Chapter IX: Part 9

Richard Howitt published in 1840 _The Gipsy King and other Poems_, and in 1868 _Wasp’s Honey: or Poetic Gold and Gems of Poetic Thought_. These contain much beautiful verse. The _Athenæum_ said of him, “He is healthfully English in his composition,” while Tennyson said, “Nature has been bountiful to you.” He won also the appreciation of Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, and Christopher North. A characteristic poem showing his delight in simple nature is _On a Daisy_, first seen by him in Australia. He died at Edingley, near Southwell. Interesting illustrative quotations from the works of the Howitts, Robert Millhouse, and other writers may be found in Wylie’s book already mentioned. Millhouse has been called “the Burns of Nottinghamshire,” and his sonnets have a simplicity and directness that indicate strength.

EDWARD HAWKSLEY published in 1829 some poems entitled _Colonel Hutchinson and other Poems_. In a poem on the Trent he makes special mention of Thomas Bailey--

“Last, Bailey tuned his sedgy reed,
And gave thee, rolling Trent, thy meed.”

In 1825 MARY ANN CURSHAM produced a long poem on _Martin Luther_, in three parts, containing altogether well over two thousand lines; and from Southwell, in 1844, came _The Eastern Princess_ and a drama entitled _Walberg, or Temptation_, by SOPHIA MARY SMITH. The publisher was W. Bunny. HENRY HOGG’S verses, published in 1852, have a pleasant smoothness and melody due to a close imitation of his poetic master, Tennyson, who at that time was evidently influencing considerably the local writers. In Tennyson’s Memoir it is recorded: “Towards the end of the year (1855) an unknown Nottingham artisan came to call. My father asked him to dinner, and at his request read _Maud_.” This artisan, it appears, had sent Tennyson his poems beforehand to read.

In illustration of Hogg’s style may be quoted these lines:--

“Till Knowledge from the statelier ranks
Shall come down unto earth, and lend
The faith to look beyond those banks
That skirt the life which has no end.

Whence some who look see nought but night,
And some feel nought but idle fears;
And grope in darkness for the light,
And waste a useless life in tears.

And some see lights that burn afar,
And hear a still voice wisely teach;
And live, and grasp their better star,
And rise on stronger wings, and reach
Unto the foremost fruits of time
Where Wisdom walketh, gathering Grace,
And swelling heaven-ward.”

EDWIN ATHERSTONE [1788–1872] was a voluminous writer. Among his works were the _Fall of Nineveh_ in thirty books; _Israel in Egypt_, containing nearly twenty thousand lines; and the _Last Days of Herculaneum_. He was a friend of John Martin the painter. He died at Bath, being at the time of his death in receipt of a pension of £100 a year.

In 1859 JOSEPH TRUMAN published a volume of verse “inscribed to the author of _Festus_ by his friend J. T.” The poems are pleasant reading and the work of a thoughtful man.

In some lines on Fox How we have:--

“Reverential earnest Arnold,
Warmly human, wisely good;
O! for more of Arnold-spirit,
In our age’s feverish blood!

More of conscience in the Nation,
More of Manhood in the Man,
Statutes in a fairer fashion,
Churches on a broader plan!”

And these lines give the spirit of the writer’s creed:--

“Sooner or later all souls shall be saved,
Else God’s love is defeated, or not rich
Like God’s, and still the pleading Christ must stand
In human earnest raising unto Him
Pathetic eyes dim with eternal tears.
For life is like a circle drawn by God,
And closes in the place it came from--heaven.”

Did space allow, many beautiful thoughts might be set down here from the poems of H. SEPTIMUS SUTTON [1825–1901], who has left behind him a volume of verse distinguished by delicate sentiment and much beauty of diction. He was educated at first for the medical profession, but finding some of the work incidental to it distasteful, he became a journalist and devoted himself to the cause of temperance, being editor of the _Alliance News_ for more than forty years. He was intimate with most of the writers of the “Sherwood Forest School,” and has left slight sketches of some of those writers in his _Clifton Grove Garland_.

The “modest” White--

“A youth, slow pacing, unawares impelled
By blind thought,”

who

“Lifted from the grass his meditative eyes”;

Philip James Bailey, who

“Came down the grove, dark-haired, deep-eyed,
And groundward looking; but I will be bound,
Not seeing aught he looked at on the ground”;

Miller, “the basket-maker”; Hall “with many a merry smile.”

Sutton’s poems won the appreciation of such judges as Francis William Newman, Frances Power Cobbe, Christina Rossetti, and George Macdonald.

One of his most exquisite productions is _Rose’s Diary_. What can be more beautiful than these lines?--

“SORROW

“The flowers live by the tears that fall
From the sad face of the skies,
And life would have no joys at all
Were there no watery eyes.
Love thou thy sorrow; grief shall bring
Its own excuse in after years;
The rainbow!--see how fair a thing
God hath built up from tears.”

And to the question, “Is life worth living?” hear Sutton’s answer:--

“How beautiful it is to be alive!
To wake each morn as if the Maker’s grace
Did us afresh from nothingness derive
That we might sing ‘How happy is our case!
How beautiful it is to be alive!’

To read in God’s great book, until we feel
Love for the love that gave it: then to kneel
Close unto Him Whose truth our souls will shrive,
While every moment’s joy doth more reveal
How beautiful it is to be alive.

Rather to go without what might increase
Our worldly standing, than our souls deprive
Of frequent speech with God, or than to cease
To feel, through having wasted health or peace,
How beautiful it is to be alive.

