A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs Part 11

It was not strange that sheep-stealing was one of the commonest offences against the law at that time, in spite of the dreadful penalty. Hunger made the people reckless. My old friend Joan, and other old persons, have said to me that it appeared in those days that the men were strangely indifferent and did not seem to care whether they were hanged or not. It is true they did not hang very many of them--the judge, as a rule, after putting on his black cap and ordering them to the gallows, would send in a recommendation to mercy for most of them; but the mercy of that time was like that of the wicked, exceedingly cruel. Instead of swinging, it was transportation for life, or for fourteen, and, at the very least, seven years. Those who have read Clarke's terrible book "For the Term of His Natural Life" know (in a way) what these poor Wiltshire labourers, who in most cases were never more heard of by their wives and children, were sent to endure in Australia and Tasmania.

And some were hanged; my friend Joan named some people she knows in the neighbourhood who are the grandchildren of a young man with a wife and family of small children who was hanged at Salisbury. She had a vivid recollection of this case because it had seemed so hard, the man having been maddened by want when he took a sheep; also because when he was hanged his poor young wife travelled to the place of slaughter to beg for his body, and had it brought home and buried decently in the village churchyard.

How great the temptation to steal sheep must have been, anyone may know now by merely walking about among the fields in this part of the country to see how the sheep are folded and left by night unguarded, often at long distances from the village, in distant fields and on the downs.

Even in the worst times it was never customary, never thought necessary, to guard the flock by night. Many cases could be given to show how easy it was to steal sheep. One quite recent, about twenty years ago, is of a shepherd who was frequently sent with sheep to the fairs, and who on his way to Wilton fair with a flock one night turned aside to open a fold and let out nineteen sheep. On arriving at the fair he took out the stolen sheep and sold them to a butcher of his acquaintance who sent them up to London. But he had taken too many from one flock; they were quickly missed, and by some lucky chance it was found out and the shepherd arrested. He was sentenced to eight months' hard labour, and it came out during the trial that this poor shepherd, whose wages were fourteen shillings a week, had a sum of L400 to his credit in a Salisbury bank!

Another case which dates far back is that of a farmer named Day, who employed a shepherd or drover to take sheep to the fairs and markets and steal sheep for him on the way. It is said that he went on at this game for years before it was discovered. Eventually master and man quarrelled and the drover gave information, whereupon Day was arrested and lodged in Fisherton Jail at Salisbury. Later he was sent to take his trial at Devizes, on horseback, accompanied by two constables. At the "Druid's Head," a public-house on the way, the three travellers alighted for refreshments, and there Day succeeded in giving them the slip, and jumping on a fast horse, standing ready saddled for him, made his escape. Farmer Day never returned to the Plain and was never heard of again.

There is an element of humour in some of the sheep-stealing stories of the old days. At one village where I often stayed, I heard about a certain Ebenezer Garlick, who was commonly called, in allusion no doubt to his surname, "Sweet Vi'lets." He was a sober, hard-working man, an example to most, but there was this against him, that he cherished a very close friendship with a poor, disreputable, drunken loafer nicknamed "Flittermouse," who spent most of his time hanging about the old coaching inn at the place for the sake of tips. Sweet Vi'lets was always giving coppers and sixpences to this man, but one day they fell out when Flittermouse begged for a shilling. He must, he said, have a shilling, he couldn't do with less, and when the other refused he followed him, demanding the money with abusive words, to everybody's astonishment. Finally Sweet Vi'lets turned on him and told him to go to the devil. Flittermouse in a rage went straight to the constable and denounced his patron as a sheep-stealer. He, Flittermouse, had been his servant and helper, and on the very last occasion of stealing a sheep he had got rid of the skin and offal by throwing them down an old disused well at the top of the village street. To the well the constable went with ropes and hooks, and succeeded in fishing up the remains described, and he thereupon arrested Garlick and took him before a magistrate, who committed him for trial. Flittermouse was the only witness for the prosecution, and the judge in his summing up said that, taking into consideration Garlick's known character in the village as a sober, diligent, honest man, it would be a little too much to hang him on the unsupported testimony of a creature like Flittermouse, who was half fool and half scoundrel. The jury, pleased and very much surprised at being directed to let a man off, obediently returned a verdict of Not Guilty, and Sweet Vi'lets returned from Salisbury triumphant, to be congratulated on his escape by all the villagers, who, however, slyly winked and smiled at one another.

