of feudal lords; but is compact of a much more romantic and human interest: the story of the striving upwards of a people, through the disheartening chances of the centuries. It is not given to the casual wayfarer to perceive this romance, envisaged as it is in the grim and grimy outskirts, or in the everyday crowding and turmoiling of the central traffic; but it is there, nevertheless, and I, for one, refuse to treat of Manchester in particular, or of the road in general, in mere terms of topography; for the road, and the places to which it conducts, take in their compass the entire interests and sympathies of mankind: the blood and tears, the joys and sorrows of the ages.

Ancient Manchester centred about the parish church, afterwards collegiate, now the Cathedral, and about the manor-house that is now Chetham’s Hospital. It is still, although its pavements are crowded, and although it is neighboured by the great Exchange and Victoria railway stations, a place of narrow streets whose singular names would themselves be sufficient evidence of antiquity,6 even though every house in them were rebuilt. No modern authority would entitle a thoroughfare “Hanging Ditch” or “Smithy Door,” but such are the names here, together with Long Millgate, Hunt’s Bank, and Withy Grove. Rural names, most of them, and you would quest in vain for the olden watermill in Millgate, and withies grow no more in Withy Grove than hazels in the Hazel Grove of which you already know.

THE BUILDING OF MANCUNIUM.

[From the fresco by Ford Madox Brown.

This spot where Cathedral and Hospital stand, and where the narrow streets with odd names plunge up and down and twist round unexpected corners, is indeed of a very high antiquity. One thousand eight hundred and thirty years ago, according to generally received opinion—that is to say, in A.D. 78—the Romans, in the reign of Agricola, came to this site, where now the tide of modern Manchester flows most strongly. They found a red, rocky bluff where is now Hunt’s Bank, overlooking the confluent rivers, and all around were forests and swamps, and doubtless the hoary ancestors of those withies after which Withy Grove was in later mediæval times named. The sole representative nowadays near Manchester of those ancient abounding swamps is Chat Moss, now a very negligible bog indeed, but even so recently as early railway days a formidable phenomenon to be reckoned with. But the rocky ledge overlooking Irk and Irwell was not unoccupied. A tribe of Britons had established themselves there; very securely,9 no doubt, against foes of their own calibre, but when the Romans came and found the situation desirable, their day was done.

No account survives of the taking of that palisaded camp of the Britons. We know nothing of what happened to the aborigines, and it is so remote a speculation that I am quite sure no one in modern Manchester has ever given the matter a moment’s thought. Nor did any Roman historian narrate how many of the Empire’s tall soldiers sank under the weight of their armour and perished in the morasses at the taking of what is said to have been styled by the British Maencenion. The Romans, in their usual way, Latinised the native name for the place, and thus, from what they called Mancunium, springs, after many intermediate changes, “Manchester.”

We know nothing of all these doings, but the building of Mancunium is strikingly pictured in the first of the series of beautiful and interesting frescoes by Ford Madox Brown in the Manchester Town Hall, and with as certain and matter-of-fact a touch as though it had been drawn from personal observation. It was the Pre-Raphaelite way. In the picture you see the toiling slaves, working on the massive walls enclosing the Roman city; a helmeted centurion on the topmost windy height directing their operations. I do not know which impress me most, the cast-iron folds of his wind-blown cloak or the gigantic muscles of his bare legs, standing out like penny rolls. They were a great people, the Romans, and their10 muscular calf-development was apparently astounding.

The early “historians” of Manchester were, however, not content with such history as this, and loved to tell a tale of the marvellous: how their city originated with a giant, Sir Tarquin, among whose peculiarities was that of having a little child every morning for breakfast, just as a modern might take anchovy, on toast. At last he was slain by Sir Lancelot de Lake, one of King Arthur’s knights, whereupon the population, relieved of this check upon it, began to increase, and here we have now, after the passing of sixteen or seventeen centuries, an assemblage, including Salford, of about three quarters of a million souls. An ancient carved wooden boss in the ceiling of the committee-room of Chetham’s Hospital alludes to this legend, and displays a giant head devouring an infant.

And so we pass on to the Norman period, and to the time when the family of Greslet, or Gresley, acquired the manor of Manchester from that great personage, Roger of Poictou, to whom a manor more or less, in all the great tract of the country that was his between the Ribble and the Mersey, was a small matter. For centuries the Gresleys retained their holding, which passed from them at last by the marriage of Joan Gresley to one of the West family. Thenceforward, the Wests, ennobled as Barons de la Warre, owned the manorial rights of Manchester, until 1579, when they sold them for £3,000 to one John11 Lacy, who in his turn, in 1596, sold to Nicholas Mosley, alderman of London, at a mere £500 profit. After holding the manor for two hundred and forty-five years, the Mosley family, in the person of Sir Oswald Mosley, sold it to the newly created Corporation of Manchester for £200,000. It was a huge sum, but Sir Oswald was scarcely wise in his generation.

Strange though it may seem in a place to outward appearance so modern as Manchester, the old manor-house of the Gresleys and the De la Warres still survives in the very centre of the great city. It is, indeed, identical with none other than the range of buildings long past occupied as Chetham’s Hospital and Library adjoining the Cathedral, and here is the later story of it.

The last of the Manchester De la Warres was a man with an enthusiasm for the religious life. In 1373 he became rector of Manchester, and in 1422 refounded the parish church that is now the Cathedral, making it collegiate, and giving his baronial hall, hard by, for the purposes of his College of priests. That establishment was disestablished and disendowed in the time of Edward the Sixth, and the College buildings granted to the Earl of Derby, who used this ancient manorial residence as his town house. His successor, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, re-endowed the College, which was again suppressed in the dawn of the Commonwealth era, when the church became a Presbyterian meeting-house.

12

Then it was that Humphrey Chetham, Manchester’s most famous benefactor, already planning the establishment of a free school, saw the College buildings, standing empty and forlorn, ready to his hand. He died in 1653, and so did not live to see the beginning of his school; but by his will of 1650 had appointed trustees for the purchase of the College, and at last, in 1658, his school of “Chetham’s Hospital” was opened. He directed that, “Ye boys shall be taught ye reading, ye writing, ye summes, and all kinds of ye ingenuitie,” and his will continues to be observed on the same spot, and in the identical buildings, to this day; the Chetham scholars even wearing the self-same picturesque but neat costume they wore when the institution was founded: dark-blue cloth jacket and knee-breeches, with silver buttons, and a queer little muffin-shaped cap.

THE HALL, CHETHAM’S SCHOOL.

The Hospital and Library buildings suffer shockingly as to their exterior by the sooty atmosphere, but the various interiors are wonderfully interesting, intrinsically, and additionally from their situation amid such circumstances as those of a gigantic commercial city wherein cloistered buildings, reasonably to be expected at Oxford or Cambridge, are not looked for. The group of buildings has survived three uses: as manor-house of the baronial period; as the home of a religious fraternity; and for two hundred and fifty years as a school. The old hospitium, or guest-house, is the boys’ dormitory, where a13 hundred neat little cots are to be seen in long perspectives: the ancient kitchen that furnished curious, and often nasty, dinners to the ancient lords of the place and supplied the priests of the College with their not too cloistral meals—save for very shame their abstinent Friday fare of fish—is still in use, and sends forth the most appetising scents about midday; and the refectory is now partly the Governor’s quarters; while14 the Baronial Hall, where De la Warres held their very considerable state, is now the dining-hall. It is a noble apartment, this ancient hall, with its walls of thick masonry, its Gothic windows, and timbered roof. A bust of Chetham is placed on the wall over what was once a fireplace replacing the more ancient central hearth or brazier in the middle of the Hall. Electric lighting replaces older methods of illumination, and everywhere reveals with fine effect ancient panelling, painted devices and pictures. Over the cloister walks, in what was in the period of the collegiate establishment the priests’ dormitory, Chetham’s Library is housed in ancient presses greatly resembling those in the Bodleian at Oxford and the University Library at Cambridge. What was once the Warden’s room of the priestly establishment is now the Reading Room. To read scholarly books, to engage in the pursuit of curious knowledge in the Reading Room of Chetham’s Library is surely a wonderful privilege, for in this exquisite room, richly panelled in oak, with striped black-and-white plaster and timbered roof, and with gorgeously coloured and gilt wall paintings, the notorious Dr. Dee, Warden of the College in Elizabethan times, entertained among others Sir Walter Raleigh; and no doubt gazed into his mystic crystal globe here, on his guest’s behalf, to see what the future held in store for that courtier, warrior, explorer, and adventurer. Did it reveal nothing of that grim cell in the Tower where that unfortunate man was to spend15 years of captivity? Did no inimical shadows wax and wane in that crystal, to warn him that Tower Hill and the headman’s axe would cut his thread?

If historic associations sufficed to bring eloquent writing into being, then what is now the Reading Room should be the parent of much literature; but the student resorting hither will have the place very much to himself, save for occasional parties of gaping visitors shown round by a Chetham’s schoolboy, for Chetham’s Library is rich rather in black-letter tomes, and in works that research feeds fat upon, than in current literature. One would not wish this cloistral seclusion amended. To find in Manchester, whose every byway seethes with life, a corner not already occupied, a spot where you can hear the ticking of a clock, is too delightful to be forgone. There is, indeed, only one other spot in Manchester where something the same conditions prevail, and that is the great palatial building of Ryland’s Library, where inestimably rare books, manuscripts, and bindings are to be found.

Manchester Cathedral adjoins Chetham’s Hospital. Cathedral though it be now, by virtue of the creation of the modern Bishopric of Manchester, the building is but a glorified parish church, and not any of the many additions made to it of recent years suffice to render it anything else. It remains, as it were, an incidental and not essential feature of the great city.

I suppose—the intense rivalry between Manchester16 and Liverpool being a thing to reckon with in so many directions—Manchester will not long remain content with this condition of affairs, especially since it has become known that the new Liverpool Cathedral, rising now from its foundations, is to outrange all others for size. The stranger to Manchester would certainly never imagine that the church he perceives, immediately outside the Exchange station, was of Cathedral rank; and indeed it is so only by reason of modern ecclesiastical arrangements, made expedient by the growth of great modern industrial communities.

MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL, FROM DEANSGATE.

MISERERE SEAT, MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL: THE PEDLAR AND THE MONKEYS.

Manchester was in the diocese of Lichfield until 1541, when it was transferred to Chester; but since 1847 it has been an independent see. Manchester people have had amply sufficient time to realise this added dignity, but the stranger fails altogether to assimilate the idea, and although he perceives the Bishop to be full-fledged—except that he is a “Lord” Bishop only by election—cannot help observing that his Cathedral is but a suffragan. It would be an imposing building in a smaller place, but here it is dwarfed by the neighbouring railway stations and the towering piles of warehouses. It looks, as already remarked, nothing more than a parish church, and a very black parish church, too. It is chiefly of Perpendicular Gothic, but little of the exterior is really old, the tower having been rebuilt in 1868, and many features added since. The beauty of the church is chiefly within. It is a dark interior, but the nave, with its tall19 slender columns of red sandstone, is particularly graceful. This is no place for an architectural history of the structure, but at least the ancient carved miserere seats may be mentioned, particularly as they are among the finest in the country, for craftsmanship and fertility of invention. Like—yet how unlike!—the pictorial advertisements of a patent medicine which here shall be nameless, “every picture tells a story,” and much entertainment may be derived from these quaintly humorous designs. The three legs of Man, shown upon one, allude to the connection of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby (who were Kings of Man), with the “old church,” as Manchester men still affectionately style the Cathedral. An elephant with a castle on his back is seen on another, but the elephant’s legs are jointed like those of a horse, and obviously the designer knew little of the structure of elephants. Another subject is that of the fox walking off with a goose. Two others display the twin sports of bull-and bear-baiting. A very humorous example displays a pedlar, fallen asleep by the way, robbed20 by monkeys, who are taking the trinkets and clothing out of his pack, and trying them on, while one other is busily searching in his hair for the usual game that monkeys in the Zoological Gardens may any day be observed seeking. Another very elaborate carving represents a sow playing the bagpipes, and a group of little pigs dancing to the music. A pilgrim engaged in drinking and accidentally letting fall the jug, is a scene unfortunately mutilated. A game of backgammon in an inn; the execution of the fox by owls and rooks; the hare’s revenge, where the hare is seen to be roasting the hunter on a spit; and a stag-hunting scene complete the set. In this last, the hunt is represented as at an end, or “done”; and probably is intended as a pun upon the name of the first Warden of the College, Huntingdon.

The history of Manchester is chiefly the history of the textile industries. There was a mill for the manufacture of woollen cloth in Manchester so early as the time of Edward the Second, and in the succeeding reign a settlement of Flemish weavers further increased the trade. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, Manchester was described as “the fayrest, best builded, quickliest, and most populous toune of all Lancastershire,” and “well-inhabited, distinguished for trade, both in linens and woollens”; but the cotton industry, introduced at the close of the sixteenth century, became no21 great thing until another two hundred years had passed.

In the meanwhile history was enacted. Early in the Cromwellian wars Manchester declared for the Parliament, and the Royalists besieged what was then the walled town twice, unsuccessfully. But these were only passing incidents. Everywhere in England at that time crop-headed men of sour visage and in subfusc garments warred with ringleted men of a cheerful countenance and ungodly conversation, wearing clothes of extravagant cut and colour. The one side fought for Parliament, the other for King, but the quarrel really was deeper than that. It was a conflict of ideals. But they fought it out elsewhere with greater fierceness and expenditure of blood, and Manchester went on as best it could with its fated function of providing linen for all the godly and ungodly, whether Royalists or Republicans, who had the wherewithal to buy.

Again Manchester was to know something of warfare, for Prince Charles and his Highlanders came in November, 1745. The sympathies of the town were largely with him, the bells of “t’owd church” were rung, and a great illumination lit the streets—as great illuminations were then understood: modern Market Street, with the shops lit of an evening, would probably reduce that illumination to a sorry flicker. Three hundred Manchester men marched south with Prince Charlie, under the command of Colonel Townley. Within a week they were marching back, and22 when they were come to Manchester again they found local sentiment sadly changed: the mob harrying their rear on the retreat to Preston. Colonel Townley and some of his ill-fated men were hanged on Kennington Common.

What the trade of Manchester was, and how goods were brought to and despatched from it in old times, may be seen from Aikin’s description in 1795:

“When the Manchester trade began to extend, the chapmen used to keep gangs of pack-horses and accompany them to the principal towns with goods in packs, which they opened and sold to shopkeepers, lodging what was unsold in small stores at the inns. The pack-horses brought back sheep’s wool, which was bought on the journey and sold to the makers of worsted yarn at Manchester, or to the clothiers of Rochdale, Saddleworth, and the West Riding of Yorkshire. On the improvement of turnpike roads, wagons were set up and the pack-horses discontinued; and the chapmen only rode out for orders, carrying with them patterns in their bags. It was during the forty years from 1730 to 1770 that trade was greatly pushed by the practice of sending these riders all over the kingdom.”

Such enterprise would not have been possible at an earlier period, for the turnpike roads surrounding Manchester date only from 1750: the earliest was the Preston to Lancaster turnpike, constructed under the Act of that year. Tolls were taken, on the Preston to Garstang section, until February23 1st, 1875, and on the Garstang to Lancaster portion until November 1st, 1882. The way out of Manchester, on to Bolton, was turnpiked in 1752, and tolls ceased to be taken on November 1st, 1871.

From the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century the roads of Lancashire were less roads than slushy lanes, very narrow and full of ruts, mud, and water. Even the main route through to Scotland was no better, and had then but little need to be, for wheeled conveyances were almost entirely unknown. Pack-horses, as we have seen, conveyed what goods were ever sent, but for all practical purposes most communities were self-contained. Their wants were few and simple, and were easily supplied from their own resources; while persons obliged to travel made their way on horseback; only those of robust physique and in good health being able to undertake such journeys, and glad enough, amid the difficulties of the way, to find here and there a stretch of lane roughly paved with rude slabs of local millstone grit.

But if the ways were incredibly foul, the inns at the end of each day’s journey went some way towards compensating the fatigued horseman for his labours. The Lancashire inns were then, according to Holinshead, writing in 1577, exceptionally good, each guest being “sure to lie in clean sheets wherein no man hath lodged.” Evidently the innkeepers looked to make their profit out of the “entertainment” they supplied24 for man and beast, for the horseman’s bed cost him nothing, but “if he go on foot, he hath a penny to pay.” Mere public-houses, of the complexion of drink-shops, were not tolerated in Manchester and Preston; for at Manchester it was forbidden to brew or sell ale unless the brewer or vendor could make “two honest beddis,” while Preston was even more strict: lodgings for four men and four horses being the irreducible minimum.

The old “Seven Stars” inn in Withy Grove is ancient enough to have come under this ordinance, which must have affected also the picturesque old house now styled the “Wellington,” in the Market Place, and the even more picturesque “Bull’s Head,” in Greengate, Salford.

With the growth of trade referred to by Aikin, between 1730 and 1770, Manchester’s interests comprehended the whole of the kingdom, and its trade was greatly helped by the demand that by this time was growing for good roads, not alone here, but generally throughout the country. Road improvements, made possible by Turnpike Acts, began to be frequent from about 1710, and were very numerous and important between 1730 and 1770, when 420 Acts were passed. In this period business grew so heavy that pack-horses did not suffice to carry the increasing bulk of goods, and wagons came more and more into use; while the press of affairs was such that principals found it necessary to visit London and other centres at more frequent intervals. It was thus that25 the Manchester and London Flying Coach was established, in 1754.

In 1760 the exportation of cotton goods began; for, with the first tentative application of machinery to weaving, production had increased beyond the possible consumption of the country. The first improvement upon the primitive form of handloom weaving was the invention of the fly-shuttle, in 1738. This contrivance doubled the weaver’s powers; but it was followed in 1768 by the invention of the “spinning-jenny,” by James Hargreaves, which increased production eight-fold.

THE “BULL’S HEAD,” SALFORD.

The population of Manchester and Salford had by this time grown to close upon 40,000, and the local needs had increased in like degree. But still, although much had been done to improve26 roads throughout the country, and in Lancashire, those immediately around Manchester itself were still so bad in 1760 that although coal was mined at Worsley, less than ten miles away, it could not be brought into the town by wheeled conveyance, but had to be carried by long lines of pack-horses, in loads of 280 lb. Coals were cheap at the pit mouth—usually 10d. the load—but the carriage cost, as a rule, a shilling more.

Inventions do not burst upon a world that has felt no need for them. The need may not have been more than blindly felt, but the necessities of the ages have, nevertheless, been supplied as they have arisen. In this, almost more than in anything else, the thinking man sees an ordered scheme of existence which, in other directions, the brutalities and injustices of an imperfect world would seem to deny.

At this time, the consumption of coal was growing so fast in Manchester, and the difficulties of marketing it were so great that the wealthy Duke of Bridgewater, owner of the pits at Worsley, conceived the idea of enriching himself still further, and at the same time helping the growth of Manchester, by means of constructing a canal from Worsley, by which coals could be carried cheaply and expeditiously. It was necessary to secure the support of the people of Manchester, before he could present a Bill to Parliament for this purpose, and he accordingly undertook, if the canal were made, to sell his coal at 4d. per hundred in the town—less than half the usual27 price—or to charge not more than half-a-crown a ton freight. The Bill was introduced and passed in 1759, without opposition, and by July 1761 the canal was opened. This first section of what eventually became the great Bridgewater Canal, extended to Runcorn in 1773, was the first step towards the making of modern Manchester, and was rendered possible only by the homely genius of James Brindley, the self-taught engineer, whose works were justly considered marvels in their day. He designed and originated all the novel and ingenious contrivances that were features of the undertaking, and did it all on wages not exceeding a guinea a week, a rate of pay he continued to receive for years of unremitting toil, until his death. The canals at length brought the Duke an income of £80,000 a year, but at Brindley’s untimely death in 1776 the stingy peer owed him some hundreds of pounds, on account of salary, which he was so incredibly mean as not to pay.

This enterprise was remarkable in more than the engineering difficulties overcome. Several canals had already been made in various parts of the country by deepening and straightening the channels of streams and rivers, and the first ship canal was that constructed in 1566, on the Exe, from Topsham to Exeter; but the Bridgewater Canal was the first to be dug in dry ground. Its extension across country, to the Mersey at Runcorn, was undertaken for the purpose of cheapening and expediting traffic in raw and28 manufactured cotton and other goods, between Manchester and Liverpool, and was thus the precursor, by a hundred and twenty years, of the Manchester Ship Canal, which aims to make Manchester a port entirely independent of its great seaboard neighbour.

The last quarter of the eighteenth century was a great turning-point in Manchester’s history. One invention rapidly succeeded another; most of them by local men, for among the sprack-witted Lancashire folk there has ever been plenty of mechanical genius. At the time when Hargreaves was planning his spinning jenny, another was perfecting a similar machine. This was Richard Arkwright, of Preston, the youngest of a poor family of thirteen children, who was born in 1732, and began life as a barber and dealer in hair at Bolton. In 1768 his cotton-spinning machine, which performed the work of sixteen or twenty men, was set up at Preston, and in 1707 was patented. His first spinning-mill was erected at Cromford, Derbyshire, in 1771, and was entirely successful. In 1786 he was knighted, and in 1792 he died, leaving a fortune of close upon half a million sterling.

The fickleness and waywardness of fortune are proverbial, but nowhere else so marked as in the struggles of inventors. In 1779, eleven years after Arkwright had set up his spinning-jenny, Samuel Crompton, of Hall-i’-th’-Wood, near Bolton, invented the hybrid “Spinning Mule,” combining the useful features of Hargreaves’ and Arkwright’s29 machines. He was an exceptionally poor man, and partly earned his living by playing the violin at the Bolton theatre.

A great step forward was Cartwright’s power-loom, invented in 1785, and the Government in 1809 granted him £10,000, in recognition of his usefulness to the advancement of commerce. With the same year that witnessed Cartwright’s invention, steam was first employed in weaving, by Boulton and Watt, and the history of the cotton industry has been, since that day, a long record of improvements, until nowadays factories are equipped with the most beautiful and complicated contrivances—the outcome of a hundred and seventy years of invention—that seem themselves almost sentient and understanding.

This long succession of mechanical improvements brought immense wealth to the manufacturers and helped to tide England’s credit over the exhausting years of the American Rebellion and continual Continental wars; but it brought the original foul blight of the factory system, which replaced the spinning once done in cottage homes. Industry was stived up in overcrowded workshops, the slums came into existence, and under-paid, over-worked, and cruelly treated child-labour characterised the days before the passing of the Factory Acts.

A distinguished Spaniard, Don Manuel Alvarez30 Espriella, visiting England in 1807, and coming to Manchester, was truly horrified by what he saw here. It seemed to him that “a place more destitute of all interesting objects than Manchester it would not be easy to conceive. In size and population it is the second city in the kingdom, containing about fourscore thousand inhabitants. Imagine this multitude crowded together in narrow streets, the houses all built of brick and blackened with smoke; frequent buildings among them as large as convents, without their antiquity, without their beauty, without their holiness; where you hear from within the everlasting din of machinery; and where, when the bell rings, it is to call wretches to their work instead of their prayers.” Here you perceive the conflict of ideals between a priest-ridden country and a land of commerce: with the telling of beads pre-eminent in the one, and the counting of gold equally prominent in the other.

Espriella and his companions saw all the sights. They were taken to one of the great cotton manufactories and were shown a number of children at work there, the guide dwelling with satisfaction and delight on the infinite good resulting from employing infants at so early an age. “I listened,” says our horrified traveller, “without contradicting him, for who would lift up his voice against Diana at Ephesus!” and he left “with a feeling at heart which makes me thank God I am not an Englishman.”

“There is,” he continues, “a shrub in some31 of the East Indian islands which the French call veloutier; it exhales an odour that is agreeable at a distance, becomes less so as you draw nearer, and when you are quite close to it, is insupportably loathsome. Alciatus himself could not have imagined an emblem more appropriate to the commercial prosperity of England.”

“The guide remarked that nothing could be so beneficial to a country as manufactures. ‘You see these children, sir,’ said he. ‘In most parts of England poor children are a burden to their parents and to the parish; here the parish, which would else have to support them, is rid of all expense; they get their bread almost as soon as they can run about, and by the time they are seven or eight years old, bring in money. There is no idleness among us: they come at five in the morning; we allow them half an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner; they leave work at six, and another set relieves them for the night; the wheels never stand still.’

“I was looking, while he spoke, at the unnatural dexterity with which the fingers of these little creatures were playing in the machinery, half giddy myself with the noise and the endless motion; and when he told me there was no rest in those walls, day or night, I thought that if Dante had peopled one of his hells with children, here was a scene worthy to have supplied him with new images of torment.

“‘These children, then,’ said I, ‘have no time to receive instruction.’

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“‘That, sir,’ he replied, is the evil we have found. Girls are employed here from the age you see, till they marry, and then they know nothing about domestic work, not even how to mend a stocking or boil a potato. But we are remedying it now, and send the children to school for an hour after they have done work.’

“I asked if so much confinement did not injure their health.

“‘No,’ he replied, ‘they are as healthy as any children in the world. To be sure, many of them as they grow up go off in consumption, but consumption is the disease of the English.’”

This was not merely a temporary state of affairs, but an evil which came into being with the factory system, and grew steadily with its growth. Nor was it confined to any particular district. Not only in Lancashire, but everywhere that mills and factories were working, did the scandals of child-labour disgust Englishmen who did not happen to be mill-owners, and surprise and horrify foreigners, who at one and the same time saw England proposing to liberate the negro slaves, and permitting white slavery, almost as gross, in “the land of liberty.”

The things that Espriella saw in 1807 were the things, infinitely aggravated by the further extension of the factory system, that prevailed in 1832, when the scandal grew to such proportions that petitions were presented from all classes to Parliament, praying that legislation should be undertaken to end it. This movement resulted33 in a Factory Commission that revealed many unsuspected things. Not only were the factory owners guilty of working their miserable child-hands almost incredible hours, under the most dreadful conditions; but the parents, who practically sold their children into this slavery, were guilty equally with them.

The report of the Factory Commission is a voluminous affair of many hundreds of folio pages. Many of those pages of evidence taken on oath disclose curiously varying ideas of what constituted cruelty in punishment, or excessive hours of labour for children. For example, a child ten years of age employed at Wigan was punished for being late at the factory, as many others were, by being forced to work with a rope round her neck, to which a 20-lb. weight was attached. There were those who did not regard this as anything at all out of the way, and declared the children so punished did not mind it. We can only wonder they did not say more, and insist that the victims rather enjoyed this torture. Mary Hooton, the mother of the girl, acknowledged that she told the overlooker to beat her.

Humphrey Dyson, giving evidence as to the practice of a factory at Manchester, stated that the overlooker made a whip of a piece of leather about three inches wide and about half a yard long, and cut into fingers at the end. This was set into a wooden handle with a brass hook. With this instrument of torture the overlooker “punished” the children at his discretion. In many34 instances, mothers, superior to the Mary Hooton type, came and took these away and destroyed them, but the overlooker made others.

The wages of these child-workers, it seemed, ranged from one shilling and sixpence to four shillings a week, and these, according to a speech made in the House of Commons, were the conditions under which those scanty wages were earned:

“The following were the hours of labour imposed upon the children and young persons. Monday morning, commence work at six o’clock: at nine, half an hour for breakfast; begin again at half-past nine, and work till twelve. Dinner, one hour; work from one till half-past four. Drinking (afternoon meal), half an hour; work from five till eight; rest, half an hour; work from half-past eight till twelve, midnight; an hour’s rest. One in the morning till five, work; half an hour’s rest; work, half-past five till nine; breakfast, half an hour; work, half-past nine till twelve. Dinner, one hour. Work, one till half-past four. Drinking, half-past four till five. Work again from five till nine on the Tuesday evening, when the gang of adult and infant slaves were dismissed for the night, after having toiled thirty-nine hours, with nine intervals for refreshment, but none for bed.

“Wednesday and Thursday were occupied with day work only. From Friday morning till Saturday night, the same labour as that of Monday and Tuesday was repeated.”

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The mill-owners, of course, felt outraged when Parliament passed the first Factory Act, and when the Ten Hours Act of 1847 and subsequent legislation, designed to put an end to the scandal of women being sent underground to work, and to rescue children from conditions hardly less horrible than those of negro slavery, was under discussion, Bright and Cobden characterised the proposals as “harassing the manufacturers,” and as “a blow at liberty.”

Manchester was a place of especial unrelieved grimness in the early years of the nineteenth century. It had ceased to be a picturesque overgrown village, and was assuming the earlier and more forbidding aspect of an industrial town. It was, of course, compared with the widespreading city of to-day, a small place, and the surrounding country came close up to its centre, and is said to have been not unpleasing. But the toil and the striving were then unrelieved by any urban graces. There was no “Society” at Manchester, but a great deal of discontent existed and short commons were then the rule. Manchester was regarded in those days of depression, after the close of the great Continental wars, as a dangerous place; and here, indeed, Radicalism was born, of injustice and hunger. “Manchester! your Royal Highness,” exclaimed the fastidious Beau Brummell, in horror, to the Prince Regent—“only think of Manchester!” when his regiment was ordered36 there. He sped swiftly away and sold out of the Army, rather than be banished to a benighted place where the correct set of a cravat was unknown, and not considered especially worth knowing.

Manchester, as an industrial centre, has, in common with other great cities similarly placed, always keenly felt the vicissitudes of national prosperity, and, with the surrounding towns and districts of Lancashire, has ever ridden on the crest of the waves of commercial expansion, or wallowed in the depths of its depression. There is perhaps no other great city, nor any other county than Lancashire, in England which so surely feels the warming glow of good times, or the chilling nip of bad; caused by influences almost wholly beyond control.

The years immediately following Waterloo and the close of the great and long-continued wars with Napoleon were lean years in Lancashire in particular, and in England in general, and discontent was rife. The price of bread was high, employment was scarce and threatened by the continual introduction of labour-saving machinery. The outlook of all the wage-earning classes was very grim, and the position was further inflamed by agitators, who very speedily put a political complexion upon the economic crisis. It was the era before Reform, when all political power was frankly held by the classes and the wealthy. The people were not enfranchised, and were taught by mob orators to believe that there lay the secret37 of the ills and disabilities they suffered. To possess a vote was held up as an ideal which, when reached, would be the solution of all grievances. It was probably not declared in so many words that enfranchisement would bring more work and better paid, nor that the voting-power would enable the working-men to vote away the employment of the labour-saving machinery they dreaded; but so much was implied. Riots, more or less serious, took place sporadically, throughout the country, where the people were almost starving; for, side by side with scarcity of employment, the price of bread was extravagantly high, in consequence of a succession of bad harvests bringing up the price of corn to an unprecedented figure. The Government at length became seriously alarmed at the troubles. There had been destructive riots in 1816, in Spitalfields, when a mob of 30,000 had broken into shops and houses, and burned and pillaged. Nottingham, Preston, Bury, and many other places were scenes of mob rule. In 1818 the Manchester operatives had broken the factory-windows, and had to be dispersed by Dragoons; and in the same year there were riots at Barnsley. The year 1819 opened with the demagogue, “Orator Hunt,” being thrashed by Hussars in the theatre at Manchester, where, it was said, he had hissed the playing of “God Save the King”; and it was declared that the turbulent Reformers of Glasgow proposed marching upon London. At the same time a Reform meeting held at Birmingham38 was dispersed, a constable being shot by workmen endeavouring to rescue one of the arrested speakers.

It must be admitted that the classes were not conciliatory. Their representatives in high places scorned the masses as the “swinish multitude,” and did not propose any political changes.

Still, the methods of the mob-rulers were extremely provocative and alarming. Whatever else they were, or were not, Hunt and Bamford, leading spirits among the Reformers, were intelligent men, and should have been able to forecast the probable effect the drilling of the multitude would have upon the Government. It was very well to argue that the drilling that went on at night was merely intended to enable great bodies of men to march to and from mass-meetings in order. The leaders were philosophical Radicals, and did not for a moment contemplate force, and their followers were very generally of the same mind; but we may easily see into the mind of Governments, which themselves only employ drilling to one end: that of reducing brute force to a scientific form of defence and attack; and undoubtedly these exercises, even without arms, were alarming, for who was to tell whence weapons might not be procured at any given moment. In short, the Administration imagined the country to be on the brink of revolution: a thing not so wildly improbable when meetings were enlivened by banners bearing the inscriptions, “Annual Parliaments,” “Universal Suffrage,”39 and “No Corn Laws”; and when that offensive emblem, a Cap of Liberty, carried on a pole, was prominent. The authorities imagined themselves face to face with an organised attempt at a subversion of the Constitution, and, in that belief, it behoved them to be on their guard.

“Orator Hunt” and Samuel Bamford, who had already, in 1817, been arrested on suspicion of high treason in connection with the Reform movement, were active in the agitation of 1819. They had drilled thousands of men in readiness for a peaceful mass-meeting to be held in the small open space then called “St. Peter’s Field,” at the end of Mosley Street, Manchester, on August 16th, and the whole countryside was agog with excitement and the wildest rumours. Rustic folk, going home in the darkness, had heard the words of military command, “face right,” “face left,” “right wheel,” “left wheel,” and so forth, and extravagant notions of what was afoot very naturally spread. In readiness for the day, the magistrates enrolled a force of special constables, and a strong force of Yeomanry and military was kept near at call.

In from Middleton marched Bamford, at the head of 6,000 men, to “St. Peter’s Field,” and from other quarters came many columns; so that by the time appointed for the opening of the meeting in that narrow space of two or three acres, some 80,000 persons were assembled. The police held a warrant for the arrest of Hunt on a charge of seditious assembly, but, in the face40 of this huge crowd, declared themselves unable to execute it, and called upon the magistrates for military assistance. A more tactful method would have been to wait until the close of the meeting, when Hunt could probably have been easily secured; but tact is not a common possession.

Close by was a force of one hundred and forty of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, hidden away in Pickford’s yard, and to them was entrusted the task of driving a way through the crowd, to seize Hunt. It was an unfortunate choice, for the Yeomanry were, to a man, master manufacturers, whose interests had been assailed violently by the mob. The regular troops near at hand would have been less prejudiced, and would have acted more gently; but the Yeomanry charged into the midst of the masses of people laying about them with the edge and point of their swords. Many inoffensive persons, men, women, and children, were cut and slashed and trampled down; but the crowd was so tightly packed that it could not have given way if it would, and the Yeomanry were not only stopped, but began to be severely handled; which, after all, was no more than they deserved. Then Hulton, prominent among the magistrates, lost his head, and ordered up the Hussars to the aid of the Yeomanry. People were ridden down by the hundred, the platforms were stormed, the banners torn down, and the field cleared. Vast crowds of weeping and cursing fugitives, many41 of them wounded, fled from the scene and out of Manchester into the country: afraid of arrest. Eleven people lay dead, thirty dangerously wounded, and forty “much injured.” Hunt, Bamford, and others were arrested. Thus ended the great Reform meeting in St. Peter’s Field. It was only four years from the time when Waterloo had been fought, and the people speedily found the name of “Peterloo” for this Yeomanry and Hussar victory. It was alternatively, with facile alliteration, known as the “Manchester massacre.” The site is now St. Peter’s Square, and on a portion of the ground stands the Free Trade Hall.

One cannot feel overmuch sympathy with the political agitation of that time. The history of all politics, in all ages, and still in progress, tells us that you succeed only in abolishing one tyranny to replace it with another: destroying the tyranny of aristocracy to replace it with that of wealth, which in its turn is overthrown by the worse tyranny of Socialism and the impossible doctrine of the essential equality of man. That which dominates will inevitably tyrannise, whether it be the strong over the weak, the aristocrat over the plebeian, or the wealthy over the poor; and sympathy with the downtrodden is a little blighted when it is realised that, when the poor grow rich and the humble powerful, they, too, begin to hector and to brow-beat. The cotton operative, rising by innate capacity from the position of a wage-earner to that of an employer, finds the42 centre of his interests shifted, and throws in his lot with the class to which he has won his way.

The necessity for Parliamentary and constitutional reform was acknowledged by Pitt, Earl of Chatham, so far back as 1782; and “radical reform”—i.e. reform going to the root of things—was demanded by the country in 1797-8; but it was left to agitators to bring the question of reform so greatly into disrepute that, in common speech, we hear always of a thing being “radically wrong”; never, by any chance, “radically right,” although the alliterative ease of either form is equal to the other.

The “Manchester School” of politics, founded in 1838 by Cobden and Bright, was a very virulent type of Radicalism, and, in some of its tenets, a singular creed for a commercial community of manufacturers and exporters to profess. It was nurtured on an agitation for the repeal of the Corn Law, and on a passion for Free Trade; it advocated peace-at-any-price, and regarded the Colonies with hatred. “It will be a happy day,” said Cobden, “when England has not an acre of territory in Continental Asia.” In these extraordinary aspirations John Bright shared to the full.

To reconcile the political creed of John Bright with his practice as a manufacturer is one of those tasks whose difficulties approach the impossible. He was an Apostle of Little Englandism: the passionate author of the phrase “Perish India!”; the ardent visionary of a day when “England”43 should cease to mean anything but this isle. What an ideal on which to dwell! Said he: “It may be a vision, yet I will cherish it.” He had what he termed the “noble vision” of Canada surrendered to the United States:

“From the frozen north to the glowing south, from the stormy waves of the Atlantic to the calmer waters of the Pacific main, I see one people, speaking one language, owning one law and holding one religion, and over all the flag of freedom, a refuge for the oppressed of every nation and of every clime.”

The “flag of freedom” was, if you please, the Stars and Stripes, and that “refuge for the oppressed” the land whose people are smarting under the tyrannies of the Trusts, and of the municipal disciples of the gospel of graft, as severely as any people ever suffered in the “oppressed” nations of Europe. At any rate, these are articles of belief to which few are now found to subscribe. That, with such aspirations as these, Bright could not endure the idea of Home Rule for Ireland, and so in 1886 broke with Gladstone and joined the Unionist party, is one of those extraordinary and illogical changes of front to which the careers of modern politicians of all shades of thought have so accustomed us that there are no surprises left.

Demagogues and silver-tongued orators have been the curse in modern times of this country. They and their audiences, grown drunken on their own wild words, have thrown over all consistency.44 In Bright you had a Radical politician opposed to the holding of an Empire, yet, as a manufacturer and exporter of cotton goods, having his interests largely bound up with the retention of our dependencies. It seemed honesty at the expense of sanity. But less honest was Bright’s bitter objection to any State interference with the factories. In 1836 he resented any attempt to control the hours of labour, and wrote a counter-blast to Fielden’s “Curse of the Factory System.” To the last, he opposed the reduction of factory hours. In 1861 he attributed the evils attendant upon over-production, in which he himself was engaged, to anything but their real cause; but, on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that, although himself a heavy loser by the Cotton Famine, he nobly championed the cause of the North in its darkest hours. Looking back upon things accomplished since he entered the political scene, his Radicalism seems to have been singularly diluted with Whiggism: inevitable, no doubt, from his position as a large employer of labour. As a Quaker, he was for Disestablishment; being a landowner, he endeavoured to bring about the abolition of the Game Laws; he was, as we have already seen, bitterly opposed, throughout his life, to State regulation of factories. He denounced Chartism, of which most of the points of reform demanded have long since been conceded, and, in reply to the demands of the factory hands for better payment, invented the comprehensive generality that “with bad trade, wages45 cannot rise”; tracing all evils to the Corn Law, that effectual red-herring drawn across many trails. Always the Corn Law, until its abolition in 1849. It was responsible for almost everything ill, short of earthquakes.

Bright opposed compulsory education—for that would probably educate the factory hands into discontent with their station; and was eager to extend the cultivation of cotton in India. When that project did not meet with the support he expected, and when his protest against the Indian protective duties failed to open India to cotton goods free of duty, “Perish India” became more than ever a pious wish. Perhaps one of his greatest mistakes was his contempt for the bogey of Papal aggression; not such a mere illuminated turnip on a post as he and his contemporaries believed. Rome stalks through the land, aggressive, at this day.

Many versions exist as to the origin of the expression, a “Manchester man,” but it is evident enough that the phrase, like that of a “Lancashire lad,” is a natural alliterative growth. The most widely accepted story, however, is that which tells of a coachman, who, asked “Who has ta gotten in t’ coach, lad?” replied, “Wha, then, ther’s a gentleman fra Liverpool, a man fra Manchester, a chap fra Bolton, an’ a felly fra Wigan.”

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A Lancashire boy’s definition of a gentleman should not at this point be forgotten. It was given many years since, and was, “one what weers at watch, an’ ligs by hisself.” So now we know that gentility, in these days of cheap watches and a prejudice against sharing a bed, may be within the reach of all.

It is no small thing to be a “Manchester man.” The name has a self-reliant ring about it that fits the men of Manchester like a glove, whatever may be the fitness of the other descriptions, or of that other which tells of “Oldham roughs.”

The Manchester manufacturer of about 1750, as described by contemporaries, was a humble person, of the greatest simplicity, working like a journeyman among his hands; beginning the day before six o’clock in the morning and ending it proportionably earlier, as the habits of the time and the primitive means of artificial lighting dictated. He both produced the goods and warehoused them, and his combined warehouse and factory was also his home. He not only worked with his weavers, but sat at meals with them, and all helped themselves out of a common bowl of water-porridge, and a dish of milk. No one among the manufacturers had such a thing as a “private residence,” and speech was indeed so simple that none of them probably would have understood the term unless put in more homely English.

