Through East Anglia in a Motor Car Part 13

So the halt was not prolonged and, the rain abating, we started on the drive of forty-five miles roughly for Ely and Cambridge. It took us through the heart of the East Anglian Fens, and the day was one in which the spirit of them entered into me, or perhaps I, having set my mind thereto, entered into their spirit. Of a truth the task was one presenting little difficulty, so far as the general mood was concerned. For me, at any rate, there has never been any real gulf between the useful and the romantic. To one nurtured at the foot of the mighty amphitheatre of the Penrhyn Slate Quarries, scooped out from the heart of a mountain, rising in purple tiers of Cyclopean scale, the work of man, so long as it be grand in outline and in purpose, has always seemed to possess an entrancing beauty of its own.

Men live who find the Fens flat and uninteresting. They demand our compa.s.sion, by no means our censure or our scorn. One does not despise a blind man because he cannot see; and these men simply suffer from partial blindness, physical and mental. There is, beyond all question, a beauty of the Fens as they are, appealing to the eye alone; they had another beauty for the eye in their original state, original that is to say so far as human history reaches, and of the nature of that original beauty a miniature presentment may be seen still at Wicken Fen, which lies between the Isle of Ely and Newmarket Heath. Happy is the man or woman who can rejoice in both of these aspects of the Fenland. Happier still, because more intelligently charmed, are those who, while they travel through the rich cornland, following the banks of rivers whose waters run at a level higher than those of the surrounding fields, can picture to themselves the scene as it was before the skill and the courage of man made the good wheat grow where the reeds once waved, made firm pasture for sleek cattle out of the quagmire, caused domestic fowls to thrive in the sometime domain of the bittern and the heron. Men never tire of singing the praises of the Dutch who, by dogged courage and centuries of unrelaxing effort, made a country for themselves, a country to which they cling with a love pa.s.sing the love of women. The conquest of the Fens, begun, so far as we know, by the Romans, was, in its way, an enterprise of equal n.o.bility and courage, and Vermuyden, Francis, Duke of Bedford, and Rennie deserve credit great as any given to any Dutch engineer. The details are perhaps dull; they would certainly be out of place here; the result is grand, a colossal gain for humanity which can best be realized and valued, be admired most cordially and warmly, as one rolls along solid roads where the Fenman of old stalked gingerly on stilts.

Who will not remember the last words of Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_, when they are quoted?

"Let us send over to Normandy for a fair white stone of Caen, and let us carve a tomb worthy of thy grand-parents."

"And what shall we write thereon?"

"What but that which is there already? 'Here lies the last of the English.'"

"Not so. We will write, 'Here lies the last of the old English.' But upon thy tomb, when thy time comes, the monks of Crowland shall write, 'Here lies the first of the new English; who, by the inspiration of G.o.d, began to drain the Fens.'"

Here is absolute truth of sentiment, and to say this is by no means to deny sympathetic appreciation of the dogged resistance offered by the Fenmen of many generations to those who rescued the Fens from the condition of a watery wilderness. Of course the Fenmen hated the very idea of the subjugation of the Marshland. Their feeling towards those who began the long and arduous work differed only in degree from that with which the savage inhabitants of a new country--new to us, that is to say--regard the advance of civilization. They were not savages, but they were hard men and hardy, for only the fittest survived the agues and the fevers, accustomed to a free out-door life, having its pleasures no less than its trials. Let me quote Kingsley:--

"Overhead the arch of heaven spread more ample than elsewhere, as over the open sea; and that vastness gave, and still gives, such cloudlands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else within these isles.

They might well have been star worshippers, those Gervii, had their sky been clear as that of the East; but they were like to have worshipped the clouds rather than the stars, according to the too universal law, that mankind worship the powers which do them harm, rather than the powers which do them good. Their priestly teachers, too, had darkened still further their notion of the world around, as accursed by sin and swarming with evil spirits. The G.o.ds and fairies of their old mythology had been transformed by the Church into fiends, alluring or loathsome, but all alike destructive to man, against whom the soldier of G.o.d, the celibate monk, fought day and night with relics, Agnus Dei, and sign of Holy Cross. And therefore the Danelagh men, who feared not mortal sword or axe, feared witches, ghosts, Pucks, Wills-o'-the-Wisp, Werewolves, spirits of the wells and the trees, and all dark, capricious and harmful beings whom their fancy called up out of the wild, wet, and unwholesome marshes, or the dark, wolf-haunted woods. For that fair land, like all things on earth, had its dark aspect. The foul exhalations of the autumn called up fever and ague, crippling and enervating, and tempting, almost compelling, to that wild and desperate drinking which was the Scandinavian's special sin. Dark and sad were those short autumn days, when all the distances were shut off, and the air reeked with foul brown fog and drenching rains from the eastern sea; and pleasant the bursting forth of the keen north-east wind, with all its whirling snowstorms. For though it sent men hurrying into the storm, to drive the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow-wreaths, and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and snow; yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the Fenman's yearly holiday, when, work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed upon the ice on skates and sledges, to run races, township against township, or visit old friends forty miles away; and met everywhere faces as bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen wind of that dry and bracing frost."