Not to forget, when pain and grief draw nigh,
Into the ocean of time past to dive
For memories of God’s mercies, or to try
To bear all sweetly, hoping still to cry
‘How beautiful it is to be alive!’

Thus ever towards man’s height of nobleness
Strive still some new progression to contrive;
Till, just as any other friend’s, we press
Death’s hand; and, having died, feel none the less
How beautiful it is to be alive.”

WILLIAM FRANK SMITH [1836–1876]. In 1864 a small volume was published by Smith, Elder & Co., _Poems by William Frank Smith_. It is dated from The Park, Nottingham, July 1864, and is dedicated to “W. W. Gull, Esq., M.D.,” the author being led to dedicate it thus “by a sense of gratitude for this, that among the hours of your laborious life you found time to encourage and appreciate my efforts when encouragement was indeed of great price to me.”

Smith was educated at Bromsgrove School. He became a doctor, and held the post of physician to the Sheffield Infirmary. His health broke down, and he died at the early age of forty.

The poems are sixteen in all, the most important being a trilogy--_Saint Bruno the Believer_, _Spinoza the Thinker_, and _Meister Cornelius the Worker_. They are evidently the production of a cultivated man with refined tastes and feelings, sensitive to the charms and varying moods of nature, and brooding, perhaps unhealthily, over the unsolved “riddle of this painful earth.”

There is in them much vividness of conception and beauty of description. The writer seems to have drawn his inspiration largely from the Ancient Classics and the Bible, from Tennyson, and mediæval speculations and pageantry.

A second edition of the poems appeared in 1879, with a memoir of the author by Dr. Pye Smith, and additional poems, including some translations from the Classics. To illustrate the style and spirit of the work, we quote from _Saint Bruno_:--

“But soon the music filled my thirsting ears
With richer harmonies,
The movement swifter grew, and then I saw
A curtain rise.
With sound of tinkling anklet bells there came
A train of laughing girls,
Dark-eyed, their braided raven tresses twined
With wreaths of pearls;
The silken rustling folds of Eastern robes
Half hid the glancing white
Of limbs divinely moulded; noiselessly
As flakes of light
From boughs in sunlight waved, their arching feet
Beat on the velvet ground
In time to that enchanted melody
That breathed around.
And sweetly chimed the silver anklet bells
While hand in hand they came,
Now bending towards me, now retiring poised
Like waving flame;
But still their dark enticing eyes were fixed
On mine unceasingly,
I might not turn away, I could not shun
Their witchery.”

As his death draws near, Spinoza soliloquises:--

“The polyp dies, his coral house remains,
The fragile ocean creatures melt away,
Their hollow spiral shells remain, perchance
For cycles hidden down beneath the earth.
I also pass away, and men no more
Shall hear my voice, but still my work remains.
In ages yet to come, high souls shall dwell
Within my palace, echoing my name
With reverence,

As one that draweth near
A fall of mighty waters in a pass,
What time the vale becomes a sunless chasm,
The overhanging rocks around him close,
He hears the awful thunder-voice more loud
Each step; even so, while now I draw more near
The awful presence, all my human life
Grows dark and narrow, all my soul is weak
With solemn awe,--with awe, but not with fear.”

The end of Meister Cornelius is impressively told. Perhaps these lines from a sonnet on the death of T. W. Buckle indicate Smith’s outlook upon life:--

“The strong right hand hath fallen from the standard,
To him, a man, was given to see the long
And dark world drama with unclouded eyes
Even as a God. Through centuries of wrong,
And sounding wars, and splendid tyrannies,
He saw the growth of thought august and strong,
The slow advance to mightier destinies.”

Of Thomas Miller a good notice appeared in the literary supplement of the _Nottingham Daily Guardian_ of the date December 18, 1906. Only passing mention can be made of John Hicklin, editor and part proprietor of the _Nottingham Journal_; of Ann Taylor, afterwards Mrs. Gilbert, of Ongar [1782–1866], a well-known writer of hymns and poems for children; of Samuel Collinson, whose _Autumn Leaves_, a small volume published in 1867, deserves mention if only for its graceful lines of dedication; of F. R. Goodyer, who wrote to the local journals many amusing parodies and comic verses on passing events, and was besides associated with William Bradbury in the production of a burlesque acted at Nottingham, _Ye Faire Maide of Clifton_.

Among translators are Gilbert Wakefield the Scholar [1756–1801], who made translations from Juvenal, Horace, and Virgil, and wrote metrical versions of one or two of the Psalms: and Ichabod Charles Wright [1795–1871], the translator of Homer and Dante. Wakefield’s translations are not very remarkable, and in his Horace renderings he does not attempt to reproduce the original metres. His Tenth Satire of Juvenal ends thus:--

“One blessing on ourselves we may bestow:
’Tis peace: and Virtue is our peace below:
No power hast thou where Wisdom’s altars rise;
We, Fortune! build thee shrines, we station in the skies.”

It seems strange that for one of the exercises of his muse he should have chosen a Psalm the last verse of which in his translation is:--

“Thrice blest the man, whose ruthless ears
Heed not the struggling mother’s moans:
Who from the breast her infant tears,
And dashes on the bleeding stones.”

