Chapter M: O A (11)

"Eh! owd Sammy's bin makkin' a speech," and a rush was made for the papers. The streets were poorly lighted in those days, and the men did a roaring business in the dark. One man, however, was so anxious to read the speech that he could not wait until he got home, but went to a shop window, where there was a light, but the paper was blank. Thinking they had given him the wrong paper, he ran after the men and shouted, pointing to the paper, "Hey, there's nowt on it." "Well," growled one of the men, "_he said nowt_."

We now climbed up the opposite side of the dale, and continued on the moorland road for a few miles, calling at the "Flagg Moor Inn" for tea. By the time we had finished it was quite dark, and the landlady of the inn did her best to persuade us to stay there for the night, telling us that the road from there to Ashbourne was so lonely that it was possible on a dark night to walk the whole distance of fourteen miles without seeing a single person, and as it had been the Great Fair at Newhaven that day, there might be some dangerous characters on the roads. When she saw we were determined to proceed farther, she warned us that the road did not pass through any village, and that there was only a solitary house here and there, some of them being a little way from the road. The road was quite straight, and had a stone wall on each side all the way, so all we had got to do was to keep straight on, and to mind we did not turn to the right or the left along any of the by-roads lest we should get lost on the moors. It was not without some feeling of regret that we bade the landlady "Good night" and started out from the comfortable inn on a pitch-dark night. Fortunately the road was dry, and, as there were no trees, the limestone of which it was composed showed a white track easily discernible in the inky darkness which surrounded it. As we got farther on our way we could see right in front a great illumination in the mist or clouds above marking the glare from the country fair at Newhaven, which was only four miles from the inn we had just left. We met quite a number of people returning from the fair, both on foot and in vehicles, and as they all appeared to be in good spirits we received a friendly greeting from all who spoke to us. Presently arriving at Newhaven itself, which consisted solely of one large inn, we found the surrounding open space packed with a noisy and jovial crowd of people, the number of whom absolutely astonished us, as the country around appeared so desolate, and we wondered where they all could have come from. Newhaven, which had been a very important place in the coaching-days, was a big three-storeyed house with twenty-five bedrooms and stabling for a hundred horses. It stood at a junction of roads about 1,100 feet above sea-level in a most lonely place, and in the zenith of its popularity there was seldom a bedroom empty, the house being quite as gay as if it had been in London itself. It had been specially built for the coach traffic by the then Duke of Devonshire, whose mansion, Chatsworth House, was only a few miles distant. King George IV stayed at Newhaven on one occasion, and was so pleased with his entertainment that he granted to the inn a free and perpetual licence of his own sovereign pleasure, so that no application for renewal of licence at Brewster Sessions was ever afterwards required; a fact which accounted in some measure for the noisy company congregated therein, in defiance of the superintendent of police, who, with five or six of his officers, was standing in front of the fair. Booths had been erected by other publicans, but the police had ordered these to be removed earlier in the day to prevent further disturbances.

We noticed they had quite a number of persons in custody, and when I saw a policeman looking very critically at the miscellaneous assortment of luggage my brother was carrying, I thought he was about to be added to the number; but he was soon satisfied as to the honesty of his intentions. The "New Haven" must have meant a new haven for passengers, horses, and coaches when the old haven had been removed, as the word seemed only to apply to the hotel, which, as it was ten miles both from Buxton and Ashbourne, and also on the Roman road known as Via Gellia, must have been built exactly to accommodate the ten-mile run of the coaches either way. It quite enlivened us to see the old-fashioned shows, the shooting-boxes, the exhibitions of monstrosities, with stalls displaying all sorts of nuts, sweets, gingerbreads, and all the paraphernalia that in those days comprised a country fair, and we should have liked to stay at the inn and visit some of the shows which were ranged in front of it and along the green patches of grass which lined the Ashbourne road; but in the first place the inn was not available, and in the second our twenty-five-mile average daily walk was too much in arrears to admit of any further delay.

All the shows and stalls were doing a roaring trade, and the naphtha lamps with which they were lighted flared weirdly into the inky darkness above. Had we been so minded, we might have turned aside and found quarters at an inn bearing the odd sign of "The Silent Woman" (a woman with her head cut off and tucked under her arm, similar to one nearer home called the "Headless Woman"--in the latter case, however, the tall figure of the woman was shown standing upright, without any visible support, while her head was calmly resting on the ground--the idea seeming to be that a woman could not be silent so long as her head was on her body), but we felt that Ashbourne must be reached that night, which now seemed blacker than ever after leaving the glaring lights in the Fair. Nor did we feel inclined to turn along any by-road on a dark night like that, seeing that we had been partly lost on our way from London the previous year, nearly at the same place, and on quite as dark a night. On that memorable occasion we had entered Dovedale near Thorpe, and visited the Lovers' Leap, Reynard's Cave, Tissington Spires, and Dove Holes, but darkness came on, compelling us to leave the dale to resume our walk the following morning. Eventually we saw a light in the distance, where we found a cottage, the inmates of which kindly conducted us with a lantern across a lonely place to the village of Parwich, which in the Derbyshire dialect they pronounced "Porritch," reminding us of our supper.

