Part 11

It is not before Rainham is reached that the road becomes once more the open highway. Moor Street is passed, and here the Rainham orchards and the cherry orchards of Gillingham begin to stretch away to the levels of the Upchurch marshes. "Wealth without health" begins to be the characteristic of the country, for the marsh mists hang over the levels from early evening, through the night, to almost midday; and agues, asthma, and bronchial complaints are the common lot. Many miles' length of submerged Roman pottery-works lie down in those Swale and Cooling marshes, and many have been, and are still, the "finds" of broken black "Upchurch ware" in the mud and ooze. Perfect specimens are discovered at rarer intervals. The proper method of searching for these vestiges of the Roman occupation is to equip one's self with a stout pair of sea-boots, and a "sou'wester," and to wade at low tide in the creeks, probing the slimy mud with iron rods. If the explorer is fortunate in his "pitch" he will discover pottery, broken or whole, by feeling his iron rod strike something harder than the surrounding half-liquid clay. The joy of such exquisite moments is unfortunately sometimes marred by the "find" being but a lump of half-baked clay; Roman, indeed, but not worthy of preservation. Still, when fragments of patterned ware are found, the discovery repays in interest for the time spent in mudlarking.

Rainham Church heralds the village, raising up its white and four-square battlemented walls from beside the road. A large building, with a few late brasses; a vault full of Tuftons, Earls of Thanet, of whom the last died in 1863, unmarried; and two life-sized marble statues of Tuftons, father and son, in that curious classic convention of the late seventeenth century which found such a delight in representing distinguished folk as Roman warriors. Nicholas Tufton, the earl, and his son, who died from wounds received in battle, are those thus represented here; and the statue of the son, scupltured in a sitting position, is a really fine work of art. Beyond this, Rainham has not much to detain the explorer, and being a summer rendezvous for Chatham pleasure-parties and bean-feasters, it is apt to become dusty and riotous when the season of annual outings is at hand.

The church seen some distance to the left of the road is that of Newington. In the vestry is displayed a copy of the last will and testament of Simon Tomlin, dated November 13, 1689. In this disposition of his worldly effects are gifts to relatives and to the poor; and to his brother-in-law, William Plawe of Stockbury, he leaves "my best beaver hatt and the sum of L15, lawful money of England." It is to be hoped that the legatee got his hat, but, as many provisions of the will do not appear to have been complied with, it seems doubtful.

There was a priory of nuns established at Newington in early Norman times, but all that is now left of it is a striking legend which proves that when these pious ladies retired from the world they brought some of the world's worst characteristics with them. What they quarrelled about one night will never now be known, but when the morning dawned the Prioress was found strangled in her bed; which goes to prove that the veil no more goes to make the nun than orders black, white, or grey furnish a monk fully forth in true monastic attributes. A chalk pit, about a mile south of the church, called significantly "Nun-pit," is shown as the place where those less holy than homicidal sisters were afterwards buried alive. Other accounts say that these nuns were removed to Minster, in Sheppey. However that may be, Henry the Second would have no more nuns here. He placed seven priests in the Priory as secular canons, and gave them the manor, hoping that this religious house would in future have a less lurid career. But things, instead of improving, grew worse. One of the canons was found murdered in his bed, and four of the brethren were convicted of the crime.

[Sidenote: NEWINGTON]

