Chapter IX: Part 9

Older than the piece of wall, older than the
almshouses, and older, indeed, than anything else in
Poole, is that much-battered, much-altered building
now known as the Town Cellars. The Great Cellar, or
King’s Hall, or Woolhouse, to give it the various
names it was once known by, was in all probability,
as the names import, a place in which goods were
stored. It was always manor property, rented by the
Corporation in later years, but more likely originally
a place used by the lords of the manor of Canford to
store the dues levied in kind, to which they were
entitled by the charter of Longespée. On the inner
side stood a small prison called the Salisbury, also
belonging to the manor, and by this were the stocks,
still remembered by old people. Modern conjecture,
catching at the ecclesiastical appearance of the
pointed doorways and cusped windows, and ignoring
the fact that such features were common to sacred and
secular buildings alike, has imagined a monastery
here, but the utter absence of evidence, the absolute
silence of all records, the fact, too, that Leland,
who visited Poole, and mentions all of importance from
the antiquary’s point of view, has nothing to say of
any such institution, and, finally, the authority of
Abbot Gasquet, whose note on the subject may be given
in full—“Poole, ‘A Friary,’ _No friary: the grant 3
Edward VI. seems to have been of gild property_”—seem
to be conclusive against the theory. The place has
been cut right through by the street from St. James’
Church to the Quay, and is so shown on the revised
Ordnance Map, while the original block is entire in
a plan of Poole dated 1768. It must have been very
narrow in proportion to its width, and parts of the
work are very roughly executed. Possibly this is the
“fair town house of stone on the Kay” of which Leland
speaks, unmutilated in his day. Old and battered
as it is, no inhabitant of the town should view it
without reverence, for it is part of the long past.
Built about the end of Edward the Third’s reign, it
must have played its part in stirring times. Poole,
during the Hundred Years’ War, was a place of much
importance, and shared in the ups and downs of that
long war—now helping to take Calais, and again
destroyed in the great raid of John de Vienne, who
paid with fire and sword in the declining years of
Edward the score run up at Cressy and Calais and
Poitiers. The old building was the centre of a fierce
struggle about five hundred years ago. At that time
the port of Poole was a thorn in the side of Frenchman
and Spaniard, and its leader, Henry Paye, was the
dread of the Channel and of the shores of the Bay of
Biscay. The Drake of his age, half admiral and half
pirate, he was commander of the King’s ships one
year and raiding the Spanish coast the next. It is a
Spanish chronicle that lifts the veil for a moment and
shows us the Poole of the Plantagenets clustering
round the Church of St. James and along the Quay,
its inhabitants ready at a moment’s notice for war;
archers and men-at-arms mustering to the warcry; the
very doors so constructed that they could be used as
“pavaisses,” or large shields, against the murderous
cross-bow bolts—everything betokening a population
living in a state of war, and revealing a lively
picture of the coast towns when there was no regular
fleet, and self-help was the order of the day. We owe
this glimpse to the Spanish _Cronica del Conde D. Pero
Niño_, the substance of which, as far as it affects
Poole, is given by Southey in his _Naval History of
England_. The attack on Poole was a revenge raid in
consequence of Henry Paye’s doings on the Spanish
coast. Early in the morning the joint Spanish and
French fleet entered the harbour, and the Spaniards
landed. Taken by surprise, with their leader away, the
men of Poole proved their mettle. A large building
(which we, without hesitation, identify with the Town
Cellars), full of arms and sea-stores, was fiercely
defended, and when this had been carried by assault
and set on fire, the fighting was continued in the
streets. So terrible was the hail of shafts that the
Spaniards recoiled, and only the landing of fresh men
enabled them at last to drive back the English. Henry
Paye’s brother led the townsmen with great gallantry,
but was killed on the spot, and then, apparently, his
men drew off. The Spaniards and their French allies,
who at first held aloof, but came bravely to help when
the first repulse took place, then returned to their
ships with a few prisoners; and the curtain again
falls.

And so we leave the old town while yet the smoke broods sullenly over the Town Cellars, and the warcry of Spain yet echoes among the narrow stone streets of the East Quay.

BRIDPORT

BY THE REV. R. GROSVENOR BARTELOT, M.A.

In the days when vikings, pirates, and roving sea-dogs ruled the waves it was a decided advantage for the shipping merchant to reside in a port which lay a mile or so up a river-mouth rather than on the coast itself. Fourteenth century Weymouth folk knew this to their cost. Dwellers they were in a growing hamlet on the sea-coast, with no church of their own, so they had to walk over the hill to Mass at Wyke Regis. Whilst thus employed in pious worship, down swooped the French ships on their defenceless abodes, and when they returned to their Sunday dinner their homesteads were a smouldering ash-heap. After that, they decided to build a chapel of their own on high ground, whence the eye of the watchman could sweep the horizon in search of strange craft.

Such a sudden surprise as this could never have occurred at Bridport. Following Wareham’s good example, the builders of this ancient town had an eye to communication by land and sea. They hugged the Roman Road, and at the same time they lay snug up a river-mouth. The Brit, which rises in the upland slopes of Axnoller Hill, amidst some of the finest Wessex scenery, after a short course through Beaminster Town, past the beautiful Tudor mansion of Parnham and the villages of Netherbury and Melplash, unites with the Symene and the Asker streams at Bridport Town, and thence flows into West Bay, a mile further on, at Bridport Harbour.

