LIBRARY 
 
 Univertity of CiWomia" 
 
 IRVINE 
 
 EX UBRI& JJHh
 
 THE 
 
 ENGLISH PEASANT 
 
 STUDIES: HISTORICAL, LOCAL, AND 
 BIOGRAPHIC 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD HEATH 
 
 Xonfcon 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1893
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA ; OR, GLIMPSES OF 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER . i 
 
 THE COTTAGE HOMES OF ENGLAND ... 57 
 
 WALKS AND TALKS WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS 
 
 I. A YORKSHIRE DALE . . . . 
 
 II. A VILLAGE FAIR IN SUFFOLK .... 
 III. FEN-LAND AND FEN-MEN ... 
 
 IV. PEASANT LIFE IN DORSET 
 
 V. PEASANT LIFE IN THE NEW FOREST . 
 
 VI. SURREY COMMONS 
 
 VII. THE KENTISH WAGGONER . . ' . 
 
 VIII. SUSSEX SHEPHERDS 
 
 IX. A SOUTHDOWN VILLAGE 
 
 X. SUSSEX COMMONS AND SUSSEX SONGS 
 XI. WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 XII. NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEP- 
 HERDS 207 
 
 XIII. IN OXFORDSHIRE 221 
 
 XIV. IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE . . . ' . . 230 
 
 TYPES OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LIFE 
 
 I. WILLIAM COBBETT 245 
 
 II. JOHN CLARE 2Q2 
 
 III. WILLIAM HUNTINGTON 32O 
 
 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL 361
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE various papers of which this book is composed were written 
 for different periodicals, at different periods between 1870 and 
 1 884, without thought of their being brought together and forming 
 a whole. 
 
 My interest in the subject began with a study of the Reports of 
 the Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons, 
 and Women in Agriculture (1867), which I took up in order to 
 gain information for some illustrated articles I was planning on 
 the various types of cottages in the different English counties. 
 
 These Reports soon convinced me that the subject was too 
 serious to be treated in the pretty fashion I intended, and the 
 result was the paper here reprinted and entitled " The Cottage 
 Homes of England" 
 
 The interest thus awakened led me, between 1870 and 1874, to 
 make a number of pedestrian tours in various parts of the country, 
 and to give the information gathered, and the sketches made, in a 
 series of papers. While I was thus going about and talking to 
 various types of English peasants, the Warwickshire strike
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 occurred, making it clear that a new era had begun for the Agri- 
 cultural Labourer ; and this fact may lend an interest to these 
 " Walks and Talks " beyond their intrinsic merit. 
 
 After this came the sketches of typical English Peasants here re- 
 produced. William Cobbett, John Clare, and William Huntington 
 are types of the tangled, distorted lives lived by men of genius who 
 come from the lower ranks of English rural life. It is not so 
 much in what these men did, as in what they were unable to do ; 
 not so much in the degree of fame to which they individually 
 attained, as in the warping of their lives, in the positive sacrifice of 
 their souls, that the interest lies. In this trilogy each life is a 
 tragedy, and each tragedy is more tragic than the one it follows ; 
 and the lives of these men represent those of thousands that 
 have been lived in England. On whom must the blame fall, but 
 on those who have hitherto monopolised power and authority in 
 the rural districts, as well as all the means of higher education ? 
 
 The articles latest in point of date are those placed at the 
 opening and conclusion of this book. As expressions of the 
 growth of convictions resulting from practical experiences, sup- 
 plemented by a careful looking up of authorities, those articles 
 are, I venture to think, the more important of the series. With 
 regard to the "English Via Dolorosa : or, Glimpses of the History 
 of the Agricultural Labourer" if any one cares to look at the 
 former Edition, they will find a long list of the sources consulted. 
 Chief among them I must mention Sir Frederick Eden's " History 
 of the State of the Poor." This precious work, now relegated in 
 the Library of the British Museum to an obscure place on the
 
 PREFACE. vl 
 
 floor, will ere long be fully acknowledged to possess a living 
 historical importance, transcending most of the well-bound 
 Chronicles and Histories which to-day are in the place of 
 honour. 
 
 In the last paper of all, " The Poor Man's Gospel" I have 
 pursued the subject in the historical vein characteristic of the 
 whole series, and have striven to show what has ever been the 
 faith of the poor and suffering since the new Revelation men had 
 of God and Duty in Jesus Christ. 
 
 The thought with which it concludes, though taken from one of 
 the very earliest of the representatives of the English Agricultural 
 Labourer, exactly harmonises with the one great thought of the 
 " Via Dolorosa," and thus suggests that that thought is a very old 
 one ; that it is, in fact, the very soul of the Christian Religion : 
 God revealed to us throughout the ages, suffering in human 
 form. 
 
 I thank the Editors of the "Contemporary Review," the 
 " Leisure Hour," and " Golden Hours " for courteously agreeing 
 to the reprint of the articles which appeared in those periodicals. 
 I ought, perhaps, to add, that in some cases these articles have 
 been abbreviated, and that all have been revised. To Dr Whitte- 
 more I owe further acknowledgment, since it was under his 
 encouragement that I began the " Walks and Talks " which, more 
 than anything else perhaps, led me into the heart of my subject. 
 
 And now, at the very moment that I conclude the work of
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 bringing together these various articles in one book by writing 
 this Preface, a great and well-conceived measure, instituting a 
 complete system of democratic government throughout rural 
 England, is being introduced into Parliament. Parish and 
 District Councils form another step towards the realisation of 
 that England which has been the ideal of thinkers and seers. 
 A day, as joyous as those in the past have been sorrowful, seems 
 about to open for "the Agricultural Labourer, oppressed and 
 depressed for a thousand years." 
 
 RICHARD HEATH. 
 
 March list 1893.
 
 I. 
 
 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA; 
 
 OR, 
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.
 
 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 (1884.) 
 
 I. 
 
 AN ENGLISH EPIPHANY. 
 
 ABOUT the year 680 there lived near the monastery of Whitby a 
 herdsman who knew so little of music and singing that when he 
 saw the harp coming towards him at festival gatherings, he, for 
 shame, rose up, and went home. 
 
 Having on one occasion thus left his companions, he withdrew 
 to the stable to tend the cattle. Here he lay down to rest, and 
 dreaming saw a man standing by his bedside, who said, "Coed- 
 mon, sing me something ; " to whom he answered, " I cannot sing 
 anything; therefore it was that I left my companions and came 
 hither." " Yet thou must sing to me," the visitor replied. " What 
 must I sing?" said the dreamer. "Sing me the origin of created 
 things." Thereupon the herdsman began to sing verses in praise 
 of God the Creator, the words of which he had never before heard. 
 Then he arose from his sleep, and having in mind all that he had 
 sung, he added to the words many others worthy of God in the 
 same measure. 
 
 In the morning he went to the town-reeve, under whose au- 
 thority he served, and told him of the gift he had received, who 
 forthwith brought him to the abbess. St Hild caused Ccedmon 
 to sing the poem in the presence of all the learned men in the 
 monastery, to whom it seemed that the herdsman had, from the 
 Lord Himself, received a heavenly gift. So they expounded to 
 him more of the sacred history, bidding him, if he could, turn the 
 words into melody of song, which he did, returning the next morn- 
 ing with another poem. Then the abbess began to make much 
 of and to love the grace of God that was in the man, exhorting 
 him to forsake the secular life and to become a monk. And she 
 3
 
 4 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 received him into the monastery with all his, causing him to be 
 taught the Holy History and the Gospel, which he, pondering 
 over, turned into sweetest verse, his song and his verse being so 
 winsome to hear that his teachers themselves wrote and learned 
 from his mouth. 
 
 Thus King Alfred relates Bede's story of the inspiration of the 
 Father of English Poetry. The Divine Messenger came and awoke 
 the Soul of this English Labourer in a stable; fitting birthplace 
 for the first cry of the humble representative throughout English 
 History, of the Man of Sorrows and the Acquaintance of grief. 
 
 Over its cradle bent holy women like St. Hild, saintly men like 
 the venerable Bede, and godly kings like Alfred the Great. 
 
 If twelve hundred years ago an English Labourer was capable 
 of writing poems which would appear the prototype of Paradise 
 Lost, what treasures must have lain hid in the souls of the agri- 
 cultural poor, condemned through all these long ages to ignorance, 
 to heavy labour and grinding poverty : an ignorance, a labour, a 
 poverty ever increasing. 
 
 To trace this Via Dolorosa is a sad work; but the poet will 
 come who will find in it the material not only of a Paradise Lost, 
 but of a Paradise Regained, for if he has to tell how this great 
 mute Soul was made an offering for National wrong-doing and has 
 to describe its suffering even unto death, he will have the joy of 
 singing its resurrection, an event accomplished in our own day. 
 
 II. 
 IN WORSE THAN EGYPTIAN BONDAGE. 
 
 THOSE crouching figures that we see sometimes supporting the 
 roof of a great building are fit emblems of the vast mass of the 
 European peoples during the Middle Ages. Both in the lands 
 under Roman and under Teutonic law, the great majority were in a 
 state of slavery. Among the Saxons the landless man must belong 
 to somebody, or he had no legal existence ; he became an outlaw, 
 and anyone might slay him. 

 
 IN WORSE THAN EGYPTIAN BONDAGE. 5 
 
 This servile condition rendered him the man of his lord; he 
 could be bought and sold together with his family and his goods 
 and chattels ; he could not marry nor give his daughter in marriage 
 without permission of the lord ; a serf, in fact, was so entirely at 
 the mercy of his master, that where the latter had judicial authority 
 he could torture his serf and put him to death. Outside the 
 manor-house stood the dreadful symbols of his power : the gallows 
 whereon to hang the men, the pit wherein to drown the women. 
 
 Nevertheless a serf could, saving his lord's right, possess pro- 
 perty ; and there must have been a certain limit to the torture 
 that could be inflicted, since the German law fixed the highest 
 number of blows a slave could receive at two hundred and twenty. 
 When it was his fate to have a good master, existence was not in- 
 tolerable ; but under a bad one, or in times of anarchy, human 
 imagination could hardly outstrip the fiendish cruelty of his 
 tyrants. 
 
 The process by which the fat kine eat up the lean kine had 
 been going on in England long before the Conquest, the old Saxon 
 freeman losing ground before the new noble class. The Norman 
 Conquest drove him down still lower, levelling into one common 
 condition of serfdom, the ceorles and thraells on the confiscated 
 estates. The old order, however, was not swept away everywhere. 
 Sir Henry Maine seems to think that the Village Community 
 which arose out of relationship and the common possession of a 
 tract of land maintained itself in England through all the revolu- 
 tions of the feudal system. 
 
 This primeval communism which secured its members in the 
 enjoyment of a certain degree of liberty, equality, and fraternity 
 was continually broken up and lessened in its area by the ravages 
 of the banditti, who, step by step, had founded another social 
 system. That the Norman rulers were capable of anything, we 
 may learn from the well-known passage in the Saxon Chronicle, 
 describing the atrocities practised on the people by some of the 
 barons in the reign of Stephen, and by the fact that, in 1102, the 
 Synod of Westminster, over which Anslem presided, denounced 
 " the wicked trade of selling men like brute beasts, which had," 
 they said, "hitherto been the common custom." 
 
 Under the Normans all except the higher classes of villeins
 
 6 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 whose services were limited to seed-time and harvest, were bound 
 to do the work needed on their lord's private domain. By them 
 his land was ploughed, dunged, and dyked, his harvests reaped, 
 his barns filled with sheaves, his stables provided with stubble, his 
 cattle, sheep, and pigs tended, his grain turned into malt, his nuts 
 gathered, his woods cut, his fires kept alive with fuel. A whole 
 army of slaves toiled for him as ploughmen, herdsmen, shepherds, 
 malsters, woodmen, carpenters, and smiths, while the borderers 
 scattered on the edges of the commons were bound to provide 
 him with a good stock of poultry and eggs. 
 
 The sole reward for all this labour was the right to existence 
 and protection. The only consolations the labourers enjoyed, 
 were the pleasures in which they could indulge on holidays, or the 
 mystic hopes which the services of the Church inspired. Dwelling 
 in dark cottages made of wattles and daubed with mud, they lived 
 on salt meat half the year, and for vegetables, ate onions, cab- 
 bages, and nettles. 
 
 How the lords fared we may judge from an account Holingshed 
 has preserved of the Earl of Leicester's expenses in 1313. By 
 that time there were labourers in the country working for daily 
 wages ; a thatcher in this same year received 3 |d. a day. If we 
 deduct Sundays and Holidays, such a labourer would have been 
 able to earn about 4 a year ; and as the Earl's expenses reached 
 .7,309, less 8, 1 6s. yd. given in charity, it appears that the 
 latter spent on his family and people an amount equal to the wages 
 of 1825 labourers. More than half of this went on eating alone, 
 while an idea of the revelry indulged in may be gathered from the 
 fact that the Earl's household drank 371 pipes of wine, and burnt 
 2,319 pounds of tallow candles as well as 1,870 pounds of Paris 
 candles. 
 
 Well might a deep-seated ill-will exist between the oppressor 
 and the oppressed. It comes out in the legendary Vision of 
 Henry I., who one night dreamt that he saw gathered round him 
 a number of labourers bearing scythes, spades, and pitchforks, 
 looking angry and threatening. And reason enough they had, if 
 Walter Mapes, a clerical pluralist, royal favourite, friend of Beket, 
 and author of the " Quest of the Holy Graal," is an example of 
 the feeling with which they were regarded. He would not have a
 
 THE PLOUGHMAN PROPHET. 7 
 
 serf taught anything. " My soul," he said, " naturally detests serfs, 
 this being my sentiment towards them, circumstances must deter- 
 mine when they are fit to have kindness shown them." It is an 
 English proverb, " Have hund to godsib and stent thir oder hand/' 
 (Go about with a dog and clench your fist.) 
 
 Nevertheless the labourers could work in hope, for one of their 
 own class, a Carpenter's Son, one who had died the death of a 
 Slave, was held to be Sovereign Lord of this feudal society. The 
 innate royalty of the labourer was thereby acknowledged, the 
 Christian Conscience was on his side. 
 
 And so was the course of events. The Crusades, the Rise of 
 Commerce, the French Wars, all worked to pull down the mighty 
 from their seats and raise those of a low degree. The Crusades 
 brought many a baron into pecuniary difficulties, what with the 
 outfit and the expensive tastes he acquired ; so that he was glad 
 to get out of embarrassment by selling his serfs their liberty. The 
 rise of Commerce created great towns, and towns obtained markets 
 at which the toilers sold their produce and thus obtained the 
 means to purchase freedom. 
 
 The change, however, came so gradually that serfdom was a 
 possible condition for Englishmen even in Tudor times. But the 
 revolution had commenced three hundred years earlier, so that by 
 the close of the thirteenth century there was a large class of serfs 
 who had been able to commute their services into money pay- 
 ments, and in the fourteenth century working for wages had be- 
 come common. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE PLOUGHMAN PROPHET. 
 
 THE Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman would be 
 well-nigh as popular to-day as it was in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries if the language had not become archaic, for there is no 
 book more thoroughly English in the best sense, none that better 
 expresses the genius of the English labourer. 
 
 Langland's aim, however, was not to delineate the labourer but
 
 8 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 to expose the corruptions which were destroying the State, and he 
 sought its reform by trying to arouse in its various members a 
 determination to do their duty in that station of life to which God 
 had called them. But there was only one upon whom he could 
 look with satisfaction : the hardworking husbandman ; the others, 
 and above all those whose office it was to guide the people into 
 the highest truth, being given over to selfishness and hypocrisy. 
 
 To the labouring class he pointed, not only as an example of 
 life, but as the only one which at that difficult crisis had light 
 enough to guide the rest, and accordingly Piers the Plowman is 
 represented as occupying in relation to England very much the 
 position of one of the Prophets in the old Hebrew Commonwealth. 
 In the midst of a world in which all manner of men are working and 
 wandering with no other reward for their pains but that of finding 
 themselves prisoners in the Castle of Care, Piers the Plowman is 
 ready and willing to lead them into the Truth. Saturated through 
 and through with the thoughts that gave rise to Lollardism, social 
 and religious, he is no mere leveller. He accepts the constitution 
 of things into which he has been born ; the king is to rule, the 
 bishop to guide, the knight to defend, while he is to labour for the 
 common weal. But this constitution of things he looks upon as 
 implying a mutual covenant. When a knight tells him that he 
 will try to do as he has been taught, Piers replies, 
 
 " Ye profre yow so faire 
 
 That I shall swynke and swete and sow for us bothe, 
 And other laboures do for thi love al my lyf-tyme, 
 In covenant that thow kepe holikirke and myselve 
 Fro wastoures and fro wikked men that this world struyeth." 
 
 This idea of a mutual covenant was as revolutionary as Wiclifs 
 theory of Dominion. As the latter relieved the Christian con- 
 science from the necessity of obedience to rulers who were traitors 
 to the Suzerain of the Universe, so the former destroyed the right 
 of an undutiful lord over his serfs. In either case the appeal lay 
 to the Individual Conscience and the Common Sense ; thus it is 
 that at the very outset Langland shows Conscience resisting the 
 King and supported by Reason. 
 
 But the Plowman's theory is thorough ; all classes are parties to 
 this covenant, the labourer as well as the knight. Therefore, he
 
 THE PLOUGHMAN PROPHET. 9 
 
 is continually preaching "hard work" to the " dikeres and the 
 delveres" and other workmen on the land; and is ceaseless in 
 the expression of his abomination of idle and lazy vagabonds who 
 waste what others win ; and he has no toleration for beggars, 
 especially of the canting sort, who array themselves as " heremites" 
 and "freres," "ancres" and "pilgrymes," who, 
 
 " With hoked staves. 
 
 Wenten to Walsingham and here wenches after ; 
 Crete lobyes and lenge that lothe were to swynke." 
 
 The stern way in which he carries out in his own family this 
 duty of fulfilling by hard work the labourers' part of the covenant, 
 is seen in the names of his wife and children, 
 
 " Dame-worche-whan-tyme-is Pieres wyf highte, 
 
 His doughter highte Do-righte-so-or-thi-dame-shal-the-bete, 
 His son highte Suffre-thi-sovereynes-to-haven-her-wille- 
 Deme-hem-nought-for-if-thow-doste-thow-shalt-it-dere-abugge (suffer for it).' T 
 
 Behind this stern exterior he hides so tender a heart that he 
 cannot bear even to see " wastoures wolves kynnes " starving ; 
 nevertheless he clokes his compassion in rough words. But his 
 heart once opened, his pity for the miserable idlers increases with 
 every beat, and from letting them "eat with hogges," he soon 
 rises to feeding them on " melke and mene ale." For real poverty 
 his sympathy is unbounded even if they have done evil ; let God 
 be the avenger. He has evidently known what it was himself to 
 feel " Hunger at his maw." 
 
 For although the labourers' position was rising so fast that they 
 would no longer dine of stale vegetables, and were not even con- 
 tent with penny ale and bacon, but expected fresh meat or fish 
 fried or baked, and that straight from the fire, the husbandman 
 who preferred independence to a full stomach had many a struggle, 
 especially during the month preceding harvest. 
 
 " ' I have no peny,' quod peres, ' poletes forto bigge, 
 Ne neyther gees ne grys, but two grene cheses, 
 A fewe cruddes and creem, and an haver cake, 
 And two loves of benes and bran, y-bake for my fauntis. 
 And yet I say, by my soule, I have no salt bacoun ;
 
 10 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 Ne.no kokeney, bi cryst : coloppes forto maken. 
 
 Ac I have percil and porettes, and many kole-plantes, 
 
 And eke a cow and a kalf, and a cart-mare, 
 
 To draw a-felde my donge, the while the drought lasteth, 
 
 And bi this lyflode we mot lyve, til lammasse tyme.' " 
 
 All this indicates hard and careful living, and the ploughman's 
 clothes " y clouted and hole," tell the same tale. 
 
 But what is most striking is that a ploughman should have so 
 great a concern for the common weal, and should not only have 
 been desirous to find the Truth for himself, but anxious to guide 
 others to it. This independence of character combined with 
 strong conservative instincts does not suggest a serf or one who 
 had lately emerged from that condition. But in the fact that the 
 Ploughman had not only his "half acre by the highway," but pos- 
 sessed a little homestead of his own, it seems far more probable 
 that he was a member of one of those rural townships where there 
 were " common fields " and " lot meadows." 
 
 Of course I recognise that Piers the Plowman is continually 
 passing from a real into an allegorical character ; but just as 
 Bunyan's " Christian " was a fair type of the best Christians found 
 among the poor in the seventeenth century, so Piers is a fair type 
 of the English husbandman who has never been submitted to the 
 degradation of personal slavery. 
 
 The popularity of the book, proved by the many copies extant in 
 a rough penmanship, and still more by the fact that the leaders of 
 the insurrection of 1381 couched their appeal to the country in its 
 phraseology, renders it evident that Langland sketched from life. 
 
 IV. 
 THE LABOURER DEMANDS JUSTICE. 
 
 THE stars fought in their courses during the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries to set the labourer free. Whether Wiclif was 
 the product or the producer of the awakening that during these 
 centuries went on all over the Continent, it would be hard to say,
 
 THE LABOURER DEMANDS JUSTICE. II 
 
 certain it is that England was one of the chief springs, if not the 
 spring-head of the movement. It was, as is well known, a move- 
 ment in favour of a return to primitive Christianity and the regen- 
 eration of Europe in harmony with it. It was therefore socialist 
 and democratic, and awakened in the hearts of the population of 
 Europe the memories of a golden age and the promise of the 
 Millennium. 
 
 The Black Death in 1349 swept away more than half the popu- 
 lation of England. Those that remained soon found that their 
 labour had doubled in value, and the labourer became at once an 
 important person in the realm. Parliament representing only the 
 landlords, accordingly enacted in 1349 and 1350 Statutes by which 
 the Labourer under pain of imprisonment and fines was bound to 
 work at the same wages that he had received before the Plague. 
 These iniquitous statutes acted like goads to the new life stirring in 
 the soul of the English serf. 1 
 
 The first Statutes of Labourers having been disregarded, Parlia- 
 ment in 1360 passed a severer law. Instead of three days in the 
 stocks, a labourer refusing to work at the old wages was to be 
 imprisoned for fifteen days. If he fled from his service to another 
 town or county he was to be outlawed and a writ for his recovery 
 to be sent to every Sheriff in England, and if taken he was to 
 have the letter F burnt into his forehead for his falsity. Towns 
 harbouring such fugitives were to deliver them up under penalty 
 of Ten pounds to the King and one hundred shillings to the 
 master, an enormous fine when tested by such wages as these 
 statutes allowed: for example, id. a day to weeders and hay- 
 makers. This Act of 1360 strictly forbade all combination among 
 workmen. 
 
 1 Sir G. Nicholls, History of the Poor Laws, chap. I, p. 45, agrees that the 
 object of these laws was to restore the expiring system of slavery, a suggestion 
 which Sir James Stephen in his History of English Criminal Law, vol. 3, p. 204 , 
 admits has much plausibility. Anyone who will take the trouble to read the 
 preamble of the second Statute will soon see how wroth the upper classes were 
 at the thought of losing their thralls. "Whereas," it says, " late against the 
 Malice of Servants which were idle and not willing to serve after the Pestilence 
 without taking excessive wages, etc., an ordinance was passed to which the 
 said servants pay no regard, but considering only their ease and singular 
 covetise do withdraw themselves from Great Men and others," etc.
 
 12 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 While these statutes if obeyed would have rendered existence 
 by labour almost impossible, wheat at this time averaging 73. the 
 quarter, the people managed to obtain such high wages, that 
 Parliament in 1363 passed another Act to restrain the sumptuous- 
 ness of their apparel ! Carters, ploughmen, plough-drivers, ox- 
 herds, neat-herds, shepherds, pig-drivers, deyes and all other 
 attendants on cattle, threshers and other labourers employed in 
 husbandry were to use no other cloth than what was called blanket 
 or russet of the value of i2d. a yard, and to wear linen girdles 
 suitable to their condition. The same statute restrained their 
 diet. 
 
 Notwithstanding facts patent to all but the wilfully blind, Parlia- 
 ment confirmed the Statute of Labourers by several subsequent 
 Acts, relying perhaps on a clause by which it hoped to entangle 
 its subjects' consciences : labourers were to be sworn twice a year 
 to observe these impossible regulations. 1 
 
 What wonder that such legislation produced in pious men a 
 horror of oaths, and in the more daring a reckless contempt of all 
 law. Eden tells us many became staff-strikers and wandered in 
 parties of two, three, and four from village to village ; others be- 
 came "sturdy rogues," and infested the kingdom with frequent 
 robberies. Iniquitous laws are the chief authors of crime. 
 
 This was the state of things when Langland composed his 
 second edition of Piers Plowman, and the rising tide of discontent 
 is pictured in the Prologue, where he introduces the fable of the 
 rats and mice holding a council to protect themselves against the 
 ravages of the cat ; the rats and mice being the town and country 
 labourers, or perhaps the husbandmen and the labourers. Lang- 
 land describes the lords as treating their people in such a way 
 " that us loathed the lyf." The object of the council was to find 
 out " if they might by any wit their lords' will withstand." 
 
 Whether Langland meant to spur the people by representing 
 them as infirm in purpose and in courage I cannot say, but as a 
 matter of fact they were quite the opposite. They had evidently 
 made up their minds they would submit to these tyrannies no 
 longer. They began to refuse their customary services, and the 
 
 1 Re-enacted 7 Henry IV., c. xvii., refusal incurred three days in the stocks, 
 which every town or seigniory was to provide under fine of a hundred shillings.
 
 THE LABOURER DEMANDS JUSTICE. 13 
 
 stewards were so little able to enforce them, that the lords' corn 
 was left uncut. Later on the lords complained that their villeins 
 were flying to the towns, and that those who remained behaved 
 insolently, knowing that the masters were afraid to exercise their 
 powers lest they should lose the serfs irrecoverably. 
 
 For now town and country were one. In the former the system 
 of forced labour being applied even more vigorously than in the 
 country, the lower craftsmen were in alliance with the agricultural 
 serfs. 
 
 This discontent began to make itself felt, and came to a height 
 during the exhaustion that followed after the Peace of Bretigny. 
 The Black Prince died, the King was falling into dotage, John of 
 Gaunt was unpopular in London and with the Church : all things 
 rendered the Government feeble. A universal upheaving com- 
 menced : while the serf was striving to obtain liberty and a fair 
 wage, the classes immediately above him thought it a good oppor- 
 tunity each to push its way a grade higher. Meanwhile there were 
 some few who only sought the reign of Justice on earth, who had 
 no personal ends in view, but who for that very reason were 
 gibbeted in their own day and stoned and pelted with ugly names 
 ever since. Such an one was John Ball, the so-called " crazy 
 priest of Kent." Which, however, was most crazy, the Parlia- 
 ments which made laws such as the Statute of Labourers, or the 
 Servant of Christ who preached the Kingdom of Justice ? 
 
 John Ball had half England at his back. A thousand voices 
 sent his messages over the land with as much precision and 
 almost as quickly as the nineteenth century telegram, " John Ball 
 greeteth you all, and doth for to understand he hath rung your 
 bell, now right and might, will and skill, God speed every dele." 
 And again : 
 
 " Johan the Miller heth y grownde smal, smal, smal, 
 The Kynge's sone of heavene shalle paye for alle ; 
 Be ware or ye be wo ; 
 Knoweth your frende from youre foo, 
 Haveth ynowe and scythe ' Hoo,' 
 And do welle and bettre, and fleth synne 
 And seketh pees, and holde therynne ; 
 And so biddeth Johan Trewman and alle his felawes."
 
 I 4 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 The actual cause of the explosion was the Poll-tax of 1380, and 
 the outbreak commenced the following summer in Kent. 
 
 John Ball was in prison in Canterbury, hither therefore the 
 people surged, and the whole town being of their mind Ball was 
 soon set free. The men of Kent marched triumphant to London, 
 killing all the lawyers that fell in their way, burning the houses of 
 the stewards of the manors, and flinging the rolls of the manor- 
 courts into the flames. 
 
 When they reached London the poorer artizans within the city 
 rose and flung open the gates. The people proudly boasted that 
 they were seekers of Truth and Justice, not thieves or robbers, so 
 instead of wasting their time in rioting, they went direct to their 
 object which was to gain possession of the king. For though the 
 people did not love their lords they had a firm faith in the king as 
 the fountain of Justice and the avenger of the oppressed. Sad to 
 say it was this beautiful faith that ruined their cause. Richard 
 II., educated in that haughty contempt of labouring-men which 
 comes out in Froissart's courtly Chronicle, where these very 
 labourers are called vermin, Richard II. played as false a part as 
 any king ever played. In his eyes it seems to have been no more 
 a crime for a prince to circumvent vile and odious rustics than to 
 trap stoats and weasels ; to catch them in his net and hang them 
 by hundreds no worse than slaughtering wild hogs. With his 
 pretty face he did to perfection the ingenuous young king, willing 
 himself to become the leader of his people and to redress all their 
 injuries. When they cried, "We will that you free us and our 
 lands for ever, and that we be never named or held serfs ! " "I 
 grant it," was the ready reply, and thirty clerks were sent for, who 
 sat hard at work, writing out charters of manumission. In the 
 same glib manner the king stilled the Kentishmen, furious at the 
 infamous assassination of their leader, Wat Tyler. The neck of 
 the rebellion broken by this timely mixture of cajolery and trucu- 
 lence, and the danger over, Richard quickly threw off his mask. 
 When the Commons of Essex came to remind him of promises 
 hardly a fortnight old, he cried out contemptuously, " O vile and 
 odious by land or sea, you are not worthy to live compared with 
 the lords whom ye have attacked; you should be forthwith punished 
 with the vilest of deaths were it not for the office you bear. Go
 
 A PARLIAMENT OF PHARAOHS. 15, 
 
 back to your comrades and bear the king's answer, you were and 
 are rustic, and shall remain in bondage, not that of old but infin- 
 itely worse. For as long as we live, and by God's help rule over 
 this realm, we will attempt by all our faculties, powers, and means, 
 to make you such an example of fear to the heirs of your servi- 
 tude as that they may have you before their eyes and you may 
 supply them with a perpetual ground of cursing and fearing you." 
 And now Richard knew how to keep his word : 1,500 of these 
 brave men were searched out in various parts of the country, and 
 hung and gibbeted as an example of fear to the heirs of their 
 servitude. 
 
 A PARLIAMENT OF PHARAOHS. 
 
 THE boy-king was only a tool in the hands of his Council. The- 
 Council itself was powerless before the determination of the lords 
 not to let the people go. When the royal message addressed to 
 the Parliament that met immediately after the quelling of the 
 Insurrection, suggested that it would be well to enfranchise and 
 set at liberty the serfs, Parliament replied, that the king's grant 
 and letters were null and void, their serfs were their goods, and 
 the king could not take their goods without their own consent. 
 "And this consent," they declared, "we have never given, and 
 never will give, were we all to die in one day." 
 
 And in this Pharaoh-like spirit they persisted. The impossible 
 Statutes of Labourers were re-affirmed, their execution being en- 
 forced by cumulative penalties, and in case of final inability to 
 pay, the labourer was to have forty days' imprisonment ; anyone 
 attempting to leave his place of residence without an official letter 
 was to be put in the stocks ; all who up to the age of twelve years 
 had been employed in husbandry must remain in that occupation, 
 even if already apprenticed to another. 
 
 In fact, the attempt on the part of the landless labourer to free 
 his children by apprenticing them in the towns was directly for- 
 bidden by the Statute 7 Hen. IV., c. xvii., on pain of a year's 
 imprisonment. And not content with closing to the poor serf
 
 1 6 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 emancipation by way of trade, they tried to prevent him getting it 
 through the door of learning; Parliament praying the King to 
 ordain that no bondman or bondwoman shall place their children 
 at school, as had been done, with a view to their entering into the 
 Church. And the same influence induced the new College at the 
 Universities to close their gates to villeins. 
 
 To render the bondage still tighter, Parliament gave the Council 
 the right to arrest and imprison, regardless of all former statutes, 
 any person speaking evil of dukes, earls, barons, nobles, and gen- 
 tlemen (gntz), or of any of the great officers of the realm ( 1 2 Rich. 
 II., c. xi.). 
 
 However, it was one thing to make laws, another to compel a 
 reluctant people to give them obedience. But the labourers were 
 isolated ; each set of serfs had to settle matters with their indivi- 
 dual lord, each particular serf to make the best of his position. 
 The audacious, the violent, the unscrupulous, forced their necks 
 out of the collar; the meek, the faithful, bore a double load, and 
 sank a grade lower. The first alone received a place in history. 
 Their growing wealth, all through the fifteenth century, rendered 
 them an important addition to the middle class, and helped greatly 
 to increase its power. 
 
 This impetus given to industry by the wide-spread hope of 
 rising a step in life, added greatly to the national wealth. We 
 have abundant proof that the poor man, and especially the small 
 husbandman, was far better off at this period than at any other. 
 The labourer, according to Statute, received 4d. a day, if not fed 
 in the house, and this continued his nominal wage throughout the 
 century. At this rate, about eighteen days' work would buy him 
 a quarter of wheat; six days, a calf; seven or eight days, a hog 
 for fatting. A lamb would cost him between sixpence and a 
 shilling; a hen, 2d.; a pullet, id. Eggs he could get at the rate 
 of twenty for a penny ; butter was a penny, and cheese was three- 
 farthings a pound. His garden produced no potatoes, but it gave 
 him fat peascods, and good apples and cherries. As to his drink, 
 Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice in 1442, merrily says, "He drank 
 no water except at certain times, and that by way of doing penance." 
 The same authority tells us that in these days English labourers 
 were clothed throughout in good woollens ; the bedding and
 
 A PARLIAMENT OF PHARAOHS. IJ 
 
 other articles in their houses were of wool, and that in great 
 store. And if the sumptuary law of 1464 was not a malicious 
 satire, the labourer indulged in broadcloth of which the yard 
 sometimes reached the price of two shillings. 
 
 It is clear that the Statute of Labourers was frequently violated, 
 and that the labourer's actual income was even better than the 
 prices just quoted would suggest. Engaged by the year, and 
 frequently living on the farm, he must often have saved money 
 enough to become a husbandman himself. This position, though 
 it involved harder living than that of the labourer, was the most 
 happy in the realm. Too lowly to be troubled by the storms of 
 jealousy which raged over the surface of society, he ate the bread 
 of independence, and lived surrounded by such an England as 
 Chaucer depicts. 
 
 A revolution had clearly taken place, a revolution which was 
 completed by the Civil Wars in which this century closed, and 
 which gave the coup de grace to feudalism. For the Day of 
 Judgment had come for the old slave-holding baronage of Norman 
 and Angevin England. In the wars of the Roses it committed the 
 happy dispatch ; and at the accession of Henry VII. the House of 
 Lords had been reduced to twenty-eight members. 
 
 How envenomed the English barons were against each other, 
 we may learn from what Stow tells us of the battle of Northampton, 
 "The earls of March and Warwicke let crie through the field that 
 no man should lay hand upon the king, ne on the common 
 people, but on the lordes, knights, and esquires." As the war 
 grew this could not be maintained. After the battle of Towton it 
 is said that nearly 40,000 men lay dead on the field. These were 
 not labouring men, but the retainers of the barons, a class of beings 
 who were to the country what the vulture was to Prometheus. 
 Towton and the Tudors cleared the air of these hawks and kites.
 
 !g THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE TUDOR KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 
 
 THE Tudors and the Middle Class rise together, they symbolize 
 each other, they are the makers of modern England. No noble 
 plays a leading part in the revolutionary reign of Henry VIII. : 
 Wolsey, More, Latimer, Cromwell, all came from the middle 
 class. 
 
 During the reign of Edward, the Sixth, the turbulent spirit of 
 aristocracy prevails, but only to accelerate the Nemesis which fell 
 on the old families even to their remotest branches. One of the 
 most striking facts in English history is the steady support given 
 by the Tudor Parliaments to every bill of Attainder. Noble after 
 noble went to the block, one great family after another was 
 crushed, each stroke was an advantage gained. 
 
 But the rising power had another arm equally effective, the 
 nobles it did not crush, it bribed. The Church was made to 
 disgorge wealth, which to-day would equal in value the total annual 
 revenue of Great Britain, and the greater part of this was spent in 
 getting great Lords to support the Revolution. 
 
 Not that the Revolution owed all its success to force and fraud. 
 The spread of knowledge through the revival of letters, the 
 invention of printing, the rapid development of Commerce, and 
 above all the tremendous blow given to the clerical aristocracy by 
 the Reformation, all concurred to put wealth and power into the 
 hands of the Middle Class. 
 
 "But the Labouring Class reaped but little benefit from this 
 change, the legislation in which Middle Class interests prevailed 
 proving if possible more tyrannical and corrupting than that more 
 purely aristocratic. 
 
 The new regime, however, commenced with some signs of 
 relenting. The Statute of Labourers of 1426 speaks of "his 
 Grace's pitty" but the notion of royal pity, held by Henry the 
 Seventh's Parliament, was compatible with putting "vagabonds 
 and idle and suspected persons," i.e., persons apparently without a
 
 THE TUDOR KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 19 
 
 master, in the stocks three days and three nights with no susten- 
 ance but bread and water. 
 
 In former times the chief object had been to retain the 
 labourer in servitude, but now he was free ; the point was to 
 extract from him as much labour as possible. Thus it is that the 
 Tudor cry is always, "Ye are idle, ye are idle" "Go therefore 
 now and work." 
 
 The Tudors gave themselves to the work of ruling with all the 
 ardour of the founders of a new and successful business. Henry 
 the Eighth is said himself to have written the Act relating to labour 
 passed in the 2yth year of his reign, as he probably did that of the 
 22nd. Sympathy with his vigorous efforts to extirpate " Ydelnesse, 
 mother and rote of all vyces " from the land will be lessened when 
 we reflect what a bitter tyranny we should feel it to be if we were 
 bound down to a certain spot, compelled to pursue an occupation 
 we disliked, and that, during the whole of our lifetime, on penalty 
 of being tied to the cart's tail, whipped until our bodies were 
 bloody, with the prospect of being hanged if we were so foolhardy 
 as to be caught more than twice loitering in parishes other than 
 our own. 
 
 But all the Acts made from the time of Richard II. downwards 
 concerning the returning and departure of labourers from the 
 hundred in which they dwelt were in force, so that any person so 
 wilful as to assert his natural liberty came under the title of 
 vagabond. The refusal of Parliament to pass a general Act of 
 Emancipation, as advised by Richard the Second's Council, had 
 led to hundreds, perhaps thousands defying the law, and being 
 branded as criminals at the outset. The villein who fled from 
 servitude was by that fact a "vagabond and a sturdy rogue." 
 And our feeling concerning these Tudor laws will change consider- 
 ably when we understand that they are simply such decrees as 
 Pharaoh would have issued against the fugitive Israelites. 
 
 To compare the Tudor tyranny to that under which the Hebrews 
 groaned in Egypt is to give an inadequate view of the case. 
 That under which the poor Englishman suffered was far worse 
 because it was practised under the sanction of the religion in which 
 he believed. Never, perhaps, in all history has there been a 
 race of monarchs who attempted so to mould the consciences of
 
 20 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 their people as did the Tudors. Not content with arranging the 
 national religious services, they ordained both a catechism and a 
 private book of prayers to be used by individuals, and in the latter 
 they prepared a special prayer for labourers ; a prayer which 
 strings together all the texts in the New Testament which can be 
 forced into an incentive to work. 
 
 Looked at from the position of a man well-to-do in the world, 
 these primers were probably edifying and sometimes elevating. 
 But the faith they undoubtedly possessed was linked in the minds 
 of the poor with profound injustice. The same authority which 
 taught them how to pray, refused them their liberty under terror of 
 the stocks, whipping, and the gibbet, and more, took from them 
 their children to be subjected to the same mingled system of 
 drudgery and catechism, slavery and prayer. By the Act 27 Hen. 
 VIII., c. 27, the children of vagrants over five years of age were to 
 be taken into custody and put out to husbandry and other crafts, 
 and any such children above the age of twelve running away were 
 to be whipped with rods. 
 
 The English outlaw has a charm for the curious reader, when 
 his adventures are pictured in a ballad like Robin Hood, or Clym 
 of the Clough ; but let it not be forgotten, these are the primeval 
 heroes of the history which was continued by Harry the Eighth's 
 Vagabonds and Sturdy Rogues. Only as the age advances, and 
 the Chivalrous gives place to the Commercial Spirit, these 
 unfortunate pariahs sink from high-spirited banditti with a certain 
 code of honour into gangs of wolfish marauders and mean 
 thieves. 
 
 And their numbers were vastly increased by an Act, needful no 
 doubt, but performed with the usual injustice to the poor and 
 helpless. The Suppression of Monastic Establishments in 1536 
 and 1540 turned adrift 50,000 persons, most of whom were incap- 
 able of earning their own living. The property taken from these 
 unhappy people, and in which they certainly had a life interest, is 
 calculated to have been worth a rental of .350,000 per annum, 
 which at twenty years' purchase would be ^7,000,000, a sum 
 equal in value to-day to the whole annual revenue of Great Britain. 
 Yet all they got was : forty shillings and a gown to the men in 
 priests' orders ; a gown simply to the women.
 
 THK TUDOR KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 21 
 
 This property, held in trust by the Church for the Poor, and 
 which by a double right belonged to God, being His primarily, 
 and His again as the gage of the repentance of the covetous and 
 the grasping, was scandalously seized by the authority of Parlia- 
 ment, and being made over to the King, as general trustee of 
 national property, was fraudulently given away by him to his ad- 
 herents and friends. The satellites of Cromwell and the Catholic 
 Lords who had to be propitiated, got the lion's share ; but, in the 
 scramble, city merchants, wool dealers, and manufacturers became 
 landowners. 
 
 So now the commercial spirit invaded agriculture. It had for 
 some time past been found more profitable to raise sheep than 
 corn, and arable land was largely turned into pastures. But 
 husbandmen and small yeomen could not make this pay and 
 were obliged therefore to sell their land. A number of little 
 estates in the market, an ever increasing demand for wool, and 
 laws supplying the farmer with labour at much below its real 
 market value : here was a truly golden opportunity for capitalists ; 
 and traders of all sorts began to compete for the farms. This 
 raised rents, and numbers of poor yeomen were soon ruined, and 
 they and their families turned into the streets. 
 
 "These covetous cormorants," cried Bernard Gilpin, "take it 
 for no offence to turn poor men out of their holds, for they say 
 the land is their own." And not content with doing what they 
 pleased with what they thought " their own," the landholders took 
 what they knew was not and enclosed common land, thus taking 
 from the poor property to which they had a better right than any 
 nobleman to his estate. " They lick," says Harrison, with graphic 
 earnestness, in his "State of England," "the sweat from the poor 
 man's brow." 
 
 No one took up the parable against the rapacity of landlords 
 more persistently than old Latimer and Bernard Gilpin ; nor were 
 they alone. It is the cry of all the earnest preachers and the 
 greatest thinkers of the age ; men like Sir Thomas More and Lord 
 Bacon. But opposed to them were practical economists, such as 
 Fitzherbert, author of The Boke of Husbandrye (1534), and Sur- 
 veyinge (1539), who argued against the waste involved in the 
 Common Field system, by which a man's rights of property were
 
 22 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 scattered about, so that he was put to a far greater expense in its 
 management than if he had it all compact in one farm. This was 
 perfectly true, and from a merely commercial point of view quite 
 unanswerable; but he forgot that this communistic system was 
 the surest protection that the men not gifted with business ability 
 could have against those that were. Fill men with the idea that 
 the summum bonum of social economy is to get the greatest 
 pecuniary results at the least possible expense, and they will stop 
 at nothing for so great an end. 
 
 Bernard Gilpin, preaching before Edward VI., described how 
 Lady Avarice set on the mighty men, and the gentlemen, and all 
 rich men, to rob and despoil the poor, and turn them from their 
 livings and their right, and ever the weakest go to the wall. " And 
 in the meantime these mighty and great men say that the com- 
 monalty live too well at ease, and grow every day to be gentlemen 
 and know not themselves ; their horns, say they, must be cut 
 shorter by raising their rents and by plucking away their pastures. 
 And hereby the commonalty come to hate the gentry, for they 
 murmur, and grudge, and say that the gentlemen have all ; and 
 there were never so many gentlemen and so little gentleness." 
 " Alas ! noble Prince," said the preacher, turning to the King, 
 " that the images of your ancestors graven in gold, and yours also, 
 contrary to your mind, are worshipped as gods, and all the poor 
 lively images of Christ perish with hunger." 
 
 A still more striking proof of the general impression of the 
 extreme greed of the landlord class is the existence of a prayer for 
 landlords, to be found in the Primmer or Boke of Private Prayer 
 set forth in 1555, two years after this discourse by Gilpin, to be 
 taught, learned, read, and used of the King's loving subjects. 
 
 " The earth is Thine, O Lord, and all that is contained therein, 
 notwithstanding Thou hast given possession thereof unto the 
 children of men, to pass the time of their short pilgrimage in this 
 vale of misery. We heartily pray Thee to send Thy Holy Spirit 
 into the hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and 
 dwelling-places of the earth, that they, remembering themselves to 
 be Thy tenants, may not rack and stretch out the rents of their 
 houses and their lands, nor yet take unreasonable fines and in- 
 comes after the manner of covetous worldlings, but so let them
 
 ANOTHER STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE. 23 
 
 out to others that the inhabitants thereof may be able to pay the 
 rents and also to honestly live, to nourish their families and to 
 relieve the poor; give them grace to consider that they are but 
 strangers and pilgrims in this world, having here no dwelling-place, 
 but seeking one to come ; that they, remembering the short con- 
 tinuance of their life, may be content with that which is sufficient 
 and not join house to house, nor couple land to land to the im- 
 poverishment of others, but so behave themselves in letting out 
 their tenements, lands, and pastures, that after this life they may 
 be received into everlasting dwelling-places ; through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. Amen." 
 
 VII. 
 
 ANOTHER STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE. 
 
 " MY father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with 
 scorpions." These words, which Scripture gibbets as the last 
 degree of princely arrogance and folly, exactly symbolize the open- 
 ing acts of the reign of the most pious, most conscientious young 
 prince England has possessed since the Conquest. That the 
 reign of Edward the Sixth commenced more wickedly than that of 
 Rehoboam was due to the rabid greediness of the new aristocracy. 
 <; Covetousness,"as Gilpin told the King, "had brought the nation 
 to such a pass that every man scraped and pilled from others, 
 every man would suck the blood of others, every man encroached 
 upon another ;" and of the truth of this, there was no more flagrant 
 example than that given by the men who, at Henry the Eighth's 
 death, seized on power, helping themselves to great titles and to 
 the public wealth. 
 
 It is a fact that ought not to be hid, because it throws a flood of 
 light on the present condition of England, that the same authority 
 that gave this country the Common Prayer Book enacted the most 
 atrocious law against its Poor that has ever disgraced the Statute 
 Book. 
 
 By the i Edward VI., c. 3, Men or Women able to work, and 
 who lived idly for three days, were to be branded with a red-hot
 
 24 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 iron on the breast with a letter V, and to be slaves for two years 
 to the informer. The master was to feed his slave with bread 
 and water, with small drink, and such refuse meat as he thought 
 proper, and to cause his slave to work by beating, chaining, 
 or otherwise, in any work or labour however vile it might be. 
 If the slave ran away from his master for the space of fourteen 
 days he was to be his slave for life, and to be branded on the 
 forehead or cheek with the letter S ; if he ran away a second time 
 he was to suffer pains of death as a felon. The master could put 
 a ring of iron on the neck, arm, or leg of his slave ; he could sell, 
 bequeath, or let out his slave after the like sort or manner he 
 might do with any other of his movable goods or chattels. Any 
 attempt to maim or wound such masters or mistresses either 
 during or after the time of slavery, or any conspiracy to burn their 
 houses or corn was to be deemed felony unless some person would 
 take such offender as a slave for ever. 
 
 Any child above five years and under fourteen, found wander- 
 ing with or without such vagabonds, might be seized by any person, 
 and being taken before a justice of the peace, could be adjudged 
 the servant or apprentice of the apprehender ; if a girl until twenty 
 years of age, if a boy until twenty-four ; and if such child ran away 
 he was to be treated as a slave, and punished with irons, or other- 
 wise. 
 
 Well might the pious young king clasp his hands, and lift up 
 his eyes to heaven, at the response in the Order for Daily Prayer : 
 " O Lord, save Thy people ! " 
 
 Robbed of their wages, and reduced to semi-serfdom by the 
 Statutes of Labourers ; robbed of their legal provision in unfore- 
 seen distress, or unprotected old age, by the confiscation of Church 
 property for the benefit of the aristocracy; robbed by the com- 
 mercial greed of the new gentry of their little farms and of the 
 common land, the English poor were met by an atrocious law 
 which condemned all who did not yield submissively to their fate 
 to feel the hot iron plough into their own breasts, and into those 
 of their wives and children, to be reduced to the vilest form of 
 slavery, and to find no relief except in a felon's doom. 
 
 Such wrongs could only be met by insurrection, and the people 
 rose in the East, and in the West, and in the Midland counties.
 
 ANOTHER STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE. 25 
 
 The rulers of England, the men who had done the people these 
 horrible wrongs, now maintained their power by the aid of Italian 
 and German mercenaries, scourges of whom the German proverb 
 said, "Rather the Turk than the Landsknecht." 
 
 Let anyone read the story of the rebellion of the Peasants in 
 Norfolk, as given by Holingshed, whose sympathies may be judged 
 from the fact that he describes his poor countrymen as "vile 
 wretches and cruel traitors" for slaying an Italian mercenary; and 
 such reader must be very blind, or prejudiced, if he does not see 
 that the Norfolk men had a better cause than any that English 
 troops were ever employed to defend; and that these 16,000 "un- 
 gratious unthrifts," conducted the struggle with admirable order, 
 and displayed at last an obstinate gallantry worthy of the High- 
 landers at Waterloo. 
 
 The insurgents demanded a removal of the King's evil council- 
 lors, a prohibition of enclosures, and a redress of the wrongs of the 
 poor. They associated three or four middle class persons of ap- 
 proved respectability (one was the Mayor of Norwich,) with Robert 
 Ket, their leader, and gave them a certain obedience as representa- 
 tives of the King, whom throughout they professed to serve. They 
 had also for chaplain the Vicar of St. Mary's, in Norwich, who 
 offered up prayers morning and evening that they might have 
 prosperous speed. Preaching went on every day from the Oak of 
 Reformation, and the insurgents even listened to preachers who 
 tried to induce them to give up their enterprise. They had a 
 small parliament of their own, two deputies being chosen from 
 every hundred, twenty-six different hundreds being represented. 
 Contributions were levied on the gentry in the neighbourhood 
 after the manner of more orthodox armies, they manacled some of 
 the more unpopular gentlemen and put them in prison, and took 
 possession of Norwich, where they had many friends. 
 
 Parr, Marquis of Northampton, was sent against them; but 
 though he got into Norwich, they defeated him and his Italians, 
 and in the melee, Lord Suffield was slain. At last the Earl of 
 Warwick, the most unscrupulous of the whole set of adventurers 
 who called themselves the King's Council, came down to Norwich 
 with a thousand German landsknechts in his army. He got pos- 
 session of Norwich, but could hardly keep it, the people constantly
 
 2 6 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 getting in and slaying his men. For three days the fighting was 
 desperate ; he meanwhile killing his prisoners, and sending herald 
 after herald to offer pardon to all who would lay down their arms. 
 This the Peasantry obstinately refused to do, not trusting the 
 herald's word. At last they risked all on a pitched battle, and 
 were defeated, 2,000, according to King Edward, being slain. The 
 remainder entrenched themselves and determined to die fighting. 
 Warwick sent heralds again and again, but they would not believe 
 them ; at last he offered to come himself and pledge his word. 
 Then, and then only, these sturdy rebels threw down their arms. 
 
 Warwick, we suppose, hung none of this final batch of prisoners, 
 but of the others he choose nine of the leaders to be hanged on 
 the Oak of Reformation. Forty-five others were drawn, hanged, 
 and quartered in the market-place at Norwich, and their quarters 
 exposed to inspire terror. Robert Ket, the leader, was hanged in 
 chains on the top of Norwich Castle, and his brother on the top of 
 Wymondham steeple ; these high places being no doubt chosen for 
 the same reason. Altogether three hundred persons are said to 
 have been executed. Some would have persuaded Warwick to 
 put to death a great number more, but he replied, "What shall we 
 then do ? hold the plough ourselves, play the carters, and labour 
 the ground with our own hands ? " 
 
 The annals of the Poor are nearly always lost or distorted. They 
 have no friendly scribes to chronicle their doings, but what comes 
 down to posterity, even when honest, is full of misconception 
 through want of sympathy. Thus the chroniclers of the Norfolk 
 insurrection leave unexplained its suddenness, its unity of purpose, 
 its order, its persistent courage, above all its religiousness. Hol- 
 ingshed gives us a hint when he tells us that they were misled by 
 " certain vain prophets which they had among them." And again, 
 that of the nine hung on the Oak of Reformation two were 
 prophets. This word prophets leads us back to the preachers of 
 the Gospel of the Poor, who with hardly an exception were believers 
 in the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was the time when 
 Anabaptist doctrine was held by thousands of the poor in Holland 
 and Germany. Their preachers were ardent propagandists, travel- 
 ling over Europe to disseminate their doctrine. We have several 
 records of Dutchmen arrested in England, some of whom were
 
 ANOTHER STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE. " 27 
 
 burnt for Anabaptist opinions. East Anglia, from its traditional 
 connection with the Low Countries, was exactly the place to which 
 they were most likely to come, and the poor disinherited sons of 
 toil would be just the men to whom they would communicate their 
 message, and by whom it would be received. 
 
 The immediate result of this insurrection and of those in other 
 parts of England was the repeal of the atrocious law against so-called 
 vagabonds and their children, passed in the first year of Edward 
 VI., and a return to the more gentle legislation of which Henry 
 VIII. was himself the author. 1 
 
 What that tenderness was may be judged from the fact that 
 Harrison in his description of England tells us that during Henry 
 the Eighth's reign 72,000 great and petty thieves were put to death ! 
 This heroic surgery, however, did not extirpate the disease. It 
 recommenced and became worse than ever. The same Chronicle 
 tells us that in Elizabeth's reign rogues were trussed up apace, and 
 there was not one year commonly wherein 300 or 400 of them were 
 not devoured and eaten up by the gallows in one place or another. 
 Adding to these numbers those who suffered under the reigns of 
 Henry VII., Edward VI., and Mary, there can hardly have been 
 less than 100,000 persons sent to the gallows under the Tudors. 
 How many were whipped until their backs streamed with blood, 
 how many were branded with the red-hot iron, or had their ears 
 cropped, how many rotted in prison, how many died on the galleys 
 in the Thames, how many were enslaved, no historian has told us; 
 but it is evident these draconian laws engendered their own prey, 
 for work them as they would the prisons were so full that to make 
 room for fresh comers quantities of desperate persons were set 
 free at each assize. 
 
 Such numbers had taken to this bandit life that there were not 
 sufficient labourers to do the ordinary tillage of the land. What 
 with rack rents, what with the competition of men who had made 
 money in towns, what with the scarcity of labourers, what with the 
 necessity of watching their flocks day and night, what with the 
 
 1 Branding, however, was reintroduced by the 2 Jac. I., c. I, but then on 
 the left shoulder instead of the breast or forehead, and with the letter R instead 
 of an F.
 
 28 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 rates for keeping up gaols and maintaining hosts of prisoners, the 
 small yeomanry of England, the twenty-pound men, were ruined 
 and sank themselves to farm labourers or sturdy rogues. No 
 wonder the latter proclaimed deadly war against society. "They 
 must live," they said ; "they would not starve." No wonder they 
 thought it a sufficient excuse for highway robbery, burglary, and 
 sheep-stealing, to cry, " The rich have gotten all into their hands 
 and will starve the poor." 
 
 The prosperous members of the body politic were in despair at 
 the ill-success of their efforts to get rid of what King Edward in 
 one of his Essays describes as its " spittle and filth." There had 
 never been more idle persons than in his day, he writes, and after 
 puzzling his wits as to the cause, he comes to the conclusion that 
 " slack execution of the laws has been the chiefest sore of all." 
 
 The truth was the selfish tyranny of the ruling classes had per- 
 verted the very conscience of the nation, and a secret sympathy 
 was not only felt through the lower strata of society for "the sturdy 
 rogue " and " the valiant beggar," but probably avowed openly, for 
 King Edward speaks of the " disobedient and contentious talking 
 and doing of the foolish and fond people," as one great cause of 
 the wilful breaking of the laws of the realm. Many who appeared 
 to get an honest living were really in league with thieves. Receivers 
 of stolen goods were everywhere the tinker's budget, the peddler's 
 bag, the glassman's basket, all were ready receptacles. In 1596 
 we are told that in every county there were three to four hundred 
 able-bodied men who lived by rapine and theft, and such daring 
 deeds as they did could never have been successful if they had not 
 found a sympathetic public. Men who were robbed would not 
 prosecute, either through fear or from what King Edward calls 
 " foolish pity ; " juries would not convict, and judges were bribed 
 or terrorised. " A piteous case for a Commonwealth ! " says 
 Bernard Gilpin, and well he might.
 
 DEGRADATION AND DEATH. 29 
 
 VIII. 
 
 DEGRADATION AND DEATH. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that the English agricultural labourer has never had two 
 more faithful limners than William Langland and George Crabbe. 
 Let anyone compare " Piers the Plowman " and " The Village," 
 and he will be forced to the conviction that in the 400 years that 
 elapsed between those works the English labourer had fallen 
 wofully. In the fourteenth-century poem we have a man animated 
 by the noblest moral purpose, one who in the strength of that 
 purpose takes a position of equality with the highest, yet without 
 a shadow of insolence; a man, in fact, who is Christ's freeman. 
 But if we turn to the eighteenth-century picture, we meet with 
 nothing but a poor, wailing, broken-hearted slave. He has toiled 
 early and late, and has laid up for his old age such a store of aches 
 and pains that he never knows what rest is; his food has been 
 stinted and unwholesome, and now that he is growing weak, he 
 who won the prize for the straightest furrow, can only get a day's 
 work here and there, " and when his age attempts its task in vain," 
 he is then taunted with being one of the lazy poor ; his children 
 find him a burden and look coldly on him. His only refuge will 
 be the workhouse, where in dirt, neglect, starvation, and noise, he 
 ends his days to be thrown into a pauper's grave, 
 
 " There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, 
 And the glad parish pays the frugal fee. " 
 
 So great a fall must have had many stages, of which we can only 
 gather an indication here and there. For instance, I have seen a 
 copy of a play performed by labourers in the presence of King 
 Charles L, and to this proof of their intelligence in the early part 
 of the seventeenth century, we may add one of their independence 
 at its close. Defoe writes in terse though unpoetic lines, 
 
 " The meanest English plowman studies law, 
 And keeps thereby the magistrates in awe. 
 Will boldly tell them what they ought to do, 
 And sometimes punish their omissions too."
 
 30 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 But the English labourer had already then fallen, as Defoe's 
 descriptions elsewhere prove, and from Defoe's times to those of 
 Charles Dickens, the descent went on with increasing speed. The 
 causes have been numerous, but all have had their origin in the 
 persistent selfishness of those who have had the presumption to 
 think that wealth and learning gave the right and the ability to 
 manage the labourer's affairs without asking his opinion or obtain- 
 ing his consent. 
 
 The idea the ruling classes have had of their position comes 
 out in a phrase used by a noble lord in the debate in the House 
 of Lords on the Spirituous Liquors Bill in 1743, "If any acci- 
 dental public misfortune should render the people likely to mutiny." 
 But the ruling classes of England have never been equal even to 
 the military conception of duty, for they have cruelly and per- 
 sistently sacrificed the lives and morals of the myriads of privates 
 they pretend to command. Take, for instance, the Distilleries 
 Act of 2 William and Mary. Its object was to ruin French com- 
 merce and to encourage the distilling of English brandy and spirits. 
 What was its result? Little more than sixty years had passed away 
 when Fielding and Hogarth dre\v their appalling pictures of the 
 result of gin-drinking in England. Gin Lane, "full of strange 
 images of death," shows vividly the moral murder which had been 
 going on. " Should," said Fielding, " the drinking of this poison 
 be continued at its present height during the next twenty years, 
 there will be very few of the common people left to drink it." 
 
 But the interest of some powerful class has constantly outweighed 
 the moral welfare of the people. Take the brewers, for instance. 
 Hundreds of them in former times were spread all over the country, 
 and their profits enabled them to almost rank with the gentry. 
 How were these profits obtained ? From innumerable alehouses 
 in the district, many of which were actually the property of the 
 brewer. Dunning, a writer on Pauperism at the time of the 
 Revolution, connects the small country alehouses with the brandy- 
 shops, as affording incredible returns to the Excise. 
 
 What need to paint the results ? In the drawings of Moreland 
 we see the labourer, bloated and lazy, seated on a bench of the 
 village alehouse, drinking away his wages, or ascending the steps 
 of the roadside inn, to get another draught of ale, or it may be, a
 
 DEGRADATION AND DEATH. 31 
 
 quartern of gin, while wife and children are waiting for him in the 
 cart below. Crabbe speaks of the " riots of the Green, that sprang 
 at first from yonder noisy Inn," and he indicates, in a strong 
 touch, how furiously brutal the heavy drinking often made the 
 churl. Fruitful source of most wretched poverty and dastardly 
 crime, its profit has been too great for the brewer, the maltster, 
 the innkeeper, and all the money-makers of the country-side, for a 
 middle-class Parliament to do other than give its control to the 
 country magistrates, men, who if not brewers, maltsters, and dis- 
 tillers themselves, have lived in immediate connection with them, 
 often as friends or as landlords. Besides, many of them were as 
 hard drinkers as the most besotted clowns on their estates. " A 
 poor man," said Defoe in 1700, "gets drunk in a country ale- 
 house. ' Why, are you not ashamed to be such a beast ? ' says a 
 good, honest neighbour to him next day. 'Ashamed!' says the 
 fellow. ' Why should I be ashamed ? Why, there was Sir John 
 
 , and Sir Robert , and the Parson, and they were all as 
 
 drunk as I. And why a beast, pray? I heard Sir Robert 
 
 say, that, 
 
 " ' He that drinks least, 
 Is most like a beast.' " 
 
 These were the sort of men who had the licensing of country 
 alehouses in those days. Such men as these were Justices of the 
 Peace, and with the clergy and the overseers, had the fate, moral 
 as well as material, of the English labourer in their hands. During 
 the latter part of the seventeenth century and the commencement 
 of the eighteenth century, the power of these rural magnates must 
 have been overwhelming. The dissenting yeomen who, during 
 the middle of the century had taken so important a stand, had to 
 choose between losing their souls or becoming criminals ; as to 
 the clergy, they played the part of the shepherd's dog rather than 
 the shepherd, barking at and biting the poor sheep in the interest 
 of their masters, the gentry. The spirit of their religion is set 
 forth in the Conventicle Act, 16 Car. II., c. 4, which enforced 
 anew the Statute of 35 Eliz. i, by which all above the age of six- 
 teen absenting themselves from church without cause for the space 
 of a month, persuading others to be present at a Conventicle,
 
 32 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 were to be imprisoned without bail till they conformed and 
 made submission. 
 
 The ideas of the clergy and the ruling classes on religion are 
 well expressed by Mandeville, a clever writer of the period : 
 
 " The Poor more especially and their children should be made 
 to go to church on Sunday, both in the fore and afternoon, 
 because they have no time on any other. By precept and 
 example they ought to be encouraged and used to it from their 
 very infancy; the wilful neglect of it ought to be counted 
 scandalous, and if downright compulsion to what I urge might 
 seem too harsh and perhaps impracticable, all diversions at least 
 ought to be strictly prohibited, and the poor hindered from every 
 amusement abroad that might allure or draw them from it." 
 
 What Mandeville meant to effect by this careful church-going 
 there can be no manner of doubt. He was philosopher enough 
 to know that you can never be sure of a slave until you have 
 mastered his conscience. The ancients did not understand this 
 art, whence their terror of servile revolt. The Tudor statesmen 
 were profoundly Machiavelian, and knew the value of mixing 
 up respect for their position with reverence for the Almighty. 
 
 The Church of England, supported by the two Houses of 
 Parliament, the Magistrates, and all the nobility, gentry and great 
 landowners, had had its own way with the agricultural labourers 
 of England for a good deal more than a thousand years. Every 
 hostile influence has been crushed, and the whole formation of 
 their moral and intellectual being had been in its hands. What 
 the Church of England had done with this great trust, what it 
 had made of its wards, to what a fate it had brought them let 
 Crabbe, himself a clergyman, tell us. Let anyone read and 
 ponder well "The Village," let him note that it is supported 
 by all Crabbe says elsewhere, that it is in accord with what 
 Clare and Bloomfield say; let him read those wonderful pieces 
 of autobiography by another agricultural labourer : Heaven 
 taken by a Storm, The Bank of Faith, etc. ; let him gather 
 together such incidental references as he can find in books like 
 that in which Hannah More recounts her work in the Mendip 
 Hills, together with the whole literature of the Methodist 
 Revival, and he will not be able to escape the conclusion that
 
 DEGRADATION AND DEATH. 33 
 
 upon the labourer as the weakest member of the body politic 
 all its ills have fallen. 
 
 The Game laws had their origin in that period so disastrous 
 for England when the ruling classes managed, by means of the 
 pretty lies of a young prince, to deceive and crush the People. 
 From the preamble to the 7 Ric. II., c. iii. & iv., it would seem 
 that the labourers were not disposed to accept their defeat as 
 final, but that on Sundays and holidays, they collected in parks 
 and warrens, under pretext of hunting ; but really to confer and 
 conspire with a view to a new rising. It was accordingly 
 enacted that no artificer, labourer, etc., should keep any dog to 
 hunt, nor use any means for taking deer, hares, conies or other 
 "gentleman's game" on pain of a year's imprisonment. 1 Thus 
 the protection up to that time limited to the game in the King's 
 forests was now extended to that of all the great landowners. 
 
 We have seen how the destruction of the old nobility, and the 
 stepping into their shoes of the successful among the middle 
 classes made no real difference in the burdens laid on the people, 
 but rather increased them. So in this question of the protection 
 of their game, the landlord parliaments, which sat from the reign 
 of Henry VII. to that of William and Mary, kept adding new 
 provisions to the laws, until they related not only to deer, hares, 
 and rabbits, but to pigs, pheasants, partridges, to heath, moor, 
 and fen-fowl, and to various kinds of fish. Quite a network of 
 prohibitions was constructed with reference to the possession of 
 dogs, ferrets, guns, bows, snares, and every means used for taking 
 wild animals. The popular notion of every Englishman's house 
 being his castle was conspicuously demonstrated to be a fallacy, 
 by 22 and 23 Car., 2, 15, which authorised a lord of the manor to 
 license his gamekeeper not only to seize all prohibited means of 
 taking game, but to search dwelling-houses and seize setting dogs, 
 nets, etc., found in them. By the 4 and 5 William and Mary, 
 c. 23, the private search was made more certain and odious by 
 the promise of half the booty to the informer, and the detected 
 poacher was subjected to the whip. 
 
 Nothing but fear of these penalties ever prevented our fore- 
 
 1 13 Ric. II., i. c. xiii. 
 D
 
 34 
 
 THE EXGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 fathers from taking possession of any wild creature which might 
 come across their path, for it was long before Englishmen could 
 believe in the right of any individual to the sole possession of the 
 game of a district. This contempt for the Conscience is in itself 
 a temptation to crime. The first step in opposition to the law 
 appears very like the vindication of Justice, but the rubicon once 
 passed, a disregard of all law ensues. 
 
 Lord Suffield, writing sixty years ago, showed that it was the 
 most natural thing in the world for an English labourer to 
 become a poacher. At that time over the greater part of England 
 by incessant toil the agricultural labourer could scarcely earn 
 more than ninepence or a shilling a day, while a gang of poachers 
 had been known to take as much as three sacks of game in one 
 night. Wherever there were game preserves the whole country 
 side was demoralised, the most apparently respectable persons 
 being implicated. A case occurred in 1816, in Gloucestershire, 
 of a large gang fully organised, having at its head the collector 
 of the rates and taxes in the parish, who was looked upon as a 
 respectable farmer. These gangs were co-operative societies, for 
 they not only provided guns and other instruments, but hired men 
 at wages little above that given to the gamekeepers to do the 
 actual poaching while they took the booty, or at least the lion's 
 share of it, and if these servants of the gang were arrested, money 
 was forthcoming to pay the penalties. 
 
 It would have been bad enough if the moral ruin had been 
 confined to a few, but it was widespread, for in some villages the 
 whole of the inhabitants were poachers. And the law by making 
 the taking of a wild creature as much a crime as stealing a domestic 
 animal rendered the step from poaching to sheep-stealing perfectly 
 natural and easy ; and thus the man who commenced by snaring 
 a rabbit frequently ended by stealing a horse, for which he was 
 hanged or transported to Botany Bay. 
 
 If under the softened regime of the Game Laws introduced in the 
 first year of William IV., there were, between 1833 and 1846, fifty 
 inquests on gamekeepers found dead, twenty-nine of the cases 
 being returned as wilful murder, and in the years 1844-1846, 
 11,392 convictions for offences against the Game Laws in England 
 and Wales, we may judge what must have been the amount of
 
 DEGRADATION AND DEATH. 35 
 
 crime under the old regime, a regime which was in operation 
 between four and five hundred years. 
 
 The same policy that made the English people gin-drinkers 
 turned them into a race of smugglers. During the great struggle 
 which William III. carried on with France all trade with that 
 country was prohibited. The natural result was that an immense 
 impetus was given to smuggling all along the Southern coast. 
 The trade was so profitable that large capitalists took it up, and 
 the people in the southern and eastern districts gave themselves 
 up to its seductions. 
 
 Law after law was enacted to suppress this traffic, but it was 
 found impossible to carry them out. The smugglers terrorised 
 the people by murdering those who gave evidence against them ; 
 the Government sought to terrorise the smugglers by hanging in 
 chains such as were convicted of these crimes. Many a dreary 
 common or lonely spot by the sea-shore thus became invested 
 with mysterious horror. 
 
 But men in these days were not hanged only for crimes of this 
 sort. Blackstone refers to 168 offences in England punishable 
 with death, four-fifths of which were made so during the reigns of 
 the first three kings of the House of Hanover. But as late as 
 1812 a woman was hanged at Manchester for assisting to seize a 
 man's potatoes, and compelling him to sell them for a lower price 
 than he asked for them. The offences other than murder for 
 which the agricultural labourers suffered death would be : Sheep, 
 Cattle, and Horse stealing, and Highway robbery. Mandeville 
 has given a picture of an execution in his day, which, with much 
 abridgment, and an additional touch or two from other sources, 
 will serve to show how many a wretched English labourer passed 
 out of this life. 
 
 Debauched by the alehouse, corrupted by poaching or smug- 
 gling, he" has joined on some fatal night in sheep-stealing. Some 
 weeks have elapsed, the fear of detection has passed away, when 
 suddenly before it is light two constables are in the village ; they 
 make their way to Robin's cottage, and, instead of going to work 
 that morning, he is handcuffed and marched off in the cold grey 
 dawn to the county gaol. A true bill is found, and during the 
 .assize, pale, haggard, and speechless, Robin stands in the dock.
 
 36 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA, 
 
 Too bewildered to follow the evidence, he only knows that the 
 chief witness is the worst of the gang, the man who persuaded 
 him into the act, and nothing is clear to him until he hears the 
 foreman of the jury say, " Guilty, my lord," and he sees the judge 
 put on his black cap. He knows then what is going to happen, 
 and trembling from head to foot he awaits the dreadful sentence. 
 Taken back to prison, he is loaded with heavy irons, and led 
 down into a loathsome dungeon, where he finds a number of 
 other convicts ; some are swearing or laughing, while one or two 
 appear agonised at the thought of their fate. 
 
 On the morning of the execution they have all been brought up 
 into the prison yard, and a hubbub goes on almost as bad as a 
 Jews' market. Loud curses from angry quarrellers, shouts for the 
 pot-boys who scuttle about, pouring out ale and other liquids, 
 blows of the blacksmith's hammer, as he pinions those who are 
 going to suffer. At last all is in readiness, the prisoners have 
 mounted the cart, the Ordinary has got up behind, and Jack 
 Ketch in front ; the soldiers press round for fear of a rescue, and 
 the great gates of the prison are swung open. 
 
 If it was hubbub within, 'tis the roar of the ocean without. 
 Jack Ketch and his unhappy freight are received with a storm of 
 oaths and coarse ribaldry, in which some of the convicts join for 
 most of them are already half drunk. The sorry procession makes 
 us way through a thick mob, which sways to and fro ; the sellers 
 of gin and other liquors bawling loud enough to be heard above 
 the general din. Again and again the hangman's cart stops before 
 a public-house, and while the condemned are taking another 
 draught, the mob rush round them to shake their hands. So 
 eager indeed are the people to show this mark of sympathy, that 
 the struggling and fighting get worse at every stage, until at last 
 the cart is hemmed in. Then heavy blows are struck, pieces of 
 swinging sticks go flying, people are knocked down and trampled 
 under foot, every one gets spattered with blood and dirt ; screams 
 groans, and brutal cries of all sorts produce a tumult beyond 
 description. 
 
 At last the cavalcade reaches the gallows, around which a 
 number of hackney carriages are assembled. These vehicles have 
 brought or contain the people's betters, who have thus come by
 
 HOW TO DESTROY A PEOPLE'S SOUL. 37 
 
 a more convenient route, and secured the best places to see the 
 show. The Ordinary and the Hangman dispatch their duties 
 with small ceremony and equal unconcern, and very soon half a 
 dozen human bodies are dangling in the air. 
 
 What the people thought of these sights, no one has cared to 
 tell us. We may be certain, however, of one thing, their whole 
 sympathy went with the sufferers and not with the law. 
 
 IX. 
 
 How TO DESTROY A PEOPLE'S SOUL. 
 
 "PAUPER ubique jacet," said Queen Elizabeth as she made a 
 progress through the kingdom, and found herself everywhere 
 surrounded by vast flocks of poor people. In the midst of 
 individual wealth and national greatness the complaint was ever 
 rising, "There is no country with so many poor as England." 
 The reason was simple: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." 
 Henry and Elizabeth so merged the Church and State one into 
 the other that those who dared to say nay became guilty of a sort 
 of treason, and were thrown into prison, whipped, pilloried, 
 mutilated, or sent to the gallows. 
 
 In thus asserting the nation to be a Church of Christ, 
 Parliament proclaimed the English people a Society of Brothers, 
 and on the ground of this very brotherhood commenced their first 
 essay in making provision for the wants of the impotent poor. 
 But, as we have seen, everything had combined to stir up the 
 spirit of selfishness in England, so that, from the court to the city, 
 from the baronial hall to the counting-house, there never was 
 a time in which individual greed had more thoroughly taken 
 possession of a nation. Gentle asking of every man and woman 
 what in their charity they would be contented to give weekly 
 towards the relief of their poor brethren in Christ ; charitable ways 
 and means of persuading obstinate persons and parishes to take 
 their share in this duty, had to be given up, and the recalcitrants 
 handed over to the Justices of the Peace, who were to tax them in 
 a weekly sum, and commit them to prison until it was paid.
 
 38 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 By the end of the reign of Elizabeth the voluntary offering had 
 given place to a regular system of taxation, the amount being 
 settled by the overseers of each parish, who were appointed every 
 Easter Day by the Justices of the Peace. The two statutes of the 
 39th and 43rd of Elizabeth became the system upon which 
 England dealt with its poor for 230 years. It was in principle a 
 system of Christian Socialism, but being worked throughout by 
 persons animated by secular motives, its action was vacillating : 
 at once feeble and hard, and, in its final development, it came as 
 near to the work of the devil as it is possible to imagine. 
 
 The Christian Socialism of the Elizabethan Poor Law dis- 
 tinguished, in the most forcible manner, between the idle and 
 industrious, the wilful and the impotent. For the one class there 
 were stripes and imprisonment, and in the end the gibbet ; for the 
 other, relief and shelter. Everything, however, depended on the 
 honesty, capacity, and Christian spirit of the Justices of the Peace 
 and Overseers into whose hands the whole care of the poor was 
 confided. As early as 1622 we find signs that many shirked the 
 work. In a tract of that date, called, "Greevous Grones for the 
 Poor," we are told, " The poor dailie increase, in many parishes 
 there being no collection for them, so that they are driven out of 
 these parishes to beg, and filtch, and steal for their maintenance." 
 
 Each parish began jealously to guard its frontier, fearing that 
 the surrounding parishes would shift upon it the burden of 
 their poor. This led to a series of acts which virtually imprisoned 
 the labourer in the limits of his parish, tying him down for a third 
 time to the soil. The place of a man's nativity being originally 
 the parish from which he could claim assistance, it became 
 the object of every parish to prevent any being born in its limits 
 who might come on the rates. If a young man who had no right 
 of settlement in a parish attempted to get married, the officials 
 immediately sought to have him removed, lest he should have 
 a family, some of whom might become chargeable. This deterred 
 young men from matrimony, and the result was a large number of 
 bastard children. That unfortunate being whom the English law 
 pursued so relentlessly: the homeless wanderer, was still more 
 cruelly dealt with. In the reign of James I. it was enacted that a 
 woman wandering and begging, if delivered of a child in a parish
 
 HOW TO DESTROY A PEOPLE'S SOUL. 39 
 
 to which she did not belong, was to be liable to whipping and six 
 months' imprisonment. Yet notwithstanding all this severity the 
 poor were ever on the increase. 
 
 Some seventy years after the Elizabethan Poor Law had been in 
 operation the rates had risen to no less a sum than ^840,000 a year. 
 Twelve years later, 1685, the poor were numbered at 1,330,000 
 heads, 400,000 of whom were in receipt of parish relief. By the 
 reign of Queen Anne the maintenance of the poor cost one million 
 sterling. 
 
 During the early years of the eighteenth century the rapid growth 
 of pauperism occupied many powerful minds, but the remedies 
 they proposed were not adopted, or quite failed to arrest its pro- 
 gress ; so that in 1795, Mr. Fox told the House of Commons "that 
 the greater part of the working classes of the country were lying 
 at the mercy and almost lay on the charity of the rich." Mr. Fox 
 was far from exaggerating the disease, for English pauperism was 
 now entering an acute stage. By the end of the War it could be 
 said to have risen fifty per cent., and there were very few of the 
 labouring classes out of its grasp. 
 
 To estimate the full force of this steady growth of pauperism we 
 must never lose sight of the fact that it took place side by side 
 with an ever-enlarging commerce, with the development of the 
 manufacturing system and the enormous increase in the wealth of 
 the ruling classes. 
 
 The writers of the early part of the eighteenth century Locke, 
 Defoe, Sir Joshua Child, Mandeville, and Henry Fielding more 
 or less attribute it to relaxation in discipline and corruption in 
 manners. They appear to have thought, and probably with reason, 
 that through careless management, a great deal of the money went 
 in the support of idleness and debauchery. When we recall the 
 laws by which, in addition to their long education in servility and 
 dependence, the labourers were drawn into the practice of poaching, 
 smuggling, and the worst forms of drinking, our surprise will be 
 how any virtue could remain in the labouring poor, how it was 
 possible for any of them to have escaped this cesspool of moral 
 misery into which their whole class was falling. 
 
 Defoe tells a story which gives us a pretty idea of the kind of 
 men who in the seventeenth century had the fate of the agricultural
 
 40 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 labourer in their hands. "Jack," said a gentleman of very high 
 quality, when after the debate in the House of Lords, King William 
 was voted on the vacant throne ; "Jack," says he, " God damn ye ; 
 Jack, go home to your lady, and tell her we have got a Protestant 
 King and Queen ; and go and make a bonfire as big as a house, 
 and bid the butler make ye all drunk, ye dog." 
 
 To ask legislators of this sort to listen to proposals like those of 
 Mr. Locke, even though they had King William's support, was 
 casting pearls before swine. So nothing came of the idea, bor- 
 rowed from the original Elizabethan legislation, of founding working 
 schools where the children of those unable to maintain their families 
 could be fed and employed instead of money for the purpose being 
 directly given to the heads of those families. 
 
 A similar fate at first befell Sir Humphrey Mackworth's scheme 
 for setting up workhouses, perhaps owing to Defoe's clever pam- 
 phlet entitled, " Giving Alms no Charity." However, in 1723, 
 Parliament determined to try the workhouse system and by 9 Geo. 
 I., c. 7, it was enacted that relief should only be given on condition 
 of entering a workhouse; i.e., that an Englishman who fell into 
 poverty should only be relieved on condition of surrendering what 
 has been trumpeted forth as the birthright of every native of this 
 country. 
 
 It was soon seen that to make this system effectual, the 
 workhouse must be more miserable and the diet poorer than that 
 to which the labouring class were accustomed. Workhouses were 
 accordingly managed by contract, and ere long they became one 
 of those horrors, the frequent end of institutions founded on 
 one principle and worked on another. Crabbe, whose profound 
 sympathy for the poor and photographic pictures of their misery 
 will render his f ame immortal, thus describes the Village Work- 
 house in 1783. He is speaking of the final fate of worn-out 
 agricultural labourers 
 
 " Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, 
 Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door ; 
 There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, 
 And the dull wheel hums doleful through the clay 
 There children dwell who know no parents' care : 
 Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there !
 
 HOW TO DESTROY A PEOPLE'S SOUL. 4F 
 
 Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, 
 Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed ; 
 Rejected widows with unheeded tears, 
 And crippled age with more than childhood's fears : 
 The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they ! 
 The moping idiot, and the madman gay." 
 
 In the very year of the appearance of Crabbe's most touching 
 poem of the Village, Mr. Pitt brought in a bill repealing the 
 9 Geo. I., c. 7, which prohibited relief to any not entering a work- 
 house, on the ground that this provision was "inconvenient 
 and oppressive, inasmuch as it often prevented an industrious 
 person from receiving such relief as is best suited to their peculiar 
 case, and held out conditions of relief injurious to the comfort and 
 domestic situation and happiness of such poor persons." 
 
 That the Act, known as 33 Geo. III., c. 23, proved one of the 
 most disastrous bits of legislation ever perpetrated, was not so 
 much the fault of its promoters as of that fatal English blindness 
 to harmony, which does not see that you cannot bind together the 
 Spirit of Christianity and the Practice of the World, that you 
 cannot found an institution on the ground of human brotherhood 
 and then work it in the spirit of competitive commerce. 
 
 In 1796 Mr. Pitt made a remarkable speech on the Poor Laws, 
 in which, after referring to the great abuses of the System, he laid 
 down the principles essential to a good Poor Law. One of the 
 most important was Relief according to number of children. 
 
 The following year Mr. Pitt brought in a bill in which he 
 proposed to realise this principle. This bill and its failure 
 for it was withdrawn at the manifest repugnance of the House of 
 Commons to make it law show two things : first, that Mr. Pitt 
 understood the meaning of the French Revolution better than 
 his supporters ; second, that they understood the condition to 
 which the Agricultural Poor were reduced better than he did. 
 
 English Statesmen had had time to understand the great storm 
 which had raged across the Channel, and had comprehended that 
 it resulted from the mass of people suddenly discovering that 
 they had been cheated, robbed, and trampled under foot for ages, 
 in order that a small section of the community might live in pride 
 and luxury ; and knowing that the same conditions existed here,
 
 42 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 they were in terror lest the like should occur in England. We 
 know from Lord Stanhope that in 1794, Pitt believed himself 
 surrounded by thousands of bandits, and that he might wake one 
 morning and find London in flames. 
 
 The truth, however, about the Revolution had not reached the 
 majority of his supporters, and their nerves being less sensitive, 
 they judged the state of the country more correctly. As to the 
 agricultural labourers, they knew them to be what we see them 
 depicted in the drawings of Morland, and in the writings of 
 Crabbe, Blomfield, and Clare ; an artless, patient, gregarious herd, 
 who went on plodding from day to day, hopeless and aimless, 
 with no other relief than an occasional burst of frantic merriment, 
 of which horse-play and hard drinking were the chief features. 
 Freed from all anxiety concerning the future, mostly ignorant of 
 any higher good than the satisfaction of their senses, there was 
 nothing to fear from such a people. 
 
 However, the soul of the Agricultural Poor was not quite dead. 
 It fluttered still in the breasts of a few sufferers, and came out as 
 such deep vague sorrows do in verse. 
 
 Blomfield and Clare, these poets of the people, have through- 
 out the same undertone of melancholy, arising from the conviction 
 that they belonged to a class which is day by day falling into a 
 deeper, more abject state of poverty or crime. When the former, 
 as he reflected on the distance the increasing wealth made be- 
 tween different ranks, cries out 
 
 " Has Wealth done this ? then Wealth's a foe to me ; 
 Foe to our rights ; that leaves a pow'rful few 
 The paths of emulation to pursue : 
 For emulation stoops to us no more : 
 The hope of humble industry is o'er " 
 
 we have, as it were, a throb from a slumbering volcano. 
 
 And the conviction that the sleeper might awake seems to have 
 been the result of Mr. Pitt's bill, for though dropped, its main 
 proposition, the making up out of the rates of the deficiency of a 
 labourer's income, came to be the general practice throughout the 
 country. This suggested the necessity of a scale, and the amount
 
 DESCENDING INTO HELL. 45 
 
 a labourer ought to have was fixed, from time to time, by the 
 price of the quartern loaf, which might vary from 6d. to 2S. 1 
 
 By this system it was admitted that every man in the country 
 had a right to an adequate maintenance, whether he was idle or 
 industrious, honest or dishonest; and that he ought to receive 
 public aid in proportion to the number of his family. English 
 people are frightened at the word Socialism. Who ever conceived 
 a worse type of Socialism than this ? 
 
