Chapter VI: Part 6

With this description of the seal the claims of Ford Abbey to figure in this volume of “Memorials” are practically finished, yet it may be of interest to continue a little further in the personal and architectural history of this wonderful old house. As we have seen, Henry VIII. granted the abbey and all its appurtenances to Richard Pollard, Esq., who was subsequently knighted by Henry VIII., and from this gentleman it passed to his son, Sir John Pollard, who sold it to his cousin, Sir Amias Poulett, of Hinton St. George, and Curry Mallet, who had held the office of head steward of the abbey under the _régime_ of Dr. Chard (as had his father, Sir Hugh Poulett, before him), and who was for a short time the custodian of Mary Queen of Scots. From Sir Amias Poulett, the abbey and estates passed by purchase to William Rosewell, Esq., Solicitor-General to Queen Elizabeth, and thence to his son, Sir Henry Rosewell, who, in 1649, conveyed them to Sir Edmund Prideaux, Bart., of Netherton, county Devon. He was educated at Cambridge, and after being admitted a student of the Inner Temple was called to the Bar, 23rd November, 1623. He was returned as Burgess for Lyme Regis and took part against the King. He appears to have been a man of marked abilities, as in 1643 we find him appointed one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, and three years later he was granted the privileges of a King’s Counsel, the combined offices being worth some £7,000 a year. It is somewhat singular that, while holding the first-named office he was allowed to retain his seat in Parliament, and when he relinquished the Great Seal, the House of Commons, as an acknowledgment of his valuable services, ordered that he should practise within the Bar, and have precedence next after the Solicitor-General, to which office he himself was raised in 1647. Although attached to the Parliamentary cause he took no part in the King’s trial, nor in the trials of the Duke of Hamilton and others. Nevertheless, he shortly afterwards accepted from the dominant party the office of Attorney-General, a post which he retained for the remainder of his life. His remarkable organising abilities were shown in 1649, when, as Master of the Post Messengers and Carriers, a post he had acquired in 1644, he established a weekly conveyance to every part of the kingdom, a great improvement on the system he had found in vogue, and under which letters were sent by special messengers, one of whose duties it was to supply relays of horses at a given mileage. It is said that the emoluments accruing to his private purse from this improved postal service were not less than £15,000 a year. Sir Edmund was twice married, and by his first wife Jane, daughter and sole heiress of Henry Collins, Esq., of Ottery St. Mary, he had a daughter Mary. His second wife was Margaret, daughter and co-heir of William Ivery, of Cotthay, Somerset, and by her he had three daughters, and a son Edmund, who succeeded him at Ford Abbey. It was Sir Edmund Prideaux who brought Inigo Jones to the Abbey to carry out certain alterations, which he did by inserting square-headed windows in the walls of the state rooms, and by adding these and other classical affectations on to the old Gothic building he destroyed the harmonious composition of the whole, and it is not, perhaps, a matter of regret that this architect died in 1654, before his designs for converting this fine old house into a sham “classical” building were carried out, although the interior of the house was embellished with magnificent decorations and the whole place made into a beautiful, comfortable, and habitable mansion.

Edmund Prideaux, the younger, had for his tutor John Tillotson, who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury. Although he took but little part in the grave political troubles of his day, he is remembered in history as the entertainer of the ill-starred Duke of Monmouth, who visited Ford in 1680, on his journey of pleasure to the west country, where he was royally entertained by his host, whose connection with his noble guest did not end here, as after the Rye House affair he was suspected of favouring the Duke, and the house was searched for arms. When the Duke subsequently landed at Lyme Regis in 1685, Mr. Prideaux, like a prudent man, remained quietly at home, but was visited at night by a small party of rebels requiring horses, and it is said that one of them while in the house drank to the health of Monmouth, which indiscretion becoming known in London, a warrant was issued for Mr. Prideaux’s arrest, and he was taken to the Tower on a charge of high treason. Notwithstanding that nothing could be proved against him, he was kept a close prisoner until he had paid the sum of £15,000 to the infamous Jeffreys, when his pardon was signed on March 20th, 1685. On the accession of William III. he petitioned Parliament for leave to bring in a Bill to charge the estates of Jeffreys with the restitution of this money, but the Act failed to pass.

The sole surviving daughter of Edmund Prideaux (and his wife, Amy Fraunceis), in 1690, married her cousin, Francis Gwyn, Esq., of Llansandr, co. Glamorgan, who thus inherited Ford Abbey, and was succeeded in the estates by his fourth son, Francis Gwyn, who, dying without issue in 1777, devised this house and all his other lands to his kinsman, John Fraunceis, or Francis, of Combe-Florey, on condition of his taking the name of Gwyn, and in this family the Abbey remained until the decease of a John Francis Gwyn, in 1846, when it was purchased by G. F. W. Miles, Esq., and afterwards by Miss Evans. It is now the property of Mrs. Freeman Roper. The famous Jeremy Bentham rented the abbey early in the nineteenth century and here he entertained James Mill and other social and literary magnates. One of the numerous Francis Gwyns was Queen Anne’s Secretary for War, and to him Her Majesty presented the magnificent tapestries now hung in the saloon. They are worked from original cartoons by Raphael, said to have been designed at the request of Pope Leo. Charles I. is said to have purchased the cartoons on the advice of Rubens, and to have removed them from Brussels in 1630. They were first placed, it is thought, at Whitehall, and William III. had them hung at Hampton Court Palace, where they remained until 1865, when they were taken to their present home, the Victoria and Albert Museum. These designs were the property of His Majesty King Edward VII., who has, I think, recently bequeathed them to the nation.