Whether in Roman times this place had any importance cannot now be definitely determined. If, however, the name of the station, _Londinis_, on the Icen Way from Dorchester to Exeter, be but a Latinised form of _Lyndaen_—_i.e._, “Broad Pool”—then there is reason to believe that Bridport High Street, which runs along the edge of Bradpole parish, is on the old Roman Road. That Bradpole was only a hamlet of Bridport is shown by the fact that not until the year 1527 had the former parish any right to bury its parishioners anywhere except in the churchyard of the latter place. The evidence of the name of the town certainly favours Roman occupation; “port” in this case is not derived from a personal source; this is the “door, or gate, of the Brit.”

We have more clear evidence of its growing importance in the Saxon period. The name of its western suburb, “Allington,” is always in mediæval days written “Athelington,” “the town of the nobles.” Hence the fashion in modern London of the aristocracy flocking to the “West End,” is, after all, only an imitation of an example set by Bridport long years ago. In Edward the Confessor’s reign one hundred and twenty houses stood in this Dorset town, which, in comparison with the other towns of the county, came next to Dorchester and Wareham. Bridport, too, had a mint of its own, and its mint-master paid well for the privilege of coining.

The Norman Conquest does not appear to have been an unmixed blessing in these parts. In _Domesday Survey_ the town is shown to have gone back considerably. Twenty houses are stated to be desolate, and the people impoverished. All these bad times, however, had passed away before the reign of King John, when Bridport was already famous for its manufacture of rope, sailcloth, and nets, and these have been its staple industries down to modern days. As early as the year 1211 the Sheriff of Dorset paid the goodly sum of £48 9s. 7d. for 1,000 yards “of cloth by the warp to make sails of ships, and for 3,000 weights of hempen thread according _to Bridport weight_ for making ships’ cables, and 39 shillings for the expenses of Robert the Fisher whilst he stayed at Bridport to procure his nets.” Let us hope “Bridport weight” was, as it is now, specially good for the price.

Residents in the town in these days are almost tired of the threadbare witticism about the “Bridport dagger,” but, for the sake of the uninitiated, it must be repeated here. When anyone wished to speak tenderly of some person who died at the hangman’s hand, he described him as being “stabbed with a Bridport dagger.” John Leland, the itinerant chronicler of the days of Henry VIII., came here and heard the joke, but it never penetrated his prosaic skull, so he gravely recorded in his note-book: “At Bridporth be made good daggers.” Suffice it to say that Newgate was duly supplied in those days (as the old Morality play, _Hycke Scorner_, tells us) with:

Ones a yere some taw halters of Burporte.

Whilst an Act of Parliament of 1528 says that “time out of mind they had used to make within the town for the most part all the great cables, ropes, hawsers, and all other tackling for the Royal Navy.” This industry has left its mark upon the architecture of the place. The streets are broad, to allow every house its “rope walk.” Some fine examples of mediæval domestic architecture are extant, notably the one now used as the Conservative Club on the east side of South Street, evidently a merchant’s house of Tudor days.

Few country towns were so rich in ecclesiastical foundations as was Bridport in the Middle Ages. It possessed the present Parish Church of St. Mary, which then had seven altars and numerous chantries; after much restoration (during which the tomb of a great-grandson of Edward I. perished), it is even now a noble example of the piety of prosperous merchants. There were, besides, the churches of St. Andrew, where now the Town Hall stands, and St. Swithun, in Allington. Other religious foundations included the Priory, now the rope factory; the double chantry chapel of St. Michael, where now is extant only the lane of that name; the Hospital of St. John, at the East Bridge; the Mawdelyn Leper House, in Allington; and the Chapel of St. James, in Wyke’s Court Lane. One can well imagine that clerical interests might sometimes clash amidst such a galaxy of places for worship. In fact, in the reign of Henry VIII. Sir John Strangwayes, Steward of the Borough, lodged a complaint with the Chancellor of the Diocese “against the disorder of certain chantry priests residing at Bridport.” This was evidently a harbinger of the coming dissolution of monastic foundations, which confined the worship of the town to two churches under one rector.

By far the greatest interest of old Bridport is centred in its immensely valuable Borough Records. These include a vast collection of old deeds of Plantagenet times more or less connected with the history of the whole county, whilst the copies of sixty-five mediæval wills, ranging from 1268 to 1460, are of unique interest and importance, dating, as so many of them do, before 1383, when the Records of the Prerogative Wills of Canterbury commence. In addition to these, a very complete series of borough charters is preserved amongst these records. Bridport was a self-governing town, with the privileges of a Royal Borough, long before 1252, when its first charter was granted by King Henry III. This was probably soon lost, for the same King, on May 5th, 1270, affixed his seal to another, which recites its predecessor thus:

The King, having inspected the rolls of his Chancery, finds that at the time when Peter de Chacepoler was keeper of his wardrobe, the men of Bridport paid thirty marks, and in return received a charter, etc.

From that time onward each Sovereign seems to have extorted a nice little donation for renewing the charter, each document growing in size and verbosity compared with the one which it supplanted, right down to the reign of James II.