 When the Parliamentary Commission of 1833 inquired into the 
 effect of this system, they could not find words strong enough to- 
 paint their dismay. They found the poor's rates in 1830 had 
 reached an annual amount of six to seven millions sterling ; that 
 in some parts of the country, nearly all the labourers were 
 paupers ; that the rascally idler was better off than the honest 
 and laborious ; the latter, one after the other, being driven to the 
 conviction that the man who worked hard was a fool ; they found,, 
 however, that employers liked the system, because it enabled them 
 to give low wages, knowing the deficiency would be made up by 
 the parish. 
 
 Never, perhaps, in history has there been a state of things so 
 ridiculously immoral. 
 
 X. 
 
 DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 IN that remarkable parable where Jesus Christ sets forth the 
 judgment of the nations He gives but one test of righteousness, 
 and that test turns on the absolute identification of Himself with 
 the poor and needy. " Forasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
 of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." 
 
 If this be so, what truer word can be said of the history just 
 narrated than that " Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth 
 crucified among us." And not only "crucified," but "dead and 
 buried," His very soul being made an offering for sin. For that 
 
 1 The highest price reached was is. lid. during the scarcity of 1799. 
 Tooke's Prices, v, 77.
 
 44 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 soul which awoke in the cowherd Ccedmon, which touched the 
 conscience of Norman kings, which appeared in Plantagenet times 
 as the prophet and guide of the people, which stood forth boldly 
 in the fourteenth century to claim our common rights, and in the 
 sixteenth century to recall a government of adventurers to its duty; 
 
 that soul finally gathered on itself all the penalties due to national 
 
 sin, until, exceedingly filled with contempt, it sank lower and lower 
 in the mire, uttered a plaintive cry and entered the tomb. Do not 
 say this is rhetoric, each phrase represents various facts, and a still 
 more cruel story has to come, for the soul of the English labourer 
 has not only passed through those stages fittingly described by the 
 words "crucified, dead and buried," but in our own age, it has 
 "descended into hell." 
 
 When the war closed, the glory of Trafalgar and of Waterloo was 
 soon forgotten in the collapse which followed the inflation of 
 trade, caused by the extravagance which had spent ^625,000,000 
 in order to overthrow the French Revolution. And not only were 
 the people of this country saddled for ever with this overwhelming 
 debt, but the Nemesis also came in an ever- widening estrangement 
 of classes. 
 
 The war found the farmer and his men living and working 
 together in a somewhat patriarchal fashion ; it left the master a 
 gentleman, the labourer a pauper. The latter, no longer an inmate 
 at the farm, lodged in some hovel and took his meals at the ale- 
 house. But the widespread ruin the collapse produced led to the 
 consolidation of farms in fewer hands. The separation between 
 master and men became more complete ; financial success the one 
 end aimed at " buy in the cheapest market and sell in the 
 dearest" the one principle that prevailed. But such was the 
 state of things that the masters were able not only to take full 
 advantage of this law, but to go beyond it. For not only did one 
 large farm require less labourers than the same area divided into 
 several smaller ones, not only was the labour market abnormally 
 increased by the stimulus given to human production by the Poor 
 Law System, but that same system rendered the men careless of 
 the amount of wages they received, since they knew the deficiency 
 would be made up by the parish. Wages were accordingly given 
 which, without this parochial dole, could not have kept the labourer
 
 DESCENDING INTO HELL. 45 
 
 alive. Seven, eight, or at the highest nine or ten shillings a week, 
 when the quartern loaf averaged eighteenpence, simply meant 
 wholesale murder. But the screw was put on gradually, and in a 
 few years, when bread had fallen to n|d. the quartern loaf, there 
 were places, Northamptonshire for example, where the magistrates 
 fixed the parish allowance at 53. a single man, 6s. a man and wife,, 
 and 2S. each child, whatever the family earned to be deducted from 
 the allowance. 
 
 As 145. or 153. was the least a single man could live upon when 
 bread was still cheaper, it is manifest that the wages which have 
 been given to the Agricultural Labourer during the greater part of 
 this century 73., 8s. or the utmost 93. or los. have meant starva- 
 tion during the lifetime of at least one generation and a portion of 
 two others. For be it remembered that on these miserable sums 
 not one person, but very frequently four or five have had to live. It 
 was only done by reducing the quantity of bread, bacon and beer,, 
 and taking in their place gruel, potatoes, suet and rice puddings, 
 with decoctions of washed-out tea leaves. But even such fare was 
 hardly possible under the varying prices which obtained during the 
 Protective system. An old man told me that he remembered the 
 time when the bread they had to eat was almost black, and so hard 
 that they had to chop it. At such times, and perhaps many others, 
 parents were glad on dark winter afternoons to fill their children's 
 stomachs with a fluid made of hot water and coarse brown sugar, 
 flavoured with a modicum of milk, and putting them to bed, get 
 rid of their cries for food until the next morning. " No wonder," 
 as Cobbett said to one of his labourers, " no wonder that you are 
 all as thin as owlets, and that that son of yours there, who is nine- 
 teen years old, and is five feet nine inches high, is as you told me 
 last summer, ' too weakly to do a man's work.' No wonder that 
 his knees bend under him, and that he has a voice like that of a 
 girl, instead of being able to carry a sack of wheat and jump a five- 
 barred gate." 
 
 In Warwickshire I met two infirm men crawling like beetles 
 along the road. After some conversation the elder of the two told 
 me that he had brought eight children into the world and had buried 
 five. What they died of he could hardly tell. Decline, one died of 
 that, he knew they called it " consumpted decline." Phthisis and
 
 46 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 scrofula, as every country practitioner has known, found its most 
 frequent victims amongst this famine-struck race. 
 
 The degradation of pauperism is far worse than that of slavery, 
 and of all pauperism none surely exceeded in cruelty this which fell 
 to the lot of the English Labourer. Pampered at first, led even 
 into a coarse luxury, he was rapidly let down until he was treated 
 to such degradations as being put up to auction, and his labour 
 sold to the highest bidder, or to being made to drag gravel carts 
 like a beast of burden. 
 
 Left in ignorance so dense that probably not one in five could 
 read or write, was it surprising that agricultural labourers should 
 view the introduction of threshing machines as calculated to put 
 the finishing stroke to their ruin ? When a prairie has been dried 
 up by a long drought the merest spark will produce a conflagration, 
 carrying destruction over hundreds of miles ; so it is with a popular 
 movement, no one knows how it began or where it will end. Thus 
 in the autumn of 1830, Agricultural England was panic-stricken 
 by the news that the labourers were rising everywhere, destroying 
 machines and setting fire to ricks. The movement spread through 
 the southern, eastern and midland counties, and even showed itself 
 in Cumberland. Sometimes it was a mere riot with an onslaught 
 on some poor-house, parsonage, or manor-house, sometimes it was 
 content with merely destroying machinery, but the most usual form 
 was rick-burning. Night after night in many parts of England the 
 blazing sky told that Captain Swing had been at his work. 
 
 In the roughly printed booklet from whence this mythic person- 
 age sprang, he is made to say : "I am not the author of these 
 burnings. What can have caused them ? Those fires," said I, " are 
 caused by farmers having been turned out of their lands to make 
 room for foxes, peasants confined two years in prison for picking 
 up a dead partridge, and parsons taking a poor man's only cow 
 for the tithe of his cabbage-garden. These are the things that 
 caused the burnings and not unfortunate ' Swing.' " 
 
 No, these rick burnings, this machine breaking, these attacks on 
 manor-houses and parsonages had in them nothing preconcerted. 
 Men who in the morning had gone quietly to their work found 
 themselves before day was out, part of a great mob, the infection 
 siezed them in a moment, and laying hold of some pitchfork or
 
 DESCENDING INTO HELL. 47 
 
 chopper they hurried on to riot in the rector's garden or break up 
 the farmer's machine. 
 
 The contrast between the tremendous energy displayed by the 
 Government, and the extreme feebleness of the unhappy rioters, 
 was suggestive of the great gulf between rich and poor. Neither 
 had the least idea of each other's real power. The greatest general 
 England has ever had was sent down into the disturbed districts to 
 support the Judges in the special assize held during December 1830. 
 
 Three hundred prisoners, many of them convicts expecting 
 sentence of death, lay in the gaol at Winchester. We are not told 
 if the old cathedral city muffled its joy-bells on that unhappy 
 Christmas morn, most probably with our characteristic indifference 
 to sentiment they pealed forth the conventional 
 
 " Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, 
 Peace and goodwill to all mankind." 
 
 Anyhow the Judges did not forget to go to church nor to omit 
 their lugubrious sermons to the men they condemned to death. 
 
 When on the 3oth of the month the Court met, the jury-box 
 and the dock were filled with convicted felons. The three judges 
 in scarlet robes, supported by Field Marshal the Duke of Well- 
 ington, proceeded to condemn these poor rustics according to the 
 cruel English law. They were brought up in batches of twenty 
 at a time, and every one had sentence of death recorded against 
 them. Six were actually sentenced to suffer on the gallows, 
 twenty were transported for life, the remainder for periods varying 
 according to judicial discretion. 
 
 The real nature of the crimes committed was shown by the 
 youth of some of the offenders. In another part of the country a 
 child of fourteen had sentence of death recorded against him ; 
 and two brothers, one twenty, the other nineteen, William and 
 Henry Packman, were ruthlessly hanged on Penenden Heath on 
 the 24th, whither they were escorted by a regiment of Scotch 
 Greys. At the sight of the gallows one exclaimed to the other, 
 "That looks an awful thing." ' Brother," said the eldest, "let us 
 shake hands before we die." The younger refused at first to have 
 the cap drawn over his eyes, saying he wished to see the people 
 as he died. Poor heart, he knew well where there was sympathy, 
 and expected strength from the sight.
 
 48 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 Terrible fact ! it was only by means of these lurid flames, these 
 black corpses dangling in the wintry wind, these English slaves 
 sent to the antipodal hell at Botany Bay, that the consciences of 
 the well-to-do ruling classes could be brought to the conviction 
 that there was something rotten in the social condition of the 
 country and that the ground beneath their feet was volcanic. 
 
 The Times newspaper for December 27, 1830, commenting 
 upon the Winchester trials, made the danger-signal scream in 
 quite revolutionary accents. 
 
 " We do affirm that the actions of this pitiable class of men 
 (the labourers), as a commentary on the treatment experienced by 
 them at the hands of the upper and middling classes ; the gentle- 
 men, clergy (who ought to teach and instruct them), and the 
 farmers who ought to pay and feed them, are disgraceful to the 
 British name. The present population must be provided for in 
 body and spirit on more liberal and Christian principles, or the 
 whole mass of labourers will start into legions of a banditti band- 
 itti less criminal than those who hate made them so than those 
 U'ho by a just but fearful retribution will soon become their victims." 
 
 The Parliamentary Commission appointed in 1833 to inquire 
 into the operation of the Poor Laws, declared itself horrified at 
 the results of its inquiries. " The condition of the rural labours 
 in too many districts was," it affirmed, "brutal and wretched; 
 their children during the day were struggling with the pigs for 
 food, and at night were huddled down on damp straw under a 
 roof of rotten thatch." 
 
 A reform conceived in the hard, inhuman spirit of modern 
 science was the outcome. I once read of a hospital nurse who, 
 disgusted with the dirty habits of some miserable patient, 
 dragged the trembling wretch half-naked out of her bed and 
 forced her into a cold bath. Such was the humanity of the New 
 Poor Law. 
 
 The shivering labourers, accustomed to their dirty hovels, 
 struggled long with grim famine before they would go into the 
 Bastilles, as they named the new Workhouses. For this title 
 there would have been no justification if honest families could 
 have avoided their use, but that that was impossible is proved by 
 the fact that the ordinary dietary of the workhouse fed the
 
 DESCENDING INTO HELL. 49 
 
 paupers twice as well as nine-tenths of English labourers could 
 feed on the wages they obtained. 
 
 On a bleak winter's evening in January 1846, the Wiltshire 
 labourers held a mass meeting in a cross-road near Goat-acre. 
 Standing on a hurdle supported on stakes driven into the ground, 
 the speakers read, by the flickering light of a candle or the glare of 
 a lanthorn, their woe-begone statements. One who had come 
 twenty miles told the story of his struggles to provide for a wife 
 and six children out of eight shillings a week. At last he applied 
 to the relieving officer, who gave him an order for one of his 
 children to go into the workhouse. "Now, fellow-labourers, is 
 not one child as dear to you as another ? I could not part with 
 ne'er a one. I said to my oldest girl, ' You are to go into the 
 workhouse.' She did not like to go, and then I spoke to the 
 others, and then I had the cries of my poor children, which were 
 piercing to my heart, ' Don't send me, father ! don't send me ! ' " 
 
 Here we see the main cause why English labourers called the 
 workhouses Bastilles. They lacerated their bruised souls in the 
 only spot where feeling was left ; the law tore asunder husband and 
 wife, parents and children. 
 
 So these miserable people preferred to starve in their horrible 
 lairs, called cottages. If you think this phrase mere rhetoric, 
 study the Report of the Medical Officer of Health, 1864, and 
 the Reports of the Commission on the Employment of Children, 
 Young Persons, and Women in Agriculture, 1867, and you 
 will find that no phrase you can think of will be adequate to 
 express the truth. Crazy, dilapidated hovels, shaking with every 
 wind, vast numbers containing but one bedroom, in which parents 
 and children, grown-up brothers and sisters, even grandparents 
 and aunts and uncles,, and occasionally lodgers, all pigged to- 
 gether, where a whole family had to be ill of fever and to lie in the 
 same room with a corpse, rooms through the ceilings of which 
 the water poured, where the walls reeked with damp, where fever 
 lurked in the saturated floor, so that the very accent of the people 
 seemed to have grown clammy, such were vast numbers of English 
 cottages up to within the time that I began to study this subject, 
 and, by numbers of pedestrian tours, to realise the truth with my 
 own eyes. Charles Kingsley refers to these facts in his terrible 
 
 E
 
 50 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 ballad, " The Bad Squire? which I only refrain from quoting for 
 want of room. 
 
 Every horror went on in such homes. The same loathsome 
 crimes that startled us so in " The Bitter Cry " have been perpe- 
 trated in our English villages, and every now and then the news- 
 papers have had to record some atrocious murder, or series of 
 murders, committed in one of these slumbering hamlets. 
 
 Degraded by pauperism, harried by the game laws, brutalised 
 by drink, maddened by starvation, are you surprised that such 
 homes produced a state of mind only to be paralleled in an old- 
 fashioned lunatic asylum, where people were kept in cages like 
 raging beasts of prey ? Some blessed angels have been at work 
 all over the land restraining these poor devils, binding up their 
 wounds, sitting at their bedsides, rilling their minds with a hidden 
 hope a hope quite undefined, but for that reason the more vast 
 and consoling. So you may enter these hovels, and find a resig- 
 nation, a peace of mind, a trust in God absolutely sublime. It is 
 the Spirit of Jesus Christ which we have driven to dwell in the 
 nethermost hells of English society. But it is by such means He 
 has preached to the spirits in prison spirits from whom all hope 
 has long fled spirits lost to natural affection and all decency 
 foul-tongued and malicious, hating themselves and hating each 
 other, apparently lost in this world and to all eternity. 
 
 Space fails me to speak of the innumerable miseries which 
 rendered these miserable homes still more miserable the toilsome 
 journeys to the work, often many miles a day the occupation 
 of the mothers in the fields the corruption of the young by the 
 ganging system; all these causes assisted to destroy domestic 
 affection the one humanising influence left to the labourer amidst 
 all his trials and temptations. When this was gone, there was 
 nothing for him but drink, and this reacted on the home, and 
 made its wretchedness still more wretched. 
 
 And thus the English labourer sank too often into a Caliban, 
 whose sole enjoyment was to make night horrible as he rushed 
 with whoops and yells from the village alehouse to terrify wife and 
 cowering children. When the poor monster of the island of 
 Lampedusa cries
 
 THE FIRST FAINT STREAK OF DAWN. 5! 
 
 "Sometime am I 
 
 All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues, 
 Do hiss me into madness ! Lo, now, lo ! 
 Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me," 
 
 we seem to hear the poor hell-bound rustic blindly groaning in his 
 anguish, but not so blind but that he feels his misery to be chiefly 
 due to that wily enchanter to whom, notwithstanding his vile 
 brutality, he is indispensable. 
 
 "We cannot miss him : he does make our fire, 
 Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices 
 That profit us." 
 
 XI. 
 
 THE FIRST FAINT STREAK OF DAWN. 
 
 ' ' WHO shall roll us away the stone from the door of the 
 sepulchre ? And when they looked they saw that the stone was 
 rolled away ; for it was very great." From 1834 to 1872 is not a 
 long time in such a history as we have been pursuing ; but how 
 great the change ! Day had broken ; the shadows were flying. 
 
 In 1834, the Dorsetshire labourers, among the gentlest and 
 most down-trodden of their class, formed a Trades-Union. The 
 Government caused six labouring men concerned in getting it up 
 to be indicted at the Assizes at Dorchester, under an obsolete 
 statute made to prevent mutiny in the Navy. They were found 
 guilty of administering an oath which this statute made penal, and 
 were sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. Notwithstanding 
 a burst of popular indignation, these six labourers were transported 
 to Van Dieman's land, the Government being so determined about 
 it as to make preparations to sweep the streets of the Metropolis 
 with cannon. 
 
 In 1872 the South Warwickshire labourers formed a Trades- 
 Union, and though the example soon spread through the country, 
 thus showing itself to be a far more formidable movement than the 
 Dorset one, not a hand was raised to stop its progress. 
 
 Few movements have been less the result of premeditation.
 
 52 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 Some labourers at Weston asked for an increase of wages ; one or 
 two of the Wellesbourne men noticed the fact in a local paper, and, 
 talking about it to a labourer who had been in the Black country, 
 he suggested that the Wellesbourne people should combine for 
 the same end. They were willing, but wanted a leader. They 
 knew a man at Barford who they thought would do : he was a day 
 labourer, but his soul was lifted above the clods. To Barford they 
 accordingly went. The good wife was at the cottage door. " We 
 want," said they, " to talk to Joe about forming a Union ; other 
 trades have a Union, and we don't see why we should not have one." 
 
 " You form a Union ! " she replied ; " why, you ain't got spirit to 
 form a Union." 
 
 " Yes, we have," they replied ; " only Arch must lead us." 
 
 " Very well," she answered, " you must tell him so yourselves, 
 and he will do it." 
 
 They did as she said, and Arch threw himself heart and soul 
 into the work. The first thing done was to hold a meeting at 
 Wellesbourne. From farm to farm, by word of mouth, the tidings 
 spread, and on the i4th day of February 1872, beneath a noble 
 chestnut, which adorns the village green, the agricultural labourers 
 of England shook off the fetters of ages. A thousand persons or 
 more were present, and adhesions poured in so fast to the new 
 Union then formed that the Secretary could hardly write the 
 names. Notices were served on the farmers asking a rise of wages 
 to sixteen shillings a week; the demand was refused, and the 
 labourers struck. 
 
 But their faith and courage were not severely tried, for the 
 agricultural labourers throughout the country took up the move 
 ment, until the Agricultural Labourers' Union became a National 
 organisation. The labourer had boldly marched into the social 
 citadel ; he was henceforth a citizen de facto, and to-morrow will be 
 so de jure. 
 
 What had given the labourer courage to claim his rights? I 
 will answer that question by the following narrative : 
 
 It was a cold winter's day, and the snow lay on the ground 
 hard and crisp, when an old man might have been seen trudging, 
 staff in hand, to his " appointment " at a village in the depths of 
 the country. Ben was a working bricklayer by trade, but he had
 
 THE FIRST FAINT STREAK OF DAWN. 53 
 
 a higher calling, namely that of a minister of Jesus Christ. The 
 temple in which he was to preach had been an old cow-house. 
 It was lighted by a few candles fastened in tin slides and stuck 
 against the walls, and by a huge fire, around which a number of 
 children were warming themselves. When he arrived the people 
 were singing, so, joining in the hymn, he got into the wooden box 
 which served as a pulpit. He could neither read nor write, but 
 his knowledge of the Scriptures was so extensive that he always 
 had a verse appropriate to the occasion. This knowledge he 
 owed to his wife, who taught him to recite whole chapters. Janet 
 was just dead, and this was the first time he had preached since 
 his loss. He took for his text 2 Tim. ii. 7, 8. The sermon over, 
 the children flocked round " dear old Ben," and an aged man, 
 stretching out his trembling hand to him, cried : " The Lord be 
 praised for what we have heard to-night ! " The old man invited 
 him to have a "dish of tea" before he went home, and the 
 preacher left the little meeting-house amid many a fervent " God 
 bless you " from the poor people who had heard him. 
 
 " I kept the kettle boiling," the good wife said to Ben, as he 
 entered the humble dwelling of his host. " I know'd you'd be 
 coming. So Janet's gone, aye hoo's better off now, Ben." 
 "Bless the Lord! hoo is," said Ben; "but it's wearying without 
 her. Hoo says, a bit afore hoo died, ' Ben,' hoo says, ' thee'l not 
 be long after me ;' and then hoo says, 'Ben, Ben,' hoo says, 'tell 
 us about Jacob's lather ; ' so I told her ; and then hoo says, ' Ben, 
 Ben,' hoo says, ' the lather's coming down, Ben,' and then hoo 
 died. Five and thirty years hoo'd been my wife, and it's lone- 
 some like now to be without her, for I'm an old man, ye sees, and 
 my work's nearly done, bless the Lord ! I've tried to serve Him 
 more years than I served the devil forty years this very night 
 since I first know'd Him, and He's been very good to me ever since." 
 His pent-up feelings overcame him, and the old man stopped 
 to give them way. It was a solemn scene, those two poor old 
 creatures out of their poverty ministering to the bodily and 
 spiritual comfort of " dear old Ben." The dish of tea was drunk ; 
 and then, kneeling on the cold bare floor, Ben prayed. It was the 
 last prayer he offered up in the presence of others, for three hours 
 later he was found, with his head resting on a stone by the road-
 
 54 
 
 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 side, dead ; a smile had overspread his features, and his face was 
 turned upward as though he too had seen the ladder coming out 
 of heaven, and the angels descending to beckon him away. 
 
 Many respectable people would have called old Ben a " ranter." 
 I should call him a primitive Christian, for though I do not 
 believe the poor in Judaea had fallen at any time so low as the 
 English poor have done, some of the apostles were not in a much 
 more exalted station than old Ben. Poor and ignorant as he was, 
 it was men like he who woke in the dull, sad minds of his fellow- 
 sufferers a new hope, a belief that there was indeed a Kingdom of 
 Heaven worth struggling to obtain. The very ignorance and 
 poverty of the labourers cut them off from knowing anything of 
 the Gospel, even in its narrow English form. They were too 
 ignorant to understand anyone who did not speak their language 
 and think their thoughts, too poor to support any kind of 
 ministry. 
 
 In the source from whence the foregoing narrative has been 
 taken will be found, through a long course of years, the obituaries 
 of Christian apostles, some of whom laboured all the week for a 
 wage of a few shillings, and then on Sunday walked twenty or 
 thirty miles to preach the Gospel. One such, having six children, 
 for weeks ate nothing but bread, although he had five miles to 
 walk daily to a barn where he was employed as a thresher. " Yet," 
 we are told, " he sometimes so felt the presence of God that he 
 seemed to have strength enough to cut the straw through with his 
 flail." Believing literally in our Lord's promises, he realised their 
 fulfilment, and in moments of dire necessity received help 
 apparently as miraculous as that given Elijah. Nobody, of course, 
 will believe this who supposes that there is no other kingdom but 
 that of Nature. However, these things are realized by the Poor 
 who have the least faith, " for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." 
 
 These were the kind of men who prophesied in f ' the valley of 
 the dry bones ; " but, of course, Resurrection is no agreeable task 
 to unhealthy souls. Like the sickly sleeper, who has passed a 
 night full of horrible dreams, and has just fallen into a heavy 
 slumber before dawn, the benighted villagers cursed the heralds of 
 the coming day and bid them begone. They pelted them with 
 mud, stones, and rotten eggs ; sometimes threw ropes over them
 
 THE FIRST FAINT STREAK OF DAWN. 55 
 
 to drag them to the river ; often sought to drown their praying and 
 preaching with fire-shovels and tin kettles. In these persecutions 
 they were sometimes led on by the authorities; and constables 
 wishing to ingratiate themselves with the upper classes laid 
 information against these poor preachers as disturbers of the 
 peace. On such a charge John Ride and Edward Bishop were 
 cited before the magistrates of Winchester, in 1834. No breach 
 of the law being proved against them, the magistrates offered to 
 let them go if they would promise not to preach again at Michel- 
 dever. Refusing to do this, they were bound over to be tried at 
 the Quarter Sessions, and during the twelve days they were 
 finding bail, they were kept in the same prison in which the 
 victims of 1830 had been confined. I do not suppose that they 
 had any idea of the dignity of their martyrdom, or how really they 
 were being associated with the sufferings of Christ. For we 
 must not expect the thoughts of even the poorest among English 
 evangelists to rise above the level of nineteenth-century Chris- 
 tianity. However, no one can preach the Gospel of the Kingdom 
 or sincerely pray that that Kingdom may come without helping to 
 bring about a revolution of the most radical description. 
 
 But if the religious awakening brought about by the instru- 
 mentality of such men gave the labourers energy enough to claim 
 their rights, the public mind had itself been prepared to admit 
 their demand by an awakening far more widespread and 
 discernible. 
 
 A great earthquake had taken place ; an angel had descended 
 from heaven, and rolling back the stone, sat upon it. Yes, we in 
 England saw only the pale aurora of that Resurrection-morn, and 
 little believed its import. We fancied ourselves a peculiar people, 
 to whom a European Sunrise was only a matter of curiosity. 
 But who that remembers the literature and the movements of 
 1848 but must feel, even if he thinks only of England, that he 
 lived in a true springtime, when buds were bursting, and birds 
 were singing, and rocks gushing with living water ? 
 
 The streams have mingled now and widened into a river, which 
 rolls on sluggishly enough ; but no dam will be made sufficiently 
 strong to stop its progress. The light has fairly broken, and 
 though the clouds keep gathering, they cannot hide the rising sun.
 
 56 THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 Already the pedestrian, wandering in various parts of rural 
 England, fails to see many of the signs of the long night through 
 which the labourers have toiled and suffered. The cottages are 
 rapidly improving, and the labourer begins to look strong and 
 hopeful. Give him power ungrudgingly, and he will in fifty years 
 redress the evil done in five hundred but on condition that he 
 delivers himself not only from the tyranny, but also from the 
 teaching of his old masters; that he worships "the Suffering 
 God," and not " the almighty dollar."
 
 II. 
 
 THE COTTAGE HOMES OF 
 ENGLAND.
 
 THE COTTAGE HOMES OF ENGLAND. 
 
 (Leisure Hour, 1870.) 
 I. 
 
 WITH their gable roofs of cosy thatch or of red tiles bright with 
 moss and lichen, with their ornamented chimneys and walls of 
 plaster laced and interlaced with heavy beams, the Cottage Homes 
 of England, peeping out from the green lanes of Kent, or fringing 
 the Surrey commons, or nestling in the wooded vales of Sussex, are 
 always picturesque. They are, moreover, the one form of human 
 habitation always in harmony with the scenery around them. In 
 Yorkshire and in Wales their aspect is bleak as the moor or the 
 mountain side; in Cumberland and in Devonshire they are alike 
 built of stone; but in the north their architecture is in keeping with 
 the stern form Nature presents among the Cumbrian hills ; while 
 in the south, covered with ivy and hidden amongst gardens and 
 orchards, each little cot appears a poem in . itself. This harmony 
 is partly due to the fact that the same soil which produces the 
 natural scenery produces the material of which the cottages are 
 built. In the north wood is scarce, stone plentiful : hence the 
 stone villages of Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the pottery dis- 
 tricts and the midland counties clay is abundant ; here, therefore, 
 brick cottages are the rule. In Westmoreland the red sandstone 
 is used ; in Kent the ragstone, in Lincolnshire the Ancaster stone, 
 in Cornwall granite, in Essex and Herts flints from the chalk hills, 
 in Hampshire mud mixed with pebbles, in Norfolk and Suffolk 
 lumps of clay mixed with straw. 
 
 Picturesque and harmonious from the artist's point of view, these 
 cottages are in most other respects a scandal to England, and to 
 write as Mrs Hemans did concerning them an unconscious satire. 
 
 59
 
 60 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 Crabbe, who saw things as they really were, disposed long ago of 
 the sentimental view of the Cottage Homes of England 
 
 " Ye gentle souls who dream of rural ease, 
 Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please, 
 Go ! if the peaceful cot your praises share, 
 Go look within, and ask if peace be there ; 
 If peace be his that drooping, weary sire, 
 Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire ; 
 Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand 
 Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand ! " 
 
 Even Crabbe's photographic painting gives but an inadequate idea 
 of the moral misery of these pretty cots, " smiling o'er the silvery 
 brooks, and round the hamlet-fanes." 
 
 The Rev. James Eraser, afterwards Bishop of Manchester, one 
 of the Assistant Commissioners in the inquiry made in 1867-68 
 into the conditions of agricultural labour l (an inquiry nominally- 
 confined to the employment of women and children, but really 
 extending to the whole subject), reports that "the majority of 
 cottages that exist in rural parishes are deficient in almost every 
 requisite that should constitute a home for a Christian family in a. 
 civilised community. They are deficient in bedroom accommo- 
 dation, very few having three chambers, and in some chambers 
 the larger proportion only one. They are deficient in drainage 
 and sanitary arrangements ; they are imperfectly supplied with 
 water ; such conveniences as they have are often so situated as to- 
 become nuisances ; they are full enough of draughts to generate any 
 amount of rheumatism; and in many instances are lamentably- 
 dilapidated and out of repair. 
 
 " It is impossible to exaggerate the ill effects of such a state of 
 things in every aspect, physical, social, economical, moral, intel- 
 lectual. Physically, a ruinous, ill-drained cottage, cribbed, cabin'd, 
 confined, and overcrowded, generates any amount of disease, 
 fevers of every type, catarrh, rheumatism, as well as intensifies to- 
 the utmost that tendency to scrofula and phthisis which, from 
 their frequent intermarriages and their low diet, abound so largely 
 among the poor. 
 
 1 Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons, and Women. 
 in Agriculture (1867).
 
 INSUFFICIENT QUANTITY AND MISERABLE QUALITY. 6 1 
 
 "The moral consequences are fearful to contemplate. . . . 
 Modesty must be an unknown virtue, decency an unimaginable 
 thing, where in one small chamber . . . two and sometimes three 
 generations are herded promiscuously, . . . where the whole atmos- 
 phere is sensual, and human nature is degraded into something 
 , below the level of the swine. It is a hideous picture, and the 
 picture is drawn from life." 
 
 In the summer 1864 a careful and elaborate inquiry was made 
 by Dr H. J. Hunter into the house accommodation of rural 
 labourers, and embodied in the seventh report of the medical 
 officer of the Privy Council for presentation to Parliament. Every 
 page testifies to its insufficient quantity and miserable quality. 
 Summing up the results of the inquiry, the report says : " Even the 
 general badness of the dwellings is an evil infinitely less urgent 
 than their numerical insufficiency," a statement proved by the 
 fact that in 821 separate parishes or townships in England a destruc- 
 tion of houses had been going on during the previous ten years 
 notwithstanding increased local demand for them, " People," the 
 report says, " do not desert villages, villages nowadays desert people." 
 
 Certain provisions of the Poor Law relating to chargeability and 
 settlement rendered it the pecuniary interest of every parish to 
 lessen the number of the poor residing within its boundaries. 
 When, therefore, a parish was the sole property of two or three 
 great landlords, " they had only to resolve that there should be no 
 labourers' dwellings on their estates, and their estates were thence- 
 forth free from half their responsibility for the poor." The Union 
 Chargeability Act has changed all this, but the evil done remains. 
 Other causes have doubtless been at work, but this has been the 
 principal one. When we come to understand the wretched pauper- 
 ism into which the agricultural labourers have drifted, we can see 
 how powerful the temptation to shift the burden of the poor-rates 
 must have been to large proprietors. " Agricultural labour," says 
 this report, " instead of implying a safe and permanent independ- 
 ence for the hard-worked labourer and his family, implies for the 
 most part only a longer or shorter circuit to eventual pauperism." 
 
 What are the causes which have brought agricultural labour 
 into this wretched condition ? 
 
 In feudal times land was held in great masses from the Crown,
 
 62 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 i 
 
 and as the importance of every lord depended upon the 
 number of retainers he could bring into the field, it was his 
 interest to divide his estate into as many farms as he could find 
 tenants to cultivate them, and to grant rights of common to each 
 one over the remaining portions. 
 
 Thorold Rogers, in his " History of Agriculture and Prices 
 in England," says : " In the i4th century the land was greatly 
 subdivided, and most of the inhabitants of villages or manors 
 held plots of land which were sufficient in many cases for 
 maintenance, and, in nearly all cases, for independence in treat- 
 ing with their employers. Most of the regular farm servants 
 the carter, the ploughman, the shepherd, the cowherd, and the 
 hog-keeper were owners of land, and there is a high degree of 
 probability that the occasional labourer was also among the 
 occupiers of the manor. The mediaeval peasant had his cottage 
 and curtilage at a very low rent and in secure possession, even 
 when, unlike the general mass of his fellows, he was not possessed 
 of land in his own right held at a labour or a money rent, and 
 he had rights of pasturage over the common lands of the manor 
 for the sheep, pigs, or perhaps cow, which he owned." 
 
 This prosperity continued to the close of the isth century, 
 when the Wars of the Roses broke out, ending in the destruction 
 of the feudal system. Manufactures rose on its ruin, the woollen 
 trade increased greatly, and large tracts of land were required 
 for sheep-walks. This caused at the time a wholesale destruc- 
 tion of villages, so that, in a petition presented to Parliament in 
 1450, it is stated that sixty-five towns (villages) and hamlets 
 within twelve miles of Warwick had been destroyed. 
 
 Many efforts were made to restore the former widely-spread 
 prosperity of the English peasantry. An Act passed in 1487 
 forbade any one to take more than one farm, and the value of 
 that farm was not to exceed ten marks yearly. Five or six times 
 in the i6th century Acts were passed imposing penalties for not 
 keeping up "houses of husbandry," and for not laying convenient 
 land for their maintenance. An Act of 1549 secured to small 
 cottiers land for gardens or orchards. Another, passed in the 
 year 1589, is peculiarly noteworthy as forbidding the erection of 
 cottages unless four acres were attached ; the object being, as
 
 LOSS OF COMMON RIGHTS. 65 
 
 Lord Bacon said of the Act of 1487, " to breed a subject to 
 live in convenient plenty and no servile condition, and to keep 
 the plough in the hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings." 
 
 And the result sought was obtained, for, towards the end of the 
 1 6th and the beginning of the i7th centuries, contemporary 
 authorities declare that the condition of the labourers and 
 small tenants in husbandry "had grown to be more powerful, 
 skilful, and careful, through recompense of gain, than heretofore 
 they had been." 
 
 This prosperity, dimmed for a time by the Civil War, was not 
 seriously affected by it, for in the reign of Charles II. there were, 
 according to the best statistical writers of the time, not less than 
 160,000 proprietors, who, with their families, must have made 
 up a seventh part of the whole population who derived their 
 subsistence from little freehold estates. This second era of 
 agricultural well-being continued until the middle of the i8th 
 century, when, from all accounts, it culminated. Prior to the 
 American War, the English peasantry were, generally speaking, in 
 a comparatively prosperous condition. They were reaping the 
 advantage of the expanding commerce of the country without 
 any corresponding diminution in their resources. 
 
 But with the improvement and extension of modern husbandry 
 commenced the depression and decay of the husbandmen. It 
 was found that large farms could be managed more profitably 
 than small ones. Thus the poor and the weak began to fall into 
 the ranks of the hired labourer, while their richer neighbour 
 rose in the social scale. 
 
 Few things had more helped the mass of English peasants 
 than the freedom they had enjoyed to use the common lands. 
 But from about the middle of the last century commenced that 
 wholesale private appropriation of common property which has so 
 largely helped to complete the ruin of the English peasant. Between 
 1710, the date of the first Inclosure Act, and 1760, only 334,974 
 statute acres were inclosed, while, in the century which followed, 
 more than seven millions of statute acres have been added to the 
 cultivated area of Great Britain. 
 
 In a speech made by Mr Cowper-Temple (Lord Mount- 
 Temple), on the second reading of the general Inclosure Bill,
 
 64 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 March 13*, 1844, he said : " In former times every cottage 
 almost had some common rights, from which the poor occupants 
 derived much benefit ; the privilege of feeding a cow, a pig, or a 
 goose on the common was a great benefit to them, and it was 
 unfortunate, when a system of inclosing commons first commenced, 
 that a portion of the land was not set apart for the benefit of 
 every cottager who enjoyed common rights, and his successors ; 
 but the course adopted had been to compensate the owner of the 
 cottage to which the common rights belonged, forgetting the 
 claims of the occupier by whom they were enjoyed." 
 
 Had the loss of these common rights been balanced by a share 
 in the material progress of the country, the agricultural labourer 
 would not have been much worse treated by these Inclosure 
 Acts than the bulk of the community, but since 1815 their wages 
 have declined, while there has been an increase in the cost of 
 living. 
 
 The fictitious prosperity that arose during the war only made 
 the subsequent destitution harder to bear. From 1815 to 1846 
 was a period of continually recurring distress amongst the agri- 
 culturists, and the unhappy labourers sank almost universally 
 into pauperism. Their wages fell to zero, if we may use that 
 term to imply the lowest point to which they could fall com- 
 patible with continued existence. In different countries they 
 varied from 75. to 123. a week. In Cambridgeshire the farmers 
 paid 8s. and beer, which made it 93. 6d., but they said it was 
 only intimidation made them pay such prices. The labourers 
 grew desperate, and in 1830 there were a series of incendiary 
 fires, extending for more than eighteen months, in the counties 
 of \Viltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. 
 
 But these efforts were like the struggles of a dying man, fitful, 
 and each time perceptibly weaker During the winter of 1845-46 
 the agonised sufferer was dimly seen writhing in the dark. In 
 the newspapers of the time there were accounts of gatherings 
 of the labourers, with their wives and children, at night, on moors 
 and commons, under circumstances that gave a weird-like 
 character to the proceedings. At one held near Wootton-Basset, 
 on a cold winter's night, the speakers, one after the other, gave 
 accounts of their own sufferings and those of their families, quite
 
 THEIR HUNGRY INHABITANTS. 65 
 
 inconceivably cruel. Nearly a thousand Wiltshire peasants were 
 present, and it was a heart-rending sight, when the moon shone 
 out from time to time behind the clouds, and revealed the 
 upturned faces worn with anxiety, want, and hunger.* 
 
 Nearly twenty years later, Elihu Burritt, in his walk to Land's 
 End, relates the result of a conversation he had with a hedger in 
 Wiltshire. After detailing his own hardships, the man told him 
 " that his son-in-law had six children, all too young to earn any- 
 thing in the field, and he had to feed, clothe, and house the whole 
 family out of eight shillings a week. They were obliged to live 
 entirely on bread, for they could not afford to have cheese with it. 
 Take out one-and-sixpence for rent, and as much for fuel, candles, 
 clothes, and a little tea, sugar, or treacle, and there was only five 
 shillings left for food for eight mouths. They must eat three 
 times a-day, which made twenty-four meals to be got out of eight- 
 pence, only a third of a penny for each." 
 
 Thus, in the progress of modern civilisation, the English 
 agricultural labourer has been a constant loser. From a condition 
 in which he might hope, by industry and thrift, to become a small 
 farmer, he can now hope for nothing better than to perform like a 
 hireling his day, and then to find a pauper's grave. One privilege 
 after another has gone, until at last he is driven from the land 
 which the toil of many generations of his ancestors has rendered 
 fertile, to burrow with his children in the slums of some outlying 
 village, and thence to trudge with gaunt face and discontented 
 heart to and fro from the scene of labour, no longer sweetened by 
 bygone memories or future hopes. 
 
 There are times when the yearnings of humanity claim to be 
 heard, and when those who, from any motive, good or bad, have 
 allowed themselves to be carried away by the tendencies of the 
 day, will be forced to exclaim with the greatest of modern English 
 agriculturists, " It is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's 
 country. I look around, and not a house is to be seen but mine. 
 I am the Giant of Giant Castle, and have eaten up all my neigh- 
 bours." 
 
 1 The Times, January 7th, 1846.
 
 66 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 II. 
 
 LET us see what the Parliamentary reports, from which we have 
 already quoted, have to say about the dwellings of rural labourers 
 in the Eastern Counties. We will select two as respectively 
 types of the evils complained of Lincolnshire, for the insufficient 
 quantity ; Norfolk, for the miserable quality of its cottages. 
 
 Lincolnshire is comparatively a new country. Before this 
 century the greater part of the lowlands was given up to the 
 wild goose and the bittern. Even the heights were only partially 
 cultivated. There was a large tract of land, twenty miles north 
 and twenty miles south of Lincoln, called the Heath, a dreary 
 waste, so vast and featureless that it was thought necessary in 
 1751 to erect upon it a sort of land lighthouse. The result of this 
 state of things w r as that the villages were built on the high roads, 
 while the parishes extended for miles into the rear, composed of 
 wild moor or fen according to the district. In our day everything 
 is changed, and the whole country brought under cultivation. 
 Dunston Pillar, a monument of former desolation, now stands 
 surrounded by field after field of waving grain, or of turnips set in 
 matchless order, upon which thousands of long-woolled sheep may 
 be seen in winter-time feeding in their netted folds. Above the 
 neatly-clipped hedgerows rise white farm buildings, surrounded 
 by clusters of stacks. But where are the cottages ? Everything has 
 been provided for but the human machine, by whose labour all 
 this wonderful change has been wrought. He must find his 
 lodging miles away from the scene of his daily toil. 
 
 The report of 1867 says concerning the Heath district "Two 
 lines of villages, from four to seven miles apart, form its eastern 
 and western boundaries, and between them there is not only an 
 absence of villages, but almost of cottages too. The main feature 
 of this district is that the labourers are all congregated into the 
 larger towns." The report of 1864, speaking of North Lincoln- 
 shire, says there are " people, women as well as men, who take an 
 hour's walk twice a day, starting in the dark and returning in the 
 dark, to obtain the privilege of selling a day's ha-d work for a
 
 IN LINCOLNSHIRE. 67 
 
 shilling." In the northern half of the Wold district, where the 
 farms are often of 800 or 1000 acres, the villages, though 
 numerous, are so small that there is only one room for the 
 regularly-hired labourers ; the large class of " catch-work " men, 
 with their wives and families, have to herd where they can. In 
 the Fen district it is even worse. The population is crowded into 
 small villages standing close to the high road, while the parishes 
 stretch miles away into the Fen, and in consequence the labourer 
 has to walk in some cases five or six miles to his work. "At 
 Baston," a few miles from Market Deeping, "a man had for many 
 years walked 56 miles a week to and from his work, and all 
 for twelve shillings. At Langtoft, two miles from Baston, a man 
 was found living in a miserable house of three rooms, with his 
 wife, her mother, and five children. The bedroom was a garret, the 
 walls of which, leaning to, formed a ridge at the top, with a dormer 
 window in front. ' Did he live there to be near his work ? ' ' No, 
 men have to trail a long way to work. The man was working in 
 Braceboro', six miles from home, and came back to his family 
 every night ! He lived there because he could get a tenantable 
 cot, and was glad of it at any price, anywhere, and in any con- 
 dition.' " 
 
 The Lincolnshire cottages are not as a rule bad in quality, 
 although in one parish a farmer speaks of some as " not fit lo 
 put a pig in," but their insufficient quantity is the cause of evils 
 quite as destructive of home life, and perhaps more so. Over 
 crowding, of course, is one of the first results, with all its deleterious 
 consequences. A girl belonging to a family of nine children was 
 asked "how they all got into one small bedroom," and she 
 replied " that they had to lie like pins, heads and tails, next each 
 other." In Grainthorpe a case was reported to the Board of 
 Guardians, in which the father and mother and seven children were 
 found in a room with only one bedstead, all ill of fever, no window 
 except one in the roof. At Easttoft the incumbent writes : 
 "Some cottages here are dreadfully crowded, especially by the 
 Irish. I know a case where a farmer had to send for a labourer 
 earlier than usual, and his foreman, when he went to the cottage, 
 could not open the door, the whole cottage being covered with 
 sleeping people packed close together."
 
 68 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 The frightfully immoral system of ganging, prevalent in 
 Lincolnshire, is largely to be attributed to insufficient cottage 
 accommodation. Mr Bramley, a farmer of more than 2000 acres of 
 land, says: "Want of cottages has given rise to the ganging 
 system, and also to increased employment of women and chil- 
 dren." "We want," says Mr Little, another farmer of 1700 
 acres, "all the children, as soon as they are old enough to be 
 available." Few cottages, few people; every hand must be pressed 
 into service, even mothers with infants. 
 
 Depressed by dismal scenery, oppressed by noxious vapours in 
 summer, and cold, clammy fogs in winter, eaten up by rheumatism 
 and ague, with homes debased and brutalised, the unhappy natives 
 of the Fen district fill up their cup of misery by becoming opium- 
 eaters. 
 
 "All England may be carved out of Norfolk," says an old 
 English writer. Pasture land and arable land, heath and wood 
 and fen, with the sea skirting two-thirds of the country ; if its 
 scenery is never grand, at least it is varied. Coke, the eminent 
 agriculturist, turned West Norfolk from a rye-growing district into a 
 wheat-growing one. His sheep-shearings were famous all over the 
 civilised world. He taught the Norfolk farmers how to improve 
 their stock, and his example led the way to most of the triumphs 
 of modern husbandry. He is said to have raised his rents from 
 tens to hundreds, and yet to have enriched his tenants as well as 
 himself. Doubtless the same results have taken place on other 
 Norfolk estates, so that the position of both landlords and farmers 
 has vastly improved. 
 
 But what has modern improvements in husbandry done for the 
 poor labourer ? In Norfolk, the county of agricultural progress, 
 his lot is worse than ever. At an agricultural dinner which took 
 place at North Waltham in 1863, Mr W. Cubitt, the eminent 
 agriculturist, thus portrayed the homes of Norfolk labourers. 
 " They had long known," he said, " as employers of labour, that one 
 great source of that demoralisation of which there had been such 
 just complaints, arose from the overcrowded dwellings of the poor. 
 In too many instances the common decencies of life were dis- 
 regarded; and if the children were not contaminated, they were sent
 
 IN NORFOLK. 69 
 
 into the world devoid of that shame which is the natural safeguard 
 of youth. He had not lived forty years amongst the poor without 
 seeing the evil influences of over-crowded houses. In fact, he saw 
 it from his very door. Where was immorality bred ? But too 
 often under the influences arising from miserable and crowded 
 dwellings." 
 
 The Rev. E. Gurdon, in a paper read before the Norwich 
 Diocesan Work Association, stated that when cottage-building is 
 left to speculators, instead of the comfortable, old-fashioned, clay 
 lump building, with its thick walls and deep, heavy, substantial, 
 thatched roof, a small clay lump house, with a red-tile roof, and 
 walls thin and pervious alike to heat and cold, is generally erected. 
 And this is only one sample of the benefit the poor get from the 
 arrangements of modern civilisation. 
 
 In the winter of 1863-64, the proprietors of the Norfolk News 
 sent one of their staff to report on the state of the cottages in 
 various parts of the county. The tours were made in company 
 with Mr Samuel Clarke, sanitary inspector to the city of Norwich, 
 and some idea may be formed of the extent of the inquiries made 
 by the fact that the reports give in detail the condition of two 
 hundred cottages. 
 
 The misery revealed was both shocking and scandalous. Take 
 this picture of a Norfolk village. " A stranger cannot enter the 
 village without being struck with surprise at its wretched and 
 desolate condition. Look where he may, he sees little else but 
 thatched roofs old, rotten, and shapeless full of holes and over- 
 grown with weeds; windows sometimes patched with rags, and 
 sometimes plastered over with clay ; the walls, which are nearly 
 all of clay, full of cracks and crannies ; and sheds and outhouses 
 where there are any looking as if they had been overthrown very 
 early in the present century, and left in the hopeless confusion in 
 which they fell." The first hut entered was a fair sample of the 
 whole. Notwithstanding the cracked clay walls, half-dismantled 
 roof, and tottering chimney, it was occupied by a man and his wife 
 and six children, who advanced in age from one to fourteen. The 
 six children slept in one small, ill-ventilated chamber, and the 
 parents in another. Both these rooms were without plaster, and 
 the sides of the roof were supported by sticks placed across " for,"
 
 fO ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 said the occupants, " whenever there is a little wind, the place 
 shakes, and we lie in fear of being smothered by its falling." It 
 was no uncommon thing for seven or eight in one case as many 
 as eleven persons of all ages and both sexes to be found sleeping 
 in one room. And then, as would only be too likely, one or more 
 would be ill with fever. In one case, where seven poor children 
 slept on two stump bedsteads, five had been ill with fever 
 for two months. Sometimes the bedroom was approached 
 by a ladder and a trap-door, and the slanting roof was so low 
 that only in the middle could a person stand upright. 
 When there were two bed-rooms, the children's roof was found at 
 times perfectly dark. Fancy five or six little wretches creeping 
 into the horrors of such a hole, and lying huddled up there like so 
 many mice. Sometimes there was too much ventilation holes in 
 the roof so that if rain came on, the pillows were, as one woman 
 observed, " as wet as a pit." Who can be surprised " that the 
 average duration of life amongst the industrial classes is scarcely 
 one-half that of the wealthy " ! 
 
 And this is only the physical side of the evil. With reference 
 to its moral results the Government Commissioner says : " Mr 
 Clarke, of Norwich, can tell anyone who will ask him tales of 
 things he himself has seen, horrifying enough to make the very 
 hair stand on end." 
 
 III. 
 
 " SOME may say that this question of the Dwellings of the Poor 
 in Agricultural Districts is a passing question of the hour, and 
 that it is not really so great an evil as is represented. I would 
 answer, Go into the country and see for yourself." So writes the 
 Hon. E. B. Portman, and he does it with authority, for this 
 is just what he has been doing himself. He and his fellow- 
 Commissioners have, during the last two or three years, been 
 traversing the country in all directions calling meetings of 
 landowners and farmers, receiving letters from hundreds of 
 clergymen and other parish authorities, examining persons of all 
 classes and every condition. On the labour question, on the
 
 IN THE MIDLAND COUNTIES. 71 
 
 education question, opinions differed ; but on the cottage question 
 there was the most striking unanimity, a stream of testimony 
 pouring in from every quarter denouncing the present condition 
 of things as a terrible evil and a national disgrace. 
 
 In this article we propose to see what light these reports 
 throw on the condition of cottage homes in the heart of 
 England. 
 
 The farther north we go, the better the condition of the 
 labourer. Thus, in the Midland Counties, the more they lie 
 to the north, the less there is to be said against their cottages. 
 
 In Notts the condition of things which prevails is similar to 
 that found in Lincolnshire, but in a modified sense. 
 
 The picturesque old cottages of Cheshire are generally in 
 bad repair, but scarcity of any sort of cottages is a still 
 greater evil. This works in a way quite destructive of the 
 labourer's home. To ensure regular assistance, the farmer only 
 cares to employ men who will lodge and board in the house. 
 Married men therefore, eating a good portion of their wages at 
 their master's table, have only about 55. or 6s. a week left to 
 give their wives to keep house with. Terribly pinched on such 
 an allowance, and without the benefit of the presence and control 
 of the father, the house soon breaks up. 
 
 In the south-west of Shropshire there is a district shut in 
 among the hills, and cut off from the outer world by the Severn 
 and the Thame, where the state of the peasantry is described as 
 deplorably bad. But the Commissioner says : " The point 
 especially deserving of attention in this county is the infamous 
 nature of the cottages. In the majority of parishes that I visited, 
 they may be described as tumbledown and ruinous, not water- 
 tight, very deficient in bedroom accommodation, and indecent 
 sanitary arrangements. On many estates cottages are to be found 
 belonging to the owners of the soil which are a disgrace to any 
 civilised community." At Bishop's Castle the Commissioner 
 had a conversation with the vicar and others. It was stated that 
 " it was not at all an uncommon thing for a bolster to be placed 
 at each end of the bed, so that all the family sleep in it with 
 their feet towards the middle." The vicar, going to baptize a 
 child, found five or six children in bed with the mother.
 
 72 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 In some parts of Herefordshire, owing to failing population 
 and former poverty, many of the small homesteads have become 
 labourers' cottages. Although these places are always old, and 
 generally dilapidated, they are large and airy. Surrounded by 
 gardens and outhouses, they have room to breed pigs, and 
 chickens, and ducks, making all the difference between independ- 
 ence and penury. 
 
 The great bulk of the cottages, however, in this county, have 
 been built by the labourers themselves on pieces of ground 
 cribbed from the waste. "They are generally constructed of 
 wattle and dub, and thatched, and contain only bedroom and 
 sitting-room. In one village many of the cottages were found 
 in the last stage of decay, windows broken, doors far from wind- 
 tight, roofs not water-tight, bedrooms unceiled." 
 
 From Upton-on-Severn, in Worcestershire, comes the state- 
 ment, " Nine-tenths of the cottages are abominable ; they are 
 overcrowded, damp, and not air-tight." Elsewhere they are 
 described as deplorably bad and overcrowded. Archdeacon 
 Sandford says : " The housework often remains undone till 
 evening, and the infants and babies are consigned to some busy 
 neighbour, or small child, unfit for the care of other children, 
 who ought herself to be at school." 
 
 The same practice prevails in Warwickshire, and there, strange 
 to say, it would appear that field-working is confined to married 
 women. It is said that the men expect the wife in this way to 
 help towards the support of the family. A Medical Officer of 
 the Warwick Union says : "I have known at least eight cases 
 in which children left at home have been burned or scalded 
 three or four of these have resulted in death. I have occasion- 
 ally known an opiate in the shape of Godfrey's Cordial, or Duffy's 
 Elixir, given by the mother to the children to keep them quiet." 
 Another surgeon, who has practised at Knowle for twenty-seven 
 years, says : " Almost all the illegitimacy is due to crowded 
 cottages. The drainage is abominable. We have outbreaks of 
 fever which we can trace entirely to nuisances." 
 
 Leicestershire is a county suffering from the two opposite evils 
 of congestion and depletion. The stocking villages are over-
 
 IN THE MIDLAND COUNTIES. 73 
 
 crowded, while in the Vale of Belvoir the population is near 
 extinction. The cottages have no gardens, and are built up close 
 against the side of the road. "Mushroom halls" and "charity 
 houses " exist largely in this county, and this is perhaps the chief 
 reason why its cottage accommodation is so peculiarly bad. 
 " Mushroom halls " are cots originally erected by squatters on the 
 edge of a common or waste, rapidly put together to avoid inter- 
 ference, only just serving for shelter, and patched up from time to 
 time to keep out wind and weather. " Charity houses " are dwell- 
 ings built expressly for or devoted to the use of the poor by private 
 benevolence, or sometimes by the parish. Negligent administra- 
 tion is generally the fate of these well-meant charities. No rent 
 being demanded, after a time the inmates frequently become the 
 virtual owners, and sell or in various ways get rid of the property. 
 Of course it falls into the hands of the worst class of proprietors, 
 as none else would purchase houses with no title. 
 
 In the close parishes of Northamptonshire the cottage supply is 
 insufficient for the amount of labour; in the open ones the 
 accommodation is rarely, if ever, adequate to provide for the 
 health, comfort, and morals of the inhabitants. As an instance of 
 the sort of building supposed to be good enough for a labouring 
 family : "Four cottages stood together in a village near a malt-kiln. 
 They had gardens. A speculator bought them. He turned the 
 kiln into six cottages, and built five others on the ground which 
 had been used for gardens." In almost all the villages of 
 Northamptonshire instances are to be met with of overcrowding. 
 "A cot, measuring 16 feet by 18 feet," the report states, "was 
 inhabited by a grandfather, aged eighty-four, father, mother, and 
 eleven children fourteen in all ; and at the time the place was 
 visited the mother of the family was engaged in washing out 
 clothes in the only living-room." This is spoken of as the worst 
 case, but others very bad are mentioned. 
 
 Education is very defective in Northamptonshire, not for want 
 of schools, but owing to the indifference and want of affection on 
 the part of the parents. This is attributed to the demoralisation 
 resulting from bad cottages, and to the poverty of the people and 
 consequent want of hope.
 
 74 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 "Bedfordshire is very inadequately supplied with cottages. 
 They are few and small, and their condition is often a mere pre- 
 carious holding together of rotten materials ; the stitch in time has 
 not been applied, and there are hundreds on which no repairs can 
 now be bestowed with advantage." This was the state of things 
 in 1864. In 1867 Mr Culley reports that in about half of fifty- 
 five parishes of which he received descriptions, the cottage 
 accommodation was either mixed, bad and good, or generally bad 
 so that we may take the above as descriptive of the cots in such 
 parishes. Of one district it is said : " Most of the men are in- 
 temperate. The causes are the aggregation of cottages in the 
 villages, the wretched condition of the cottages, the entire absence 
 of a proprietary considering themselves in any way responsible for 
 the moral and physical well-being of their tenants, and lastly, the 
 very defective legislation about public-houses." 
 
 In Buckinghamshire the labourer's home is no better than else- 
 where. Here is an interior drawn by a landowner at Coleshill. 
 " Look into a cottage in Bucks. You see a want of furniture, 
 scanty bedding, perhaps the remains of a quartern loaf, and a mug 
 smelling of beer. The family, not having a good meal of victuals 
 once in twelve months, do their work (except piecework) accord- 
 ingly without a will. As a rule, they are honest and well-conducted, 
 but their enemies are want of economy, ignorance, and the beer- 
 shop." 
 
 In the autumn of 1863 the Morning Star published a series of 
 articles, entitled " Rural Life in Buckinghamshire." Mr Culley 
 mentions that in seven of the worst parishes exposed in these 
 articles there has only been improvement in two. Of cottages in 
 other parts he speaks in such language as " very wretched dens," 
 " wretched hovels," " very bad cottages, quite unfit for human 
 beings to live in." 
 
 In the "Burnham Magazine" of May 1868 were some strong 
 remarks about the cottages in that town, ending thus : " Human 
 nature caged up in them must become degraded, and when these 
 homes are emptied from the sheer impossibility of living in them, 
 the beer-shops of course are filled."
 
 IN THE MIDLAND COUNTIES. 75 
 
 Oxfordshire is a thoroughly agricultural county, and in its 
 farming arrangements still maintains some old-fashioned ideas and 
 practices. Boys are still lodged at the farmers' houses, and instead 
 of looking to factories and mines for an improvement in their 
 position, they aspire to be grooms, and the girls to go out to 
 service. The boys are employed on the land, as they are in most 
 other parts of the country, too early, and, trudging about in their 
 heavy boots on the sticky soil, contract a weakness in the legs, 
 which leaves its indelible mark in an awkward gait. 
 
 Oxfordshire cottages are not so bad as those of Beds or Bucks ; 
 but in treating of Oxon and Berks Mr Culley attributes the loose 
 morals of the female population to the overcrowding of cottages. 
 
 From Berkshire come a series of denunciations. The Rev. W. 
 J. Butler, Wantage, says : " Wretched pigsties of hovels destroy 
 decency, self-respect, and the love of home. I could mention 
 frightful results from the present system of dwelling-houses." 
 
 Speaking of the Union of Newent, in Gloucestershire, a union 
 comprising eighteen parishes with a population of 12,500, Dr 
 Fraser says : " The physical, social, and educational condition of 
 the labouring classes appeared to me to be low. Many cottages 
 which I saw in the parishes of Newent, Linton, and Taynton, are 
 simply unfit for human habitation." In a note he says, "In 
 Linton I was informed very few of the cottages have a staircase ; 
 the bedrooms are reached by a ladder or steps. The cases in 
 which the roof particularly when it is old thatch is so utterly 
 unsound as to be unable to resist anything like a downpour, and 
 where people's bedding, in consequence, constantly gets deluged, 
 are too numerous to mention." 
 
 Mr Cattle, a surgeon practising at Newent, took Dr Fraser a 
 drive one afternoon through his district, and showed him some of 
 the worst of these dens ; and he says that, " speaking generally, 
 anything more deplorable than the way large masses of the 
 population in the neighbourhood of Newent, in Kilcote, Gorsley, 
 Linton, and on Glass House Hill, are housed cannot be con- 
 ceived. The state of their homes tells on the physical condition 
 of the people. Many of them never wash ; the flannel undervest
 
 76 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 is perhaps only taken off when it is worn out. The dietary is 
 correspondingly low many families have nothing but bread from 
 one week's end to the other." He speaks of the depression that 
 he felt on his return from the drive, in which he had seen type 
 after type of social life almost degraded to the level of barbarism. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE charges these Reports bring against the cottages in East 
 Anglia and those in Mid England are, upon the whole, true of 
 those in the southern counties ; and of the metropolitan counties 
 the same dark tale is told. 
 
 In Essex Dr Hunter found that a destruction of houses had 
 been going on in twenty-two parishes, without arresting the 
 growth of the population, so that in 1861 a larger number of persons 
 were squeezing themselves into a smaller number of houses than 
 had been the case in 1851. At Great Chesterford he describes 
 some of the cots as " pictures of misery." At Little Chesterton 
 were "plenty of tumble-down houses with most wretched 
 thatches." At Wendon were " some most melancholy cottages ; 
 the crumbling clay exposed the ribs, and none but the poorest 
 materials seem used." At Little Hallingbury the floors were of 
 large pebbles set in concrete, which of course busy little fingers 
 were hard at work day by day pulling out. Washing such floors 
 must have been out of the question a pail of water would leave 
 them as full of pools as a bad road on a rainy day. 
 
 In Surrey the commons are skirted by cottages of the poorest 
 description, originally built by squatters out of the waste. In 
 course of time some have been sold, and so rebuilt or repaired as 
 to become decent habitations, but numbers may be found only 
 containing one bedroom and one sitting-room, totally destitute of 
 drainage, and in a wretched condition. Those who live near such 
 commons must have often heard "they have the fever on the 
 common," that is, the " scarlet fever." Even the pretty, comfort- 
 able-looking Surrey towns have their dark spots, and these are just
 
 IN SURREY AND KENT. 77 
 
 the habitations of the poor labourer Epsom, for example. Of 
 Godstone it is said, " We have many cottages unfit for human 
 habitation ; they are small and crowded, without ventilation or 
 drainage, outhouses, gardens, or water supply." At Farnham the 
 Commissioner saw a cottage in which a man and his wife and ten 
 children lived. The whole family slept in one room, divided by a 
 wooden screen, carried partially across. There was only one 
 window to supply light and air to the whole room on both sides of 
 the screen. 
 
 From the neighbourhood of Maidstone, in Kent, we get 
 evidence similar in character to that concerning Norfolk. "Cot- 
 tage accommodation is generally miserable, especially as to bed- 
 rooms ; no decency can be observed. The sitting-rooms are too 
 often stone or brick floored draughty, cold, wretched places, from 
 which the father and grown-up sons are only too glad to escape 
 to the warm public-house near. The sanitary arrangements are 
 horrible, and, in short, the cottages of the working man are so 
 curiously contrived as to sap the foundations of morality, religion, 
 and health." 
 
 In East Kent it is said many of the cottages are quite 
 uninhabitable. What, then, must be the misery of the Cottage 
 Homes of England, when, in the face of such evidence, the Com- 
 missioner says, " and yet it appeared to me that they were better in 
 Kent than in any county I have visited " ? 
 
 When in these reports we continually read such remarks as : 
 "Our cottages are better now," "There is not much to complain 
 of now," and find the whole matter spoken of as "the evil 
 growth of many generations," we become conscious of a continuity 
 of misery, under which generation after generation has dragged 
 out a painful existence. Forty years ago, travelling through 
 Leicestershire, William Cobbett thus described the homes of the 
 peasantry: "Look at these hovels made of mud and of straw; 
 bits of glass, or of old cast-off windows, without frames or hinges 
 frequently, but merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them, and 
 look at the bits of chairs or stools ; the wretched boards tacked 
 together to serve for a table ; the floor of pebble, broken brick, 
 or of the bare ground. Look at the thing called a bed, and survey
 
 78 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 the rags on the backs of the wretched inhabitants, 'and then 
 wonder, if you can, that the jails and dungeons and tread-mills 
 increase." If after years of effort on the part of some landowners, 
 the above description is scarcely now an exaggeration of certain 
 parts of the country, how universally true must it have been 
 before the national conscience was aroused on the matter ! 
 
 Pent-up city folk often envy the fresh complexion and the stal- 
 wart frame of the farmer or country gentleman, while they wonder 
 how labourers who breathe the same air have such a feeble and 
 dejected look. Who can wonder, when he once knows the secret 
 of those "Black Holes," miscalled bedrooms, in which they 
 nightly inhale draughts of poisoned vapour ? 
 
 One of the most evident results of bad dwellings is physical 
 debility. One surgeon in Norfolk " observes the want of muscular 
 development in the agricultural labourer : he has no calves to his 
 legs, and no development of the biceps muscle of his arm." 
 Another notes the blanched and unhealthy-looking condition of the 
 children in a particular locality. Some places are scourged by 
 fevers, some decimated by consumption everywhere the aged are 
 cruelly tortured by rheumatism. 
 
 " There is a want," writes Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, " of 
 physical energy, of what I may call labour pluck, a deadening of 
 mind and body force. They may work up to what they are worth 
 as regards the value of Avhat they do in the labour market, but 
 even this is done after a very listless fashion. They form farm 
 machinery in the mass, but the motive power is weak." 
 
 In the south and west of England, agricultural labourers live on 
 the verge of pauperism, and have no hope of bettering their 
 position. " A labourer who is ill one day, or whose child is sick, 
 as a matter of course applies to the parish doctor, and a week's 
 illness always sends him to the parish. Even the best and most 
 industrious labourers are discouraged from joining friendly 
 societies lest it should interfere with their right to come upon the 
 rates. And too often the management of these societies is calcu- 
 lated to make them think that it is far wiser to rely wholly upon 
 parish relief. In hundreds of cases, after years of patient self-denial, 
 and of saving against a day of trouble, the poor labourer has been
 
 EVIL RESULTS OF THEIR WRETCHEDNESS. 79 
 
 sent on the parish because there is nothing ' in the box of his 
 club,' or because he and others were getting old, and were likely 
 soon to come on its funds, the younger members of the club 
 having dissolved it and reconstituted it without him." Sickness and 
 want of work bring many labourers into debt against their will, 
 and the system of the tally-men with whom he deals is so tempt- 
 ing as to render it with many a confirmed habit. 
 
 The reports frequently refer to the indifference to chastity, 
 attributing it to the wretched sleeping-places so often the lot of 
 labouring families. " The rage for beer " is described as such 
 that if a man gets an extra shilling it goes in drink, while mop 
 fairs, club festivals, and harvest homes are usually scenes of in- 
 toxication. What with the overwhelming force of a propensity, 
 the result of a habit of many generations, due largely to wretched 
 cottages and the abominable little beer-shops which are spread 
 like devil-traps over the country-side, the labourer has no chance. 
 " If the Queen means to do any good to us," said a poor wife to 
 Mr Culley, "she had best begin by putting down them alehouses ; 
 they makes gentlefolks' fortunes [the italics are mine], they do; 
 look at this, captain ; and they won't put them down, but the 
 Queen might, or, leastways, shorten their hours. It's Saturday 
 night till twelve o'clock, and they ain't well out o' church on 
 Sundays till they're in again. Them alehouses is our curse, they are." 
 
 Human nature gets used to the circumstances around it, and 
 nothing at last becomes so painful as a change. Thus the 
 labourer gets used to his wretched cot, and dislikes the change 
 involved in his removal to a better one. A great landlord com- 
 plained that he had given a very good cottage to a labourer, 
 and found it was not appreciated at all. The tenant put his 
 apples in one room, did not inhabit another, and would put his 
 pig into another, if allowed to do so. Another landlord said : 
 " If you built a palace, and furnish it to match, you would 
 scarcely induce the people to leave these places into which you 
 would hardly put a pig to live." Could any sadder proof be given 
 of the moral depression into which the men have fallen on whose 
 labours these great landlords live than this clinging to wretched- 
 ness, this habit of living in misery ? 
 
 " In the eye of the moralist," says Dr Fraser, " the most
 
 So ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 malign aspect of poverty is in its power to generate the loss of 
 natural affection. Poverty is emphatically hardening at any rate, 
 in its influence on the natural man." In Cambridgeshire the 
 children go to work as young as six years old ; many at seven or 
 eight. The reason appears to be in many cases that the parents 
 compel the ganger to take the little one on condition of getting 
 regularly the labour of the bigger child of the same family. But 
 what is to be expected of people who see their families suffering 
 under such wretched physical evils, and are themselves depressed 
 and disheartened by them ? "For," says the report, "the formidable 
 difficulty of all is not the apathy of their parents, but their poverty. 
 It is impossible for men with large families to look beyond the 
 present hour. To be warmed and filled is to them the one great 
 object in life, and to talk to them about improving the minds of 
 their children, while they are unable to provide those things which 
 are needful for their bodies, must seem to them like mocking." 
 
 Can a mother forget her sucking child ? Think of the Lincoln- 
 shire babies, drugged by their mothers with opium; of poor 
 
 Betsey B who did not remember how many babies she had 
 
 had. Think of mothers driving their poor little weeping children 
 out to work before it is light, threatening to beat them if they do 
 not go. Think of fathers sitting all day outside beer-shops, like 
 lazy hogs basking in the sun, while their children break their 
 backs to supply the means of parental dissipation. "Without 
 natural affection." This is the result of a wretched home. And 
 what can come of such a home ? The poor girls often add shame 
 to their wretchedness. In Norfolk one child out of every ten 
 is illegitimate. The boys grow up to be young ruffians, who care 
 for nobody. If they are wild, they will turn poachers, and perhaps 
 get hanged for killing a gamekeeper, or they will be picked up by 
 the recruiting sergeant; or if they are steady, they will continue to 
 tread the same weary round as their father, and, unless these 
 things be not speedily altered, perpetuate this misery to future 
 generations. 
 
 These reports do not give any direct statements as to the 
 religious condition of the agricultural poor, but we note that the 
 greater part of the information is obtained through clergymen, and 
 that its tone is, as a rule, depressing, carrying the conviction that
 
 IN DEVONSHIRE. 8 1 
 
 religion is at a very low ebb indeed in our rural districts. The 
 conclusion to which an Oxfordshire clergyman has come may 
 fairly be accepted as descriptive of the condition of things 
 throughout the country : " I am satisfied, from observations 
 which I have made during a period of thirty-five years passed in 
 the ministry of the Church, that before our teaching and preach- 
 ing can have the effect we look for, we must house the labourer 
 in a better manner." 
 
 V. 
 
 DEVONSHIRE cottages look quite idyllic, standing among the 
 gardens and orchards of that picturesque county, but the report 
 describes them as being, except upon the estates of a few land- 
 owners, in a deplorable condition. In one place they are spoken 
 of as "wretched," in another as "ruinous hovels," in a third as 
 " damp, dark, unhealthy holes." Usually the walls are made of 
 " cob," a concrete formed of mud, straw, and pebbles. The roofs 
 are of thatch, but too often open and out of repair. The usual 
 form is a kitchen and back room, with two bedrooms above ; 
 small cots of only a kitchen and a bedroom are comparatively 
 rare. The interior of these cots is cheerless enough. Enter 
 one, and it will be found dark and dingy for want of light no 
 bright coal fire, but a grate with a solid front, into which are 
 dropped the roots that have been grubbed up for fuel. The 
 floors are of concrete, or paved with slate, occasionally nothing 
 but earth, and at times very rough. Mount the stairs to the low- 
 pitched bedroom, and you may sometimes find such holes in the 
 floor that your legs are in danger of slipping through into the 
 chamber below. According to Dr Hunter, the people say they 
 feel oppressed and heartless about furnishing their rooms or keep- 
 ing them tidy. Sometimes they only use two of the rooms ; of the 
 rest, one will be turned into an ash-bin, the other into a store-room 
 for potatoes, or into a general receptacle for rubbish. An 
 occasional show of crockery suggests that, under happier circum- 
 stances, the Devonian labourers could make themselves bright and 
 cheerful homes. 
 
 G
 
 82 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 One secret of their depression is the empty larder. They rarely 
 get butcher's meat, but eat coarse, brown bread, washed down by 
 too much rough, sour cider. If moderately well off, their usual 
 diet is bread in milk and water for breakfast, bread and cheese for 
 luncheon and dinner, and potatoes and bacon for supper. Every- 
 where there is depression and hopelessness, owing partly perhaps 
 to the damp, humid climate, partly to a decay of the prosperity 
 which once distinguished the western counties, but mainly to the 
 fact that they are miserably housed and under-fed. 
 
 Women work to some extent in the fields, but no one will allow 
 that it has a demoralising influence. The men receive three pints 
 of cider a day as part of their wages, a custom which adds to their 
 depression by leading them to drink apart from their wives and 
 families. Immorality is directly traced to the conditions of cot- 
 tage life. Little value is set on education, and unless the Vicar 
 pays the penny, the parents will frequently plead poverty or any other 
 excuse to keep the children from school. In one district probably 
 a sample of others the boys are described as a rough, coarse lot. 
 "There is a marked class of lads," says the clergyman writing, 
 " from the ages of fourteen to twenty and twenty-four, who are 
 most difficult to handle, shifty in their work, ignorant. Very few 
 can read or write, and they are utterly regardless of authority. 
 ' Juvenile rowdyism ' is on the increase, and is a marked and bad 
 feature in our present social position, full, to my mind, of future 
 evil." 
 
 In the annual report for 1868 of the South Devon Congrega- 
 tional Union, a missionary, whose work lies about Dartmoor, 
 gives the following instance of belief in witchcraft, as significant 
 of the condition of the people : " A poor man suffering from an 
 internal complaint had been sent to the Torquay Infirmary. His 
 disease completely baffled the skill of the medical men there, and 
 also of others whom he had consulted. But this occasioned him 
 no surprise. He was quite satisfied that he had been ' ill-wished,' 
 and all efforts to shake this conviction were fruitless. In conver- 
 sation one day he said, ' he was better, and able to do a little work 
 again. I asked him how it came about, and the following was his 
 account of the matter : ' I knew all along it was not God's afflic- 
 tion, and now I have proved it was not. A man came to me and
 
 IN DORSKTSHIRF. 83 
 
 said, " I think you are bewitched, and I will tell you what to do. 
 Take a lump of salt, and put it into the fire at twelve o'clock at 
 night, and if it gets hard you are ill-wished." Well, I did so, and 
 sure enough it did get hard, and then I knew what was up. After 
 that I got some pins, and threw them into the fire, and while I was 
 burning them there was such a noise on the outside of my door 
 that I was frightened. I did this for three nights, and after that a 
 woman near me was taken ill, and I got better, and since then my 
 wife has been cured in the same way and after that you mustn't 
 tell me there is no such thing as ill-wishing.' " 
 
 To pass on to Dorset. There the cottages have long been " a 
 bye-word and a reproach." Much has been done, and still they 
 remain more ruinous and contain worse accommodation than in any 
 county the commissioner visited, excepting Shropshire. Several vil- 
 lages mentioned and described in the evidence are said to contain 
 many cottages unfit for habitation. " I saw," the commissioner 
 says, "whole rows of cottages abounding with nuisances of all 
 kinds. Remonstrance is generally disregarded, and the state of filth 
 in which many parishes are left calls aloud for active interference." 
 
 The Dorset cottage is usually built of mud, with a thatched roof. 
 Many have only one bedroom; three is a luxury to which few 
 can lay claim. Enter one : a more dreary place it would be difficult 
 to imagine. There is no grate, but a huge open chimney, with a 
 few bricks upon the hearth, on which the miserable inhabitants 
 place their fuel sometimes nothing but clods of peat, emitting 
 wretched acrid vapours. Owing to the low open chimney, the 
 house is constantly filled with smoke, rendering the ceilings, where 
 they have them, black and dingy enough. Dr Aldridge stated at 
 a meeting of the Farmers' Club at Dorchester, in January 1867, 
 that " the cottages at Fordington were so bad that he ventured to 
 say that they would not put their animals in such places, and yet 
 they were occupied by families of five or six individuals. In many 
 of these cottages one could not stand upright, and the smoke, 
 dirt, and filth together made a state of things not to be equalled 
 in St Giles's." 
 
 Around these wretched hearths the poor family crowd on a win- 
 ter's night, stretching out their chilled hands and feet to gather
 
 84 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 what warmth they may. But some are so poverty-stricken that 
 they can only afford to light a fire at meal-times ; often their wet 
 clothes can never be dried, but are put on damp again the next 
 morning ; for fuel is very expensive. One woman stated that it 
 cost them ^2 in the winter for firewood. Here is a case mentioned 
 in the Labour Circular, Feb. 1868. " E., IDS. per week; wife 
 and six children. Son, 33. 6d. per week ; total income, 133. 6d. ; 
 no grist or other allowance; rent, is. 6d., leaving only 125. a week 
 to support and clothe eight persons, a little more than than 2-^d. a 
 day for each member of the family." 
 
 No wonder there is a " want of labour pluck" in such people, 
 a deadening of mental and physical force. No wonder that such 
 circumstances send the father to the public-house; no wonder 
 that the mother, disheartened at the difficulty of keeping her 
 smoky, dilapidated house decent and clean, gives up the task in 
 despair. 
 
 Frequently, however, the home does not get the benefit of 
 her presence, the custom prevailing in Dorsetshire of hiring a 
 whole family. Thus the wife goes to work as well as the 
 husband, and takes her place in the barn, or the field, or beside 
 the threshing-machine. The poor little ones are locked up all 
 day, or left under the care of some young girl of seven or eight 
 years of age, who has enough to do to mind the baby ; and, when 
 the mother comes home, smashed crockery and sullen tempers 
 have been the result of the family left without proper guardian- 
 ship or control. 
 
 But they are so poor that every member of the family must 
 earn a crust as soon as he can. Boys of seven or eight go to 
 work nay, sometimes they begin as early as six. Their poverty, 
 again, and the unconscionable way the farmers have of paying 
 their wages fortnightly, or even monthly, causes them to run into 
 debt with their masters or the tally-men, destroying every atom of 
 independence, or power of improving their condition. 
 
 One advantage they have larger allotments than in any 
 other part of the kingdom, and to most cottages ample gardens 
 are attached. And here, if they had the energy, they could add 
 considerably to their domestic comfort. If every penny was not 
 of such immediate consequence to them, they could cultivate 
 these plots of ground to great advantage.
 
 IN NORTliUMBERLANt). 85, 
 
 " What wi' dungen, diggen up, and zeeden, 
 A thinnen, cleanen, howen up, and weeden, 
 Hodge, an' the biggest o' the childern, too, 
 Could always vind some useful jobs to do." 
 
 To conclude, however, with a brighter picture, one that will 
 show that there is nothing in agricultural labour of itself to 
 depress a man, or to prevent his realising domestic happiness. 
 
 The Northumbrian peasantry are described as stalwart, vigor- 
 ous, and healthy, independent yet courteous, provident and sober, 
 with a profound belief in the advantages of education, and 
 considerable religious principle. They enjoy good wages, and 
 frequently rise to the position of stewards. Enter one of their 
 cots. It is often but one apartment, lit up by a single window, 
 with nothing but a concrete floor, and some are unceiled, or 
 only have a partially ceiled roof. In one corner stands a large 
 bedstead, the family heirloom, completely shrouded by white 
 dimity ; while a box-bed, closed in the daytime, is the children's 
 resting-place at night. The stores of bacon overhead, the 
 butter, and cheese, and meal in the half-open cupboard, the 
 variety and whiteness of the bread and cakes on the table, attest 
 the truth of the good wife's assertion when, with simple pride, 
 she assures her visitor "that they are not poor." 
 
 The mahogany furniture, bright with hand-polish, the display 
 of crockery and ornaments, the easy comfort of every arrange- 
 ment, seen in the dancing light of a brilliant coal-fire, all tell of 
 good housewifery and ample incomes. Every fire-place, too, has 
 its set-pot and oven," both being in constant requisition, for they 
 have plenty of meat. Yet the good wife will tell you that they 
 had a " sair " fight for it before the children earned anything, 
 for, if there was a point upon which they were determined, it was 
 that the bairns should not go to work unless they spent at least 
 the autumn and the winter in getting a little schooling. Surprising 
 indeed are the facts related, showing the belief both parents and 
 children entertain of the value of instruction. Shepherds club 
 together to hire a perambulating schoolmaster, and they have 
 their children taught Latin, and sometimes French and Euclid. 
 In one district it is stated that there is not a person who cannot 
 read and write.
 
 86 ENGLISH COTTAGES. 
 
 On a winter's evening the family circle gather round the 
 cheerful fire, the women knitting, the father mending shoes an 
 art nearly all acquire w^hile one of the younger ones reads for 
 the benefit of the whole group. 
 
 Notwithstanding such a high degree of domestic happiness as 
 these facts suggest, the report speaks strongly concerning the 
 miserable accommodation many of the Northumbrian cottages 
 afford. Formerly they were mere sheds, without window frames, 
 partitions, grates, or ceiling ; the unfortunate tenant had to bring 
 all these things with him, so that if the weather was wet he 
 frequently found a great puddle on the earthen floor. 
 
 Even yet there are cots to which this description exactly 
 applies, and the miseries the inhabitants have to undergo, espec- 
 ially with their taste for the comfortable, must be great. Under 
 any circumstances it must be extremely " confusing," as one 
 woman mildly put it, to have to perform all the operations of bed- 
 room, parlour, and kitchen in one apartment, and quite distressing 
 when any member of the family is sick. 
 
 The "bondager" system peculiar to Northumberland, by which 
 every farm labourer is bound to provide a woman whose labour 
 shall be at the disposal of the master whenever he may require it, 
 and whom the labourer is therefore obliged to have lodging in his 
 house, does not conduce to domestic comfort. So favourable, 
 however, are his other conditions, and such is the superiority of his 
 character, that these two circumstances a miserable cottage with 
 only one room, and a stranger lodging with him do not prevent 
 the Northumbrian peasant possessing a decent, happy home. 
 
 No doubt something is due to the fact that he comes of a 
 race which has dwelt for generations on the battle-field of English 
 history, developing a power of struggling with and conquering 
 difficulties. Something also may be attributed to the climate. 
 The average mortality in the Glendale Union, one of the largest 
 agricultural districts in Northumberland, from the year 1851 to 
 1860, was only fifteen per thousand, whereas the general average 
 of Great Britain is twenty-two per thousand. And again, to the 
 favourable conditions of his service, he being hired by the year, 
 and paid alike in wet weather or dry, in sickness and in health. 
 And perhaps more than to any of these causes, though they all
 
 NOT THE ONLY CAUSE OF THE LABOURERS' MISERY. 87 
 
 work together to the same end, he owes his comparatively happy 
 position to his superior education. 
 
 Thus the great exception of the Northumbrian peasant de- 
 stroys the theory that evils attending the lot of the English labourer 
 are mainly due to his miserable, unhealthy cottage. His material 
 wants are signs rather than causes of the evil that besets and ruins 
 his life. That evil must be sought in a circumstance with which 
 these reports do not deal, a condition into which they make no 
 inquiry. Yet, after all, nothing is so important to men as their 
 religious environment. 
 
 The Northumbrian peasant is largely influenced by a form of 
 Christianity that not only recognises that he is a man, but that, 
 without ceasing to be a labouring man, tending sheep, or following 
 the plough, he can be chosen, and is chosen, if found worthy, an elder 
 of the Church. The labourers in most other parts of England have 
 been regarded as a helot race, born to be hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water, brothers and friends in much the same sense 
 that horses and dogs are brothers and friends. That this is no 
 unfair view of the lordly way English gentlemen have of looking 
 at the labouring classes is amusingly illustrated in these very 
 reports, one of the Chief Commissioners giving it as his opinion 
 that the cause of the happy position of the Northumbrian 
 labourer compared with the southern labourer is "that he is 
 better educated, and hence is both mentally and physically a 
 sitperior animal." The writer of these pages is no denomination- 
 alist, but so far as he has personal tastes and sympathies, they are 
 not with Presbyterian forms, but with the liturgy of the Church of 
 England. All the more he is bound to point out the superior 
 educative power of the Presbyterian to the Church of England 
 system, as seen in the higher form of the manhood and woman- 
 hood of the people under its control. 
 
 The reason is clear the one is a democratic religion, the other 
 the most aristocratic in the world. It is this characteristic of the 
 Church of England which is mainly responsible for the degraded 
 condition of the English rural poor.
 
 III. 
 
 WALKS AND TALKS WITH ENGLISH 
 PEASANTS.
 
 WALKS AND TALKS WITH ENGLISH 
 PEASANTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 A YORKSHIRE DALE. 
 
 (Gulden Hours, 1872.) 
 
 " And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales, 
 Among the rocks and winding scars ; 
 Where deep and low the hamlets lie, 
 Beneath their little patch of sky 
 And little lot of stars." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 IN the wild sublimity of its mountain cradle, and the romantic 
 beauty of its falls, the Swale need not fear comparison with its 
 sisters, the Ure and the Greta. 
 
 Shut in by two long ranges of opposing cliffs, rising at times to 
 the altitude of nearly 2000 feet, Swaledale has preserved longer 
 than elsewhere the interesting and often valuable customs of the 
 fore-elders. The ancient town of Richmond, at the entrance to 
 the dale, is its only direct communication with the outer world. 
 To go north, or south, or west, the dalesmen must traverse pre- 
 cipitous and lonely roads, across lofty fells, or wild illimitable 
 moors. Thus shut in, they acquire that stay-at-home character, 
 than which nothing so strengthens local idiosyncracy. At the 
 present day there are people in the dale who have never even 
 gone so far from their homes as Richmond. 
 
 " They know no other torrent 
 Than that which waters with its silver current 
 Their native meadows ; and that very earth 
 Shall give them burial which first gave them birth." 
 
 The only public conveyance in the dale is the carrier's cart, 
 
 91
 
 92 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 which jogs to and fro from Richmond to Reeth, a village about 
 half-way up the dale. 
 
