CHAPTER IX

WIMBLEDON, MERTON, MITCHAM, AND THEIR MEMORIES

[Sidenote: Wimbledon]

Scarcely less interesting than the charming riverside districts of Surrey described above is the neighbouring parish of Wimbledon, that stretches southwards from Wandsworth, Putney, Roehampton and Barnes to Merton and Cheam, and westwards to Kingston, the river Wandle dividing it from Mitcham on the east. Long before the Conquest, Wimbledon Common, that was then but a small portion of vast unenclosed wild lands, was the scene of events that had their share in determining the fate of southern England, and since that epoch-making event it has again and again been associated with typical incidents of the national life. The remains of very extensive entrenchments on its south-western side, locally known as Bensbury, that were unfortunately almost destroyed in 1880 by the owner of the property, prove that it was at a very early date the scene of important military operations, but whether these entrenchments were the work of British, Roman, or Saxon hands there is no evidence to prove. Popular opinion, however, long since decided that Cæsar {198} was the first occupier of the Rounds, as the earthworks were called, and the few still existing relics will probably always be associated with his name. Possibly, indeed, he may have halted on the common during the campaign of B.C. 54, and even have drank from the spring of pure water about a quarter of a mile from his supposed camp, that is preserved from defilement by a stone casing provided at the expense of Sir Henry Peek, who was for some time owner of the mansion known as Wimbledon House. It is as difficult to determine the origin of the word Wimbledon as it is to decide who was the maker of the so-called Cæsar's Camp. It is very differently spelt by various chroniclers, and the probability is that the two first syllables preserve the name of an early Saxon owner of the manor, and that the last simply means hill. In the Saxon Chronicle reference is made to a battle that took place at Wibbandune, possibly near the much-discussed camp, between Ceawlin, King of Wessex, and Æthelbricht, King of Kent, in which the latter was defeated, but Wimbledon is not mentioned in Doomsday Book, it having been one of many submanors belonging to Mortlake. It was separated from the latter by Henry VIII., to be bestowed upon Thomas Cromwell, who was then at the very zenith of his prosperity, for he had fulfilled his promise that he would make his master the richest monarch who had ever ruled over England. He was raised to the peerage as Baron of Okeham, and almost immediately afterwards created Earl of Essex. It was, however, but for one brief year that he was {199} allowed to enjoy his new dignities and possessions, and it had scarcely ended before the fickle Henry turned against him. The once highly favoured minister was accused of treason, and eight weeks after he became an earl he was beheaded on Tower Hill. The manor of Wimbledon reverted to the Crown, and later it was given by the king to Catherine Parr for her life. On the death of her stepmother in 1547, Queen Mary bestowed it on Cardinal Pole, then only a deacon, with whom it was popularly believed she was in love before her marriage with Philip II. of Spain. Pole, however, never resided at Wimbledon, and the property was taken from him before his death, which took place the day after that of the queen, whose evil genius he had been. Queen Elizabeth granted the manor in 1576 to Sir Christopher Hatton, from whom it passed by purchase to Sir Thomas Cecil, son of the great statesman Sir William Cecil, better known as Lord Burghley. The new owner pulled down the old manor-house and replaced it by a magnificent structure, that until its demolition early in the eighteenth century by Sir Theodore Jansen was considered the finest private residence near London. It was designed by John Thorpe, whose architectural drawing for it, bearing the inscription, 'Wymbledon, an house standing on the edge of a hie hill,' is preserved in the Soane Museum. Queen Elizabeth was often the guest of Lord Burghley in the house he inherited from his father, the approaches to which appear to have been but little in keeping with its grandeur, as proved by an entry {200} in the Kingston Churchwarden's book for 1599 recording the payment of twenty pence for mending the ways when the queen went from Wimbledon to Nonsuch.