So much for the mid-eighteenth century47 cotton-spinner. Let us see how his descendant of about 1866 appeared to his contemporaries. A writer in a popular magazine of that date, holding forth more or less eloquently on the characteristics of Manchester men and Liverpool gentlemen, described a “Liverpool gentleman” as a magnificent person who traded beyond his means and abused his credit, finally, when the inevitable crash came, compounding with his creditors on the basis of three shillings in the pound, and continuing his splendid life with almost undimmed splendour. But a “Manchester man,” according to this apologist, when he breaks, breaks utterly, and, surrendering his all, starts again from below. How these distinctions have borne the test of time I will not pretend to say. At that period, according to this same writer, the typical Manchester man was an imaginary person he chose to style “John Brown.” Putting aside the fact that there is no true or exclusive Lancashire ring about the name of Brown, we will pass on to the career of this typical person, as figured in that bygone writer’s keen imagination.

John Brown was originally a poor lad in a cotton mill. His father and mother were—the Lord alone knows whom, for his known career began with his being found as an infant one winter’s night on a doorstep, wrapped in a flannel petticoat marked “J. B.” The foundling was taken to the workhouse and was fed, clothed, and educated at the public charge, finally being sent, as a lad, to the nearest cotton factory, where,48 by his ability and industry, he speedily rose to be a foreman. He married, early, one Mary Smith, who was captured and enslaved by his noble whiskers, and (being probably well versed in penny novelettes, in which the infants of the aristocracy are not uncommonly abandoned on doorsteps) secretly thought him of gentle blood. John Brown, like the Industrious Apprentice in the moral tales, continually rose higher, and became a cotton-spinner on his own account, and a wealthy man, with a magnificent villa at Higher Broughton, or some other place at that time still semi-rural. He knew nothing of Art, but, as it seemed to be the conventional thing for a man in his position to do, he bought pictures, chiefly, it must be confessed, on the basis of so much per square foot. He rose at six, was at the mill by eight o’clock; and had dinner at midday in town. He was home to tea, which he took with his “owd wumman” in the back-kitchen, leaving the magnificent dining-room for uncomfortable state occasions. He was in bed by nine o’clock.

I do not know if any wealthy Manchester commercial men of the late ’sixties recognised themselves in this effort of the imagination; but at any rate it would not hold good nowadays. I do not perceive, at the present time, actually or imaginatively, any great cotton-spinner taking tea in the back-kitchen or retiring at 9 p.m., and, although the art patron idea vigorously survives, it is music that pre-eminently distinguishes49 Manchester in its higher recreations: Liverpool being really the greater art centre, devoted, above all things of culture, to the pleasing of the eye rather than of the ear.

To the typical Manchester man of that time, birth and gentility were nothing. He was, above all things, unsentimental and matter-of-fact, and provokingly literal. It was a Manchester man who, when a passage of poetry was read from Coleridge, declared that the reading, “The swallow was a-cold,” was incorrect, and should be “had a cold.”

“Day is breaking” remarked some one to a cotton-spinner. “Let it break,” he replied, “it owes me nothing.”

It was an inhabitant of some town jealous of Manchester—and there are plenty of them—who declared that a Manchester man, viewing Nelson’s bloodstained coat and waistcoat at Greenwich Hospital, would feel little patriotic emotion. He wonders first what cloth they were made of. It is a cruel saying, but it has at least this foundation: that Little Englandism and the old Manchester School of politics were one. Were one, for the Manchester School of Bright and Cobden is dead and its corpse dishonoured. It is true that what looked like a mental aberration overtook Manchester and the country in general at the election of 1906, but that was, here at any rate, not so much political conviction as your straightforward, forthright Lancashire man’s indignation at the want of honesty, the pitiful pettifogging, that50 characterised the Balfour Administration. There was, moreover, a feeling that the country had not been fairly treated in 1903, when Lord Salisbury resigned his office into the hands of his nephew. The policy of “keeping it in the family,” as though the governance of the country were a prerogative of the Cecil family, was very rightly resented, even to Manchester’s overwhelming rejection of the chief pettifogger himself.

Ten millions of people inhabit the manufacturing districts of which Manchester is the centre. It is at once the wealthiest and the poorest district in England, where wealth has an increasing tendency to accumulate in the hands of the few, and where, according to official returns, there are, at the other extreme, more paupers than anywhere else in the land, with the single exception of Middlesex, including London. The inevitable reverse to the medal of great commercial prosperity is wretched poverty existing side by side with it. It is only in poor agricultural, non-manufacturing countries that poverty is comparatively happy and endurable. If there is a remedy for such a state of things in the industrial centres, no one has yet found or applied it. There is always a large proportion here of the classes it has become the fashion to style “submerged,” and in times when prosperity wanes it increases so as to include most of the wage-earners, and to bring the smaller51 shopkeepers to the verge of ruin. Many of these periods of depression have been beyond human power to foresee or to avert, but others have been induced by the action of the manufacturers, in competition with one another. But in almost every instance of hard times the nearest remedy has been sought, on one side, or the other, in the strike or the lock-out. Lancashire is the home of these crude remedies.

Next to the shortage, or the high price, of raw material, or the slackness of trade, the greatest evil is that of the glutted market, caused by over-production, hardly possible before the days of machinery; an evil which is most often caused by the competition of manufacturers, who continue to manufacture, each one in the hope that, whoever else suffers, he at least will not. Over-production has in the past been carried on to such an extent that goods have had to be sold in bulk for very considerably lower than the cost of manufacture. Selling at a heavy loss, the manufacturers have sought the nearest means handy to reduce their deficit; and this has usually been found in the reduction of wages, rather than in decreasing the output. A five or ten per cent. reduction has generally brought about a strike, which has, before now, been welcome to great firms, in affording an excuse for ceasing to manufacture at a ruinous loss. To provoke a strike on these terms has been the only way out of an impossible situation; and the indignant workpeople have thus, instead of embarrassing the masters,52 unwittingly saved them from bankruptcy. The middle course is the expedient of “short time.”

These are large and serious questions, happily not of late years pushed forward by circumstances so greatly as of yore; but once very prominent indeed. The literature of cotton-spinning and strikes is a very extensive one, and written upon largely by no less an authority than Mr. John Morley, who is of opinion that “some of them (the manufacturers) are idle, some are incompetent, and some of them are blackguards.” This is severe criticism indeed to pass upon as enterprising and as upright a body of commercial men as it is possible to find in England: men, too, not so long since, generally of his own brand of politics. They do not seem the words of a philosopher.

The greatest period of over-production was that culminating in the gorged markets of 1861. The years 1859-60 had been times of “terrific prosperity,” in which new mills had sprung up numerously, and had, in common with the older, been working overtime. In the beginning of 1861 there were 2,270 factories in Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Cheshire, working at high pressure. As a result of the supposition that those good times would last, manufacturers strained every nerve to work their plant and their hands to their utmost capacity, and in doing so produced such a bulk of goods that by their own efforts they brought prosperity to an end. India and China, the great markets for shirtings and yarn, were full up, and ceased to be buyers; and all the while,53 the warehouses of Manchester were bursting with an increasing stock of unsaleable goods. The result was “short time” in October 1861. Even had there been no war in America, bad times would have come; but with the opening of the civil war between North and South, the Cotton Famine of 1862-3, brought about by the cessation of the supply of raw cotton from the Southern States, brought wealthy cotton-spinners to the verge of ruin, and misery and starvation to hundreds of thousands. Every one in the manufacturing districts suffered, for the classes are dependent one upon another. To manufacturers, workpeople, shopkeepers, professional men, the Cotton Famine was a very grim reality. By December 1862, no fewer than 247,000 hands were out of employment, and more than half that number on “short time.” The huge number of 234,000 were in receipt of poor-relief, and the average poor-rates for the manufacturing districts rose from 7⁵⁄₈d. in the £, to 2s. 2½d. The Relief Funds subscribed amounted to over £2,000,000, and the trade losses due to the Cotton Famine were calculated at £70,000,000.

The newspapers of that dreadful time were full of pen-pictures of the Famine, and they are readily to be referred to, but no good purpose would be served by recounting those sad tales. Yet, in spite of all their sufferings, in spite of having everything to gain from the success of the South, the essential sturdiness, independence, and honesty of the Lancashire people’s character kept their54 original opinions firm: that the North was right in fighting against slavery. It was essentially the people’s opinion. Knowing something themselves of slavery in the days before the Factory Acts, they were sympathetic, and were solid for the North. Other classes were, at best, divided, and England as a whole was for the South.

Manchester long ago ceased to be a cotton-manufacturing centre. The growth of the industry, the growth of the city, and the increase of rent, rates, and taxes within it, all led to Manchester becoming the metropolis of cotton, in which it is no longer worked up from the raw material, but where the finished product is warehoused. Warehouses, and not factories, are the prominent buildings of “Cottonopolis”; which is now a city of merchants and middlemen, and the metropolis of the Lancashire industrial towns, where all professions and trades are represented. To see the cotton mills, you need go to Stockport, Bolton, Blackburn, Oldham, and Preston: but whenever they suffer, Manchester will share in their trials.

The magnitude of the cotton-spinning trade is too great to be readily grasped. In the comparatively early stages of its history, in the years 1793-1824, the value of the total exports was £365,000,000, or an average of, say, twelve millions sterling a year, and that of the raw material imported £128,000,000. In 1887, the total value of the annual exports had risen to £70,957,000; or, in other words, it had grown almost six-fold.

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There were then 700,000 operatives, and a sum of £29,400,000 was paid annually in wages. According to the returns for 1905, the exports of cotton goods in that year were valued at £92,000,000, showing an annual increase since 1887 of considerably over a million sterling a year. And still the tide of commercial prosperity is rising; no fewer than eighty new cotton mills having been built in Lancashire in the eighteen months comprising 1906 and the first half of 1907: with the result that there is more work to be done than hands to do it. When in due course the usual over-production ensues, and the scarcity of labour is replaced by lack of work, the bulk of misery and suffering will be proportionately increased; and should there ever come another Cotton Famine, the horrors of 1863 will fade into comparative insignificance.

“What Lancashire thinks to-day, England will think to-morrow.” That is a political byword, not always supported by events; but if we enlarge the scope into a plenary comprehension of affairs, the truth of it becomes much more evident. Railways, in the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, August 26th, 1830, the first in England, originated in Lancashire, and spread from it; and canals, although the first was made elsewhere, at Manchester first became of importance. The opening of the Duke of Bridgewater’s56 canal in 1761, and that of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, mark the beginnings of two different eras: the second of the two freighted with no one yet knows what tremendous possibilities. Manchester is a port, and has become so by an exertion of local patriotism not equalled elsewhere. When shares in the proposed Ship Canal were offered in the financial world and no one would find the capital, the future of the project looked hopeless. The powers for its construction, granted by Act of Parliament, were nearly lapsing, and the promoters were reduced to stumping the surrounding country and holding meetings to advertise the scheme. In that dark hour many working-men of Manchester put their savings into the Company, and the Corporation itself became very largely concerned in it. When the success of the issue appeared assured, the giants of finance plucked up a little courage, the situation was saved at the eleventh hour, and the Canal became at last, after an expenditure of fifteen millions and a quarter sterling, an accomplished fact. It has only recently yielded any return upon that huge expenditure, but the direct access to the sea it gives has enormously increased Manchester’s wealth and importance. The useful and the beautiful, we are told, are one, but the Manchester Ship Canal is not a beautiful object. Its waters are black and smell to Heaven on hot days, and the great locks, swing-bridges, and the like, although wonderful engineering feats, are not improvements upon the landscape. But they have57 a majesty of their own, and if you voyage down the Ship Canal, duly holding your nose, you will be much impressed. You will be even more impressed if you don’t hold it. A succession of docks, lairages, grain elevators and coal-shoots lines this Acherontean tideway: everything equipped with machinery that performs marvels in a quiet, unostentatious, matter-of-fact manner. And the great ocean-going steamers come surging slowly up to Manchester, bellowing for the swing bridges to swing open, and crowds of interested idlers, and the impatient traffic, held up at the flung-up bridges, look upon the sight with never-satiated gaze. It is a perennial wonder, a sensation that never stales.

In some ways even more wonderful are the changes that have overtaken Trafford Park, at the head of the Canal. Time was, and not so long since, when the park railings, along the Chester Road, at the outskirts of Manchester, disclosed broad stretches of wooded lawns, sloping to the Irwell, but it is now as though some magician’s wand had waved away the trees and the lawns and in one act had replaced them with a close imitation of the East India Docks, where skyscraping blocks of fireproof warehouses and mazes of railway sidings form amazing evidences of what the Canal has already done for Manchester. It has certainly “done for” any lingering rural fringe.

I well remember in the long ago being dumped down by the railway in Manchester, as a stranger,58 with no friends in the great city, and with that dim sense of locality only a railway journey can give. Coming by road into any such place, you bring topographical continuity with you, and know where the grim houses end and the smiling country begins; but to be set down solitary in midst of these miles of streets, and then on some leisure day to essay the enterprise of walking out to where the last house fronts upon the fields, and to walk on and on, and never seem to come any nearer the fringe of the frowning houses, is an experience whose horror only De Quincey could hope to portray. London is larger, but its streets have a more varied interest. Here, away from the midst of Manchester, whose central architecture is ornate, if black, the mean, featureless streets sear your very soul. It was before the days of electric tramways, and I walked on and on, and still on, without coming to the end of Manchester, and then at Old Trafford, obsessed with a dread of it all, walked back; thinking, rather wildly, did it ever come to an end.

Having since then come to it and left it by several roads, I am now fully informed as to its limits, and, with that knowledge, the houses look a little kindlier, the streets do not seem quite interminable. But I am still impressed with the extraordinary length to which the paved roads and lanes—paved with granite setts—run. There is a lane—a country lane, for it is bordered with hedges—which I found when exploring the neighbourhood on a bicycle, and that lane went on and59 onwards, ever winding, for miles, and always, although extraordinarily lonely, and with never a house nor a wayfarer, paved with granite setts which it must have cost a considerable fortune to lay there. It began in the neighbourhood of Warburton and ended at a misbegotten place called Broad Heath, and still it was more than six and a half miles to Manchester. I was never before so genuinely astonished in all my life.

At Old Trafford are the Botanical Gardens, once admirably placed, but now as incongruous as though, say, St. James’s Park were set beside the Commercial Road. Manchester amused itself in a genteel way there; but to see how Manchester can intensely enjoy itself after a spell of dogged work, the Belle Vue Gardens, Longsight, should be visited at holiday time. The place is the, superlatively the, popular resort, and is Hampstead Heath, Rosherville, and the Crystal Palace combined.

There is no end to describing Manchester: it is so vast and so varied, and its story presents so many chapters. One might say something of the Fenian outrage of September 18th, 1867, when Sergeant Brett, in charge of the prison-van conveying prisoners to Belle Vue Gaol, was shot in the Hyde Road by a desperate gang of forty armed men endeavouring to release the criminals, Kelly and Deasy. Of those arrested, Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien were sentenced to death, and hanged at the New Bailey Prison, Salford; figuring since in60 the perverted Irish Valhalla of heroes as “the Manchester Martyrs.”

MANCHESTER TOWN HALL.

In another glance at Manchester the great Town Hall, in Albert Square, demands notice, not merely because it cost considerably over a million pounds, but because it is one of the chief architectural embellishments of the city. Opened in 1877, it was, like many other modern public buildings here, the work of Alfred Waterhouse. The style is an enriched Early English and the exterior stately to a degree. But what shall we say of the beautiful but dark interior, with its maze of corridors, its unexpected steps up and steps down? The stranger to Manchester, however, must needs entrust himself to the perils of that wilderness, for in the very fine and striking series of twelve fresco paintings by Ford Madox Brown he will find not only a justification of pre-Raphaelite methods, allied with some fine colouring and some very quaint drawing, but an illuminating pictorial commentary upon the history of the city.

It is not, however, all culture at Manchester: there are all sorts here, as in every great city. Some think the Cheetham Hill suburb the last word in dignity and ease: others extol Whalley Range, but all unite in reviling the Redbank district and Angel Meadow, or Angel Street as I believe it is now styled. Any intimate acquaintance with large towns and the flagrant purlieus in them, usually styled Providence Place, Pleasant View, and the like, will prepare the reader for63 the statement that angels do not inhabit Angel Meadow, any more than they do Seven Dials in London. Culture does not linger here. There is oblique testimony to this in a recent resolution of the Watch Committee to supply a police-constable with a new “set of teeth, to take the place of those he has lost in the discharge of his duty.” They were the celestials of the Angel Meadow district who knocked the constable’s teeth out. Hallelujah! The place is not so far from the Cathedral and the Strangeways Gaol, but neither the promise of present punishment that the gaol holds forth for evil courses, nor the hope of Heaven for the repentant that the Cathedral typifies, suffices to blanch the scarlet sins of Redbank, or to win the inhabitants of Angel Meadow to a better life.

If one thing is more certain than another in any great town, it is that the stranger should not explore back streets. Civic pride will see eye to eye with me there. For, indeed, the stranger in back streets sees strange sights, hears weird language, and smells still weirder odours that are not mentioned in conventional council chambers. The back streets converse in a speech of their own: they read a literature their own, and feed on food of which the front streets know nothing. In fact, in back streets and front you have two worlds that are entirely dissimilar, and know little, and would probably like to know even less, of one another.

64

In despair at picturing Manchester in brief—for it is not to be done—I will devote some pages to a few words as to coaching times, and then conclude. Little can with advantage be said of those times, because the inns to and from which the coaches and waggons came and went are nearly all of the past, and because old inns of any kind are rare in Manchester nowadays. The ancient “Seven Stars” in Withy Grove is, however, not only much older than the oldest coach, but looks it too, in its timbered gables and stout walls, and is even of age remote enough for it to be claimed that the Collegiate Church itself is junior to it. Nay, it even pretends to be the “Oldest Licensed House in Great Britain.” Near it is the equally picturesque and ancient “Old Rover’s Return.” The “Bull’s Head,” in a neighbouring alley, with the finely moulded head of a bull by way of sign, has convivial memories and associations with early postal times, and there stands a grotesquely out-of-plumb timbered and lath-and-plastered old tenement in Long Millgate that was once the “Sun” inn, the place where Ben Brierley and his fellow dialect-poets found inspiration in the chimney-corner. The initials “W. A. F.” and the date 1647, are found upon the old building, but it is obviously at least a century older than that. No longer an inn, it is still known as “Poets’ Corner,” and in its rather vague celebrity the65 curio-dealer who now occupies the premises doubtless finds his account.

THE “SUN” INN, POET’S CORNER.

The foremost coaching inn at Manchester was the “Bridgewater Arms,” near the corner of High Street and Market Street. To it came the Royal Mail. In later years H. C. Lacy removed to grander premises, at the corner of Mosley Street and Market Street: a house that had in its day been a fine private mansion, and then still had the advantage of possessing a very large, well-stocked garden in the rear. He styled this house the “Royal Hotel and New Bridgewater Arms,” and to it came as well as the Mail, the “Defiance” and other smart coaches. It has66 long since disappeared, and the present “Royal Hotel” stands on the site; but the old original “Bridgewater Arms” still exists, although now, and for many a year past, occupied as warehouses. The initials B. I. M. and date 1736 are on a spout-head that looks down upon Bridgewater Place, the narrow alley upon which the warehouse fronts. It is a fustian warehouse in these days, but a poetic tribute by a former guest of the house, torn from the arms of his lady-love, remains, scratched on the glass of an upper window. He had his own ideas of where capital letters and punctuation should occur:

1797 

This enriched pane is very carefully preserved from injury by being covered with wire, and thus the lover’s lament will probably remain so long as the house stands.

The “Peacock,” resorted to by the “Peveril of the Peak”; the “Swan,” where the “Independent” pulled up; the “Star,” rendezvous of the “Manchester Telegraph,” are now merely names; and the times they belonged to are perhaps more thoroughly forgotten at Manchester than in any other city. Looking upon the maze of branching67 tramlines and the hundreds of swiftly running electric cars that begin at five o’clock in the morning and do not cease until after midnight, and are driven more recklessly and at a greater speed than elsewhere, you clearly perceive that Manchester has no time for the past and not much leisure to expend upon the present.

Crossing the Irwell by Blackfriars Bridge, Salford is reached; a distinction, so far as the pilgrim is concerned, without a difference. Just as, to outward appearance, London and Southwark, and Brighton and Hove are one, so are Manchester and Salford. But in local politics they are all separate and independent, and if an observant eye is turned upon the very tramway cars here, it will be seen that there is not only a Corporation of Manchester but a Corporation also of Salford; and, if the comparative gorgeousness of the Salford tramcars were any criterion, Salford should be the more important place of the two. Their comparative rank is, however, to be judged by the fact that a Lord Mayor heads the Town Council of Manchester and a Mayor that of Salford; but the curious anomaly still exists that Manchester stands in the Hundred of Salford, and thus the larger is, in that respect at least, included within the smaller. This singular anachronism is a relic of those very ancient times when the Hundreds were formed. In that era68 Manchester itself was a place largely lying in ruin, the result of Norse fire and sword, and Salford, sprung up on the other side of the river, away from the scene of desolation, bid fair to be its successor in all the ages.

The thunder of railway trains overhead, and the crash and rumble of heavy-laden lorries along the road, accompany the explorer along his way through Salford. But there is an oasis in all this at the Crescent, where the Irwell, in one of its far-flung loops, approaches and the extensive Peel Park appears. Beyond this again comes unlovely Pendleton, and then the Bolton Road and Irlam-o’-th’-Height—that is to say, Irwellham-on-the-Hill—not so romantic in appearance as in name. Here the road rises to those always grim uplands extending to Bolton and giving that place its old name of Bolton-le-Moors: more grim now than ever, for here is the great coal-field that has made Manchester possible.

Passing through Pendlebury, with the old Duke of Bridgewater’s collieries of Worsley away to the left, we plunge into the district of coal-pits at Clifton, where the hoisting-gear of the Clifton Hall Colliery, the marshalled coal-waggons, the rails across the road, and the spoil-banks where starved vegetation takes a precarious hold, make a desolation beside the way. On the left are the sullen moors, with perhaps a solitary cow grazing in one of the few remaining fields, just to emphasise the change that has come over the scene; while on the right, far down, flows the69 Irwell, amid a curious medley of beautiful country, ancient halls and manor-houses, and innumerable collieries and mills whose chimney-stacks spout smoke and steam over all the valley. When a steady rain comes down, on windless days, and diffuses the mingled steam and smoke over the landscape in a grey, woolly mass of vapour, the scene is weird in the extreme; while a wet day at Kearsley or Farnworth, places of grey houses and drab shops, is a desolation in which even the public-houses that have superseded the inns fail to radiate a meretricious cheerfulness.

Moses Gate, now a kind of succursal to Bolton, and with a railway station of its own, was once a toll-gate on the turnpike road. Who was Moses, except perhaps the pikeman, I do not know, nor does any one locally evince the least curiosity. The name is accepted as a matter of course, together with the unlovely circumstances; but railway passengers passing to more favoured places are as a rule extremely amused by it.

Bolton was formerly surrounded by “dreary and inhospitable” moors, but the stranger may doubt their ever being as dreary as the present surroundings of the great black, squalid, and unbeautiful town. In the very far-off days when those surrounding moors first saw this settlement, it was “Bothelton,” from the word “Botl,” which means a homestead. There are several “botl,” “bothal” and “bottle” prefixes or terminations of place-names in these northern70 counties: notably Walbottle, near Newcastle, situated on the Roman wall; and “Bothel” occurs near Morpeth and in the neighbourhood of Keswick. “Bootle” has a similar origin.

At last the name became worn down to Bolton: “Bolton-le-Moors,” to distinguish it from Bolton-le-Sands, on Morecambe Bay; but it is many a long year since this distinguishing mark was last used.

THE “OLD MAN AND SCYTHE.”

There was once a time when Bolton was a cleanly little town that manufactured woollen cloths, fustian, and dimities, under idyllic conditions. Those industries were in full progress when the quarrels of King and Parliament broke rudely in upon the scene, in 1644: the Parliamentary party having garrisoned the place, which, unfortunately for itself, was a walled town. On came Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, from Wigan, with a force to take it by assault, but he was repulsed with heavy loss, and withdrew; the garrison being afterwards reinforced from Manchester, and its strength brought up to 3,000. Again the assault was pressed, and this time the Lord Strange was aided by Prince Rupert with 10,000 men. Two hundred devoted Cavaliers crept up under the walls, while treachery, it was said, admitted the cavalry. The storming of Bolton that ensued was one of the bloodiest affairs of the war, and few were spared from the fury of the Royalists. More than seven years later, the then Earl of Derby suffered for the excesses he, with Prince Rupert,71 permitted on this occasion; for, having been captured at the Battle of Worcester, he was brought to Bolton and beheaded on October 15th, 1651, at the Market Cross in Church Gate, opposite the “Old Man and Scythe” inn: with a grim fitness on the scene of the bloodshed himself had approved. An inscription on the front of the house narrates how “In this ancient hostelry James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, spent the last few hours of his life previous to his execution.” The house, built in 1636, was indeed a portion of his extensive Bolton property. Whatever the original sign of the house, the present72 is doubtless an allusion to the famous exploit of William Trafford of Swithamley, whose pretence of being an idiot saved his property from being plundered by the Puritan soldiery. They discovered him wielding a flail in his barn, and monotonously repeating “Now thus,” and so, unable to make him comprehend anything, they left. Beneath the threshing-floor where this supposed “natural” was gibbering lay his chief valuables. His trick is alluded to in the sign of the “Old Rock House” inn at Barton, near Manchester, where he is represented in a counter-charged suit, alternately red and white, and with his flail, inscribed “Now thus.” Here at Bolton, while the chequered red and white dress, somewhat resembling that of a jester, or fool, is retained, and while he wears a similar fool’s cap, his flail has in the course of years become a scythe.

The “original” heading-axe that decapitated the bloody Earl, who richly deserved his fate, is shown in the inn, which is merely a public-house, together with the chair he sat upon. But a chair also purporting to be the identical one is among the relics at the Earl of Derby’s seat at Knowsley, where there is probably another heading-axe. The only way out of this awkward impasse, to please every one, is to suggest that, being an important personage, he was given two chairs to sit upon and was executed twice, by two executioners! One can say no fairer than that.

The “Old Man and Scythe,” it should be73 added, looks in the illustration a highly picturesque half-timbered building: but it is really commonplace brick, and the “timbering” is but a product of the house-painter’s brush.

At “Bowton,” more than anywhere else along the road, you hear the Lancashire talk, and the people of the town are as rough-and-ready as any in the county, both in manners and in appearance. Even in Lancashire they talk of a “rough Bolton chap,” and as less refined than the people of Wigan, St. Helens, or Widnes; which is very like Walworth reflecting upon the lack of culture in Whitechapel. A good deal of this apparent brusqueness and rudeness is, however, more apparent than real. The Londoner, come from a place where a great deal of insincerity, and even callousness, is hidden by the veneer of conventional behaviour, is startled and shocked by the forthright manners and the very frank speech of Bolton and other manufacturing towns, but there is a heartiness about the people there is no mistaking. That typical character, “John Blunt,” has certainly peopled Lancashire with his kin.

The clogs still clatter on the pavements of Bolton, and shawled girls are yet to be seen going to and from the mills, but even in the last fifteen years Bolton has grown enormously, not only in population but towards a higher standard of life. Yet, to this writer at least, the thought of Bolton will ever recall the odour of fried fish; for it was on a winter’s evening, long ago, that74 he first came into the grim town. Fried-fish shops filled the air with a revolting reek, and everywhere along the pavements walked those who without ceremony ate their suppers out of newspapers. High above, yellow in the dark sky, like bilious eyes, glowered the illuminated dials of the Town Hall clock, while ever and again the quarters chimed and the hours growled out.

TOWN HALL, BOLTON.

Bolton is especially proud of its Town Hall, which was opened in 1873, and was the first of those immense buildings, of a monumental character, that of late years have been built in hundreds of towns, less to fill a need than to please the vanity of mayors and aldermen. No wonder, when municipalities build palaces for themselves, and house every department royally and regardless of cost, the rates go mounting ever higher.

The Town Hall of Bolton, designed in a75 composite classic style, is, in most of its circumstances, a good deal more imposing than useful. A weary flight of steps leads lengthily up to the colonnaded portico, and although it looks magnificent, is, practically, a sorrow to all who have often to scale it.

A clock-tower, 220 feet in height, surmounts this elephantine building, which cost £170,000, and has so imposing an appearance that it has been the parent of many others; the design having been so admired that it was closely copied in every detail by Leeds, Portsmouth, and other towns; Paddington also proposing to build itself one upon the same model. But the Bolton parent of them all has become very grim; being, by reason of the smoke from the two hundred or so lofty factory chimneys of the town, “as black as your hat.”

FIRWOOD: BIRTHPLACE OF CROMPTON.

The most interesting places in Bolton are—to speak in paradox—just outside it. On the Bury road, where the electric tramcars race, you may with some difficulty find the little turning at Firwood, where the humble birthplace of Samuel Crompton still stands. Along the main road the modern houses march prosaically on to Bury, but down this little turning, which descends steeply and has the most extravagantly uneven paving anywhere in the neighbourhood, you find a nook very much in the condition of the whole countryside76 in Crompton’s day. Always excepting, of course, the big cotton-mill that stands here. Looking down towards Bolton there are still fragments of woods and tangled brakes—fir-woods, or others—but on the skyline, as ever in Lancashire, are factory chimneys, wreathing fantastic smoke-trails. Among the three cottages here, Crompton’s early home is identified by a stone tablet inscribed—

Birthplace of
SAMUEL CROMPTON.
Born Decr. 3rd, 1753.

I look at that humble, stone-built cot with something of reverence. It did not, however, witness his bringing-up, for when he was but five years of age, his parents removed to Hall-i’-th’-Wood, an ancient mansion from which the owners had migrated to a more modern residence. Here77 the Cromptons farmed in a small way, and here Samuel’s father early died.

Hall-i’-th’-Wood (the Lancashire pronunciation may be written down “Hauleythwood”) stands in a situation still romantic, in the parish of Tonge, one mile from Bolton, on the Blackburn road. The great and ancient woods of oak that once surrounded the old house are gone since then, but the Eagley Brook yet comes foaming down in little cascades amid the rocks of the picturesque gorge above whose crest the Hall is situated; and there are patches of woodland remaining to inform the scene with sylvan beauty. It is, frankly, a surprise, set as it is at the very edge of the roaring traffic of a high road with shops where housewives are bidden by leather-lunged butchers “Buy, buy, buy”: and as delightful as surprising.

The Hall in the Wood is not only interesting as the place where Samuel Crompton invented the Spinning Mule: it is one of the finest examples among the many ancient Halls of Lancashire, and is singularly varied in its architecture; having been built in two separate and distinct periods, and in each period of entirely different materials. It was one Lawrence Brownelow who built the original half-timbered portion, in 1591, as appears by the initials of himself and his wife Bridget, and the date,

B
L      B
1591

carved on a stone mantel. In 1637 the property was sold to Christopher Norres, woollen-draper, of78 Bolton, who was succeeded by his son, Alexander, a partisan of King Charles in the Civil War. Norres escaped lightly from the victorious Parliament, with a fine of £15 and the taking of the Covenant and other oaths; and then settled down here, building the stone wing that bears the date 1648. With him, however, ended the Norres reign, for his daughter Alice married a John Starkie, whose descendants resided here until near the middle of the eighteenth century. Their punning heraldic cognisance, six storks for Starkie, may still be seen, done in plaster.

HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD.

It was a neglected and dilapidated old house to which the Cromptons came in 1758. For economical reasons—the window-tax then prevailed—all the unnecessary windows, and some that really were necessary, had been bricked up, rain came through the roof, and rats ran unchecked from room to room. There, in a house a world too large for them, the widowed Mrs. Crompton and her little lad lived upon the proceeds of a small farm and the insignificant gains she made from spinning yarn, by hand, as all yarn then was spun. Samuel helped in the spinning, much, it may be supposed, against his will; and in the drudgery of it his inventive powers were wakened, in the direction of labour-saving. Hargreaves’ spinning-jenny of 1768 and Arkwright’s invention were new when he began to plan, and his machine took the form of an improvement combining the principles of both. He was twenty-one years of age before he began the work, and not until five81 years were gone had he completed it. The times were not propitious for inventors, bands of infuriated weavers roaming the districts round about, destroying everywhere the spinning-jennies that they imagined were depriving them of work; and Crompton was obliged constantly to take his model to pieces and hide it in the garret roofs of his wind-swept, rat-haunted home. But at length the weavers’ fury spent itself, and then he could experiment without fear of house and model being wrecked. Then, however, arose a newer danger. Crompton, it became gradually known, had a wonderful new machine in the old place, and many were those who sought in some way to surprise the secret of it, among them the crafty Arkwright, inventor and man of business too: an unusual combination of talents that Crompton, unfortunately for himself, did not possess. In the result, the secret was given away for a miserable pittance, and not even patented. Factories were equipped with his invention, and manufacturers combined to subscribe, as an act of grace, a hundred guineas that should, multiplied a thousandfold, have been his by right. In 1812, Crompton found that the number of spindles worked on his principle totalled five millions. In that year a reward seemed almost within his grasp, for a vote of £20,000, in recognition of his services was proposed, and was to have been submitted to Parliament by Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister; but that very day, in the act of carrying a memorandum to that effect in his82 hand, Perceval was assassinated by Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, and the proposal was not renewed. But by the intervention of some friends a memorial to Parliament was prepared, which was signed by the principal manufacturers of the kingdom, with the result that the sum of £5,000 was granted to him. Let us here observe the exquisite humour of the thing. The “principal manufacturers” had become such, and had amassed great wealth by aid of Crompton’s mule, but they meanly went to Government, and thus taxed the whole nation for a sum themselves should have raised.

With this sum Crompton established his sons in the bleaching business; but the establishment failed, and the inventor was again in straitened circumstances. A second subscription was raised, and a life annuity purchased for Crompton, producing about £63 per annum. He enjoyed it only two years, for he died in 1827, aged seventy-three, and was buried in Bolton parish churchyard.

The last stroke of cynic fortune was not dealt until 1862, when the hapless inventor had been thirty-five years in his grave. Then the town of Bolton, whose manufacturers had, living, denied him a livelihood, set up a statue to the man who had made their town, and twenty other towns, great and prosperous. Among those present at the unveiling, and shrinking in his poverty from the robed and finely apparelled magnates, was Crompton’s surviving son, then aged seventy-two, and in the poorest circumstances. Palmerston83 eventually sent him a dole from the Royal Bounty Fund.

If the spirits of the departed can know what goes forward in the world they have left, there must be bitter ironic laughter in the Beyond. Plundered and neglected in life, Crompton is tardily honoured in death. The darkling, mouldering old Hall has, through the munificence of Mr. W. H. Lever, been purchased from the representatives of the Starkie family, finely restored, stored with personal relics of Crompton, and presented, as a lasting memorial, to the town of Bolton. It is open, freely, every day. There you see Crompton’s old violin, his Bible, and chair, and a model of his Spinning Mule. But there is much else besides. Old portraits and old prints decorate the panelled walls, and ancient furniture fills the room. Panelling has been brought from an ancient house at Hare Street, near Buntingford, and a finely moulded plaster ceiling copied from the “Old Woolpack” inn, Deansgate, Bolton, pulled down in 1880. From the stone-flagged terrace of the garden you look across to Bolton itself and the clustered chimneys whose murk affronts the sky.

There are two ways out of Bolton, to Chorley and Preston; known severally as the Chorley Old and New Roads. The old road ascends windy heights, and although still a practicable highway, is of such a character that any traveller—not84 being a professional explorer of old roads—who finds himself on it, and perceives the new road going flat, below, is deeply sorry for himself. The way into this old road is by the group of houses called Dorfcocker—where the “Tempest Arms” displays the Tempest cognisance and their motto, “Loywf as thow Fynds”—and along Boot Lane. Thence comes a steep steady ascent past the “Bob’s Smithy” inn and the cottages of Scant Row—well-named in its meagre, hungry look—to the “Horwich Moorgate” inn with the subsidiary title of the “Blundell Arms.” Did any authority compensate these unfortunate inns when the traffic was diverted into the “New” road? Let us hope so, for the doing of it deprived them—not of a livelihood, else how could they have continued to live?—but certainly of all save the merest means of existence. There remains yet a look about the “Moorgate” inn which tells you that not always did it rub meanly along on selling beer to rustics or mill-hands. Alas!

Henceforward, having reached the summit, and not wishing to remain on this wind-swept height, it is necessary to descend: that is obvious enough. But not easily is that descent made. To Avernus the transition is reputed to be easy and comfortable: to Horwich, where the old and new roads join, it is martyrdom, especially if it be undertaken on a cycle. And so descending, cautiously and with alternate prayers and curses, over the agonising pits and gullies in the neglected setts of the Chorley Old Road, to the85 only less fearful surface of the Chorley New Road at Horwich, we come at the two hundredth mile from London to the great lake-like reservoirs of the Liverpool Waterworks, formed in 1848, stretching for a long way alongside the road, and occupying the site of Anglezarke Moor. To a height of 1,545 feet rises the sullen mass of Rivington Pike, in the background, crowned with its masonry beacon. There are at least two dozen other reservoirs of different sizes up there, in the vast gloomy moors where the Pike presides: reservoirs in solitudes looking down upon the circle of busy towns comprising Bolton, Bury, Wigan, Blackburn, and Preston, and supplying their needs.

RIVINGTON PIKE.

The great reservoirs beside the road, fenced from it by an ugly dwarf wall and iron railing, are full of fish, and in most respects like natural lakes; but the scenery, bold though it be, is scrubby and hard-featured, and the scant trees look to those used to the softer and more luxuriant86 vegetation of the south, starved. But if one has courage sufficient to follow the waggonette-loads of beanfeasters from Bolton, who favour these scenes, there will be found a quite charming wooded glen and waterfall at Dean, beyond Rivington village.

RIVINGTON PIKE FROM THE ROAD.

That, however, is by no means the way to Chorley; but rather a side dish: albeit a good deal more appetising than the main road itself. Chorley was in Leland’s time, the matter of four hundred years ago, down in doleful dumps. “Chorle,” he notes, painstaking traveller that he was, “wonderful poor, having no market.” This is where your modern Chorleian smiles the smile of conscious worth, for the place is the antithesis of what it was then and is wonderfully rich and populous. At the same time, I do not find anything at all to say about it, except that continual tale of cotton-mills, supplemented here by calico-printing. There is an ancient parish church, with relics of St. Lawrence, its patron saint, brought from Normandy in 1442 by Sir Rowland Standish, and enclosed doubly behind glass and an iron grille; and with the elaborate canopied pew of the Standish family of Duxbury Park, near by. The Standishes number among their ancestors such diverse characters as that loyal squire, John Standish, who helped to dispatch Wat Tyler; and the much more famous Miles Standish, “a blunt old sea-captain, a man not of words, but of actions,” who, born in 1584, sailed with the Pilgrim Fathers to America in the Mayflower,87 in 1620. The Chorley parish register of baptisms in 1584, in which his name should occur, is defaced, lending some support to the theory that his claim to be the rightful heir to the Duxbury estate was feared by his contemporary relatives, who are in this manner suspected of seeking to invalidate it. Whatever his prospects of success, he relinquished them in sailing for New England, where he became the best-known of those early colonists, and has found apotheosis in Longfellow’s Courtship of Miles Standish. The poet represents him as the elderly widowed Governor of Plymouth, in love with Priscilla, and, at once too shy and too busy to do his own love-making, despatching his youthful secretary, John Alden—himself in love with Priscilla—to woo her, “the loveliest maiden in Plymouth,” by proxy. Poor John went on his mission, as he was bid, and loyally fulfilled it. But without avail. Miles, in John’s arguments, appeared to every advantage.88 He was a great man, the greatest in the colony, and heir to vast estates; a gentleman, like all the Standishes, with a silver cock, red-combed and wattled, for arms, and all the rest of it. But these great gifts were nothing to Priscilla, who no more than any other girl could endure love-making by deputy, and, seeing the true condition of affairs, asked, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

A monument, 120 feet in height, stands on Captain’s Hill, Duxbury, to the memory of this stout but bashful sailor, and when the elements are kindly forms a conspicuous landmark. But rain is your portion in these latitudes, which perhaps is the reason why the present writer, not alone in this disability, failed to find that “Sea View” of which the sign of a wayside inn on the road from Chorley to Preston speaks. But after all, rain or shine, that is no wonder, for measured on the map, across the flattest of country, it is seven miles thence to the sea.

Hard by, on the right hand, is Whittle-le-Woods—there should be elements of humour in the name to Americans, that nation of whittlers—celebrated (a strictly local celebrity) for its alkaline springs, sovereign, so they say, for rheumatic affections, but more potent, it would appear, in brewing, for “Whittle Springs Ale”—a kind of stingo—obtrudes upon you, on sign and hoarding, all the way into Preston.