 The little company with whom I rode to Reeth consisted of an 
 old daleswoman and her daughter, and a woodcutter who sprang 
 up soon after we left Richmond. He was an independent sort of 
 a man, as indeed I found all the dalesmen to be. There is a 
 practical equality among them, arising from similarity of position 
 and education, which shows itself in many ways. Farther up the 
 dale, I was told, the servants sit in the same parlour as their 
 master and mistress, and call them, with the simple familiarity 
 of friends, Tom and Mary. 
 
 The woodcutter was very talkative. He was employed in 
 cutting down small, or " spring-wood," as he phrased it, used for 
 the purpose of making supports to the cuttings in the lead mines. 
 He was paid 4d. a dozen, but the dozen was reckoned in a 
 curious way. Twenty-four small sticks, or one pole of ten feet, 
 were alike regarded as equivalent to a dozen. He found employ- 
 ment nearly all the year round, and was evidently not badly off. 
 He thought there were not many poor people in the dale that is, 
 people in want. On the contrary, many poor-looking men were 
 very rich, and had hundreds of pounds in the bank. Those who 
 live near the moor can feed their stock for nothing, live in the 
 barest manner, and save little by little. In describing the dales- 
 men, we must reverse the line 
 
 " His vices lean to virtue's side," 
 
 for their frugality and prudence too often degenerate into mere 
 avarice and selfishness. The woodcutter spoke of one man, worth 
 ^2000, who hired himself as a day-labourer to his brother, 
 because by so doing it cost him nothing to live. I was told of 
 another man who lived at the rate of about 20 a year, and 
 suffered all the anxieties of the wealthy miser. " No one," he 
 was heard to say, " knew what it was to sleep on seven thousand 
 pounds." 
 
 From Richmond to Reeth the Swale comes dashing and 
 sparkling over the stones which lie scattered everywhere in its 
 shallow bed. Right up from its banks, sometimes almost 
 precipitously, the rocks rise clothed with thick woods, while, 
 high above, their scarred and lofty ridges wind circuitousl up
 
 A YORKSHIRE DALE. 93 
 
 the dale. To the left the acclivity is less sudd'en, and its base 
 is sometimes covered with trees, sometimes spread out into 
 fields ; but it rises ere long to an altitude equal to the opposite 
 side, so that the road is shut in by a double range of hills, while 
 in the far-off distance ever appears the hazy outline of some huge 
 round-shouldered fell. Now and then a farmhouse may be seen 
 perched up amongst the trees, but as a rule they lie along the 
 road. Nailed against the wall of one I noticed a number of 
 dry corpses of weasels, squirrels, hawks, and some tails of wild- 
 cats a proof to the master of the energy of his servants. 
 
 Peaceful, indeed, would be the lives of these dalesmen, if it 
 were not that their chief industry lead-mining is subject to 
 much fluctuation. Reeth, the centre of the mining district, is a 
 bleak and rather dismal place, surrounded by lofty hills. It 
 stands itself at a level of 600 feet above the sea ; while Reeth 
 Low Moor, which rises immediately behind the village, is 1000 
 feet higher. All the houses are of stone, and, like both the men 
 and the horses, may be described as " bony, gaunt, and grim." 
 What a relief a red chimney-pot would be ! but not a particle of 
 colour is allowed to disturb the dull monotony of the grey 
 limestone, of which not only houses, but barns and stables, are 
 built. So plentiful is it that I observed a lane actually paved, 
 while every field is divided by walls called " dykes," composed 
 of loose boulders, which are piled one on another, and kept 
 together by their great weight. 
 
 These dykes intersect the landscape in all directions, adding 
 to the severe aspect of the hills, scarred all along their heights 
 with patches of naked rock. But the dale itself is sweet, though 
 stern. Seen in the transfiguring power of sunlight, all its hardness 
 softens into lines of beauty. 
 
 It was hay harvest, but the season was peculiarly wet. Now 
 and then the sun broke out, and then the fields were full of groups 
 of busy men and' women. Up and down they went, steadily 
 tossing the new-mown grass, while the children sang joyfully. It 
 was a happy hour 
 
 " From dale to dale, 
 
 Waking the breeze, arose the blended voice 
 Of happy labour, love, and social glee."
 
 94 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 In Reeth and its neighbourhood I conversed with some of 
 the miners. When the veins are exhausted, the mining com- 
 panies offer them a large percentage to search out fresh veins ; 
 but when they are found, they reduce the amount rapidly, as 
 they know that labourers will then come flocking in. This makes 
 the work very precarious. One man told me that he had earned 
 by a single job as much as ^60 or jo, while at another time 
 he had not earned more than eighteenpence in eighteen weeks. 
 When in regular work they average nine or ten shillings a week, 
 taking the whole year round. Owing, however, to the unhealthy 
 nature of the employment, they are unable to work more than 
 six hours a day. They begin at ten years of age ; their lungs 
 gradually get stuffed up with the fine lead-dust, so that as men 
 they look very thin and sickly, and can scarcely live to be old. 
 
 In a walk in the neighbourhood of Reeth I met one a gentle, 
 intelligent man. His complexion was pale and yellow, but 
 through it shone a genial, shrewd, and far from melancholy 
 expression. He w r as returning home from the mine. He had 
 to walk two hours to his work, and two hours back a distance 
 of five or six miles each way. He worked in the mine his own 
 time, and spoke well of the masters. Sometimes the miners 
 descend shafts twenty-four fathoms deep ; these shafts are 
 supported by woodwork, and the men have to climb up and 
 down them. In the levels they work by candle-light, and go 
 in by a very narrow tunnel on a tramway. They never have 
 explosions, as in coal-mines, but the air is close, and when they 
 come out they feel dizzy for a bit. 
 
 In addition to his earnings at the mine, he farmed three 
 acres, on which he kept a cow selling the milk for a penny a 
 pint, and sometimes " kearning a bit." He had had eight 
 children, but they were all dead but two ; one, a girl of seven, 
 had died in a fortnight from the effects of a burn. The last who 
 died was a young man of eight-and-t\venty, who, it seemed, had 
 taken much to learning. " I schuled him te fourteen, and he 
 went on te mensuration and algebra. Ah, edication's a light 
 harrow, ye may carry it anywhere. I sent him down here te 
 schule at Low Row, and paid sixpence a week. The price was 
 tenpence, but the committee said, ' If ye charge him that much,
 
 A YORKSHIRE DALE. 95 
 
 maybe he'll be taken away, sin' his father's but a puir man.' 
 There was Barker's son, he went te college, and was teacher 
 at the free schule up here ; he was his schulefellow ; the tweeah 
 went to schule together, and now they are both deead." 
 
 Consumption killed the son a disease, I fear, common 
 amongst these miners, since inhaling the noxious vapour and 
 the lead-dust must make havoc with the lungs, and, moreover the 
 occupation is hereditary. 
 
 My friend paid ,13 a year for his little cottage, and something 
 besides for poors' rates and taxes. He had no vote, and seemed 
 rather to deprecate the privilege than to desire it. 
 
 " If I'd a vote they might summon me te York on a jury ; 
 besides, I know many a man who has a vote who daren't use 
 it." He hoped they would pass the bill for vote by ballot. 
 
 He was a Wesleyan, but he thought " we should never be 
 asked what we'd been." A man one instinctively took to, when 
 the time came for parting it was with mutual regret. 
 
 An old tale was told me, setting forth the quaint simplicity 
 of these dalesmen. A miner, going into a little Roman Catholic 
 -church in the dale, was present at the Mass. He stared for a 
 long time at each successive action in the ceremonial, until at 
 last he saw the priest raise the chalice, hold it aloft, and drink 
 from it himself without offering it to the other communicants. 
 Then his patience fairly gave way, and he exclaimed, " Eh, lad, I 
 thought thee'd take it all theesel' in the end." 
 
 The dialect of these dalesmen is not easy to understand, for 
 they not only use a great many words a stranger has never heard 
 of before, but they use common words in a strange sense. Thus 
 a sick person is said to be "silly." Some old English words are 
 used to bray, is to bruise. They have their own way of naming 
 some things thus red currants are " wine berries." In many 
 words, however, it is only the pronunciation, as " lili-uns " for 
 children, that is, little ones ; while the youngest is called the 
 "le-le-ist." At the inn at which I stopped this difference of 
 pronunciation led to a curious mistake. I asked for fruit, and 
 they understood me to ask for trout^ which they call " troot" 
 Going into the kitchen, and seeing the mistress engaged in making 
 preserves, I put the question to her.
 
 96 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 " May be," she replied ; " as it's been so soppy, there'll be some 
 catched to-day." 
 
 Their habit of nicknaming each other is carried to such an 
 extent that people are better known by these nicknames than by 
 their real ones. 
 
 " Who has joined the church ? " asks a woman, at whose house 
 the minister calls. 
 
 " Mary Alderson," he replies. 
 
 The inquirer looks puzzled, although she has probably known 
 the girl in question from a baby. A little later he goes in 
 again. 
 
 " Oh," she says, " I know who 'tis you mean ; it's Bessie 
 Billywidow." 
 
 People, too, so far accept these nicknames as almost to forget 
 that they possess any other. At Richmond Sessions they called 
 out for a man named John Metcalf. No answer. Some one 
 suggested that they should cry Sandy John Jock, and he showed 
 himself immediately. Frequently the nickname consists of the 
 addition of their father's and grandfather's Christian name, as 
 Simon's Dick, Simon's Dick's Maggie. 
 
 When we left Reeth the clouds were dark and gloomy, and 
 soon quite hid the distant fell. Suddenly the rain fell in torrents. 
 At the approach of the second storm we took shelter in a cottage. 
 Instead of the ancient hearthstone and open chimney and turf fire, 
 such as one sees in the south, there was a modern grate, possess- 
 ing every convenience, such as large ovens and boilers, while the 
 pots and kettles were suspended by hooks of polished steel to a 
 crane of the same material. 
 
 A huge pot as big as a bucket hung over the fire, filled with 
 some savoury mess, which a young damsel was stirring. It is said 
 there is little for the young women to do beyond housework and 
 churning, which can be easily done by the mother and one of the 
 daughters. The cheese and butter they make is collected by local 
 men, who take it to Hawes, where it is bought by the dealers. 
 
 How miserable these little stone villages look in wet weather ; 
 no pretty little gardens, but stuck here and there without 
 symmetry, black, grimy, and ruinous-looking. The whole of the 
 vale, and far away up the sides of the hills, is divided into endless
 
 A YORKSHIRE DALE. 97 
 
 fields, each field surrounded by its dyke. In the corner of every 
 field stands the " cow-byre," a little stone building, the upper story 
 being used for hay, the lower to shield the cows in winter. 
 
 Wet and dripping I left Muker, but notwithstanding the rain I 
 could perceive at every step the road was becoming grander. Now 
 through the mist I saw the enormous fells rising on every hand. 
 I heard the roar of the mountain torrents, swollen with the heavy 
 rains ; the brown, foaming waters dashing over slabs of limestone, 
 now this side, now that. .Soon I passed Thwaite, a little village 
 picturesquely situated on a beck, whose dashing force covers its 
 stony walls with spray. On I went, until I found that I was 
 coming on the moor. 
 
 But where was Keld? Keld, my bourn? Keld, to see which 
 I had made this pilgrimage ? Why, it turned out to be a little 
 hamlet of stone cots, hid in a cul-de-sac, surrounded by illimitable 
 moors. The moors cragless, treeless, undulating sweeps of peat 
 bog and heather and swamp ; the moors 
 
 " That seldom hear a voice save that of heaven ! 
 How like a prostrate giant not in sleep, 
 But listening to his beating heart they lie ! 
 With winds and clouds dread harmony they keep." 
 
 And yet in this silent, remote spot hearts have been beating, 
 brains working, and life going on as fresh and vigorous as any in 
 the busy haunts of men. Here a noble-hearted Christian minister, 
 who has been called "the Oberlin of the dales," lived and 
 laboured, and this it was which made the spot attractive, and drew 
 me to it. 
 
 James Wilkinson was himself a dalesman. The very name of 
 his birthplace, Beckside Farm, Howgill, suggests the scenes 
 amongst which he was cradled. One sees the little stone home- 
 stead standing in the gill or gully of some romantic vale, the 
 mountain stream dashing down in sparkling cascades. 
 
 Labouring day by day for the good of his people, thinking only 
 how he might promote their mental and spiritual welfare ; turning 
 his thoughts into deeds ; shut out from all external influences in 
 this remote spot for twenty-eight years, James Wilkinson lived a 
 poem, if he never wrote one. He used his great powers of 
 organisation and untiring energy entirely for the good of others, 
 
 II
 
 98 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 his sole purpose in life being, as he himself puts it, " to be spent in 
 the ways of his great Lord and Master Jesus Christ." In the 
 quarter of a century during which he worked in Keld and its 
 neighbourhood,hundreds one might say thousands of Yorkshire- 
 men, with just such talents as his, rose easily to positions of wealth 
 and influence far beyond the dreams of their forefathers. But 
 such considerations never tempted James Wilkinson from his 
 post. Ordained at Keld, he died pastor of Keld, having fairly 
 worn himself out by his manifold labours. To form any idea of 
 the intense earnestness of his spirit, one ought to see Keld, a 
 miserable hamlet of about twenty cottages, containing not more 
 than seventy inhabitants, hidden in an out-of-the-way corner of the 
 moors, nearly ten miles from direct communication with any of 
 the main arteries of life in England. 
 
 Some idea may be formed of his energy by a short summary of 
 the outward and material improvements which were effected 
 during his ministry. Having succeeded in getting a new school- 
 house erected, he turned his attention to the best means of 
 arousing the mental energies of his people. Collecting a little 
 company of twelve young men at his house, he formed a Mutual 
 Improvement Society on the principle of self-reliance. In seven 
 years the Society was able to think of building a Literary Institute, 
 which was opened in 1862 at a cost of about ^119. I visited 
 this Institute in company with the librarian, who is also the post- 
 master of the village. It had two good rooms, in one of which 
 was a large and well-selected library, comprising not only good 
 books of reference, such as " Rees' Cyclopedia," but many of the 
 best modern works of science, travel, and fiction. The books have 
 been mainly selected by the members themselves. Whenever 
 they have some money to spend they get a list from Mudie's 
 Library, and each member is allowed to write down the name of 
 the new book he wishes added. The list having been put up for 
 a fortnight, each member votes for those in the list he likes best. 
 
 In the winter, evening classes are conducted by the librarian, 
 who is evidently the chief man in the village. He dwells in a 
 cottage built by his great-grandfather, and possesses a large and 
 well-stocked garden and apiary. The interior of the cottage was 
 the pink of neatness and comfort, and contained many curiosities.
 
 A YORKSHIRE DALE. 99 
 
 Up against the wall was a row of old china, which would have 
 rejoiced the heart of a collector. He was a musician as well, and 
 possessed both a dulcimer and a harmonium. Just behind his 
 cottage is a fine waterfall called Cataract Force, caused by the 
 Swale forcing its way through the limestone, and pouring down 
 over a number of ledges, some hundred feet in width, in a series 
 of foaming falls. 
 
 But to return to the pastor of Keld and its Literary Institute. The 
 example thus set in the most remote corner of the dale spread, and 
 now there is scarcely a village in Swaledale without its literary 
 institute. 
 
 We may judge that all this outward fruit could not have ripened 
 if there had not been earnest and constant endeavour in a more 
 private way. Not only were there the regular Sunday ministra- 
 tions, with six or eight miles to traverse betwixt the two chapels of 
 Keld and Thwaite, but pastoral visits in winter-time, which were still 
 more formidable undertakings. They were generally announced 
 beforehand from the pulpit, and when the day arrived a little com- 
 pany would sally forth with their pastor, clad weather-proof, and, 
 carrying lanterns and sticks, cross the trackless snow of the moor, 
 leaping the frozen becks, to visit some lonely farm lying far away 
 among the hills, and which but for such visits would be cut off from 
 human sympathy for weeks together. 
 
 The people here at the head of the dale are mainly shepherd 
 farmers, working themselves, assisted perhaps by a couple of men 
 who live in the house, and eat and drink with them. If these men 
 get married, they live out of the house, and receive about twelve 
 or thirteen shillings a week. But they generally wait until they 
 have saved a little money, and can take a small farm and begin on 
 their own account. This is not difficult to do, as every house- 
 holder has a right of pasturage for his cattle and sheep on the 
 moors from the 29th of May until winter. During winter the 
 cattle are shut up in the cow-byres and fed upon hay, but the poor 
 sheep have to do the best they can on the moor. This is a hard 
 time for the shepherds, as the roads get snowed up, and the sheep 
 in danger of being lost. However, they collect them in little places 
 of refuge, resembling the Northumbrian "stells." Often the boys 
 have to go out on the moor with great bundles of hay on their 
 heads to feed the sheep.
 
 100 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 During the summer-time, about six o'clock every afternoon, the 
 cow-herds go out with great tin cases slung over their shoulder, 
 uttering a shrill cry to call the cattle of the moors. Rarely have 
 they any trouble, for the cows are so accustomed to the hour that 
 they would return of themselves, even if there were no call. 
 
 The cottages are seldom on a level with the road, standing 
 either above or below it. I was invited into one which lay con- 
 siderably below the road-side, inhabited by a couple who had 
 evidently married late in life. Spotlessly clean was their parlour, 
 chairs, table, and floor, bright as hand polish and soap and water 
 could make them. There was the tall mahogany clock-case, made 
 at the time of the wedding. There, too, was a shorter clock and 
 a barometer. Dazzling was the burnished steel of the great fire range, 
 notwithstanding the good fire which burnt in the grate, though it 
 was only just August. From the ceiling hung suspended long 
 planks of cedar wood, whereon they stowed away their oatmeal 
 cakes and other commodities. Instead of pictures, the walls were 
 ornamented with numerous mourning-cards, framed and glazed. 
 They placed me in a great rocking-chair, and while the farmer sat 
 opposite me in another, the good wife fetched a glass of milk and 
 some oatcake. The farmer thought things wonderfully improved 
 in the dale since his childhood ; hardly any land was then enclosed, 
 all was open moor. For even these quiet spots see great changes. 
 The tide of humanity is ever ebbing and flowing. Thus, twelve 
 hundred years ago, the Swale must have had a vast population on 
 its banks if it be true that Paulinus baptized 10,000 converts in 
 its waters. Now human beings are so scarce that a visitor is quite 
 a curiosity. Immediately I entered the village the news was 
 transmitted to the minister that " a stranger in mannerly claes had 
 come to Keld ; " and in the evening a number of men and boys, 
 who had assembled close by the house at which I was staying, 
 were evidently discussing my apparition. Every now and then a 
 figure passed by my window, casting a stealthy glance within, so that 
 I thought it best for my own peace of mind and theirs to go out 
 and make a clean breast of it. 
 
 After the morning's deluge sunset brought a lovely evening, and 
 I had a glimpse of what the dales might be when all was propitious. 
 To the left, Kisdon, a lofty hill, rose to the height of 1600 feet
 
 A YORKSHIRE DALE. IOI 
 
 above the sea-level. From one end to the other hung a rainbow. 
 On the other side the sun was setting, softly touching with its 
 golden light Muker Ridge, a great sweep of moorland. From 
 White Beacon Hags to Gil's Head, for so they call the crests which 
 rise at either end of this moorland ridge, lay a bank of soft white 
 cloud. No sound but the roar of waterfalls disturbed the stillness 
 of the Sabbath eve. 
 
 The roar of waterfalls ! ay, indeed ! for nigh to Keld are 
 some of the finest to be seen. I have spoken of Cataract 
 Force, which is immediately behind the village. Onward the 
 Swale continues its troubled way, until it passes under a little 
 antique stone bridge. Here West Stonesdale Beck comes rushing 
 into the Swale in a fine series of falls. Then the river winds on 
 through a stony ravine, where the rocks rise like the walls of an 
 old fortress, 
 
 " Condemned to mine a channelled way 
 Through solid sheets of marble grey." 
 
 It pours down here in two magnificent waterfalls, called Kisdon 
 Higher and Lower Force. To see them in their glory it is neces- 
 sary to descend to the bed of the river. This was no easy task, 
 since one side is precipitous rock, and the other a slippery soil 
 and tangled underwood, but it was a sight fully repaying every 
 exertion. Huge rocks, thirty or forty feet high, had fallen down, 
 and lay strewn about the stream. The ridge of the limestone wall 
 to the right was crowned with foliage ; indeed, both sides are well 
 wooded, trees growing wherever they can find earth to root them- 
 selves. Ferns of rarest kinds, mosses, and wild flowers, adorn in 
 profusion the boggy declivities, while on the clammy sides of the 
 ravine one may see the mosses gradually petrifying under the per- 
 petual drip. But the fall itself, seen in such weather, is stupen- 
 dous. Its immense volume comes pouring over the rocks, 
 ploughing the solid bed of the river, and steaming up again in 
 clouds of spray, the froth settling into thick clots on both sides. 
 Up again we have to scramble, now climbing from stone step to 
 stone step, until we reach the Higher Force, where the waters fall 
 in a huge peat-stained cataract. 
 
 On my road back I followed the course of the Swale, having
 
 102 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Kisdon to my right. I passed the ruins of an old smelting-house, 
 standing at the entrance of a narrow gorge. Capped by a round- 
 headed mountain, its wild and solemn grandeur seemed like a 
 dream of the Holy Land. 
 
 Boggy enough is Ivelet Moor, over which I had to cross ; but 
 the scenery repaid all. From the wooded hillsides ever and anon 
 the little becks came trickling over the rock. All of a sudden I 
 note a heavy fog on the distant moor ; a few moments, and it has 
 reached me, and down comes the drenching rain. 
 
 But the sun is soon out again, and with every step the dale loses 
 the stern aspect of its moorland cradle, and becomes more and more 
 serenely beautiful. If I cast one more glance behind I see the great 
 moors rising on both sides of the deep flat valley, cut up into 
 numerous fields, and studded here and there by a few fir copses, 
 the distances ever shut in by the cold cloud-like tops of the loftier 
 fells. But when I look forward, the scene is gentle and charming, 
 the blue stream meanders to and fro, leaving broad banks of white 
 stones sparkling in the sunlight. Dotted with many trees is the 
 edge of the stream, while above and below the roadway rise the 
 little stone cottages. What rural bits one may see on this roadway ! 
 All is free, free as the air and the water ; cattle browse and pigs 
 wander at their own sweet will. Here comes a pedlar with one 
 leg, marching along bravely on crutches, to make a foreground to 
 the picture, while for a distance we have the bold outline of 
 Harkaside Moor, and further on the purply heights of Copper- 
 thwaite. Farewell, bright stream 
 
 " Flow on, and bathe each wilding flower 
 That lives, and dies, and lives again ; 
 Flow on, blessed by the vernal shower, 
 And morning clew, and summer rain, 
 A little emblem of that river 
 Which flows in Paradise for ever !"
 
 II. 
 
 A VILLAGE FAIR IN SUFFOLK. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1871.) 
 
 " The booths whitening the village green 
 
 Where Punch and Scaramouch aloft are seen ; 
 Sign beyond sign in close array unfurled, 
 Picturing at large the wonders of the world ; 
 And far and wide, over the vicar's pale, 
 Black hoods and scarlet crossing hill and dale, 
 All, all abroad, and music in the gale." 
 
 To dwell far from the great stream of life is ever the fate of the 
 agricultural labourer, and this is why he naturally tends to bar- 
 barism. The early Christians had such a sense of his short- 
 comings in this respect that they used the term " pagani" the 
 country people, to express the state of mentat and spiritual 
 ignorance. But the Fair helped to send a few rays of knowledge 
 into his poor benighted mind, and to keep alive those social 
 qualities which in his case often seemed in danger of dying out 
 At the fair he discovered that there was a world beyond his 
 village, and infinitely wonderful things in it. And even the sports, 
 brutal as many seem to us now, brought out a spirit of emulation 
 and kept up a sense of self-respect, which was a real good in men, 
 whose souls were in danger of being crushed by daily drudgery 
 and unintermitting toil. 
 
 But better than all was the opportunity it afforded for the 
 reunion of families early broken by the exigencies of a dire 
 poverty. The elder boys and girls cheered their labours all the 
 year by the thought of seeing their parents and their brothers and 
 
 103
 
 104 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 sisters at the Wake, as it is frequently called. Who has read 
 Bloomfield's simple ballad of " Richard and Kate, or Fair Day," 
 and not been touched as the poet recalled scenes which he 
 doubtless witnessed, and which drew out the best feelings of his 
 heart ? Richard, an aged Suffolk labourer, sets off with Kate, his 
 good old wife, to the Fair : 
 
 "At length arriv'd amidst the throng, 
 
 Grandchildren bawling hemm'd them round, 
 And dragg'd them by the skirts along 
 Where gingerbread bestrew'd the ground. 
 
 And soon the aged couple spy'd 
 
 Their lusty sons and daughters dear ; 
 When Richard, thus exulting, cried 
 
 ' Didn't I tell you they'd be here ? ' " 
 
 After enjoying themselves watching the various scenes of 
 amusement, a happy family party, in which 
 
 " Twas good to see the honest strife, 
 
 Which should contribute most to please ; " 
 
 his faithful Kate warns her partner that it is time to depart. 
 
 "The children want an hour, ye see, 
 To talk a bit before we go." 
 
 Then they wander into the fields, the little ones toppling on the 
 green and bowling their fairings down the hill. 
 
 " Richard with pride beheld the scene, 
 Nor could he for his life sit still. 
 
 (Then raising high his mug and voice) 
 
 ' An old man's weakness don't despise ! 
 I love you well, my girls and boys ; 
 
 God bless you all ; ' so said his eyes 
 
 For, as he spoke, a big round drop 
 
 Fell bounding on his ample sleeve ; 
 A witness which he could not stop, 
 
 A witness which all hearts believe."
 
 A VILLAGE FAIR IN SUFFOLK. IO$ 
 
 " Thou, Filial Piety, wert there ; 
 
 And round the ring, benignly bright, 
 Dwelt in the luscious half-shed tear, 
 And in the parting word Good-night." 
 
 Last autumn we stayed at a Suffolk village not a dozen miles from 
 Honnington, where Bloomfield was born, and from Sapiston, where 
 he worked as a farmer's boy. If you object to broken rest, do not 
 take up your abode in a village on the night before the fair. It 
 may be a place in which you could enjoy delicious slumbers every 
 other night in the year, but on that particular morning you will 
 infallibly wake long before daybreak conscious of much unpleasant 
 bustle. There is the constant creaking of wheels coming into the 
 village, but what is worse, a noise as the noise of a city full of 
 undertakers tap, tap, tap ; rap-a-tap-tap. Heavy elephantine feet 
 have been passing and repassing ever since it was light, and when 
 at last you rise and look out of the window, behold ! the little 
 triangular market-place is full of canvas and gipsy carts. Cheery- 
 faced country people are busy setting out their wares, while dark, 
 sallow-visaged, inscrutable-looking men stand idly about, probably 
 speculating on the gains their round-abouts, their shows, and their 
 pistol galleries will bring in. By degrees the visitors arrive boys 
 and girls with shining morning faces, bent upon a day's fun ; the 
 elders, too, in the best spirits, and loud in their mutual 
 greetings. 
 
 Later on in the day we thread the line of little booths, and 
 think how many generations of Hodges and Mollies, arrayed in 
 new smocks and blazing ribbons, have found in them a source of 
 delight, the mere anticipation of which was enough to sweeten 
 the monotony of their existence from year's end to year's 
 end. 
 
 We look at those stores of dolls and whips and whistles, and 
 think how in every age the children have looked forward to fair 
 day as a day redolent with joyful surprises, when some good fairy 
 seemed to load their little hands with all that heart could wish, or 
 brightest fancy ever could conceive. 
 
 How we hate the tin whistle's shrill, brain-piercing noise ! Yet 
 when we reflect that, for aught we know, the little Saxon ploughboy 
 blew it in the same reckless defiant way beneath the Norman
 
 106 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 keep, we are compelled to respect it as satisfying a perennial 
 want of boy-nature. 
 
 Still more to be venerated is the " darling dolly." Was there 
 ever an age in the world's history in which the "puppa" did not 
 exist in some form or other ? incipient maternal love ever need- 
 ing something to nurture it and to gratify it. No one could have 
 invented the doll ; it must have been the spontaneous creation of 
 girl-nature, tying up a heap of rags into the semblance of a 
 baby. 
 
 Shall we then despise the village fair, which showered blessings 
 on the little ones, and provided them with many a happy illusion 
 ere the hard realities of life had dulled their small imaginations ? 
 
 Nay, rather let us pause with delight before the gingerbread 
 stall, and the good-stuff stall, and think how many little mouths 
 have watered as they surveyed those wonderful figures in ginger- 
 bread, those piles of hardbake, those bottles of bull's-eyes, those 
 sticks of sugar-candy. Wonderful figures in gingerbread, did we 
 say ? Yes, indeed, for why are they so large, and some of them 
 actually gilt ? Know ye not that these gingerbreads are the most 
 ancjent relics of the fair? They are the true fairings, being 
 nothing else originally than representations of the patron saint of 
 the Church, in honour of whose dedication the fair was held. 
 
 Alas ! there is a falling off in all these things, but we make bold 
 to say gingerbread and bull's-eyes and sugar candy never can and 
 never will go out of fashion as long as there are boys and girls to 
 eat them. 
 
 Yet we must admit it does require some imagination to invest 
 that line of stalls, so strongly suggestive of the Lowther Arcade 
 in petto, with the halo of antiquity, especially when, coming to that 
 ancient institution the roundabout, instead of our old friend the 
 hobby-horse, we find it a circle of bicycles, with such legends as 
 these : " Go on, Joseph," " Going to the Derby," " Patronized 
 by the Nobility," etc. 
 
 How that bicycle roundabout speaks of the mutability of all 
 things ! Bicycles, indeed, in place of the greasy pole, the jumping 
 in sacks, the bull-baiting, the bear-baiting, the fighting with 
 quarter-staves, the boxing and wrestling, and all the other sports 
 suggestive of rough, strong, sturdy old England !
 
 A VILLAGE FAIR IN SUFFOLK. 107 
 
 Nevertheless, the bicycle roundabout affords plenty of fun. 
 Little boys, and young damsels in all the ugly glories of modern 
 female costume, seat themselves on chairs fixed on the round- 
 about, while young men mount the saddles, and work the bicycles 
 with a will. Round flies the merry circle old men and children, 
 lads and lassies while Jacko, the monkey, climbs the many-coloured 
 pole in the centre, and, gravely seated on the cross-beam, surveys 
 the crowd, and cynic-like, doubtless, cogitates on the weakness 
 and folly of the human race. "There they go," thinks he, 
 " madly pursuing a dream. One follows the other, and they please 
 themselves with believing 'tis a splendid race, but they are no 
 more racers than the old mill-horse ; they career round the circle, 
 only to end where they began." 
 
 But what are those two long funnels which stretch right athwart 
 the centre of the market-place ? In front of each is a screen 
 ornamented with martial pictures depicting heroic deeds at Alma 
 and Inkermann. In the centre of each screen a huge hole gapes, 
 and around it a group of men and boys have gathered to spend 
 hours in the slowest fun imaginable. 
 
 From time to time one challenges the other to a shot, and then 
 receiving the gun from its fat, imperturbable owner, he fires it off 
 down the tube. A loud click announces the arrival of the ball at 
 the other end, when, if it has hit its aim, the marksman is entitled 
 to a second shot. If not, the crowd wait stolidly until some one 
 else is smitten with a desire to waste a penny. Thus it goes on 
 for hours click, click, a dull, monotonous game but it pleases 
 our rustic friends, and why should it displease us ? 
 
 And now as evening advances the flaring little lights bring out 
 all the latent beauties of the cheap toys and the still cheaper 
 crockery. You see piles of hideous-looking ornaments, and 
 wonder at the bad taste that can buy such rubbish and call it 
 pretty. 
 
 From the village inn comes the sound of music, and, passing the 
 door, all may see a rustic Adonis dancing a jig on the sanded floor 
 to the squeaky notes of the village fiddler. Later on the merri- 
 ment increases, but it is time for all right-minded people to go 
 home.
 
 108 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 " ' Good-night," says Harry ; ' Good-night,' says Mary 
 
 ' Good-night ' says Dolly to John ; 
 ' Good-night,' says Sue ; ' Good-night,' says Hugh ; 
 
 ' Good-night,' says every one. 
 Some walked, and some did run, 
 
 Some loitered on the way, 
 And bound themselves with true love knots 
 
 To meet the next holiday."
 
 III. 
 
 FEN-LAND AND FEN-MEN. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1873.) 
 
 KING GEORGE the Third and the author of the " Political Regis- 
 ter " have given the best descriptions of Fen-land to be met with. 
 The king's is the briefer and more comprehensive. "What, 
 what ! " he exclaimed, " Lincolnshire ? All flats, fogs, and fens 
 eh, eh?" But Cobbett's is the most graphic. "Here," he writes, 
 " I am in the heart of the Fens. The whole country is level as 
 the table on which I am now writing ; the horizon like the sea in 
 a dead calm. You see the morning sun come up just as at sea, 
 and see it go down over the rim in just the same way as at sea in 
 a calm. The land covered with beautiful grass, with sheep lying 
 about upon it as fat as hogs stretched out sleeping in a stye. 
 Everything grows well here; earth without a stone as big as a 
 pin's head, grass as thick as it can grow upon the ground, 
 immense bowling-greens separated by ditches, and not a sign of 
 a dock or thistle." 
 
 Nevertheless it lacks several features necessary to complete the 
 picture. 
 
 The cottages standing beneath the roadway, surrounded by 
 water, and reached by bridges or planks across the ditches, the 
 road itself a long straight causeway, locally called a rampire, run- 
 ning for miles by the side of a dyke, and on which you may trudge 
 for an hour without a turn or change in the scene; the moist 
 meadows below, intersected by innumerable sluggish streams, 
 "where the dwarf sallows creep," and where the ducks paddle 
 away their time, or spend it searching for hidden treasure in the 
 rich mud, the black boat aground on the dyke bank, or lying in 
 the outfall of some ditch with nets and snares nigh at hand ; 
 and last of all, standing out against the gloomy sky there are the
 
 110 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 windmills, and the solitary trees, and the black poles of the shiices. 
 Journey where you will, such are the scenes which meet the eye. 
 'Tis ever the same, 
 
 " The level waste, the rounding grey." 
 
 But the rich and prolific soil, dark in colour, and as fine in 
 substance as flour, and when cut deep down into with a spade, 
 like a piece of hard butter, compensates its owners for the entire 
 absence of natural scenery. 
 
 Only the combined force of the three Ridings of Yorkshire can 
 outdo it in general results. 
 
 At the meeting in connection with the agricultural labourers' 
 movement, held in Exeter Hall towards the close of last year (1872), 
 the Lincolnshire fen district was represented by a labourer, who, 
 in an eloquent speech, described the sufferings of himself and his 
 companions. He admitted that Lincolnshire Fen-men received 
 a money wage higher than other parts of the country, and yet the 
 burden of his speech seemed to be that semi-starvation and debt 
 dogged their footsteps through life. "I remember," he said, 
 " working as a boy for twopence a day, and for years going without 
 stockings to my feet ; I remember going hundreds of times to work 
 with a bit of bread and a herring for dinner, having had bread and 
 hot water for breakfast." 
 
 During the autumn I was present at an open-air meeting which 
 took place in the dark and in the rain at Croyland, where I believe 
 that I heard the same speaker, together with a fellow-labourer 
 from the Cambridgeshire fens. The latter, in a woe-begone strain, 
 harped on a like string, relating the hardship and misery he and 
 his people had at times endured from want of food, saying bitterly 
 that it would be better if those who professed to feel so much for 
 the labourer would leave off talking about good cottages, educa- 
 tion, or sanitary reform, as the one thing needed, and, first of all, 
 give them enough to eat. 
 
 Now, as this meeting was composed entirely of labouring people, 
 with a few of the farmers and the tradesmen of the locality men 
 who knew by a life-long experience the true state of the case it 
 is evident this Cambridgeshire fen-man would not have made this 
 want of the necessaries of life a leading point in his harangue if
 
 FEN-LAND AND FEN-MEN. Ill 
 
 he had not been sure that it was here where the shoe pinched. 
 For, though wages may be half as much again in Lincolnshire as 
 they are in Dorset, what, after all, is 153. a week to support a 
 family of five or six persons? And this is the case of many a 
 young married man. Deduct is. 6d. or 23. for rent, and you have 
 about a couple of shillings for the weekly food and clothing of 
 each individual, just one-sixth of the amount usually allowed a 
 servant for board wages, and which may therefore be considered 
 the sum judged necessary for one person's maintenance per week. 
 
 Better a thousand times for the labouring man was that old 
 Hebrew legislation which forbade the agriculturist to muzzle the 
 ox which trod out the corn, than a so-called Christian civilisation 
 which, while pretending to treat the Bible with reverence, really 
 sets aside the great bulk of its teachings with contempt, and pre- 
 fers to take the rules and regulations of its social life from political 
 economy ; whose laws it professes to believe are so immutable, 
 yet so salutary, that it can look down on its workers, half starved in 
 the midst of plenty, with the same kind of pity that it regards the 
 victims of a flood or an earthquake. 
 
 Certain it is that the question of mere existence must be upper- 
 most in these fen-men's minds, or they could not possibly have 
 forgotten some far worse evils of their social condition. I refer to 
 the wretched slavery into which scientific improvement and 
 material progress has brought their wives and children. For not 
 a word did these representative fen-men say at either meeting 
 concerning the infamous gang system. 
 
 It looks ominous, and, taken in connection with the singular 
 reticence which I have found in getting information on the sub- 
 ject, I am inclined to think that a certain blindness has come 
 upon the inhabitants of the district with regard to its wickedness. 
 
 The labouring men may dislike any interference with their sup- 
 posed rights as fathers to sell their children into slavery; the 
 farmers and the landowners may deprecate any interference with 
 the labour market which would lessen their profits ; but if England 
 recognises its responsibility to God as a nation, it must believe 
 that He will not be satisfied with the plea of ignorance, or the 
 plea of the exigencies of trade, or even with the plea of parental 
 rights. The righteous Ruler of the universe will undoubtedly
 
 112 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 demand at its hands the blood of its young children destroyed 
 body and soul by this agricultural gang system. 
 
 But before I proceed to unfold the evils which have followed in 
 the wake of scientific improvement, let me record one benefit 
 which has proceeded from it. It has vastly improved the health 
 of the district. Malaria and other similar diseases which con- 
 stantly lurked in the watery atmosphere have been banished, and 
 the Fens, with one alarming exception, stand high in the Registrar- 
 General's report. 
 
 But the very cause which has brought about this one advantage, 
 the bringing of so much land under tillage, has led to evils of such 
 magnitude as far to counterbalance this solitary good. 
 
 These enormous tracts of land require constant labour to keep 
 them well cultivated. The soil is so prolific that the weeds would 
 soon choke everything else if they were not vigorously kept in check. 
 The farms are generally very large, and run a long way into the 
 fen. As a rule, there are no cottages upon them, and they there- 
 fore depend almost entirely for their labour on the native supply in 
 the various villages, which lie on the highways, or rather, below 
 them. The want of house-room naturally prevents any influx from 
 other parts of the country, and the consequence is, that for about 
 eight months in the year, every available woman and child is 
 pressed into service. 
 
 As this kind of labour has been found to be more effectual 
 under direction and in concert, and as, moreover, it is not always 
 wanted to the same extent, a system has arisen whereby a man, 
 called a gang-master, contracts to supply labour when and where 
 it was wanted. He is generally of the class called " catch-work 
 labourers," that is, a man who prefers jobbing to regular employ- 
 ment. He makes it his business to collect a number of women, 
 young persons, and children, sometimes as many as forty, and form 
 them into a gang, which he leads out day by day to those parts of 
 the fen where he has engaged to work. 
 
 This system commenced in the Lincolnshire fens about forty 
 years ago, the natural offspring, as I have said, of the great improve- 
 ments science had there made. 
 
 It went on for a whole generation demoralizing the people. At 
 last, in 1865-66, a Commission was appointed, and the evils it
 
 FEN-LAND AND FEN-MEN. 113 
 
 revealed from the corruption which ensued in these mixed gangs 
 of women, boys, and girls were of such a nature, that the very same 
 year that the report was published Parliament passed an Act by 
 which it was forbidden to employ any child under eight years of 
 age in a public gang, or any female in the same gang with a male. 
 It was also enacted that every gang-master should take out a 
 licence, and, in the case of a female gang, a woman was to act as 
 gang-master as well as the man. The Act further gave the Justices 
 power to limit the distance to which a child should walk, if they 
 thought fit. 
 
 No doubt this Act has largely mitigated the evils of public 
 gangs, but private gangs are in no way affected by it. A large 
 occupier near Spalding says : " The result of legislation for 
 public gangs will be great evasion of the Act under the form 
 of private gangs, which will require dealing with just as 
 much." 
 
 A private gang is one formed and employed by a farmer on his 
 own land; he therefore feels a personal responsibility in its 
 character and proceedings. This is undoubtedly a great advan- 
 tage, and if the farmer will really trouble himself about it, it may 
 be made a very real one. But the enormous size and great length 
 of the fen farms renders personal supervision in many cases a 
 practical impossibility. How can a man who has perhaps farms 
 miles apart, perhaps two or three hundred acres each in extent, 
 and stretching in elongated fashion for miles into the fen, know 
 much about the behaviour of his work-people? He must leave it 
 to the master of his gang. If the latter is a strictly upright man, 
 things may go on well ; but if otherwise, a perfect sink of corrup- 
 tion may exist on the estate of the best-intentioned master 
 in the world. 
 
 And even supposing that by strict and careful supervision the 
 grosser forms of evil are kept down, the private gang system does 
 not afford any alleviation in the labour-slavery which has been the 
 lot of these poor fen women and children for two genera- 
 tions. 
 
 Let us picture to ourselves the life of one of these families, and 
 we shall see more clearly how little benefit they have derived from 
 the great wealth with which science has enriched their land ; how, 
 
 I
 
 114 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 on the contrary, it has made their lives more miserable and more 
 utterly hopeless than they otherwise would have been. 
 
 In their small cottages for some are so small, that they have 
 sometimes to turn the children into the street, the room is so 
 stifling they have passed the night, withfor six persons in one 
 bedroom it can hardly be more ; and this not imaginary. In one 
 row of twelve houses at Langtoft (1864), a ganging village, the 
 average to one bedroom was more than six persons. Up at 
 earliest dawn, for they must start for work at half-past five or 
 six, breakfast is scrambled through, and the children hurry out 
 into the street, to meet like a company of factory hands at a given 
 rendezvous. Boys and girls, big and little, corrupt and innocent, 
 they flock together; and there in the pure morning light the more 
 depraved give the tone to the assemblage, by commencing some 
 disgusting badinage. Croyland triple bridge is a spot where they 
 thus assemble, and one of the farmers in the neighbourhood thus 
 writes to the Government Commissioner in 1866 : 
 
 " You should see the children and women at Croyland ; they all 
 meet at the bridge at six a.m. before they start for work, and you 
 should hear the talk that goes on then." 
 
 The gang-master appears, and under his guidance they com- 
 mence the toils of the day. Three, four, five, sometimes six miles 
 they trudge into the fen, where in companies they begin their task, 
 pulling weeds or potatoes, or topping beets, or peeling osiers, or 
 whatever else may be the work of the season. And how do they 
 work? Continually stooping to grub up weeds or potatoes, at 
 other times kneeling on the damp earth, as in weeding carrots, 
 and occasionally wet up to their middles, as, for instance, in 
 weeding standing corn. " It is dreadful," says a large farmer at 
 Spalding, " to see the little things coming out wet and draggled. 
 It is as bad for their health as their morals." 
 
 If the ganger be a decent man, he will do his best to suppress 
 such evil as he may chance to see and hear; but if, as not 
 unfrequently happens, he is a man of no principle, he will permit 
 the evil to have full sway, as the easiest means of preserving his 
 power. Nay, it is on record that he himself is sometimes the 
 leader and inciter of moral corruption. Anyhow, all are left to 
 themselves during meal-times, and then untaught, hard-worked,
 
 FEN-LAND AND FEN-MEN. 115 
 
 overstrung humanity runs amuck ; and innocent children witness 
 scenes and hear words which corrupt their whole lives. Toil 
 and sin this seems the hard, the terrible lot of these poor fen- 
 children. 
 
 After all, it is the system itself as applied to children of all ages 
 and both sexes, not its mere accidents, which is the motive cause 
 of vice. 
 
 A justice of the peace in the Isle of Ely says: "I fail to see 
 how the children thus usefully and profitably employed in the 
 field are likely to have their morals less safely guarded than they 
 would in a school-yard or in the village streets." Happy man ! 
 he can never have known what it is to have the mind oppressed by 
 a monotonous and disagreeable employment, or the nerves over- 
 strung with protracted labour. If he had, he would have been 
 aware how fearfully open such a condition of body and mind 
 leaves even a man of strong principle to the most horrible 
 temptations. And when the subjects of it are children of all ages, 
 any one who has had the slightest experience of such a life will 
 acknowledge that it is only too natural for them to run into all 
 kinds of devilry. 
 
 Strong artisans, strong in the consciousness of their power, 
 consider nine hours a day enough work for the father of a family, 
 with all the responsibilities of life upon him, and they could quote 
 the wisest of our kings in their favour ; but here in Lincolnshire 
 children are made to work ten to twelve hours a day. 
 
 Ernest Hare, a boy of eleven, living at Deeping, St James's, 
 told the commissioner that he was in a private gang. He left 
 home at 5 and got back at 7. He was employed by a farmer who 
 had two farms, the nearest of which was three miles from his 
 home ; the other at Deeping St Nicholas, six miles away ; and 
 with reference to this latter he adds, " We'd have sometimes to go 
 to t'other end of it," which was three miles further. 
 
 Well might an inhabitant of this same village tell me that some 
 people in Deeping never see daylight there all the winter from 
 Monday morning to Saturday night. They go off 'in the dark, 
 and come home in the dark. Well might the police superinten- 
 dent at Spalding say, " They go too far, and work too long ; ten 
 or twelve hours is too much for a young child"
 
 Il6 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 And yet the landowners and farmers of Lincolnshire met in 
 conference in their Chamber of Agriculture, and being interro- 
 gated by the Commissioner what they thought should be done, 
 answered, first and foremost, that it did not appear to them that 
 the present hours of work of women and children employed in 
 agriculture are excessive, or injurious to the physical condition of 
 either ; and that, secondly, " no restrictions should be placed on 
 the distances to which it should be lawful for them to go 
 to work." 
 
 It is, as I have said, now forbidden to any public gang-master to 
 have a mixed gang. But though this may prevent positive acts 
 of immorality, it does not prevent that demoralizing influence 
 which always ensues when a company of young people of all ages 
 work unrestrained by the presence of their masters. This is 
 especially the case with girls, since it is just the roughest and 
 most depraved of the sex who are most constantly employed in 
 this kind of labour, and who, by force of their audacity and 
 superior skill, naturally assume the leadership of the gang. Their 
 coarse and lewd conversation soon corrupts the whole gang, and 
 so the moral evil spreads. This is the kind of training the 
 future womanhood of the district has to go through, and it can 
 easily be foreseen what sort of homes such young persons will 
 form. Their slovenly and slatternly cottages, full of discomfort, 
 alienate their husbands and drive them to the beer-shop. Their 
 ignorance of the arts of sewing and mending causes the children 
 to go in tatters. As a farmer in Deeping Fen truly observes, " No 
 amount of wages will make the husband better off, for the wife 
 does not know how to use the money." In fact, a comfort- 
 able and happy home is an idea they have never been permitted 
 to entertain, many being driven by the stress of their wretched- 
 ness to be themselves instrumental in destroying its very 
 possibility. 
 
 Let any one look into the Sixth Report of the medical officer of 
 the Privy Council (1863), and he will there find a tale of horror 
 as to some facts of social life amongst the labouring people of 
 the fen districts. The account I refer to is Dr H. J. Hunter's 
 report on the alarming mortality amongst infants in certain rural 
 districts in England. And these districts are just the very ones
 
 PEN-LAND AND FEN-MEN. 117 
 
 of which I am writing, and others like them, that is, the 
 reclaimed marsh lands lying near the mouths of the principal 
 rivers which fall into the North Sea. 
 
 With wonderful accord this mortality was traced by seventy 
 medical practitioners and other gentlemen well acquainted with 
 the habits of the poor, who were consulted on the subject by Dr 
 Hunter, the commissioner, "to the bringing of the land under 
 tillage, i.e., to the cause which had banished malaria, and had 
 substituted a fertile though unsightly garden for the winter 
 marshes and summer pastures of fifty or a hundred years ago. 
 It was generally thought that infants received no harm from 
 malarious evils, but a much greater enemy had been brought 
 against them when their mothers were forced into the fields." 
 
 By such authoritative testimony the cause is shown to be 
 mainly due to the destruction of the maternal instinct in women 
 whose lives are hardened and brutalized by unsuitable toil and 
 continual contact with moral corruption, and by the neglect 
 that must ensue when they are obliged to leave their babies to 
 the care of others. 
 
 One-fourth of the infants lawfully born in these districts die 
 under one year of age, while of the remainder the average amounts 
 to one-third. Whatever the immediate occasion of death, all the 
 medical men agree in believing the real cause to be the mother's 
 neglect, while "the degree of criminality they attributed to the 
 women varied from a sympathising excuse for their ignorance to a 
 downright charge of wilful neglect with the hope of death, in 
 fact, infanticide." 
 
 The history of many an unfortunate infant is thus traced in the 
 report : Perhaps it is the immediate offspring of the gang 
 system. Born into a household already burdened with too many 
 mouths, its appearance in the world is unwelcome to every one. 
 The young mother, called away to work, gives up her child to an 
 old woman, who professes to keep a school for such babies. All 
 the food the child gets from its mother is morning and evening. 
 During the night she is too fatigued to attend to its wants ; in 
 fact, if she is to do her day's work, she cannot afford to lose her 
 rest. 
 
 Both by day and night the child is either deprived of food, or
 
 Il WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 fed, not with a bottle, but with a spoon, and it accordingly soon 
 acquires a taste for the unnaturally solid food given it. Milk is 
 dear, and not to be had, and so sugar-sop a lumpy mass of 
 bread, water, and sugar is used instead. This is either given 
 cold, or is left on the hob in a cup, seldom or never changed or 
 cleaned, and from time to time this fermenting and sooty mess is 
 heaped into the infant's mouth by the nurse. 
 
 Older mothers, after losing two or three children, begin to view 
 the subject as one for ingenuity and speculation. The neighbours 
 will say, " So-and-so has another baby ; you'll see it won't live," 
 and treat it as a sort of joke. A medical man is called in to the 
 wasting infant, "because there is so much bother about the 
 registration." The mother says the child is dying, and won't 
 touch food. But when the doctor offers food, the child is raven- 
 ious, and " fit to tear the spoon in pieces." 
 
 The above is almost a literal quotation from the report, which 
 then goes on to say : " It was more than once related that women 
 who had lost two or three successive children lost no more after it 
 had been plainly signified to them that their proceedings were 
 watched." 
 
 Should the unhappy little creature struggle through this period 
 of semi-starvation, its life is threatened by another domestic 
 demon. 
 
 " There can be no doubt," says the report, " of the truth of the 
 horrid statement made by almost every surgeon in the marsh- 
 land, that there was not a labourer's house in which a bottle of 
 opiate was not to be seen, and not a child but who got it in some 
 form." 
 
 Each village has its own peculiar preparation, the favourite 
 form for infants being Godfrey's Cordial, a mixture of opium, 
 treacle, and sassafras. Each mother buys the "Godfrey" she 
 favours most, so that, when she leaves her baby in the morning, 
 she will leave her own bottle with the nurse. Should the nurse 
 substitute her own, and should it turn out more potent, as is 
 sometimes the case, the children will sink into such a state that, 
 in a fright, she sends off for the surgeon, who on his arrival finds 
 half a dozen babies, some snoring, some squinting, all pallid and 
 eye-sunken, lying about the room. Happily, he is prepared for
 
 FEN-LAND AND FEN-MEN. 11$ 
 
 the emergency, applies the stomach-pump, and the poisoned 
 infants come round. 
 
 Supposing they clear this danger and grow up, the habit thus 
 induced often stays with them for life. It is well known that in 
 no part of England is there such a quantity of this drug consumed 
 as in the Fen-land. Wholesale druggists report that they send 
 immense quantities into these districts, and retail druggists often 
 dispense as much as 200 Ibs. a year. It is sold in pills or penny 
 sticks, and a thriving shop will serve 300 or 400 customers on a 
 Saturday night, the largest consumers being the inhabitants of 
 small hamlets or isolated cottages in the fens. 
 
 It is true that this is a report of a state of things which existed 
 ten years ago in the fens ; but it cannot be supposed a practice so 
 widely spread should suddenly have ceased. In a late report, that 
 of 1867, Mr Ellis, a surgeon at Crowle, in the Isle of Axholme, says : 
 " The mothers leave their children to go out to work ; even chil- 
 dren that are suckling are left a whole day often thirty-five 
 children in the charge of one old woman. Sometimes they give 
 them Godfrey (opium) to keep them quiet while they are out. 
 Twins and illegitimate children almost always die. I know a 
 case here where a woman has had five or six children, all of 
 whom have died, having been given opium to keep them quiet." 
 And when the writer was in Spalding last autumn, he was told 
 more opium was sold there than in any part of the kingdom. 
 
 Under such a system none but the strong live, and wretched as 
 in a moral sense their companionship in daily labour too often is, 
 it is probable, on the whole, that the open air and constant 
 exercise prove the very best restorative these poor little ones can 
 have, and cause many to grow up, in spite of such terrible odds, 
 strong men and women. 
 
 As soon, too, as they can work they get enough to eat. To 
 this end they are sent to work as young as a master will employ 
 them, and each generation repeats its parents' experience, begin- 
 ning a little earlier, and growing more and more insubordinate 
 than the last. 
 
 As to the boys, they soon learn to master their mothers, 
 and will not go to school even when the winter months come on 
 and there is not such a demand for their labour. The grossest 
 ignorance accordingly prevails.
 
 120 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Mr Leaper, the police superintendent at Spalding, reports that 
 scores of farm labourers apply for admission into the Force who 
 cannot even write their own names. 
 
 The Vicar of Langtoft says, " This year, out of twenty boys who 
 came to me averaging sixteen years old, seven could not read at 
 all, and ten could not write at all, while with others the' power 
 was too small to be of any practical use." But it is contrary to 
 the spirit of the god worshipped in these regions that the human 
 machine should be too enlightened. As the Vicar of Burgh-le- 
 Marsh says, " The employers of labour do not wish the children 
 to be wholly ignorant, but think that a very moderate share of 
 scholarship is sufficient. Their view is that ' more than a little is 
 by much too much ; ' they are afraid that the labourers will be 
 spoilt for field work." 
 
 Parents bemoan the home misery, schoolmasters bewail their 
 empty schools, and clergymen are in despair. It is impossible to 
 cope with the evil, " I despair," says one, " of making the good 
 overbalance the evil in this parish." A few philanthropic farmers 
 and landowners deplore the system, and individually fight against 
 it, striving to repress its greater evils, or at least to keep their own 
 lands free from them. But, notwithstanding its science, this 
 enlightened age has its gods just as the most barbarous ages that 
 have gone before it. And perhaps, of the whole Pantheon, none 
 is adored more sincerely by Englishmen than that cruel Moloch, 
 the Trade Spirit. At his altar the inhabitants of the fens are 
 compelled to sacrifice their children. For if the facts I have 
 stated be correct and they mainly rest on the authority of the 
 Government Commissions, which have never been, as far as I 
 know, refuted is it too much to say that these unhappy people 
 are compelled to a sin not unlike that into which Israel fell in its 
 most prosperous days the sin of " causing their sons and their 
 daughters to pass through the fire " a fire more terrible in reality 
 than a material furnace the fire of physical exhaustion and 
 moral pollution ?
 
 IV. 
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN DORSET. 
 (Golden Hours, 1872.) 
 
 IT is, I suppose, an undisputed fact that the Dorset labourer has 
 worked for generations at a lower money wage than any other 
 member of the agricultural community. I suppose, too, it is an 
 undisputed fact that the cottage in which he has been compelled 
 to live has long been a byword and a reproach. I know that the 
 question of wages in Dorsetshire is embarrassed by a number of 
 so-called privileges, and by opportunities of extra earnings ; never- 
 theless, there can be little doubt that the labourer in Dorset has 
 been, and still is, notwithstanding the rise in wages which has 
 taken place in some districts, worse off than in any other part 
 of the land. 
 
 So wretched indeed has been his lot, that Sir Charles Trevelyan 
 is probably within the truth when he says, "The state of our 
 southern peasantry is worse than the present state of the peasantry 
 in the greater part of Ireland." 
 
 Many people no doubt console themselves with the belief that 
 such a condition of things is not so hard as it seems, considering 
 what dull, coarse-minded clodhoppers the people are who have to 
 endure it. As a matter of fact, however, natures of the gentlest 
 mould may be met with perhaps as frequently among " dull 
 clodhoppers" as among the classes above them in the social 
 scale. 
 
 The peculiarity in Dorset is that such natures are not so much 
 the exception as the rule. The Dorset peasantry are gentlefolk 
 by birth. It is not that veneer which the most thorough scoundrel 
 can easily assume, but that native inbred refinement, that per- 
 ception of beauty and fitness, which is almost, if not quite, a 
 divine ift.
 
 122 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 If any one would see for himself how truly this is the character 
 of the Dorset peasant, let him study the works of their poet, 
 William Barnes. Born in the Vale of Blackmore, of an old yeo- 
 man family, farming for two centuries their own land, his imme- 
 diate ancestors suffered the fate which is gradually bringing to an 
 end this fine class of Englishmen. No doubt he describes the 
 revolution he witnessed in his own native vale when he says 
 
 "Then ten good dearies were a-ved 
 
 Along that water's winden bed, 
 
 An' in the lewth o' hills an' wood 
 
 A half a score farmhousen stood : 
 
 But now, count all o'm how you would, 
 So many less do hold the land, 
 You'd vind but vive that still do stand 
 A-comen doun vrom gramfer's" 
 
 To Dorset, its people ; their language and customs ; to the 
 delineation of the joys and sorrows which go to make up their 
 daily life, he has devoted all his genius. As a pastor he has 
 laboured for their highest interests. When I saw him moving 
 amongst them, I could think of no picture which so aptly repre- 
 sented him as the one Longfellow draws of the parish priest in the 
 Arcadian village of Grandpre. 
 
 "Reverend walked he among them ; and up rose matrons and maidens, 
 Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome." 
 
 Dorsetshire may be divided into three districts. There is the 
 highland, running through the centre of the county, and forming 
 its back-bone. 
 
 " The zwellen downs, wi' chalky tracts 
 A-climmen up their sunny backs ; " 
 
 the vale of Blackmore to the north, mainly laid down in grass 
 land, and occupied by dairy farmers ; while to the south of the 
 chalk hills stretches for many a mile vast tracts of heath, much of 
 which is uncultivated, and upon which are to be found most of 
 those wretched cottages for which, as I have said, Dorsetshire has 
 earned such an unenviable notoriety. 
 
 However, some of the worst cottages in the county are in the 
 neighbourhood of Dorchester itself. Nothing can well exceed the
 
 LIFE IN DORSET. 123 
 
 description of those in the village of Fordington, as given in the 
 Government report of 1867, and I saw enough as I passed through 
 the village last autumn to enable me to testify against the place. 
 
 The villages in Dorset have a very grave, sombre appearance, 
 and the cottages are built in rows, and mostly formed of stone or 
 " cob," with no front gardens ; and if it were not for the cosy-look- 
 ing thatched roofs and the two dormer windows peeping out 
 underneath them, these Dorset villages would look as stern and as 
 bleak as those in the north country. But the thatch covers the whole 
 village, at least, all those portions that are contiguous, like some 
 beneficent natural growth, spreading its protecting arms over every- 
 thing. No form, however unexpected, or ugly, or unusual, is left 
 out of its embrace ; it undulates gently over them all, and brings 
 cottages big and little, outhouses, barns, pigsties, all into one 
 harmonious whole, and may be regarded as emblematic of the 
 unity of the society dwelling beneath it. 
 
 " Cob " is mud covered with a thin coating of plaster. Cottages 
 built of this material are very snug and warm in winter, and cool 
 in summer. The old cottages are mainly built of it, and are 
 often very large and roomy. I went into one, in an old tumble- 
 down row, in Stowborough. The cottage itself was perhaps twenty 
 feet wide. Its sole inhabitant was a good dame, the old school- 
 mistress of the village. The floor was sanded and furnished with 
 tall chairs and an ancient escritoire, which had come from Corfe, 
 some thought from the castle. On the old hearth were a couple 
 of fire-dogs. In another part of the house was a stack of 3000 
 peats, her winter's supply. Every poor cottager about this part 
 burns peat, so that there is a turfy smell pervading the air. 
 They can get 1000 peats for about three shillings, but to 
 those who have to employ others to do the cutting, 
 carting, and unloading, it costs ten times the money. The 
 good old dame's school had been one of the ordinary stamp, 
 but she had conducted it for forty years ; and when she 
 gave up, the parents and scholars had presented her with a 
 large illustrated Bible, as a testimony of their gratitude and 
 respect. The greatest trouble she had was that her landlord 
 wanted to pull down the old house, the home of her fathers, and 
 build a new one. And this touches a chord which is very com-
 
 124 Wlttt ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 mon amongst the rural poor. For the old house is full of sweet 
 memories, and if you destroy it, you destroy the only joy left in 
 life for the old to dwell in the thought of the past. Moreover, 
 it sometimes happens that a new house is no real advantage to the 
 labourer, as Mr Barnes has said 
 
 " A new house ! yes indeed ! a small 
 Straight upstart thing, that, after all, 
 Do teake in only half the groun' 
 The wold woone did avore 'twer down ; 
 Wi' little windows straight an' flat, 
 Not big enough to zun a cat, 
 An' dealen door a-meade so thin, 
 A puff o' wind would blow en in. 
 
 No, no ; I would'en gie thee thanks 
 Vor fine white walls and vloors o' planks, 
 Nor doors a-painted up so fine, 
 If I'd a wold grey house o' mine." 
 
 In these old houses were chimneys indeed ; chimney corners in 
 which the whole family could nestle. 
 
 * 
 
 " An' when I zot among 'em, I 
 Could zee all up agean the sky, 
 Drough chimney, where our vo'k did hitch 
 The zalt-box an' the beacon vlitch." 
 
 Mr Barnes, with a laudable desire to maintain the ideal of 
 "home" in Dorset cottages, has shown how, notwithstanding all 
 their miseries, a labouring man's cottage may still remain for 
 him the most joyful spot on earth. 
 
 " My children an' my vier-place, 
 Where Molly wi' her cheerful feace, 
 When I'd a-trod my wat'ry road 
 Vrom night-bedarken'd vields abrode, 
 Wi' nimble hands, at evenen, blest 
 Wi' vire and wood my hard-won rest'; 
 The while the little woones did clim', 
 So sleek-skinned up from lira' to lim', 
 Till strugglen hard an' clingen tight. 
 They reach'd at last my feace's height, 
 All tryen which could soonest hold 
 My mind wi' little teales they twold."
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN DORSET. 125 
 
 Just now we had a description of a chimney corner of a Dorset 
 cottage in the old time, and the flitches of bacon suggested good 
 fare; we have all heard how different it is in the present day. 
 Here is an account of how the family [of an ordinary Dorset 
 labourer lives, given by the good wife, and reported by the Com- 
 missioner, Mr Stanhope : 
 
 " We have brought up ten children and have never had sixpence 
 from the parish. My husband has 8s. and his cottage and garden. 
 We mayn't keep a pig, but instead of this master gives us 6d. a 
 week for the wash. Sometimes, if anything happens " ominous 
 expression, suggesting how infinitely less considerate are the bonds 
 which unite modern Christian society to those which Moses im- 
 posed on the Hebrews 3000 years ago " master's glad to sell us 
 some of the meat. In the last three years we have got perhaps 
 seven or eight bits in this way. We have bought a bit at Christ- 
 mas, when the children are here. We buy a little pig-meat ; we 
 use it with the potatoes. At harvest we have some cheese, but 
 not at any other time. We don't often get potatoes. When we 
 had ten at home, we could not live on the bread we could buy. 
 We'd get a little rice if the potatoes wasn't good. My children 
 never used to drink much tea. I'd mix them a little broth (bread, 
 hot water, pepper, and salt). At harvest and hay time we get 
 money to buy cider." 
 
 Another woman, the wife of a shepherd, who had lived at 
 Blandford twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, stated that she had 
 had twelve children, seven of whom were living at home with 
 them then. They lived on potatoes, bread, and pig-meat, but 
 often sat down to dry bread. They never had a bit of milk. 
 They had learned to drink cocoa at harvest, which is doubtless a 
 great improvement on cider. The husband had los. a week, and 
 a house to live in, because he worked on Sundays. They had a 
 piece of potato ground near the house, but, as she pathetically 
 observed, "'taters, 'taters, every year they don't turn out very 
 much." They bought their own firewood, but had to draw it 
 themselves. Sometimes their wood will cost them ^2 for the 
 winter. At one time they only had two bedrooms, and when all 
 the family were young, thirteen or fourteen persons would be 
 sleeping in them.
 
 I 2 6 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 I am assured, however, that remarkable care may often be 
 noticed among them to avoid the ill effects of overcrowding, such 
 as sending out the young men at nights to lodge with neighbours ; 
 and that in some cases, where too many have occupied one room, 
 it would be difficult to trace the slightest symptoms of want of 
 modesty. But this, as my informant tells me, depends almost 
 entirely on the character of the parents. However the fact may 
 be, that it should be possible at all under the circumstances speaks 
 well for the innate delicacy of the Dorset peasant. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Dorchester the cottagers kill a pig 
 now and then, but they too commonly, if not mainly, live on 
 bread and cheese and potatoes. Thus in a little poem on the 
 father's return at eventime, Mr Barnes makes the wife say 
 
 " Your supper's nearly ready. I've a-got 
 Some teaties here a-doen in the pot ; 
 I wish wi' all my heart I had some meat. 
 I got a little ceake, too, here a-beaken on 
 Upon the vier. 'Tis done by this time, though ; 
 He's nice and moist ; vor when I were a-meaken o'n, 
 I stuck some bits ov apple in the dough." 
 
 But what better fare can be hoped for with wages such as the 
 Dorset peasant gets wages too of which the greater part is some- 
 times paid in kind ? Many farmers keep a running account with 
 their men. There is the grist-corn, that is the barley or second 
 wheat, which they sell their labourers at the market rate. There 
 is skim-milk, wash for the pig, the occasional bits of dead meat ; 
 and in the Vale of Blackmore a quantity of beer and cider ; so 
 that when the time comes for the settlement of accounts the 
 labourer finds he has very little cash to receive. 
 
 It is a miserable system, liable to great abuse, only working well 
 under masters who are both prosperous and generous. As to 
 prosperity, the modern farmer is driven by high rents and heavy 
 taxes to closer dealings with his men than was the case with his 
 predecessors ; he cannot afford to be so generous as they were. 
 In those days there was a community of feeling between the 
 farmer and his men which made such a system work satisfactorily 
 for both parties. The patriarchal idea still held sway in rural life. 
 
 Nevertheless the Dorset peasant speaks well of his employers^
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN DORSET. 127 
 
 is amenable to his parson, and has a good word for the squire. 
 He is neither sad nor suspicious. He makes the most of his joys, 
 and bears his sorrows as best he may. 
 
 Thus in 1847, after the potato famine, when the people were 
 suffering much more than usual, so that they were thankful to buy 
 undressed flour and pea-meal, the children were as bright and 
 merry, and the people as cheerful as under ordinary circumstances. 
 
 Like all simple, true-hearted natures, they are very susceptible 
 to love and friendship. Walking down the road in twilight, or 
 meetings in the woody hollow, are institutions as faithfully observed 
 by the young men and maidens here as elsewhere. 
 
 Most frequently the fair is the place where the attraction is first 
 felt. Then the young labourer, arrayed in his holiday costume, is 
 emboldened to try his fortune, and overcome the shamefacedness 
 so natural to him. 
 
 " Last Easter Jim put on his blue 
 Frock cwoat the vu'st time vier new ; 
 Wi' yollow buttons all o' brass, 
 That glittered in the zun lik' glass. 
 An' pok'd 'ithin the button-hole 
 A tutty he'd a-begg'd or stole. 
 A span new wes'co't, too, he wore, 
 Wi' yollow stripes all down avore ; 
 An' tied his breeches' lags below 
 The knee, wi' ribbon in a bow ; 
 An' drow'd his kitty-boots azide, 
 An' put his laggens on, an' tied 
 His shoes wi' strings two vinkers wide, 
 Because 'twer Easter Zunday." 
 
 It is perhaps in dress and behaviour one sees more than in 
 anything else the gentle breeding of the Dorset peasant. On 
 Sunday the men mostly wear tidy coats of black or blue, with tall 
 beavers, while the women are simply but neatly attired. What 
 can be more charming or fit than the dress of a Dorset maiden as 
 described by Mr Barnes ? 
 
 " Her frocks be a-meade all becomen an' plain 
 An' clean as a blossom undimmed by a stain. 
 Her bonnet ha' got but two ribbons, a-tied 
 Up under her chin, or let down at the zide."
 
 128 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Not that there is less gaiety or mirth in Dorset than in any other 
 part of England, but, as far as I could learn, it was wholesome 
 mirth. 
 
 Indeed, the love of joking, play of wit, and sharp but kindly 
 repartee, the ready appreciation of irony and of principles con- 
 veyed or hinted in a playful manner, is quite a striking feature in 
 Dorset character. In these poems the women are often depicted 
 as playing off practical jokes on the good-natured but duller-witted 
 sex; sometimes tacking up the sleeves and collars of Tom 
 Dumpy's smock and filling it with stones, or sometimes giving 
 him a sly push and sending him head over ears into a ditch. The 
 men, too, have their fun, but mainly amuse themselves with such 
 games as quoits, jumping, ringing bells, and playing quoits. 
 
 Feast-day is an institution vigorously supported by bell-ringing, 
 fifes playing, horns roaring, drums beating, and boughs over every 
 door, while from the country all around the people come flock- 
 ing in. 
 
 Club-day, too, is an important anniversary, when the members, 
 bearing their great flags, walk in procession to the church, where 
 Mr Goodman, the rector, preaches them a sermon, and wisely 
 gives them warning 
 
 " 'To spend their evenen lik' their mornen.'" 
 
 However, the church is no match for the public-house, and dinner 
 and drink soon make too many of the members heedless of the 
 exhortation, and so, " stark mad with pweison stuff," the evening 
 of a club-day presents a sad scene in many a cottage home, for 
 drink is the fiend that misleads men in Dorsetshire as everywhere 
 else. Unhappily, custom favours its temptation, labourers re- 
 ceiving in some cases cider as part of their wages. No doubt 
 both masters and men are under the belief that it helps them to 
 work better. 
 
 Mr Bailey Denton gives a striking instance of the prevalence 
 of this opinion in Dorset, and how signally it was refuted. In 
 1852 he was employing Dorset labourers on some large drainage 
 works in the county, at the rate of wages which were then given 
 73. and 93. a week. Convinced that labour so poorly paid was 
 hardly worth having, he induced some north countrymen to
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN DORSET. 129 
 
 migrate south, promising them a minimum wage of i8s. a week. 
 When the Dorset men learnt what the north countrymen were 
 getting, they were filled with a spirit of emulation, and commenced 
 drinking a greater quantity of beer, that they might be able to 
 work as hard. But they soon saw their error, when they found 
 that their competitors were living on good bread and meat, while 
 they were half starved on bread, tobacco, and bad beer or worse 
 cider. After a time they became convinced that a little butcher's 
 meat was worth all the beer in the world, and under this diet 
 became so efficient that Mr Denton was enabled to reverse the 
 experiment, and take the Dorset men to do work for him in York- 
 shire. 
 
 With all their poverty, and the absolute necessity that every 
 child in the house should do its utmost to add to the family purse, 
 Mr Stanhope, [the Government Commissioner, says, " I noticed with 
 pleasure the great desire for instruction among the labouring poor 
 in this county, one proof of which may be found in the fact that 
 the proportion of parishes with night schools is unusually large. 
 In Dorset there are forty-four night schools in 100 ecclesiastical 
 districts; while in Kent, where the labourer is so well off in a 
 money point of view, there are only twenty-six in an equal number." 
 
 But night schools can do but little when a boy goes to work at 
 eight years of age, or frequently earlier, getting up with his father 
 at four or five o'clock in the morning, and stumping about over 
 the fields from six until two with no cessation excepting little halts 
 for meals. Not only is his mind deadened, but his poor little 
 body is permanently injured. 
 
 Compare the shapely forms of the young farmers with those of 
 the stunted young labourer, and the injury inflicted by compelling 
 an immature body to such labour as agricultural work will be seen 
 at a glance. Compare the stalwart, jovial forms of the elderly 
 farmers with that of the rheumatic, mishapen forms of the old 
 labourers, and the evil result, not only of over-early work, but of a 
 lifetime of poor and insufficient food and bad lodging, will be 
 manifest. Add to all this that they suffer from a want unknown 
 to the northern labourer a good fire. At Milton Abbas the vicar 
 says, "Fuel is so scarce that the families as a rule never have a 
 fire at meal-times except in the winter." 
 
 K
 
 130 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 All these things combine to depress a naturally sensitive people, 
 and to render them the victims of oppression both earthly and 
 spiritual. 
 
 Education helps them to throw off the yoke, and every clever 
 lad naturally thinks of emigration as the only possible cure for the 
 terrible hardships he must endure if he stays at home. As a poor 
 mother said, "They like to be good scholars, because it helps 
 them to get away." 
 
 Education, too, frees their minds from still darker evils which 
 oppress them belief in omens, witchcraft, ghosts, etc. 
 
 " The Church an' Happy Zunday " would doubtless be very 
 popular if it were written in ordinary English. It teaches the 
 labouring man that 
 
 " The best vor body an' vor soul 
 'S the church an' happy Zunday. 
 Vor then our loosened souls do rise 
 Wi' holy thoughts beyond the skies, 
 As we do think o' Him that shed 
 His blood vor us, an' still do spread 
 His love upon the live an' dead ; 
 An' how He gi'ed a time an' pleace 
 To gather us, and gi'e us greace 
 The church an' happy Zunday." 
 
 Sunday gives the poor toiler an opportunity of cultivating those 
 human affections without which life would become bestial. It is 
 
 " The day that's all his own to spend 
 Wi' God an' wi' a buzzom friend ;" 
 
 the only day when families and friends can meet. Thus one of 
 the poems describes a truly rural custom, that of bringing one 
 another home on Sunday evening : 
 
 " Zoo if you'd stir my heart-blood now, 
 Tell how we used to play, an' how 
 You brought us gwain on Zundays. " 
 
 The Dorset peasant's faith in God is simple and childlike God 
 has promised, and He will perform. So, too, he forgets not the 
 dead, but, with faith in a future life, he says
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN DORSET. 
 
 " But there's a worold still to bless 
 
 The good, where zickness never rose; 
 
 An' there's a year that's winterless, 
 Where glassy waters never vroze ; 
 
 An' there, if true but e'thly love 
 
 Do seem noo sin to God above, 
 
 'S a smilen still my harmless dove, 
 
 So feair as when she bloomed vor me ! " 
 
 Nevertheless poverty and a sensitive heart are no protection 
 against the snares of Satan ; on the contrary, it is just because 
 he has a sensitive heart that the Dorset peasant is all the more 
 easily crushed and rendered reckless by adversity. Periods of 
 semi-starvation and wretched cottages drive such natures into vice 
 and practical atheism. At whose door lies the sin ? 
 
 Isfthis the practical result of modern social economy ? If so it 
 is a system by which the poor get poorer, and the rich richer ; a 
 system, the evil effects of which are more manifest in the country 
 than in the town, since it is evident that the small landed 
 proprietor, the small farmer, are everyday losing ground, while the 
 great landed proprietor and the large farmer are every day adding 
 to their domains and increasing the acreage of their farms. 
 
 These poems give many proofs of the decay of a class of men 
 of more value to the country than the great noble, or the large 
 scientific farmer. The first, at best, is only the capital of the 
 column, the ornament and exemplar of society ; the second use- 
 ful as he increases the aggregate wealth of the country ; but 
 the class which is being extinguished in their favour made men, 
 made families, with as real a family pride and a far deeper attach- 
 ment to the old roof-tree than can ever be the case with those 
 who are wealthy enough to have several residences. Nothing can 
 be worse for any country than the severing of the people from the 
 soil, and turning all but a very few into mere tenants at will. To 
 destroy a race of men who are at once free yet contented a race 
 of men whose spirit has been so well expressed by our poet in the 
 following lines : 
 
 " I'm landlord o' my little farm, 
 
 I'm king 'ithin my little pleace ;
 
 132 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 I don't break laws an' do no harm, 
 An* bent a-fear'd o' noo man's fea.ce. 
 An' I be happy wi' my spot 
 O' freehold ground an' mossy cot, 
 An' shoulden get a better lot 
 If I had all my will," 
 
 is to turn the natural supporters of things as they are into dis- 
 contented serfs, who will gladly see them overturned. But it is 
 too late. In the early part of this paper we gave a quotation 
 showing how thoroughly this revolution has been effected in 
 Dorsetshire. Others we could find even more telling, of the 
 gradual destruction of homesteads and houses which once 
 nourished happy souls 
 
 " Now scattered vur an' wide, 
 An zome o'm be a-wanten bread, 
 Zome, better off, ha' died." 
 
 For what is the result ? 
 
 " An' many that wer little farmers then 
 Be no a-come all adown to leabren men ; 
 An' many leabren men wi' empty hands, 
 Do live lik' drones upon the workers' lands." 
 
 Thus the poor are made poorer, while, still worse, the very lands 
 of the poor the common land is taken from them enclosed ; 
 for whose benefit ? The large proprietors again. They get the 
 lion's share, while the poor man gets nothing at all. Not possess- 
 ing any freehold land of his own, the privilege he has enjoyed for 
 ages of pasturing his cow, or feeding his geese or ducks, goes for 
 nothing. As our poet makes one poor labourer say to another in 
 one of his eclogues 
 
 " Ah, Robert ! times be badish vor the poor, 
 An" worse will come, I be a-feared, if Moore 
 In thease year's almanick do tell us right." 
 
 To which Robert replies 
 
 " Why then we sartianly must starve. Good-night ! "
 
 V. 
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN THE NEW FOREST. 
 {Golden Hours, 1892.) 
 
 IT is a mistake into which most people fall, to suppose that a 
 forest is simply a large wood. In its original signification the 
 word " forest " meant very much the same as it does now in the 
 mouth of a backwoodsman, and included the whole country 
 exterior to the towns or the lands cleared and brought under 
 civilization. Such has always been the character of the New 
 Forest, the greater part of which is moorland, bare of trees, 
 covered with heather, ling, and brake. 
 
 In old Saxon times civilization had advanced a few steps into 
 the Forest, but further progress was peremptorily stopped by the 
 stern edict of the conquering Norman. Nevertheless, it does not 
 appear that it was ever entirely without inhabitants. A few 
 hamlets, with here and there a solitary toft or farmhouse, and 
 many a little cot of mud and thatch on its outskirts, sheltered a 
 population which, from generation to generation, has continued to 
 dwell there under conditions quite peculiar to themselves. For 
 its human inhabitants were only just tolerated, and lived under 
 the most terrible penalties if they dared in the slightest way to 
 interfere with the wild animals for whose preservation the Forest 
 existed. / 
 
 Whatever may be the exact truth about the origin of the New 
 Forest, it is certain the Conqueror much enlarged it, absorbing 
 the lands of many Saxon owners; and, above all, greatly in- 
 creased the severity of the Forest Laws, executing them with 
 fierce rigour. 
 
 The cruelty and injustice of these laws is one of the main 
 
 133
 
 134 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 points in English history, and did more than anything else to turn 
 the Norman barons themselves into the champions of liberty. We 
 cannot, therefore, be surprised that in the New Forest itself they 
 excited the bitterest antagonism. Within the memory of some 
 living, almost every man in the Forest was a poacher. To kill the 
 king's deer was looked upon as no sin. In early times it had worn 
 the mask of patriotism, but though the halo had long departed, 
 public opinion was affected by the tradition. 
 
 Even in recent times quite a system of snaring the deer 
 existed. Sometimes hooks were baited with apples ; sometimes 
 the fawn's hoof was pared, or a thorn thrust into the foot, in order 
 to keep the doe in one spot until the poacher wanted to kill her. 
 Thus the foresters were never without " mutton," as they called 
 the venison. If one house had not a supply, another had some, 
 and community in lawlessness made them very neighbourly. 
 
 Stretching down almost to the seashore, and from its very nature 
 well adapted for the commission of every dark deed under the 
 sun, with a public opinion thus demoralized by ages of oppression, 
 the New Forest was just the place for smuggling to take root and 
 to flourish. At the close of the seventeenth century the narrowest 
 commercial policy prevailed in England, so much so, that during 
 the war with Louis XIV., trade with France was entirely pro- 
 hibited. The rapid decay of most of the ports on the Channel 
 soon ensued, and many of the inhabitants took to smuggling. 
 Even great capitalists embarked in it, and illicit trade became so 
 extensive that all the efforts of the Government during the whole 
 of the eighteenth century were insufficient to place any effectual 
 bar in its way, much less to put it down. On the Hampshire 
 coast the smugglers grew so bold in their impunity, that at times 
 as many as twenty or thirty waggons laden with kegs, and guarded 
 by two or three hundred horsemen, each horseman bearing some 
 two or three tubs, would come over Hengistbury Heath, making 
 their way in open day past Christ Church into the Forest. The 
 demoralization of the district became so thorough that at one time 
 a gang of desperadoes took possession of Ambrose Cave, on the 
 borders of the Forest, plundering the whole country, and murder- 
 ing upwards of thirty people, throwing their bodies down a 
 well.
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN THE NEW FOREST. 135 
 
 Boat-building went on in many a barn, and the foresters had 
 fierce fights with the coast-guard, defending their ill-gotten booty 
 with "swingels." Sometimes they had the worst of it, and then 
 in their flight they would pitch the goods into one of the numer- 
 ous ponds with which the Forest abounds, returning some sub- 
 sequent night to haul them up again. Thus arose the well-known 
 expression " moon-rakers." The spirits were frequently kept buried 
 beneath the fireplace or the stable, as the local proverb says, 
 " Keystone under the hearth, keystone under the horse's belly." 
 
 Happily the temptation to smuggling and poaching has ceased 
 to exist, in the latter case by the withdrawal of the deer in 1851. 
 It is still true that there are men in the Forest who partially 
 support themselves by stealing game, but the general tone of 
 public morality has so much improved that one who has lived 
 amongst them as a minister nearly thirty years, affirms that, if drink 
 were put aside, he does not believe that there is a more decent, 
 orderly, and honest community in the kingdom. 
 
 What a fact for the advocates of the abolition of the Game Laws 
 and of ale-houses ! Here is a population for eight centuries a law- 
 less race, made so because their rulers cared more for the pre- 
 servation of wild animals than they did for the moral elevation of 
 the human beings committed to their charge. The deer abolished, 
 the laws concerning them a dead letter, and the demoralized 
 people rapidly return to law-abiding ways. 
 
 Eight centuries of deer-stealing, one might have supposed, 
 would have so ingrained poaching into the nature of a forester, that 
 their removal would have only driven him to seek a new channel 
 for the gratification of his propensity. But such has not been the 
 case with the greater part of the population ; and it is fair to argue 
 that, just as the forester has learnt to be honest now the deer are 
 gone, so would he learn to be sober if that infinitely more demor- 
 alizing influence was removed, namely, the existence of ale-houses. 
 
 All agree that drinking is the great vice of the foresters. It 
 drags them down with remorseless grasp, and is without doubt the 
 chief evil which oppresses them. Such, however, is the force of 
 custom in this particular, that some of their employers help to make 
 them careless workmen and improvident parents by paying them 
 their weekly wages in the village tap-room.
 
 136 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 While, however, the abolition of the deer has greatly elevated 
 the tone of public morality in the Forest, it has without doubt in- 
 creased the hardship of life to the labouring portion of the com- 
 munity. For it is manifest life with plenty to eat is a very 
 different thing from life with an empty stomach. Formerly it was 
 meat every day, and as much as they liked ; now it must be some- 
 thing very different, seeing that the ordinary wages of a New 
 Forest labourer vary from ten to twelve shillings a week. A carter 
 gets a shilling more, and is allowed a house and garden rent-free. 
 
 Under the old state of things the harshness of the law was some- 
 what balanced by a number of privileges enjoyed by the foresters, 
 such as the right of pasturage, and of getting wood, turf, and fern 
 out of the Forest. It was found, however, that great abuses had 
 crept in, and in 1848 the rights of the foresters were defined. As 
 is usually the case in these legal arrangements, to those who had was 
 given, while to those who had not was taken away that which they 
 had. The result is that the poorer foresters have now no privileges 
 whatever, except that of picking up the fallen pieces from the trees 
 and pulling up the furze stumps, locally called " blacks," after a fire. 
 
 Those, however, who put in their claims, and could show any- 
 thing like a title, seem to have retained their right of pasturage, and 
 many are thus enabled to keep a horse or a cow. Some keep 
 asses, and some rear a few of the ponies, which are now as much 
 a feature of the Forest as the deer formerly were. Pigs also can 
 be turned out during masting-time, to eat the beech-nuts and 
 acorns. Wood, too, can be bought for fuel. 
 
 Moreover, the neighbourhood of the Forest presents so many 
 opportunities whereby a shrewd and industrious man may fairly 
 increase his income, that it does not appear that the poverty of the 
 district is anything like so severe as it is in many other parts of 
 agricultural England. 
 
 From autumn to spring is the time for felling the larger timber. 
 First the fir, then the beech, lastly the oak. In the spring the 
 young trees in the enclosures, locally called "flitterns," have to be 
 thinned. Then comes the hay harvest, and the turf, and fern 
 seasons, while all the year round there is work of some kind going 
 on making fresh enclosures, cutting brambles and brushwood, 
 hedging, ditching, and draining.
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN THE NEW FOREST. 137 
 
 The wood-cutters work in companies of six or eight, under the 
 eye of an overlooker, who has frequently been a workman himself, 
 and so practically understands the setting out of the work and its 
 management. These overlookers are answerable to the inspectors, 
 of whom there are eight ; they in their turn are subject to the 
 Deputy-Surveyor of the Forest, who resides at the Queen's House in 
 Lyndhurst. 
 