It was in 1842 that, for the convenience of county business, the parish of Thorncombe, containing Ford Abbey, was transferred to the county of Dorset.

DORCHESTER[49]

BY THE LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM, D.D.

If Bede is right, the Roman armies did not leave our shores till A.D. 452. Whether it was then, so near the end of the old Western Empire, or a little earlier, it must have been a dark hour for Dorset, which no doubt saw something of the embarkation; some considerable force, in that strict order which to the last the legions maintained, would no doubt march from Durnovaria to Clavinio (Weymouth) to take ship. The light of history falls faint over Dorset and Dorchester for many a year from that Roman exodus. But it is interesting to find that the “Saxons,” to use the familiar term, took a century and a half to master Dorset; our fathers must have made a stubborn fight against endless raids. It is at least possible that the victory of Badon Hill—in which, says the Arthurian legend, the Saxon hordes were ruinously beaten by the “Britons,” led perhaps by a Rome-trained chief—was won in Dorset; Badbury, near Wimborne, in the belief of Edwin Guest of Cambridge, was Badon. But Wessex in due time absorbed Dorset and Dorchester; and now our fields and woodlands were well sprinkled with royal manors, while our town, beyond a doubt, still kept much of its old dignity and culture; for the Saxons left the walled cities largely alone, after disarming their inhabitants. Durnovaria, with its name changed to Dorceastre, still stood fenced with its massive wall and still contained many a stately house, tessellated and frescoed. Kings of Wessex doubtless visited Dorset often, for the chase, and for sustenance on their manors, and to keep state at Dorceastre. Alfred, in all likelihood, was known by sight in the town. His grandson, Athelstan, allowed it the right of coinage—a sure testimony to its importance.

It suffered sorely from the Danes a century later. Sweyn, in 1002, taking awful revenge for the massacre wrought by Ethelred the “Unredy”—that is to say, the “Counsel-less”—marched from Devon to Wilts by Dorset, and left Dorchester a desolation. It is said that he tore down the walls, but this, almost for certain, was not so; they were too massive to be wrecked without long labour, which the rovers would not care to spend; and there is large evidence for their existence far into the seventeenth century. However, Danish fire and sword must have left the town black and blood-stained within its ramparts. Half a century later, under the Confessor, Dorchester counted 172 houses; the number is recorded in _Domesday Book_ (1085-6) as large, in contrast to the eighty-eight at the date of the survey. Very likely the building of the Norman Castle (where now stands the Prison) had to do with the shrinkage; the castle was sure to be a centre of spoliation.

The restless John was in the town in 1201, and often later—hunting, no doubt, and taking his “one night’s firm,” the statutable sustenance due to the King and his men. Under Edward I., in 1295, we sent burgesses to the first English Parliament. Our last burgess sat from 1874 till 1885. Dorchester is now only the centre of an electoral division.

In that same reign appears the first mention of our town churches: Holy Trinity, St. Peter’s, and All Saints’. Not that the parishes are no older than that date; indeed, the porch of St. Peter’s contains a twelfth century fragment.

The reign of Edward III. experienced the terror of the Great Plague, carried from China over Asia to Europe, where literally millions of people perished. It burst into England, alas! from a ship which put in at the Dorset shore, and no doubt our town owed to that awful scourge the low state of industry recorded a little later. Things had mended by the time of Henry VI., and from then, upon the whole, the place has been prosperous. In the seventeenth century it was busy with cloth-making and, as now, with the brewing of beer. In the old times of farming it was a great centre of grain commerce. Stories are told of Dorchester fair-days, when wheat-laden wagons stood ranged in long file from Cornhill, along South Street, and far out upon the Weymouth road.

The town had its troubles in “the great century.” In August, 1613, a fierce fire swept it almost clean away. The old churches of Trinity and All Saints vanished, with nearly every other building within the walls (and some outside their circuit, in Fordington), save only St. Peter’s and the houses near it—among which would be that now almost solitary relic of picturesque Old Dorchester, “Jeffreys’ lodgings.”

But the rebuilding must have been energetic, for in the Civil Wars we find Dorchester populous and active enough to be a troublesome focus of “malignity.” “A place more entirely disaffected to the King, England had not,” says Clarendon. One probable cause of this attitude lay in the commanding influence of John White, Rector of Holy Trinity from 1606 to 1648. White was an Oxonian, a man of culture and piety, and evidently of strong personal influence. Preachers to-day may envy, if they please, the pulpit privileges given him by the town. The borough records show, for example, that in 1630 one Nycholls was brought to justice for having “offered speeche concerning Mr. John White’s preaching.” White helped to plan the colony of Massachusetts, but he did not join the emigration. His power was felt at home, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the politics of Dorchester.

In 1642 the walls were solidly repaired, and outside works thrown up at, among other points, Maumbury Ring. Watch was kept day and night at the gates and on St. Peter’s Tower. But the spirit of the town strangely failed when, on the approach of the enemy, one Master Strode predicted that the walls would hold off the King’s men for just half-an-hour. The Governor, Sir Walter Erle, hearing that Lord Carnarvon was coming with two thousand men, and Prince Maurice’s artillery besides, promptly left the place, and the citizens opened the gates on a promise that they should be spared violence. Carnarvon would have kept the promise with chivalrous fidelity, but Maurice let his men loose, and Dorchester was so badly handled that Carnarvon threw up his command and went to serve the King in person. A little later the town behaved much more bravely, and baffled a small Irish force under Lord Inchiquin till help from Weymouth completed the rout of the Royalists. Later again Essex occupied the town in force; and then Sir Lewis Dives, for the King, surprised it with brilliant success, but was badly beaten on a second attempt. Yet later there was a skirmish at Dorchester, when the royalist _Mercurius_ says that no less a captain than Cromwell himself was put to flight by Lord Goring; but the account lacks full confirmation. A story of that skirmish clings to a corner of lower Fordington, a curve in the road near Grey’s Bridge, known as Tupp’s, or Tubb’s, Corner; it is said that a Cromwellian hero of that name fled thereby at a speed memorable for all time.