From these queer stories we come, appropriately enough, to a tale in which the Enemy bears a brave part. When Newington Church was being built, "ever so long ago," as the tale of gramarye has it, and the time came for the bells to be hung, the Devil, who, it is well known, hates the sound of church bells, conceived the grand plan of pushing the tower over, so that the builders would give up the idea. Accordingly, he ventured down the lane one night, and, standing in the churchyard--as he could well do, because the place was not yet consecrated--placed his back against the tower, and, putting his feet against a wall on the other side of the road, pushed. No one knows what was the result, but as there is a tower here to this day--and a very fine one it is, too--it may be presumed that either Satan had altogether overrated his strength, or that the builders had built better than they knew. But if the Enemy failed in this, he at least succeeded in leaving his mark. Accordingly, here is the wall, and in it is a stone, and in that stone is a hole made by his toes; while on another stone is the print of a very fine and large boot-sole--valuable evidence, because it not only proves the truth of the story but also shows us that the Devil wore a Blucher boot on one foot and let the other go unshod. If you ask me how it came about that the Devil could come here in the fourteenth century wearing a nineteenth-century boot, I must quote the showman who exhibited a wax model of Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel was seen to be reading the _Times_, and some one in the crowd pointed out the incongruous circumstance, to which the showman replied that Daniel, being a prophet, read the _Times_ by anticipation! And if a saint could anticipate the nineteenth century in newspapers, why should not the Fiend do the same in boots?

Peaceful cherry orchards stretch along the narrow valley, and the railway runs through them, giving glimpses to passengers of long rows of cherry trees with emerald grass flecked with sunlight and flocks of sheep feeding under the boughs; and picturesque farmsteads standing in midst of fertile meads.

XXVII

[Sidenote: ROMAN STATIONS]

The village of Newington stands on either side of the old Dover Road, which is here identical with the famous Roman military _via_ of Watling Street. It is situated in the centre of a district covered thickly with Roman remains, and the village itself dates from Saxon times, when it really _was_ a "new town" as distinguished from the adjacent ruins of the ancient Roman station of Durolevum. All the ingenuity of archaeologists has been insufficient to determine at what particular spot this military post was established. Judde Hill, Sittingbourne, and Bapchild have been selected as probable sites of Durolevum, and certainly Bapchild and Sittingbourne are likely places for the original military post mentioned in the _Itinerary_ of Antoninus. Both are situated within an easy distance of the measurements given by the itinerist, and at either place there was anciently a stream of water crossing the road, sufficient, perhaps, to warrant the prefix of "Duro," which, almost without exception, distinguishes the Roman military place-names on the Dover Road. That prefix was the Latinized form of the Celtic "dour," signifying a stream, and it is met with at:--

Dubris == Dover. Durovernum == Canterbury. Durolevum == ? Bapchild, Sittingbourne, or Ospringe. Durobrivae == Rochester.

A military expedition would naturally be encamped beside a stream, where the cavalry could water their horses, in preference to a waterless district; and therefore, Newington and Judde Hill, which both stand beyond an easy reach of flowing water, cannot have such good claims to have been the site of Durolevum as either Sittingbourne, or Bapchild, whose name, indeed, is a corruption of the Saxon Beccanceld, "the pool of the springs." The flow of water throughout the country must in those remote times have been much greater than now, for dense forests then covered a great part of the island, and induced rains and moisture. In fact, the Dover Road was until recent years remarkable for the number of considerable streams and trickling rills that flowed across it, either under bridges or across fords, and it is not so long since those that crossed the highway at Sittingbourne and Bapchild were diverted or dried up. They must have been broad streams when Caesar led his legionaries up the rough British trackway in pursuit of the Cantii, and the still very considerable brook that crosses the road at Ospringe would have then attained the dimensions of a river. It might be well to look to Ospringe for the original Durolevum, for the situation must have been admirable from a military point of view; and, moreover, it was near, if not then actually on, the head of a navigable creek leading directly to the sea, where Faversham now stands.

But when archaeologists leave the consideration of Caesar's and his successors' military station and seek the site of Durolevum town or city, they unaccountably lose sight of the fact that this Roman province of Britannia Prima was obviously very populous, and that Durolevum, instead of being a small isolated town, must needs have been the centre of a thickly populated district of smaller towns, hamlets, and outlying villas, stretching for miles along the now solitary reaches of the Dover Road, and reaching down to the Upchurch marshes.