GEORGE HICKLING, of Cotgrave [1827–1909], is better known perhaps to Nottinghamshire readers by his pen-name of “Rusticus.” Of lowly origin and circumstances and practically self-educated, he attained a respectable position in the local world of letters, and, if he did not achieve greatness, he produced work which showed that he had a sensitive and observant mind, and that he had by perseverance won a most creditable victory over limited opportunities. Much of his verse was contributed to the Nottingham newspapers, to which, towards the close of his life, he sent also communications in prose on agricultural and meteorological matters. Two collected volumes of his verse were published: _The Pleasures of Life, and other Poems_, which appeared in 1861. It was dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle, and has some introductory lines signed H. B., M.A., and dated Nottingham Park, September 22, 1859. The other, _Echoes from Nature; or the Song of the Woodland Muse, a Poem for the People_, is dated 1863, and dedicated to Frederick Webster, Esq. They consist largely of descriptive and reflective pieces, suggested by the village and its neighbourhood in which his life was spent. They contain also patriotic verse called forth by the current events of his time. There are in some of these poems, naturally, unconscious echoes of more illustrious writers, such as Goldsmith. This does not mean a charge of plagiarism; far from it: the thoughts of “Rusticus” were his own, and he clearly endeavoured to express them in his own simple words. But he would be as profoundly influenced by the books he read in his early days as boys are by the personal teaching of a vigorous and stimulating master. Characteristic quotation from him is not easy. Perhaps the following lines will give a fair idea of his style and thought. But his poems should be read whole and one with another.

“WHAT IS LOVE?

“Ah, What is love? No mortal tongue can tell:
It is the power that saves the earth from hell!
It is the spring of many a noble deed,
It shines refulgent in the Christian’s creed;
It smiles in every bursting bud and flower,
It has a voice in every passing hour;
It compasses the whole creation round,
And by its tendrils hearts to hearts are bound.
’Tis the pulsation of the universe,
It counteracts the evils of the curse;
The golden cord that pendent hangs from heaven;
The mystic ladder-way to mortals given;
It is the breath of blessed spirit throngs
When round the earth they breathe eternal songs.”

The _Nottingham Athenæum_ said of him that “he was the truest poet in our locality, and his present volume bears us out in our assertion”; and the _London Athenæum_: “Some of Mr. Hickling’s poems are excellent, and show great poetic power”; while the _Telegraph_ describes the verse as a pearl “as pure and priceless as any of the glittering gems that Nottingham genius has hitherto offered.”

In 1859 James Blackwood, of Paternoster Row, published a small volume of poems entitled, _The Flirting Page, a Legend of Normandy, and other Poems_, by Charles Dranfield and George Denham Halifax. “Charles Dranfield” was the pen-name of RICHARD FOSTER SKETCHLEY, who was born at Newark on 23rd July 1826. He was of far-reaching Newark ancestry, and was educated at the Magnus Grammar School, from which he proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford. In 1864 he was appointed Assistant-Keeper of the Science and Art Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, and held that post for thirty years. He was on the staff of _Punch_ for many years. A memorial notice of him was contributed to the _Magnus Magazine_ by Mr. T. M. Blagg, another old Magnus boy. It is clear from the testimony of his friends that Sketchley was a man of great charm of manner and singular modesty; his serious poems show that he had a cultured mind, refined and sensitive; that he had no common gift for humorous writing is evident from his connexion with such a paper as _Punch_, He died at Seaford in Sussex, and was buried there.

His chief poem in the volume mentioned above is _The Flirting Page_, in the style of the _Ingoldsby Legends_. It is amusing and well written, with a great command of rhyme, and shows that the writer had an extensive acquaintance with men and things. The more serious poems deal with incidents in the Crimean War, or with feelings aroused by memories of the far-off days of happy youth. Quotation is not easy; the poems should be read as wholes. These lines, from the Introduction to _The Flirting Page_, will illustrate the author’s gift of rhyme:--

“Leave business, and bullion, and British Bank bubbles
For woods and plantations, for fallows and stubbles:
Leave barracks and chambers, the clubs, and ‘the House’
For the mountains and moor, for the deer and the grouse,
For jungles and prairies, and lonely savannahs,
With rifles and pale ale, and lots of ‘Havanahs’;
Leave the porter of Barclay, the water of Thames,
For vin ordinaire and the waters of Ems:
Leave station and bridges, by railway and steamer,
For Keswick or Conway, for Antwerp or Lima;
For the Rhine or the Rhone,
Or the winding Saone:
For the valley of Chamouni, bent on pic-nicing
On the top of Mont Blanc with champagne and chicken;
For Rome to buy bronzes and gaze at the Pope;
For Naples whose king’s not so good as its soap;
For the Dove or the Danube, for Malvern or Mecca;
For the banks of the Wye, or the banks of the Neckar.”

And as specimen of the shorter poems, we may take to illustrate the writer’s sympathetic insight, two contrasted verses from “Peace and War (Sunday, November 5, 1854)”:--

“In the carved chancel stalls
Knelt a maiden in the sun;
And the marble on the walls
Told of fields her fathers won:
She was pleading in her love
That her lover might not die:
And the angels wept above
For they heard his dying cry.

* * * * *

Underneath the pollard oaks,
Clustered on a grassy knoll
Where the woodman’s ringing strokes
Never slash the slender bole;
Meeting death among his men,
Grasping still his father’s sword,
Never more to charge again,
Lay the loved one on the sward.”

It is clear that Sketchley’s work is too good to pass over without remark. He had the gift of rousing the emotions and kindling the imagination by a skilful touch of scenic colour, as when he speaks of “the grange beyond the wold” (perhaps a recollection of Tennyson’s “old mill across the wold”), and again,

“Where the rectory roses cluster, where the whitened cottage peers,
In the old manorial mansion, eyes were filled with thankful tears.”