Lord Burghley, who had been created Earl of Essex, before his death left his Wimbledon property to his youngest son, Edward Cecil, who received the title of Lord Wimbledon in 1626. The latter, who was an eloquent writer as well as a distinguished soldier, and is included in Horace Walpole's catalogue of royal and noble authors, died in 1638, at the beginning of the acute stage of the conflict between autocratic and constitutional government, and his heir sold his Wimbledon home to Queen Henrietta Maria, who was often there with her husband and children during the few years of happiness that remained to them. Only a short time before the end of his troubled career, Charles I. gave orders that some melon seeds from Spain should be planted in the gardens, but whether this was done or not is not known. The beautiful house and estate were sold in 1649 by the Parliamentary Commissioners to a Mr. Baynes, from whom they were soon afterwards purchased by General Lambert, who is said to have found great consolation for the troubles resulting from his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the Protector by cultivating flowers, the tulips and gilliflowers he raised at Wimbledon having been the finest that could be had for love or money.

After the Restoration Charles II. gave back the Wimbledon manor-house to his widowed mother, {201} but it was too full of sad memories for her to care to live in it, and she sold it in 1661--the year, by the way, of the trial of General Lambert for treason--to John Digby, Earl of Bristol, who with the aid of the famous John Evelyn soon completely transformed it to suit his own taste. It was in the parish church of Wimbledon that the earl made his famous renunciation of the Roman Catholic religion, that was described by the French ambassador, who happened to be present, as an insolent and daring act; and it was whilst he was living in his half-finished mansion that he narrowly escaped arrest somewhat later when Charles II. sent messengers to arrest him. The Earl of Bristol died at Wimbledon in 1676, and his estate, after changing hands several times, was bought in 1717 by Sir Theodore Jansen, one of the promoters of the luckless South Sea scheme, who, with little reverence for the beauty and historic associations of the house, at once began to pull it down. Before he had time to build another he and his fellow-speculators were ruined, and the Wimbledon estate was sold by him to Sarah Jennings, the famous Duchess of Marlborough. She in her turn built a new and costly mansion which she bequeathed, with the rest of the property, to her grandson, John Spencer, to whose descendants it belonged--passing, in accordance with the custom known as borough English, to the youngest, not the eldest son--until 1871, when it was sold and broken up into a number of small holdings. The house built for the duchess, in which Hannah More was the guest, in 1786, of the Bishop of St. Asaph, was {202} burned down in 1785, and the then owner replaced it with that still standing, known as Wimbledon Park House, that is associated with the memory of Sir William Paxton, the architect of the Crystal Palace, who began his career as assistant to his brother, who was head gardener for many years to the Cecil family.

At the present time Wimbledon, in spite of all the changes that have taken place in its general appearance, is one of the most beautiful of the London suburbs, and though it has lost its historic manor-house, it retains many fine old mansions that bear witness to its aristocratic associations. Amongst these, perhaps the finest is Eagle House, on the Green, a noble Jacobean structure, with ten gables, built by Robert Bell, a wealthy London merchant in the reign of James I., and occupied for some years, from 1789, by the Right Honourable William Grenville, the relation and colleague of William Pitt, who often visited him there, one of the bedrooms being still named after him. A house not far off, known as Wimbledon Lodge, was at the same time the home of the famous philanthropist, William Wilberforce, who in his _Journal_ makes many allusions to his happy meetings at Eagle House with William Pitt, whom he sometimes persuaded to go to church with him.

At Chester House, another fine old mansion that faces the common, John Horne Tooke spent the last years of his life, and died in 1812, leaving instructions in his will that he should be buried in a mausoleum, still preserved in the garden; but his {203} wishes were disregarded, for he rests in the churchyard of Ealing. Near the Crooked Billet, already referred to in connection with Thomas Cromwell, lived John Murray, founder of the publishing house named after him, and amongst his neighbours were William Gifford, the first editor of the _Quarterly Review_, and James Perry, the originator of the _Morning Chronicle_. Melrose House, on West Hill, now a home for incurables, was once the seat of the Duke of Sutherland. Madame Goldschmidt, better known as Jenny Lind, lived for several years in Wimbledon Park, and it was in Wresil Lodge that the celebrated Anglo-Indian statesman, Sir Bartle Frere, passed away.

The Parsonage of Wimbledon is a very picturesque old homestead, but there is little of interest about the modern parish church, that has had several predecessors, except the mortuary chapel connected with it that was built in the early seventeenth century as a family vault by Lord Wimbledon. There are, however, two or three noteworthy eighteenth-century tombs in the churchyard, that also owns a memorial to the celebrated American painter, Gilbert Stuart Newton, who died at Chelsea in 1835.