Of sheep-stealing stories I will relate one more--a case which never came into court and was never discovered. It was related to me by a middle-aged man, a shepherd of Warminster, who had it from his father, a shepherd of Chitterne, one of the lonely, isolated villages on Salisbury Plain, between the Avon and the Wylye. His father had it from the person who committed the crime and was anxious to tell it to some one, and knew that the shepherd was his true friend, a silent, safe man. He was a farm-labourer, named Shergold--one of the South Wiltshire surnames very common in the early part of last century, which now appear to be dying out--described as a very big, powerful man, full of life and energy. He had a wife and several young children to keep, and the time was near mid-winter; Shergold was out of work, having been discharged from the farm at the end of the harvest; it was an exceptionally cold season and there was no food and no firing in the house.

One evening in late December a drover arrived at Chitterne with a flock of sheep which he was driving to Tilshead, another downland village several miles away. He was anxious to get to Tilshead that night and wanted a man to help him. Shergold was on the spot and undertook to go with him for the sum of fourpence. They set out when it was getting dark; the sheep were put on the road, the drover going before the flock and Shergold following at the tail. It was a cold, cloudy night, threatening snow, and so dark that he could hardly distinguish the dim forms of even the hindmost sheep, and by and by the temptation to steal one a.s.sailed him. For how easy it would be for him to do it! With his tremendous strength he could kill and hide a sheep very quickly without making any sound whatever to alarm the drover. He was very far ahead; Shergold could judge the distance by the sound of his voice when he uttered a call or shout from time to time, and by the barking of the dog, as he flew up and down, first on one side of the road, then on the other, to keep the flock well on it. And he thought of what a sheep would be to him and to his hungry ones at home until the temptation was too strong, and suddenly lifting his big, heavy stick he brought it down with such force on the head of a sheep as to drop it with its skull crushed, dead as a stone. Hastily picking it up he ran a few yards away, and placed it among the furze-bushes, intending to take it home on his way back, and then returned to the flock.

They arrived at Tilshead in the small hours, and after receiving his fourpence he started for home, walking rapidly and then running to be in time, but when he got back to where the sheep was lying the dawn was coming, and he knew that before he could get to Chitterne with that heavy burden on his back people would be getting up in the village and he would perhaps be seen. The only thing to do was to hide the sheep and return for it on the following night. Accordingly he carried it away a couple of hundred yards to a pit or small hollow in the down full of bramble and furze-bushes, and here he concealed it, covering it with a ma.s.s of dead bracken and herbage, and left it. That afternoon the long-threatening snow began to fall, and with snow on the ground he dared not go to recover his sheep, since his footprints would betray him; he must wait once more for the snow to melt. But the snow fell all night, and what must his feelings have been when he looked at it still falling in the morning and knew that he could have gone for the sheep with safety, since all traces would have been quickly obliterated!

Once more there was nothing to do but wait patiently for the snow to cease falling and for the thaw. But how intolerable it was; for the weather continued bitterly cold for many days, and the whole country was white. During those hungry days even that poor comfort of sleeping or dozing away the time was denied him, for the danger of discovery was ever present to his mind, and Shergold was not one of the callous men who had become indifferent to their fate; it was his first crime, and he loved his own life and his wife and children, crying to him for food.

And the food for them was lying there on the down, close by, and he could not get it! Roast mutton, boiled mutton--mutton in a dozen delicious forms--the thought of it was as distressing, as maddening, as that of the peril he was in.

It was a full fortnight before the wished thaw came; then with fear and trembling he went for his sheep, only to find that it had been pulled to pieces and the flesh devoured by dogs and foxes!

From these memories of the old villagers I turn to the newspapers of the day to make a few citations.

