Part 16

The folly of the Gothamites, according to this version, was more apparent than real; but it is the name for folly, rather than that for cunning, which has survived. So early as 1568 appeared the book entitled “The Merry Tales of the Mad-men of Gottam,” and other ancient allusions are plentiful; among them that to “Gotham College,” an imaginary institution for the training of simpletons. A rhyme, of unknown antiquity, celebrates another exploit of the villagers, in a delicately allusive way:

Three Wise Men of Gotham Went to sea in a bowl; If the bowl had been stronger, My tale had been longer.

The tragedy of the voyage we can vividly picture for ourselves.

There is, however, a rival Gotham, disputing these doubtful honours. It is a place called Gotham Marsh, situated in the neighbourhood of Pevensey, and the identical tales are told of it; but if any place may be said to be the real original, the Nottinghamshire village is the one, although it must not be forgotten that many places are credited with similar stupidity. Of the village of Towednack, in Cornwall, in the neighbourhood of St. Ives, the identical cuckoo story is told; the people of Coggeshall, in Essex, are said to have chained up a wheelbarrow, after it was bitten by a mad dog, for fear it should develop hydrophobia; and in the ancient world Bœotia and Phrygia were notoriously considered the home of the dunderheaded. We are familiar, too, with the taunt in the Scriptures, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?”

[Sidenote: _ASSORTED FOLLY_]

This is all very highly uncomplimentary and interesting, and Gotham seems eminently a place to be visited; but travellers meet with strange disappointments. Gotham is a furiously ugly village of extraordinarily wide and empty roads, and smelling violently of pigs; gypsum mines and soap-works still further render it undesirable. A commonplace inn, the “Cuckoo Bush,” displays a double-sided pictorial sign, very faded, exhibiting on one side the cuckoo and on the other a group of the wiseacres aforesaid, attempting to build him in.

It is indeed, by selecting the fine church, possible to make an illustration of Gotham that shall not be commonplace; and the interior, being in part Transitional Norman, is even finer than the exterior. A singular uncouth carving on the chancel arch, popularly supposed to represent “Toothache,” was probably intended to typify the Divine “gift of speech.”

Resuming the road at Kegworth, the fag-end of Leicestershire is soon ended. Lockington, on the left hand, with a very dilapidated church, being the last village in this angle of the shire, where it joins Notts and Derbyshire, was once considered a remote and out-of-the-way place: hence the old rustic saying, “Put up your pipes and go to Lockington Wake”: _i.e._ “Be quiet and go away with you.”

XXV

And thus we come to the Trent, but before crossing at Cavendish Bridge and into Derby, we will leave the modern high road, and, striking off to the left, through Castle Donington, come, in something like six miles, to Stanton-by-Bridge and the long causeway that leads up to the famous bridge of Swarkestone. The present line of road between Derby and London, by way of Loughborough, did not come into great use until 1771, when Cavendish Bridge was built. Until that time, the broad and swift Trent, at the best of times not easily crossed, and always peculiarly subject to flooding, was without a bridge anywhere else than at Swarkestone in all those twenty-four miles or so between Nottingham and Burton, and much of the traffic of horsemen, pedestrians and pack-horses, instead of crossing the Trent here, at Wilne Ferry, went southward of Derby by Osmaston, Chellaston, and across the river at Swarkestone, and thence past Stanton-by-Bridge and King’s Newton, coming into a choice of roads for London at Ravenstone, whence one went, at discretion, either by Hinckley and Towcester, or else by Groby and so into Leicester.

[Sidenote: _THE RIVER TRENT_]

The Trent was thus, in those ancient days when bridges were few, a barrier of high strategical importance, and whoso held those infrequent bridges commanded the military situation in the midlands: hence the high importance, from an early period, of the castle, town, and bridge of Nottingham.

[Sidenote: _SWARKESTONE BRIDGE_]

Between Stanton and Swarkestone, on either side of the Trent, the land stretches out perfectly flat for nearly a mile, and is at this day a fertile expanse of water-meadows in summer. In winter, or in wet seasons, it becomes a vast inland sea, not, even now, altogether without its dangers, but anciently extremely hazardous.