Clayton Green is an outlying settlement of Clayton-le-Woods, one of the several unimportant89 villages in the neighbourhood with that foreign conjunction. There is nothing whatever to be said of Clayton Green, which has a place in my memory only as the spot where, in an inclement summer, I stood sheltering under the dripping trees at the entrance to a park, and saw, as I shivered there in the cold wet blast, a hundred-legged insect happily crawl into his warm, snug crevice between the stones of the dry walling, out of the miserable day. And the cold wind blew, the rain, fell, and the motors swashed by in the ankle-deep slush of the muddy road, and it was yet over five miles to the outskirts of Preston.

DARWEN BRIDGE AND WALTON-LE-DALE.

Bamber Bridge, where you see, not the rustic bridge across the tributary of the Ribble that conferred the name upon the place, but instead a very busy and dirty railway level-crossing, is now;90 a something in the likeness of a busy town of cotton-spinning mills. Beyond it, the road comes to the Ribble itself, and to Darwen Bridge, rebuilt in 1901, the latest successor of the original bridge built in 1366 and rebuilt in 1752.

Walton-le-Dale, the village on the right, looks a peaceable place enough, and it has little history, but it came very near being the scene of a bloodstained struggle between Catholics and Presbyterians in the Old Pretender’s rising of 1715. Nearly the whole of the Catholic gentry of Lancashire had turned out to aid the Pretender’s forces, and the rebellion was almost on the point of changing from a dynastic conflict and a clash between Whig and Tory ideals into the very much more serious matter of a religious war. The rising of the Tories and the Catholics stirred to furious antagonism the Whigs and the Low Churchmen, but most of them blew off their rage in violent language. Not so the valiant Boanerges of the dissenting chapel of Chowbent, near Bolton, who not only breathed fire and slaughter, but took the lead of eighty among his congregation, whom he marched off to the front; the front being the passage of the Ribble, over against Preston. There the embattled minister—this valiant Parson Woods, “General Woods” as they called him—posted his men to withstand the crossing of the river, and was said to have drawn his sword and sworn he would run through the body the first man who showed signs of timidity. Having arrived there, armed only with what Baines, the91 Lancashire historian, calls “implements of husbandry”—what a beautiful phrase, covering the ungainliness of the poor crooked scythe and spade!—in front of a strong force of rebels, armed with implements of war, they doubtless were timid; but the bold advance of General Wills saved the situation, and Parson Woods had no excuse to embrue his hands in gore. But King George the First, recognising his earnestness, sent a gratuity of £100, which Woods promptly divided among his men; they in their turn handing it over towards rebuilding their chapel.

For the rest, there remains but to remark upon this singular epitaph, dated 1685, in Walton-le-Dale church, before we have over the bridge into Preston:

“Here lyeth the body of a pure virgin, espoused to the man Xt Jesus, Mrs. Cordelia Hoghton, whose honorable descent you know. Know now her ascent.”

Crossing the Ribble and looking backwards, the view along the dale to where Walton stands is charming; but with the extraordinary expansion of the Lancashire cotton-spinning industry, and the building here of many new mills, it seems like to be an expiring charm of scenery. Already the mills have come across from the north to the south bank of the river.

92

Preston has always been known as “proud.” The old rhyme ran:

But the rhyme long since went out of date. One would hesitate to declare that Preston is in any sense poor, while certainly the reproach of its church having a low steeple has been removed these many years past; for the spire of St. Werburgh is a particularly fine and lofty one, rising to a height of 303 feet. If it be necessary to find an origin for that supposed pride of Proud Preston, I should look for it in the fact that the town has always been the capital of the Duchy of Lancaster, and not in the story of its ladies once considering themselves too superior to mate with the commercial men of the neighbourhood.

“Proud Preston” occupies a proud position, on lofty ground overlooking the Ribble and its extensive flats. Its name, “Priest’s Town,” derives from the site having been the property of a Benedictine priory once situated here, but before the time of the priory, it was named “Amounderness,” from the ridge, or ness, then, even more than now, a striking object across the levels. Penwortham, on the opposite side of the river, was in that early period the chief place, for there stood the great castle of the Earls of Chester, giving security to peaceable folk against the incursions of the Scots; but when the county of93 Lancaster was made a Duchy, and the defence centred at Lancaster, Penwortham decayed and Preston grew populous. The unwisdom of this move across the river to a site without strong defences was immediately made apparent, for no sooner had Preston grown into an important town than the Scots, under Robert Bruce, came and burnt nearly the whole of it.

Charters to the number of fifteen, ranging from the time of Henry the First to that of Charles the Second, have been conferred upon Preston; mostly in recognition of its importance as capital of the Duchy of Lancaster; and desirable privileges, such as the right of gaol and gibbet, tumbril and pillory, were added, so that Preston might deal, quite independently of Lancaster, with cases arising here, that demanded those engines of justice.

Still, it was ever a prosperous and busy town, as the antiquity of its guilds proves; and suffered considerable loss in the Parliamentary war, when it was the scene of two struggles between Royalists and Roundheads. The first was in 1643, when the townsfolk were divided in opinion, and fighting took place in the streets: the second in 1649, when a Royalist army, commanded by Sir Marmaduke Langdale and the Duke of Hamilton, was driven from Clitheroe to Ribbleton Moor, on the outskirts of the town, by Cromwell, with a numerically inferior force.

The next taste of warlike times was in 1715, which was like to be a very serious time for94 Preston; for in the Jacobite rebellion that made this year memorable, the townsfolk figured more than a thought too prominently as well-wishers to the cause. English rebels, as well as Scotch, made this incursion from Scotland something new in the moving annals of such things. In olden times the Scots had come from the north as enemies; now the Old Pretender, “James the Seventh of Scotland and Third of England,” was proclaimed at the market-cross with every mark of approval, and the hospitality of the townsfolk and the smiles of the young ladies were extended to those who, it was thought, were presently to upset “the Elector” in London.

This kindly reception wrought disaster to the rebels. They had reached Preston on November 9th, but, instead of marching onward and fighting, idled away the precious days in feasting and flirting: and, as it proved, these hospitable burgesses and pretty girls formed what military strategists might call a “containing force” really helpful to the Royal armies hurrying up to meet the rebels, who were caught in Preston town, as neatly as possible. The invaders had numbered two thousand, but it is typical of the mismanagement of this ill-fated rebellion that ever since October 6th, when the Northumbrian Jacobites had assembled at Rothbury, their counsels had been divided. Later, when they had joined forces with a body of Scottish rebels, and had marched along the Borders, and so down into Lancashire, there was little authority and no discipline. The95 Scots wanted to fight in Scotland, and the English, for their part, declined to conduct the revolt there. So, grumbling and dissatisfied, they came south, under the leadership of Forster of Etherston, elected “General,” but a person of no native capacity or acquired military knowledge, and simply one of the famous, long-descended Northumbrian Forsters; famed less on account of their merits than that they had existed in Northumberland so long, and owned so many of its acres.

Disheartened by the feebleness of the invasion, five hundred of the insurgents left, and marched away home again. The remaining fifteen hundred were reinforced at Preston by the Roman Catholic gentry of Lancashire, their servants and tenantry, to the number of twelve hundred, but they appear to have been an embarrassment rather than of use.

Towards Preston, by way of Manchester and Wigan, came General Wills, on behalf of King George. His force numbered only a thousand men, and had the invaders been commanded by a soldier, or even by a civilian of ordinary courage and determination, it is possible the rebellion, of 1715 might have been successful. But Forster was a pitiful fellow. He did not even place Preston in a proper state of defence. It was not a walled town, and barricades were hastily run up on Wills’s approach being made known; but no advantage was taken of the excellent defensible position in advance of the town, where the road ran in a hollow way, and where the96 bridge across the river in itself could have been successfully held by few.

Forster, on hearing of Wills’s march, did certainly a more extraordinary thing than ever any other military commander is reported to have done on the approach of the enemy: he went to bed! I believe we could have respected him more had he run away. How it was that the other leaders, the Earls of Derwentwater and Kenmure, merely roused him from his couch, and did not take stronger measures, is a mystery. Better, perhaps, had they done so; for although the barricaded town repulsed the attack made by Wills on the 12th, and indeed inflicted severe loss upon him, Forster agreed to surrender unconditionally, and delivering Lord Derwentwater and Colonel Macintosh as hostages, did actually deliver up the town on the 15th. Meanwhile, the Lancashire Roman Catholics had run away, and none saw the going of them.

Fighting at Sheriffmuir and elsewhere in Scotland followed before the rebellion was crushed, but the surrender at Preston marked the end of this incursion upon English soil. Fourteen hundred prisoners were taken, many of considerable standing. Some among them being half-pay officers, were treated as deserters, and were summarily shot: hundreds were consigned to Chester Castle and afterwards sold into slavery overseas; but those who had been the moving spirits were taken to London. Among them were the egregious Forster, Lords Derwentwater, Kenmure,97 Nithsdale, Carnwath, Widdrington, Wintoun, and Nairn. They reached London on December 9th; riding horseback from Highgate with their arms tied behind their backs, to the sound of the drum: a mock “public entry,” to satirise the hopes they had expressed, in a happier hour, of a triumphal procession into London.

On the whole, the Government acted with leniency. Derwentwater and Kenmure were executed, twenty-two rebels were hanged in Lancashire, and four in London; but Lord Nithsdale, exchanging clothes with his wife, fled from the Tower, and others were permitted to escape, or were pardoned after an interval.

Forster escaped from Newgate by an ingenious ruse, only possible in days when prisons were conducted very much like hotels. He had inveigled Pitts, the Governor, into his room and the two sat drinking wine there while Forster’s servant locked the head-gaoler’s attendant in the cellar. Forster then left the room, ostensibly for a moment, but did not return, and the Governor, alarmed, arose to find himself locked in. Already, while he was vainly shouting and thumping upon the thick oak door, Forster and his trusty servant had enlarged themselves from gaol, and were making for Rochford on the Essex coast, whence they embarked for France.

Forster took no further part in public affairs, but travelled to Italy, and died at Rome in 1738. Had he shown generalship at Preston equal to98 this of his flight, all might have gone well with the Pretender.

The rebellion of 1745 came nearer success than this of thirty years earlier, but we do not find Preston harbouring and encouraging the rebels of that time, to anything like the same extent. The gaiety of Preston was not, this time, for them. But what, after all, did that gaiety amount to? A great deal, perhaps, judged by the standard of the wild Highlanders, come but lately from their solitary glens; but very little, it would seem, reckoned from an English standpoint, if the business then done by the sole wine-merchant of the town may serve for comparison. It would appear that the merchant who supplied Manchester lived at Preston, as the resort of the gentry, and was rarely asked to supply more than a gallon of wine at a time: and that a time which did not commonly stint itself in drink.

It was a very small place in those days, and numbered little more than 6,000 inhabitants; but when the factory system was introduced into the cotton manufacture, it grew rapidly, and is now a great town of more than 113,000 people. Nothing else so vividly shows us how far removed we are from those days, in circumstances and spirit, than the simple juxtaposition of those eloquent figures, which speak far more eloquently than the most impassioned descriptive writing.

PRESTON: TOWN HALL, HARRIS PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND SESSIONS HOUSE

There remains a certain stateliness in the streets and houses of Preston: an aristocratic “county town” environment that not all the expansion101 of industrialism has been able to engulf: an eighteenth-century appearance that calmly declines to be hustled out of existence. The refinements of life, in so far as they are reflected by many dainty tea-shops and restaurants, are not lacking at Preston; but let the stranger come into the town on a Saturday night, and he will see another phase of existence, for then the place is typical of all Lancashire towns on that supreme marketing occasion. The streets are thronged with the people of Preston and all the villages round about: it is a marketing and pleasuring saturnalia, wherein the brilliantly lighted shops, the barrows, and the shows compete for the custom of thousands of good-humoured mill-hands whose weekly wages are burning holes in their pockets.

Preston Town Hall was long pre-eminent among the town halls of Lancashire, and a source of peculiar pride to the townsfolk, but others have since eclipsed it. Designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, it looks like an instalment of St. Pancras station, in London, also designed by him, unaccountably mislaid in the provinces. Manchester, the biggest town, holding, bien entendu, all the tricks, has rightly gone Nap on town halls, and has won the game. Even in Preston its pre-eminence has since been challenged, for in the self-same square there stands the immense building of the Harris Institute and Public Library, designed in the Ionic order of architecture: a very severe Greek contrast with the gay Early English of the Town Hall. But there are even later competitors, the Sessions House and102 the Post Office, to challenge attention. Of these two, the first is in the present fashionable Eclectic Renaissance, while the Post Office is the product of the Office of Works, and of no style at all. The great square in which these various buildings stand is, therefore, nowadays very much an exhibition of architectural methods, incongruous and mutually destructive.

“TEETOTAL”

Outside Preston, probably not one person in a thousand knows how the word “teetotal” sprang into popular use. It is said to have been, to all intents and purposes, deliberately invented by “Dicky Turner,” a reformed drunkard, who, speaking at a meeting held in September, 1833, at the Old Cockpit, declaimed vehemently against the arguments of the moderate drinkers, and insisted upon total abstinence. “I’ll have nowt to dee wi’ this moderation botheration pledge,” he said: “I’ll be reet down out—an’—out tee—tee—total for ever and ever.”

“Well done,” shouted the meeting, and the word was adopted, with enthusiasm.

It bore no reference to tea, as often supposed, nor was it the result of a stuttering attempt at the word “total”; for Turner was not a stutterer, but was well known as a coiner of words, at any103 emergency; to say nothing of being a perpetrator of what in an Irishman would be called “bulls”: of which the following is a supreme example. Speaking in furtherance of the temperance movement, he said, “We will go with our axes on our shoulders and plough up the great deep, and then the ship of temperance shall sail gallantly over the land.”

A stone in St. Peter’s churchyard, to his memory and to that of fellow-workers in their cause, is inscribed

Beneath
this stone are
deposited the Remains of
RICHARD TURNER,
author of the word Teetotal,
as applied to abstinence from
all intoxicating Liquors,
who departed this life on the
27th day of October, 1846,
Aged 56 years.

Here—where did you get that hat?—you see the fearsome spectacle (according to modern ideas) that Dicky Turner presented.

It will be observed that in this claim to the origin of “teetotal” there is a qualification not generally admitted. This reservation is generally overlooked, but is important. He was indeed only author of the word in its application to total abstinence, for it was at that time well known in Ireland, and is to be found in the writings of De Quincey and Maginn. But every tale is good until the next is told, and in another version104 “teetotal” is said to have originated in a general signing of a pledge of moderate drinking: those who signed and were prepared for total abstention adding a T, for “total,” to their signatures.

To conclude with Preston, it was here that the inspiration was given to Focardi, then an unknown and needy sculptor, for his group, long since famous, “You Dirty Boy!”

Lodging in a humble purlieu of the town, he witnessed the scene of the old woman scrubbing the writhing urchin and rubbing the soap into him, and realising the humorous possibilities of such a group, secured the two as models and at once set to work. He could not have foreseen the price of £500 at which the statuary was purchased, nor the world-wide advertising celebrity it was given, in pictures and in replica terra-cotta statuettes, by the proprietors of Pears’ soap.

The twenty-two miles between Preston and Lancaster are more remarkable for the excellence of the road than for the interest of the way. When you have achieved the pull-up past Gallows Hill—or what was once known by that name—where numbers of the rebels of 1715 expiated their error of judgment, and have come to where the tramways cease, the road becomes undulating, and is neighboured, first on one side and then on the other, by the railway and the Lancaster Canal. At Hollowforth what looks like an ancient105 gateway was built in 1853 from the stones of an old obelisk formerly standing in Preston market-place. The little river Wyre is twice crossed, at Brock’s Bridge and Garstang. At Myerscough, where the pull-up was formerly very trying for horses, the inscription may be read:

To relieve the sufferings
Of animals labouring in our service
The steep ascent of this hill
Was lowered
At the expense of Mary and Margaret Cross
of Myerscough,
A.D. 1869.
This deed of mercy appeals to every
Passer-by, that he too show Mercy to
The creatures God has put under his hand

GARSTANG.

Garstang, that stands rather finely on the road, with its old “Royal Oak” inn and ancient market-cross, hinting, not remotely to those who care for these things, of better days, was in fact once a market-town. But Garstang has outlived its ancient importance. Time was when it owned a Mayor and Corporation, who proudly dated106 back to 1314. Even in 1680 it was sufficiently important to win a renewal of its ancient charter of incorporation, but it has long lost any relics of its old state. The interfering besoms of the Local Government Board swept away the Mayor and his subordinates in 1883, and presented Garstang instead with a nice new Town Trust. It all sounds very improving and wonderful, but the plain man suspects only the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee in all this; with, of course, the inevitable legal charges for making the wonderful change.

In the days when Garstang did a large cattle trade, that singular seventeenth-century character, Richard Braithwaite, who styled himself “Drunken Barnaby,” came staggering through, with his usual skinful, on his way from Lancaster.

There are two jokes belonging to Garstang. One is the parish church, situated a mile and a half away, in a lonely situation, and the other is the railway that here crosses the road. To-day, those of the inhabitants upon whose hands time hangs heavily haunt the street with fell intent to inflict the Great Railway Joke upon the unsuspecting stranger who, maybe, halts to examine the cross. They fix him, as did the Ancient Mariner107 the Wedding Guest, with their glittering, or rheumy, eye, as the case may be, and with hoarse voice and pointing finger ask him if he sees that railway. Assured that he does, comes then the answer, with weird chuckles: “the longest railway in England, the ‘Garstang and Not End.’” Now the “Garstang and Knott End Railway” is probably the very shortest, being not quite seven miles in length: hence this stupendous funniment. Where it does end, however, is at Pilling. Some day, when the long-projected five-miles’ extension to Fleetwood, and a junction with the railway there, is accomplished, the joke will be extinct and the humour of Garstang dowsed in blackest night.

Beyond Garstang, the Bleasdale Fells appear, away to the right. The old importance of the road, before the railway that now runs so swift and frequent a service, is seen in the various inns on the way. There are the “New Holly,” “Middle Holly,” and “Old Holly,” or “Hamilton Arms,” inns. The “New Holly,” at Forton, replaces an older house of the same name, still standing, at Hollins Hill, on the left, on the old road that went out of use in 1825. Even the wayside “Bay Horse” railway station takes its name from an inn that was once a change-house for the coaches. In 1825 the “Bay Horse” inn was closed, and re-opened in 1892.

Galgate and Scotforth demand no notice, except that the former is thought to have obtained its name from “Gael-gaet,” a passage for the Gaels, or Scots, and that the name of Scotforth carries a108 similar meaning. For we are come now within hail of the land that was in the old times always seething in Border raids: the district that Lancaster Castle, at the easy passage of the Lune, was built to defend.

Lancaster is a fine name, if it is but pronounced as it should be; but the traveller who may chance to be something of a connoisseur in fine old place-names is a little shocked to find the town locally known as “Lankystir” and the county as “Lankyshire.” The old stirring history of the place wilts and droops in that horrible pronunciation.

There is, after all, a very great deal in a name. A “Lancashire man” has a commercial sound: you detect the chink of coin in it, and it has, in truth, a modern appropriateness, for Lancashire is nowadays nothing if not commercial. Call him, however, a “Lancastrian,” and he becomes at once to the imagination an embattled warrior worthy of figuring, with all the circumstances of chivalry, in the Wars of the Roses.

LANCASTER.

There are still some few traces of the Roman antiquity of Lancaster, in the castle—the castle on the river Lune, that gave the place its name—but it is in Norman and mediæval circumstances that it chiefly figures. The castle, the very beginning and origin of Lancaster, stands on a bold hill rising above the Lune in so convenient a situation for defence that Nature might almost111 have thoughtfully provided it for the purpose, and represents the stronghold built by Roger of Poictou, who held all Lancashire from William the Conqueror. Exactly how much of the once formidable Roman castrum he found here cannot be known, for the Normans were more intent upon conquering and securing their military successes with fortresses, than upon preserving antiquities. The cult of the antique was, in fact, not yet born; and when, about 1094, the great Roger began to build the grim keep that still remains the chief feature of Lancaster Castle, he spared nothing in the way of Roman altars and sculptured relics that might in any way serve his turn. To him and his builders they were relics of old, forgotten things, already dead and damned with Paganism and the Roman rule, some, six hundred years: as remote a period, for example, as from our day backwards to that of Edward the Second, which seems to ourselves no inconsiderable space of time.

So into the foundations of his immensely thick castle walls, and into the rubble core of them went many Roman inscribed stones that antiquaries would now dearly prize. Adrian’s Tower, with the Well Tower, was built originally in Roman times: the first so early as A.D. 125, and the Well Tower in A.D. 305, by Constantius Chlorus. Roger, the Norman, seems to have repaired and added to these. In Roman times the basement of Adrian’s Tower was a place where the corn for the garrison was ground.112 Later it became a bakery, and has since 1892 been a museum. In the excavations of 1890, an old floor and a considerable deal of rubbish were removed, to a depth of eight and a half feet, revealing the original level. In the course of these works a portion of the Roman millstone for grinding corn was discovered, and here it remains, in company with such diverse objects as a Roman altar, found in the foundations of the Shire Hall in 1797; some pikes captured from the Scottish rebels of 1715, forbidding festoons of fetters, and a “madman’s chair,” fitted with bolts and chains, as used at the time when the dark lower chambers of the keep served the purpose of county lunatic asylum, and, together with the fearful treatment accorded the lunatics, served only to confirm them in their lunacy. There are indeed some very fearful things in this old fortress, place of judgment, and prison of Lancaster Castle, which has been everything, from the home of kings down to debtors’ prison and county gaol.

As Shire Hall, Sessions House, Assize Courts, and gaol it still remains. Prominent among the gruesome sights of the castle are the dungeons in the Well Tower, one below the other, in the basement, where prisoners lay in darkness, secured to the floor by the iron rings that still remain. The roof of the upper dungeon bears witness to the method of its construction. The earth having been first spread with a strongly made layer of wattled osiers, liquid cement was then run over them, and in drying formed a compact mass.

113

The earth was then easily excavated beneath the ingeniously constructed roof. Some few of the osiers still remain in it.

More modern resources of justice are seen in the Drop Room, and in the Crown Court itself, where, at the back of the dock, may yet be seen the “Holdfast” and the branding-iron once used in branding malefactors with an M on the brawn of the left thumb. The operation was performed in Court and the success of it announced by the Head Gaoler in the formula, “A fair mark, my Lord!”

“A FAIR MARK, MY LORD.”

The tragical memories of Lancaster Castle range from mediæval deeds of blood down to the executions of prisoners taken in the Jacobite rebellions, and to the merely sordid executions since it has been a gaol. From 1799 to 1889, when the castle ceased to be a gaol for the whole of Lancashire, no fewer than 228 criminals were hanged here.

114

He is a fortunate visitor who comes to Lancaster at the opening of Assize (unless he comes for trial), for old times live again in the pageant of the Judges’ reception by the Javelin-men, in their costume of blue and yellow, who escort them to their lodgings, and stand attendant in Court at the opening of the commission of Oyer and Terminer.

The impressive approach to Lancaster Castle is by way of John o’ Gaunt’s gateway, one of the many works added by that historic personage, Shakespeare’s “time-honoured Lancaster,” when his father, Edward the Third, created him Duke of Lancaster and raised Lancashire in consequence to the condition of County Palatine. The “time-honoured” one himself stands in effigy in a niche over the door-way. One would like to think the statue contemporary with him, but the guide-books, from which no derogatory secrets are hid, tell the disappointing tale that it dates only from 1822.

JAVELIN-MAN.

LANCASTER CASTLE.

John o’ Gaunt is not to be avoided in Lancaster,115 castle or town. He is, indeed, to be found pretty well all over the country, for he was not merely Duke of Lancaster (although that was no small matter), but owned manors in almost every part of England. Moreover, from him sprang the House of Lancaster, the Red Rose, whose struggles with the Yorkist White Rose form so long and bloody a series of chapters in English history. Here, in Lancaster, from “John o’ Gaunt’s Chair,” the topmost turret of the castle keep, down to Horseshoe Corner, the great Duke is everywhere, and figures on picture-postcards, china, and silver spoons with a fine impartiality. Horseshoe Corner is an otherwise commonplace crossing of streets where, in the middle of the roadway, a horseshoe is inserted. It is the representative, at this long interval of time, of a shoe cast by116 John o’ Gaunt’s horse on the spot, and is renewed every seven years.

St. Mary’s Church, adjoining the castle, and separated from it only by that sad spot on the terrace where criminals were hanged in the times of public executions, is a fine bold structure of Perpendicular character, and possibly a good deal might be said of it in the architectural way; but it interests me chiefly as containing a memorial brass, now very much the worse for wear, to Thomas Covell, Governor of the castle forty-eight years, Coroner forty-six years, and six times Mayor of Lancaster. He died in 1639, aged seventy-eight, and is the subject of the following encomiastic verse:

He is represented standing, with hands clasped in prayer; a long robe, open in front, disclosing his tall military jack-boots.

No merrier fellow than the good Covell ever presided over dungeon and little-ease. Prisoners who were fortunate enough to be consigned to Lancaster Castle used it as a country house; and, so that they fairly gave their parole to return, went117 and came very much as they pleased. Some of them, that is to say. Popish recusants were sure of the best attention, and the Bishop of Carlisle, writing with some heat upon the subject, declared “they have liberty to go when and whither they list; to hunt, hawk, and go to horse-races.” Enjoying life himself, Covell was kindly disposed to others of like temperament. To Burton, however, one of the Puritans who was sent to Lancaster Castle to have his ears cropped, this high-spirited Governor was a “beastly man.”

“Drunken Barnaby” was not of that opinion. Doubtless the two drank many a noggin together; Barnaby writing him down—

John Taylor, the so-called “Water Poet,” who on his “Pennyless Pilgrimage” to Edinburgh and back levied toll on many men’s hospitable tables, tells how

and in short he was very much, in the amateur way, what his brother was professionally, who kept the “George” inn, in the town; and, strange to say, his wife was no less hospitable than himself.

We are not accustomed to think of Lancaster as a seaport, but it was once much more important in that way than Liverpool itself. To be sure, that was long ago, but not so very, very long:118 no further back, indeed, than the time of Charles the First, who, in levying what has been called the “objectionable” tax—but what tax is not, to the taxee?—of Ship Money, assessed Lancaster at £30, Liverpool at £25, and Preston at £20. What Manchester has laboriously and expensively done in its Ship Canal might more easily and cheaply be effected by Preston and Lancaster, lying nearer the sea: and doubtless a time will come—but with that we have no concern. Meanwhile there are salmon in the Lune, as wanderers along the riverside by Crook o’ Lune may discover, and Lancaster as yet knows nothing of great commercial docks. With modern developments, however, the Town Council has felt the need of a borough motto. “Time-honoured Lancaster” was suggested, but the Heralds’ College, sticklers for accuracy, pointing out that this referred to John o’ Gaunt and not to the town, suggested “Luck to Loyne” instead; and accordingly, “Luck to Loyne” it is.

The finest view of Lancaster is from the Skerton Bridge crossing the river Lune at a point where the castle and the old church of St. Mary group finely on the castle hill, and rightly form the most prominent objects, historical as they are. Unfortunately for the view, railway developments have done a good deal to destroy its majestic simplicity. A railway bridge of the most atrocious lattice-girder type, crossing from the point known by the curious name of “Green Ayre,” cuts the finest picture in half, and a number of sidings119 have abolished the verdant banks of the Lune for a good distance and form undesirable neighbours to the embowered beauty of Ladies’ Walk.

Skerton Bridge, which takes the road out of Lancaster to Carlisle, in 1900 replaced the old Lune Bridge built in 1788, which itself replaced a much older structure.

But the commercial spirit has seized historic Lancaster, and factories of various kinds thrust their chimneys into the sky. Oilcloth-making by hand was started in a small way many years ago, in an old shed rented by a journeyman house-painter, Williamson by name. The enterprise quickly prospered and grew into a wealth-producing wholesale business. The journeyman painter’s son is now Baron Ashton, much to the dissatisfaction of many jealous folk who gave his father a job in the days of small things. It is a romance of industry, and has helped to change the appearance of Lancaster, the quiet, grave country-town of yore. There was until recent years a bleak and barren upland known as Lancaster Moor, overlooking the town: it is now transformed, with trees and shrubs, as the “Williamson Park.” A huge new Town Hall is also a Williamson product, and overlooking all Lancaster and dwarfing the importance of the old castle itself, a mammoth bugbear of a thing called the “Ashton Memorial” arrests the eye from far and near, like a St. Paul’s dome on the hilltop. Entering Lancaster from the north, you can no more miss seeing it than you could miss seeing St. Paul’s from Ludgate120 Hill. American tourists ask, in their picturesque way, “Who in thunder built it?” and they are told that it is built to the honour and glory of the Williamson family. It arouses terrible thoughts of what may yet be in store for the historic places of Old England, when each ennobled maker of wall-papers, drain-pipes, and the like shall feel that the merits of his race demand advertising as prominently as his wares.

The suburb of Skerton, on the north side of Skerton Bridge, leads to the hamlet of Slyne, perched on a hill overlooking Morecambe Bay. The place-name “Slyne” looks as unpleasant in print as do the personal names of Silas, Matthias, or Jabez, and the meaning of it, as of the similar place-names “Slindon” and “Slinfold,” in Sussex, seems to have escaped research. A quaint old manor-house, now a farm, with an odd doorway inscribed

G
C      M
1681,

stands facing the road, and with the old “Cross Keys” inn, dated 1727, comprises nearly all there is of Slyne. Here comes the left-hand turning to Hest Bank, on the shore of Morecambe Bay, whence old travellers, greatly daring, took a short cut across the treacherous quicksands at low water, to Grange and Cartmel, instead of going the roundabout way of Carnforth and Milnthorpe. Lancashire is here cleft into two separate and distinct portions, Lonsdale south121 of the sands, and Lonsdale north; a great wedge of Westmorland coming in between.

MAP OF THE “OVER-SANDS” ROUTE.

The geography of the district surrounding Lancaster is by no means simple. It is a country bordering upon the sea, which here and there advances into the land, in the shapes of great sandy bays and long, tongue-like estuaries of short but turbulent rivers that, taking their origin as mountain-torrents amid the gloomy heights of the eternal hills and mountains of Lakeland, have their sudden moods, dictated by the melting of the snows, and by rain-storms. The distant landscape in the neighbourhood of Lancaster is always closed122 in by mountain heights, and the flat shores of Morecambe Bay look the more flat, and the far-off fells appear the more rugged, in these several contrasts.

A considerable number of these little rivers come pouring down from the Lakes to the sea: the Lune, the Kent, the Keer, the Winster, the Leven, the Crake, and the Duddon. The road on to Kendal and Carlisle avoids all the estuaries, and goes uneventfully onwards; but travellers who wished to pass expeditiously between Lancaster, Furness, and Ulverston had no choice but to make their perilous way “Over Sands,” across the inner bight of Morecambe Bay, at low tide. The alternative was the unwelcome, and anciently the dangerous, one of going the extravagantly long way round by Milnthorpe, Crosthwaite, and Newby Bridge, under Whitbarrow, where the treacherous Mosses, almost as dangerous as the sands of the seashore, spread, and where the lawless and desperate cattle-reivers lurked. Confronted with these problems, old-time wayfarers generally chose the sands.

The story of “Lancaster Sands,” as they are often called, is romantic and melancholy. The hazardous crossing was made between Hest Bank and Kent’s Bank, a distance of eleven miles, over a wet sandy waste that is twelve feet deep in sea-water, at high tide. In these days of railway travel, and since 1864, when the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway was opened, the Over-Sands route is less frequently used, and principally by farmers’ carts and by inquisitive tourists; but123 in all the earlier centuries it was necessary, and great pains were taken to ensure, so far as might humanly be, the safety of travellers across.

The sands are first mentioned by Tacitus, in his history of the second campaign waged by Agricola against the Western Brigantes, the tribes inhabiting Furness and the northern detached district of Lancashire now known as North Lonsdale. The Romans, with their usual combined thoroughness and prudence, appear to have made causeways crossing the estuaries of the Kent, the Leven, and the Duddon, considerably inshore from the exposed Over-Sands route and somewhat on the route of the present railway bridges; but traces of their handiwork are now very few.

The next historical reference is not met with until 1325, when the Abbot of Furness petitioned the King that his jurisdiction might be extended in this district, to comprehend the Leven Sands, which were so dangerous that many travellers, sixteen on one occasion, and six on another, had been overtaken by the tide, and drowned. His petition was granted, and the Abbot established, on an island half-way across the estuary, a little chapel in which the monks prayed all round the twenty-four hours for the safety, or for the souls, as the case might be, of those who sought to cross. It is, however, scarce to be supposed that the Abbey privileges would have been thus extended had the aid to travellers been merely that of prayers. A more practical note was the124 addition of a lighthouse, or beacon tower, to the chapel, combined with the readiness of the monks to guide strangers. Since 1820, the guide across Leven Sands has received an annual salary of £22 from the Duchy of Lancaster, with a grant of three acres of land. He enjoys, in addition, under the provisions of the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway Act of 1851, a further £20 a year, in compensation for loss of fees caused by the opening of the railway; for although he is a public official, he commonly received gifts and free-will fees from those he guided across in pre-railway days.

The more lengthy journey, from Hest Bank to Kent’s Bank, was under the especial care of the Priory of Cartmel, which from an early period maintained an official guide who was paid out of a grant made to the Priory from Peter’s Pence for the especial purpose of performing this public service. Travellers here also had the benefit of the monks’ prayers, which in truth they often needed.

This very necessary office of guide did by no means fall into decay with the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry the Eighth. Provision was made by the expenses being charged to the Duchy of Lancaster: “the Carter over the Kent,” as the guide was called, being paid £20 per annum by the Receiver-General, and the guide across the shorter passage of the Keer being paid £10. The Carter no doubt performed his duty, but the Sands every now and then claimed their victims. Thus,125 in the registers of Cartmel may be read the following tragical entries:

“1576, Sept. 12. One young man buryed, which was drowned in the brodwater.”

“1582, Aug. 1, was buryed a son of Leonard Rollinson, of Furness Fell, drowned at the Grainge, the 28th daye of July.”

“1610, Feb. 4, John ffell, son of Augustine, of Birkbie, drowned on Conysed Sands.”

“1630, Aug. 10, Wm. Best, gent., drowned on Melthorp Sands.”

The registers of Cartmel alone testify to over 120 persons having lost their lives while crossing the channels of these treacherous shores.

The race of secular guides across the Kent began, after the surrender of Cartmel Priory, with Thomas Tempest. Son succeeded father in the office, but they seem soon afterwards to have become Carters; probably having adopted the name from their official title.

The poet Gray, touring the Lake Country in 1769, relates a pathetic story of a family overtaken by the mists half-way across the Sands: “An old fisherman told me, in his dialect, a moving story, how a brother of the trade—a cockler, as he styled him—driving a little cart with his two daughters (women grown) in it, and his wife on horseback following, set out one day to cross the Sands, as they had been frequently used to do (for nobody in the village knew them better than the old man did). When they were about half-way over, a thick fog rose, and as they126 advanced they found the water much deeper than they expected. The old man was puzzled. He stopped, and said he would go a little way to find some mark he was acquainted with. They stayed awhile for him, but in vain. They called aloud, but no reply. At last the young women pressed their mother to think where they were, and go on. She would not leave the place. She wandered about, forlorn and amazed. She would not quit her horse and get into the cart with them. They determined, after much time wasted, to turn back, and gave themselves up to the guidance of their horses. The elder woman was soon washed off, and perished. The girls clung close to their cart, and the horse, sometimes wading and sometimes swimming, brought them back to land alive, but senseless with terror and distress, and unable for many days to give an account of themselves. The bodies of the parents were found the next ebb, that of the father a very few paces distant from the spot where he had left them.”

LANCASTER SANDS.

[After J. M. W. Turner, R.A.

The story is still remembered how, in the days when coaches crossed Grange Sands at low water, an outside passenger lost his portmanteau and excitedly jumped down after it, becoming half-engulfed in the treacherous quicksands. He would probably have perished, had the guard, used to the place, not come to his rescue, and pulled him out, with a resounding “cluck,” similar to the noise made when drawing a cork.

But a more serious affair was that of 1811,129 when the Over-Sands coach, the Lancaster stage, was overturned in the Kent Channel, through the horses turning restive. They brought the coach to a stop, and the current washing away the sand under the wheels of one side, the whole affair turned completely over. It was very nearly a tragedy, for there were fifteen passengers, inside and out, flung floundering in the sand and water at a very dangerous place. A young lady, floating on voluminous clothes down the Channel, was grabbed by the guard, and the passengers huddled together on the side of the overturned coach; but all the loose luggage was swept away and lost, and two pointer dogs were drowned. The passengers were brought to land on the backs of the coach-horses, the last being taken off none too soon; for the coach was gradually sinking, and was eventually completely engulfed in the sands.

A narrow escape was that of Major Bigland, who was crossing one dark evening in his gig from Lancaster, intending to reach Cartmel. He drove towards the sea instead, and only by extreme good fortune managed to land near Conishead. A post-chaise was lost and the postboy and one of the horses drowned near Hest Bank in 1821, and in 1825 the Lancaster coach was blown over, midway, and a horse drowned. The passengers were only with difficulty saved. In 1832 the identical coach was sunk in a quicksand. Much later, in 1846, nine merry holiday-makers, returning from the Whitsun fair at Ulverston, drove130 into a treacherous spot near Black Scar, on the Leven Sands, and were all immediately drowned: and a similar disaster occurred to a party of seven farm-hands crossing the Kent Sands to Lancaster in 1857, the year the Furness Railway was opened, and the Over-Sands coach discontinued. In every case, the bodies were easily found; lending point to the grim story told of an ancient mariner who, asked if guides were ever lost on the sands, answered with simplicity: “I never knew any lost. There’s one or two drowned, now and again, but they’re generally found when the tide goes out.”

About 1785 a coach was started between Ulverston and Lancaster, going daily across the sands. The scene at its crossing was curious. The Carter, on horseback, headed it, and in its wake generally followed a number of carts and other country vehicles, forming a procession not unlike an Eastern caravan crossing the deserts of Arabia. The Carter’s guidance was absolutely necessary, for although the track might at every ebb be beaten out by a multitude, the incoming tide inevitably obliterated every trace of it, and the channels were constantly shifting. A contemporary account says: “The Carter seems a cheerful and pleasant fellow. He wore a rough great-coat and a pair of jack-boots, and was mounted on a good horse, which appeared to have been up to the ribs in water. When we came to him, he recommended us to wait till the arrival of the coach, which was nearly a mile distant,131 as the tide would then be gone further out. When the coach came up, we took the water in procession, and crossed two channels in one of which the water was up to the horses’ bellies. The coach passed over without the least difficulty, being drawn by fine, tall horses. Arrived at the other side, the Carter received our gratuities and we rode on, keeping close to a line of rods which have been planted in the sands to indicate the track. The channel is seldom two days together in the same place. You may make the chart one day, and before the ink is dry it will have shifted.”

A sufficient testimony to the dangers of the sands is found in the fact that those who have known them best have ever been the ones to most dread them and the “cruel crawling tide” that with the shifting of the wind can readily change from a crawl to a hissing seething gallop across the perilous flats.

The proper time to attempt the crossing is five hours after high water, but even then only in fine weather. A strong sea-breeze will bring the flood in, fully an hour before the tide-tables; while after heavy rains the crossing is impossible, owing to the flood-water from the rivers permeating the sands in every direction and converting the whole route into one vast quicksand. Never132 at any time should the stranger attempt the passage without competent assistance.

The dangers of the Lancashire coast were illustrated once more at the very moment of these lines being written, in the inquest held, September 1907, on John Richardson, a farm-labourer who was engulfed in the quicksands at Broadfleet Bridge, Pilling, near Garstang. While walking on the sands, he sank to the waist, and being far from any human habitation, his cries could not be heard; with the result that he met a fearful death by slow drowning, as the cruel tide crept up across the lonely shore.

Turner’s picture of the coach crossing the sands is dramatic, but nothing in the way of drama is enacted there now. It is a grey and sullen scene. On the skyline to the left is the tall ugly tower at Morecambe, and dimly on the right the mountains of Lakeland. The London and North-Western Railway runs along the shore, at its Hest Bank station cutting off proper access, and only by the rarest chance is the Over-Sands route now taken.

CARNFORTH.

The village of Bolton-le-Sands, standing on the Lancaster Canal, and near the shore, is a small place of many inns—the “Blue Anchor,” “Black Bull” and others—and an old church, surrounded and almost overhung by trees. Succeeding it is Carnforth, growing almost while you wait, in the new-found prosperity of its ironworks, where a133 goodly quantity of the hæmatite ore of the adjoining Furness district is smelted. Beyond it, in a choice of routes to Kendal, by Milnthorpe or by Burton-in-Kendal, we take the second, past the “Longlands” inn; where traces of an older road to Kendal are to be found. A mile onward, a considerable stretch of it, on the left hand of the present highway, exists as a deserted lane, very narrow here and there, and overgrown with grass. In general, however, farmers have gradually abolished it and added it to their pastures, and even this surviving stretch is in process of being similarly swallowed and digested. Portions of it are not without their romantic aspects: as where a huge granite crag, called from time immemorial “the Buckstone,” stands in the hedgerow and recalls the trials of travellers in a bygone age, when roads were little better than winding tracks and sign-posts did not exist. They went,134 those palpitating travellers, as directed, “past the Buckstone,” standing for centuries as sure a landmark as anything in this countryside. And now it is forgotten, except by the farming and field-folk and those whose business or pleasure is in the byways and the hedges. Many surrounding houses and natural objects are named after the wild deer that once roamed the district: among them Roanad Hill, and Hilderstone and Deerslack farms.