A still darker experience than that of war awaited Dorchester not long after. When Monmouth fought at Sedgemoor (1685) our Dorset peasants were among the bravest of his rude but heroic army. And when the abortive rising was over, the Bloody Assizes began, and Jeffreys sat at Dorchester. His lodgings are still shown, the most striking house-front in the town, with its black timbers and long, low windows; and still, in the Town Hall, is kept the chair from which the terrible Chief Justice, in a court hung with red, dealt out death with grim smiles and ghastly jests. Nearly three hundred men, told that it was their only hope, pleaded guilty, but for most of them the only result was a few days’ respite. Seventy-four were executed at Dorchester, with all the horrible circumstances of death for treason. For years afterwards grim human relics of that evil time still clung to the railings round St. Peter’s, greeting the entering worshippers.

This was not quite the last scene of horror at Dorchester, though it was alone in its dreadful kind. As late as within the eighteenth century an unhappy woman, convicted of the murder of her husband, was hanged and then burned within Maumbury, amidst a vast gazing multitude.

It is a relief to think that about the same time the town put on a beauty of a sort unique, I think, in England. The walls had somehow largely disappeared within the last half of the seventeenth century; and now it was proposed to plant double rows of trees all along the line of their foundations. By 1712 the planting was complete, and for nearly two complete centuries Dorchester has been surrounded by the noble range of avenues which we call The Walks, renewed from time to time, and kept with increasing care. From close to Glide Path Hill (“Glippath”) the visitor can walk under long successive aisles of sycamores or chestnuts on a well-laid gravel road, now facing east, now south, now west, now north, till he finds himself close to the foot of High Street, within ten minutes of his point of departure. I have seen the noble avenues at King’s Lynn, and those of the Backs at Cambridge are only less dear to me than our Walks. But I do not think that anything even there can quite equal these bowery ramparts of our ancient town—certainly not when we put together the natural charm and the historical interest.

The Walks were still young about the year 1730, when a poet, in the course of a tour from London to Exeter with a group of friends, rode through Dorchester. It was Pope’s intimate, John Gay. The travellers first saw the town, of course, from Stinsford Hill, over a foreground which then, no doubt, was less full of trees. The reaches of the Frome and the broad water-meadows pleased Gay, as well they might, and in his delightful verse-journal we read his impression:

Now the steep hill fair Dorchester o’erlooks,
Border’d by meads and wash’d by silver brooks.

In 1762 we find recorded as noteworthy the paving and fencing of a side-walk in the lower High Street; and in 1774 came the first public lighting of the streets. A decade later Miss Burney (Mme. D’Arblay) gives a lively picture of Dorchester as she saw it when travelling in the suite of George III. to Weymouth: “The city had so antique an air, I longed to investigate its old buildings. The houses have the most ancient appearance of any that are inhabited that I have happened to see; and inhabited they were indeed! There was an amazing quantity of indigenous residers—old women and young children,” who, as she shrewdly remarks, could not have come in from a distance, and so formed an index of population. Yet the town could not have counted then more than 3,000 inhabitants. It contains now just 10,500.

We reach at last the nineteenth century. The town, like the county, and like all rural England, was in grave alarm in 1830 at the time of the “rick-burnings.” Mrs. Mary Frampton’s _Journal_ speaks much of the scenes of riot and of wild alarms. I possess letters written by my mother, then the young mistress of Fordington Vicarage,[50] in which she speaks of the nightly watch and ward kept all around, and of her husband’s active share in it, and the relief, under the terrible strain, which was given by the friendly attitude of Fordington towards him. Just later the Frampton _Journal_ describes the battle royal of an election scene on Poundbury (Pummery, as I must be allowed still to call it), when the greatest of all Dorset’s sons, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, stood for the county.

That date brings me to times only a little previous to my own memory, and well within the memory of my brothers and friends, and familiar of course to my father, who from 1829 to 1880, as Vicar of Fordington, laboured alike for the spiritual and social good of his parishioners. I may be allowed to close my narrative with a small sheaf of reminiscences from his and other memories. Then, after a brief glance of the mind’s eye over my native town, my task of love is done.

My father knew very old people who “remembered when rooms were first carpeted at Dorchester.” One aged parishioner could recall the change of style in the calendar in 1752; the children were taken to _a stile_ in the Great Field as a memento. He and my mother saw, from Maumbury, about 1832, the Princess Victoria with her mother, passing in their carriage on the way to Weymouth. My brother, since 1880 Bishop in Mid-China, recalls the bringing into the town, in carts, about 1834, of loads of saplings sent to be planted along the London Road; and a noble avenue they made, which now, alas! is no more than a relic of itself.

