Rural Rides Page 45

3. Population.

  4. Number of Churches and Chapels.

  5. Number of persons they (the churches and chapels) can contain.

  In looking into this account, as it was finally made up and printed by the parliamentary officers, I saw, that it was impossible for it to be true. I have always asserted, and, indeed, I have clearly PROVED, that one of the two last population returns is FALSE, barefacedly false; and, I was sure, that the account, of which I am now speaking, was equally false. The falsehood, consisted, I saw, principally, in the account of the capacity of the church to contain people; that is, under the head No. 5, as above stated. I saw, that, in almost every instance, this account MUST OF NECESSITY BE FALSE, though coming from under the pen of a beneficed clergyman. I saw, that there was a constant desire to make it appear, that the church was now become TOO SMALL! And thus to help along the opinion of a great recent increase of population, an opinion so sedulously inculcated by all the tax-eaters of every sort, and by the most brutal and best public instructor. In some cases the falsehood of this account was impudent almost beyond conception; and yet, it required going to the spot to get unquestionable proof of the falsehood. In many of the parishes, in hundreds of them, the population is next to nothing, far fewer persons than the church porch would contain. Even in these cases, the parsons have seldom said, that the church would contain more than the population! In such cases, they have generally said, that the church can contain ‘the population’. So it can; but, it can contain ten times the number! And thus it was, that, in words of truth, a lie in meaning was told to the Parliament, and not one word of notice was ever taken of it. Little Langford, or Landford, for instance, between Salisbury and Warminster, is returned as having a population under twenty, and a church that ‘can contain the population’. This church, which I went and looked at, can contain, very conveniently, two hundred people! But, there was one instance, in which the parson had been singularly impudent; for, he had stated the population at eight persons, and had stated that the church could contain eight persons! This was the account of the parish of SHARNCUT, in this county of Wilts. It lies on the very northernmost edge of the county, and its boundary, on one side, divided Wiltshire from Gloucestershire. To this SHARNCUT, therefore, I was resolved to go, and to try the fact with my own eyes. When, therefore, I got through CRICKLADE, I was compelled to quit the Malmsbury road, and go away to my right. I had to go through a village called ASHTON KEINES, with which place I was very much stricken. It is now a straggling village; but, to a certainty, it has been a large market town. There is a market-cross still standing in an open place in it; and, there are such numerous lanes, crossing each other, and cutting the land up into such little bits, that it must, at one time, have been a large town. It is a very curious place, and I should have stopped in it for some time, but I was now within a few miles of the famous SHARNCUT, the church of which, according to the parson’s account, could contain eight persons!

  At the end of about three miles more of road, rather difficult to find, but very pleasant, I got to SHARNCUT, which I found to consist of a church, two farm-houses, and a parsonage-house, one part of the buildings of which had become a labourer’s house. The church has no tower, but a sort of crowning-piece (very ancient) on the transept. The church is sixty feet long, and, on an average, twenty-eight feet wide; so that the area of it contains one thousand six hundred and eighty square feet; or, one hundred and eighty-six square yards! I found in the church eleven pews that would contain, that were made to contain, eighty-two people; and, these do not occupy a third part of the area of the church; and thus, more than two hundred persons, at the least, might be accommodated, with perfect convenience, in this church, which the parson says, ‘can contain eight’! Nay, the church porch, on its two benches, would hold twenty people, taking little and big promiscuously. I have been thus particular, in this instance, because I would leave no doubt as to the barefacedness of the lie. A strict inquiry would show, that the far greater part of the account is a most impudent lie, or, rather, string of lies. For, as to the subterfuge, that this account was true, because the church ‘can contain eight’, it is an addition to the crime of lying. What the Parliament meant was, ‘what is the greatest number of persons that the church can contain at worship’; and, therefore to put the figure of 8 against the church of SHARNCUT was to tell the Parliament a wilful lie. This parish is a rectory; it has great and small tithes; it has a glebe, and a good solid house, though the parson says it is unfit for him to live in! In short, he is not here; a curate that serves, perhaps, three or four other churches, comes here at five o’clock in the afternoon.