From the Buckstone you see the rugged terraced hill of Farleton Knott, styled by the county historian “the Gibraltar of Westmoreland,” and, down beneath, the clustered houses of Burton-in-Kendal; but before you reach that decayed town the old road is cut off and a modern lane leads on the right into the highway, past Dalton Park, through whose grounds the old road ran its winding way. Still, a few yards within the Park wall, may be seen, amid the trees, a rude milestone bearing nothing by way of inscription save the figure “10.” This, if you please, was the curt way of informing travellers that they were ten miles from Lancaster. It is obvious that old-time wayfarers had to bring some native understanding with them.

The old boundary of Westmoreland and Lancashire, somewhat varied in recent times, is seen marked on a brass plate on the way to Burton-in-Kendal, opposite a group of old cottages standing in a hollow beside the modern raised road. The place is called Heron Syke, and the deep hollow135 and surviving fragment of old road illustrate the ancient name, indicating a marshy place with a brook, once frequented by herons.

THE BUCKSTONE.

And here we are in Westmoreland. Authorities have not yet done disputing whether it was originally “Westmoreland,” or “Westmereland,” for the moors and the meres, i.e. the lakes, are equally prominent in the county; and, by the same token, there is no settled spelling of the name, “Westmoreland”; with two “e’s” or with one. The one “e” appears to be now the more favoured of these versions, but, for my part, I plump for the more romantic-looking old style.

The old wool-market of Burton-in-Kendal is extinct, and that is a very quiet uneventful place nowadays, in which a narrow street of grey stone houses opens into a little square where the granite pillar of a market-cross, reared upon three steps,136 stands, bearing witness to an importance otherwise not only past, but almost forgotten. The market-cross was by way of being stocks and pillory as well, for the steps were fitted with contrivances by which petty offenders were literally “laid by the heels.” There were two pairs of them, as the inquisitive may readily see: and there, thus securely fastened, the rogues and vagabonds of Burton’s busier days were exposed to gibe, insult, and missile.

THE MARKET CROSS AND PILLORY, BURTON-IN-KENDAL.

On the night of April 30th, 1812, some evil-disposed persons placed no fewer than eleven gates across the road between Lancaster and137 Burton-in-Kendal, with intent to upset the mail; which indeed only narrowly escaped. These scoundrels were never caught.

Burton is, or was, a loyal place, and does what it can to celebrate national events. It cannot, in the very nature of things, with the slender resources at its command, do much, and its high-water-mark of effort is seen in a very ordinary gas-lamp, erected to commemorate the wedding of the Prince of Wales in 1863.

THE “DUKE OF CUMBERLAND” INN, AND FARLETON KNOTT.

Farleton Knott—most hills in these parts are “Knotts”—strikingly overhangs the road to Kendal, rising in grey scarps, ridges, and terraces above a level stretch, where the humble old whitewashed “Duke of Cumberland” inn stands beside the lonely way. This is followed, at a considerable interval, by Crooklands inn, with the church of Preston Patrick on the right, and the hamlet of End Moor, all seated in, or overlooking, a green and fertile valley, where a silvery beck winds away138 in shining loops. The scene, with its rich grass and fine trees, might be in one of the bolder parts of Surrey, rather than in the north.

KENDAL CASTLE, AND THE ROAD INTO KENDAL.

Now Kendal is approached, its ruined castle surmounting a rounded green hill and thrusting out ragged walls almost in the likeness of some rocky outcrop. Kendal Castle seems to have been so threatening a fortress—and it still looks especially formidable from the north, whence most of its possible enemies could come—that no one appears ever to have attacked it. They went round the other way, if another way could be found, or—better still—stopped at home.

At Kendal was born the much-married Katherine Parr, whose family at the time were lords of the castle. Thirdly, she was married by Henry the Eighth, and was so fortunate as to survive him. How little she regretted that Royal husband we may judge by the fact that, two months after his death she married, fourthly an139 old flame, Admiral Lord Seymour of Sudeley, and then, a year later, died, aged thirty-six.

On the Milnthorpe road, a mile short of Kendal, stands the little manor-house of Collin Field, a halting-place for the night often used by that formidable lady, Ann, Countess of Pembroke, on her journeys between her various residences. It was purchased in 1660 by her secretary, George Sedgwick, who long lived there and occupied his leisure in writing of his great mistress. The house is an admirable specimen of the semi-fortified smaller residences of that age.

And so into Kendal, across the river.

Kendal, originally Kirkby Kendal, i.e. Kirk-by-Kent Dale, is indeed very much among the waters, for here the river Kent, reinforced by tributary streams pouring down from the misty fells, foams down in weirs, and is crossed, in highway and byway, by no fewer than three bridges. There is good fishing for the “gentle” angler in these waters. Though why “gentle” and where the gentleness is more than I can comprehend. For sport, the angler baits his cruel line and, if sport be good, he, himself an exemplar of “nature, red in tooth and claw,” hooks, with his fiendish barb, some unfortunate trout or grayling in the gills.

The streets of Kendal are mostly “gates,” as Stramongate and Strickland gate, and were once140 picturesque, in the stern way of these northern latitudes; but Kendal, in these days a highly prosperous agricultural town, and in a favourable position at the gate of the Lake Country, is being greatly rebuilt, and looks, to those who hurry by, little removed from the common run of provincial towns. Motor-tourists to and from the Lakes do not deign to halt at Kendal, and he who does may notice, any day of summer and autumn, a veritable procession of cars hurrying to and from those resorts and regarding Kendal as an unwelcome incident, containing inhabitants and dogs, which are to be run over only at risk to car and purse.

The great church of Kendal lies low, by the river, and is great, not in height, nor in any imposing architectural design, but in the sheer ground-space it covers. It has no fewer than five aisles, and by consequence of them looks squat. It is a kind of Westmoreland Westminster Abbey, the place of sepulture of barons and squires innumerable from the castle on the hill yonder and from the country round about. Their private chapels, where Parrs and Bellinghams, Stricklands, Howards, and others lie, are now not a little the worse for wear, and no longer private; and their mortuary glories obscured. But to one of the old school of county historians or patient genealogists, the interior of Kendal church would be, in the way of hatchments, heraldic carvings, and flatulent epitaphs, the study of years. More to my purpose are the strange incidents and the odd inscriptions of the place.

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There hangs, for example, in the once private chapel of the dead and gone Bellinghams a helmet with a story. Once, it seems, in the days when Cavalier and Roundhead fought out their dispute, there flourished a family of Philipsons in the Windermere district, with a notorious person, Major Robert Philipson, at their head: so wild and reckless that he was commonly known as “Robin the Devil.” It is hardly necessary to add that he was not a Puritan. This rumbustious character, greatly incensed that the Puritans should have established themselves in the town, under one Colonel Briggs, set out one Sunday with a number of horsemen, to kill the colonel in church. Happily for Briggs, he had not attended service that day, and Philipson, rampaging with drawn sword over the building, was baulked of his prey: although it does not seem quite certain that Robin would have been fortunate had Briggs been present, for even without their commander the people present made him run, and in his haste to go his helmet was knocked off against an archway. He did not stop to recover it, but made off as quick as he could go. So much for your daredevils. The helmet was hung up as a trophy. But Smelfungus, the antiquary, who must for always be spoiling the best stories with his dry facts, tells us that the helmet is really a portion of the funeral armour of Sir Roger Bellingham, suspended over his tomb.

Among the interesting items in Kendal Church are pieces of an ancient cross, dated about A.D. 850,142 and the monument to over one hundred and fifty officers and men of the 55th (Westmoreland) Regiment, who fell in that most stupid of blunders, the Crimean War, from which none, save the Army contractors, ever reaped any advantage. Here, too, is a Chinese “Dragon Flag,” captured at Chusan, and deposited in the church in 1874.

Here, also, is a monument to the unfortunate Sir Augustine Nichols, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, poisoned when on circuit at Kendal in 1616. But the most curious object in Kendal Church is the epitaph upon a former vicar, the Reverend Ralph Tyrer, B.D., who died in June 1627. The curious rhymes of which it is composed are said to have been written by himself; but, however that may be, it is certain that whoever was the author of them was keenly desirous of puzzling posterity. He has done it effectually, too. He has set out, in his rugged and uncouth way, that—

“My sister wed me”: that is the crux of the matter; but it does not appear that this is to be taken seriously, in its ordinary meaning. As to the real interpretation, we are offered at least two143 stories: the one that his sister, finding him too busy or too diffident a man to do his own wooing, conducted his courtship for him and provided him with a wife of her own choosing. In that case, she dared much. The alternative theory is that the word “sister,” as used here, is intended to bear an academical meaning, and to indicate that he was educated at Cambridge but admitted ad eundem afterwards to the “sister University” of Oxford.

The people of Kendal were turbulent folk in the old days, and varied the humdrum existence of woollen manufacture and the printing of cottons by rioting: keeping up their reputation in this sort until the early years of the nineteenth century, when the first Parliamentary election was excuse sufficient for an outbreak. The making and the dyeing of the once famous “Kendal green” cloth is a thing of the past, and peace is now the characteristic of Kendal, but the reputation of the neighbourhood for incisive wit remains, in the ancient story of the horseman who asked a countryman the time o’ day. “Twelve o’clock,” said the man, looking at that rural chronometer, the sky.

“Twelve!” exclaimed the traveller. “I thought it was more.”

“Did y’ever know it to be moor nor twelve?” rejoined the man, turning away.

The traveller, struck with this unusual rustic facility for repartee, sent his servant after him, to know if he would like a situation as a jester.

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“Here, fellow,” said the servant, “my master wants to know if you would like a place as fool.”

The reply was disheartening: “Does he want two on ’em, then, or are you going to leave?”

The turbulent people of Kendal no doubt acquired their character from the old-time circumstances of the place, ever subject to incursions of Scottish raiders. Sturdy independence, and a readiness to hold their own, thus become traits in these men of the dales and fells. Something of the ancient trials of Kendal town may yet be seen, behind the modern smug facing of shops in the older streets, where houses and cottages are built around courtyards approached only by narrow alleys easily to be defended, in case of attack.

The last occasion when these old defences seemed like to prove again useful was in 1745, when Prince Charlie, in memories of whose enterprise this road is so rich, came with his ill-disciplined following. But nothing serious happened: the Prince stayed the night in Stricklandgate, at the old mansion still standing, numbered 93, and rested there again on his retreat. Next day came the Duke of Cumberland, in hot pursuit, and he also halted at the old house, pleasantly remarking that they had entertained his cousin there, the day before. I suspect the more or less unwilling host of Prince and Duke, in fear of consequences, explained, as politely as he could, that he entertained whom he must.

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CASTLE DAIRY.

There is, after all, singularly little pictorial quality in Kendal. The old town-house of the Bellinghams, in Stramongate, built in 1546, still exists, although the family is extinct; but it turns the commonplace front of an ironmonger’s shop to the street. Indeed, old Kendal is only to be pictured in that fine rugged building, the Castle Dairy, in Wildman Street. It is supposed to have been the dairy of the old castle, and still contains a few of the many ancient and curious relics found in old cupboards and secret places in its immensely thick walls, together with some fragments of stained glass bearing the arms of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby. But the curious genealogy of the Saxon kings, and the old illuminated Roman mass-book, have been removed to the Public Library.

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Between Kendal and Penrith, a distance of twenty-six miles, is situated the bleakest and most trying stretch of country in all the distance from London and Glasgow. It is the district of that high-perched table-land, 1,400 feet above sea-level, dreaded by the old coachmen, and the passengers too, as “Shap Fell.” All the weather of Westmoreland is brewed amid the inhospitable altitudes of Stainmoor and Shap Fell, which are, in addition, afflicted with the local phenomenon known as the “Helm Wind.” This, perhaps fortunately for travellers, is not a winter’s gale, but a playful blast that characterises the days of May and June. When the tourist reads that it is strong enough to overturn horses and carriages, and that the noise of it may be heard twenty miles off, like thunder, or the roar of a cataract, he entertains serious thoughts of accomplishing this stage of his journey by rail. The Helm Wind derives its name from the “helm,” or cap, of light clouds that rests immovably for hours in the sky at the time of its blowing. It blows across the fells of Westmoreland and Cumberland, rushing down their steep sides and lashing the waters of the Lakes into furious waves and driven spray.

The ascent to this not very promising region begins by a gentle rise at Mint Bridge, one mile from Kendal. It continues, with increasingly steep gradients, but with two short intervals of147 down gradient, for nine and a half miles, when the summit is reached. Although Shap Fell has so ugly a name, the rise at no point exceeds 1 in 10. It is rather the long-continued character of the ascent to the exposed summit that makes the road remarkable.

The coaching accidents on this stage were remarkably few. The principal happening of this kind was when a country mail was upset at Kirbythore Bridge, on Hucks Brow, owing to the horses shying at a quite inoffensive water-wheel. The coach fell eight feet, and a horse was killed, but there the damage ended. A stalwart Yorkshire wool-stapler, who was riding outside, was flung off and made to perform a complete somersault, but he alighted safely on his feet, and just in time to catch, at “mid-off,” a parcel which shot with wondrous velocity out of a woman’s arms, and proved on inspection to be a baby. He said, dryly, when they congratulated him on his fielding, that “a stray baby isn’t generally a good catch for a man.”

It was only right and proper that on such a road as this amateur coachmen were few. It would, indeed, have sounded a higher note of propriety had there been none at all. With regard to the mails, the Post Office regulations, not only on this road, but on roads in general, strictly forbade coachmen allowing amateurs to drive, and expected the guards to interpose, to prevent anything of the kind. On one occasion, when young Teather, of Teather & Son, the148 mail-contractors, had taken the coachman’s place, and was about to drive his own horses, a half-indignant and half-terrified passenger seized the reins because the guard would not veto the arrangement. What would have happened to that guard for not fulfilling his instructions to the letter we do not know, for there happened to be a change of Government at the time, and when the guard somewhat impudently desired to know which of the two Postmasters-General—the in-coming or retiring—he was to address in his defence, the matter was allowed to drop.

One of the few privileged amateurs was Mr. James Parkin, who generally worked on Teather’s ground out of Penrith, towards Carlisle. He was one of those who would drive only the best of teams, and so gave up when the railways encroached and the horses on the shorter journeys became inferior. He was wont to say he did not care to be a “screw-driver.” He was a very steady but slow-going whip: too slow for the Mail, and lacked energy to make his horses slip along over the galloping ground, where really scientific coachmen always made up for lost time. The guard, in fact, was perpetually holding up his watch, admonishing him to “send ’em along.”

Ramsay of Barnton was a good enough whip when the cattle were good, but he liked to choose his ground. Nightingale, the great coursing judge of that day, was the one to “take a coach through the country.” He took the horses as they came,—kickers or jibbers—and, thanks to his fine149 nerves and delicate handling of the ribbons, kept his time to a second.

Parson Bird was also said to be “well up to his work,” and was so good-hearted a fellow that when the regular coachman from Keswick to Kendal broke his leg, he took his place for six weeks, and collected the fees for him. A story is told of a lady giving the parson-coachman half-a-crown at the end of the journey one afternoon, and being introduced to him at a ball the same evening at Kendal. He at once asked for a dance, but she was highly indignant that a coachman should so presume. However, the matter was explained, and to such satisfaction that not only did she dance, but eventually became Mrs. Bird.

Among the regular coachmen, John Reed took a very high place. He was a stout and a very silent man: all for his horses and nothing to his passengers. He drove the Glasgow Mail from Carlisle to Abington, never tasted ale or wine, and never had an accident. This was the more remarkable as Mr. Johnstone of Hallheaths, owner of Charles XII., horsed the Mail along one stage with nothing but thoroughbreds; and, had they “taken off,” not even Reed, strong-wristed though he was, could have held them in.

John Bryden was the very reverse of John Reed, and full of jollity and good stories on the box. The two Drydens were even more dashing in their style: one had the art of teaching his horses to trot when most men would have had150 them on the gallop; the other was a wonderful singer. Whenever the Mail reached a long ascent and he had to slacken speed, he would beguile the way with “She Wore a Wreath of Roses,” or “I Know a Flower within my Garden Growing,” in a rich tenor that would have secured him a good concert-room engagement in these times.

Another notable coachman was “Little Isaac Johnson.” He kept on the box for thirty-five years, and never had an accident. He was supreme with a kicking horse, and always took care to make him his near-side leader. When such an one was put there, he could punish him more severely, and liked to hit restive animals inside the thigh. He could “fairly wale them up,” if they continued to rebel.

The Telfers were coachmen of the same severe school, and well known over Shap way. Jem Barnes, on the other hand, was fat and lumbersome and lacked fire; so that people did say he had his sleeping-ground as well as his galloping-ground. But, one night, at least, when he was driving north over Shap Fell, there was little chance of sleeping. He had on that occasion not only to gallop at all the snow-drifts, but to put a postboy and a pair on in front. The pole-hook broke in midst of the blinding, snow-wreathed journey, and the hand of his almost namesake, Jem Byrns, the guard, was nearly frozen to the screw-wrench when he brought out a spare pole-hook and fastened it on. The snow was falling in flakes as large as crown-pieces all the while,151 and the only comic relief was the voice of a “heavy swell” issuing from the box seat, beneath a perfect tortoise-shell covering of capes and furs, “What are you fellows keeping me here in the cold for, and warming your own hands at the lamp?”

George Eade, another of this distinguished company, was very deaf, but with hearing enough to be cognisant of a great many objurgations from Mr. Richardson, of the “Greyhound” at Shap, for taking it out of his horses. One day Richardson came out and was particularly bland—nothing to complain of at all—but George, unable to distinguish anything, and concluding he was on the old subject, had his back up in an instant. “Hang you!” said he, “I’m not before my time; I’ll bet you £5 of it; look at my watch!”

Jack Pooley was a great character. When he retired from the box, he joined the Yeomanry and entered his horse for a cavalry plate at a race-meeting. Two of the conditions of entry were that it must never have won £50, and also must be half-bred. Some objections being raised, it became necessary to examine him before the committee. To the first question, whether his horse had ever won £50, he replied, “No, indeed! but he’s helped to lose many a fifty—he ran three years in an opposition coach.” The next question was, “What is he by, Mr. Pooley?” “By?” said Jack. “I should say he was by a shorthorn bull, he’s such a devil of a roarer.” The answers, we are told, were considered eminently satisfactory.

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The mail-coachmen on the Shap and Penrith stage were for some time afflicted with a mare that stopped with every one of them in turn at the end of two miles. At last they all wearied of her, and orders were issued that if she refused again, she was not to be brought back alive. On this fateful journey she started, and, according to her use and wont, suddenly sulked and sat down on her haunches in the middle of the road, like a dog, with her fore-legs straight out in front. The coachman, armed by the contractor with power of life or death, did not proceed to tragical extremities. He got down, took a rail out of the hedge, and struck her nine times below the knees with the flat side of it. This treatment proved effectual, not only for that journey, but for all time, and she was docile and willing ever after.

How bravely and doggedly the mails and stages battled on winter nights against the howling blasts of Shap and Stainmoor, sometimes contending with snowstorms and drifts in which not only the coachman and guard, but the passengers also, bore a hand at the snow-shovels and dug and delved until hands and feet, previously numbed with cold, glowed again! How anxiously, when that digging and delving seemed almost ineffectual and the drifts impassable, did they strain their vision to catch a glimpse through the murky night, filled with driving snowflakes for the cheerful lights of that roadside inn, the “Welcome into Cumberland,” telling travellers accustomed to this road not only of comfort153 available at hand, but of a farewell to the terrors of Westmoreland and approach to the sheltered little town of Penrith.

At four miles and three-quarters from Kendal, at Watchgate, the finest view opens, along Sleddale. Beyond it comes the “Plough” inn, with pictorial sign and the couplet—

a statement to which farmers do not unanimously subscribe.

BOROUGHBRIDGE, SHAP FELL.

Beyond this again comes Hucks Brow, the end of the first stage out of Kendal, and Forest Hall, which, with the Abbey Farm at Shap, forms one of the two largest sheep-farms in Westmoreland.154 Another rise of a mile and a half, and a steep descent leads to Boroughbridge, a hamlet where an ancient bridge spans a mountain stream and is neighboured by a few cottages and the “Bay Horse” inn. From this point the final and most trying ascent is made. An old road goes winding away in the valley below, past Hausefoot Farm, but it has long ceased to be of any but strictly local use.

The road across Shap summit is built upon peat bogs, and needs constant repair. The boggy nature of the foundation is not apparent to the casual wayfarer, but may readily be discovered by standing beside it at the passing of a motor-car, when it very perceptibly shakes.

At the descent from the summit towards Shap village, the old road crosses to the right hand, and away to the right, half a mile across the moors, the hotel of Shap Wells is seen, rising from its wooded hollow.

Dr. Granville, who wrote a work on English spas in 1845, came in due course to Shap Wells, and remarks justly upon the wild and remote situation of the wells and the hotel, but he does not lay any stress upon the truly awful ancient-egg flavour of the medicinal waters, which, if their medicinal virtues be in proportion to their taste, must needs be very remarkably curative. He talks rather of the colour scheme of the water, than of bouquet, and waxes eloquent on its bluish, opalescent hue. He was here in the height of summer, and found at the hotel a “lady sitting at155 a roasting fire (of which by-the-by I was glad to partake also) on the 6th of August.” But notwithstanding the curious taste and flavour of the waters, the hotel is greatly frequented. It is not the waters, but the bracing air, that now forms the attraction.

The village of Shap, although itself of no mean altitude, seems quite sheltered after the four miles’ run down from the summit. Still stands the old “Greyhound” inn of coaching days, as you enter the village. And not only of coaching days, but of times earlier, as the tablet over the door, dated 1703, proclaims. This was the inn, doubtless, at which Prince Charlie called, on his way, and found the landlady a “sad imposing wife.” The weird greyhound sculptured on the tablet somewhat resembles the Saxon idea of a horse, as carved on White Horse Hill, in Berkshire.

SIGN OF THE “GREYHOUND,” SHAP.

Shap is a large village, with cattle-market, and an odd squat building styled a “market cross,” now used as a parish room, but it is chiefly famous among tourists for its Abbey, which exists only in scanty ruin, a mile away, in a lonely situation: lonely, that is to say, except for its great Abbey Farm. You approach it over a sheep track down and156 across a narrow bridge built by the old monks so well that it stands soundly to this day and does not let my Lord Lonsdale through when he drives visitors across in his big motor-car, to see the ruined tower, practically all that remains of the Abbey. Shelter was more to the point when I came here, chased by rain-storms and thunder-storms that spouted and rumbled among the hills, and I know more of the kindly hospitality of the farm than of the antiquities of the Abbey, which, after all, are few beyond broken columns and the stone coffins of departed and forgotten abbots and brethren. The Abbey was resigned in 1541 by Richard Evenwode, the last Abbot. Its revenue was then £154 per annum, a good deal in those days. To-day black-faced, horned Scotch mountain-sheep roam the Abbey lands.

SHAP ABBEY.

Hackthorpe village, with an old hall, now a farmhouse, beside the road, brings us to the neighbourhood of Lowther Castle and its beautiful157 park, seat of the Earl of Lonsdale. The mansion itself, built by Smirke in 1808, is magnificent, in the sense that it is huge and was costly to build and is princely in its appointments, but it is not a castle nor is it Gothic architecture, although the architect who designed it, and the second Lord Lonsdale, for whom it was designed, fondly imagined it to be so.

The wicked Lowther, the “bad Lord Lonsdale,” i.e. the first Earl (1736-1802), once haunted this superstitious countryside, after he had run his earthly course with sinful éclat, and was a dreaded “boggle”—which is Westmoreland and Cumberland for “ghost.” This once notorious character, “this brutal fellow,” as Boswell styled him, was eccentric to a degree, and actually acknowledged himself to be “truly a madman, though too rich to be confined.” One of his eccentricities was the keeping of wild horses, instead of deer, in his park at Lowther. Too rich and powerful to care a rap what was thought of him, he drove about in gloomy, out-of-date majesty in an ancient mildewed carriage drawn by shaggy, unclipped horses. The entry of this equipage into Penrith, where he owned most of the property and, politically speaking, all the inhabitants, was regarded with awful expectation of what he would do next, and was feared almost as much as the coming of some mediæval judge armed with a commission to try rebels.

In life representative of the worst and coarsest feudal barons of the Middle Ages, he was held in158 still greater terror in his death. The awe-stricken rustics long continued to tell how he was with difficulty buried, and how, while the clergyman was praying over him, his mischievous disembodied spirit very nearly knocked the astonished cleric from his desk. Disturbances at the Hall and noises in the stables followed, and men and horses had no rest. The Hall became almost uninhabitable, and out of doors there was constant danger of meeting the noble but malignant spook, either driving in his ghostly “coach and six,” or walking along the dark roads. In a desperate case of this kind, a Catholic priest was thought to be essential as a spirit-layer. The Established Church would not serve, and as for Dissenters—bah! The priest came and prayed, but Jemmy was obstinate and stood a long siege, and when conjured by all that was holy, was only willing to be banished to the Red Sea—to which troublesome spirits are rusticated, as a sort of spiritual Botany Bay—for a year and a day. This was not considered good enough. The district had experienced too much of him in life, and ardently wished to be shot of his ghost for good and all, and so the priest was urged to pray for all he was worth, which he did, finally overpowering the tyrant. Instead of transporting him to the Red Sea, he was laid under the great rock of Walla Crag, Haweswater, for ever!

It is at Clifton, just south of Penrith, that the real Borderland begins. We are still thirty-five miles short of the actual border-line, but we have159 come now within the “sphere of influence” (as international politicians might now phrase it) of the old mosstrooping, cattle-lifting, and plundering and burning rascals from the Scottish side, who ever and again came across the Solway in well-mounted bands that numbered perhaps twenty, or perhaps five hundred, and often swept the countryside clean of stock; returning as swiftly as they had come, and leaving burning homesteads behind them. Those times have left plentiful traces, still plain to see, in the old domestic architecture of mansion and farmstead. Castles we have here, as elsewhere, but this borderland is the country of the peel-tower. In ages when the south of England lived in security, and men no longer built homes that were half fortresses, these oft-raided northern counties still lived in constant and well-founded apprehensions, and every one who had anything to lose had his own stronghold, in the little peel-tower that was, according to circumstances, his entire home, or a considerable part of it. Many of the peel-towers remain, as uninhabited ruins: others form the central portion of houses and mansions since enlarged. At Clifton stands such a one.

It is a fair type of the defences once absolutely necessary. You see the care taken to build strongly, with thick walls that no swiftly moving band of raiders could have leisure to demolish; and you see, too, that it was equally impossible to burn. The ground floor was not only exceptionally solid, but it had no entrance from without,160 and was reached only by a trap-door in the floor above.

So soon as the farmer or the squireen of those days had taken alarm, he drove his stock into the barmkin, or enclosure, attached to his tower of refuge, and, summoning all his family and securing his valuables, ascended with them by a ladder to the first floor, and, withdrawing the ladder after him, awaited events. For defence he had a store of heavy stones on the leads above the second floor; or from the narrow-slitted windows could shift to shoot arrows, or fling hot water, boiling tar, or domestic sewage upon enemies who came near enough.

But the cattle were still in danger, and the men of the house were usually concerned to garrison the tower with the women and children, and to give fight, if the odds were not overwhelming, outside; and many a Westmoreland and Cumberland farmer has died in protecting his stock.

Clifton should be marked on maps with the conventional crossed swords indicating the site of a battle, for it was here, on the evening of December 18th, 1745, that the Battle of Clifton Moor, the last ever fought on English ground, was decided. It is true that, judged by the standard of killed and wounded, it was no great affair, but it probably gave a final turn to the fortunes of the Young Pretender. It was fought midway in the panic-stricken retreat from Derby, and was a rearguard action, covering the retirement161 of the main body upon Penrith and Carlisle. Some two thousand Highlanders made a stand here, in the muddy road and fields, in advance of the village, as the sun went down, and the Duke of Cumberland’s force, consisting chiefly of Kerr’s, Bland’s, Montagu’s, Kingston’s, and Cobham’s dragoons, attacked them in the growing darkness.

CLIFTON.

The rebel cavalry were off at once. According to the account of Lord George Murray, on the Scottish side, “our horsemen, on seeing the enemy, went to Penrith”: an innocent phrase, which rather obscures the prudent, if inglorious, fact that they “bunked,” as a schoolboy would say, or “did a guy,” as the slangy would remark: leaving the Highland infantry to do the best they could. It was a haphazard hurly-burly that ensued. No one could see any one. The Highlanders were quite invisible, and the English dragoons only to be seen by the gleam of their buff belts in the darkness. Mr. Thomas Savage, a Quaker, whose house was in the thick of the162 encounter, was anxious for himself, and for his cattle, which interposed between the combatants, but he had really little cause for alarm; for both sides fired so high and so wide that not even a cow was killed, and after all the shooting and the hacking was done, and the rebels had fled, leaving the more or less stricken field in the possession of the enemy, it was found that but twelve (or according to one account, five) Highlanders had been killed and some forty to seventy made prisoners. On the English side, eleven dragoons were killed, and twenty-nine wounded. Many a railway accident has wrought more havoc.

The registers of Clifton church bear witness to this event, in the following entries:

“The 19th of December, 1745, Ten Dragoons, to wit, six of Bland’s, three of Cobham’s, and one of Mark Kerr’s Regiment, buried, who was killed y^e evening before by y^e Rebels in y^e skirmish between y^e Duke of Cumberland’s army and them at y^e end of Clifton Moor next y^e town.”

“Robert Atkins, a private Dragoon of General Bland’s Regiment, buried y^e 8th Day of January, 1746.”

This last was obviously one of the wounded.

The Duke of Cumberland wanted a lodging for the night, and stayed accordingly in the house of Mr. Savage, who, during the progress of the affair, had locked himself in, while his daughter-in-law hid in the kitchen cupboard. The Quaker’s account of the Duke was, “pleasant agreeable163 company he was—a man of parts, very friendly, and no pride in him.”

None came so well out of that fight as Colonel Honeywood of Howgill, who seems to have been a host in himself, and would have done even better had it not been for an accident by which even the bravest of the brave might be brought ingloriously to earth. His prowess was vouched for by a Highlander, who, asked how his people got on, quaintly replied: “We gat on vary weel, till the lang man in the muckle boots cam ower the dyke, but his fut slipped on a turd, and we gat him down.” The Highlanders nearly did for the “lang man,” for they gave him three sword cuts on the head, and then left. He seems to have lived a charmed life, for he was at that time invalided home from Continental warfare, in which, at the Battle of Dettingen, he had received no fewer than twenty-three broadsword cuts and two musket balls.

His hurts do not seem to have permanently harmed him, for he lived forty years longer.

In the lowlands beneath Clifton stands Brougham Hall, and near it Brougham Castle, both beside the Eamont river. A good deal of the Hall is ancient, but most of the exterior, recased in a baronial way, looks like (what it is) an academic attempt at recovering the architectural style of the fourteenth century. When it is said that the164 work was done in the early part of the nineteenth century, it will be supposed, with a good deal of truth, that the result is dull and lifeless. Anciently the seat of the Broughams, it came at length to the Bird family, from whom the property was purchased in 1727 by the grandfather of the Lord Brougham who was Lord Chancellor and a great political figure in the days of George the Fourth, William the Fourth, and Queen Victoria. Dr. Granville, travelling hereabouts in the middle of the nineteenth century, sampling medicinal spas, looked upon the Hall with awe, as the residence of that statesman.

The Doctor cherished a remarkable veneration for that able, but eccentric personage, and was perhaps the only person to do so. Says he, “Like the Château de Vernet, Brougham Hall, when the grave shall have swept away prejudices and political animosities, will be visited by thousands, eager to behold the château of the English Voltaire; he who, to the encyclopædic knowledge and pungent wit of the French philosopher, joined the impassioned and fiery eloquence of Mirabeau.” Thus the enthusiastic Granville.

Eloquence? Brougham could tear a passion to tatters with any one, but he ranted. It is true that the post-boys used to drive the chaises of travellers in these regions somewhat out of the direct road, in order to glimpse the residence of Lord Brougham; but those travellers viewed the place, and Brougham himself, with curiosity, just as one might an Icelandic geyser, to which,165 indeed, he is not inaptly to be compared. His spoutings were as plentiful and as hot.

Not every one looked upon Brougham with awe, as the caricatures of his grotesque physiognomy prove. Jemmy Anderson, a well-known post-boy in this district, was not abashed by him; but then post-boys venerated no one. It was in the days when the future Lord Chancellor was still Mr. Henry Brougham, Q.C., that Jemmy Anderson drove him, post, from Shap to Penrith, and “took him down” an unwonted peg. Jemmy jogged quietly along at about seven miles an hour, mounted upon an almost broken-down wheeler, until the fiery spirit within the post-chaise could stand it no longer. Letting down the front window the future Lord Chancellor vociferated: “Post-boy, I shan’t give you a farthing, for you have driven me like a snail.” “Indeed,” replied the shrewd Cumbrian, “thee wunna gie me a farden, wunna thee? Then ah’ve coomed far enow for nowt!” With that he slowly dismounted and began to detach his horses from the chaise, until an appealing voice from within led to a compromise, by which the angry lawyer, who had been specially retained to appear in a cause célèbre at Penrith, capitulated, and upon paying his money down—upon which the offended post-boy insisted—Jemmy Anderson was persuaded to finish the stage.

The Brougham family, still owning the Hall, trace their descent from Saxon times, and one of their ancestors, referred to as “Brum,” fortified his residence here so long ago as 1284.

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SEPULCHRAL SLAB OF UDARD DE BROHAM.

An early ancestor was Udard De Broham, a crusader, who died in 1185. “His soul is with the saints, we trust”; but his skull, ravished from his grave in Brougham Church, grins from its glass case in the Hall, and his trusty sword, that had been buried with him, is near by. It was in 1846, when repairs were in progress at the church, that the skeleton of Udard was discovered, beneath the inscribed slab pictured here, a mere two feet deep. He had been laid here cross-legged and spurred on one heel. With him had been buried a fragment of glass of Phœnician manufacture, blue inside, but externally patterned in black and white stripes not unlike the striped peppermint sweets still dear to rural youth. This was considered a talisman, or luck-compelling object, in the superstitious age in which Udard flourished, and was doubtless brought by him from Palestine and buried with him as his most prized possession.

Nine ancient De Brohams in all were discovered at this time, including the remains of Gilbert, son of Udard, a man of gigantic size,167 who died in 1230. A curious enamelled metal circlet, of beautiful workmanship, and in perfect preservation, lay beside him; and his grave was duly rifled of it.

BROUGHAM CASTLE.

But Brougham Castle is finer than the Hall, or than memories of De Brohams. Brougham derives its name, down the long alleys of time, from Brovacum, a Roman station in these outposts of the Roman dominion, thickly studded with such. And a military post of the first importance it continued to be until the time of Henry the Fourth. Normans built the keep of the old castle, and the families of Vipont and De Clifford added to it, and held the marchlands against the Scots, or warred for or against their sovereigns, with more or less success, until their line ended in a woman: the famous Ann Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, who was as good a man as any. She was born in 1590, and enjoyed length of days and strength of mind during the whole of them, dying at last in 1676. Marrying twice, and unhappily on both occasions, she was twice widowed, and left with an only daughter. Upon her second widowhood she retired to these scenes of her youth, and busied herself in rebuilding her ancient and ruined castles of Brougham, Appleby, Skipton, Bardon Tower, Pendragon, and Brough; together with the restoration of numerous churches, and the erection of monuments to various people, including herself. She was as ceaseless and busy a builder as old Bess of Hardwick herself, and an imperious and168 masterful old lady who even withstood Cromwell. He declared he would ding down her castles as soon as she built them up, but she merely replied that they would be rebuilt every time, and Cromwell was obliged to give in. “Let her build an she will, for me” he said, and build she accordingly did. She is described as having been a “perfect mistress of forecast and aftercast,” who “knew well how to converse of all things, from predestination to slea-silk;” and she certainly was tenacious of her rights, or what she conceived to be her rights; being as remarkable a litigant as she was a builder. By all accounts, she was nothing less than an unmitigated terror, and the plain man, who reads of her autocratic ways, is apt to think that the unhappiness of her marriages169 was felt by her husbands a good deal more than by herself.

We know a great deal about this extraordinary woman, for among her activities was the writing, at tremendous length, about herself and her ancestors; and in those pages she dwells with an amusing complacency upon the early beauties of her face, her form, and mind.

COUNTESS PILLAR.

It was in 1652 that she so thoroughly repaired Brougham Castle, making it afterwards her principal residence; but the day of castles was done, and, as she really must have foreseen, her works were left, after her death, to decay. Her only daughter had married the Earl of Thanet, who in 1728 caused the most part of Brougham Castle to be demolished, and the materials sold. And here it stands to-day, a roofless shell.

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“Thys made Roger” are the words boldly carved over the gateway; telling us that the first Lord Clifford was the great builder of the castle. His grandson added largely to it; and a mighty place it must have been. Cliffords of Brougham and a dozen other strongholds dared with impunity what smaller men would have been ruined to attempt the tenth part of; and the messengers of Kings, sent with formidable sealed documents, have been set down to dine at Brougham Castle upon the wax and parchment of the commands they brought, and have made a hearty, but involuntary, meal upon those unappetising materials under the grim eyes of my lord, without wine to wash them down or condiment to flavour them withal.

YANWATH HALL.

And now the scene is merely the subject for an artist; and a beautiful subject, too. The old ruins stand in an ideal situation, in an undulating grassy meadow, sloping towards the171 sparkling Eamont, framed in with trees, and with distant mountains closing in the scene.

Such is the present condition of the old Countess Ann’s pride; but something of her passion for commemoration remains, not so far away, in the monument known in all this countryside as the Countess Pillar; built by her in 1656. It is adorned with her arms and those of allied families, and bears this inscription:

The Eamont, the Eden, and the Lowther were well guarded, as the fortified houses by the fords still prove. Yanwath Hall, an ancient home of the Threlkelds, is a fine example of a peel-tower added to and elaborated into a residence. It is one of the earliest and most interesting, having been built midway in the fourteenth century. The original tower, strong in its walls, six feet thick and embattled, stands fifty-five feet high and looks down into a courtyard, the barmkin, or inner bailey, where the ancient oaken, iron-banded, and studded doors and windows guarded by thick stanchions show172 how concerned the old owners were for their personal security in insecure times.

ASKHAM HALL.

Cliburn, Sockbridge, and Barton Kirke were all fortified houses, disposed by these rivers like the castles upon a chess-board. Finest of these old fortified mansions is the romantically situated and picturesquely designed Askham Hall, now the rectory of Lowther, but situated in Askham village. It stands high above the wooded Lowther, foaming down among its rocks under Lowther Park, and was originally the castellated seat of the Sandford family. The front is dour and forbidding enough, and the interior, although oak panelled and converted into a residence173 after the ideas that were modern two hundred and fifty years ago, does not commend itself as a cheerful residence. But the additions made at the side by Thomas Sandford in 1574 are exquisitely sketchable. They comprise a gatehouse and outbuildings enclosing a courtyard. The drip-moulding over the archway is in a peculiar style, resembling a cable; its ends finished off in the likeness of ammonites. Over the arch are the Sandford arms, with those of Crackanthorpe and Lancaster of Howgill, and this inscription, done in letters run oddly together:

The Sandfords ended at last, after three hundred years, in 1680.

Returning to the road from these quests, the Lowther is crossed at Lowther Bridge. Beside the river and immediately skirting the road, is the earthwork known as “King Arthur’s Round Table,” an ancient raised platform whose purpose can only be guessed at. Not King Arthur, but the Norse settlers, are held to have been the originators of it, as the stage whereon their rude displays of arms were held: in particular a duel known as “holmegang,” a species of gladiatorial174 combat in which the opponents were armed with knives, bound together, and then compelled to fight to the death. Such are the fearful memories of this now peaceful scene. On the opposite side of the road, within a belt of trees, is an arena ascribed to the no less tragical rites of the Druids.

KING ARTHUR’S DRINKING CUP.

King Arthur is further celebrated in a huge circular red sandstone tank standing in the yard of the “Crown” inn, adjoining. It is known locally as “King Arthur’s Drinking Cup,” and has a capacity of about eighty gallons, sufficient to quench the thirst, not merely of King Arthur,175 but of a megatherium. But quite apart from any wildly absurd legends, the thing is astonishing in these days of zinc cisterns. Who so painfully scooped this tank out of a solid block of stone, and when, and how long the work occupied him, are alike unknown.