It was nearly closing-time when we were ushered into the taproom of the village inn among some strange companions, and when the hour of closing arrived we saw the head of the village policeman appear at the shutter through which outside customers were served with beer. The landlord asked him, "Will you have a pint?" Looking significantly at ourselves, he replied, "No, thank you," but we noticed the "pint" was placed in the aperture, and soon afterwards disappeared!

At Newhaven we ascertained that we were now quite near Hartington and Dovedale. Hartington was a famous resort of fishermen and well known to Isaak Walton, the "Father of Fishermen," and author of that famous book _The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man's Recreation_, so full of such cheerful piety and contentment, such sweet freshness and simplicity, as to give the book a perennial charm. He was a great friend of Charles Cotton of Beresford Hall, who built a fine fishing-house near the famous Pike Pool on the River Dove, over the arched doorway of which he placed a cipher stone formed with the combined initials of Walton and himself, and inscribed with the words "Piscatoribus Sacrum." It was said that when they came to fish in the fish pool early in the morning, Cotton smoked tobacco for his breakfast!

What spot more honoured than this beautiful place?
Twice honoured truly. Here Charles Cotton sang,
Hilarious, his whole-hearted songs, that rang
With a true note, through town and country ways,
While the Dove trout--in chorus--splashed their praise.
Here Walton sate with Cotton in the shade
And watched him dubb his flies, and doubtless made
The time seem short, with gossip of old days.
Their cyphers are enlaced above the door,
And in each angler's heart, firm-set and sure.

While rivers run, shall those two names endure,
Walton and Cotton linked for evermore---
And Piscatoribus Sacrum where more fit
A motto for their wisdom worth and wit?

Say, where shall the toiler find rest from his labours,
And seek sweet repose from the overstrung will?
Away from the worry and jar of his neighbours
Where moor-tinted streamlets flow down from the hill.

Then hurrah! jolly anglers, for burn and for river.
The songs of the birds and the lowing of kine:
The voice of the river shall soothe us for ever,
Then here's to the toast, boys--"The rod and the line!"

We walked in the darkness for about six miles thinking all the time of Dovedale, which we knew was running parallel with our road at about two miles' distance. When we reached Tissington, about three miles from Ashbourne, the night had become lighter, and there ought to have been a considerable section of the moon visible if the sky had been clear. Here we came to quite a considerable number of trees, but the village must have been somewhere in the rear of them. Well-dressing was a custom common in Derbyshire, and also on a much smaller scale in some of the neighbouring counties; but this village of Tissington was specially noted in this respect, for it contained five wells, all of which had to be dressed. As the dressers of the different wells vied with each other which should have the best show, the children and young people had a busy time in collecting the flowers, plants, buds, and ferns necessary to form the display. The festival was held on Holy Thursday, and was preceded with a service in the church followed by one at each of the wells, and if the weather was fine, hundreds of visitors assembled to criticise the work at the different wells. The origin of well-dressing is unknown, but it is certainly of remote antiquity, probably dating back to pagan times. That at Tissington was supposed to have developed at the time of the Black Plague in the fourteenth century, when, although it decimated many villages in the neighbourhood, it missed Tissington altogether--because, it was supposed, of the purity of the waters. But the origin of well-dressing must have been of much greater antiquity: the custom no doubt had its beginnings as an expression of praise to God from whom all blessings flow. The old proverb, "We never know the value of water till the well runs dry," is singularly appropriate in the hilly districts of Derbyshire, where not only the wells, but the rivers also have been known to dry up, and when the spring comes and brings the flowers, what could be more natural than to thank the Almighty who sends the rain and the water, without which they could not grow.

We were sorry to have missed our walk down Dove Dale, but it was all for the best, as we should again have been caught in the dark there, and perhaps I should have injured my foot again, as the path along the Dale was difficult to negotiate even in the daylight. In any case we were pleased when we reached Ashbourne, where we had no difficulty in finding our hotel, for the signboard of the "Green Man" reached over our heads from one side of the main street to the other.

(_Distance walked twenty-six and a half miles_.)

_Tuesday, October 31st._

The inn we stayed at was a famous one in the days of the stagecoaches, and bore the double name "The Green Man and the Black's Head Royal Hotel" on a sign which was probably unique, for it reached across the full width of the street. A former landlord having bought another coaching-house in the town known as the "Black's Head," transferred the business to the "Green Man," when he incorporated the two signs. We were now on the verge of Dr. Johnson's country, the learned compiler of the great dictionary, who visited the "Green Man" in company with his companion, James Boswell, whose _Life of Dr. Johnson_ is said to be the finest biography ever written in the English language. They had a friend at Ashbourne, a Dr. Taylor, whom they often visited, and on one occasion when they were all sitting in his garden their conversation turned on the subject of the future state of man. Johnson gave expression to his views in the following words, "Sir, I do not imagine that all things will be made clear to us immediately after death, but that the ways of Providence will be explained to us very gradually."