 The labour is very severe, and the men often have to walk some 
 miles to their work. Their average wages are twelve shillings a 
 week, and even if they work by the piece, they are not expected 
 to earn more. Cutting and peeling the oak is paid by the piece, 
 stacking up the wood by the fathom, faggotting by the hundred. 
 
 The work, however, only employs a limited number of men, and 
 these not entirely ; so that there are many other occupations pur- 
 sued by the foresters. 
 
 Some of course find enough to do tending their cattle, ponies, 
 and pigs. Others, who go by the name of "broom-squires," 
 makes brooms from the heath, and sell them in the neighbouring 
 towns ; some purchase wood, which they hawk for firing ; while 
 the very poorest use their right to collect the dead sticks in the 
 Forest, make them into bundles, and sell them as " Match " or 
 " Farthing faggots." 
 
 In these various ways a labourer in the New Forest may make, 
 upon an average, fourteen or fifteen shillings a week all the year 
 round. Such an estimate, however, implies intelligence ; but since 
 we know this is not a gift possessed by the majority of any com- 
 munity, we may judge that life here is not quite so easy as such a 
 sum might lead an economist to expect. 
 
 There is a class of small farmers in the Forest, such as have else- 
 where sunk into the condition of labourers, but whose position is 
 here maintained by the benefits accruing from Forest privileges. 
 Some farm as few as five acres, for which they pay a rental of 
 about 12 the year, and do all the work themselves, with the 
 assistance of their wives and children. As they are obliged to keep 
 a couple of horses, they use them when unemployed in doing job- 
 work. They keep one or two cows and a number of fowls, and 
 once a week the farmer's wife carries the produce of their little 
 farm to the nearest market-town for sale.
 
 138 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 One other occupation has been carried on in the Forest from 
 the earliest times, and still flourishes, at least in the neighbourhood 
 of Lyndhurst. Everybody has heard of Purkess, the charcoal- 
 burner, in whose cart the body of Rufus was conveyed to Win- 
 chester. Nearly eight centuries have rolled away since then, and 
 charcoal is still burnt on the same spot and in the same round 
 ovens ; but what is even more wonderful, as showing the unchang- 
 ing habits of the foresters, is that descendants of this same 
 Purkess, or of his family, are still to be found in the woods and in 
 the village of Minestead. 
 
 The cottages in the New Forest are beyond the average. There 
 are some miserable dwellings at Beaulieu Rails, belonging to 
 squatters, which are merely mud huts ; but elsewhere they are very 
 comfortable. At Beaulieu every cottage in the parish belongs to 
 Lord Henry Scott, and has a living-room, scullery and pantry, and 
 two or three bedrooms, with good water supply and thorough 
 drainage. Each cottage has a pigstye, and at least twenty perches 
 of garden. The rent charged is only a shilling a week ; the 
 average rent for a cottage throughout the Forest is 4 per annum. 
 
 The appearance of a New Forest cottage, with its warm cosy 
 thatch spreading in all directions, and its old fruit-trees trained 
 over its sides, standing in its own little orchard or garden, is 
 suggestive of comfort. Bees too are largely kept, and find an un- 
 told harvest of honey in the heather bells. Bee-keeping is an 
 ancient custom in the Forest ; it is recorded in " Doomsday " book 
 that the woods round Eling in those days yielded twelve pounds 
 of honey every year. Mead is still made and drunk, as in old 
 English times. Obviously a pursuit so long continued on one spot 
 will have a folk-lore of its own. Thus we are told in Mr Wise's 
 interesting work on the New Forest, that the drones are here 
 named the "big bees." The straw caps placed over the "bee- 
 pots" are called " bee-hackles," or " bee-hakes," while the entrance 
 to the hive goes by the name of the " tee-hole." Connected, too, 
 with this subject is the old superstition that if a death occurs in 
 the family the bees must be told of it, or else they will leave their 
 hives and never again return. 
 
 Nothing sweeter, nothing more charming, can be imagined than 
 the appearance of a New Forest village, seen as I saw Minestead,
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN THE NEW FOREST. 139 
 
 on a bright autumnal morning, the blue smoke curling gently 
 heavenwards from its brown thatched roofs, as they peeped out 
 here and there among the trees. Not a jarring note could I hear, 
 not even the clang of the blacksmith's hammer or the woodman's 
 axe ; all was silent and still, nought save the happy voice of child- 
 hood playing in the " boughy " dells, a sound which rather in- 
 creased than disturbed the deep repose of the scene. 
 
 And such has been its aspect for ages ; here generation after 
 generation has 
 
 " Lived and died, 
 Passing a dreamy life, diversified 
 By nought of novelty, save now and then 
 A horn resounding through the neighbouring glen." 
 
 But the New Forest affords sights infinitely varied, and changing 
 with every season of the year. It was early autumn when I was 
 there ; and the lovely effects of light and shade, the marvellous 
 forms of the gnarled oaks, the huge and rugged hollies, glowing 
 blood-red with their wealth of berries, the brake, all russet and golden, 
 and the sweeps of distant moorland crowned by forest after forest, 
 would make one wonder how it was the dwellers amongst such 
 beauteous scenes were not a race of artists, if we did not remember 
 that it is but rare to find a man who has the " open eye." 
 
 Passing through Minestead, I went into a cottage ; it was very 
 small, but neat, and its sanded floor gave it a fresh and bright 
 look. The biggest thing in the house was the great chimney. A 
 fire was burning on the hearth, lying on flat iron bars, with two 
 ancient fire-dogs in front ; a tall clock ornamented the room. 
 The old dame said they no longer burned turf, for her husband had 
 never put in his claim when he ought to have done, and so they had 
 lost their right ; but she did not think it was much of a loss, since 
 they had had to pay heavily for cutting and carting the turf; and 
 besides, it took up so much room. They got their living by 
 keeping cows. Coming out, I noted the beautiful form of the 
 pitchers in use in the Forest, and saw the same make again in 
 Dorset. 
 
 On I wandered, down lanes laden with blackberries, and on the 
 outskirts of the village sketched two of its cots. They were good 
 types of all the rest ; the thick thatch coming deep down over the
 
 140 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 upper windows gave them the appearance of two ill-matched eyes 
 peeping out from under heavy humorous eyebrows. 
 
 As I sat, I heard the voices of a number of little children all 
 repeating together their catechism. "To submit myself to my 
 pastors and masters, and to order myself lowly and reverently to 
 all my betters," were, singular to say, the words which caught 
 my ear. 
 
 Leaving Minestead, I crossed Squire Compton's Park, where 
 the cottages, models of beauty, comfort, and picturesqueness, 
 stand in their own little grounds in the midst of their lord's larger 
 ones. They were occupied by the labourers on the manor, and 
 were let to them according to size, from one to two shillings a 
 week. On the outskirts of the Forest, near Lyndhurst, I came on 
 a little hamlet, and seating myself on some logs of wood which 
 lay on the corner of the sward, watched its life. Before me on 
 one side of the road stood a row of blind-eyed, brown-bonnetted 
 cots ; then a wheelwright's shop, where the furnace was burning 
 and the hammer twanging ; next a smithy, where the horse stood 
 quietly while the farrier tapped his shoe ; last of all, an old cot 
 under the shade of a large tree, with a man on a ladder mending 
 the roof. Opposite was a little road-side inn, with wondrous 
 attractions both for the waggoner and his horse. In the inn- 
 yard were stacks of fern and hay, the former being used for litter, 
 as straw would be elsewhere. Along the edge of the grass, a 
 couple of black sows, followed by their numerous progeny, went 
 nosing about with a most unsatisfied grunt, while a company of 
 geese with nervous quack-quack strutted over the green. 
 
 Twang of hammer, quack of geese, and grunt of mother porker, 
 with sudden squeal of horror from every little pigling if horse or 
 carriage wheel too suddenly approached ; loud talk of men and 
 women rising fully with the wind, and you have the sights and 
 sounds which go to make up a picture of out-door life in these 
 secluded spots. 
 
 It is quite possible that in the less frequented parts of the 
 Forest one might meet with uncouthness and suspicion, but for 
 my part, I found them not only civil but friendly; and this 
 experience is corroborated by those who know them well, and 
 who protest against a character for unusual rudeness being ascribed
 
 PEASANT LIFE IN THE NEW FOREST. 14! 
 
 to them. One gentleman who has lived amongst them thirty 
 years assures me that he has never received a rude answer but 
 once, and that was from a stranger. 
 
 Much, no doubt, has been done by the schools with which the 
 Forest is well supplied. Probably, too, it is they who have driven 
 the old superstitions away, and scattered the mental twilight which 
 for so many ages pervaded these leafy solitudes. Nevertheless, 
 we are assured by Mr Wise, who has made the subject his study, 
 these superstitions still exist, but are rarely alluded to, for fear of 
 ridicule. 
 
 Nothing perhaps gives one a better idea of the habits of mind 
 of these "rude forefathers of the" Forest "hamlet," than such a 
 catalogue as he has collected of these weird fancies. Handed 
 down from generation to generation, they were so numerous as to 
 form a rule of life, meeting the unhappy peasant at every step, 
 haunting and terrifying his mind, and driving him into a baseless 
 fatalism, and at times to a sort of devil-worship. 
 
 But perhaps the most peculiar custom in the Forest is the great 
 squirrel-hunt, which takes place the day after Christmas. Twenty 
 or thirty men and boys form themselves into a company, and, 
 armed with leaded sticks, called "scales" or "squoyles," go out 
 into the Forest. Directly they see a squirrel, away go the sticks, 
 until the poor creature, bewildered and frightened, is fain to 
 descend, and then is soon killed. When they have caught a 
 sufficient number they put them into a great pie, which is eaten 
 at a feast they hold at some public-house. 
 
 No one is so sententious as the peasant. He likes his wit and 
 his wisdom done up in small bundles easy to carry and ready for 
 use. Thus the concentrated experience of every district compacts 
 itself into some proverbial expression. These two proverbs, " A 
 good bark year makes a good wheat year," " To rattle like a boar 
 in a holmebush," are evidently of Forest origin. " A poor dry 
 thing, let it go," smacks of the poacher. " He won't climb up 
 May Hill " tells the sad end of many a poor wood-cutter, daily 
 wet with autumnal mists and the malific miasma, which must ever 
 float about the undrained morasses of the Forest. A villainous 
 historical memory is for ever pilloried in the proverb, " As bad as 
 Jeffreys " ; while the reproof to greediness contained in another is
 
 142 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 interesting, as showing the sort of friends a lonely Forest child may 
 make. For it is said to have originated with a girl who was in the 
 habit of sharing her breakfast with a snake, and when he was 
 inclined to lick up more than his portion, she tapped him on the 
 head with her spoon, with this gentle reminder, " Eat your own 
 side, Speckleback." 
 
 Curious and full of meaning are some of their expressions. 
 Thus, " A slink of a thing " means anything, animate or inanimate, 
 which is miserable, weak, half-starved, or of poor quality. Others 
 are interesting because they are peculiar to the district. Ask a 
 peasant in the New Forest the distance to a certain place, and he 
 will reply, " I allow it to be so far." 
 
 Should the disafforestation now talked of take place, all these 
 peculiarities will rapidly die out, and with them will pass away in 
 England a condition of things not to be found anywhere else.
 
 VI. 
 
 SURREY COMMONS. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1872.) 
 
 VERY few, even of those who dwell in Surrey, have any adequate 
 idea of the number and extent of its commons. In Brayley's 
 "History of Surrey," published in 1841, it is stated that the 
 heaths, greens, commons, and such-like tracts of land within the 
 county, number no less than 280. But not to speak of the greens, 
 which are sometimes small, one could easily count on the inch-to- 
 a-mile ordnance map more than a hundred commons or heaths 
 having distinct names. 
 
 Indeed, the western part of the county is a series of commons. 
 It is still almost true that a man may ride from Ascot Heath, in 
 Berkshire, across Surrey, to Bexley Heath in Sussex, a distance of 
 thirty miles, and hardly leave common land the whole way. Mr 
 Marshall, the author of the "Rural Economy of the Southern 
 Counties," estimates this extensive waste as covering in his time 
 an area of 150 square miles, or 100,000 acres, the chief portion of 
 which was in Surrey. And even now, although some consider- 
 able patches here and there have been enclosed ; and along the 
 slips by the sides of the streams which intersect it has always 
 been found some well-cultivated land, it still remains generally 
 true that the western side of the county is mainly common or 
 commonable land. 
 
 This sort of land may, in fact, be said to be the characteristic 
 feature of Surrey, for there are very few parts in which extensive 
 commons may not be found. Captain Maxse, in his valuable 
 map, published in the Fortnightly Review for August 1870, sets 
 down the waste land in Surrey as amounting to 147,709 acres. As 
 
 143
 
 144 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 the area of the county is 478,792 acres, it follows that nearly one- 
 third of its soil is given up to waste. 
 
 A century or two ago, when English agriculture had hardly 
 emerged from the barbarous state in which it is found during 
 feudal times, persons having common rights no doubt considered 
 them a very valuable appendage to their farms. They were con- 
 tented with the diminutive sheep and cattle which they raised 
 upon them, little dreaming of the wonderful improvement which 
 superior diet and careful breeding would one day effect. But now, 
 when the great thing aimed at in pastoral science is the quality of 
 the herds and flocks, it must be less than ever worth a farmer's 
 while to turn his stock out to feed on the bare and boggy common. 
 Except during summer-time, the cattle and sheep which are 
 allowed to wander over these commons have a miserable and 
 degenerate look. The author of the "Rural Economy of the 
 Southern Counties" thus refers to the degeneracy which takes 
 place in animals pastured on Surrey commons : " Those which are 
 most conspicuous, on the barren flat heaths of Surrey, are small, 
 mean-looking cattle. Yet they must be of a quality intrinsically 
 good, or they could not exist on so bare a pasture. The breed of 
 sheep . . . are, in general, small and ill-formed animals. Their 
 mutton, however, is in high repute ; and they are probably well- 
 fleshed, having been starved into their present state." 
 
 Besides thus reducing the quality of his stock, the commoner is 
 in continual danger of losing his animals, unless they are under the 
 care of a herdsman or shepherd ; or at all events of being fined by 
 the wayward if they are found straying on the high road, or by the 
 common-driver, should he come across the lost beast and impound 
 it. Moreover, the practice of giving up the commons to geese is 
 destructive of its use for cattle, for the latter turn away with disgust 
 from land where geese have been. 
 
 Thus it appears that a common is of very little use to those who 
 farm on a large scale and for profit, and of no use at all to the 
 commoner who keeps a few beasts for his own service, since the 
 cost of a man to watch them would swallow up any possible 
 advantage. 
 
 It follows then that the only persons to whom the common is of 
 use are the poor cottagers, who dwell upon it, and who can turn
 
 SURREY COMMONS. 145 
 
 out a cow or a few sheep, some geese or ducks, and watch their 
 property all day long with their own eyes. 
 
 It is these people who appear to be, and, as a matter of fact are, 
 the real commoners now ; although, when the question comes to 
 be legally dealt with, and an enclosure takes place, they are as 
 completely put out of court as any stranger would be. 
 
 For few of them can produce, as one boasted to me she could, 
 " papers," proving their title to the holding. In the majority of 
 cases they were originally squatters with about as much " legal " 
 right to the land as the gipsy who settles for a night on the village 
 green. It was a notion held among the peasantry in olden times, 
 that he who could in one night erect a " Mushroom Hall " or a 
 " now-or-never," without hindrance from the officials of the manor, 
 had obtained a copyhold right to the land. Thus frequently it 
 happened that labourers, 'and sometimes travelling tinkers, or 
 basket-makers, would set up a few hurdles in a night and enclose 
 a piece of land. If no interference ensued, a wall soon took the 
 place of the hurdles, ere long it was roofed in, and thus arose 
 many of those wretched little hovels, in which it is grievous to 
 think any English family should be reared. A hedge or trench 
 was then thrown up a few yards from the cot ; year by year it was 
 removed a few feet further, fruit-trees were planted, and the ground 
 stocked with vegetables. Thus many a little plot of cultivated 
 land came into existence, the origin of which was as complete a 
 myth in a generation or two as if it had arisen in pre-historic ages. 
 
 The sort of building put up on these encroachments was about 
 equal to an ordinary tool-house in a gentleman's garden. One I 
 saw and sketched on Epsom common contained two apartments* 
 and I was informed by the man residing there that the old lady to 
 whom it belonged brought up twelve children in it. He himself 
 lived there with eight children. His case was an illustration of the 
 numerous accidents to which the agricultural labourer is liable. 
 Twelve years ago he had had his foot crushed in a wheel-rut, 
 rheumatism had seized the leg, and had at last taken possession of 
 his whole body, so that he had never been able to do a day's work 
 since. His wife set to work bravely, sometimes leaving home at 
 five in the morning to stand at the wash-tub all day. The baby, 
 five months old, had already become so resigned to its hard life,
 
 146 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 as to be willing to go to bed and to sleep when it grew dark with- 
 out a whimper. The father said he could not read or write, but 
 he sent all his children to school, for he "knew the miss of it," 
 and he told me with a glow of pride that the schoolmistress said 
 that the little bright, intelligent girl by his side was the best 
 scholar she had. 
 
 The house he said had " common rights," and possibly it had, 
 as it was evidently an old one, and might from its mere continu- 
 ance for sixty years have itself become a freehold, and turned the 
 privileges it had taken into legal rights. On this common, 
 through the kindness of the late lord of the manor, every poor 
 cottager has permission to turn out ten sheep ; while upon another 
 I found the lord doing all he could to encourage the people to 
 keep cows, but it did not appear that in either case many avail 
 themselves of the opportunity. There are no doubt some cases 
 where from exceptional causes the people make good use of their 
 common, but as a rule the majority are too poor to take advant- 
 age of their situation. A cow or a sheep implies food and 
 housing in winter, and they have neither the means to purchase 
 the one nor the convenience for the other. 
 
 Perhaps the most general use made of the commons is to cut 
 the fern, to make litter for the pigs, and to get firing for the house. 
 In some places coal has superseded the necessity for seeking much 
 of the latter, but in the more remote parts wood and turf is the 
 only fuel known. With fires made from them the cottagers still 
 smoke the bacon which they hang up their chimneys. In seasons 
 when fruit is scarce, the blackberries and other wild fruit found 
 on these commons afford quite a little addition to their year's 
 income. 
 
 Fowls are not much kept. They, too, cannot live solely on the 
 land, and are a constant source of ill-will where there are 
 neighbours. Geese and donkeys are characteristic features of 
 every Surrey common. Notwithstanding the objection to the 
 former, they are found everywhere. Not that they are always the 
 property of the cottagers; in some cases they only watch them for 
 others. Bees are much kept in some parts, and produce fragrant 
 honey, feeding as they do on the wild thyme and marjoram, and 
 the purple-blossomed heather.
 
 SURREY COMMONS, 147 
 
 Since the Inclosure Act has been passed, a clearer idea has 
 obtained of the legal aspect of the question, and accordingly on 
 some commons the freeholders have succeeded in entirely stop- 
 ping the cottagers from exercising any privileges whatever. On 
 other commons, where the cottagers are numerous, it would be 
 impossible to do so without force. I know of one common where 
 few of the persons who use it could probably prove their legal 
 right to do so. As the common-driver told me, he could rise up 
 any morning and drive off all the cattle and sheep on it, but he is 
 not likely to attempt it. This common adjoins another belong- 
 ing to a different manor, and yet the sheep of people living in one 
 wander at their own sweet will over the boggy slopes of the other. 
 
 In the middle of the latter common I found a poor woman, 
 living in a very comfortable cottage. Her husband was a labourer, 
 and they had brought up a numerous family on 23. a-day, but it 
 did not appear that they had ever thought of making any use of 
 the common. And yet she told me of one man who had about 
 200 sheep which he turned out every day. Of course he had no 
 right, or at least no right to pasture for one-tenth part of the 
 number. All he could have urged in support of his encroachment 
 would be contained in the old saying 
 
 " Let him take that has the power, 
 And let him keep that can." 
 
 The fact is, the majority of the lords of the manors do not care 
 to stop these encroachments. They know they can make no use 
 of the common themselves, and they have no wish to play the 
 part of the dog in the manger. 
 
 And this leads me to speak of those for whose advantage these 
 extensive wastes really exist. 
 
 There is a class of self-willed, determined, acquisitive sort of 
 men, to the production of which common life is especially 
 favourable, because it gives freedom from all restraint ; permits the 
 development of peculiarities without hindrance, and in the doubt 
 which hangs over the character and extent of its rights, gives a 
 stimulus to such natures to get all they can. These are the people 
 who make a living out of the commons. 
 
 I got into company with such a man on a walk I made to a.
 
 148 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 common in the north-west of the county. I had trudged for miles 
 along a solitary but almost straight road, hemmed in by lines of 
 pines and other trees on either side. Not a sound was to be heard, 
 except the distant shouting of a crow-boy. The only sign of life 
 were the enormous ants, which kept up a perpetual motion over 
 the sandbanks that enclosed the woods. At last I heard a cart 
 coming along, and, begging a lift, found myself seated beside a 
 little jolly, apple-cheeked man, who was carrying bread from a 
 neighbouring town to the very common to which I was bound. 
 He had commenced work as an agricultural labourer at eight years 
 of age, and had, since he had been a man, worked at 143. a week. 
 Now, however, he lived on the common, and sold beer and 
 grocery. As we passed along he remarked that, had he known 
 what he did now, he would have had a bit of land. 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 " Built on it," he replied, " asked no one." 
 
 " Couldn't the waste not yet enclosed be turned to account ? " 
 
 " Not for wheat, but," quoth he, " if I were the parish of C 
 
 I know what I'd do with it. I'd enclose it, and take all these 'ere 
 paupers, that are doing nothing, and make 'em plant trees upon 
 it, and then work in tending 'em." 
 
 He was evidently well-to-do, and spoke with a sort of con- 
 temptuous pity of those who inhabited the miserable cots we saw, 
 huddled together in little groups on various parts of the common. 
 
 He realized the expression " As merry as a sand-boy," giving me 
 with much humour the notes of the birds which frequent the 
 common. Thus he described the yellow hammer's as asking for 
 " a little bit of bread and no cheese," the chaffinch for " some 
 bread and no beer," while the wood-pigeon cried moodily, "you 
 old foo', you old foo'." 
 
 Upon another common I met with a still more singular 
 character. Over the door of a cottage, standing in a large garden 
 on the side of a common, was this sign-board 
 
 Worm Doctor. 
 
 Professor of Medical Botany. 
 
 Herb Medicines prepared for every complaint. 
 
 Advice Gratis."
 
 SURRfeY COMMONS* 149 
 
 The owner thereof was a shrewd, taciturn old man, of the 
 American rather than the English type. He had been a soldier, 
 and had stood guard over Napoleon in St Helena, and was there 
 till the captive emperor died, leaving the island on the day of the 
 funeral. He told me some interesting facts about Bonaparte, but 
 I was more anxious to talk to him about the art he practised. 
 
 How he came to be a herbalist was on this wise. When a boy 
 he had suffered so from chilblains in the winter that his hands 
 were of no use to him. One day he saw a herb in the hedge, and 
 wished to pluck it, but his father told him it would " pisin " him. 
 Genius, however, was not to be restrained, so he gathered it, 
 rubbed his blains with the berries, and to his joy they departed, 
 never to trouble him again. 
 
 Ever since that time he had been a believer in the wonderful 
 potency of herbs, and had scraped together such knowledge as a 
 shrewd man, who had lived in various countries, must have 
 many opportunities of acquiring. His garden was full of marvel- 
 lous herbs and ordinary kitchen stuff, growing together in happy 
 confusion. Pointing to one, he told me it was worth its weight in 
 gold. Speaking of what disease each herb was good for, he 
 assured me that he had cured one young man of the King's evil, 
 but it had taken him months to do it. 
 
 The house he lived in was the inheritance of his wife, and 
 whether by worm-doctoring, or by his native savoir faire, I 
 cannot say, but the old stocking was so full that he was about to 
 purchase the adjoining plot of ground for ^300. 
 
 Such characters, perhaps, serve to maintain a spirit of inde- 
 pendence and self-reliance among the class to which they belong. 
 " I'm a Hindependent," said one of them to me ; and it was true 
 in every sense. He was evidently a man of independent means 
 and independent views. He declared himself an independent in 
 religion, and he was equally so in manners. 
 
 But it does not follow that because a few hardy natures flourish 
 on these wastes, the majority can do so. We have seen that 
 where the strict letter of the law is understood and enforced, they 
 can be deprived of their imagined rights, and that when they are 
 permitted and even encouraged to make use of them, their 
 poverty prevents them doing so.
 
 156 WITH ENGLlSti PEASANTS. 
 
 To all, however, there surely remains one great advantage,* 
 the situation. To live on the edge of a breezy common, where 
 the children can scamper about all the livelong day, would seem to 
 many a parent, compelled to bring up his family in the close 
 street of a city, an advantage impossible to over-estimate. 
 Glorious indeed looks one of these commons on a bright sum- 
 mer's morning. How vast and wide the expanse seems to 
 stretch, skirted here and there by lines of deep green foliage. 
 On one side, elbowing into the common land, stand a group of 
 cottages, while afar off in the centre is a wind-mill slowly wind- 
 ing its sails. The heather is in full bloom, bluebells nod their 
 pretty heads, and the wild thyme scents the breeze. 
 
 Or it is a day more in accordance with the wilder scenery of a 
 West Surrey common. The wind blows gustily, and dark, angry 
 clouds rapidly alternate with patches of blue sky. The rugged, 
 broken waste is covered with black furze, while on its skirts, here 
 and there, are little homesteads, enclosed in thick quickset 
 hedges, and surrounded by stunted, wind-bitten trees. In the 
 foreground here comes the donkey and the geese, and perhaps 
 the roadside inn, with its signboard standing some distance off 
 on the green, flapping to and fro in the breeze. Imagine such a 
 picture, backed off with a distant horizon of purply grey pines, 
 and what scene can be more suggestive of health and enjoyment? 
 And doubtless, where a common is on the uplands, where the 
 oil is sandy and pebbly, where, in fact, Nature never intended 
 the land for a much better fate, the people who live upon it are 
 healthy. But when a common is wet clay, only needing to be 
 drained to become valuable land, there hideous malaria rises 
 every autumn and winter, and woe to the unhappy people who 
 dwell upon its borders. 
 
 One evening this summer I was passing over a common not 
 twenty miles from London. It was a wild spot, broken up by 
 pools of water, and skirted by tall trees, amongst which the little 
 cots hid themselves. The great red sun was sinking over the 
 woods which crowned the western height. As every sight was 
 beautiful, so every sound was pleasant. The tinkle of the sheep- 
 bell, the soft " baa " of the lambs, the merry voices of the boys 
 playing at cricket in one corner, the sudden blow of the ball, all 
 was suggestive of rural poetry.
 
 SURREY COMMONS. 151 
 
 But look a little longer. Try to cross the common, and dry as 
 the weather is, you will find your feet continually sinking into the 
 mud. Look at those pools ; they are black and stagnant, and 
 emit a smell like the vilest sewer. Pass along the skirts of the 
 common where these miserable little cottages stand, and you will 
 find a Styx-like ditch, widening in one part into a filthy pond. 
 Around this pond the children are playing, and upon one of the 
 planks which cross this rivulet of death sits a mother and babe> 
 while, stretched along another, sprawling flat upon his stomach, 
 lies a father. 
 
 I asked a man if the place was healthy. 
 
 "Oh, dear no," he replied; "we've had the scarlet-fever bad 
 enough, eight or nine died. My son lost his only child, a sweet, 
 engaging little thing ; it's near broke the mother's heart." 
 
 Well might the poor fellow ask me for a bit of " bacca," the 
 only disinfectant the unhappy people knew of. He said they had 
 no drainage, but spoke of the cottage we were looking at as hav- 
 ing a great pool behind, where they threw their chamber stuff, 
 and all their slops, and only emptied it as the garden wanted 
 manure. 
 
 But while evils of this kind are more or less local, there are 
 moral disadvantages incident to the very nature of all common 
 life. 
 
 Any one passing through the more secluded parts of Surrey 
 must have been struck with the extraordinary -dearth of inhabit- 
 ants. In some parts you may walk for miles, and scarcely meet a 
 soul. It is quite clear that "the great Wen," as Cobbett de- 
 lighted to call the Metropolis, has depleted the whole county, and 
 that its rural population is getting more and more sparse. In the 
 decade 1851-1861, while the total population of Surrey in- 
 creased rather more than 20 per cent., the number engaged in 
 agricultural pursuits did not increase 3 per cent. The total area 
 of land in Surrey, exclusive- of that devoted to cities, towns, 
 villages, water, roads, or railways, is 420,900 acres ; and to culti- 
 vate this there were, in 1861, 19,086 persons of both sexes engaged 
 in agricultural pursuits, giving one person to 22 acres. It is 
 manifest, therefore, that their life must be one of increasing 
 isolation, and this must be especially the case on the commons.
 
 152 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Nothing brutalises human beings so rapidly as withdrawal 
 from the influences of society ; and when the morality of a 
 common is said to be comparatively good, as I am told in some 
 cases it is, I think it will be found that the cottagers to whom the 
 statement refers live in small villages, not in isolated dwellings. 
 When this is the case, a standard of morality is maintained among 
 them, according to the ideal of those who, from position or 
 character, are their guides and leaders. 
 
 But, as a rule, life on a common is an isolated one. And when 
 this is the case, to quote the testimony of a clergyman living in 
 the neighbourhood of the extensive commons in the south-west of 
 Surrey, " people who live at a distance from the villages always 
 fall away in morality." A minister who has laboured for the last 
 ten years on very extensive commons in the centre of Surrey 
 speaks of their morality and religion as being in the lowest state. 
 The young people of both sexes are very corrupt little virtue, in 
 fact, is to be found anywhere ; much drunkenness prevails, and a 
 disposition to live without regular employment. The corruption 
 of the young is mainly due to want of regular employment and 
 gross ignorance. They often do not go to school at all, but 
 spend their time wandering over the common gathering wood, or 
 wild fruit. 
 
 In such places they are, practically, of the same religion as 
 their forefathers, "the Heathens." The dark superstitions which 
 once held sway over every part of rural England still haunt these 
 wild wastes. The people yet believe in witchcraft, and think that 
 the person bewitched has the right and the power to kill the witch 
 by certain enchantments. My friend assures me that such 
 opinions not only prevail, but that he has known them acted upon 
 in several cottages. 
 
 " To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not 
 shall be taken away that which he seemeth to have." This is the 
 rule of the present system of enclosure. But it is so bad that, until 
 it is altered, it would be better to leave things as they are. It is 
 hardly fair that a few persons who have allowed their so-called 
 rights to lie dormant for years, perhaps centuries, should now, 
 when the country has awoke to the value of its waste lands, come 
 forward and quietly divide them among themselves. The rich are
 
 SURREY COMMONS. 153 
 
 made richer in proportion to their riches, while the poor are made 
 poorer in proportion to their poverty. Indeed, in some places it 
 has been observed that enclosure has been succeeded by a de- 
 crease rather than an increase of the population. The Inclosure 
 Commissioners are imbued so strongly with the legal notion of 
 the freeholders being the only persons interested in these manorial 
 wastes that they forget the public have a larger right and a deeper 
 interest in the matter. They proposed to enclose a Surrey com- 
 mon lately extending over 380 acres, only reserving two acres for 
 the public, and nothing for the poor ! 
 
 If vested interest and the force of custom is to rule in this 
 question, then I say none can show a better title to the'possession of 
 these commons than the poor cottagers. But vested interest or a 
 dead system cannot be allowed to rule in a question of such vital 
 importance to the vast majority of English families. If they are, 
 then we may anticipate for the English race a degeneracy similar 
 to that observed in the cattle and sheep which pasture on these 
 commons, and future historians will describe our unhappy posterity 
 in similar language to that which I have quoted from the author 
 of "The Rural Economy of Surrey." "These people," he will 
 say, " are probably of the ancient stock, but they are in general 
 small and ill-formed, having been starved into their present state."
 
 VII. 
 
 THE KENTISH WAGGONER. 
 
 ( Golden Hours, 1872.) 
 
 EACH county or district seems to afford the student of agricultural 
 life in England a different problem. Here in Kent we have the 
 labourer and his family all earning high wages ; from one end of 
 the year to the other there is plenty of work for husband, wife, 
 and children ; they are rich as farm labourers go ; and yet, when 
 the time of trial comes, they are no better off than their brethren 
 in less favoured parts of the land. When they are sick they go to 
 the parish, when they are old they come to the workhouse. 
 
 The solution of the problem is not far to seek. The Kentish 
 agricultural labourer shares a delusion common enough in every 
 class of society, that there is some wonderful talismanic power in 
 the mere possession of the coin of the realm, which will bring a 
 man all he really needs. This is an article in the world's creed, 
 believed in everywhere, and by all classes of men, but nowhere 
 with such unhesitating faith as in the country. Nay, to be wise 
 in this particular, practical men allow that the young should learn 
 betimes such arts as may enable them to become more clever at 
 money-making ; but to waste time in learning how to spend their 
 money when they have got it is mere folly, since they are con- 
 vinced that every one knows that art only too well already. 
 
 " Enlighten," said a Kentish farmer, " a labourer reasonably, but 
 don't let it be only book-learning. A boy that is going to be a 
 clerk is learning how to live when he is at school, but one that is 
 to be a farm labourer is learning what is a luxury to him. It all 
 depends upon a boy's growth when he is able to do work. A little 
 chap of eight, or even less, may be useful." 
 
 154
 
 THE KENTISH WAGGONER. 155 
 
 In this the labourer and his master will be found of one mind. He 
 is not unwilling to send his children to school if you can only show 
 him that they can earn more money by it. But if his boy can get 
 a day's work rook-scaring, the few pence he thus earns far out- 
 weighs all the problematical advantages of a day's schooling. 
 
 It is this contempt for learning, unless it can be rapidly turned 
 into money, which causes the agricultural labourer in Kent, not- 
 withstanding good wages and plenty of work, to remain at the 
 same dead level as his less prosperous countrymen. The people 
 here, as elsewhere, are destroyed for lack of knowledge. 
 
 If we trace the life of one of these Kentish labourers, we shall 
 see how thoroughly his material interests and those of his family 
 are sacrificed to this faith in that apparently wise saw, Ne sutor 
 idtra crepidam. Let us take as a type one of the better class, a 
 waggoner, a man, we will suppose, with every advantage in 
 character, health, and regular employment. 
 
 Commencing life by a moderately regular attendance at the 
 national school up to seven or eight, he is, as we have seen, soon 
 made useful as a little scarecrow. After he has been employed in 
 odd jobs off and on for a year or two, he is entrusted with an 
 old gun or a pistol, with which he amuses himself popping at the 
 birds. From November till May, Sundays included, he follows 
 this monotonous employment, unless perchance his father should 
 volunteer to do duty for him that he may go to the Sunday School. 
 What a vacuity of mind must result from standing about day after 
 day in the same fields, surrounded by the same objects objects, 
 too, concerning which the poor lad knows nothing save their out- 
 ward shapes ; and such wearisome, protracted labour undergone 
 at this tender age stunts the body as well as the mind. 
 
 If, however, he is a waggoner's son, he will soon get more con- 
 genial employment as a " mate." For a waggoner's son is carter- 
 bred, and as used to horses as to his brothers and sisters. The 
 atmosphere of his home is redolent of the stable. The horses are 
 the one object of thought, of talk, and of interest to father, mother, 
 and children. Speak to a waggoner about his team, and you have 
 won his heart ; ask the poor worn-out mother about her husband's 
 horses, and her face will brighten up, and in the midst of her cares 
 and hard work, she will find time to dilate on the merits of Captain,
 
 156 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 of Violet, or of Jerry. Visit them when the day's work is over, and 
 the whole family are gathered round the hearth, and the never- 
 failing topic of conversation will be the horses. 
 
 As a babe, the first words he lisps are the names of the horses. 
 Does he cry he is taken to see "Prince," or lifted up to pat 
 " Diamond." He no sooner learns to walk than he finds his way 
 to the stable, toddling with the rest of the family after " dadda," as 
 he spends hour after hour cleaning and baiting his charge. Thus, 
 from earliest infancy, he is receiving a technical education ; he 
 hears of nothing, thinks of nothing, talks of nothing but of that 
 one business by which he is to live ; the stable becomes playroom 
 and schoolroom combined ; all his ideas centre in it and gather 
 round it ; and when in due course he becomes a mate, he displays 
 at once an inborn and inbred faculty for managing horses. 
 
 And the life thus commenced continues with unvarying 
 regularity to the end of the chapter. Once a mate, he has to be 
 up at five o'clock in the morning ; his work is not over until ten at 
 night, and during every hour of the day, except when he himself is 
 eating, he is with the horses, either in the field or the stable. 
 
 Of course such hours are outrageously long, and would indeed 
 be insupportable if it were not for the society of the horses. 
 Efforts have been made to shorten a mate's daily work, and in one 
 place it is reported that by an arrangement of staying longer one 
 day, and coming later the next, the hours are reduced to 
 twelve ! 
 
 Moreover, under this system, all about the boy are as ignorant 
 as himself. Whether he lodges with his father, or the waggoner 
 with whom he works, it is about the same as far as his stock of 
 ideas is concerned. From all parts of Kent, even from employers 
 themselves, comes the same tale. One employer says, " I have not 
 a well-educated labourer, male or female. They may some of 
 them be able to read after a fashion, but there is not one of them 
 that writes well enough for a stranger, unused to them, to read off 
 (what they have written) at first sight." 
 
 A lady who takes much interest in " waggoners' mates," says, 
 " Many, if not all, have been to school, but have forgotten nearly 
 all they learnt. They have generally lost all desire to improve 
 themselves. I know seven men in one hamlet who cannot read."
 
 THE KENTISH WAGGONER. 15? 
 
 A clergyman at East Church speaks of "the heavy, overworked, 
 weary young men, who scarcely know their alphabet." 
 
 The only possible means of preserving the little knowledge they 
 have is to be found in the evening school. But such a school 
 rarely prospers in a purely agricultural district, simply because 
 those for whom it is intended are too tired to come to it. After a 
 long and perhaps wet day's work, it is not in human nature to 
 quit the warm fireside and the family supper to goad the poor be- 
 dulled intellect into tiresome effort. Warmth, indeed, may some- 
 times attract a poor lad, who cannot get much of it at home. 
 " Let me sit by the fire, and I'll do a jolly good sum, and no mis- 
 take about it," said one such boy to a friend of mine, a teacher in 
 a Kent night-school. 
 
 While these schools can never supply the place of regular and 
 daily instruction, they may and do keep alive the desire for better 
 things. My friend quoted above sometimes enlivens his lessons 
 by reading a little tale, and finds those most acceptable which 
 describe a higher state of society than that to which the boys are 
 accustomed. 
 
 " I wish I was a gentleman," said one boy. 
 
 "What would you do?" he was asked. 
 
 " Sit in front of the fire and eat bull's-eyes," he replied. 
 
 There is another occupation which stands much in the way of 
 the young waggoner becoming a very zealous attendant at the 
 evening school. He may forget his letters, but he never forgets 
 the art of love-making. He finds that he can soon earn what to 
 him seems a good bit of money, and his thoughts naturally turn to 
 settling in life as his fathers did before him. I cannot say whether 
 he goes about it in the same business-like way that they did. 
 
 " Ich will put on my best white sloppe, 
 And Ich will wear my yellow hose ; 
 And on my head a good grey hat, 
 And in't Ich sticke a lovely rose. 
 
 Wherefore cease off, make no delay, 
 
 And if you'll love me, love me now, 
 Or els Ich zeeke zome oder where, 
 
 For Ich cannot come every day to woo." 
 
 With a certain prospect of getting a living] as long as health
 
 158 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 lasts and as he never has ache nor pain, he is scarcely likely to 
 trouble himself much with this consideration he does not wait 
 to save enough to buy furniture or even clothes, but as soon as he 
 has man's wages he takes his lass to church, and launches on the 
 troubled sea of matrimony. 
 
 Two rooms in a small row content him, and there is always 
 some benevolent broker willing to supply the necessary furniture. 
 Then as to clothes, his credit is good here also. Every one knows 
 him, and that he is not likely to run away just as he has taken to 
 himself a wife. Our young waggoner is so ignorant that he 
 cannot be expected to look beyond his nose in this or in any 
 other particular unconnected with the management of horses. 
 His duties to a possible posterity, or to society through them, are 
 considerations quite beyond his " tether ; " all he knows is that 
 he will be more comfortable. And who can blame him if the 
 description given a few years ago of the domestic comfort he 
 enjoyed when lodged on a farm still be true ? An essay by the Rev. 
 E. O. Hammond, of Sundridge, addressed to the Sittingbourne 
 Agricultural Association in 1856, thus describes his lodging : 
 
 " He returns home after a long day spent in the service of his 
 master, generally fatigued, often wet since the morning. Here and 
 there, but not generally, there is a fire accessible, where he may 
 restore his frozen circulation, and do something at least towards 
 drying his wearing apparel. When a little comfortable, he may 
 take a candle and amuse himself according to his taste. Ordinarily 
 there is no fire and no light for the farm servant when the toil of 
 the day is done. If there is a fire for his use he must light it him- 
 self, or if candles, he must either buy them or economise his stable 
 allowance of five for two nights. Not unfrequently he will 
 sacrifice his supper to go straight to bed, on which, having first 
 deposited his boots to prevent them from freezing, he ensconces 
 his person between a pair of sheets that defy all the colours of the 
 rainbow for a hue that will match them. The stench of the 
 chamber is intolerable in many cases, and no wonder, under the 
 occupation of stable and labour-stained men and clothes, the men 
 varying in number from three or four to nine or ten in a room 
 on very large farms, and sleeping in most cases two in a bed." 
 
 A Kent woman is no more accustomed to idleness than her
 
 THE KENTISH WAGGONER. 159 
 
 husband ; so, yoked together, they enter the mill, and commence 
 to tread the weary round, hoping for nothing better than per- 
 mission to tread it to the end of their days. The good man has 
 now to be up every day in the year between three and four 
 o'clock in the morning. At six he comes home to breakfast, and 
 not only must this be ready, but by eight all the work in the house 
 done, for then the wife too must turn out and do her share of 
 outdoor labour. 
 
 For in Kent, with its hop-gardens, its cherry-orchards, and its 
 market-grounds, there is always plenty of work for a waggoner's 
 wife all the year round. In the early part of the year there is 
 pole-shaving, pole-butting, and dibbling beans. Then comes 
 couching or weeding, thistle-spudding, hop-tying, and thinning the 
 mangolds. With summer-time comes fruit-packing. Then Kent 
 is seen in its glory. All the cherry-orchards are full of active, 
 merry groups, some on ladders, some laden with baskets, all busy 
 and hard at work. Then comes harvesting, followed quickly by 
 the great work of the year, when every one mother, sisters, 
 brothers, and even the baby all go out from morning till night 
 into the hop-gardens, and pick as much as their fingers can 
 At last the circling seasons end with duller work picking up 
 potatoes, couching amongst the sown wheat, and pulling up 
 mangolds and turnips. 
 
 Thus a Kentish wife is pretty well occupied, and she only stays 
 away from the field when absolutely obliged to do so. For it is 
 an understood thing that she and her children are to give their 
 labour to the farmer whenever he needs it. Cottages, when 
 they are on the master's land, are sometimes let subject to this 
 arrangement, so that any objection on the part of the woman 
 would lead to the eviction of the family. But they do not 
 object. On the contrary, they seem rather to like it. 
 
 "I think," says one, "it is quite right. Women ought to go 
 and do women's work, and help their husbands, and not stay 
 at home. I have taken my daughters out at six years old, hop- 
 tying. When I was eight years old I tied three acres myself. 
 They would give me a dinner every day that I should keep up. 
 I was very quick at it. Now I can't do so much, but I and 
 my daughters tied five acres this year. I go to ladder-tying too."
 
 l6o WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Only she did not think she was fairly paid. " I go and do more 
 than a man would, and yet they give a shilling instead of half a 
 crown." 
 
 Thus the money flows in from all sources, the family purse gets 
 replenished, and should the father continue in good employ and 
 have no serious illness they may be said to do moderately well. 
 
 The ordinary wages of a Kentish waggoner are about fourteen 
 shillings a week. A correspondent of the Field newspaper, an 
 agriculturist in East Kent, in a letter which appeared in that 
 paper this year, 1 says that in his locality, the Isle of Thanet, some 
 farmers pay fifteen shillings a week, that he himself pays three- 
 pence an hour, and gives the average earnings of his men last 
 year : 
 
 * d. 
 46 weeks at 155., or 36. an hour . . . . 34 10 o 
 
 I week, hay-cutting 140 
 
 5 weeks' harvesting 900 
 
 44 "4 o 
 
 which is nearly seventeen shillings a week all the year round 
 for the father's earnings alone. In addition to this, the wife will 
 earn from two shillings to half a crown a week, while the bigger 
 children will be getting from three to seven shillings a week. 
 
 Food in an average family of half a dozen children will probably 
 come to sixteen or seventeen shillings ; for, working as they all do, 
 from morning till night, it is necessary that they should live well. 
 And this in fact is the great and beneficial result of Kentish agri- 
 cultural economy. Supper is the social meal of the day ; and the 
 honest waggoner, when he sits down after all the toils of the day, 
 comes to it with an appetite as capacious as the omnivorous giant 
 Jack of bean-stalk fame had the honour of dining with. He will 
 commence with a large beefsteak pudding, and finish up with a 
 basin full of bread and milk or several cups of tea. As to the 
 boys who work, each one rivals his father, the bigger one perhaps 
 outdoing him altogether. As a result the men are stalwart, the 
 women rubicund. There is a harmony in the appearance of both 
 land and people. It is a well-nurtured land, and the people are a 
 
 well-nurtured people. 
 
 1 1872.
 
 THE KENTISH WAGGONER. l6l 
 
 But here it ends. Ignorance, notwithstanding high wages and 
 good living, robs them of all the higher benefits they might 
 obtain from their prosperous circumstances, and renders them as 
 truly dependent as are the rest of their class. 
 
 The great drawback of their lives is their unceasing, protracted 
 labour, the compulsion put on their wives to turn out into the 
 fields, and the temptation offered to make use at the very earliest 
 age of the money-making power in the children. 
 
 Had they knowledge, they would find out that a little combina- 
 tion among themselves would soon shorten the hours of labour 
 without lessening the wages. So too they would see clearly that 
 a wife's services at home are worth vastly more than she can 
 earn abroad, especially if there is a young family. Had they 
 knowledge, they would never dream of putting forth such an 
 excuse for their negligence as this : I can't read, and yet I can 
 earn my living ; my father couldn't read, and yet he could earn 
 his living : what good will book-learning do my son ? Why, as 
 Farmer Jones says, " It will spoil him and make a fool of him." 
 
 This ignorance not only works to oppress the poor waggoner, 
 but also to oppress the ratepayers. If a man was well educated, 
 if he had read a few books that had nothing whatever to do 
 with his daily toil, he would feel it a disgrace and a degrada- 
 tion to ask for charity when he had the whole world open before 
 him in which to earn a living. Such a man must utterly break 
 down under the combined influence of sickness and poverty 
 before he could ever descend to apply for parish relief. 
 
 But the Kentish waggoner has been educated under the " mind 
 your own business " system, and knows of only two alternatives, 
 to work in his native fields, or live at the expense of his native 
 parish. The agricultural labourer's position is an anomaly in the 
 nineteenth century ; it is a relic of feudalism minus all its advan- 
 tages. He has been taught that his own position is that of the 
 serf who tills the land ; to want more education will only unfit him 
 for his post. " I am content," he argues ; " I will do my duty to the 
 land, but when I can't work then the land must do its duty to me." 
 
 He has not risen out of serfdom, and the doctrine that he is to 
 learn nothing but what will fit him to follow the plough will keep 
 him there for ever. If so, we may expect an ever-increasing 
 
 M
 
 1 62 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 pauperism. Even now parish relief is his anchor of refuge. The 
 club is convenient in its way, but would never maintain itself if it 
 were not held at the " Red Lion," and brought weekly visions of 
 foaming pewter pots, and long clay pipes, and roaring songs, and 
 loud thumping of delighted hob-nails. But he knows it' has an 
 ugly habit off casting off the older members, so he does not trust 
 it, but drifts on to his last refuge, the Union workhouse. 
 
 Here he comes at last, his fine physique shattered by rheuma- 
 tism, his hair silvered, his cheek still ruddy as a russet apple ; but 
 power of work nearly gone, he is glad to break a few stones on the 
 road, or, when feebler still, to do odd jobs in the Union grounds, 
 and to crawl about in the warm summer sun. 
 
 But life has become very sad 
 
 " Bob, from his wife and children parted, 
 Droops in his prison, broken-hearted." 
 
 His "old woman," sent to dwell in a different part of the 
 house, soon breaks up ; while the Union is so far from his home, 
 that his children come rarely to see him, and gradually for- 
 get their aged father, until one day they receive a summons 
 to remove the body. Then they go, and with some lamentations 
 and some slight twinges of conscience, bring the old waggoner 
 back again to the spot which gave him birth, and bury him 
 
 "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
 
 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap ; 
 Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 
 
 The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
 
 VIII. 
 SUSSEX SHEPHERDS. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1871.) 
 
 IT was June, " rosy June," as old Waller calls her, when I set out 
 on a ramble to Chanctonbery Ring. No one who has been in 
 West Sussex can have failed to have noticed its dark crown of 
 wood rising above the Downs, but it is just a little out of the 
 beaten track, and few pedestrians ever make their way to it. 
 
 Starting from the little station at Goring, I found I had to go 
 through the woods. At times the road became quite wild and 
 picturesque ; the yellow iris was in bloom, " lighting up with its 
 golden beam " the wayside marsh. Emerging from the woods, I 
 turned into a path leading to Findon, a little village where I pur- 
 posed resting. 
 
 Then my road skirted a chalk-pit and passed a mill, where I sought 
 the miller, who was at his tea, but who readily give me all the in- 
 formation I required. What a curious race some of these South 
 Down millers have been ! Every visitor at Worthing has seen the 
 miller's tomb at Highdown Hill. This worthy not only had his 
 grave prepared long before his death, but kept his coffin ready, 
 wheeling it on castors every night underneath his bed. 
 
 The South Down villages are amongst the quietest spots in 
 the world. You see a cluster of lowly habitations built of flints 
 or boulders, with little gardens stocked with roses and wallflowers. 
 The cottages are mostly thatched, and look wonderfully cosy. 
 Then amongst the tall elms or ashes and they are tall in these 
 sheltered spots, mighty giants stands the old farmhouse, an 
 ancient, high-roofed, gable-pointed building, surrounded by barns 
 and stables and haystacks, with circular pigeon-house, all suggestive 
 
 163
 
 164 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 of a quiet patriarchal life. These South Down farmers have seen 
 little change. Revolution after revolution has passed. The 
 London of one decennary would hardly know the London of the 
 next, and yet in these unchanging parts are to be found men till- 
 ing the same land over which their forefathers drove the plough 
 in the days of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 What curious people live in these out-of-the-way places ! 
 Wandering through a village a little nearer the coast, but of the 
 same type, I came on a farm in ruins. The last time I walked to 
 this place it was at this spot I had talked with an old man, an 
 ancient worthy who had fallen in every way into the sere and 
 yellow leaf. The tide of fortune had run out with the tide of 
 life. He had evidently gone, for his house had fallen into sad 
 decay. The broken windows, the wilderness garden, the barns 
 unthatched, the rafters naked, seemed to suggest some melancholy 
 tale. Perhaps his heirs had quarrelled, perhaps he was the last 
 of his race, and there was no one to care for his honour or his 
 house. 
 
 Stepping across a stone stile, I lifted the latch, and found 
 myself in a kitchen with a large old-fashioned hearth, and I looked 
 up at the sky through its chimney, blackened with smoking many 
 a side of fat bacon. In one corner were some rickety stairs, up 
 which I crept into a small, low-pitched bedroom. I opened the 
 back door, and looked upon what was once a little fruit-garden. 
 Through another I found the dining-room, and then up the front 
 staircase into bedrooms, sad and dreary and tenantless. 
 
 I descended, and opened an outer door, expecting the same 
 desolation, when I found a room, bright and cheerful, paved with 
 red bricks, clean as the cleanest floor. All around seemed tidy 
 and furnished. An old man, with a face like a russet apple, sitting 
 cosily by a little fire, did not seem at all surprised at the intrusion ; 
 so begging his pardon, I turned it off by asking him to whom the 
 ruined house belonged. Laughing at the idea of its being in 
 Chancery, he told me that it was the property of an old lady who 
 had too much money, and therefore chose to allow her houses to 
 go to rack and ruin rather than let them. 
 
 The cheery little man hobbled off his chair, and came and 
 stood at the door. Amongst other things he told me that an
 
 SUSSEX SHEPHERDS. 165 
 
 able-bodied man in these parts could earn thirteen shillings a 
 week, a carter or a ploughman fourteen shillings, with his rent free 
 into the bargain. On this he thought they might do well if they 
 did not visit the public-house. Said he, "My wife and me, we 
 scratches together about eight shilling a week, and we do pretty 
 comfortable." Then he made a little money by selling manure, 
 which he collected off the roads, and for which he got three 
 shillings a cart-load. But he had children doing well, and perhaps 
 they helped him a bit. One son had been on a man-of-war five- 
 and-twenty years, and now had a pension of twelve shillings a 
 week ; another daughter was married to a pensioner who kept a 
 beer-shop, and was doing a good trade ; so that, if it was not for 
 the " rheumatics," the old man would have been quite happy, and 
 contented with his lot. 
 
 I asked him about the church, which was very picturesque, and 
 evidently well cared for in every detail. He said, " Our parson 
 do love the church, he do." Thinking this suggested ritualism, I 
 asked him if the rector was a High Churchman. " Oh, dear no," 
 he replied, " he be very low ; you can't hear him at all unless may- 
 be you sit close by." 
 
 Pass through one of these villages on a summer's afternoon, and 
 " all around is silence ; " but return at evening, and at each 
 cottage door groups are standing, while on every road one meets 
 the labourer homeward bound. But Saturday is the evening to 
 see the village wide awake ; then all the world is out. It was on 
 one such evening I was returning from Angmering across the 
 meadows, when I passed an old man, blear-eyed, and clad in blue 
 smock. He was seventy-five years of age. Early in life he wished 
 to emigrate ; but his father would not let him, lest people should 
 say that he had wanted to get rid of him. He worked as a 
 hedger in winter, at half-a-crown a day ; and in summer by the 
 piece, at odd jobs, making about the same. Sometimes he made 
 only four days' work. He did not think much of benefit clubs, 
 because the parish took advantage of them to lessen a man's 
 allowance when he was sick. He greatly objected to steam 
 ploughs and mowing machines, because they lessened men's 
 work. We passed a field where the clover was all tossed about 
 by the rain, and the old man said, " Perhaps it's my poor foolish
 
 1 66 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 way, but I think the Supreme Being has done this for the benefit 
 of poor men." Railways it was a mistake to suppose took up 
 much of the country; it was gentlemen's estates, where they 
 enclosed the best land, and planted it with shrubs, that he dis- 
 liked to see. "Vanity pleasures," the old labourer called 
 them. 
 
 Of Saturday night in a village inn be warned, ye pedestrians, 
 especially if it be haymaking or harvesting. It was not Saturday 
 night when I tried to sleep at the inn at Findon ; but it was the 
 haymaking season. Hour after hour passed away in songs, always 
 followed by the delighted thumping of hob-nailed boots. As the 
 small hours drew nigh the riot seemed to grow worse. Forms 
 were knocked down, and, as batch after batch turned out with 
 yells and fearful whoops, I thought of Comus and his rout : 
 
 " Midnight song and revelry, 
 Tipsy dance and jollity." 
 
 Next morning, as I ascended the hill-side, I met a group of 
 children. One, an honest-faced little maid, with a good-natured 
 snub, had been picking totter-grass with her chubby-faced baby 
 brother. I spoke to them, and admired their little sheaf of grass. 
 Sally put out her hand in an uncouth way. "Oo," she said; but 
 it was courteously meant, and I never felt more pleasure in 
 receiving any present than I did this. 
 
 The night before I met a gentle little fellow in the village, with 
 blue eyes, high narrow forehead, and delicate complexion just 
 such a boy as John Clare might have been. His sleeves were 
 tucked up to his elbows, and he was wheeling a barrow, but 
 courtesy was inbred, and every time he spoke he touched his hat. 
 He worked during summer, and went to school in winter ; rose at 
 six, and worked away from seven or eight until nine or ten in the 
 evening let us hope with plenty of time to play about a bit, as 
 well as to eat his meals. 
 
 Higher and higher I mount over the soft green sward, until I 
 reach my goal Chanctonbery Ring. As I wandered round its 
 base a panorama such as one sees nowhere else lay spread out 
 before my eyes. Here, like a living map, the verdant weald, inter- 
 sected by a thousand hedgerows, stretched for many a mile,
 
 SUSSEX SHEPHERDS. 167 
 
 dotted with leafy parks and dark umbrageous woodlands : while 
 from among the trees peep the towns and villages, each nestling 
 around its ancient church, the whole scene closed in by the 
 forest ridge which rises far off, crowned with dark fir copses. 
 
 In the centre of the ring is an open space, soft with the 
 debris of a hundred autumns. The giant elms stretch out their 
 long arms and shade it from the sun ; while those around send 
 up their branches heavenwards. On one side is a wood of 
 pines, through which the wind moans mournful as the roar of 
 the waves on the sea-shore. 
 
 Beneath their shadow was an old shepherd tending his flock. 
 He was an old man seventy-five years of age, he said ; but he 
 looked much younger. His hair was only partially grey, and 
 his honest face might have been quite handsome, had it not 
 been for a rather Hebrew nose which the winds of sixty years 
 had coloured into a bright red. He was a man of character, 
 and spoke in a strong, decided manner, but with no roughness. 
 
 " You be right, sir," said he again and again. " Sure it be, 
 sir." 
 
 But when I tried to learn something about the way a shepherd 
 was paid he would give me no direct answer. Perhaps he thought 
 it beneath his self-respect to do so ; or maybe it was his Sussex 
 breeding, so that he naturally fenced with any question which he 
 deemed important. 
 
 In former times the shepherd had an interest in the flock. 
 Shepherds kept their own sheep amongst those of their masters, 
 just as Jacob kept his among the flocks of Laban. Many, too, 
 had their own little bits of land. " Shepherds' Acres " is still the 
 name attached to some pieces of ground, but they are all absorbed 
 into the larger properties. The possession of property, however 
 small, gives a permanent character to a family, so that there were 
 shepherding families on the South Downs who, if they had con- 
 sulted the parish register, could have traced their ancestry as far 
 back as the times of the Stuarts. 
 
 The old shepherd of Chanctonbery Ring was not, however, a 
 hireling. He knew every sheep in his flock personally, and thought 
 the sheep knew him. He had been " sixty years on the Downs, 
 Sundays and week-days, and had his health, sure, thank God."
 
 1 68 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 During the present summer J I found my way into the cottage of 
 a Southdown shepherd, who had pursued his calling for well-nigh 
 seventy years. Old H was' a fine intelligent man, with a fore- 
 head large enough for a professor, arched, characteristic eyebrows, 
 and a mouth full of humour. In came his ancient comrade, Peter, 
 an honest and true-hearted old worthy. They both complained 
 sadly of the change in the position and prospects of the shepherding 
 life now-a-days. They corroborated the fact' that a shepherd was 
 formerly allowed to keep his own sheep among the flocks of his 
 master, and instanced the case of one shepherd who, if I remem- 
 ber right, possessed as many as seventy sheep, all bought out of his 
 own earnings. Now the masters objected even to their keeping a 
 hog. 
 
 Forty or fifty years ago a shepherd's wages were seventeen or 
 eighteen shillings a week ; at present sixteen or seventeen is the 
 highest amount he can get. Everything is dearer now than then, 
 except bread, which old H had known as high as three shil- 
 lings and a penny the gallon since he had been married. They 
 reckoned that every member in a household consumed a gallon of 
 flour per week, so that one may readily calculate from this what a 
 man, his wife, and six children would require. 
 
 Peter had to pay two and sixpence a week for his cottage, and it 
 had, I think he said, no garden. 
 
 Old H had been in one situation where he never went 
 
 home to his dinner from year's end to year's end, Sundays and 
 Christmas Day included. 
 
 Winter was bad enough, what with wind, and rain, and cold; 
 but summer was worse. It was anxious work to keep the sheep 
 from straying, but the great trouble was to keep the flock free from 
 their terrible enemy, the blow-fly. This miserable insect lays its 
 eggs in the wool of the poor sheep, and the maggots become alive 
 in four-and-twenty hours, and begin at once to feed on their victims. 
 Directly a sheep is " struck," as they call it, the only remedy is to 
 shear it at once, for if not quickly relieved it will faint from ex- 
 haustion. 
 
 These men were respectable in the best sense, yet they evidently 
 thought it no degradation to take the parish money. At the basis 
 
 1 1871.
 
 SUSSEX SHEPHERDS. 169 
 
 of all their thoughts about life lay quite unconsciously com- 
 munist principles. They had a right to live ; and if they, by hard 
 labour, could not keep themselves and their families, then the 
 parish was bound to step in and provide whatever was necessary. 
 Therefore it appeared to them that the increased strictness of the 
 parish now-a-days in giving relief was an additional element 
 of hardness in the poor man's lot. In former times, they said, 
 every man who had more than three children received a gallon of 
 flour per week from the parish for each additional child; now 
 nothing is given, except in the case of absolute need. 
 
 They had both gone to work when about seven years of age, 
 and had never had a day's schooling in their lives. Peter could 
 
 read a little, but old H could not read at all. They could 
 
 scarcely ever go to church. Sometimes, if they happened to have 
 two or three trusty boys, they might venture to leave the flock. 
 
 Old H had had several children, but like most other 
 
 grown-up families 
 
 "Some were wed, and some were dead, 
 And some were gone to sea." 
 
 Lately he had lost his wife and a poor deaf and dumb son, who 
 had notwithstanding been a great comfort to him. Both the 
 old father and Peter were loud in his praise. It was good to see 
 the affection the old friends had for each other. 
 
 All of a sudden Peter rose and bid me good-night. I took out 
 a shilling, remarking that perhaps he knew some poor man who 
 might want it. He looked at the shilling, and, turning round, 
 gave it to his old comrade, saying, " Well, I do know a poor 
 man, and this is him ; " and then, without waiting for thanks, he 
 
 was gone. Old H received it with a meek dignity truly 
 
 admirable. 
 
 In former times every shepherd had his hut on the Downs, 
 Sometimes it was a cave scooped out of the side of a bank, lined 
 with heath or straw, and covered with sods of turf or hawthorn 
 boughs. Here in rough weather the shepherd took refuge and 
 watched his sheep. Sometimes he would read or otherwise amuse 
 himself. " It was in my hut," said one of these worthies to Mr 
 Lower, " that I first read about Moses and his shepherding life
 
 170 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 and about David's killing of the lion and the bear. Ah, how glad 
 I felt that we hadn't such wild beastes to frighten, and maybe kill 
 our sheep and us." 
 
 But still they had some enemies to contend with that do not 
 exist now. Foxes would sometimes kill the young lambs, and 
 ravens pick out the eyes of a poor ewe that had fallen down some 
 steep part of the hill. Buzzards and wild turkeys frequented the 
 Downs, and at times even an eagle made its appearance. 
 
 When June came sheep-shearing was performed with patriarchal 
 joviality and good-fellowship. The men formed themselves into 
 companies, and appointed a captain and a lieutenant. The 
 former was distinguished by a cap with a gold band, the latter 
 wore a silver one. Then they met at the cottage of the captain, 
 where they had a feast and arranged their plans. 
 
 On the morning appointed they all assemble at the spot by 
 seven o'clock : breakfast over they set to work. Clip, clip, went 
 the shears, with many a merry laugh and shout ; but the men 
 worked with a will, only stopping for a short breathing-time, which 
 they called lighting up, when they refreshed themselves with 
 draughts of home-brewed ale, poured out by the farmer's daughter 
 with no stinted hand. Dinner was a short meal, for they all 
 looked forward to the event of the day the sheep-shearing sup- 
 per. And what a feast it was ! held in the barn or great kitchen 
 of the farmhouse. The farmer and his wife would be present, 
 and " Eat, drink, and spare not " was the welcome given to the 
 guests. 
 
 Merry became the company as the evening advanced. Ere 
 long they began to clear their throats, and pipe in hand, out came 
 the old traditional songs sung to the old traditional tunes. 
 
 Here is a true old Sussex sheep-shearing song. It has real 
 pastoral flavour about it, and looks as if it might be co-eval with 
 Shakespere. The first and last stanzas will afford a specimen of 
 the rest : 
 
 " Here's the rosebuds in June and the violets are blowing, 
 The small birds they warble from every green bough ; 
 
 Here's the pink and the lily, 
 
 And the daffydowndilly, 
 To perfume and adorn the sweet meadows in June
 
 SUSSEX SHEPHERDS. 171 
 
 Tis all before the plough the fat oxen go slow. 
 
 But the lads and the lassies to the sheep-shearing go. 
 
 When the sheep-shearing's over and harvest draws nigh, 
 We'll prepare for the fields our strength for to try ; 
 
 We'll reap and we'll mow, 
 
 We'll plough and we'll sow. 
 
 Oh, the pink and the lily, 
 
 And the daffydowndilly ! " etc.
 
 IX. 
 
 A SOUTHDOWN VILLAGE. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1874.) 
 
 SYMBOL of the power that made us a nation, there is no symbol of 
 the unity of its successive generations like an ancient church. 
 
 In Seaford Church dedicated, by the way, to the popular 
 ecclesiastical hero of Sussex, St Leonard I attended an interesting 
 service, one that in many ways smacked of " the good old times." 
 It was club day. As Mr Barnes, the learned and humorous poet 
 of Dorsetshire, says : 
 
 "By ten 
 
 O'clock the pleace wer vull o' men 
 A-dressed to goo to church, and dine 
 An' walk about the pleace in line." 
 
 When I reached the church the procession had already filed in, 
 and the members were all seated, their banners and badges mak- 
 ing the aisles look quite gay. The preacher on this occasion was 
 honest and brave, but gave the impression that he cared much 
 more for his own notions than anything else. " Christianity," he 
 said, " had produced the true feeling of brotherhood ; the cry we 
 heard so much about now-a-days, ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ! ' 
 was all bosh. They did well in coming to church, but they would 
 do better if, like the old guilds, they had a prayer for every 
 occasion. The members of these guilds were pious as well as 
 provident." Gradually he drew them on to his own belief. " You 
 call your vicar a Ritualist," he said ; " why, you are the Ritualists. 
 What else is the meaning of your banners, and badges, and pro- 
 cessions ? If I did not approve of it, I should not allow you to 
 bring these things into the house of God ; but I do, for Ritualism 
 
 172
 
 A SOUTHDOWN VILLAGE. 173 
 
 is the voice of Nature." Then he spoke of the way the Reforma- 
 tion had stopped such symbolism in the Church. "Think you," 
 he went on to say, " that I should be afraid to carry out my ideas ? 
 No ! it is not for want of the will it's the way. It's the means to 
 do it we want. Ask the Churchwardens what has often been the 
 offertory, even from a well-dressed congregation. Three or four 
 shillings ! Why, the people who cry out against Ritualism want a 
 cheap religion one that shan't cost them anything." Then, after 
 praising their good conduct on former occasions, he rightly pro- 
 tested against the way they had of dividing the surplus money 
 every club-day, and so leaving themselves without any balance. 
 He had already denounced as mean and contemptible those who, 
 being well off, came on the funds directly they were sick. Whether 
 it was the Ritualistic teaching, or the trenchant criticism on the 
 management, which most offended the club, we cannot say we 
 suspect the latter ; certain it was that the stewards refused to make 
 the collection for new bell-ropes, which the vicar said they had 
 promised to do ; and the whole congregation walked out, leaving 
 him standing on the altar steps, with his little choristers all arrayed 
 in due order around him, waiting to receive the offertory which 
 never came. 
 
 The club, with banners waving and music playing, then formed 
 into procession, and perambulating the town, finally arrived on the 
 green, a piece of common land near the shore, where under a long 
 tent they all sat down to a hearty dinner. 
 
 "An' there they made such stunnin' clatters 
 Wi' knives an' forks, an' pleates an' platters ; 
 An' waiters ran, an' beer did pass 
 Vrom tap to pig, vrom pig to glass." 
 
 Outside the tent the usual attendants at a fair had arrived. The 
 gipsy carts, the photographers' waggons, the ginger-bread stalls 
 and cockshies. As dusk came, all the respectable men, their wives 
 and children, had gone home, and left the field to the drunken and 
 the debauched. 
 
 In many parishes it is, or was, the custom for the rector or 
 vicar to preside over this dinner in person. It was not so, how- 
 ever, on this occasion. The most prominent guest was an officer, 
 a visitor in the town, who made the men a good speech, in which
 
 174 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 he gave them some excellent advice on the character they should 
 bear at home. "Consult," he said, "your wives, and not your 
 neighbours, in every difficulty of life ; cultivate self-respect, and 
 seek to possess true religion." Finally, he inveighed, in the 
 strongest manner, against the sermon that they had heard, which 
 he characterised as an insult to them all. 
 
 " Old customs ! oh ! I love the sound, 
 
 However simple they may be : 
 Whate'er with time hath sanction found 
 Is welcome and is dear to me." 
 
 This is the natural feeling of all poor, unlearned, but pious men. 
 But mediaeval customs, instead of appearing old, are to them new- 
 fangled and vain. They infallibly drive all the more earnest ones 
 quite away, making them say as one such did the other day to 
 me, " Why, sir, the Church seem just like a theatre." 
 
 Let us, however, cast aside for a time these unpleasing reflec- 
 tions, and refresh our spirits by a walk over the cliffs which rise so 
 picturesquely to the east of Seaford. How full of feature and 
 interest the South Downs become in this neighbourhood ! 
 
 By the white lumps of chalk placed to guide the wayfarer at 
 night or in gloomy weather, we track our path across the cliffs as 
 it rises and falls with the undulations of the hills. Now and then 
 there are breaks in the cliffs, through which we get wild romantic 
 bits of seascape. The finest of these breaks is about half-a-mile 
 along the coast. The cliffs are split most fantastic-wise, and lead 
 down by precipitous steps from one landing-place to another. It 
 is a dangerous spot to attempt to penetrate too far, but we may 
 advance sufficiently near to note how fine a foreground the white 
 jagged chalk, softened by patches of green sward and yellow 
 poppies, makes to the deep blue sea which fills up the gap. Seen 
 when the moon was up, and the cliffs gleamed out spectrally, 
 while overhead was heard the plaintive cry of the sea-gull, and 
 below, the deep moan of the unseen wave, the place suggested all 
 manner of superstitious fancies to the poor South Saxon. Just 
 the haunt in which the " Pharisees," as they called fairies, would 
 choose for their revels, a fitting court and temple for Puck, the 
 leading sprite in their frolicsome band. So they named it Puck 
 Church Parlour a queer combination of ideas.
 
 A SOUTHDOWN VILLAGE. 175 
 
 A mile further on, and Cuckmere Haven is in sight. Not 
 much of a haven, however, especially in summer-time. The sand 
 has silted up and raised the bed of the river some feet above the 
 level of the Channel. During the neap tides there is not enough 
 water in the river to enable it to reach the sea, so there it lies 
 after all its efforts, lost at last in ugly lagunes. 
 
 The descent is sharp, and we soon find ourselves wandering 
 along a grassy ridge by the side of the river. A large flock of 
 gulls disporting themselves a little higher up, perceiving the 
 approach of a moving figure, rise rapidly, hover for a while over- 
 head, and then suddenly disappear into space like a troop of 
 ghosts. 
 
 Even in these days of railways and telegraphs and Sunday 
 excursionists, an old-world peace lingers about such valleys as 
 these. The lap of the ocean, the cry of the sea-bird, the 
 occasional low of oxen, the continual bleating of sheep, these are 
 the only sounds which break its repose. The soft green hills 
 undulate on either side, and terminate much the same in outline, 
 altogether the same in effect as they did when a thousand 
 years ago King Alfred met Asser, the learned monk, in the valley 
 that runs up from Birling Gap. Few are the habitations of 
 men. You may walk for a mile, and not see the smallest cot, 
 much less a farmhouse ; but when you do come across the latter, 
 how suggestive of cosy comfort ! Embosomed in trees, the farm 
 buildings stand in a cluster, apparently in no order ; house, 
 stables, barns, all with white walls and high gable roofs, the said 
 roofs being of that warm red grey, covered with lichen, only pro- 
 perly describable with brush and palette. 
 
 How hidden and lost to all human ken are the tiny villages 
 which lie amongst these downs ! Why, here, within a mile, the 
 coastguard did not seem to know where West Dean was ; and no 
 doubt many a traveller has passed up this valley within a few 
 hundred yards of it, and never dreamt of its existence. Mount 
 the hill at the foot of which stands the little farm of Except, and 
 when you reach its summit you will see, nestling down in the 
 grassy hollow on the other side, a little village, evidently all one 
 community. There is the great house of the squire, the less pre- 
 tentious one of his bailiff; there are the farm buildings, together
 
 176 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 with labourers' cots, standing amongst green gardens and tall 
 trees, all gathered round the quaintest little church it is possible 
 to find in England. What a spot for an English Hans Christian 
 Anderson ! How cleverly would he describe the look of that little 
 church tower crowned with its conical hat, just for all the world 
 like an old witch ; its three windows answering to eyes and nose, 
 giving her a queerly solemn expression, like some ancient tabby 
 who has sat there dreaming, dreaming for ages ! For down in this 
 quiet Dean every one must rub his eyes now and then to assure 
 himself that he is not asleep. Up the high slopes of the downs, 
 here and there, a flock of sheep are browsing, but it is too far off 
 to hear their bleat, or even the tinkle of their bells. Swallows and 
 blackbirds are for ever flying across the hollow, just as their 
 ancestors have done for centuries. 
 
 What traditions, what tales one might listen to if some old 
 dreamer lying in yonder little graveyard could wake up and relate 
 them ! Of the old Saxon, grown peaceful and home-loving, who 
 hid himself away in this nook, and built a church where he might 
 daily pray, " From the terror of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver 
 us " ; of the watch and ward there was when the news came that 
 a Danish chuile had been seen in the Sea Ford, or lying under 
 Beachy Head ; and how they prepared to carry off wives and 
 children, cattle and goods, up to some town which lay deeper in 
 the heart of the Downs. 
 
 Age after age has passed away, and no change has this little 
 village known, save when the old religion passed away and gave 
 place to the new. Still remains the big old font, in which they 
 were ready to immerse a Danish sinner, if he would only give up 
 his wolfish rapacity and be friends with his Saxon brother. Here 
 too, is the priest's house, so ancient that one can imagine the 
 thralls, clad in the same smocks then as now, only wearing the great 
 iron collar of service round their neck, coming to their pastor to 
 recount their griefs, and to crave his intercession with their master 
 to save them from the lash. 
 
 Returning once more into the valley of the Cuckmere, we 
 try to wake up, but the spirit of the place is not conducive to 
 concentration of purpose, and we soon find ourselves wandering 
 up an opening in the hills which seems to invite investigation. A
 
 A SOUTHDOWN VILLAGE. 177 
 
 large pool, so large that it might almost be termed a lake, leads 
 to the most picturesque of farms. Its old house, its large round 
 dovecot, its barns and outhouses, are all centuries old. From a 
 talk with a foreman, who proved a most gentle sort of man, we 
 learned that the farm covered eight hundred acres, and extended 
 over the downs in one long strip two miles and a half in length ; 
 its width apparently not exceeding two or three hundred yards. 
 He lived in the old farmhouse, but did not give a very inviting 
 account of the healthiness of these happy-looking vales. They 
 appear to be nothing better than natural tanks, into which the 
 innumerable springs from the hills pour their water. To drain 
 them thoroughly would be to deprive the sheep of the only water 
 to be got in the hot summer-time ; so in winter great pools of 
 water flood the lower levels, causing much disease to the in- 
 habitants. He and his children had all been ill together with 
 ague. He had had it for some months, and was brought so low 
 that he could only crawl on his hands and knees downstairs. 
 
 The next village we came upon is, without exaggeration, the 
 most picturesque we have ever seen in any part of England. It 
 recalled the old mezzo-tints of rural life a hundred years ago. 
 The cottages were centuries old, and had the very highest of 
 gable-roofs, with the thatch at the back coming down almost to 
 the ground. In one of these little gardens was a poor mother. 
 She was a great sufferer, her fingers appeared to be half rotted off 
 with scrofula. She appeared a sincere, humble creature ; know- 
 ing but very little, groping as it were in the dark, seeking, like 
 the poor diseased woman of old, if she might but touch the hem 
 of His garment. 
 
 Ere long Alfriston appears in sight, a cluster of grey-brown 
 houses all comfortably snoozing together. Behind rises the 
 Down, to the left a large motherly church, grey and weather- 
 beaten, built in the form of a Greek cross. This little but most 
 ancient town stands immediately on the bank of the Cuckmere, 
 and to reach it we must cross the meadow, now bright with 
 buttercups ; and traversing a long and narrow foot-bridge we 
 enter the town up a side lane. 
 
 Thirty or forty years ago Alfriston possessed tanyards and 
 tallow-chandlers' factories, but now they are all gone, and nothing 
 
 N
 
 178 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 remains to occupy its inhabitants but agricultural labour. " Give 
 me," said Agur, "neither poverty nor riches, lest I be full, and 
 deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord ? or lest I be poor, and 
 steal, and take the name of my God in vain." The decay of 
 Alfriston is an instance of the results of this common evil : the 
 blindness, the vice, engendered by poverty. Ignorance dense and 
 dark seems to have settled on the place. " More immoral than 
 any part of the Weald," such was the testimony of a resident. 
 Neither church nor chapel seemed to have much power for good. 
 The chapel was the ugliest, most dismal-looking building in the 
 town. Little or no interest could be aroused in the people, save 
 when some homely preacher in a smock came and talked to them 
 in the language of hyper-Calvinism. Why does this dreadful 
 doctrine so commend itself to these poor souls ? Is it not because 
 it represents God as dealing with the universe just in accordance 
 with their own experience of life ? the great mass left to rot on in 
 blindness, misery, and corruption, while a favoured few are lifted 
 up into health and wealth, and the enjoyment of all kinds of 
 happiness. 
 
 One day last summer we saw this chapel decked out in a way 
 that proved that even old-fashioned Dissenters were beginning to 
 believe that repulsive ugliness was not a necessary adjunct of pure 
 religion. It was the anniversary of the opening of the chapel, and 
 some joyous hearts and tasteful fingers had adorned its naked 
 walls and heavy galleries with floral wreaths and posies. 
 
 The old meeting-house was well filled, for the preacher was one 
 who not only had a message to deliver, but was endowed with 
 that gift of eloquence which, like sweet music, steals away every 
 heart. The little inn-yard was crowded with vehicles, showing 
 that preaching has not yet lost its power to attract men. 
 
 This was not by any means the first time this little inn had 
 been made busy by such an unusual class of customers. In fact, 
 it may lay claim to be called a house of call for the religious. It 
 dates from the early part of the sixteenth century, and is believed 
 to have been used by the pilgrims on their way to the shrine of 
 St Richard of Chichester. 
 
 For three centuries there was no name so popular in Sussex as 
 that of the good Bishop of Chichester, Richard de la Wyche.
 
 A SOUTHDOWN VILLAGE. 179 
 
 Divested of the superstitious wonders with which his memory 
 afterwards became associated, it is certain that he was in many 
 respects a model bishop. Although he exercised his rule with a 
 certain quaint, fatherly severity, he was always full of sympathy for 
 the poor and suffering among his flock. A characteristic anecdote 
 is related of his charity. On one occasion his steward told him 
 that his rents were insufficient to supply all its demands. " Is it 
 just," he replied, "that you and I should eat and drink out of 
 gold and silver vessels, while Christ, in His poor, is perishing 
 with hunger ? " So the plate was sold, and a valuable palfrey the 
 bishop prized, that he might have the wherewithal to give to the 
 poor. 
 
 Tempora mutantur : in this mediaeval inn, sacred to such old 
 Catholic memories, the theological food dealt out to the modern 
 wayfaring guest is not simply Protestantism, but Calvinism of the 
 extremest type. The evening we spent under its hospitable roof, 
 we had no friends but the books which loaded the window-sill of 
 this little parlour. They were mostly hyper-Calvinistic magazines ; 
 nevertheless we found one which proved to be interesting. It was 
 the life of a man struggling towards light amongst people of these 
 views, and who himself subsequently became a minister among 
 them. For a long period he appears to have been in great and 
 distressing doubt as to whether he was among the saved, but he 
 relates how much this doubt was removed by the text, " We know 
 that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the 
 brethren." What a lesson Joseph Tanner, the hyper-Calvinist 
 preacher, here teaches Christian people ! And the answer will be 
 that of the old Scribe " And who is my brother ? " 
 
 This little Plantagenet hostel is old the grey weather-beaten 
 motherly church is older, but Alfriston contains a symbol older 
 than either, telling of a better welcome than the hostel can afford, 
 of a larger unity than the Church dares to speak of. In the centre 
 of the village, beneath the shadow of a tree, is an old stone cross, 
 a relic of those days when men were taught as much by the eye as 
 the ear ; but still, if we rightly think of it, witnessing to us of the 
 same great truths as it did to them ; above all, witnessing that 
 there is a great uniting power in the world, able, if men will only 
 permit it, to reconcile them to God and to one another. This
 
 180 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 cross has indeed a peculiar right to stand there a symbol of that 
 great reality which alone can turn the hearts of the fathers to the 
 children, and of the children to the fathers, binding all the genera- 
 tions in one ; for from its steps the same old story has been repeated 
 age after age by friar, Reformer, Puritan, and, latest of all, by an 
 Independent preacher, one George Gilbert, an old soldier, whose 
 earnest appeals resulted in the erection of the ugly little meeting- 
 house, about whose anniversary we have been speaking. 
 
 But we must leave Alfriston, and wend our way homeward, 
 which we will do by the higher road over the downs. The walk, 
 if not so interesting as that along the vale, is productive of finer 
 landscapes and grander views of down scenery. Sometimes the 
 turns and twists of the hills are so sudden, and the declivities so 
 precipitous, that one would suppose oneself on the Yorkshire 
 moors rather than among the gentle scenery of the South Downs. 
 But it 
 
 "Is the hour 
 When shadow steals o'er nature's loveliness ; " 
 
 and ere long 
 
 " The moon hath risen on high, 
 
 And in the clear blue sky 
 The golden stars all brightly glow ; 
 
 How still the earth ! how calm ! 
 
 What dear and home-like charm 
 From gentle twilight doth she borrow ! 
 
 Like to some quiet room, 
 
 Where, wrapt in still soft gloom, 
 We sleep away the daylight's sorrow."
 
 X. 
 
 SUSSEX COMMONS AND SUSSEX SONGS. 
 
 ( Golden Hours, 1871.) 
 
 MY first ramble into the weald of Sussex was to Horsted Keynes, a 
 sequestered village hid in the woodlands. No more reposeful spot 
 could be found in the world than its peaceful churchyard, sacred 
 to the memory of pious Archbishop Leighton. 
 
 It was late in the autumn, and the yellow woods told of the year's 
 decline. From the numberless oaks, so common in this district, 
 the acorns were falling in myriads. Boys, women, and children 
 were out, sometimes in whole families, gathering them into 
 baskets and pans, and turning them into a sack. A gusty day 
 brings a rich harvest 
 
 " Then o'er their heads, loud lashed by furious squalls, 
 Bright from their cups the rattling treasure falls." 
 
 In ancient times the vast woods, which then existed all over the 
 country, supported thousands of swine. According to Doomsday 
 Book, in Essex alone there were nearly a hundred thousand hogs. 
 Still more must this have been the case with the Weald, which at 
 that time was covered with forests. Now, however, the breeding of 
 pigs is a comparatively unimportant addition to the produce of 
 the farm ; and where it is carried on to any extent, acorns are used 
 sparingly, since it is averred that acorn-feeding produces a pebbly 
 sort of bacon. So that the acorn harvest, once so important, has 
 dwindled into a gleaning of the roadsides by the unemployed 
 people. However, they get a shilling a bushel from the farmer for 
 what they find, showing that great quantities are still devoured by 
 the Sussex pigs. 
 
 181
 
 1 82 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 In the south-eastern portion of the Weald, taking the parishes of 
 Heathfield, Warbleton, and Waldron as a centre, a large propor- 
 tion of the labourers and small farmers keep from eight to sixteen 
 brood-hens, and breed chickens for the fatters. They live chiefly 
 in remote places away from the villages and hamlets, their 
 favourite spots being the light, dry soil of the commons, and the 
 higher grounds clothed with heather and short grass. Their 
 special aim is to obtain large broods early in the spring, in prepara- 
 tion for the London market, the price of spring chicken being 
 twice or thrice as much as can be obtained at other seasons. 
 
 Some idea of the importance of the business to this part of the 
 Weald may be gathered from the following statistics furnished me 
 by the vicar of Heathfield. In 1864, 163 tons, 5 cwts. 7 Ibs. of 
 fatted chicken were sent up to London from Heathfield by one 
 carrier, being 101,547 fowls fed and fatted in the three parishes of 
 Heathfield, Warbleton, and Waldron. In 1867 and 1868 the 
 quantity somewhat diminished; in 1869 and 1870 it rose to 181 
 and 191 tons, or 105,887 fowls. 
 
 Between thirteen and fifteen thousand pounds has been paid 
 annually to the fatters by this one carrier, besides the sums received 
 direct from the London salesmen. The quantity this year (1871) 
 it is estimated will reach 200 tons. To these numbers may be 
 added about half as much again, sent up to London by a different 
 route, besides the poultry sent to Brighton and Hastings. The 
 estimated price of the chicken sent by both routes from Heathfield 
 to London is ^25,000 per annum. 
 
