From John O'Groats to Land's End Part 40

Short is my tale:--Fitz-Eustace' care A pierced and mangled body bare To moated Lichfield's lofty pile; And there, beneath the southern aisle, A tomb, with Gothic sculpture fair, Did long Lord Marmion's image bear, (Now vainly for its sight you look; 'Twas levell'd when fanatic Brook The fair cathedral storm'd and took; But, thanks to Heaven, and good Saint Chad, A guerdon meet the spoiler had!) There erst was martial Marmion found, His feet upon a couchant hound, His hands to heaven upraised: And all around, on scutcheon rich, And tablet carved, and fretted niche, His arms and feats were blazed.

And yet, though all was carved so fair, And priest for Marmion breathed the prayer, The last Lord Marmion lay not there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEREVALE ABBEY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "KING d.i.c.k'S WELL."]

The Marmion stone on the bridge has five unequal sides, and at one time formed the base for a figure of the Virgin and the Child, which stood on the bridge. The ancient family of Ba.s.set of Drayton, a village close by, were in some way connected with this stone, for on one side appeared the arms of the family, on another the monogram M.R. surmounted by a crown, and on the two others the letters I.H.C. About two miles farther on we entered the village of Fazeley, purposely to see a house where a relative of ours had once resided, being curious to know what kind of a place it was. Here we were only a short distance away from Drayton Manor, at one time the residence of the great Sir Robert Peel. Having gratified our curiosity, we recrossed the River Tame, pa.s.sing along the great Watling Street, the Roman Road which King Alfred used as a boundary in dividing England with the Danes, towards Atherstone in search of "fields and pastures new," and in a few miles reached the grounds of Merevale Abbey, now in ruins, where Robert, Earl Ferrers, was buried, long before coffins were used for burial purposes, in "a good ox hide." Here we reached the town of Atherstone, where the staple industry was the manufacture of hats, the Atherstone Company of Hat-makers being incorporated by charters from James I and Charles II.

Many of the chiefs on the West Coast of Africa have been decorated with gorgeous hats that have been made at Atherstone. When the Romans were making their famous street and reached the spot where Atherstone now stands, they came, according to local tradition, to a large stone that was in their way, and in moving it they disturbed a nest of adders, which flew at them. The stone was named Adders' Stone, which gradually became corrupted to Athers' Stone, and hence the name of the town. The Corporation of the Governors embodied this incident in their coat of arms and on the Grammar School, which was endowed in 1573: a stone showed the adders as springing upwards, and displaying the words, "Adderstonien Sigil Scholae." We called at the "Old Red Lion Inn," and, going to explore the town while our refreshments were being prepared, found our way to a church, once part of a monastery, where the old fourteenth-century bell was still tolled. It was in the chancel of this church that Henry, Earl of Richmond, partook of Holy Communion on the eve of his great victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, by which he became King Henry VII. He had also spent a night at the "Three Tuns Inn" preparing his plans for the fight, which occurred two days later, August 22nd, 1485. There was on the site of the battle a well named "King d.i.c.k's Well," which was covered with masonry in the form of a pyramid, with an entrance on one of its four sides, and which covered the spring where Richard, weary of fighting, had a refreshing drink before the final charge that ended in his death. He, however, lost the battle, and Henry of Richmond, who won it, was crowned King of England at Stoke Golding Church, which was practically on the battlefield, and is one of the finest specimens of decorated architecture in England. But what an anxious and weary time these kings must have had! not only they, but all others. When we considered how many of them had been overthrown, a.s.sa.s.sinated, taken prisoners in war, executed, slain in battle, forced to abdicate, tortured to death, committed suicide, and gone mad, we came to the conclusion that Shakespeare was right when he wrote, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." In his _King Richard II_ he makes the King say:

"And nothing can we call our own but death, And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

For G.o.d's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of Kings: How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd."

One good result of the Battle of Bosworth Field was that it ended the "Wars of the Roses," which had been a curse to England for thirty years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BULL BAITING STONE, ATHERSTONE.]