The chief glory of Wimbledon is now, as it has been for centuries, its breezy elevated common, that is more than a thousand acres in extent, and with Putney Heath, Richmond Park, Ham and Sheen commons, form an unbroken stretch of varied scenery unrivalled even in the heart of the country for its rural charm. Peaceful as Wimbledon Common now seems, however, it has witnessed {204} many stirring and gruesome incidents, for it was long a favourite haunt of highwaymen and a noted place for duels. The secluded Coombe Wood on its outskirts, beloved of Constable and Stothard, where stands the house occupied by Lord Liverpool when he was Prime Minister, was the chief lurking-place of those lying in wait for unwary travellers, who were often not only robbed but murdered in broad daylight. It was no unusual thing for the bodies of criminals to be left hanging in chains till they rotted away near the spot where their worst deeds were done, and in a contemporary caricature of the duel already referred to between William Pitt and William Tierney, the remains of the notorious Jerry Abershaw, who suffered death at Kensington in 1735, are seen in the background dangling from a post close to the Windmill which is still such a picturesque feature of the common.

In 1789 occurred the encounter between Colonel Lennox, later Duke of Richmond, and the Duke of York, second son of George III., that caused much excitement at the time, for it was unusual for a commoner to challenge a prince of the blood, though the latter was in this case undoubtedly in the wrong, a fact of which he proved his sense by refusing to fire at his antagonist, who had to be content with discharging one bullet only that passed harmlessly through his adversary's hair. In 1807 a duel was fought in Coombe Wood, in which both parties were slightly wounded, between Sir Francis Burdett, the famous Conservative statesman, and Mr. Paull, who had been one of his agents {205} in his successful candidature for Westminster; and in 1809 a certain Mr. Payne was mortally wounded in a duel on the common with a Mr. Clarke, who had made dishonourable proposals to his sister. More celebrated than either of these meetings, however, was that of 1839, when the Marquis of Londonderry met Henry Grattan, son of the famous Irish patriot of that name, and, after allowing his opponent to fire at him, discharged his own pistol in the air, a quiet way of proving his contempt for the duel as a mode of settling quarrels. A year later the future Emperor Napoleon III. challenged his fellow-countryman, Comte Léon, to a combat on Wimbledon Common, but a dispute having arisen between them when on the ground as to the weapons to be used, so much delay was caused that the police appeared on the scene and arrested the whole party, who were brought before the magistrate at Bow Street and bound over to keep the peace. Far more serious than this fiasco was the encounter, in the same year, between the Earl of Cardigan, later leader of the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, and Captain Harvey Tuckett, one of his officers, whom he had treated with unwarrantable harshness. The latter was seriously wounded, and public indignation against the earl was very great, but though he was tried by his peers in 1841 he escaped punishment through a legal quibble, his counsel having pretended that it was impossible to prove the identity of the sufferer with the Captain Tuckett named in the indictment.

By the middle of the nineteenth century duelling {206} had quite gone out of fashion in England; and although a few hostile meetings have since taken place on Wimbledon Common, they have been mere farces unworthy of serious consideration. The beautiful open space has since then become associated with memories of a far more ennobling kind, for it has been the scene of many a great gathering of volunteers, which have made the name of Wimbledon known throughout the civilised world, and have done more, perhaps, than anything else to make military service popular in England.

