The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WINDMILL, WIMBLEDON COMMON.]

[Sidenote: _THE DUELLO_]

But Putney Heath and the adjoining Wimbledon Common were not notorious only for highwaymen and footpads: they were the favourite meeting-grounds of belligerent gentlemen with an exaggerated and altogether mistaken idea of honour, who faced one another armed with swords or pistols, and fought duels at an early hour of the morning, when courage was apt to be insufficiently warmed. Their notions of honour and "satisfaction" were, possibly, somewhat ridiculous, but it seems to me that a man who would get up at an unearthly hour of the morning, perhaps in the coldest of weather, to shoot at a fellow-creature, or to be shot at by him,--to be run through the body with a rapier, or else to run his opponent through some vital part,--must have been either singularly courageous or peculiarly vindictive.

To either (or both) of these categories, then, must have belonged my Lord Chandos and Colonel Compton, who were among the earliest to be "out" upon this spot. The affair took place in 1652, and was fought with swords, the Colonel being run through the body in a trice. In later times one of the most extraordinary duels of the eighteenth century took place on Wimbledon Common, between the Duke of York and Colonel Lennox, afterwards Duke of Richmond and Viceroy of Ireland. It seems that the Duke of York, with his brother the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), was insulted one night at Vauxhall by two gentlemen and a lady, all three masked, whose ident.i.ty, although shrewdly suspected, could not be certainly ascertained at the time. They were, as a matter of fact, Lady Charlotte Lennox, who had some grievance against the Prince, and her two brothers, the Duke of Grafton and Lieutenant-Colonel Lennox. Now, the latter being Lieutenant-Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, of which regiment the Duke of York was full Colonel, was thus in a position of considerable delicacy when his commanding officer took the first opportunity that offered of putting an affront upon him on parade; for if he challenged and killed a Royal Duke in a duel, the severest penalties would no doubt be inflicted upon him,[1] but if, on the other hand, he pocketed the insult, his "honour" was indelibly stained. Colonel Lennox took what he thought the best course, and challenged the Duke of York to a hostile meeting, which duly came off in a dell near where that well-known landmark, the Wimbledon Common windmill, now stands. The seconds were Lord Rawdon and the Earl of Winchilsea, and the weapons chosen were pistols. On the word "Fire!" being given, only the Colonel's pistol was discharged: the Duke not having pulled the trigger, and the Colonel not being desirous of another shot, honour was declared to have been satisfied; the only damage done, according to a contemporary account, being the loss of a curl from his Royal Highness's head. An historian of the duello, however, throws unkind doubts upon this story, and insinuates that the seconds, mindful no less of their own safety than that of the Duke of York, took very good care that the pistols were primed without bullets.

[Sidenote: _VICARIOUS DUELLING_]

In 1798 Mr. Pitt and Mr. George Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, had a bloodless set-to, and two other political antagonists--Lord Castlereagh and the jocular George Canning--fought, without a scratch, in 1809. In the same year Lord Paget and Captain Cadogan had a "hostile meeting" here, and exchanged shots without effect, the cause being, not politics this time, but that much more fruitful origin of discord--a woman. Lord Paget, himself a married man, had eloped with Lady Charlotte Wellesley, the wife of his friend Henry Wellesley, and the lady's brother (one would have thought the injured husband should have given battle) decided to avenge the outraged honour of his family. So, as related, the combatants faced one another and fired. The Captain's bullet went wide: my lord's pistol merely flashed, and he, with a spark of right feeling, declined to shoot again at a man whose family he had wronged. Mr. Henry Wellesley, though apparently pusillanimous, was a more formidable, if less romantic, antagonist. That gentleman brought an action for _crim. con._ against Lord Paget, and salved his wounded feelings effectually with a verdict carrying damages to the tune of 20,000.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM PITT.]

One of the very few serious encounters that took place here happened to be also the last. This was the duel between General Lorenzo Moore and Mr.

Miles Stapylton, fought with pistols on February 13, 1832. The General wounded the civilian, who was seen to fall to the ground by the pa.s.sengers in the G.o.dalming coach, which happened to be pa.s.sing at the time. Some of them came to his a.s.sistance, conveyed him off in a carriage, and desired the General to consider himself under arrest. General Moore was ignominiously marched off by a police-constable (so unromantic had the times grown!), and was charged at Kingston. His antagonist, however, becoming better, the man of war was released on bail, and no more was ever heard of the affair.