Tumultuously eloquent Kingsley gives here an impression which, as an overture to the stirring story of _Hereward the Wake_ may not have been guiltless of anachronism; but it suits our purpose the better. He is too severe, in this case as in others, on the Roman Catholic clergy. Most likely the Gervii were not immigrants from oversea, not historical immigrants at any rate. Their traditions, it may well be, were of that Druidism which the Romans understood so little. Outlaws and desperate men, Saxon and Dane, naturally drifted to the Fens, bringing in their own traditions, and became one people with them. Sledges the denizens of the Fens doubtless used, and snowshoes perhaps, in the days of Hereward, when the Fens were indeed the last stronghold of the English; but one would like to see some kind of evidence for skates. As for the merrymaking on the ice, the friendly visits and the like, the chances are that they were as much the products of a happy imagination as the ancient Fenman's joy in the wild north-easter. Life really was hard and lonely for him. He probably cursed the north-easter as heartily as a rheumatic man does now, and if he welcomed the frost it was because it enabled him to approach and kill the more easily the wild birds with which the Fens teemed. In the main he was hunter, fisher, fowler, and that was why he resisted civilization.

Junketings on the ice belonged to a later period altogether. Oliver Cromwell resisted the reclamation of the Fens because he thought he saw in it a subtle device of the great to enrich themselves. The Fenman resisted it because he was a fowler and a fisher, and the draining reduced the area of his happy hunting grounds and of the waters of which he was free and out of which he could make a scanty living. Men might call him "slodger,"

"yellow-belly"--the first word sounds like the very quintessence of churned mud, the second is eloquent of sickness--and he might grumble at the hardships of his lot. Still he knew no other way of living. He could snare the myriad wildfowl, many of them no longer known in England, which haunted the fastnesses of the reeds as no other man could. He knew the flight of each kind at every hour of the day and at every season of the year. No man so cunningly as he could capture the mighty luce or pike, noosing him sometimes, at others, and especially in winter, catching him with baits, craftily let down through a hole in the ice, or could so artfully trap the fat eels wherewith the clergy of Ely or of Crowland might turn a fast in the letter into a feast in the spirit. With his stilts and his leaping pole he could travel over the marshes with the most astonishing celerity; but that he enjoyed his life so keenly as Kingsley would have us believe is in the last degree unlikely.

Still the Fenman knew the life, and he knew his powers. He had no ambition to drive the slow oxen, to turn the fertile furrow, to garner the golden grain. Indifferent to questions of national welfare he was, as of course.

The rustic of to-day is absolutely indifferent to considerations of the kind. He likes to see the straw so heavy that it cannot be cut by machines, laid by storms so that the sickle must needs be employed, because that means more work for men. Time was, and that not so very long ago, when, following the example of the artisans and weavers of manufacturing England, Hodge rioted and broke up the thrashing machines and the like, which did the work of twenty men and more. "It stands to reason," he used to say, "that such newfangled notions are bad for the likes of us." It stood to reason, from the Fenman's point of view, that to drain the Fens would be to leave him without the only occupation for which he was fit; it probably never occurred to him that he might adapt himself to altered circ.u.mstances and become a regular worker, tied to fixed hours, instead of an amphibious wanderer, fowling and fishing when he pleased, or when necessity drove him to exertion. Who shall blame him? Certainly not the sportsman, the naturalist, or the botanist, who have felt a pang of regret as they have watched, elsewhere than in the Fens it may be, the marsh that always held snipe, from which the bittern has been known to rise, in the recesses of which some almost extinct herb survived, converted into a fruitful field.

Yet what man familiar with the life of the country has not felt these regrets, even while he knew all the time that the change was for the public good and that his own livelihood would not be directly affected? Is it possible, then, not to sympathize with the resistance of the Fenmen, who knew nothing of "the public good" and saw their livelihood, or the chance of obtaining it, destroyed before their helpless eyes. It was the old story. One man's meat is another man's poison all the world over and for all time; and there can be no progress, no wholesale and beneficial change in the ways of life, without much incidental tribulation. Nevertheless, when all things are weighed in the balance, not a scintilla of doubt remains that the draining of the Fens was begun and continued, as the old knight in _Hereward the Wake_ said, "by the inspiration of G.o.d." It banished a few birds; but we could better spare a few kinds of birds than preserve them with the fevers and the agues which were the inseparable accident of their haunts. It was the end of the "slodgers" and the "yellow-bellies," who were but a handful of men; but in their place are thousands of human beings who, in spite of agricultural troubles which the drainers of the Fens could not by any means have foreseen, are at least sufficiently clad and fed, and decently housed.

It is not always, it is not indeed often, that the reflections appropriate to a scene throng into one's mind when that scene is visited. Sometimes, at the foot of Niagara, for example, thoughts refuse to come into the mind at all; it is only afterwards that with d.i.c.kens one reflects, it was surely only afterwards he reflected, that the one abiding impression left by Niagara is the remembrance from time to time that a like ma.s.s of water is still falling, and falling, and falling, yesterday to-day and for ever.