 In this part of the Weald, and along the Kentish border, hop- 
 picking is the great business immediately the wheat harvest is 
 over. Hop-picking is carried on in Sussex in a somewhat more 
 Arcadian fashion than in the neighbouring county, into which 
 Whitechapel and the East of London pours itself during the 
 season. 
 
 One night I slept at a little inn at Rotherfield, and listened to 
 some very curious singing going on in the bar-parlour. The songs 
 were given to solemn tell-tale tunes, sounding in the distance very 
 much like a recitation of the Athanasian Creed. Next day I had 
 a talk with one of the singers, a miller, who was said to know more 
 songs than any one else in the district. He had never seen them
 
 SUSSEX COMMONS AND SUSSEX SONGS. 183 
 
 in print, but would try to write me out a few. Here is one he 
 gave me in praise of the hop-bine : 
 
 " A song and a cheer for good English beer, 
 
 That froths in the foaming can ; 
 The beer and the bine in union join 
 
 To gladden the heart of man. 
 When the Spring appears, the bine it uprears, 
 
 Its circuline race begins, 
 
 Till it reaches at length its beauty and strength, 
 And waves in the summer winds. 
 
 Chorus So long may the hops in their beauty stand, 
 And still be the pride of our native land." 
 
 And so on for four stanzas more. 
 
 In the woodlands a very important branch of labour is the 
 felling and preparing timber for the market. St Leonard's Forest 
 covers a tract of 9000 acres, in the cross-roads of which it is easy 
 to lose the way, especially after dark. A sawyer, who had lived 
 thirty-five years in the forest, told me that he could remember 
 when it was far more extensive than it is now. Oaks are mainly 
 raised, and some exist of an enormous size. Certain of them are 
 quite famous. 
 
 The poverty of the people he described as excessive. He had 
 no idea how they managed, but supposed they must be half 
 starved. Throughout the Weald the labourers add a little to their 
 income by working in the woods during the spring. They are 
 employed by the timber merchant, and the job lasts about a 
 month. They work by the piece, and their business is at first to 
 fell the timber, and then to strip it and set up the bark. The 
 whole of this work goes by the name of "flawing." "Faggoting 
 the lop" and scraping and "hatching" the bark are different 
 operations. A man can earn by "flawing" two-and-sixpence to 
 six shillings a day; women and children do the scraping. In 
 some parts felling timber goes on all the winter, from November 
 to March, and if a woodman is clever he gets from twelve to fif- 
 teen shillings a week. In autumn a good deal of wood is cut for 
 other purposes as, for instance, making gunpowder. Near 
 Uckfield I met a man driving a cart laden with black alder, going 
 to be used for this purpose. The carter was unshaven, and a true 
 Sussex man in his dialect.
 
 184 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Thus it would appear that a clever and industrious man on the 
 Weald, who has his wits about him, can find something to do all 
 the year round ; and according to the Report of the Agricultural 
 Commission such a labourer can earn on an average sixteen 
 shillings a week. However, the labourer will tell you that there 
 are important drawbacks not taken into account, such as having 
 to provide his own tools in connection with the hopping work, 
 and, if it is a wet season, firing, night after night, to dry his wet 
 clothes. 
 
 Moreover, this estimate supposes a man not only to be in- 
 dustrious but clever, and must therefore be taken as the maximum 
 of wages to be earned in the Weald. Besides, it does not take 
 into account accident or illness. The regular day-wage varies 
 from twelve to thirteen shillings and sixpence the week, and the 
 amount is made up by extras, earned by piece-work connected 
 with the hop-gardens, hay-making, and harvest. The wife gener- 
 ally helps at these seasons. At hop-picking and tying she can earn 
 about 4. 
 
 No doubt among rural labourers, as amongst every other class, 
 there are rich and poor. The rich are those who just pay their 
 way, the poor those who are ever on the verge of pauperism. The 
 rich are the rare exception, the poor the vast majority. When the 
 family is young, and there is only one pair of hands to supply the 
 food, it constantly exists in a state of semi-starvation. 
 
 Thus, at Mayfield, in the depth of the winter, I went into a 
 cottage, where I found a mother and eight children four boys and 
 four girls. They had only eighteen-pence each a week for meals. 
 The children were having their dinner, which consisted of a dole 
 of bread and cheese. 
 
 Happily there is much fellow-feeling among labouring families. 
 If any one gets down very low, those who are well off come to the 
 rescue. Here is a verse of a song the miller gave me. It may be 
 called " A Poor Man's Song." Its note is sympathy produced by a 
 past and a too probable future experience. 
 
 i " Oh come, come to the ingle-side, 
 
 For the night is dark and drear; 
 The snow is deep and the mountains wide, 
 Then stay and rest thee here ;
 
 SUSSEX COMMONS AND SUSSEX SONGS. 185 
 
 My board is simply spread, 
 
 I have a little food to spare, 
 But thou shall break my wholesome bread, 
 
 And have a wholesome share. 
 For while the faggot burns 
 
 To warm my cottage floor, 
 They never shall say the poor man turns 
 
 A poorer from his door. 
 
 Then come, come to the ingle -side, etc. 
 
 If thou wert rich and strong, 
 
 I would not ask thee in ; 
 But thy journey has been long, 
 
 And thy tattered garb is thin. 
 Thy limbs are stiff with cold, 
 
 Thy hair is snowy white, 
 Thou art a pilgim far too old 
 
 To face this bitter night. 
 Less pity might there be 
 
 In breast more warmly clad, 
 But I have been as poor as thee, 
 
 As hungry, and as sad. 
 
 Then come, come to the ingle-side, etc. 
 
 Where a labourer or his wife is idle and improvident, the 
 sordid miser)' into which they sink is something beyond belief. 
 In Rotherfield I went into one cottage where a woman sat in the 
 grimy chimney corner, trying to make a kettle boil over a few sticks 
 of wood. Two little girls were hanging over the dying embers, 
 for it was miserably cold. The mother took us upstairs, where 
 there were two compartments. In the first, a sort of landing, the 
 parents slept on a miserable bed almost on a level with the floor. 
 In a small outer room was a little shake-down on which the children 
 slept. Not a chair, nor a table, nor any other article of furniture, 
 was in the room. In the parents' sleeping-place the wet came in, 
 so that the woman said one night she was wet through. She had 
 had ten children, but had only reared two. One boy died when 
 he was nine ; the others had died mostly of decline and galloping 
 consumption slow starvation, in fact ! For this miserable habita- 
 tion they paid two shillings a week. It had, however, a garden, 
 in which they raised cabbages. Her husband earned, on an 
 average, ten shillings a week all the year round.
 
 1 86 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 As a rule, the Wealden peasant is provident. Some men 
 subscribe as much as ;8 or ^9 a year to clubs ; i for support 
 in illness, and 1 to 8 is expended for clothes. The general 
 arrangement in the hop districts is that the man's wages pays for 
 rent and food, while that which the women and children earn 
 goes towards clothes. 
 
 But provident or improvident, there can be no doubt that the 
 majority of children and old people do not get enough to eat. 
 The old people have a peculiar complexion arising from poorness 
 of blood, in some cases breaking out into sores. I was told that 
 there is widespread hereditary consumption in East Sussex. 
 
 The extinction of its ancient industry, the iron trade, the rise 
 of import smuggling, and the Act of Uniformity, all combined to 
 throw the Weald into that path of retrogression from which it 
 has only very partially emerged. Parishes in which three hundred 
 years ago there was such an active, earnest, progressive spirit, that 
 several of their inhabitants were burnt to death for the cause of 
 the Reformation, are now sunk in an almost incredible ignorance 
 and immorality. 
 
 I met with a poor boy near Cross-on-Hand, who had been 
 paralysed since he was eighteen months old, in his leg. His 
 body was not fit for any work, but his mind had grown. He 
 told me that in arithmetic he had gone as far as vulgar fractions, 
 and now longed to draw. Yet those who exercise the Christian 
 ministry in the Weald complain of the apathy and stolid indiffer- 
 ence of the people, of the rowdyism of the boys, and the im- 
 morality of both sexes. From all I heard, it would be difficult 
 to exaggerate the latter evil. Let no one suppose, however, that 
 they are peculiarly corrupt. It is poverty, ignorance, and a low 
 state of public opinion which is at the root of the evil. I saw a 
 kind little woman, at the risk of losing other employment, attend- 
 ing upon a poor old bed-ridden couple, who were being eaten by 
 vermin, and had no one else to care for them. She had had two 
 illegitimate children, but from the way she spoke of the fact it 
 was believed that she only regarded it as an inconvenience. 
 
 The people are very clean, as a rule. The men generally wear 
 black smocks, and the woman are neat and tidy in their dress. 
 The interiors of the cottages are black from the smoke of the
 
 SUSSEX COMMONS AND SUSSEX SONGS. 187 
 
 wood fires ; but the floors and seats are scrupulously clean. 
 Although I saw some miserable dwellings, Sussex cottages may 
 be described as, on the whole, roomy and comfortable. Some- 
 times they are old farmhouses converted into two or three 
 different tenements. In many parts of the Weald are to be found 
 picturesque examples of ancient farmhouses and cottages, laced 
 and interlaced with great beams. Some have been restored, and 
 are carefully preserved by their enlightened proprietors, but they 
 cannot restore the stalwart yeomen who were once their inhabitants. 
 
 Most of the old cottages have a large open chimney, with a 
 pedestal of bricks in the centre of the hearth, on which a log of 
 wood or a few sticks burn daily. Suspended above by a chain 
 hangs the kettle, or the pot-au-feu. In front you may often see 
 the settle or bist, as it used to be called in Sussex, a grand old bit 
 of furniture, telling of better days. In the wall at the back of the 
 hearth is an iron plate with two handles. This is the cottager's 
 oven, and here they bake their bread. Those who know best 
 say it would be a good thing if they could brew their own beer, 
 and then all the little beer-shops would be shut up, and a vast 
 amount of misery prevented. 
 
 Not that the peasant of the Weald is a drunkard. He is far 
 too poor for that. It is only on club-days, and occasionally on 
 Saturday night, that he gives way. Habitual drinking in the 
 country is the vice of a class in a superior social position. 
 
 The Wealden labourer is inclined to be suspicious, and will 
 fence unnecessarily with a simple question. In some places he 
 will exhibit a certain independence of spirit, which would probably 
 be more common if life were a little easier with him. 
 
 The existence of these poor Wealden peasants is so hard that 
 the humour characteristic of the Teutonic race rarely shows itself. 
 But it comes out at last in times and places where you would 
 least expect it. How many a touch of rustic humour may be 
 found in the village churchyard ! Here is a verse from a tomb- 
 stone which I saw at Burwash to the memory of a mother and her 
 
 two children : 
 
 " Down in the deep, here lie asleep, 
 
 My pretty babes and I ; 
 God thought it best our souls to rest 
 From this our misery."
 
 1 88 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Hobbling along the road to Frantfield was a poor old labourer 
 who lived at Buxted. 
 
 " Bad times here in the winter ? " I asked. 
 
 "Not so bad," he replied. "The farmer keeps the married 
 ones on, and turns off the single ones." 
 
 My admiration for the kindness of the farmer was somewhat 
 lessened when it was afterwards pointed out that philanthropy 
 had little to do with this arrangement, but that a single man 
 could and would go elsewhere, while a married one with a 
 family came at once on the rates. 
 
 " There wasn't much drinking," the old labourer said, " about 
 there. They hadn't enough to get drunk upon." 
 
 As to witches, he hadn't heard speak of any since he was a 
 boy ; his mother used to talk of 'em. " Did I think, now, that 
 a witch could stop a cart going up-hill ? " 
 
 "Did he?" 
 
 " Well, he wasn't sure." 
 
 "Pharisees? What were they? Oh, yes; he had heard speak 
 of faery rings." 
 
 " Did he go to church ? " 
 
 " Yes, and sometimes to the Wesleyans. All we have to do," 
 said he, as if he wished to give a summary of his creed, "is 
 to stick to the Bible.". 
 
 Yet even he had his difficulties. 
 
 " I be ignorant, sir, I be. Maybe ye can tell me what this 
 means. I think it be in one of the little books where it do 
 say, ' God came from Teman.' How can that be when it say 
 ' God was, and is, and ever shall be ' ? "
 
 XL 
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 
 
 {Golden Hours, 1874.) 
 
 THAT the South Saxon nature is a deeply religious one all we 
 know of the people now and of the history of their forefathers 
 tends to convince us. We see, moreover, in its manifestation 
 from the earliest times to the present day a proof that the 
 primal elements of character in a race, as in an individual, 
 remain the same under every possible change of circumstance. 
 The first we know of the South Saxon religiously is that he was a 
 worshipper of Odin, " the terrible and severe god, the father of 
 slaughter, the god that carries desolation and fire, the active and 
 roaring deity, he who gives victory and revives courage in conflict, 
 who names those that are to be slain." With the worship of Odin 
 was associated in course of time that of Frigga, or Frea, his wife, 
 the goddess of love, of pleasure, and sensuality. The most dis- 
 tinguishing feature of this primitive religion was \\sfatalism. Three 
 Fates predestined the general career of men, while each individual 
 had a special Fate who attended on him, controlled his life, and 
 determined his end. In contests and fights an additional species 
 of Fates called Valkeries, the direct emissaries of Odin, were 
 employed to select the warriors who were to fall, and to be at once 
 translated to Valhalla. In Valhalla they fought all day, and sat 
 down at night to feast on the never-ending flesh of the boar 
 Scrimner, washed down by deep draughts of mead drunk from the 
 skulls of their enemies. To Niflheim were doomed all the poor in 
 spirit, all who were not gifted with, or had not been able to attain 
 to, a habit of self-confidence. Over its miseries Hela reigned 
 
 189
 
 190 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 supreme. " Her palace was Anguish, her table Famine, her 
 waiters Expectation and Delay, the threshold of her door was 
 Precipice, her bed was Leanness, and her look struck terror in 
 every beholder." 
 
 Behind this grosser creed appears the dim shade of a more 
 ancient faith. An almighty, omniscient Creator is spoken of who 
 would one day manifest Himself. Then Odin and the whole 
 Valhalla would disappear in a general conflagration, and from the 
 chaos would spring forth a new heaven and a new hell. The final 
 judgment would then take place, and each individual would 
 receive an irreversible sentence determining his fate to all eternity. 
 
 Such was the faith by which the ancient South Saxon lived and 
 died. More than a thousand years have passed away since the 
 whole pantheon of Scandinavian gods and goddesses fell into the 
 limbo of forgetfulness ; but the primal characteristics of that faith 
 appear in each succeeding generation, gathering round other 
 names and permeating another theology. On this old vigorous 
 Scandinavian stock the pure truth of Christ has been more than 
 once grafted, producing for a time much precious fruit ; but just 
 as it is in the orchard, so is it amongst men each generation 
 of trees requires new grafting, or it will infallibly return to the 
 original strain, and produce only crabs. 
 
 To such a condition the religious life of rural Sussex has long 
 been tending, so that it would perhaps be easier now than in 
 ages gone by to show that the faith of the typical Sussex man 
 is marked by exactly the same characteristics as that of his pagan 
 forefathers. It is true that he thinks that he worships only one 
 God ; but his conception of the Divine character is agreeable to 
 ideas which seem to have become part of his nature during the 
 long night of heathendom. The attributes of the eternal Creator 
 have become mingled in his mind with those of Odin, the strong 
 and severe god, who names those that are to be slain, and with 
 those of the fates who determine and control the destinies of men. 
 None but those whom Odin has selected, and who the fates have 
 predestined to be slain, will reach the Valhalla ; all others, even 
 Balder, the beautiful god of light, are doomed to the miseries of 
 Niflheim. 
 
 He pays his homage to Odin, he resigns himself to Odin's will ;
 
 VVEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 191 
 
 but he seeks relief from a worship so despairful at the shrine of 
 Frigga, or Frea, the goddess of sensuality. 
 
 Fatalism and sensuality this is the evil heritage of the South 
 Saxon race, and it has produced its fruit in a deep-seated melan- 
 choly, and in a continual suspicion of God and man. Of their 
 suspicion of man it is difficult to give an adequate idea. It is 
 seen chiefly in the way in which the typical Sussex 
 religionist regards all who differ from him. Instead of trying 
 to enlighten their darkness, he shuns all religious connection 
 with them as persons in the gall of bitterness and the 
 bond of iniquity. His suspicion of God is shown in his theology, 
 its great object being to disprove the glad tidings of God's love to 
 the world. From Sunday to Sunday the great work of his 
 preachers is to assure those who have got to believe that God has 
 a particular love for them as individuals that this is still the case. 
 But it is hard work. On the other hand, many who do not 
 attain to this belief have so little confidence in God that they 
 suppose He permits them to be worried by malicious spirits, who 
 bewitch them, frighten them with apparitions, and otherwise 
 torment them. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Rotherfield I went to see a good old 
 man of seventy-three who had lived in the parish ever since he was 
 seven years old. He was in a weak, nervous state, and suffered 
 from sleeplessness. In broad Sussex dialect, very difficult to 
 understand, he told us tales of witchcraft and apparition. One 
 story was of a man who came to see a girl who lived at his house, 
 and how this man had declared that all- the cocks and hens in the 
 yard had their feathers turned the wrong way, and how he had 
 seen a great boar-cat with flaring eyes in the hen-roost. This 
 unhappy man, he said, was hag-ridden, Sussex for bewitched. Our 
 informant had not the ghost-seeing faculty himself; but he had a 
 boy that possessed it. This lad from earliest childhood had seen 
 cats when no one else could; still more, on one occasion he had 
 actually seen his Uncle William's ghost walking down the road, 
 the uncle in question dying shortly after the ominous apparition. 
 He accounted for the preternatural power on the part of the boy 
 by his having been born in the middle of the night I 
 
 Of the depth of superstition, ignorance, immorality, and
 
 1 92 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 poverty which prevails in the Weald of Sussex, it is impossible 
 for me to give any adequate idea. I will relate a few facts in 
 illustration of these points ; no doubt those who dwell in the 
 district could relate many others still more striking 
 
 In a parish contiguous to Alayfield the clergyman told me that 
 an old woman came to him, and having informed him that her 
 little grand-daughter was ill, she said in an insinuating way, " I 
 think, sir, it 'ud do her good if she were to have little of the 
 sacrament wine." 
 
 In another Wealden parish a minister said that it was his 
 impression that not more than half of the population could read 
 fluently ; a few of the remainder very imperfectly, the rest not at 
 all. On a jury, on which I think he said he had occasion to be 
 present, composed of farmers, most of whom were well to-do, only 
 six could sign their names ; on another, only one witness out of 
 five could write. 
 
 Passing over Crowborough Common, I came upon a little cot 
 not much higher than a man, and about ten or twelve feet in 
 length. I looked in at the open door, and found it papered with 
 odd bits of paper, and ornamented with a sheet of the Police 
 News. My tap aroused a recumbent figure on a bed, which just 
 filled up the whole of one end of the cottage. The gruff voice 
 assured me that its owner was not ill, but merely taking a rest, as 
 he worked hard all the week. He was a sweep, and lived here 
 alone with his boy. 
 
 Grimes was not sullen, but very genial. He came and sat on a 
 stool in front of an old fireplace, all burnt out and rusty. He 
 could not read, nor his boy either. What was the use ? His 
 father and mother hadn't been able to read, and yet they pulled 
 along, and went to America. He hadn't been able to read, and 
 yet he had pulled along ; indeed, he was in such repute, that if I 
 was to offer to sweep his chimney ever so well, his customers 
 wouldn't have me. What more, then, could his boy want than to 
 be trusted and believed in, and allowed to sweep these same 
 chimneys, until he in his turn could make the next generation of 
 boys do it for him ? 
 
 From what he said, it appeared that boys still climb chimneys 
 in this oart of the country. He had a machine, but it was
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 193 
 
 impossible to clean some chimneys ; they had such ledges and 
 such windings, you couldn't nohow get at the soot unless a boy 
 went up. He didn't believe in boys being ill-treated ; had heard 
 of pricking boys behind, but didn't believe it. You must be very 
 good to boys to get them to go at all. It was no use larruping 
 them, or they'd sulk and refuse. When you'd taught them their 
 trade, then if they put on you, you might larrup them. 
 
 If I were to relate the statements I received on the subject of 
 morality, I feel sure that I should be accused of exaggeration. 
 Suffice it to say that as regards the relation of the sexes, public 
 opinion can scarcely be lower in any part of England. 
 
 I observe from the Report of the Agricultural Commission in 
 1868 that in some parts of West Sussex the demoralization was 
 attributed to habits of drunkenness on the part of the labouring 
 classes. This is not true of the Weald ; the people really have no 
 money to spend on drink. 
 
 Poverty, miserable cottages, and the want of a really Christian 
 ministry, these are the causes of much of the degradation to be 
 found in the Weald of Sussex. 
 
 To realize this poverty and the wretchedness of their homes 
 one must live amongst them, not as a mere bird of passage, or a 
 summer visitor, or a gentleman resident, but as one of themselves. 
 One must pass up and down the Weald in winter-time and in 
 rainy weather, note how they have neither cisterns nor drainage, 
 how therefore they suffer from thirst in the dog-days when all the 
 springs are dry, and have floors swamped when the rainy season 
 sets in, while the house-filth oozes out from a slit in the wall to 
 trickle into the garden or wayside gutter. One must go into the 
 cots themselves, blackened with ages of wood fires, and breathe 
 the reeking smoke and foul air, see the mother and children 
 cowering over a few poor sticks smouldering on some bricks 
 under the great chimney, realizing Cowper's picture of the poor 
 labourer's wife a hundred years ago 
 
 "The frugal housewife trembles when she lights 
 Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear, 
 But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. 
 The few small embers left she nurses well, 
 And while her infant race with out-spread hands 
 O
 
 IQ4 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 And crowded knees sit cowering o'er the sparks, 
 Retires, content to quake so they be warmed." 
 
 One must see the children eating bread and butter for dinner, 
 and drinking the hot wash they call tea ; one must note the bleared 
 eyes, the scrofulous skin, the ulcerated legs, the rheumatic 
 agonized bodies, one must see these things and a hundred others 
 for oneself to realize the depth of their miserable poverty. 
 
 The benefit caused by any fresh industry which will give 
 employment to a few hands, and thus bring a little runlet of the 
 vast wealth of the outlying world into this impoverished district, 
 may be seen in the villages which form the parish of Hurstmon- 
 ceux. In this neighbourhood about twenty persons find profit- 
 able employment in making the flat baskets so much used for 
 agricultural purposes, such, for instance, as bringing potatoes 
 from the fields. Many are sent over to France, the Hurstmonceux 
 makers having established a reputation through one of the first of 
 their number obtaining a prize at the Exhibition of 1851. 
 
 In speaking of Sussex commons, I have described how, in 
 Heathfield and its neighbourhood, chicken-fattening has grown up 
 into a large trade. The men who collect the chickens from the 
 cottages which fringe the edges of the numerous commons, or 
 which lie hidden in out-of-the-way lanes, are called higglers. You 
 can scarcely traverse any road in this locality without meeting 
 one of them, lean sinewy men or youths, carrying an enormous 
 wicker cage, full of chickens, on their shoulders, and a stout 
 staff in their hands. Trudging along at one pace, they bear the 
 burden of life in a brave though somewhat moody fashion. 
 
 Even among those who are better off, one is oppressed by a 
 sense of the poverty of the Weald. The fires of wood and small- 
 coal, the inferiority of almost every article of diet, everything, in 
 fact, repeats the same sad tale. However, this very poverty seems 
 to tell in favour of the few tradesfolk to be found in every village, 
 for it has prevented a rush of competitors. Unlike the poor 
 labourers, who are wholly dependent on the good-will of the 
 employers of the district, most of the tradesmen can afford to be 
 independent of individual customers. As to the artificers the 
 builder, the wheelwright, the carpenter, or the smith they are,
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 1 95 
 
 generally speaking, masters of the situation, and can not only 
 charge what they choose, but do their work how or when it suits 
 them best. This enviable position produces a sort of crabbed 
 independence, an illustration of which was given me in the 
 character of one parish which was thus graphically sketched by its 
 rector : " The people here wouldn't care twopence for a 
 duke." 
 
 The more prosperous such people become, the more this 
 disagreeable phase of character predominates, until the whole 
 atmosphere becomes laden with petty jealousies, wounded self- 
 love, and outrageous egotism, working up here and there into 
 rancorous life-long animosities. 
 
 No mere formal religion, however perfect in theory, can do any- 
 thing to prevent or heal this strife. People who are of the same 
 blood, and dwell under the same roof, or who go to the same 
 church or chapel and pronounce Shibboleth in exactly the same 
 way, can still be sullen foes. Nothing but the true spirit of the 
 kingdom of heaven can make a man at once independent and 
 sympathetic ; and such characters can be found in every sect and 
 form of Christianity, and in the present disjointed state of 
 Christendom unconnected with any denomination. 
 
 And they may be met with even in these dead Wealden 
 towns. I know one, a smith, a type of the soft-hearted Sussex 
 man. His wife, a pale, sickly woman, with the sad smile of 
 the permanent invalid, is constantly at work, either attending 
 to the shop or to a tribe of small children, whose presence both 
 she and her husband seem to imagine constitute their greatest 
 earthly happiness. Added to this, she is ever assiduous in 
 helping her neighbours, nursing the sick, and promoting the 
 good of the little Christian society in which both she and her 
 husband find a continual spiritual impetus, making and keeping 
 them what they are. Here is one among their many good 
 works. A poor woman, whom she has nursed during her 
 illness, is on her deathbed. "Ah," said the sick woman, 
 " I could die happy if I knew you'd take my poor Liz." 
 She consented, but what will the husband say ? ff Tom," 
 the said, directly she got home, "I'm afeerd you'll think I've
 
 196 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 been an' done a foolish thing ; I've promised to take charge of 
 
 poor Mrs P 's gal." I think I see him, innocent of coat and 
 
 waistcoat, his shirt-sleeves tucked up, his grimy, brawny arms 
 akimbo on his broad chest, his round genial face^eaming through 
 the soot which envelops it, like the sun shining through a mirky 
 atmosphere, looking down on his pale, anxious wife, and replying 
 cheerily, " Not I, mother ; don't you be afeerd ; if you don't mind 
 the trouble, I'm willing enough." So they took the little orphan 
 into their own family, though her father lived in the town, and 
 could earn enough to keep her himself if he would. Such people 
 are deeply needed in these out-of-the-world spots. Calamities 
 happen which no poor-law, no organized system of charity, 
 could adequately relieve, nothing, in fact, but the consoling 
 sympathy of brotherly kindness arising from such simple- 
 hearted faith in a loving God and Saviour, as just de- 
 scribed. 
 
 In my perambulations about the district I met with a woman 
 whose strange, familiar way of speaking and half-distraught manner 
 seemed to compel me to listen to her. Her story wore an air of 
 exaggeration and a tone of imposture, but I was afterwards assured 
 on the best authority that there was no reason for doubting that 
 she spoke the truth. 
 
 " It's three year," she said, " sin' I buried my husband ; a kinder 
 man never breathed. He'd been out all day surveying, and when 
 he came home at night I said, ' Now, dear, let me make you some 
 tea.' ' No,' said he, ' Em'ly dear ; I have had a good tea, never 
 ate more heartily in my life, yet for all that I didn't seem to have 
 enough ; I'll go to bed.' As he passed through the children's 
 bed-room he kissed them all, and said, ' Jesus bless you, my little 
 lambs ; ' and then he promised one should have a little present 
 for her womanly ways. When he laid down we kissed each other, 
 and he said, ' Good-night, Em'ly dear ; if I lie on my left side, 
 you'll turn me, won't you ? ' I never woke till morning, and then I 
 heard him making a strange noise. I started up and turned him, 
 but he was quite blue ; I rose him in my arms, called for a glass 
 of water, but he fell forward and died. I was quite incautious 
 until the inquest.
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 1 97 
 
 " You should see my little girls ; they are the dearest children, 
 though I say it. Often and often have they fallen down on their 
 knees and asked the blessed Jesus to send us food." She told me 
 how when they had once done so she looked into the garden, and 
 saw, as she thought, one of the children's pocket-handkerchiefs. 
 It proved to be a stranger's, and in the corner tied up in a knot 
 was a shilling. The eldest child, she said, had been in the 
 infirmary at Hastings with a bad leg, and was obliged to have it 
 cut. " When," she continued, " the child was going to be put on 
 the operating-table, the surgeon came and said, 'Now, Amanda 
 dear, we are going to cut your leg.' 'Very well, sir,' she replied, 
 ' I am ready ; only give me five minutes that I may go into the 
 lavatory.' ' What for ? ' ' That I may ask God to give me strength 
 to bear it.' " 
 
 The poor woman concluded by a bitter invective against the 
 guardians. " Only let me be guardian for a week," she exclaimed, 
 " and see what I'd do ! Think of giving little children meat such 
 as you would not give to hogs ! Think of waking little children up 
 at six in the morning, and not letting them have anything again 
 until twelve ! Would you like it ? Of course they are hungry-like. 
 Six hours be a long time for a child to wait. Arid then when they 
 are sick, to have to apply to the Board, and perhaps wait a 
 fortnight. It's a shame. Ah ! that - is a brute. I should 
 like to scrunch him, I should. He is a brute." 
 
 Near Waldron I met a bright, happy-faced boy, seventeen years 
 old, who told me that he had worked ever since he was nine ; left 
 school then and went to service first for fourpence a day, then for 
 sixpence, then for eightpence, then for eighteenpence, then for two 
 shillings ; now he works in the fields, has eight shillings a week, and 
 will shortly be raised. Some had lately gone from those parts to 
 New Zealand, but he did not care to emigrate as long as he had 
 two hands and there was work to be done. He went to a night- 
 school in winter, and gets on there a good bit ; has a few books 
 " The Negro Servant," and a book about " Noah's Ark," and 
 "The Tower of Babel," which he has read over and over 
 again. 
 
 This boy had worked ever since he was nine. Sufficiently
 
 198 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 young, but in his case it appeared to be domestic service ; not as 
 I had seen just before I had met him, a child of that age actually 
 employed in the fields. He was a little fair-haired boy, and came 
 running to the side of the field to ask the time. He told me that 
 he had to work from six in the morning until six in the evening, 
 with an hour at twelve o'clock for his dinner. His job just then 
 was pulling up a red weed in the corn. He had worked for 
 three summers, and only went to school in the winter. I parted 
 with him and his three little sisters at the gate of their father's 
 cottage, where they had all come to welcome him home to his 
 dinner not of meat, but of gooseberry pie. 
 
 There are doubtless many parishes in England in which no voice 
 is ever raised against the cruel wrong done to a young child in thus 
 making him work eleven hours a day. But where a voice is raised 
 to rebuke the parents who sell their children into slavery, and 
 the farmers who buy their labour, whose voice is it ? Whose is 
 the counter influence, the only counter influence that can come 
 with any weight against parental influence, against the exigencies 
 of the sole employer, the exigencies of stern want ? Only his 
 who can claim them for God, who can remind parents and 
 employers that these children have minds and souls which have 
 a right to knowledge and education, the much-abused 
 parson ! 
 
 Not that the best among them does more than he ought, or in 
 many cases is half enough that champion of the poor which his 
 high office calls him to be. For a clergyman's office is exactly that 
 of Mr Greatheart in " The Pilgrim's Progress." He is especially 
 appointed to be the defender of the women and children of his 
 charge, and of all the Fearings and Feebleminds among the men ; 
 to struggle in their cause with the terrible giants which seek their 
 destruction Grim (want), Maul the oppressor' (soria! custom}, and 
 Despair, the most cruel of all, who drives to drink and ruin those 
 whom Grim and Maul have already half killed. 
 
 May we live to see the day when a true priesthood in England, 
 emancipated themselves from the thraldom of Grim, Maul, and 
 Despair, shall rise to their true calling, and become the defenders 
 of the poor, and the oppressed, and the suffering in EVERY class 
 against their foes !
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 199 
 
 But let the clergy look well to it, for by some means or 
 other the hearts of the poor are more often than not alienated 
 from them. 
 
 Not far from Cross-in-Hand I had a talk with a wheelwright, 
 who was at work in his shop by the road-side. Most of the 
 people thereabouts, he said, went to chapel. He went to a 
 Wesleyan place of worship, where the congregation sometimes 
 numbered two hundred people. " Why did the people prefer 
 chapel to church ? " " Because they could understand better ; the 
 preaching was plainer than at church ; they spoke more to the 
 soul. You see, clergymen do it more for a living." "Do not 
 people 'think it a benefit to have some one in the parish to 
 whom they can always go ? " " Never knew any one who did," 
 was the answer. "The clergyman here is not bad to people 
 when they are sick, but," continued the wheelwright, " I would 
 not go to church for that sort of thing ; it must end bad. 
 What'll such people do when they come to die ? " 
 
 This prejudice against the clergy on the part of those who are 
 just beginning to realize their power to think and act with inde- 
 pendence, arises from the fact that the rural clergy, as a class, have 
 so closely identified themselves with the gentry as to give rise to 
 the impression that they regard themselves as a sort of spiritual 
 squirearchy. 
 
 When they shall have the courage to descend from their high 
 social position, and to claim no status but a heavenly one ; when 
 they shall become willing to be regarded quite as much as labour- 
 ing men as squires ; when, in fact, they shall absolutely refuse to 
 take any particular position in the social scale, but shall claim 
 equality and fellowship with all, then they will be in a fair way to 
 recover their influence with every class, and to find it tenfold 
 greater than it ever has been. 
 
 If, too, the rural clergy would recover and retain their influence 
 as pastors of the whole flock, they must strive in a spirit of deep 
 sympathy to understand the real faith and character of those 
 amongst their parishioners who dissent from the National 
 Church. 
 
 Throughout Sussex the hyper-Calvinists are the most numerous 
 body. Their churches were no doubt founded to maintain
 
 200 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 the same creed as that once held by the greater number of 
 Baptist churches, a creed of which particular salvation was a 
 distinctive point ; but while the greater part of the denomination 
 have become so affected by the modern evangelical revival as to 
 sink or almost lose sight of this doctrine, the Baptists of East 
 Sussex, coming under the influence of Huntingtonianism, have 
 continued more and more to magnify its importance, until, like 
 Aaron's rod, it seems to have swallowed up everything else. In 
 most villages they will be found to have a chapel, the minister of 
 which is not unfrequently himself a farmer or a labourer. At 
 Buxted the pastor of the chapel proved to be an ancient labourer 
 in a dark smock, a truly simple-minded, good old man. 
 
 While I was staying in an ancient Wealden town, a large new 
 Calvinistic chapel was opened, creating for the day quite an 
 unwonted excitement. The building was well filled, one might 
 almost say crowded, by a respectable body of worshippers, 
 mostly farmers, their wives and children, many of whom came 
 long distances in chaises, waggonettes, and carts. 
 
 The preacher in the morning was one of the most eminent hold- 
 ing their peculiar views. It was evident that he knew that the 
 people he had to deal with were a desponding race, entertaining 
 the most melancholy ideas concerning the fate of mankind in 
 general, for his sermon was entirely devoted to an attempt to 
 assure as many individuals among them as he possibly could, that, 
 come what might to the bulk of men, they at least were safe. His 
 text was, " Do good in Thy good pleasure unto Zion, build Thou 
 the walls of Jerusalem ; " and the question raised was, Who were 
 true Zionites ? From his point of view the walls of the holy city 
 became very extensive, for he asserted that any one] who in the 
 course of his life had felt five minutes' love to the Saviour was a 
 true Zionite. 
 
 In the evening the minister of the place preached. He was a 
 farmer, and lives miles away from his charge, but amongst these 
 people the minister's office appears to be chiefly that of preaching. 
 Every elect soul, they believe, has its appointed teacher, and every 
 teacher has his appointed work. The former must go any distance to 
 hear the right man ; the latter any distance to do the right work. 
 Thus in the course of this sermon the speaker spoke of having
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 2OI 
 
 himself gone to hear a certain preacher, with the conviction that 
 what HE said would settle his fate. He came home with the joyful 
 assurance that he was safe. So with reference to a preacher narrat- 
 ing his own experience. He said that poor souls listened and said, 
 " That is just how I feel. If that man goes to heaven and I am 
 sure he will I shall go too." 
 
 But for a genuine specimen of a hyper-Calvinistic preacher and 
 a hyper-Calvinistic sermon, what I saw and heard at a little chapel 
 on Crowborough Common could not be surpassed. 
 
 In the pulpit was a tall man, with a gaunt face, high forehead, 
 and sad eyes, looking as if bowed down by deep mental distress. 
 In low tones he opened the service by reading the psalm, " Why 
 art thou cast down, O my soul ? " Then a bluff old worthy, the 
 very reverse of the minister, gave out the hymn, which was led off 
 by a young man with an accordion. A prayer followed, pictur- 
 esque and poetical in language, its imagery drawn from the Bible 
 and " The Pilgrim's Progress." Then another hymn ; and then the 
 sermon, from the text, " Persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, 
 but not destroyed." " How often," he said, " is a child of God 
 wounded in the house of his friends ! How I remember to have 
 aggravated my dear old father ! ' You old people,' says I, ' have 
 some curious crotchets in your heads, but you are not to expect 
 us young ones are going to take up with them all, why, you don't 
 know what you believe yourself.' As I turned away I saw the tear 
 trickle down the old man's eye, and now I know that I persecuted 
 that godly father. So, too, the devil sometimes comes between a 
 man and his wife, and poor souls find that just where they ought to 
 get most help, there they meet with nothing but cruel words and 
 unkind insinuations, so that they are almost driven to distraction, 
 and to doubt if the root of the matter be in them. Thus Job's 
 wife said, ' Curse God, and die.' " Then he told a most apocryphal 
 anecdote about a woman whose husband threatened to put her 
 into a heated oven if she persisted in going to a certain chapel ; 
 however she went, came trembling home, begged for five minutes' 
 prayer, her steadfast faith so affecting her persecutor that he gave 
 up his cruel design. Then he dwelt on the antagonism there has 
 ever been between two classes of men in the world. All are from 
 one federal head, but God has chosen some for Himself, according
 
 202 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 to the words, " A people have I formed for Myself." These must be 
 persecuted by the others. From the time of Cain and Abel it ever 
 has been so. Some saints are surprised. " I never have any one 
 to see me now," is the frequent complaint. " Get a fiddle, my 
 friend, begin to scroop away, invite the people to a dance, and see 
 how they will flock around, and call you 'good fellow, 'good 
 woman,' only another word, as my father used to say, for a 
 fool. 
 
 " The way of persecution is the King's highway, the divine 
 college to which He sends all His dear ones." He dwelt on this 
 thought with extraordinary force, and it seemed to give relief to 
 his soul. I had observed that though he had commenced by say- 
 ing that he was so weak that he trembled from head to foot, as he 
 proceeded his voice got stronger and stronger, until at last he had 
 entirely recovered his equanimity, and appeared quite happy. 
 He had delivered his soul. 
 
 The display of literary food in a bookseller's shop in a Wealden 
 town was suggestive of the intellectual character of the district. 
 First and foremost were Huntington's books, in company with 
 others of a kindred theology, their favourite hymn-book by Gadsby, 
 Owen and Boston's theological works. Side by side with all this 
 theology we have the London Journal, the Half-penny Magazine, 
 and Reynolds 's Miscellany. The only agreeable fact is, that even 
 here Bunyan and Defoe find their way. Thus they cater for the 
 two races of mankind, while for polemics against the one great 
 power which threatens some day to devour them all, they have 
 nothing to offer but that dreadful-looking little book called Maria 
 Monk. If any one would measure the enormous difference 
 between Sussex and Northumberland, let him compare the 
 literature sold in this shop with that in a village bookseller's in 
 North umberland. 
 
 Calvinists are not the only Dissenters in a Sussex village. 
 There are those who represent a more modern style of Non- 
 conformity. From the pulpits of their chapels may almost 
 always be heard sermons in harmony with what is widely known 
 as Revival preaching. Its favourite text is, " For God so loved 
 the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 203 
 
 believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life;" and its favourite hymn, "Just as I am, without one 
 plea." This ministry, when exercised by a gentle, loving-hearted 
 man, has calmed many a troubled heart, and such scenes as the 
 following seem to suggest progress towards a real unity. 
 
 It is Sunday evening, the service is over, and the majority of 
 the congregation have gone. The forms and seats are pushed 
 back, and the little table, at which those who led the singing 
 usually sat, is spread with a small white cloth, a bottle of wine, a 
 large wine-glass, and a small plate of bread. The communicants 
 gather round old and young, poor and better off. Boys are there 
 of eleven or twelve years of age, and one little girl about eight, 
 two or three of the small maid-of-all-work type, making the number 
 of the young an unusual and interesting feature. The pastor sits 
 down among them, and reads the passage, "Ought not Christ to 
 have suffered these things, and entered into His glory ? " Then 
 singing and prayer and eating the bread, singing and prayer and 
 drinking the wine, another hymn, the offertory, and benediction. 
 Thus concludes this great act of Christian worship, in all its parts 
 perfectly harmonious and beautiful, because the spirit which per- 
 vaded it was one of true adoration and love. 
 
 And yet such men, working day by day in God's name, and for 
 the love of Christ, cannot be recognised and encouraged, because, 
 providentially, they have been brought into the work by other 
 channels than those of the Established Church ; while on the 
 other hand, they must be quite cast out of the synagogue, be- 
 cause they do not make election the beginning, middle, and end 
 of all their sermons. 
 
 In the presence of such ignorance, superstition, immorality, 
 bigotry, and consequent suspicion and disunion how can we be 
 surprised that Romanism is replanting itself in the Weald? 
 Although at present no effort is made at proselytising, it would be 
 idle to suppose that the Jesuits have chosen this locality wherein 
 to build two noble orphanages, and to found a nunnery on the 
 site of an ancient archi-episcopal palace, without any ulterior pur- 
 pose of propagating their faith among the people. 
 
 The nunnery is contiguous to the parish church, and being
 
 204 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 a restoration of the ruins of the palace built about the same 
 period, the two buildings will, in course of time, seem to belong 
 to each other. The great hall, a fine apartment, which formerly 
 possessed an open roof, has been turned into a chapel. On 
 the walls have been placed a series of beautiful bas-reliefs re- 
 presentating the stations of the cross. Two figures of Jesuit 
 saints SS. Stanislaus and Alphegius stand before the altar, 
 apparently guarding it. The nuns call themselves " the Sisters 
 of the Holy Child." 
 
 The orphanages being in lofty positions, are visible for 'miles 
 round. They have both been built at the expense of the 
 Duchess of Leeds, and are said to have cost, the one ^15,000, 
 the other ^20,000. I made a pilgrimage to one, and found 
 its arrangements all that could possibly be desired. The door 
 was opened by one of the brothers who acts as cook ; another 
 brother was sent for, who very courteously showed me over the 
 building. I was taken into the chapel a plain building with an 
 altar decorated with flowers, and a statue on one side of St. 
 Joseph and the Child, on the other of the Virgin Mary. She was 
 also surrounded with flowers; it had lately been the feast of 
 the Assumption. My cicerone told me that a Dutchman named 
 Reinkens was the founder of their fraternity, and that they were 
 called Xavierian Brothers, after St. Francis Xavier, and were a 
 branch of the great Ignatian Society. 
 
 He took me into the dormitory a vast apartment which seemed 
 to extend the whole length of the building. It was divided 
 by a number of arches down the centre, filled in to about the 
 height of a man's breast, so cutting the dormitory in two without 
 lessening the quantity of air. The elder boys slept on one side, 
 the younger on the other. When they enter the room for the 
 night, each boy stands at the head of his bed, and taking hold of 
 the white counterpane, folds it up. Then, at a given signal, they 
 all kneel down and say their evening prayer. These acts, and 
 every other, are all done by rule, the whole company being 
 directed by a single brother, who stands on a step by one of the 
 arches. 
 
 In the schoolroom the boys appeared seated at desks, or standing
 
 WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER. 205 
 
 in a half-circle. They were reading out of a lesson-book, the 
 subject being " The Third Foe to Salvation the Flesh" 
 
 In the upper part of the building was another large apartment, 
 and used at present as a play-room, but intended for another dor- 
 mitory, but as yet the orphanage only contains fifty boys, whereas 
 it is constructed for two hundred. 
 
 The brothers, I think, were ten in number, and are liable to be 
 removed and sent elsewhere at any time. Their vows are the 
 three ordinary ones, poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their 
 chief work is educating the young, and they have such faith in 
 their system that this brother said that if a boy six years of age 
 were placed in his hands he would undertake to mould him 
 according to his own will. When the boys grow up they are rarely 
 devoted to the priesthood. On the contrary, they are sent into 
 various secular stations abroad, or in England. Carpentering, tailor- 
 ing and baking are taught in the house. But they are educated not 
 only for artisans, but some even enter the liberal professions. One 
 was already in the Ordnance Survey, and two were clerks in 
 London. They all wear a brown holland skeleton suit in summer, 
 and a corduroy one in winter. A friend asked one of the boys, 
 who was working in the garden, how he liked it ; he gave no direct 
 answer, but replied in this characteristic fashion, " If I were to 
 speak against the orphanage, should I not be an ungrateful 
 boy ? " 
 
 Faith still lingers in the Weald, genuine and powerful. " I never 
 saw such beautiful death-beds as I have seen in Sussex," said a 
 clergyman to the writer. Among the cottages I visited was 
 one in a drear, dilapidated row. I entered. It was * a 
 large, bare room, with a brick floor. I was invited, however, 
 to ascend the staircase, and there in the upper room lay 
 a pale, intelligent woman. She had been ill for years, and was 
 so weak that she could not speak, spelling out all she wished 
 to say by means of a large alphabet. She had had a bad 
 husband, and now was partially supported by the parish. On her 
 bed were a number of religious papers and tracts, which she gave 
 to every one who came, so that there was not a house in the town 
 without one. It was easy to see that she was carefully tended
 
 206 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 by those who loved her. A little lad sat by her bed-side a 
 neighbour's child, she said. An atmosphere of calm peace and 
 love reigned around. The Divine light shone all the brighter 
 for its bare, poverty-stricken surroundings.
 
 XII. 
 
 NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEPHERDS. 
 (Golden Hours, 1871.) 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING the miserable condition of a large number of 
 our fellow-countrymen who follow "the painful plough," there 
 yet remains, even in England, a peasantry concerning whom a 
 Royal Commission has given the following report : " They are 
 very intelligent, sober, and courteous in their manner. This 
 courtesy, moreover, is not cringing, but coupled with a manly 
 independence of demeanour. Crime is almost unknown in agri- 
 cultural Northumberland." 
 
 During the present summer I sought to find out, as far as I 
 could, what it was made the Northumberland peasantry so 
 superior. I visited Wooler and its neighbourhood, walking along 
 the base of the Cheviots as far as Rothbury, and during my 
 rambles I took every opportunity of conversing with the people, 
 and learning from their own mouths the true state of things. 
 
 First of all, the conditions of agricultural service in North- 
 umberland are peculiar. The hind, an old Saxon name 
 implying a household servant, is hired by the year, his term of 
 service commencing on the i3th of May to the same date 
 on the following year. Something like statute fairs are held 
 about Lady-day in Wooler, Rothbury, Belford, Alnwick, and 
 Morpeth, at which the hinds are hired. Unmarried hinds 
 and domestic servants are, however, engaged only a few days 
 before they go to a place. 
 
 Cottages are provided expressly for labourers on a farm, and their 
 use considered as part of the wages. They are the property of 
 the laird, as the landlord is called ; are built by him, and included 
 
 207
 
 208 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 in the farmer's rent. Wages are paid mostly in kind, and perhaps 
 the best idea I can give of what this means is to quote a state- 
 ment given by the post-master at Wooler to the Commissioner, as 
 to the value of wages paid in this fashion : 
 
 Cow (its keep) . . . . .^800 
 
 House . . . . . . 300 
 
 Coals (carrying from the pit) . . . 150 
 
 Potatoes . . . . . . 400 
 
 Oats . . . . . . 600 
 
 Barley . . . . . 4 16 o 
 
 Peas . . . . . . 300 
 
 Wheat . . . . . . 200 
 
 Stint Money . ...500 
 
 37 
 
 A hind can, if he prefers it, get paid in cash, but taking all 
 things into consideration he can by this system make from fifteen 
 to eighteen shillings a week. 
 
 But there is one great drawback. The hind has to provide a 
 woman to work for his master as required. The hind has to 
 give the " bondager " for such is the ugly title, evidently a relic 
 of serfdom yearly wages amounting to ^12, ios., besides 
 food, and lodging, and washing. As he only receives ^15 
 for her work, it is clear that he only gets 505. for her lodging 
 and maintenance all the year round. It frequently happens, 
 however, that the bondager is his own daughter, and this leads 
 to his making a bargain for the labour of his whole family. 
 
 To get to Wooler one must go off the line railways have not 
 penetrated so far and so I rode across the country, on the top of 
 the coach, with the Cheviots full in view. There were only two 
 travellers besides myself, one of whom, though fashionably dressed, 
 quietly informed me that he was a Newcastle policeman going 
 home for a holiday, and that his friends were shepherds. 
 
 Wooler is a little town, -with one long street branching out into 
 two or three ways at one end. It has a number of inns, but all 
 but two were very small, and none appeared to do any business. 
 It was market-day when I arrived, but the sole additional excite- 
 ment consisted in the entry about noon of a dozen or twenty
 
 NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEPHERDS. 209 
 
 squires and farmers, who walked or stood about in groups con- 
 versing with each other. 
 
 There were a few quiet shops in the street, one a bookseller's. 
 Everything in the way of stationery sold there was of the cheapest 
 description, showing that the owner catered for a class who were not 
 disposed to spend their money on mere luxuries; but on the counter 
 I saw works, which certainly argued an enlightened public in Wooler 
 and its neighbourhood. Erckmann-Chatrian's novels, the Duke 
 of Argyll's "Reign of Law," such were the books sold on one 
 counter, while the other was devoted to the sale of lollipops and 
 sugar-candy. But I doubt, however, whether the youngsters of 
 Wooler saw any incongruity in these things ; for they take equally 
 well to the sweets of learning and of good-stuff. That same after- 
 noon a number of boys running out of school overtook me in the 
 fields. Three of them almost immediately stretched themselves 
 on the grass and recommenced summing. The English Presby- 
 terian schoolmaster at Wooler told the Government Commissioner, 
 Mr Henley, that he had four boys in his school learning Latin, 
 one the son of a gamekeeper, another the son of a shepherd, a 
 third the son of a skinner of sheep, and the fourth the son of the 
 widow of a railway porter. Two others learnt French and Euclid, 
 one a shepherd's son, and the other a hind's. 
 
 At the beginning of the last century, the country round about 
 here was almost in a state of nature, now there are few parts of 
 England so well cultivated. Turnip-growing is the work to which 
 the Northumbrian farmers devote their best energies. Thousands 
 of acres are planted here along the base of the Cheviots, upon 
 which, when its verdant herbage begins to fail, the sheep are fed. 
 It is curious to note, as one may frequently at this time of the 
 year, a party of women and boys turnip-hoeing, and all working in 
 a line, with one man as overseer directing them. To a stranger 
 unaccustomed to such a sight it unpleasantly recalls old scenes in 
 the sugar plantations of Jamaica or of South Carolina. But with 
 such a people as the Northumbrians anything like slave-driving is 
 quite impossible. The arrangement is the result of systematic 
 farming, the application of the rules of the factory to the 
 field. 
 
 Just outside Wooler is Humbleton Hill, an outpost of the 
 
 p
 
 210 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Cheviots, and famous for a fierce border battle, described by 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The hill itself is wild and picturesque, with great boulders of 
 granite scattered all amongst the fern. In some parts the naked 
 rock rises quite precipitous, while the dells between are filled with 
 the foxglove, amongst which the rabbits start, and play hide-and- 
 seek. When at last I reached the top, the wind blew so fiercely 
 that I was glad to shelter myself behind a great cairn which had 
 been raised there. Before me was a deep gorge, and then arose 
 the Cheviot range great purply round-shouldered hills, with 
 sudden ascents and declivities. Hedgehope lay in light, all its 
 sinuosities brought out soft but distinct, while Old Cheviot rose 
 immediately opposite, wrapped in gloom. Behind its dark brow, 
 like a sea of hills bathed in sunshine, was the Scotch border, while 
 turning to the north-east I saw the German Ocean. 
 
 In my descent I came upon an old man carrying home a bundle 
 of wood. He appeared surprised when I told him that I under- 
 stood labourers were better off in Northumberland than elsewhere. 
 He said that they reckoned, when they had taken everything into 
 consideration, that they did not get more than 125. a week. He 
 had never been married, but had lived in his old and miserable 
 cot for twenty years. " Why had he never cared to marry ? " 
 
 " Because," he replied, " a woman in Northumberland 's not 
 worth house room. Why, you see, sir, she's out in the field all 
 day, and knows nothing about housework. A man can do varra 
 superior to the vast of them." 
 
 He had made up his mind early in life, not only on this account, 
 but because he would not bring a woman and perhaps a family 
 into the bargain into misery. " Men and women lived disagree- 
 able, for there was nothing like poverty to make them quarrel." 
 Here was the other side of the question, though some will, no 
 doubt, think he was a cynical old bachelor. But his face had 
 nothing sour in it, and I could not but admire the manner in 
 which he accepted his hard fate. He assured me he was quite 
 contented ; and although it seemed hard to believe, there was no 
 reason to doubt that he meant what he said. 
 
 Next morning I started for a ramble over the Cheviots, but 
 soon lost my way. However, I came upon a couple of cottages,
 
 NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEPHERDS. 211 
 
 and was allowed to enter one to have a look at its interior. The 
 tenant was a widow woman, who lived there with her three sons 
 and two daughters. One son was a labourer, the other worked in 
 a quarry, while the third went to school. Both daughters worked 
 in the fields, one serving as the bondager. The mother com- 
 plained that working in the fields affected the health of one of the 
 daughters. 
 
 The house consisted of one room and a loft ascended by a 
 ladder. Downstairs were two box beds, which I sketched, as they 
 afforded a good example of this essentially Northumbrian practice. 
 In this particular instance they were without sliding doors or even 
 curtains, as is elsewhere frequently the case. They had begun to 
 entertain some ideas of the benefit of ventilation. 
 
 Things looked very comfortable, as doubtless they were not 
 badly off, with four grown-up young people earning their living. 
 They kept a cow in winter-time ; it had formerly come into the 
 house, but I understood the practice was discontinued. While 
 sketching, in came a strong, good-looking youth, about eighteen or 
 twenty. The labourers have a good long rest in the middle of the 
 day, an hour and a-half, or two hours. They live well, " eat a vast 
 of meat," although it is principally bacon. Their bread is made 
 of barley and pea-meal mixed. This, with a good basin of porridge 
 and milk, forms their breakfast. To judge from the number of 
 dealers in tea and tobacco, no village, however small, is without 
 one. I infer they drink a great deal of tea and coffee, and this is 
 corroborated by the reports, in which medical men continually 
 express their regret at the growth of this practice, since they 
 believe it to have an injurious tendency. 
 
 From thence I wandered over the hills, trying to get into the 
 right track, until at last I came on a shepherd's cottage, where I 
 again inquired the way. Here, too, I was heartily welcomed. 
 The shepherd was at home, and while I attempted a sketch of the 
 interior of his house, he told me freely the conditions of his 
 service. 
 
 But first of all, let me describe his home. Its exterior looked 
 dreary enough, seen in the rain. I passed through a little stone 
 passage, and then into a larger apartment. Here were two box 
 beds as in the former house. There was no ceiling, but canvas
 
 212 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 had been drawn tight over the rafters, so that the great beams 
 came under it. The sides of the house were of rough stones, of 
 the same make as the dykes. Paper had been put over them to 
 give it an appearance of comfort, but the wind got between it and 
 the wall, and made it wabble to and fro. A spotless deal table 
 stood beneath the window, upon which the good-wife was knead- 
 ing her bread. When it was made it went into a large oven, which 
 formed part of the usual range found in most Northumbrian cots, 
 and which is put in by the tenant himself. By the side of the 
 window was a looking-glass and a little case of shelves containing 
 the crockery, all tastefully arranged. As I talked with the 
 shepherd, he kept rocking the cradle, a curious little box on 
 rollers. 
 
 His conditions were as follows : When he entered into service 
 he was allowed to purchase a number of sheep at his master's 
 expense. When he was married, he began with thirteen ; now he 
 has forty-two. He also has a cow, and kills perhaps two large 
 hogs in the year. Cow and hogs, as well as sheep, are well 
 provided for by the master. Besides this, he supplies him with 
 thirteen barrels of corn, each barrel containing six bushels, and 
 fifteen hundred yards of potatoes, and a house to live in. Coals 
 he buys himself, but they are carted by his master to his door. 
 He makes his income out of the wool of his sheep, and the sale of 
 his lambs. He was going to Alnwick Fair with the latter on the 
 following Monday. His eldest boy was twelve years old; he 
 worked in the fields with the women, turnip-hoeing in the 
 summer, and went to school in the winter. He had a taste for 
 drawing, and had ornamented various parts of the room with his 
 little efforts. His parents said they hoped, if they were spared, 
 to give him another season or two of schooling, although they 
 had four other boys and a little girl. 
 
 The shepherd, whose house I sketched, always went down to 
 Wooler on Sunday, to the Presbyterian Church, as his father 
 had done before him for fifty years. 
 
 He took me to see another shepherd, who lived in a new house 
 built by the Earl of Tankerville. It was as comfortable as any- 
 one in the world could wish ; two large rooms, with every con- 
 venience ; a capital stove, good oven and boiler, all put in at the
 
 NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEPHERDS. 213 
 
 laird's expense ; a roomy dairy, a cowhouse with stalls for six 
 cows, a stable for the horse, and a place for the dog. Nothing 
 was forgotten. I can imagine no life, on the whole, so healthful 
 and so hopeful as that of a Cheviot shepherd, if the old conditions 
 of service can be maintained, and such cottages built for him. 
 
 It is, however, one full of anxiety, and sometimes of great 
 peril. During the winter months they are liable to terrible 
 snowstorms, in which not only the flock but the shepherd him- 
 self has been known to perish. The mariner is hardly more 
 weatherwise than the shepherd, but the most experienced 
 shepherd is unable to foresee the extent and fury of these pitiless 
 storms. Sometimes they come with hardly any notice at all, or 
 after warm weather sufficient to delude all but the most canny 
 into the belief that the winter is over and gone ; at other times 
 the skies will gather and lower for hours, but none can tell in 
 what quarter the storm will break. In sheltered parts of the hills 
 the shepherds erect stone walls in the form of a circle, roughly 
 built of boulders, and about four feet high, as places of refuge for 
 the sheep when a storm comes on. Happy is the shepherd who 
 can gather his sheep, and fold them safely into such a " stell," 
 for if they get scattered after the storm has set in, they will, of 
 their own accord, seek the nooks and gullies the very spots 
 where the snow-wreaths accumulate, and get buried at the depth 
 of many feet. When this occurs, the shepherds go and search 
 for the lost sheep with long poles, with which they probe the 
 snow, but in the white, wavy, trackless drift they would have 
 little chance of success, if it were not for the help of their 
 invaluable dogs. The intelligence of these sagacious animals is 
 an ever-renewed cause of wonder; without them, it is not too 
 much to say, a district like the Cheviots would be a desert. 
 
 Each shepherd has two dogs, and with such companions he 
 can never be lonely, for, in the business of attending to the 
 flock, they have more than a human sympathy with his wishes 
 and intentions. A word, a look, a whistle is sufficient. They 
 dart off and gather the sheep from distant hills, exercising some- 
 thing very much like reason in bringing home the wanderer for 
 miles, and hardly expecting any reward but the satisfaction of 
 having pleased their master.
 
 214 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 The shepherds' houses are built, as a rule, in the glens by the 
 side of a burn. In the blinding mists which suddenly occur a 
 shepherd will sometimes lose his way, and getting on the wrong 
 side of the hill, wander far from his home into some distant 
 valley. Directly he is conscious of having lost himself, he 
 descends the side of the hill until he comes to a watercourse ; this 
 soon leads him to a brook, the brook joins a burn, and on the 
 burn he knows erelong he will come to friendly cot, where he can 
 rest and learn his whereabouts. 
 
 In the interesting blue-books quoted at the commencement of 
 this article, we have some surprising proofs given of the determina- 
 tion of these shepherds to obtain instruction for themselves and 
 their children. 
 
 Anthony Dagg, a shepherd of Linbriggs, on the Cheviots, the 
 father of eleven children, about twenty years ago hired a school- 
 master at his own expense. After a year or two he took his 
 master and two other shepherds into partnership. The school is 
 now attended by thirty-one children, and there is not at the 
 present time a person in the district who cannot read and write. 
 The schoolmaster moves from house to house among his four 
 employers, receiving board and lodging during fourteen days for 
 each scholar. 
 
 Near Bellingham a few shepherds on the hills keep a school- 
 master between them, and lately commissioned their schoolmaster 
 to procure for them Virgil, Horace, and Caesar. 
 
 In the winter-time the parents will send the bigger boys into 
 lodgings at Wooler, that they may have further advantages in the 
 way of education. In the school belonging to the English 
 Presbyterians the master speaks of having two sons of shepherds, 
 one learning Latin, the other French and Euclid. 
 
 Perhaps the secret of this mental energy lies in the deep 
 religiousness which characterises them as a class. 
 
 " It is almost impossible that the shepherd can be other than a 
 religious character, being so much conversant with the Almighty 
 in His works, in all the goings on of Nature, and in His control of 
 the otherwise resistless elements. He feels himself a dependent 
 being, morning and evening, on the great Ruler of the Universe ; 
 he holds converse with Him in the cloud and the storm, on the
 
 NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEPHERDS. 215 
 
 misty mountain and the darksome waste, in the whirling drifts and 
 the overwhelming thaw, and even in the voices and sounds that 
 are only heard by the howling cliff or the solitary dell. How can 
 such a man fail to be impressed with the presence of an Eternal 
 God, of an omniscient eye, and an almighty arm ? " 
 
 So says the Ettrick Shepherd, and on this subject no one was 
 better able to speak than he. It is true that he is referring to his 
 own people, but all he has to say applies with equal force to the 
 shepherds on the English side of the Border. 
 
 Leaving Wooler, I bent my course southwards along the base of 
 the Cheviots, preferring bye-roads, because they brought me 
 through more villages. The system of building cottages on the 
 farms makes villages scarce, and one would be inclined to think 
 there were no people in the land, so rarely does one meet even a 
 solitary wayfarer on the road. Had I had more time, I might 
 have studied many things beside the peasantry. 
 
 At Ilderton I came on a long row of cottages, mere plain, 
 substantial little dwellings, each with a window and a door, cold 
 and dreary-looking enough in the pelting rain. I found one 
 where they kept a shop, and sold small groceries, and, entering, 
 ventured to ask them to make me some tea. The house consisted 
 of the one room, which served as bedroom, sitting-room, kitchen, 
 and shop in all. Yet it was a really comfortable little place, as clean 
 as one could wish, and the box-beds hardly looked stuffy. Pictures, 
 not at all bad, adorned the wall ; one was a large portrait of John 
 Bunyan. On the table was a volume of Spurgeon's sermons, and 
 a book by McCheyne. There, too, was the tall clock, without 
 which a cottage would never seem furnished in the north. 
 
 The good woman, with just a slight tinge of coldness at first, 
 took off a great pot of nettles she was about to boil for the pigs, 
 and hung up the kettle. It seemed to boil in no time, and soon 
 she made some excellent tea. Then she sat down, and began to 
 knit away as if for her life, while her eldest daughter was busily 
 engaged in numberless domestic duties, doing it all so pleasantly 
 as if it were no effort. The youngest daughter it seemed had not 
 reached the age for labour, and it being too wet to go to sc ho ol 
 was busy with a piece of fancy-work. 
 
 The mother said they were not obliged to provide a bondager,
 
 2l6 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 like most other people. There was a church at Ilderton, but 
 only two or three families went ; the rest were Presbyterians ; she 
 should like to hear Mr Spurgeon preach ; she had read his " John 
 Ploughman's Talk," and thought he seemed to know all about 
 agricultural life. 
 
 On I went until I reached Wooperton, where I was invited to 
 rest by the postmaster. His home was the pink of neatness, but 
 then he was an old bachelor. However, he gave a very different 
 account of Northumbrian women to my old cottager. He had 
 known women who had worked in the fields who were very clever 
 with the needle, and good managers ; still, he believed it a bad 
 system for domestic life. There was, however, a true simplicity 
 of character about these labouring girls. He spoke of some who 
 would not look at a man in a superior position ; were he worth 
 hundreds, they would refuse him. He believed they were very 
 happy. It was his opinion that in godliness and joy combined 
 
 " The cottage leaves the palace far behind." 
 
 The people, he said, came on Sabbath for miles to their chapels 
 in Wooler, Branton, and Glanton ; but on sacramental days, which 
 only occur three times a year in March, July, and October 
 every one makes an effort to be present, and then the chapels are 
 thronged. 
 
 Next day being Sunday, I had an opportunity of going to the 
 chapel at Glanton. A more intelligent, earnest, serious congrega- 
 tion I never saw in my life. There was scarcely a listless or 
 stupid-looking face among them all, the greater part being men 
 between eighteen and fifty. The service was in no way attractive; 
 the hymns were the Scotch paraphrase of the psalms, and the 
 singing at times dragged heavily. But these people have a religion 
 in which they believe, and which they themselves support. They 
 do not go to church to receive a loaf, or a dole of flannel or 
 money ; on the contrary, they are expected to believe it is more 
 blessed to give than to receive, and every Sunday round from pew 
 to pew goes the collecting-box, and few, I venture to say, let it 
 pass without a weekly offering. Nearly all the labouring people, 
 shepherds and hinds, are Presbyterians, and not only attend a 
 place of worship, but are generally communicants. In Wooler
 
 NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEPHERDS. 217 
 
 there are three churches of this denomination, with 600 com- 
 municants, another with 300, and at the third, which is called 
 English Presbyterian, there are about 200. Most of their children 
 are sent in due course to be catechized by their ministers. Mr 
 Grey, in his article on Northumbrian Farming in the Journal of 
 the Royal Agricultural Society, particularly notes the clean and 
 respectable attire of the field-working women and girls in attend- 
 ing their places of worship on Sundays, and says it would fill with 
 astonishment, and perhaps envy, the female peasantry of Kent or 
 Surrey. 
 
 Before I left Wooler I paid a visit to one of the Presbyterian 
 ministers. He endorsed all I had seen of the domestic life of 
 these noble people. The bondage system, he said, was not so 
 strict as it used to be. He spoke of the blot on the fair fame of 
 Northumbria. Illegitimacy was not uncommon, but he did not 
 think it much due to field labour ; the cottages, no doubt, were a 
 source of evil. 
 
 The prevalence of this particular vice is attributed by others to 
 the laxity of opinion with reference to the marriage bond, arising 
 from the frequency of border marriages in former times ; but it 
 does not seem necessary to go far for a cause in the presence of 
 the bondage system, carried on in connection with one-roomed 
 cottages. 
 
 At Eslington, close to Lord Ravensworth's mansion, I went into 
 a cottage where seven persons a father, mother, grandmother, 
 two grown-up sons, and two other children all slept in one room, 
 and that room was not weather-tight, since daylight could be seen 
 through the boards which formed the ceiling. They had given up 
 the box-beds because of the " varmint," and had two four-posters, 
 and a fold-up bedstead for the sons. 
 
 In this case the mother acted as the bondager, and the grand- 
 mother did the housework. Surely such a domestic arrangement is 
 bad enough in itself; how much worse, if in addition they had been 
 obliged to receive a stranger into the family, and that a young 
 female. To a stranger it must be a matter of astonishment how 
 such enlightened people as Northumbrian employers can allow 
 such a system to continue a single day, did we not remember that 
 there is not an evil which has afflicted and oppressed mankind but
 
 2l8 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 it has found its ablest apologists amongst truly benevolent men, 
 whose interests, unfortunately for their own clearness of vision, 
 were wrapped up in the maintenance of the institution. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to suppose that when we speak of 
 seven people sleeping in one room in Northumberland, it comes 
 to the same thing as it would be in other parts of England. We 
 must remember that the house consists of only one room, and is 
 therefore large and comparatively high. This fact, and the good 
 living and air the whole family enjoy, renders it innocuous to 
 health. Both sexes are physically strong. 
 
 It is well known that in all athletic sports the north countrymen 
 excel. Perhaps there are no such leapers in the world as the 
 borderers. At Glanton I witnessed the Great Northern Games, 
 and nothing surprised me so much as the height over which the 
 natives leaped. In the flat-racing, hurdle-racing, and wrestling the 
 professional athletes from Scotland and elsewhere came off conquer- 
 ors, but the leaping was hotly contested by the natives, some vaulting 
 with the aid of a pole over a stick between ten and eleven feet high. 
 
 With the more serious sports were mingled others of a lighter 
 nature the Highland fling, donkey-racing, and a curious game 
 at which the boys played blindfolded, and each armed with a bag 
 of coloured dust. The fun consisted in a man, who kept ringing 
 a little bell, leading them all a wild-goose chase, while they, on their 
 part, tried to beat him with their dust-bags, but more frequently 
 falling foul of each other. Of course this excited much merri- 
 ment, otherwise the proceedings were conducted with the utmost 
 decorum. There was very little laughing, occasional outbursts of 
 enthusiasm in the way of applause, especially of little knots 
 interested in the success of a friend. Otherwise there was no 
 undue prepossession, and the strangers got their full due. All 
 classes were represented, but the greater part were so dressed that 
 had it not been for a covered stand devoted to the gentry, it 
 would have been difficult to say who was who in such a respect- 
 able assembly. 
 
 I cannot conclude this paper without relating one more incident 
 which occurred in my last walk in Northumberland. Being tired, 
 I came to a lone cottage, which had, however, the inscription, 
 " Licensed to sell tea and tobacco," over the little porch. I
 
 NORTHUMBRIAN HINDS AND CHEVIOT SHEPHERDS. 2 19 
 
 looked in, and asked them if they would make me a cup of tea. 
 This they readily agreed to do, and going to their store, I soon 
 had everything I could wish. While refreshing myself, my eye 
 wandered over the room, which served alike for parlour, bedroom, 
 and kitchen, the groceries being kept in the lean-to. Box-beds 
 had been discarded for two well-appointed four-posters, very 
 different from the gaunt skeletons, with drabby shawls doing duty 
 for curtains, one sees so often in southern cottages. But what 
 struck me most of all were the books. Not only was there a good 
 bookcase, with Goldsmith's " Animated Nature," and the " History 
 of England," in three volumes, well bound, but on a little table by 
 my side I observed Good Words, the Sunday Magazine, St Paul's 
 Magazine, " The Holy Grail," and " The Old Curiosity Shop." I 
 was not surprised to learn that these people were good Presbyterians, 
 and staunch believers in the value of education. The father was 
 taking his rest after his midday meal, reading the newspaper, and 
 I fell into conversation with him and his wife. They told me that 
 their children, a boy and a girl, had to walk every day six or seven 
 miles to school at Whittingham, but they did not speak of it as a 
 hardship, or as an excuse for neglecting to send their children. 
 As to the young people themselves, they evidently loved learning 
 all the more since it had cost them such an effort to obain it. 
 
 It was in the churchyard of the parish where they went to school 
 that I met with the following inscription : 
 
 " SACRED TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 JAMES MITCHELL, TEACHER, BRANTON, 
 
 Son of William and Mary Mitchell, 
 Who died I5th of August 1853, aged 26 years. 
 
 He was a young man of cultivated and refined mind, well 
 aware of the importance of his profession. He discharged 
 his duties efficiently, gained the affections of his pupils, and 
 the respect of all who knew him. ' Having kept the faith,' 
 he died in the full hope of attaining a ' crown of glory."' 
 
 All honour to the land that honours the schoolmaster ! What
 
 220 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 can give to England's peasantry the intelligence, the self-respect, 
 the self-reliance, the home comfort which makes Northumbria a 
 land of Goshen in our agricultural Egypt ? 
 
 Changes wide and deep may be in store for us, but this we 
 know they will all be delusive without the aid of the school- 
 master. 
 
 " From the pains 
 
 And faithful care of unambitious schools, 
 Instructing simple childhood's ready ear, 
 Thence look for these beneficent results."
 
 XIII. 
 IN OXFORDSHIRE. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1872.) 
 
 WHEN the Emperor Alexander I. avowed that if he was not Czar 
 of all the Russias he would choose to be an English gentleman, 
 he expressed a view most of us have entertained, when, wandering 
 about England, our way has led us through some noble park, 
 at once stately and historic. 
 
 Let us for a moment recall in imagination one of those stately 
 homes, sacred to the gentle and aristocratic life. Through 
 broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime, we approach the palatial 
 residence, surrounded by its gardens, its orchards, its streams, 
 and its lakes. We enter it, and find the galleries hung with the 
 masterpieces of ancient and modern art, the library stored with 
 the literature of the world, the halls crowded with curiosities 
 from every clime, the terraces adorned with statues and vases and 
 " flowers of all heavens." 
 
 We ascend an eminence, and, watching the fallow deer gently 
 trooping up and down the glades, our eyes wander over the 
 great belt of forest which skirts the park. Beyond it, in the 
 broad expanse of peaceful country, lies dozing here and there a 
 hamlet. Among the distant trees rises the village church, and 
 hard by the parsonage peeps out, its well-cared-for garden telling 
 of cultured ease. Perchance the golden fields are waving in the 
 sunlight, and the old gable-roofed farmhouses stand out in a sort 
 of comfortable solitude, surrounded by their stacks and their 
 barns. Down in the meadows, by the stream which waters the 
 landscape, cattle are grazing ; while afar off, on the uplands which 
 shut in the horizon, flocks of sheep feed among the shadows.
 
 222 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 And all this, we are told, belongs to one man ! 
 
 How natural to gaze on such a scene, so peaceful, so beautiful, 
 so suggestive of all kinds of poetical ideas of rural happiness, and 
 instinctively to believe it must be the best possible condition of 
 existence for all who are privileged to live within its borders. 
 How natural to exclaim with the American Republican, entranced 
 by the potent spell of English aristocratic society, " I never 
 realized so forcibly the splendid results of wealth and primo- 
 geniture." 
 
 So will it appear to those who dwell within the magic walls of 
 the enchanter's castle. Pass beyond the white lodges and get 
 into the sunburnt highway. Stop the first labouring man you 
 meet, enter his cottage, listen to the housewife's tale, and then 
 say what you think of the splendid results of wealth and primo- 
 geniture. 
 
 Such were my cogitations after paying a visit to the district 
 which has Blenheim Park for its centre, and the Marlborough 
 estates for its circumference. A park fourteen miles round, 
 enclosing an area of 3000 acres, worthy, from its antiquity and 
 beauty, to be compared with Windsor. A regal palace, rather 
 than an old grey hall, standing in a fairyland of gardens and 
 streams and fountains and islands, with picture galleries, whose 
 wealth of Rubens and Titians moved a great German art critic to 
 declare Blenheim alone worthy a journey to England. The 
 possession of such an estate is enough to elevate its owner to the 
 very top of the social column, even if he owed it to modern 
 commerce or to ancient rapine. But Blenheim, as everyone 
 knows, is held by the better title of service done in the cause of 
 European liberty. Still more, its present owner, as a Christian 
 man, and as one who has been a minister of the Queen, must be 
 supposed to take a higher view of his duties than that which 
 ordinarily obtains in rural districts. At Blenheim, therefore, if 
 anywhere, we ought to find the rural system of England producing 
 good fruits. 
 
 In passing rapidly through the villages which lie under the 
 Blenheim aegis, one's sense of the orderly and the beautiful is 
 certainly gratified. The white cottages and pretty porches over- 
 grown with jasmine and honeysuckle, the small gardens just now
 
 IN OXFORDSHIRE 223 
 
 blazing with gorgeous hollyhocks, and often well stocked with 
 fruit-trees, seem at first sight to leave little to be desired. 
 
 But look deeper. Talk with the peasantry, and you will find 
 discontent everywhere. Not a grumbling, unreasonable discon- 
 tent, but a deep sense that things are very far from what they 
 should be. 
 
 In his now famous manifesto to his tenantry, the Duke 
 recognises this state of things, and attributes it to agitators and 
 declaimers. No doubt the Union propaganda has done a good 
 deal to produce the present outspoken expression of feeling, but 
 would it have had the amount of influence it has had if it had 
 not found the soil prepared, the seed sown, and the crop itself 
 ready to be gathered in ? What the Union chiefly has done has 
 been to help the general discontent to express itself, and to 
 bring about such a mutual understanding as should enable it to 
 do so with some hope of removing the causes. 
 
 No one could read Mr George Culley's most favourable 
 report of the condition of Oxfordshire labourers, given in the 
 "Agricultural Commissioner's Blue-book of 1869," and suppose 
 for one instant that the labourers themselves could be contented 
 with it, or that they would not be more and more discontented 
 as they became thoroughly alive to its evils. 
 
 What were the labourers' wages in the Woodstock district 
 lately that is, before the Union movement commenced ? Ten 
 shillings a week ! At harvest time, with the help of his wife and 
 children, he could make four or five times as much, but it only 
 lasted two or three weeks, and he had to work from early 
 dawn to sunset. 
 
 Mr Culley, in his report, gives the following statement, as 
 made to him by a labourer's wife at Combe, a pretty village 
 close by Blenheim, and where some some of the Duke's labourers 
 live. 
 
 " My husband is a farm labourer ; he has ten shillings a week 
 if they make all time ; sometimes he loses a day or two from wet, 
 and they take it off. I can't say what my husband gets in piece 
 work ; in harvest, if I help him with a little boy, we can cut and 
 tie an acre a day, and we got nine shillings an acre last har 
 vest; the crops was light, the rabbits had eat so much, you
 
 224 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 see, sir, or we would have got ten shillings. We had a fortnight at 
 this." 
 
 This appears an average case. Whatever way we look at it, 
 an Oxfordshire labourer's wages, all things considered, can hardly 
 amount to much above twelve shillings a week. These people 
 had only two children, but most labourers, as we know, have 
 many more. Could such a pittance keep more than bare life in 
 their bodies ? 
 
 In my late perambulation through this district, in one day I 
 came across several cases, showing what is the result of this semi- 
 starvation on the constitutions of the people. 
 
 Early in the day at Bladon I met with a poor distorted creature, 
 who had had erysipelas in his legs for the last thirteen or fourteen 
 years, brought on by overstraining himself at his work. He had 
 commenced labour at nine years of age, and his was doubtless an 
 extreme form of a common evil, noted by Dr Batt, of Witney, in 
 his evidence given in the Government Report : " Children are 
 employed too young in heavy ploughed land, it tells on them later 
 in life ; when they get about fifty they go at the knees, and are 
 very much bent." 
 
 But that it became more than mere distortion with this poor 
 man was certainly due, as Dr White of the Woodstock Union says, 
 in referring to the fact that farm labourers are not so healthy as 
 they should be, "to the low wages, which will not allow men with 
 families to procure food in quantity or quality sufficient to keep 
 up the standard of health, and they are therefore more easily 
 affected by outside influences inimical to health." 
 
 At the next village, Long Handborough, I came up with a man 
 who had a most wretched look. He had caught a severe cold a 
 year or two before, mowing, and ever since his eyes had been so 
 bad that he could not do any regular work, but was obliged to 
 live by such jobs of porterage as he could pick up at the railway 
 station. And late in the same day I met with another. 
 
 No one can walk far along a country road or enter a village 
 without meeting those who in its heaviest form have borne the 
 primeval curse. Poor, rheumatic creatures, dragging their un- 
 willing limbs over the stones, deaf, dark, and dull. Or you enter 
 a cottage, and as the woman talks with you she holds her
 
 IN OXFORDSHIRE. 225 
 
 hand to her side. She has a heart complaint. And yet she has 
 been regularly in the fields, bringing up a family at the same time, 
 working sometimes as many as fourteen hours on a stretch. But 
 all she says is, "that she must if they would get bread;" neverthe- 
 less she adds, " this fieldwork ruins many a woman's constitution." 
 You ask her about the children. It is a common tale, the natural 
 result she has lost four out of seven. 
 
 And thus the lives of men, women, and children are as really 
 sacrificed now as ever they were in old heathen times, not certainly 
 to appease some cruel deity, but in order that England may pro- 
 duce a highly-bred race of men and women, living a life so perfect 
 in all its conditions of happiness as to excite the envy and the 
 admiration of the world. 
 
 Much may doubtless be said on the question of cottages being 
 built as farm buildings, to be used by the tenant's own labourers, 
 and his alone ; but in the Duke's manifesto, the reason avowed for 
 putting both cottages and allotment-grounds into the hands of the 
 farmers is the attitude of the labourers in forming a Union. 
 Moreover, these cottages are mainly in villages, so that the result 
 is to place one class of the community directly under the control 
 of another. This is still more shown in the determination to take 
 away the allotment-grounds, since it proves that it is con- 
 sidered unwise to allow the labourer to feel, even in the smallest 
 degree, independent of his employer. As there are 914 allotments, 
 the greater proportion of which are forty poles each in extent, and 
 360 cottages on the Duke's estates in Oxfordshire, it will be seen 
 how numerous are the persons likely to be affected by the 
 manifesto. 
 
 And this brings me to speak of the "cottages themselves as the 
 second item in the grounds of discontent which an intelligent and 
 religious labourer may righteously feel as he contemplates his 
 condition. 
 
 Not that I mean to say that the cottages in this district are 
 worse than elsewhere, or perhaps so bad as I have seen them in 
 some parts, nevertheless such is the condition of numbers in the 
 Woodstock Union, that the Medical Officer of Health ascribes the 
 unhealthiness of the people to the two causes of low wages and 
 the unwholesomeness of many of the cottages. 
 
 Q
 
 226 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 As illustrations of the sort of places the Oxfordshire labourer 
 inhabits, I will describe two cottage interiors I sketched. 
 The first, at Long Handborough, was clean and tidy enough for the 
 most scrupulous persons, but there was no floor but rough stone 
 flags. The draught was kept out by a thin screen of calico, but 
 it must be very cold in winter. The fire-place was a most primi- 
 tive arrangement ; a couple of bricks, with a rest placed trans- 
 versely to support the saucepan, a few sticks and a little coal. 
 
 The other was at Wootten, and was a cottage in which the good 
 dame had dwelt since her birth. She allowed me to go up into 
 the sleeping-room to sketch. As far as I can remember, it would 
 have accorded with the average size of rooms in Wootten, and 
 would probably be nine or ten feet square. The great four-post 
 bedstead, finding as it does its last refuge with the rural poor, after 
 it has been discarded everywhere else, touched the unceiled roof. 
 Many gaudy little pictures adorned the walls, and a quantity of 
 crockery from the pedlar's basket loaded the narrow shelves. 
 Flower-pots filled up the long window-sill ; the window itself only 
 opening in one compartment. Nevertheless it afforded a 
 pleasant view of the mediaeval-looking village of Wootten, with 
 its precipitous winding streets, crowned by the old church, and 
 the river Glyme running at its base, spanned by a many-arched 
 bridge. 
 
 She seemed much depressed at the struggle going on in Wootten 
 between the farmers and the labourers, as in no place have the 
 former shown themselves more determined to crush the attempt 
 on the part of the men to form a Union. 
 
 It appears that the labourers at Wootten, on the 2Qth of Max- 
 last, formed themselves into a Union. They began with only six- 
 teen members, and their first requests coming when the excitement 
 about the Warwickshire strike was at its height met with success. 
 Their employers agreed to advance them first to eleven shillings, 
 and then to twelve shillings. After a time, the labourers, finding 
 their numbers increase, and the principles of the Union more 
 thoroughly understood and accepted, thought themselves justified 
 in asking still better terms : sixteen shillings a week, nine hours 
 work per day, and fourpence an hour overtime. This request the 
 farmers determined to resist. They accordingly commenced a lock-
 
 IN OXFORDSHIRE. 227 
 
 out, and discharged every man belonging to the Union. The 
 consequence was 120 hands were immediately thrown out of work. 
 
 The husband of the woman whose cottage I have here 
 described was one who thus lost his situation. With the exception 
 of eighteen years, he had worked for the same family since he was 
 a boy, and his wife had served them also. 
 
 As I stood talking, two soldiers crossed the bridge. " A'n't 
 that a sight to aggravate one ? " she exclaimed ; and truly it was a 
 shame to think that the Queen's troops should be sent to take the 
 bread literally out of the mouths of the poor. 
 
 Not a greater mistake has been committed during the whole 
 of this struggle than this obtaining soldiers to gather in the harvest. 
 It is a mistake which the people will not forget, and which has 
 envenomed a dispute hitherto carried on by the men without the 
 least desire or sign of violence. 
 
 Whether it is to be attributed to the Farmers' Protection Society, 
 or to some individual farmer at Wootten, or to more potent 
 influence, does not appear certain; however it was, some one had 
 sufficient interest to induce a commanding officer at Aldershot to 
 send down ten men of the 46th Foot to Wootten. Accordingly 
 the day after Parliament rose, to the chagrin of the people, the 
 red-coats marched into the fields. 
 
 The whole thing was done without the knowledge of the War 
 Office, and in direct violation of Article 180 of the Queen's Regu- 
 lations for the Army, which says that soldiers may be allowed to 
 assist in gathering in the harvest, when application is made for 
 that purpose, "provided that the employment of the population is 
 not interfered with." 
 
 As there were more than sixty or seventy able-bodied men 
 ready to work, no plea could be advanced as to the scarcity of 
 labour ; on the contrary, it is manifest that the introduction of 
 these soldiers, who thus laid aside the sword for the sickle, took 
 the labourers' harvest away ; robbing them of the only opportunity 
 they have in the year to make a little money to pay their debts. 
 Moreover, it was a most unfair interference in the struggle between 
 the employer and the employed, destroying the only chance the 
 latter had of making better terms with his master; and in view 
 of the long winter, with its scarcity of work, and cold, pinching
 
 228 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 poverty, it would certainly have compelled the labourer, if it had 
 not been for the National Union, to cast himself entirely on his 
 master's mercy. 
 