It is usual to date the beginning of the great volunteer movement from 1859, when General Peel, then Minister of War, sanctioned the acceptance by the authorities of those who offered themselves to take part in the national defence, but the way had been long before prepared by the formation of local associations, amongst which that of Wimbledon, founded in 1799, was the first. A corps of cavalry and one of infantry were quickly formed, in which all the leading gentlemen of the parish were enrolled. The example thus set was eagerly followed, and in 1798 George III. reviewed on Wimbledon Common a regiment more than six hundred strong. By 1803 the volunteers numbered no less than 355,307, and there can be no doubt that had Napoleon realised the expectations of the people of England by invasion, the self-constituted army would have proved itself fully equal to the emergency. After the battle of Waterloo the volunteer force was disbanded; but the spirit which had animated it was not extinct, and when {207} some years later a new war with France seemed imminent, a single spark was all that was needed to kindle anew the patriotic enthusiasm of the whole nation, which resulted in the formation of a new volunteer army, in many respects superior to its predecessor. In June 1860 Queen Victoria reviewed that army in Hyde Park, and a month later took place on Wimbledon Common the inauguration of the National Rifle Association, Her Majesty firing the first shot. From that time to 1887, when the meetings were transferred to Bisley, the volunteers encamped on the beautiful common every summer, representative teams from every part of the United Kingdom and some of the colonies taking part in the various competitions, which, with the reviews that terminated the operations, attracted thousands of spectators. Wimbledon Common is now comparatively deserted, but the memory of the volunteers is kept green by the fine flagstaff, the loftiest in England, that rises up a short distance from the windmill, and consists of the trunk of a single Californian pine that was towed across the Atlantic by a liner, and was the gift of a Canadian corps in acknowledgment of the hospitality received during a visit to the camp. Now and then, as when in 1906 the London companies of the Royal Volunteer Army Medical Corps and a party of Electrical Royal Engineers rehearsed first aid to the wounded after a fight supposed to have taken place in the night, the common is still turned to account as a practising-ground, but it is at present chiefly noted as being the headquarters of the {208} London and Scottish Golf and the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Clubs.

[Sidenote: Merton]

Within easy reach of Wimbledon are a number of villages, including Merton, Morden, Malden, Mitcham, and Tooting, which, though they have all recently been promoted to the doubtful dignity of becoming suburbs of London, still retain some few relics of the days gone by when they were secluded woodland hamlets. Of these the most important is Merton--inseparably connected with the memory of Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton--the history of which can be traced back to the eighth century, when its site was the scene of a terrible tragedy, for it was there that in 784 the noble king of the West Saxons, Cynewulf, who was on a visit to a lady to whom he was deeply attached, was treacherously slain, with all his attendants, by the Ætheling Cyneheard, a crime that was fearfully avenged the day after, when the murderer and all his followers but one fell victims to the rage of Cynewulf's thanes. According to some authorities, it was near the Surrey Merton that the battle took place between the English and the Danes in 871, when King Æthelred was wounded to death, and at which his brother, the future King Alfred, was present; but it must be added that the balance of evidence is in favour of that important event, which inaugurated a new era for England, having occurred elsewhere. In any case, however, it is certain that Merton--the name of which is supposed to signify the town on the mere, from its vicinity to the ponds of the Wandle--was a valuable manor at the time {209} of the Conquest, when it was the property of King Harold. It was confiscated by William I., and was retained by the Crown until it was bestowed by Henry I. on the so-called Gilbert the Norman, founder of the famous priory of Merton that was long the glory of the neighbourhood.

Originally a humble community of monks living in a small timber-built house near a Norman church, also built by Gilbert, the new settlement quickly attracted so many novices that it was soon decided to transfer it to a more extensive site, and in the course of a few years a stately structure, of which, unfortunately, but a few scanty relics remain, rose up on the banks of the Wandle. The first stone was laid by Gilbert the Norman in 1130, but he did not live to see the completion of his work, for he died the same year, after having carefully secured the property to the Augustinians. From the first the priory enjoyed many special privileges, including that of a seat in Parliament for its abbot and the right of sanctuary, of which Hubert de Burgh, who had acted as Regent during the minority of Henry III., availed himself when he was fleeing from the wrath of his ungrateful master in 1234. It was in the spacious hall of the priory that met, two years later, the great council of the nation that defeated the attempt of the king and pope, who were for once inspired by a common ambition, to force upon the people what was known as the 'Rule of the Canon Law for the legitimisation of children born before the wedlock of their parents.' Earls and barons alike stood firm, declaring that nothing {210} would induce them to change the established laws of England; and it was not until several centuries later that what became known as the Statute of Merton was to a great extent nullified by the passing of the Legitimacy Act of 1858.

As time went on Merton Priory became a celebrated place of education, numbering amongst its pupils many boys who later rose to eminence, including Thomas à Becket, who was there for some time before he was sent to Pevensey Castle for his military training, and Walter de Merton, who became Lord High Chancellor of England in 1261, and founded in 1264 at the neighbouring village of Malden the college of Merton, that was transferred in 1274 to Oxford, and enjoys the distinction of having been the first institution in that city that was organised on collegiate lines.