But, in relation to the Fens, I can truthfully say that most of these thoughts ran through my mind as we rolled along the road. Details of course did not. I had forgotten about Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and Rennie, but I remembered the great deeds of the House of Bedford and boyhood's delight in Hereward. As the road followed the sinuous bank of cabined Ouse, as I looked at the flat fields of rich black soil in which the corn showed green or of pasture springing into life, I felt to realize that on these very places the reeds had whispered and, as Sir Bedivere said to King Arthur, so man might have reported, to Hereward if you will, "Nought heard I, save the waves wap and the waters wan." Each church with its hamlet rose a little above the general level of the plain, making it the easier to understand that each stood on firm ground, once an island among the marshes, upon which the church had set her beacon light. If Downham Church, which we pa.s.sed, might be taken as a sample--and it may be with safety--then the more leisurely topographers who have gone before are abundantly justified in saying that the churches of the Fen country are of an uncommon stateliness and beauty. This place, by the way, shares with North Walsham the honour of having taken a share in the education of Nelson.

With such thoughts flooding into the mind we were quickly, or seemed to be quickly, at Ely, of which something has been written before, and no more shall be written. The road thence to Cambridge needs no fresh description, and at Cambridge, for our purposes, the account of this expedition might end but for one small incident of a doubly instructive character. First, however, let it be said, since the "Bull" has been praised before, that on this occasion it turned out to have been unhappily chosen as a place at which to take luncheon. Appet.i.tes were ravenous, but the meal was not a success. Perhaps because it was vacation time, the house was not prepared for guests. At any rate, the stair-carpets were "up"; but Cambridge is a big place, on an important highway, and, in fact, the guests were many and the mutton was tough. So, somewhat dissatisfied, to Royston and home, quite a long way but, so far as Royston, familiar already, and beyond that outside the present manor. Still, an incident occurring in the next manor must be recorded, because it was an incident, because it was germane to the motor-car and its little brother the motor-cycle, and because it had a double moral. It so fell out that somewhere, between Luton and Dunstable, if memory serves accurately, we were proceeding at a fittingly careful pace, and keeping scrupulously to the proper side of a not too wide and very meandering road. Suddenly, round the corner in front of us, appeared a motor-cycle, on its proper side of the road too, but proceeding at a good pace, the motor-cyclist having a young woman on a bicycle in tow. If she had kept her head all would have been well. As it was she lost it, fell head over heels into the ditch on her near side of the road, and suffered nothing worse than a shaking, which, indeed, she deserved. In due course she was picked up, placed in the tonneau, and taken back to her mother, while I held her bicycle as it rested on our near foot-board. It appeared to be the first time this very penitent damsel had tried this suicidal method of progression; let us hope it was also the last; for that it is suicidal, potentially at any rate, there is no kind of doubt. She was really in some danger, for she was just as likely to tumble into the road as into the ditch. Mr. Johnson could have stopped in time to avoid her if she had, because he was going carefully, and with a due regard to the potential dangers of the road. But I know a good many other drivers with regard to whom I should be sorry to say confidently that they could be relied upon to have been driving with equal care in the same circ.u.mstances.

It was the kind of incident which made one think.

CHAPTER XIII

FROM KING'S LYNN AS CENTRE

PART I

King's Lynn--The Globe Hotel--English hotels--Reform necessary but difficult--Centre of exploration in adjacent country--Early history of Lynn--Little known--Not Roman--Important in the eleventh century--Formerly Lynn Episcopi--Lynn Regis since Henry VIII--Chapel of Red Mount--Stopping-place for pilgrims--"King John's" cup and sword--Possibly that of King John of France--Early prosperity of Lynn--Contribution against the Armada--Lynn during the Civil War--Sir Hamon le Strange--Cromwell at siege of Lynn--Custom-house and Guildhall--A city of merchants--Lynn and Eugene Aram--Bulwer's novel and the facts--Was Aram guilty?--The theatre--Sea-faring men--To Peterborough via Wisbech--Its a.s.sociation with the Fens--The cathedral--Cathedrals as books in stone--Crowland.

PART II

To Castle Rising--Once a port--Once a borough--The keep and surroundings--The mystery of the earthworks--Not Roman probably--A suggestion--Robert de Montault's feud with Lynn--Rising and the She Wolf of France--Not so harshly imprisoned after all--Wolferton--Sandringham--Always beautiful country--The house--Sports and pastimes of royalty--Dersingham--Snettisham--The Hunstantons and the Le Stranges--"Twthill"--A suggested derivation--Brancaster--The Peddars way--The Saxon pirates--Brancaster described by Mr.

Haverfield--Excavation needed--Burnham Deepdale--Burnham Thorpe--The birthplace of Nelson--To Fakenham--Rainham Hall--The early Townshends--Elmhan--Once seat of bishopric--Earthworks--East Dereham and George Borrow--His description--Cowper--Swaffham--The first Coursing Club--Castle Acre--The Castle's story clear--That of the earthworks all darkness.