Bull-baiting was one of the favourite sports of our forefathers, the bull being usually fastened to an iron ring in the centre of a piece of ground, while dogs were urged on to attack it, many of them being killed in the fight. This s.p.a.ce of land was known as the Bull-ring, a name often found in the centre of large towns at the present day. We knew a village in Shropshire where the original ring was still to be seen embedded in the cobbled pavement between the church and the village inn.

But at Atherstone the bull had been fastened to a large stone, still to be seen, but away from the road, which had now been diverted from its original track.

The ancient whipping-post, along with the stocks, which had accommodation for three persons, had found their last resting-place inside the old market-hall. They must have been almost constantly occupied and used in the good old times, as Atherstone was not only on the great Watling Street, but it had a unique position on the other roads of the country, as an old milestone near our hotel, where we found our refreshments waiting our arrival, informed us that we were a hundred miles from London, a hundred miles from Liverpool, and a hundred miles from Lincoln, so that Atherstone could fairly claim to be one of the central towns in England, though the distance to Lincoln had been overstated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STOCKS IN ATHERSTONE MARKET-HALL.]

We continued walking along the Watling Street for a short distance, until we reached the end of the town, and then we forked on to the right towards Nuncaton; but in a very short distance we came to the village of Mancetter, where there was a fine old church, apparently the Parish Church of Atherstone. When the Romans were here they protected their "Street" by means of forts, and one in a small chain of these was at Mancetter, the Manduesdum of the Romans, their camp appearing in the form of a square mound, with the "Street" pa.s.sing through the centre.

Inside the church were quite a number of very old books, in one of which we were shown a wood-cut representing the burning of Robert Glover and Cornelius Bongley at Coventry in 1555. Glover was a gentleman who lived at the Manor House here, and was one of the Mancetter Martyrs, the other being Mrs. Lewis, a tenant of his who lived at the Manor House Farm. She was burnt in 1557, two years later. A large tablet was placed in the church to their memories, both of them having suffered for their adherence to the Protestant Faith. The east-end window was a curiosity, for it contained a large quant.i.ty of thirteenth-century stained gla.s.s which had been brought here from Merevale Abbey. It was probably damaged both there and in transit, as it seemed to have a somewhat rough appearance; the verger informed us, when pointing out several defects in the figures, that a local glazier had been employed to erect it who did not understand such work, and though he had no doubt done his best, he had made some awkward mistakes. Why David's sword appeared behind his back the verger could not explain, so my brother suggested that either the head or the body had been turned the wrong way about.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MANOR HOUSE, MANCETTER.]

There were five bells in the church tower, the largest of which was, of course, the tenor bell, weighing thirty-three hundredweight, and the words that had been cast on it set us a-thinking:

My soaring sound does warning give That a man on earth not only lives.

There were usually some strange records in these country churchyards, and we generally found them in the older portions of the burial-grounds; but we had very little time to look for them as the night was coming on, so we secured the services of the verger, who pointed out in the new part of the churchyard a stone recording the history of Charles Richard Potter in the following words:

Born--May 11, 1788.

Married--May 11, 1812.

Died--May 11, 1858.

So the eleventh day of May was a lucky or an unlucky day for Mr.

Potter--probably both; but one strange feature which we only thought of afterwards was that he had lived exactly the allotted span of three score years and ten. In the old part of the yard were the following epitaphs:

The Earth's a City Full of crooked streets Death is ye market-place Where all must meet If life was merchandise That man could buy The rich would always live Ye poor must die.

In bygone times it was no unusual thing to find dead bodies on the road, or oftener a short distance from it, where the owners had laid themselves down to die; we ourselves remembered, in a lonely place, only a field's breadth from the coach road to London, a pit at the side of which years ago the corpse of a soldier had been found in the bushes.

Here, apparently, there had been a similar case, with the exception that the man had been found by the side of the Watling Street instead of the fields adjoining. No one in the district knew who the stranger was, but as sufficient money had been found on him to pay the cost of the burial, his corpse was placed in Mancetter Churchyard, and as his name was unknown, some mysterious initials, of which no one now living knew the meaning, appeared on the headstone.