Within easy distance of London, Merton was often visited by the reigning sovereigns, who repaid the hospitality they received from the abbot with constant gifts of land or money, so that by the time of the suppression of the monasteries the abbey grounds, that were enclosed by a wall, a few portions of which are still standing, were no less than sixty acres in extent, and its revenues amounted to more than a thousand pounds a year. In addition to this, the priory owned many estates in other parts of the country, with the advowsons of several churches, but all its property was snatched away by Henry VIII., who let the abbey on lease, but retained the manor of Merton, which remained the property of the Crown until 1610, when it was sold {211} by James I. to a certain Thomas Hunt, since which time it changed hands again and again before its lands were broken up into small holdings and built upon. Of the ancient manor-house not a trace is left, though possibly the so-called manor farm may occupy its site, but the abbey remained uninjured for some time longer. It had been given by Queen Mary just before her death to the monastery of Sheen, but was reclaimed by her successor, who granted a long lease of it to the cofferer of the royal household, Gregory Lovell, who died at Merton in 1597; and was buried in the parish church. In 1610 the historic building was sold to a certain Thomas Hunt, who passed it on to his heirs in good preservation, as proved by the fact that it was one of the strong places fortified during the Civil War. In 1668 it became the property of a member of the Pepys family, and its purchase by his 'Cosen Tom' is referred to by Samuel Pepys in his _Diary_ for that year. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the priory and chapel were still beautiful buildings, but long before the end they had been despoiled and converted into a calico-printing factory. Part of the materials were used to build a mansion that occupied the site of the modern house now called Merton Abbey, and a single Norman arch incorporated in the factory is all that remains to bear witness to the glory of the monastery founded by Gilbert the Norman. The railway connecting Wimbledon and Tooting runs right across what were once the abbey grounds; but in the portion belonging to the house referred to above are {212} some fish-ponds that were probably used by the monks.

Fortunately the parish church of Merton, in which Lord Nelson, Sir William and Lady Hamilton often worshipped, with its tiled roof, squat timber tower, and octagonal spire, its Norman arch at the northern end and Early English pillars in the nave, retains, in spite of frequent restoration, very much the appearance that it did when first completed early in the twelfth century. Two of the ancient lancet windows remain, the arms of the priory in old stained glass have been worked into the modern east window, on the south wall is a mural monument, with kneeling effigies, to the memory of Gregory Lovell, his wife, and their eight children, and in the nave are the hatchments of the great families who at different times owned the manor of Merton, and also one bearing the arms of Lord Nelson that was presented after his death by Lady Hamilton. In the vestry is preserved the pew in which the lovers used to sit, and in the churchyard are several quaint old tombs, including that of the second wife of the famous bookseller, James Luckington, who lived for some years at Merton.

Opposite to the church is an interesting Elizabethan mansion standing well back from the road in extensive grounds, with fine entrance-gates of wrought iron, that was long erroneously supposed to have been the original manor-house of Merton, and close to the gates is a flight of stone steps that are said to have been used by Lord Nelson for mounting and dismounting when he rode to church from {213} his beloved home on the Wandle, known as Merton Place, where he spent the happiest years of his life, and from which he went forth never to return five weeks before the battle of Trafalgar, in which he lost his life.

Unfortunately, absolutely no trace is now left of Merton Place, for it was sold in 1808 by Lady Hamilton, to whom it had been bequeathed, and its site is now occupied by a street of commonplace villas, the names of Nelson Place and the Nelson Arms alone recalling the days when the great naval hero was a familiar figure in the village. Opposite the railway station, however, is a ruined castellated gate overgrown with ivy that once gave access to the estate which Nelson and his beloved Emma called Paradise Merton, which witnessed the closing scenes of a romance without a parallel in history or fiction. On the improvement of that estate large sums of money were expended, and after the credulous or wilfully blind Sir William Hamilton had passed away, the long disowned but deeply loved Horatia was brought to live with her mother, her absent father betraying in his letters a deep solicitude for her welfare, as when he begs that 'a strong netting about three feet high may be placed round the Nile,' as he called the stream running through the grounds, 'that the little thing may not tumble in.'