To build a causeway from the comparatively high ground of Stanton on one side, and Swarkestone on the other, with little bridges spanning the intermediate rills, and a large bridge crossing the Trent itself, became early the good work of some pious founder, whose identity has, in the way usual with such things, become involved in legends. The chief legend of Swarkestone Bridge tells us that it was built by two maiden sisters, whose lovers were drowned in the passage, before ever a bridge or causeway existed. They expended all their fortune upon, and devoted their lives to, the work, and built a chapel on the bridge itself, wherein wayfarers might give thanks for their safety, and pray for the souls of those who had been drowned, and those of the pious benefactors. Another version says that the two ladies were daughters of the Countess of Bellomont, and that they expended all their fortune on the work, and were reduced to spinning for a livelihood.

But if we seek the real origin of this early work, thought to have been originally undertaken in the twelfth century, we must look to the neighbouring Priory of Repton, which built it and kept it in repair, just as many other religious houses undertook similar works of practical Christianity on behalf of wayfarers, all over the country; making roads, bridging rivers, and providing hostels for all and sundry whose evil fate compelled them to travel in those days when the best place in the world was a man’s own fireside.

In the chapel they placed on the bridge a brother of the Priory officiated, at the same time receiving offerings from grateful travellers for maintenance and repairs of the structure. And so the combined chapel and toll-house remained, until all religious institutions suffered a thorough change, under Henry the Eighth. We know what then became of it, for in the report of the Church Goods Commissioners in 1552 it is stated: “We have a chapell edified and buylded uppon Trent in ye mydest of the greate streme annexed to Swerston bregge, the whiche had certayne stuffe belongyng to it; ii desks to knell in, a table of wode, and certayne barres of yron and glasse in the wyndos, which Mr. Edward Beamont, of Arkeston, hath taken away to his owne use, and we saye that if the chappell dekeye, the bridge wyll not stande.”

The chapel was, however, allowed to “dekeye,” and yet the bridge stood, having been rebuilt so late as 1796. It says much for the excellence of the monks’ work that their bridge remained until 1795, when, not floods merely, but floods aided by a heavy lot of timber from a yard upstream, came and overthrew it.

The bridge has been the scene of some military exploits. Here the redoubtable Sir John Gell of Hopton, commanding the Parliamentary forces, routed a force of Cavaliers on January 5th, 1643; and held the approaches during all that troubled time. In 1745, too, when Prince Charles and his Highlanders came so near to overthrowing the House of Hanover, and regaining the crown of England for the feckless Stuarts, he made, as any invader from the north was bound to do, for this essential position.

The story of “the Forty-five” is closely involved with the course of the Manchester and Glasgow Road, from this point onwards, and therefore requires some brief historical summary.

[Sidenote: “_THE FORTY-FIVE_”]

In 1745, Prince Charles, the “Young Pretender,” son of James, the “Old Pretender,” who in 1715 had made an ineffectual attempt to secure the crown his father, James the Second, had lost, determined on a bold throw for fortune. Setting out from France, July 2nd, on the _Doutelle_, a little brig of 18 guns, engaged in privateering against English shipping, he landed eventually at Erisca, in the Hebrides. He had not voyaged without adventure. Accompanying the _Doutelle_ was a French warship, the _Elizabeth_, which carried 68 guns and 700 men.

The precise connection of the French government with this attempt of Prince Charles is obscure; but it would appear to have been an elastic arrangement, by which the French could disclaim any hand in the rising, if it proved a failure, while sympathetic enough to secretly aid, and to be prepared for further help if the prospects of the enterprise were sufficiently hopeful. Off the Lizard, the two ships were challenged by an English man-o’-war, the _Lion_, which engaged the _Elizabeth_, with the result that both were disabled and compelled to put back to their respective ports; while the brig bearing the Prince, his few followers, his supplies of money and arms, made away to Scotland.