The mention of Newark calls up the names of several writers whose works were published in that town when it was a publishing centre. For a more detailed account of these authors and their works the reader is referred to Mr. T. M. Blagg’s chapter on “Newark as a Publishing Town,” in his little book of Newark history.

In 1810, _Besthorpe, a Descriptive Poem by a Young Native_, was printed by Hage. Charles Snart, solicitor, angler, and poet, brought out a _Selection of Poems_, containing several pieces by himself. They have many allusions to the Trent and the writer’s love of the rod and line.

In 1823 John Atkin, of North Muskham, published _Jonah Tink_, the title being an anagrammatic transposition of the letters of the writer’s name. In 1830 appeared _Cambria, Raymond, and other Poems_, by a Lady; and in the same year _The Power of Gold_, by H. N. Bousfield, undergraduate of Queen’s College, Cambridge; and in 1862 _Sonnets_, by Thomas Lester, a schoolmaster at Ossington. At an earlier date (1793) Allen and Ridge had produced _Miscellaneous Poems_, by R. P. Shilton.

_Jonah Tink_ has no claim to the title of poetry as the elegant expression of subtle or deep feeling, and the idealized description of nature, character, and action; it is merely a rhymed and not over-grammatical account of the rise of an industrious and well-conducted farm-servant to wealth and an influential position; it is a kind of rhymed commentary on Hogarth’s Industrious Apprentice. Its value lies in its descriptive touches of the life of a certain section of society at the time it was written, and its incidental allusions to social abuses and customs. From the preface it appears that Atkin was originally a carpenter and joiner by trade, and afterwards became master of the Free School in his native village. He mentions a visit to a “personally unknown bard,” Mr. Benjamin Kemp, of Farnsfield. He had his full share of pedagogic authoritativeness, and it is amusing to read that he “disbelieved the theory” of Sir Isaac Newton as to gravitation. He makes a disparaging reference to Southey,

“I should ’tis sure
Like S--th--y gain a sinecure,”

adding in a note, “In the year 1818 no fewer than four Marriages of the Royals took place, which formerly would have caused the Laureate to invoke the Sackbut, but not a line had been produced by the State Poet.”

Bousfield’s _Power of Gold_ is more literary in its form. It deals with the warping and corrupting influence of wealth on naturally good dispositions, and is religious in tone, as are many others of Bousfield’s poems. Among the subscribers to the book were Michael Thomas Sadler, M.P.; Dr. Sleath, Master of Repton; and Henry Willoughby, M.P. One line in the poem on wealth, “To temper earth with antepast of heaven,” suggests by its archaism that the writer was familiar with the earlier writers of verse. It is perhaps not without interest to mention that, as the scientific imagination of Erasmus Darwin anticipated the invention of aeroplanes, so John Atkin foreshadowed the era of the bicycle and motor car by his allusion to the actual use in his time of the “velocipede”--a beast which “wanted neither corn nor hay.”

Other local verse-writers who in this paper must be only names are:--Matthew Unwin [1755–1786], Sidney Giles [1814–1846], Charles Hooton [1810–1847], Edward Hind, Lucy Joynes [1781–1851], William Calvert, John Wright, Frank Browne, Mary Ann Carter, William Powers Smith, E. G. Pickering, Samuel Mullen, and H. Bradbury Mellors. Nor should we forget David Love [1750–1827], packman and ballad-monger. He was a Scotchman by birth. Two portraits of him were exhibited by the Thoroton Society at the conversazione held in 1900.

A cursory glance at the work of our local poets will make it plain that they reflect the dominant literary tendencies of various epochs, “the spacious times of great Elizabeth,” when sonnets expressed the amours and gallantries of the Queen’s Court; the dramatic impulse and fantastic compositions of the early Stuart period; the satirical poems of the age of Dryden; the simplicity, fondness for nature, and reflective poetry of Wordsworth and Browning. There do not appear any clear traces of the influence of Keats and Shelley.

It may be objected that much of the verse spoken about is not poetry at all. But the objection is scarcely valid. Great gifts of vivid imagination and creative genius, with the power of apt, vigorous, and melodious expression, are granted to few. Minor writers can, however, act the part of the ancient pædagogos by leading us on to the great masters of thought and song; or, to vary the figure, they dig from the deep mines of thought gems to polish and set for daily use by busy, practical, unlearned men. They change the pure gold into current coin. And though Spedding speaks “of the tricks of these versifying times (about 1842) born of superficial sensibility to beauty and a turn for setting to music the current doctrines and fashionable feelings of the day,” it will be found that, with few exceptions, our writers are honourably distinguished for their independence of thought, and truthful spontaneous naturalness.

In conclusion, this paper lays no claim to exhaustive treatment of its subject, either in respect of the writers enumerated or the short notices of some of them. Time, space, and opportunity have been against both the one and the other. The writer has done his work amid a pressure of other occupations; and he craves the indulgence which is usually shown towards errors or omissions--

“Quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura.”

If his work should be another step onwards towards a complete anthology of the native verse, and should lead Nottinghamshire men to a fuller knowledge and keener appreciation of their county writers, it will have its full reward.