Boswell stayed at the "Green Man" just before journeying with Dr. Johnson to Scotland, and was greatly pleased by the manners of the landlady, for he described her as a "mighty civil gentlewoman" who curtseyed very low as she gave him an engraving of the sign of the house, under which she had written a polite note asking for a recommendation of the inn to his "extensive acquaintance, and her most grateful thanks for his patronage and her sincerest prayers for his happiness in time and in blessed eternity." The present landlady of the hotel appeared to be a worthy successor to the lady who presided there in the time of Boswell, for we found her equally civil and obliging, and, needless to say, we did justice to a very good breakfast served up in her best style.

The Old Hall of Ashbourne, situated at the higher end of the town, was a fine old mansion, with a long history, dating from the Cockayne family, who were in possession of lands here as early as the year 1372, and who were followed by the Boothby family.

The young Pretender, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," who had many friends in England, stayed a night at the Hall in 1745, and the oak door of the room in which he slept was still preserved. He and his Highlanders never got farther than Derby, when he had to beat a hurried retreat, pursued by the Duke of Cumberland. Prince Charlie, to avoid the opposing army at Stafford and Lichfield, turned aside along the Churnet valley, through Leek, and so to Ashbourne. At Derby he called a Council of War, and learned how the Royal forces were closing in upon him, so that reluctantly a retreat was ordered. Then began a period of plundering and rapine. The Highlanders spread over the country, but on their return never crossed into Staffordshire, for, as the story goes, the old women of the Woodlands of Needwood Forest undertook to find how things were going, and crept down to the bridges of Sudbury and Scropton. As it began to rain, they used their red flannel petticoats as cloaks, which the Highlanders, spying, took to be the red uniforms of soldiers, and a panic seized them--so much so, that some who had seized some pig-puddings and were fastening them hot on a pole, according to a local ditty, ran out through a back door, and, jumping from a heap of manure, fell up to the neck in a cesspool. The pillage near Ashbourne was very great, but they could not stay, for the Duke was already at Uttoxoter with a small force.

George Canning, the great orator who was born in 1770 and died when he was Prime Minister of England in 1827, often visited Ashbourne Old Hall. In his time the town of Ashbourne was a flourishing one; it was said to be the only town in England that benefited by the French prisoners of war, as there were 200 officers, including three generals, quartered there in 1804, and it was estimated that they spent nearly £30,000 in Ashbourne. An omnibus was then running between Ashbourne and Derby, which out of courtesy to the French was named a "diligence," the French equivalent for stage-coach; but the Derby diligence was soon abbreviated to the Derby "Dilly." The roads at that time were very rough, macadamised surfaces being unknown, and a very steep hill leading into the Ashbourne and Derby Road was called _bête noire_ by the French, about which Canning, who was an occasional passenger, wrote the following lines:

So down the hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby Dilly, carrying three insides;
One in each corner sits and lolls at ease,
With folded arms, propt back and outstretched knees;
While the pressed bodkin, pinched and squeezed to death,
Sweats in the midmost place and scolds and pants for breath.

We were now at the end of the last spur of the Pennine Range of hills and in the last town in Derbyshire. As if to own allegiance to its own county, the spire of the parish church, which was 212 feet high, claimed to be the "Pride of the Peak." In the thirteenth-century church beneath it, dedicated to St. Oswald, there were many fine tombs of the former owners of the Old Hall at Ashbourne, those belonging to the Cockayne family being splendid examples of the sculptor's art. We noted that one member of the family was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1404, while another had been knighted by King Henry VII at the siege of Tournay. The finest object in the church was the marble figure of a little child as she appeared--

Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,

which for simplicity, elegance, and childlike innocence of face was said to be the most interesting and pathetic monument in England. It is reputed to be the masterpiece of the English sculptor Thomas Banks, whose work was almost entirely executed abroad, where he was better known than in England. The inscriptions on it were in four different languages, English, Italian, French, and Latin, that in English being:

I was not in safety, neither had I rest, and the trouble came.

The dedication was inscribed:

TO PENELOPE

ONLY CHILD OF SIR BROOKE BOOTHBY AND DAME SUSANNAH BOOTHBY.

Born April 11th 1785, died March 13th 1791. She was in form and
intellect most exquisite The unfortunate parents ventured their all
in this Frail bark, And the wreck was Total.

The melancholy reference to their having ventured their all bore upon the separation between the father and mother, which immediately followed the child's death.

The description of the monument reads as follows:

The figure of the child reclines on a pillowed mattress, her hands
resting one upon the other near her head. She is simply attired in a
frock, below which her naked feet are carelessly placed one over the
other, the whole position suggesting that in the restlessness of pain
she had just turned to find a cooler and easier place of rest.

Her portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, her name appearing in his "Book of Sitters" in July 1788, when she was just over three years of age, and is one of the most famous child-pictures by that great master. The picture shows Little Penelope in a white dress and a dark belt, sitting on a stone sill, with trees in the background. Her mittened hands are folded in her lap, and her eyes are demurely cast down. She is wearing a high mob-cap, said to have belonged to Sir Joshua's grandmother.