For the purposes of this chapter we will sleep, if it please you, and take our meals occasionally, at the Globe Hotel, standing in the south-west corner of the s.p.a.cious square at King's Lynn, where, in fact, I have often stayed for many days together. That is why the "Globe" is recommended, not with any extremity of warmth, but just as an ordinary and rather old-fashioned hotel, such as one may expect to find--sometimes the expectation is vain--in a really old-fashioned town like Lynn. It is no sumptuous palace, but it provides plain and wholesome food, fair liquor, and clean bedrooms at about the normal English price. That is much too high, of course, judged by the Continental standard, and some day one may hope that the mysterious reason why English hotel-keepers, having to pay less than the generality of their contemporaries abroad for that raw material of dinners, of which they too often forget to change the original condition, charge more highly for the results and certainly, to all appearance, do not thrive so consistently. They would answer, most likely, that the hotel-keepers of provincial France and of parts of Switzerland can afford to charge their very modest prices because they can safely rely on a regular influx of travellers, princ.i.p.ally English, German, and American. "I can never tell," says Boniface, "how many will want dinner on any day.

Whether five come or fifty, all expect dinner; I must always be prepared for them"--very often he is sadly unprepared--"and my prices do not do much more than cover my expenses. Many a beautiful joint have I provided, for I never buy anything but the very best, that has had to be thrown away."

Quote to him hotels abroad, such as we all know, where guests are taken in _en pension_, and fed fairly well, at from six to nine francs a day, or put it at 5s. to 7s. 6d. to simplify matters, and, while it is plain that he does not really believe you, he will bring up again the same old argument.

Nor can you persuade him that a large part of the annual exodus to the Continent is due to knowledge that touring in England is, so far as food and accommodation go, so very dear, and often so remarkably nasty by comparison with touring on the Continent that men are driven abroad.

Individually, however, Boniface is in rather a difficult position. Our beautiful islands, for they are very lovely in many kinds of loveliness, and our roads (which, if not equal to those of France, seem to an American to have attained an almost ideal perfection) will never attract their due share of voluntary travellers until the general average of hotels shall be improved, and the general average of charges shall be reduced. Even then some years must elapse before the reform would be realized as well as known, and the set habits of the travelling public, the public which travels of its own free-will and for its own pleasure, might be slow to change. They also, like the hotel-keepers, are English men and English women, Scots and Irish of both s.e.xes, not easy to move out of a fixed groove. In any case the pioneer, the paragon among hotel-keepers, who should attempt to gain custom by setting an example of prices really moderate, not moderate according to English standards, would almost certainly court bankruptcy. One swallow does not make a summer; the certainty of finding one cheap and comfortable hotel on a tour would not suffice to turn the stream of tourists into the route on which that hotel lay.

So, perhaps, the complaints of motorists and others concerning the charges of English hotels (and Irish and Scotch hotels too) may be regarded as being rather in the nature of letting off steam than in that of using it in the hope of effecting any real result. The fault lies in the system; the system cannot be reformed without concerted action of hotel-keepers, of which there is no present evidence; and, if reform came, the actual reformers would probably be losers, although the next generation of hotel-keepers would reap a rich harvest. The process of reform would be, indeed, something like making pasture out of arable land, a costly enterprise, the profits of which are so long in coming that it is rarely undertaken by tenants for a short term. Since that is so we must take our hotels as we find them, praising some as being a little better than others when all might be vastly improved. On these principles the "Globe" at Lynn is recommended, although the "Crown" or the "Duke's Head" may, for all I know, be equally good. It may be added, too, that it used to be, perhaps still is, the hotel used by Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, whose Parliamentary connection with King's Lynn was long. His presence in it, however, argued nothing. It may have been the Conservative or Unionist hotel traditionally, as the "Royal" at Norwich is the Liberal House; or again, Mr. Bowles may have been no less independent in the choice of a hotel, even in his own const.i.tuency, than he was in selecting his lobby on a division in the House of Commons.

At any rate the "Globe" will serve as a resting-place. From it we will examine King's Lynn, thinking a little of its history and a.s.sociations, and take a drive of a single day in the first part of the chapter; and in the second we will take, for purposes of writing, a considerably longer drive which, for those who desire to see a great number of interesting places at leisure, would be much better divided into two parts, or even three, than taken in a single piece. Only, having visited all the places named, by road too, but not expressly for the purpose of this book, I am disposed to recommend a return to Lynn for the night, if a day seems to be growing too long, rather than a sojourn at some outlying place in which the inn or hotel, where there is one, has not been tested on my vile body. For example, in this second drive, if my advice be taken, the traveller may find himself at Brancaster at about the time of afternoon tea. Even on a summer's day he will hardly be disposed to complete the programme suggested. He can easily run back to Lynn, in time to dress for dinner comfortably, along a different road from that which he took in coming, and if he likes to start again at the next point in the drive on the following morning, he can reach that again by a new series of roads. He is never likely to regret his return to Lynn, because it is really an exceedingly interesting and characteristic place.