NOTTINGHAM

BY W. P. W. PHILLIMORE

The first historical reference to Nottingham which we possess is but a little more than a thousand years ago, and though it is likely enough that there were at a very much earlier date some few dwellings along the southern slopes of the hills upon which the city stands, or cave dwellings hewn out of the soft sandstone rock, it is unlikely that it had become of any importance before the Saxon period, to which it is obvious that its name, anciently Snotingaham, belongs. It is apparently tribal in its origin, indicating the home or dwelling of the descendants of Snod; possibly the early form of our modern surname of Snow. There are but few other places in England whose names may have a similar origin. In Kent we find Snode Bridge and Snodland, in Dorset is Nottington, and in Hampshire, a few miles west of Andover, is an obscure hamlet called Snottington. Snenton, now an integral part of Nottingham, is said to have the same derivation, and the local historians identify it with the Notintone of Domesday. Medieval writers have ascribed a much greater antiquity to Nottingham, and have given it the strange name of Tiguocobauc, said to mean a place of caves. The tradition of King Ebranc and of the slaughter of the Britons here points to a belief in medieval days in the great antiquity of the town. But beyond the existence of cave dwellings, which after all may be quite modern in origin, and the discovery of a few bronze implements, we have no tangible evidence of any higher antiquity, and the physical characteristics of the site further militate against the claim. With the forest coming near the town on the north, and the alluvial marsh lands on the south, the site must in early times have been very inaccessible, a fact which doubtless attracted those who first selected the Castle rock as a military stronghold. The Castle and St. Mary’s and Snenton churches form the ends of a double horseshoe. Between them lies the town facing the south, with the rock dwellings of Snenton Hermitage at one end, and those under the Castle rock, known in later times as the Papist Holes, at the other end. Until destroyed by the Great Northern Railway extensions in recent years, the rock dwellings at the foot of the rock at Snenton, on which stands St. Stephen’s Church, were an interesting characteristic of the village.

The Danish invasion of Mercia brought Nottingham into prominence. It became one of the five principal towns of the Danelagh--Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, and Stamford, being the other four--and though the Danish dominion was not of long duration, it left a very permanent mark on the town. The gateways in the town walls were known as “Bars,” instead of “Gates” as in the south of England, and the last of these, Chapel Bar, pulled down in the eighteenth century, still survives in name, forming a familiar part of the great western outlet of the town. The other trace of the Danish occupation is the almost universal use of “Gate” instead of “Street.” Two hundred years ago the only streets were Stoney Street and Pepper Street, the other principal thoroughfares being known as Gates or Rows, while the lesser ones were called Lanes. Wheeler Gate, Goose Gate, Peter Gate, Mary Gate, Long Row, Smithy Row, and Friar Lane are familiar to all Nottingham people, and within the last half century we still had Sheep Lane and Chandlers’ Lane. These last have given place to Market Street and Victoria Street, just as in the previous century Sadler Gate, the continuation of Bridlesmith Gate, very inappropriately became High Street, and Cow Lane and Girdlesmith Gate were renamed Clumber Street and Pelham Street.

Although there was right in the centre of the town one of the largest market-places in the kingdom, the ways out in every direction were remarkably narrow, and even within recent years two carts could not pass one another in Pelham Street, the principal eastern exit. The widening of Cow Lane, now Clumber Street, in the eighteenth century, followed by the demolition of Chapel Bar, improving the ways out on the north and west, were the earliest attempts at town improvement. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw the construction of Albert Street and the widening of Lister Gate on the south, the conversion of Chandlers’ Lane into Victoria Street, and the change in Sheep Lane by widening it so as to form Market Street. King Street and the widening of Wheeler Gate are the most recent of the street improvements in the centre of the town.

As a military post in early times, Nottingham was of considerable importance. The great rock, upon which stood the Castle, with its natural means of defence, was obviously well suited for a military stronghold. The Castle, built or rebuilt by William the Conqueror, was guarded by William Peverel, and somewhat more than a hundred years later it became the stronghold of John, when Earl of Mortein, in his rebellion against his brother, King Richard I, by whom it was besieged in 1194. It was at Nottingham Castle, in 1330, that Edward III struck the blow which ended the usurpation of Isabella and Mortimer, through the help of Eland, the Governor, who revealed to him the existence of the secret passage down into the valley of the Leen, which ever since has borne the name of Mortimer’s Hole, now so familiar to Nottingham people. Throughout his reign Edward III was often at Nottingham Castle, and held some of his Parliaments here. It continued to be a royal fortress and residence, but after the Wars of the Roses was allowed to fall into decay. From the description which Leland the antiquary gives of it in the reign of Henry VIII, the buildings must have been of great extent and importance, but no illustrations of it have been preserved, and there now only remains the entrance gateway of this famous fortress as an indication of its former greatness. A plan of it is given in the local histories, upon which the late Mr. T. C. Hine based an imaginative picture of it. In the reign of James I it was granted to the Earl of Rutland, and so became private property. It was then so ruinous that that King, on his visit to Nottingham, could find no suitable lodging in it, and was obliged to stay in the town itself. Only once again was Nottingham Castle concerned with military matters, and that was in 1642, when King Charles I here raised his standard against the Parliament. The next year it fell into the possession of the Parliament, and was held by the famous Colonel Hutchinson, who defended it against royalist attacks. Of the siege we have the well-known narrative related by Mrs. Hutchinson in the _Life_ of her husband, which she wrote. After the Civil War the Castle was dismantled, and its military history ended. It was afterwards bought by the Duke of Newcastle, who demolished the remains, and in 1674 commenced the erection of the present stately building, which was completed by his son in 1679, but was occupied as a residence by the Newcastle family for hardly a hundred years, being afterwards let to tenants. At the time of the Reform Riots in 1832, it was burnt down by the mob, and remained a blackened ruin until, in 1878, it was acquired on a long lease by the Corporation of Nottingham, and converted into an art museum.