[Sidenote: _PITT_]

Mr. Pitt, "the Great Commoner," who fought here without a scratch, was, if not upon his "native heath" (for he was born at Hayes, in Kent), at least within sight of his home. In fact, he practically went forth to do battle at the very gates of Bowling Green House, where he lived--and died, broken-hearted at Napoleon's successes, in later years. The house still stands, altered, 'tis true, but not rebuilt; and the trees that shade its lawn and make beautiful its rearward gardens have in their ranks some that grew here when Pitt was resident under this roof. To call him "master"

here were to use the wrong expression, for the private conduct, and the in-comings and out-goings of this great man, who made continental alliances and whose political ascendancy set vast armies in motion all over Europe, were very fully ordered by his eccentric and imperious niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept his bachelor household, acted as a secretary, and filled by her own appointment the post of candid friend and adviser. If Pitt endured uncomplainingly all this frank criticism under his own roof-tree, the fact says much for the natural sweetness of his temper; if he followed the advice of his volatile and irresponsible niece, then he must have been weak-minded indeed. But the things that she did and said, and he endured, are written by Lady Hester herself, and no less reliable witness could be cited than she of her uncle's domestic life.

The "Telegraph" inn, that stands so short a distance from Bowling Green House, marks the site of one of the old Admiralty telegraph-towers that were placed in a line between London and Portsmouth, and whence signals were transmitted by semaph.o.r.es before the introduction of the electric telegraph. Here it was that the anxious politicians gathered while Pitt lay a-dying up the road in January 1806, in his forty-seventh year, struck down by an attack of gout brought on by news of Austerlitz. He received the "heavy news" while at Bath, sent in haste by courier; and shortly afterwards he journeyed home to Putney, whence he was never fated to go, only to his grave. It was on January 12 that he arrived at Bowling Green House, and the first thing that met his gaze when he entered was the map of Europe, hanging in the hall. The sight of it struck the dying man like the thrust of a dagger, for of what use were political divisions and boundaries, now that Napoleon was master? "Roll up that map," he exclaimed; "it will not be wanted these ten years!" On January 23 he was dead, and his last words, "My country, how I leave my country!" show the mental agonies of his pa.s.sing.

Thus died the greatest statesman of the eighteenth century, and the most precocious in our annals. His opponents held it truth that he died of port wine; his colleagues and his admirers of our own times say his wounded patriotism dealt him the fatal blow; and this last, with some modification, seems the correct view. Port he drank in prodigious quant.i.ties: in his childhood it saved his life, and it probably enabled a weakly const.i.tution to hold out for forty-seven years. But save for the coloration of his face, which in later days had a port-wine complexion, his appearance showed nothing of the _viveur_. He was tall, angular, and emaciated, and his features were cast in a most irregular mould. His nose was long and tip-tilted, his face thin and spare, and his upper lip, according to George III. (who certainly should have been an excellent judge of obstinacy, seeing that he was perhaps the most self-willed and unreasonable man of his time), was "d----d long and obstinate." But Pitt's unprepossessing and even mean appearance was redeemed by the fire and brilliancy of his eyes, and the dignity and lofty bearing he a.s.sumed in public transfigured the awkward figure that was so severely commented upon in private life.

X

From here, where Pitt died, it is a long and gentle descent to Kingston Vale and the Robin Hood Gate. As you go down, the eye ranges over the hills of Surrey, blue in the distance, and the picturesquely-broken waste of Wimbledon Common appears in the foreground, now all innocent of the bustle and turmoil, the business and the pleasure of the Wimbledon Meeting. Alas! for the days, and still more alas! for the nights, of Wimbledon Camp.

At the foot of the hill, going down from the Heath to Kingston, there used to stand, beside the road, a mounting-block for a.s.sisting hors.e.m.e.n in alighting from or mounting their horses. On it was carved the name of Thomas Nuthall, Surveyor of Roehampton, 1654, with the curious jingle:--

"From London towne to Portse downe They say 'tis miles three score."

This has disappeared, like many another quaint roadside relic, and there comes now nothing but evidence of suburban activity until Kingston is reached, save indeed the ruined Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, now a school-house, beside the footpath.

[Sidenote: _KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES_]

Kingston-on-Thames is still provincial in appearance, though now the centre of a great growth of modern suburbs. Here we are eleven miles from the Borough, and at the end of the first stage out of London in the old days of the mail-coaches. Modern drags, like the "Rocket" Portsmouth coach of some years back, changed at the "Robin Hood," in Kingston Vale, but the coachmen of coaching times made longer stages.