"It was an old wild fancy that Catus Decia.n.u.s," Boadicea's Roman contemporary in this country, "founded Lynn," says Mr. Haverfield; on the other hand, according to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, it is supposed to have been a British settlement. Its origin is, in fact, "wrop up in mystery" rather more completely than is usual with old English towns. We know that the earliest entry in the Red Book of Lynn is 1309, and the last East Anglian bishop who occupied Thetford as his diocesan capital is believed to have built a church where St. Margaret's now stands.

Presumably, therefore, Lynn was a place of some importance in his day, which was at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries. There is an odd tradition concerning the original church, of which not much is left, for in the eighteenth century the spire collapsed on to the nave in a gale of wind. The tradition, mentioned by Mr. Rye, is that the foundation was laid on woolpacks; "but I fancy this only came from some donation of wool, or of a wool subsidy, in aid of a partial rebuilding. Whatever it was built on its foundations certainly settled very much directly, for the tower leans over in such a Pisa-like way that it makes a nervous spectator quite uncomfortable to go inside it and look up, though the protecting piers have been there in their present places a trifle over seven hundred years or so." How to reconcile this with the fact that the spire was blown down on to the nave in 1741 is Mr. Rye's business, not mine. Besides that, the fragments of history connected with Lynn are so interesting that they will leave little, if any, s.p.a.ce for those discourses on ecclesiastical architecture which are the princ.i.p.al parts of the generality of guide-books.

Of the early history, the really early history of Lynn, little is known. It had strong walls, relics of which remain, of uncertain date, save that they were not Roman. It belonged to the East Anglian bishops, or at any rate was in their temporal jurisdiction, until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, when it became Lynn Regis, no longer Lynn Episcopi. It was a stopping place for pilgrims on the way to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, who were encouraged to lay their offerings in the Chapel of the Red Mount, to which chapel, very small and very beautiful within, an ancient avenue still leads. Observe the distinct entrance and exit, testifying alike to the business apt.i.tude of those who were in charge, and to the popularity of the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham. Lynn has a charter of 1216, given by King John, and preserves a sword and a cup alleged to have been given by him.

Here "Murray" is "too clever by half," and himself supplies, if it had but occurred to him, a key which it was left to a local antiquary to apply to this historical problem. "The cup itself, in elegance of shape, might have come from the hand of Cellini. The figures in enamel of men and women hunting and hawking are extremely curious. Judging, however, from the costume and workmanship this cup cannot be older than the period of Edward III--the period of the greatest prosperity of Lynn. The sword also, although an inscription on one side of the hilt records that John took it from his side and gave it to the town, is really no older than the sixteenth century. Both articles seem to be subst.i.tutes for the original donations." That is not so certain. On the opposite page the same writer mentions a bra.s.s in St. Margaret's commemorating a Mayor of Edward III's time, and a representation below of the "Peac.o.c.k's Feast" given by this same mayor to Edward III, who is represented at table, having before him a cup very like the one in question. Now Edward III not only visited Lynn, but also kept King John of France as an honoured prisoner for many years.

He was as likely as not to take John with him to Lynn, and the chances are that the cup, as a local antiquary has suggested to Mr. Rye, was the gift of a king of France. As for the inscription on the sword, it is nothing. It was in the nature of things that whosoever gave the sword, the inscription should be placed upon it afterwards, and, as to a date suggested by workmanship, it would be very unsafe to rely upon it.

"Probably it was in the time of Edward III that, speaking relatively, Lynn was most prosperous." It is a.s.sumed that the statement was not made without evidence of some kind. Otherwise probabilities would seem to point in the opposite direction, and it would be natural to expect that, as the Fens were gradually subjugated, producing some things worth exporting and supporting men capable of buying things imported, the port provided for them by nature would grow in respect of trade. Still there is abundant evidence of its importance later than Edward III and long before the great and good work of reclaiming the Fens had been take seriously in hand. In the time of Elizabeth, Lynn and Blakeney (!), the latter now no longer worthy of mention as a port, furnished "2 shippes and 1 pinnace," a contribution equal to that of Ipswich and Harwich, to resist the Armada.

Then, as we have seen, Oliver Cromwell resisted the first scheme of Fen-reclamation formed by the ill.u.s.trious house of Bedford--the Protector of later years was then a resident at Ely and member for Cambridge in the House of Commons. Yet the value of Lynn was quickly made manifest during the Rebellion. Moved thereto by stout Sir Hamon le Strange of Hunstanton, Lynn showed itself to be veritably Lynn Regis, almost the only part of East Anglia that adhered to Charles. It was a matter of no small moment. Even afterwards, when the Restoration was being planned the projected seizure of Lynn was regarded by the planners and by Clarendon as an enterprise of exceptional value because Lynn was "a Maritime Town, of great importance in respect of the Situation, and likewise of the Good Affection of the Gentlemen of the Parts adjacent." To the first Charles it would have been of priceless value could he but have held it, for through it he could have secured from the Continent that supply of ammunition of which, almost from the beginning of the war, he was in sore need. With Sir Hamon le Strange for governor, 50 pieces of ordnance, 1200 muskets, and 500 barrels of powder, Lynn was held in a manner plainly showing how much value the King set upon it. The Parliamentary generals, however, were equally alive to the use that might be made of Lynn as a port from which to obtain supplies.