Prince Charlie, the darling of many a romantic tale and legend, the hero of numberless pathetic Scots ballads, was at this time twenty-five years of age: tall above the average, comely and courteous: every inch a Prince, so his admirers declared. The Highland chieftains who had been so lavish of promises when he was away, across the water, were not at first so ready with their help when he appeared among them. A good deal of time was wasted, and he raised his white standard with the red cross at Glenfinnan only on August 19th. Thereafter, the clans poured in to his aid; but it was not until September 16th that he appeared before Edinburgh and summoned the city to surrender. Edinburgh, let it be acknowledged, placed no obstacles in his way, for it submitted very tamely, and Charles, in all the glory of a costume which seems to the present generation, that goes clad in so sombre a fashion, to have been extravagantly theatrical, had the satisfaction of proclaiming his father at the High Cross, as King James the Eighth of Scotland, and Third of England.

Let us see what figure of romance he presented to the loyal eyes of the clansmen, and the melting glances of the ladies. He stood straight as a lance, and wore breeches of red velvet, military boots, and a short tartan coat crossed with a blue silk sash, edged with gold. On his head was a blue velvet bonnet, bound with gold lace, and with a white cockade, the badge of his party. On his breast depended the star of the order of St. Andrew, and at his side swung a basket-hilted broadsword. The hair of this very picture of a Prince of romance was of an auburn tint, but it was generally concealed from view by a white wig. Altogether, this was a display that may be thought more suitable for ceremonial occasions than for the serious business of campaigning.

[Sidenote: _THE INCOMPLETE LETTER-WRITER_]

To modern censorious minds the picture formed by this gay figure suffers in the letters he wrote. They were written, let it be said, in the loftiest sentiments, but the spelling of them was abominable. When every one—among those who were sufficiently accomplished to write at all—spelled according to personal predilection, this mattered little or nothing; but in these days, when every Board School boy can at least spell simple words, it seems shocking, and tarnishes romance with a smear of vulgarity, to read Prince Charlie’s references to “muney” and “munishuns.” When he draws his “sord,” we laugh, instead of being thrilled, and when he writes of his father as “gems,” we with difficulty understand that he means “James.”

This is no place to follow his advance step by step. He gained a complete victory at Prestonpans on September 21st and, the way then cleared, he should have pressed forward. But a lack of sufficient recruits, and, much more certainly, the wish to pose and dazzle Edinburgh, as the victor in this first conflict, led the Prince to delay. Had he made a dash into England on the morrow of Prestonpans, his cousin, King George, would in all likelihood have been overthrown. But he wasted precious time, and only left Edinburgh on October 31st, for the advance upon England, He was at Carlisle on November 9th. The opposition there was feeble, and he took the city and passed on. Meanwhile, large forces were moving up from the south to meet him and his Highlanders. Marshal Wade was in Staffordshire with an army, and the Duke of Cumberland was advancing with another. King George in person was proposing to leave London with a third. Many of these troops had been landed from the scene of war with the French in Flanders, in the interval of inaction after Prestonpans.

Prince Charles decided to give battle to Wade in Staffordshire, and advanced through Lancaster and Manchester, to Stockport. News then arrived of the presence of the Duke of Cumberland with his army divided between Lichfield, Coventry, Stafford, and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the ingenious ruse was contrived of detaching a small column of Highlanders to Congleton, while the main body of the Prince’s force slipped quietly by the English army, on the road to Derby. It was a master-stroke of manœuvring and was entirely successful. The Duke of Cumberland, thus cleverly deceived, hurried up his forces on the evening of December 2nd, going north, while the invaders pushed south, and were installed at Derby on the 4th, where they were rejoined by the detached column.