  The motive for making out the returns in this way is clear enough. The parsons see, that they are getting what they get in a declining, and a mouldering, country. The size of the church tells them, every thing tells them, that the country is a mean and miserable thing, compared with what it was in former times. They feel the facts; but they wish to disguise them, because they know that they have been one great cause of the country being in its present impoverished and dilapidated state. They know, that the people look at them with an accusing eye; and they wish to put as fair a face as they can upon the state of things. If you talk to them, they will never acknowledge that there is any misery in the country; because they well know how large a share they have had in the cause of it. They were always haughty and insolent; but, the anti-jacobin times made them ten thousand times more so than ever. The cry of ATHEISM, as of the French, gave these fellows of ours a fine time of it: they became identified with loyalty, and what was more, with property; and, at one time, to say, or hint, a word against a parson, do what he would, was to be an enemy of God and of all property! I verily believe, that, if PERCY JOCELYN; that Right Reverend Father in God, Bishop of Clogher, and uncle of the Earl of Roden, and Commissioner of Education; I verily believe, that, if he and JOHN MOVELLY, the soldier of the Guards, had committed their horrid crime in the time of Pitt or Perceval, or before low prices came, no man would have dared to say a word about it; and that, if any man had dared to do it, he would have been hunted down as an Atheist and Jacobin!—Those were the glorious times for them. They urged on the war: they were the loudest of all the trumpeters. They saw their tithes in danger. If they did not get the Bourbons restored, there was no chance of re-establishing tithes in France; and, then the example might be fatal. But, they forgot, that, to restore the Bourbons, A DEBT must be contracted; and that, when the nation could not pay the interest of that debt, it would, as it now does, begin to look hard at the tithes! In short, they over-reached themselves; and those of them who have common sense, now see it: each hopes that the thing will last out his time; but, they have, unless they be half-idiots, a constant dread upon their minds: this makes them a great deal less brazen than they used to be; and, I dare say, that, if the parliamentary return had to be made out again, the parson of SHARNCUT would not state that the church ‘can contain eight persons’.

  From SHARNCUT I came through a very long and straggling village, called SOMERFORD, another called OCKSEY, and another called CRUDWELL. Between Somerford and Ocksey, I saw, on the side of the road, more goldfinches than I had ever seen together; I think fifty times as many as I had ever seen at one time in my life. The favourite food of the goldfinch is the seed of the thistle. This seed is just now dead ripe. The thistles are all cut and carried away from the fields by the harvest; but, they grow alongside the roads; and, in this place, in great quantities. So that the goldfinches were got here in flocks, and, as they continued to fly along before me, for nearly half a mile, and still sticking to the road and the banks, I do believe I had, at last, a flock of ten thousand flying before me. Birds of every kind, including partridges and pheasants and all sorts of poultry, are most abundant this year. The fine, long summer has been singularly favourable to them; and you see the effect of it in the great broods of chickens and ducks and geese and turkeys in and about every farm-yard. The churches of the last-mentioned villages are all large, particularly the
latter, which is capable of containing, very conveniently, 3 or 4,000 people. It is a very large church; it has a triple roof, and is nearly 100 feet long; and master parson says, in his return, that it ‘can contain three hundred people’. At OCKSEY the people were in church as I came by. I heard the singers singing; and, as the church-yard was close by the road-side, I got off my horse and went in, giving my horse to a boy to hold. The fellow says that his church ‘can contain two hundred people’. I counted pews for about 450; the singing gallery would hold 40 or 50; two thirds of the area of the church have no pews in them. On benches these two thirds would hold 2,000 persons, taking one with another! But, this is nothing rare; the same sort of statement has been made, the same kind of falsehoods, relative to the whole of the parishes, throughout the country, with here and there an exception. Every where you see the indubitable marks of decay in mansions, in parsonage houses and in people. Nothing can so strongly depict the great decay of the villages as the state of the parsonage-houses, which are so many parcels of public property, and to prevent the dilapidation of which there are laws so strict. Since I left Devizes, I have passed close by, or very near to, thirty-two parish churches; and, in fifteen, out of these thirty-two parishes, the parsonage-houses are stated, in the parliamentary return, either as being unfit for a parson to live in, or, as being wholly tumbled down and gone! What then, are there Scotch vagabonds; are there CHALMERSES and COLQUHOUNS, to swear, ‘mon’, that Pitt and Jubilee George4 begat all us Englishmen; and, that there were only a few stragglers of us in the world before! And that our dark and ignorant fathers, who built Winchester and Salisbury Cathedrals, had neither hands nor money!

