Rural Rides Page 40

  But, what ignorance, impudence and insolence must those base wretches have, who propose to transport the labouring people, as being too numerous, while the produce, which is obtained by their labour, is more than sufficient for three, four, or five, or even ten times their numbers! JERRY CURTEIS, who has, it seems, been a famous witness on this occasion, says that the poor-rates, in many cases, amount to as much as the rent. Well; and what then, JERRY? The rent may be high enough too, and the farmer may afford to pay them both; for, a very large part of what you call poor-rates ought to be called wages. But, at any rate, what has all this to do with the necessity of emigration? To make out such necessity, you must make out that you have more mouths than the produce of the parish will feed? Do then, JERRY, tell us, another time, a little about the quantity of food annually raised in four or five adjoining parishes; for, is it not something rather damnable, JERRY, to talk of transporting Englishmen, on account of the excess of their numbers, when the fact is notorious, that their labour produces five or ten times as much food and raiment as they and their families consume!

  However, to drop JERRY, for the present, the baseness, the foul, the stinking, the carrion baseness, of the fellows that call themselves ‘country gentlemen’, is, that the wretches, while railing against the poor and the poor-rates; while affecting to believe, that the poor are wicked and lazy; while complaining that the poor, the working people, are too numerous, and that the country villages are too populous: the carrion baseness of these wretches, is, that, while they are thus bold with regard to the working and poor people, they never even whisper a word against pensioners, placemen, soldiers, parsons, fundholders, tax-gatherers, or tax-eaters! They say not a word against the prolific dead-weight, to whom they GIVE A PREMIUM FOR BREEDING, while they want to check the population of labourers! They never say a word about the too great populousness of the WEN; nor about that of Liverpool, Manchester, Cheltenham, and the like! Oh! they are the most cowardly, the very basest, the most scandalously base reptiles that ever were warmed into life by the rays of the sun!

  In taking my leave of this beautiful vale I have to express my deep shame, as an Englishman, at beholding the general extreme poverty of those who cause this vale to produce such quantities of food and raiment. This is, I verily believe it, the worst used labouring people upon the face of the earth. Dogs and hogs and horses are treated with more civility; and as to food and lodging, how gladly would the labourers change with them! This state of things never can continue many years! By some means or other there must be an end to it; and my firm belief is, that that end will be dreadful. In the mean while I see, and I see it with pleasure, that the common people know that they are ill used; and that they cordially, most cordially, hate those who ill-treat them.

  During the day I crossed the river about fifteen or sixteen times; and in such hot weather it was very pleasant to be so much amongst meadows and water. I had been at NETHERAVON (18) about eighteen years ago, where I had seen a great quantity of hares. It is a place belonging to Mr HICKS BEACH, or BEECH, who was once a member of parliament. I found the place altered a good deal; out of repair; the gates rather rotten; and (a very bad sign!) the roof of the dog-kennel falling in! There is a church, at this village of NETHERAVON, large enough to hold a thousand or two of people, and the whole parish contains only 350 souls, men, women and children. This Netheravon was formerly a great lordship, and in the parish there were three considerable mansion-houses, besides the one near the church. These mansions are all down now; and it is curious enough to see the former walled gardens become orchards, together with other changes, all tending to prove the gradual decay in all except what appertains merely to the land as a thing of production for the distant market. But, indeed, the people and the means of enjoyment must go away. They are drawn away by the taxes and the paper-money. How are twenty thousand new houses to be, all at once, building in the WEN, without people and food and raiment going from this valley towards the WEN? It must be so; and this unnatural, this dilapidating, this ruining and debasing work must go on, until that which produces it be destroyed.