This picture was sold in 1859 to the Earl of Dudley for 1,100 guineas, and afterwards exhibited at Burlington House, when it was bought by Mr. David Thwaites for £20,060.

The model for the famous picture "Cherry Ripe," painted by Sir John Everett-Millais, was Miss Talmage, who had appeared as Little Penelope at a fancy-dress ball, and it was said in later years that if there had been no Penelope Boothby by Sir Joshua Reynolds, there would have been no "Cherry Ripe" by Sir John Everett-Millais.

Sir Francis Chantrey, the great sculptor, also visited Ashbourne Church. His patron, Mrs. Robinson, when she gave him the order to execute that exquisite work, the Sleeping Children, in Lichfield Cathedral, expressly stipulated that he must see the figure of Penelope Boothby in Ashbourne Church before he began her work. Accordingly Chantrey came down to the church and completed his sketch afterwards at the "Green Man Inn," working at it until one o'clock the next morning, when he departed by the London coach.

Ashbourne is one of the few places which kept up the football match on Shrove Tuesday, a relic probably of the past, when the ball was a creature or a human being, and life or death the object of the game. But now the game was to play a stuffed case or the biggest part of it up and down the stream, the Ecclesbourne, until the mill at either limit of the town was reached.

The River Dove, of which it has been written the "Dove's flood is worth a king's good," formed the boundary between Derbyshire and Staffordshire, which we crossed by a bridge about two miles after leaving Ashbourne. This bridge, we were told, was known as the Hanging Bridge, because at one time people were hanged on the tree which stood on the border between the two counties, and we might have fared badly if our journey had been made in the good old times, when "tramps" were severely treated. Across the river lay the village of Mayneld, where the landlord of the inn was killed in a quarrel with Prince Charlie's men in their retreat from Derby for resisting their demands, and higher up the country a farmer had been killed because he declined to give up his horse. They were not nearly so orderly as they retreated towards the north, for they cleared both provisions and valuables from the country on both sides of the roads. A cottage at Mayneld was pointed out to us as having once upon a time been inhabited by Thomas, or Tom Moore, Ireland's great poet, whose popularity was as great in England as in his native country, and who died in 1852 at the age of seventy-three years. The cottage was at that time surrounded by woods and fields, and no doubt the sound of Ashbourne Church bells, as it floated in the air, suggested to him one of his sweetest and saddest songs:

Those evening bells! those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth and home and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime.

Those joyous hours are passed away,
And many a heart that then was gay
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.

And so 'twill be when I am gone:
The tuneful peal will still ring on:
While other bards shall walk these dells
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.

We passed Calwick Abbey, once a religious house, but centuries ago converted into a private mansion, which in the time of Handel (1685-1759) was inhabited by the Granville family. Handel, although a German, spent most of his time in England, and was often the guest of the nobility. It was said that it was at Calwick Abbey that his greatest oratorios were conceived, and that the organ on which he played was still preserved. We ourselves had seen an organ in an Old Hall in Cheshire on which he had played when a visitor there, and where was also shown a score copy in his own handwriting. All that was mortal of Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his magnificent oratorios will endure to the end of time.

On arrival at Ellastone we left our luggage at the substantially built inn there while we went to visit Norbury Church, which was well worth seeing, and as my foot had now greatly improved we were able to get over the ground rather more quickly. Norbury was granted to the Fitzherberts in 1125, and, strange as it may appear, the original deed was still in the possession of that ancient family, whose chief residence was now at Swynnerton at the opposite side of Staffordshire, where they succeeded the Swynnerton family as owners of the estate. The black image of that grim crusader Swynnerton of Swynnerton still remained in the old chapel there, and as usual in ancient times, where the churches were built of sandstone, they sharpened their arrows on the walls or porches of the church, the holes made in sharpening them being plainly visible. Church restorations have caused these holes to be filled with cement in many places, like the bullet holes of the more recent period of the Civil War, but holes in the exact shape of arrow heads were still to be seen in the walls at Swynnerton, the different heights showing some of the archers to have been very tall men. In spite of severe persecution at the time of the Reformation this branch of the family of the Fitzherberts adhered to the Roman Catholic Faith, Sir Thomas Fitzherbert being one of the most prominent victims of the Elizabethan persecutions, having passed no less than thirty years of his life in various prisons in England.

Norbury church was not a large one, but the chancel was nearly as large as the nave. It dated back to the middle of the fourteenth century, when Henry of Kniveton was rector, who made the church famous by placing a number of fine stained-glass windows in the chancel. The glass in these windows was very chaste and beautiful, owing to the finely tinted soft browns and greens, now probably mellowed by age, and said to rank amongst the finest of their kind in England. The grand monuments to the Fitzherberts were magnificently fine examples of the art and clothing of the past ages, the two most gorgeous tombs being those of the tenth and eleventh lords, in all the grandeur of plate armour, collars, decorations, spurs, and swords; one had an angel and the other a monk to hold his foot as he crossed into the unknown. The figures of their families as sculptured below them were also very fine. Considering that one of the lords had seventeen children and the other fifteen it was scarcely to be wondered at that descendants of the great family still existed.