The era of the Roman colonization of Britain is so remote that few antiquaries even ever stop awhile to consider how long those hardy aliens occupied this island, or how effective that occupation was, either in a military or social sense. Four hundred years just measure the length of time the Romans were with us; and what can not be done in so lengthy a period! Four hundred years would suffice to create a high state of civilization from mere savagery, and that is what the Romans accomplished here in that space of time. They not only conquered, but they eventually pacified, the fierce and fearless Britons; and they established export and import trades that rendered Britain the most prosperous colony of the Roman Empire, and the Romano-British merchants and people the wealthiest colonists of those times. Stately villas beyond the towns, but sufficiently near them to invoke, if needs were, the protection of the cohorts, rose up on all sides, where the rich traders in British produce took their ease or engaged themselves in cultivating the cherry and sweet-chestnut trees which they had introduced from the sunny hillsides of Italy. There is to this day a manor at Milton-next-Sittingbourne called "Northwood Chasteners," so called from an ancient grove of chestnuts (_castaneas_), the descendants of the first chestnut trees introduced by the Romans. Vast Roman potteries had their being in the lowlands beside the Medway; Upchurch, Faversham, and Richborough furnished the tables of Roman Emperors and epicures with the "native" oysters that were even then famous and the cause of an immense trade; while manufactures poured in from Rome to suit the British taste.

Durolevum must, then, be sought amid the potsherds of a hundred settlements, any one of which might have been a suburb of that forgotten station; but the site where the present village of Newington stands was probably fresh ground when the Saxons came and drove out with ruthless slaughter the luxurious and enervated Romanized British, who speedily fell a prey to barbarians when once the Roman garrison was withdrawn. Archaeologists have remarked that the Saxons generally occupied the Roman towns that were left after the Romano-British fled from them; but although they sometimes did so, there are many instances where they established towns on new sites closely adjoining the old, but carefully separated from them. Such was the case at Wroxeter, where the Saxons built an entirely new town, adjoining, but not actually on, the ruined and deserted city of Uriconium. Probably the Saxons found Durolevum wrecked in the internal struggles that rent Britain asunder after the legionaries were withdrawn; and, being a Pagan and superstitious people, they shunned the almost deserted heap of ruins as being the abode of evil spirits. The stagnant and fetid wreck of a great city, whose fallen houses covered the bodies of many slaughtered citizens, and whose site was very likely overflowed with choked drains and freshets from the swollen streams, was not exactly the place to appeal to strangers, even though uncivilized, as a suitable site for dwelling upon; and, indeed, it may readily be imagined that these rotting remains of a dead civilization would be infinitely more awe-inspiring to a barbaric race than to the few remaining Britons who had seen the place in all the pride and circumstance of better days. And, indeed, the black, polluted earth of a long-inhabited town, and the will-o'-wisps and phosphorescent bubbles bred from the corruption below, that would float at night upon the surface of the water, would have frighted most people of those superstitious times.

Newington stands on elevated ground, away from such chances, but in its immediate neighbourhood have been found many Roman relics, and all around, the fields, the meadows, and the hillsides are rich in legends and broken pottery. Standard Hill is so called from a tradition that the Roman eagle was there displayed, and a field adjoining is known as Crockfield, from the great number of Roman pots and fragments of pottery turned up there by the plough. The name of Keycol Hill, too, is said to have had a Roman origin, and Hasted derives it from Caii Collis, or Caius Julius Caesar's Hill. Finally, the modern roadside hamlet of Key Street, between Newington and Sittingbourne, is said to owe its name to _Caii Stratum_, or Caius Street.

The inn at Key Street, now called the "Key," was previously to 1733 known as the "Ship." It stands near the hill-top where Key Street commences, and commands a long, straight dip of the road towards Sittingbourne, whose outlying houses are just beyond the farthest clump of trees.