[Sidenote: Malden]

Malden, the Anglo-Saxon name of which signifies the Hill of the Cross, has now even less that is distinctive about it than Merton, but it is noteworthy as having been the first site of the college referred to above, founded in 1240 by Walter de Merton, {214} who at that date bought Malden Manor, the history of which can be traced back to the time of the Doomsday Survey, when with that of the neighbouring Chessington it was the property of Richard de Tonbridge. Merton College retained its estate at Mitcham until the dissolution of the monasteries, when Henry VIII. took 120 acres of it--now part of the populous suburb known as Worcester Park--to add them to the grounds of Nonsuch Palace. Later Queen Elizabeth confiscated the manors of Malden and Chessington with the advowsons of both livings for a term of no less than five hundred years, salving her conscience by paying a nominal rent of forty pounds, but in the reign of her successor the members of the college succeeded in bringing about a compromise, by the terms of which the then owner of the lease and his heirs were allowed to retain it for another eighty years.

The parish church of Malden, though it has been again and again restored, still retains traces of Saxon work in the walls of the chancel, that now serves as an aisle of the greatly enlarged building, and in the east window are the arms of Walter de Merton and of Bishop Ravis, who occupied the see of London in the early nineteenth century, whilst the position occupied by the altar in the first chapel is marked by a stone slab bearing the inscription: 'Here stood the Lord's Table on Maeldune, the Hill of the Cross for nigh a thousand years.'

Some two miles from Merton is the still secluded village of Morden, or the settlement on the great hill, the manor of which belonged at the time of the {215} Conquest to the abbey of Westminster, and became the property of the Crown on the dissolution of the monasteries. It was granted by Edward VI. to Edward Whitchurch and Lionel Ducket, and since then has changed hands many times. Its ancient manor-house is still represented by a mansion known as Morden Hall, and its parish church retains the tower of a much earlier building, whilst on its walls hang many fine old brasses and a number of hatchments of great antiquarian interest.

[Sidenote: Mitcham]

The extensive parish of Mitcham, that stretches away from Merton and Morden to Beddington, Carshalton, and Croydon on the south, and on the east to Streatham and Norwood includes one of the most beautiful commons near London, set in a border of fields planted with lavender bushes and sweet-smelling herbs. It is associated, moreover, with many interesting memories, and at the time of the Conquest was an extremely valuable property, including no less than five manors that were later reduced to three, which changed hands so often that it is almost impossible to trace their history. It is enough to add that Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, owned a house at Mitcham that still bears his name, that Sir Walter Raleigh occupied another for some time that belonged to his wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton, and that in a mansion now pulled down Sir Julius Cæsar received Queen Elizabeth in 1598, an honour that according to his own account cost him considerably more than £700. On the banks of the Wandle, in a villa known as Grove House, lived Sir Thomas More, and two {216} centuries later it was the home of a man of a very different type, Lord Clive, who in 1774, just before he took his own life, gave it to the great lawyer Alexander Wedderburn, the future Lord Chancellor of England, who had defended him at his trial. In 1789 Grove House was bought by the London banker Sir Samuel Hoare, who often showed hospitality in it to Hannah More, the Wilberforces and the Macaulays. Dr. Donne, the famous Dean of St. Paul, who died in 1631, was also at one time a resident at Mitcham; Charles Mathews, who was to make such a great reputation as a comedian, used to ride over on his pony for a gallop on Mitcham Common when he was at school at Clapham; and Dr. Johnson was fond of dining in the neighbourhood when he was the guest of Mrs. Thrale at Streatham.

The original village of Mitcham, picturesquely situated on the Wandle, that here works several mills, is now but the nucleus of a rapidly growing town; and it is very much the same with its neighbour Tooting, that retains little except the common, which is now its chief distinction, to recall the days when Queen Elizabeth was the guest of the lord of the manor, Lord Burghley, or those a century later, when the author of _Robinson Crusoe_ lived in a little house on the road that still bears his name and founded the conventicle now replaced by the Defoe Presbyterian chapel. The ancient parish church of Tooting, of which that conventicle soon became a serious rival, was pulled down some eighty years ago to make room for a modern successor; of the beautiful convent of the Holy Cross, that once {217} stood just without the village, and is said to have been connected with the church by a subterranean passage, not a trace remains; whilst a few dignified-looking mansions with wrought-iron entrance-gates, and the two inns known as the Castle and the Angel, are the only houses with any claim to antiquity.

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