 It is said that when the soldiers arrived at Wootten, they were 
 somewhat disconcerted at the sight of groups of sad-eyed men 
 standing about in enforced idleness, and they told the farmers 
 that they hoped the people would be civil, as they could easily get 
 the assistance of 200 or 300 men in a couple of hours. " Don't be 
 alarmed," was the reply ; " our men are the quietest people in the 
 world." But although the Wootten people may be quiet and 
 peaceable, it may not be so elsewhere, as may be seen by a letter 
 published in the Daily News, from an Essex labourer, some time 
 in August. It was an act cruelly exasperating, very much like 
 brandishing the red flag in the face of the poor, worried, badgered 
 bull. 
 
 It is a happy thing that the new movement for union among the 
 labourers is under the leadership of Christian men, who in their 
 own religious communities have had some practice in fellowship ; 
 for the labourers, feeling their ignorance and inexperience, follow 
 their leaders unreservedly. A little while ago the men of Wootten 
 and the neighbourhood marched into Woodstock to the number of 
 200 or 300 men. One who witnessed the sight, said that he never 
 saw a more orderly procession in his life, and when it was over 
 their leader dismissed them all, saying, " Now go home, lads, and 
 don't let any one have a word to say against you." 
 
 For the mass of the labourers are like men feeling their way in 
 the dark ; they crave for guidance. As my informant, a young 
 labourer, whose health had been ruined by the abject slavery of 
 his great employers to bad customs of modern society, very 
 touchingly put it, " They want some one to tell them whether 
 their thoughts are right or not." They have no helps ; they are 
 too poor to buy books or to take in magazines. An occasional 
 Cottager or British Workman or Police News finds its way amongst 
 them, and is preserved and pasted on the cottage walls for the sake 
 of its pictures. 
 
 But it is evident that Methodism has been quietly doing a good 
 work amongst them. The Primitive Methodist United Free 
 Church has a circuit in this neighbourhood with eighteen chapels,
 
 IN OXFORDSHIRE. 229 
 
 each managed by its own congregation, and ministered to by 
 local preachers. Two regular ministers superintend the whole 
 circuit. Under this system Oxfordshire labourers have learnt 
 something of the art of self-government, and how to submit loyally 
 to the men of their own choice. It has taught the leaders how to 
 organize and how to sustain the burden of a great undertaking. 
 Thus they have learnt to have faith in the ultimate triumph of a 
 principle ; thus they have obtained power to endure in hours of 
 weakness and apparent defeat ; and thus they have learnt how to 
 retain calmness in hours of prosperity. 
 
 Nothing is more energising than the Gospel of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, even though narrowed by present-day forms, provided it 
 comes from the heart and lips of sincere, child-like men and 
 women.
 
 XIV. 
 IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1872.) 
 
 DESCRIBE a circle with Warwick for its centre, let the line of its 
 circumference begin at Leeds, and it will as nearly as possible 
 pass round the body of England, leaving the two limbs to the north 
 and south-west to balance each other. Just equidistant from this 
 central point lie London and Manchester, so that we may truly 
 say, from the heart of old England has come the impulse 
 which bids fair to revolutionise the condition of our agricultural 
 labourers. 
 
 I lately made a pilgrimage to the spring-head of this movement 
 to Barford, where dwells its leader, Joseph Arch ; to Wellesbourne, 
 beneath whose now historic chestnut the leaders of the movement 
 have found a rural forum. 
 
 Leaving Warwick, which in its calm decay recalls the age when 
 statesmen reckoned the prosperity of the country, not by the quar- 
 terly returns of the Exchequer or by the increase of population, 
 but by the condition of its men I take the road whose very name, 
 suggests the genius of that noble era. 
 
 " To Stratford" tells me I am now in Shakspeare's England, 
 wandering among scenes which formed for him the background of 
 every rural picture, whether the scene was laid in England or 
 France, Italy or Greece. 
 
 Nowhere, indeed, can we find more truly English landscapes. 
 Roads lined with noble elms or beeches ; parks clad in greensward, 
 with glimpses of an ancient Tudor mansion seen among the trees ; 
 cottages of mediaeval build, laced and interlaced with huge beams, 
 their high-peaked roofs neatly thatched, and often covered with 
 
 203
 
 IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE. 231 
 
 lichen ; standing amid their little gardens, bright with the fairest 
 (lowers of the season the streaked gilliflower, the blue hepatica, 
 and the purple polythanus ; while the lanes, the fields, the copses, 
 are flowered over with " the violet dim, pale primroses, cowslips 
 wan," and the delicate wood-anemone, blue and white. For the 
 soil is of the richest, well watered by the gently flowing Avon. 
 The farms are large, varying from 50 to 300 acres, mainly arable, 
 but with a good proportion of the land laid down in grass. But 
 however, it is not considered a dairy county, and probably there 
 are not many Warwickshire farmers who could now say 
 
 ' ' At my farm 
 
 I have a hundred milch kine to the pail, 
 Six score fat oxen standing in my stalls, 
 And all things answerable to this portion." 
 
 My first companions on the road were a couple of boys driving a 
 dung-cart. They were little fellows, yet one said he was twelve years 
 old. He had commenced work four years before, having left school 
 entirely at eight years of age. He worked from six to six o'clock, 
 sometimes getting up at half-past four. They always went out 
 in couples, as the horse sometimes ran away, and it was impossible 
 for one alone to manage him. Accidents often occur from allow- 
 ing children thus early to act the carter, while the long hours and 
 insufficient food are very injurious to their constitutions. Indeed, 
 the lad spoke pitifully of the length of time they had to go without 
 food. Young as he was, he had learnt how a little stimulant 
 would still the cravings of an empty stomach, and asked me for 
 something to drink ; but just as he did so we were met by an old 
 man who sent them back and took charge of the horse himself. 
 
 lire long I came upon Barford, a neat village mainly built of 
 red brick, the cottages fronting the street. I saw some very large 
 buildings, evidently old homesteads, one of which was going to 
 decay. At the end of the village I found Mr Arch's dwelling- 
 place, an unpretending modern cottage. It is his own, however, 
 and so is the piece of land upon which it is built. 
 
 Unfortunately, he had just set out on a tour, in order that he 
 might meet night after night great gatherings of his fellow-labourers
 
 232 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 and urge them to union. From Mrs Arch, however, I learnt 
 much that was interesting concerning the origin and spirit of the 
 movement. She was evidently the wife for a public man ; self- 
 reliant, and heartily believing in her husband's call to the work. 
 
 During the early years of Joseph Arch's married life, he was a 
 labourer on nine shillings a week. But when his family increased 
 he threw up his situation, and soon made more by jobbing for the 
 farmers round. As he could not remove his home, he was 
 obliged to be away for a long time together, and often endured 
 great hardships, seeking to save every farthing he could, some- 
 times sleeping in barns or outhouses, or beneath hay-ricks, and 
 even on wood-stacks. Thus he received a physical education 
 inuring him to the arduous work he has now undertaken, the 
 Bible and the weekly newspaper being his only means of mental 
 training. Little schooling, indeed, was possible for a lad who 
 commenced to toil on the land at nine years of age. 
 
 Mrs Arch said that they had often talked of the condition of their 
 class, but could not see their way to do anything. They were 
 Methodists, and Arch being a man of deep religious convictions, 
 and gifted with natural eloquence, became a local preacher. 
 
 One day Arch, when he was engaged making a box for his 
 son, who had gone into the army, two men from Wellesbourne 
 came to see him. At first the wife refused to call him, 
 and would only consent on their telling her what they 
 wanted. 
 
 " We want," said they, " to talk to Joe about forming a union ; 
 other trades have a Union, and we don't see why we shouldn't 
 have one." 
 
 " You form a Union ! " she replied ; " why, you ain't got spirit 
 enough to do it." 
 
 " Yes, we have ; only Arch must lead us." 
 
 " Very well," she answered, " you must tell him so yourselves, 
 and he will do it." 
 
 The man they sought entered heart and soul into their wishes, 
 and the following Wednesday he went over to the village ; and 
 then and there, on the i4th day of February 1872, was held the 
 first of those now famous Wellesbourne meetings. 
 
 From farm to farm the tidings had been carried. The men of
 
 IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE. 233 
 
 Wellesbourne, a village, or rather two villages, numbering 1,500 
 inhabitants, were there almost to a man. From the neighbouring 
 hamlets the labouring men came in such numbers that a thousand 
 and more had soon congregated in the little triangular green where 
 stands the great chestnut. Arch urged upon them in his own earnest, 
 sledge-hammer way the necessity of combination, and proposed a 
 Union. The tinder was ready, and the spark was struck ; the men 
 came forward so fast to give their names, that they could not write 
 them down rapidly enough. A week after there was another 
 meeting, more names were given in, a committee was formed, a 
 secretary appointed, and an organization instituted. Notices were 
 sent to the farmers, asking that wages should be advanced from 
 twelve shillings to sixteen shillings a week. The farmers made no 
 reply, and so on the following Saturday the men struck. There 
 were more than a hundred who thus " came out " in Wellesborne 
 alone, while from the neighbourhood around nearly a hundred 
 more joined them. 
 
 Of course the masters were somewhat surprised and much 
 annoyed at this sudden outburst of their labourers. So war was 
 proclaimed in the disturbed district, and the first action taken was 
 to serve the men who joined the Union with notices to quit their 
 cottages. Just as I entered Wellesbourne I saw several very nice 
 large cottages, let, no doubt, much beneath their value. Sir 
 Charles Mordaunt, the landlord, had given them all notice to quit 
 because they joined the Union. A placard was issued, and posted 
 up about the county, in which the Wellesbourne farmers declared 
 their resolution to employ none who thus acted, and to eject them 
 from their cottages. 
 
 Nevertheless the cause prospered. The 200 men who first 
 joined the Union almost all found work, so that when I was there 
 only 29 remained unemployed. Some had been engaged in a 
 soap factory in Liverpool, some in the dockyards at Gateshead, 
 others had emigrated to the Colonies. Very painful, however, to 
 all concerned are the immediate effects of this revolution, uproot- 
 ing old ties, and introducing much bitterness into the social life of 
 the district. Hard must it be for the men to see the home, 
 tended and loved for many a year, in the hands of strangers; 
 while the masters will feel the want of their old, trusty labourers
 
 234 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 when harvest comes, and already complain bitterly of the ingrati- 
 tude of those for whom they have sometimes found work at a loss 
 to themselves. 
 
 However, it is a law of the universe that wrong done must 
 be avenged. Strange, perhaps, that it should be so rarely 
 avenged on those who did it. "The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." Happy they 
 who suffer for their own faults ; they are the favoured few. So 
 now the present race of farmers, the present race of landlords, nay, 
 the nation at large, will have to suffer for the accumulated wrongs 
 endured by the agricultural poor of this land for generations. 
 
 Just as I left Wellesbourne I met two infirm men, creeping in 
 the sunshine, one after the other. They were not very old, not 
 older than the century. At such an age, in the higher walks of life, 
 men manage empires and command armies, and travel from Dan 
 to Beersheba ; and yet at threescore years and ten the grasshopper 
 was a burden to these poor worn-out field labourers. 
 
 They subsisted, so they said, on 35. a week, allowed by their 
 club, supplemented by is. and a loaf from the parish. Out of this 
 they paid a guinea a year subscription to the club, and provided 
 lodging, clothes, etc. 
 
 On what did they live ? 
 
 They bought half a pound of pig meat or mutton once a week, 
 a bit of lard, and some bread. 
 
 What did they have to drink ? 
 
 " Taay nothing but taay." 
 
 " A half-pint of beer a day 'ud strengthen us up, but we can't 
 get it ; taay is poor stuff." 
 
 The elder or taller had had eight children, and had buried 
 five. 
 
 What did they die of? 
 
 He could hardly tell. Decline one died of that he knew ; it 
 was what they call " consumpted decline." 
 
 The other had performed his part in adding to the stock of 
 society, but it brought him no pecuniary benefit, for his children 
 had enough to do to keep themselves, and the old father 
 evidently felt no surprise that they did not help him. Both 
 hoped, as it was natural they should, to be soon in a better land.
 
 IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE. 235 
 
 They said they tried hard for it. One observed, " Faith is a fine 
 thing, as the good Book says." 
 
 On the road I stopped a man in a coal-cart, who turned out to 
 be quite a character. He had been an agricultural labourer, and 
 had waggoned for a farmer in Wellesbourne for years. He 
 evidently considered himself a practical man, and a great deal 
 wiser than his employer. 
 
 " Often," said he, " have I told the maayster, ' You'd better go 
 home, maayster, and not stop bothering me. I know what's best 
 to do to the land.' What could maayster know ? He was only 
 a wool- winder." 
 
 I observed that wages did not make so much difference as one 
 might suppose. That one man's house on 125. a week was a 
 model of comfort ; another's, on the same wage, was a den of 
 misery. 
 
 "You're right, maayster," he replied: "and I daresay you will 
 agree with me when I tell you what makes the difference ; " and 
 then, leaning forward, the crow's-feet round his eyes all puckering 
 up with delight, he exclaimed with emphasis, " It's a good wife 
 that makes a house a comfort ! A good wife '11 make 123. go as far 
 as another would a guinea." 
 
 Next day, in the neighbourhood of Stratford, in the hamlet of 
 Shottery, I saw enough to give colour to a statement made the 
 other day in the Chamber of Agriculture at Warwick, by an 
 eminent Warwickshire farmer, that it was his opinion that the 
 cottages lay at the root of the present difficulty. 
 
 One of the villagers, accompanied by her little son, was cross- 
 ing the meadow. About Stratford, she said, the labourers had 
 only us. a week up till lately ; now they were to have 123. They 
 were not allowed to keep pigs, and had no allotments. She had 
 a cottage with two rooms up-stairs and a pantry below, for which 
 she paid is. gd. a week. Her little boy went to school ; but 
 their betters need not be afraid that these young rustics are 
 taught any superfluous lore, since this Shottery boy, living pro- 
 bably within a stone's throw of Anne Hathaway's cottage, had 
 never heard of the name of William Shakspeare. Nor was he a 
 singular exception, for I asked a baker's boy, who gave me a ride 
 in his cart, and who lived at Hampton Lucy, close to Charlcote
 
 236 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Park, the same question, and he too had never heard of such a 
 man as Shakspeare. 
 
 Passing through the village I saw four old cots standing in a 
 row together. I had no means of measuring, but I should hardly 
 think each house could have been more than 8 ft. wide and 
 about 15 ft. deep. There were but two rooms. In one I found a 
 woman with four children, and she was on the eve of adding to 
 the number ; they all slept, six of them, in one small room. 
 
 Next door things look much more comfortable, as it was the 
 home of an old couple, who lived there alone. The little room 
 was very clean, and was furnished with a tall clock, which nearly 
 touched the ceiling. There was a rack, too, with a number of 
 plates of the willow pattern, and some small religious pictures. 
 The old woman had herself worked in the fields until lately, when 
 she hurt one of her eyes. Women are not continuously employed 
 in Warwickshire ; but at certain seasons it would appear that 
 many do labour out of doors. In spring-time they" are out couch- 
 ing and weeding the crops, in haymaking and harvest they bind 
 up and rake, and at other seasons they pick potatoes and clean 
 turnips. It is not at all economical for married women thus 
 to engage themselves, as they only get is. a day in winter and 
 jod. in summer, working from eight in the morning to five in 
 the afternoon, with intervals for meals. All this time they are 
 wearing out their clothes, and leaving their homes and babies to 
 the care of some little daughter. Every now and then sad 
 accidents happen. A medical officer of the union of Warwick 
 says : " I have known at least eight cases in which children left 
 at home have either been burnt or scalded to death. I have 
 occasionally known an opiate in the shape of Godfrey's cordial or 
 Daffy's elixir given by the mother to the children to keep them 
 quiet." The women who thus work rather like it, and it no 
 doubt suits certain temperaments better than the more quiet 
 employment of domestic life. Probably they worked as girls, 
 and of such it is said that they are just the ones who dislike the 
 control of domestic service. 
 
 Leaving Shottery, so pretty and yet so miserable, I made my 
 way across the meadows into the Alcester Road. 
 
 And now I seemed to have got away from a centre of life, and
 
 IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE. 237 
 
 to be passing into a district so thinly populated that for miles 
 I rarely met a human being. The road was very charming, rising 
 and falling, apple and pear trees frequently growing on the sides 
 of the road. Now and then I came to a solitary cot, or perhaps 
 a couple, probably having their origin in some roadside encroach- 
 ment. 
 
 Alcester is a sleepy town lying on 'the banks of the Alne, 
 just at its junction with the Arrow. There is a considerable 
 manufacture of needles carried on in the place ; but the neigh- 
 bourhood is purely agricultural, and contains some pretty hamlets, 
 where the cottages are mostly surrounded by good-sized gardens, 
 well stocked with fruit-trees. 
 
 In one village, however, which I visited, about two miles from 
 Alcester, I saw no such gardens, and the cots were extremely old. 
 But if those of its inhabitants with whom I talked were not 
 singular exceptions, it was a garden in a higher sense. 
 
 Sitting down by the roadside to sketch, I saw a comely, sweet- 
 faced old dame come trudging up the lane. She had a warm 
 kerchief over her shoulders, and looked as clean as a new pin. 
 She was, indeed, a picture of health and happiness, and never 
 spoke but a merry smile played over her lips. And yet she had 
 only two shillings a week and a loaf to live upon, eked out by the 
 proceeds of her little garden. Doubtless she got some help from 
 her children and neighbours ; but this was all she had to rely on, 
 and out of this she had to pay her rent. How she managed to 
 live, and withal to look so blooming and happy and clean, was 
 rather marvellous. But she evidently had a secret source of joy 
 which the Avorld could neither give nor take away. The Lord, 
 she gave me to understand, was always with her, making her 
 happy. Some of the healthiest little ones I ever saw came running 
 up to her ; she said they were her grandchildren. With warm 
 affection she dwelt on the memory of her husband, who had been 
 her guide and companion in every sense. It was refreshing to 
 meet so bright and joyous a spirit in such circumstances, and she 
 more than realized Cowper's picture : 
 
 " Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay." 
 Entering a cottage, a poor wretched place, full of fierce
 
 238 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 draughts, I found an old man sitting over a little coal fire made 
 between some bricks on the hearth. He had lost all his teeth, 
 and a bad asthma made him pant sadly for breath ; but he too 
 was content with his lot. 
 
 "I be eighty come Michaelmas," he said, " and have lived 
 thiity or forty years in this place; I was bred at Honeybourn, in 
 Gloucester, and am the last of my family." 
 
 He was deeply and truly pious ; but his experience was some- 
 what like that of the patriarch Jacob. In answer to a question as 
 to whether he had had much trouble : 
 
 "No man more," he replied. "It's a wurruld of trouble, and 
 I shall be glad to be out of it.'' 
 
 He had had several children, but did not appear to regret it, or 
 to think that that fact had increased his misery. A sick wife had 
 been his life-long affliction ; the poor old body lay above sixteen 
 months bedridden. 
 
 Withal he was no grumbler, but disposed to think he had all 
 that he was entitled to. "Yes," said he, "I liked to go to 
 church as long as I could ; I was bred up to church. Our 
 parson be very kind; he comes to see me often, and does good 
 to body as well as soul." Referring to the Labourers' Union he 
 said, " I don't think much o' this 'ere Union, and I'll tell yer why, 
 sir. Here have I served one man or his father this forty year, and 
 never had a misword. All the work I have done he's paid me for. 
 How do you think, sir, such a maayster 'ud like it if I was to fly 
 in his face and ask him for more wages ? We must all do our 
 duty, sir. The maaysters must do their duty to the men, and 
 the men must do their duty to their maaysters ; " and suddenly 
 waxing warm, the old man exclaimed, " England expects every 
 man to do his duty, sir, as Lord Nelson said." 
 
 The old labourer's views of life were especially fitting for a man 
 on the brink of the grave. It was well for him to depart in love 
 and charity, and with a good word for all. But his miserable 
 circumstances cried out against the system under which he had 
 lived. He may have had a master who neither defrauded nor 
 abused him, but his life had been little better than the endurance 
 of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment with hard labour. Day 
 by day, year by year, he had trudged the weary round, just as the
 
 IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE. 239 
 
 felon paces backwards and forwards to the scene of his toil. But 
 the felon knows no anxiety, his bread and his water are sure ; 
 little recks he of rent-day, or the score at the tally-shop, or of the 
 doctor's bill. Should he fall ill, he knows it will be a passport to 
 the hospital, a time of repose, with extra rations of meat, and 
 possibly wine. Not so with the labourer; far from extra food 
 being his lot. should he or his wife be laid aside, the whole house- 
 hold is impoverished, and have to do with less even of the 
 necessaries of life. So, again, in old age, if he will not resign his 
 liberty, he must be content with just enough to keep body and 
 soul together, to sit panting with asthma in a little draughty hovel, 
 longing for death to release him, and saying bitterly with the 
 patriarch, " Few and evil have been the days of the years of my 
 pilgrimage." 
 
 Christianity teaches contentment founded on trust in God, but 
 nowhere contentment founded on the love of ease and the fear of 
 man. But it teaches everywhere to its followers a burning indig- 
 nation against all wrong and injustice. 
 
 This "capacity for indignation," as Mr Kingsley has lately 
 reminded us, is the root of all virtue. Therefore I believe the 
 Christianity of the leaders of the Warwickshire Labourers' Union 
 to be of a far nobler type than that of this good old labourer. 
 
 How much the world gains when its inevitable changes are 
 brought about by men who believe in their responsibility to God, 
 may be seen in the unusual moderation and good sense which has 
 marked this movement. And surely its wonderful success may be 
 accepted as a proof that it was the right act at the right time, and 
 therefore of its being strictly within the divine order of things. 
 When 1872 opened, the men of South Warwickshire had scarcely 
 dreamt of agitating. When in February they first sent in their 
 demands, we have seen how little the masters comprehended the 
 situation ; so that they quite ignored the notice, believing it was 
 got up by a few discontented spirits, and that the great mass of the 
 labourers would sink again into their old subserviency directly 
 these persons had withdrawn. 
 
 But they soon found out their mistake. Village after village 
 took up the cry. Along the dark lanes came the men tramping 
 through the slush, in spite of rain, and darkness, and still darker
 
 240 WITH ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 frowns, no longer groaning forth with a hungry quaver the abject 
 old cry 
 
 " We've got no work to do, to do, 
 We've got no work to do ; " 
 
 but with new heart and hope singing with hoarse but manly voice 
 the Union hymn 
 
 " Then up, be doing, brave-hearted men, 
 Stand shoulder to shoulder again and again, 
 Then ask for your rights, and you'll have them, when 
 Each man has joined the Union. 
 
 Be temperate, manly, true, and brave, 
 Let each combine his comrade to save ; 
 Then, though the masters may storm and rave, 
 He may shout and sing of union. 
 
 We won't be idle, we won't stand still, 
 We're willing to work, to plough, and till ; 
 But if we don't get a rise, we'll strike, we will, 
 For all are joined in union." 
 
 A great mass meeting was held at Leamington on Good Friday. 
 The Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers' Union was there and 
 then formally inaugurated, rules framed, and officers appointed. 
 It was evident the men meant what they were about, and accord- 
 ingly the masters began to understand that they must change their 
 attitude. 
 
 At a meeting of the County Chamber of Agriculture, held at the 
 Shire Hall, Warwick, April 13, it was admitted that the labourers 
 had a right to form a union, and one of the speakers strongly 
 deprecated the attempt to prevent it by refusing to employ any 
 man who became a member. It was urged that they should meet 
 the labourers in a friendly spirit, and that the Council should try 
 to bring about a conference between the landowners, the farmers, 
 and the labourers. They also unanimously adopted a resolution 
 in favour of piecework where practicable, and against the payment 
 of wages in kind. 
 
 The meeting of the Chamber in May was still more conciliatory. 
 One resolution was passed in favour of stringent regulations for the 
 education of labourers' children ; while others were agreed to
 
 IN SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE. 24! 
 
 urging all farmers to pay their men the day before the local 
 market, and against the practice of supplying men with beer at the 
 hay and corn harvests. 
 
 Wages have risen from 125. to 145. and 153., so that the 
 labourers of South Warwickshire may fairly congratulate them- 
 selves upon having already gained a great moral victory. 
 
 And thus a great agricultural revolution has commenced, the 
 end whereof no sensible man would dare to prophesy. From 
 Northumberland to Cornwall, from Norfolk to Hereford, one 
 hears everywhere the tidings of rising life. The central wave is 
 spreading, and the adjacent counties are forming Unions ; and now 
 they talk of a congress of representatives, that they may form a 
 National Union. The heart of old England has heaved, and 
 every member of the agricultural community throughout the 
 country begins to feel the glow of a new life.
 
 IV. 
 
 TYPES OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL 
 LIFE.
 
 TYPES OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL 
 LIFE. 
 
 I, 
 
 A PEASANT POLITICIAN. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1874.) 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 
 
 COBBETT was perhaps the most perfect specimen of the typical 
 "John Bull" this country ever produced. Born and bred in 
 Surrey, he knew every inch of the county, traversing it in a way 
 scarcely any other man ever did, and coming at last to end his 
 days there. His father was a small farmer at Farnham, and here, 
 in a house now marked out with pride by his fellow-townsmen, 
 William Cobbett first saw the light on the Qth of March 1762. 
 
 "With respect to my ancestors," he says in a graphic bit of 
 autobiography which he gave his foes in America, " I shall go no 
 further back than my grandfather, and for this plain reason 
 that I never heard talk of any prior to him. He was a day 
 labourer, and I have heard my father say that he worked for one 
 farmer from the day of his marriage to that of his death, upwards 
 of forty years. He died before I was born, but I have often slept 
 beneath the same roof that sheltered him, and where his widow 
 dwelt for several years after his death. It was a little thatched 
 cottage with a garden before the door. It had but two windows 
 a damson tree shaded one, and a clump of filberts the other. 
 Here I and my brothers went every Christmas and Whitsuntide to 
 spend a week or two, and torment the poor old woman with our 
 noise and dilapidations. She used to give us bread-and-milk for 
 breakfast, an apple-pudding for dinner, and a piece of bread and 
 
 245
 
 246 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 cheese for our supper. Her fire was made of turf cut from the 
 neighbouring heath ; and her evening light was a rush dipped in 
 grease." 
 
 Cobbett's description of the locality of his grandmother's cottage, 
 more than once repeated, is so exact that there is not much 
 difficulty in deciding where it once stood. About a half-mile on 
 the road from Farnham to Waverley is a turning to the left, which 
 leads across a wild, sandy Surrey common, rich with brake, and 
 heather, and ling, and broken up everywhere into dells and lanes. 
 Two paths cross each other at right angles, and the cottages, 
 which are scattered all over the common, have to some extent 
 taken their line in connection with these paths. Each stands in 
 its own little garden, or sometimes large garden. On the verge of 
 this common, looking across the valley of the Wey, about a mile 
 from Farnham, just where the road from Moor Park runs into the 
 Farnham Road, stood two little cottages, one of which would, in 
 all probability, have been Grandmother Cobbett's. 
 
 What a playground was that wild bit of common for the sturdy 
 little Surrey urchin ! It was such a spot as this, if not this very 
 spot, which he pointed out to his son as the sand-hill to which he 
 owed so much. Down its steep sides he and his two brothers 
 rolled each other until their hair, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth 
 were filled with sand, each roll ending in shouts of laughter. 
 " Happy as a sand-boy on a Surrey common " is his own description 
 of the culmination of all human felicity, and probably it was the 
 sense of the unending stock of health and good spirits which he 
 then laid in that made him affirm with his usual emphasis that 
 it was owing to the education received on that sand-hill that he 
 was so vastly superior to " the frivolous idiots " turned out from 
 " those dens of dunces called colleges and universities." 
 
 No pinching hunger stunted his mind or body. His father was 
 well-to-do, as one may see from his birthplace. It is impossible to 
 read his books, and doubt that he had a soul all alive to the 
 influences of Nature. Up at early dawn, what sights such a boy 
 would see and unconsciously treasure up in his memory ! The 
 hill on which his grandmother's cottage stood rises between the 
 two noble demesnes of Moor Park and Waverley Abbey. The 
 road in front immediately curved beneath the woods of Waverley ;
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 247 
 
 while to the left stretched the valley of the Wey, its green 
 pastures following its still waters as they flow gently along at the 
 base of the wooded range of hills which form the outworks of 
 Moor Park, and which end in the noble eminence of Crooksbury 
 Hill an eminence, unlike any other in Surrey, rising into a cone, 
 crested with Scotch firs. " Here," he says, "I used to take the 
 eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. The hill was a 
 famous object in the neighbourhood. It served as the superlative 
 degree of height. ' As high as Crooksbury Hill ' meant with us 
 the utmost degree of height." 
 
 "A father like ours," he goes on to say, "it will be readily 
 supposed, did not suffer us to eat the bread of idleness. I do not 
 remember the time when I did not earn my own living. My first 
 occupation was driving the small birds from the turnip seed and 
 the rooks from the peas. When I first trudged a field, with my 
 wooden bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulders, I was 
 hardly able to climb the gates and stiles ; and at the close of the 
 day to reach home was a task of infinite difficulty. My next 
 employment was weeding wheat, and leading a single horse at 
 harrowing barley. Hoeing peas followed ; and hence I arrived 
 at the honour of joining the reapers in harvest, driving the 
 team, and holding the plough. We were all strong and laborious; 
 and my father used to boast that he had four boys, the eldest of 
 whom was but fifteen years old, who did as much work as any 
 three men in the parish of Farnham. Honest pride and happy 
 days ! " 
 
 "At eleven years," he told the public, in a choice morsel of 
 autobiography which he introduced into an electioneering ad- 
 dress, " my employment was clipping of box edges and weeding 
 beds of flowers in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester, at the 
 castle of Farnham, my native town. I had always been fond of 
 beautiful gardens ; and a gardener who had just come from the 
 King's gardens at Kew gave such a description of them as made 
 me instantly resolve to work in these gardens. The next morn- 
 ing, without saying a word to any one, off I set, with no clothes 
 except those on my back, and with thirteen halfpence in my 
 pocket. I found that I must go to Richmond, and I accordingly 
 went on, from place to place inquiring my way thither. A long
 
 248 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 day (it was in June) brought me to Richmond in the afternoon. 
 Two pennyworth of bread and cheese and a pennyworth of small 
 beer, which I had on the road, and one halfpenny that I had lost 
 somehow or other, left threepence in my pocket ; with this for my 
 whole fortune I was trudging through Richmond in my blue 
 smock frock, and my red gaiters tied under my knees, when, star- 
 ing about me, my eyes fell on a little book in a bookseller's 
 window, on the outside of which was written, 'Tale of a Tub,' 
 price threepence. The title was so odd that my curiosity was 
 excited. I had the threepence, but then I could have no supper. 
 In I went and got the little book, which I was so impatient to 
 read that I got over into a field at the upper corner of Kew 
 Gardens, where there stood a haystack. On the shady side of 
 this I sat down to read. The book was so different from any- 
 thing that I had ever read before, it was something so new to my 
 rnind, that though I could not at all understand some of it, it 
 delighted me beyond description ; and it produced what I have 
 always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was 
 dark without any thought about supper or bed. When I could 
 see no longer I put my little book in my pocket and tumbled 
 down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the birds in Kew 
 Gardens awaked me in the morning; when off I started to Kew 
 reading my little book." 
 
 Cobbett was a writer who always tried to express in words the 
 exact meaning of his thoughts. This statement of his, therefore, 
 that reading "The Tale of a Tub" produced in him a birth of 
 intellect is not to be dismissed as a mere so-to-speak. lie here 
 claims the author of " The Tale of a Tub" as his literary parent ; 
 and it is a singular fact that in the development of his intel- 
 lectual powers Cobbett manifested a likeness to Swift so marked, 
 that we are forced to say, as we should do in an analogous case of 
 a physical resemblance, "Why, he is the very image of his 
 father." 
 
 At the end of the vale of which we have spoken as opening up 
 just in front of Grandmother Cobbett's cottage, is a substantial 
 red-bricked house, with gable roof and three dormer windows. 
 The walls are covered with ivy, and festooned with American 
 creepers. All around are woods rising high above the house. In
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 249 
 
 front are roads cut through the sand-rock, their sides being per- 
 forated with martins' nests and crowned by tall firs, at whose feet 
 brake and ling and prodigious fungi grow. By the side of the 
 house a little gate opens into the most picturesque of walks, lead- 
 ing along a level terrace cut right through the hanger, and so 
 entirely shaded by trees, to the mansion once occupied by Sir 
 William Temple in Moor Park. It is no stately avenue, but a 
 wild path through the woods ; yet perfectly passable, and as 
 agreeable walking as the turf of a park. 
 
 In this cottage, thus romantically situated, lived Hester Johnson, 
 the ill-fated but famous Stella ; and along this path she, clad in 
 hooped dress and high-heeled shoes, and her whimsical lover, in 
 his long periwig and rusty black clothes, must have had many a 
 stroll. 
 
 It is certainly a curious and perhaps an idle thought to suppose 
 that the spirit which got possession of Swift among these scenes, 
 should have returned after the lapse of a generation to the same 
 place, and found another mind ready for its operation ? 
 
 However, Cobbett developed almost every one of Swift's 
 characteristics of style ; but what we chiefly note is, that from the 
 very first he courted and delighted in his spirit. In Cobbett's 
 " Advice to Young Men " he says : " When I read the work of 
 Pope and Swift, I was greatly delighted with their lashing Dennis." 
 One of Cobbett's favourite maxims, " If a flea or a louse bite me, 
 I'll kill it if I can," is said to have been borrowed from Swift. 
 And he concludes one of his tirades with this remark " I always say 
 with Swift 
 
 ' Hated by fools, and fools to hate, 
 Be this my motto and my fate.' " 
 
 A few yards from Stella's cottage stand the park gates of 
 "Waverley," the place from which it is said Scott got the famous 
 title by which his novels are known to the world. If the influence 
 of Swift is visible in Cobbett's style and temper, that of Waverley 
 Park is even more so in his opinions. The demesne had belonged 
 in former times to a monastery of the Cistercian order, founded in 
 1128 by Giffard, Bishop of Winchester. Two hundred years ago 
 Waverley Abbey was in a very different condition from what it is 
 now. In Cobbett's boyhood there were still the remains of a fine
 
 250 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 church, and a part of the cloisters. There was also a portion of 
 a magnificent chapel, larger than that of Trinity College, Oxford. 
 Tall and ancient trees everywhere overshadowed the ruins, and 
 there were still the remains of the groves and alcoves of the 
 beautiful gardens which once surrounded the abbey. The kitchen- 
 garden still existed; and in his "English Gardener" Cobbett 
 describes how well it was situated, looking full to the south, with 
 a high hill behind it. He tells how the earliest birds used to 
 sing there, and what prodigious quantities of fruit it used to bear ; 
 how the peaches, nectarines, apricots, and fine plums never failed ; 
 and how, if the workmen had not lent a helping hand, not a fourth 
 part would have been got rid of. And now he says it is nothing 
 but a coarse, rushy meadow, all the drains which formerly took 
 away the oozings of the hill having been choked up or broken 
 up ; the very spot where he had seen bushels of hautboy straw- 
 berries, such as he had never seen since, now nothing but a 
 swampy meadow, producing sedgy grass and rushes. "This 
 most secluded and beautiful spot," he bursts out, "was given 
 away by that ruthless tyrant, Henry VIII., to one of the basest 
 and greediest of cormorant courtiers, Sir W. Fitzwilliams, and 
 finally came into the hands of Sir Robert Rich, who ' tore every- 
 thing to atoms.' I must be excused," he adds, "for breaking out 
 into these complaints. It was the spot where I first began to 
 learn to work, or rather, where I first began to eat fine fruit in a 
 garden ; and though I have now seen and observed upon as many 
 quarters as any man in England, I have never beheld a garden 
 equal to that of ' Waverley.' " 
 
 Here we have some inkling of the feelings the frequent sight of 
 these venerable ruins stirred up in his youthful mind. That he 
 loved this place many references in his books testify. To his son 
 in after days he pointed out a tree close to the ruins of the abbey, 
 from a limb of which he fell into the river, trying to take a crow's 
 nest ; and another, a hollow elm up which he affirmed that he had 
 once seen a wild cat go that was as big as a middle-sized spaniel 
 dog, and for standing to which slight exaggeration he got a beating. 
 
 Many a time as he worked or played in the gardens, or about 
 the ruins, wondering thoughts would no doubt enter his mind as 
 to who the builders of the abbey were, and what kind of men they
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 25 I 
 
 must have been who could have left such memorials of their power. 
 But it was not until he read the history of his country that the 
 deep impression left on his mind by his early and familiar acquain- 
 tance with Waverley Abbey took form, and how it did this passage 
 from his " Protestant Reformation " will show : 
 
 " The monastics built and wrote for posterity. They executed 
 everything in the very best manner ; their gardens, fish-ponds, 
 farms, in all, in the whole of their economy, they set an example, 
 tending to make the country beautiful, to make it an object of 
 pride with the people, and to make the nation truly and per- 
 manently great. Go into any country, and survey, even at this 
 day, the ruins of its perhaps twenty abbeys and priories ; and then 
 ask yourself, ' What have we in exchange for these ? ' Go to the 
 site of some once opulent convent. Look at the cloister, now 
 become, in the hands of a rack-renter, the receptacle for dung, 
 fodder, and faggot-wood ; see the hall, where for ages the widow, 
 the orphan, the aged, and the stranger found a table ready spread ; 
 see a bit of its walls now helping to make a cattle-shed, the rest 
 having been hauled away to build a workhouse ; recognise in the 
 side of a barn a part of the once magnificent chapel " ; and so on, 
 until he brings you to " listen to an account of the hypocritical 
 pretences, the base motives, the tyrannical and bloody means 
 under which, from which, and by which, that devastation was 
 affected, and that hospitality banished for ever from the land." 
 
 It was the indelible impression which this early acquaintance 
 with Waverley Abbey made on his mind which led him into such 
 a fierce and life-long opposition to all modern social arrangements. 
 In a dashing, witty critique which William Hazlitt wrote on Cob- 
 bet's character he says, " He is not wedded to his notions not he. 
 He had not one Mrs Cobbett among all his opinions." This may 
 seem true to any one who dives here and there at haphazard into 
 his numerous works, but there is one notion, one opinion, he set 
 out with, which he never changed a conviction which had its 
 birth in the gardens of Waverley Abbey, which gained strength 
 with every book he read, every experience he passed through, and 
 every scene he saw. And it was this : that in one way or another 
 the arrangements of modern society all tend to crush the poor 
 man, poor being here a relative term, and not to be understood
 
 252 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 as merely meaning the "submerged tenth"; but the poor farmer, 
 for instance, as much as the poor labourer. To the last he 
 remained an enthusiastic medievalist, never tired of insisting on 
 the greatness and happiness of England in the olden times. 
 
 " If I am an extraordinary man," he says in one of his writings, 
 "as I have been called by some persons who ought to have found 
 a different epithet, I was a still more extraordinary boy." For if 
 he was wilful, he was independent two qualities not always linked 
 together. 
 
 To judge from the many inns and public-houses which to our 
 own day attract custom under the sign of "The Rodney," that 
 naval commander would appear to have been one of the most popular 
 of our sea-kings. In April 1782 he obtained a great victory over 
 the French in the Carribee Islands. No doubt it was the national 
 enthusiasm which this victory evoked that aroused in young Cob- 
 bett's mind the desire to become a sailor. In the autumn of 1782 
 he went down to Portsmouth to visit his uncle. At Portsdown he 
 caught sight of the sea for the first time, and the sight caused his 
 heart to glow with patriotic fire. 
 
 For two years Gibraltar had been besieged by the Spaniards, 
 and just at the very time that young Cobbett arrived at Portsdown, 
 the fleet under Lord Howe intended for its relief lay at Spithead. 
 " It was not," he says, " the sea alone that I saw ; the grand fleet 
 w r as riding at anchor at Spithead. I had heard of the wooden 
 walls of old England ; I had formed my ideas of a ship, and of a 
 fleet : but what I now beheld so far surpassed what I had ever 
 been able to form a conception of, that I stood lost between 
 astonishment and admiration. I had heard talk of the glorious 
 deeds of our admirals and sailors, of the defeat of the Spanish 
 Armada, and of all those memorable combats that good and true 
 Englishmen never fail to relate to their children about a hundred 
 times a year. The brave Rodney's victories over our natural 
 enemies, the French and the Spaniards, have long been the theme 
 of our praise and the burden of our songs. The sight of our fleet 
 brought all these into my mind in confused order, it is true, but 
 with irresistible force. My heart was inflated with national pride. 
 The sailors were my countrymen ; the fleet belonged to my 
 country ; and surely I had my part in it, and in all its honours :
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 253 
 
 yet these honours I had not earned. I took to myself a sort of 
 reproach for possessing what I had no right to, and resolved to 
 have a just claim by sharing in the hardships and dangers." 
 
 He could not sleep that night for thinking of that wonderful 
 fleet, but rose up with the daylight, went down to the old castle on 
 the beach, got on the battlements, and had a nearer look at it. 
 He was impatient to be off at once, so he went without delay to 
 Portsmouth, got into a boat, and in a few minutes was on board 
 the Pegasus man-of-war. 
 
 The captain looked at the ruddy-cheeked youth, and, thinking 
 perhaps it was a pity that the owner of such an honest, ingenuous 
 face should be exposed to the corruptions of the forecastle, tried 
 to dissuade him by telling him, in sailor-like fashion", that if he be- 
 came one of his crew, he would have to be married to Miss Roper. 
 Strange to say, Captain Berkeley had a stronger will than even 
 young Cobbett, and by no entreaties could he be prevailed upon 
 to allow him to stay. The would-be sailor, determined not to be 
 balked, went to the Port-Admiral, but he, directly he learnt what 
 Captain Berkeley had said, refused to entertain the application. 
 
 " It is not in a man that walketh to direct his steps." Who 
 would have supposed that in the days of press-gangs, on the eve of 
 active service, two naval commanders would have refused a 
 healthy, intelligent, ardent young volunteer ? But so it was ! 
 William Cobbett was intended for other work than to help in the 
 relief of Gibraltar, and perhaps get shot for his pains. 
 
 However, the sea had inoculated him with its own restless 
 nature. Next year he was off again, and this time it was to 
 London. 
 
 "It was," he relates, "on the 6th of May 1783, that I, like Don 
 Quixote, sallied forth to seek adventures. I was dressed in my 
 holiday clothes, in order to accompany two or three lasses to 
 Guildford Fair. They were to assemble at a house about three 
 miles from my home, where I was to attend them ; but, unfortun- 
 ately for me, I had to cross the London turnpike road. The 
 stage-coach had just turned the summit of a hill, and was rattling 
 towards me at a merry rate. The notion of going to London 
 never entered my mind till this very moment, yet the step was 
 completely determined upon before the coach came to the spot
 
 254 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 where I stood. Up I got, and was in London about nine o'clock 
 in the evening." 
 
 It so happened that going to the fair he had put all the money 
 he possessed in the world into his pocket. He had been years 
 slowly amassing it; but it all went, save one half-crown, by the 
 time he had paid his fair, and had alighted on Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Fortunately, there was a gentleman in the coach who had dealt 
 with his father at Weyhill Fair. He was a hop merchant in South- 
 wark, and seeing the danger the young man was in, he took him 
 to his own house, and endeavoured to induce him to return home. 
 But against this young Cobbett's pride rebelled. Finding him so 
 determined, the hop merchant gave up pressing him, and found 
 him a situation as a lawyer's clerk in Gray's Inn. 
 
 Here he began to learn something of the slavery of self-will. 
 He had to work from five in the morning until eight or nine at 
 night, and sometimes all night long. However, this new occupa- 
 tion taught him to spell correctly, and gave him an insight into 
 the law. 
 
 Walking about one Sunday in St James's Park, his eye caught 
 a placard describing in glowing colours the glory and profit of 
 entering His Majesty's service as a marine. 
 
 He was sick of the high stool and dark office in Gray's Inn ; so 
 without much thought he started for Chatham to enlist. He took 
 the king's shilling, but to his surprise he learnt the next morning 
 that he had not enlisted in the marine service at all, but that the 
 regiment he had joined was a marching one, the main body of 
 which was then serving in Nova Scotia. The Captain was an 
 Irishman, and with a very little touch of the auctioneer's art quite 
 enchanted the young recruit with a description of the country, and 
 made him wild to be off without a moment's delay; instead of 
 which he was compelled to remain a whole year in the barracks at 
 Chatham. This delay proved to be of great advantage to him, 
 for it gave him leisure to commence that course of self-education 
 which raised him to the position he afterwards occupied. He 
 subscribed to a library in the neighbourhood, and so keen was his 
 appetite for knowledge that he had soon read the greater part of 
 the books some twice over. His intelligence quickly made itself 
 felt. The commandant of the garrison, General Deberg, em-
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 255 
 
 ployed him to copy out his letters ; and perceiving his ignorance 
 of grammar, pointed out his mistakes, and advised him to remedy 
 the deficiency. He set about the task with the utmost assiduity. 
 He wrote out the whole of Lowth's Grammar two or three times ; 
 got it by heart, and every time he was posted sentinel repeated it 
 to himself from the beginning to the end. 
 
 Under what difficulties he carried on the study he relates in a 
 passage which shows the indomitable energy of his character. " I 
 learned grammar," he says in his " Advice to Young Men," " when 
 I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge 
 of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study in ; 
 my knapsack was my bookcase ; a bit of board lying on my lap 
 was my writing-table ; and the task did not demand anything like 
 a year of my life. I had no money to purchase candle or oil. 
 In winter-time it was rarely that I could get any evening light but 
 that of the fire, and only my turn even of that. To buy a pen or 
 a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of food, 
 though in a state of half-starvation. I had no moment of time 
 that I could call my own ; and I had to read and to write amidst 
 the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and brawling of at least 
 half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that too in the 
 hours of their freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the 
 farthing that I had to give now and then for ink, pen, or paper. 
 That farthing was, alas ! a great sum for me ! I was as tall as I 
 am now ; I had great health and great exercise. The whole of 
 the money not expended for us at market was twopence a week for 
 each man. I remember and well I may that upon one 
 occasion I, after all absolutely necessary expenses, had, on a Friday, 
 made shift to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined 
 for the purchase of a red herring in the morning ; but when I 
 pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly 
 able to endure life, I found that I had lost my halfpenny ! I 
 buried my head under the miserable sheets and rug, and cried like 
 a child. 
 
 Such efforts compelled him to be an early riser, and most 
 correct and regular in all his habits. He was soon marked as 
 a self-reliant and reliable man. He was made a corporal, and then
 
 256 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 advanced at one leap over the heads of thirty sergeants to be 
 serjeant-major. 
 
 The day came at last when his regiment was to sail for Nova 
 Scotia. To men like Cobbett such a voyage is the veritable dis- 
 covery of a new world. Soon after his arrival the regiment was 
 ordered to St John's, in the province of New Brunswick ; and it 
 was while here that he fell in love. It was, as will be supposed, 
 in his own characteristic fashion. To begin with, it was love at 
 first sight. He had not been in Anne Reid's company an hour 
 before he had made up his mind. But nothing so enhanced his 
 opinion of his own judgment as a trifling circumstance which 
 happened shortly after. " It was my habit," he says, " when I had 
 done my morning's writing, to go out at break of day to take a 
 walk on a hill at the foot of which our barracks lay. In about 
 three mornings after I had first seen her I had, by an invitation to 
 breakfast with me, got up two young men to join me in my walk ; 
 and our road lay by the house of her father and mother. It was 
 hardly light, but she was out on the snow, scrubbing out a wash- 
 ing tub. ' That's the girl for me,' said I when we had got out 
 of her hearing." 
 
 With his usual positiveness and self-confidence he writes, " From 
 the day that I first spoke to her I never had a thought of her 
 ever being the wife of any other man, more than I had a thought 
 of her being transformed into a chest of drawers; and I formed 
 my resolution at once to marry her as soon as we could get per- 
 mission, and to get out of the army as soon as I could." 
 
 However, his fidelity was destined to a severe trial. The 
 artillery, in which his sweetheart's father was a sergeant-major, 
 was ordered back to England, while his own regiment was sent to 
 Fredericton, a hundred miles up the river St John. 
 
 Rambling about the woods of New Brunswick, he lost his way. 
 Night came on, but he could not sleep on account of the cold, 
 and the noise of bears. There was a moon shining, and he 
 wandered on until at last he came on a log hut. The master, a 
 loyalist Yankee farmer, received him with the utmost cordiality. 
 The enjoyment of a good bed and a sumptuous breakfast was 
 intensified by the fact that the house was adorned by the presence
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 257 
 
 of the farmer's daughter, a young girl with the loveliest of blue 
 eyes, and the most bewitching manners and costume. 
 
 The young soldier often found his way again to the hospitable 
 log-house, so often indeed that both he and the young damsel and 
 all her family allowed themselves to live quite oblivious to the 
 fact that he had already entered into a prior engagement. Had 
 Anne Reid given him the slightest reason to think she wished to 
 break with him, he would have consented at once, but she did not 
 do so, and the time came when everybody's delusion had to be 
 dispelled, and a shadow left upon the sunlight of that hitherto 
 happy log-house. 
 
 Cobbett was rewarded beyond his deserts for his fidelity to 
 Anne Reid. When she had left St John's he had sent her a 
 purse of a hundred and fifty guineas being, in fact, the whole of 
 his accumulations since he had been in the army ; begging her, if 
 she found the military society in her own home at Woolwich dis- 
 agreeable, not to spare the money, but to take lodgings with 
 respectable people until he returned to England to marry her ; 
 to buy herself good clothes, and not to live by hard work. On 
 his return he found that she had not spent a farthing of the 
 money, but had been drudging away during their separation as a 
 maid of all work at five pounds a year. 
 
 They were soon married ; Cobbett having, immediately after his 
 arrival in England, procured his discharge from the army. 
 
 This step had not been taken from any disgust for the pro- 
 fession. On the contrary, it would appear from his rapid promo- 
 tion and good standing in the regiment that his character and 
 talents were singularly suited to the military life. His commanding 
 officer, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and his colonel, General 
 Frederick, urged him to remain, offering to use their influence 
 with the King to get him promoted to the rank of an ensign. 
 But Cobbett had long made up his mind, and no prospect, 
 however fine, could affect him ; so they gave him his discharge, 
 accompanied by a handsome testimonial of his good conduct 
 while under their command. 
 
 What then was his motive? Simply this, that he might 
 expose and bring to punishment certain officers in the regiment, 
 who he believed guilty of malversation in their several depart-
 
 258 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 ments. His indefatigable endeavours to improve himself in the 
 three R's had led to his virtually becoming clerk to the whole 
 regiment. The papers and books of the various departments 
 came into his hands, and he soon found that manifold wrongs 
 were done by the officers to the soldiers, and to the public. The 
 quartermaster, for instance, who had the issuing of the provisions, 
 kept the fourth part to himself. Cobbett astonished his fellow- 
 sergeants by proposing to put a stop to such proceedings. But 
 when he made the attempt, he found that it involved him in 
 much disgrace, and would probably only lead to his own degrada- 
 tion so he thought it best to give up his design until he returned 
 to England, and could get out of the army. Meanwhile he 
 determined to take notes and copies from the regimental books, 
 that he might have evidence of the charges when the time came 
 to make them. To attest the truth of these notes and copies he 
 knew that it would be necessary for him to produce a witness. 
 After some hesitation, therefore, he confided his plan to a young 
 corporal who assisted him in keeping the regimental accounts. 
 But to the last he was in dread lest he and his comrade should be 
 discovered, and made to suffer the wrath of the officers. 
 
 Once discharged, he hastened to London and saw Sir George 
 Young, the Secretary of War. A court-martial being ordered, 
 Cobbett requested that it should be held in London, and the 
 books immediately secured. The former demand was acceded to, 
 but no order w r as issued concerning the latter until two months 
 had elapsed from the time of the charge being made. Cobbett 
 had done this in the middle of January 1792. On the 24th of 
 March he was at Portsmouth, and learnt the books were still in 
 the officers' hands. He immediately wrote to the Judge-Advocate 
 to say that unless the authorities would consent to give a discharge 
 to the soldier he should name as the witness in proof of his 
 charges, he should not appear in the case, as he was sure that 
 otherwise justice would not be done. To this communication no 
 answer was* returned. 
 
 He was at this time totally ignorant of the nature of the laws 
 relating to sedition, and, like all persons in such case, had an 
 undefined terror of their possible power. When, therefore, he 
 heard it said that he was about to be prosecuted for sedition, and
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 259 
 
 that he stood a chance of being sent to Botany Bay, he became 
 alarmed, and determined at once to put himself out of the reach 
 of such a contingency. 
 
 Before the month of March 1792 was out he had accordingly 
 crossed the Channel. The place to which he fled was a little 
 village called Tilq, near St Omer's, where he and his wife lodged 
 in the house of the maire of the commune, a certain M. Le Grand. 
 When Cobbett arrived in France, its unhappy King was just 
 entering the vortex of the Revolution. On the 2oth of June the 
 Tuileries was attacked by the mob, and Louis XVI. was 
 compelled to wear the cap of liberty. In July a number of 
 republicans arrived from the south singing the Marseillaise. 
 Suddenly, like a bomb in the midst of a powder magazine, fell the 
 Duke of Brunswick's proclamation, announcing that the German 
 armies would shortly be in Paris to restore order, and threatening 
 the people with wholesale military execution and the total over- 
 throw of their city if the slightest insult was offered to the royal 
 family. The explosion was terrific. The Tuileries was again 
 attacked, the King and the royal family fled for their lives. 
 The blood which trickled down the stairs and under the door- 
 sills of the Tuileries on that fatal August the gth announced 
 the coming flood. 
 
 News travelled slowly in those days, but the tremor of such 
 portentous events soon penetrated the obscurest villages, and 
 made the dullest hearts beat more rapidly. Cobbett felt the fas- 
 cination ; he must go to Paris. But he had no idea of the fearful 
 character of the storm raging there. When he reached Abbeville 
 he learnt that the very day he left Tilq the King had been put in 
 prison and his Swiss guard slaughtered ; upon which he deter- 
 mined to make the best of his way to Havre, and set sail without 
 delay for America. On the voyage a French vessel overtook 
 them, bringing news of the September massacres. He disem- 
 barked at Philadelphia, his mind filled with horror at what he had 
 seen and heard of the character and results of democratic prin- 
 ciples. He found a residence for a time at Wilmington, where a 
 number of emigrants from France and from St Domingo were 
 living, and he was welcomed into their society as one who shared 
 their political opinions, and could teach them English. His
 
 260 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 pupils soon become very numerous, so that ere long he was 
 making four or five hundred pounds a year. Amongst those who 
 sought to enlist his services was the celebrated M. de Talleyrand, 
 who offered him twenty dollars a month ; but Cobbett, suspecting 
 his intentions, resolutely refused. "I did not want," he said, "a 
 French spy to take a survey either of my desk or my house." The 
 exercises that he wrote for his pupils became a grammar, which 
 he published in Philadelphia under the title of the " Maitre 
 d'Anglais." It had a large sale in America, and soon became 
 known in France, so that it was ordered to be used in the public 
 schools. A certain individual named Du Roure, who afterwards 
 edited it, and sent forth five editions in Paris, sought in the 
 fifth edition to deny Cobbett's claim to be its author ; but in vol. 
 33 of the Register the latter fully exposed the Frenchman's attempt 
 to deprive him of the paternity of his first-born literary child. 
 
 The event which first brought Cobbett before the world as a 
 political writer was the arrival of Dr Priestley in New York. 
 Burnt out of house and home by the turbulent friends of " King 
 and Church" in Birmingham, this friend of freedom deter- 
 mined to go to the United States. Cobbett, who regarded 
 him as one of the leaders of English Jacobinism, made up his 
 mind to salute his arrival with a broadside. He accordingly 
 attacked him in a pamphlet, which he proposed to call "The 
 Tartuffe detected; or, Observations on the Emigration of a 
 Martyr to the Cause of Liberty." The pamphlet was, however, 
 published without the first title, and became the commencement 
 of that celebrated series afterwards known as The Works of Peter 
 Porcupine, a pseudonym which had its origin in some correspon- 
 dent accusing Cobbett of writing as savagely as if his pen was the 
 quill of an porcupine. These productions soon made manifest 
 his wonderful talent for writing plain but racy English, as well as 
 for finding out witty titles, and for fastening clever nicknames on 
 every one of his victims. Thus his next pamphlet was entitled 
 " A Bone to gnaw for the Democrats ; another, " A Kick for a 
 Bite ; " and so on. 
 
 Finding his writings sell, he determined to set up in business 
 for himself. Accordingly, in the spring of 1796 he took a house 
 for the purpose in Second Street, Philadelphia, and celebrated
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 261 
 
 the opening in his own original way by firing a volley 
 into the popular political creed of the city. The whole of 
 the previous Sunday he spent in preparing such an exhibition 
 as had never been known before in Philadelphia. His window 
 was a large one, but he determined to fill it with engravings of all 
 the kings, queens, and princes he could lay his hands upon ; with 
 portraits of the various members of the English ministry ; several 
 English bishops, generals, admirals ; and, in short, with every 
 picture which he thought would excite the rage of the enemies of 
 Great Britain. In order to make the exhibition more exasperat- 
 ing, he linked together the most terrible of the French Revolu- 
 tionists with certain popular Americans Marat with Franklin, for 
 example. The next day the people came stared in amazement 
 at the audacity of the new English bookseller, but not a stone 
 was thrown. The town, however, soon teemed with angry 
 pamphlets, in which he was attacked in his own style. The more 
 he was abused the more he enjoyed the situation. " I am one," 
 he told them, "whose obstinacy only increases with opposition." 
 He now commenced a new series of pamphlets, which he en- 
 titled " The Political Censor," and in which he not only attacked 
 democratic principles, but tried to pillory popular American 
 leaders. 
 
 The yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia ; Cobbett would 
 not flee, as many did, but philosophically sought to divert his 
 mind by reading a book called " Ales Perils" an exciting account 
 of the adventures of M. Lovet, a Brissotin, who fled for his life 
 during the Reign of Terror. 
 
 This epidemic was, however, the ultimate cause of Cobbett's 
 return to England. There was a certain Dr Rush who professed 
 that he had done great things during the fever. Cobbett con- 
 sidered this person as a quack, and that it was his duty to expose 
 his pernicious system. He called him a Sangrado, the Samson of 
 Medicine, charging him with murdering his patients, and slaying 
 his thousands and tens of thousands. Rush brought an action 
 for libel, and Cobbett, who had done his best to incense the 
 American public, met with no mercy from judge or jury. He wa 
 condemned to pay five thousand dollars for the damage done to 
 the reputation of his antagonist, and to pay the costs of the trial,
 
 262 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 which, together with other losses incurred in consequence, 
 amounted to three thousand dollars more. 
 
 This judgment almost ruined him. But Cobbett was a man of 
 war by nature, and only regarded the loss of his hardly-earned 
 money as a general would that of his impedimenta. He prepared 
 himself afresh for the battle, and with that singular humour which 
 seems to take the sting out of all his quarrels, he started a new 
 publication called the J?its/i-\ight, in which he attacked, with the 
 utmost hostility, judge, jury, and plaintiff. 
 
 But he felt the time had come for him to quit America, 
 and in the first year of the present century he returned to 
 England. 
 
 On his arrival he was welcomed by the Government as a man 
 who had done distinguished service. Mr Wyndham especially 
 appears to have entertained an admiration for him, and on one 
 occasion invited him to dinner, asking Mr Pitt to meet him. 
 
 During the next year the Treaty of Amiens was concluded, 
 and peace was proclaimed. Cobbett considered that treaty a 
 mistake, and refused to illuminate. The people, who had suffered 
 terribly by the war, were ardently in favour of the Peace, and it 
 was probable his house would be attacked. By the direct 
 intervention of the Home Secretary a number of Bow Street 
 officers were sent to protect it. The people overcame them, and 
 were not driven off until the Horse Guards appeared. 
 
 In 1804 there were fears of an invasion. Napoleon was 
 making alarming preparations at Boulogne. Cobbett wrote a 
 paper, which he entitled " Important Considerations for the 
 People of this Kingdom." The manuscript was laid before the 
 Prime Minister by Mr Yorke, the Home Secretary. Mr Adding- 
 ton was so pleased with it that he caused it to be printed, and 
 sent to every parish in the kingdom. Mr Wyndham was equally 
 enthusiastic in his praise. 
 
 If Cobbett had been a man seeking his own interest, or reckless of 
 principle, as his detractors represent, his shrewd, business-like nature 
 would have prompted him to seize the opportunity now afforded 
 him of rising high in influence with, and gaining such rewards as 
 he would from the British Government. But just as he had been 
 indifferent to promotion in the army, if it had to be purchased
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 263 
 
 at the cost of conniving at official corruption, he now disdained 
 the thought of political advancement if it was to be obtained at 
 the cost of stifling his opinions. 
 
 A year before his return from America, the Act of Union 
 between Great Britain and Ireland had been passed. It was 
 notorious that it had been effected by the most disgraceful 
 means. However, Mr Pitt tried to reconcile himself and the 
 greater portion of the public to the transaction, by the plea that it 
 would enable the Government more easily to remove the Catholic 
 disabilities. But when the question was settled, Mr Pitt found 
 that the King was so obstinately opposed to Catholic relief, that, 
 if the idea was pressed, it would in all probability drive him out 
 of his senses. Pitt accordingly resigned, and a ministry composed 
 of men pledged against the claims of the Roman Catholics came 
 in. Now, Cobbett's conservatism was of a much more antique 
 and thorough character than that of the Tory gentlemen with 
 whom he was allied. He had a rooted conviction that in every 
 sense the Old times, the Old ways, and the Old laws were better 
 than the New. He reverenced every institution which he could 
 trace back to those times. "The Crown, the Mitre, and the 
 Bible" this was the sign over his shop in Pall Mall. He firmly 
 believed England was a far happier country, and had a larger, 
 more prosperous, and nobler population in Catholic times than in 
 Protestant ones. 
 
 Nothing, therefore, was more consistent than that he, high- 
 flying Tory as he was, should sympathise deeply with wrongs 
 suffered by the professors of the old form of faith. When, there- 
 fore, this question came to be a party one, he was compelled to 
 ally himself with the Radicals. Driven by the force of circum- 
 stances into new connections, he came to see things in a fresh 
 light, but it was always from the old standpoint. Catholic 
 Emancipation was the bridge which led him from one party to 
 the other; but, Tory or Radical, his root convictions were the 
 same from the beginning of his life to the end. 
 
 Soon after his arrival in England he started the Weekly 
 Register, a periodical he kept up until the day of his death. In 
 1803 there appeared in that journal a series of anonymous letters 
 attacking the various members of the Irish Government. The
 
 264 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 times were critical. Colonel Despard and his associates had been 
 executed early in the year for conspiring against the King and the 
 Government. Bonaparte was busy preparing for an invasion of 
 either England or Ireland, probably the latter, for he was well 
 aware that its population was desperate with discontent. 
 Cobbett's views with reference to the Catholics were, no doubt, 
 well known, and had already caused the Government to regard him 
 as more likely to prove their enemy than their ally. It was deter- 
 mined, therefore, to indict him for libel. He was convicted, and 
 fined 500. Another prosecution was then commenced by Mr 
 Plunkett, the Irish Attorney-General. Cobbett was again con- 
 victed, and fined an additional ^500. 
 
 His early impressions, his rural sympathies, his enthusiastic 
 patriotism, his military education, and his six months' stay in 
 revolutionary France, had sent Cobbett to America a Tory of the 
 most extreme type ; but his eight years' residence there had pre- 
 pared his mind for very different views. 
 
 He had not only to read much said on the other side, but his 
 own eyes constantly bore witness to him of the vast contrast be- 
 tween the condition and prospects of the mass of the community 
 in America to what he had known it in England. Describing a 
 few years earlier the very district in which Cobbett had resided, 
 Dr Franklin wrote : "The lands (the farmer) possesses are con- 
 tinually rising in value with the increase of population ; and, on 
 the whole, he is enabled to give such good wages to those who 
 work for him, that all who are acquainted with the Old World 
 must agree that in no part are the labouring poor so generally well 
 fed, well [clothed, well lodged, and well paid, as in the United 
 States of America." A happy mediocrity in wealth prevailed 
 everywhere ; there were few rich men, and hardly one who could 
 be called very poor. The hard-working cultivator of the soil 
 worked, as a rule, for himself, and was able to support his family 
 in decent plenty. In the cities the workmen all had higher 
 wages than in any other part of the world, and were paid moreover 
 in ready money. Cobbett himself, therefore, in spite of all his 
 horror for democratic institutions, was compelled to share 
 Franklin's conviction, that, as far as material well-being went, " no 
 nation enjoyed a greater share of human felicity."
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 265 
 
 When he returned to England in 1800 the state of things was 
 much worse than when he had left, so that the contrast was 
 brought home to him in the most vivid manner. Corn he found 
 at 1345. the quarter: in the spring of 1801 it rose to 1563. On 
 the 5th of March in that year the quartern loaf was is. io|d. As 
 to the poor labourers, the men who had toiled all the year round 
 beneath the sun and the rain to raise this bread for others, they 
 had to put up with what no one else would touch. They ate, as 
 an old man in Northamptonshire once told me, what we now give 
 to the pigs. Their barley bread was such poor stuff that it fell out 
 of the crust directly it was cut. The English rural poor would 
 have died off every winter by thousands had not the local 
 authorities throughout the country kept them alive by charity. 
 The custom was that when the gallon loaf of 8 Ibs. 1 1 oz. rose to 
 is., every man was to be allowed 33. weekly, and to have is. 6d. 
 in addition for each member of his family. In this way the whole 
 agricultural population became pauperized. Cobbett found that 
 one person in every seven throughout the country received 
 parochial relief ! 
 
 A Royal proclamation was put forth exhorting the people to eat 
 brown bread, and bounties were offered on the introduction of 
 maize and rice. Riots were general. The people, blinded by 
 ignorance and hunger, supposed it was the fault of the millers and 
 bakers, and tried to burn the mills and break open the bakers' 
 shops. 
 
 The war was, of course, the immediate cause of this extreme 
 misery, but for its ultimate cause we must look much further 
 back. Not only in France, but also in England, had the poorer 
 classes been degrading for generations. The cry of the labourer had 
 long gone up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and did much, 
 we may be sure, to bring about that Revolution in whose surges 
 we still are. 
 
 A poet, remarkable for the extreme fidelity of his painting rather 
 than for the high flight of his sentiment or language, has given us 
 graphic pictures of the woeful misery in which the poor of England 
 were existing years before the war. Crabbe had the very best 
 opportunities of knowing the truth as a country clergyman, and had 
 no reason for exaggerating.
 
 266 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 At the time he published that which I am about to quote 
 (1783) he was the friend of Burke, and the domestic chaplain of 
 the Duke of Rutland, so that no doubt these very lines were read 
 with admiration in Belvoir Castle, and admitted to be only too 
 true. 
 
 Speaking of the poor labourers as "the slaves that dig the 
 golden ore," he says 
 
 " Go, then, and see them rising with the sun, 
 Through a long course of daily toil to run ; 
 See them beneath the day-star's raging heat, 
 When the knees tremble and the temples beat : 
 Behold them leaning on their scythes, look o'er 
 The labour past, and toils to come explore ; 
 See them alternate suns and showers engage, 
 And hoard up aches and anguish for their age ; 
 Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, 
 When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew ; 
 Then own that labour may as fatal be 
 To these thy slaves as thine excess to thee." 
 
 Bitter are the poor man's reflections as he thinks over his toil- 
 some life : 
 
 " These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see, 
 Are others' gain, but killing cares to me ; 
 To me the children of my youth are lords, 
 Cool in their looks, but hasty in their words. 
 A lonely, wretched man in pain I go, 
 None need my help, and none relieve my woe ; 
 Then let my bones beneath the turf be laid, 
 And men forget the wretch they would not aid. 
 Thus groan the old, till, by disease oppressed, 
 They taste a final woe, and then they rest." 
 
 How could a man with such a passion for rural pursuits, a man 
 all eyes and ears as Cobbett was, how could such a man not fail to 
 see and to be deeply affected by so violent a contrast in the con- 
 dition of his own countrymen, and that of the people he had been 
 living amongst ? Nor would his shrewd and penetrating intellect 
 have been long before it sought to trace out the causes which had 
 produced such a state of things. He soon came to the conclusion 
 that the cause was simply this, that England was ruled by an 
 Oligarchy for its own benefit. Henceforth he waged as bitter a
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 267 
 
 war against the landowners and stockjobbers in England as he 
 had done against the democrats in the United States. 
 
 To have left the Tories merely for the Whigs would in no way 
 have expressed the conviction which was thus forced on his mind. 
 From the point of view at which he surveyed the social condition 
 of his country, " Caesar and Pompey were very much alike, specially 
 Pompey." He therefore went straight over to the Radicals, and 
 allied himself with their leaders, Major Cartwright and Sir Francis 
 Burdett. Animated by his new ideas, the Weekly Register gradu- 
 ally became an enormous power in the country. All parties read 
 it : it was so hot, spicy, and invigorating. Statesmen felt the 
 pepper fall on their jaded consciences, and enjoyed the titillation 
 rather than otherwise. The fashionable world, ever craving for 
 scandal, delighted in its personalities, and entered with as much 
 zest into the way its Editor riveted a nickname on one of his foes 
 as a pack of dirty urchins would in hunting a poor cur with an old 
 tin kettle tied to its tail. To people of quality he was only a blind 
 Samson who every week made sport of them ; to the suffering 
 people he was a veritable Hercules, who had undertaken the 
 prodigious task of cleansing the Augean stables of the British Con- 
 stitution from all their foulness and corruption. He told the 
 masses of his countrymen its bankrupt traders and farmers, its 
 starving artisans and labourers that the one thing needful was 
 Parliamentary Reform. He stretched the liberty of plain speak- 
 ing to the utmost point, and beat the British Government in their 
 endeavours to put him down. 
 
 But it was a life-long fight before he succeeded. At first he 
 was nearly crushed. In July 1809 there was a mutiny among the 
 militiamen at Ely. Four squadrons of German cavalry stationed 
 at Bury were sent for, the mutiny suppressed, and the ringleaders 
 sentenced to 500 lashes each. Cobbett's national feeling was 
 aroused, and he wrote a strong article in his Rfgister, making a 
 great point of Englishmen being flogged in their own country by 
 foreigners. He was at once prosecuted, and sentenced to pay a 
 fine of ;iooo to the king, and to suffer two years' imprisonment ! 
 to give security for his good behaviour for seven years, himself in 
 ^3000, and two sureties in ^1000 each ! 
 
 It was a tremendous blow. Cobbett staggered, reeled, and, as
 
 268 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 some said, cried Peccavi. It was a moment of human weakness, 
 very natural to a man of such intense and contending sym- 
 pathies. On the one hand there was the conviction that he had a 
 work to do a work which, look at it how he might, or we may, 
 was the same in reality as that of the old Hebrew judges a call to 
 the high and perilous task of delivering his people ; on the other, 
 he was a typical Englishman, never more happy than at his own 
 fireside, alone with his wife and children. 
 
 Of that wife he wrote several years after his marriage as the 
 being " to whose gentleness, prudence, and fortitude I owe what- 
 ever I enjoy of pleasure, of fortune, or of reputation ; " while 
 Miss Mitford, who visited the Cobbetts when they lived at Botley, 
 in Hampshire, speaks of her as a " sweet motherly woman, realizing 
 our notion of one of Scott's most charming characters, Alie Din- 
 mont, in her simplicity, her kindness, and her devotion to her 
 husband and children." 
 
 The house Cobbett had bought at Botley was one of those 
 ugly red-bricked mansions so common in the Georgian era. It 
 stood on an eminence, and had " a beautiful lawn and gardens 
 sweeping down to the river." Miss Mitford is enthusiastic in her 
 description of the place. " His fields," she says, " might have 
 been shown to a foreigner as a specimen of the richest and love- 
 liest English scenery. In the cultivation of his garden, too, he 
 displayed the same taste." She eulogizes his green Indian corn, 
 his Carolina beans, his water-melons, and his wall-fruit ; and 
 concludes by declaring that she " never saw a more glowing or a 
 more fragrant autumn garden than that at Botley, with its pyramids 
 of hollyhocks, and its masses of China asters, of foxgloves, of 
 mignonette, and of varied geranium." 
 
 The house, she says, was full of guests of almost all ranks and 
 descriptions. There was "room for all, and the hearts of the 
 owners would have had room for three times the number. I 
 never saw hospitality more genuine, more simple, or more 
 thoroughly successful in the great end of hospitality the putting 
 everybody completely at ease. There was not the slightest attempt 
 at finery, or display, or gentility. They called it a farmhouse, 
 and everything was in accordance with the largest idea of a great 
 English yeoman of the old time."
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 269 
 
 The host she describes as " a tall, stout, man, fair and sunburnt, 
 with a bright smile, and an air compounded of the soldier and 
 the farmer, to which his habit of wearing a red waistcoat con- 
 tributed not a little. He was, I think, the most athletic and 
 vigorous person that I have ever known. Nothing could tire him. 
 At home in the morning he would begin his active day by mowing 
 his own lawn, beating his gardener Robinson, the best mower 
 except himself in the parish, at that fatiguing work." Samuel 
 Bamford, the author of " Passages in the Life of a Radical," who 
 saw him under very different circumstances, namely, at a political 
 meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in London, gives 
 essentially the same impression of him. " Had I met him," he 
 says, "anywhere save in that room and on that occasion, I should 
 have taken him for a gentleman farming his own broad estate. 
 He seemed to have that kind of self-possession and ease about 
 him, together with a certain bantering jollity, which are so natural 
 to fast-handed and well-housed lords of the soil. He was, I 
 suppose, not less than six feet in height, portly, with a fresh, clear, 
 and round cheek, and a small grey eye, twinkling with good- 
 humoured archness. He was dressed in a blue coat, yellow swans- 
 down waistcoat, drab kersey small-clothes, and top-boots. His 
 hair was grey, and his cravat and linen were fine, and very white. 
 In short he was a perfect representative of what he always wished 
 to be, an English gentleman farmer." 
 
 In his " Advice to Young Men," Cobbett has given a beautiful 
 picture of the family life he sought to cultivate at Botley. " My 
 first duty," he says, " was to make [my family] healthy and strong, 
 if I could, and to give them as much enjoyment of life as possible. 
 Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that 
 they should be bred up in it too. ... I effected everything with- 
 out scolding, and even without command. My children are a 
 family of scholars ; each sex has its appropriate species of learning ; 
 and I could safely take my oath that I never ordered a child of 
 mine, son or daughter, to look into a book in my life. ... I 
 accomplished my purpose indirectly. The first thing of all was 
 health, which was secured by the deeply interesting and never- 
 ending sports of the field and pleasures of the garden. Luckily 
 these things were treated of in books and pictures of endless variety
 
 270 . TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 so that, on wet days, in long evenings, these came into play. A 
 large strong table, in the middle of the room, their mother sitting 
 at her work, used to be surrounded with them the baby, if big 
 enough, set up in a high chair. Here were inkstands, pens, 
 pencils, india-rubber, and paper, all in abundance, and every one 
 scrabbled about as he or she pleased. There were prints of 
 animals of all sorts ; books treating of them ; others treating of 
 gardening, of flowers, of husbandry, of hunting, coursing, shooting, 
 fishing, planting, and, in short, of everything with regard to which 
 we had something to do. One would be trying to imitate a bit of 
 my writing, another drawing the pictures of some of our dogs or 
 horses, a third poking over BEWICK'S Quadrupeds, and picking 
 out what he said about them; but our book of never-failing 
 resource was the French Maison Rustique, or FARMHOUSE," a 
 book full of illustrations ; and " there " he goes on to say, " was I, 
 in my leisure moments, to join this inquisitive group, to read the 
 French, and tell them what it meaned in English, when the 
 picture did not sufficiently explain itself. . . . 
 
 " To teach the children the habit of early rising was a great 
 object. This was a capital matter ; because here were industry 
 and health both at stake. Yet I avoided command even here ; 
 and merely offered a reward. The child who was downstairs first 
 was called the LARK^r the day, and further sat at my right hand 
 at dinner." 
 
 Miss Mitford says that " ' the Lark ' had, amongst other in- 
 dulgences, the pretty privilege of making his mother's nosegay, 
 and that of any other lady visitors." 
 
 " But to do the things that I did," continues Cobbett, " you 
 must love home yourself; to rear up children in this manner you 
 must live with them ; you must make them, ioo,feel, by your con- 
 duct, that you prefer this to any other mode of passing your time. 
 . . . I never spent an idle week, or even day, in my whole life. 
 Yet 1 found time to talk with them, to walk, to ride about with 
 them ; and when forced to go from home, always took one or 
 more with me. . . . When my business kept me away from 
 the scra&dlingtokAt a petition often came that I would go and talk 
 with the group, and the bearer generally was the youngest, being 
 the most likely to succeed. When I went from home all followed
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 271 
 
 me to the outer gate, and looked after me, till the carriage, or 
 horse, was out of sight. At the time appointed for my return all 
 were prepared to meet me ; and, if it were late at night, they sat 
 up as long as they were able to keep their eyes open. 
 We lived in a garden of about two acres, partly kitchen-garden 
 with walls, partly shrubbery and trees, and partly grass. There 
 were the peaches, as tempting as any that ever grew, and yet as 
 safe from fingers as if no child were ever in the garden. . . . 
 In the meanwhile the book-learning crept in of its own accord by 
 imperceptible degrees. . . . They began by taking words out 
 of printed books ; finding out which letter was which; . . . 
 and by imitating bits of my writing. . . . The first use that 
 any one of them made of the pen was to write to me, though in 
 the same house with them ; . . . and they were sure to re- 
 ceive SL prompt answer with most encouraging compliments. 
 
 "In this happy state we lived until the year 1810, when the 
 Government laid its merciless fangs upon me, dragged from me 
 these delights, and crammed me into a jail amongst felons. . . . 
 It was in the month of July when the horrible sentence was passed 
 upon me. My wife, having left the children in the care of her good 
 and affectionate sister, was in London, waiting to know the doom 
 of her husband. When the news arrived at Eotley, the three boys, 
 one eleven, another nine, and the other seven years old, were hoe- 
 ing cabbages in that garden which had been the source of so much 
 delight. When the account of the savage sentence was brought 
 to them, the youngest could not for some time be made to under- 
 stand what a jail was ; and when he did, he all in a tremor ex- 
 claimed, ' Now I'm sure, William, that PAPA is not in a place like 
 that.' The other, in order to disguise his tears and smother his 
 sobs, fell to work with the hoe, and chopped about like a blind 
 person" 
 
 Is it surprising that a man who possessed such strong domestic 
 instincts should have wavered and doubted whether he was 
 justified in sacrificing the interests of those he loved? His offer 
 to capitulate certainly shows that Cobbett had nothing of the 
 martyr in him. The Government refused his submission, and 
 as might be expected, the depth of his power to love became the 
 measure of the intensity of his hate. When he heard how his
 
 272 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 children were affected by his sentence, it filled him with the 
 deepest resentment; and in the recollection of all that he and 
 his family endured, he breaks out into a strain of the most intense 
 animosity against all who were trying to crush him. 
 
 "What!" he exclaims, "lam to forgive, am I, injuries like 
 this ; and that, too, without any atonement ? Oh no ! I have 
 not so read the Holy Scriptures ; I have not from them learned 
 that I am not to rejoice at the fall of unjust foes ; and it makes 
 a part of my happiness to be able to tell millions of men that I do 
 thus rejoice, and that I have the means of calling on so many just 
 and merciful men to rejoice along with me." 
 
 Shut up in Newgate, he continued his Weekly Register, his 
 chief solace being a hamper which he received every week from 
 Botley, containing fruit and country fare, specimens of plants, 
 bulbs, and roots. Each child sent him a letter, and some of his 
 or her most beautiful flowers. Moreover, the hamper always con- 
 tained a journal of the week's labours, proceedings, and occurrences. 
 After a time he had one or more of his children with him, to carry 
 on his correspondence. But he had seen the meridian of his 
 prosperity. The vindictive sentence passed upon him, with the 
 immense expense it entailed, and the confusion into which it 
 brought all his affairs, was the primary cause of the pecuniary 
 troubles which henceforth dogged his steps. 
 
 His sanguine temperament did not foresee these disasters, and the 
 two years in Newgate passed quickly away, thanks to his indefati- 
 gable industry. When he came out of prison a dinner was given 
 to him in London, at which 600 persons were present. When he 
 went home he was welcomed at Alton by the ringing of the church 
 bells; by another dinner, which was given him at Winchester; 
 and finally his neighbours met him on the road, and dragged him 
 for more than a mile into Botley. 
 
 The great war into which England plunged in 1793 was openly 
 avowed to be a political one. " It was necessary," its supporters 
 said, "to excite the English people against France, in order to 
 prevent French principles from spreading and fixing themselves in 
 England." When Fox spoke of the misery and privation such a 
 war would occasion to the bulk of the people, Burke contemptu- 
 ously replied, "The ground of a political war is of all things that
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 273 
 
 which the poor labourer and manufacturer are the least capable of 
 conceiving. This sort of people know in general what they must 
 suffer by war. It is a matter to which they are sufficiently com- 
 petent, because it is a matter of feeling. The causes of a war are 
 not matters of feeling, but of reason and foresight, and often of 
 remote considerations, and of a very great combination of circum- 
 stances, which they are utterly incapable of comprehending ; and, 
 indeed, it is not every man in the higher classes who is altogether 
 equal to it." 
 
 The wonderful prescience which the great anti-Jacobin thus 
 arrogated to a select few among the higher classes turned out to be 
 the direst of delusions. 
 
 It led, as we know, to an amount of distress and privation never 
 before endured in England. It saddled the country with a debt 
 of ^"600,000,000; and what in the eyes of a commercial com- 
 munity would have been a still greater calamity, it very nearly 
 broke the Bank of England ! 
 
 The Government had kept up the cry of " Wolf ! wolf ! " until 
 at last the wolf did come, and in a most unexpected form. As 
 long as an invasion was only a possibility, its mere dread sus- 
 tained the flame of patriotism ; but the instant it seemed likely to 
 prove a reality, patriotism melted before self-interest, and there 
 was a general rush to turn everything into gold. The country banks 
 were resting on the Bank of England, and that institution had lent 
 so much of its money to the Government that it was quite unequal 
 to meet the demand for gold which now began to be made upon 
 it. On Saturday, the 25th of February 1797, its stock of bullion 
 had got so low that, to keep off the crowd, every demand was 
 paid in sixpences. Some of the Directors were already with Pitt, 
 who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. On Sunday the 
 Cabinet met, and determined that the Bank must stop cash pay- 
 ments the next morning. 
 
 For a whole generation this condition of things lasted. It was 
 not until four-and-twenty years after that the Bank was able to 
 pay demands once more in gold. Guineas had almost disappeared, 
 and crown pieces were only preserved in circulation by being 
 raised to the value of five shillings and sixpence. 
 
 Cobbett had an inveterate hatred of the whole system of fund- 
 
 T
 
 274 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 ing and stockjobbing, and linked it with the decline of the true 
 greatness and prosperity of England. During the two years he 
 was in prison he wrote that famous series of letters to the people 
 of Salisbury, which he afterwards published under the title of 
 " Paper against Gold, or the History and Mystery of the Bank of 
 England." He therein strives to show that ever since the intro- 
 duction of the Funding System, taxation, pauperism, misery, and 
 crime have all increased ; but his chief aim was to convince his 
 countrymen that a paper currency must in the end destroy public 
 credit. 
 
 For twenty years the British Government had exerted all its 
 energies in order to crush the Revolution. To this end the lives 
 of hundreds of our soldiers and sailors had been sacrificed, and 
 the productive energies of the country mortgaged to all time. 
 Meanwhile the rulers who had directed the war, and the 
 people by whose opinion it had been sustained, had alike 
 suffered. The misery, bankruptcy, and crime, which had pre- 
 vailed among the latter, were, as we have seen, terrible, but so also 
 was the strain the public men of those days had to endure. The 
 war killed Pitt quite as much as it did Nelson. Neither Fox nor 
 Canning lived to be sixty. Whitbread, Romilly, and Castlereagh 
 all destroyed themselves. Percival was shot at the door of the 
 House of Commons by a Liverpool merchant who had become 
 bankrupt and mad, and who attributed his ruin to the policy of 
 the Government. 
 
 To find that after all this frightful expenditure of treasure and 
 strength the Revolution was not only alive, but raising its head in 
 their own country, was provoking to the last degree. Samson was 
 waking up from his sleep, and shaking his chains, blindly stretch 
 ing forth his hands, intent upon doing some damage to his masters. 
 Not only were the Midland weavers breaking the new frames, but 
 in Wales the ironworkers had assembled to the number of ten 
 or twelve thousand, and were putting out the furnaces. The 
 Staffordshire colliers were marching up to London to present 
 a petition to the Regent, while the starving agricultural labourers 
 were firing the ricks and destroying the threshing machines. In 
 Manchester the artisans were proposing to march in a body to 
 London, each man with a blanket strapped to his back and a
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 275 
 
 petition in his hand. In the metropolis itself an attempt was 
 made to take the Tower by a mob led on by a young fanatic. 
 
 Cobbett's writings became the most popular reading of the 
 country. In nearly every cottage in the manufacturing districts 
 of South Lancashire, of Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham, as well 
 as in similar districts in Scotland, he was looked up to as an 
 oracle. Soon after he was set at liberty he commenced to publish 
 his Weekly Register in the form of a twopenny weekly pamphlet, 
 that he might bring his writings within the reach of the great body 
 of the people. He laboured to convince his countrymen that it 
 was not machinery, but misgovernment, that had been the cause 
 of all their misery, and that to reform Parliament was the only 
 way to effect an alteration. 
 
 Clubs were formed to bring this about ; the agitation gradually 
 took form, and Cobbett was regarded by the people as one of the 
 most trusted of their leaders. 
 