Amongst the books possessed by the Corporation, the most ancient carries us back to old Bridport from a legal point of vision. It is the law-book of Richard Laurence, M.P., who lived from about 1300 to 1361. In it he has recorded copies of all the Acts of Parliament which would be likely to come in useful to him in his legal profession. Beginning from Magna Charta itself, he could turn to this volume, and at a glance see what punishments were enacted against coin-clippers, false measurers, brewers of too mild ale, or even against bigamists. Many are the entries referring to nautical affairs, showing how often he must have been consulted by busy Dorset mariners. How many a six and eightpence this worthy lawyer of six centuries ago made out of this book! On one page he records a matter less prosaic—his daughter’s birthday. There were no parish registers then, so he writes:

Laurentia, the second daughter of Richard and Petronel Laurencz, was born on the vigil of Saint Petronilla, being Whitsun Eve, in the 12th year of King Edward III. (1338).

He who so often made other people’s wills at last made his own on July 26th, 1361, which is duly preserved amongst the muniments.

Another volume—the old dome-book of the borough—contains amidst solemn minutes of meetings of the Corporation back in the days of the Edwards, many quaint little quibbles. The writer evidently jotted down on a fly-leaf the following as being a very good witticism which, in the relaxation following a heavy session, some worthy Bridport alderman of old told to beguile away the weariness of his fellow civic fathers: “I will cause you to make a cross, and, without any interference, you will be unable to leave the house without breaking that cross.” This is how it was to be done: “Clasp a post fixed in the house, and make a cross with your extended arms, and then how can you go out without breaking that cross.” Here is another, after the “blind beggar’s brother” pattern: “A pear tree bore all the fruit that a pear tree ought to bear, and yet it did not bear pears. What is the answer?” “Well, it only bore one pear.” Somewhat childish, certainly, but such little “catches” as these delighted the mediæval conversationalist; and do they not show that human nature has ever been the same? An interesting sidelight is thrown upon the clock trade of those days by a document dated 1425, whereby Sir John Stalbrygge, priest, was paid three shillings and fourpence for “keeping the clock on St. Andrew’s Church.” Matters horological in the Middle Ages were almost entirely in the hands of the church. The clergy and monks were the clock-makers and menders; witness the Glastonbury Clock in Wells Cathedral, the Wimborne Clock, and others. Was not Pope Sylvester himself, when a priest, the inventor of an improved timepiece? Hence it appears that for nearly six centuries the townsmen have turned their eyes towards that same spot where still the town clock chimes out the fleeting hours.

A word about the Bridport Harbour and its vicissitudes. In early days there were numerous contentions between the citizens and the monks of Caen, who owned the manor of Burton; at other times they were disputing with the Abbot of Cerne or the Prior of Frampton, who apparently wished to debar them from salving their own ships when wrecked outside the harbour. Vessels were small enough to be beached in those days; when ships were increased in size, the Haven was built, in the year 1385, but it proved not such a success as was anticipated. Apparently during most of the next century every county in the south of England was canvassed for subscriptions towards Bridport Harbour; all sorts of expedients were devised to raise money. In 1446 was drawn up a portentous document, still extant, known as an indulgence, granting pardons to all those who should contribute to this object. It was signed by one archbishop, two cardinals, and twelve bishops. Armed with this deed, John Greve, Proctor for the town, started round collecting. He writes a pitiful letter on May Day, 1448, from Dartford, in Kent, detailing how his sub-collector, John Banbury, “sumtime bellman of Lodres,” had decamped with six weeks’ collections, besides stealing his “new chimere of grey black russet, and a crucifix with a beryl stone set therein.” Nor could he find the rogue, for he says, “He took his leave on St. George’s Day, and so bid me farewell, and I have ridden and gone far to seek him—more than forty miles about—and I cannot hear of him.”

A few interesting survivals of old Bridport have come down to modern times in the shape of place-names. “Bucky Doo” passage, between the Town Hall and the “Greyhound,” is suggestive of the rustic rabbit or the rural roebuck; but it is simply the old name, “Bocardo,” originally a syllogism in logic, which was here, as at Oxford, applied to the prison because, just as a Bocardo syllogism always ended in a final negative, so did a compulsory visit to the Bocardo lock-up generally mean a closer acquaintance with the disciplinary use of “the Bridport dagger,” and a final negative to the drama of life. Stake Lane has been altered to Barrack Street in modern times. Gyrtoppe’s House, in Allington, carries us back to the year 1360, when Sir Nicholas Gyrtoppe was Chantry Priest of St. Michael’s, Bridport. It may be mentioned that a pretty but utterly groundless story of the origin of this name has been told, viz., that King Charles II., when a fugitive from Worcester fight, had to “girth up” Miss Juliana Coningsby’s saddle trappings at this spot in 1652: hence the term “girth up.”

Much could be written of the Civil War days concerning this place. How the Roundheads voted £10 (November 29th, 1642) to fortify (!) the town. How the Corporation met, and voted as follows:—

1642, 14th December.—It is agreed that the inhabitants that have muskets shall watch at night in turn; that a watch house shall be erected at each bridge; that eight of the Commoners shall watch at night and eight by day, two at each of the three bridges, one in Stake Lane, and one in Weak’s Lane.

