Rural Rides Page 43

  My road from Warminster to Devizes lay through WESTBURY, a nasty odious rotten-borough, a really rotten place. It has cloth factories in it, and they seem to be ready to tumble down as well as many of the houses. God’s curse seems to be upon most of these rotten-boroughs. After coming through this miserable hole, I came along, on the north side of the famous hill, called BRATTON CASTLE, SO renowned in the annals of the Romans and of Alfred the Great. WESTBURY is a place of great ancient grandeur; and, it is easy to perceive, that it was once ten or twenty times its present size. My road was now the line of separation between what they call SOUTH WILTS and NORTH WILTS, the former consisting of high and broad downs and narrow valleys with meadows and rivers running down them; the latter consisting of a rather flat, enclosed country: the former having a chalk bottom; the latter a bottom of marl, clay, or flat stone: the former a country for lean sheep and corn; and the latter a country for cattle, fat sheep, cheese, and bacon: the former, by far, to my taste, the most beautiful; and I am by no means sure, that it is not, all things considered, the most rich. All my way along, till I came very near to Devizes, I had the steep and naked downs up to my right, and the flat and enclosed country to my left.

  Very near to BRATTON CASTLE (which is only a hill with deep ditches on it) is the village of EDDINGTON, SO famed for the battle fought here by Alfred and the Danes. The church, in this village, would contain several thousands of persons; and the village is reduced to a few straggling houses. The land here is very good; better than almost any I ever saw; as black, and, apparently, as rich, as the land in the market-gardens at Fulham. The turnips are very good all along here for several miles; but, this is, indeed, singularly fine and rich land. The orchards very fine; finely sheltered, and the crops of apples and pears and walnuts very abundant. Walnuts ripe now, a month earlier than usual. After EDDINGTON I came to a hamlet called EARL’S STOKE, the houses of which stand at a few yards from each other, on the two sides of the road; every house is white; and the front of every one is covered with some sort or other of climatis, or with rose-trees, or jasmines. It was easy to guess, that the whole belonged to one owner; and that owner I found to be a Mr WATSON TAYLOR, whose very pretty seat is close by the hamlet, and in whose park-pond I saw what I never saw before; namely, some black swans. They are not nearly so large as the white, nor are they so stately in their movements. They are a meaner bird.

  Highworth (Wilts), Monday, 4th Sept.

  I got here, yesterday, after a ride, including my deviations, of about thirty-four miles, and that, too, without breaking my fast. Before I got into the rotten-borough of CALNE, I had two tributes to pay to the Aristocracy; namely, two Sunday tolls; and, I was resolved, that the country, in which these tolls were extorted, should have not a farthing of my money, that I could, by any means, keep from it. Therefore, I fasted, until I got into the free-quarters in which I now am. I would have made my horse fast too, if I could have done it without the risk of making him unable to carry me…

  FROM HIGHWORTH TO CRICKLADE AND THENCE TO MALMSBURY

  Highworth (Wilts), Monday, 4th Sept. 1826

  When I got to Devizes, on Saturday evening, and came to look out of the inn-window into the street, I perceived, that I had seen that place before, and, always having thought, that I should like to see Devizes, of which I had heard so much talk as a famous corn-market, I was very much surprised to find, that it was not new to me. Presently a stage-coach came up to the door, with ‘Bath and London’ upon its panels; and then I recollected, that I had been at this place, on my way to Bristol, last year. Devizes is, as nearly as possible, in the centre of the county, and the canal, that passes close by it, is the great channel through which the produce of the country is carried away to be devoured by the idlers, the thieves, and the prostitutes, who are all tax-eaters, in the WENS of Bath and London. POTTERN, which I passed through in my way from Warminster to Devizes, was once a place much larger than Devizes; and it is now a mere ragged village, with a church large, very ancient, and of most costly structure. The whole of the people, here, might, as in most other cases, be placed in the belfry, or the church-porches. All the way along, the mansion-houses are nearly all gone. There is now and then a great place, belonging to a borough-monger, or some one connected with borough-mongers; but, all the little gentlemen are gone; and, hence it is, that parsons are now made justices of the peace! There are few other persons left, who are at all capable of filling the office in a way to suit the system! The monopolizing brewers and rag-rooks are, in some places, the ‘magistrates’; and thus is the whole thing changed, and England is no mere what it was. Very near to the sides of my road from Warminster to Devizes, there were formerly (within a hundred years), 22 mansion-houses of sufficient note to be marked as such in the county-map, then made. There are now only seven of them remaining. There were five parish-churches nearly close to my road; and, in one parish out of the five, the parsonage-house is, in the parliamentary return, said to be ‘too small’ for the parson to live in, though the church would contain two or three thousand people, and though the living is a Rectory, and a rich one too! Thus has the church-property, or, rather, that public property, which is called church property, been dilapidated! The parsons have swallowed the tithes and the rent of the glebes; and have, successively, suffered the parsonage-houses to fall into decay. But, these parsonage-houses were, indeed, not intended for large families. They were intended for a priest, a main part of whose business it was to distribute the tithes amongst the poor and the strangers! The parson, in this case, at CORSELY, says, ‘too small for an incumbent with a family’. Ah! there is the mischief. It was never intended to give men tithes as a premium for breeding! MALTHUS does not seem to see any harm in this sort of increase of population. It is the working population, those who raise the food and the clothing, that he and SCARLETT want to put a stop to the breeding of!