On the embankment enclosing the prehistoric camp there has been placed in the last few years a monument, in the shape of an Iona cross, to the patriotism of four natives of Eamont Bridge. But let the inscription on the cross itself tell the tale: “At that crisis in the history of the Empire, when volunteers were invited for active service in the South African War, this village of Eamont Bridge sent four: John Hindson, William Todd, and Arthur Warwick, of the 24th Coy. (Westmoreland and Cumberland) Imperial Yeomanry, and William Hindson, of the Volunteer Coy. of the Border Regt. Of these John Hindson and William Todd were killed in action at Faber’s Put, 30th May, 1900. This monument was erected by public subscription on this historic spot granted by Lord Brougham and Vaux, 1901. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

The old bridge, built in 1425, spanning the Eamont River, has given its name to the village that has in the course of years sprung up here. It is a small, scattered place, but some of the houses are old, and several bear inscriptions. “Omne solum forti patria est,” says one, with initials “H. P.” and date “1671” appended. “H. P.” was evidently a student of Ovidius Naso.

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The road over Eamont Bridge is very steep and narrow and the ascent beyond it steeper still; so that the stranger, observing the fury with which the drivers of the excursion wagonettes and motor chars-a-banc take the ascents and descents on their wild way to and from Penrith and Ullswater, confidently expects an accident “while he waits.” But whether it be skill, or luck, the accidents do not happen, and expectant strangers, to have their expectations realised, would have to wait on the spot until the moss grew on them.

According to the writers of guide-books, there may be found, carved on the parapet of the bridge, the hospitable phrase, “Welcome into Cumberland.” You, in fact, in crossing it leave Westmoreland for Cumberland, and, having read so much of this kindly sentiment, you seek diligently for the inscription. Alas! in vain. There is not, nor was there ever, anything of the kind. Instead, what meets your eye is an inn whose sign, “The Welcome into Cumberland,” is adorned with a representation of pipes and punch-bowl, and with a weird picture of a Personage—he must be a Personage, for he wears frock-coat and silk hat—effusively greeting a Highlander arrayed in full Highland fig. Each looks astonished at the other, and the pilgrim of the roads, gazing fascinated, is astonished at both. This, then, is the “Welcome,” and one by no means so disinterested as you were led to expect. Another vanished illusion!

EAMONT BRIDGE.

Even the inn bears its moral tag, for over the179 door you read “Struimus in Diem, sed Nox venit,” with the date “MDCCXVII,” and the names of Nathan and Elizabeth Gower. One “R. L. Wharton” appears to have endorsed the sentiment (having duly inquired what the Latin meant) and subscribed his name and the date 1781, in approval.

Penrith derives its name, originally Pen-rhydd; “the red hill,” from Beacon Hill, 937 feet high, under whose shelter this place of narrow and huddled streets lies. The Beacon Hill was in the old days a protection to the surrounding country, for from its crest flared those warning flames that advised many a mile of threatened Westmoreland of the approach of the invading Scots.

But although Penrith is sheltered by its great godfather hill, it was never at any time effectually protected against the invader. Carlisle, eighteen miles away to the north, was its great bulwark, and if that fortified city fell, or were cleverly avoided, then the case of Penrith was sorry indeed, as in the notable instance of 1345, when the Scots, numbering 26,000 men, came pouring across the Border, and burnt the town and many neighbouring villages; taking prisoners with them, on their return, as many hale and hearty men as they could find, to be sold as slaves to the highest bidders. Such was life on the Borders in the fourteenth century, and, reading these things, we are inclined180 to agree with Taylor the “Water-poet’s” conclusion:

The next year, the remaining inhabitants of Penrith, graciously permitted by the King to protect themselves, built a communal castle, and each townsman, so far as was possible to him, rebuilt his own dwelling-house in a strong and defensible way. Hence the grim, thick-walled houses that even now line many of the narrow streets.

That the Castle was at least once rebuilt seems certain. One of these rebuildings was that by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, before he became that inimical character of history, Richard the Third, was Governor of these marches, and resided here in every circumstance of magnificence. Now the place is a ruin, a condition it owes to the Penrith people themselves, who early in the time of Queen Elizabeth considered they had a more pressing need for a prison than for a fortress, and accordingly with thirty loads of stone, erected a very secure, if not very comfortable, gaol. At the same period, Robert Bartram, a merchant of the town, built himself a house from the same materials; and there it stands to this day in the churchyard, inscribed “R. B., 1563.”

There is thus nothing pictorial in the bare, roofless red walls of the Castle. It has little, or no story, and stands in the unromantic neighbourhood of the railway station, in a lofty situation on a hilltop above the town.

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The Duke of Gloucester, although he rebuilt the Castle, is chiefly associated with a much more sheltered situation, in the town itself. There were intervals between the acts of even Richard the Third’s melodrama, when, turning from battle, and from compassing the death of his relatives, he sought repose and refreshment, and he found them here in what must have been the exceedingly comfortable quarters of what was once Dockwray Hall, an ancient building that stands in the square called Great Dockwray, and is now, in memory of him, the “Gloucester Arms” inn.

The old house does not wear so prepossessing an exterior as, under these historic circumstances, it should. That is largely due to its stucco facing, painted the colour of decaying liver. The only exterior sign of the house being anything out of the ordinary is the carved and emblazoned shield over the door, displaying the arms of Richard himself, supported by two white boars with gilded manes. Another doorway has a shield with three greyhounds, “in pale, courant,” as a herald would say, and the inscription “I. W., 1580:” the initials standing for “John Whelpdale,” who made extensive alterations to the building.

The pilgrim who sups not merely on gross food and drink, but feeds the finer tissues of his being on historic scenes and antique panelled rooms, will find much delight in the “Gloucester Arms.” He may sleep where that gory Richard slept—and, it may be hoped, with a better conscience,182 and may look upon a banqueting-hall, now unfortunately subdivided, wherein our ancestors feasted on swans and other curious dishes long obsolete, washed down with nasty drinks unknown to the present age.

Equally interesting is the old “Two Lions” inn near by. It looks out up the street in a shy manner, being hidden upon a narrow entry, in a fashion that to a southron seems a strangely retiring pose for an ancient mansion of the landed classes; a complexion from which, in fact, the house has, since ancient times, declined. Time was—in the reign of the more or less good Queen Bess, to be precise—when what is now the “Two Lions” was the “town house” of Gerard Lowther, a notable member of the always rich and powerful Lowther family; and little though the exterior may attract, there is a very wealth of interest within. The fireplace of the hall has three heraldic shields, and the banqueting-room, now the smoking-room, has an enriched plaster ceiling, dated 1585 and displaying ten shields of the arms of Lowthers and allied families. In an upstairs room is another ceiling heraldically adorned with the arms of Lowther and Dudley, dated 1586, and with the initials of Gerard Lowther himself and Lucy, his wife. More to the purpose of the smaller tradesmen of Penrith, who are the chief frequenters of the “Two Lions,” is the fine bowling-green—bowling rhyming with “howling,” in the speech of the older folk—at the back of the house.

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There is not much left of the ancient church of Penrith, beside its Gothic tower, for the body of the building dates only from 1722, and is in a classic style that seems rank heresy in a place so historic as this. Not even the monolithic Ionic columns of red marble that decorate the interior, nor the ornate gilded chandeliers presented by the Duke of Portland, in recognition of the loyalty of Penrith in 1745, can compensate the stranger for the loss; although, to be sure, the townsfolk are inordinately proud of them. But there are many ancient monuments in the church, and some interesting fragments of stained glass that have escaped destruction. Among them is represented golden-haired Cicely Neville, youngest of all the two-and-twenty children of Henry Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. This is that “Proud Cis of Raby” who was wife of Richard, Duke of York, and mother of Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third. Here, too, is seen a plaguey ill-favoured stained-glass “likeness” of Richard the Second, with hair of an unpleasant canary-yellow and a couple of chin-sprouts of the same colour.

THE GIANT’S GRAVE.

Still upon three sides of the church-tower you see sculptured the “bear and ragged staff” device of the great Earl of Warwick, the King-maker, who in his time was lord of Penrith, and rebuilt the upper stage of the tower; but undoubtedly the chief interest—and mystery—of the spot is the so-called “Giant’s Grave,” in the churchyard. No one knows who rests here, but184 for choice it is the grave of a chief among those Scandinavian settlers who established themselves in these northern counties in the tenth century. Legend, of course, steps in to explain that of which archæology is ignorant. The invincible hardihood of legends is such as to command the astonished respect of the calmest mind; and here we are bidden by old folk-lore to look upon the grave of one Sir Hugh Cæsarius,185 a man of colossal proportions, but as big-hearted, metaphorically, as he was high, who cleared the surrounding Inglewood Forest of the wild boars that were a terror to the people, at some period not specified. The tall grey sandstone pillars that stand over his grave, at a distance apart of fifteen feet, are supposed to mark his height, and are covered with Runic devices, greatly defaced and pitifully weather-worn. Rude hunch-backed stones between them are popularly supposed to represent the backs of boars.

These hoary relics had a narrow escape of being totally destroyed by those who pulled down the old church; and the work of breaking them into pieces had already begun when the indignant people of the town stopped it. The clamps marking where the broken pillars were mended are clearly to be seen. A stone, really the head of an ancient cross, near by, is said to mark the place where the giant’s thumb is buried.

Penrith has suffered much in its time from wars and tumults, but it was afflicted in a dreadful manner by a great plague which almost depopulated the neighbourhood between September 1597 and January 1599, as an inscription in the church relates. In Penrith itself 2,260 people died, and in Kendal 2,500.

The chief streets of the town have been much modernised, but some old landmarks reward the diligent. The “Prince Charles Restaurant,” a baker’s shop, occupies the mansion where the Young Pretender lodged, and some old Penrith186 merchants’ houses remain: notably one in Angel Lane, on whose front the old local passion for remembrance, that usually finds expression in dates, initials, and improving maxims, develops into family history and epitaph, as thus:

This is mysterious, beyond hope of solution.

On the building now an infants’ school is the inscription “WIL. ROBINSON, CIVISLONDANNO 1670,” oddly spaced, and over the entrance to an alley the initials “R. E. L. 1697,” with sculptured shears above; probably a relic of the Langhorn family, cloth-merchants, whose earliest memento in this sort is the inscription “T. E. L. 1584.”

OLD DOORWAY, PENRITH.

The Boer War of 1899-1902 has left a wayside memorial at the approach to Penrith, and another, in the shape of a beautiful bronze statue, personifying Victory conferring honour upon the fallen, stands by Middlegate, as you leave for the north. “Scotland Road,” confronting you, indicates the187 not far distant Border, and then, at the “White Ox” inn, the ways divide: on the right the Old Carlisle Road, on the left the new. Very steep and rough goes the old road for one mile. Prince Charlie marched it, and has my heartfelt sympathy. After passing the “Inglewood” inn, which seems forlornly to wonder what has become of the traffic, it rejoins the existing highway—which runs along the traces of an ancient Roman road—at Stony Beck. To the left hand, near Plumpton station, are some traces of the Roman station of Voreda, known as Castlesteads, or Old Penrith. It has yielded many relics. Of the ancient Inglewood Forest, and the alarming wild boars that frequented it, there are no signs, and the road—as excellent a road as one would wish to find—goes with little incident away into Carlisle itself, the Petterill Brook on the left hand. The “Pack Horse” inn stands at the cross-road to Lazonby, where Salkeld toll-gate once stood, and then, two miles from High Hesket, on the left hand, rises the hill known suggestively as Thiefside: the thieves in question, no doubt, the old horse-thieves, cattle-raiders, and moss-trooping vagabonds of the Border. High Hesket is a tiny wayside village of the rough stone houses, generally whitewashed, that henceforward are the feature of the road, through Cumberland and into Dumfriesshire. The church of High Hesket, quite a humble little building, with bellcote in lieu of tower, stands, shamefaced in a coating of compo, by the way, near another dilapidated old “White Ox” inn,188 once busy with the traffic of a bygone day. The motor-cars disregard it, or merely halt for that last indignity to an inn, a pail of water wherewith to cool their engines. Dropping downhill to Low Hesket, the road comes quickly to Carleton and then, by the frowzy street of Botchergate, into the midst of Carlisle.

THIEFSIDE

Carlisle was the first and stoutest bulwark gainst the northern foe, and maintained that character for close upon sixteen hundred years, from the remote time of the Roman dominion until the union of the kingdoms under James the First. The place, standing as it does upon a rocky bluff, overlooking the levels of the Solway and the Eden, was, it would almost seem, intended by Nature for this office, and here accordingly the Roman wall of Hadrian was traced, running from sea to sea, from Wallsend near Newcastle, to Carlisle, and ending on the Solway Firth189 at Bowness. Here they found an early Celtic settlement, “Caer Lywelydd”; but it was not the site of Carlisle, but rather Stanwix, its northern suburb, on the opposite bank of the Eden, that formed the Roman military station of Luguvallum, i.e. the “station on the wall.” What is now Carlisle was the civil settlement. When the Romans withdrew, to defend their decaying Empire nearer home, Luguvallum, peopled with half-breed Romano-British, who could not retire with them, made for years a hopeless fight with the savages out of Scotland on the one hand, and with the Saxons on the other. The Saxons, as almost everywhere else, prevailed in the end, and the town became in their tongue, “Caer Luel”; whence the transition to “Carlisle” is one of the easiest.

Carlisle, the great mediæval fortress-town, owes its origin to Rufus. The mighty Conqueror, who subdued most other portions of this land, rested short of Westmoreland and Cumberland, which had then for one hundred and twenty years been accounted Scottish soil; but it was under his generally despised son that these broad lands were won back for England; and the Scottish King Malcolm, invading England on the east coast, in revenge, was slain in 1093, at Alnwick. Peace, however, was not to reign upon these contested lands for yet many a century; but what could be done was accomplished, and Carlisle Castle arose, a grim Norman keep, upon the highest apex of the town. It was in after years190 enlarged and strengthened, and the strong walls of the city connected with it; and to-day, although the factory-buildings and the smoky chimneys in a distant view of Carlisle show, readily enough, that the city is now a place of commerce, the Norman castle-keep still darkly crowns the scene, sharing its pre-eminence only with the Cathedral.

But in spite of its castle and the stout town walls, Carlisle has been, many more times than can readily be counted, the scene of warfare, and was often sacked and burnt. It was thus ever a place of arms. In all the country round about, men went armed to the plough, and the great lords held their lands from the King under the strictest obligations to military service, and were captained by the Lord Warden, whose duties included the firing of beacons and the mustering of all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Small tenants held their fields and farms under the name of “nag-tenements” and “foot-tenements,” and were bound, according to their degree, to fight mounted or on foot.

When the enemy crossed the Border, there was a stir in the city of Carlisle, like that which accompanies the overturning of an ant-heap. The muckle town-bell was rung, the citizens assembled under arms, and the women manned the walls (if the expression may be allowed) with kettles, boiling-water, and apronfuls of stones.

There was no worse time in this long history than the reign of Henry the Eighth. War with Scotland had brought to that country the crushing191 defeat of Flodden, where, in the words of the Scottish lament, “The flowers of the forest were a’ weed awa”; but the result was anarchy in the Borders, where thousands of lawless men lived, whom no man could restrain. The Warden’s office was then no light task, and a Scot on the English side, or an Englishman on the Scottish, went in momentary danger of his life. Every man was required to explain his presence, and in the streets of Carlisle none might speak, without leave, to a Scot, and none of that nationality was permitted to live in the city.

Carlisle Castle remained at this period, and for long after, a strong place, but nothing is more astonishing than the ease with which raiders often surprised even the stoutest castles. Let us take, for instance, the affair of the “bold Buccleuch” and Kinmont Willie, in the times of Queen Elizabeth. The borders had long been free from war on the larger scale, but the moss-trooping, reiving forays survived in much of their early severity, in spite of the amicable appointment of English and Scottish Lords Wardens, who were supposed to restrain the lawless folk on either side of the debateable lands between the marches. The Wardens’ Courts were strictly conducted in the districts of the Solway, and those assembled at them were guaranteed from violence on either side. But in 1596, when the Court assembled at Kershopeburn to settle grievances in connection with the great raids of the Armstrongs, who had come across from Scotland to the number of three192 thousand and lifted all the stock for miles around, the feelings of the English were raw. A notable man among these cattle-thieves was this same “Kinmont Willie,” and the English sorely longed to take vengeance upon him. At the Court, he was protected by the rules of that assemblage, but in riding away he was reckless enough to go off alone, and what might have been expected happened. He was captured and consigned to a dungeon in Carlisle Castle.

All the Scottish side of the Border was immediately in an uproar at this violation of agreements, and Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, Keeper of Liddesdale, was moved to apply for the raider’s release. Buccleuch was a law-abiding person, and would probably have been glad enough to see Kinmont Willie properly hanged on his own side, but this breach of the understanding between the Wardens was an outrage not to be endured.

Lord Scrope, the English Warden, informed him the affair was so important that it must be referred to the Queen; and she in turn ignored it altogether. Buccleuch therefore determined, at whatever cost, to rescue the prisoner, who would otherwise soon have been hanged, and he put himself at the head of two hundred and ten desperate spirits who at night crossed the Esk and silently drew near to Carlisle, two hours before peep o’ day. They had brought with them, on horseback, scaling ladders for the castle walls, and pickaxes, and made a breach by the postern-gate. What were those sentinels doing, who were not193 alarmed? Sleeping, doubtless. At any rate, the garrison knew nothing until Buccleuch’s men had forced an entrance. The dungeon where the prisoner was immured was known, and he was brought forth, chains and all, and hurried away. The whole party were speedily off again, and into their own country, before pursuit was properly organised.

The last raid took place actually in 1601, when the kingdoms were united by the accession of James the First, and while he was at Berwick, journeying to London. Several hundreds of Scots then came plundering past Carlisle, and many were captured and duly hanged. James, anxious to unite the kingdoms in reality, ordered that the name of “the Border,” standing for centuries of warfare, should give place to “the midlands,” but the new style does not seem ever to have come into general use; and the coming of the Stuarts meant in after years much more trouble for Carlisle and its surroundings; for it was in 1644-5 that the city endured the longest and most severe siege in its history. It was held for the King, and beleaguered for eight months by the Scottish General, Leslie. The citizens paid dearly for their loyalty, and were reduced to eating horses, dogs, and rats. Hungry folks chased errant cats hazardously across roof-tops, in view of the besiegers, who took long shots at them; and even hemp-seed became so dear that only the wealthy could afford it. Money current in the city was coined from silver plate; but there was so little food to purchase that, as a194 diarist of the time wrote, “the citizens were so shrunk from starvation, they could not choose but laugh at one another, to see their clothes hang upon them as upon men on gibbets.”

It was upon the surrender ending this memorable siege that Carlisle Cathedral suffered so greatly. The visitor who first sets eyes upon the venerable pile finds himself bewildered by its unusual proportions, and has some difficulty in distinguishing which end is east and which west. He has been used, everywhere else, to see the nave of a cathedral much longer than its choir, and to see the building stretching away westward from the central tower five and six times the length of the eastern, or choir, limb. Here, however, when he has definitely settled his bearings, he perceives the choir to be more than thrice the length of the nave.

This present odd aspect of the Cathedral, looking as though it had been twisted bodily round, is entirely owing to the fury with which the soldiery fell upon it, after the siege. Where there were once eight bays to the Early Norman nave, there are now but two: the rest all went as so much rough stone wherewith to repair the walls of the city and to erect guard-houses: a curious reversal of its early use, for it was from the ancient Roman wall that these stones came in Norman times.

EAST END, CARLISLE CATHEDRAL.

But Carlisle was not done with trouble, even in the sacrilege of 1645. It escaped in 1715, for the rebels avoided coming to clashes with a fortified city; but it came to know intimately of the much195 more nearly successful rebellion of 1745. But what use are battlemented walls of stone, if they be manned with faint hearts? After all the brave doings of “merry Carlisle,” it is sad to think how low the martial spirit had sunk by 1745, when the militia, assembled in the city, declined to fight the rebels under Prince Charlie. A bold front would have compelled the invaders to leave Carlisle alone; but the broadswords of the Highlanders had so much of what military historians term “moral effect” that the militiamen positively refused to run the risk of being cleaved by that terrible cold196 steel. Poor Colonel Durand, in command—if we may still call that a command which will not obey orders—might rave, and implore, and even weep, but it was useless, and the city was surrendered. Prince Charlie was in camp at Brampton, eight miles away, and it must have been a proud moment for him—if a sorry humiliation for some—when mayor and corporation went out to him and on their knees offered the keys of the gates. The next day the Prince entered in triumph, on a milk-white horse, one hundred pipers piping before him. It must have been a fearful moment—for those who did not love the bagpipes.

George the Second, at St. James’s, began to reconsider his position at hearing of this signal failure of his sworn protectors, and many excellent, though time-serving, people in high places began to explain away the disagreeable things they had said of the Stuarts. But in a few weeks, as we know, the Highlanders were retreating; and, trimming their sails anew, politicians and witlings were repeating again their protestations of loyalty to the House of Hanover, and refurbishing that old quotation from Revelation, chapter xvii. verse 11, first current in 1715, by which they affected to believe that James the Second of England and Seventh of Scotland, and his son, the Pretender (de jure James the Third and Eighth) were the subjects of prophecy: “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.”

An ingenious find, it must be allowed, and197 sufficient, providing no one else could refer to Revelation and find another quotation, a little destructive of the first. But such an one was actually to hand in the preceding verse, which very curiously says, “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” There were those excellent Whigs who, reading this, were not entirely happy until events demonstrated that the rebellion was absolutely hopeless.

The Duke of Cumberland with ease retook the city, and captured with it Prince Charlie’s devoted rear-guard: the brave Colonel Townely and his 120 men of the Manchester Regiment, together with over two hundred Highlanders, and some few Frenchmen. They were lodged in the Cathedral, and thence taken in a long melancholy procession to London, there, according to their degree, to be beheaded as gentlemen, or hanged like common malefactors. They rode, tied hand and foot, or walked, roped together, the whole bitter way.

The Duke was not greatly impressed with the military value of the castle. He called it “an old hen-coop,” but it held securely enough the other miserable prisoners who were sent into Carlisle after Culloden. Four hundred of them awaited their doom in the grim dungeons, throughout the hot weather of 1746, and in October the executions began. Ninety-six fell to the hangman, and others were transported beyond seas. In batches of half-a-dozen or a dozen at a time, they198 were called forth from their captivity and drawn on hurdles to that Hanoverian Golgotha, Gallows Hill, south of the city, where they were hanged and afterwards quartered, in the bloody-minded old way; their heads afterwards set upon poles over the Scotch Gate.

You may see relics of that savage time, even now, in the cell fashioned in the thick eastern wall of the keep: the prison occupied by Macdonald of Keppoch. He whiled away the tedium of imprisonment by decorating the walls with designs, executed with a nail, and there they still remain. At this day Carlisle Castle is a somewhat shabby military depôt. The outer bailey is a parade-ground skirted with barracks, and the inner ward and keep are War Office storehouses. But it is in the unexpected modern surroundings of the public library that the most tragical memento of that time brings the hazards of rebellion with greatest vividness before you. This is a plaster cast of a monument erected to Dr. Archibald Campbell in the Savoy Chapel, London. The Chapel was largely destroyed by fire in 1864, and with it the marble monument. The unfortunate doctor was a non-combatant who acted as surgeon to the rebels at Culloden, and escaped abroad from that disastrous field. He returned, after seven years, to his Scottish home, thinking he might then safely do so; but was informed against and executed.

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The greatest figure in the coaching world up north was Teather, who was principal contractor for mails and stage-coaches in all that lengthy territory of 166 miles between Lancaster and Glasgow. The careers of the Teathers reflect the fortunes of the road. John Teather, the father, was originally landlord of the “Royal Oak,” Keswick, which does not stand on the main route to the north; but he left the comparative obscurity of that Lakeland town for the bustling activities of Carlisle, and from that strategic coaching position worked the coaches sixty-five miles south to Lancaster, and 101 miles north, to Glasgow.

Eight mails entered and left Carlisle daily, and seven stage-coaches; and eighty horses were kept for the proper working of them. Teather and his son managed this important business: the younger succeeding to it in 1837 and, in the general wreck brought about by railway extension, living to end where his father had begun, as landlord of the “Royal Oak” at Keswick.

With the coming of the nineteenth century, some steps were taken to make Carlisle a port. It was thought that a ship-canal from a place called Fisher’s Cross on the Solway, to Carlisle, a distance of twelve miles, would make the ancient city a place of commercial importance; and accordingly the canal was cut, 1819-23, at a cost of £90,000, and Fisher’s Cross was dignified by200 the new name of “Port Carlisle.” The enterprise never paid its way, any steps that might in after years have been taken to improve the position being rendered impossible by the coming of railways; while the irony of fate long ago overtook the canal, in its conversion into a railway.

It was in December 1846 that the first railway ran into Carlisle from the south. This was the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway, long since absorbed into the London and North-Western. In September 1847 the Caledonian Railway, from Carlisle to Moffat, carried on the new methods another stage, and in the following February it was further extended to Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was necessarily the death-blow of the coaches along the main route. My old friend, Mr. W. H. Duignan, of Walsall, who remembers that time, travelled from Carlisle to Glasgow by the last mail-coach. He went to the “Bush” hotel and booked a seat for the occasion.

The bookkeeper remarked, when he gave his name, “I think I have often booked you before, sir, have I not?”

“Yes,” the traveller replied.

“Then, sir,” rejoined the clerk, refusing the money, “Mr.——”—mentioning the name of the hotel-keeper—“will feel it a pleasure if you will accept a seat, and order anything you please, at his expense.”

My friend declared that was the most gentlemanly-dying mail he ever knew.

The “Bush” has since been rebuilt, but at201 Corby Castle, some two miles away, in what was once the “Haunted Room,” there hangs in a frame an interesting pane of glass from one of its windows, inscribed by no less notable a traveller than Hume, the historian, with the satirical verse, reflecting upon the “Bush,” the Cathedral, and Carlisle in general:

Sir Walter Scott saw this in 1825, and humorously remarked in a letter to his friend Morritt upon “Hume’s poetical works.”

The reason that made Carlisle in early days the key of military dispositions, and in later times so important a coaching centre, acted even more powerfully in making it the busy centre of many railway systems that it is to-day. Carlisle has ever stood squarely in the way of those who would pass on the west between England and Scotland. To-day, the rival railways all run into one joint station: and there the London and North-Western, the Midland, and their respective allies, the Caledonian, the North British, and the Glasgow and South-Western, after many a Parliamentary battle in the past, compose their differences.

The chief coaching-business was ruined thus early, but the branch coaches yet remained, and the last coach—that to Edinburgh by Hawick—did not leave Carlisle on its final journey until202 August 31st, 1862. Coaching history, however, is as little illustrated in Carlisle by visible remains as the ancient story of the place, for while the “Bush” has been rebuilt, the rival inn, the “Crown and Mitre,” in Castle Street, has declined to the state of a coffee-tavern, and the “Blue Bell,” in Scotch Street, has obviously seen its best days.

If you seek frowning gateways, embattled walls, and the like, sufficient to clothe the stirring story of Carlisle, you will be freezing in the cold shade of disappointment, for the streets of Carlisle are wide, many of the houses are modern, and railways are very much to the fore. The Cathedral is obscurely placed, and almost the only picturesque nook is the alley called St. Alban’s Row. Even the old upping-blocks that used to stand so plentifully by the kerbstones for the convenience of horsemen, and were a feature of Carlisle, have disappeared. Only the odd names of the streets and alleys occasionally remain: among them Rickergate, Whippery, and Durham Ox Lane.

ST. ALBAN’S ROW.

Carlisle of to-day has a commercial reputation. It makes hats and whips, and textile fabrics, to say nothing of dye-works, where the citizens of Carlisle are prepared (at a price) to dye for their country. The manufacture of gingham, too, the secret of it stolen long ago from Guingamp, its native place, in Brittany, occupies a good deal of attention, and the production of biscuits and cardboard-boxes makes up the tale of the city’s activities. But Carlisle, for all these developments,203 looks a poor place, and by no means a merry. All the fun ceased when raiding and murdering went out of date, and the only merry-making nowadays to be seen and heard is not indigenous. It is to be found at the great Carlisle Joint Station, at unseasonable hours, and is provided, free, gratis, all for nothing, by travelling theatrical companies bound for Scotland. For two generations past, the low comedians of the companies have whiled away the weary waiting sometimes to be done on Carlisle platforms, and astonished the tired porters by dancing Scotch reels and sword-dances, accompanied by fiendish yelps, or have expressed a desire to have a “willie waucht,” to “dee for Annie Laurie,” to be “fou the noo,” or anything else supposedly204 Scottish. It is one of the most cherished conventions of the theatrical profession on tour.

This great joint railway station—the Citadel Station, as it is called—is neighboured by two enormous mediæval-looking drum towers of red sandstone, restorations of two of the same character built in the sixteenth century. They look none the less gloomy because they serve merely the purpose of Assize Courts, instead of fortifications. You must needs pass between them on entering Carlisle from the London road, and they are among the first things to dispel any idea the stranger may have brought with him that Carlisle is really “merry.”

There is that about the modern appearance of Carlisle which irresistibly reminds one of a ragged urchin clothed in some full-grown man’s trousers. Many things are too large for its circumstances. Two prominent things among the many that suggest this comparison are the unnecessary electric tramways and the noble Eden Bridge, carrying the road across the river to Stanwix. The bridge, built a hundred years ago, is monumental, and even the lamp-standards, designed for it at the same time, are fine. But the over-head trolley-wires are an offence to the spirit of the thing, and the city of Carlisle cares so little for it that ugly electric light standards are placed at intervals, and the fine old iron lamps that might so easily and handsomely have been adapted, now serve no useful purpose.

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Crossing to Stanwix, we are at last on the Border, for here ran the Roman wall, on its way from Wallsend, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, to Bowness, dividing the civilisation of that time from the unknown savagery further north. Built about A.D. 121, at the instance of the Emperor Hadrian, it kept the painted, skin-clad “Picts” in their own wild country for over three hundred years, and employed a considerable garrison to patrol it and exercise a continual vigilance along those bitter, wind-swept miles. Many a gallant centurion, condemned to mounting guard in these ancient marches, has doubtless in the long ago leant over the ramparts of the Wall, and gazing into the shaggy forest and brushwood beyond, called down curses upon the “forward policy” in Rome, that pushed the limits of Empire into the frozen north, before the southernmost provinces were fully settled. Here was no society, and no glory in fighting with savages to be compared with that to be gained in campaigns against the armies of Carthage or of Greece.

Here, at this wall-fortress of Convagata, there was, at any rate, the neighbourhood of Luguvallum, apparently well-settled, but the solitary life of these wardens of old Rome in the lonely mile-castles of the wall must have been so exceedingly dull that the dangers of an occasional Pict raid would be welcomed.

Even in times so comparatively modern as the206 beginning of the seventeenth century the Border was little known. Camden spoke of the northern reaches of this road, before he visited Cumberland in 1607, as a part of the country “lying beyond the mountains toward the Western Ocean,” and was greatly exercised with the hazards of even nearing these remote fastnesses. He approached the Lancashire people with “a kind of dread”; but, trusting to the protection of God, determined at last to “run the hazard of the attempt.” He did indeed come to the Border, but found, in exploring the Roman Wall dividing England and Scotland, that the Wall was not only a division between two countries, but marked the confines of civilisation. He accordingly returned, shivering with apprehension, leaving his projected work incomplete.

CARLISLE.

Stanwix, site of Convagata, obtains its name from the “stone way” the Saxons found here. Truth to tell, modern Stanwix is a sorry spot on which to meditate upon the departed colonial fortunes of Imperial Rome, for the Wall is gone and Stanwix church and churchyard stand upon the site of the fort. A precious ugly church, too, it is that has been built here: Early English only by intention; with a dismally crowded churchyard around it. A pathetic story is told by one of the epitaphs: “Here lie the mortal bodies of five little sisters, the much-loved children of A. C. Tait, Dean of Carlisle, and of Catherine, his wife, who were all cut off within five weeks.” They died during an epidemic of scarlet-fever, in 1856. A209 memorial window to them is in the north transept of the Cathedral. “A. C. Tait” was, of course, Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.

But if Stanwix be so ugly and commonplace, the scenery in which it is placed is extremely beautiful. The greater, then, the crime of those who have made it what it is. There is a lovely steep grassy descent, plenteously wooded with noble trees, that falls away from the ridge of Stanwix down to the Eden, and thus skirts the river for a mile or more. “Rickerby Holmes” is the name of this beautiful feature. From this point you gain the finest view of Carlisle.

It is a flat, featureless country that stretches north from Stanwix across the nine miles to the Border-line. Miserable villages that are merely collections of gaunt cottages little better than hovels, often built of “dubbin,” i.e. clay and straw, occur at intervals. Nearly all of comparatively modern date, they point unmistakably to the fact that it is not so very long since to live in the Debatable Land was hazardous, and not to be thought of by the law-abiding. Very well indeed for moss-trooping vagabonds and cow-stealers, but not for the responsible, or those who wished for a quiet life.

Passing Goslin Syke, where a marshy stream crosses the road, we come to Kingstown, where the road branches right and left. On this, the last stage to the Border, this parting of the ways meant much to eloping couples, bound for210 Scotland and marriage immediately on reaching Scottish soil.

The geography of Gretna and the Border is, so far as roads are concerned, somewhat involved, and requires careful explanation. Up to 1830, when the wide-spreading sands of the Esk were bridged, the way for coaches and all road-traffic lay circuitously through Longtown to the right of where the fork of the roads now occurs; but in that year the New Road, or the “English Road,” as it was commonly called, was opened, causing much interference with what the inhabitants of Springfield had almost come to regard as their “vested rights.” For, as the accompanying plan will show, Springfield lay directly on the route into Scotland; and Gretna Green merely to one side of it. But here again it behoves the historian to be careful and not rashly to assume that the early marriages were made at Springfield, and should therefore have been named after it. As a curious matter of fact, this village did not come into existence until 1791, when it was built by the then landowner, Sir William Maxwell, who named it from a farm standing there. It was then, and for long after, the home of people professing to be weavers, but really, almost without exception, a set of drunken Border blackguards who, when not helplessly intoxicated, were smugglers and poachers and wastrels generally, and, living in the marches of the two countries, respected the laws of neither.

Springfield, immediately after its rise, took211 away most of the marrying business of Gretna, being nearer the magical dividing-line.

MAP OF OLD AND NEW ROADS FROM CARLISLE TO GRETNA GREEN.

Blackford, on the Longtown road, is of the one unvarying pattern here, and is followed by the hamlet of West Linton, by the river Lyne, where a cottage or so, a farm, and the whitewashed “Graham’s Arms,” with its motto, “N’Oublie,” stand stodged in the mud. Fir-trees and a laurel-bordered road then lead to the212 by-way where Arthuret church, standing solitary, serves for churchless Longtown, half a mile distant.

In Arthuret churchyard there is shown a broken cross, said to mark the grave of Archie Armstrong, the famous Court fool of James the First and Charles the First. James brought him south, from the Border, where he had early distinguished himself as a sheepstealer in Eskdale; and his impudence and invincible effrontery brought him a long period of success at Court. But at last he overreached himself, in his enmity to Archbishop Laud. On one occasion, saying grace at Whitehall, he exclaimed, “Great praise to God and little laud to the Devil,” and all the Court sniggered; but when, in 1637, he met Laud at a time when the Scots were rising against the Archbishop’s attempts at dictation in religious matters, and asked, “Wha’s fool the noo?” the jester’s licence had grown beyond endurance, and he was dismissed. He lived many years longer, and earned the reputation of an extremely usurious lender of money, to whom no sharp practices came amiss. The cross shown as marking his resting-place is really a portion of an ancient Scandinavian monument.

Another character, very notorious in his day, lies in the churchyard: Sir James Graham of Netherby, who was Home Secretary in 1844, when the correspondence of Mazzini and other political refugees was opened at the General Post Office by his direction, and read. Graham received213 his orders from the Earl of Aberdeen, Minister for Foreign Affairs, but it was Graham himself upon whom the whole of the public obloquy fell, and he remarked, in the true spirit of prophecy, that all else he had done would be forgotten, and he would be remembered only by this wretched incident. It surely is a pitiful thing and a real tragedy of the public service that an honourable gentleman who in private life would have scorned to do anything mean should go down in history as the man who violated the sanctity of private correspondence.

ARTHURET CHURCH.

There are no architectural graces in Longtown. Each house is like its fellow and every street resembles every other street. How then do the strayed revellers, returning home “fou,” find the way to their especial domiciles? An attempt to subdue the stark angularity of Longtown,214 though not to give its streets variety, is seen in the somewhat recent planting of the roads with trees.

Many people suppose the river Esk at Longtown to be the division between England and Scotland. The supposition is reasonable enough, for the actual divisor, the Sark, four miles further on, approaching Springfield, is a very insignificant stream in appearance. The political and the social significances of it were, however, of very serious import indeed.

Solway Moss is passed on the way. Turner has made it the subject of one of the finest plates in his Liber Studiorum, and has imported into the view some mountains that are not there, together with some weather which, fortunately for the present writer, was equally absent when he passed this way.

SOLWAY MOSS

[After J. M. W. Turner, R.A.

Solway Moss is marked on the maps with the conventional crossed swords that indicate a battle. It was not an epoch-making battle that was fought here, November 24th, 1542, but it was one of the most complete of English victories, and the story of it is compact of a peculiar terror. The Scots had crossed the Border in force, and were proceeding on their usual lines of fire and pillage, to the assault of Carlisle, when they were met at Arthuret by an army under Sir Thomas Wharton, the stout Warden of the West Marches. The English onset disorganised the invaders, who fled in the gathering darkness. Ten thousand fugitives lost their way, and found themselves217 with the flowing tide upon the fatal Solway Sands. Some flung away their arms and struggled through, thousands were drowned, and many surrendered to women. Meanwhile, the main body, pursued by the English, wandered in the other direction across the Esk and plunged into the bog of Solway Moss, and were swallowed up, slain, or taken prisoners. “Never,” says Froude, “in all the wars between England and Scotland, had there been a defeat more complete, more sudden, or more disgraceful.” James the Fifth of Scotland died on December 14th, heartbroken at the disaster. It was a complete English revenge for the defeat they had suffered at the Sark, hard by, in 1449, nearly a hundred years before.

THE ROAD PAST SOLWAY MOSS.

Turner therefore does right in so romantically treating the subject, and I am merely a pictorial reporter, setting down only what I see. But at any rate, while Turner might dissuade the pilgrim, with his storm overhead and his fathomless bog218 beneath, whence apparently some wretches are just escaping with their lives, you see by the modern sketch that there is at least a hard high road running by.

Having come now to the Sark, and across it into the long street of Springfield, and by the same token into Scotland, it is necessary to tell at length the story of “Gretna Green” marriages. It could scarce be told in more forbidding surroundings, for Springfield is one long street of gaunt, unrelieved commonplace, and neither the once notorious “Queen’s Head” inn on the right, nor the “Maxwell Arms” on the left, helps to relieve it in the least degree. But the devil’s in it if love can’t throw a rosy tinge over even such a scene, and doubtless Springfield looked entrancing to some.

The popularity of Gretna Green elopements dated from the passing of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1754, by which it was declared that “Any person solemnising matrimony in any other place than a church or public chapel, without banns, or other license, shall, on conviction, be adjudged guilty of felony, and be transported for fourteen years, and all such marriages shall be void.”

This measure was expressly designed to put an end to the long-continued and growing scandals of the so-called “Fleet marriages,”219 which had first attracted attention in 1674. The Fleet marriages, performed by the chaplains of the Fleet Prison, in London, led to many abuses. Made on the spur of the moment, between the prisoners there, incarcerated for debt or other misdemeanours, and the visitors permitted free access under the lax discipline of that time, the most fearful alliances were perpetrated by wholesale. Drunken prisoners, dissolute women, and parsons who richly deserved being unfrocked were the actors in these scenes, almost exactly matched by the similar clandestine marriages performed on application, at all hours of day or night, by the chaplains of the Savoy, and by the clerical owners of proprietary chapels in Mayfair.

These marriage-merchants earned amazing incomes, the still-existing records of a Fleet parson’s fees in 1748 showing that in the month of October alone he received no less than £69 12s. 9d. for his services. At the Fleet, on March 25th, 1754, the day before Lord Hardwicke’s Act became law, there was a grand winding-up of the business, when 217 marriages were celebrated.

The penalty provided by the Act was not, under the existing circumstances, too severe; for, in view of the evils wrought by those practices, it was necessary to provide the greatest discouragement possible to this traffic. Much more then than now, a marriage, once performed, was irrevocable. Divorce courts, for redress of matrimonial injuries, were unknown, and the220 drunken and the reckless who had taken part so lightly in a Fleet marriage were held to their bargain for life.

But the Act, beneficent though it was, did not pass without great opposition, and even when it became law, its operation was confined to England; with the result that the only difficulty in the way of a clandestine marriage that should be sufficiently legal was that of making a journey out of England; whether across the English Channel to Calais, or into the Isle of Man, or across the Border into Scotland, was immaterial. The Isle of Man was for a brief period a favourite place, but the House of Keys, the legislature of that isle, in 1757 passed an Act forbidding marriages other than by banns or special license, with a penalty identical with that provided by the English Act for clergymen who should infringe it; while any layman performing any such ceremony was very roughly dealt with: the penalties in his case being—

1. To be pilloried.

2. To lose his ears.

3. To be imprisoned until the Governor saw fit to release him, on payment of a fine not exceeding £50.

After the passing of this Act we hear little or nothing of clandestine marriages being celebrated in the Isle of Man.