I just remember the days of the stage coaches in Dorchester. I see the old _Emerald_ still, and hear the bugle of the guard. In 1852 I travelled by coach to Dorchester from Bath. And how vividly I can see the excitement of the crowd on the arrival of the first South-Western train, in 1847! An old woman still runs across my field of view, crying out: “There, I did never zee a coach avore goo wi’out ’osses!” I remember, two years later, Prince Albert’s arrival at the station, where he took carriage for Weymouth, there to lay the first stone of the Breakwater. Very vividly I recall the thousands of lamps festooned along the Walks to illuminate an entertainment for old people after the Crimean peace. Two years earlier, a few weeks before the Alma, I remember the awful outburst of the cholera in Fordington; it was brought from London in tainted clothing which was sent to the wash in a Fordington cottage. My father “stood between the dead and the living” at that dark time, and, with admirable assistance, was able, under God, to bar the pestilence from entering the town.

But I must not ramble further into narrative. Dorchester, with its integral neighbour, Fordington (incorporated into the borough in 1835), is very dear to my heart, and it is not easy to put narrow limits upon reminiscence. Yet scarcely a word has been said here about our chief architectural features of the place. I have but named Trinity Church, the third structure in succession to that which perished in 1613, as All Saints’ Church is the second in like sequence—All Saints’, whose fine spire, raised in 1852, gave a wholly new feature to the town. St. Peter’s is the ecclesiastical crown of Dorchester—a noble Perpendicular church, with a dignified tower, vocal with eight fine bells; in its churchyard stands a bronze statue of our Dorset poet, William Barnes. At the head of High Street, where the tree-vaulted Bridport road runs out westward, stands the modern St. Mary’s, the church of West Fordington; the pretty original church, Christ Church, now the chapel of the Artillery Barracks, was built by my father’s efforts in 1847, when the parish was divided from old Fordington. The County Hall and Town Hall are leading features of the High Street. The present Town Hall, in 1849, took the place of a building visible still to my memory, under which opened an archway leading into North Square, and which itself succeeded, in 1791, “The Cupola,” near the Town Pump. The Museum, where my brother, Henry Moule, long superintended and developed the excellent geological and antiquarian collections, is a handsome modern feature of the middle High Street; it stands at a point where, almost within the oldest living memory, projecting houses so narrowed the roadway that the stage-coach could pass up and down only with great caution. The County Hospital, founded in 1841, has grown into abundant usefulness, and makes, with its beautiful little chapel, a dignified feature of the place. In South Street the quaint front of the “Napper’s Mite” almshouses, and the Grammar School, are conspicuous.

With Fordington Church, St. George’s, let me close. As I write[51] it is about to be largely rebuilt, for Fordington has grown fast; and the north aisle of 1833 is, indeed, very far from beautiful. But, whilst I rejoice that space and form should be added to the church, my mind must still and always see it as it was, with its simple chancel of 1750; its rude, partly Norman, north aisle; its pulpit of 1592, now approached by a rood-stair re-opened in 1863; its remarkable eleventh century _tympanum_ at the south door, which shows (probably) St. George routing the Saracens at Antioch, in armour of the Bayeux type; and its very noble fifteenth century tower, a model of proportion. Let us climb that tower, by the stairs familiar to me all my days, and from it bid farewell to Dorchester. Beautiful is the prospect, near and far. Below us lies the spacious churchyard, a burial-place, in parts, ever since the Roman period. Westward you see Dorchester, tower, spire, and bowery Walks, with Poundbury beyond them. South-westward lies expanded the vast field of Fordington, which till 1870 was unbroken by fence, and was tilled by the farmers on a system of annual exchange, older, probably, than the Christian era. Beyond it stretches the green, massive rampart of Maiden Castle, and, more distant still, the aerial dome of Blackdown, crowned by the monumental tower which commemorates Nelson’s Hardy. North-westward we can almost see beautiful Wolfeton House, cradle of the greatness of the Bedfords. Northward, we look down on the roofs and lanes of dear old Fordington; and eastward lie the long, fair levels of the Swingbridge meadows, where Frome is sluiced into hundreds of channels, bright with living water. The bowery slopes of Stinsford and Kingston flank the meadows; and then, eastward, the broad valley leads the eye away to the vanishing yet abiding line of the Purbecks, a cloud of tenderest blue. South-eastward, over the village and its bartons, the woods of Came appear, and the sea-ridge runs above them with its long line of Danish burial-mounds. Almost in sight are Max Gate, the home of Mr. Hardy, our renowned novelist, and the thatched roof of Came Rectory, once the home of our poet, William Barnes—deep student, true pastor, clear and tender seer of nature and of man.

O fields and streams, another race
Already comes to take our place,
To claim their right in you,
Our homes to hold, our walks to rove—
But who shall love you with our love,
Shall know you as we knew?

WEYMOUTH

BY SIDNEY HEATH

It has become customary in recent years for topographical and other writers to depict Weymouth, if not exactly as a town of mushroom growth, at least as one whose history and antiquity date no further back than from the time when George III. found its salubrious air so suited to his health. True, the aspect of the modern town has little left of its pre-Georgian days to tempt the archæologist or allure the casual literary worker; but a few hours spent among the old records of the town would speedily remove this first impression of modernity, and convince even the most sceptical antiquary that the old town of Weymouth is one of the most ancient in the county of Dorset. The casual visitor may, therefore, be forgiven his impression that Weymouth was founded by George III.; for so nearly were the older buildings swept away at the time of this royal invasion that even loyal Weymouth citizens now find it difficult to realise how living a thing was the ancient past of their town, since whatever was left untouched by the Georgian builders has been well-nigh destroyed in more recent times to make way for what is called modern convenience and improvement.

The word Weymouth is derived directly from the Saxon “Waegemuth,” _waeg_ meaning a wave, that is the sea; and _mutha_, an opening. The Celtic name for the river Wey, allied to the Welsh word _gwy_, meaning water, seems to have caused some confusion in the Saxon mind, and have led them to regard the mouth of the estuary (the Backwater) as the inlet of the sea rather than the outlet of a small stream.