  When I got in here yesterday, I went, at first, to an inn; but I very soon changed my quarters for the house of a friend, who and whose family, though I had never seen them before, and had never heard of them until I was at Highworth, gave me a hearty reception, and precisely in the style that I like. This town, though it has nothing particularly engaging in itself stands upon one of the prettiest spots that can be imagined. Besides the river Avon, which I went down in the South-East part of the country, here is another river Avon, which runs down to BATH, and two branches, or sources, of which meet here. There is a pretty ridge of ground, the base of which is a mile, or a mile and a half wide. On each side of this ridge a branch of the river runs down, through a flat of very fine meadows. The town and the beautiful remains of the famous old Abbey, stand on the rounded spot, which terminates this ridge; and, just below, nearly close to the town, the two branches of the river meet; and then they begin to be called the Avon. The land round about is excellent, and of a great variety of forms. The trees are lofty and fine: so that what with the water, the meadows, the fine cattle and sheep, and, as I hear, the absence of hard-pinching poverty, this is a very pleasant place. There remains more of the Abbey than, I believe, of any of our monastic buildings, except that of Westminster, and those that have become Cathedrals. The church-service is performed in the part of the Abbey that is left standing. The parish church has fallen down and is gone; but the tower remains, which is made use of for the bells; but the Abbey is used as the church, though the church-tower is at a considerable distance from it. It was once a most magnificent building; and there is now a door-way, which is the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and which was nevertheless, built in SAXON times, in ‘the dark ages’, and was built by men, who were not begotten by Pitt nor by Jubilee-George. – What fools, as well as ungrateful creatures, we have been and are! There is a broken arch, standing off from the sound part of the building, at which one cannot look up without feeling shame at the thought of ever having abused the men who made it. No one need tell any man of sense; he feels our inferiority to our fathers, upon merely beholding the remains of their efforts to ornament their country and elevate the minds of the people. We talk of our skill and learning, indeed! How do we know how skilful, how learned they were? If, in all that they have left us, we see that they surpassed us, why are we to conclude, that they did not surpass us in all other things worthy of admiration? – This famous Abbey was founded, in about the year 600, by MAIDULF, a Scotch Monk, who upon the suppression of a Nunnery here at that time selected the spot for this great establishment. For the great magnificence, however, to which it was soon after brought, it was indebted to ALDHELM, a Monk educated within its first walls, by the founder himself; and to St ALDHELM, who by his great virtues became very famous, the Church was dedicated in the time of King Edgar. This Monastery continued flourishing during those dark ages, until it was sacked by the great enlightener, at which time it was found to be endowed to the amount of sixteen thousand and seventy seven pounds, eleven shillings and eight-pence, of the money of the present day! Amongst other, many other, great men produced by this Abbey of Malmsbury, was that famous scholar and historian, WILLIAM DE MALMSBURY.

  There is a market-cross, in this town, the sight of which is worth a journey of hundreds of miles. TIME, with his scythe, and ‘enlightened Protestant piety’, with its pick-axes and crow-bars; these united have done much to efface the beauties of this monument of ancient skill and taste, and proof of ancient wealth; but, in spite of all their destructive efforts, this Cross still remains a most beautiful thing, though possibly, and even probably, nearly, or quite, a thousand years old. There is a market-cross lately erected at DEVIZES, and intended to imitate the ancient ones. Compare that with this, and, then you have, pretty fairly, a view of the difference between US and our FOREFATHERS of the ‘dark ages’.

  To-morrow I start for Bollitree, near Ross, Herefordshire, my road being across the county, and through the city of Gloucester.