The Channel Islands, and particularly Guernsey, were then occasionally favoured, but the difficulties of access prevented them ever becoming popular221 with the love-lorn, who very generally, while prepared to suffer many things, drew the line at sea-sickness.

FILIAL AFFECTION.

[After Rowlandson.

The Border, in fact, was destined to be, above all others, the place to which eloping couples sped. “When Britain first at Heaven’s command, arose from out the azure main,” she was sealed to a high destiny; and when the Border was set between the kingdoms of England and Scotland, it seems, at different times and periods, to have been provided for the express purpose of affording a refuge and a living for moss-troopers, cattle-lifters, and the generally lawless people of the frontiers. It was thus quite in keeping with old Border history that, when brute force went out and legal enormities took its place, it should be the refuge of eloping lovers, of whom a very large proportion were fortune-hunting scamps running away with silly, sentimental schoolgirls.

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The flight into Scotland afforded exceptional facilities, for marrying across the Border has ever been (and still is) the simplest of affairs; the chief difficulty being still, as Lord Eldon long ago observed, to find out what does not constitute a marriage in Scotland. My lord himself spoke as doubly an expert, for he was not only the great legal authority of his time, but himself had been married across the Border. Indeed, Lord Deas was of opinion that mere consent, even in the absence of witnesses, constituted lawful wedlock, just as in those primitive days when the man only went to the woman’s home and took her to his own. Pope Innocent III., who does not appear to have been so innocent as his name would imply, in 1198 put an end to this simple plan.

Preposterous although it may seem, the difficulty in Scotland is, not to get married, but how not. The mere verbal acknowledgments exchanged, “This is my wife,” “This is my husband,” are all-sufficient, and equally binding as the most formal marriage-license ever issued by a bishop to his “dearly beloved”; and even words spoken in jest, without any wish or desire that they should be seriously considered, are binding. It is not to be supposed that novelists have remained ignorant of these quaint customs, and indeed Gretna Green in particular, and the Scottish marriage-laws in general, give point to Wilkie Collins’s “Man and Wife,” Mrs. Henry Wood’s “Elster’s Folly,” and J. M. Barrie’s “Little Minister,” among other novels.

“A FALSE ALARM ON THE ROAD: ‘TIS ONLY THE MAIL!”

[After C. B. Newhouse.

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Bound intimately up with these affairs, and thought to have originated these singularly loose methods, was the old Scottish custom of “hand-fasting,” still practised in the opening years of the nineteenth century, but with the increase of education, and still more the growth of comfort, then fast dying out. These barbaric customs, resembling in degree some old Welsh observances, mattered little to a peasantry sunk in ignorance, but with the growth of wage-earning and of property, and the consequent sense of responsibility, they could by no possibility survive. “Hand-fasting” was the selection, on approval, of a wife or husband, who would live together for one year on trial. If mutually satisfactory at the close of the year, they became man and wife for good and all; if not, they parted, and were free to choose again. Children, if there were any, were the charge of the non-content partner.

The Border must have seemed a Heaven-provided resort to couples bent on evading Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, but, strangely enough, the sufficient virtue of the first step across the dividing-line was not at first generally recognised, and fleeting lovers were originally not content until they had come, post haste, to Edinburgh, where, in the Canongate, they found a crowd of blackguardly scoundrels idling about in greasy and tattered Geneva gowns and pretending to be clergymen, who did their business for them at any prices the circumstances seemed to warrant, from a shilling and a glass of whiskey, up to five226 guineas. Thus were the runaway Lord George Lennox and Lady Louisa Ker, daughter of the Earl of Ancrum, married, in 1759.

Thus, although even so early as 1753, the year before the Marriage Act became law, a “Gretna Green wedding” was performed by Joseph Paisley, the first “Gretna Priest,” it was not until 1771 that the marrying at Gretna Green grew such a recognised institution that registers began to be kept.

Gretna stands to all the world for runaway matches, but although by far the most popular place, it was by no means the only one. Any spot on the long lonely seventy miles of Border served the same purpose, and Lamberton Toll, north of Berwick, and Coldstream were not without their advantages, especially from Newcastle-on-Tyne, to which they lay quite handy. The future Earl of Eldon, who ran away as a lad with his Bessie Surtees, got married at Lamberton or at Coldstream.

On this West Coast, however, on the “new” road to Gretna, the actual crossing of the Border is at the passage of the little river Sark, half a mile before you come to that more famous hamlet. Although Gretna is pre-eminently famed, and Springfield, just short of it, comes second in popular estimation, a very good case might be made out for giving Sark Bar prominence in this strange history.

SARK BAR.

It is nothing but an old toll-house on the north, or Scottish side of the river. But there’s227 the rub. It is the first spot on Scottish soil, and much virtue accordingly attached to it. The name of Gretna obscured those of all other places in the minds of strangers, but those on the spot, together with every post-boy between Carlisle and the Border, knew better; and those runaways who were so hard-pressed that the extra half-mile on to Springfield or Gretna meant all the difference between success and failure had cause to bless Sark Toll Bar, or Alison’s Bank Bar, as it is sometimes called. This was an inimical spot to parents and guardians, and a sad disillusion to all pursuers. Here fathers, hot on the heels of fugitives, were commonly foiled in the very cynthia of the minute. At the moment of triumphantly thinking they would, in that further half-mile, overtake their prey, Simon Beattie, the toll-keeper, was spiriting the fluttering young things into his innocent-looking whitewashed toll-house, and in the presence of the necessary two witnesses, including the grinning post-boy, was asking them228 the simple questions that sufficed: “Were they single?” and “Did they wish to become man and wife?” It was all over by the time the foaming enemy was cursing and kicking outside the barred and bolted door; and when Beattie unbolted it and introduced the newly-wed, there was nothing to do but try and look pleasant, or perhaps in extreme cases give young hopeful a horse-whipping; which, after all, was scarce politic.

Simon Beattie, between four o’clock on a Saturday morning and the Sunday evening following, in November 1842, married no fewer than forty-five couples at Sark Toll Bar, and his successor, John Murray, in one night performed the same office for sixty-one. No wonder Murray thought it possible to amass a fortune here. He reared the “Sark Bar” inn close by, on the English side of the Sark, but he had not finished it when Lord Brougham’s Act, of 1856, ruining all these fugitive proceedings, came into operation; and there was an end of his hopes.

But it was evidently in existence in 1852, for it is referred to in an article in Household Words of that year, written by Blanchard Jerrold, who describes how he left Carlisle by train and came to Gretna station, where he alighted and found a couple who alighted at the same time being “addressed eagerly by one or two men of common appearance. Are these individuals making offers for the conveyance of the couple’s luggage? The station-master looks on at the warm conference with a sardonic grin; and with a quick twitch of the229 head, draws the attention of the guard to the interesting group. The train goes forward, and the conference breaks up. One of the men conducts the lady and gentleman to a little red-brick hotel close by; and the others retire discontentedly. I inquire about this rivalry, and am informed that it is a clerical contest. The little red-brick hotel is the property of Mr. Murray, who also inhabits the famous toll-bar which is on the Scotch bank of the stream. Thus this sagacious toll-keeper pounces upon the couples at the station; removes them to his ‘Gretna Hotel,’ and then drives them down a narrow lane, and over the bridge to the toll-bar, where he marries them. In this way it appears Murray has contrived to monopolise five-sixths of the trade matrimonial. It is to be observed, however, that there is a Gretna station, and a Gretna Green station, and that the latter is the point which deposits happy couples opposite Gretna Hall.”

Competition was evidently most extraordinarily keen for it to have gone the length of inducing a Border marriage-monger to build an hotel on the English side of the Sark, and for his agents and others to have wrangled and disputed for business on a railway platform, like so many cab-touts. The romance of Gretna obviously departed, leaving only the sordid dregs, when the Glasgow and South-Western Railway was made, 1848-50, and linked up with Carlisle and the whole of England.

Painters and engravers found the romance of230 Gretna greatly to their minds, and numerous pictures exist of scenes upon the road, and at Gretna itself. Two of the most striking are those by C. B. Newhouse, showing “A False Alarm on the Road: ’Tis only the Mail,” and “One Mile from Gretna: The Governor in sight, with a Screw loose.” In the first we see the love-lorn ones, halted in front of a wayside inn, the post-boys running out with fresh horses, while with a rush the Royal Mail suddenly dashes by. They think for the moment they are overtaken, but sink back with the heartfelt ejaculation, “’Tis only the Mail.” In the second picture we have the post-boys whipping and spurring on the frantic horses, and the prospective bridegroom standing up in the chaise, holding out a further inducement to speed, in the shape of a bag which, by the size of it, would appear to contain a modest competency for life. On the summit of a distant hill the governor’s chaise appears to have met with an accident, and the chase is virtually over.

The “Deaf Postilion,” pictured by George Cruikshank, seems to have been a real person, and the incident he illustrates to have really happened. He was stone-deaf, and when furiously driving an anxious couple towards the goal of their hopes, failed to notice that, in the lurching and plunging of the chaise, the springs had broken, leaving the body behind, while he hastened on, blissfully unconscious of the disaster, with the fore-carriage.

“ONE MILE FROM GRETNA: THE GOVERNOR IN SIGHT, WITH A SCREW LOOSE.”

[After C. B. Newhouse.

233

THE DEAF POST-BOY.

[After Cruikshank.

In the merry days of the road, Springfield was alert. The two inns, the “King’s Head” (as it was then) and the “Maxwell Arms,” combined the parts of registrar’s office and hostelry: the innkeepers doubling the characters of “priests” and hosts: while at Gretna Green itself stood Gretna234 Hall, a most comfortable, and indeed aristocratic, hotel. But, indeed, any one could, would, and did marry all who asked, anywhere. There was absolute Free Trade in it; only some were sharper than others to turn the privilege to account. Even women might perform the simple formula, although it does not appear that a woman ever did.

The inns, of course, took the pick of the business; for the convenience of coming, tired out with the long-continued excitement of being pursued out of one country into another, to be married and refreshed under one roof was so obvious that it need not be insisted upon.

Prices, naturally enough, varied. They ruled low or high, according to whether you appeared to be poor or wealthy, moderately leisured, or in a frantic haste, and marriages have been “celebrated”—the circumstances would hardly permit the use of the word “solemnised”—for the sake, at one extreme, of a glass of whiskey and a pleasant word, and, at the other extremity, for so high a fee as £100, and “D—n you, be quick about it!” There have even been times when the offer of that sum has not availed; not, we may be sure, because the keen-witted natives stood out for more, but solely on account of the excruciating circumstances. You are required to imagine such a case: the hour midnight; the more or less innocent folk of Springfield and Gretna asleep. A chaise, driven at a headlong gallop, appears, closely followed by exultant parents. The village is awake in a trice,235 for it sleeps always with one ear cocked; and rival “priests” are hurrying on their clothes, as quick as may be, eager to earn a fee, which, judging from the circumstances, should be a substantial one. And even as they hurry, they hear a hoarse, despairing voice exclaiming in the empty street, “A hundred pounds to the man who marries me!” It is the expectant bridegroom; but before they can reach him and his bride-elect, the pursuers have come up, and snatched the lady away.

The “blacksmith” is a myth, deriving, no doubt, from the more or less poetic idea of indissoluble bonds being forged. There were no blacksmiths’ forges here then, and despite old prints showing couples being married over the anvil, with post-boy looking on, no blacksmith seems ever to have been known as a “priest.” That term was, of course, absolutely an indefensible assumption; but there is this excuse, perhaps, for the “blacksmith” idea. It seems that, among those who conducted weddings, was one “Tom the Piper,” properly Thomas Little, of the “Maxwell Arms” inn, who, with his son, hit upon the attractive title of the “Gretna Wedding” inn, and hung out a painted sign representing the afterwards famous smithy scene.

Paisley, already mentioned as the first “priest,” was nothing more than a drunken Border thief and ne’er-do-well. Colonel Hawker, writing of him in 1812, says: “I should mention that the old man who officiated for nearly forty years, at £40,236 £50, and sometimes £100 a job, never was a blacksmith. Old Joe Paisley, for that was his name, was by trade a tobacconist. He was a very large, heavy man, and might have died worth a great deal of money; but from being an intolerable drunkard and a very unsteady fellow, his money went as lightly as it came, and after he had solemnised the marriages and dismissed his ‘couple of fools’ they could not possibly be more eager to follow their avocations than his reverence was to trudge off to a whisky-house.”

In 1791 Paisley, who up to that time lived in a cottage on the Green, removed to Springfield, a little nearer the Border, where he took the “King’s Head” inn. With his removal his business largely increased. He was long an object of curiosity to travellers. At the time of his death, about 1814, he was an overgrown mass of fat, weighing at least thirty-five stone; and was grossly ignorant in his mind and insufferably coarse in his manner. Although an habitual drunkard, he was seldom or never seen “the worse for” drink, and was accustomed during the last forty years of his life to drink a Scots pint, equal to three English quarts, of brandy a day.

On one occasion a fellow spirit, one “Ned the Turner,” sat down with him on a Monday morning to an anker of strong cognac, and before the evening of the succeeding Saturday they kicked the empty cask out of the door; neither of them having been drunk, nor had the assistance of any237 one in drinking. Paisley was celebrated for his stentorian lungs and almost incredible muscular powers. He could with ease bend a strong poker over his arm, and had frequently been known to straighten an ordinary horse-shoe in its cold state.

It was told of him that he had once, when two couples at the same time required his services, married the wrong brides and bridegrooms. They were dismayed, but not Paisley, “Weel, then, ye can jist soort yersels,” said he. He was no ideal Cupid’s officer, for he was used cynically to remark that, although well paid for performing marriages, his fortune would be made in a week if he could with equal ease pronounce divorces.

We are not to suppose that eloping pairs just went off quietly to the Border and were allowed to take their time on the journey. Not at all; and they usually, knowing that parents and guardians would soon be swiftly on their track, made what haste they could. Whether pursuers or pursued first reached the Border made all the difference, for although the Scots law would not help parents and guardians forbidding the ceremony, it was always possible for the choleric father of a sentimental young lady to seize her and to give young Lochinvar the taste of a horse-whip.

Some of the races for Gretna Green were so near that the betting on the contendants was even amongst the excited spectators of the chase. A pedestrian on the English high-road within a238 mile of the Scotch boundary would be overtaken by a light travelling chariot, drawn at the rate of sixteen miles an hour by four of the fleetest post-horses that the host of Carlisle’s chief inn could afford. Each postilion would give his whip-hand horse a cut with his whip at every bound of the infuriated creature, whilst as frequently he plunged his spurs into the reeking flanks of the animal he bestrode. And as the riders passed him at their perilous speed, pale as death in their faces, whilst they flogged and spurred like jockeys at the finish of a neck-and-neck Derby, he would see the bridegroom’s head at the front window of the vehicle, and hear him screaming frantically, “Go it! Go it! We are getting away from them! Fifty guineas to each of you if we get there in time!” Another five minutes and the pursuers—two red-faced elderly gentlemen, whirled along at the same mad pace in a similar chariot, drawn by equally fleet horses—would dash past him. “How far ahead? Shall we catch them?” “Five minutes before you—not more.” The response would scarcely have been shouted out when the spectator would see the chase ended abruptly by the fall of a horse, the breaking of a trace, the upset of the carriage, or some other mishap that might just as well have befallen the fugitives and given the victory to their pursuers.

The oldest-established and most famous “priest” after Paisley was Robert Elliot, who married Paisley’s grand-daughter, Ann Graham, at the beginning of 1811, and lived at the former “King’s239 Head” from that date. When he published his “Memoirs” in 1842, he claimed that he had for the twenty-nine years past been the “sole and only parson of Gretna Green”; an impudent falsehood disproved by the existence to this day of the registers kept by David Lang, who from 1792 until 1827 married a great number of people and was particularly famous as having married Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Miss Ellen Turner, whom he abducted in 1826. David Lang had been in his youth an itinerant draper. On his journeys southward, through Lancashire, he was spirited away by the Press Gang, to serve aboard His Majesty’s ships. After many adventures, including that of being captured by Paul Jones, the pirate, he settled down here, and was in the course of time succeeded by his son, Simon, who died in 1872, and was described by Blanchard Jerrold, who visited Gretna in 1852, as “a spare old man, dressed with some pretensions to gentility.” He in turn was succeeded by his son, William Lang, who was the local postman, and had some faint claims to be considered a “priest”; whatever such claims may be worth in a place where, as already shown, any one has an undisputed right to marry any one else.

Elliot, however, was by way of being a literary character, and in history writ about Gretna Green bulks large, because of his printed spoutings: the printed word being, even among those who ought to know better, sacred. The sheer truth of it is that, at one and the same time, there were no240 fewer than four prominent establishments devoted to the marrying trade. The fact is scarcely remarkable, when we consider the number of them that committed matrimony at Gretna or Springfield; at that time averaging four hundred annually. Elliot was but one. He gives a return of the numbers he married, beginning in 1811 with 58, and ending in 1840 with 42. His busiest years were from 1821 to 1836, and the busiest 1824 and 1825, when he married 196 and 198 couples. In all, he married no fewer than 3,872 couples.

Elliot, in his “Memoirs,” has a view of his inn, which he, with characteristic effrontery, styles “The Marriage House.” Now if there was pre-eminently one marriage-house far and away superior to any other, it certainly was that of Gretna Hall, built in 1710 by one of the Johnstone family, whose elaborately sculptured coat of arms still remains over the doorway, even though the Johnstones vanished more than a century ago, and though in the interval the property has many times changed hands, and has been an inn and has reverted again to the condition of a private residence. It was about 1793 that Gretna Hall became an inn: a very superior inn, indeed, with three avenues approaching it: an inn where the neatest of “neat post-chaises” were kept, and where the coaches halted. So it remained until 1851. John Linton became landlord of Gretna Hall in 1825, and ruled for twenty-six years. He had been valet to Sir James Graham of Netherby, and was generally considered a superior241 man. He did not personally marry his guests, who were naturally gleaned from the front rank of fugitives; but generally employed David Lang, and when that worthy died replaced him by one who was by trade a shoemaker, and thus perhaps predisposed to join two ardent souls together. He paid his journeymen small sums for their journey-work, just as your dignified clergy pay curates for their labours. Notwithstanding this personal abstention on Linton’s part, he was generally known as “the Bishop.” The nickname at once shows the superior estimation in which he and his establishment were held, and carries an implied satire upon Right Reverend Fathers in God. An account rendered by John Linton to his guests would be a curiosity, if itemised. A handsome sum was, doubtless, set down for being married, among the insignificant items for food and lights. Although he did not officiate, he kept the registers of marriages at his house; and they are still in existence at Annan.

GRETNA HALL IN THE OLD DAYS.

242

A marriage that was really an abduction, and, as such, became a matter of extraordinary notoriety, to match the amazing audacity of the man who perpetrated it, was that of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Ellen Turner, in 1826. The form of marriage was performed at Gretna Hall, on March 8th. Wakefield was at the time a widower, aged thirty. He had been educated at Westminster School, and by the influence of his first wife’s family had been given an appointment at the British Legation in Turin. This he resigned, and was living on his wits in Paris when he chanced to hear of Miss Turner, a beautiful girl sixteen years of age, and heiress to a great fortune. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant—afterwards M.P. for Blackburn, 1832-41—living at Pott Shrigley, in Cheshire, and was at the time at a boarding-school in Liverpool. Wakefield invented an ingenious and plausible story for marrying the girl and so securing her money. Coming to England, he called at the school in Liverpool with a letter purporting to be in her father’s handwriting, stating that he was ill and she was to return home in company with the bearer of the letter. No suspicions were awakened, and the girl was allowed to depart with him. During the journey by post-chaise, Wakefield, who seems to have been a scoundrel of wonderful address, told her that her father’s illness was really assumed, and that he was then, a ruined man, flying from his creditors to Scotland. They were to meet him at Carlisle and cross the Border243 together. At Carlisle, of course, no father was to be found, and Wakefield then declared that affairs were so serious that only a marriage with himself would save her parent from the horrors of a debtors’ prison. If she married him, he would at once advance her father £60,000. The story seemed of the crudest and most unconvincing kind, but it imposed upon Ellen Turner, and she agreed, in order to save her father, to marry Wakefield at Gretna.

The day following the marriage, Wakefield hurried her with him across England, and to Calais. From that strategic point he proposed to communicate with the girl’s father, and come to terms, but Wakefield very soon found himself arrested by the French police and sent over to England, to stand his trial at the Lancaster Assizes, for abduction, Mr. Turner in the meanwhile claiming his daughter.

Wakefield and a brother who had aided him were awarded the very light sentence of three years’ imprisonment apiece. In the following month the marriage was annulled by a special Act of Parliament. A curious point was raised during the trial, Serjeant Cross, for the prosecution, stating that “Had the offence been committed on English ground, the defendants would in the course of the law have been condemned to an ignominious death.”

Wakefield afterwards emigrated to Australia, and in 1838 acted as secretary to Lord Durham, in Canada. Apologists have stated that he244 redeemed his early faults by usefulness in the Colonies, but to most it will seem that he was an extremely dangerous man, only too leniently dealt with. He died in 1862.

Elliot’s most romantic clients were the Earl of Westmoreland and Miss Child, who eloped in 1782. The father of the young lady was the famous London banker, whose great fortune, and the prospect of marrying it, dazzled the Earl quite as much as the beauty of his daughter and heiress. She fell in love with the noble suitor, whose proposal did not, however, commend itself to the banker. “Your blood, my lord, is good,” said he, “but money is better”; and he refused his consent. But the disappointed suitor was not disheartened, and the lovers eloped in a four-horse chaise; his canny lordship having arranged beforehand for relays of horses all the way: prudently, at the strategic point of Shap, hiring every horse to be found there. Mr. Child, enraged, lost no time in following. Using every effort that money could procure, he at last came up with the fugitives changing at High Hesket; and, leaping from his chaise, drew a pistol and shot one of the leaders of their conveyance. At the same moment, one of the Earl’s servants ran behind Mr. Child’s carriage and cut the leather braces suspending the body. The Earl and his love proceeded with three horses, with the father pursuing. Not for245 long, however, for presently the body fell over, and pursuit became a laggard and hopeless rearguard. One hundred guineas was the fee paid to the fortunate Elliot by the Earl. Mr. Child died within a year of the affair, it is supposed from disappointment and anger at his daughter’s disobedience. Rowlandson has, in his caricature, “Filial Affection,” drawn a more or less close commentary upon this incident. The banker took excellent care that neither of them should have his money, which he devised to any issue of the marriage. Lady Westmoreland died in 1793, leaving six children, and the Earl married again, at which one is instinctively revolted.

The elder daughter of Lord and Lady Westmoreland, Lady Sophia Fane, inherited the fortune, and married the Earl of Jersey; and their daughter, the Lady Adela Corisande Maud Villiers, followed the example set by her grandparents; eloping in 1845, at the age of seventeen, with the youthful Captain Ibbetson, of the 11th Hussars. It was a November night when the ardent pair flitted from the lady’s home at Middleton Park, Bicester. They did not patronise Elliot, but went to Gretna Hall. They reached Mr. Linton’s establishment on the 6th, and were duly married, as the surviving register shows. Lady Adela died fifteen years later, but Captain Ibbetson survived until 1898.

Jack Ainslie, of the “Bush,” Carlisle, was a sworn enemy to parents and guardians. He was perpetually signing his name as a witness to marriages, and was in fact quite a consulting246 counsel to love-lorn squires and damsels. To have him, in his yellow jacket, on the near wheeler was worth as many points to them as it was for attorneys to retain a leading K.C. When pushed hard, Jack knew of cunning bye-lanes and woods to hide the pursued couples in, and had occupation-roads across farms, and all that sort of geography, at his fingers’ tips.

On one occasion he altogether surpassed his previous doings. He had driven a runaway couple to Longtown, and as he thought they were taking it rather too easily, strongly advised them to cross the Border and get married before they dined. They were weary and would not be advised, and so he took his horses back to Carlisle and thought them “just poor silly things.”

He had not long returned before the girl’s mother and a Bow Street officer dashed up to the “Bush” in a post-chaise. There was not a second to lose, and so Jack, saying not a word to any one, jumped on a horse and galloped to Longtown. He had barely time to see the dawdlers huddled into a post-chaise, and to take his seat and clear the “lang toun” when the pursuers loomed in sight. The pursuit was so hot that the only way was to turn sharp down a lane. From it they saw the enemy fly past towards Gretna and so on to Annan, where they found themselves at fault and gave up the pursuit. The coast being thus cleared, Jack would stand no more nonsense, but saw his couple duly married and witnessed before he went back to Carlisle. The signatures of that247 marriage were always looked at with a certain sad interest, for the bridegroom was killed the next year, at Waterloo. This was Jack’s “leading case.” He was long remembered as a “civil old fellow, perhaps five feet seven if he was stretched out, and with such nice crooked legs.”

One of the most remarkable of these runaway weddings was that of the old and widowed ex-Lord Chancellor, Erskine, to Sarah Buck, his housekeeper, an elderly widow with a numerous family of children, who accompanied them.

THE OLD SMITHY, GRETNA GREEN.

“In the year 1818,” says Elliot, “as near as I can remember, Lord Chief Justice Erskine came to Gretna in a chaise and four horses, dressed in woman’s clothes, accompanied by an elderly lady and four children. When I first saw them,248 I took the elderly lady for the mother of the children, and the learned Lord for the grandmother. He asked me many questions relative to Gretna marriages, all of which I answered him as I would a female, until by chance I espied a button of his waistcoat through the opening of a neckerchief which he wore over his breast. After he found that I had discovered his sex, he smiled but made no remark. He afterwards changed his dress, and I married him to the female whom he had brought with him. I asked him why he had come in female attire; he answered that he had his own reasons for it. He gave me twenty pounds, and again resumed his female dress. Twelve months after, at the instigation of his sons by a former wife, he wished to divorce her by Scots law, but found, upon trial, that he could not.”

Erskine was not the first great lawyer, by very many, to exhibit a practical uncertainty as to the law, however certain he might theoretically be. He made no further attempt to upset the legality of the marriage, and in December 1821 a son, christened Hampden Erskine, was born to this odd couple. Erskine died, in his seventy-third year, in 1823.

Among the more famous clients of the canny marriage-mongers of Gretna were the heroic Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, and Miss Katharine Barnes, in 1812. On their heels came Viscount Deerhurst, son of the Earl of Coventry, whose fee to the “priest” was £100. Very late249 in Gretna’s history came the marriage of Lord Drumlanrig, heir to the sixth Marquis of Queensberry, and Miss Caroline Clayton, in 1840. The lady’s father, General Clayton, had objected to the marriage, on account of her youth, for she was only nineteen at the time; and the couple decided to hie over the Border on the first opportunity. This soon offered, and, discarding the time-honoured post-chaise, they rode horseback all the way, reaching their haven on May 25th. This gallant cavalier became seventh Marquis of Queensberry, and was accidentally shot in 1858, at Kinmont, when out rabbiting. The Marchioness long survived him, and died so recently as February 1904.

The circumstances of the elopement of Lady Rose Somerset, daughter of the seventh Duke of Beaufort, in 1846, with Captain Francis Lovell, show that the old hazards were passing. They took railway tickets, and so, without foam-flecked horses or anxious post-boys, came to Gretna.

But by far the most romantic incident in those annals of “over the Border” elopements was the marriage of Miss Penelope Smyth on May 7th, 1836, at Gretna Hall to Charles Ferdinand Bourbon, Prince of the two Sicilies and Capua, brother and heir-presumptive to Ferdinand the Second, King of Naples. The whole affair reads like the vapourings of some extravagant novelist of the old Family Reader type. Miss Smyth was a beautiful Exeter girl, and additionally attractive to an impecunious Prince in the fact of possessing250 a fortune of £20,000. The circumstances of her being in Italy do not appear, but she seems to have been married to the Prince at Lucca, and again at Rome. They fled from Italy to avoid the fury of the King of Naples, who denied the legality of the union, and claimed that no marriage could be contracted by a Prince of the Blood Royal without the consent of the reigning sovereign. The Prince appears to have relied upon the affection of his sister, the Queen Regent of Spain, to smooth matters over, but was rebuffed at Madrid, the Queen refusing to receive either him or his bride. They then left for Paris, and afterwards for England, after a third ceremony had been performed, and flew to this inevitable refuge, the Border. Then, coming to London, they applied for a license at Doctor’s Commons.

Of the virtuous intentions of this anxious and much-married couple there can be no possible doubt whatever, and the part of “villain of the piece” is taken by the bold bad “Bomba,” the notorious King of Naples, who acted to perfection the character of tyrannical brother. He instructed the Sicilian Ambassador to protest against the license being issued, and it was accordingly refused. The dauntless couple were then married in the ordinary way, by banns, at St. George’s, Hanover Square.

The virtuous lived happily ever after, and the wicked met with the retribution that, by all the canons of dramatic art, was to be expected, for the kingdom of Naples was abolished in 1861,251 and with it went King Bomba and all questions of succession.

GRETNA GREEN.

The contributor to Household Words in 1852, found John Linton dead, and the glory of Gretna Hall already departed; but Mrs. Linton was there, and he seems to have been provided with a not unpalatable dinner, while some few good cigars remained. But it was not for dinner or for cigars he came. He wanted some juicy facts for his article. He got some, but they were not so very juicy. Everything, you see, spoke of the Past, and he was reduced to being shown the “registers,” which the widow Lang very jealously displayed to him. They were wrapped in an old silk handkerchief, and when they were untied and he252 would have handled them, the suspicious old dame gently repulsed his hand, and turned over the leaves herself for his inspection.

Everywhere in the house, vanished visitors had scrawled their names, despite the notice, “Please not to write on the walls, windows, or shutters,” pasted on the looking-glass of the dining-room. Scrawled on a window-pane was the frank confession, perhaps made in disillusioned after years, “John Anderson made a fool of himself in Gretna, 1831”; and in a greasy visitors’ book he found the usual ribald remarks. With the prevailing air of desolation heavy upon everything, he asked how long it was since the last marriage had been celebrated there, expecting a reply in terms of years; but the landlady turned to the maid who was laying the cloth, and said, “Was it Tuesday or Monday last, that couple came?” The maid said it was “Monday.”

Oh! what a surprise.

Gretna Green itself is a small place, and to-day a dull one, too. The Hall, situated in its private grounds, is just a country mansion. No longer do the officers from Carlisle garrison “come once a week to be married,” as the lady there pleasantly suggested to me; and no one will accost the stranger and hint that it is a fine day for a wedding. Eheu! fugaces.

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The Dumfries coach branched off at Gretna, but nowadays only an occasional motor-car halts in the village, its driver perplexed by the multiplicity of roads, and, if he be a Southron, no less perplexed by the broad Dumfriesshire accent in which his inquiries are answered. For, of a sudden—as suddenly as the dividing-line between the two countries—Scotch have succeeded to English people. At Longtown even, the people are English; here and henceforward Scottish talk and Scottish physiognomies, if not the national dress, are prominent. There is no mingling, to this day.

I do not suppose the Dumfriesshire folk will realise the existence of their Doric. They will be like the friends of that farmer who went southwards and on returning home complained that the “Enklish” made “remairks” about his speech. ‘Mon,’ said they, ‘we didna ken ony o’us had ony auxent at a’.’

Scotland was of old an almost unknown land to the English, and indeed it largely so remained until Queen Victoria’s preference for North Britain brought about a fashionable exploitation of Caledonia; but such ignorance as that of the lady who declared she “never went to Scotland because the crossing made her sea-sick” cannot ever have been common.

Thomas Kirke, who surely, from his name, should himself have been a Scot, published in 1679 a “Modern Account of Scotland” which was either254 a joke (in bad taste) or an attempt to exploit this ignorance. “Scotland,” he wrote, “is compared to a louse, whose legs and engrailed edges represent the promontories and buttings-out into the sea, with more nooks and angles than the most conceited of my Lord Mayor’s Custards; nor does the comparison determine here; A Louse preys upon its own Fosterer and Preserver, and is productive of those Minute Animals called Nitts; so Scotland, whose Proboscis joyns too close to England, has suckt away the nutriment from Northumberland.”

Thomas Kirke, it will be observed, did not love Scotsmen. But he could be a good deal more abusive than the specimen already quoted.

“Nemo ne impune Læcessit,” he continues: “true enough: whoever deals with them shall be sure to smart for it.... The thistle was nicely placed there, partly to show the ‘fertility’ of the country, Nature alone producing plenty of these gay flowers; and partly as an emblem of the people, the top thereof having some colour of a flower, but the bulk and substance of it is only sharp, and poysonous pricks.”

THE DUMFRIES COACH.

[After C. B. Newhouse.

A good deal of fine, unreliable information may be culled from the classic pages of Thomas Kirke. Thus, “Scotland is from Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. That the Scots derived from the Egyptians is not to be doubted, from divers considerable circumstances: the plagues of Egypt being entailed upon them: that of Lice (being a Judgment unrepealed) is an257 ample testimony. These loving animals accompanied them from Egypt, and remain with them to this day, never forsaking them (but as Rats leave a House) till they tumble into their Graves. The Plague of Biles and Blains is hereditary to them, as a distinguishing mark from the rest of the World, which (like the Devil’s cloven hoof) warns all men to beware of them. The Judgment of Hail and Snow is naturalized and made free Denizan here, and continues with them from the Sun; first ingress into Aries, till he has passed the 30th degree of Aquary.

“The Plagues of Darkness was said to be thick darkness, to be felt, which most undoubtedly these people have a share in: the darkness being appliable to their gross and blockish understandings (as I had it from a scholar of their own Nation).

“Woods they have none: that suits not with the frugality of the people, who are so far from propagating any, that they destroy those they had upon this politick State Maxim, that Corn will not grow on the land pestered with its Roots, and their branches harbour Birds, Animals above their humble conversation, that exceeds not that of Hornless Quadrupedes; marry, perhaps some of their houses lurk under the shelter of a plump of trees (the Birds not daring so high a presumption) like Hugh Peters Puss in her Majesty, or an Owl in an Ivy-Bush. Some fir-woods there are in the High-lands, but so inaccessible, that they serve for no other use than Dens for those ravenous258 Wolves with 2 hands, that prey upon their neighbourhood and shelter themselves under this Covert; to whom the sight of a stranger is as surprizing as that of a Cockatrice. The Vallies for the most part are covered with Beer or Bigg, and the Hills with Snow.

“If the air was not so pure and well-refined by its agitation, it would be so infected with the stinks of their Towns and the steam of the Nasty Inhabitants that it would be pestilential and destructive.

“The people are Proud, Arrogant, Vainglorious boasters; Bloody, Barbarous and Inhuman Butchers. Couzenage and Theft is in perfection among them, and they are perfect English-haters. Their spirits are so mean that they rarely rob, but they take away life first. Lying in Ambush, they send a brace of bullets through the traveller’s body, and to make sure work they sheath their Durks in his liveless trunk.

“Their cruelty descends to their Beasts, it being a custom in some places to feast upon a living Cow. They tie it in the middle of them, near a great fire, and then cut collops off this poor living beast, and broil them on the fire, till they have mangled her all to pieces: nay, sometimes they will only cut off as much as will satisfy their present Appetites, and let her go till their greedy Stomachs call for a new supply: such horrible cruelty as can scarce be paralleled in the whole world.”

“The Highlanders talk only Erse, the Lowlanders259 understand and talk English, but they are so currish that if a stranger enquires the way in English they will certainly answer in Erse, and find no other language until you force it from them with a Cudgel.”

Let us hope, for the travellers’ own sakes, that they did not take this advice. But let us follow Mr. Kirke indoors. This, according to him, was a Scottish interior: “To enter a kitchen is to enter Hell alive: the stew and stink enough to suffocate you,” while “Musick they have, but not the Harmony of the Spheres, but loud Terrene noises, like the bellowing of beasts: the loud Bagpipe is their chief delight.”

As for the inns: “Change-houses they call them, poor small cottages, where you must be content to take what you find, perhaps Eggs with Chicks in them, and some Long Cale; at the better sort of them a dish of chop’d Chickens, which they esteem a dainty dish, and will take it unkindly if you do not eat very heartily of it.”

Oddly enough, he says nothing of porridge. But St. Jerome attributed the heresy of Pelagius to his feeding upon oatmeal porridge, which may perhaps be responsible for more religious difficulties than we are aware of. The heresy of Pelagius (whose real name was Morgan, and himself therefore presumably a Welshman), was divided into six points, chief of them being what one is tempted to characterise as the “common-sense” view that Adam’s sin was confined to his own person. The daring Pelagius was condemned,260 A.D. 418, as an heretic, but he lived on, notwithstanding, to the age of threescore years and ten: a jolly, fat man, by all accounts, and of distinctly anti-celibate views.

It is rarely, nowadays, you see a plaid, and not often a kilt. Nowhere is the sight now seen that once astonished travellers: the sight of countryfolk walking barefoot, carrying shoes and stockings in their hands, for sake of economy, until they reached the outskirts of a town, where, for sake of appearance, they put them on. The once poor country has grown a great deal beyond that. But kilts formed the only wear at the time of the rebellion of 1745, when one unhappy detachment of rebels found them rather embarrassing. An English subaltern, in command of a few men, had the good fortune to secure a numerically superior body of rebels, and was sorely at a loss what to do with them on the march to Carlisle; being afraid that they would on their way, finding themselves more powerful, turn upon his small force and wreak a terrible revenge. The happy idea struck him of having the waist-bands of the prisoners’ kilts cut before the march was begun: and thus they went; the Scotsmen being too busily engaged in holding their petticoats up to be in any way dangerous.

Only on festive occasions is the kilt in evidence, in all its barbaric varieties of tartan. The Royal Stuart tartan is an eye-searing affair of bright red, with a pattern of green, black, blue, and white stripes, calculated to make an261 æsthete faint. The Macmillan tartan would please the old negress who wanted “nothing startling: just plain red and yellow.” It is bright yellow with a plaid pattern in light red. One of the Macdonald clans sports a nice thing in red with bright green patterns. Such a taste in dress seems oddly at variance with the grey, Calvinistic religious temper of Scotland, and a direct challenge to dull northern skies.

To argue from this old love of colour in dress a corresponding delight in flowers would be a mistake, for rural Scotland has few indeed of the English type of cottage, with clustered roses and jessamine and a very wealth of colour in its old-fashioned garden. All through Dumfriesshire and Lanarkshire, eighty-five miles along the road to Glasgow, the country cottages are merely un-ornamental living-boxes, and flower-gardens are vanities not indulged in. Perhaps we see in this, again, the Scottish practical character that has advanced Scotland so far along the road to material wealth, has made Glasgow what it is, and has set Scotsmen in commanding positions.

The proverbial tenacity of the Scot has fathered many good stories, of which that of the farmer returning from market is one of the best. Attacked by three burly ruffians for sake of the gold he was supposed to be carrying, he fought desperately, felling one of his assailants with a blow that knocked him senseless, until at last a well-delivered butt in the stomach laid him low; whereupon the footpads262 went thoroughly over his pockets. But searching diligently though they did, all they could find was a sixpenny-piece, instead of the expected wealth.

“My goodness!” exclaimed one of them, feeling his bruised face, “if he’d had eighteen-pence he would have killed the three of us.”

The pawky “canny” qualities of the Scots were never more admirably illustrated than on that occasion in the football season of 1905, when the visit of the New Zealand team, known as the “All Blacks,” was under arrangement. The Glasgow authorities had not at the time arrived at anything like a proper idea of the New Zealanders’ qualities, nor of the great assemblage of spectators that any game in which they were engaged would attract; and so they cautiously refused the offer of half the gate-money and stipulated for a guarantee of £50 or so, conceding the “gate” to the visitors.

An agreement was arrived at upon that basis, but as the season advanced and the extraordinary triumphs of the New Zealanders elsewhere made it abundantly evident that the “gate” at the Glasgow match would be phenomenal, the Glaswegians made heroic attempts to alter the arrangement—without success.

An incredible number of saxpences went bang over that affair, for the Glasgow folks received £50 and paid over £1,000, taken at the gates. And the New Zealanders won the game, in addition to pouching the boodle. Scotland was263 sair humeeliated the day, ye ken, and showed it sourly. The New Zealanders came without a welcome into the city, were “booed” in the field, and left amid something like a hostile demonstration.

There is nothing at all of the “Caledonia stern and wild” description of scenery along these first few miles. The country becomes pleasantly undulating, villages are placed here and there along the road, and a railway runs companionably by, with the stream of Kirtle Water neighbouring it. Kirkpatrick is the first village. Beyond it the old road of pre-Telford days goes off to the right, for nearly two miles, and joins the modern road again at Merkland, passing an ancient granite boundary-cross surrounded by holly-bushes. A very great deal of highly untrustworthy “history” may be acquired about this cross by him who seeks wayside information. At the roadside smithy, hard by, the blacksmiths tell you it is the memorial of a man who was shot from Robgillt Tower—or “Toe-er,” in the local pronunciation. Whether the man who was shot was worth the memorial is more than any one can say, but the shot itself certainly would deserve a monument. A long shot, indeed, for it is a good mile away to Robgillt Tower! Bonshaw Tower, closer at hand, seems more likely. Another story, very popular in the neighbourhood, is that the men of this district sold their wives here.