On June 10th, 1643, Lieutenant Lee garrisoned the place for the Parliament; on March 16th following, Captain Pyne, with a party from Lyme, captured the town and took 140 horse. Waller was here six months later (September 24th) raising the posse with 2,000 horse and 1,500 dragoons. Suffice it to say that Bridport preferred to keep as clear as possible from civil turmoil.

As for the romantic story of the escape of Charles II. after the battle of Worcester, and how he was nearly captured here, the reader is referred to Chapter I. for the full account.

The Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion brings us to the end of our interest in Old Bridport. It was on Sunday morning, June 13th, 1685, that the whole place was thrown into a ferment by a surprise attack on the town delivered by three hundred of Monmouth’s rebels from Lyme Regis. Lord Grey commanded them, and after a night march and on arrival at dawn having at the first volley routed the Dorset militia of 1,200 foot with 100 horse, they started making prisoners of the officers who were lodging at the “Bull” hotel. In this latter work, two Dorset men of good family fell victims—Edward Coker and Wadham Strangwayes—being slain by the rebels, who, after the first flush of victory, disregarded ordinary precautions, and when the King’s troops rallied they had to beat an ignominious retreat to Lyme. Judge Jeffreys finished the work by ordering twelve of the condemned rebels to be executed at Bridport. To any student of that period of history the unique collection of autographs, broadsides, songs, and portraits, including the pre-Sedgemoor letter from Lord Dumblane to his father, the Duke of Leeds—all which are contained in the library of Mr. Broadley, of Bridport—are absolutely indispensable.

SHAFTESBURY

BY THE REV. THOMAS PERKINS, M.A.

Shaston, the ancient British Palladour, was, and is, in itself the city of a dream. Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its magnificent apsidal abbey, the chief glory of South Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled free-stone mansions—all now ruthlessly swept away—throw the visitor, even against his will, into a pensive melancholy, which the stimulating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. The spot was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots and abbesses, saints and bishops, knights and squires. The bones of King Edward “the Martyr,” carefully removed thither for holy preservation, brought Shaston a renown which made it the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and enabled it to maintain a reputation extending far beyond English shores. To this fair creation of the great Middle-Ages the Dissolution was, as historians tell us, the death-knell. With the destruction of the enormous abbey the whole place collapsed in a general ruin; the martyr’s bones met with the fate of the sacred pile that held them, and not a stone is now left to tell where they lie.

So does Thomas Hardy describe the ancient town of Shaftesbury.[55] Truly, it is a town that appears to have seen its best days. Its market-place is almost deserted, save on market-days, and when some travelling wild beast show visits the town. On fair days the round-abouts with galloping horses do a lively business, and their steam-driven organs emit energetic music that may be heard far and wide; and when a good circus pitches its tent on Castle Hill, vehicles of every description stream in by hundreds from all the surrounding villages, for there is nothing that the country folk love better than a circus. But at other times Shaftesbury would be considered by a stranger passing through it, fresh from city life, as a quiet if not sleepy town. It has little to boast of save its splendid site, its pure health-giving breezes, and the magnificent views of the surrounding hills and downs and valleys that may be obtained from several points of vantage. Of its four remaining churches one only is of mediæval date; the three others are all quite modern, entirely destitute of architectural interest, and with little beauty to recommend them. All the others which once stood here have disappeared, leaving nothing to remind us of their former existence save, in some few cases, the name of a street or lane. Of the glorious Abbey, probably the wealthiest nunnery that ever existed in the kingdom, nothing but the walls that once enclosed the precincts on the south-east, and the foundations of the church, long entirely hidden from sight by surface soil, now happily opened out by recent excavations, remain.

Left high and dry upon its hill-top it can watch the trailing steam of the locomotives in the deep valley to the north as they hurry by, taking no heed of the once royal burgh, the chief mint of Dorset in the days of the West Saxon Kings, the burial-place of murdered Eadward, and of Eadmund’s wife, Ealdgyth or Elgefu, the site of the nunnery founded by Ælfred, and ruled at first by his “midmost daughter” Æthelgede or Æthelgeofu. And yet this town has a real history that can be traced back for more than 1,000 years, and a legendary one that carries us back well-nigh to the days of King Solomon, for we read in a British Brut or chronicle: “After Lleon came Rhun of the Stout Spear, his son, and he built the Castle of Mount Paladr, which is now called Caer Sefton, and there while he was building this stronghold there was an Eryr that gave some prophecies about this island.” In Powell’s _History of Cambria_ it is said:

... Concerning the word of Eryr at the building of Caer Septon on Mt. Paladour in the year after the creation of the world 3048 some think that an eagle did then speak and prophesie; others are of opinion that it was a Brytaine named Aquila (Eryr in British) that prophesied of these things and of the recoverie of the whole ile again by the Brytaines.[56]