The earliest beginnings of the town are lost in obscurity; yet, even if we are not prepared to accept the assertion of certain historians that the Tyrian and Phœnician merchants traded here in their numerous visits to these shores, we have evidence of a more than respectable antiquity in some traces and memorials of the Roman occupation, in the way of roads, coins, and pottery; while at Preston, an almost adjoining village, remains of a Roman villa may still be seen, and considerable Roman remains have been found at Radipole.

There are very few records or official documents antecedent to the reign of William I., and naturally many chasms occur in the continuity of the recorded history of Weymouth. The earliest mention of the place is in Saxon annals, which state that King Athelstan, A.D. 938, granted to the Abbey of Middleton (Milton), in Dorset, in order that masses might be said for his soul and the souls of his ancestors and successors, Kings of England:

All that water within the shore of Waymuth, and half the stream of that Waymuth out at sea: twelve acres for the support of the wear and its officer, three thaynes and a saltern by the wear, and sixty-seven hides of land in its neighbourhood.

The next mention of the place occurs in a Saxon charter of King Ethelred II., wherein the King gives land to his minister, Atsere, during his life, and licence to leave the inheritance of it as he wills. The charter is signed by the King with the sign of the cross; by Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Oswald, Archbishop of York; and the Bishops Athelwold, Living, and Hirwold. The date of this interesting document is either obliterated or was never inserted; but in 980 Dunstan was Grand-Master of the fraternity of free and accepted Masons in England, and both he and Oswald died about 988.

We find no further record of Weymouth until 1042, when Edward the Confessor caused a charge to be brought by Robert, Bishop of London, accusing his mother, Queen Emma, of consenting to the death of her son Alfred, of endeavouring to poison Edward, another of her sons, and of maintaining an infamous connection with her kinsman, Alwin, Bishop of Winton, to the King’s and her own dishonour. The Queen was ordered to purge herself by “fiery ordeal,” which she did at Winchester Cathedral in the presence of the King and his nobles; and, having passed barefooted and blindfold over nine red-hot ploughshares without harm, she was adjudged to have cleared herself of the accusations and to have furnished her accusers with an example of what female chastity is able to accomplish. The King publicly solicited his mother’s pardon; but the Church of Winton was not so easily appeased at the charge brought against its Bishop, and forced the repentant King to submit to severe penance, and to give nine manors to Holy Mother Church, accordingly—“Ex libello donatorium Wintoniæ Ecclesiæ, S. Edwardus rex, dedit Portelond, Wikes, Hellwell, et Waimuth maneriis, cum ceteris aliis, ad Wintoniæ ecclesiæ”; and this grant was confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent II.

In _Domesday_ there are several parcels of land separately surveyed under the name of _wai_ and _waia_, with no additional name to distinguish them, and they are held by different individuals.

Henry I. granted by a charter (without date) to the Prior and Monks of St. Swithun, Winton, the ports of “Waimuth and Melecumb, with all their appurtenances, together with the manors of Wike and Portelond,” which King Edward gave them, and that they might enjoy all the liberties, wrecks, and all free customs, by sea and by land, as they had ever enjoyed them. This charter was confirmed by Henry II.

In the reign of Henry III. the manor appears to have been considered as a dependency of Wyke, and again as appertaining to Portland, but it is certain that in the early part of this reign it was granted to Henry Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and his successors, as appears by the entry on the Charter Rolls. The Bishops did not keep the manor long, for it soon became the property of the opulent family of Clare, from whom was descended Edward IV. It would be tedious to trace the varying fortunes of the Clare family, who were for centuries among the most powerful in the kingdom; and although much could be written of the subsequent holders of the manor, the following brief records must suffice for several decades:—

* * * * *

40 Edward III.—Lionel, Duke of Clarence, held the boroughs of Weymouth and Wareham, the manors of Portland and Wyke, with many others.

22 Richard II.—Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, held the borough of Weymouth, the manors of Portland and Wyke, with many others.

11 Henry V.—Anna, wife of Edward, Earl of March, held the borough of Weymouth, etc.

* * * * *

By the marriage of Ann Mortimer, sister of the Earl of March, with Richard de Conysburgh, Earl of Cambridge, the manor fell to the house of York, for their son, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, succeeded them; and in 11 Henry VI., the King granted to Richard, Duke of York, livery of Weymouth, and all the castles, manors, lands, etc., which Ann, late wife of Edmund, _Comes Marchiæ_, held in dower of the inheritance of the Duke.

The town is mentioned by Leland (1538), Coker (1630 _circa_), and Camden. The first-named writes:

The Tounlet of Waymouth lyith strait agayn Milton (Melcombe) on the other side of the haven, and at this place, the Trajectus is by a bote and a rope, bent over the haven, so that yn the fery-bote they use no ores.

In another part of the Itinerary we read:

Waiymouth Town rite agen Milton, on the other side of the Haven yt is bigger than Miltoun ys now. The Est South Est point of the Haven of Waymouth ys caulid St. Aldelm’s point, being a litl foreland. Ther ys a Chapelle by on the Hille. The Paroch Chirch ys a mile of—a Kay for shippes in the town—the Haven Mouth almost at hand. Half a mile and more to the New Castelle—an open Barbecane to the Castelle. Weimouth is counted 20 miles from Pole.