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Passing Kirtlebridge and its railway station, and crossing Kirtle Water and Mein Water, we come by some very pretty woodland and parklike scenery, to Ecclefechan: a very celebrated place now, and a place of pilgrimage since Thomas Carlyle died, in 1881. For Ecclefechan was the native village of that latter-day prophet, hero-worshipper, and apostle of work.

But there lies to the left of the road at the approach to Mein Water and the park of Burnfoot, a little-known Carlyle landmark that should be noted. The little graveyard of Pennersaughs contains the tombs of his grandfather and great-grandfather, among others.

A great deal of argument has been expended upon the meaning of Ecclefechan. “Ecclesia Fechanis” is said to be the origin of the name; but who St. Fechan was, who is supposed to have founded the original church here, is more than any one is prepared to definitely say. The sceptical stoutly declare him a myth: a saintly “Mrs. Harris”; while Welshmen might declare that “Ecclefechan” is “Eglwys vychan,” i.e. “Little Church,” and none would be able to prove himself correct.

ECCLEFECHAN: SHOWING BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.

Carlyle once, in a memorable outburst, declared that “the picturesque” to him was “a mere bore,” and that “simple knolls and fields, with brooks and hedges among them,” were best of all for his taste. If this was genuine, and not sheer Carlylean perversity, why then Ecclefechan, his native village, was the ideal birthplace, for it is the265 mere negation of beauty and the picturesque. Yet it has a certain interesting quality. It has “character.” For you could not pick out any individual house and point to its comeliness, but although Ecclefechan is in its component parts made up of precisely the same materials as fifty other Annandale villages, there is a distinctive personality in it which would be evident even if the stimulating association with Carlyle were not present. A rushing burn goes down one side of the street and the swifts fly and scream overhead. Among the unassertive white-faced and grey houses is one with an archway and above it a quaint window of quasi-Jacobean character. It is the dwelling-house built by Thomas Carlyle’s father and uncles about 1791, and over the doorway is the plain inscription, “Birthplace of Carlyle, 4 Dec. 1795.” Beside the doorway itself stands a boulder-stone, now graven with a characteristic266 Carlylean quotation: “That idle crag”; and always, above the shrilling of the swifts, you hear the murmur of the stream a few feet away: “the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by.”

“The arch-house,” as it is known locally, was built with that central archway for the convenience of those three mason-brothers, James, Frank, and Tom, in storing the materials of their trade. There they reared their several families.

“This umbrageous Man’s nest,” Carlyle styles it: and a very well-filled nest it was, too. To-day it is freely open to all comers, and many and diverse are those who come here. In the year ending August 31st, 1905, the house was visited by 1,700 people, who gazed with reverence, with curiosity, or with mere vacuity of mind—after their several sorts—upon the humble interiors.

“And is this really the room in which Carlyle was born?” asked one in that first category, a good many years ago, in an awestruck voice.

“Aye,” said the gudewife, who to be sure did not rightly comprehend the inner meaning of all this hero-worship; “an’ oor Maggie was born here, too.”

Homeric laughter, doubtless, at this, in that place where the literary immortals foregather.

Professor Wilson, “Christopher North,” and his fellow-contributors to the Edinburgh Review, claimed to cultivate literature on a little oatmeal, but the claim might better be made for the author of “Frederick the Great” and “Sartor Resartus.” Plain living and high-thinking, you cannot fail267 to see, formed his life. A very simple-living, homely man indeed, as all his intimate belongings clearly show. His plain, commonplace inkstand, with the last pen he used, his simple writing-table with its original table-cloth, his tobacco-jar, together with a tobacco-cutter with which he sliced his own tobacco, are all of the least expensive kind, and, looking upon them, I feel vicariously ashamed for the modern authors of “masterpieces” who, according to the literary journals of the day, cannot feel “inspired” unless they are lapped round with every luxury. Carlyle’s felt hat is enclosed under glass: his straw hat hangs upon the wall, and you may put it on your own head. Most people do. Prominent among the many tributes to his genius is the great laurel wreath sent in 1895 by the German Emperor to mark the centenary of his birth. It was, of course, primarily a tribute to the hero-worshipping author of “Frederick the Great.”

OLD TABLET AT ECCLEFECHAN.

Carlyle himself lies in the dour little graveyard of Ecclefechan, among his kin and away from his wife, whose grave is in the roofless nave268 of Haddington Abbey. Like most Scottish kirkyards, the gates of it are chained and locked.

“Entepfuhl” as Carlyle in “Sartor Resartus” styles Ecclefechan, is proud of him, largely, I suspect, because it perceives that the world beyond Annandale thinks so much of “Tam Carl.” There is a “Resartus Reading Room,” rather shabby with decrepit chairs, themselves sadly wanting reseating, or, better still, renewing altogether.

An oddly designed old house-tablet recently uncovered from the many coats of plaster and whitewash that had long concealed it, is now a feature of the house adjoining the Carlyle birthplace, and is perhaps the only curious item in the village.

There is a railway station nowadays at Ecclefechan, but the village is probably a quieter place than it was in Carlyle’s early days, when the Glasgow Mail dashed by, and the local coaches enlivened the street twice a day. For one thing, the station lies at a considerable step away, up along what was the new road when Telford made it, so long ago, and called new to this day.

It is a kind of mild hog’s-back ascent out of Ecclefechan and so along the six miles to Lockerbie, passing on the way the farmhouse of Mainhill, where Thomas Carlyle’s father at the age of fifty-seven started to be a farmer, striving there ten years, from 1815 to 1826. Then comes the beautiful park of Castlemilk, seat of the Jardine family, followed by Milk269 Bridge crossing the river of that name, and the smart suburban entrance to Lockerbie.

The town of Lockerbie is a thriving place, of a neatness and cleanliness altogether remarkable: a change indeed from the time when this rhyme was possible:

New in appearance, with a modern Town Hall in a florid version of the Scotch baronial style, and an air of abounding prosperity. Here, in this considerable place of shops, the Southron who knows not Scotland first discovers what the Scottish nation can do in the way of scones, seed-cakes, plum-cakes, baps, and bannocks, to say nothing of shortbread. It is a liberal education, in its especial way.

Five miles north of Lockerbie, Jardine Hall is passed, with the haunted ruin of Spedlin’s Tower away across the park. In another mile, at Dinwoodie Green, the road again divides into old road and new. The old road, running to the right hand, through the town of Moffat, over Ericstane Brae and down to Elvanfoot Bridge, a distance of twenty-three miles, is an excellent road still, but it ascends rugged and mountainous heights, while the “new road,” avoiding Moffat altogether, is at its highest altitude 500 feet below the summit of the old. Between the two roads on the way to Moffat runs the river Annan, and270 here and there are glens that at different times gave shelter to Covenanters and horse-stealing rascals. Wamphray Glen was one of the fastnesses of the Johnstones: the locality having from time immemorial been rich in Johnstones and Jardines. There was a Johnstone who lived in the old days at Lockerbie, in one of the numerous defensible towers of the district. He bore a more or less knightly part in the battle of Dryfe Sands, hard by, while at home his gentle lady with her own fair hands dinged in the head of Lord Maxwell with the castle keys.

The new road continues, with few features on the way, on a gradual rise, to Beattock, crossing the Annan at Johnstone Bridge, a pretty wooded scene, with wayside post-office. Beattock was important in the old coaching days, for here, beside the road, in a spot otherwise lonely, stood Beattock Inn. Two miles down the road was Moffat. There was nothing else but that change-house for mail-coach and stage. The house remains even now, but no longer an inn, and adjoining it stands the Beattock station of the Caledonian Railway, which abolished coaching on this road over fifty years ago.

Nowadays there is no house of public entertainment in all the thirty miles between Lockerbie and Crawford, on this modern road avoiding Moffat, except the refreshment room at Beattock station: the village that has in latter days sprung up here being quite innocent of anything of the kind.

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The town of Moffat, down below, had no place in the scheme of Telford’s Carlisle and Glasgow Road. It had very little importance in the councils of the Post Office; Glasgow, Carlisle, Manchester, and London being places whose needs far outweighed any local discontent; and the new road went straight away from Beattock, leaving the little town aside.

Before the beginnings of coaching, when Glasgow made its need of direct and speedy communication with the south heard, the London mail went by mounted post-boys, through Edinburgh. At that time the road to Glasgow went through Moffat and steeply up over Ericstane Brae, where it was improved or “turnpiked,” about 1776, but improved, it would seem, in no very substantial manner, for it is recorded that “seventy carts of merchants’ goods” using it weekly had caused it to fall into disrepair. Such remained the condition of affairs when mail-coaches were established elsewhere, and gave the growing commercial city of Glasgow hopes of acquiring a direct service of its own. Such a service meant much to the Glasgow of that day, already grown commercially important. It was pointed out to the Post Office that already, since 1776, the Glasgow and Carlisle Diligence had found it possible to travel this route; and what was possible to private enterprise should be possible also to Government. To induce the272 Post Office to establish a mail by this route, through Carlisle, the Glasgow merchants and the Chamber of Commerce went so far as to subscribe handsomely to eke out the slender pay offered contractors, and on this basis the mail was established in June 1788. But the Post Office was not content. The road in general was rough and stony, and the Secretary was for ever threatening to withdraw the coach, if the worst places were not repaired. In 1795, Provost Dunlop was informed that the Carlisle and Glasgow mail might have to be discontinued in favour of the old route by Edinburgh, involving a loss of one whole day. Glasgow appealed to the Government to stay this threatened calamity, and to repair the road south of Elvanfoot. It was pointed out that Lord Douglas had expended £4,000 on the road between Lesmahagow and the Hassockwell Burn, near the Devil’s Beef Tub, and that the city had already done much for it. The road, it was added, was not, after all, a local highway, but part of the great national route, north and south, and, as such, rightly the especial charge of the Government. Going through the wild, little-travelled watershed between Clyde and Annan, it could never be adequately repaired from the proceeds of any tolls it was possible to charge. It was further urged that the Government had itself impoverished the road, the mail-coaches being by law exempt from all tolls, and thus being able to carry passengers more cheaply than the stage-coaches,273 which paid heavily, and, unable to compete on equal terms, had, between 1788 and 1795, been driven off the route. Thus the turnpikes lost their dues at every turn.

To all this the Post Office turned a deaf ear. The Department knew perfectly well how greatly Glasgow appreciated the expediting of its mails by one day, and was convinced that its merchants would make considerable sacrifices to retain the advantage. The Department was entirely correct. An Act was obtained, at the instance of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, empowering the Evan Water Trustees to make and maintain a new road over the watershed, in place of the old road at Ericstane Brae, described in the Act, George the Third, c. 21, 1798, as “very steep and hazardous for all wheel carriages, and dangerous for travellers.”

But it was one thing to “empower” the Trustees to do this, and quite another, and not so easy an one, to find the money. It was eventually raised by subscriptions. The merchants of Glasgow, the public institutions of the city, and a number of English mill-owners between them subscribed £6,000, and the road was begun; firstly from Elvanfoot to Summit Level, and thence down Evan Water to Beattock, there joining the Edinburgh, Moffat, and Dumfries turnpike; and secondly, a continuation of this road by a diagonal line across the level Dale of Annan to Dinwoodie Green, eleven miles south of Moffat, on the Glasgow, Moffat, and Carlisle turnpike.

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The works, as already said, were begun, and the first section, from Elvanfoot to Beattock, was completed in 1808; but then the funds became exhausted, and the Dumfriesshire people, who had been expected to do the rest, would not, or could not, do it. So the road had to go, after all, round by Moffat; turning sharply to the left at Langbedholm, two miles north of Beattock, and thence made its way by the Chapel Brae to Moffat, and south, as before, by Wamphray, Woodfoot, and Dinwoodie Green.

THE GLASGOW MAIL.

[After James Pollard.

Even this half-realised plan was preferable to the rugged round by Ericstane Muir; but no sooner was the new road made than the old question of repairs was again raised. The tolls were insufficient to pay expenses, and the wear and tear of the elements and the traffic could not be made good. What it was like in 1812 we learn from the writings of Colonel Hawker, who, travelling this way at that time, describes it as having been mended with large soft quarry-stones, at first like brickbats, and afterwards like sand. Bad as this was, it was the best that could be done with the resources available; and the Post Office continued hard-hearted, Hasker, the Superintendent of Mail Coaches, threatening continually to withdraw the mail and send it round by Edinburgh. In 1810, the various Trusts concerned had approached Parliament for a redress of their grievances, without result, but at last, in 1813, an Act was passed repealing the exemption of mail-coaches from toll in Scotland,277 where the population was (it was at length conceded) scanty, and tolls yielded a miserably small sum.

But the Post Office had as many turns as an old and often-hunted dog-fox, and, declining to be baulked, violated the spirit of this concession by an ingenious trick. What had been given by the Act, the Department took away again by the simple expedient of raising the postage on letters to Scotland by one halfpenny each, aggregating an increase of £6,000 per annum. It was quite like a game of chess.

To this move the Scottish Trusts replied by raising their tolls against the mails, with the result that the Post Office was made to pay £12,000 per annum more. They cried metaphorically, if not actually, “Check!” The next move was with the Superintendent, who responded by taking off a number of the mails, by way of warning to Glasgow.

Checkmate!

This was, of course, very interesting as a trial of strength and endurance, but was, after all, a little unworthy, and scarcely the way to conduct the business of a nation. The fact, indeed, seems to have been soon realised, for the Government, on December 7th, 1814, took the whole matter up, and the Treasury instructed Telford to “make a proper survey, plan, and estimate” for amending the whole course of the road between Carlisle and Glasgow, and to report to a special House of Commons Committee. Telford surveyed the road,278 and in 1815 reported: “The existing declivities, direction, and construction are so bad that for many years the road has been with difficulty kept open.” He submitted detailed plans for its improvement, and assured the Committee that they would, if adopted, shorten the distance, then 102½ miles, by nearly 9 miles, and the time occupied in travelling by at least the equivalent of 9 more.

Hasker’s evidence before the Committee showed that the Post Office seriously contemplated sending the mail by Edinburgh—a six-hours’ longer journey each way.

A commendable feature of those times was that when it did at last come to a Committee being appointed, results were very soon shown. On June 28th, 1815, not long after Telford’s report had been received, the Committee in its turn reported unanimously that his plan ought to be carried out, and that the Government should grant substantial aid towards the cost, estimated at £80,000. A year later—July 1st, 1816—an “Act for a grant of £50,000 for the Road from the City of Glasgow to the City of Carlisle” was passed; the work to be managed by the already existing Commissioners of Highland Roads and Bridges. Voluminous reports, with plans, exist, among the Parliamentary papers of that age, showing how the work progressed to its completion; and the traveller of to-day who explores the districts between Carlisle and Glasgow will see for himself, in the contrast between the extravagant279 gradients of the old road in the neighbourhood of Moffat, and the easy rise and fall of Telford’s new stretches of highway, how thoroughly the work was done.

Moffat, in these days a neat and quiet townlet relying upon the waters of its Sulphur Well for its prosperity, lies in a hollow of the mountains. As to which is the neater and cleaner of the two—Lockerbie or Moffat—I will not be so rash as to hazard an opinion, but no one is likely to dispute the fact that “Moaffet” is the quieter. For one thing, this quietude is one of its principal assets, and although it has a railway station, the fact of its being merely the terminus of a two-mile branch from Beattock will be sufficient to prove that the quiet is not greatly disturbed by trains.

There is nothing very striking in the appearance of Moffat, beyond this remarkable neatness and the breadth of its High Street; the centre of the town, in its mingling of shops and villas, and the ever-present spaciousness, indeed, resembling the ordinary suburbs of less restful places. But one singular object that has claims neither to antiquity nor beauty, stands in midst of the broad street and tells the stranger that Moffat and its neighbourhood are celebrated for something else than a medicinal spa and a great hydropathic establishment. This is the Colvin Fountain, presented to the town by William Colvin, of the280 neighbouring Craigielands, and surmounted by the effigy of a contemplative-looking ram, in allusion to the sheep-farming that has given prosperity to the district.

The Auld Kirk of Moffat, belonging to an era very different from this, stands appropriately secluded in the old kirkyard that is locked and barred against casual entry. The Auld Kirk is in ruins, and that is appropriate too; for what bond of sympathy can there be between the rather smug, self-satisfied character of the modern hypochondriacs who, metaphorically (and sometimes actually) lapped in cotton-wool, now resort to Moffat, and the stern Covenanters who were dragooned in the surrounding braes and on the inclement fells, and passed a night in prison in the Auld Kirk, before being conducted to the small mercies awaiting them in Edinburgh? No: the historic building is rightly left alone to its memories.

But this thorough locking of the old churchyards in Scotland is a little revolting to an Englishman. It seems to emphasise, to the point of callousness, the fact that the day of the dead is indeed done; and hints that they not only have no part in the world, but none in the thoughts of their own kin.

Here lies the great road-reformer, John Loudon Macadam, and few are those who, turning aside to seek his epitaph, trouble further to have the gates unlocked. Macadam was born at Ayr in 1756, and died at Duncrieff House, Moffat, in281 1836, after having made an imperishable name in the annals of the road, and contributing a new verb, “to macadamise,” to the language.

Situated on one of the two roads from Carlisle to Edinburgh, Moffat had of old-time a goodly number of inns. Among them the “Annandale Arms” and the “Spur” were immediate competitors. There are Burns associations with the “Spur,” but much more intimate ones with the “Old Black Bull” inn, which remains very much the same plain whitewashed stone house it was in the poet’s day. The tale is told how he, with some cronies, was drinking in a window-seat of the inn when they saw two ladies ride by on horseback; one of them so pretty and so small that she was known as “one of the Graces in miniature.” “Odd,” said one of the public-house loungers, “that one should be so little and the other so big”; whereupon Burns wrote on a window-pane:

A very pretty compliment to the little lady, but uncommonly hard, by implication, on the full-sized one. The pane of glass was long ago removed, and is supposed to be now at Dumfries.

The famed Sulphur Well is situated a mile and a half away from Moffat, in a Swiss-like châlet on a rugged hillside 300 feet above the town. Some walk to it, others ride, and for two-pence282 you can drink as much of the almost incredibly nasty water as you please. The first tumbler is, to taste and smell (it smells like “election eggs” or assafœtida), more than enough for the strongest stomach, and seems to be brewed in an inner laboratory of the infernal regions. But the second glass—if you are ill enough or courageous enough to take a second—seems not so bad, and visitors by degrees become perfect gluttons for it. The water is a specific for rheumatism and gout, among other things, and was known so long ago as 1633, when Rachel Whiteford, daughter of the parson of Moffat, benefited by it. In 1659, Dr. Matthew McKaile, of Edinburgh, wrote a pamphlet in Latin about its virtues, and thereafter the fame of the Well has taken care of itself. But the invigorating air of the mountains has, no doubt, at least an equal share in restoring many of the invalids to health.

The rugged and forbidding scenery around Moffat culminates on the Edinburgh Road at the gloomy hollow of the hills called the “Devil’s Beef Tub,” which is said to have acquired its name from this being a favourite place among the cattle-thieves of yore to hide their stolen cattle. The “Beef Tub” is really a deeper and more rugged version of the “Devil’s Punch Bowl” on the Portsmouth Road. Sir Walter Scott, who romantically says “It looks as if four hills were laying their heads together to shut daylight from the dark, hollow space between them,” tells in “Redgauntlet” how a prisoner being marched past283 the spot, breaking from his guards, escaped by throwing himself down and rolling to the bottom.

This wild country was the scene of a mail-coach tragedy on February 1st, 1831, when the Dumfries and Edinburgh mail was snowed up at Moffat. Eager to perform their duty, the driver and guard procured saddle-horses and flung the mail-bags across them, but a few minutes’ effort proved that it was impossible to proceed with the horses, and the two undaunted men sent them back to Moffat, and went on by themselves, afoot. It was an enterprise of the most hopeless kind, impossible to be accomplished. They sank down exhausted, near this gorge, and perished in the snow. Their bodies were found, a week later, and the mail-bags they had carefully hung upon a wayside snow-post, hard by.

To-day, in the old kirkyard of Moffat, two stones to the memory of these brave men, “faithful unto death,” may be found, with the inscriptions:

and

The local Courier newspaper of the time, with more truth than feeling, described the act of these284 devoted servants of the Post Office as “an exaggerated sense of duty.”

If you go far enough past the Devil’s Beef Tub and Tweedshaws, where the river Tweed rises, you come, along this old road to Edinburgh, to the “Crook” inn, where the poet Campbell had a curious experience. Taking a generous glass of toddy, he went to bed. Presently there came a knock at the door, and there entered the pretty maiden who had given him supper. “Please, sir, could ye tak’ a neebour into your bed?”

“With all my heart,” exclaimed the poet, starting up gaily.

“Thank you, sir; for the Moffat carrier’s come in, a’ wat, and there’s no’ a single other place.”

This was not what the poet expected. Up came the big reeking man, and exit the little woman.

The old Glasgow road, that goes up from Moffat past Meikleholmside, and so across Ericstane Muir, is everything a road should not be. It is steep, narrow, exposed, and rugged, and, except as an object-lesson in what our ancestors had to put up with, is a very undesirable route and one in which no one would wish to find himself. It has not even the merit of being picturesque.

The road that Telford made continues onward from Beattock in more suave fashion. It follows the glen of Evan Water for nine miles, and the285 three of them—road, river, and Caledonian Railway—go amicably side by side under the hills, to Beattock Summit and down to Elvanfoot, where the Elvanfoot Inn of other days now stands as a shooting-lodge.

BROKEN BRIDGE.

Elvanfoot Bridge, that carries the road over the Evan (i.e. Avon) Water, looks down upon a pretty scene of rushing stream, boulders, and ferns, or “furruns,” as a Scotsman would enunciate the word.

It was here, late on the tempestuous and rainy night of October 25th, 1808, that the most terrifying and dramatic accident of any that ever befell the mail coaches occurred. It is not without due thought and choice of words that we have called it dramatic, for the happening was precisely of that thrilling spectacular character cherished by theatrical managers whose public demands sensation.

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The Evan Water was in flood this black and boisterous night, and, raving in its stony bed, tore furiously at the newly rebuilt bridge that spanned the torrent. Down through the wild obscurity from the heights above Douglas Mill came the mail from Glasgow for Carlisle, and no sooner did the horses place foot upon the bridge than it collapsed, as suddenly and completely as any stage property. It was near ten o’clock, the insides had composed themselves to that semblance of sleep which coach travellers could command, and the outsides had wrapped themselves up in their greatcoats, and had so fixed their minds upon more pleasant circumstances than riding in the rain on a cold October night, that they were practically oblivious of their surroundings, when they were suddenly plunged, with the coach, coachman, horses, and guard, into the foaming water underneath the broken arch. There were two outside passengers: one a City merchant named Lund, the other a Mr. Brand of Ecclefechan. Both were instantly killed. The four insides, a lady and three gentlemen, were more fortunate, and escaped with bruises and a fright. The horses suffered severely, the leaders being killed in falling, and one of the wheelers crushed to death, as it lay below, by falling stones from the crumbling arch. The coach and harness were utterly destroyed, and Alexander Cooper, the coachman, although found protected from being washed away by two huge boulders, only survived by a few weeks the injuries his spine287 had received. The guard, Thomas Kingham, was found with his head cut open, but soon recovered. He always considered his escape from being killed was due to his not having strapped himself into his seat on that fatal night, so that, instead of being involved with the coach, he was shot clear of it, into the water.

It was due to the presence of mind shown by the lady passenger that the down mail, at that moment due to pass this tragical spot, did not meet the fate that had already overtaken this unfortunate coach. She had found a temporary refuge on a friendly rock rising amidst the surging water, and crouching there, saw the lamps of the oncoming coach glaring through the mist and rain. Shrieking at the highest pitch of her voice, she fortunately attracted the attention of the coachman, who drew up on the very verge of destruction.

The first care of the guard belonging to the new arrival was to rescue this lady from her position. Hugh Campbell was not like the conventional heroes of the theatre, who make nothing of grasping the heroine round the waist, and, striking an attitude, so removing her to a place of safety with an air suggesting a whimsical combination of a Chesterfield and a bold bad bandit. No, he set about the task with a modest diffidence which somewhat exasperated the lady herself. Climbing down with the broken reins lashed together, so that those above could haul her up, he asked doubtfully, “Whaur will I grip her?”

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“Grip me whaur ye like,” said she, “but grip me sicker”; and he accordingly tied her up securely and she was hoisted to the road above, without more ado.

The down mail returned to Moffat with a heavy and mournful load, including the dead and injured passengers of the up coach. The only uninjured horse was led behind.

For many years the bridge was not properly mended, funds being scarce on these roads; and the mail, slowing for it, lost five minutes on every journey. The part that fell may still be traced by the shorter lime stalactites hanging from the repaired arch. It is still known as “Broken Bridge,” in addition to “Milestone Brig,” from the milestone on it, marking the midway distance between Carlisle and Glasgow: “Carlisle 47½ miles. Glasgow 47 miles.”

The Caledonian Railway, approaching this scene, crosses the Evan Water on a bridge which looks as though a Norman consulting architect had been raised from the dead to design. It passes in a shallow cutting over a scrubby moor, protected against being embedded in winter’s snows by a close palisade of timber on either side.

The road now, with Crawford in the distance, sharply bends, and crosses the infant Clyde at New Bridge.

Crawford, situated in a wide strath, or green vale, where several streams join the Clyde, is a scattered village whose white houses show289 pleasantly at great distances. It is a favourite place among the wealthier Glasgow folk who like rural holidays. The New Crawford Inn of coaching days, a substantial, mansion-like building, opened in 1822, on the completion of this portion of Telford’s new road, is still in business as the “Cranstoun Hotel.” The old road, from Elvanfoot, goes straighter than the new one to Abington, but with severe gradients; while the new continues its even way alongside the river, to Abington, where it bids good-bye to the Clyde altogether, until Bothwell is reached.

“BRIG O’ CLYDE.”

Abington is a typical Scottish anglers’ resort: just a tiny place with an inn, a post-office, a few cottages, and a fine park or two; very neat, very still, and looking very expensive and exclusive. A gamekeeper, or an angler in waders, with rod and creel, are almost the only figures seen here, in the road.

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Beyond Abington, the river and the rail alike turn aside and leave the road to solitude. Not even Telford’s road-engineering genius could abolish the ghastly pull-up over the bleak and beastly moor that stretches between this point and Douglas Mill. You deceptively descend to it, to Denighton Bridge, crossing a little stream that comes down the valley from Crawfordjohn, but then rise to an exposed lonely plateau, bleaker than Shap and without its interest. Down at Denighton Bridge, where the view ranges along the gloomy valley wherein the Covenanters skulked and the troopers of Montrose hunted them, the sheep graze and the lambkins frisk in spring. Even a wet and cold cyclist (who is not easily amused) must shriek with laughter at the antics of the lambs, which are a good deal funnier than those of any low comedian I have ever seen. No need to encore them either, for they continue all day, or at least until, exhausted with laughter, you depart, to face the muir above.

Heaven send the traveller who travels here by his own efforts has fine weather and a following wind, otherwise his progress is slow martyrdom along eight miles of shivery loneliness, and thrice welcome is the longed-for descent to Douglas Mill.

The Douglas Water runs in a deep and beautifully wooded valley at Douglas Mill, where the wayside Douglas Mill Inn stood in the coaching era, and where, behind an imposing gravelled sweep, the entrance to the beautiful park of the291 Earl of Home is seen. For five miles another stretch of old road goes to the right, across Broken Cross Muir, as far as Lesmahagow: the new road pursuing an eventful course, past the Newfield Inn.

Lesmahagow, i.e. the Court, or Place, of Mahego, an early Gaelic saint, was once the site of an Abbey. It is now a small, but prosperous, town, looking very new and neat, in spite of the fact that it is situated on the edge of the Lanark coal-field. The traveller who pursues a dogged way along the road, and looks to neither right nor left, will know nothing of Lesmahagow, which lies slightly to the left hand; and I am sure he will not miss much. But, in the crossing of old and new roads here, at the bridging of the little river Nethan, and with the railway passing near by, a singular complexity of ways is produced.

From this point, on to the very outskirts of Glasgow, the great industrial districts of Lanark display their activities before the traveller in no uncertain manner. Passing Blackwood, the centre of the colliery district is reached at Larkhall, and miners, going to and from work, are the chief wayfarers. The coal of the Lanarkshire pits is of an inferior kind, and by no means well-suited for domestic use, burning dull, and apt to fly in explosive red-hot embers on to carpets and hearth-rugs. But it is not a gassy coal, and the miners are able to go to their work with naked lights. Hence the little oil-lamp which, strung to his cap, is the mark of every Lanark coal-getter.

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HAMILTON PALACE.

Hamilton, the capital of all this district, is a very considerable town, and an odd mixture of ducal dignity and striving industrialism. It stands at the gates of the Duke of Hamilton’s great park, and jostles that dignified place in a way that would make the hermit Dukes of Bedford faint with horror. But the Dukes of Hamilton, who are Douglases, and of much more distinguished lineage than the Russells, do not seem greatly to suffer from this contact with the world: although, to be sure, the magnificent Alexander, tenth Duke, found the old streets of the town so close to his residence that the colliers and the weavers of the place could easily observe his domestic affairs. This was too much, not merely for a Duke: even so comparatively grovelling a thing as an ordinary squire would have refused to put up with it: and so the too-neighbourly293 street, and even the old Tolbooth, were purchased. The Tolbooth stands, even now, in the park, and the front walls of the otherwise demolished houses, with doors and windows filled up, form an odd boundary-wall.

The tenth Duke was magnificent indeed. He knew what was due to his strawberry-leaves, and, being a man of immense wealth, saw that he got his due accordingly. A great deal is possible to a man with eighteen titles and five residences, and millions of money to properly support them. He added expensively to the Palace in 1828 and not only beautified it and filled it with wonderful collections of art and literature, but expended £130,000 on a grand mausoleum, so that he might be adequately housed in death. He even imported the black marble sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian monarch; who, however, appears to have been of shorter stature than the princely Duke Alexander, for the thing was a misfit, and when at length his Grace was gathered to his fathers, his body had to be doubled up, in a very derogatory way. The immense collections in Hamilton Palace were at length sold in 1882, by an extravagant and impecunious successor of Duke Alexander, and realised £400,000 at auction.

The park and the mausoleum may be seen at due seasons, and sometimes the miniature castle of Châtelherault, built in 1732, in imitation of the castle in France whence the Dukes of Hamilton take their French title of Dukes of Châtelherault.

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Hamilton town is a cheery place, with colour and ornament in its new buildings: very different from the lowering streets of Glasgow, which we are now nearing. In its present prosperous condition, many old buildings are being removed, but the passer-by will note a quaint tablet over an old house in the chief street, with three moustached lions’ heads, the initials “A. S.” and the inscription:

A very broad and well-kept stretch of road leads from Hamilton to the Clyde at Bothwell Bridge: the famous Brig where the battle so immediately disastrous to the Covenanters was fought, June 22nd, 1679. The bridge representing the one that spanned the river so long ago was built in 1826, and neither it nor the road resembles the old circumstances of the place in any but the remotest degree. The road across Bothwell Brig when the battle was fought was steep and but twelve feet wide. The Covenanters lost the day entirely through the internal dissensions among their own forces. Each officer wanted to be commandant, and while they were bitterly wrangling about this point, up came the Royalist forces under the Duke of Monmouth and “bloody Claverse,” otherwise Graham of Claverhouse, the “bonnie Dundee” of the famous ballad. The Covenanting army was well placed for defence, and the day might, in other circumstances,295 have gone in their favour, but as it was, they were defeated, with a slaughter of three hundred. Twelve hundred prisoners were taken. Of these, some were executed: many were shipped to the plantations in Barbadoes. Thus was avenged the initial Royalist defeat by the hands of the Covenanters at Drumclog, on the 1st of June.

It was not until 1903 that the tall obelisk now standing the north side of the bridge was erected, to commemorate the Covenanters who fought and fell “in defence of civil and religious liberty, for Christ’s Crown and Covenant.”

BOTHWELL BRIDGE.

The red ruins of the ancient castle of Bothwell stand in the neighbouring park belonging to the Earl of Home. The little town of Bothwell, with its finely rebuilt church, fringes the road: in the churchyard a highly decorative monument of296 terra-cotta and mosaics to the memory of Joanna Baillie, the poet, with quotations in praise of the scenery around Bothwell. The scenery is still (what is left of it) fine, but since the day when Joanna Baillie wandered in Bothwell’s braes, and corresponded with Sir Walter Scott, the suburbs of Glasgow have swept over the scene; and henceforward the way to Glasgow is not rural.

Yet although Glasgow is, in its population, the “second city of the Empire,” coming next after London, it is by no means the centre of so great a number of smaller townships as Manchester, and by consequence the approach, along crowded streets to the centre of the city, is not so lengthy. Bothwell, at the very furthest, is the limit, and is nine miles from the Exchange at Glasgow. Laurel Bank and the suburb of Uddingston follow, and to this fringe in these days the electric tramways extend. To these marches of the city succeed Broomhouse and some busy outlying collieries of the Lanarkshire coal-fields, Mount Vernon railway station, and Tolcross. It was at the approach to Tolcross, soon after the mail-coach to London had been established, that a desperate attempt to wreck and rob the mail was made. The road at that time passed through a small fir wood, where a strong rope was stretched across the highway and securely fastened at either end to tree-trunks, at the height of the places usually occupied by coachman and guard; but, as it happened, a slow-moving hay-waggon came along first, instead of297 the more quickly moving van, and the waggoner got rather a surprise.

At Tolcross, the traveller has at last arrived at Glasgow, and enters there, into the wealthy city, by the meanest of back-doors. Tolcross and its lengthy continuation, Gallowgate, are one long-drawn slum, and so conduct shamelessly to the very heart of things: the junction of Trongate, Saltmarket, and High Street, where stands the old centre of the city in coaching days, Glasgow Cross.

Here Glasgow is at its busiest, and the hurrying crowds look as though they had little time for sentiment. Yet the Glasgow people have, of course, an interest in Sir Walter Scott, and some there are who can point out to the stranger the house, once an inn, in King Street, turning out of Trongate, which Scott once frequented. It was perhaps the original of the “Luckie Flyter’s Hostelry” in Rob Roy. The pilgrim will be bidden look at the iron ring to which Sir Walter, in common with many another traveller, secured his horse.

But there is little enough of this sort of thing: railways old and railways new; railways above and railways below, and electric tramcars on the surface, are the chief things in evidence.

Here you see the Cross station of the underground railway, cheek by jowl with the old equestrian statue of William the Third, that tells298 you, without more ado, of Glasgow’s old Whiggish complexion of politics: the tall steeple of the old Tolbooth, and straddling the sidewalk, the tower of the Tron Church. The Tron itself (it was a public weighing-machine) went very long ago, together with the pleasant custom of nailing to it the ears of those tradesfolk who gave short weight.

Between this point and Candleriggs were found the principal coach offices. From Walker’s coach-office at the “Tontine,” the mail-coach for London started at about 1 a.m., called at the Post Office in Glassford Street for the bags, left there at 1.15, pulled up again at the “Tontine” for the way-bill, and then was off in earnest, its five lamps glaring through the darkness. Its first considerable pull-up was at Beattock Inn, where breakfast before a blazing fire, off Finnan haddock, chops, ham and eggs, baps and buttered toast made amends to the passengers for much. Such, until the beginning of 1848, were the initial circumstances of the long journey to London.

The coaching inns of Glasgow were distributed in the Gallowgate, the Cross, and Argyle Street. Chief among these was the “Saracen’s Head,” a large building, for its era, with a frontage of one hundred feet to Gallowgate. Greatly admired at the time of its being built, in 1754, it was, according to modern ideas, a singularly grim and hard-featured frontage of stone that greeted travellers who halted here, at what was then by far the foremost hostelry in the city of Glasgow.

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It stood hard by where the East Port in the Gallowgate marked the ancient limits of the city in that direction, and owed its origin to the expansion of Glasgow following upon the more settled times that ensued after the suppression of “the Forty-five.” The Glasgow magistrates caused the old Gallowgate Port to be removed in 1749, and, in their zeal for extending the city, spared nothing; demolishing the neighbouring fourteenth-century Archbishop’s Palace, and desecrating the chapel and kirkyard of St. Mungo without the walls. In 1754 they advertised their readiness to sell the old kirkyard for feuing, and offered especial inducements to any speculative person who would undertake the establishment of an hotel, then felt to be greatly needed in Glasgow; where, up to that period, only inns of a doubtful character, and of an insanitary condition that admitted of no doubts whatever, existed. The speculator was duly forthcoming, in the person of Robert Tennent, landlord at the time of the “White Hart” inn, in the Gallowgate, who on November 24th, 1754, purchased the land of the kirkyard, on the understanding that he built an hotel according to plans to be agreed upon. As an extra inducement, the vendors threw into the bargain the stones of the demolished Archbishop’s Palace, and from them the “Saracen’s Head” was accordingly built.

Tennent immediately began to build, and reared his hotel on the site of the kirkyard; grubbing up and destroying without scruple the gravestones300 of the old burgesses of two hundred years earlier. By December 1755 he had completed the building and removed from the “White Hart”: advertising in the Edinburgh Courant of December 18th that his new house was a “convenient and handsome new inn,” built by himself at the request of the magistrates of Glasgow. He took the opportunity of acquainting “all Ladies and Gentlemen” that he had “36 Fire Rooms now fit to receive lodgers. The Bed-chambers are all separate, none of them entering through another, and are so contrived that there is no need of going out of Doors to get to them. The Beds are all very good, clean, and free from Bugs”—which obviously was not commonly the case, or there would have been no need for him to lay stress upon the fact.

Notwithstanding the peculiar advantages of his house—its independence of Keating or his predecessors, and the convenience of guests not being obliged to walk out of doors to reach their bed-rooms—Tennent’s speculation was a failure, and on February 3rd, 1757, he died, heavily in debt. His creditors, at a loss what to do with the house, let it to his widow at a rent of £50 a year. When she died, in 1768, it was sold to James Graham, of the “Black Bull,” who carried it on, with much success, until his death in 1777. But although he was so successful with the “Saracen’s Head,” he was unfortunate in other directions and died bankrupt. He was succeeded by his widow, who in 1791 married one Buchanan, who seems to have been rather a wild person, and indeed himself301 went bankrupt in 1791, dying two years later.

In 1792 the “Saracen’s Head” was purchased by William Miller; who, later, converted it into shops and tenements.

The sign of the house was an enormous half-length picture of a turbaned Saracen, with goggling eyes, represented as fiercely drawing his scimitar, and habited in a claret-coloured gown, decorated with a red sash.

This house was exceptionally famous as a literary landmark. In October 1773, Johnson and Boswell stayed two nights, on their return from the Hebrides; the poet Gray is thought to have met the brothers Foulis, the famous Glasgow printers, and to have concluded arrangements here for their edition of his poems, including the famous Elegy; Dorothy Wordsworth, in her “Journal,” under August 22nd, 1803, tells how pleased she and her brother were at last to leave the weary coach and find themselves in “the quiet little back parlour” of the “Saracen’s Head.”

The magistrates, in that age a convivial set of men, delighted to assemble in the “Magistrates’ Room,” and their capacity for drinking deep may be judged from the size of the famous punch-bowl of the establishment, which held five gallons. Adorned with the City arms, it was usually brought in, shoulder-high, by the landlord himself, and with great ceremony placed before the Chairman and the magistrates, who were probably themselves carried home at a later stage302 of the session, or left sleeping off the effects under the table. The bowl has for many years been lost sight of. Last seen in 1860, it is believed to be no longer in existence.

The “Saracen’s Head” building finally disappeared in 1904.

The “Black Bull,” second only to the “Saracen’s Head,” was built close by the West Port, in Argyle Street, in 1758, and took its name from an old inn on the opposite side of the road, kept at that time by James Graham, who afterwards acquired the “Saracen’s Head.” The building of the “Black Bull” was a shrewd speculation of the Highland Society, which in 1757 purchased the freehold site for £260 11s. 6d. It contained twenty-three bedrooms, and six reception rooms, and was provided with an ample sufficiency of cellars: six in number. For a number of years the rent appears to have been £100 per annum. By 1788, it had risen to £140, and under a nineteen-years’ lease from 1789 to 1808 was £245. In 1825, when shops were made on the ground-floor, the combined rental of shops and hotel had risen to £1,168; by which it would appear that the Highland Society had secured full measure and brimming over from its investment of £260 in 1757.

The year 1849 saw the closing of the “Black Bull,” when it was converted into a drapery establishment. The building stands at the corner of Virginia Street, and is now occupied by Messrs. Mann, Byars & Co.

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Later in date, and more advanced in comforts, was the “Tontine Hotel,” built originally as the Glasgow Exchange, in 1781-2. With the advantage of a central position, at the Cross, it eventually became the foremost hotel in Glasgow. It was leased to one “Mr. Smart” in 1784, as an hotel; a coffee-house and imposing reading-rooms forming important adjuncts.