First Manchester, and later Cromwell, took part in the siege; it is even said the "Virgin Troop" of Norwich, Puritan Amazons, took the field on this occasion. At any rate, in 1643 Lynn surrendered, to the grievous loss of Charles and the corresponding gain of the Parliament.

Lynn's commercial history may be described roughly as the dogged and not entirely fruitless struggle of a town once really great and prosperous to fight the new conditions of modern trade, conditions tending to make remote and out of the way a port which was once accessible and almost central. The glory has not all departed, but a great deal of it has gone, leaving its traces plainly to be seen in architecture. The Custom-house, Dutch in appearance (for the trade with Holland was considerable), and the Guildhall speak of the days gone by; the central market square is far too s.p.a.cious for the present needs of the place. The main streets are narrow, but that was the way of old cities, and their lights, carried on elegant iron arches across the streets, give it a distinctly foreign air. Drive away from the main street towards the Custom-house, and you will find another, running parallel to it, of substantial Queen Anne houses compelling reflection.

They speak of a bygone prosperity. I have found no trace that Lynn ever was, as Ipswich and Norwich were in the pre-railway days, and as for that matter nearly every county town in England was, a centre of county society, in which the county families kept their town houses, occupying them for a gay season in each year. These houses seem to speak rather of rich Lynn merchants of the past, trading with the Low Countries on a scale very large for those days. Again, with the sea to the northward, after a few miles of navigable river, and the Fens on every side nearly, living on its trade by sea, Lynn seems to have been placed in a species of natural isolation, which perhaps goes some way to account for the fact that it is not quite like any other town in England.

Probably the Lynn "character" of the past most of us would best like to meet, not for very long perhaps, was Miss Mary Breeze, who died, aged seventy-eight, in 1789. It is recorded of her that "she took out her shooting license, kept as good greyhounds, and was as sure a shot as any in the county." But a corporation minute beginning, "Guildhall, Lynn. At a congregation there holden on the 14th day of February, 1758," points to a contemporary of Miss Mary Breeze, in whom the wider world was once keenly interested. On that day Eugene Aram was approved as usher to the Grammar School, on the appointment of Mr. Knox, in the place of John Birkes, "dismissed." Like, probably, most middle-aged men, I remember reading _Eugene Aram_ with eager interest as a boy; in these later years the task has been achieved only after heroic efforts and in obedience to a sense of duty. The n.o.ble author, who could describe a chair in front of a public-house as "cathedrarian accommodation," is not for this age. By the help, however, of a paper read by Mr. E. M. Beloe to a county society, and preserved in _Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries_, I am able to see something of this celebrated case, once much discussed, as it must have appeared to the inhabitants of Lynn.

Aram was appointed usher of the ancient Grammar School, now vanished (but Lynn has recently acquired a far more important Grammar School, named after King Edward VII), in February, 1758. He lived in the headmaster's house, spent his holidays with the Vicar of Heacham, and most of his Sundays with Archdeacon Steadman, who was Rector of Gaywood. He was gloomy of aspect, given to solitary walks, in the habit of looking back over his shoulder, as if some one were following him; but he was also obviously a man of remarkable attainments. Bulwer gives him all these traits, except (I think) that of looking over his shoulder, which is local tradition. Bulwer also makes Aram the impa.s.sioned suitor of a local lady; but Mr. Beloe says nothing on that head. If Aram was such, then his intentions must have been dishonourable and may have been bigamous: on that point, however, Lynn could have known nothing. Imagine, then, the surprise of the good people of Lynn when, in August or September of the year 1758, after Aram had been among them seven months only, two Knaresborough constables came to Sir John Turner, the most important magistrate of Lynn, and one of those who had sanctioned the appointment of Aram, with a warrant against the usher. The warrant, being issued in Yorkshire, required to be backed. Sir John Turner backed it, accompanied the constables to the Grammar School, and was present while Aram, having been summoned to an inner room, was duly arrested. Next, according to Hood's _Dream of Eugene Aram_--

Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist, And Eugene Aram walked between, With gyves upon his wrist.

This was poetic licence; as a matter of fact, Aram started for Knaresborough in a post-chaise. That was all the people of Lynn saw or knew of Eugene Aram, save that they learned, through the meagre channels of information then existing, that he was eventually convicted at Knaresborough, after lying untried for nearly a year in York gaol, on a charge of murder fourteen years old. Small wonder, then, that Mr. Beloe wrote and read aloud "His name has been, from my youth upwards, a kind of fascination for me"; small wonder that Lynn was and remained deeply interested to find it had harboured a criminal, whose guilt was doubted by some, whose career was the theme of a stirring poem, n.o.bly recited by Sir Henry Irving, and of a novel which was at one time much to the taste of the age.