  I saw, on my way through the down-countries, hundreds of acres of ploughed land in shelves. What I mean is, the side of a steep hill, made into the shape of a stairs, only the rising parts more sloping than those of a stairs, and deeper in proportion. The side of the hill, in its original form, was too steep to be ploughed, or, even to be worked with a spade. The earth, as soon as moved, would have rolled down the hill; and, besides, the rains would have soon washed down all the surface earth, and have left nothing for plants of any sort to grow in. Therefore the sides of hills, where the land was sufficiently good, and where it was wanted for the growing of corn, were thus made into a sort of steps or shelves, and the horizontal parts (representing the parts of the stairs that we put our feet upon,) were ploughed and sowed, as they generally are, indeed, to this day. Now, no man, not even the hireling CHALMERS, will have the impudence to say, that these shelves, amounting to thousands and thousands of acres in Wiltshire alone, were not made by the hand of man. It would be as impudent to contend, that the churches were formed by the flood, as to contend, that these shelves were formed by that cause. Yet, thus the Scotch scribes must contend; or, they must give up all their assertions about the ancient beggary and want of population in England; for, as in the case of the churches, what were these shelves made FOR? And could they be made at all, without a great abundance of hands? These shelves are every where to be seen throughout the down-countries of Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire and Cornwall; and, besides this, large tracts of land, amounting to millions of acres, perhaps, which are now downs, heaths, or woodlands, still, if you examine closely, bear the marks of the plough. The fact is, I dare say, that the country has never varied much in the gross amount of its population; but, formerly the people were pretty evenly spread over the country, instead of being, as the greater part of them now are, collected together in great masses, where, for the greater part, the idlers live on the labour of the industrious.

  In quitting DEVIZES yesterday morning, I saw, just on the outside of the town, a monstrous building, which I took for a barracks but, upon asking what it was, I found it was one of those o
ther marks of the JUBILEE REIGN; namely a most magnificent gaol! It seemed to me sufficient to hold one-half of the able-bodied men in the county! And it would do it too, and do it well! Such a system must come to an end, and the end must be dreadful. As I came on the road, for the first three or four miles, I saw great numbers of labourers either digging potatoes for their Sunday’s dinner, or coming home with them, or going out to dig them. The land-owners, or occupiers, let small pieces of land to the labourers, and these they cultivate with the spade for their own use. They pay, in all cases a high rent, and, in most cases, an enormous one. The practice prevails all the way from Warminster to Devizes, and from Devizes to nearly this place (Highworth). The rent is, in some places, a shilling a rod, which is, mind, 160s. or 8l. an acre! Still the poor creatures like to have the land: they work in it at their spare hours; and on Sunday mornings early: and the overseers, sharp as they may be, cannot ascertain precisely how much they get out of their plat of ground. But, good God! what a life to live! What a life to see people live; to see this sight in our own country, and to have the base vanity to boast of that country, and to talk of our ‘constitution’ and our ‘liberties’, and to affect to pity the Spaniards, whose working people live like gentlemen, compared with our miserable creatures. Again I say, give me the Inquisition and well-healed cheeks and ribs, rather than ‘civil and religious liberty’, and skin and bone. But, the fact is, that, where honest and laborious men can be compelled to starve quietly, whether all at once or by inches, with old wheat ricks and fat cattle under their eye, it is a mockery to talk of their ‘liberty’, of any sort; for, the sum total of their state is this, they have ‘liberty’ to choose between death by starvation (quick or slow) and death by the halter!