Sir Nicholas, who died in 1473, occupied the first tomb, his son the second, and his children were represented dressed in the different costumes of their chosen professions, the first being in armour with a cross, and the next as a lawyer with a scroll, while another was represented as a monk with a book, but as the next had his head knocked off it was impossible to decipher him; others seemed to have gone into businesses of one kind or another.

The oldest monument in the church was a stone cross-legged effigy of a warrior in armour, dating from about the year 1300; while the plainest was the image of a female corpse in a shroud, on a gravestone, who was named ... Elysebeth ...

The which decessed the yeare that is goone,
A thousand four hundred neynty and oone.

The church was dedicated to St. Barloke, probably one of the ancient British Divines.

On returning to Ellastone we learned that the inn was associated with "George Eliot," whose works we had heard of but had not read. We were under the impression that the author was a man, and were therefore surprised to find that "George Eliot" was only the _nom de plume_ of a lady whose name was Marian Evans. Her grandfather was the village wheelwright and blacksmith at Ellastone, and the prototype of "Adam Bede" in her famous novel of that name.

It has been said that no one has ever drawn a landscape more graphically than Marian Evans, and the names of places are so thinly veiled that if we had read the book we could easily have traced the country covered by "Adam Bede." Thus Staffordshire is described as Loamshire, Derbyshire as Stoneyshire, and the Mountains of the Peak as the barren hills, while Oakbourne stands for Ashbourne, Norbourne for Norbury, and Hayslope, described so clearly in the second chapter of _Adam Bede_, is Ellastone, the "Donnithorpe Arms" being the "Bromley Arms Hotel," where we stayed for refreshments. It was there that a traveller is described in the novel as riding up to the hotel, and the landlord telling him that there was to be a "Methodis' Preaching" that evening on the village green, and the traveller stayed to listen to the address of "Dinah Morris," who was Elizabeth Evans, the mother of the authoress.

Wootton Hall, which stands immediately behind the village of Ellastone, was at one time inhabited by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the great French writer, who, when he was expelled from France, took the Hall for twelve months in 1776, beginning to write there his _Confessions_, as well as his _Letters on Botany_, at a spot known as the "Twenty oaks." It was very bad weather for a part of the time, and snowed incessantly, with a bitterly cold wind, but he wrote, "In spite of all, I would rather live in the hole of one of the rabbits of this warren, than in the finest rooms in London."

We now hurried across the country, along old country lanes and over fields, to visit Alton Towers; but, as it was unfortunately closed on that day, it was only by trespassing that we were able to see a part of the grounds. We could see the fine conservatories, with their richly gilded domes, and some portion of the ground and gardens, which were in a deep dell. These were begun by Richard, Earl of Shrewsbury, in the year 1814, who, after years of labour, and at enormous expense, converted them from a wilderness into one of the most extraordinary gardens in Europe, almost baffling description. There was a monument either to himself or the gardener, on which were the words:

He made the desert smile.

From the Uttoxeter Road we could see a Gothic bridge, with an embankment leading up to it, and a huge imitation of Stonehenge, in which we were much interested, that being one of the great objects of interest we intended visiting when we reached Salisbury Plain. We were able to obtain a small guide-book, but it only gave us the information that the gardens consisted of a "labyrinth of terraces, walls, trellis-work, arbours, vases, stairs, pavements, temples, pagodas, gates, parterres, gravel and grass walks, ornamental buildings, bridges, porticos, seats, caves, flower-baskets, waterfalls, rocks, cottages, trees, shrubs and beds of flowers, ivied walls, moss houses, rock, shell, and root work, old trunks of trees, etc., etc.," so, as it would occupy half a day to see the gardens thoroughly, we decided to come again on some future occasion. A Gothic temple stood on the summit of a natural rock, and among other curiosities were a corkscrew fountain of very peculiar character, and vases and statues almost without end.

We now followed the main road to the Staffordshire town of Uttoxeter, passing the ruins of Croxden Abbey in the distance, where the heart of King John had been buried, and where plenty of traces of the extreme skill in agriculture possessed by the monks can be seen. One side of the chapel still served as a cowshed, but perhaps the most interesting features were the stone coffins in the orchard as originally placed, with openings so small, that a boy of ten can hardly lie in one.

But we missed a sight which as good churchmen we were afterwards told we ought to have remembered. October 31st was All-Hallows Eve, "when ghosts do walk," and here we were in a place they revelled in--so much so that they gave their name to it, Duninius' Dale. Here the curious sights known as "Will-o'-the-Wisp" could be seen magnificently by those who would venture a midnight visit. But we had forgotten the day.