  When I came down to STRATFORD DEAN (29 in map), I wanted to go across to LAVERSTOKE, which lay to my left of Salisbury; but just on the side of the road here, at Stratford Dean, rises the ACCURSED HILL. It is very lofty. It was originally a hill in an irregular sort of sugar-loaf shape: but, it was so altered by the Romans, or by somebody, that the upper three-quarter parts of the hill now, when seen from a distance, somewhat resemble three cheeses, laid one upon another; the bottom one a great deal broader than the next, and the top one like a Stilton cheese, in proportion to a Gloucester one. I resolved to ride over this ACCURSED HILL. AS I was going up a field towards it, I met a man going home from work. I asked how he got on. He said, very badly. I asked him what was the cause of it. He said the hard times. ‘What times,’ said I; ‘was there ever a finer summer, a finer harvest, and is there not an old wheat-rick in every farm-yard?’ ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘they make it bad for poor people, for all that.’ ‘They?’ said I, ‘who is they?’ He was silent. ‘Oh, no no! my friend,’ said I, ‘it is not they; it is that ACCURSED HILL that has robbed you of the supper that you ought to find smoking on the table when you get home.’ I gave him the price of a pot of beer, and on I went, leaving the poor dejected assemblage of skin and bone to wonder at my words.

  The hill is very steep, and I dismounted and led my horse up. Being as near to the top as I could conveniently get, I stood a little while reflecting, not so much on the changes which that hill has seen, as on the changes, the terrible changes, which, in all human probability, it had yet to see, and which it would have greatly helped to produce. It was impossible to stand on this accursed spot, without swelling with indignation against the base and plundering and murderous sons of corruption. I have often wished, and I, speaking out loud, expressed the wish now; ‘May that man perish for ever and ever, who, having the power, neglects to bring to justice the perjured, the suborning, the insolent and perfidious miscreants, who openly sell their country’s rights and their own souls.’

  From the ACCURSED HILL I went to LAVERSTOKE where ‘JEMMY BOROUGH’ (as they call him here), the Judge, lives. I have not heard much about ‘JEMMY’ since he tried and condemned the two young men who had wounded the game-keepers of ASHTON SMITH and LORD PALMERSTON.7 His Lordship (Palmerston) is, I see, making a tolerable figure in the newspapers as a share-man! I got into Salisbury about half past seven o’clock, less tired than I recollect ever to have been after so long a ride; for, including my several crossings of the river and my deviations to look at churches and farm-yards, and rick-yards, I think I must have ridden nearly forty miles.

  FROM SALISBURY TO WARMINSTER, FROM WARMINSTER TO FROME, FROM FROME TO DEVIZES, AND FROM DEVIZES TO HIGHWORTH

  ‘Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail: saying, When will the new moon be gone that we may sell corn? And the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the Ephah small and the Shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? Shall not the land tremble for this; and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? I will turn your feasting into mourning, saith the Lord God, and your songs into lamentations.’ – Amos, chap. viii. ver. 4 to 10.

  Heytesbtuy (Wilts), Thursday, 31st August, 1826

  This place, which is one of the rotten boroughs of Wiltshire, and which was formerly a considerable town, is now but a very miserable affair. Yesterday morning I went into the Cathedral at Salisbury about 7 o’clock. When I got into the nave of the church, and was looking up and admiring the columns and the roof, I heard a sort of humming, in some place which appeared to be in the transept of the building. I wondered what it was, and made my way towards the place whence the noise appeared to issue. As I approached it, the noise seemed to grow louder. At last, I thought I could distinguish the sounds of the human voice. This encouraged me t
o proceed; and, still following the sound, I at last turned in at a doorway to my left, where I found a priest and his congregation assembled. It was a parson of some sort, with a white covering on him, and five women and four men: when I arrived, there were five couple of us. I joined the congregation, until they came to the litany; and then, being monstrously hungry, I did not think myself bound to stay any longer. I wonder what the founders would say, if they could rise from the grave, and see such a congregation as this in this most magnificent and beautiful cathedral? I wonder what they would say, if they could know to what purpose the endowments of this Cathedral are now applied; and above all things, I wonder what they would say, if they could see the half-starved labourers that now minister to the luxuries of those who wallow in the wealth of those endowments. There is one thing, at any rate, that might be abstained from, by those that revel in the riches of those endowments; namely, to abuse and blackguard those of our forefathers, from whom the endowments came, and who erected the edifice, and carried so far towards the skies that beautiful and matchless spire, of which the present possessors have the impudence to boast, while they represent as ignorant and benighted creatures, those who conceived the grand design, and who executed the scientific and costly work. These fellows, in big white wigs, of the size of half a bushel, have the audacity, even within the walls of the Cathedrals themselves, to rail against those who founded them; and RENNELL and STURGES, while they were actually, literally, fattening on the spoils of the monastery of St SWITHIN, at Winchester, were publishing abusive pamphlets against that Catholic religion which had given them their very bread. For my part, I could not look up at the spire and the whole of the church at Salisbury, without feeling that I lived in degenerate times. Such a thing never could be made now. We feel that, as we look at the building. It really does appear that if our forefathers had not made these buildings, we should have forgotten, before now, what the Christian religion was!