The Brut quoted was evidently written after Dorset was occupied by the Saxons, because it says that the town was called Septon (a form of Shafton), and implies that it was not so called when Rhun built it. It is pretty certain that Caer Paladr was the Celtic name, and that the Saxon name Sceaftesbyrig is a translation of it, the modern form of which is Shaftesbury. If it was called after the name of the King who built it, it was after part of his surname Baladr or Paladr (spear), Bras (stout). Others think the spear or shaft was suggested by the long straight hill on the point of which the town was built. At a later date the name was contracted into Shaston, but this has become nearly obsolete, save in municipal and other formal documents, where the various parishes are called Shaston St. Peter’s, Shaston St. James’, etc. The name also appears on the milestones, and the inhabitants of the town are called Shastonians. No doubt the Romans captured this Celtic hill-stronghold, and as proof of this, the finding of some Roman coins has been alleged; but no written record of this period has come down to us. The real history begins in Saxon times. Ælfred came to the West Saxon throne in 871, and in 888 he founded a Benedictine Nunnery at Shaftesbury, setting over it his “medemesta-dehter” as first Abbess. This we learn from Asser, Ælfred’s friend, who tells us that he built the Abbey near the eastern gate of the town. This shows that by this time Shaftesbury was a walled town. An inscription on a stone in the Abbey Chapterhouse, so William of Malmesbury tells us, recorded the fact that the town was built by Ælfred in 880, by which he probably means rebuilt after its partial or complete destruction by the Danes.

Shaftesbury was counted as one of the four royal boroughs of Dorset (Wareham, Dorchester, and Bridport being the other three), and at the time of the Norman Conquest it was the largest of the four. Æthelstan granted the town the right of coining, and several scores of pennies struck here in his reign were found in excavating a mediæval house near the Forum in 1884-5. In the reign of Eadward the Confessor three coiners lived in the town, each paying 13s. 4d. annually to the Crown, and a fine of £1 on the introduction of a new coinage. The names, Gold Hill and Coppice (that is, Copper) Street Lane, still speak of the old mints of Shaftesbury.

On March 18th, 978, as everyone knows, King Eadward was treacherously slain at the house of, and by the order of, his stepmother. The body of the murdered King was dragged some distance by his horse, and when found was buried without any kingly honour at Wareham. On February 20th, 980, Ælfere, Eadward’s ealdorman, removed the body with all due state from Wareham to Shaftesbury, and here it was buried, somewhere in the Abbey Church. Doubtless the reason why Shaftesbury was chosen as the place of his burial was because he was of Ælfred’s kin, and this religious house had been founded by Ælfred.

Miracles soon began to be worked at his tomb. He appeared, so it was said, to a lame woman who lived at some distant spot, and bade her go to his grave at Shaftesbury, promising that if she went she should be healed of her infirmity. She obeyed his injunction, and received the due reward for her faith. The grave in which the King was laid did not, however, please him as a permanent resting-place. First he indicated his dissatisfaction by raising the tomb bodily, and then when this did not lead to an immediate translation of his relics, he appeared in visions and intimated his desire to have a fresh grave. This was about twenty-one years after his burial in the Abbey. The grave was opened, and, as was usual in such cases, a sweet fragrance from it pervaded the church. His body was then laid in the new tomb in a chapel specially dedicated to him. Possibly this chapel stood over the crypt on the north side of the north choir aisle. The day of his death, March 18th, and the days of the two translations of his relics, February 20th and June 20th, were kept in honour of the King, who, for what reason we cannot tell, was regarded as a saint and martyr. His fame spread far and wide, and brought many pilgrims and no small gain to the Abbey. At one time the town was in danger of losing its old name, Shaftesbury, and being called Eadwardstowe, but in course of time the new name died out and the old name was revived. Pilgrims were numerous, and possibly sometimes passed the whole night in the church. In order to make a thorough cleansing of the floor after their visits more easy, a slight slope towards the west was given to the choir pavement, so that it might be well swilled. A similar arrangement may be seen in other churches.

At Shaftesbury, too, was Eadmund Ironside’s wife buried; and on November 12th, 1035, Knut the Dane died at Shaftesbury, but was not buried in the Abbey, his body being carried to the royal city of Winchester and laid to rest within the Cathedral Church there. Up to the time of the Conquest the Abbesses bore English names; after that time the names of their successors show that Shaftesbury Abbey formed no exception to the rule that all the most valuable church preferments were bestowed on those of Norman and French birth. Through every change of dynasty the Abbey of Shaftesbury continued to flourish, growing continually richer, and adding field to field, until it was said that if the Abbot of Somerset Glaston could marry the Abbess of Dorset Shaston they would together own more land than the King himself. The Abbess held a barony, and ranked with the mitred Abbots, who had the privilege of sitting in Parliament, and it was said that her rank rendered her subject to be summoned by the King, but that she was excused from serving on account of her sex. At last the time came for the Abbey to be dissolved. More prudent than Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury—who refused to surrender and was hanged on St. Michael’s Hill, overlooking his wide domains—Elizabeth Zouche, the last Abbess of Shaftesbury, gave up to Henry VIII., on March 23rd, 1539, the Abbey with all its property, valued at £1,329 per annum, and received in lieu thereof the handsome pension of £133 a year for her own use. At this time there were fifty-four nuns within its walls, each of whom received a pension varying from £7 down to £3 6s. 8d.; the total amount given in pensions was £431.