[Sidenote: _IN THE BALANCE_]

At this juncture the third English army was just setting out from London and had reached Finchley Common. London was thoroughly alarmed: shops were closed, the banks experienced an uneasy time, and more than one of King George’s ministers anxiously debated the problem of whether it were safest to declare for the Stuarts, or to remain loyal to the House of Hanover. King George himself, according to popular rumour, had made every preparation for leaving the country in haste, if it were found necessary. Above all, the French were expected to attempt a landing. All these terrors and doubts resulted in a panic on a day long after remembered as “Black Friday.”

Prince Charles came very near success. He had five thousand men at Derby, and although his ragged Highlanders were looked upon with contempt by the English people, and although his cause by no means met with the popular support he had anticipated, the people, if indeed they did not help him, at any rate did not very actively oppose. Scottish sentiment had, in a manner truly remarkable, survived the fact that the Prince was a Roman Catholic, and that he was quite ignorant, at the time of his landing, of Scottish costume and manners; but the English people looked with disfavour upon one who was almost as much a foreigner as George the Second himself. They loved neither the Hanoverians nor the Stuarts, and were heartily tired of both their houses, whose ambitions were for ever hindering honest men in their business and their pleasures.

Had Prince Charles made haste to advance beyond Derby, he would have been running grave risks, but, with two hostile forces already near him, the position could scarce have been more dangerous; while it was busily rumoured that either the courage or the loyalty, or perhaps both, of the King’s army on Finchley Common were in doubt; and that on the appearance of the invaders they would promptly lay down their arms. Prince Charles, to do him justice, was eager to advance. To retreat, even for a while, would be, he clearly saw, to strike dismay into his supporters, and to weaken his cause. Already his outposts were six miles south of Derby, holding the approaches to Swarkestone Bridge. He was for risking everything. “Rather than go back,” he said, “I would wish to be twenty feet underground.” But the faint-hearts were numerous around him. Not among the clansmen, but amid the leaders did prudence—to call it no worse name—show itself; and prudence prevailed. After heated councils of war, the outposts were withdrawn, and on December 5th the retreat from Derby began.

The historian who is also a sentimentalist, and looks upon history as a romance, at this point feels keenly disappointed. He cares little for Stuart or Hanoverian, but he feels defrauded of the stirring chapters that would have been added to English history, had Prince Charles pressed on and reached London. Three, at least, of the Georges were so deadly dull, alike in their vices and their less frequent virtues, that a Stuart, even though he developed afterwards all the defects of his race, would have been welcome. But it was not to be, and, after marching into the very middle of England, the invaders marched all the weary way back again; and met disaster miserably in the midst of Scotland. They could have fared no worse, and would have ended more gloriously, in the advance.

[Sidenote: _DISASTER IN RETREAT_]

Some admiration must needs be felt for the villagers near Swarkestone. The Derby militia and amateur soldiers made a strategic movement to the rear on the advance of the Highlanders, but the men of Weston presented an embattled front. In the records of that village we learn the villagers held a council and furbished up their arms for resistance. They sent forth one John Pritchard, as scout, to Derby, to see if the rebels were coming, and despatched on his heels Francis Henshaw and William Dawson, made valiant with three quarts of ale each. William Rose, blacksmith, was paid one shilling “for mending ye towne musquet,” and a further sum of one shilling-and-sixpence was expended upon ammunition for this weapon. Doubtless, the men of Weston would have given a good account of themselves, and it is to be remarked that it was the day after these warlike preparations that Prince Charles began his retreat! Weston rejoiced, and appointed a day of thanksgiving, the village constable contributed half-a-crown thank-offering, and the community got as drunk as funds permitted.

Thus, for many reasons, we look upon Swarkestone Bridge with interest. Causeway and bridge combined extend for three-quarters of a mile; the Trent itself spanned in five arches of 414 feet in all. The causeway, with its many Gothic-arched openings, is obviously very old, and is not improved in appearance by the recent repairs done in blue brick. On the Swarkestone side stands the fine substantial old coaching inn, the “Crewe and Harpur’s Arms,” with the many-quartered shield of arms of the family of Harpur-Crewe, of Calke, near by, prominent over the door, surmounting the motto, _Degenerante genus opprobrium_—“Lineage becomes a disgrace to him who degenerates from it.”