We stopped for tea at Uttoxeter, and formed the opinion that it was a clean but rather sleepy town. There was little to be seen in the church, as it was used in the seventeenth century as a prison for Scottish troops, "who did great damage." It must, however, have been a very healthy town, if we might judge from the longevity of the notables who were born there: Sir Thomas Degge, judge of Western Wales and a famous antiquary, was born here in 1612, and died aged ninety-two; Thomas Allen, a distinguished mathematician and philosopher, the founder of the college at Dulwich and the local Grammar School as well, born 1542, died aged ninety; Samuel Bentley, poet, born 1720, died aged eighty-three; Admiral Alan Gardner, born at the Manor House in 1742, and who, for distinguished services against the French, was raised to the Irish Peerage as Baron Gardner of Uttoxeter, and was M.P. for Plymouth, died aged sixty-seven; Mary Howitt, the well-known authoress, born 1799, also lived to the age of eighty-nine. A fair record for a small country town! John Wesley preached in the marketplace, in the centre of which was a fountain erected to the memory of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the distinguished lexicographer. His father, whose home was at Lichfield, was a bookseller and had a bookstall in Uttoxeter Market, which he attended on market days. The story is told that on one occasion, not feeling very well, he asked his son, Samuel, to take his place, who from motives of pride flatly refused to do so. From this illness the old man never recovered, and many years afterwards, on the anniversary of that sorrowful day, Dr. Samuel Johnson, then in the height of his fame, came to the very spot in the market-place where this unpleasant incident occurred and did penance, standing bareheaded for a full hour in a pitiless storm of wind and rain, much to the surprise of the people who saw him.

We now bade good-bye to the River Dove, leaving it to carry its share of the Pennine Range waters to the Trent, and walked up the hill leading out of the town towards Abbots Bromley. We soon reached a lonely and densely wooded country with Bagot's Wood to the left, containing trees of enormous age and size, remnants of the original forest of Needwood, while to the right was Chartley Park, embracing about a thousand acres of land enclosed from the same forest by the Earl of Derby, about the year 1248. In this park was still to be seen the famous herd of wild cattle, whose ancestors were known to have been driven into the park when it was enclosed. These animals resisted being handled by men, and arranged themselves in a semi-circle on the approach of an intruder. The cattle were perfectly white, excepting their extremities, their ears, muzzles, and hoofs being black, and their long spreading horns were also tipped with black. Chartley was granted by William Rufus to Hugh Lupus, first Earl of Chester, whose descendant, Ranulph, a Crusader, on his return from the Holy War, built Beeston Castle in Cheshire, with protecting walls and towers, after the model of those at Constantinople. He also built the Castle at Chartley about the same period, A.D. 1220, remarkable as having been the last place of imprisonment for the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, as she was taken from there in 1586 to be executed at Fotheringhay.

We were interested in these stories of Chartley Castle, for in our own county cattle with almost the same characteristics were preserved in the Parks of Lyme and Somerford, and probably possessed a similar history. That Ranulph was well known can be assumed from the fact that Langland in his _Piers Plowman_ in the fourteenth century says:

I cannot perfitly my paternoster as the Priest it singeth.
But I can rhymes of Robin Hood and Randall Erie of Chester.

Queer company, and yet it was an old story that Robin did find an asylum at Chartley Castle.

We overtook an elderly man on the road returning home from his day's toil on the Bagot estate, and he told us of an old oak tree of tremendous size called the "Beggar's Oak"; but it was now too dark for us to see it. The steward of the estate had marked it, together with others, to be felled and sold; but though his lordship was very poor, he would not have the big oak cut down. He said that both Dick Turpin and Robin Hood had haunted these woods, and when he was a lad a good many horses were stolen and hidden in lonely places amongst the thick bushes to be sold afterwards in other parts of the country.

The "Beggar's Oak" was mentioned in the _History of Staffordshire_ in 1830, when its branches were measured by Dr. Darwen as spreading 48 feet in every direction. There was also a larger oak mentioned with a trunk 21 feet 4-1/2 inches in circumference, but in a decayed condition. This was named the Swilcar Lawn Oak, and stood on the Crown lands at Marchington Woodlands, and in Bagot's wood were also the Squitch, King, and Lord Bagot's Walking stick, all fine trees. There were also two famous oaks at Mavesyn Ridware called "Gog and Magog," but only their huge decayed trunks remained. Abbots Bromley had some curious privileges, and some of the great games were kept up. Thus the heads of the horses and reindeers for the "hobby horse" games were to be seen at the church.

The owner of this region, Lord Bagot, could trace his ancestry back to before the Conquest, for the Normans found one Bagod in possession. In course of time, when the estate had become comparatively poor, we heard that the noble owner had married the daughter of Mr. Bass, the rich brewer of Burton, the first of the Peerage marriages with the families of the new but rich.

We passed the Butter Cross and the old inn, reminiscent of stage-coach days, as the church bell was tolling, probably the curfew, and long after darkness had set in, for we were trying to reach Lichfield, we came to the village of Handsacre, where at the "Crown Inn" we stayed the night.

(_Distance walked twenty-five miles_.)