One remarkable feature continued in Nottingham right into the eighteenth century, and that was the division of the town into the English and French boroughs. The English part of the town was that surrounding the mother church of St. Mary; the French, or the new town, comprised the districts now forming the parishes of St. Peter and St. Nicholas. For the two divisions of the borough, between which the market-place was divided, it was customary to elect separate juries. Indeed, the custom of electing two sheriffs and two coroners, which prevailed until the Municipal Reform Act of 1835, has been thought to have a similar origin.

In the middle ages Nottingham was a place of military rather than of ecclesiastical importance. Town and county until the nineteenth century owed allegiance to the far-off cathedral of St. Peter at York. The Grey Friars and the White Friars, as well as the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, had houses here, but of these establishments all traces save street names have long since disappeared. And of the great priory at Lenton, founded by Peverel, there are left only the fragments of two Norman pillars to indicate the strength and majesty of that building. Until the last century there were but three parish churches in the town. St. Peter’s structurally is the most ancient, for parts of it appear to date from the twelfth century, and it may be regarded in some respects as more interesting than the more important church of St. Mary’s. St. Nicholas, the smallest of the three ancient churches, demolished for military reasons in 1647, was rebuilt some thirty years later, and is notable as being one of the comparatively few examples there are of late seventeenth century church work built in the pointed style. But the glory of Nottingham is the great church of St. Mary built in the middle of the ancient English borough, its tower rivalling in prominence the castle at the other end of the town. From an architectural point of view this splendid cruciform church has the advantage that, with the exception of the chancel, which was built at a somewhat later date, the whole of it belongs to the best period of the Perpendicular style. Its present internal characteristic, lightness, was noted by the antiquary John Leland, in Henry VIII’s time, who described it as having “so many fair windows that no artificer could imagine to set more.”

In the early nineteenth century began the building of additional churches necessitated by the growth of the town, and of these the first was St. James on Standard Hill, which in its name commemorates an ancient chapel that had long before disappeared. Of the many new churches which have been built in the past century, or of the efforts of the various nonconformist bodies who similarly have sought to supply the religious requirements of the town, it is impossible here to do more than allude.

The great increase of Nottingham during the past hundred years has been due to the trade of the place, but this is no mere modern development. In the middle ages the “little smith of Nottingham who doth the work that no man can,” was as famous as his successors at the present day upon whose skill depend the great staple trades of lace and hosiery. Smithy Row, Bridlesmith Gate, Girdlesmith Gate, Bellar Gate, and Bellfounders’ Yard point out to us where the ancient craftsmen in metal carried on their industries. Many other trades have been carried on from time to time, and one of these, dyeing, left us a picturesque reminder in the fields of saffron which, in springtime and in autumn, were, until the great extension of building on the southern side of the town, so conspicuous a feature of the Nottingham Meadows.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century the growth and prosperity of the town was greatly restricted by the commonable lands surrounding it which could not be built upon; but in 1845, under an Inclosure Act, the commonable rights were extinguished, thus permitting the needful extension of the town. So long ago as 1787 the need of inclosure was realised, but steadily and persistently opposed by the Corporation, whose past action largely contributed to the creation of insanitary areas, which in recent years have in some measure been swept away at a vast expense, partly by railway extensions without cost to the town, partly under improvement schemes at the expense of the ratepayer.

The population of Nottingham, less than 25,000 at the end of the eighteenth century, has increased at least tenfold in the past hundred years. An ancient borough by prescription, now a titular city, it has a series of charters from the time of Henry II, and for more than 600 years has had a mayor and the right of returning members to Parliament. It is also a county in itself, though through the supposed exigencies of the case the site of the Shire Hall in the middle of the town belongs to the county. The Corporation is a very wealthy body, possessed of large estates producing more than £30,000 a year, besides the revenue which it draws from the profits of its commercial undertakings, such as the trams, the gasworks, and the waterworks, not to mention the contributions of the ratepayers, whose burdens, despite the Corporation estates, are not less than those of other towns. In 1877 the area of the borough was extended by the inclusion of the neighbouring parishes of Snenton, Lenton, Radford, Basford, and Bulwell, and in 1897 it was by royal charter created a city.

Some reference may properly be made to the individual activity of Nottingham citizens. The religious work of the town is mainly dependent upon voluntary contributions, and in medical matters the various hospitals of the town form a striking testimony to this principle; while voluntary education is well represented by the High School and the Blue Coat School. Even the University College owes its origin to the anonymous gift of £10,000, and it is a matter of common knowledge that the great religious and social organisation known as the Salvation Army, which is based wholly upon volunteer work, was founded by a native of Nottingham. The literary activity of the town has not been small. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Dr. Standfast, the rector of Clifton, founded the professional library known by his name, which is merged in Bromley House Library, established in 1816. But even in much humbler ranks of life the value of books was recognised. Few perhaps realise what the working classes of Nottingham did before rate-supported libraries were started. Seventy years ago there were at least six operatives’ libraries supported by the weekly pence of working men, and the remarkable point about them--surprising perhaps to modern philanthropists--is, that they were situated at obscure taverns in some of the poorest parts of the town. That at the Rancliffe Arms, founded in 1835, had 2200 volumes; another at the Seven Stars owned about 1800 volumes, and the one at the Alderman Wood possessed 2150 volumes, while the Oddfellows’ Library had 2300. There was another at the People’s Hall, and in 1836 was founded the Mechanics’ Institution, which, with its library, lectures, and classes, has done such valuable work for the intellectual advancement of the town, and is a centre of great literary activity. Even the rate-supported Public Library was based upon the old Artisans’ Library, which was founded as long ago as 1824.