Eugene Aram's story is really so full of interest that it is worth summarizing, very briefly and without introduction of the "love interest"

(as his literary agents have it) with which Bulwer strove to give it human reality. Of quite humble parentage and meagre education, he early showed a pa.s.sion for learning. Born in 1704, he was a married schoolmaster at Netherdale long before he was thirty, and when he migrated to Knaresborough, still as a schoolmaster, in 1734, he had acquired considerable knowledge of Latin and Greek. At Knaresborough he remained ten years. Then his intimate Daniel Clarke disappeared, having previously been supplied with a large quant.i.ty of goods on credit. Nothing worse than a common swindle seems to have been suspected at the time. Suspicion of having been concerned in it fell upon Aram; proceedings were taken against him; his garden was searched; but no evidence was forthcoming and he was discharged. However, he left Knaresborough shortly afterwards, deserting his wife at the same time, and for the next ten years he appears to have wandered about England, acting as usher in all sorts of schools, and studying comparative philology. The definite story finds him next an usher at Lynn, peculiar in manner but, by reason of his attainments probably, an acceptable a.s.sociate to the cultivated gentlemen of the district.

It would have been well for Aram if, when he left Knaresborough, he had taken away his wife also. The deserted woman, whom the n.o.ble novelist found it convenient to forget, had doubtless a feeling of resentment against her husband, and had certainly a long tongue. Talking over her grievances, which really were quite considerable, she had been heard to suggest that her husband and Houseman, "the scoundrel Houseman" of Bulwer, were jointly responsible for the disappearance of Clarke, but her talk was clearly regarded as the scurrilous spite of an angry woman. Then a skeleton was found near Knaresborough, in a place where no recent skeleton had a right to be, and folks began to say that there was some method in Mrs. Aram's madness. There was an inquest, at which she gave evidence; Houseman was arrested and "confronted with the bones." He vowed that they were not the bones of "Dan Clarke," confessed that he had been present while Aram and another man murdered Clarke, and that Clarke's bones had been buried in a well-known cave hard by. In that cave bones were found. Where was Aram? A clue (this is from Mr. Beloe and does not appear in most accounts) was supplied by a Yorkshire horse-dealer, who had seen Aram at Lynn during his travels. So Aram was arrested, as we have seen, tried, convicted and executed, making full confession after conviction, and suggesting, by way of motive, that Clarke had made too successful love to his wife.

Was Eugene Aram guilty or not? To his confession, probably, no serious attention need be paid. The man was highly strung clearly, he had been a penniless prisoner for nearly a year at a time when our prisons were h.e.l.ls upon earth, he had conducted his own defence during an arduous and, from our modern point of view, very unfairly conducted trial, he attempted suicide by opening a vein on the night before his execution, he was desperate, probably not master of himself, and last, perhaps not least, confessions were the custom of the criminals of the age. It has been urged on his behalf that the trial was unfair, from our point of view, since counsel might not be retained for the defence of prisoners in those days nor wives called in defence of their husbands. As to the wife's evidence, if it had been admissible, the story makes it plain that it would have been more likely to be d.a.m.ning than favourable. She had been deserted, she had been left to shift for herself for many years, she had said that Aram knew all about the disappearance of Clarke. It was a distinct advantage to Aram that she could not be called. That he suffered from having to defend himself is in the last degree unlikely. Paley, who travelled all the way from Cambridge to hear his defence, said he had secured his conviction by his own cleverness. The original defence, preserved by Bulwer, is indeed marked by singular ability; but it is not in the very least convincing. I can imagine the jury saying to one another: "If this obviously clever man can think of nothing better than this to say, he is guilty sure enough."

Houseman, it might very fairly be said, was not a credible witness. He was, indeed, on his own showing, a most mean and despicable villain; but the strength of the circ.u.mstantial evidence, the fact that Aram ran away, that he did not cross-examine Houseman or attempt to overthrow his evidence, and that his defence really amounted to an essay on the fallibility of circ.u.mstantial evidence, were quite enough to secure his conviction then, or now. The sympathy felt for Eugene Aram has sprung from the fact that the villain Houseman escaped, and that Aram was an able and a brilliantly learned man. Hume, I believe, said he was a century ahead of his age in Celtic research; but neither the one fact nor the other is inconsistent with a belief that Clarke was murdered, and that Aram was present at the murder.

Such are the reflections one may carry about the narrow streets of Lynn, and sometimes, of an evening, one may go to the theatre, but my one experience of that was not inviting. The maxim _ne coram populo_ was more flagrantly trodden underfoot surely than ever before, when, in a play called (I think) _Slaves of the Harem_, a full-blooded and genuine African went through with a bowstring the gestures of executing an erring lady on the stage (who in her turn made appropriate grimaces) to the uproarious delight of an audience which insisted on encoring the scene. On the other hand, time spent in talking with the people in warm bar-parlours of an evening, or among the mariners who idle on the quay by day, as mariners always have and always will, is apt to be rewarded by no means ill. Among the sea-faring men, at any rate, hardy fishermen for the most part, the feeling that one may be talking to lineal descendants of Vikings soon deepens into conviction. They are fine seamen, too, these men of the east coast, and the Navy depends upon them not a little; but very prudently, and without saying anything about it, it is arranged that the same ship's company shall never be part east and part west countrymen.