  At Salisbury, or very near to it, four other rivers fall into the AVON. The Wyly river, the Nadder, the Born, and another little river that comes from Norrington. These all become one, at last, just below Salisbury, and then, under the name of the AVON, wind along down and fall into the sea at Christchurch. In coming from Salisbury, I came up the road which runs pretty nearly parallel with the river WYLY, which river rises at Warminster and in the neighbourhood. This river runs down a valley twenty-two miles long. It is not so pretty as the valley of the Avon; but it is very fine in its whole length from Salisbury to this place (Heytesbury). Here are watered meadows nearest to the river on both sides; then the gardens, the houses, and the corn-fields. After the corn-fields come the downs; but, generally speaking, the downs are not so bold here as they are on the sides of the Avon. The downs do not come out in promontories so often as they do on the sides of the Avon. The Ah-ah! if I may so express it, is not so deep, and the sides of it not so steep, as in the case of the Avon; but the villages are as frequent; there is more than one church in every mile, and there has been a due proportion of mansion houses demolished and defaced. The farms are very fine up this vale, and the meadows, particularly at a place called STAPLEFORD, are singularly fine. They had just been mowed at Stapleford, and the hay carried off. At Stapleford, there is a little cross valley, running up between two hills of the down. There is a little run of water about a yard wide at this time, coming down this little vale across the road into the river. The little vale runs up three miles. It does not appear to be half a mile wide; but in those three miles there are four churches; namely, Stapleford, Uppington, Berwick St James, and Winterbome Stoke. The present population of these four villages is 769 souls, men, women, and children, the whole of whom could very conveniently be seated in the chancel of the church at Stapleford. Indeed, the church and parish of Uppington seem to have been united with one of the other parishes, like the parish in Kent which was united with North Cray, and not a single house of which now remains. What were these four churches Built FOR within the distance of three miles? There are three parsonage houses still remaining; but, and it is a very curious fact, neither of them good enough for the parson to live in! Here are seven hundred and sixty souls to be taken care of, but there is no parsonage house for a soul-curer to stay in, or at least that he will stay in; and all the three parsonages are, in the return laid before Parliament, represented to be no better than miserable labourers’ cottages, though the parish of Winterborne Stoke has a church sufficient to contain two or three thousand people. The truth is, that the parsons have been receiving the revenues of the livings, and have been suffering the parsonage houses to fall into decay. Here were two or three mansion houses, which are also gone, even from the sides of this little run of water.