  FROM MALMSBURY, IN WILTSHIRE, THROUGH GLOUCESTERSHIRE, HEREFORDSHIRE, AND WORCESTERSHIRE

  Stroud (Gloucestershire), Tuesday Forenoon, 12th Sept. 1826

  I set off from Malmsbury this morning at 6 o’clock, in as sweet and bright a morning as ever came out of the heavens, and leaving behind me as pleasant a house and as kind hosts as I ever met with in the whole course of my life, either in England or America; and that is saying a great deal indeed. This circumstance was the more pleasant, as I had never before either seen, or heard of, these kind, unaffected, sensible, sans-façons, and most agreeable friends. From Malmsbury I first came, at the end of five miles, to TUTBURY, which is in Gloucestershire, there being here, a sort of dell, or ravine, which, in this place, is the boundary line of the two counties, and over which you go on a bridge, one-half of which belongs to each county. And now, before I take my leave of Wiltshire, I must observe, that, in the whole course of my life (days of courtship excepted, of course), I never passed seventeen pleasanter days than those which I have just spent in Wiltshire. It is, especially in the Southern half, just the sort of country that I like; the weather has been pleasant; I have been in good houses and amongst good and beautiful gardens; and, in every case, I have not only been most kindly entertained, but my entertainers have been of just the stamp that I like.

  I saw again, this morning, large flocks of goldfinches, feeding on the thistle-seed, on the road-side. The French call this bird by a name derived from the thistle, so notorious has it always been, that they lived upon this seed. Thistle is, in French, Chardon; and the French call this beautiful little bird Chardonaret. I never could have supposed, that such flocks of these birds would ever be seen in England. But, it is a great year for all the feathered race, whether wild or tame: naturally so, indeed; for every one knows, that it is the wet, and not the cold, that is injurious to the breeding of birds of all sorts, whether land-birds or water-birds. They say, that there are, this year, double the usual quantity of ducks and geese: and, really, they do seem to swarm in the farm-yards, wherever I go. It is a great mistake to suppose, that ducks and geese need water, except to drink. There is, perhaps, no spot in the world, in proportion to its size and population, where so many of these birds are reared and fatted, as in Long Island; and, it is not in one case out often, that they have any ponds to go to, or, that they ever see any wat
er other than water that is drawn up out of a well.

  A little way before I got to TUTBURY I saw a woman digging some potatoes, in a strip of ground, making part of a field, nearly an oblong square, and which field appeared to be laid out in strips. She told me, that the field was part of a farm (to the homestead of which she pointed); that it was, by the farmer, let out in strips to labouring people; that each strip contained a rood (or quarter of a statute acre); that each married labourer rented one strip; and that the annual rent was a pound for the strip. Now, the taxes being all paid by the farmer; the fences being kept in repair by him; and, as appeared to me, the land being exceedingly good: all these things considered, the rent does not appear to be too high. – This fashion is certainly a growing one; it is a little step towards a coming back to the ancient small life and lease holds and common-fields! This field of strips was, in fact, a sort of common-field; and the ‘agriculturists’, as the conceited asses of landlords call themselves, at their clubs and meetings, might, and they would if their skulls could admit any thoughts except such as relate to high prices and low wages; they might, and they would, begin to suspect, that the ‘dark age’ people were not so very foolish, when they had so many common-fields, and when almost every man that had a family had also a bit of land, either large or small. It is a very curious thing, that the enclosing of commons, that the shutting out of the labourers from all share in the land; that the prohibiting of them to look at a wild animal, almost at a lark or a frog; it is curious that this hard-hearted system should have gone on, until, at last, it has produced effects so injurious and so dangerous to the grinders themselves, that they have, of their own accord, and for their own safety, begun to make a step towards the ancient system, and have, in the manner I have observed, made the labourers sharers, in some degree, in the uses, at any rate, of the soil. The far greater part of these strips of land have potatoes growing in them; but, in some cases, they have borne wheat, and, in others, barley, this year; and these have now turnips; very young, most of them, but, in some places, very fine, and, in every instance, nicely hoed out. The land that will bear 400 bushels of potatoes to the acre, will bear 40 bushels of wheat; and, the ten bushels of wheat, to the quarter of an acre, would be a crop far more valuable than a hundred bushels of potatoes, as I have proved many times, in the Register.