_Wednesday, November 1st._

Although the "Crown" at Handsacre was only a small inn, we were very comfortable, and the company assembled on the premises the previous evening took a great interest in our travels. We had no difficulty in getting an early breakfast, and a good one too, before leaving the inn this morning, but we found we had missed seeing one or two interesting places which we passed the previous night in the dark, and we had also crossed the River Trent as it flowed towards the great brewery town of Burton, only a few miles distant.

Daylight found us at the foot of the famous Cannock Chase. The Chase covered about 30,000 acres of land, which had been purposely kept out of cultivation in olden times in order to form a happy hunting-ground for the Mercian Kings, who for 300 years ruled over that part of the country. The best known of these kings was Offa, who in the year 757 had either made or repaired the dyke that separated England from Wales, beginning at Chepstow in Monmouthshire, and continuing across the country into Flintshire. It was not a dyke filled with water, as for the most part it passed over a very hilly country where water was not available, but a deep trench sunk on the Welsh side, the soil being thrown up on the English side, forming a bank about four yards high, of which considerable portions were still visible, and known as "Offa's Dyke." Cannock Chase, which covered the elevations to our right, was still an ideal hunting-country, as its surface was hilly and diversified, and a combination of moorland and forest, while the mansions of the noblemen who patronised the "Hunt" surrounded it on all sides, that named "Beau-Desert," the hall or hunting-box of the Marquis of Anglesey, being quite near to our road.

We soon arrived at Lichfield, and on entering the town the three lofty and ornamental spires of the cathedral, which from their smart appearance were known as "The Three Ladies," immediately attracted our attention. But for these, travellers entering Lichfield by this road might easily have passed the cathedral without noticing it, as it stands on low and rather swampy ground, where its fine proportions do not show to advantage.

The Close of the cathedral, which partially surrounded it, was heavily fortified in the time of the Civil War, causing the cathedral to be very badly damaged, for it suffered no less than three different sieges by the armies of the Parliament.

The cathedral was dedicated to St. Chad, but whether he was the same St. Chad whose cave was in the rocky bank of the River Don, and about whom we had heard farther north, or not, we could not ascertain. He must have been a water-loving saint, as a well in the town formed by a spring of pure water was known as St. Chad's Well, in which the saint stood naked while he prayed, upon a stone which had been preserved by building it into the wall of the well. There was also in the cathedral at one time the "Chapel of St. Chad's Head," but this had been almost destroyed during the first siege of 1643. The ancient writings of the patron saint in the early Welsh language had fortunately been preserved. Written on parchment and ornamented with rude drawings of the Apostles and others, they were known as St. Chad's Gospels, forming one of the most treasured relics belonging to the cathedral, but, sad to relate, had been removed by stealth, it was said, from the Cathedral of Llandaff.

The first siege began on March 2nd, 1643, which happened to be St. Chad's Day, and it was recorded that during that siege "Lord Brooke who was standing in the street was killed, being shot through the eye by Dumb Dyott from the cathedral steeple." The cathedral was afterwards used by Cromwell's men as a stable, and every ornament inside and outside that they could reach was greatly damaged; but they appeared to have tried to finish the cathedral off altogether, when in 1651 they stripped the lead from the roof and then set the woodwork on fire. It was afterwards repaired and rebuilt, but nearly all the ornaments on the west front, which had been profusely decorated with the figures of martyrs, apostles, priests, and kings, had been damaged or destroyed. At the Restoration an effort was made to replace these in cement, but this proved a failure, and the only perfect figure that remained then on the west front was a rather clumsy one of Charles II, who had given a hundred timber trees out of Needwood Forest to repair the buildings. Many of the damaged figures were taken down in 1744, and some others were removed later by the Dean, who was afraid they might fall on his head as he went in and out of the cathedral.

In those days chimney sweepers employed a boy to climb up the inside of the chimneys and sweep the parts that could not be reached with their brush from below, the method of screwing one stale to the end of another and reaching the top in that way being then unknown. These boys were often cruelly treated, and had even been known to be suffocated in the chimney. The nature of their occupation rendered them very daring, and for this reason the Dean employed one of them to remove the rest of the damaged figures, a service which he satisfactorily performed at no small risk both to himself and others.

There is a very fine view in the interior of the cathedral looking from west to east, which extends to a distance of 370 feet, and of which Sir Gilbert Scott, the great ecclesiastical architect, who was born in 1811, has written, "I always hold this work to be almost absolute perfection in design and detail"; another great authority said that when he saw it his impressions were like those described by John Milton in his "Il Penseroso":

Let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embossed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below.
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies.
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

We had not much time to explore the interior, but were obliged to visit the white marble effigy by the famous Chantrey of the "Sleeping Children" of Prebendary Robinson. It was beautifully executed, but for some reason we preferred that of little Penelope we had seen the day before, possibly because these children appeared so much older and more like young ladies compared with Penelope, who was really a child. Another monument by Chantrey which impressed us more strongly than that of the children was that of Bishop Ryder in a kneeling posture, which we thought a very fine production. There was also a slab to the memory of Admiral Parker, the last survivor of Nelson's captains, and some fine stained-glass windows of the sixteenth century formerly belonging to the Abbey of Herckrode, near Liège, which Sir Brooke Boothby, the father of little Penelope, had bought in Belgium in 1803 and presented to the cathedral.