At Nottingham is one of the ancient crossing places of the river Trent, the history of which dates back about a thousand years, for the building of a bridge here has been ascribed to Edward the Elder. The large expanse of alluvial land between the town and the present bed of the Trent necessitated in fact more than one bridge, as is hinted at in the colloquial plural form, not perhaps yet obsolete, of the Trent bridges, instead of merely Trent bridge. Passing the meadows from the foot of St. Mary’s rock, a series of bridges carried the London road to the narrow stone bridge of eighteen or twenty arches, which, forty years ago, was superseded by the present bridge of stone and iron.

Medieval records have much to tell us of the building of the Trent bridge. Then, as now, the maintenance of the bridge was provided for without calling upon the townsmen for enforced contributions in the shape of rates. Seven hundred years ago the care and maintenance of the bridge was undertaken by the Hospital of St. John, in Nottingham, and in 1231 we have the record of “indulgences” of thirteen days given to those aiding in the building of the bridge of Hoybel at Nottingham--doubtless the structure known in later times as the Hethbeth bridge, a name of which the origin has not been satisfactorily determined.

Bridges, then, were largely maintained with ecclesiastical support by voluntary gifts, as is shown by various episcopal records granting “indulgences” for their benefit. A chapel was commonly associated with a bridge, and the Trent bridge, with the chapel of St. Mary at the north end, was no exception to the rule. In 1303 John le Paumer of Nottingham, and Alice his wife, settled property in Nottingham amounting to the substantial annual value of £6, 13s. 5d. for the endowment of two chaplains for a daily service in the chapel of St. Mary at Hethbeth bridge, “for the souls of them, their ancestors, and all Christians who assign their goods or part of them for the maintenance of the bridge.” John le Paumer died within the next few years, but his widow, Alice le Paumer, continued the good work, and in 1311 she obtained a grant of pontage, or the right of levying tolls on wares brought over the bridge, in order to provide the necessary funds, and provision was made for auditing the proceeds and the expenditure which she incurred. For fifteen or sixteen years the work seems to have continued under her care, for there exists in the Patent Rolls record of various grants to this lady in connection with the bridges. In 1314 occurs the specific statement that she was then building the bridge of Hethbeth, and four years later that the right to take pontage is extended for a further period of four years to provide also for the repair of any bridge to be built between Hethbeth bridge and the land towards “Gameleston,” now Gamston. This second bridge seems to have been built within the space of two years, for in July 1321 it was still spoken of as “to be built,” and in November 1323 it is stated to be “newly built.” In 1324 Alice le Paumer received a further grant of pontage for three years for the repair of Hethbeth bridge and “the bridge of the new breach by the said bridge.”

It is not altogether easy to determine what these two bridges were. Between our modern Trent bridge and the land towards Gamston there could not have been any bridge, and the situation of the two bridges must be sought for somewhere in the London road between the town and West Bridgford. The Hethbeth bridge has been assumed to be, and probably correctly, the southern part of that series of arches which carry the roadway over the meadows to the south of the Leen. From the alluvial conformation of the land it is not unlikely that the Trent may have altered its course, or that it may have become divided here. If so the old stone bridge demolished some forty years ago would be that built by Alice le Paumer about 1321–1323, and described as the bridge of the “new breach,” an expression perhaps indicative of some new course then made by the Trent.

The ancient stone bridge, which the older inhabitants of the city well remember, stood a little to the west of the present iron structure. One or two of the arches at the southern end have been left standing, and they indicate its width, or perhaps one might rather say its narrowness, in medieval times, though at some later period the bridge was widened, but not sufficiently to permit of a footpath on either side, and the only refuge from the traffic available for pedestrians was to be found in the angular recesses which surmounted the buttresses. Most of the arches of the bridge were pointed and narrow, dating probably from the time of Alice le Paumer, but those at the northern end had been rebuilt in the seventeenth century in a wider and rounded style. It was a picturesque and interesting structure, and as far as traffic was concerned at the time of its demolition, amply sufficed for the needs of the district. Only on market days was the foot passenger troubled by the traffic across the bridge--a great contrast to the present time, when the bridge has to serve the requirements of the populous suburb which has taken the place of the little country village of West Bridgford. It was in 1870 that the present Trent bridge was opened to traffic, and shortly after the ancient structure, which for so many centuries had served the needs of the men of Nottingham, was removed, all save the arches, which serve as the entrance to the riverside walk to Wilford. Those who are curious about relics of the past may like to know that some of the stonework of the old Trent bridge was utilised in building a new aisle to Plumtree Church.

The Trent bridge is richly endowed, and out of the revenues of the bridge estate were provided the funds needed to build the present structure, without recourse to the ratepayer. These endowments are of ancient standing, and in an extension of this system of voluntary endowment followed by our ancestors may yet be found the way to relieve the ratepayer of the ever-increasing burden of local taxation.

Half a century ago there were in the county but two bridges across the Trent--at Nottingham and Newark. Now we have in addition those at Wilford and Gunthorpe, besides the two railway bridges at Nottingham. As against this must be set the recent discontinuance of the ancient ferry which from Roman times or even earlier had existed at Littleborough.

This sketch of the history and character of a great city is imperfect, as such attempts must be when limited to the space of a few pages. Perhaps it will suffice to show that Nottingham is no mean city, but one of which the inhabitants are rightly proud. Those who have settled there by choice, and those who are natives of the town, alike pride themselves upon it with good reason.