From the day of the Dissolution the glory of Shaftesbury began to pass away. In an incredibly short space of time the Abbey was demolished, and when Leland visited the place a few years later the church had entirely disappeared. There was much litigation between the town and those to whom the Abbey lands had been granted—the Earl of Southampton and Sir Thomas Arundel—and this dispute continued for fifty years, greatly impoverishing the town.

Shaftesbury received its first municipal charter in the second year of James I.; a second charter was granted in 1666 by Charles II. From that time Shaftesbury led an uneventful life, broken at times by the excitement of contested elections, which were fought with great bitterness, and the consumption of much beer and the giving of much gold. The town was originally represented by two members; the two first of these sat in the Parliament of the twenty-fifth year of Edward I. At the time of the Reform Bill of 1832 it lost one member, and in 1885 it ceased to be a Parliamentary Borough, and was merged in the Northern Division of Dorset. At the election of 1880 a singular incident took place, which will show how high party feeling ran in the ancient borough. The candidate who had represented the constituency in the previous Parliament was defeated, and after the declaration of the poll, about nine o’clock in the evening, his disappointed partizans indulged in such violent and riotous conduct that the successful candidate and his friends could not leave the room in the Town Hall where the votes had been counted. Stones were thrown at the windows, some of the police were injured, but the besieged barricaded the doors of the building, closed the shutters, and waited with patience, while the angry mob outside, for the space of four or five hours, yelled like wild beasts disappointed of their prey. At last, finding that they could not effect an entrance and make a fresh vacancy in the constituency by killing the new member, the crowd began to drop off one by one, and by two o’clock in the morning the siege was practically raised, and the imprisoned member and his friends were able to get out and reach their hotel unmolested. Some of the rioters were tried, but evidence sufficiently clear to identify the men who had wounded the police was not to be obtained, and the accused were acquitted. This was the last time Shaftesbury was called on to elect a member; and as the town stands quite on the borders of the new district of North Dorset, the poll is not now declared from the Town Hall window at Shaftesbury, but at Sturminster Newton, a town more centrally situated.

At one time there were twelve churches or chapels in Shaftesbury—St. Peter’s, St. Martin’s, St. Andrew’s, Holy Trinity, St. Lawrence’s, St. Michael’s, St. James’, All Saints’, St. John the Baptist’s, St. Mary’s, St. Edward’s, and last, but not least, the Abbey Church of St. Mary and St. Edward. Beyond the borough boundary was the Church of St. Rumbold,[57] now generally spoken of as Cann Church. Why Shaftesbury, which was never a large town, should have needed so many churches has always been a mystery. The late William Barnes suggested a theory which may partially account for it. He says that some of these churches may have been old British ones, and that the Saxon Christians could not, or would not, enter into communion with the British Christians, but built churches of their own. This is probably true, although it still fails to account for the number of churches which, on this supposition, the Saxons must have built. It must be remembered, as explained in the Introduction, that Dorset remained much longer free from the dominion of the West Saxon Kings than Hampshire, and that when it was finally conquered by the West Saxons, these men had already become Christians, so that the conquest was not one of expulsion or extermination. The Celtic inhabitants were allowed to remain in the old homes, though in an inferior position. The laws of Ine, 688, clearly show this. In Exeter there is a church dedicated to St. Petroc, who was a Cornish, and therefore Celtic, saint. Mr. Barnes thinks that the Shaftesbury churches dedicated to St. Michael, St. Martin, St. Lawrence, and the smaller one dedicated to St. Mary, may have been Celtic. St. Martin was a Gaulish saint, St. Lawrence may have been a dedication due to the early missionaries, while the two hills in Cornwall and Brittany dedicated to St. Michael show that he was a saint held in honour by the Celts. The British Church differed in certain points of observance from the Church founded by the missionaries from Rome under St. Augustine, notably as to the date of keeping Easter. Bæda says that when he was Abbot of Malmesbury he wrote, by order of the Synod of his own Church, a book against the errors of the British Church, and that by it he persuaded many of the Celts, who were subjects of the West Saxon King, to adopt the Roman date for the celebration of the Resurrection. But even if we assume that there were four Celtic churches, why should no less than eight fresh ones have been built by the West Saxons? No explanation has been offered. Possibly, however, some of the churches may have been only small chapels or chantries.