 The Government were much alarmed at the reappearance of 
 the Revolution, which they supposed finally crushed by the battle 
 of Waterloo and the treaty of Vienna. Breaking of frames had 
 already been made a hanging matter ; now they induced Parlia- 
 ment to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and pass the celebrated 
 " Six Acts." 
 
 These laws put a most effectual gag on the liberty of the press, 
 since newspaper writers henceforth became liable to transporta- 
 tion if found guilty of seditious libel. Still more, they enabled 
 the Government to suppress anything like public agitation for 
 Parliamentary Reform, since they expressly forbade any co- 
 operation or correspondence for the purpose of amending the Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 Cobbett considered these new laws were levelled mainly at him ; 
 he was moreover involved in a whirlpool of difficulties, the result 
 of his two years' imprisonment. So a few days before the "Six 
 Acts " became law he set sail once again for America. 
 
 This time he went to Long Island, and took a farm at North 
 Hampstead. But although he had crossed the Atlantic, he did 
 not relinquish his Weekly Register. It had reached the enormous 
 sale, for those days, of 50,000 copies. He continued now to 
 write the paper in Long Island, just as he had formerly written it
 
 276 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 in Newgate. This work, and managing a farm, did not, how- 
 ever, exhaust all his energies. He was still actively employed in 
 educating his younger children. To his son James he wrote 
 a series of letters on English Grammar, which he afterwards 
 published as a book. This amusing and characteristic work has 
 always been very popular. 10,000 copies were sold in one month. 
 
 Wherever he went it might be said that the schoolmaster was 
 abroad, for he immediately began to take upon himself the office 
 of Educator-in-general to the people. Long Island he found 
 singularly deficient in gardens, so in a short time he brought out 
 for the benefit of its inhabitants a little book called "The 
 American Gardener." 
 
 " Some persons may think," he says in the Preface, " that flowers 
 are things of no use ; that they are nonsensical things. 
 For my part, as a thing to keep and not to sell, as a thing the 
 possession of which is to give me pleasure, I hesitate not a 
 moment to prefer the plant of a fine carnation to a watch set with 
 diamonds." 
 
 Nothing, perhaps, so marks the change which had taken place 
 in his views as the way in which he now regarded the American 
 people and their institutions. He saw everything couleur de rose. 
 "America was a land of universal civility, of unbounded hospi- 
 tality. Everybody's circumstances were so easy that there was no 
 occasion for hypocrisy; there was no boasting of wealth, no attempt 
 to disguise poverty, no over-anxious desire to get on, and no 
 attempt to get distinction from mere riches. Every farmer was 
 good-humoured, well-informed, modest, and sedate. So far from 
 being a land of paupers, there was, properly speaking, no class like 
 that to which the French have applied the degrading appellation 
 of Peasantry. All were living in peace and prosperity, and to 
 crown all, they enjoyed what England did not freedom of 
 representation, and freedom of the press." 
 
 Such, in brief, was his account of America "revisited." He had 
 dropped his green spectacles, and saw through a pair of magnifiers. 
 
 Nevertheless his heart yearned after his native land. He was 
 born for England, and was never intended to become a Yankee. 
 In May 1819, a fire having destroyed his dwelling-house and 
 burnt most of his stock, he determined to return home,
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 277 
 
 The act by which he signalized his reappearance in England 
 no one but Cobbett would or could have done. It was in the 
 highest degree idiosyncratic. 
 
 He had achieved so much by self-help that he treated the 
 experience of other men with about as little respect as a millionaire 
 would the gift of a sixpence. For forms of literary ability which 
 were not his he professed contempt. Thus he sneered at Scott, 
 Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and said that Shakespeare and Milton 
 were overrated. 
 
 But let some circumstance open his eyes, let him imagine him- 
 self a new Columbus, let him awake to the existence of a fresh 
 continent of knowledge, and in the very degree he had before 
 depreciated it he now proceeded to laud and magnify its import- 
 ance. William Cobbett was not the man to bow before other 
 people's idols. He must make them for himself, or they were no 
 gods at all. He found an author believed in by every one. He 
 stood stiffly up in the crowd and cursed the image to its face. 
 The time came when the idol was forsaken and cast down from 
 its throne. Cobbett saw it lying in the dirt ; some circumstance 
 induced him to pick it up, and to his amazement he perhaps 
 found that its head really was made of gold. Astonished at his 
 own good fortune and sagacity, he at once sets about rehabilitating 
 the poor ill-used thing ; and placing it again on its pedestal, he 
 commanded, in a loud tone, all men, on pain of being demon- 
 strated fools or knaves, to fall down and worship the golden image 
 which he, their great teacher, had set up. 
 
 When he first went to America he found the democrats bow- 
 ing low at the shrine of Tom Paine. Without more ado he 
 went to the nearest gutter, filled his hands with mud, and threw 
 it all over their idol. When he returned the worship had died 
 down, Paine's reputation lay in the dirt, and no one would soil 
 his fingers to lift it out. 
 
 Cobbett, however, had meanwhile become deeply interested in 
 the currency question, and had found out that Paine had written 
 an able and masterly book on the subject. Paine then, whom he 
 had so abused, was,, after all, a great man, a man who had long 
 ago seen the true principles of a national currency, and had 
 exposed the fallacies of Pitt and the stock-jobbers. He was just
 
 278 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 then so filled with the importance of the subject that Paine's 
 prescience seemed to him wonderful. Words were not strong 
 enough to describe his wisdom. He was the enlightener of the 
 human race, the immortal Thomas Paine ! 
 
 But Cobbett's enthusiasm underlay a most practical nature. 
 His thoughts were always turned into deeds as quickly as may 
 be. The great Englishman must not lie and rot in a foreign 
 land : his bones must rest in his native soil, he must have a public 
 funeral, he must be carried to his grave amidst twenty wagon- 
 loads of flowers. Accordingly Cobbett, having had the bones 
 exhumed, brought them across the Atlantic, and landed at 
 Liverpool with the sacred relics in a wooden box ! 
 
 But he soon found that he had committed an anachronism. 
 The majority of Englishmen, especially the Radicals, rather prided 
 themselves on a contempt for such things. A living fox, they 
 thought, was better than a dead lion. To propose the worship of 
 relics to men whose notions were all based on the idea of utility is 
 another proof, if such were wanting, that Cobbett's Radicalism was 
 founded on quite other grounds to those of his contemporaries. 
 
 Of course, the appearance of the relics produced a storm of 
 ridicule ; but Cobbett braved it, and if any one mockingly asked 
 him what had become of the old Quaker's bones, he referred to 
 them as a priceless treasure, to which he intended at some future 
 day to pay signal honour. 
 
 When he left England his affairs were inextricably involved. 
 His return, therefore, brought him a shoal of lawsuits. But his 
 courage and energy were inexhaustible. He dared to go, on one 
 occasion, and argue in his own cause, with Brougham for his 
 adversary, in the Court of King's Bench, and, what was more, as 
 good as beat him, for the plaintiff had asked for ^3000, and the 
 jury only gave him 405. ! 
 
 He was now more entirely than ever a political man, and felt 
 that his natural bourn was the House of Commons. He accord- 
 ingly called upon the Reformers of England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland to subscribe ^5000 in order that he might be sent to 
 Parliament. He stood for Coventry early in 1820, but the 
 opposition was so powerful that on the fourth day of the election 
 he retired from the contest.
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 279 
 
 Foiled for a time in these efforts, he began to make journeys 
 about the country, in order to collect facts in support of the views 
 which he advocated, and at the same time to propagate those 
 views among the farmers. He published his journal from time to 
 time, relating' his observations and adventures with the utmost 
 humour. 
 
 Nothing, perhaps, would give a better idea of Cobbett's peculiar 
 character than a rural ride taken in his company. If he stays at 
 an inn, he rises with the chickens, and rousing up waiters and 
 maids and boots, demands his breakfast almost before it is day, 
 light. Little cares he for the ill-humour in the kitchen, or the 
 objurgations which are audibly muttered as he leaves the yard. 
 To rise early suits him, and is an excellent lesson for them, so he 
 sets oft" on his journey, bright as a lark, and cheerful as a grass- 
 hopper. The rays of the morning sun have just begun to light up 
 the landscape, and the soul of the peregrinating politician, ever 
 attuned to the harmonies of nature, revels in the song of the birds- 
 in the sparkle of the dew, in the bloom of the purple heather, in 
 the mist which still lies in the valley, in the wisps of blue smoke 
 curling from the cottage chimneys. The strife with which he 
 commenced the day seems to act as a tonic. The wrath of men 
 no more jars the tuneful chords of his being than the anger of 
 nature. Nothing can depress his inexhaustible spirits. Cold and 
 damp fogs, soaking rains, and dreary, monotonous Lincolnshire 
 fens, he will describe them all with such a perfect touch as to 
 prove that he heartily enjoys and enters into their spirit. Those 
 little shrewd, twinkling eyes of his, in fact, see everything : the 
 nature of the soil, and of the subsoil ; what it produces, and how 
 it is cultivated. In a sentence, in a word, he paints a picture of 
 the agriculture of a locality. He talks to every one, he enters the 
 cottages, he sees the labourers in the misery of the'r homes, broken 
 down and demoralised by starvation ; he sees farmhouses going, 
 the larger farms gradually devouring the smaller ones ; he sees vil- 
 lages which were once towns ; churches far too large for the present 
 number of their worshippers ; he sees game eating up the people's 
 food, while farmers are fined, and poachers hanged, to preserve it ; 
 in fine, he sees the hereditary patrimonies of hundreds of yeomen, 
 once the pride and strength of England, fall one after the other
 
 280 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 into the maw of those who have become wealthy on Government 
 sinecures, or by gambling in the public stocks ; and the sight so 
 arouses his indignation that he cannot contain his wrath, but pours 
 it out, hot and scalding, on those who he believes are robbing and 
 destroying his poor countrymen ! 
 
 Towards noon he approaches where a market is being held. A 
 perfect specimen of an old-fashioned English farmer in his dress, 
 manners, and language, he is hail-fellow-well-met with all in the 
 market-place. He talks with every one, and at last, when the 
 farmers are all turning into the inn, he goes with them too, and 
 dines at their table. Dinner over, some one proposes his health ; 
 this gives him an opportunity of making a speech on the miseries 
 of the country, the folly of the Government, and the burden of the 
 "Dead Weight," as he calls the National Debt; and he rarely 
 concludes without having a fling at Jews, Quakers, Unitarians, 
 Parsons, and Stockjobbers classes of men to whom he specially 
 objects. 
 
 On other occasions when the company is very numerous, his 
 appearance is sure to be the cause of disturbance, for he has made 
 himself many enemies by his strong language. 
 
 Some one will rise and read a paragraph from the Register, in 
 which its Editor appears to exult over the ruin of the farmers. 
 There is a great hubbub, and another opponent moves that Mr 
 Cobbett be put out of the room. He rises that they may all see 
 the man they have to put out. His robust figure and obstinate, 
 rosy-cheeked, imperturbable face make them think it prudent to 
 give up the project ; so, instead, the opposition demonstrate their 
 antipathy by a general stampede to the door. But Cobbett has 
 begun to speak, and ready as they were a moment ago to expel 
 him, they have an Englishman's love of a good speech, well 
 seasoned with personalities ; and the whole body of dissentients 
 turn back and crowd about the doorway, just to hear what " the 
 mountebank " has to say for himself. His case is clear ; the 
 person who read from the Register only gave portions of the 
 article, and in this way a man may be made to say any- 
 thing. 
 
 All these things his enjoyment of the country, his agricultural 
 notes, his political and social reflections, his evening speeches, and
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 28 1 
 
 his whimsical adventures are related with such a mingling of 
 fierce earnestness and racy humour that the " Rural Rides " will 
 immortalise him if all his other works should come to be forgotten. 
 They embalm a character, the like of which the world may never 
 see again ; while at the same time they contain a storehouse of 
 material for students of the social condition of England during the 
 third decade of the present century. 
 
 Just as he went about the country to find facts to support his 
 political doctrine, so he made his researches into its past history. 
 For the former task he was admirably fitted by all his previous 
 experience and peculiar talents ; for the latter he was just as in- 
 competent. His preconceived opinions, his obstinate prejudices, 
 his utter incapacity to sympathise with the mental peculiarities of 
 those who did not think and feel as he did, rendered it impossible 
 that he could write true history. Nevertheless he undertook to 
 give the world the history of the Protestant Reformation, and the 
 result was, as might have been expected, a violent ex parte state- 
 ment from a Roman Catholic point of view. So long, however, 
 as history continues to be written in the interest of certain 
 political or religious principles, a book like Cobbett's will have a 
 value for the judicious reader. Moreover, it contains an account 
 of the shameful way in which the large estates of the Church were 
 disposed, often a series of iniquitous acts which have never yet 
 been atoned for, and therefore cannot and must not be forgotten. 
 
 Although the author of " The Protestant Reformation " writes 
 as if he held a brief for Rome, he was in truth no more a Papist 
 than he was an Atheist. He was far too English for the former 
 position, far too religious for the latter. 
 
 Two or three years before he wrote the " Reformation " he pub- 
 lished a series of religious tracts. They were twelve in number, 
 and the titles will give some idea of their contents, and the spirit 
 in which they were conceived : i. " Naboth's Vineyard, or God's 
 Vengeance against Hypocrisy ; " 2. " The Sin of Drunkenness in 
 Kings, Priests, and People ; " 3. " The Fall of Judas, or God's 
 Vengeance against Bribery ; " 4. " The Rights of the Poor, or the 
 Punishment of Oppressors ; " 5. " God's Judgment on Unjust 
 Judges;" 6. "The Sluggard;" 7. "God's Vengeance against 
 Murderers ; " 8. " The Gamester ; " 9. " God's Vengeance against
 
 282 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Public Robbers;" 10. "The Unnatural Mother;" n. "The 
 Sin of forbidding Marriage ;" 12. " Parsons and Tithes." 
 
 These twelve sermons for so he called them were published 
 in 1823, and sufficiently prove that his sudden esteem for Paine 
 had nothing to do with that writer's sceptical opinions. Not to 
 have reverenced and believed in the Bible would have required 
 Cobbett to do positive violence to his deepest convictions, and 
 perhaps we may add to his very nature. For though it may seem 
 to the superficial observer a strange thing to say, William Cobbett 
 was, in the strictly literal meaning of the term, a very religious 
 man. No one could entertain a more intense belief than he did 
 in the laws which God has written in the course and constitution 
 of nature, and of the paramount duty of every man to obey those 
 laws. As far as he had light, he sought sincerely to regulate his 
 own life by them, and made it the task of his existence to assert, 
 maintain, and render them dominant over the lives of his fellow- 
 men. William Cobbett was always and everywhere a preacher of 
 righteousness. He had, as we have seen, a natural piety. Old 
 age, helpless infancy, suffering poverty, always commanded his 
 ready and reverential sympathy. In all the domestic relations he 
 was admirable he was a dutiful son, a loving husband, and a 
 tender father both from choice and conviction. Of his devotion 
 to his country we cannot speak too highly ; to it he sacrificed 
 everything. 
 
 Such a man could not help seeing that the Bible was the chief 
 exponent and witness of those great primal laws by which he felt 
 himself and all men bound, and in the fulfilment of which he was 
 convinced men, families, and nations could alone find happiness 
 and true prosperity. 
 
 Yet his contemporaries might have said concerning him, "The 
 least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." For he was 
 not permitted to see beyond the confines of the visible ; the 
 spiritual was a sphere of which he had no conception. Cobbett 
 was well-nigh a perfect instance of the metis sanum in corpore sano. 
 Yet "the open eye" possessed by many more or less suffering in 
 body and mind was not vouchsafed to him. 
 
 Yet this very limitation of the range of his vision probably gave 
 a force and concentration to his intellect which it would not other-
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 283 
 
 wise have possessed. It made it more easy for him to believe 
 himself capable of understanding and teaching all that it was 
 necessary for men to know. In addition to his writings in 
 America, which of themselves fill ten or twelve volumes to his 
 Weekly Register, extending over thirty-five years ; to his laborious 
 " Parliamentary Register ; " to his work on the Currency ; to his 
 " Protestant Reformation," and to his Sermons he wrote a series 
 of educational works. Beginning with the child, he published a 
 really interesting spelling-book ; grammars not only of the English, 
 but also of the French and Italian languages ; a geographical 
 dictionary of England and Wales ; and several histories, among 
 which we find a Roman history in two volumes. When his pupils 
 had passed from the schoolroom to the business of life he followed 
 them as their daily Mentor. His " Advice to Young Men, and 
 incidentally to Young Women" is full of valuable suggestions, con- 
 veyed in a most original way, on the choice of a profession, the 
 temptations of youth, self-culture, love-making, marriage, rearing 
 and educating children, and the duties of citizens. Of this 
 work it is impossible to speak too highly. It is wholesome food, 
 served up in the best style, every dish being flavoured with the 
 purveyor's own piquant sauce. But to the improvement of the 
 small farmers and rural labourers, his peculiar people, the class 
 from whence he sprang, he devoted all his powers. For the 
 labourers he wrote his "Poor Man's Friend," his "Cottage 
 Economy," and his "Legacy to Labourers;" while the higher 
 price of his " English Gardener," his " Woodlands," and his 
 edition of "Tull's Husbandry" mark them out as intended for 
 the farmers. 
 
 Such was the versatility of his genius that he attempted a 
 comedy. In a laughable little play, entitled " Surplus Population : 
 a Comedy in Three Acts," he ridicules the Malthusian theories. 
 The principal characters are Sir Gripe Grindum, the squire ; Peter 
 Thimble, Esq., a great anti-population philosopher; and Dick 
 Hazle, a labourer, in love with Betsy Birch, one of a family of 
 seventeen. 
 
 Not a page of his books, however uninteresting the subject may 
 be to the ordinary reader, can be called dry. Cobbett has the 
 wondrous art of making the most ponderous subject light reading.
 
 284 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Perhaps the secret of this is that he used literature as a vehicle, 
 not as an end. It was not so much his object to be thought a 
 great author as to preach his ideas. Like his literary progenitor, 
 he so felt his vocation to be that of a political writer that he never 
 could quite throw it off, even in the most homely of his works. 
 In his Spelling-book the very first fable has a political moral, while 
 his Grammar is full from beginning to end with the most amusing 
 thrusts at distinguished statesmen, bishops, and other highly 
 placed persons. 
 
 His style has been compared in its power of graphic narration 
 to Defoe, in its charming simplicity and homely wisdom to 
 Franklin ; but it is to the writer whom we have denominated his 
 literary progenitor that we must look for an almost complete 
 parallel. Cobbett wrote, like Swift, in the most nervous, racy, 
 homely, yet absolutely correct English. Both aimed to be thought 
 writers of the utmost simplicity and honesty of character. Both 
 cultivated a habit of minute observation and description. On the 
 road to the most vindictive political warfare, both linger by the 
 way to relate, with Dutch-like painting, trifling circumstances in 
 their lives, singular adventures, or homely scenes, in which they 
 have taken part, touching off their own characters or those of their 
 companions in such a way as to render questions long since 
 settled full of interest to the most unlearned and non-political of 
 readers. 
 
 There is a passage in Lord Jeffreys' remarks on the literary 
 characteristics of Swift, almost applicable word for word to 
 Cobbett : " It is no small proof of the vigour and vivacity of his 
 genius that posterity should have been so anxious to preserve 
 these careless and hasty productions upon which the author 
 appears to have set no other value than as means for the attain- 
 ment of an end. The truth is, accordingly, that they are very 
 extraordinary performances, and considered with a view to the 
 purposes for which they were intended, have probably never been 
 equalled in any period of the world. They are written with great 
 plainness and intrepidity, advance at once to the matter in dis- 
 pute, give battle to the strength of the enemy, and never seek any 
 kind of advantage from darkness or obscurity. Their distinguish- 
 ing feature, however, is the force and vehemence of the invective
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 285 
 
 in which they abound the copiousness, the steadiness, the 
 perseverance, and the dexterity with which abuse and ridicule are 
 showered upon the adversary." Swift, however, had one great 
 characteristic which Cobbett did not possess. Swift could veil 
 his sarcasm in irony, Cobbett was too ferociously honest to 
 attempt anything of the kind. 
 
 It was his ambition to be thought a plain speaker, one who 
 called a spade a spade ; but plain speaking, especially when made 
 the medium of political warfare, is usually attained by the easy 
 process of refusing to see any side but one. Into this Cobbett 
 fell to such an extent that it may well be called his besetting sin. 
 His enemies asserted on more than one occasion that he told a 
 downright lie. If he did, it was like that of a child, as roundly 
 affirmed and as easy of detection. He was the very last man in 
 the world to be guilty of that life-long acted lie, " that " dreadful 
 sort of " lie which," as Lord Bacon says, " eateth in." William 
 Cobbett had, in fact, a singularly transparent nature. 
 
 When we reflect on the enormous tasks Cobbett undertook, he 
 appears as a Hercules or a Samson. He set at defiance and 
 fought single-handed every power of note or influence in the king- 
 dom. Like Don Quixote's hero, Felixmarte of Hircania, he gave 
 battle to five swinging giants at once the Landlords and the 
 Rural Clergy, the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange, and 
 most difficult of all to manage, a hydra-headed monster called the 
 London Press. And as if this was not enough sport for one man, 
 with back-handed strokes he attacked his own allies. 
 
 But as the strong man always has some compensating weakness 
 to prevent him overpowering all his fellows, Cobbett's herculean 
 force of body, mind, and spirit was marred, and its power singularly 
 destroyed, by the way in which he blew his own trumpet. Just as 
 there was no epithet too scathing for his adversary, the English 
 language wanted words in which to express a sense of his own 
 merits. We must not, however, measure him by the standard of 
 his contemporaries. Cobbett was a child of nature, and refused 
 to be tied by the green withes of conventionality and civilization. 
 Cobbett was a giant, and giants have always been remarkable for 
 their simplicity. We have never read of one who did not advance 
 to the encounter proclaiming his own might and renown.
 
 286 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 But what are the faults of a life compared with its purpose ? 
 Did the Hebrews fail to recognise Samson as one of the greatest 
 of their heroes, because his weakness and folly on one point 
 rendered all his prodigious efforts for their deliverance abortive ? 
 The Word of God taught them to judge a man not by the result of 
 his life, but by its object ; not by its weakness or its strength, but 
 by its spirit. Judged by this standard, Cobbett will more and 
 more appear what he really was a great English patriot. The 
 paramount object of his life was the well-being of England. To 
 that end he devoted all he possessed ; to it he sacrificed his 
 own interests, and the interests of those who were dearest to 
 him. 
 
 His critics cannot understand a man who at one time works 
 with Tories, at another time with Radicals, who defends in turn 
 the National Church, the old Catholic Church, and Dissent. See, 
 say they, he has not one Mrs Cobbett amongst his opinions. No, 
 indeed, for he was a man who lived by convictions, not by opinions. 
 For these convictions he fought, using opinions just as a warrior 
 would a sword and a shield. And chiefest among all his con- 
 victions was this : that nothing unfair, unjust, or unrighteous 
 could be for the true prosperity of England, however firmly it had 
 come to be established by law or by public opinion. 
 
 A few more struggles, and this career, so deeply interesting to 
 Englishmen, comes to a close. In 1826 he made another attempt 
 to enter Parliament for Preston, this time having for his adversary 
 the late Lord Derby, then Mr Stanley. The enthusiasm among 
 the Lancashire artisans was intense. On his road to Preston he 
 passed through Bolton, and several other towns and villages. 
 Thousands of the working people, bearing flags and banners, and 
 carrying green boughs, turned out to welcome him. Standing 
 upon the seat of his carriage with his hat off, the people followed 
 with the cry, " Here's the cleverest man in England ; " " Here we 
 have got the cleverest man in England." That day was one of 
 the proudest in his life ; in it he realized his kingship over the 
 hearts of men. " The King," he said, " had some precious praises 
 bestowed upon him by his Irish, Scotch, and Hanoverian subjects ; 
 in exchange for the whole of them I would not give the words of 
 a poor weaver at Blackburn, who, lifting his little girl up in the
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 287 
 
 crowd, and pretty nearly in the dark, held her towards me to 
 shake hands with her ; and then, taking her down, said, ' Theere, 
 now, th'ast shooken honds wi' th' cleverest mon in England.' " 
 
 But all this popular enthusiasm was of no avail against the 
 territorial influence of the Stanleys. Cobbett stood lowest on the 
 poll. But so far from being disheartened, he averred that 
 numerically he was the real representative of the town, and such 
 was the faith the people had in him that he returned home, to use 
 his own powerful language, " through forty miles of huzzas from 
 the lips of a hundred thousand people." 
 
 " You are always in spirits, Cobbett ! " " To be sure : for why 
 should I not be ? Poverty I have always set at defiance, and I 
 could therefore defy the temptations of riches ; and as to home and 
 children, I had taken care to provide myself with an inexhaustible 
 store of that sobriety ; the truth is, that throughout nearly forty 
 years of troubles, losses, and crosses, assailed all the while by more 
 numerous and powerful enemies than ever man had before to 
 contend with, and performing at the same time labours greater 
 than man ever before performed all these labours requiring 
 mental exertion, and some of them mental exertion of the highest 
 order, the truth is, that throughout the whole of this long time 
 of troubles and labours I have never known a single hour of real 
 anxiety ; the troubles have been no troubles to me ; I have not 
 known what lowness of spirits meaned ; have been more gay, and 
 felt less care than any bachelor that ever lived." 
 
 " A merry heart doeth good like medicine," and surely the man 
 who undertakes to do battle for the poor and the oppressed needs 
 to have a constant supply of this medicine, or else the world of 
 trouble he has taken upon himself will produce "that sorrow of 
 heart" by which the wise man says "the spirit is broken." For 
 Cobbett, above all men, needed this never-failing spring of joyous- 
 ness. His latter years were cast in the very darkest days of all 
 the sad history of the English agricultural poor. Since the termina- 
 tion of the war things had got worse and worse. In various 
 counties their wages averaged from ys. to 125. Labourers on the 
 lower wage could not get enough food to work upon. The un- 
 happy men grew mad with hunger and despair. In 1830 incen- 
 diary fires began to break out in Wiltshire, in Hampshire, in
 
 288 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Buckinghamshire, and in Berwickshire, keeping the country 
 districts for more than eighteen months in terror. 
 
 Cobbett could scarcely contain himself when he thought of the 
 unhappy, hopeless state of the class from whence he sprang, and the 
 more so when he compared it with the condition of the small French 
 agriculturists, so wonderfully altered by the Revolution. He refused, 
 as he always had done, to be quiet, and his articles were spoken 
 of in the House of Commons as seditious. Six months elapsed, 
 and the Government determined to indict him for seditious libel. 
 Denman, Gurney, Wightman, and Maule, all of whom afterwards 
 rose to the Bench, were retained for the Crown ; Cobbett, single- 
 handed, entered the lists against them. 
 
 All through the trial he insisted on identifying himself in the 
 most complete way with his unhappy brethren. His designation 
 in the indictment had been " William Cobbett, labourer." Never, 
 therefore, did he allow the Attorney-General to mention his name 
 without obliging him to add to it the title, labourer. The speech 
 he made in his defence took six hours, but the argument wa 
 simply the tu quoque one, and went to prove that the Whigs had 
 completely destroyed their right to bring such a charge against 
 him, since they had allowed their own adherents to utter things 
 far more seditious. It was throughout an appeal to the political 
 prejudices of at least a portion of the jury, a proceeding not unfair 
 in a political trial where a man is his own defender. It was 
 completely successful, for the jury were equally divided in their 
 verdict, and had to be discharged. 
 
 Cobbett's victory concluded the era of State press prosecutions. 
 But his animosity to the Whigs was implacable. He passed his 
 days in traversing the country and pouring out his maledictions 
 upon them. His great power was in the North, and here he spent 
 most of his time in giving political lectures. At the general 
 election in 1832 he was nominated a candidate both for Man- 
 chester and Oldham. At Manchester he stood lowest on the poll, 
 but he was returned for Oldham in company with his friend 
 Mr Fielden. 
 
 Cobbett's efforts to get into Parliament had been like those of 
 the valiant man that Christian saw in the Interpreter's house. 
 " Set down my name, sir," he said to the British public ; " the
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 289 
 
 which done the man drew his sword, and put an helmet upon his 
 head, and rushed toward the door upon the armed men who kept 
 it, who laid upon him with deadly force ; but he, not at all dis- 
 couraged, fell to cutting and hacking most fiercely. So after he 
 had received and given many wounds to those that attempted to 
 keep him out, he cut his way through them all, and pressed 
 forward into the palace." 
 
 But alas for the great cause Cobbett represented ! The 
 House of Commons proved to him not a palace, but a tomb. The 
 close confinement, the late hours, the strain of an unnatural social 
 life, was too much for the man who had for threescore years 
 and ten lived on fresh air and cultivated early habits. He threw 
 himself into his new life with his usual ardour. In the House he 
 showed himself the same as he had been out of it. He would not 
 bow down to its idols : he attacked Macaulay in his first speech ; 
 and in another proposed that Sir Robert Peel should be removed 
 from the Privy Council. Just as he had stood up fearlessly 
 against the tumultuous curses of a market-room, he now main- 
 tained himself against the contemptuous clamour of the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 On one occasion members grew impatient when he attempted 
 to speak ; but he told them that they should not proceed to a 
 division for two hours unless they consented to hear him. 
 
 But it was long before he could believe that even his wonderful 
 health was beginning to give way. To the public, as usual, he 
 poured out his complaints. "Why," he says, "are 658 of us 
 crammed into a space that allows to each of us no more than a 
 foot and a half square ? " 
 
 How- often do we find men of heart who have passed tumultu- 
 ous lives yearning in moments of depression for the scenes of 
 their childhood. Like David, they long for a drink of the water 
 of the well at Bethlehem. A touch of this home-sickness seems 
 now to have come upon William Cobbett. 
 
 He took a farm at Normandy, a small straggling village on the 
 verge of Bagshot Heath, where for many a mile nothing is to be 
 seen but sandy common, covered with furze, and dotted with 
 ranges of fir - trees. Cobbett hoped at Normandy Farm to 
 refresh body and soul by recalling, if it were possible, the time 
 
 u
 
 2 90 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 when he was free and " happy as a sandboy on a Surrey 
 common." 
 
 It was only on Sunday, however, that he could get this relaxa- 
 tion, and even then he often spent the time in writing. 
 
 It is clear he grew more earnest and more bitter as the time 
 approached that he must give up his work. How near it was 
 he had no conception. In 1834 he stood again for Oldham, 
 and was once more returned. 
 
 In the spring of the next year there was a debate in the 
 House upon a motion for a repeal of the malt tax. Cobbett was 
 present during the whole of the debate, and would have made a 
 speech but for a sudden attack of the throat. On the 25th of 
 May he spoke in favour of the motion for an inquiry into the 
 causes of Agricultural distress. He went home exhausted, and 
 got down immediately into the country. His disorder increased, 
 and on the nth of July he was alarmingly ill. On Monday, the 
 1 5th, he was so much better that he was able to talk about political 
 affairs, and said that he wished for four days' rain for the "Cobbett 
 corn " the Indian corn he cultivated on his farm, and wished to 
 introduce into England. But a dread instinct told him that he 
 was approaching the spot 
 
 " Where sat the shadow feared of man." 
 
 He tried to throw the impression off. He would prove to him- 
 self, and every one else, that he was not going to die. So he had 
 himself carried round the farm by four men in a sort of sedan- 
 chair, made by tying two poles to the legs of a large arm-chair. 
 It was a desperate effort, and when he returned to his bed it was 
 evident that it was his last. But his indomitable spirit would not 
 give in without a struggle. He fought his last enemy inch by 
 inch. " I won't die" he exclaimed to his attendant. But in that 
 war there is no discharge, the most determined is soon overcome ; 
 and long before the morning light broke, long before all those joyous 
 sounds began which he had a thousand times welcomed, his great 
 heart ceased to beat, and the artisans of the north, and the 
 labourers of the south, soon learnt to their dismay that William 
 Cobbett, their champion and their friend, was no more. 
 
 His corpse was taken to his birthplace, and there, followed by
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 2QI 
 
 thousands of labouring men in smock frocks, it was carried to its 
 burial-place, close by the porch of the church where he had been 
 baptized, and where he had learnt his first ideas of God and the 
 world to come. 
 
 No spot could have been more happily chosen. There his 
 father lies, and his grandfather, the worthy old-fashioned labourer 
 who served but one master during the whole of a long life ; there, 
 too, for nearly a generation, has the faithful wife rested by the 
 side of her lord. Thus the domestic piety which shines so brightly 
 through the whole of his career was honoured, and William 
 Cobbett was gathered to his own people. 
 
 When the waves of time have passed again and again over the 
 records of this century, obliterating much that now fills the minds 
 of men, the memory of William Cobbett and his endless struggles 
 will appear in their true significance, and his countrymen will 
 assuredly enrol his name among their worthies as one who lived 
 and fought and died in the service of England.
 
 II. 
 
 A PEASANT POET. 
 
 {Golden Hours, 1873.) 
 JOHN CLARE. 
 
 A LITTLE fair-haired boy, with bright, eager eyes, clad in well- 
 patched smock and heavy clouted shoes, is running joyfully over 
 a wild heath at early dawn. Every now and then he stops to take 
 breath, and sometimes plucks a bluebell or a sprig of marjoram, 
 yet he presses onwards, over common and field, through wood- 
 land and park, down into the valley and up the hill ; at first sing- 
 ing, but after a time often sinking down wearily by the wayside, 
 for the sun is getting fierce, and his strength is well-nigh gone. 
 
 Whither is the child bent ? Yesternight and again this morning 
 he saw hanging midway between heaven and earth a beautiful 
 land. To reach it he set out breakfastless, but alas ! the nearer he 
 seems to get to it, the further off it appears ; and now, as he gains 
 the summit of the hill he has made such an effort to climb, a dark 
 cloud has fallen, and the alluring vision is lost in dull, grey 
 gloom. 
 
 Ready to faint from sheer exhaustion and distress of mind, some 
 men working in the neighbourhood take pity upon him, give him 
 a crust or two from their wallets, and set him out on his road 
 home. Thither he returns at nightfall, to receive his punishment, 
 and then to hide his sorrows in the dark, and to sob over the 
 destruction of the bright illimitable hopes that delusive horizon 
 had aroused in his imagination. 
 
 Just as the child is father to the man, so this early adventure of 
 John Clare proved an omen of what his life would be. Again and 
 
 292
 
 JOHN CLARE. 293 
 
 again he realised the bitter experience of his "Dream," and 
 learnt how 
 
 " Hopeless distance with a boundless stretch, 
 
 Flashed on despair the joy it could not reach, 
 
 A moment's mockery." 
 
 In Helpstone, an obscure village in Northamptonshire, not far 
 from Peterborough Great Fen, dwelt, towards the close of the last 
 century, one Parker Clare, " a hind born to the flail and plough." 
 He was the child of sin and suffering; his mother a poor girl, 
 misled by the audacious manners and glib tongue of a roving 
 vagabond who had made the village his halting-place for a season. 
 
 Parker Clare solaced himself in the only way he could by taking 
 a companion to share his woes. Those were days when wages 
 in Northamptonshire, for able-bodied men, were only eight or nine 
 shillings in summer, and about five or six shillings in winter ; but 
 since Parker Clare could never claim to be an able-bodied man, 
 he went through life mainly as a pauper. Knowing what we do of 
 agricultural homes, we may suppose that the dwelling of such a 
 poverty-stricken wretch was just a little more miserable than those 
 of his fellows. But, doubtless, even he felt its misery more acutely 
 when, seven months after he had taken to himself a wife, he 
 became the father of twins. Nevertheless, if he could have seen 
 it, there was just at that time a ruddy glare on the social horizon, 
 which betokened a bright to-morrow. The feudal system, of 
 whose dregs he was a victim, was rapidly passing away. Its sun 
 was setting in blood-red clouds, and all Europe stood aghast, as 
 men who watch in silent horror some awful conflagration. John 
 Clare was born in that " Annus Terribilis," 1793. 
 
 He was, as I have said, a twin child, much more sickly than his 
 sister, who died ; but, like so many sickly people, the very weak- 
 ness of the body seemed to give the soul more play. The walls of 
 sense were not so thick, the veil which hid the Invisible was not 
 quite so dense ; and if John Clare suffered more than his chubby 
 companions, he was compensated by a power to perceive and 
 enjoy glories which were hidden from them. 
 
 Even in his earliest years he discovered, as we have seen, the 
 
 1 "The Dream," one of Clare's finest poems, is to be found in the volume 
 entitled "The Shepherd's Calendar."
 
 294 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 soul of a poet, yearning after the beautiful. He was a silent, 
 solitary child, loving the companionship of flowers and purling 
 brooks better than that of his rough and noisy playmates a sort of 
 fondling of Dame Nature, feeling only happy in her arms, and when 
 she was unfolding some of her beauteous stores for his delectation. 
 
 " With other boys he little cared to mix ; 
 Joy left him lonely in his hawthorn bowers, 
 As haply binding up his knot of flowers, 
 Or list'ning unseen birds to hear them sing ; 
 Or gazing downwards where the runnel pours, 
 Through the moss'd bridge, in many a whirling ring, 
 How would he muse o'er all on pleasure's fairy wing ? " 
 
 He was like " the child " in " The Story without an End." His 
 dearest friends dwelt in the woods, the fields, the hedges, and on 
 the banks of the gurgling rivulets. Among such scenes " there 
 was no end to his delight. The little birds warbled and sang, and 
 fluttered and hopped about, and the delicate wood flowers gave 
 out their beauty and their odours ; and every sweet sound took a 
 sweet odour by the hand, and thus walked through the open door 
 of the child's heart, and held a joyous nuptial dance therein." 
 Nevertheless, his soul was human, and his eye and his heart were 
 just as open to the lights and sounds, the manner of life and mode 
 of thought, which marked the simple swains among whom he lived 
 and died. That village life was imprinted like a series of never- 
 fading photographs on his mind. And although the light of his 
 genius could not help seizing upon everything capable of forming 
 a picture and irradiating it, just as the sunlight fills even ugly 
 things with its own glow of beauty ; nevertheless, the continued 
 wretchedness and unmerited suffering of the life around him burnt 
 so deeply into his young heart, that no personal acts of kindness 
 he hereafter experienced and they were innumerable from high 
 and low could ever wring from him one note of joy for being 
 born an Englishman, or, in fact, for being born at all. 
 
 " As most of Nature's children prove to be, 
 His little soul was easy made to smart, 
 His tear was quickly born to sympathy, 
 And soon were rous'd the feelings of his heart, 
 In others' woes and wants to bear a part.
 
 JOHN CLARE. 295 
 
 Alas, he knew too much of every pain, 
 
 That shower'd full thick on his unshelter'd head." 
 
 Ignorant of all other lore, his parents had an endless stock of 
 ghost stories and fairy tales to tell him, while an old woman who 
 tended the cows belonging to the village on Helpstone Heath was 
 his first teacher in the art of poesy. Day by day, as he went to 
 school, he used to wander after his old friend, listening with de- 
 light to her songs and ditties, so that the child was for ever hum- 
 ming, even in his dreams, such old-world rhymes as these, 
 
 " There sat three ravens upon a tree, 
 Heigh down, derry O ! 
 There sat two ravens upon a tree, 
 As deep in love as he and she." 
 
 Thus in various ways did his appetite for the beautiful, the 
 human, the wonderful, and the musical get food. 
 
 But bread and raiment were still more imperiously needful since 
 his father was so often ailing. So Parker Clare made his son a 
 small flail wherewith he could assist him to thresh. But the child's 
 weak arms could do so little that they put him with the plough- 
 man. This, too, was far beyond his strength ; in a few months he 
 fell ill, and was laid up with a tertiary ague. Poverty, however, 
 has no choice, and it was better to drag himself from his bed to 
 work in the damp fields than to have nothing to eat but potatoes 
 and rye-bread. 
 
 And still more his soul refused to die of starvation, and demanded 
 its portion of food also; so he laid by his pence, and when the slack 
 time came in winter, he went to school at Glinton, a village noted for 
 its tapering spire, and for its comfortable look compared to poverty- 
 stricken Helpstone. His schoolmaster was a tall old man, with 
 white hair hanging down over his coat collar. He was fond of the 
 violin and long walks, pursuing the latter with the spirit of a true 
 pedestrian, taking great strides, wrapt in thought, and humming a 
 tune to himself as he went along. His boys laughed at his ways, 
 but loved him, for he was very good to them. He allowed them 
 to read books out of his little library, which to a lad like Clare 
 was a privilege indeed. Hungry he often was for a crust of bread, 
 but infinitely more did he hunger after a book. He made such 
 good use of the precious hours he spent at Mr Merrishaw's school
 
 296 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 that he fairly astonished his parents by his wonderful learning, and 
 even surprised a certain uncle, who had seen rather more of the 
 world. This relative, butler to a Wisbeach lawyer, was so struck 
 with his nephew's abilities, that he felt sure his master had only to 
 see him, and he would secure such talent at once by giving him a 
 place in his office. 
 
 Manifold were the preparations for John's entrance into the 
 great world. Mrs Clare cut up an old gown expressly to make 
 him a pair of trousers, and actually committed the extravagance 
 of buying him a pair of gloves. He went by boat to Wisbeach, 
 and arrived at the great man's house. Uncle Morris took him 
 under his wing, and presented him to his master. The lawyer 
 looked at the poor lad in his big breeches and tight little coat, 
 ordered him to be well taken care of, and sent back again as soon 
 as might be to Helpstone. 
 
 From lawyer's clerk in a large county town to general servant 
 at the village public-house was rather a fall; nevertheless the 
 latter was by far the more congenial situation, affording him 
 opportunities he otherwise would not have had of becoming one 
 truest of the and sweetest of England's rural poets. 
 
 The landlord of the Blue Bell was an easy man, and treated 
 him as if he had been his own son. John's chief occupation was 
 to tend his master's cattle. This gave him ample time for reading, 
 and he used to wander about the Heath, book in hand. Unfor- 
 tunately, books were very scarce in Helpstone, and those he chiefly 
 got were the old favourites which the pedlars sold: " Valentine and 
 Orson," "Cinderella," "Jack the Giant-Killer," and others like 
 them. 
 
 Well-fed and without a care, in these happy days the boy lived 
 on enchanted ground. 
 
 " Nature looked on him with a 'witching eye, 
 Her pleasing scenes were his delightful book, 
 Where he, while other louts roam'd heedless by, 
 With wild enthusiasm used to look. 
 The king-cup vale, the gravel-paved brook, 
 Were paradise with him to move among ; 
 And haply sheltering in some lonely nook, 
 He often sat to see it purl along, 
 And, fir'd with what he saw, humm'd o'er his simple song."
 
 JOHN CLARE. 297 
 
 When summer-time came he would seek the woodlands, and 
 penetrating into the leafy recesses "where sweet hermit Nature 
 hides," he would track out some runlet 
 
 " On its journey wild, 
 
 Where dripping blue-bells on the bank did weep. 
 O what a lovely scene to Nature's child, 
 Through roots and o'er dead leaves to see it creep, 
 Watching on some moss'd stump in contemplation deep. 
 
 No insect 'scap'd him, from the gaudy plume 
 Of dazzling butterflies, so fine to view, 
 To the small midges that at evening come 
 Like dust-spots, dancing o'er the waters blue." 
 
 For hours he would lie 
 
 " Stretched o'er an oaken plank, 
 
 To see the dancing beetles play." 
 
 Thus, as each season returned, he with unwearied eye was ever 
 watching Nature at work. And she in return unfolded to him 
 her secrets, as she does only to the humble, the innocent, and the 
 loving. Intelligent men who in after days visited the scenes he 
 has described, marvelled, when they found the reality so common- 
 place, at the genius which enabled this peasant boy to see beauties 
 which to ordinary eyes were unperceivable. But John Clare pos- 
 sessed the Argus-eyes of love, and still more a rustic faith which 
 enabled him to people the woods and meadows around him with 
 a wondrous kingdom of fays, and ghosts, and giants, idealising for 
 him these homely scenes with a sense of the invisible. 
 
 Sometimes indeed his imagination became almost a terror to 
 him. There was a lonely road along which he had to take his 
 cattle once a week, and it led through a part of the fen where it 
 was reported a murder had once been committed. It was a fear- 
 ful place for a country lad to pass, since here, as soon as it was 
 dark, the wicked sprites held high carnival, and were accustomed 
 to treat most unmercifully the belated traveller. 
 
 One autumn afternoon the gloom came on unusually early, and 
 when poor John reached the haunted spot down came the ghosts 
 upon him, and so pinched, and pulled, and buffeted him that 
 when he entered the Blue Bell his livid face and chattering lips 
 made his mistress think he was about to have the ague.
 
 298 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 Nevertheless, "fear" was with him "a cherished visitant," and 
 he would rather have endured far worse terrors than have never 
 entertained a belief in fairy-land. 
 
 Over and over again in his poems does he return to the delights 
 of those days of unquestioning faith, perhaps nowhere more 
 beautifully than in the lines in the " Shepherd's Calendar," begin- 
 ning 
 
 " Oh ! spirit of the days gone by, 
 Sweet childhood's fearful ecstacy ! " 
 
 How his thoughts and feelings were now bursting every day into 
 life he has himself told us, with much delicacy and power, 
 in his " Dawnings of Genius." It is evidently of himself, 
 when he writes 
 
 " Thus pausing wild on all he saunters by, 
 
 He feels enraptured though he knows not why ; 
 And hums and mutters o'er his joys in vain, 
 And dwells on something which he can't explain. 
 The bursts of thought with which his soul's perplexed 
 Are bred one moment, and are gone the next." 
 
 Now and then he got a book which opened up the outer world 
 to him ; as, speaking of himself under the name of the " Village 
 Minstrel," he says 
 
 " And oft with books spare hours he would beguile, 
 And blunder oft with joy round Crusoe's lonely isle." 
 
 To a youth with so lively an imagination, the sudden apparition 
 of a fair young girl sitting on a stile, weaving a garland, was enough 
 to alter the whole complexion of his life. 
 
 There are not many ballads in the English language which, for 
 light and gracefulness, can match the song in which this young 
 peasant has expressed the burst of feeling which now carried away 
 his heart 
 
 " I love thee, sweet Mary, but love thee in fear ; 
 
 Were I but the morning breeze, healthy and airy, 
 As thou goest a-walking I'd breathe in thine ear, 
 And whisper and sigh how I love thee, my Mary ! 
 
 I would steal a kiss, but I dare not presume ; 
 
 Wert thou but a rose in thy garden, sweet fairy, 
 And I a bold bee for to rifle its bloom, 
 
 A whole summer's day would I kiss thee, my Mary !
 
 JOHN CLARE. 299 
 
 I long to be with thee, but cannot tell how ; 
 
 Wert thou but the elder that grows on thy dairy, 
 And I the blest woodbine to twine on the bough, 
 
 I'd embrace thee and cling to thee ever, my Mary ! " 
 
 Mary Joyce listened to the tale of love his stammering, artless 
 tongue poured forth ; but when her father heard of it, he forbade 
 her ever to speak to " that beggar boy " again. It was not his 
 poverty so much as his poetry that caused Farmer Joyce to talk of 
 him so harshly. John moved in a most eccentric orbit, and the 
 sight of him running after the cows, book in hand, or declaiming 
 to himself by the wayside, his clothes in tatters, and his long hair 
 streaming in the wind, produced the very natural impression that 
 he was half silly and never would come to any good. 
 
 Mary was obedient, but remained a spinster to her dying day ; 
 as to John, the disappointment warped his life. It was his first 
 deep sorrow, never, never to be forgotten. His penknife carved 
 the initials of her name inside the porch of Clinton Church, but 
 love carved that name still deeper on his heart. Half a century 
 later it was the only memory that survived when all else had gone 
 to wreck. 
 
 It was just at this juncture, when love had thus stirred up the 
 fount of feeling, that he met with Thomson's "Seasons." Coming 
 back from Stamford, where he had been to buy the book, the 
 purchase-money, eighteenpence, having been made up partly 
 by pence extracted from his mother, and partly by loans from 
 friendly villagers, his path lay through Burghley Park, and what 
 with the loveliness of the scene, and the joy of having a real poetry 
 book, his soul burst forth for the first time into song, and found 
 expression in verse. 
 
 Parker Clare had a love for gardening ; it would have suited him 
 better than ploughing or threshing. It was too late now to change 
 his occupation, but nothing could be better for John ; so when he 
 heard that the head-gardener at Burghley wanted an apprentice, it 
 aroused every latent spark of ambition in the poor man's breast, 
 and he determined to lose no time in trying to secure the place 
 for his son. With much obsequiousness, the pair waited on the 
 great man, and he, pleased at being treated with such deference, 
 took a fancy to the boy, and consented to employ him.
 
 300 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 " What a life for John ! " thought Parker Clare, as he rejoiced 
 with his wife over their great success. How could he help looking 
 forward to the day when they should all go and live in one of the 
 Marquis's best cottages, or, perhaps, indeed, keep one of the 
 lodges at the park gates ! John, too, no doubt, had his thoughts ; 
 the inspiration first came in Burghley Park, and there he was to 
 work and live. How he would sing and make melody in his heart 
 the live-long day ! 
 
 But alas ! the apprenticeship at Burghley Park proved an apple 
 of Sodom. The gardener and his men were sons of Belial. 
 Every night it was the custom to lock up the workmen lest they 
 should rob the orchards. However, directly the master went out, 
 as he usually did to get tipsy at an inn in the town, the men and 
 boys managed to get through one of the windows, scramble over 
 the park palings, and betake themselves to a neighbouring public- 
 house, called " The Hole in the Wall," kept by a retired servant 
 from the great house. 
 
 Of course John Clare was coaxed and persuaded to go, and of 
 course he became as bad as any of them. Doubtless he had 
 often wondered whether the crooning old woman whom the 
 villagers pointed out as a witch, had really 
 
 " Sold herself to Satan's evil powers." 
 
 Did he ever think that he himself was really doing so now ? Poor 
 fellow, he lay again and again all night besotted under a tree. 
 What wonder that a horrible rheumatism tormented him, and that 
 the inspiration left him ? Never afterwards did he free himself 
 from the habit incurred at Burghley Park. 
 
 At last he broke his contract and ran off, perhaps the only way 
 he could conceive of deliverance. At first he and his companion 
 set out northwards, but ere long his heart forced him home again, 
 whither he returned a poor destitute lad, all his bright visions of 
 Burghley Park lost for ever in a mist of sin and brutality. 
 
 Once again back and in the fields, the inspiration returned, and 
 he began to write poetic effusions, and to read them whenever he 
 could get a listener. But his people had a dull ear for such stuff; 
 his comrades gibed at him, his father reproved him, and his 
 mother, anxious soul more suspicious, doubtless, of those bits of
 
 JOHN CLARE. 301 
 
 paper, covered with weird characters, than of half-a-dozen " Holes 
 in the Wall," " Blue Bells," or " Parting Pots," burnt them all 
 from motives, not, perhaps, very dissimilar to those which 
 prompted Don Quixote's niece to make an auto-da-fe of her 
 uncle's romantic library. 
 
 But the way in which Clare met this pretty persecution showed 
 that he had real genius. He did not complain of his hard fate, 
 but determined to instil into his parents' minds a love of poetry. 
 So the next piece he made he read over to his father, who, how- 
 ever, pronounced it all stuff and nonsense, and not at all to be 
 compared to the ballads they were accustomed to troll out at 
 the " Blue Bell." So the next time John composed a poem' in 
 the ballad style, and, without saying whose it was, read it to his 
 father as if it was from a printed sheet. Old Mr Clare declared 
 it fine, and told his son if he could write like that it would do. 
 Thus John learnt it was not his poetry, but himself they doubted, 
 and henceforth he read all his effusions anonymously, and after- 
 wards hid them far away from his mother's careful eye in a deep 
 crevice in the wall of his bed-room. 
 
 Later on, when the villagers woke up to the idea that the silly 
 beggar boy was likely to prove some one great after all, they began 
 to entertain respect for his scribblings. 
 
 The young poet used to sit in the evening in one corner of the 
 kitchen, where there was a little window looking out on the " Blue 
 Bell," and when the neighbours popped their heads in at the 
 door and saw him writing, they would turn away, saying that 
 they were afraid that they should disturb John. But years of 
 effort had so accustomed him to self-concentration that he would 
 invariably reply, "Come in, you won't hinder me." The window 
 is now blocked up, and the nook is used as a cupboard, but the 
 tradition survives to this day in Helpstone. 
 
 After awhile John determined to show his poems to another 
 friend, a labouring man much older than himself, but who had 
 the reputation of having been in a better position, and of having had 
 some education. This worthy examined them very carefully, and 
 after a week returned them to Clare, with the significant question, 
 " Do you understand grammar ? " 
 
 Poor John blushed and felt utterly ashamed of his attempts at
 
 302 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 composition while he remained densely ignorant of so important a 
 branch of knowledge. So he procured, without delay, one of 
 those puzzling works called English grammars. He tried his best 
 to make it out, but finally gave it up in despair, and resolved to 
 get on without understanding grammar. 
 
 Meanwhile the young man, craving above all things for a little 
 sympathetic appreciation of his poetic efforts, fell into the hands 
 of a couple who had nothing to recommend them but the faculty 
 of " good fellowship." 
 
 At the end of the village lived, on their own little freehold, two 
 brothers named Billings. They loafed away their time in the 
 day, and poached at night ; gathering around them every evening 
 in their cottage, which went by the name of " Bachelors' Hall," 
 the most reckless characters in the place. It was very easy, after 
 the Burghley Park experiences, for John Clare to fall into this 
 kind of temptation, and night after night he spent at Bachelors' 
 Hall, reciting his songs amidst the thumping applause of heavy 
 fists and hob-nailed boots. 
 
 At home things began to look more dreary than ever. The 
 poor father was more and more a burden, and John found he had 
 less and less money to spare. It was a dark time in Clare's life, 
 and he made it still darker and more wretched for his unhappy 
 parents, by committing the usual folly of a rural labourer when he 
 loses his head in drink. He fell into the hands of the recruiting 
 sergeant 
 
 " With high-crowned hat and ribbons hung about, 
 With tuteling fife, and hoarse rap-tapping drum." 
 
 Clare was marched off with a number of other poor waifs to learn 
 the goose-step. It must have been a queer Falstaffian regiment, 
 for Clare was clad in trousers so long that he had to tuck them 
 into his shoes. Indeed, the recruiting was managed on such slip- 
 shod principles, that the whole district set their faces against it 
 determinately, so that in the end the military authorities quietly 
 gave way, and disbanded the men. Thus Clare had just enough 
 of soldiering to give him a taste for vagabondism. 
 
 Accordingly, we find him next consorting with the gipsies. 
 Happily the very cause which rendered his life a burden saved
 
 JOHN CLARE. 303 
 
 him from going quite astray at this juncture. He enjoyed the 
 freedom, the merriment, the wit of his nomadic friends, but he 
 could not stomach their greasy pot. So after a time he returned 
 to honest labour, and began working in a limekiln at ros. a week. 
 
 One Sunday afternoon, having had his glass at the village inn, 
 he sat down under a hedge, when the vision of Patty Patty of 
 the Vale Patty, who was to prove his faithful wife, came across 
 him. 
 
 His thoughts rose high again. Bright forms once more 
 appeared above the horizon. He set his heart on three objects. 
 To possess his charming Patty, to see his poems printed in a 
 book, and to wear an olive-green coat ! 
 
 However, John was a born poet, and in spite of all his illusions 
 he could not help bursting forth with the words 
 
 " What are vain hopes? The puffing gale of morn, 
 
 That of its charms divests the dewy lawn, 
 And robs each flow'ret of its gem and dies ; 
 
 A cobweb hiding disappointment's thorn, 
 Which stings more keenly through the deep disguise." 
 
 Some one had put it into his head that the only way to get his 
 poems printed was to issue a prospectus, and so to induce a 
 number of persons to become subscribers. The prospectus was 
 printed and distributed, but although Clare got seven names put 
 down, he only had one real subscriber to the book. 
 
 He now became restless and determined to quit his native 
 village, he and another man named Coblee. The night before 
 they were to depart, the jovial crew who held their revels at the 
 Bachelors' Hall had a farewell feast. By way of settling to what 
 part of the country Clare and his friend should journey, it was 
 proposed that a stick should be put up in the middle of the room, 
 that they should all join hands and dance around it, and that the 
 way it fell should indicate the direction the travellers were to take. 
 In the midst of this singular proceeding there was a loud tap at the 
 door. When it was opened, a voice was heard calling for John 
 Clare to come home at once, as there were two real gentlemen 
 waiting to see him. John went without delay, and the two real 
 gentlemen proved to be Mr Edward Drury, bookseller, of Stam- 
 ford, and his friend the editor of the Stamford Mercury.
 
 304 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 This visit proved a turning-point in Clare's life. Mr Drury had 
 seen the prospectus, and being struck with its extreme simplicity, 
 had determined to find out the author and have a look at his 
 poems. But the singular appearance of the poet must have 
 surprised him even more than the peculiar style of his prospectus. 
 " A man of short stature, keen eager eyes, high forehead, long 
 hair, falling down in wild and almost grotesque fashion over his 
 shoulders, and garments tattered and torn, altogether little 
 removed from rags " such is the portrait his biographer, Mr 
 Frederick Martin, draws of John Clare at this time. 
 
 At his visitor's request Clare produced a bundle of his poems, 
 the first of which so pleased the bookseller that he at once made 
 him a most generous offer in effect to print the poems at his own 
 expense, and give Clare the profits. 
 
 But when he read over another packet of poems which Clare 
 sent him afterwards the bookseller began to be afraid he had gone 
 too far, and accordingly asked the opinion of a learned clergyman, 
 who, no doubt shocked at the bad spelling and grammar, pro- 
 nounced decidedly against them. A few days after Clare went 
 over to Stamford to learn what was going to be done. Mr Drury 
 put the clergyman's letter into his hands ; Clare read it, burst into 
 tears, and rushed out of the shop. The kind-hearted bookseller, 
 grieved at his want of tact, ran after him, and by dint of much 
 talk consoled him. The poems were then sent up to London. 
 Mr Taylor, the publisher, had the discrimination to see 
 that their author was a real poet, and that his work only wanted 
 a little polishing. From this time forth Mr Drury proved 
 his friend. He had him continually to his house, lent him books, 
 advised and talked with him, and used his influence over him in 
 a very praiseworthy manner. 
 
 But alas for such poets as John Clare there was little hope for 
 them in those days except they consented to yield themselves to 
 the enervating influence of patronage. It mattered little to a 
 sturdy, self-reliant man when he had fairly got on his own legs ; but 
 it was a continual source of pain to a sensitive, gentle, clinging 
 nature such as Clare's. He was sure to rely too much upon it, 
 he was sure to surrender too much to it, and then to resent its 
 very natural dictation.
 
 JOHN CLARE. 305 
 
 He was not, however, without friends, who treated him as a 
 man ought to be treated. Such an one was Mr Holland, the 
 Independent Minister at Market Deeping. Meeting with Clare's 
 prospectus, one of the poems so pleased him that he made a 
 pilgrimage to Bridge Casterton to see the writer. He found 
 him in a lime-kiln, scribbling on the top of his hat. The 
 acquaintance soon ripened into friendship ; and nothing was so 
 grateful or encouraging to Clare as the genuine commendation 
 which he received from Mr Holland, when from time to time 
 he put a new poem into his hands to read. Thus he was 
 helped to a truer faith in himself, and his courage sustained. 
 Mr Taylor had taken his work in hand ; but months had elapsed, 
 and no news came of its fate. Clare was beginning to despair, 
 when one wet day who should appear at his cottage door but 
 Mr Holland, his face beaming with pleasure. 
 
 " Am I not a good prophet ? " said he, coming up to John and 
 shaking him by both hands. 
 
 Clare was mystified; but soon to his great delight he heard 
 that his book was out, and that it was the talk of the town in 
 fact, a great success. 
 
 His spirits rose at once to the seventh heaven. The longings, 
 the hopes, the ambitions of his life were realised. Once more he 
 saw the beautiful unknown world gleaming on the horizon. 
 Heaven had lifted the dark clouds ; the load of life fell from his 
 back ; he could walk, run, scale any height ; he would soon reach 
 that elysium of poetic fame he had dreamt of; and then "the 
 crown of bays," for which he had hoped and waited so long, would 
 descend on his brow. 
 
 But the troubles he had hitherto known, the discords his soul 
 had as yet experienced, were light compared with those which were 
 to follow. A fierce temptation was already lying in wait for him. 
 Clare had fallen into the snare, so common among the rural poor 
 the delusion that courtship is the same as matrimony. It came, 
 as temptation often does, in a form seemingly beautiful, and 
 totally unexpected. When the London Reviews came down that 
 January, the great people in the neighbourhood were astonished 
 to find that a poet had arisen amongst them, perhaps a Burns, 
 c ome one who would shed fame on all who had to do with him. 
 
 x
 
 306 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 One day an old general met him in Mr Drury's shop, and took 
 him home to his mansion, where a romantic young lady made love 
 to him, a proceeding which well-nigh tempted him to the wicked- 
 ness of repudiating his Patty, to whom he was now bound by the 
 tenderest ties. 
 
 As he returned home that night from his wanderings, after the 
 unknown bliss which had beckoned to him so alluringly 
 from the far-off horizon, Clare felt that the clouds had already 
 dropped, and with all his glory he was still a heartsore, struggling 
 man. Happily he overcame the great temptation to forsake 
 Patty, and without more ado he married her, and brought her 
 home to the old cottage at Helpstone. 
 
 It is beyond my purpose to trace the history of his literary life. 
 Suffice it to say that his patrons carried him up to London, and 
 made a great show of him for one season. The long overcoat he 
 wore to conceal his poverty he stoutly refused to take off in the 
 hottest of rooms or the densest of crowds, so that he was a great 
 sensation in every saloon to which he was taken. As handsome 
 as a nobleman, yet so clownish, so unsophisticated : it was delicious 
 to have the monotonous perfection of good society broken by such 
 a singular apparition. 
 
 Nevertheless, he gave his keepers some anxiety, as he would 
 only make friends with those who he felt really sympathised with 
 him, and these were too often of the Billings' stamp, rowdies of 
 the upper class, men who took him to the lowest theatres, and 
 into the worst company. Happily, he made one friendship of the 
 Holland type. Admiral Lord Radstock, a noble specimen of an 
 English gentleman, who had nothing of the mere patron about 
 him, met him at dinner ; and the peer and the peasant being both 
 true, simple-hearted men, felt " that touch of nature which makes 
 the whole world kin," and became fast friends for life. Lord 
 Radstock, who to a fine manly nature united great literary abilities 
 and sound common-sense, was able and willing to be of the 
 utmost service to the poor poet. 
 
 This was not the only time -Clare visited London. He came up 
 on three subsequent occasions, and was introduced into the 
 literary society of the day, meeting such men as Hazlitt and 
 Cunningham, De Quincey, Lamb, and Coleridge. i^But in the
 
 JOHN CLARE. 307 
 
 little cottage at Helpstone they must have learnt to dread these 
 London journeys, for he invariably came back unhappy and dis- 
 contented, and not able to apply himself to ordinary work. 
 
 Instead of finding him some post of usefulness, where he could 
 labour either mentally or physically, his patrons thought that the 
 best possible thing to do was to endow him with an annuity. 
 Once Clare wanted to spend a part o the fund in a small freehold, 
 and turn farmer. The brothers Billings had found the usual end 
 of such ways. They were deeply in debt, and forced to sell their 
 freehold. They offered it to Clare, but, to his great chagrin, 
 Lord Radstock, who was a trustee of the fund, would not consent 
 to its purchase. Unhappily that disinterested and intelligent 
 friend died too early for Clare's advantage. Clare, anxious to do 
 something, persisted in his scheme of becoming a farmer, and got 
 deeper and deeper into pecuniary embarrassment. 
 
 In 1821 came out his second volume of poems, "The Village 
 Minstrel," but the sensation was over ; the peasant poet was out 
 of fashion, and the book did not sell. The volume is tinged 
 throughout with a more continuous and profounder melancholy 
 than the " Rural Life and Scenery," showing that worldly fame 
 had already made a sad life sadder. His family was increasing ; 
 so, what with disappointment and debt, it is not surprising that he 
 fell ill. 
 
 In 1825 "The Shepherd's Calendar" was published, and 
 although it contains some of the most wonderfully descriptive 
 nature-painting in the English language, and some most touching 
 tales as true to village life as Crabbe's it was not a success. 
 
 There are few bits of nature-painting finer than his description 
 of a July day, one of those days when hour after hour the summer 
 heat grows fiercer and fiercer 
 
 " Till noon burns with its blistering breath 
 Around, and day dies still as death : 
 The busy noise of man and brute 
 Is on a sudden lost and mute ; 
 E'en the brook that leaps along 
 Seems weary of its bubbling song, 
 And so soft its waters creep, 
 Tired silence sinks in sounder sleep. 
 The cricket on its banks is dumb, 
 The very flies forget to hum ;
 
 308 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 And save the waggon rocking round, 
 The landscape sleeps without a sound. 
 
 And in the over-heated air 
 
 Not one light thing is floating there, 
 
 Save that to the earnest eye 
 
 The restless heat is twittering by." 
 
 Or a picture in perfect harmony with the burst of joy which all 
 creation feels in early summer-time : 
 
 "The driving boy beside his team, 
 
 Of May-month's beauty now will dream, 
 And cock his hat, and turn his eye 
 On flower, and tree, and deepening sky ; 
 And oft burst loud in fits of song, 
 And whistle as he reels along ; 
 Cracking his whip in starts of joy, 
 A happy, dirty, driving boy." 
 
 But what are one or two quotations, his poems abound with 
 descriptions and touches of character true and vivid as these. It 
 seems strange, indeed, that they should be so little appreciated, so 
 that it does not appear to be worth the while of any publisher to 
 bring them out in a popular form. 
 
 But to return to his actual history ; his wants drove him now to 
 a singular trade for a poet. He tried to hawk his own books 
 about the country ; but this too was a failure, and he gave it up in 
 despair. 
 
 With fierce ardour he began again to labour on his little farm. 
 Sometimes he would work on fifteen or sixteen hours a day, but it 
 was in vain. His frantic efforts to keep the wolf from the door 
 only made it come the sooner. He was confined to his bed for a 
 month. Poverty, gaunt and hungry, came upon him. His 
 children wanted bread. 
 
 When he came out of his sick-room, his creditors began dun- 
 ning him, especially his landlord, who threatened to turn him 
 out of his house. 
 
 His love for the old place was something touching something 
 impossible to conceive of by those who have ample means, and 
 are accustomed to the pleasures and benefits of constant change.
 
 JOHN CLARE. 309 
 
 And so, when they talked about turning him out, it almost drove 
 him beside himself. In his dismay, he ran like a child to his friend, 
 the butler at Melton Park. It so happened that while he was re- 
 lating his troubles Earl Fitzwilliam appeared on the scene, and 
 Clare in his excitement poured them all out to him. The Earl 
 listened with much sympathy ; and, anxious to relieve his anxiety, 
 told him that he would find a cottage and a small piece of land 
 for him. Lord Fitzwilliam was better than his word, for not only 
 did he have a cottage built expressly for Clare, but he took pains 
 to have it erected in the most charming spot in his domain. Half- 
 hidden in mossy orchard-trees and surrounded by a luxuriant and 
 fragrant garden, a cottage in Northborough would appear just the 
 home for a Rural Poet. But Clare was something more than a 
 mere reflector of external nature. He would have been as great 
 a poet, and perhaps a greater, had he been born amongst bricks and 
 mortar. Deep, intense human affection lay at the basis of his 
 being, and almost overpowered every other faculty. From earliest 
 infancy it had gone out to all things animate and inanimate 
 about him, and so entwined itself about them as to make them 
 part of its own being. Sordid and ugly they might be to others, 
 but to him they were all aglow with the radiance of his own love. 
 
 " O native endearments ! I would not forsake ye, 
 
 I would not forsake ye for sweetest of scenes : 
 For sweetest of gardens that Nature could make me, 
 
 I would not forsake ye, dear valleys and greens. 
 Swamps of wild rush-beds and sloughs' squashy traces, 
 
 Grounds of rough fallows with thistle and weed, 
 Flats and low valleys of kingcups and daisies, 
 
 Sweetest of subjects are ye for my reed : 
 Ye commons, left free in the rude rays of Nature, 
 
 Ye brown heaths, beclothed in furze as ye be, 
 My wild eye in rapture adores every feature, 
 
 Ye are dear as this heart in my bosom to me." 
 
 When the time therefore came for him to go, the wrench was 
 more than he could bear. He dallied and delayed until his wife 
 could bear it no longer, and at last, by the advice of some of his 
 best friends, she determined to make the move without his consent. 
 When he saw the goods actually being carried out of the house, 
 he rose up and followed them as a man might the corpse of one
 
 310 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 he had loved. It was a bitter trial to him, and he solaced himself 
 in his own way by pouring out his heart in the verses 
 
 " I've left my own old Home of Homes, 
 
 Green fields, and every pleasant place ; " 
 
 concluding with the lines so conscious of daily increasing sadness, 
 so hopeless of the present and the future 
 
 " I dwell on trifles, like a child 
 
 I feel as ill becomes a man ; 
 And yet my thoughts, like weedlings wild, 
 
 Grow up and blossom where they can : 
 They turn to places known so long, 
 
 And feel that joys were dwelling there ; 
 So home-fed pleasure fills my song 
 
 That hath no present joy to share." 
 
 And now, though he had a house to live in, concerning the rent 
 of which he need be under no anxiety, and a pension of ^45 a 
 year, yet with a wife and children, and laden with debt, he could 
 not keep his head above water. Poverty came on like an armed 
 man, and what rendered it worse to bear than before was that the 
 friends who had surrounded him from a child could not know. So 
 he sank deeper and deeper into distress of mind and body. 
 
 One day in the winter following he went out, having left his 
 children almost starving. The time passed on, and he did not re- 
 turn. His little girl was sent to look for him. She found him lying 
 insensible by the river-side. They dragged him home, got him to 
 bed, and there he lay a poor invalid until the spring-time came 
 again. Then he sat up once more in his chair and looked at his 
 books. His wife would have him go out. She had known of 
 old 
 
 " How forth into the fields he went, 
 And nature's living motion lent 
 The pulse of life to discontent." 
 
 But Nature-medicine would do no longer ; he was conscious of it, 
 and refused to go. It was not merely physical disease, it was not 
 entirely mental ; it was something deeper still, his spirit was 
 wounded. He had tasted the bitter cup the world had to give, and 
 he found it wormwood and gall. The beautiful unknown land had
 
 JOHN CLARE. 31 1 
 
 appeared so near. It was but "a moment's mockery." Every 
 new effort he had made, every new pleasure he had tasted, only 
 proved that the " distance " was more " hopeless " than ever, and 
 that the land of earthly satisfaction was an illusion ; that though 
 it might seem to rise for an hour on the horizon, it would only be 
 to 
 
 " Flash on despair the joy it could not reach." 
 
 So he sank down as he did when a child, footsore and heart- 
 sore, longing for a father's hand to help him home again. But no 
 labourer in a neighbouring field came to him now. No one even 
 offered him the driest crust of Divine truth, whereon he might stay 
 his soul till he reached the Father's home again. 
 
 Conscious that Nature-worship could afford him no relief, he 
 turned instinctively to where he believed God was to be found. 
 He took down the Bible ; he began to read in a blind sort of way 
 the theological books he possessed. But though he read, he could 
 not understand. He was like the eunuch, who, reading the most 
 pregnant chapter in the Old Testament, answered the question, 
 " Understandest thou what thou readest ? " with the humble reply, 
 " How can I, unless some one teach me ? " But there was none 
 to teach Clare, and so he lost himself in admiration of the poetry 
 of the Bible. He was so captivated with the golden tints, the bril- 
 liant hues, the aerial perspective, that he forgot these were but the 
 glorious and transitory garments of eternal truths which he had 
 yet to find. As was natural to every troubled man coming to the 
 Bible for consolation, he fastened on the Psalms and the Book of 
 Job. When the doctor came to see him he could talk of nothing 
 but the Bible. He told him that he meant to write a volume of 
 religious poetry, simple explanations of the truths of the Bible. 
 
 The doctor was pleased, and told Clare that he would leave no 
 stone unturned to get him subscribers. This he did, but to his 
 surprise, whenever he came with news of what he was doing, Clare 
 seemed utterly indifferent, and could only talk about the Bible. 
 On one occasion he cried out, " Is not this Book of Job a wonderful 
 poem ? Let me read you my paraphrase of it." In a tremulous 
 voice he read until he came to the last lines, and then burst into 
 tears. The kind doctor was alarmed. It looked as if there was
 
 312 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 something more than bodily weakness. But after the fit was over 
 he conversed rationally enough. There was a rift in the clouds for 
 the last time. 
 
 Alas, poor Clare ! He was straining his eyes once more into 
 the beautiful unknown. Doubtless he was feeling after God, if 
 haply he might find Him. He had loved to call on all Nature to join 
 with him in praising its glorious Creator. There are few religious 
 lyrics, indeed, in the English language finer than his " Song of 
 Praise," and " Nature's Hymn to Deity ; " but it does not appear 
 from his works or his life that he had up to this time ever felt his 
 need of God as a Saviour. Now, he was eagerly stretching out 
 his hands ; there was something in the Bible something deeper, 
 more glorious than ever he had thought of before. It was the 
 true light glimmering on the far-off horizon, but the clouds were 
 fast coming. A long night of darkness was about to settle on his 
 soul. 
 
 For months his wife watched and waited, hiding the dread 
 secret as long as she could. But a sudden visit of Clare to the. 
 vicar of Helpstone revealed the extent of the calamity. He 
 burst out in a manner which left no doubt of his insanity. 
 Medical advice was at once taken, and he was removed to an 
 asylum in Epping Forest. 
 
 By outdoor employment and exercise they sought to restore 
 the tone of his mind. He was allowed to roam about the Forest 
 at will, but strictly forbidden to write poetry. But even this 
 restriction was relaxed, and now and then he presented the 
 doctor with a composition. 
 
 These bits were more touchingly beautiful than ever, but they 
 betrayed the fact that even now, when chaos reigned in his mind, 
 his soul was again straining after a beautiful vision ; that, even in 
 his deep despondency, the horizon was flashing with another 
 illusive joy. 
 
 Long before he was sent away to Epping Forest he had fancied 
 that he had again seen his " Mary " that Mary whose fair form 
 seated on a stile, weaving a garland, struck the first note of love in 
 his heart. The apparition had awakened the old fount of feeling, 
 and Clare sang in touching accents
 
 JOHN CLARE. 313 
 
 " First love will with the heart remain 
 
 When all its hopes are by, 
 As frail rose-blossoms still retain 
 
 Their fragrance when they die. 
 And joy's first dreams will haunt the wind 
 
 With shades from whence they sprung, 
 As summer leaves the stems behind, 
 
 On which spring blossoms hung." 
 
 And now though that sweet form lay silent in the grave, and 
 Clare himself was sinking into a darkness more terrible a real 
 imprisonment of mind and soul it was his unhappy fate to 
 believe that the joy which, in his youth, had appeared at so 
 hopeless a distance, was now about to be realized, and that Mary 
 was his wife, only waiting for him to come home again. 
 
 How truly do the lines just quoted describe his woeful 
 experience ! As the real world passed away from his vision, the 
 hallucination took more and more hold of him. In a volume 
 recently published, " Life and Remains of John Clare," by Mr J. L. 
 Cherry, a number of poems are given which were written during 
 the long period of mental illusion into which Clare now fell. 
 Out of seventy-three pieces, forty-nine are love poems. One is 
 " To my Wife, a Valentine," but the greater part of the remainder 
 are evidently inspired by the memory of the lost one. Sometimes 
 she is addressed by name, sometimes she is disguised under 
 other names, sometimes she has other surnames, Mary Batiman, 
 Mary Littlechild, Mary Appleby, Mary Dove. Even Nature 
 must talk to him of his beloved. 
 
 " The cowslips blooming everywhere 
 
 My heart's own thought would steal : 
 I nip't them that they should not hear : 
 
 They smiled, and would reveal ; 
 And o'er each meadow, right or wrong, 
 They sing the name I've worshipped long. 
 
 The brook that mirrored clear the sky 
 
 Full well I know the spot ; 
 The mouse-ear looked with bright blue eye, 
 
 And said "Forget-me-not." 
 And from the brook I turned away, 
 But heard it many an after day.
 
 314 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 The king-cup on its slender stalk, 
 
 Within the pasture dell, 
 Would picture there a pleasant walk 
 
 With one I loved so well. 
 It said, " How sweet at eventide 
 'Twould be, with true love at thy side." 
 
 And on the pasture's woody knoll 
 
 I saw the wild blue-bell, 
 On Sundays, where I used to stroll 
 
 With her I loved so well: 
 She culled the flowers the year before ; 
 These bowed, and told the story o'er." 
 
 He was ever in imagination seeking his lost one, and ever hoping 
 to regain her. 
 
 So now, while he appeared to be getting better, he was dream- 
 ing how he could effect his escape, and find his Mary. After 
 several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to get away, and the 
 story of his adventures written by himself has an interest quite 
 unique. 
 
 In an old wide-awake, which he had found amongst the 
 remains of a gipsy encampment, Clare stole off. By a sort of 
 intuition he managed to get into the great York road, reaching 
 Stevenage in Hertfordshire the first night. There he slept in an 
 old shed on some clover, taking care to lie with his head to the 
 north, that he might know in what direction to steer in the 
 morning. 
 
 With a grateful thanksgiving for his night's rest, he set out on 
 his journey fasting, for he had not a penny in his pocket. 
 Happily, a countryman whom he met on horseback threw him a 
 penny, with which he got half a pint of beer, a rest, and shelter 
 from a heavy shower. Onward he marched, through villages 
 and towns, until, as the morning waned, he sat down for half an 
 hour, and, as he quaintly observes, " made a good many wishes 
 for breakfast." 
 
 When, late in the evening, he reached Potton in Bedfordshire, 
 he inquired for the house of the clergyman and the overseer. 
 But he could not find them, and being nearly worn out, one of 
 his feet having become so crippled that he could only just 
 hobble along, he asked a labourer where he could find a shed
 
 JOHN CLARE. 315 
 
 and some dry straw on the road. The man told him of a farm a 
 little farther on, belonging to a public-house called "The Ram." 
 However, he felt too much fatigued to go on, and lay down under 
 some elms by the roadside. But the wind was so fierce that he 
 had to get up again, quaking as one who had the ague. So he 
 essayed to reach The Ram," but the night was getting dark. 
 Still he hobbled on as fast as he could, contrasting his own 
 misery with the comfort inside the houses by the road-side as 
 they lit up one after another. When he got to " The Ram," it 
 was still open, and he did not like to lie in the outhouse, as there 
 were people about. So he travelled on through a lonely road 
 overshadowed by trees. At last he came to a spot where the 
 road branched into two highways, and turning back to read a 
 milestone, utterly forgot which was north and south. His doubts 
 and hopelessness made him so feeble he could scarcely walk ; 
 however, coming to a turnpike gate, he found on inquiry he was 
 right, and so went on with courage. At last -he found a solitary 
 house near a wood, and he lay in the porch all night. 
 
 Next day he pursued his journey, but in such a dazed state from 
 hunger and fatigue, that he was simply a walking automaton, 
 seeing, hearing, scarcely feeling anything. However, when he 
 lay down in a dyke at night and fell asleep, the cold water woke 
 him up and compelled him to go on. He went through a long 
 dark avenue of trees, a town with lights in the chamber windows ; 
 suddenly a light coach heavily laden came rattling by, splashing 
 the mud in his face. But he walked on as one half asleep. 
 
 Morning came, and his hunger was now so intense that he satis- 
 fied its craving by eating the grass as he went along ! At length 
 he became footsore, and dropping down as he entered Stilton, he 
 fell asleep on the pavement in that partial manner usual with over- 
 strained nature, and heard the people talking about him. " Poor 
 creature ! " said one. " Oh, he's shamming," said another. So 
 he dragged himself up and hobbled on towards Peterborough. 
 
 Just before he reached that town, a cartful of Helpstone people 
 passed him, and recognising him, threw him some halfpence. So 
 he got a meal and was refreshed. On through Peterborough he 
 went, until he got some distance out of the town, when a cart 
 appeared on the road. It was his poor faithful Patty, his true wife !
 
 316 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 She had heard from the Helpstone people of her husband's miser- 
 able plight, had divined the truth, and without delay had set off 
 to meet him. With much coaxing, and an admission that she was 
 his second wife, he was induced to allow himself to be put into the 
 cart and driven to Northborough. 
 
 Perchance he might have recovered had affluence been his lot, 
 and he could have been left quiet in the bosom of his family. 
 But it was thought advisable to remove him to Northampton 
 County Asylum, where he passed the long dark evening of his life 
 twenty-two years in a madhouse ! 
 
 " When all the hopes that charmed him once were o'er, 
 To warm his soul in ecstasy no more, 
 By disappointments proved a foolish cheat, 
 Each ending bitter and beginning sweet ; " 
 
 when the last dim light of these illusive horizons had vanished and 
 sunk into night, with that wondrous instinct which had been 
 deceived so oft, yet never could be destroyed, Clare's heart turned 
 again towards the hopes of an unknown blessed land of rest and 
 peace, and from his prison he uttered the cry 
 
 " I long for the scenes where man has never trod, 
 For scenes where woman never smiled or wept : 
 
 There to abide with my Creator, God, 
 And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, 
 
 Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie 
 The grass below ; above the vaulted sky." 
 
 This was his dying note; he wrote no more. The spring of 
 1864 came and found the much-tried poet sinking quietly to rest. 
 On the 2oth of May he gently passed away : his last words, " I 
 want to go home," the cry of the wearied, wandering child, who 
 longs for the safety and repose of its father's arms. 
 
 One or two pious hearts in Northampton, who knew how he had 
 loved his native scenes, came forward to save his remains from a 
 pauper's grave. They remembered that he had said 
 
 " O let one wish, go where I will, be mine 
 
 To turn me back and wander home to die, 
 'Mong nearest friends my latest breath resign, 
 And in the churchyard with my kindred lie."
 
 JOHN CLARE. 317 
 
 A letter was despatched to acquaint his wife with his decease, 
 and that his body would be brought to Helpstone to be buried 
 on the 24th. But the letter was opened by another Mrs John 
 Clare at Helpstone, so that the widowed woman at Northborough 
 remained in ignorance of what had happened. 
 
 Tragic, then, was the last return of John Clare to the dear native 
 spot to which he had hoped to come back to die. 
 
 The coffin arrived with its precious remains, but there were 
 none to meet it ; not a soul, led by Christian, or even by relative 
 or literary ties, to perform the last obsequies of an English poet. 
 The bearers took it to the churchyard, and called upon the 
 sexton to dig a grave. He was away from home that afternoon, 
 so with some reluctance they carried the corpse into the tap-room 
 of " The Hexter's Arms," and laid it on the table. 
 
 On the evening of the next day, when the body was committed 
 to the ground, his old cottage was sold, but it did not disturb 
 John Clare now. He was gathered to his fathers, and had reached 
 " the Home of Homes." 
 
 Thus did his 
 
 " Weary spirit sail away, 
 That long, long-looked-for 'better place' to gain." 
 
 John Clare is the poet of English peasant life. He, if any one 
 can, may claim to be a representative man. Bloomfield has not 
 depicted that life with more sympathy, nor Crabbe with a truer 
 touch. Crabbe looked down upon it from above ; Clare lived it, 
 felt its joys, and endured all its woes. 
 
 I have tried to give some idea of the sordid suffering of his 
 childhood and youth, but only those who have read his works can 
 know how the iron entered into his soul. He was one with his 
 brethren in that bitter, long-fought fight with grim Poverty ; one 
 with them in his content and discontent ; contented to do as his 
 fathers did, yet discontented, profoundly discontented with his lot. 
 
 With a love for his native scenes, capable of being developed 
 into the intensest patriotism, with a love of old customs and old 
 institutions in fact, a Conservative by nature he is driven to 
 cry 
 
 " O England ! boasted land of liberty, 
 With strangers still thou may'st the title own,
 
 318 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 But thy poor slaves the alteration see, 
 
 With many a loss to them the truth is known. 
 
 And every village owns its tyrants now, 
 
 And parish slaves must live as parish kings allow. " 
 
 With the intensest love of home, with a capacity for the fullest, 
 deepest human affection, he is driven at last by utter stress 
 of woe to feel completely weaned from it, and to cry, as many an 
 aged labourer, the inmate of a Union so distant that he is forgotten 
 by kith and kin, might do, that 
 
 ' ' Even those he loved best 
 Are strange nay, they are stranger than the rest." 
 
 And then his errors : are they not just those of the labouring 
 man ? And so too the deep yet melancholy piety which marks 
 him all through life so in harmony with what one reads every- 
 where in our village churchyards. 
 
 Life is a misery an ignis fatuus, death a freedom from misery 
 something that will heal every wound, and enable him to lay 
 his aching head to rest. He is resigned ; " God's will be done," 
 he says. 
 
 " Fate's decree, 
 Doomed many evils should encompass thee. " 
 
 He speaks of God as " the Omnipotent," thinking doubtless of 
 Him as the poor labourer does in His awful character as "the 
 Almighty." His simple theology is this : God has mysteriously 
 doomed us to pain and want here ; if we bear it patiently and well 
 now, we shall be rewarded hereafter. Thus, speaking of the dead 
 who lie in the churchyard, he says 
 
 "The bill's made out, the reck'ning paid, 
 
 The book is crossed, the business done ; 
 On them the last demand is made, 
 And heaven's eternal peace is won." 
 
 Who will deny that there is some truth in this view with our 
 Lord's words before him ? " But Abraham said, Son, remember 
 that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise 
 Lazarus evil things ; but now he is comforted, and thou art tor- 
 mented." But at best it is a view which can only help men to
 
 JOHN CLARE. 319 
 
 endure ; it is utterly powerless to raise them from sin, from 
 suffering, and woe. 
 