SOUTHWELL

BY W. E. HODGSON,

_Priest-Vicar of Wells Cathedral, and late Assistant-Curate of
Southwell Minster_

Hidden in a hollow amidst the undulating downs which skirt the vale of Trent, Southwell has escaped the notice which it deserves from both the antiquary and the historian. Its annals are not wildly exciting, for the streets of the little township have not often resounded to the clash of arms, nor its halls been the scene of statesmen’s high debate; but its history is really interesting to the serious student, for in some ways it is unique. And above all, the lover of our church architecture finds in the stones of the Minster a majesty of conception, mixed with an extreme delicacy of detail, which it is not easy to excel.

The best way to approach Southwell is to travel by the road from Nottingham which passes through Thurgarton, the low road the natives call it, for when the pilgrim has breasted Brackenhurst Hill, he is greeted by a truly artistic view: the sight of Southwell Minster nestling in the valley below, framed in a plentiful surrounding of trees, and banked with a pleasing profusion of red-tiled roofs. It is the south side of the church which is thus seen, and the picture of the cathedral standing in the midst of green fields, once the Archbishop of York’s park, seems the very ideal of peace and tranquillity. It is indeed a true epitome of the whole story of the church and town.

The history of Southwell is known to reach back to the year 956, but like many other places whose origins are uncertain, that history has been extended still further back into the past, till it rests on the very weakest of foundations. The mistake arose partly, no doubt, from a desire to attach to the church the well-known name of some pioneer of Christianity in this land, and partly from the mistaken identity of the locality of Tiovulfingacester, the place near which, so Bede tells us, Paulinus baptized large numbers of converts in the Trent. Camden, who is followed by all the local historians, describes Paulinus as the founder of the first church at Southwell, but there is no real evidence to support this assertion, and we must be content to admit that the origin of the place is unknown. The locality, however, was inhabited during the Roman occupation of Britain, for undoubted Roman remains have been discovered. A piece of pavement can be seen beneath some old wooden stalls in the south limb of the transept of the Minster, and when some digging was in progress a few years ago in the garden of the Residence House, to the east of the Minster, the remains of a Roman wall were discovered. These remains were photographed before they were covered up again, and it is quite possible in the summer to trace the course of the masonry beneath the lawn by the lighter shade of green which it causes the grass above it to assume. Experts, to whom the fragments of pottery and other things which have been dug up in the garden have been shown, are convinced of their genuineness. Whether the Roman occupation took the form of a villa or an encampment we cannot tell; but the sheltered hollow in which Southwell lies is one that would have taken the fancy of some magnate seeking a site for his country house, for it would have been easily accessible from the Trent, and was also within a few miles of the Fosse way. But this is all conjecture, and though at any time the spade may reveal direct evidence of earlier history, yet at present we can only start with certainty at the year 956 A.D.

There is no direct evidence to show in what diocese Southwell lay before 956, for it is uncertain whether that part of Nottinghamshire belonged to Lindsey or Mercia. If the boundary lay to the west of Southwell, then it was in Lindsey and in the diocese of Sidnaceaster,[52] and the province of York, but if to the east, it was in Mercia, and so in the diocese of Lichfield and the province of Canterbury. Nottingham itself was in Mercia,[53] but Newark seems always to have belonged to the Archbishops of York, and so was probably in Lindsey.[54] There is ample evidence to suppose that the boundary lay between Southwell and Newark, a supposition to which the connection of the former with St. Eadburg lends weight. This connection of St. Eadburg is unfortunately not at all clear. In a tractate on the burial-places of English saints, which was apparently a kind of pilgrims’ guide to famous shrines (the oldest extant copy is assigned to the year 1015), there is the following entry: “There resteth St. Eadburg in the Minster near the water which is called Trent.” St. Eadburg, abbess of the monastery of Repton, died at the beginning of the eighth century; she was a lady of Mercian royal descent, and the friend of St. Guthlac, the founder of Croyland, to whom on one occasion she sent a coffin and a winding-sheet, with a request that he should use them when the proper time arrived. These strange gifts St. Guthlac is said to have ordered to be used after his death.[55]

St. Eadburg of Repton is generally considered to be the saint of that name whose shrine was mentioned in the pilgrims’ guide as being at Southwell. But why was she buried at Southwell? It has been conjectured that she founded a monastery there; but there is no evidence of this, and as far as we have any certain knowledge there does not seem to have ever been a time when any regular Order was established at Southwell. Tradition also is silent on the point. Before 956 Southwell was probably a royal estate, and perhaps one of the least disturbed parts of Mercia. Besides, in those days, the peregrinations of the bones of saints were not infrequent, and St. Eadburg’s must have been moved to Southwell some time after her death, as it appears that St. Eadburg’s body lay at the Monastery of Limming or Lyminge in Kent for over 150 years. For there are references to her in two charters in Birch’s _Cartularium Saxonicum_.

(1) A grant of land in Canterbury, A.D. 804, by Coenulph, King of the Mercians, and Cuthred, King of the Cantuarii, to Selethryth, Abbess of the Convent at Limming, “ubi pausat corpus beatæ Eadburgæ.” (B.C.S. 317, Cod. Dip. 188.)

(2) A grant by Athelstan to the church of St. Mary, Lyminge, of land at Vlaham or Elham in Kent, A.D. 964. In this charter Lyminge is described as the place “ubi sepulta est sancta Eadburga.” (B.C.S. 1126.)