[Sidenote: PLACE-NAMES]

The chance wayfarer little thinks how abundant are the vestiges of antiquity here, both in fragments of pottery, and in the time-honoured names of manors, fields, and meadows. Such things are only to be brought to light by the painstaking local historian who has access to Court Rolls and ancient estate maps. It is little known or considered by the dwellers in populous towns that almost every meadow, field, croft, pasture, down, or woodland has its name, as distinct and as well-known locally as that of any London street included in the Directory. More than this, these names are often the survivals of a state of things existing a thousand years ago. They are frequently rendered obscure by the corruption and evolution of languages, and by the physical changes that have come over the face of the country during so long a period; but with research, and linguistic scholarship, and a knowledge both of local history and the ancient history of the country in general, much that seems at first obscure, or even utterly inexplicable, may be finally resolved into meaning. The study of these place-names has all the attraction of original exploration, and leads on inexhaustibly. But while the tracking of apparently meaningless names to their origin has all the fascination of sport, it gives rise to many hazardous conjectures and lame conclusions, and names that do not yield their secrets to patient inquiry are too often thrust into some ill-fitting category from which they are rescued, to the shame and derision of those who placed them there. In fine, "cock-sureness" is nowhere more out of place than in these inquiries, and in nothing else is the mental effort of "jumping to conclusions" met with such ludicrous accidents. It has, for instance, long been a commonplace in these inquiries to refer the names of towns, villages, or hamlets ending in "ing" to the settlements of Saxon patriarchal tribes; and the Hallings, Coolings, Bobbings, Detlings, and Wellings are set down as having been originally the homes of Teutonic clans taking their names from chieftains named Halla, Coela, Bobba, and so forth.

But while this rule may generally hold good, it must not be applied automatically, and the "learning" that has given this origin to the names of Sittingbourne, Newington, and Ospringe must be regarded as a grotesque exercise of imagination, creating previously unheard-of clans, the Soedingas, the Newingas, and the Osprings, who are not only new to archaeology, but probably have never existed. Of course, in the utter absence of all evidence, save that of the places themselves so named, no statement can be _proved_ correct; but these mystic Soedingas may almost certainly be dismissed to the realm of fairy-tales, and if there ever was a tribe of Newingas, they _took_ their name _from_ the village which they built and where they lived, instead of _giving_ it _to_ the place. Where others have come to grief, it would be rash to seek new derivations; but it seems evident that Ospringe derives its name from the stream flowing through the village, and that the name of Sittingbourne is nothing other than "seething burn," or "the bubbling brook," a poetic name which the place no longer merits. Place-names of Roman origin may be sought in the several _Vigos_ that exist, some now the names of fields, marshes, roadsides, and commons where there is not a house to be seen, but which were originally the sites of Roman villages, the name of "Vigo"--the Latin _vicus_--having been traditionally handed down to the present day many centuries after the last traces of those settlements have disappeared.

Many fields, too, here and in different parts of the country, are named "Whitehall." How did they get that name? The answer is sought in the Roman word "_aula_," the residence of a magistrate or a chief man in authority. When the Saxons came, they found these grand _aulas_, built of stone, dotted about the country, some ruined, others tolerably perfect; and they must have made a strong impression upon these barbaric Pagans, used at that early period of their history only to wooden dwellings of the rudest construction. They would have demanded the names of these places from the Romano-British, who would tell them they were _aulas_; and they would have called them "hwit aulas," from the stone of which they were built. It was thus that the many villages called "Whitchurch" got their name, from the stone (or "white") churches that were so remarkable as compared with the dark-hued temples and churches of wood to which the Saxons were accustomed.

But if this origin of the "Whitehalls" does not satisfy, there is another which may be even more likely. They were, possibly, at one time the sites of village Witan-halls, where the wise men of the Saxon villages assembled their local Parliaments, the "witans" or "witenagemots," those remote forerunners of the village- and parish-councils which statesmen of the late nineteenth century have established, as items in a more or less admirable scheme for restoring the Heptarchy. There are "Whitehalls" in the immediate outlying fields of Sittingbourne, and there is one within the Roman encampment overhanging the railway cutting at Harbledown; but at none of these places are there any traces of buildings above ground. Excavation might reveal ancient foundations.