The law as it was did not distinguish between a case of the kind just related, of the starving, sorely tempted Shergold, and that of the systematic thief: sheep-stealing was a capital offence and the man must hang, unless recommended to mercy, and we know what was meant by "mercy"

in those days. That so barbarous a law existed within memory of people to be found living in most villages appears almost incredible to us; but despite the recommendations to "mercy" usual in a large majority of cases, the law of that time was not more horrible than the temper of the men who administered it. There are good and bad among all, and in all professions, but there is also a black spot in most, possibly in all hearts, which may be developed to almost any extent, and change the justest, wisest, most moral men into "human devils"--the phrase invented by Canon Wilberforce in another connexion. In reading the old reports and the expressions used by the judges in their summings up and sentences, it is impossible not to believe that the awful power they possessed, and its constant exercise, had not only produced the inevitable hardening effect, but had made them cruel in the true sense of the word. Their pleasure in pa.s.sing dreadful sentences was very thinly disguised, indeed, by certain lofty conventional phrases as to the necessity of upholding the law, morality, and religion; they were, indeed, as familiar with the name of the Deity as any ranter in a conventicle, and the "enormity of the crime" was an expression as constantly used in the case of the theft of a loaf of bread, or of an old coat left hanging on a hedge, by some ill-clad, half-starved wretch, as in cases of burglary, arson, rape, and murder.

It is surprising to find how very few the real crimes were in those days, despite the misery of the people; that nearly all the "crimes" for which men were sentenced to the gallows and to transportation for life, or for long terms, were offences which would now be sufficiently punished by a few weeks', or even a few days', imprisonment. Thus in April 1825, I note that Mr. Justice Park commented on the heavy appearance of the calendar. It was not so much the number (170) of the offenders that excited his concern as it was the nature of the crimes with which they were charged. The worst crime in this instance was sheep-stealing!

Again, this same Mr. Justice Park, at the Spring a.s.sizes at Salisbury 1827, said that though the calendar was a heavy one, he was happy to find on looking at the depositions of the princ.i.p.al cases, that they were not of a very serious character. Nevertheless he pa.s.sed sentence of death on twenty-eight persons, among them being one for stealing half a crown!

Of the twenty-eight all but three were eventually reprieved, one of the fated three being a youth of nineteen, who was charged with stealing a mare and pleaded guilty in spite of a warning from the judge not to do so. This irritated the great man who had the power of life and death in his hand. In pa.s.sing sentence the judge "expatiated on the prevalence of the crime of horse-stealing and the necessity of making an example. The enormity of Read's crime rendered him a proper example, and he would therefore hold out no hope of mercy towards him." As to the plea of guilty, he remarked that nowadays too many persons pleaded guilty, deluded with the hope that it would be taken into consideration and they would escape the severer penalty. He was determined to put a stop to that sort of thing; if Read had not pleaded guilty no doubt some extenuating circ.u.mstance would have come up during the trial and he would have saved his life.

There, if ever, spoke the "human devil" in a black cap!

I find another case of a sentence of transportation for life on a youth of eighteen, named Edward Baker, for stealing a pocket-handkerchief. Had he pleaded guilty it might have been worse for him.

At the Salisbury Spring a.s.sizes, 1830, Mr. Justice Gazalee, addressing the grand jury, said that none of the crimes appeared to be marked with circ.u.mstances of great moral turpitude. The prisoners numbered one hundred and thirty; he pa.s.sed sentences of death on twenty-nine, life transportations on five, fourteen years on five, seven years on eleven, and various terms of hard labour on the others.

The severity of the magistrates at the quarter-sessions was equally revolting. I notice in one case, where the leading magistrate on the bench was a great local magnate, an M.P. for Salisbury, etc., a poor fellow with the unfortunate name of Moses Snook was charged with stealing a plank ten feet long, the property of the aforesaid local magnate, M.P., etc., and sentenced to fourteen years' transportation.

Sentenced by the man who owned the plank, worth perhaps a shilling or two!

When such was the law of the land and the temper of those who administered it--judges and magistrates or landlords--what must the misery of the people have been to cause them to rise in revolt against their masters! They did nothing outrageous even in the height of their frenzy; they smashed the thrashing machines, burnt some ricks, while the maddest of them broke into a few houses and destroyed their contents; but they injured no man; yet they knew what they were facing--the gallows or transportation to the penal settlements ready for their reception at the Antipodes. It is a pity that the history of this rising of the agricultural labourer, the most patient and submissive of men, has never been written. Nothing, in fact, has ever been said of it except from the point of view of landowners and farmers, but there is ample material for a truer and a moving narrative, not only in the brief reports in the papers of the time, but also in the memories of many persons still living, and of their children and children's children, preserved in many a cottage throughout the south of England.