The story of Kingston is a great deal too long for me to dwell upon in these pages, which are not intended for a topographical dictionary. I am, indeed, not at all sure but that a book might not be written upon this old town, both to the advantage of the writer and the inhabitants of this truly royal borough; and here is the suggestion, generously offered to any one who wishes a subject!

Kingston-upon-Thames is so explicitly named in order to distinguish it from the many other Kingstons which loyalty or sn.o.bbery (please to take your choice) has created all over England. There is a Kingston near Portsmouth, and the town of Hull was always known as Kingston-upon-Hull until conveniency and democracy conspired together (much, I should imagine, to the delight of Citizen Carnegie, the Almighty Millionaire and Astounding Autocrat of Homestead) to dock it of two-thirds of its name.

But the list of Kingstons is too long for this place, and so you are referred to the "Gazetteer" for the rest, while I proceed to delve amid antiquarian matter in respect of the kings whose coronations took place here.

It seems, then, that before their Saxon majesties had conferred this undying distinction upon the town it was (or what little there was of it) called Moreford, from the ford by which Julius Caesar and his hosts crossed the Thames; if, indeed, they did not cross at quite a different place, as some antiquaries contend, called Coway Stakes, by Shepperton. When ninth-century Unification prevailed, and the Heptarchy was knocked into a c.o.c.ked hat, Egbert (only the late Mr. Freeman would have preferred to call him "Ecgbehrt") held a great council here; but that first great Bretwalda was crowned elsewhere, and the Kingston coronations begin in A.D. 900 with Edward the Elder, who sat upon a big stone in the market-place and received his crown amid the acclamations of the people and the confoundedly rough horse-play of the chiefs, who bore him aloft upon a buckler, and (I a.s.sure you it was so) tossed him vigorously in the air until the new king became sick and silly, and was devoutly thankful that a Coronation came only once in a lifetime!

[Sidenote: _SAXON KINGS AND MODERN CYCLISTS_]

I trouble you with these details merely because the stone upon which these kings received their crowns is still in existence in the market-place, enclosed by and mounted on a modern seven-sided pedestal, upon whose every face is carved the name of one of those Seven Kings, fearfully and wonderfully spelled, to the amazement of the thousands of cyclists who pa.s.s by and darkly remember to have heard of Edward the Elder and his successors. When they come and read of Eadweard and similar perversions, they go away, more than ever determined to forget all about the pre-Norman monarchs and to confine their attention to those nineteenth-century bounders, the idols of their little purview--I name the "Makers'

Amateurs."

But this Anglo-Saxon line of kings, from Edward the Elder to Edmund the Martyr and Ethelred, is a great deal more interesting than the professional cyclist. True, you cannot well lay a wager about Athelstan or Edred, who have been dead a considerable time, something, in fact, a little under a thousand years,--and they never played things low down for "records" or took sordid cheques or shared in "gate-money"; but they are still interesting, and made things so lively in their days that some of their doings have been handed down through ten centuries--and _that_ is a kind of "record" in itself!

The Saxons managed to defeat the Danes here in some great battle, half mythical, half historic, and the old Shrovetide game of football that used to be indulged in, within the town, is supposed to have been derived from the (certainly unchivalric) way in which the townsfolk of that dim era indulged in the sport of kicking the decapitated head of the Danish leader about their streets.

However that may have been, here was the chosen spot of Saxon coronation, and here stands the stone within a modern iron railing which is fondly believed to be of Saxon character. This stone is supposed to have been one of thirteen, originally forming a Druidical circle, and invested with a sacred character, if not a G.o.dlike power. Indeed, the connection between sacred stones and coronation stones is very close, for at one time kings were heirs of the G.o.ds, and not only pretended to Divine right, but were actually regarded as themselves divine. People, however, shed this last superst.i.tion, and began to disregard sacred stones at a comparatively early date, and the other twelve deities or sacred objects of Kingston soon disappeared, for when the townsfolk set about rebuilding their original wooden houses with more enduring materials, they quickly broke up the G.o.ds and built walls of their fragments.

[Sidenote: _KINGSTON LOYALTY_]

Kingston has ever been a place of importance, and its castle (than which no other stronghold in England has so utterly pa.s.sed away and vanished, even its site being a mere matter of conjecture) was several times captured and recaptured by opposing hosts in the Middle Ages. In later times Kingston became celebrated much in the same way as Yankee Boston leaped into fame; for it was here that the first armed force a.s.sembled in the Civil War between Charles I. and his Parliament. Colonel Lunsford and other Royalist officers attempted to seize for the King the store of arms in the town, intending to proceed afterwards to Portsmouth, to hold that fortress in the Royal cause. The King was at that time at Hampton Court.