XXVIII

[Sidenote: HERMITS]

As mediaeval travellers approached Sittingbourne from the direction of London, the first objects they perceived were the chapel and hermitage of Schamel, dedicated to Saint Thomas a Becket, and standing on the south side of the road. They are gone now, and a wayside public-house--"The Volunteers"--stands on, or near their site; but the hermitage was, from the time of King John to the impious days of Henry the Eighth, a resting-place for those devout pilgrims who sought the shrine of the "holy blissful martyr" at Canterbury. In the reign, however, of that "Defender of the Faith"--when it suited him--the chapel and the hermitage were scattered to the winds, and the hermit thrust out into a world that had grown tired of making pilgrimages. But, while it lasted, the Hermitage of Schamel did a very thriving business; so thriving, indeed, as to excite the jealousy of the Sittingbourne people, who conceived themselves injured by the intercepting of pilgrims before they could reach and fertilize the town with streams of gold. Rich pilgrims were a source of wealth to many towns and villages on the Dover Road, and hermits, bishops, priors, and abbots contended for them like 'busmen for passengers before the introduction of the bell-punch and the ticket system.

We first hear of Schamel Hermitage in the time of a priest named Samuel, whose duties consisted in saying mass daily, in wearing a hair-shirt, refraining from soap and water, and in attending upon those pilgrims and travellers who did not mind the apostolic dirt in which he wallowed; and by whose alms he supported himself and the chapel. Samuel died and was gathered to his fathers, and the building presently fell into decay, to be rebuilt by an Augustinian monk, during whose lifetime the annals of the Hermitage are too placid for recounting in this place. His successor was one Walter de Hermestone, who was appointed by the Queen about 1271. Imagine his disgust, though, when he came here and found the place a wreck, the work of the Vicar and the townsfolk of Sittingbourne. This estimable clergyman, whose name was Simon de Shordich, and who seems to have brought the manners and customs of his native place with him, had carried off the Hermitage bell and altar as prizes to his own church, and the men of Sittingbourne had left both the Hermitage and the Chapel in the likeness of a Babylonic ruin. History does not record what became of Walter de Hermestone, but it seems likely that he departed for some more peaceful spot. Meanwhile, Simon de Shordich died, perhaps from the effects of the eremitical curses which the disappointed incumbent of the ruinated place doubtless showered on him; and he was followed, both in his Vicarage and his evil courses, by a certain Boniface, who carted away the ruins and sold them.

[Sidenote: SCHAMEL]

Sixteen years later an inquiry was held on these matters, at the instance of the Queen, who, holding the manor of Milton-next-Sittingbourne, was patron of the chapel. There seems to have been a hamlet of Schamel at this time, for a certain William the Weaver, and others who gave evidence before the commission, are located here. It must have been about this era that the chapel was rebuilt, but little is heard of it until June, 1358, when the Queen of Edward the Third passed by, and gave 20s. in alms. Friar Richard de Lexeden was then in possession. Two years later, King John of France passed, on his way home, and gave twenty nobles, a sum equal to no less than L120 of our money; and that is the last we hear of the Hermitage until it was for ever destroyed in 1542-43.

Meanwhile, the chapel of Swanstree, at the east end of the town, was as much upheld and cared for by the Sittingbourne people as the Schamel chapel was robbed and injured. Wealthy tradespeople left money in their wills to its altars and for the repair of the roads thither, and the Vicars of Sittingbourne approved of it, because it not only did not take away from them, but gleaned anything that the pilgrims had to spare after they left Sittingbourne, and before they came to the next town. But although so favoured, this chapel has gone the way of the other, and not a vestige of it remains. It stood on the grounds of the present Murston Rectory.

[Sidenote: SITTINGBOURNE]