Part 10

The modern reader, perusing all these manifold sins and wickednesses of the roads, rather wonders how they could all have been crowded on to such truly vile ways, and if a stone were as big as a horse, how room could have been found beside it for holes, ponds and other objectionable features. But Arthur Young was a truthful man in general.

To-day the Essex high roads are as near perfection as any in the home counties, even though the byways be steep and rough and more than usually winding.

It is in these byways that he who seeks rural Essex shall find. The dramatic suddenness and completeness with which, a few hundred yards from the high road, the sophisticated wayside towns and hamlets are exchanged for the unspoiled rusticity of the original villages is surprising. In these lanes the older rustics talk and think much as their grandfathers did, but the rising generation unhappily do not, and the Essex rustic in general, like his fellows elsewhere, has almost wholly discarded the old dress of the peasantry. Only the very old or the more remote yet wear the smock-frock--the "round frock," or the "gaberdine," as they called it--that was once as honourable a distinction of the ploughmen, herds, or carters as are the uniforms of our soldiers and sailors.

The time is long past since a clean smock-frock, corded breeches, worsted stockings and well-greased lace-up boots formed the approved rural costume for Sundays or holidays, just as the same articles of apparel in a "second-best" condition made the workaday wear. The Sunday costume of the agricultural labourer is now a cheap and clumsy travesty of the clothes worn by townsfolk, and in hideous contrast with his surroundings. Exactly what it is like may be seen on any advertisement hoarding in the outskirts of Chelmsford, Colchester and lesser towns, where pictorial posters bid Giles go to Shoddy's for cheap outfits. Sunday mornings find him flaunting his finery in the village street; his would-be stylish boots creaking, his every article of wear writ large with vulgarity. Often he carries gloves in those large hands of his, rough with honest week-day toil, and a pair may thus last him for years--for he dare not attempt to put them on. Would that he equally purchased his cheap cigars for show and refrained from smoking them!

But there the village dandy is. Often his pocket-handkerchief is scented; generally his hair is glossy with grease; and he would not consider himself fully equipped without watch and chain, scarf-pin, ring and walking stick. To grease his boots he would be ashamed. _They_ must be brightly polished, even though his manners are not, and his language defiles the village street what time the bells are ringing to church. Such is Young England in the villages at the dawn of the Twentieth Century. These things may spell Progress, but they are rather pitiful.

It is a little difficult, in presenting a sketch of his ancestor of a hundred years or more ago, to avoid drawing too favourable a view of him; but the rustic in old times certainly seems to have matched much better with his surroundings than is the case nowadays. He made no attempts to dress up to town standards, and if he wanted to shine above his fellows did so by virtue of superior neatness only. Perhaps he had the finer instincts of the two, or more likely lacked the opportunities for bad taste that surround his descendants. Certainly, if we are to believe in the origin of the smock-frock, as put forward by some antiquaries, we must sorrowfully admit that the rustic's remote ancestor had as great a longing for unsuitable display in dress as can possibly be charged to the present generation. The smock-frock is, in fact, traced back by some to the ecclesiastical garments worn at Mass by deacons and sub-deacons, at the time when the Reformation swept vestments out of every village church in the land. Those who are familiar with genuine old smock-frocks have noticed the elaborate and often beautiful needlework on collar and breast. The devices appear to have a traditional likeness, all over the country, and consist either of Celtic-looking whorls, or of semi-decorative flower forms, or of lozenge patterns. The comparative simplicity or elaboration of this needlework depended solely upon the fancy, or the time at command, of the wearer's women-folk whose work it was. Whence came this tradition? It is thought from the tunicles of the minor clergy, which were certainly decorated in the same position, if not in similar patterns. When the minor belongings of the Church became the spoil of the villages, Hodge and Giles found themselves the proud possessors of the strange garments, for which they could find at first no better use than for Sunday wear. A striking appearance they must have made in them, down the village street, the envy of their less fortunate fellows.

When the looted vestments grew shabby they must have been used for everyday wear, and so have set the fashions in smock-frocks, both in shape and decoration, for centuries to come. If it be thought that the costume was rather extravagant, it can only be asked, is not that of the modern Sunday morning yokel extravagant also?

The rustic of long ago was a man of dense ignorance and dark superstitions. No one county was then more guilty than another in that respect, but East Anglians, and perhaps especially the Essex bucolics, are still, despite their veneer of civilisation, sunk in uncanny beliefs. Witches still "overlook" folks in Essex hamlets, and spells are cast on cattle and horses, or unhappy fowls are blighted by the Evil Eye. Consequently the learned professions of Witch-Doctor and Wise Women are not yet extinct. Their existence is not likely to be discovered by the stranger, but they thrive, in limited numbers, even in these days of pills and patent medicines.