But Lunsford's enterprise failed, for the Parliament got wind of it and speedily arrested him. By a singular coincidence, Kingston was also the scene of one of the last stands of the Royalists, for, in July 1648, a body of some six hundred men was a.s.sembled here under the commands of Lord Holland, the second Duke of Buckingham, and his brother, Lord Francis Villiers.

They set out for Carisbrooke, with the object of releasing the King, who was imprisoned there, but a superior force met them at Reigate, and in the last skirmish that followed their retreat to Kingston, Lord Francis Villiers was slain, in a road between the town and Surbiton Common, at a spot long marked by the tree against whose trunk he stood and fought single-handed a hopeless fight against six Roundheads.

"Here," says Aubrey, the historian of Surrey, "was slain the beautiful Francis Villiers, at an elm in the hedge of the east side of the lane; where, his horse being killed under him, he turned his back to the elm, and fought most valiantly with half-a-dozen. The enemy, coming on the other side of the hedge, pushed off his helmet and killed him, July 7, 1648, about six or seven o'clock in the afternoon. On the elm, cut down in 1680, was cut an ill-shaped =V= for Villiers, in memory of him."

Indeed, Kingston has always been a loyal town, and its people High Tories of a kind that warms my heart towards them when I think of their bravery.

Not resting content with appearing in arms against the Parliament, they pet.i.tioned in behalf of their King, thereby incurring considerable danger of being "remembered" in no kindly wise by my lords and commons of Puritan sympathies. Their High Toryism and hatred of modernity have been seen in recent times by their objection to having their Corporation reformed, and even in the persecution of cyclists has their bias been shown; but centuries ago these traits took a much less pleasing shape: the whipping and despiteful using of beggars, the ducking of scolds and the plentiful hangings of petty criminals; although, to be sure, there were some kindly souls in the town, as evidenced by the entries given in the parish registers of alms bestowed instead of scourgings, and we have here no such record of brutality as G.o.dalming registers afford. Kingston, being on a well-worn road and itself a considerable place, was in receipt of much custom from wayfarers of every cla.s.s, travelling to the sea. Here came sea-salts, men-of-war, personages of the highest station, and d.i.c.k, Tom, and ragged Harry. The fine old inns that Kingston boasted afford proof of the amount of custom the town enjoyed. Of these, alas! only the "Castle"

is left, and that well-known house, going back to Elizabethan times, is cut up into separate tenements.

The travellers who "put up" here must have made a goodly crowd, and were, doubtless, the source of much prosperity to this ancient borough,

"A praty town, by Tamise ripe."

[Sidenote: _MENDICANTS_]

Another kind of mediaeval wayfarers (who took away what others brought) were those who went from place to place, collecting alms for the relief of their distresses. These beggars were "briefed" or authorized by the Ecclesiastical Courts to collect alms and solicit aid at any church they might think fit, even at great distances away from their homes.

Thus the country was, before the pa.s.sing of the Poor Laws, infested with certificated beggars and tramps who, coming with pitiful tales of robbery, disease, and spoliation, worked upon the charitable feelings of country churchwardens, who listened to the woeful tales of mendicants both native and from over sea, and relieved them with a few pence and a "G.o.d be with you," pa.s.sing them over to the next parish, where the process would be repeated. The roads leading to and from the sea-board would be particularly favoured by these unfortunates, and the Portsmouth Road, in especial, must have witnessed at times quite a procession of dolorous alms-seekers telling of sad mishaps on land and sea in foreign climes.

Some of the items given in this way are recorded in old parish registers and churchwardens' accounts. Here are some significant extracts from Kingston-upon-Thames records:--

"June 25, 1570. Sonday was her Iho Jinkin by pattin w{ch} was robbid on the sea by Spanyards.

"February 1571.

"10 Sonday was her a man for his Father who was robbed on the Sey by Lycence from my Lord Admirall."

Here we are not to a.s.sume, from the absence of punctuation, that this unfortunate man was robbed by licence from the Admiral, but that this was a variety of licence from the ecclesiastical kind--a kind of secular recommendation to all and sundry, subscribed by the man's commanding officer.

"10 Item was here the proctor of Kingsland beside Knightbrig.

"24 Sonday was here ij weman the mother and dowghter owte of Ireland she called Elynor Salve to gather upon the deathe of her howsbande a gentlman slayne amongst the wylde Iryshe being Captain of Gallygla.s.ses and gathered xviij_d_.

"May 26 Item her was a man from Dorkinge whose howse was brent.