Hopeless as the revolt was and quickly suppressed, it had served to alarm the landlords and their tenants, and taken in conjunction with other outbreaks, notably at Bristol, it produced a sense of anxiety in the mind of the country generally. The feeling found a somewhat amusing expression in the House of Commons, in a motion of Mr. Perceval, on 14th February 1831. This was to move an address to His Majesty to appoint a day for a general fast throughout the United Kingdom. He said that "the state of the country called for a measure like this--that it was a state of political and religious disorganization--that the elements of the Const.i.tution were being hourly loosened--that in this land there was no attachment, no control, no humility of spirit, no mutual confidence between the poor man and the rich, the employer and the employed; but fear and mistrust and aversion, where, in the time of our fathers, there was nothing but brotherly love and rejoicing before the Lord."

The House was cynical and smilingly put the matter by, but the anxiety was manifested plainly enough in the treatment meted out to the poor men who had been arrested and were tried before the Special Commissions sent down to Salisbury, Winchester, and other towns. No doubt it was a pleasant time for the judges; at Salisbury thirty-four poor fellows were sentenced to death; thirty-three to be transported for life, ten for fourteen years, and so on.

And here is one last little scene about which the reports in the newspapers of the time say nothing, but which I have from one who witnessed and clearly remembers it, a woman of ninety-five, whose whole life has been pa.s.sed at a village within sound of the Salisbury Cathedral bells.

It was when the trial was ended, when those who were found guilty and had been sentenced were brought out of the court-house to be taken back to prison, and from all over the Plain and from all parts of Wiltshire their womenfolk had come to learn their fate, and were gathered, a pale, anxious, weeping crowd, outside the gates. The sentenced men came out looking eagerly at the people until they recognized their own and cried out to them to be of good cheer. "'Tis hanging for me," one would say, "but there'll perhaps be a recommendation to mercy, so don't you fret till you know." Then another: "Don't go on so, old mother, 'tis only for life I'm sent." And yet another: "Don't you cry, old girl, 'tis only fourteen years I've got, and maybe I'll live to see you all again." And so on, as they filed out past their weeping women on their way to Fisherton Jail, to be taken thence to the transports in Portsmouth and Plymouth harbours waiting to convey their living freights to that h.e.l.l on earth so far from home. Not criminals but good, brave men were these!--Wiltshiremen of that strong, enduring, patient cla.s.s, who not only as labourers on the land but on many a hard-fought field in many parts of the world from of old down to our war of a few years ago in Africa, have shown the stuff that was in them!

But, alas! for the poor women who were left--for the old mother who could never hope to see her boy again, and for the wife and her children who waited and hoped against hope through long toiling years,

And dreamed and started as they slept For joy that he was come,

but waking saw his face no more. Very few, so far as I can make out, not more than one in five or six, ever returned.

This, it may be said, was only what they might have expected, the law being what it was--just the ordinary thing. The hideous part of the business was that, as an effect of the alarm created in the minds of those who feared injury to their property and loss of power to oppress the poor labourers, there was money in plenty subscribed to hire witnesses for the prosecution. It was necessary to strike terror into the people. The smell of blood-money brought out a number of scoundrels who for a few pounds were only too ready to swear away the life of any man, and it was notorious that numbers of poor fellows were condemned in this way.

One incident as to this point may be given in conclusion of this chapter about old unhappy things. It relates not to one of those who were sentenced to the gallows or to transportation, but to an inquest and the treatment of the dead.

I have spoken in the last chapter of the mob that visited Hindon, Fonthill, and other villages. They ended their round at Pytt House, near Tisbury, where they broke up the machinery. On that occasion a body of yeomanry came on the scene, but arrived only after the mob had accomplished its purpose of breaking up the thrashing machines. When the troops appeared the "rioters," as they were called, made off into the woods and escaped; but before they fled one of them had met his death. A number of persons from the farms and villages around had gathered at the spot and were looking on, when one, a farmer from the neighbouring village of Chilmark, s.n.a.t.c.hed a gun from a gamekeeper's hand and shot one of the rioters, killing him dead. On 27th January 1831 an inquest was held on the body, and some one was found to swear that the man had been shot by one of the yeomanry, although it was known to everybody that, when the man was shot, the troop had not yet arrived on the scene.