Board Schools are supposed to be educating Young England into a dead monotony of speech, but it will be long before they complete the horrid work. In Essex, indeed, we may not unreasonably think it a task beyond the power of teachers and inspectors, who if they have not succeeded, after thirty years working of the Elementary Education Act, in inducing the lower-class Londoners to say "yes" for "yuss," together with other linguistic enormities, are not likely to be successful in abolishing the very marked and stubborn Essex shibboleths. It may not generally be known that much of the so-called "Cockney" talk derives from the Essex dialect. From Essex especially comes that curious perversity of the unruly member which in many cases insists upon pronouncing the letter A as I. The lower-class Londoner and the Essex peasant are unanimous in enunciating A as I in all words where that letter retains its open sound and its individuality. Thus, in the words "baby" "favourite," "made" and "native," for instance, the letter becomes I; and the Fleet Street newsboy, shouting his "spusshul uxtry piper," can legitimately call cousins, if he wishes it, with the Essex lad at the plough-tail.

Where A is sounded broadly, or in cases like the word "was," in which it masquerades as O, or where the letter is absolutely silent, or not fully pronounced, as in "beast" and "maternal," this peculiarity does not appear.

The effect is sometimes grotesque, as, for example, near Colchester, where the villages of Layer Marney, Layer Breton, and Layer de la Hay are always spoken of as Liyer, the last mentioned becoming Liyer de la High.

Nor is pronunciation the only singular feature of Essex talk, as those who keep their ears alert in these parts will soon find. The oddest phrases are matters of everyday use, and the Essex peasant can no more help using the word "together," in season and out, than he can help being hungry before meals or sleepy by bedtime. "Together," as employed by the Essex peasant, is a word absolutely meaningless; a kind of linguistic excrescence which, like a wart or a boil, is neither useful nor beautiful. When a ploughman says he is going to plough "that there field together," he does not mean to imply that he is about to plough it together with some other land, or with a party of other ploughmen. He simply adds the word from force of habit, and from hearing his father and grandfather before him so use it, in almost every sentence, as a sort of verbal makeweight. The present writer has had the good fortune to hear a supremely ludicrous use of this Bœotian habit of speech. It was market-day at Colchester, and Stanway village had emptied itself in the direction of the town. A dog rolled dustily in the sunny road, and the historian of these things luxuriously quaffed his "large lemon" on the bench outside the village inn. As Artemus Ward might have said, "orl was peas," when there entered upon the scene a countryman, evidently known to the landlord. He walked into the bar, and, surprised to find mine host in solitary state, exclaimed, "What, all alone together, bor?"

"Yes," replied the landlord, in no wise astonished at this extraordinary expression, "the missus has gone to Colchester together."

"Did my missus go with her?" asked the rustic.

"No," rejoined the landlord, "she went by herself."

In this countryman's talk we find a word belonging more especially to Norfolk and Suffolk. This is the word, "bor," a diminutive for neighbour.

XXV

STANWAY is approached along a flat stretch, past Mark's Tey, which, without being itself quite on the road, has sent out modern and extremely ugly brick tentacles to line the way. For an incredible distance along the flat the timber tower of Mark's Tey church is visible, amid an inchoate mass of railway signal masts and puffs of smoke. Whistlings, screechings, crashings and rumblings proceed from that direction, for this is a junction of the Great Eastern with the Colne Valley Railway, and the station, by the way, where the lady in Thackeray's _Lamentable Ballad of the Foundling of Shoreditch_ appeared with the baby which she eventually left behind her. It is this busy junction that has caused the hideous outcrop of mean houses along the road to render the village of the old De Marcas something new and strange. Mark's Tey is at a junction of roads as well as of rails, for the road from Braintree and Bishop's Stortford falls in here.

Copford's solitary houses by the way give scarce a hint of the village nearly a mile off, whose little church formerly owned a terrifying relic, in the shape of a human skin nailed on its door; a skin that had been the personal property of some unfortunate straggler from the hordes of marauding Danes that once infested the district, of whom we have already heard legends at Kelvedon and Gore Pit. His Saxon captors must have flayed him with a ferocious delight and nailed up his cuticle with precisely the same satisfaction as that of the gamekeeper who wages war upon stoats and weazels and other vermin, and hangs their bodies on the barn door. But there must have been a bitter day of reckoning for those Saxons when the sea-rovers came this way again and saw in what fashion that doorway was decorated.