Camden states that in the reign of Edward III., the King got together a powerful army and fleet for the purpose of invading France, and the town provided twenty ships and 264 mariners for the siege of Calais; but these figures are disputed by Hackluit, who says there were but fifteen ships and 263 mariners. In March, 1347, the bailiffs of Weymouth seized all the goods, chattels, jewels, and armour of Geoffry, Earl of Harcautly, who had joined the army of the French King. In 1377 the town suffered considerably from the fleet of Charles V., when great portions of the ports of Dartmouth, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Hastings, and Weymouth were destroyed.

The next event of importance was the landing here, on April 14th, 1471, of Margaret of Anjou, the consort of Henry VI., on her return from France with her son, Prince Edward.

So the tide of history swept on, with periodical ravages from pirates and enemies, until the appearance off the harbour of a large foreign fleet of eighty sail, which had voyaged from Middleburg on January 10th, 1505, to escort Philip and Johanna to their Kingdom of Castile; but a violent hurricane caused the ships to run to Weymouth for shelter. The inhabitants, being unaware of the quality of their visitors, and alarmed at so formidable an array of vessels, speedily armed themselves, and sent word to Sir Thomas Trenchard, at Wolfeton, who, with Sir John Carew, marched into the town at the head of some hastily improvised troops. On the rank of the visitors becoming known, Sir Thomas invited them to his house at Wolfeton until he could advise the King, Henry VII., of the fortuitous circumstance. As soon as Henry had notice of the arrival of these royal visitors, he despatched the Earl of Arundel with a troop of 300 horse, carrying torches, to escort them to London.

There is much in the minor history of the town that one would fain linger over, but we must confine ourselves to those larger and more far-reaching historical events with which the old life of Weymouth was so closely bound up.

In 1544 the bailiffs of Weymouth received the following letter from the King, Henry VIII.:—

(By the King.)

Henr. R.

Trustie and well beloved, we greate you well. And whereas betweene us and the Emperor upon provocation of manyfolde injuries committed by the Frenche Kyng unto us both particularlie; And for his confederation wyth the Turke, against ye whole commonwealthe of Christendome. It ys agreede that eche of us aparte, in person, with his puissant Armie in several parties this soommer, shall invade the Realme of Fraunce; and beyng not yet furneyshed as to our honour appertayneth:—

We have appoynted you to send us the nombre of xv hable fotemen, well furneyshed for the warres as appertayneth, whereof iii to bee archers, every oone furneyshed with a goode bowe in a cace, with xxiii goode arrows in a cace, a goode sworde, and a dagger, and the rest to be billmen, havyng besydes theyre bill, a goode sworde, and a dagger, to be levyed of your owne servants and tenants.

And that you put the saide nombre in such a redyness, furnished with coats and hosen of such colours as is appointed for the battel of our Armey.

As they faile not within oone houres warnyng to march forward to such place as shall be appoynted accordinglie:—

Yeven under our Sygnete at our palace of Westmr., the v^{th} daie of June, the xxxv yere of our reigne.

Henr. R.

Weymouth had been created a borough in the reign of Edward II., at the time that his nephew, Gilbert of Clare, Earl of Gloucester, was lord of the manor (one of whose sisters had married Piers Gaveston, and the other sister was the wife of Hugh le Despencer); and although the town is styled a “burg” in several documents relating to previous reigns, it was not until the nineteenth year of the reign of Edward II. that it returned a representative to Parliament.

The borough of Weymouth and the adjoining one of Melcombe (which together now make up modern Weymouth) had long viewed each other with jealous eyes; and so many complaints being made through their respective members, the Parliament prepared a charter, at the suggestion of Cecil, it is said, which was approved by Queen Elizabeth in the thirteenth year of her reign, which united these two discordant elements into one borough.

The merchants of the town, like all those of our southern ports, played a zealous and active part in fitting out ships to fight the Armada; and from a MS. in the Cottonian Library we learn that the following vessels set out from Weymouth in 1588, with instructions to guard the coast and seek out the Invincible Armada:—

Name. Tonnage. Master. Men.
_The Gallion_ 100 Richard Miller 50
_The Catherine_ 60 30
_The Heath Hen_ 60 30
_The Golden Lion_ 120 60
_The Sutton_ 70 Hugh Preston 40
_The Expedition_ 70 50

Notwithstanding that their largest vessel was only of 120 tons, the Weymouth contingent captured two of the galleons and brought them as prizes into the harbour. The only other vessels sent by the county on this occasion were two from Lyme Regis—_The Revenge_, of 60 tons, and _The Jacob_, of 90 tons—and four from Poole. In the Guildhall there is a memorial of the event in the shape of a massive iron-bound chest (_see illustration_), believed to have been brought from one of the captured galleons; and many other relics are scattered over the county, as at Bingham’s Melcombe, where there is a magnificent oval dining-table, of massive form and marvellous workmanship, with the crest of a Spanish grandee in the centre, the whole mounted on a sea-chest in lieu of legs. Many Spanish coins have been washed ashore on the Chesil Bank, and it is possible that others of the ill-fated ships sank in the vicinity of Portland, or that the dons threw their money and valuables overboard rather than let them fall into the hands of their captors.

Little is recorded during the next fifty years, save the building of a wooden bridge of seventeen arches to unite the two towns, in 1594; and thirteen years later the town was visited by one of those great plagues which periodically swept over mediæval England.