Here lieth interr'd the Body of I.

H. I. M.

What Ere we was or am it matters not to whom related, or by whom begot, We was, but am not.

Ask no more of me 'Tis all we are And all that you must be.

We now hurried on, but as every finger-post had been painted white to receive the new letters, the old words beneath the paint were quite illegible, and, the road being lonely, of course we got lost, so, instead of arriving at Nuneaton, we found ourselves again at the Watling Street, at a higher point than that where we had left it when leaving Atherstone. Nearly opposite the lane end from which we now emerged there was a public-house, set back from the road, where a sign, suspended from a pole, swung alongside the Watling Street to attract the attention of travellers to the inn, and here we called to inquire our way to Nuneaton. The name of the house was the "Royal Red Gate Inn," the pole we had seen on the Watling Street holding a wooden gate painted red. We asked why the red gate was a royal one, and the landlady said it was because Queen Adelaide once called there, but who Queen Adelaide was, and when she called there, she did not know. When asked what she called for, she replied, "I don't know, unless it was for a drink!" As we did not know who Queen Adelaide was ourselves, we had to wait until we reached Nuneaton, where we were informed that she was the wife of William IV, and that in her retirement she lived at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire, so this would be on her coach road to and from London. The lane at one end of the Red Gate went to Fenney Drayton, where George Fox the Quaker was born, about whom we had heard farther north; but we had to push on, and finally did reach Nuneaton for the night.

_(Distance walked twenty-seven miles_.)

_Thursday, November 2nd._

In our early days we used to be told there was only one man in Manchester, which fact was true if we looked at the name; in the same way we were told there was but one nun in Nuneaton, but the ruins of the nunnery suggested that there must have been quite a number there in the past ages. We had seen many monasteries in our travels, but only one nunnery, and that was at York; so convent life did not seem to have been very popular in the North country, the chorus of a young lady's song of the period perhaps furnishing the reason why:

[Ill.u.s.tration: "GEORGE ELLIOT."]

Then I won't be a Nun, And I shan't be a Nun; I'm so fond of pleasure That I _cannot_ be a Nun.

The nuns had of course disappeared and long since been forgotten, but other women had risen to take their places in the minds and memories of the people of Nuneaton, foremost amongst whom was Mary Ann Evans, who was born about the year 1820 at the South Farm, Arbury, whither her father, belonging to the Newdegate family, had removed from Derbyshire to take charge of some property in Warwickshire. "George Eliot" has been described as "the greatest woman writer in English literature," and as many of her novels related mainly to persons and places between Nuneaton and Coventry, that district had been named by the Nuneaton people "The Country of George Eliot." _Scenes of Clerical Life_ was published in 1858, and _The Mill on the Floss_ in 1860, and although the characters and places are more difficult to locate than those in _Adam Bede_, the "Bull Hotel" at Nuneaton has been identified as the "Red Lion" in her novel, where Mr. Dempster, over his third gla.s.s of brandy and water, would overwhelm a disputant who had beaten him in argument, with some such tirade as: "I don't care a straw, sir, either for you or your encyclopaedia; a farrago of false information picked up in a cargo of waste paper. Will you tell me, sir, that I don't know the origin of Presbyterianism? I, sir, a man known through the county; while you, sir, are ignored by the very fleas that infest the miserable alley in which you were bred!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTH FARM, ARBURY, THE BIRTHPLACE OF "GEORGE ELIOT"]

We left the "Newdegate Arms" at Nuneaton early in the morning, on our way to Lutterworth, our next object of interest, and pa.s.sed by the village of Hartshill, where Michael Drayton was born in 1563. He was a lyric poet of considerable fame and a friend of Shakespeare. His greatest work, _Polyolbion_, a poetic description of different parts of England, was published in 1613. He became Poet Laureate, and at his death, in 1631, was buried in Westminster Abbey.

