Chapter XXI

UP-HILL from Stilton, three-quarters of a mile away, but well within sight, stands the Norman Cross inn, where the Peterborough, Louth, Lincoln, and Hull coaches turned off to the right.

[Picture: Norman Cross]

Norman Cross! how many have been those old-time cyclists who have partaken of the hospitality of the inn here! Not always, though, has it been a place of welcome memories. For years, indeed, during the long struggles between England and France, this was the site of one of the largest of the prisons in which captured French soldiers were incarcerated. Over three thousand were placed here, officers and privates, some remaining captive for more than ten years. Happy those who, through influence or by mere luck, were selected to be exchanged for our soldiers, prisoners in France.

It was a weary time for those poor fellows. Many of them died in the great insanitary sheds in which they were confined, and others lost their reason. Desperate men sometimes succeeded in escaping to the coast, where friends were awaiting them. Others, wandering over the lonely flats, perished miserably in the dykes and drains into which they fell when the mists shrouded the countryside. There were, again, those who stabbed the sentries and made off. Such an one was Charles François Marie Bonchew, an officer, who had wounded, but had not killed, a sentry named Alexander Halliday. Being captured, he was sentenced to death at Huntingdon, and was brought back to Norman Cross to be executed, September 1808. All the prisoners were turned out to witness the execution, and the garrison was under arms.

But it was not all savagery and horror here among those military captives, for they were often allowed out on parole, within certain hours and well-defined bounds. It was understood that no prisoner out on parole should leave the highroad, nor was he to be at large after sunset. If he disregarded these rules he was liable to be shot at sight by any one who had a gun handy. He was an Ishmael against whom every hand was turned, and, indeed, the Post Office offered a reward of £5 to any mail guard who, seeing a prisoner breaking parole, should shoot him. After several inoffensive farm-labourers, going home after dusk, had been peppered with shot in mistake by guards anxious to secure this reward, the village streets and roads adjacent became singularly desolate when a coach was heard approaching.

There were exceptions to these strict rules, and officers of high rank—and consequently assumed to have a nicer sense of honour than that obtaining among subalterns and the rank and file—were permitted to take private lodgings at Stilton. Those were the fortunate ones. Most of the prisoners, unhappily, were penniless, and after a time even their own Government refused supplies for their maintenance. Accordingly, they obtained some few little luxuries, and employed the time that hung so heavily on their hands, by carving toys and artistic nick-nacks out of fragments of wood, or from the bones left from their rations, and selling them to the crowds of country folks who came to gaze at them on certain days. Straw-plaiting, too, was a prisoners’ industry, until it was stopped by some of the military in charge.

In March, 1812, Sergeant Ives, of the West Essex Militia, was stopped on the highway between Stilton and Norman Cross by a number of persons unknown, who, after having knocked him down and robbed him of his money and watch, wrenched open his jaws, and with savage cruelty, cut off a piece of his tongue. It was supposed that this outrage was in revenge for his having been concerned in suppressing the plait trade at Norman Cross barracks.

The prisoners were not entirely without spiritual consolation, for the good Bishop de Moulines appointed himself their chaplain, and, of his own free will leaving France, took up residence at Stilton. He attended them in sickness, and helped them out of his own resources.

The officers in charge of these prisoners were often brutal, but that there were some who sympathised with their sorrows is evident from the tablet still to be seen in Yaxley Church, a mile distant, which tells of the gratitude of the prisoners for the kindness shown them by Captain John Draper, R.N., who died after being in charge of the prison for only eighteen months.

Norman Cross Prison, or “Yaxley Barracks”—Norman Cross being in the parish of Yaxley—built in 1796; was demolished in 1816, and no vestige of it is left.

And so all recollection of these things might in time have faded away had it not been for the monument erected by the wayside in the fateful year 1914. Let us pause to consider that moment. Events were hurrying towards the beginning of the Great War of 1914–18, and the nation in general was wholly ignorant of what was coming. Stupidly ignorant, for there were many omens. It was at this moment, afterwards seen to be so full of tragedy, that the memorial pillar on, or near, the site of Yaxley Barracks, to the memory of those French prisoners of war, was unveiled, July 28th, 1914, by Lord Weardale. A gilded bronze French Imperial eagle stoops on the crest of a handsome pillar, and on the plinth is a tablet stating that this is a memorial to 1770 French prisoners who died in captivity.

[Picture: French Prisoners of War Monument, Norman Cross]

These incidents, “picked from the wormholes of long vanished days,” give romance to the otherwise featureless road onwards to Kate’s Cabin and Water Newton. The “Kate’s Cabin” inn is mentioned by every road-book of coaching-times, but no one ever condescended to explain the origin of this curious sign, and the inn itself, once standing in the receipt of custom at the cross-roads, three miles and a half from Norman Cross, is now a pretty cottage.

[Picture: Sculptured figure, Water Newton Church] Nearly two miles onward, Water Newton comes in sight, standing, dry and secure, on its knoll above the water-meadows on the river Nene. On the western face of its church tower, which originally, before Wansford bridge was built and the road diverted, faced the highway, may yet be seen a tabernacle containing an ancient effigy of a man in semi-ecclesiastical attire, his hands clasped in prayer. An inscription in Norman French may with some difficulty be deciphered beneath it, inviting the passer-by to pray for the soul of Thomas Purden:—

“VOVS KE PAR
ISSI PASSEZ
POVR LE ALME
TOMAS PVR
DEN PRIEZ.”

Read aloud, we perceive this to be intended for rhyme.

No one prays for the soul of Thomas Purden nowadays, for these two very excellent and individually sufficient reasons—that prayers for the dead are not customary in the Church of England, and that, since the road has been diverted, there are no passers-by.

This brings us to the reason why Thomas Purden should have expected wayfarers to intercede for his soul. That he expected them to do this out of gratitude seems obvious; but it is not at first evident for what they should be so grateful. We are, however, to bear in mind that a road passed down beside this church tower in those days, where no road—only a meadow—exists to-day. The meadow slopes steeply to the river, and doubtless a ford, a ferry, or some primitive bridge was established here by Thomas Purden long before even a wooden bridge existed at Wansford. In providing some safe method by which travellers might pass this river, even now subject to dangerous floods, Purden would have been a benefactor in the eyes alike of men and of Holy Church, and fully entitled to the prayers and intercessions of all.

[Picture: Water Newton Church]

For many years the head of the figure had disappeared, but when the church was restored, some years since, an ingenious mason fitted him with another which had, in the usual careless fashion of restorers, been knocked off something else. And it is a simple truth that since its “restoration,” Water Newton church is sadly bare.

By the wayside, on the left, against the wall of a farm-house residence, will be noticed an old milestone and horseman’s upping-block combined. It marks the 81st mile from London, and bears the initials “E. B.,” together with the date, 1708. This is perhaps the only survivor of a series which, according to De Foe, in his “Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain,” a Mr. Boulter was projecting “to London, for the general benefit.”

[Picture: Edmund Boulter’s Milestone]

Edmund Boulter was one of the family who were then seated at Gawthorp Hall, near Leeds, and who, not much later, sold that property to Henry Lascelles, father of the first Lord Harewood.

At the hamlet of Sibson, on the left hand in descending toward the level-crossing at Wansford station, may still be seen the stocks and whipping-post beside the road. To the right flows the winding Nene, through illimitable oozy meadows, its course marked in the far distance by the pollard willows that line its banks. The Nene here divides the counties of Huntingdonshire and Northants, Wansford itself lying in the last-mentioned county and Stibbington on the hither side of the river. The famous Wansford Bridge joins the two, and helps to render Wansford and Stibbington one place in the eyes of strangers. Both places belong to the Duke of Bedford, Stibbington bearing the mark of its ownership distinctly visible in its severe and uncomfortable-looking “model” modern-gothic stone houses, with the coroneted “B” on their gables. In this manner the accursed Russells have bedevilled many of the villages and townlets unhappily owned by them, and the feelings of all who live in their earmarked houses must be akin to those of paupers who inhabit workhouses and infirmaries, with the important exception that the Duke’s tenants pay rent and taxes. Wansford, fortunately, has not been rebuilt, and it is possible for the villagers to live without an uncomfortable sense of belonging, body and soul, to the Dukes of Bedford.

The famous “Haycock” inn, usually spoken of as at Wansford, is, in fact, on the Huntingdonshire side of the bridge, and in Stibbington. Its sign alludes to the supposed origin of the curious nick-name of “Wansford-in-England,” first mentioned in that scarce little early eighteenth-century book, _Drunken Barnaby’s Four Journeys to the North of England_. In its pages he describes being carried off by a flood:—

“On a haycock sleeping soundly,
Th’ River rose and took me roundly
Down the current: People cry’d;
Sleeping, down the Stream I hy’d:
‘Where away,’ quoth they, ‘from Greenland?’
‘No, from Wansforth-brigs in England.’”

This “in England” has puzzled many. It really refers to the situation of Wansford in Northamptonshire, near, but not in, “Holland”—the Holland division of Lincolnshire.

[Picture: The “Haycock,” Wansford]

Wansford’s peculiar fame is thus more than local. Perhaps the queer picture-sign of the grand old inn, representing Drunken Barnaby on his haycock, helped to disperse it over England in days when it could not fail to be seen by every passing traveller. The “Haycock” ceased to be an inn, and is now occupied as a hunting-box. It affords a pleasing relief from the Duke of Bedford’s almshouse-looking cottages, and is a building not only of considerable age, but of dignified architectural character. Stone-built, with handsome windows and steep slated roof, and carefully designed, even to its chimneys, it is, architecturally speaking, among the very finest of the houses ever used as inns in England, and has more the appearance of having been originally designed as a private mansion than as a house of public entertainment. The sign is now hung in the hall of the house, the corbels it rested on being still visible beside the present door, replacing the old archway by which the coaches and post-chaises entered and left the courtyard of the inn of old.

The “Haycock,” even in its days as an inn, was a noted hunting centre. Situated in the country of the Fitzwilliam Hunt, it afforded, with its splendid accommodation for guests and for horses, headquarters for those who had not a hunting-box of their own, and in those days stabled as many as a hundred and fifty horses.

[Picture: Sign of the “Haycock.”]

“Young Percival” kept the “Haycock” from about 1826, and drove the “Regent” between Wansford and Stamford, in place of “old John Barker.” At that time he had more valour than discretion in driving, and on one occasion at least nearly brought disaster upon the coach at the famous bridge by “punishing” a spirited team which had given some trouble at starting. At the steep and narrow entrance to the bridge they took it in their heads to resent his double-thonging, the leaders turning round, and the whole team presently facing towards London instead of Stamford. They had to be driven back to the “Haycock,” and Barker took them on to Stamford.

[Picture: Wansford Bridge]

That bridge would have been an exceedingly awkward place for a coach accident. It is picturesqueness itself, and by consequence not the most convenient for traffic. Originally built in 1577, with thirteen arches, it was repaired in 1674, as a Latin inscription carved midway on it informs the inquiring stranger. In the winter of 1795 an ice-flood destroyed some of the southernmost arches, which were replaced the following year by two wider spans, so that Wansford Bridge has now only ten openings. The northern approach to it from Stamford leads down in a dangerous, steep, sudden, and narrow curve, intersected by a cross-road. Now that there is no longer a turnpike gate at this point to bring the traffic to a slow pace, this descent is fruitful in accidents, and at least one cyclist has been killed here in an attempt to negotiate this sharp curve on the descent into the cross-road. An inoffensive cottage standing at the corner opposite the “Mermaid” inn has received many a cyclist through its window, and the new masonry of its wall bears witness to the wreck caused by a heavy wagon hurtling down the hill, carrying away the side of the house.

The five miles between Wansford and Stamford begin with this long rise, whose crest was cut through in coaching days, the earth taken being used to fill up a deep hollow which succeeded, where a little brook trickled across the road, the coaches fording it. Thence, by what used to be called in the old road-books “Whitewater Turnpike,” past the few cottages of Thornhaugh, and so to where the long wall of Burghley Park begins on the right hand. Here the telegraph poles, that have hitherto so unfailingly followed the highway, suddenly go off to the right, and into Stamford by the circuitous Barnack road, in deference to the objections, or otherwise, of the Marquis of Exeter, against their going through his park.

The famous Burghley House by Stamford town is not visible from the road, and is indeed situated a mile within the park, only the gate-house to the estate being passed in the long descent into that outlying portion of the town known as Stamford Baron.

There is, amid the works of Tennyson, a curiously romantic poem, “The Lord of Burleigh,” which on the part of the literary pilgrim will repay close examination; and this examination will yield some astonishing results. It is, briefly stated, the story of an Earl masquerading as a landscape painter and winning the heart and hand of a farmer’s daughter. He takes her, after the wedding, to see—

“A mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before;
Many a gallant gay domestic
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
‘All of this is mine and thine.’
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.”

The original person from whose doings this poem was written was, in fact, Henry Cecil, tenth Earl, and afterwards first Marquis, of Exeter. He was the lord of Burghley House (not “Burleigh Hall”), by Stamford town, and his descendants are there yet.

Not a landscape painter, but a kind of London man about town and Member of Parliament for Stamford, 1774–1780, 1784–1790, and then plain Mr. Henry Cecil (for he did not succeed his uncle in the title until December, 1793), he is found rather mysteriously wandering about Shropshire in 1789, calling himself (there is never any accounting for taste) “Mr. Jones.” He was then a man who had been married fourteen years, and was thirty-six years of age.

The scene opens (thus to put it in dramatic form) on an evening towards the end of June, 1789, when a stranger knocked at the door of Farmer Hoggins at Great Bolas in Shropshire, and begged shelter for the night. He was obviously a gentleman, but called himself by the very plebian name of “John Jones.” He made himself so agreeable that his stay “for the night” lasted some weeks, and he returned again in a month or so, taking up his residence in the village. The attraction which brought him back to Great Bolas was evidently Sarah Hoggins, the farmer’s daughter, at that time a girl of sixteen, having been born in June, 1773. He proposed for Sarah, and on April 17th, 1790, they were married in Great Bolas Church, the register showing that he married in the name of “John Jones.” Meanwhile he had purchased land in the village, and built a house which he called “Bolas Villa.” Gossip grew extremely busy with this mysterious stranger who had thus descended upon the place, and it was generally suspected that he was a highwayman in an extensive way of business, especially as some notable highway robberies happened coincidently with his appearance.

Early in 1794, “Mr. John Jones,” living thus at Great Bolas, learnt that his uncle, the ninth Earl of Exeter, had died in December. Telling his wife they must journey into Northamptonshire, where he had business, they set out and arrived at “Burghley House, by Stamford town,” and there he disclosed to her for the first time that he was not “John Jones,” but Henry Cecil, and now Earl of Exeter.

At what time he broke the news to her that he was already a married man there is no evidence to show. Strictly speaking, he had made a bigamous marriage, because, although his wife, one of the Vernons of Hanbury, in Worcestershire, had eloped on June 14, 1789, with the Reverend William Sneyd, curate of that place, he had at the time taken no steps to obtain a divorce.

[Picture: Burghley House, by Stamford Town]

But he had every excuse. He had honestly fallen in love with Sarah Hoggins after thus meeting her while wandering about the country a few days after his wife’s flight; and he obtained a divorce by Act of Parliament in March, 1791. Having done this, he married Sarah Hoggins secondly some six months later (October 3) in the City of London Church of St. Mildred, Bread Street, in whose register his name appears as “Henry Cecil, bachelor.”

Tennyson’s poem is, therefore, rather more romantic than truthful; and the lines which tell us how she murmured—

“Oh! that he
Were again that landscape painter
Who did win my heart from me,”

have no authority. Nor is there any evidence to warrant the statement that—

“A trouble weighed upon her
And perplexed her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.”

The poet continues—

“So she droop’d and droop’d before him,
Fading slowly from his side;
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.”

The Countess of Exeter, in fact, died on January 18, 1797, not quite twenty-four years of age; but not from “the burthen of an honour unto which she was not born.” Happily, accession to the ranks of the titled nobility is not fatal, as the marriage of many distinguished ornaments of the musical comedy stage assure us; and so we must charge the Poet Laureate with the flunkey thought that blue blood is a kind apart, and not to be admixed with other strains. This from the poet who wrote—

“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”

is unexpected.

She left two sons and one daughter. Her eldest son became second Marquis of Exeter, his father, the Earl, having been raised a step in the peerage in 1801.

The enterprising Earl married, thirdly, in 1800, the divorced wife of the eighth Duke of Hamilton, and died May 1, 1804, aged fifty; but his third wife survived until January 17, 1837. In the billiard-room of Burghley House is a portrait-group of “the Lord of Burleigh” and his wife, Sarah Hoggins, by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

“Bolas Villa” was given by the Earl to his godson. It has since been enlarged, and is now styled “Burghley Villa.” The church of Great Bolas is a grim-looking brick building of the eighteenth century, when many of the Shropshire churches in that district were rebuilt.