  To-day has been exceedingly hot. Hotter, I think, for a short time, than I ever felt it in England before. In coming through a village called WISHFORD, and mounting a little hill, I thought the heat upon my back was as great as I had ever felt in my life. There were thunder storms about, and it had rained at Wishford a little before I came to it. My next village was one that I had lived in for a short time, when I was only about ten or eleven years of age. I had been sent down with a horse from Farnham, and I remember that I went by Stone-henge, and rode up and looked at the stones. From Stone-henge I went to the village of Steeple Langford, where I remained from the month of June till the fall of the year. I remembered the beautiful villages up and down this valley. I also remembered, very well, that the women at Steeple Langford used to card and spin dyed wool. I was, therefore somewhat filled with curiosity to see this Steeple Langford again; and, indeed, it was the recollection of this village that made me take a ride into Wiltshire this summer. I have, I dare say, a thousand times talked about this Steeple Langford and about the beautiful farms and meadows along this valley. I have talked of these to my children a great many times; and I formed the design of letting two of them see this valley this year, and to go through Warminster to Stroud, and so on to Gloucester and Hereford, but, when I got to Everley, I found that they would never get along fast enough to get into Herefordshire in time for what they intended; so that I parted from them in the manner I have before described. I was resolved, however, to see Steeple Langford myself, and I was impatient to get to it, hoping to find a public-house, and a stable to put my horse in, to protect him, for a while, against the flies, which tormented him to such a degree, that to ride him was work as hard as threshing. When I got to Steeple Langford, I found no public-house, and I found it a much more miserable place than I had remembered it. The Steeple, to which it owed its distinctive appellation, was gone; and the place altogether seemed to me to be very much altered for the worse. A little further on, however, I came to a very famous inn, called DEPTFORD INN, which is in the parish of Wyly. I stayed at this inn till about four o’clock in the afternoon. I remembered Wyly very well, and thought it a gay place when I was a boy. I remembered a very beautiful garden belonging to a rich farmer and miller. I went to see it; but, alas! though the statues in the water and on the grass-plat were still remaining, every thing seemed to be in a state of perfect carelessness and neglect. The living of this parish of Wyly was lately owned by DAMPIER (a brother of the Judge), who lived at, and I believe had the living of, MEON STOKE in Hampshire. This fellow, I believe, never saw the parish of Wyly but once, though it must have yielded him a pretty good fleece. It is a Rectory, and the great tithes must be worth, I should think, six or seven hundred pounds a year, at the least. It is a part of our system to have certain families, who have no particular merit; but who are to be maintained, without why or wherefore, at the public expense, in some shape, or under some name, or other, it matters not much what shape or what name. If you look through the old list of pensioners, sinecurists, parsons, and the like, you will find the same names everlastingly recurring. They seem to be a sort of creatures that have an inheritance in the public carcass, like the maggots that some people have in their skins. This family of AMPIER seems to be one of those. What, in God’s name, should have
made one of these a Bishop and the other a Judge! I never heard of the smallest particle of talent that either of them possessed. This Rector of Wyly was another of them. There was no harm in them that I know of, beyond that of living upon the public; but, where were their merits? They had none, to distinguish them, and to entitle them to the great sums they received; and, under any other system than such a system as this, they would, in all human probability, have been gentlemen’s servants or little shopkeepers. I dare say there is some of the breed left; and, if there be, I would pledge my existence that they are, in some shape or other, feeding upon the public. However, thus it must be, until that change come which will put an end to men paying fourpence in tax upon a pot of beer.

  This DEPTFORD INN was a famous place of meeting for the Yeomanry Cavalry, in glorious anti-jacobin times, when wheat was twenty shillings a bushel, and when a man could be crammed into gaol for years, for only looking awry. This inn was a glorious place in the days of PEG NICHOLSON and her KNIGHTS. Strangely altered now. The shape of the garden shows you what revelry used to be carried on here. Peel’s Bill gave this inn, and all belonging to it, a terrible souse. The unfeeling brutes, who used to brandish their swords, and swagger about, at the news of what was called ‘a victory’, have now to lower their scale in clothing, in drink, in eating, in dress, in horseflesh, and everything else. They are now a lower sort of men than they were. They look at their rusty sword and their old dusty helmet and their once gay regimental jacket. They do not hang these up now in the ‘parlour’ for every body to see them: they hang them up in their bed-rooms, or in a cock-loft; and when they meet their eye, they look at them as a cow does at a bastard calf, or as the bridegroom does at a girl that the overseers are about to compel him to marry. If their children should happen to see these implements of war twenty or thirty years hence, they will certainly think that their fathers were the greatest fools that ever walked the face of the earth; and that will be a most filial and charitable way of thinking of them; for, it is not from ignorance that they have sinned, but from excessive baseness; and when any of them now complain of those acts of the Government which strip them, (as the late Order in Council1 does) of a fifth part of their property in an hour, let them recollect their own base and malignant conduct towards those persecuted reformers, who, if they had not been suppressed by these very yeomen, would, long ago, have put an end to the cause of that ruin of which these yeomen now complain. When they complain of their ruin, let them remember the toasts which they drank in anti-jacobin times; let them remember their base and insulting exultations on the occasion of the 16th of August at Manchester;2 let them remember their cowardly abuse of men, who were endeavouring to free their country from that horrible scourge which they themselves now feel.