The Harpurs, who settled at Swarkestone in the fifteenth century, came originally from Warwickshire, and flourished here exceedingly, as their monuments in the church, hard by, prove. One, Sir Richard Harpur, 1577, lies in effigy, robed as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and his son, Sir John Harpur, near by. Their old mansion is in ruins close by the church, but in a meadow, still called the “Balcony Field,” remains a curious Jacobean pavilion that would appear to have been the spot whence the ladies of the family and their guests safely watched the sports: the bull-and bear-baiting and other vanished pastimes of a brutal era.

XXVI

[Sidenote: _CAVENDISH BRIDGE_]

Returning to Cavendish Bridge, and crossing it, we enter Derbyshire, whose people have long been unjustly made the subject of the old folk-rhyme:

Derbyshire born, Derbyshire bred, Strong i’ th’ arm, An’ thick i’ th’ ’ead.

The tolls levied at Cavendish Bridge long remained at an almost prohibitive figure. The crossing of the Trent, before the bridge was completed in 1771 at a cost of £3,333, was by means of a ferry-barge, large enough to take vehicles, and the fare for a post-chaise was half-a-crown, which remained the charge for the bridge, as Bray in his tour of 1776 notes.

Although the bridge was long since freed, the toll-house stands, and on it may still be seen the old notice-board which it seems to have been nobody’s business, in particular, to remove. I am grateful for the fact, for it enables the following particulars to be gleaned:

Tolls taken at this BRIDGE by Virtue of an Act of Parliament being the fame that were taken at the Ferry, viz.:—

_s._ _d._ Coaches, Chariots, Landaus, etc., with 4 wheels, each 2 6 Chaise, Chair, etc.; with 2 wheels 1 0 Waggon, Wain, etc.; with 4 wheels 1 6 Horse, Mule, or Ass, not drawing 0 1

And so forth, through the various classes of traffic, ending with:

_d._ Foot passengers 1 Soldiers (favour’d) 1/2

The Trent, broad and strong, borders the road for the half-mile between the bridge and the village of Shardlow, where the Trent and Mersey Canal runs across the way, and the “Holden Arms,” a church built in the unsatisfactory Gothic of 1838, the “Navigation,” the “Dog and Duck,” and the “Old Crown” inns are huddled; together with a fine old red-brick mansion dated 1686, and bearing the initials R.B.L.

[Sidenote: _APPROACH TO DERBY_]

It is but seven miles onward to Derby, and the town has grown so greatly, and is still growing with such giant strides, that it has sent out, as it were, along the road, all manner of subtle indications of its advance; together with some not so subtle, in the shape of dusty roads and horrible houses. For the worst side of Derby is obtruded upon the London road. You do not come into all this kind of thing at once. It is a sort of gradual declension. First you notice an uncomfortable something indefinable, then the hedges begin to be worn and ragged, and at last disappear altogether. Then you pass a bend in the road—and there—ah! me—is the inevitable electric tramway, with the conductor and driver of the waiting car, in the usual uniform modelled on that of a ship’s petty officer.

But there are two or three things on the way that demand notice. Nowhere can there be another neighbourhood so prodigal in “astons” as this. Here, on the road itself, is Alvaston; to the right is Elvaston, and scattered here, there, and everywhere are Ambaston, Admaston, Chellaston, Breaston, and Osmaston; with one village simply “Aston” unadorned.

The very similar names of Alvaston and Elvaston are productive of infinite trouble to the Post Office and others; but the places are very different from one another. Alvaston is a place of modern suburban development; but Elvaston, lying a mile off to the right of the road, and approached only by difficult byways, is very rural. Hidden away there, stands Elvaston Castle, seat of the Earl of Harrington, that unconventional peer who conducts (or until lately did conduct) a fruit-shop at the corner of Craig’s Court, Charing Cross.

[Sidenote: _PEERS IN TRADE_]