  Between Warminster and Westbury I saw thirty or more men digging a great field of I dare say, twelve acres. I thought, ‘surely, that “humane”, half-mad, and beastly fellow, OWEN, is not got at work here; that OWEN, who the beastly feelosofers tell us, went to the Continent, to find out how to teach the labouring people to live in a married state without having children’.1 No: it was not OWEN: it was the overseer of the parish, who had set these men to dig up this field, previously to its being sown with wheat. In short, it was a digging instead of a ploughing. The men, I found upon inquiry, got 9d. a day for their work. Plain digging, in the market gardens near London, is, I believe, 3d. or 4d. a rod. If these poor men, who were chiefly weavers or spinners from WESTBURY, or had come home to their parish from BRADFORD or TROWBRIDGE; if they digged six rods each in a day, and fairly did it, they must work well. This would be 11/2d. a rod, or 2Or. an acre; and that is as cheap as ploughing, and four times as good. But, how much better to give the men higher wages, and let them do more work? If married, how are their miserable families to live on 4s. 6d. a week? And, if single, they must and will have more, either by poaching, or by taking without leave. At any rate, this is better than the road work: I mean better for those who pay the rates, for here is something which they get for the money that they give to the poor; whereas, in the case of the road-work, the money given in relief is generally wholly so much lost to the rate-payer. What a curious spectacle is this: the manufactories throwing the people back again upon the land! It is not above eighteen months ago, that the Scotch FEELOSOFERS, and especially Dr BLACK, were calling upon the farm labourers to become manufacturers! I remonstrated with the Doctor at the time; but, he still insisted, that such a transfer of hands was the only remedy for the distress in the farming districts! However (and I thank God for it) the feelosofers have enough to do at home now; for the poor are crying for food in dear, cleanly, warm, fruitful Scotland herself, in spite of a’ the Hamiltons and a’ the Wallaces and a’ the Maxwells and a’ the Hope Johnstones and a’ the Dundases and a’ the Edinbro’ Reviewers and a’ the Broughams and Birckbecks. In spite of all these, the poor of Scotland are now helping themselves, or about to do it, for want of the means of purchasing food.

  From Devizes I came to the vile rotten borough of CALNE leaving, the park and house of LORD LANSDOWN to my left. This man’s name is PETTY, and, doubtless, his ancestors ‘came in with the Conqueror’; for, Petty is, unquestionably, a corruption of the French word PETIT; and, in this case, there appears to have been not the least degeneracy; a thing rather rare in these days. There is a man whose name was GRIMSTONE (that is, to a certainty, Grindstone), who is now called LORD VERULAM, and who, according to his pedigree in the Peerage, is descended from a standard-bearer of the Conqueror’! Now, the devil a bit is there the word GRINDSTONE, or GRIMSTONE, in the Norman language. Well, let them have all that their French descent can give them, since they will insist upon it, that they are not of this country. So help me God, I would, if I could, give them Normandy to live in, and, if the people would let them, to possess. This PETTY family began, or, at least, made its first grand push, in poor, unfortunate Ireland! The history of that push would amuse the people of Wiltshire! Talking of Normans and high-blood, puts me in mind of BECKFORD and his ‘ABBEY’! The public knows, that the tower of this thing fell down some time ago. It was built of Scotch-fir and cased with stone! In it there was a place which the owner had named, ‘The Gallery of Edward HI, the frieze of which, (says the account,) contains the achievements of seventy-eight Knights of the Garter, from whom the owner is LINEALLY DESCENDED’! Was there ever vanity and impudence equal to these! the negro-driver brag of his high blood! I dare say, that the old powder-man, FARQUHAR, had as good pretension; and I really should like to know, whether he took out Beckford’s name, and put in his own, as the lineal descendant of the seventy-eight Knights of the Garter.

  I could not come through that villanous hole, CALNE, without cursing Corruption at every step; and, when I was coming by an ill-looking, broken-winded place, called the town-hall, I suppose, I poured out a double dose of execration upon it. ‘Out of the frying-pan into the fire’; for, in about ten miles more, I came to another rotten-hole, called WOTTON-BASSET! This also is a mean, vile place, though the country all round it is very fine. On this side of WOTTON-BASSET, I went out of my way to see the church at GREAT LYDDIARD, which, in the parliamentary return, is called Lyddiard Tregoose. In my old map it is called Tregose; and, to a certainty, the word was Tregrosse; that is to say, tres grosse, or, very big. Here is a good old mansion-house and large walled-in garden and a park, belonging, they told me, to LORD BOLINGBROKE. I went quite down to the house, close to which stands the large and fine church. It appears to have been a noble place; the land is some of the finest in the whole country; the trees show that the land is excellent; but, all, except the church, is in a state of irrepair and apparent neglect, if not abandonment. The parish is large, the living is a rich one, it is a Rectory; but though the incumbent has the great and small tithes, he, in his return tells the Parliament, that the parsonage-house is ‘worn out and incapable of repair’! And, observe, that Parliament lets him continue to sack the produce of the tithes and the glebe, while they know the parsonage-house to be crumbling-down, and while he has the impudence to tell them that he does not reside in it, though the law says that he shall! And, while this is suffered to be, a poor man may be transported for being in pursuit of a hare! What coals, how hot, how red, is this flagitious system preparing for the backs of its supporters!