Copford and its outlying houses lie at the crest of a gentle descent into the valley of a rivulet which finds its way into the Colne. It stands, as its name implies, overlooking some ford which, once important, has, in the gradual draining of the country and the shrinkage of streams, now lost all significance. Stanway adjoins it, and lies along the descent, in the hollow and up the corresponding rise on the other side, where its church stands in a forbidding loneliness. The name of Stanway is sufficient warranty of this being, thus far, the Roman road. It is, however, not so certain that the remaining four miles of the existing highway from this point into Colchester follow the course taken by the Romans; and, indeed, the later researches of archæologists go far to prove that the original way into Roman Colchester avoided the intervening village of Lexden altogether, and, curving eastwards, avoided what may then have been a marsh, to take the higher ground over a portion of Lexden Heath; bending westwards again and crossing the site of the present road between where the grammar school and the hospital now stand. From this point it seems to have crossed by where the Lordsland Nursery grounds stood until recently built over, to the ancient Roman gateway and bastion in the western wall of the town, long known as Colking's, or King Coel's Castle, but originally the Decuman Gate of Roman times. The course followed by this old Roman way is lined on either side with sepulchral remains, and seems to have once been a great cemetery. Wherever the ground is disturbed the relics of some soldier or citizen of Colonia are found, some dating back to the foundation of the colony, nearly nineteen centuries ago. The most remarkable among them are to be seen in the museum at Colchester Castle. There--the most human relic of them all--is the touching monument to M. Favonius, a Centurion of the Twentieth Legion, discovered in 1871 between the hospital and the grammar school, at a depth of 3 feet below the surface, and at a distance of 10 feet from the old Roman road. It is a sculptured stone, 4 feet in height, with the figure of the Centurion himself carved on it, in high relief. It is evidently a portrait of him. He stands in full military costume, his cloak hanging from his shoulders, his sword and dagger by his side. The inscription, almost as sharp as on the day when it was cut, nearly nineteen hundred years ago, tells us that the monument was erected by two of his servants, Verecundus and Novicius. They call him "facilis," the "easy" or "good-natured." It is surely a sweet and touching thing that when all other record of that soldier has perished, we should yet know him to have been a kindly creature.

But to return to Stanway, which keeps, as sole vestige of its heath, a little space of the greenest turf, perhaps half an acre in extent, beside the insignificant stream in the hollow, and opposite the "Swan" Inn. The heath that formerly spread out across the elevated but flat table-land between this village and the succeeding one of Lexden was, in its different parts, variously named after them. On Stanway Heath, in Ogilby's _Britannia_ of 1697, a picture map shows a beacon standing between the forty-seventh and forty-eighth milestones from London, on the right-hand side of the road. It appears to have been a post some 30 feet in height, crowned with a fire-bucket, and climbed by means of slats nailed across. The beacon, thus easily lighted, was provided for the benefit of travellers going to or coming from Colchester across the desolate heath, whose dangers may be guessed from the existence of a "Cut-throat Lane" even in the comparative security of Lexden village. The heath by the highway is a thing of the past, for those portions not brought under cultivation by the farmer have been grabbed by the builder, and the so-called Lexden Heath of to-day is a quite recent row of houses, with a post-office, and shops, and everything complete and modern. At the forty-eighth milestone, amid all this modern upheaval, stands a disused toll-house, and, close by, something much more ancient; the deep, pre-historic hollow, smothered in dense woods and shrubs, known as "King Cole's Kitchen," and now--figure to yourself the shame of it!--overshadowed by a cottage, new built, and named from it "King Cole's Cottage."

Turning off to the right, the curious in things pre-historic may lose themselves in the solitudes of the real Lexden Heath, where the Devil, the Trinobantes, the Romans, or Fairfax, the Parliamentary General--according to varying legends--threw up the entrenchments, and delved the ditches, found there in plenty. The Devil, we say advisedly, for "Gryme," or "Grim," whose name is attached to the dyke across the heath, was none other, in the minds of the Saxons. "Lexden Straight Road" follows for an unconscionable distance a line of Roman entrenchments, and is straight and dull beyond belief. Followed long enough, it leads to "Bottle End," which may originally have been "Battle End," the scene of some traditional legend of Boadicea's defeat at the hands of the Romans. Or, again, it perhaps marks some forgotten connection with St Botolph, whose ruined Abbey stands outside Colchester's walls, and whose honoured name is pronounced "Bottle" by Colcestrians. Anything is possible in a district where Beacon End, the site of the old beacon already mentioned, has become Bacon End.

Lexden village now claims attention. It is a place in which one school of antiquaries finds the original Roman station of Camulodunum, established on the site of the royal city of Cunobelin, King of the Trinobantes; a finding strenuously contested by another following. Certainly, among the tall elms and rolling surface of Lexden Park there are remains in plenty of huge defensive earthworks, telling in no uncertain manner that this must have been a place of enormous strength, by whomsoever held. The surroundings are weird and impressive to a degree.