We again went astray owing to the finger-posts being without names, but at length reached the Watling Street at cross-roads, where there was a very old public-house called "The Three Pots," and here we turned to the right along the Street. The road was very lonely, for there were very few houses on the Street itself, the villages being a mile or two away on either side, but we had not gone very far before we met a Church of England clergyman, who told us he had just returned from India, and that he would much have liked to form one of our company in the journey we were taking. He was sorry he had not met us lower down the road so that he could have detained us a short time to listen to some of our tales of adventures, and he would have given us a gla.s.s of beer and some bread and cheese; which he altered to milk and eggs when we told him we did not drink beer. We explained to him that we should never be able to complete our journey if we joined the company of the beer-drinkers at the many taverns we pa.s.sed, and lingered at, on our way. Our experience was that we were expected to tell tales, and the farther we travelled the more we should have had to tell. He quite saw the force of our argument, and then he said: "I presume you are not married," and when we told him we were not, he said, "I thought not, as you would never have been allowed to engage in so long a journey," and added, "I am just about to be married myself." We told him we were sorry he was about to lose his liberty, and, wishing him much happiness, and again thanking him for his proffered hospitality, we resumed our march.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIGH CROSS, THE CENTRE OF ENGLAND.]

In pa.s.sing through country villages we often met the local clergyman or doctor, of whom we invariably inquired concerning any objects of interest to be seen. It was marvellous how many of them expressed a wish to imitate our example. This, however, was only on fine days, for we seldom met those gentlemen when the weather was bad, and we wondered whether, if we had, they would still have expressed a wish to form one of our company! Fine weather prevailed that day, and we soon arrived at the High Cross which marked the Roman centre of England. It was at this point that their most celebrated roads, the Fosse Way and the Watling Street, crossed each other, running, we supposed, from north-east to south-west and from north-west to south-east, to the extreme ends of the kingdom in each direction. The Cross in the time of the Romans was made of wood, being replaced or renewed in successive generations, until in the middle of the seventeenth century it was utilised as a finger-post, consisting of a long pole with four arms, to direct the way from "London to West Chester," and from "York to Bristol." In 1712 an ornamental stone cross was erected on the same spot by a number of gentlemen headed by Basil, the fourth Earl of Denbigh, who had large estates in that neighbourhood. The tableland on which it stood was 440 feet above the sea-level, rivers running from it in every direction, and such was the extent of the country visible from the Cross that with the aid of a telescope fifty-six churches could be seen. This elevated position might account for the Cross being struck by lightning in 1791 and partially destroyed, but the inscriptions on the base, which had been left standing, were still visible, although partially obscured by the numerous names and initials of vandals, who have succeeded in closing many interesting places to more civilised and sensible people. We could perhaps go further and describe them as fools, for what will it matter to posterity what their initials or names are; they only rouse the ire of those who follow them and a feeling of disappointment that they had not caught the offenders in their act of wanton mischief and been able to administer some corporal punishment or other.

Years ago the benevolent owner of a fine estate situated near a town decided to open his beautiful grounds to his poorer neighbours, but before doing so he erected at the entrance gate two large wooden tablets resembling the two tablets of the Ten Commandments formerly fixed in churches but now rapidly disappearing, and on these he caused his conditions and desires to be painted in poetry, four verses on each tablet. They represent what most landowners desire but few obtain:

I

No chief to enter at this gate To wander through this fine estate; The owner of this ancient Hall A kindly welcome bids to all: Yet hopes that no one will neglect The following wishes to respect.

II

When in the meadows grown for hay.

Keep to the Drive or right of way.

Fright not the cattle on the lea Nor damage flower nor shrub nor tree; And let no vestiges be found Of paper, scattered o'er the ground.

III

One more request will sure suffice: From carving any rude device Refrain! and oh let no one see Your name on post, or bridge or tree.

Such were the act of fool, whose name We fear can ne'er descend to fame.

IV

Your olive-branches with you take, And let them here their pastime make.