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 found the county fairly evenly divided in support of the rival parties, and Corfe Castle became the headquarters of the Royalist, and Bingham’s Melcombe that of the Parliamentary forces. In 1643 the Earl of Carnarvon seized and held for the King, Weymouth, Melcombe, and Portland, and left them in charge of Prince Maurice, whose troops are said to have pillaged and ravaged the district. The following year the Earl of Essex defeated the Royalist troops, and took the town for the Parliament, when he was assisted by a fleet under the Lord High Admiral, the Earl of Warwick. The towns proved a rich prize for the captors, as, in addition to much ammunition, etc., no less than sixty ships fell into their hands. The troubles of the inhabitants, however, were far from over, as in 1645 Sir Lewis Dyves received orders from the King to make an attempt to re-capture Weymouth, which, with the help of Sir W. Hastings, the Governor of Portland, he succeeded in doing, and drove the defenders across the harbour into Melcombe. On June 15th, 1644, the town surrendered to the Parliamentary Commander, Sir William Balfour, the final overthrow being largely due to the Earl of Warwick, who appeared off the harbour with a large fleet, originally mobilised for the relief of Lyme Regis. The spoils of war which fell into the hands of the captors included 100 pieces of ordnance, 2,000 muskets, 150 cases of pistols, 200 barrels of powder, and 1,000 swords, in addition to sixty ships of various tonnage lying in the harbour. The losses sustained by the combined towns in the Civil War amounted to £20,000, as a certificate from the Justices, in the Parliamentary Roll, testifies. The town to-day shows no trace of the fierce bombardments it underwent, but a house in Maiden Street has a “bogus” memento in the shape of a cannon ball foolishly inserted in the masonry some decades since.

In 1649 the inhabitants petitioned Parliament for a grant of £3,000, to enable them to enlarge Melcombe Church, build a new bridge, and free the harbour from rubbish.

The “Old Castle,” otherwise Sandsfoot Castle, situated about half a mile from Weymouth proper, is to-day nothing but a mere shell of the former stronghold. It was built by Henry VIII., about 1539, and was part of his scheme for the fortification of various parts of the coast, particularly Portsmouth, Portland, and Weymouth, against a possible invasion on the part of Papal Europe on his throwing off the Roman yoke in 1540. Leland calls it “a right goodlie and warlyke castel, havyng one open barbicane.” The existing masonry shows its form to have been a parallelogram, and from its commanding position it, no doubt, was a fortress of considerable strength. It is difficult to identify, from its crumbling remains, the various portions of the castle, but that portion to the north, from its vaulted character, appears to have been the Governor’s apartment; while fronting south was the gun platform, as the embrasure shows. This platform would also flank its east and west sides, which were also pierced for big guns, while almost level with the ground was the barbican, with two tiers of loop-holes for small arms.

On a tombstone at Whitchurch Canonicorum is the following inscription:—

Here lyeth Iohn Wadham of Catherstone, Esquyer, who deceased A.D. 1584, who was dewring his life time Captayne of the Queene’s Ma^{ties} castell called Sandesfote, besides Waymouth in the countye of Dorset.

Among its other Governors were George Bamfield, 1631; Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1643; Colonel Ashburnham and Colonel William Sydenham, 1644; and Humphrey Weld, of Lulworth, 1685. It is a matter for regret that this old building should have been so neglected, as each year sees large masses of its masonry falling over the cliff. As a writer as long ago as 1829 said:

Its remains even now attract many an inquisitive enquiry as to why it has been so neglected, as where the neighing of hostile steeds, and the busy clang of arms once sounded to the battle’s din, the humble grass now grows, its walls are the dormitories of the birds of the air, and its rooms afford pasturage to the cattle; a change certainly more gratifying to us as a nation; but still its bold towering appearance, as seen ascending the hill, or viewing it from the hill, reminds us of some bygone tale.

In addition to the castle, the town was further protected by several forts. Probably none of these were in the nature of permanent fortifications, except the Blockhouse, which stood near the east end of Blockhouse Lane. The New Fort, or Jetty Fort, was erected at the entrance of the harbour, at the end of the old pier, and was dismantled in 1661, although in Hutchins’ time three guns were placed in position on the same site. Then there was Dock Fort, under the hill, west of the Jetty Pier, St. Nicholas’ Chapel converted into a fort by the Parliamentary troops, and a small fort called the Nothe Fort.

Few events seem to have occurred during the Protectorate that need recording beyond the great naval victory gained by Blake over Van Tromp, off Portland; and, as some compensation for the damage done to their property during the reign of his father, Charles II. granted the town in 1660 an annuity of £100 a year for ten years from the Customs’ dues. It was during this reign that tradesmen coined small money or tokens for the convenience of those wishing to buy small quantities of goods, as but little small money was coined by authority. In 1594 the Mayor of Bristol was granted permission to coin a token, and the benefit to the community proved so great that the custom spread to other towns. Weymouth coined many of these tokens (_see illustration_), which were made of copper, brass, or lead, and decorated as fancy dictated. Every person and tradesman in the town was obliged to take them, and they undoubtedly answered the purpose of providing the people with small money. In 1672, however, Charles II. ordered to be coined a sufficient number of half-pence and farthings for the exigencies of the State, and these _numorum famuli_ were prohibited as being an infringement of the King’s prerogative.

The Town Token

Thomas Hyde

Bartholomew Beer

James Stanley

James Budd

Some Weymouth
Tokens]

The grant of armorial bearings to Weymouth and Melcombe Regis bears the date of May 1st, 1592. The seals of the town were eight in number, a description of which is recorded in Ellis’s _History of Weymouth_.

When the ill-starred Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis in 1685, no Weymouthians seem to have flocked to his standard. Upon the failure of the rebellion the participants of the neighbourhood were quickly disposed of by Judge Jeffreys, who opened his Bloody Assize at Dorchester, and ordered them to be hanged at Greenhill, and their bodies to be dismembered and exhibited throughout the county as a warning to rebels.