The village skirting the road is one of the prettiest on the way. Going towards Colchester, the road drops down the hill, where old cottages stand high above the pathway, with steep little gardens in front, kept from sliding down into the road itself by lichened retaining-walls sprouting with house-leek and draped with climbing plants. Lower still, hard by the church whose carpenter-Gothic atrocities are hung about with ivy and creepers until they are transfigured into a dream of beauty, the grouping of the 'Sun' Inn and neighbouring houses is exquisite. Beyond this point begins the suburban approach to Colchester, a town it behoves the stranger to approach with a proper respect, for here was the first Roman colony in Britain. The history of Colchester, indeed, begins so far back as A.D. 44, and there was already a pre-historic native city in existence before then; the royal city of that ancient British king, Cunobelin, the monarch famous in the pages of Shakespeare as "Cymbeline."

XXVI

CUNOBELIN, Lord of the Trinobantes, ruler of that part of the country now divided into Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hunts, Cambridgeshire and Essex, was the successor of his father Cassivelaunus, who had warred, not ingloriously, with Julius Cæsar. He transferred his capital from his native town on the site of St Albans to where Colchester now stands. He appears to have been a powerful ruler, and, if little is known of him, certainly he is no myth, for the vague legends that held the name of the Buckinghamshire villages of Great and Little Kimble to be a corrupted form of his own were strikingly proved correct some years ago, when a hoard of gold coins was ploughed up in their neighbourhood, bearing his title.

We do not know by what name Colchester was then styled. After Cunobelin had died, full of years and worn by grief at the revolts of his sons, Caractacus, Adminius and Togodumnus, the end of the native State over which he had ruled speedily came. Adminius, in a fury against his brothers, fled from Britain to seek the aid of the Romans, and if no immediate result came, certainly his invitation must have revived the old Cæsarian dream of conquest. The real cause of the Roman invasion that took place shortly after the death of Cunobelin was the solicitation of a certain Bericus, a British Prince of whom nothing appears to be known beyond this one fact.

The invasion took place in A.D. 43, under that able general, Aulus Plautius, who threw the Trinobantes back from Hertfordshire and Middlesex, across the Lea and into the Essex marshes, where for a time they could not be followed. This was the position at the close of the year. Detached portions of the invading forces had overrun the south of Britain as far as Gloucester and had defeated the tribes on the way; leaving a garrison in the west. But the island was little known and held many mysteries. None could tell the real strength of the natives, who disappeared in the forests and marshes that covered the face of the land, and by their irregular warfare disconcerted the Roman plans of campaign. Plautius was at last driven to act on the defensive on the Essex borders. His soldiers were dying in the ague-stricken morasses between the Thames and the Lea, and had the enemy possessed powers of combination and military skill, he might well have been cut off here, at the end of the known world. A retirement with his sick and dying was impossible. Nothing remained but to go into camp during the winter, and meanwhile to send for reinforcements. He accordingly sent for forces from Gaul. They came with commendable promptitude, commanded by the Emperor Claudius in person. With these new legions came an elephant corps, brought from Africa to carry the heavy baggage. But they acted a better part than this, for their strange appearance terrified the astonished Trinobantes a great deal more than any increase of the Roman soldiery could have done. We may imagine this corps, crashing irresistibly through the thickets, the forests and marshes on that march into the Unknown, along this line of country now traversed by the Norwich Road, and can readily understand little resistance being met with on the way. The tribes were dispersed and their territory occupied as far as the Stour, and a colony was founded in the opening of the new year, A.D. 44, on the site of Cunobelin's city--Colonia Camulodunum, the first Roman settlement in Britain.

The Romans had so easily overcome the resistance of the natives that they were soon lulled into a feeling of security. For an uninterrupted space of sixteen years Colonia grew and prospered. It became a pleasant town, inhabited by veteran soldiers grown grey in the service of the Empire, and spending their later years in retirement. The Emperor Claudius, flushed with his success, had assumed the dignity of a god and had caused a Temple to be erected in the market-place to his honour, with attendant priests and altars. The governors and consuls were lesser gods, and treated with contempt and ill-judged severity the natives who had been overcome with such ease. The soldiery were uniformly brutal. Degeneracy and luxury flourished together with this attitude of oppression, and the town wholly lacked defences. It is not surprising that these colonists were bitterly hated by their vassals, who in especial looked upon the priests as so many harpies living upon their substance, and were so in fact, just as all priesthoods and all clergy have been from the beginning, and will be to the end. In this last respect these poor Trinobantes, these wretched barbarians, exhibited a quite surprising discernment, not equalled by the priest-ridden centuries of culture and enlightenment that have since passed.