Soon after the dissolution of the Abbey, as has been said previously, all the walls above the surface were pulled down, except the one that skirts the steep lane known as Gold Hill. This wall stands, strongly buttressed by gigantic masses of masonry on the outside (some of them contemporaneous with the walls, others added afterwards), for it has to bear up the earth of what was formerly the Abbey garden. The foundations of the Abbey Church, either purposely or naturally, in the course of time were covered with soil, and so remained until 1861, when some excavations took place and sundry relics were found, among them a stone coffin containing a skeleton and an abbot’s staff and ring. The foundations were then once more covered in, but recently the Corporation obtained a twenty-one years’ lease of the ground for the purpose of more thorough investigation. All the foundations that remain will be uncovered, the ground laid out as an ornamental garden and thrown open to the public. Considerable progress has been made with this work; all except the extreme west end of the nave has been excavated to the level of the floor, and some very interesting discoveries have been made. Many fragments of delicately-carved stonework, some of them bearing the original colour with which they were decorated, were unearthed, and are preserved in the Town Hall. The excavation began at the eastern end of the church, and proceeded westward. It was found that the east end of the choir was apsidal, the form usual in Norman times, but abandoned by English builders in the thirteenth century, when many of the larger churches were extended further to the east, though in France the apsidal termination is almost universal. The form shows that the Abbey Church was rebuilt during the Norman period of architecture, and that the choir was not afterwards extended eastward, for in earlier days, as well as in the thirteenth century and later, the rectangular east end was common. The north choir aisle was apsidal internally and square-ended externally; the south aisle was much wider than the north, and was evidently extended in the fifteenth century. The foundations of the high altar are complete, and on the north side of it is a grave formed of faced stone, which probably contained the body of the founder of the Norman Church. The crypt lies outside of the north aisle, and this has been completely cleared out; its floor is sixteen feet below the level of the ground. On this floor was found a twisted Byzantine column, which probably supported a similar column in the chapel above the crypt. This is the chapel which is believed to have been the shrine of King Eadward the Martyr. A most curious discovery was made in the crypt—namely, a number of dolicho-cephalous skulls. The question arises: How did they get there? For the shape of these skulls indicates that their owners were men of the Neolithic Age! In various graves sundry ornaments and articles of dress have been found—a gold ring in which a stone had once been set, a leaden bulla bearing the name of Pope Martin V. (1417-1431), and a number of bronze pins, probably used to fasten the garment in which the body was buried. The clay used for puddling the bottom of the graves acted much in the manner of quicklime and destroyed the bodies. Several pieces of the pavement, formed of heraldic and other tiles, remain _in situ_. It is supposed by some that the Abbey Church once possessed a central tower and a tall spire, though it is doubtful if the _spire_ ever existed; if it did, the church standing on its lofty isolated hill about 700 feet above the sea-level must have been a conspicuous object from all the wide Vale of Blackmore and its surrounding hills, as well as from the Vale of Wardours to the north, along which the railway now runs.

St. Peter’s Church is the oldest building in the town, but it is late Perpendicular in style. It is noteworthy that it has not, and apparently never had, a chancel properly called so; no doubt a ritual chancel may have been formed by a wooden screen. A holy-water stoup is to be seen on the left hand as one goes into the entrance porch at the west side of the tower. The richly-carved pierced parapet of the north aisle bears the Tudor rose and the portcullis, and so shows that this part of the church was built early in the sixteenth century.

Many of the houses in the town are old, but not of great antiquity. Thatched cottages abound in the side lanes, and even the long main street, which runs from east to west, has a picturesque irregularity on the sky-line. The most interesting house is one in Bimport, marked in a map dated 1615 as Mr. Groves’ house. It stands near the gasworks and the chief entrance to Castle Hill. It is a good example of a town house of the early sixteenth century, and contains some well-carved mantelpieces of somewhat later date. This house has served various purposes—at one time it was an inn, and some years ago narrowly escaped destruction. It, however, did escape with only the removal of its old stone-slabbed roof, in place of which one of red tiling has been substituted. An additional interest has been given to this old building by its introduction into _Jude the Obscure_ as the dwelling-place of the schoolmaster Phillotson, from a window of which his wife Sue once jumped into the street. Beyond this house is one known as St. John’s, standing as it does on St. John’s Hill, more of which hereafter. It was, in great measure, built of material bought at the sale of Beckford’s strange and whimsical erection known as Fonthill Abbey, of which the story is told in the _Memorials of Old Wiltshire_. In the garden of St. John’s Cottage is a curious cross, in which are two carved alabaster panels, covered with glass to preserve them from frost and rain.

Shaftesbury owes what distinction it possesses to its position, and this is due to its geological formation. A long promontory[58] of Upper Greensand runs from the east, and ends in a sharp point where the steep escarpments facing the north-west and south meet. On the triangle formed by these two the town is built. Looking out from the end of this high ground we may see a conical, wooded hill known as Duncliffe; this is an outlier of the same greensand formation; all the rest of the greensand, which once occupied the space between, has been gradually washed away, and the surface of the lower ground consists of various members of the Jurassic series. Under the greensand lies a bed of Gault, a blue-coloured clay impervious to water; and, as the greensand rock is porous, the gault holds up the water that percolates through the greensand, with the result that a thickness of about twenty-five feet of the lowest bed of the greensand is full of water, while the upper layers are dry. Hence, to get water to supply the town, wells would have to be sunk to the depth of 150 feet. Some such wells were, indeed, sunk in mediæval times, but were not satisfactory. It is only in recent times that regular water-works, with pumping-engines, reservoir, and mains, have been constructed, and Shaftesbury had to depend for water until that time on a supply obtained from springs at Enmore Green, a village situated under the hill and to the north of the town. This gave rise to a quaint and curious custom. On the Sunday next after the Festival of the Invention of the Cross, May 3rd (the day was changed in 1663 to the Monday before Ascension Day), the Mayor and burgesses of Shaftesbury went down to the springs at Enmore Green with mirth and minstrelsy, and, chief of all, with a staff or bezant adorned with feathers, pieces of gold, rings and jewels, and sundry dues—to wit, a pair of gloves, a calf’s head, a gallon of ale, and two penny loaves of fine wheaten bread: these were presented to the bailiff of the manor of Gillingham, in which the village of Enmore Green was situated. Moreover, the Mayor and burgesses, for one whole hour by the clock, had to dance round the village green hand in hand. Should the dues not be presented, or the dance fail, the penalty was that the water should no longer be supplied to inhabitants of the borough of Shaftesbury. The decoration of the bezant was a costly matter; the original one, of gilded wood in the form of a palm-tree, was in the possession of Lady Theodora Guest, and has been presented by her ladyship to the Corporation of Shaftesbury. The water was brought up in carts drawn by horses, and strong ones they must have been, for the hill they had to climb is one of the steepest in the neighbourhood. The fixed price for a bucketful of water was a farthing. From the scanty supply of drinking-water it came to pass that a saying got abroad that Shaftesbury was a town where “there was more beer than water”; to which was added two lines describing other noteworthy characteristics of the place—namely, that “here there was a churchyard above the steeple,” and that the town contained “more rogues than honest people.” Once during the writer’s fifteen years’ sojourn in the town some accident happened to the pumping apparatus at the water-works, and for several weeks the inhabitants were thrown back upon the old source of water supply. Day after day water-carts might be seen slowly passing along the streets, while servants or housewives came out from every doorway with empty pails or buckets, though they were not called upon to pay their farthings for the filling of them, as the expense was borne by the owners of the water-works.