The present bishop, Bishop Selwyn, seemed to be very much loved, as everybody had a good word for him. One gentleman told us he was the first bishop to reside at the palace, all former bishops having resided at Eccleshall, a town twenty-six miles away. Before coming to Lichfield he had been twenty-two years in New Zealand, being the first bishop of that colony. He died seven years after our visit, and had a great funeral, at which Mr. W.E. Gladstone, who described Selwyn as "a noble man," was one of the pall-bearers. The poet Browning's words were often applied to Bishop Selwyn:

We that have loved him so, followed and honour'd him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Caught his clear accents, learnt his great language,
Made him our pattern to live and to die.

There were several old houses in Lichfield of more than local interest, one of which, called the Priest's House, was the birthplace in 1617 of Elias Ashmole, Windsor Herald to King Charles II, and founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. When we got into the town, or city, we found that, although St. Chad was the patron saint of the cathedral, there was also a patron saint of Lichfield itself, for it was Johnson here, Johnson there, and Johnson everywhere, so we must needs go and see the house where the great Doctor was born in 1709. We found it adjoining the market-place, and in front of a monument on which were depicted three scenes connected with his childhood: the first showing him mounted on his father's back listening to Dr. Sacheverell, who was shown in the act of preaching; the second showed him being carried to school between the shoulders of two boys, another boy following closely behind, as if to catch him in the event of a fall; while the third panel represents him standing in the market-place at Uttoxeter, doing penance to propitiate Heaven for the act of disobedience to his father that had happened fifty years ago. When very young he was afflicted with scrofula, or king's evil; so his mother took him in 1712, when he was only two and a half years old, to London, where he was touched by Queen Anne, being the last person so touched in England. The belief had prevailed from the time of Edward the Confessor that scrofula could be cured by the royal touch, and although the office remained in our Prayer Book till 1719, the Jacobites considered that the power did not descend to King William and Queen Anne because "Divine" hereditary right was not fully possessed by them; which doubtless would be taken to account for the fact that Johnson was not healed, for he was troubled with the disease as long as he lived. When he was three years old he was carried by his father to the cathedral to hear Dr. Sacheverell preach. This gentleman, who was a Church of England minister and a great political preacher, was born in 1672. He was so extremely bitter against the dissenters and their Whig supporters that he was impeached before the House of Lords, and suspended for three years, while his sermon on "Perils of False Brethren," which had had an enormous sale, was burnt by the common hangman! It was said that young Johnson's conduct while listening to the doctor's preaching on that occasion was quite exemplary.

Johnson was educated at the Lichfield Grammar School under Dr. Hunter, who was a very severe schoolmaster, and must have been one of those who "drove it in behind," for Johnson afterwards wrote: "My Master whipt me very well. Without that I should have done nothing." Dr. Hunter boasted that he never taught a boy anything; he whipped and they learned. It was said, too, that when he flogged them he always said: "Boys, I do this to save you from the gallows!" Johnson went to Oxford, and afterwards, in 1736, opened a school near Lichfield, advertising in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for young gentleman "to be boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by Samuel Johnson." He only got eight pupils, amongst whom was David Garrick, who afterwards became the leading tragic actor of his time. Johnson had for some time been at work on a tragedy called _The Tragedy of Irene_, though whether this decided Garrick to become a tragedy actor is not known; the play, however, did not succeed with the play-going public in London, and had to be withdrawn. Neither did the school succeed, and it had to be given up, Johnson, accompanied by David Garrick, setting off to London, where it was said that he lived in a garret on fourpence-halfpenny per day. Many years afterwards, when Johnson was dining with a fashionable company, a remark was made referring to an incident that occurred in a certain year, and Johnson exclaimed: "That was the year when I came to London with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket."

Garrick overheard the remark, and exclaimed: "Eh, what do you say? with twopence-halfpenny in your pocket?"

"Why, yes; when I came with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three-halfpence in thine."

Poverty haunted Johnson all through life until 1762, when he was granted a pension of £300 a year by King George III, on the recommendation of Lord Bute, the Prime Minister, who, in making the offer, said: "It is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done." In the meantime Johnson had brought out his great Dictionary, at which he had worked for years in extreme poverty, and in the progress of which he had asked Lord Chesterfield to become his patron, in the hope that he would render him some financial assistance. When he went to see him, however, he was kept waiting for over an hour, while his lordship amused himself by conversing with some second-rate mortal named "Colley Cibber," and when this man came out, and Johnson saw who it was for whom he had been kept waiting, he hurriedly and indignantly took his departure. When his Dictionary was nearly ready for publication and likely to become a great success, his lordship wrote to Johnson offering to become his patron; but it was now too late, and Johnson's reply was characteristic of the man, as the following passages from his letter show:

Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on with my work through Difficulties, of which it is useless
to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
encouragement, or one-smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
expect, for I never had a Patron before. The notice you have been
pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but
it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till
I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want
it. I hope it is no cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself!