Chapter 40

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johnson's name is often associated with London taverns, but it would be wrong to assume on that account that he had bibulous tendencies, for although he described Boswell, who wrote his splendid biography, as a "clubable" man, and the tavern chair as the throne of human felicity, it should be remembered that there were no gentlemen's clubs in London in those days, hence groups of famous men met at the taverns. Johnson had quite a host of friends, including Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith, Savage (whose biography he wrote), Sheridan, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. When Sir Joshua Reynolds and Johnson were dining at Mrs. Garrick's house in London they were regaled with Uttoxeter ale, which had a "peculiar appropriate value," but Johnson's beverage at the London taverns was lemonade, or the juice of oranges, or tea, and it was his boast that "with tea he amused the evenings, with tea solaced the midnight hour, and with tea welcomed the morning." He was credited with drinking enormous quantities of that beverage, the highest number of cups recorded being twenty-five at one time, but the size of the cups were very much smaller in those days.

Johnson, who died in 1784 at the age of seventy-five, was buried in Westminster Abbey, and, mainly through the exertions of his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, a statue of him was erected in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Other eminent men besides Dr. Johnson received their education at Lichfield Grammar School: Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, Joseph Addison the great essayist, whose father was Dean of Lichfield, and David Garrick the actor, were all educated at the Grammar School. There were five boys who had at one period attended the school who afterwards became judges of the High Court: Lord Chief Justice Willes, Lord Chief Justice Wilmot, Lord Chief Baron Parker, Mr. Justice Noel, and Sir Richard Lloyd, Baron of the Exchequer.

Leaving Lichfield, we passed along the racecourse and walked as quickly as we could to Tamworth, where at the railway station we found our box awaiting us with a fresh change of clothing. In a few minutes we were comfortably rigged out for our farther journey; the box, in which my brother packed up the stones, was then reconsigned to our home address. I was now strong enough to carry my own luggage, which seemed to fit very awkwardly in its former position, but I soon got over that. There was at Tamworth a fine old church dedicated to St. Editha which we did not visit. We saw the bronze statue erected in 1852 to the memory of the great Sir Robert Peel, Bart., who represented Tamworth in Parliament, and was twice Prime Minister, and who brought in the famous Bill for the Abolition of the Corn Laws. These Laws had been in operation from the year 1436. But times had changed: the population had rapidly grown with the development of industries, so that being limited to home production, corn reached such a high price that people came to see that the laws pressed hardly upon the poorer classes, hence they were ultimately abolished altogether. The Bill was passed in 1846, Cobden, Bright, and Villiers leading the agitation against them, and after the Corn Laws were abolished a period of great prosperity prevailed in England.

Sir Robert Peel died from the effect of an accident sustained when riding on horseback in Hyde Park, on June 25th, 1850; he fell from his horse, dying three days afterwards, and was buried in his mausoleum, in the Parish Church of Drayton Bassett, a village about two miles from Tamworth.

It was the day of the Municipal Elections as we passed through Tamworth, but, as only one ward was being contested, there was an almost total absence o f the excitement usual on such occasions.

Tamworth Castle contains some walls that were built by the Saxons in a herringbone pattern. There was a palace on the site of the castle in the time of Ofta, which was the chief residence of the Kings of Mercia; but William the Conqueror gave the castle and town of Tamworth and the Manor of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire to his dispensor, or royal steward, Robert of Fontenaye-le-Marmion in Normandy, whose family were the hereditary champions of the Dukes of Normandy:

These Lincoln lands the Conqueror gave, That England's glove they might convey To Knight renowned amongst the brave-- The Baron bold of Fontenaye.

Robert Marmion, therefore, was the first "King's Champion of England," an honour which remained in his family until the death of the eighth Lord, Philip Marmion, in 1291. This man was one of the leading nobles at the Court of Henry III, and the stubborn defender of Kenilworth Castle, acting as King's Champion at the Coronation of Edward I on August 19th, 1274. The duty of the King's Champion on the day of Coronation was to ride completely armed on a barbed horse into Westminster Hall, and there to challenge to combat any who should gainsay the king's title. On the death of Philip de Marmion the Castle of Tamworth passed by marriage to the Trevilles, Sir Alexander Treville, as owner of the castle, officiating; as Royal Champion at the Coronation of Edward III in 1327; but at the Coronation of Richard II, in 1377, the right of the Treville family to act as champion was disputed by Sir John Dymoke, to whom the Manor of Scrivelsby had descended by marriage from another relative of Phillip Marmion. It was decided that the office went with the Manor of Scrivelsby, and the Dymokes had acted as King's Champion ever since, their coat of arms bearing in Latin the motto, "I fight for the king."

As we passed over what is known as the Lady Bridge spanning the River Tame, just where it joins the River Anker at the foot of the castle, we saw a stone built in the bridge called the Marmion Stone, and remembered Sir Walter Scott's "Tale of Flodden Field" and his famous lines:

"Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!" Were the last words of Marmion.

But we found other references in Sir Walter's "Marmion":

Two pursuivants, whom tabards deck, With silver scutcheon round their neck And there, with herald pomp and state, They hail'd Lord Marmion: They hail'd him Lord of Fontenaye, Of Lutterward, and Scrivelsbaye, Of Tamworth tower and town.

and in the Fifth Canto in "Marmion," King James of Scotland is made to say:

"Southward I march by break of day; And if within Tantallon strong. The good Lord Marmion tarries long, Perchance our meeting next may fall At Tamworth, in his castle-hall."-- The haughty Marmion felt the taunt, And answer'd, grave, the royal vaunt: "Much honour'd were my humble home, If in its halls King James should come.

* * * * *

And many a banner will be torn, And many a knight to earth be borne, And many a sheaf of arrows spent. Ere Scotland's King shall cross the Trent."

Sir Walter described Marmion as having been killed in the battle together with one of his peasants, and that as both bodies had been stripped and were covered with wounds, they could not distinguish one from the other, with the result that the peasant was brought and buried at Lichfield instead of his lord.

Short is my tale:--Fitz-Eustace' care A pierced and mangled body bare To moated Lichfield's lofty pile; And there, beneath the southern aisle, A tomb, with Gothic sculpture fair, Did long Lord Marmion's image bear, (Now vainly for its sight you look; 'Twas levell'd when fanatic Brook The fair cathedral storm'd and took; But, thanks to Heaven, and good Saint Chad, A guerdon meet the spoiler had!) There erst was martial Marmion found, His feet upon a couchant hound, His hands to heaven upraised: And all around, on scutcheon rich, And tablet carved, and fretted niche, His arms and feats were blazed. And yet, though all was carved so fair, And priest for Marmion breathed the prayer, The last Lord Marmion lay not there.

The Marmion stone on the bridge has five unequal sides, and at one time formed the base for a figure of the Virgin and the Child, which stood on the bridge. The ancient family of Basset of Drayton, a village close by, were in some way connected with this stone, for on one side appeared the arms of the family, on another the monogram M.R. surmounted by a crown, and on the two others the letters I.H.C. About two miles farther on we entered the village of Fazeley, purposely to see a house where a relative of ours had once resided, being curious to know what kind of a place it was. Here we were only a short distance away from Drayton Manor, at one time the residence of the great Sir Robert Peel. Having gratified our curiosity, we recrossed the River Tame, passing along the great Watling Street, the Roman Road which King Alfred used as a boundary in dividing England with the Danes, towards Atherstone in search of "fields and pastures new," and in a few miles reached the grounds of Merevale Abbey, now in ruins, where Robert, Earl Ferrers, was buried, long before coffins were used for burial purposes, in "a good ox hide." Here we reached the town of Atherstone, where the staple industry was the manufacture of hats, the Atherstone Company of Hat-makers being incorporated by charters from James I and Charles II. Many of the chiefs on the West Coast of Africa have been decorated with gorgeous hats that have been made at Atherstone. When the Romans were making their famous street and reached the spot where Atherstone now stands, they came, according to local tradition, to a large stone that was in their way, and in moving it they disturbed a nest of adders, which flew at them. The stone was named Adders' Stone, which gradually became corrupted to Athers' Stone, and hence the name of the town. The Corporation of the Governors embodied this incident in their coat of arms and on the Grammar School, which was endowed in 1573: a stone showed the adders as springing upwards, and displaying the words, "Adderstonien Sigil Scholæ." We called at the "Old Red Lion Inn," and, going to explore the town while our refreshments were being prepared, found our way to a church, once part of a monastery, where the old fourteenth-century bell was still tolled. It was in the chancel of this church that Henry, Earl of Richmond, partook of Holy Communion on the eve of his great victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, by which he became King Henry VII. He had also spent a night at the "Three Tuns Inn" preparing his plans for the fight, which occurred two days later, August 22nd, 1485. There was on the site of the battle a well named "King Dick's Well," which was covered with masonry in the form of a pyramid, with an entrance on one of its four sides, and which covered the spring where Richard, weary of fighting, had a refreshing drink before the final charge that ended in his death. He, however, lost the battle, and Henry of Richmond, who won it, was crowned King of England at Stoke Golding Church, which was practically on the battlefield, and is one of the finest specimens of decorated architecture in England. But what an anxious and weary time these kings must have had! not only they, but all others. When we considered how many of them had been overthrown, assassinated, taken prisoners in war, executed, slain in battle, forced to abdicate, tortured to death, committed suicide, and gone mad, we came to the conclusion that Shakespeare was right when he wrote, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." In his _King Richard II_ he makes the King say:

"And nothing can we call our own but death, And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of Kings: How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd."

One good result of the Battle of Bosworth Field was that it ended the "Wars of the Roses," which had been a curse to England for thirty years.

Bull-baiting was one of the favourite sports of our forefathers, the bull being usually fastened to an iron ring in the centre of a piece of ground, while dogs were urged on to attack it, many of them being killed in the fight. This space of land was known as the Bull-ring, a name often found in the centre of large towns at the present day. We knew a village in Shropshire where the original ring was still to be seen embedded in the cobbled pavement between the church and the village inn. But at Atherstone the bull had been fastened to a large stone, still to be seen, but away from the road, which had now been diverted from its original track.

The ancient whipping-post, along with the stocks, which had accommodation for three persons, had found their last resting-place inside the old market-hall. They must have been almost constantly occupied and used in the good old times, as Atherstone was not only on the great Watling Street, but it had a unique position on the other roads of the country, as an old milestone near our hotel, where we found our refreshments waiting our arrival, informed us that we were a hundred miles from London, a hundred miles from Liverpool, and a hundred miles from Lincoln, so that Atherstone could fairly claim to be one of the central towns in England, though the distance to Lincoln had been overstated.

We continued walking along the Watling Street for a short distance, until we reached the end of the town, and then we forked on to the right towards Nuncaton; but in a very short distance we came to the village of Mancetter, where there was a fine old church, apparently the Parish Church of Atherstone. When the Romans were here they protected their "Street" by means of forts, and one in a small chain of these was at Mancetter, the Manduesdum of the Romans, their camp appearing in the form of a square mound, with the "Street" passing through the centre. Inside the church were quite a number of very old books, in one of which we were shown a wood-cut representing the burning of Robert Glover and Cornelius Bongley at Coventry in 1555. Glover was a gentleman who lived at the Manor House here, and was one of the Mancetter Martyrs, the other being Mrs. Lewis, a tenant of his who lived at the Manor House Farm. She was burnt in 1557, two years later. A large tablet was placed in the church to their memories, both of them having suffered for their adherence to the Protestant Faith. The east-end window was a curiosity, for it contained a large quantity of thirteenth-century stained glass which had been brought here from Merevale Abbey. It was probably damaged both there and in transit, as it seemed to have a somewhat rough appearance; the verger informed us, when pointing out several defects in the figures, that a local glazier had been employed to erect it who did not understand such work, and though he had no doubt done his best, he had made some awkward mistakes. Why David's sword appeared behind his back the verger could not explain, so my brother suggested that either the head or the body had been turned the wrong way about.

There were five bells in the church tower, the largest of which was, of course, the tenor bell, weighing thirty-three hundredweight, and the words that had been cast on it set us a-thinking:

My soaring sound does warning give That a man on earth not only lives.

There were usually some strange records in these country churchyards, and we generally found them in the older portions of the burial-grounds; but we had very little time to look for them as the night was coming on, so we secured the services of the verger, who pointed out in the new part of the churchyard a stone recording the history of Charles Richard Potter in the following words:

Born--May 11, 1788. Married--May 11, 1812. Died--May 11, 1858.

So the eleventh day of May was a lucky or an unlucky day for Mr. Potter--probably both; but one strange feature which we only thought of afterwards was that he had lived exactly the allotted span of three score years and ten. In the old part of the yard were the following epitaphs:

The Earth's a City Full of crooked streets Death is ye market-place Where all must meet If life was merchandise That man could buy The rich would always live Ye poor must die.

In bygone times it was no unusual thing to find dead bodies on the road, or oftener a short distance from it, where the owners had laid themselves down to die; we ourselves remembered, in a lonely place, only a field's breadth from the coach road to London, a pit at the side of which years ago the corpse of a soldier had been found in the bushes. Here, apparently, there had been a similar case, with the exception that the man had been found by the side of the Watling Street instead of the fields adjoining. No one in the district knew who the stranger was, but as sufficient money had been found on him to pay the cost of the burial, his corpse was placed in Mancetter Churchyard, and as his name was unknown, some mysterious initials, of which no one now living knew the meaning, appeared on the headstone.

Here lieth interr'd the Body of I.

H. I. M.