So we come down to the close of the seventeenth century with little to record save devastating fires, plagues, and storms. A general period of poverty and depression seems then to have overtaken the two towns. The causes leading to this change, which had begun to show itself in the reign of Elizabeth, were many and various, and may be briefly ascribed to the concrete result of the vicious rule of the Stuarts, the removal of the wool trade to Poole, the loss of the Newfoundland trade, and the injury received during the Civil War. Ellis tells us that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, “scarcely any idea can be formed of the general devastation and depression that everywhere prevailed. Houses were of little value ... the population had dwindled to a mere nothing ... old tenements fell down ... the inhabitants consisted chiefly of smugglers and fishermen.”

Before we turn to the brighter days which set in towards the middle of the reign of George III., a short account must be given of the larger memorials of the town—_e.g._, the old bridge, the priory, and the parish church, although it must be confessed that of important antiquities dating before the Georgian era the town has little to show beyond a few remnants of Jacobean houses, part of one solitary pillar of the chapel, and possibly a few old doorways; and in later and minor memorials the town is little better off. There is, in the Guildhall, the fine iron-bound chest before mentioned, and another, said to be of similar origin, bequeathed by the late Sir Richard Howard. There is also an ancient chair with a cardinal’s hat carved on the back, and the old stocks and whipping-post; but for the most part nothing has survived save the truly Georgian, such as round windows, picturesque doorways, and part of the old Gloucester Lodge, now an hotel—an altogether disappointing record in comparison with the long and varied history of the place.

Of the old chapel,[52] the one remaining stone is preserved in the wall of a school. The chapel was a chapel of ease to Wyke Regis, the mother-church of Weymouth, and was dedicated to St. Nicholas. It stood on the summit of a hill overlooking the old town of Weymouth, and its site is commemorated in the name “Chapelhaye,” by which the district is known. There are several documents extant relating to this chapel, and among extracts from the _Liceirce_ is the following:—

None shall fail at the setting forth of the procession of Corpus Christi day, on pain of forfeiting one pound of wax, and each brother shall pay six pennies to the procession, and pay yearly.

This relates to the fraternity or guild in the Chapel of St. Nicholas, which was founded by a patent granted in 20 Henry VIII. to Adam Moleyns, Dean of Sarum, and certain parishioners of Wyke Regis, and known as “The Fraternity or Guild of St. George in Weymouth.”

Before the building of a bridge across the harbour the means of direct communication between the two towns was, so Leland says in 1530, by means of a boat, drawn over by a rope affixed to two posts, erected on either side of the harbour, a contrivance which was in use at Portland Ferry as late as 1839. In 1594 this primitive method of crossing gave way on the erection of the wooden bridge before referred to, erected at the expense of several wealthy merchants of London, who appear to have had trading interests here. This, in its turn, was so seriously injured during the Civil Wars, that it fell to pieces, and was rebuilt in 12 Anne by Thomas Hardy, Knt., William Harvey, James Littleton, and Reginald Marriott, the towns’ Parliamentary representatives, and it continued in use until 1741, when a bridge sixty yards long, with a draw-bridge in the centre, took its place. The celebrated Bubb Dodington, the first and only Lord Melcombe, contributed largely to its cost. In 1770 another bridge was erected some seventy yards westward, thus increasing the length of the harbour; but as the inhabitants were forced to make a considerable detour to reach it, they petitioned against the proposed alteration, but to no purpose. In 1820 it was determined to erect the first bridge of stone,[53] which is still in use, and only calls for mention here from the fact that on pulling down some adjacent houses an urn filled with silver coins of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. was found; and it is said that some of the inhabitants had a fine haul of “treasure trove” on this occasion. More interesting, perhaps, was the discovery of a gilt brass crucifix, four inches long; and on the wall of one of the demolished houses was painted the following verse:—

God saue our Queene Elizabethe,
God send hir happie dayes;
God graunt her grace to
Persevir in his most holie wayes.
A. Dom. 1577.

The old priory, or, as it was more commonly called, the “Friary,” stood in Maiden Street. It was a house of the Dominican Friars, dedicated in the name of St. Winifred, although Speed gives Dominic as the dedicatory saint. Leland writes of it as “a fayre house of Freres in the est part of the town.” The ancient chair now in the Guildhall came from this priory, and it was said to possess miraculous powers of healing the sick, and otherwise blessing the devout who were privileged to sit upon it. The priory shared the fate of the other monastic foundations at the Dissolution.

Of churches which can be rightly considered as memorials, Weymouth has no example, as the oldest is that of St. Mary, the parish church. The foundation-stone was laid on October 4th, 1815; this church was erected partly on the site of a former church. It is a large, simple, and unpretentious building, of which some hard things have been said and written, but it is at least well built and free from sham, although of its architecture the less said the better. It is, however, somewhat redeemed by an excellently designed cupola containing one bell. Inside, an altar-piece by Sir James Thornhill, a native of the town, whose daughter married his pupil Hogarth, claims attention; as also does the following curious inscription, in which the artist, by contracting the word “worthiest,” has conveyed the very opposite estimate of the deceased’s character to that intended:—

UNDERTH LIES YE BODY OF
CHRISR. BROOKS ESQ. OF JAMAICA
WHO DEPARD. THIS LIFE 4 SEPR. 1769
AGED 38 YEARS, ONE OF YE WORST. OF MEN
FRIEND TO YE DISTRESD.
TRULY AFFECTD. & KIND HUSBAND
TENDER PART. & A SINCR. FRIEND.