The man, this witness stated, had attacked, or threatened, one of the soldiers with his stick, and had been shot. This was sufficient for the coroner; he instructed his jury to bring in a verdict of "Justifiable homicide," which they obediently did. "This verdict," the coroner then said, "entailed the same consequences as an act of _felo-de-se_, and he felt that he could not give a warrant for the burial of the deceased. However painful the duty devolved on him in thus adding to the sorrows of the surviving relations, the law appeared too clear to him to admit of an alternative."

The coroner was just as eager as the judges to exhibit his zeal for the gentry, who were being injured in their interests by these disturbances; and though he could not hang anybody, being only a coroner, he could at any rate kick the one corpse brought before him. Doubtless the "surviving relations," for whose sorrows he had expressed sympathy, carried the poor murdered man off by night to hide him somewhere in the earth.

After the law had been thus vindicated and all the business done with, even to the corpse-kicking by the coroner, the farmers were still anxious, and began to show it by holding meetings and discussions on the condition of the labourers. Everybody said that the men had been very properly punished; but at the same time it was admitted that they had some reason for their discontent, that, with bread so dear, it was hardly possible for a man with a family to support himself on seven shillings a week, and it was generally agreed to raise the wages one shilling. But by and by when the anxiety had quite died out, when it was found that the men were more submissive than they had ever been, the lesson they had received having sunk deep into their minds, they cut off the extra shilling and wages were what they had been--seven shillings a week for a hard-working seasoned labourer, with a family to keep, and from four to six shillings for young unmarried men and for women, even for those who did as much work in the field as any man.

But there were no more risings.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SHEPHERD'S RETURN

Yarnborough Castle sheep-fair--Caleb leaves Doveton and goes into Dorset--A land of strange happenings--He is home-sick and returns to Winterbourne Bishop--Joseph, his brother, leaves home--His meeting with Caleb's old master--Settles in Dorset and is joined by his sister Hannah--They marry and have children--I go to look for them--Joseph Bawcombe in extreme old age--Hannah in decline

Caleb's shepherding period in Doveton came to a somewhat sudden conclusion. It was nearing the end of August and he was beginning to think about the sheep which would have to be taken to the "Castle"

sheep-fair on 5th October, and it appeared strange to him that his master had so far said nothing to him on the subject. By "Castle" he meant Yarnborough Castle, the name of a vast prehistoric earthwork on one of the high downs between Warminster and Amesbury. There is no village there and no house near; it is nothing but an immense circular wall and trench, inside of which the fair is held. It was formerly one of the most important sheep-fairs in the country, but for the last two or three decades has been falling off and is now of little account. When Bawcombe was shepherd at Doveton it was still great, and when he first went there as Mr. Ellerby's head-shepherd he found himself regarded as a person of considerable importance at the Castle. Before setting out with the sheep he asked for his master's instructions, and was told that when he got to the ground he would be directed by the persons in charge to the proper place. The Ellerbys, he said, had exhibited and sold their sheep there for a period of eighty-eight years, without missing a year, and always at the same spot. Every person visiting the fair on business knew just where to find the Ellerbys' sheep, and, he added with pride, they expected them to be the best sheep at the Castle.

One day Mr. Ellerby came to have a talk with his shepherd, and in reply to a remark of the latter about the October sheep-fair he said that he would have no sheep to send. "No sheep to send, master!" exclaimed Caleb in amazement. Then Mr. Ellerby told him that he had taken a notion into his head that he wanted to go abroad with his wife for a time, and that some person had just made him so good an offer for all his sheep that he was going to accept it, so that for the first time in eighty-eight years there would be no sheep from Doveton Farm at the Castle fair. When he came back he would buy again; but if he could live away from the farm, he would probably never come back--he would sell it.

Caleb went home with a heavy heart and told his wife. It grieved her, too, because of her feeling for Mrs. Ellerby, but in a little while she set herself to comfort him. "Why, what's wrong about it?" she asked.