  In coming from WOTTON-BASSET to HIGHWORTH, J left SWINDON a few miles away to my left, and came by the village of BLUNSDON. All along here I saw great quantities of hops in the hedges, and very fine hops, and I saw at a village called STRATTON, I think it was, the first campanula that I ever saw in my life. The main stalk was more than four feet high, and there were four stalks, none of which was less than three feet high. All through the country, poor, as well as rich, are very neat in their gardens, and very careful to raise a great variety of flowers. At Blunsdon I saw a clump, or, rather a sort of orchard, of as fine walnut-trees as I ever beheld, and loaded with walnuts. Indeed I have seen great crops of walnuts all the way from London. From Blunsdon to this place is but a short distan
ce, and I got here about two or three o’clock. This is a cheese country; some corn, but, generally speaking, it is a country of dairies. The sheep here are of the large kind; a sort of Leicester sheep, and the cattle chiefly for milking. The ground is a stiff loam at top, and a yellowish stone under. The houses are almost all built of stone. It is a tolerably rich, but by no means, a gay and pretty country. Highworth has a situation corresponding with its name. On every side you go up-hill to it, and from it you see to a great distance all round and into many counties.

  Highworth, Wednesday, 6th Sept

  The great object of my visit to the Northern border of Wiltshire will be mentioned when I get to MALMSBURY, whither I intend to go tomorrow, or next day, and thence, through Gloucestershire, in my way to Herefordshire. But, an additional inducement, was to have a good long political gossip, with some excellent friends, who detest the borough-ruffians as cordially as I do, and who, I hope, wish as anxiously to see their fall effected, and no matter by what means. There was, however, arising incidentally, a third object, which had I known of its existence, would, of itself, have brought me from the South-West to the North-East corner of this county. One of the parishes adjoining to Highworth is that of COLESHILL, which is in Berkshire, and which is the property of LORD RADNOR, or Lord FOLKESTONE, and is the seat of the latter. I was at Coleshill twenty-two or three years ago, and twice at later periods. In 1824, Lord FOLKESTONE bought some Locust trees of me; and he has several times told me, that they were growing very finely; but, I did not know, that they had been planted at Coleshill; and, indeed, I always thought, that they had been planted somewhere in the South of Wiltshire. I now found, however, that they were growing at Coleshill, and yesterday I went to see them, and was, for many reasons, more delighted with the sight, than with any that I have beheld for a long while. These trees stand in clumps of 200 trees in each, and the trees being four feet apart each way. These clumps make part of a plantation of 30 or 40 acres, perhaps 50 acres. The rest of the ground; that is to say, the ground where the clumps of Locusts do not stand, was, at the same time that the Locust clumps were, planted with chesnuts, elms, ashes, oaks, beeches, and other trees. These trees were stouter and taller than the Locust trees were, when the plantation was made. Yet, if you were now to place yourself at a mile’s distance from the plantation, you would not think that there was any plantation at all, except the clumps. The fact is, that the other trees have, as they generally do, made, as yet, but very little progress; are not, I should think, upon an average, more than 4½ feet, or 5 feet, high; while the clumps of Locusts are from 12 to 20 feet high; and, I think, that I may safely say, that the average height is SIXTEEN FEET. They are the most beautiful clumps of trees that I ever saw in my life. They were indeed, planted by a clever and most trusty servant, who to say all that can be said in his praise, is, that he is worthy of such a master as he has. The trees are, indeed, in good land, and have been taken good care of; but, the other trees are in the same land,- and, while they have been taken the same care of since they were planted, they had not, I am sure, worse treatment before planting than these Locust-trees had. At the time when I sold them to my Lord Folkestone, they were in a field at Worth, near Crawley, in Sussex. The history of their transport is this. A Wiltshire wagon came to Worth for the trees, on the 14th of March 1824. The wagon had been stopped on the way by the snow; and, though the snow was gone off before the trees were put upon the wagon, it was very cold, and there were sharp frosts and harsh winds. I had the trees taken up, and tied up in hundreds by withes, like so many fagots. They were then put in and upon the wagon, we doing our best to keep the roots inwards in the loading, so as to prevent them from being exposed but as little as possible to the wind, sun and frost. We put some fern on the top, and, where we could, on the sides; and we tied on the load with ropes, just as we should have done with a load of fagots. In this way, they were several days upon the road; and I do not know how long it was before they got safe into the ground again. All this shows how hardy these trees are, and it ought to admonish gentlemen to make pretty strict enquiries, when they have gardeners, or bailiffs, or stewards, under whose hands Locust trees die, or do not thrive.