In the old coaching days Shaftesbury was a livelier place than now, since the London and Exeter coaches, with their splendid teams and cheerful horns, passed through it daily, changing their horses at the chief hostelry. When the Salisbury and Yeovil Railway (afterwards absorbed by the London and South-Western) was planned it was intended to bring the line, not indeed through the town, but within a half-mile or so of it, with a station under the hill; but the bill was here, as in many another place, opposed by the landowners, with the result that the line was not allowed to come within about three miles of Shaftesbury, and was carried through the neighbouring town of Gillingham, which from that time began to increase, while Shaftesbury decreased. Periodically there has been an agitation for a branch line or a loop or a light railway running from Tisbury and passing near Shaftesbury, and joining, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Wareham, the line to Weymouth. But all the agitation has ended in nothing practical.

The beauty of its scenery and the clearness of its air have raised a hope in the minds of some of its inhabitants that Shaftesbury may become a summer health resort; but as long as the town is so difficult of access these hopes do not seem likely to be fulfilled to any great extent.

There are scarcely any historical events connected with Shaftesbury besides those already mentioned; but it is worthy of notice that once for a short time two royal ladies were held prisoners at the Abbey. Robert the Bruce, when on one occasion things were not going well with him, entrusted his second wife, Elizabeth, and her step-daughter, Marjory (the only child of his first wife, Isabella of Mar), to the care of his younger brother, Nigel Bruce, who was holding the strong Castle of Kildrummie, near the source of the Don, in Aberdeenshire. The castle was besieged by the English, under the Earls of Lancaster and Hereford, but when the magazine was treacherously burnt the garrison had to surrender. Nigel Bruce was taken to Berwick, tried, condemned, and executed. Elizabeth and Marjory were carried off across the border, and, with a view of placing them far beyond all chance of rescue, were ultimately handed over to the Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1313. King Edward II. allowed them twenty shillings a week for their maintenance, a sum of much greater value in those days than now. After the battle of Bannockburn (June, 1314), the Earl of Hereford, who had been taken prisoner by Bruce, was given up in exchange for the Queen, who during all her married life, with the exception of two years, had been in the hands of the English, for she had been married in 1304, and had been taken prisoner in 1306.

It is needful, before finishing this chapter, to explain the old saying about the churchyard being higher than the steeple. There was once a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist that stood at the south-west point of the hill on which Shaftesbury is built; this has long ago passed away, but its graveyard still remains. Its parish was amalgamated with that of St. James, whose church stands below the hill, and for some time the old churchyard of St. John’s served as the burial-ground for the united parishes. Hence arose the saying quoted. Speaking of St. James leads us to notice the interesting fact that part of this parish lies outside the municipal boundaries, and is situated in the Liberty of Alcester,[59] so called because this land belonged to a monastery at the town of Alcester, in Warwickshire, and was free from the payment of local tithes. Some have supposed that the word Alcester was the name of a Roman town, on the ruins of which Shaftesbury was built; but this is not the case.

In the early part of the eighteenth century a free school was founded by one William Lush, merchant, of Shaftesbury, for the education of a small number of boys and girls. A new scheme was drawn up about thirty years ago by the Charity Commissioners: new buildings were erected to the east of the town close to Cann Church, but within the boundaries of the parish of Shaston St. Peter, and in 1879 Shaftesbury Grammar School, as it is always called, was opened, the writer of this chapter holding the office then, and for fifteen years afterwards, of headmaster of the re-organised school, which, though never likely to be a large one, has already done, and is still doing, useful work in its own quiet and unobtrusive way.

Despite the fact that strangers may call Shaftesbury a sleepy place, and far behind the times in enterprise; despite the fact that it has fallen from its former importance, and may by some be looked on as a mere derelict—yet those who have known it and dwelt upon “The Rock” cannot but keep a tender spot in their memories for this quaint Dorset town.