"'Twill be more 'n three months before the year's out, and master'll pay for all the time sure, and we can go home to Bishop and bide a little without work, and see if that father of yours has forgiven 'ee for going away to Warminster."

So they comforted themselves, and were beginning to think with pleasure of home when Mr. Ellerby informed his shepherd that a friend of his, a good man though not a rich one, was anxious to take him as head-shepherd, with good wages and a good cottage rent free. The only drawback for the Bawcombes was that it would take them still farther from home, for the farm was in Dorset, although quite near the Wiltshire border.

Eventually they accepted the offer, and by the middle of September were once more settled down in what was to them a strange land. How strange it must have seemed to Caleb, how far removed from home and all familiar things, when even to this day, more than forty years later, he speaks of it as the ordinary modern man might speak of a year's residence in Uganda, Tierra del Fuego, or the Andaman Islands! It was a foreign country, and the ways of the people were strange to him, and it was a land of very strange things. One of the strangest was an old ruined church in the neighbourhood of the farm where he was shepherd. It was roofless, more than half fallen down, and all the standing portion, with the tower, overgrown with old ivy; the building itself stood in the centre of a huge round earthwork and trench, with large barrows on the ground outside the circle. Concerning this church he had a wonderful story: its decay and ruin had come about after the great bell in the tower had mysteriously disappeared, stolen one stormy night, it was believed, by the Devil himself. The stolen bell, it was discovered, had been flung into a small river at a distance of some miles from the church, and there in summer-time, when the water was low, it could be distinctly seen lying half buried in the mud at the bottom. But all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't pull it out; the Devil, who pulled the other way, was strongest. Eventually some wise person said that a team of white oxen would be able to pull it out, and after much seeking the white oxen were obtained, and thick ropes were tied to the sunken bell, and the cattle were goaded and yelled at, and tugged and strained until the bell came up and was finally drawn right up to the top of the steep, cliff-like bank of the stream. Then one of the teamsters shouted in triumph, "Now we've got out the bell, in spite of all the devils in h.e.l.l," and no sooner had he spoken the bold words than the ropes parted, and back tumbled the bell to its old place at the bottom of the river, where it remains to this day. Caleb had once met a man in those parts who a.s.sured him that he had seen the bell with his own eyes, lying nearly buried in mud at the bottom of the stream.

The legend is not in the history of Dorset; a much more prosaic account of the disappearance of the bell is there given, in which the Devil took no part unless he was at the back of the bad men who were concerned in the business. But in this strange, remote country, outside of "Wiltsheer," Bawcombe was in a region where anything might have happened, where the very soil and pasture were unlike that of his native country, and the mud adhered to his boots in a most unaccountable way.

It was almost uncanny. Doubtless he was home-sick, for a month or two before the end of the year he asked his master to look out for another shepherd.

This was a great disappointment to the farmer: he had gone a distance from home to secure a good shepherd, and had hoped to keep him permanently, and now after a single year he was going to lose him. What did the shepherd want? He would do anything to please him, and begged him to stay another year. But no, his mind was set on going back to his own native village and to his own people. And so when his long year was ended he took his crook and set out over the hills and valleys, followed by a cart containing his "sticks" and wife and children. And at home with his old parents and his people he was happy once more; in a short time he found a place as head-shepherd, with a cottage in the village, and followed his flock on the old familiar down, and everything again was as it had been from the beginning of life and as he desired it to be even to the end.

His return resulted incidentally in other changes and migrations in the Bawcombe family. His elder brother Joseph, unmarried still although his senior by about eight years, had not got on well at home. He was a person of a peculiar disposition, so silent with so fixed and unsmiling an expression, that he gave the idea of a stolid, thick-skinned man, but at bottom he was of a sensitive nature, and feeling that his master did not treat him properly, he gave up his place and was for a long time without one. He was singularly attentive to all that fell from Caleb about his wide wanderings and strange experiences, especially in the distant Dorset country; and at length, about a year after his brother's return, he announced his intention of going away from his native place for good to seek his fortune in some distant place where his services would perhaps be better appreciated. When asked where he intended going, he answered that he was going to look for a place in that part of Dorset where Caleb had been shepherd for a year and had been so highly thought of.