The arrival of the London newspapers at the Tontine Reading Rooms was in the old days the signal for riotous excitement. Immediately on receiving the bag of papers from the Post Office, the waiter locked himself up in the bar. After he had sorted the different papers and had made them up in a heap, he unlocked the door and, making a sudden rush into the middle of the room, tossed up the whole heap as high as the ceiling. Then came an irresistible rush and scramble of subscribers, every one darting forward to lay hold of a paper. Sometimes a lucky and agile fellow would secure five or six and run off into a corner, to select his favourite: always hotly pursued by half a dozen of the disappointed scramblers, who without ceremony snatched away the first they could lay hold of, regardless of its being torn in the contest. On those occasions a heap of gentlemen could often be seen sprawling on the floor and climbing over one another’s backs, like so many schoolboys.

The name of the hotel derived from the financial, lottery-like principle of the tontine, by which the building funds were raised.

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One hundred and seven shares of £50 each were subscribed in 1781; the interest upon the investment being paid at regular intervals, and the property gradually devolving, as the members of the tontine died, upon the survivors; the lessening number of the persons to share out increasing pro rata the value of the survivors’ holding.

The “Tontine Hotel” ceased to be an hotel many years ago, and is now the warehouse of Messrs. Moore, Taggart & Co.

Here, then, we are come to the end of this long journey, into the roaring, overcrowded streets of modern Glasgow.

I shall not attempt to describe the Glaswegian: there are so many varieties of him. Nor his accent, which evades characterisation. The Londoner, accustomed to think his own city busy and crowded, will find, on coming to Glasgow, that he has still something to learn about congested streets. Let him, for example, resort to the Central station of the Caledonian Railway (the whistles of whose Prussian-blue-painted engines have an accent of their own) and he shall see a high tide of life new to him.

TRONGATE.

As for ancient Glasgow, I know not where to bid you look for it, unless it be in the Cathedral, and that is ancient indeed. The rest is very new, yet very grey and gloomy, for the immense commercial306 interests of Glasgow have not only compelled the extension of the city, but also the complete rebuilding of its centre, and have caused it to be rebuilt exclusively in stone. The chief streets are of stone, are paved with stone, and have remarkably tall buildings, and so with the side streets: the sole difference being that while the principal thoroughfares contain the shops, every side street leading out of them is a more or less dirty slum, where dirty little bare-legged, ragged-tailed boys and girls play in the road or spit out of windows on the passing stranger. I suppose the respectable people do their business in the city, and live outside it.

There is no colour in Glasgow, which, when once you are out of the noise and bustle of the business streets, is thus a very depressing place; and I think the Scotsman’s praise, “Man, ye should live in Glesca’, there’s such gran’ faceelities for gettin’ oot o’t,” must have taken unconscious count of this.

In one way, and one only, Glasgow resembles London. This is in the way in which the Clyde divides it, north and south. North, you have old Glasgow and its immediate extensions; south are the dependent districts of Hutchesontown, Laurieston, Gorbals, Govanhill, and a dozen others.

The Clyde and the neighbourhood of the Lanarkshire coalfield are the determining factors that have made Glasgow what it is, yet although its wealth and size are of modern growth, it is no parvenu, upstart place without a history. St.307 Kentigern, or St. Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, came here so early as A.D. 543, but early as he was, Glasgow was already here, in the guise of one hamlet on the Molendinar Burn, where the Cathedral now stands, and another nearer the Clyde.

And here, with this mention of St. Kentigern, it is necessary for awhile to divert the stream of historical narrative into the interesting backwater of saintly biography, and thus learn the story of how the city came by its singular armorial bearings.

Kentigern, the founder of the see, was born in A.D. 518, or 527, and was by birth a by no means humble person, having been the son of Ewen ap Urien, a prince of Strathclyde, and of Thenewth, daughter of Loth, King of Northumbria. Kentigern was born at Culross, where, as a youth, he entered the Church, under the guidance and protection of St. Serf, the old Bishop of Culross, who showed great affection for him, and used to style him, intimately, “Munchu,” a nickname said to derive from words signifying “dear, well-mannered little fellow.” Kentigern was not only urbane, but pious as well, and early of such holiness as to be able to perform miracles. The first of these was the bringing again to life a pet robin belonging to his patron, which had been accidently killed by other lads in the monastery, who laid the blame of the accident on him. Taking the dead bird in his hand, and making the sign of the308 Cross, it revived, and flew off, chirping, to its master.

The next miracle was exhibited to reprove his mischievous young companions, who, seeing him fall asleep over a consecrated fire which it was his duty to attend, extinguished it. Kentigern merely, when he awoke, went outside and found a frozen hazel branch which he breathed upon, in the name of the Trinity, whereupon it burst into flame.

The precocious sanctity and the amazing miracles of Kentigern so impressed St. Serf—as well they might—that when the cook attached to the monastery died suddenly at harvest time and the reapers were returning to a dinner that had not been prepared, the Bishop merely gave him the choice of cooking the dinner, or raising the cook from the dead. Whatever else Kentigern was, he was no chef, and so did the easiest thing for him to perform, and resurrected the cook, who was doubtless grateful: but probably not so grateful as the reapers, who narrowly escaped having their dinner spoilt.

But these were not his most celebrated exploits; and were mere side-shows compared with the famous adventure of the Queen of Cadzow, which he saved from becoming a tragedy. It seems that the King of Strathclyde had given his consort a ring of great price and singular beauty, but she in turn presented it to a knight with whom she was on terms of peculiar friendship. As ill-fortune would have it, the King309 espied it on the knight’s finger, and, indignant that his gift should have been passed on, snatched it off and flung it into the Clyde. He then, saying nothing of what had happened, asked her for it. She made a temporary excuse, and in distress turned to Kentigern, who listened patiently, and then instructed her to cause a fishing-line to be cast into the river, when the first fish hooked would be found to have the missing ring in his stomach.

THE ARMS OF GLASGOW.

The line was cast, the fish caught, and the ring duly found and returned to the King, who was thus completely hoodwinked. Our sympathies are rather with the King, over this business, than310 with the Queen, or the saint, who does not seem to have been able to withstand a woman’s tears or the desire of showing-off; even though it were in a questionable cause.

But he was equal to any emergency. Preaching once to a great crowd, to whom he was almost inaudible and invisible, owing to the flatness of the ground he stood on, he caused a mound to grow up beneath his feet, and prophesied that Glasgow should rise as the mound had done.

Finally he died in A.D. 603, and was buried on the site where Glasgow Cathedral stands.

The arms of Glasgow illustrate many of these stories, but were not adopted until toward the close of the sixteenth century, the earliest representation of them being found sculptured over the entrance to the Tron Kirk, and dated 1592. They were heraldically formulated in modern times, and, in the language of heralds, are: “Argent, on a mount in base, an oak-tree proper: the stem and bole thereof surmounted by a salmon on its back, also proper, with a signet-ring in its mouth, or; on top of the tree a redbreast, and on the sinister fess point an ancient bell, both also proper”: the bell referring to one he is said to have brought from Rome. The crest includes a half-length of the saint, in the act of benediction, and the supporters are two salmon.

GLASGOW CATHEDRAL, AND THE NECROPOLIS.

Although the arms are modern, the same, or similar, devices appeared upon the common seal of Glasgow from an early period: the mound, however, being a comparatively recent addition,312 necessitated by the hazel branch having become, by some unexplained species of evolution, an oak tree. The earliest representation of the mound is said to be that shown on the bell of Tron Kirk, which also first exhibits the famous Glasgow motto, which, in its original and unexpurgated form: “Lord, let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word and praising Thy name,” is to be found over the entrance to Blackfriars Church.

The theological and missionary complexion of this aspiration was completely obscured in 1699, when the abbreviated form was first used as the city motto: the inference, to satirical minds, now being “Let Glasgow Flourish—by all means.”

Popular disbelief in these miraculous things is expressed in the lines:

St. Enoch Church, built in 1780, and the St. Enoch terminus both, in a way, owe their names to Kentigern. St. Enoch is a name you will not find in the hierarchy of saints. There was never any such person, the name being merely a corruption of that of Thenewth, the mother of Kentigern.

The Cathedral itself is dedicated to Kentigern, under the pet name given him by St. Serf.

St. Mungo’s Cathedral, standing on the site where, by the “Glas-coed,” or “dark wood” of the original settlement, the saint erected his wooden mission church some thirteen hundred and313 fifty years ago, is the successor of several buildings that have been erected on the spot, and in its present form dates from what we are accustomed to style the Early English period of the mid-thirteenth century. It consists of nave, 155 feet in length, and choir of 97 feet; with aisles, Lady Chapel, and Chapter House; while the crypt beneath the choir is one of the most striking features of the building.

Occupying the highest point in Glasgow, the Cathedral was in olden days in midst of very beautiful scenery, but in these times it is surrounded by the poorest quarters and although it commands views of some extent, they are only of roofs and chimneys and of the once pretty hillside now thickly set with the larger or smaller monuments of the cemetery called the “Necropolis.” The old Molendinar Burn that ran in the hollow between the Cathedral and that crowded Golgotha was long ago covered up and its course converted into a road spanned by the bridge leading into the cemetery, called the “Bridge of Sighs.” Prominent above all other monuments on that stricken hill is the tall column crowned by an effigy of John Knox. The Cathedral Yard itself is a dismal place. There, forming a close paving, are the memorials of many of Glasgow’s departed citizens: the stones broken and mangy: merchants jostling cock-lairds and dunghill squires with their heraldic achievements weathered in most cases almost beyond recognition; and one of those ferocious denunciatory Covenanters’314 monuments with which every visitor to Scotland soon becomes familiar.

So runs the savage rhyme.

The Cathedral, in common with other such ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland, is maintained by the Office of Works, and is opened at ten o’clock in the morning by an uniformed official. It is black without and extremely dark within: the crypt, by reason of the darkness and the maze of pillars, being a place wherein the stranger is reduced to groping his way about. In short, a building of exquisite beauty, but dank and dark to a degree. A great deal of this darkness is caused by the bad, semi-opaque, highly coloured heraldic and other stained glass inserted half a century ago.

Glasgow has ever been proud of its Cathedral. Sir Walter Scott echoes this attitude in “Rob Roy,” where he makes Andrew Fairservice say: “A brave kirk—nane o’ yer whigmaleeries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it—a’ solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep hands and gunpowther aff it.”

It would have gone ill with this “solid, weel-jointed mason-wark” when the leaven of the Reformation was working, had not the Glaswegians, prouder of the building than of the religion for which it stood, presented a bold front against the fury of the surrounding townships and their own315 suburbs, eager to destroy it altogether. Again, in the words of Andrew Fairservice, “It wasna for love o’ paperie—na, na! nane could ever say that o’ the trades o’ Glasgow. Sae they sune came to an agreement to take a’ the idolatrous statues o’ sants (sorrow be on them) out o’ their neuks. And sae the bits o’ stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar Burn, and the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the fleas are kaimed off her, and a’body was alike pleased.”

The Cathedral was then made to fulfil the needs of no fewer than three congregations: one meeting in the choir, another in the nave, and a third in the Laigh Kirk, or Low Church (i.e. the crypt). The ancient pile has not been without its dramatic moments, as when, in October 1650, Cromwell himself sat here, unmoved, with Mr. Secretary Thurlow, while a furious preacher, Dr. Zachary Boyd, emulating a like exploit of John Knox before Queen Mary, many years before, for two hours preached at him, as “Sectary and Blasphemer.”

“Shall I have him out by the ears and pistol him?” whispered Thurlow, his anger gaining the better of his lawyer instincts.

“No,” replied the man of force and arms, unwontedly, but roughly, diplomatic. “He’s a fool and you’re another: I’ll pay him out in his own coin.”

He invited Boyd to dinner, and after the meal offered up an exhausting prayer of three hours’316 length. After this “like cures like” homœopathic treatment, Dr. Boyd crept home, dazed, to bed and nightmare: but it would surely have been more prettily exasperating had Cromwell prayed his three hours before dinner.

The Cathedral Square abuts upon one of the most squalid neighbourhoods in Glasgow, but it is here that the oldest domestic building in the city stands. The stranger’s attention is first attracted to it by the legend, “Provand’s Lordship,” painted across the weathered stone frontage over the hairdresser’s shop that occupies part of the ground floor. Then, glancing at the high-pitched roof and the corbie-stepped gables, characteristic of old Scottish architecture, he will perceive that he is indeed contemplating a very reverend building. It was, in fact, originally erected during the episcopacy of Bishop Muirhead, 1455-73, as a manse for certain of the clergy of the Cathedral, and this portion of the building still exhibits a shield of the Bishop’s arms: three acorns, on a bend. In 1570, shortly after the Reformation had dispossessed the clergy of their properties, William Baillie, who had been granted the Provand’s Lordship lands and houses by Queen Mary in 1565, added the wing that now fronts upon the street. Here, in 1565, before that addition was made, the Queen stayed on her visit to Glasgow. The visitor, exploring the ancient and interesting, but miserably uncomfortable, rooms, will, more than ever, suspect that the goodness of the “good old days” is a myth.

317

But why “Provand’s Lordship”? You might stand all day in the crowded Cathedral Square, and canvass all who passed; and yet no one would be able to tell you, unless indeed you happened upon one of the leading spirits of the “Provand’s Lordship Literary Club,” Dr. Robert B. Lothian, Messrs. R. H. Arnott, Thos. Lugton, and Jas. Murphy, who have just purchased the property.

THE OLDEST HOUSE IN GLASGOW.

According to those, and other, authorities, the house was in the first instance erected as a residence for the priest in charge of St. Nicholas’ Hospital, and afterwards became the residence of one of the Cathedral prebendaries—the Prebendary of Balarnock, whose prebend included a long strip of land extending from the Cathedral to Cowlairs and Provanhall, five miles away to the east, where the country-house of himself and those who succeeded him still stands. He was Lord of the318 Manor of Provan, and so were his secular successors. Thus “Provand’s Lordship,” a title Lord Rosebery, speaking in October 1907 at a dinner given by the “Provand’s Lordship Literary Club,” professed himself unable to understand. But what that sorry fugitive figure of political failure cannot comprehend is not, it will be seen, after all, so difficult of comprehension.

And now to revert to the secular story of Glasgow, which has been so long interrupted. The village had by 1136 become important enough for the site of the first Cathedral, and so through centuries it grew, retaining the reputation of being “an exceedingly beautiful little place” until the very dawn of the eighteenth century. It early stood for law and order, and preferred the Hanoverians to the Stuarts, both in the ’15 and the ’45: opposing the Old Pretender on the first occasion with 600 men, and Prince Charlie on the second with double that number. But the city was made to supply the rebels of 1745 with £5,000 in gold and £500 worth of munitions. Its population was then about 50,000. In 1768, when the modern commercial career of Glasgow may be said to have commenced, in the works for the deepening of the Clyde then undertaken, the inhabitants numbered about 70,000. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the figure had risen to319 83,769, in 1851 to 360,000, and is now computed at close upon one million.

The commercial genius and the farsighted energy of the Scottish people have transformed what was the shallow, muddy estuary of the Clyde into a busy waterway second to none in the world. As a river, the Clyde has never counted for much, but as an estuary it has ever been of importance; an importance, however, sadly neutralised by the shoals that from the earliest known times obstructed the passage. Even in remote days Glasgow made attempts to clear the fairway, and in 1565 efforts were devoted to increasing the depth of the channel, and to correcting its course, “aimless in its wanderings, and dangerous with banks and quicksands.” But little was done, and in 1651 it was reported as every day more and more filling up. At that time no considerable vessel could approach nearer Glasgow than Dumbarton, fourteen miles distant, and the tonnage of the port was a mere 957 tons. This condition of affairs remained until 1740, when John Golborne, a Chester engineer, was employed to dredge and build jetties.

But in 1755, high-water at the Broomielaw still gave a depth of only five feet, and at low-water there were but eighteen inches. To-day, on the same spot, there is a twenty-five feet depth of water, and the largest ocean-going steamers lie off the crowded quays.

But there is no finality here. If there were, Glasgow would be thinking of shutting up shop.320 Dredging is still in progress, and the bottomless Loch Long still receives the resultant harvest of mud. Meanwhile, the revenue of the River Clyde Trust goes soaring up. One hundred and fifty years ago it was £1,500 per annum. In 1898 it was £430,000, and doubtless by now considerably exceeds half a million sterling. The Broomielaw, once, in a distant past, a wild waterside common where broom and heather flourished, is now a combination of Thames Street and Blackfriars, London, the resemblance heightened by the similarity of Glasgow Bridge and the lattice-girder railway-bridges to those spanning the Thames.

The beauty of these lower reaches of the Clyde has, therefore, departed; but although the river at Glasgow may look and smell very like a sewer, Glaswegians are proud of it, as they have every right to be, for it is their very own. The story is told of such a proprietary Glasgow man being assured by a Canadian that a dozen Clydes could be added to the St. Lawrence, and no difference be observed. “Weel, mebbe,” the Glaswegian is reported to have said; “the St. Lawrence is th’ wark o’ th’ Almichty, but we made th’ Clyde oorsels.”

The Clyde shipbuilding yards are to-day the first in the world, and the riverside, from Glasgow city to Port Glasgow and Greenock, rings with the clang of the hammers and the noise of the riveters busily adding to the maritime tonnage of the nation.

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North of the Cathedral is the more than usually unlovely district of Port Dundas, where, beside the two canals that give the neighbourhood the rather magnificent name of “Port,” are all manner of warehouses and manufactories. This also is the St. Rollox district. I do not know who St. Rollox was, but his name suggest as canonised boating champion. The place is notable for the tall chimney of Townsend’s chemical works: “St. Rollox’s big stalk,” 489 feet in height, said to be the tallest chimney in the world. In a furious gale it sways like a flagstaff. After an existence of fifty years, the lofty chimney was being repointed in August 1907 when John Goldie, a steeplejack, fell from the summit and was of course killed, every bone in his body being broken.

DIXON’S BLAZES.

The south, as well as the north, has its industrial322 sights. Across the river in Hutchesontown, is the well-known “Dixon’s Blazes”: great ironworks that shed an infernal glow by night over the street and the tramcars that run by. No Glaswegian ever willingly allows the stranger to depart without seeing “Dixon’s Blazes”: but, after all, Middlesbrough can show bigger sights in that kind.

After all, the most instructive views are Glasgow on a Saturday night and the same place (but so changed that you ask yourself, Can it be the same?) on Sunday. At midnight on Saturday, Glasgow is roaring drunk and the neighbourhoods of the Trongate and the Central Station are veritable pandemoniums: but on Sunday those not thoughtful enough to have laid in a private store of alcoholic liquor must needs go thirsty, for Scotland is the land of rigorous Sunday closing. The only way to circumvent this barbarous observance is to arm one’s self with a prescription from a complaisant medical practitioner, indicating the following:

Presented at any chemist’s, this results, strange to say, in a preparation not to be distinguished from what is sold on week-days across the public bars as “whiskey and soda.”

It is along the Great Western Road, and in the park at Kelvingrove, that Sunday finds Glasgow at its best: for there you are in the323 residential districts, and the finest feathers are then assumed for church-parade. It is the picturesque made more picturesque by the stately group of the University buildings, erected between 1866 and 1870.

Glasgow having the reputation of being the “best-governed city in Great Britain,” it behoves the stranger, if not to pry into its great tramways, gas and water and electric-lighting undertakings, and the like municipal activities, at least to see the civic centre of the place. This is George Square. A citizen of Glasgow—I think he was a Lord Provost, or at the very least of it a bailie—has written a history of George Square, from whose pages you may learn how (like Britain arising at Heaven’s command from the azure main) George Square came into being from some pitiful malebolge, at the august will of the city council. It is a story touched to great issues, and if it does not make my heart beat to a quicker rate, that is my own insufficiency.

To a Londoner, who cannot help his vice of comparison, George Square is another, and a smaller, Trafalgar Square. To aid the resemblance and confirm the smallness of the scale, here is a column in the centre. Sir Walter Scott, and not Nelson, it is who in effigy occupies the summit. The thing looks as though, with a little judicious watering and careful culture, it might some day grow to be a Nelson column. All around are other statues: equestrian effigies of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; and Colin324 Campbell, Thomas Campbell, Peel, Livingstone, Sir John Moore, Burns, and others on foot. One side of the Square is occupied by the “City Chambers”: what in England we would term the Town Hall. This is a great pile designed by William Young, architect of the new War Office building in London; and in the same classic renaissance style, with the same old pepper-castor pavilions at either end: the usual small ones (for cayenne) in the middle, and the inevitable pediment and indispensable tower. The cost was £540,000, the building was open in 1888, and this, the third or fourth Glasgow Town Hall, each one in succession larger than its forebear, is already too small. So also is the inconvenient General Post Office building, near by, opened in 1876.

In connection with the bronze Valhalla of heroes in George Square, it may be noted that Glasgow is, in general, great in statues and memorials. Probably the most majestic statue of Wellington in existence is that in front of the Exchange, an equestrian effigy by Marochetti. Nelson, on the other hand, is commemorated by a tall obelisk on Glasgow Green.

Footnote.

THE END

325

• Abington. ii. 289
• Adlington, i. 340, 346, 347-49
• Alvaston, i. 281
• Anglezarke Moor, ii. 85
• Annan, River, ii. 269, 270, 272
• Ardwick Green, i. 352
• Arthuret, ii. 212, 214
• Ashbourne, i. 76, 87, 306, 308-23
• Askham Hall, ii. 172
• Bamber Bridge, ii. 89
• Bamford, Samuel, i. 51-111
• Barnet, i. 56, 111, 119-21
• Barnet Fair, i. 116-119
• Barrow-on-Soar, i. 248, 253
• Bass family (brewers), i. 311
• Beattock, ii. 270, 273, 279, 284
• Bedford, Dukes of, i. 157-64; ii. 292
• Belgrave, i. 246, 251
• Blackford, ii. 211
• Blackwood, ii. 291
• Blore, i. 329
• Bollin, River, i. 345
• Bollington, i. 345
• Bolton, ii. 68-75
• Bolton-le-Sands, ii. 132
• Bonshaw Tower, ii. 263
• Boothby, Penelope, i. 316-18
• Boroughbridge, ii. 153-54
• Bosley, i. 337
• Bothwell, ii. 295
• Bothwell Bridge, Battle of, ii. 294
• Boughton, i. 198
• Boughton Green, i. 198
• Brailsford, i. 42, 308
• Brandreth, Jeremiah, rebel, i. 89, 291-97
• Bright, John, i. 22, 199; ii. 42-5
• Brixworth, i. 200-3
• Brougham, ii. 163-71
• Broughton, near Newport Pagnell, i. 166
• Buckstone, The, ii. 133-35
• Bullock Smithy (Hazel Grove), i. 83, 350-52
• Burton-in-Kendal, ii. 133-37
• Calton Moor, i. 329
• Carleton, ii. 188
• Carlisle, i. 14, ii. 188-207, 214
• Carlyle, Thomas, ii. 264-68
• Carnforth, ii. 132
• Carriers, i. 24, 311
• Cavendish Bridge, i. 266, 279
• Charles Edward, Prince (see Rebellion of 1745).
• Chorley, ii. 83, 86-88
• Church Langton, i. 217-20
• Churnet, River, i. 335
• Clayton Green, ii. 88
• Clayton-le-Woods, ii. 88
• Clifton (near Manchester), ii. 68 326
• Clifton (near Penrith), ii. 158-63
• Clipston, i. 211
• Clyde, River, ii. 272, 288, 289, 294, 307, 320
• Coaches:—
• Beehive, London and Manchester, i. 41
• Carlisle Mail, i. 5-14
• Carlisle Post Coach, i. 5
• Courier, London and Glasgow, i.  29
• Defiance, London and Manchester, i. 32, 34, 37, 41, 42, 308; ii. 65
• Derby Dilly, Manchester and Derby, i. 309
• Derby Fly, Derby and London, i.  290
• Dumfries Coach, ii. 253, 255
• Dumfries and Edinburgh Mail, ii. 283
• Estafette, London and Manchester, i. 38
• Flying Coach (1754), London and Manchester, i. 23
• Flying Machine, London and Manchester, i. 24
• Glasgow Mail, i. 5-21; ii. 149, 200, 268, 270-79, 286-88
• Glasgow and Carlisle Diligence, ii. 271
• Glasgow and Edinburgh Stage, i. 3
• Handforth, Howe, Glanville & Richardson’s Manchester and London Coach, i. 24
• Independent, London and Manchester, i. 33
• London Flying Machine (1770) Manchester and London, i.  24
• London New and Elegant Diligence, Manchester and London, i. 25
• Manchester Mail, London and Manchester, i. 25, 116; ii. 65
• Manchester and Derby Mail, i. 310
• Manchester Telegraph, London and Manchester, i. 33, 37-9, 41; ii. 66
• New Diligence, Manchester and London, i. 25
• Peveril of the Peak, London and Manchester, i. 22, 41, 42
• Plummer’s Glasgow and London Coach, i. 5
• Prince Cobourg, London and Manchester, i. 32
• Red Rover, London and Manchester, i. 41, 43
• Regulator, London and Manchester, i. 33
• Royal Defiance, London and Manchester, i. 33
• Coaching, i. 2-51, 125, 289, 309; ii. 129-32, 137, 147-53, 199-202, 230, 253, 255, 270-72, 274-79, 283-88, 296-98
• Coaching accidents, i. 14, 42; ii. 147, 283, 285-88
• Coaching and Carrying Notabilities:—
• Ainslie, Jack, ii. 245-47
• Anderson, James, ii. 165
• Barnes, James, ii. 150
• Bass, William, i. 311
• Baxendale, Joseph, i. 311
• Bird, “Parson,” ii. 149
• Bryden, John, ii. 149
• Byrns, Jim, i. 50; ii. 150
• Campbell, Hugh, ii. 287
• Chaplin, William, i. 33, 43 327
• Davies, Tom, i. 47
• Douglas, Harry, i. 46
• Drydens, the, ii. 149
• Eade, George, ii. 155
• Goodfellow, John, ii. 283
• Hoorn, William, i. 3
• Horne, Benjamin Worthy, i. 43
• Inns, Samuel, i. 47
• Jervis, William, i. 48
• Johnson, Isaac, ii. 150
• Lacy, H. C., i. 25, 29; ii. 65
• MacGeorge, James, ii. 283
• Meecher, James, i. 47
• Nelson, Robert, i. 41
• Nightingale, Robert, ii. 148
• Parkin, James, ii. 148
• Pickford, Matthew, i. 24, 311
• Pooley, John, ii. 151
• Ramsay of Barnton, ii. 148
• Reed, John, ii. 149
• Sherman, Edward, i. 34-38, 43
• Skaife, Edward, i. 50
• Snow, Bob, i. 46
• Teather, John, ii. 147, 199
• Telfers, the, ii. 150
• Venables, the, i. 49
• Walker, John, i. 4.
• Wall, Joe, i. 46
• Waterhouse, William, i. 33, 34
• Cockfosters, i. 121
• Compton, i. 309
• Convagata, Stanwix, ii. 205
• Cook, Thomas (originator of railway excursions), i. 244
• Countess Pillar, ii. 169, 171
• Crawford, ii. 270, 288
• Crompton, Samuel, inventor, ii. 28, 75-83
• Cuckoo Bush, i. 266
• Dane, River, i. 336, 337
• Denighton Bridge, ii. 290
• Derby, i. 75, 89, 281, 285-306
• Derventio, Derby, i. 285
• Derwent, River, i. 285, 304
• Devil’s Beef Tub, ii. 272, 282
• Dinwoodie Green, ii. 269, 273
• Dorfcocker, ii. 84
• Douglas Mill, ii. 290
• Douglas Water, ii. 290
• Dove, River, i. 324, 329
• Dunstable, i. 61, 154
• Dyrham Park, i. 124
• Eakley (or Inckley) Lane, i. 173
• Eamont Bridge, ii. 175-79
• Eamont River, ii. 171, 175
• East Langton, i. 217-20
• Ecclefechan, ii. 264-68
• Eden, River, ii. 171, 204
• Elvanfoot, ii. 269, 272, 273
• Elvaston, i. 281-85
• End Moor, ii. 137
• Ericstane Brae, ii. 269, 271, 273, 284
• Esk, River, ii. 210, 214, 217
• Evan Water, ii. 273, 284-88
• Farleton Knott, ii. 134, 137
• Farnworth, ii. 69
• Faxton, i. 208-10
• Finchley, i. 115
• Firwood, ii. 75
• Flamstead, i. 153
• Flash, i. 342-45
• Forton, ii. 107
• Foxton Locks, i. 220
• Friar’s Wash, i. 152
• Galgate, ii. 107
• Garstang, ii. 105-7
• Gayhurst, i. 170-72
• Giant’s Grave, the, ii. 183-85
• Glasgow, ii. 296-324 328
• Glen Magna (or Great Glen), i. 222
• Gorhambury, i. 151
• Goslin Syke, ii. 209
• Gotham, i. 262-66
• Great Glen (or Glen Magna), i. 222
• Gretna Green, i. 14; ii. 210, 218, 222-53
• “Gretna Green” Marriages:—
• Bourbon, Prince Charles Ferdinand, and Penelope Smyth, ii. 249
• Deerhurst, Viscount, ii. 248
• Drumlanrig, Viscount, and Caroline Clayton, ii. 249
• Dundonald, Earl of, and Katharine Barnes, ii. 248
• Erskine, Lord Chief Justice, and Sarah Buck, ii. 247
• Ibbetson, Captain, and Lady Adela Villiers, ii. 245
• Lovell, Captain Francis, and Lady Rose Somerset, ii. 249
• Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, and Ellen Turner, ii. 242-44
• Westmoreland, Earl of, and Miss Child, ii. 244
• Grindley Marsh, i. 352
• Gunpowder Plot, i. 171
• Hackleton, i. 177
• Hackthorpe, ii. 156
• Hadley Green, i. 124
• Hall-i’-th’-Wood, ii. 28, 76-83
• Hamilton, ii. 292-94
• Hamps, River, i. 330
• Hanging Bridge, i. 324-26, 329
• Hardingstone, i. 178
• Hassockwell Burn, ii. 272
• Hathern, i. 261
• Hazel Grove (Bullock Smithy), i. 83, 349-52
• Heaton Chapel, near Stockport, i. 352
• Heaton Norris, i. 352
• Heaviley, i. 352
• Helm Wind, the, ii. 146
• Heron Syke, ii. 134
• Hest Bank, ii. 120, 122, 129, 132
• Highgate, i. 55, 115
• High Hesket, ii. 187, 244
• Hockliffe, i. 3, 61, 155
• Hogstye End, i. 165
• Hope Green, i. 349
• Hopping Hill, i. 210
• Horton, i. 174, 176
• Horwich, ii. 84
• Hucks Brow, ii. 147, 153
• Inckley (or Eakley), Lane, i. 173
• Inns (mentioned at length):—
• Bay Horse, near Lancaster, ii. 107
• Beattock Inn, ii. 270, 298
• Bedford Arms, Woburn, i. 109-11, 163
• Bell, Derby, i. 290
• Black Bull, Glasgow, ii. 302
• Black Swan, Mountsorrel, i. 251
• Bottom Inn, near Leek, i. 331
• Bridgewater Arms, Manchester, i. 25, 26, 29, 33; ii. 65
• Bull and Mouth, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, i. 19, 34, 37, 44
• Bull’s Head, Eakley Lane, i. 174
• Bull’s Head, Loughborough, i. 260
• Bull’s Head, Manchester, ii. 64
• Bull’s Head, Salford, ii. 24
• Bush, Carlisle, i. 5; ii. 200, 245, 246
• Crewe and Harpur’s Arms, Swarkestone, i. 278 329
• Crook, Tweedshaws, ii. 284
• Crown, Eamont Bridge, ii. 174
• Cuckoo Bush, Gotham, i. 266
• Fleur-de-lis, St. Albans, i. 127, 128
• George and Dragon, Eakley Lane, i. 174
• Gloucester Arms, Penrith, ii. 181
• Green Man (Bottom Inn), i. 331
• Green Man and Black’s Head, Ashbourne, i. 322
• Gretna Hall, ii. 229, 240-42, 245, 249, 251
• Gretna Hotel, ii. 229
• Greyhound, Shap, ii. 151, 155
• Horton Inn, i. 174
• Horwich Moorgate, ii. 84
• Kedleston Inn, i. 306
• King’s Head (now Queen’s Head), Springfield, ii. 233, 236, 238, 240
• Lathbury Inn, i. 169
• Maxwell Arms, Springfield, ii. 233, 235
• New Inn, Hackleton, i. 177
• Old Black Bull, Moffat, ii. 281
• Old Man and Scythe, Bolton, ii. 71-73
• Old Rover’s Return, Manchester, ii. 64
• Old White Lion, Finchley, i. 116
• Plough, Shap Fell, ii. 153
• Red Lion, Hazel Grove, i. 351
• Royal Hotel and New Bridgewater Arms, Manchester, i. 29; ii. 65
• Saracen’s Head, Glasgow, ii. 298-302
• Sark Bar, ii. 228
• Seven Stars, Manchester, ii. 24-64
• Sun (Poet’s Corner), ii. 64
• Swan with Two Necks, Lad Lane, i. 25, 32, 33
• Tempest Arms, Horwich Moor, ii. 84
• Tontine, Glasgow, ii. 298, 303
• Two Lions, Penrith, ii. 182
• Welcome into Cumberland, Eamont Bridge, ii. 152, 176, 179
• White Lion, Stockport, i. 357
• White Swan, Mountsorrel, i. 252
• Irk, River, ii. 5
• Irlam-o’-th’-Height, ii. 68
• Irwell, River, ii. 5, 67, 68
• Islington, i. 112
• Johnstone Bridge, ii. 270
• Kearsley, ii. 69
• Kedleston Hall, i. 307
• Kegworth, i. 89, 91, 261
• Kelmarsh, i. 210
• Kendal, ii. 138-45
• Kent River, ii. 122, 125, 139
• Kent’s Bank, ii. 122, 124
• Kentigern, Saint, ii. 308-12
• Kibworth Beauchamp, i. 221
• King Arthur’s Drinking Cup, ii. 174
• King Arthur’s Round Table, ii. 173
• Kingsthorpe, i. 196
• Kingston-on-Soar, i. 262
• Kingstown, ii. 209
• Kirk Langley, i. 306
• Kirkpatrick, ii. 263
• Kirtlebridge, ii. 264 330
• Kirtle Water, ii. 263, 264
• Lamport, i. 203-7
• Lancaster, ii. 108-20
• Lancaster Sands, ii. 122-32
• Langtons, the, i. 217-20
• Larkhall, ii. 291
• Lathbury, i. 169
• Leek, i. 85, 323, 331-35
• Leicester, i. 71, 95, 223-46
• Lesmahagow, ii. 272, 291
• Levenshulme, i. 352
• Lockerbie, ii. 269, 279
• Lockington, i. 266
• London Colney, i. 125
• Longsight, i. 352
• Longtown, ii. 211, 212, 213, 253
• Lonsdale, The “Bad Lord,” ii. 157
• Loughborough, i. 73, 84, 91, 94, 259-61
• Low Hesket, ii. 188
• Lowther Castle, ii. 156-58
• Lowther River, ii. 171-73
• Luguvallum, Carlisle, ii. 189, 205
• Lune, River, ii. 108, 118
• Lyne, River, ii. 210
• Macadam, John Loudon, ii. 280
• Macaulay, Thomas Babington, i. 246-48
• Macclesfield, i. 84, 323, 326, 337-42
• Mackworth, i. 306
• Maidwell, i. 210
• Manchester, ii. 1-68
• Mancunium, Manchester, ii. 9
• Manifold, River, i. 330
• Market Harborough, i. 96, 212-17, 254
• Markyate Street, i. 61, 153
• Mayfield, i. 326
• Meikleholmside, ii. 284
• Mein Water, ii. 264
• Merkland, ii. 263
• Milk, River, ii. 269
• Milton Bryant, i. 157
• Moffat, ii. 269-71, 273, 274, 279-84
• Monken Hadley, i. 120, 122
• Moore, Thomas (poet), i. 262, 326-9
• Moses Gate, ii. 69
• Mountsorrel, i. 73, 95, 248-52
• Mungo, Saint, ii. 308-12
• Myerscough, ii. 105
• Naseby, Battle of, i. 211
• Nene, River, i. 185
• Nethan, River, ii. 291
• Newport Pagnell, i. 61, 109, 166-69
• Northampton, i. 66, 96, 175, 184-96
• Oadby, i. 223
• Old-time Travellers (in general), i. 15-22, 51-111
• Bamford, Samuel, i. 51-111
• Boswell, James, i. 298, 321-23; ii. 301
• Bright, John, i. 22, 199
• Brougham, Lord, ii. 164
• Eldon, Earl of, ii. 226
• Granville, Dr., ii. 154, 164
• Gray, Thos., ii. 125, 301
• Hawker, Col., i. 9; ii. 235, 274
• Hume, David, ii. 201
• Johnson, Dr., i. 298; ii. 301
• Mandeville, Sir John, i. 148-50
• Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, i. 16-19
• Wesley, Rev. John, i. 142, 168
• Wilson, Professor John, i. 6
• Old-time Travelling, i. 3-51, 125; ii. 222-53, 274, 298
• Osmaston Manor, i. 308
• Ouse, River, i. 109, 173
• Over Sands, ii. 122-32 331
• Oxendon, i. 212
• Peel Towers, ii. 159
• Pendlebury, ii. 68
• Pendleton, ii. 68
• Pennersaughs, ii. 264
• Penrith, i. 14; ii. 179-87
• Penwortham, ii. 92
• “Peterloo,” i. 53, 326; ii. 39-41
• Petterill, River, ii. 187
• Pickford & Co., i. 310
• Piddington, i. 176
• Poynton, i. 349
• Prestbury, i. 345-47
• Preston, i. 84, 87; ii. 83, 90-105
• Prince Charles Edward (see Rebellion of 1745).
• Pytchley Hunt, the, i. 199
• Quakers, the (origin of the name), i. 289
• Quarndon, i. 306
• Queen’s Cross, near Northampton, i. 99, 178-84
• Quorn Hunt, the, i. 212, 253-57
• Quorndon, or Quorn, i. 95, 252-59, 306
• Railways, i. 43; ii. 55, 107, 122, 124, 130, 132, 200, 228, 270, 285, 288, 304
• Ratæ Coritanorum, Leicester, i. 225-29
• Rebellion of 1715, i. 270; ii. 90, 93-97, 104, 112, 196, 319
• Rebellion of 1745, i. 169, 270-78, 287, 319, 324, 334; ii. 21, 98, 103, 144, 155, 160-63, 185, 187, 195-98, 260, 319
• Redbourne, i. 111, 152
• Ribble, River, ii. 90-92
• Richard III., i. 238; ii. 180
• Ring Cross, i. 112-15
• Rivington Pike, ii. 85, 87
• Rothley, i. 95, 246
• Rothley Temple, i. 246
• Rudyard Lake, i. 335
• Rushton Marsh, i. 336
• Rushton Spencer, i. 336
• Russell family, i. 157-64
• St. Albans, i. 56-61, 111, 125-50
• Salford, ii. 67
• Sark River, ii. 214, 217
• Sark Bar, ii. 226-29
• Scotforth, ii. 107
• Shap, ii. 151, 155
• Shap Abbey, ii. 156
• Shap Fell, i. 54; ii. 146, 150
• Shardlow, i. 281
• Skerton, ii. 120
• “Slash, Captain,” i. 198
• Slyne, ii. 120
• Soar, River, i. 244, 248, 262
• Solway Moss, ii. 214-18
• South Mimms, i. 124
• Springfield, ii. 210, 214, 218, 226, 227, 234-36
• Standish, Miles, ii. 86-88
• Stanton-by-Bridge, i. 267
• Stanwix, i. 11; ii. 189, 204-9
• Stockport, i. 83, 323, 353-58
• Stoke Goldington, i. 62, 99
• Swarkestone Bridge, i. 267, 270, 273, 276-78
• Swinscoe, or Swinecote, i. 329
• “Teetotal,” origin of the word, i. 104
• Telford, Thomas, i. 2, 10; ii. 263, 268, 271, 277-79
• Thiefside, ii. 187, 188
• Tolcross, ii. 296
• Trent, River, i. 89, 254, 261, 266-70, 278-81
• Turnpike Trusts, ii. 273-78 332
• Tyringham, i. 170
• Uddingston, ii. 296
• Verulamium, St. Albans, i. 130, 150
• Voreda, Old Penrith, ii. 187
• Waggons (Manchester and London):—
• Bass’s, i. 24
• Cooper’s, i. 24
• Hulse’s, i. 24
• Pickford’s Flying Waggons, i. 24, 311
• Washington’s, i. 24
• Wood’s, i. 24
• Walton-le-Dale, ii. 90
• Wamphray, ii. 270, 274
• Wanlip, i. 246, 251
• Waterfall, i. 330
• Waterhouses, i. 330
• Wavendon, i. 166
• West Linton, ii. 211
• Whetstone, i. 56
• Whittle-le-Woods, ii. 88
• “Wise Men of Gotham,” i. 262-66
• Woburn, i. 61, 109, 157, 163-65
• Woburn Abbey, i. 157-62
• Woburn Sands, i. 165
• Wolsey, Cardinal, i. 244
• Woodhouse Eaves, i. 253
• Yanwath Hall, ii. 170

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