It was fore-ordained that this portion of a chapter should end with a drive. It is a drive to be taken very shortly in print, and quite easily by road over Fen country, not needing to be described anew, to a cathedral city situate geographically in the Midlands--that is to say, to Peterborough. Now Peterborough is in Northamptonshire, and Northamptonshire sounds Midland as Midland can be. On what pretext is Peterborough introduced? Really none is needed; our brief detour is but an ill.u.s.tration of the truth that county boundaries, apart from the matters of police and road-making, have no more meaning for the motorist than they had for the Romans. Peterborough is easily accessible from Lynn, via Wisbech, by thirty-five miles of flat road. Its cathedral dominates the Fens from the west as Ely dominates their southern and central parts; it has been intimately a.s.sociated with their troubled history in the past. The cathedral too, although by no means to be reckoned amongst the most majestic to be found in England, is very fine in itself, and exceptionally interesting and suggestive. I had written "instructive," but that is usually a word raising expectation of tedious discourse. As a matter of fact, little shall be written about Peterborough Cathedral, although many personal impressions might be moulded into one. Go to see Peterborough Cathedral. Remember that it is one of the three Norman cathedrals of England; that the first church on this site was built in the closing years of the seventh century, and rased to the ground by the Danes; that the second was burned in the twelfth century; that the greater part of the present structure was 120 years in the building before it was consecrated in the thirteenth century; that the central tower was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and that the nineteenth century saw a great deal of necessary work done. Remembering this, you will surely depart reluctantly, convinced that of all our English books in stone none contains more chapters than that ent.i.tled Peterborough Cathedral, that in no edifice can the student of architecture who inspects with the advantage of special knowledge, or the fairly cultivated man who lacks that special knowledge, find more details of genuine charm and interest. Here you can trace developments, early Norman vaulting in the aisles, exquisite fan-vaulting--it is peculiar to England--in the choir, cl.u.s.tered piers to columns. Here you may follow the differences in character and arrangement between a monastic cathedral, such as Peterborough was, served by regular clergy and monks, and one of the old foundation, like St. Paul's, which, being served by secular clergy, was not affected by the reforms of Henry VIII. You may see, too, traces of the iconoclastic zeal of Cromwell's followers, often credited with the misdeeds of others. In spite of them, too, you may realize, not more forcibly than elsewhere perhaps, but still in full force, that which has been remarkably well put by Professor Banister Fletcher and Mr. Banister F. Fletcher in their _Comparative Architecture_. "The place in the national life which the mediaeval cathedrals occupied was an important one, and must be realized if we would understand how they were regarded. In the absence of books, and of people able to read them, cathedrals were erected and decorated partly as a means of popular education, the sculpture and the painted gla.s.s reflecting the incidents of Bible history from the Creation to the redemption of mankind, the sculptured forms and brilliant colouring rendering them easily understood by the people. The virtues and vices, with their symbols, were also displayed, either in gla.s.s or statuary, along with their reward or punishment. Saints and angels told of the better life, and the various handicrafts, both of peace and war, were mirrored in imperishable stone or coloured gla.s.s. They, to a large extent, took the place in our social state since occupied by such modern inst.i.tutions as the Board School, Free Library, Museum, Picture Gallery, and Concert Hall. They were the history books of the period. Architecture then as now was also the grand chronicle of secular history, past and present, in which Kings, n.o.bles, and Knights were represented."

Nothing conduces more to appreciation of the full meaning of a pa.s.sage than the laborious process of copying, and having now performed that process I am moved to protest that these few lines, while they leave to the understanding the purely ecclesiastical significance of mediaeval architecture, and are absolutely free from rhetorical artifice, are more pregnant with meaning than many pages of moving eloquence. So we leave Peterborough and, if the mood seizes us, make a detour of eight miles to Crowland before returning to Peterborough. This, personally I cannot speak for; but there are some remains of the historic abbey.

PART II

The end of these wanderings is now close in sight, and the thought fills him who writes with feelings in which regret predominates over relief. He would be a cold-blooded person indeed who, after much travel in East Anglia had revealed to him many beauties new to him, besides refreshing acquaintance with those seen before, after steeping himself, to the best of his ability and opportunities, in the history and legends of the district, should not have developed a very warm appreciation of the variety and character of both. But it is needless to say this over and over again, in various forms of words, in vain imitation of Matthew Arnold's method of compelling attention, and there is the less excuse for anything of the kind in that our last drive, or drives, take us through an exceptionally large number of storied places, and through some of the most breezy and fascinating of Norfolk scenery.