 Oh! when will the true light shine upon our poor pagani ? 
 when will they learn that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is not a stern Fate, who dooms thousands of His creatures 
 to want and misery ? How could they, if they were truly taught 
 His character from the Bible, and learnt there what pains the God 
 of Moses took to prevent any of His people coming to utter 
 poverty ? 
 
 Only let the true gospel be preached, the good news that God 
 himself is the Saviour, the Redeemer of man, and this melancholy 
 religion which teaches men calmly to resign their children to want 
 and dirt in reality to disease and death will pass away as a 
 dark oppressive cloud from the minds and souls of our agricultural 
 poor, and enable them to be, as they ought from their occupation 
 to be, the most joyous, most independent inhabitants of our land.
 
 III. 
 
 A PEASANT PREACHER. 
 
 (Golden Hours, 1873.) 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 
 
 FEW men have been more abused or misrepresented than William 
 Huntington. Crabbe openly satirizes the Peasant Preacher in 
 his " Borough ; " but his style of painting was too conscientious to 
 misrepresent very considerably. It is Southey and Macaulay, 
 however, who have given currency to the true notion of his 
 character usually entertained. It consists in what Carlyle calls 
 "The fanatic-hypocrite theory." Fanaticism is so vague a charge, 
 so entirely dependent for its meaning on the maker of it, that I 
 leave it to the facts of Huntington's life to show how far it is true 
 or false. But as to hypocrisy, no one with the slightest sympathy 
 for the struggles of the human soul, unless he is already pre- 
 judiced, can read Huntington's remarkable autobiographies and 
 believe him a hypocrite. John Sterling, the friend of Maurice, 
 of Carlyle, and of Julius Hare, thus writes to the latter concerning 
 him : 
 
 "I read last night a small volume by W. Huntington, S.S., 
 called 'Heaven taken by Prayer.' Seldom have I been more 
 astonished, all my impressions of him having been derived from a 
 dimly remembered and most scurrilous and coxcombical article 
 (unless I do it great injustice) of Southey 's in the Quarterly Review, 
 and from an anecdote quoted out of Matthews the comedian's 
 life, which on such an authority I do not credit. This little book 
 shows him as the worthy compeer of Bunyan, and there is hardl 
 
 320
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 321 
 
 any one in history whose sincerity I could less easily doubt. His 
 narrative is one of the most deeply affecting and heart-seizing I 
 ever saw, and he seems to me to be 'a Cobbett with a conscience.' 
 In that additional idea, by the way, what a world of difference lies. 
 The book would have charmed Coleridge, the fourth volume of 
 whose literary remains I have just looked through." 
 
 Some modern philosophers would have us believe that the 
 Conscience is a thing formed by the code of morals by the 
 notions of right and wrong current in the society into which we are 
 bora. That such notions deeply affect the Conscience is plain, 
 but if they were its origin, it would rest satisfied in them, which 
 it never can. 
 
 Nothing, for instance, is more certain than that Huntington's 
 Conscience could not be satisfied with the code of morals, with 
 the notions of right and wrong which obtained in the society into 
 which he was born; that it impelled him to seek quite another 
 code even God's right or wrong. And yet if we glance at the 
 condition of that society, we shall see at once how deeply its 
 notions of right and wrong gave form and character to his con- 
 science, its manifold evils intensifying those peculiarly dark views 
 of God's relation to the world which his early experience and his 
 inherited tendencies inclined him to take. 
 
 It was the end of an age. All society was in dissolution. Lust, 
 murder, robbery, and atheism sat enthroned in Europe. " Since 
 the reign of the Roman emperors profligacy had never been con- 
 ducted in so open and undisguised a manner as under Louis XV. 
 and the Regent Orleans. All that we read in ancient historians, 
 veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language, of the orgies 
 of ancient Babylon, was equalled if not exceeded by the nocturnal 
 revels of the Regent Orleans, the Cardinal Dubois, and his other 
 licentious associates." x Paris set the fashion, London was not far 
 behind. Not only lords, but ladies of the first families were 
 openly dissolute in their conduct. A state of society which could 
 produce a Duke of Queensberry must have fallen to the lowest 
 pit of corruption. For there were few noblemen indeed who were 
 not drunkards, gamblers, or licentious. As to the clergy, they 
 followed the prevalent fashion, and none but a Methodist thought 
 
 1 Alison. 
 
 y
 
 322 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 it incongruous in a minister of the Gospel to play at cards, follow 
 the hounds, or drink deep. What London society had become 
 Hogarth's prints reveal. One has only to look over a few of 
 them to feel heartsick at the dissoluteness, the hardness, the 
 cruelty, into which all classes seem to have fallen. 
 
 Corrupt as society was in London, it professed itself shocked at 
 the barbarism of other parts of England. Ever since the war 
 with France, in the early part of the century, heavy protective 
 duties had been enacted to cripple the enemy's commerce. The 
 result had been the demoralization of the dwellers on the south- 
 east coast. Respect for laws divine and human was rapidly losing 
 ground, not only among them, but far into the interior. Smug- 
 gling was organized on so vast a scale that large capitalists entered 
 into it. The whole population gradually got mixed up in the 
 traffic, until they began to see no wrong in it. In the wilder 
 inland districts, such as the Weald and the New Forest, store- 
 houses were established, and lines of transit organized to the 
 metropolis. Daring spirits found it a far more profitable and an 
 infinitely more exciting employment than honest labour. Honest 
 labourers felt no scruple in adding to their miserable incomes by 
 acting as guides to the illicit convoys over the Downs, through the 
 miry lanes of the Weald, or the leafy shades of the New Forest. 
 The lawlessness was frightful, The coastguard had a terrible time 
 of it. Fights were common. Drunkenness, licentiousness, idle- 
 ness, infected the whole population. From smuggling to highway 
 robbery was a short cut. These Avere the days of Dick Turpin 
 and Jack Sheppard, of Jonathan Wild and Claude Duval. 
 
 In the very centre of the district thus demoralized, in a state 
 of society thus verging on dissolution, William Huntington was 
 born. Under what circumstances he came into the world, and *n 
 what a miserable manner he passed his childhood, he thus 
 relates : 
 
 " The place of my nativity is Cranbrook, in the Weald of Kent. 
 The house in which I was born lies between Goudhurst and Cran- 
 brook. If a person walks from Goudhurst to Cranbrook on the 
 main road he comes to a little green. About a quarter of a 
 mile from that green, on the high road, is a place called the Four 
 Wents, where four roads or ways meet. At that place are three
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 323 
 
 houses a farmhouse on the left hand, and two small houses on 
 the right. In the first of these small houses on the right hand is 
 the place where my mother brought me forth to see many an evil 
 day. My father was a day-labouring man, who worked for seven 
 or eight shillings in the winter, and in the summer for nine shill- 
 ings a week, which is but a small pittance to keep a family. My 
 mother bore eleven children, of which number I am the tenth. 
 My parents being very poor, and receiving no support from the 
 parish, we children fared very hard, and indeed seldom knew what 
 it was to have a belly-full of victuals above once in the week, 
 which was on the Sabbath day, when we were allowed to know 
 what a bit of meat was. But it often happened that rent, or some 
 other debt, was to be discharged, and on such accounts no meat 
 could be procured. These barren Sabbaths were mourning days 
 indeed to us young ones ; but to our sorrow, they frequently came. 
 Suffering with hunger, cold, and almost nakedness, so embittered 
 my life in my childhood, that I often wished secretly that I had 
 been a brute, for then I could have filled my belly in the 
 fields." 
 
 In all his writings he is singularly careless of dates. However, 
 we learn from the parish register at Cranbrook that he was born 
 February 2nd, 1745. 
 
 To add to the wretched lot to which the poor child was called, 
 a bar-sinister was on his birth. He was not the son of William 
 Hunt, his reputed father, but of Barnabas Russel, the farmer for 
 whom the ill-used man worked. Perhaps this was the reason that 
 he was not baptized until he was nearly six years of age, but left 
 a little outcast heathen in name as well as in fact. 
 
 Farmer Russel so far recognised his duty as to get him into the 
 Free School. Here he learnt to write a little, and to read in the 
 New Testament, but he was never taught to cast accounts. 
 
 He had previously learnt to read at a dame's school, and it was 
 standing at her knee, or at that of her old man, that he says he 
 first heard about God Almighty, as one who took note of chil- 
 dren's sins. This idea, he says with a grim, unconscious humour, 
 "stuck to my conscience a great while; and who this God 
 Almighty could be I could not conjecture ; and how He could 
 know my sins without asking my mother I could not conceive.
 
 324 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 At that time there was a person named Godfrey, an exciseman, in 
 the town, a man of a stern and hard-favoured countenance, whom I 
 took notice of for having a stick covered with white figures, and 
 an inkbottle hanging at the button-hole of his coat. I imagined 
 that man to be employed by God Almighty to take notice and 
 keep an account of children's sins ; and once I got into the 
 market-house, and watched him very narrowly, and found that he 
 was always in a hurry by his walking so fast ; and I thought he 
 had need to hurry, as he must have a deal to do to find out all 
 the sins of children. I watched him out of one shop into another 
 all about the town, and from that time eyed him as a most for- 
 midable being, and the greatest enemy I had in all the world, and 
 would shun him if possible; but if he happened to meet me 
 unawares in turning a corner, you might have struck me down 
 with a feather ; I hung down my head, bowed and scraped till I 
 could get out of his sight, and then I fled when none but conscience 
 pursued. This man was a terror to me a long time, and has 
 caused me to say many prayers." 
 
 Gradually he learnt more of this great God, but only sufficient 
 to make him terribly afraid. 
 
 " Punishment for sin I found was to be inflicted after death, 
 therefore I hated the churchyard more than all the ground in the 
 parish ; and it was a rare thing to catch me there in the dark. I 
 would travel any distance round about, rather than drag my 
 guilty conscience over that enchanted spot." 
 
 When about six or seven years old he went to work with his 
 mother's husband, who was a good man, but doubtless took a 
 most melancholy view of life, as well he might. The work was 
 threshing corn, and when the winnowing day came, which occurred 
 about once in three weeks, the farmer allowed them a dinner. If 
 it rained no winnowing could be done, and there would be no 
 dinner. 
 
 As the boy sat watching the clouds, the thought, he says, 
 " came into my mind, that God did everything contrary to people's 
 desires ; and that if I prayed for a fine day, it would surely rain ; 
 but if I swore I knew it would rain, then it certainly would not. 
 I obeyed this wretched temptation, and swore several dreadful 
 oaths that I knew it would rain, and it cleared up and rained not.
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 325 
 
 So the ' father of lies ' appeared to speak the truth. We dressed 
 the corn, and I got my dinner." This fatalism and devil-worship 
 was probably shared by many beside himself. However, the Light 
 that was in him struggled with the darkness which was gathering 
 thick as his nature developed with increasing years, and he came 
 more and more under the influence of the tone of thought around 
 him. When he was about eight years old he learnt his first lesson 
 in the power of prayer. 
 
 "I also remember to have once heard a person say that all 
 things were possible with God ; which words I secretly treasured 
 up and pondered in my heart; and as I had great desire at 
 that time to live in the capacity of an errand-boy with a certain 
 gentleman in the place, it came into my mind that, if all things 
 were possible with God, it was also possible for Him to send me 
 to live as a servant-boy with Squire Cooke ; though at the same 
 time he had a boy who I believed was well approved of. Notwith- 
 standing this last circumstance, I privately asked God, in an ex- 
 tempore way, to give me that boy's place; and made many 
 promises how good I would be if He granted me this request. 
 For many days I privately begged of God this favour, which no- 
 body knew but God and myself, till now I relate it. I believe I 
 went on in this way of praying, sometimes under a hedge, or on my 
 bed, for a week or two; and I thought, if God granted me this 
 favour, I should know whether all things were possible with Him 
 or not. Having prayed for many days, and finding no likelihood 
 of an answer, I readily concluded that there was no God ; and 
 therefore I had no cause to be so afraid of sinning, nor had I 
 any occasion to pray to Him any more. Accordingly I left off 
 praying for some time, and then began again, till at last I left off 
 entirely. Some few days after this, there came a man to my 
 father's house and said, ' William, Squire Cooke wants a boy ; why 
 don't you go after the place ? ' I said ' John Dungy lives there.' 
 He answered, ' No ; he is turned away.' I asked for what. He 
 replied, ' Old Master Coley, the oysterman, went there a few days 
 ago to carry some oysters ; and while the old man was gone with 
 a measure of them into the house, the boy robbed the pads, as 
 they hung on the horse while he was tied up at the gate ; and the 
 mistress, seeing him, discharged him for it.' To my astonishment
 
 326 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 I got the place, and the bargain was struck at twenty shillings per 
 annum. For many days and weeks an uncommon impression 
 about the power of God lay fresh on my mind." 
 
 Half starved, his utmost wish had thus been to get a place, and 
 so fare better, but now, no longer troubled on that account, he did as 
 young rustics mostly do fell in love. The affection was mutual, and 
 so intense on his part that in after life, referring to it, he says, " She 
 shot me through the heart, and killed me to all but herself; and 
 I believe I could have served as many years for Susan Fever as 
 Jacob did for Rachel." 
 
 Under the influence of this attachment he determined to learn 
 a trade, and so apprenticed himself to his brother-in-law, who was 
 a gun-maker ; but the man drank so hard that he ruined himself 
 and his business, and his apprentice had to try his fortune else- 
 where. 
 
 Out of employ and getting ragged, his sweetheart's parents 
 began to look coldly upon him, and were anxious to break off the 
 match. In the sequel the lovers fell into the sin so frequent 
 among their class ; probably they hoped that when the result became 
 known it would lead to marriage. However, neither the father 
 nor the parish authorities would consent, so the young man was 
 summoned before the magistrates, and ordered to pay a regular 
 sum for the maintenance of the child. 
 
 In order to drown the trouble he was in, he now gave himself 
 up to dissipation, and amongst other things learned to dance. 
 Falling, however, dangerously ill, he thought he was about to die, 
 and that if he did, he would certainly be lost. When he recovered 
 he vowed that he would never dance again, but for some time 
 conscience gave him no peace, hardly allowing him to sleep at 
 nights. At last he determined to leave Cranbrook, as the weight 
 about his neck prevented him making any way. 
 
 From this time for years his life was one continued scene of 
 change and trouble, sometimes one occupation, sometimes another ; 
 driving a hearse at Tunbridge Wells, then working at Arundel and 
 at Chichester ; then at Epsom, at Riverhead, at Low Leyton. His 
 life, in fact, was that of the ordinary field labourer on tramp, some- 
 times sleeping in the open air, and on one occasion going without 
 food for three days and three nights together.
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 327 
 
 This sort of existence brought on a severe illness, which over- 
 took him at Danbury, in Essex. However, a good Samaritan in 
 the shape of the hostess of the " Bell " had pity upon him, and 
 nursed and fed him as if he had been her own child. 
 
 Soon after he recommenced his wanderings he found himself in 
 Kent, and the fear came upon him that he should be arrested for 
 the debt now due to the parish of Cranbrook, and thrown into 
 prison. Whereupon he thought that he would change his name 
 from Hunt into Huntington, so that they might not find him out. 
 But like the former sin, of which this was indeed the corollary, he 
 was severely punished for the deceit, since, after he had been long 
 accustomed to it, and probably thought no more about it, it was 
 discovered and exposed, and used as a handle against his fame as 
 a public preacher. It gave him the appearance of an impostor, an 
 appearance which an unusually sincere life and the passing away 
 of a whole century has never entirely worn off. 
 
 And as so often happens, the fear which led to the deception 
 was, after all, baseless. Susan Fever had already married some one 
 else, and it would appear that soon after he had tidings of her 
 death. 
 
 In the same year that he changed his name (1769) he married a 
 native of Dorset Mary Short, a hardworking, religiously disposed 
 woman, two years older than himself. She told him that she 
 would make a good man of him, which no doubt was one reason 
 why he married her. 
 
 However, his domestic life began sadly enough. He lamed him- 
 self and fell ill, and soon got so low in the world as to want food. 
 To add to his trials, his firstborn, a little girl, suddenly died. 
 
 The accumulation of trouble which had thus befallen him forced 
 home upon him the conviction that the continued misfortune 
 which had now dogged his steps for years was owing to his sins. 
 He felt that he had neither known, feared, loved, nor served God 
 as he ought. 
 
 Had Huntington lived three hundred years earlier, he would 
 have talked his wife into letting him go and cast himself at some 
 monastic gate, begging admission on any terms, so that he might 
 once and for ever quit the world. But his spiritual conflict was not 
 to be fought out in a convent, but in a cottage ; not in the grave-
 
 $28 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 like silence of a stony cell, but amidst a thousand domestic cares, 
 in a close chamber, with nothing to hide his agony from wife and 
 little ones but an old curtain behind which he could pray. 
 Nevertheless he followed in the w r ake of the great mediaeval spirits, 
 and, according to the manner of his day, forsook the world. He 
 was naturally of a cheerful turn of mind, and fond of jovial 
 society : but now he determined to give up all companionship ; 
 and, that he might the more thoroughly carry out his resolution, 
 removed from Mortlake, where he was working, to Kingston, pre- 
 ferring to walk a dozen miles a day rather than run the risk of 
 being entangled again in bad company. 
 
 He became very regular at church, had daily prayer with his 
 wife, and learnt several little prayers to say as he walked to and 
 from the scene of his labour. But to his dismay he found that 
 the more he tried to act rightly, the more he felt inclined to do 
 wrongly. This continual struggle brought home the sense of sin 
 so terribly to him, that he fell into the deepest gloom and despair. 
 
 " Molly," he cried out to his wife, " I am undone for ever ; I 
 am lost and gone ; there is no hope nor mercy for me. You know 
 not what a sinner I am ; you know not where I am, nor what I 
 feel ! " 
 
 It was the beginning of a state of mental anguish only paralleled 
 by that related with such graphic force in Bunyan's "Grace 
 Abounding." 
 
 Hell became to him the one great reality. It swallowed up 
 every other thought. He envied the horses and cattle, because 
 they had no judgment-day to fear ; he wished that he had never 
 been born. For a long time he was tempted to throw himself 
 into the Thames. 
 
 The interest and peculiarity of Huntington's struggles lies in 
 the fact that it was due in no way to human influence. 
 
 No fellow-sinner had reproved him ; no Mr Evangelist had ever 
 said to him, " Flee from the wrath to come ; " no Vicar-General 
 Staupitz had told him to look alone to Jesus ; no holy Monica 
 was praying for him. 
 
 He was so ignorant, that though he had lived twenty-six years 
 in a so-called Christian land, he did not know where Christ was 
 born. As to other people's doings or thinkings, he knew nothing
 
 WILLIAM HUNxiNGfoisr. 329 
 
 about them, nor, indeed, to his great harm, did he at any period 
 of his life seem to wish to know. It does not appear that he had 
 ever heard of John Bunyan at this time ; as to Luther, he may 
 have heard the name, but that was all. Doubtless in his tramp- 
 ings over the metropolitan counties he had met with Methodist 
 preachers ; but it does not seem that he had ever listened to any. 
 Besides, he was born in a locality and amongst a people over 
 whom Methodism never has been able to obtain much influence, 
 and with tendencies which made him one of its greatest opponents 
 to the end of his days. And it so happens that at this very time 
 he regarded them with horror, as deceivers who came to draw 
 ignorant people from the Church, wolves in sheeps' clothing, 
 wretches that would hasten the end of the world. He was loth 
 to meet them, and wondered King George suffered them to 
 preach. 
 
 So far from listening to such unauthorised preachers, he was 
 most devout in going to church, waiting with hungry soul and 
 open ears for the least scrap of information which should relieve 
 his burdened spirit. He went from church to church " to find a 
 minister who could point out the way to him wherein God, in His 
 justice, could save a sinner;" but not a word did he hear that 
 could help him. He had so deep a reverence for the clergy, that 
 it never entered into his mind that perhaps, after all, it was " like 
 people, like priest ; " but he came instead to a curious conclusion, 
 worthy of note as suggestive of the extraordinary ideas ignorant 
 people may be entertaining. He says, " As I went mourning 
 home from one of these church-goings, it came into my mind that 
 the clergy knew which way God could save sinners, but that they 
 would not tell us, lest we should get as wise as themselves ; that 
 they had learned the path, but their keeping us ignorant of it was 
 on purpose to keep us close to the Church." 
 
 At last he thought it would do him good if he received the 
 Sacrament. So he set off to speak to his clergyman, but not 
 finding him at home he went to the clerk. This worthy proposed 
 adjournment to the public-house, where they might arrange the 
 matter over a glass of rum and water. As the old clerk staggered 
 out of the beer-shop into the dark night, he gave the poor man 
 this advice : " Don't," said he, " go to my master, or to any other
 
 33 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 parson, but," pointing with his finger up to the stars, " go there ; 
 if I was in your case I would go there." 
 
 Next Sunday he humbly waited after service, and when all the 
 quality had partaken, his old friend motioned him to the com- 
 munion table. However, he came away with all his guilt and 
 distress just as great as when he went, and began to think that 
 religion, instead of making him better, every day made him worse. 
 His body got weaker and weaker, so that he had hardly strength 
 enough to go about his work, while his mind was more and more 
 harassed, so that he became peevish and ill-tempered, a burden to 
 his wife as well as to himself. 
 
 But he was not left without teaching. Every now and then the 
 Divine Light burst in upon him, and flooded his soul with joy ; 
 but dark clouds of unbelief rose again, and he sank into a deeper 
 night than before. 
 
 Early in his narrative he describes with great beauty one such 
 moment of Divine illumination : 
 
 " Going one morning to my labour, groaning under the perilous 
 state my soul was in, and I think as completely miserable as any 
 mortal could be and live, it came suddenly into my mind, ' I 
 wonder in what part of the world Jesus Christ was born ? ' though 
 at that time I had no more knowledge of Him, who He was, or 
 what He came to do, than one of the Arabs in the deserts of 
 Arabia. 
 
 " I was wondering where He was born, and it came into my 
 mind that He was born in the East, because our clergy turn their 
 faces to the East when they read their creeds. I then looked 
 from point to point eastward ; determined to be sure to dart my 
 eyes, if possible, straight to the spot, if I darted them slowly round 
 two quarters. 
 
 " However, when my eyes came to the sun, which was just then 
 risen above the hills, I felt such a love and spirit of meekness flow 
 into my soul, from the thoughts of Christ's name and birth, as I 
 never had felt before. 
 
 " I burst out, and wept so loud, that I believe a person might 
 have heard me at a distance of twenty or thirty rods. And 
 although I had at that time no idea of what Christ came to do, or 
 what He died for, yet I had an amazing sense of His sufferings on
 
 WILLIAM ttUNTINGTON. 33 1 
 
 my heart, which filled me with love to Him, and I pitied Him in my 
 soul, and found a great dislike to the Jews for using Him so 
 cruelly ; still, however, I remained profoundly ignorant of the 
 benefits of His cross." 
 
 On another occasion he was at Kingston Church, listening to 
 the anthem, when the sweet music so carried him above all his 
 despair that he could not tell whether he was in the body or out 
 of it. 
 
 While this internal conflict was going on he was often the mark 
 for the gibes and mockings of his fellow-workmen ; so much so 
 that he was glad to accept a gardener's place at Sunbury, and so 
 ease himself from this annoyance. 
 
 He was aware that the man whose successor he was to be had 
 cut his throat, after robbing his master ; but he was much cast 
 down when the old woman in charge of the house took him up 
 into the chamber where the unhappy man had slept, and after 
 dilating on the circumstances, and pointing out the marks on the 
 floor, she told him that this was the room he was to occupy, and 
 the bed upon which he was to sleep. 
 
 It is impossible to do justice to the terrific struggles the soul of 
 the poor gardener now went through. The prey of violent 
 temptations by day, the thought of sleeping in the same'apartment 
 in which Satan had already conquered a fellow-mortal took away 
 sleep at night. At last the battle became so sore, and his despair 
 so great, that he sat down and seriously meditated making terms 
 with the fiend. But as the thought came upon him, a profound 
 fear of God, he says, took possession of his soul, utterly destroying 
 the potency of the temptation, so that he arose and went into the 
 garden to his labour. As he worked he began to pray ; and as 
 his eyes involuntarily rose to heaven he saw a rainbow spanning 
 the firmament. " There is a. God, and the Bible is true ! " he 
 exclaimed. " God's Word says, 'I will set My bow in the 
 cloud,' and there it is ; my eyes now see it : there is a God, and 
 God's Word fs true ! " 
 
 The memory of that rainbow encouraged him for a time, and 
 he became still more earnest in his endeavours to keep from sin. 
 He determined again to take the Sacrament, and to fit himself for 
 it ; and to do battle against the enemy he fasted so continuously
 
 332 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 
 that his stomach began to reject all kinds of food. This second 
 attempt on his part to approach the Lord's table led to worse 
 results than before. He was overwhelmed with the thought that 
 if a man sinned after he had received the Sacrament there was no 
 help for him. Driven to desperation, he determined to give up 
 religion altogether ; he would crush this accusing conscience, and 
 live as other men. Accordingly, he turned into the alehouse, 
 sought company, went to a review, did all he could to throw off 
 his fears, saying to himself, " If I am damned, I shall not be 
 damned alone; the great part of mankind will bear me company." 
 
 In this dissolute course he persisted for weeks, until he met 
 with a man who made him a present of a manuscript sermon. He 
 took it home, opened it, and this was the text " For Tophet is 
 ordained of old ; yea, for the king it is prepared ; he hath made it 
 deep and large, the pile thereof is fire and much wood ; the breath 
 of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." 
 
 As the unhappy sinner read the sermon his hair stood on end, 
 and such was his terror that he thought for a few minutes he was 
 really in hell. In his remorse for his late misconduct he says, in 
 his strong way, that " he thought he should have torn the flesh 
 from his bones." He stripped himself, knelt down, and vowed 
 that if God would pardon this act of wilful rebellion, he would 
 never again enter a public-house in Sunbury. 
 
 It was shortly after this, on that very walk home from a visit to 
 the new mansion which Lord Clive was erecting for himself, and 
 in referring to which Macaulay has made so many mistakes, show- 
 ing his ignorance of Huntington's real life and character, that the 
 idea of the doctrine of election first broke in upon his mind. His 
 companion had heard Whitefield, Romaine, and other great 
 preachers in London, and they, he assured him, said that only the 
 elect would be saved and none else. " Then," said Huntington, 
 "there is no cause to try for salvation." "No," rejoined the 
 other, " you can do nothing if you do." 
 
 Soon after this he was looking over a prayer-book, when he came 
 upon the Articles. He had never noticed them before, but now 
 he read them ; and sure enough there was the doctrine of election 
 plainly and fully expressed. 
 
 So he got his Bible, and began to look all over it, with a view
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 333 
 
 to see if it was there also. To his surprise, the more he read, and 
 the more he searched, the more he found about it, until at 
 last it seemed to him written everywhere. 
 
 Happily, he was not left long to ponder on this doctrine ; only 
 just long enough to make it a step in his deliverance. For at this 
 time it did nothing more than make him feel man's utter impotency 
 and his entire dependence on the grace of God for salvation. It 
 stopped once and for ever all resolutions, vows, fastings, and other 
 vain efforts at making himself righteous. It led him one more 
 step down into the deepest, darkest dungeon of despair ; the 
 belief that he himself was not, could not be, one of the elect, and 
 that therefore for him there was no salvation. 
 
 It was near Christmas 1773, he was standing on a ladder prun- 
 ing a large pear-tree ; a whole stream of thought was passing through 
 his soul. He reviewed all the struggles he had been through; 
 how he had resolved, and how he had broken his resolutions ; how 
 hard he had tried ; how he had battled and prayed, and all in vain ; 
 how diligently he had read the Scriptures, but how impossible it 
 had been to make them agree ; how great had been the fight, and 
 how thorough the defeat. He recalled the facts of his life, 
 especially the stigma on his birth. The offspring of adultery, how 
 could he possibly be among the elect? "Oh," he cried in his 
 agony, " that I was a brute, a reptile, or an insect ! Oh that I 
 could sink into non-existence ! that death temporal could but 
 finish all ! Oh that there were no judgment to come ! But I 
 know there is and a final doom fixed ; and I shall shortly know 
 the worst of it ; for I am almost mad and almost dead ! " 
 
 As he thus sank in utter despondency, and the very lowest 
 depths seemed to be reached, suddenly a great light shone in upon 
 his soul, and he thought he saw two rays lighting up this awful 
 doctrine upon which he had been pondering. One ray seemed to 
 light up all the commandments, threatenings, and curses; the 
 other all the promises and divine invitations. The vision was so 
 dazzling, so powerful, that it seemed to take away his senses ; and 
 in terror he descended from the ladder, crying out, as he looked 
 every way, and saw nothing but the vision, " What is it ? what is 
 it?" Immediately, he says, he heard a voice saying, in plain 
 words, " Lay by your forms of prayer, and go and pray to Jesus
 
 334 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS, 
 
 Christ ; do not you see how pitifully He speaks to sinners ? " He 
 goes on to say : 
 
 " I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but went to my 
 little tool-house to pray ; yet I cannot remember that I had at that 
 time any faith in the Saviour, or expectation of being heard 
 or answered ; to all appearance I was sunk too low for that. I 
 rather thought this vision was to bring me to a final end. There- 
 fore I trembled in myself, and was almost desperate, fearing that 
 I should shortly sink under that awful line of dreadful threatenings 
 and curses. 
 
 " When I came into my little tool-house, to the best of my re- 
 membrance I did as I usually had done ; that is, I pulled off my 
 blue apron, and covered my head and face with it ; for I was like 
 the poor publican, I could not even look up to God ; I was afraid 
 He would damn me if I offered to do it. 
 
 " I kneeled down and began to pray extempore, in the language 
 of one desperate, precisely thus : ' O Lord, I am a sinner, and 
 Thou knowest it. I have tried to make myself better, but cannot. 
 If there is any way left in which Thou canst save me, do Thou 
 save me ; if not, I must be damned, for I cannot try any more, nor 
 will not.' 
 
 " The very moment the last sentence had dropped from my lips, 
 the spirit of grace and of supplication was poured into my soul ; and 
 I forthwith spake as the Spirit gave me utterance. I immediately 
 prayed with such energy, eloquence, fluency, boldness, and famil- 
 iarity as quite astonished me ; as much as though I should now 
 speak Arabic, a language that I never learned a syllable of. And 
 the blessed Spirit of God poured th'e sweet promises into my heart 
 from all parts of the Scriptures in a powerful manner, and helped 
 my infirmities greatly by furnishing my faltering tongue with words 
 to plead prevalently with God. 
 
 " It came to pass that, after I had been wrestling in this manner 
 for about the space of a quarter of an hour, behold, Jesus Christ 
 appeared to me in a most glorious and conspicuous manner, with 
 all His body stained with blood ! He appeared in His aspect as 
 one greatly dishonoured and much abused, and yet inclined to 
 pity me. I turned my eyes from Him, but He pursued me, and 

 
 WILLIAM HUNTJNGTOX. 335 
 
 was still before me. I fell to the ground, and lay on my face, but 
 could not shun the sight. I never before saw sin in such a light 
 as I then did. 
 
 "The sight and sense of sin which I had in the sight of a 
 slaughtered Saviour filled my soul with indignation against myself 
 and my sin, and caused my bowels to sound with unutterable love, 
 pity, and compassion towards my highly-injured God and Saviour. 
 My murmuring was completely slain at once, and I cried out, ' Oh, 
 I cannot bear it ! Oh, send me to hell, to my own place, for I 
 deserve it ! I cannot, I will not complain. Oh, send me to hell ! 
 I did not know till now that I had been sinning against Thy 
 wounds and blood ! I did not know that Thou hadst suffered 
 thus for wretched me ! I did not know till now that I had any 
 concern in crucifying Thee ! I cannot beg mercy of my suffering 
 Lord and Saviour. No ; send me to hell, for I deserve it. Oh, 
 I will never complain, for I know that my complaining would be 
 unjust.' 
 
 " The more I strove to avoid Him, the nearer He approached ; 
 the vision opened brighter and brighter, and the impression was 
 made deeper upon my mind ; and the more I condemned myself, 
 and tried to creep into darkness from His sight, the more He 
 smiled upon me, and the more He melted, renewed, and com- 
 forted my soul. When I found I could not shun Him nor shut 
 out His dissolving beams, I arose from the ground and went into 
 the garden. Here I found all my temptations were fled ; my hard 
 thoughts of God, and the dreadful ideas I had of Him in His 
 righteous law, were dissipated ; my sins, which had stood before 
 me during so many months, with their ghastly and formidable 
 appearance, had spread their wings and taken flight, as far from 
 me as the east is from the west, so that no bird remained upon 
 the sacrifice. 
 
 
 
 "Thus sin, Satan, death, destruction, horror, despair, unbelief, 
 confusion, and distraction struck their flags, and were routed, 
 vanquished, and slain, before the triumphant Redeemer's divine 
 artillery, displayed from that wonderful armoury, the mystery of 
 the cross, where God and sinners meet.
 
 33<5 TYPICAL EXGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 " I went into the tool-house in all the agonies of the damned, 
 and returned with the kingdom of God established in my heart. 
 
 happy year ! O happy day ! blessed minute ! sacred spot ! Yea, 
 rather .blessed be my dear Redeemer, who 'delivered my soul 
 from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.' " 
 
 He now tried to go to work, but for that day at least it w r as im- 
 possible. 
 
 " Jesus Christ had come ; it was the year of jubilee with me, 
 and the earth must bring forth of herself, for I could not till the 
 ground. The servant was now freed from his master, and my 
 hands were delivered from the pots. My soul had got on the wings 
 of a dove ; she had fled to keep holy day, and I was determined 
 to keep holy day also. I therefore left the garden, and went to 
 Sunbury-common, where I could walk as many miles as I pleased 
 without being molested ; and there I blessed and praised God 
 with a loud voice, without anybody listening to the glorious con- 
 verse which I held with my dear Redeemer. 
 
 "When I came there I was amazed, for the whole creation 
 appeared in such embroidery as I had never before seen. 'His glory 
 covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise.' Indeed, 
 
 1 could not compare myself to anything, unless it was to one who 
 had been shut up in a dark cell from the moment of his birth till 
 he arrived at the age of twenty or thirty years, and then was turned 
 into the world on a glorious sunshiny day, and placed on an 
 eminence, where he could survey the greatest part of the world at 
 one view." 
 
 When he came home in the evening, " I went," he says, " into 
 the house laughing, crying, and saying to my dear Redeemer, ' I 
 have heaven enough. What can heaven be more ? What can it 
 add to this ? I desire no other heaven ; I have enough.' I took 
 the Bible down to read, and as soon as I opened it was so amazed, 
 that I did not know it to be the same book ; the glorious light 
 shone. in all the dark and obscure passages, for the day-dawn and 
 the day-star had risen in my heart 
 
 Few ever exercised faith more simply and entirely than Hunt- 
 ington now began to do. 
 
 Not long after the great event lately recounted had taken place, 
 he left Sunbury, and took a situation as gardener to the owner of
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 337 
 
 the powder mills at Ewell. His wages were to be eleven shillings 
 in summer, and ten shillings in winter. As he had been obliged 
 to pawn his best clothes to get money to move his goods, he had 
 to live very closely at first in order to save enough to redeem 
 them. Indeed, his capital in hand was simply nothing, for on 
 arriving at his new abode on Monday, he found that he had just 
 tenpence halfpenny left to provide for himself, wife, and child 
 until Saturday evening. 
 
 But having tested the power of prayer, and being, as he says, 
 rich in faith, he knelt down, and besought his God to send him 
 relief. 
 
 " The next evening," he relates, " my landlord's daughter and 
 son-in-law came up to see their mother, with whom I lodged, and 
 brought some baked meat, which they had just taken out of their 
 oven, and brought for me and my wife to sup along with them. 
 These poor people knew nothing of us nor of our God. The next 
 day in the evening they did the same; and kept sending victuals 
 or garden stuff to us all the week long. We had not made our 
 case known to any but God ; nor did we appear ragged, or like 
 people in want ; no, we appeared better in dress than even those 
 who relieved us ; but God sent an answer to our prayer by them, 
 who knew not at the same time what they were about, nor did I 
 tell them till some months after." Then it was that this good 
 neighbour told him that he had been impressed with the idea that 
 they had no victuals, although his wife scouted the notion saying, 
 " These people are better to pass than we are." 
 
 In order to save the money for the clothes, which, with interest, 
 came to nearly forty shillings, they had, as I have said, to pinch 
 and live very close. So they took to eating barley bread, sug- 
 gested by reading the passage, " There is a lad here with two 
 barley loaves and a few small fishes." " If," said Huntington to 
 his wife, " the poor Saviour and His Apostles ate barley bread, 
 surely we may." 
 
 Notwithstanding the saving thus effected, the effort at getting 
 the clothes out of pawn was so great that they sometimes lived 
 upon nothing else but their barley cakes. His fatherly heart 
 yearned over his little child, and he was much distressed to think 
 she should have to suffer on his account. However, he relates in 
 
 z
 
 338 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 his " Bank of Faith " how food was provided for them in a very 
 wonderful manner. Looking out, as he did, for the direct help of 
 God in all things great and small, he got the habit of making daily 
 observation of the judgments, mercies, and providences of God. 
 His relation of these events in his " Bank of Faith " has brought 
 upon him the utmost indignation and contempt. Southey says, 
 " There is nothing like it in the whole bibliotheca of knavery and 
 fanaticism." And yet Southey, I imagine, would not have 
 objected to Dr Arnold's assertion of the special providence of 
 God as manifested in an event of such proportions as the break- 
 up of the Napoleonic power by the unprecedented severity 
 of the winter of 1812. But when it comes to Divine interposi- 
 tion on behalf of a poor labouring man and his family, 
 the result appears so inadequate to the grandeur of the power 
 exercised, that it strikes him as incongruous and absurd. But 
 this is as unreasonable as it is contrary to the teaching of the 
 Gospels. 
 
 William Huntington may well be called a representative, typical 
 man. In him the character of the peasant of the great Weald of 
 Surrey, Sussex, and Kent is most forcibly expressed. A man of 
 intense individuality, and therefore very independent in thought 
 and action, very obstinate in his own opinions, and most indomit- 
 able in carrying out his own plans ; his profound reverence for all 
 that was above him rendered him naturally a firm believer in 
 the Divine order of things, just as he found it around him. No 
 Tory of the Tories could possibly have been more so. He ac- 
 cepted, without a doubt, the glaring disparities of life the destitu- 
 tion and starvation of some, the plethoric wealth of others as 
 agreeable to the Divine intention, and regarded all liberals and 
 reformers as " lovers of rebellion," and " men given to change." 
 In the King, the Church, and the Squirearchy it was natural to 
 him to believe. And if he turned upon the clergy, and 
 spoke slightingly of the services of the Church at this period 
 of his life, it was in that bitterness of spirit with which a 
 child turns upon indifferent and careless parents, the bitterness 
 of one who feels he has been defrauded of a father's and a mother's 
 love.
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 339 
 
 Withal he had been tempted, and had fallen into exactly the 
 sins of his people. Confusion of ideas concerning courtship and 
 matrimony, with the burden and sorrow accruing therefrom ; want 
 of confidence in other men's good intentions; and suspicion 
 leading to deceit, such, we have seen, had been his temptations, 
 and these too were the temptations of the peasant of the 
 Weald. 
 
 An earnest-hearted, long-suffering people, capable of becoming 
 very dark, ignorant, besotted, and depraved, or of rising to a 
 grandeur and nobility of faith, such as all the crackling fires of 
 Smithfield could never burn out, these people now began to 
 find in their fellow-peasant one who expressed their deepest 
 thoughts. 
 
 His first hearers were the man and his wife who had wel- 
 comed him so kindly to Ewell. They invited him to come 
 into their cottage and talk to them. Others came, but he was 
 not satisfied to go on before he had taken the advice of the 
 minister of a Methodist meeting he now attended at Kingston. 
 His teacher thought it right to deter him by drawing a picture of 
 the responsibility of any one who attempted the work of preach- 
 ing. This greatly distressed and alarmed him. Moreover, he 
 fancied the people at the chapel looked coldly upon him. They 
 could not understand him, and were afraid of him. 
 
 No human being, in fact, could be blamed for not seeing in this 
 rough, unmannerly gardener, with his strange thoughts only half 
 expressed, a great and powerful preacher. 
 
 But what could so wonderful an experience mean if he had not 
 passed through it for others ? Why, indeed, should he have been 
 singled out for special teaching if he was not to teach his brethren ? 
 He had learned something which he believed was of infinite im- 
 portance for them to know. That knowledge had come to him 
 not from books, or even sermons, but, as he believed, by a 
 heavenly vision and by the action of a heavenly Teacher. What 
 more real call could any preacher have than this ? 
 
 And if he wanted a human amen to the Divine message, he 
 soon had it. His neighbours crowded into the little thatched cot- 
 tage, and their testimony was expressed by one of their number, a 
 poor unhappy woman, who was induced by her husband to come
 
 340 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 to the meeting. She went home, dreamt the world had come to 
 r.n end, and that in her distress she cried out, " There is Light in 
 Ev.-ell Marsh ! " 
 
 After a time he began to take a text, and the first he thus 
 preached from was characteristic of his future style and 
 theology. It was taken from the Song of Solomon " A garden 
 enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain 
 sealed." 
 
 " After this," he says, " I found my heart like a springing well. 
 The next morning passages of Scripture flowed in upon my mind, 
 till I longed to pour them out ; and various heads of discourse 
 would naturally arise from various texts." 
 
 " When I left work I used to take my book and walk out into 
 the corn-fields, sit down among the standing corn, and there read 
 and pray, and talk to my Redeemer, who seemed to show His 
 loving-kindness so conspicuously to me. In the lonely fields and 
 under the hedges I used to continue till nine or ten o'clock in the 
 evening, and it was like bathing in the river of pleasure. In the 
 morning I generally arose very early, and had most delightful, soul- 
 humbling times in prayer, which sent me to my labour in peace, 
 knowing and feeling that all things stood fair between Christ and 
 my conscience; when this was the case I knew all was well. 
 Some of the sweetest hours that ever I enjoyed, or perhaps ever 
 shall enjoy in this world, were at Sunbury in Middlesex, and at 
 Ewell, in Surrey, where I had no friend but He that loveth at all 
 times ; no brother but He that was born for adversity ; no father 
 but the Father of Mercies, and God of all comfort ; no spiritual 
 neighbours but the elect angels ; no mother but the heavenly 
 Jerusalem ; no fellowship but with the Father and the Son ; no 
 communion but with the Holy Ghost ; no delights but in heavenly 
 things ; no teacher but the Almighty ; no comforter but the Con- 
 solation of Israel ; no amusements but in the covenant of grace ; 
 no constant companions but faith, hope, and charity. I had no 
 hypocrite to ensnare and oppose me : no impostor to mislead 
 me ; no apostate to stumble me." 
 
 A preacher thus instructed, ignorant and unlearned though he 
 was, could not be hid in a corner. It was not long before the 
 whole parish seemed stirred up against him, so that when harvest
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 341 
 
 came, and his wife joined the gleaners in the field, she was 
 driven out with the taunt, " What ! wives of the clergy go a- 
 gleaning ? " 
 
 His master, too, finding that some of the men began to refuse 
 to work on Sunday, thought it was high time to get rid of him. 
 So he had to leave Ewell, and went to Thames Ditton, where he 
 got a situation as a coal-heaver at ten shillings a week. 
 
 Here he commenced to preach, and soon found himself opposed 
 far more roughly than he had been at Ewell. Persecution by the 
 State had longed ceased, but persecution by the mob was what 
 every unauthorized preacher had to expect. 
 
 Many efforts were made to destroy his little meeting. One 
 anecdote he relates in his " Naked Bow of God " will serve to 
 show the sort of persecution the mob were not only permitted, 
 but encouraged to carry out against those whom they called 
 Methodistical preachers. A woman who had a kitchen frequented 
 by bargemen adjoining the room he used to preach in, having 
 done her best to disturb the congregation, determined to lay a 
 plot to turn them into the aggressors. She entered the meeting, 
 struck one of the women, and then, some rising to turn her out, 
 she cried Murder, whereupon the mob smashed the doors to pieces 
 and attacked the meeting by burning asafoetida, and throwing 
 dirt over those present. After breaking up the seats, the 
 wretched crew smashed an entire window. The place being 
 licensed, a warrant was procured, and some of the aggressors 
 taken before the magistrates, but to little purpose, for it soon 
 appeared with whose side these worthy guardians of law and order 
 sympathized. 
 
 So the mob, meeting with such encouragement, adorned 
 their hats with blue ribbons, and followed their victims home, 
 the whole parish joining in the triumph; the bells being im- 
 mediately rung, and Huntington's little cottage beset on all sides. 
 His effigy was then burnt, and a blasphemous harangue delivered 
 by way of a funeral sermon. 
 
 On another occasion a man, hoping to disturb the meeting, 
 came into the room dressed in a woman's bonnet, petticoat, and 
 black oilskin cloak, his face smeared with tallow and coloured 
 with soot. Such practical jokes were not, however, so dangerous
 
 342 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 as the stoning with brickbats which now took place. Every 
 window in the little room was smashed, so that they were obliged 
 to brick them up and use candles. Finding these attacks did not 
 daunt the Coalheaver, but that he still persisted, they determined 
 to force their way into the room, and, as they phrased it, " pull 
 the fellow out of his hole," and so effectually frighten him. Hun- 
 tington was informed of the meditated outrage, and when the 
 evening came, heard the allies coming together to the peal of the 
 church bells. As he listened to the increasing din, and heard the 
 oaths and halloos without, his heart sank within him, and he began 
 to think it would be prudent to stay at home. But he says : " This 
 word soon put my cowardice to flight ' He that will save his life 
 shall lose it, and he that will lose his life for my sake and the 
 Gospel's shall find it.' I then left my habitation, and went 
 through the confused ranks of this enraged host to our place of 
 worship, with no other armour than half a grain of faith in my 
 heart, and a little Bible in my pocket." 
 
 His courage was rewarded by his complete deliverance, and the 
 ignominious overthrow of the leading spirit in the plot. This man 
 was an upper servant in a great family in the neighbourhood, and 
 had been unexpectedly despatched to London that very day. He 
 had ridden back hard that he might save his oath and execute his 
 promise. But ere he arrived his horse threw him ; he was taken 
 to a public-house, too much hurt to be removed for many 
 days. 
 
 The whole six years Huntington preached to the people at 
 Thames Ditton he did so without fee or reward, although he was 
 constantly in dire poverty. At such times he would have recourse 
 to his only source of daily help. When his children were suffering 
 at home from hunger and cold, he would pass the dinner-hour, 
 during which his fello \v-workmen were in the public-house, in the 
 barge-tilt or cabin, telling God how his little ones wanted bread. 
 On one occasion he says 
 
 " I was now a fortnight or more out of work, which sorely tried 
 me indeed ; for it so happened that we were forced to put our 
 little ones to bed one night without a supper, and their dinner 
 was a very scanty one. When they saw me look into the cup- 
 board, and shut the door again without giving them anything,
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 343 
 
 they lisped out some very pathetic though broken accents, 
 expressive of want, which touched my parental feelings very 
 sorely, and took away my rest for that night. 
 
 " In this miserable situation I knew not where to go. If I left 
 off preaching and ran from the work (as Jonah did), I should deny 
 the Lord that bought me. Though I was willing to work, yet 
 none would employ me on account of my religion ; and if I stayed 
 at home, my little ones were crying for bread." 
 
 He was relieved from this painful position by a friend who he 
 went to see, offering him a guinea, a friend, however, who knew 
 nothing about his distress, for Huntington had determined to say 
 nothing about it, but wait and see what the Lord would do for him. 
 This is one of innumerable instances which he relates in his " Bank 
 of Faith " of the way in which his wants were provided for. In- 
 deed, the road from coal-heaving and cobbling to the ministry was a 
 terrible struggle for a man with a family. The more he preached, 
 the less work of any other kind he could do; and the more, 
 therefore, he was obliged to live by the free-will offerings of those 
 who were taught by his preaching. For years he had no certain 
 human resource; for everything great and small he needed, 
 he depended on heavenly help. He accepted literally and 
 simply the words of the Sermon on the Mount "If God so 
 clothe the grass, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into 
 the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O ye of little 
 faith ? " 
 
 He now began to travel about, preaching in various parts of 
 Surrey. In 1776 he was ordained the minister over a few people 
 at Woking. How indefatigable he was in his work may be 
 gathered from the following statement of his engagements one 
 week : 
 
 " I was to go to Woking and preach on the Lord's day morning, 
 to Worplesdon in the afternoon, and from thence to Farnham in 
 the evening ; to preach at Petworth, in Sussex, on the Monday, 
 at Horsham on the Tuesday, at Margaret Street Chapel on the 
 Wednesday, and at Ditton on the Thursday evening ; but before 
 I could reach Ditton on the Wednesday I was so far spent that 
 I thought I must have lain down on the road, yet with much 
 difficulty I reached home ; and then I had to go to London." It
 
 344 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 thus appears that in five days he preached seven times, journeying 
 nearly 120 miles, chiefly on foot. 
 
 These prodigious labours, undertaken on so poor a fare as he 
 had to content himself with, brought him into such a condition 
 that he was obliged to gird his stomach with a handkerchief as 
 tight as he could bear it, in order to gather strength to enable him 
 to preach, as he sometimes did, three times a day. 
 
 At last his friends in London bought him a horse as he 
 believed, in answer to prayer. On this horse he took long 
 journeys across the country, so that he was enabled to do much 
 more with far less toil to himself. 
 
 In 1778 he was summoned before the magistrates at Kingston, 
 as one who had intruded himself into the parish of Ditton without 
 having gained any legal settlement. However, his influence had 
 now so increased, that some one in the metropolis hired two 
 lawyers to defend him, and he left the court triumphant. 
 
 In 1779 he was first invited to preach in London, supplying the 
 pulpit of a chapel in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square. 
 
 He had tried agricultural labour, gun-making, gardening, coal- 
 heaving, and cobbling, without making the slightest progress in 
 any one of them hardly, in fact, getting a subsistence by them ; but 
 now he became a preacher he was able, in three years after his 
 first sermon in London, to build a chapel on his own responsi- 
 bility. He had never shown the slightest enterprise in any other 
 walk of life, except perhaps when, in the ardour of love, he appren- 
 ticed himself to gun-making ; but now this poor coal-heaver, with 
 scarcely a penny in his pocket, had the courage to hire ground on 
 the Duke of Portland's estate, in Titchfield Street, at a rental of 
 ^"47 a year, and to set about erecting a chapel, relying for the 
 means to supply the money entirely upon Him whom he loved to 
 call his Divine Banker. Whether we call it faith or presumption, 
 as a matter of fact, the money was forthcoming, the place was soon 
 built, and named " Providence Chapel." 
 
 Once in London he rapidly rose in fame. By diligence and care 
 he overcame his uncouth provincial dialect, and such crowds came 
 to hear him, that in a few years he added a second gallery to the 
 chapel, making it big enough to hold 2000 persons. He evidently 
 regarded it as a sort of Ark, floating above the waters of a drowning
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 345 
 
 world, and it was his humour to commence his letters " The Cabin, 
 Monday morning," or " On board the Providence, Tuesday." 
 
 " I am here," he writes to a friend, " in my little cabin at the 
 chapel day and night, and no spot is so sacred or so highly esteemed 
 by me as this : it is to me Bethel, Mount Tabor, the hill Mizar. 
 Many a heavy load have I cast off here, and many a heavenly ray, 
 many a sweet foretaste of better days have I had in this little cot." 
 
 His first effort in London had only been one among his many 
 labours ; but even when he finally settled there he never gave up 
 his journeys into the country ; on the contrary, he extended them 
 to other parts of the land. In 1786 he spent six weeks at Bristol 
 and Bath, preaching to crowded audiences, and to the colliers at 
 Kingswood. 
 
 Probably, as a gardener or a coal-heaver, he had only been too 
 glad when the hour came to throw down the spade or the sack; 
 but now as preacher he never seemed able to rest. Every week he 
 preached five sermons in London of unusual length, besides 
 occasional ones elsewhere. While in the country, he mentions on 
 one occasion preaching as many as thirteen times in nine days. 
 As to time, he would not be limited, going on frequently for an 
 hour and a half or two hours ; and when on one occasion a man 
 in the congregation happened to turn his eyes to the clock, he 
 said, " We do not preach here by the hour." 
 
 He was at this time a tall, thin man, slight in figure, and 
 wonderfully erect, considering he had spent thirty years of his life 
 toiling in fields, in coal-sheds, or on the cobbler's bench. His 
 dress was the reverse of slovenly. From an early time he had 
 been particular about what he called his " parsonic livery." The 
 intelligence displayed in his square massive forehead and finely 
 arched brows was somewhat hidden by an ugly short-cropped 
 black wig he wore. Otherwise his features were not specially 
 handsome. The terrible struggles of his early life had left their 
 mark on his countenance. It was stern, and wanting in that 
 repose only observable in beautiful natures. There was, however, 
 a fund of humour which broke out on occasion, and made him 
 cheerful in society but it was slightly caustic, and as likely to 
 wound as to amuse. 1 
 
 1 His portrait, painted by Pellegrini, an Italian artist, is in the National 
 Portrait Gallery at Bethnal Green.
 
 346 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 A clergyman, who regularly attended his ministry in later times, 
 thus describes his manner in the pulpit : " He never either raved 
 or ranted, or even exerted his voice, which was clear and agreeable, 
 and if it had ever been powerful, became softened in his later 
 years. He laid great weight or emphasis upon the concluding 
 words of his sentences, which made them very forcible." 
 "Preaching," says Garnett Terry, who, in his day, was engraver 
 to the Bank of England, and an impartial witness, since he so far 
 fell out with Huntington as to threaten him with an action for 
 libel " preaching," he says, "was with Huntington talking his 
 discourses were as story-telling. No labour in his art, no action ; 
 his was the agreeable style of preaching, for in speaking, as in 
 writing, he seemed frequently to laugh in his heart. Engaging as 
 was this last trait in him, both from the pulpit and the press, it 
 was sometimes carried to excess, and displayed so as to act repul- 
 sively." He was generally so attractive, and his congregation so 
 intensely interested, that the majority rose from their seats and 
 stood, eager not to lose a word. 
 
 His memory was so good that in the latter part of his life he 
 never used a Bible in the pulpit, yet he was never known to make a 
 mistake in his text, or to be at a loss in quoting Scripture, 
 always giving the book, chapter, and verse. The Bible, in fact, 
 had been his sole school-book ; from its continual perusal he had 
 learnt to write and to speak in a style which makes him the 
 worthy compeer of Defoe and Cobbett ; on its glowing imagery 
 the more poetic side of his mind had feasted, until he became so 
 enamoured with it that he could not speak or write long without 
 falling into an Oriental strain. 
 
 This tendency may be seen in the titles of some of his sermons, 
 as "The Heavenly Work-folks and their Mystic Pay;" "The 
 Colour of the Fields and their Fitness for the Harvest ; " " The 
 Apartments, Equipage, and Parade of Immanuel." 
 
 He pushed his own peculiar views to extreme lengths, and as a 
 controversialist was wanting in all charity. A perfect Ishmael, 
 his hand was against every man, and every man's hand against his. 
 He violently opposed John Wesley, and his whole system of 
 divinity, and only agreed with him in politics. There were, in 
 fact, very few ministers of any denomination in London with
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 347 
 
 whom he could fraternize, or in whose preaching he had any 
 faith. 
 
 This suspicion was thoroughly reciprocal, and, except by 
 Romaine and two or three leading clergymen of the Evangelical 
 school, he was generally regarded as a conceited, dogmatic, 
 dangerous man. 
 
 That he was nevertheless capable of attracting even the noblest 
 hearts, when they had not been previously offended by his self- 
 assertion and bigotry, is clear by the way in which his writings have 
 affected such readers as Sterling ; and even in his own day there 
 were men of the same stamp who heartily believed in and appre- 
 ciated him. 
 
 Such was the pious and conscientious William James Brook, 
 vicar of Brighton and chaplain to the Prince Regent. Mr Brook 
 not only had an intense sense of the responsibility of his orifice, 
 and fearlessly rebuked the license of that voluptuous circle of 
 which the Regent was the centre and the Pavilion the scene, but 
 preferring conscience and duty to the prospect of the most exalted 
 usefulness, to say nothing of the high preferment within his reach, 
 determined to resign his living. 
 
 This act he ascribed mainly to the influence of Huntington's 
 books. He writes to him from Brighton in 1805 : 
 
 " I cannot longer delay expressing some of the feelings of my 
 heart. It has pleased God in His manifold mercies to make you 
 instrumental in bringing me out of my country, from my kindred 
 and my father's house, by sending some of your books to me when 
 my mind was first awakened, and I began to fall into trouble." 
 He then relates the effect of hearing him preach in London ; and 
 then goes on to say, " Receive this, a slight token of the union 
 and harmony my soul delights to find in every remembrance of you, 
 as of one whom God pointed out as a guide some years ago." 
 
 Another minister who was greatly affected by him was Mr 
 Algar Lock, who afterwards became his assistant. Mr Lock was 
 
 O * 
 
 in much distress of mind, and imagined he had committed the 
 unpardonable sin. Walking down Cheapside, he was suddenly 
 so overcome by his emotion that he seized hold of a lamp-post to 
 save himself from falling. A little old woman, who sat close by 
 Bow Church selling tapes, saw him, and detected at once from his 
 look what was the matter with him. " Oh," said she, " you must
 
 348 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 go and hear the Coalheaver, sir ; he is the man that will suit you ; 
 he preaches near here every Tuesday night." He went, and 
 Huntington gave out the text, " All manner of sin and blasphemy 
 shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Holy 
 Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men." " Let me out ! let me 
 out ! " cried the unhappy man. But the crowd was too great ; he 
 was compelled to remain, and that night he was delivered from 
 the fear which had so long oppressed him. 
 
 Others, men of widely different temperament, attended his 
 ministry. Mr Peto, founder of the firm of "Peto, Brassey, and 
 Co.," was one such. He was the builder of the Custom House, 
 and the following story is related in connection with laying its 
 foundation stone : The ceremony was performed by the Premier 
 of the day, the Earl of Liverpool ; and when Mr Peto handed the 
 mallet and trowel he was observed to offer a prayer. Lord Liver- 
 pool was much struck, and after the business was over learnt 
 from Mr Peto that he attended the ministry of Mr Huntington. 
 Next Sunday Lord Liverpool, and a number of persons with him, 
 came to hear the Peasant Preacher. 
 
 Several of the servants in the royal household were members of 
 the church of which Huntington was pastor ; the Princess Amelia 
 frequently came to hear him preach, and George III. himself was 
 known to have read some of his books. 
 
 Such success would have turned the head of a hypocrite or a 
 fanatic. That one whose birth was so ignominious, who for 
 years had been a poor labourer, a gardener, a coalheaver, a 
 cobbler, and at one time nothing more nor less than a tramp, 
 should stand up in the metropolis of England, and not only have 
 thousands crowding to hear him, but amongst them men of 
 thought and rank, was enough to tempt the sincerest and most 
 sensible of men to pride and self-exaltation. That Huntington 
 did not become quite giddy with the glory of his position must 
 be attributed to the same power which had enabled him to fight 
 with his spiritual darkness until God gave him light, and which 
 had upheld him when starvation stared him in the face, or per- 
 secution threatened to overwhelm him. Prayer, he writes in one 
 of his works, " is the ascent of the heart to the Almighty, and its 
 returns are the descent of Christ to the soul's help. Prayer is a
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 349 
 
 defence against the spirit of this world a bar to the inroads of 
 vanity." 
 
 From this temptation it was a refuge for him to dwell constantly 
 on the sovereign grace of God, to regard his elevation as 
 utterly unmerited, and to say, " He raiseth the poor out of the dust, 
 and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among 
 princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory." 
 
 However, the tendency in him was so strong that, notwithstand- 
 ing his opposition to all attempts on the part of a man to help 
 himself, he found the necessity of self-mortification. Instead of 
 the hair shirt and the flagellating whip, he fastened round his neck 
 the collar of service, and engraved upon it S. S., the "Sinner 
 Saved;" and further, published to the world all the degrading 
 circumstances of his early history. 
 
 It does not seem much to give up the hope of being able to 
 earn ten or eleven shillings a week, to be willing to risk so poor a 
 pittance to obey a divine call ; but little as it was, Huntington con- 
 ceived that it was vastly rewarded. " For some few years before I 
 was married," he writes, "all my personal effects used to be 
 carried in my hand, or on my shoulders, in one or two large hand- 
 kerchiefs ; but after marriage, for some few years, I used to carry 
 all the goods that we had gotten on my shoulders in a large sack. 
 But when we moved from Thames Ditton to London we loaded two 
 large carts with furniture and other necessaries, besides a post- 
 chaise well filled with children and cats. But at this time God 
 had given me such a treasure in my sack that it was increased to a 
 multitude ; we were almost a fortnight in getting away the stuff." 
 This idea that the attainment of wealth and influence were marks 
 of divine favour led him, as it has done thousands of his religious 
 fellow-countrymen, into new temptations, bringing at last undreamt- 
 of sufferings and degradations of a far more profound and enduring 
 character than these he attempted to inflict on himself. 
 
 Like John Clare, and most men who have passed their early 
 lives in the country, it was a great desire of his heart, when he 
 found money began to flow freely into his treasury, to have a little 
 farm. So in 1798, sixteen years after he had come to London, he 
 took a house and farm at Hendon. He had taken no heed of the 
 Apostle's word, " No man that warreth entangleth himself with the
 
 350 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 affairs of this life." Before he could take possession a trouble- 
 some lawsuit followed. It is to the removal of his furniture to 
 this place, which was called Cricklewood House, that he refers in 
 the extract above quoted. 
 
 His income at this time from the chapel is said to have been 
 about 2000 a year, in addition to which he must have derived 
 considerable profit from his numerous publications. People now, 
 finding he was so well off, began to load him with gifts. Thus one 
 sent him some guinea-fowls, another some barn-door fowls, another 
 a goose and gander, another some turkeys, another a hive of bees ; 
 two or three persons sent him sheep and ewes and lambs, another 
 a cow, while one person sent three hundred gooseberry and currant 
 plants, fourscore standard trees, and would insist upon keeping his 
 garden stocked in seeds and plants. Friends in the country, 
 especially from Sussex, kept sending him malt and peas and oats. 
 Presents in money came freely in, apparently just as he needed 
 it; occasionally fifty pounds at a time. But not satisfied with 
 loading their teacher with all this wealth, some of his admirers 
 were bent upon seeing him move about with as much magnificence 
 as the greatest in the land. So one day up drove a fine new coach 
 and a pair of horses, with the initials of his name and the initials 
 of his state, "W. H., S.S.," emblazoned on the panels of the 
 doors, on the pads of the harness, and on the blinkers of the 
 bridles. 
 
 It was contrary to Huntington's nature and to his principles to 
 hoard, so that he probably spent quite as quickly as he received. 
 Not only did he freely invite his former friends and acquaintances 
 to his house, and help his own poor relations ; not only did he 
 love to do real practical works of benevolence, such as setting men 
 up in business ; but remembering how delighted he had been 
 when a poor man with an extra shilling, he could never hire a 
 coach, or cross the river in a wherry, but he must pay double as 
 much as any other man. When he travelled he would give the 
 postboys half a sovereign ; he was known on one occasion to have 
 slipped a sovereign into a boatman's hand for merely taking him 
 to look over a ship at Woolwich ; on another he gave the same 
 amount to a poor cottager for giving him and a friend a cup of tea. 
 In keeping with such reckless munificence is the story told of his
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 351 
 
 calling his little grand-daughter to him, and putting a handful of 
 gold into her lap, just as if she had been a child of Croesus. 
 
 Very abstemious himself, he loved to see his friends enjoy 
 themselves. One Christmas his party numbered as many as a 
 hundred persons. To have been born to unknown wealth, to have 
 spent without a thought, to have allowed wasteful profusion to be 
 the habit of his household, to have staved in hogsheads of wine and 
 barrels of beer, and roasted oxen whole on every festive occasion ; 
 to have shared, in fact, with his neighbours all the good things 
 God had given him, asking only in exchange that he should be 
 lord paramount that all should wear his colours, and shout 
 " King and Church " till their throats were hoarse j and at last to 
 have died leaving his estate beggared, the whole country-side de- 
 bauched, and a name loved and enshrined in the hearts of the 
 people as the best of landlords, and the only true gentleman of his 
 race ; such would in all probability have been William Hunting- 
 ton's career had he been born in one of the stately homes of 
 England instead of in one of its miserable cots. Freely he had 
 received, freely he gave. In William Huntington the Sussex 
 peasant shows himself capable of a rude order of grandeur. 
 
 However, Huntington would never have risen to the point of 
 being recognised as a type of the South Saxon peasant had not 
 individuality been a marked feature in his character. 
 
 Having proclaimed from the housetops the wretchedness and 
 disgrace of his early days, having bestowed on himself the title of 
 S.S., as if it belonged alone to him, he now desired to set forth 
 with equal prominence the honour and glory to which he had been 
 raised. Not content, therefore, with merely appearing in decent 
 garb, he wore the great shovel hat of a clergyman, and dubbed 
 himself " the Doctor." Not content even with the grandeur of 
 his carriage and pair, he actually hired two more horses, and 
 drove about with regal pomp in a coach and four, a coachman 
 and footman in livery, and a superb hammercloth, made of a 
 tiger's skin with gilt claws. 
 
 Some may think he must have gone out of his mind. Nothing 
 of the sort. We have only to reflect what had been the history of 
 his life, how he had emerged from material misery, through 
 spiritual darkness into spiritual light, and so to material honour,
 
 352 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 to understand what a temptation it was to a man of his egotism to 
 display all his honours to the best advantage. 
 
 His habit of reflecting on William Huntington, of talking about 
 William Huntington, his extraordinary character and experience, 
 became to himself and to his followers an idol, which, if he truly 
 was what he believed himself to be, must be shattered, and shown 
 to be vanity. Romaine, who knew and appreciated him, when he 
 had read the first part of " The Bank of Faith," made this prescient 
 remark, " Self must be abased." And this was now about to be 
 fulfilled in Huntington's last experience. 
 
 Among the people who attended his ministry was a certain 
 Lady Sanderson. She was the daughter of one Lord Mayor, and 
 the wife of another. Sir James Sanderson, her husband, was 
 mayor in 1792, and for the support then afforded to Pitt's 
 Government against the rising revolutionary spirit was created a 
 baronet. This lady was a clever, engaging little woman, neat and 
 careful in her ways. She was fond of hearing sermons, visiting 
 prisons, and looking after orphans in fact, she was both religious 
 and philanthropic. To such a person it was a new sensation to 
 go and hear the famous Coalheaver. She went in a slightly mock- 
 ing spirit, as suited a person of her discernment, but somehow 
 returned in a very different frame of mind. No doubt the 
 preacher, with his power of spiritual analysis, had awakened some 
 unusual thoughts concerning her own fair profession. 
 
 After several visits to Providence Chapel, she sent her serving 
 woman to Mr Huntington's house to ask an interview, which was 
 immediately granted. Notwithstanding his numerous engage- 
 ments and love of meditation and retirement, the thought of this 
 interesting little widow was continually before him, so that he 
 frequently mentioned her in the letters he wrote during that 
 month of July 1803. Poor man, all he was thinking of was the 
 glory it would be to draw into the Gospel net this " lady of title " 
 for thus, in his old serf spirit, he writes when speaking of her. 
 
 However sincere Lady Sanderson may have been at first, it was 
 clear in the end that it was not so much the preacher as the man 
 who had fascinated her. The strong, deep-hearted coalheaver, so 
 rough in his manners, so blunt in his talk, so genuine in his kind- 
 ness, so spiritual in all his thoughts, had a wonderful attraction for
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 
 
 353 
 
 this delicate little lady, accustomed to such a different style of 
 man in the civic circle in which she had hitherto moved. 
 
 She hovered about him, was always calling at Cricklewood, 
 would even stay there, to Mrs Huntington's great annoyance. 
 For the latter, poor soul, was the first to learn that it was not all 
 gold that glitters. She, the faithful wife for more than thirty 
 years, the partner of her husband's trials, spiritual and temporal, 
 the woman whom neither peevishness nor poverty could alienate, 
 who had followed her master through all his manifold changes, 
 strange and alarming as they must sometimes have appeared to 
 her, had fallen the first victim to his prosperity. 
 
 Accustomed for long years to semi-starvation, the child pro- 
 bably of generations similarly starved, this unwonted plenty was 
 too much for her in fact, killed her. Still worse, her last 
 days were saddened by this shadow of Lady Sanderson passing 
 between her and her husband. Possibly that lady's business 
 ability was of some use at Cricklewood House. At any rate her 
 influence at last grew so great that in his preaching tours through 
 the country Mr Huntington consented to travel about in her 
 carriage. Of course this gave rise to much scandal, but he was 
 too blind to perceive it, and if he had done so, would probably 
 have felt a secret pleasure in setting the world at defiance. 
 
 His friends longed to warn him, but dared not. At last Brook 
 came, saw the state of things, and with his usual courage and con- 
 scientiousness took the task on himself. 
 
 "Sir," said he, "you are surrounded with hypocrites, who are 
 doing you injury ; why encourage their company ? " 
 
 "If," replied Huntington, "God has given you, Brook, discern- 
 ment to see it, He has not shown it to me." 
 
 "Then," said Brook, "the time will come when you will 
 assuredly find it so." 
 
 A second time and a third time he warned him, but only sue 
 ceeded at last in thoroughly enraging him. Huntington told his 
 friends that Brook was a hypocrite, and so turned his back on the 
 most faithful friend he had- 
 
 It does not appear that Huntington at this time entertained any 
 idea of marriage, but a year after (August 15, 1808) Lady 
 Sanderson became his wife* 
 
 2 A
 
 354 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 If the seer had not been blinded Huntington would certainly 
 have described the experience which now befel him under the 
 simile of Israel going into captivity. In truth, both he and his 
 admirers had fallen into idolatry. The great idol, William 
 Huntington, S.S., must be pulled down, and share the fate of all 
 other vanities. And now trouble followed upon trouble, disaster on 
 disaster, until at last, in July 1810, came the utter destruction by 
 fire of his beloved chapel, the scene of his triumphs, the monu- 
 ment of his greatest glory ! Within two months death removed his 
 only fellow-labourer. Next year witnessed the departure of Brook, 
 and in the account given of the way in which Huntington received 
 the news, we may learn the bitterness of his soul at this time. 
 
 He was walking in his garden, when his man asked him if he 
 had heard anything from Brighton. " No," he replied. " Then," 
 said the gardener, "I have to tell you, sir, that Mr Brook is 
 dead." It was like a stab to the heart ; he moved on without a 
 word, but shortly returned, and with strong emotion said, " So 
 Mr Brook is dead, is he, John ? Well, mark this James Brook is 
 gone to heaven, and my house is a complete hell to me." 
 
 And he, too, was drawing near to his final account. Sad and 
 dreary seem his last years. Occasionally a mournful word escapes 
 him. But his outward prosperity continued great as ever. A new 
 chapel had been built at a cost of ^10,000. He removed to 
 another house at Hermes Hill, Pentonville, his goods filling eight 
 waggons this time ! " How hardly shall they that have riches 
 enter the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 However, he preached on, and there seemed no decay there 
 though he was in terrible fear lest there should be. 
 
 More and more was he separated from his children and best 
 friends ; more and more was he driven into uncongenial society 
 till he had a sort of little hermitage built in his garden, with thick 
 walls and double doors and windows. But here he was not 
 allowed peace. The idle boys who congregated in Copenhagen 
 Fields used to throw stones at the windows, which so aggravated 
 him that on one occasion he ran out and knocked a man down, 
 and then immediately tried to atone for it by sending him a couple 
 of guineas. In fact, he was often wretched, as many facts show. 
 His wife was as close as he was generous, and she had almost, or, 
 perhaps, even a stronger will than his own.
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 355 
 
 Nevertheless, he continued to preach almost to the very last. 
 The last time he presided at the communion he spoke of the 
 experience he had had of the love of Christ, and of Satan's temp- 
 tations ; " yet, after all," he said, " here am I, and the religion I 
 received from God is not worn out, but I feel my work is almost 
 done, my Master has told me so ; but come life, come death, I am 
 builded on the Rock Christ." On the Wednesday evening 
 following he preached his last sermon, from the words, "Re- 
 member how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and 
 watch." 
 
 In the following week he became so much weaker that his wife 
 determined to hurry him off to Tunbridge Wells. He was put 
 into the carriage, but was so ill by the way that he nearly died. 
 One object was to get him next door to the lawyer's, as his worldly 
 affairs were still unsettled. 
 
 What a satire it seems on his early life to have to recount that 
 this man of faith, this man who had lived by simple trust in God 
 for so many years, should in his last hour, instead of the calm 
 repose and silent meditation he once enjoyed, have been worried 
 by lawyers, perplexed by all kinds of worldly business, and driven 
 in the end to have a will drawn up disastrous to the interests of 
 his children and congregation. 
 
 Some of his children came to see him. He rose from his bed, 
 and said he would sit up and sup with them for the last night before 
 he died. "I am heartily glad to see you," he said to them. "I 
 do love my children, and should have been glad to see them all 
 here, if they could have come to see me." 
 
 The ruling passion was strong even in death, and after supper 
 he discoursed for about half an hour on the words, " Blessed are 
 the dead that die in the Lord." On the following evening (July i, 
 1813), he quietly departed without a struggle. 
 
 The funeral was such an one as had never before been wit- 
 nessed in Sussex. The hearse which conveyed the remains of 
 this peasant preacher through his native Weald was drawn with 
 regal pomp by six horses. At Godstone it was met by vast 
 numbers who had walked or ridden from London, until the pro- 
 cession reached a mile in length. All that summer's day the long 
 black line wound its tortuous course up and down the hilly
 
 356 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 clay-bound roads of the Weald ; for although it left the Wells 
 early in the morning, it did not reach Lewes, its halting-place, 
 until five o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 In silence the body was committed to the vault, which, indeed, 
 was well, seeing there was none who could have spoken truly con- 
 cerning him. 
 
 An inscription was placed on his tomb, which may be read to 
 this day, an inscription dictated by himself a few days before his 
 death, and which plainly shows that he passed away without being 
 delivered from that spirit of Self which was the besetting sin of his 
 life, and the ultimate cause of the failure of his work. For all 
 that was of self, all that was specially identified with his name as 
 the founder of a sect, soon withered away. There was the usual 
 manifestation of hero-worship after his death, a fight for relics, a 
 setting-up of memorials. His coffee-pot fetched ^16, his chair 
 sixty guineas ! 
 
 But the big chapel began to look very dismal after its light was 
 extinguished. War soon broke out between Lady Sanderson, the 
 trustees, and the dwindling congregation. The place was thrown 
 into Chancery, and after a wretched existence of about twenty 
 years it was sold by order of the Court, and became an Episcopal 
 Chapel, and is now a district church called St Bartholomew's. 
 
 A few years since the remains of the pulpit from which he had 
 preached to thousands, and the handsome mural tablet which for 
 twenty years cried " Ichabod " to the few dejected worshippers 
 who found their way into the deserted pews, were discovered 
 hidden in the dust of a builder's yard the pulpit too rotten for 
 anything but firewood, the tablet alone being of value was cut up 
 into slips for cheap mantelpieces ! 
 
 As to what remained of his property, it was nearly all lost in 
 Chancery suits. His eldest son did not get his legacy until twenty 
 years after his father's death. 
 
 As it was with his own chapel, so was it with nearly every place 
 he had established throughout the country. As soon as the 
 ministers died who had been placed in them as pastors, they 
 rapidly declined. 
 
 In Sussex chiefly, and a few other localities, has he any con- 
 siderable following left. There, amongst his own people, the
 
 WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. 357 
 
 peasantry of the Weald, his doctrines and his books are still held 
 in reverence, showing that he was a man who truly expressed the 
 deepest thoughts of his people. For this reason, and for their 
 intrinsic preciousness as real bits of spiritual autobiography, " The 
 Bank of Faith " and " The Kingdom of Heaven " are treasures of 
 great value, not only to religious England but to the whole 
 Church. 
 
 The native elements of Huntington's character may not be 
 attractive, but it cannot be admitted that its inconsistencies, let 
 us say its startling incongruities, in any way render it unreal. On 
 the contrary, it is one of the most genuine of lives. Inhuman as 
 may seem his theology, he is most human in his life. The heart 
 which can feel no interest in his struggles with sin and poverty, his 
 battles with men and fiends ; which cannot follow with sympathy 
 the varying fortunes of the fight, until in the hour of deepest 
 despondency the Deliverer appears ; which is utterly revolted by 
 his failings, his maledictory spirit, his pride, vain-glory, and osten- 
 tation, does not understand nor care for man as man. The heart, 
 too, which repels the thought that a deliverance so wonderful could 
 have been effected on behalf of such a man is not in full harmony 
 with Christ's work in the world. 
 
 In the city of Jericho there were doubtless upright, noble- 
 hearted men, generous, sincere persons, humble, pious souls, under 
 whose roofs and in whose society the human heart of Jesus would 
 have found rest and satisfaction. But He had not come to please 
 Himself, or gratify His own feelings or affections ; so, spying out 
 the most despised, most loathed man in the crowd, the man who 
 was lost to all sense of patriotism, had sunk to the condition of a 
 mere hireling of the tyrant, the oppressor of his brethren for the 
 sake of money this pariah of society Jesus chose as the man at 
 whose house He would abide, and to whom He would bring sal- 
 vation. 
 
 And this despised Israelite, type of the most repulsive of 
 characters, the usurious Jew, ready to sell all for gain, welcomes 
 his Saviour joyfully, and stands up in the presence of his own 
 people, men with natures as blunted to all refinement as himself, 
 stands up and in his own way expresses his devotion to his Guest. 
 
 Even in the hour of his repentance and new-born love for all
 
 358 TYPICAL ENGLISH PEASANTS. 
 
 that is great and noble and holy, there is a certain tone of self- 
 satisfaction, as if he would say to Jesus and those around, See how 
 great a sacrifice I am about to make ! 
 
 But the Saviour condemned him not. He knew that his faith, 
 alloyed as it was with years of ignoble thinking and acting, was RKAL, 
 and that was enough. 
 
 But my purpose here is not to defend William Huntington, 
 either as a man or a Christian, but to present him as an English 
 agricultural labourer, struggling to develop what was in him without 
 any help from his country shut out, in fact, by his poverty from 
 any share in the wealth of culture and experience England inherits 
 from the past. We have no right to sit in judgment on such men, 
 for they owe us nothing. We make England even appear to them 
 the hardest of stepmothers, instead of the loving mother they have 
 a right to expect. But England, tied and bound, robbed and 
 enchained, is in need of their help. Some day her sons will not 
 think everything gained, because the strong individual is free to 
 tyrannise over the weak, and will begin to think it time that the 
 country that is, England herself should be free. That will be a 
 happy day.
 
 V. 
 
 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL.
 
 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 (Contemporary Review, 1884.) 
 
 ORDINARY histories concern themselves so little with the mass of 
 the people, that prior to the French Revolution one might suppose 
 the labouring classes of Europe resembled Issachar, who is de- 
 scribed as a strong ass crouching down between two burdens a 
 strong ass who when it fell had only, as a truculent German ruler 
 observed, to be whipped, and it slowly got up again, and went on 
 dragging its load. 
 
 The reverse is the fact, for from the moment the Gospel of the 
 kingdom of Heaven was proclaimed, a divine discontent set in ; 
 those who believed the message could no longer rest satisfied with 
 things as they were, but by passive or active opposition did what 
 in them lay to establish the reign of justice on earth. " This man," 
 said the Scribes and Pharisees, "stirreth up the people;" and 
 verily the charge was true. 
 
 St Chrysostom has in a few vigorous touches depicted the storm 
 which the apostolic preaching aroused in the Roman world. 
 What greater incentive to revolution than to proclaim a kingdom 
 of righteousness among people so -crushed by injustice as the in- 
 habitants of the Roman Empire ! Restrained for a time by a very 
 decided apostolic injunction, and a firm belief in the immediate 
 coming of the King to deliver His saints and establish His king- 
 dom upon earth, the first believers refrained from social and 
 political action ; but when the hope of His second advent became 
 more vague, and a sense of their ever-increasing numbers took 
 possession of the Church, an agitation seems to have set in, which, 
 like some great ground-swell, made the Roman Empire heave 
 
 361
 
 362 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 from one end to the other. Trembling and doubtful in what direction 
 to turn the helm of State, the authorities at one moment caress the 
 new influence and at another try to terrorize it. Marvellous edicts 
 in favour of the weak, the mean, the miserable, alternate with a 
 series of relentless persecutions against Christians ; both lines of 
 policy, alien to the haughty but tolerant spirit of ancient Rome, 
 abundantly prove the truth of what I have advanced ; but those 
 who have penetrated further into the subject affirm that there was 
 at least one insurrection in Gaul that was distinctly Christian. 
 
 It is a horrible thing to reflect on the history of Christ's poor 
 since His- religion has been patronised by the ruling classes. 
 Consider the way the Normans, those " born rulers," treated the 
 peasantry. Their tyranny was so impossible to endure that the 
 labourers began to confederate with a view to a common protec- 
 tion. Raoul, uncle of the young Duke of Normandy, sent out 
 spies in every direction, and in one day arrested all the leaders. 
 " Without any trial, without the slightest inquiry, he inflicted upon 
 them mutilations or atrocious tortures ; of some he put out the eyes, 
 of others he cut off the hands or feet ; some had their legs burned, 
 others were impaled alive or had melted lead poured over them." 
 And, according to a well-known passage in the " Saxon Chronicle " 
 under the year 1137, the horrors the English poor suffered in 
 " the castles filled with devils and evil men " equalled in atrocity 
 the darkest crimes of which the Inquisition was ever imagined 
 guilty. 
 
 An ancient drawing exists illustrating a legend called "The 
 Vision of Henry I." Labouring men surround the king's bed, 
 armed with scythes, spades, and pitchforks. The sleeper points 
 with his bare finger upwards, as if he would indicate the only 
 direction in which such clamourers are ever heard ; but the 
 peasants look determined. Their leader, a little man, holds up a 
 charter ; another, with a woe-begone face, dilates on the miseries 
 they suffer ; while a stolid young churl waits in the background, 
 pitchfork in hand. A " coward conscience " has been the real 
 cause of the long series of " reigns of terror " by which Christ's 
 suffering poor have been kept, like trembling sheep, the perpetual 
 prey of generation after generation of wolves. 
 
 But the oppressors, instead of repenting, thought to buy off the
 
 WICLIF'S DOCTRINE OF "DOMINION." 363 
 
 justice of Heaven as they could that of earth. The Christian 
 clergy were admitted to the best half of the plunder, and became 
 and have continued for ages fanatical supporters of power and 
 property. The laity, however, alarmed at the rapidity with which 
 the land was falling into the hands of the Church, and at the papal 
 assumption of Universal Dominion, gave their support to a principle 
 of which they did not see the meaning. Wiclif s doctrine of " Do- 
 minion " proved the axe laid to the root of the tree, not only of 
 clerical but also of lay assumption. " Dominion," said Wiclif, 
 " can in its highest and purest sense belong to God alone. He 
 deals it out to men in their several stations and offices on -condition 
 of obedience to His commandments ; mortal sin, therefore, 
 
 breaks the link and deprives man of his authority Thus 
 
 no one in a state of mortal sin has, in strict right, either priest- 
 hood or lordship, a principle which applies of course to every 
 human being." There was nothing on which Wiclif wrote more 
 fully than this same doctrine of Donlinion, and it is clear that no 
 part of his system had greater influence on the subsequent history 
 of Europe. 
 
 To assert that Dominion was founded on Grace and depended 
 on its preservation, was to cut at the root of hereditary right 
 in political sovereignty, and of all those acquired and per- 
 manent rights upon which the hierarchies in Church and State are 
 founded. 
 
 That this is no exaggeration may be seen by an inquiry into the 
 causes of the great Hussite war in Bohemia. Nothing is more 
 certain than that John Huss was the champion of Wiclif s doctrine 
 in Bohemia, and especially of that on Dominion. " If," he said 
 before the Council of Constance, " a bishop or a prelate is in 
 mortal sin, he is no longer pope, bishop, or prelate ; still more, if 
 a king is in mortal sin, he is not truly a king before God." The 
 phrase was hardly out of his mouth than the prelates rose, crying : 
 " Call the king, this concerns him." Huss was made to repeat 
 his words. Sigismund listened, and stolidly remarked that no one 
 was without sin; the Cardinal of Cambrai, whose wits were 
 sharper, cried : " What, is it not enough for you to overthrow 
 the Church? do you wish to attack kings?" All saw that 
 the doctrine was revolutionary. "Away with such a fellow;
 
 364 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 it is not fit that he should live." The Bohemian people, who 
 had also understood its import, uttered a cry of indignation, 
 and their great general, John Zizka, resolved to avenge their 
 martyr. 
 
 The enthusiasm of the Bohemian peasants who flocked to his 
 banner was so intense that the learned of the time could find no 
 better explanation for the phenomenon than a conjunction of the 
 stars. It soon appeared, however, to be no question of astrology, 
 but the piled-up force of the Christian conscience, suddenly 
 delivered by Wiclif's doctrine, seeking to sweep out of Bohemia 
 the falsehoods of feudalism. In a little time, therefore, the war 
 became a civil one, and, under the names of Utraquists and 
 Taborites, was opened up the old strife between the oppressors and 
 the oppressed. 
 
 To the wonderful camp on Mount Tabor the peasants came in 
 thousands, bringing with them in great waggons their aged parents, 
 their wives and children, and all their household goods. They 
 believed that a new era was about to open, in which there would 
 be no more crimes nor abominations, no more lies nor perfidies, 
 where there would no longer be different ranks or dignities among 
 men, where property would be abolished, and the human race 
 delivered for ever from work, misery, and hunger ; where the differ- 
 ence between the learned and the ignorant would cease, for all would 
 equally be disciples of the Saviour, and the Eternal Truth would 
 shine upon all ; where the wicked would repent of their wickedness, 
 so that the Bible and the Atonement would no longer be necessary, 
 since all mankind would be saved. 
 
 It would be difficult to exceed the thoroughness of the doctrine 
 of equality as held by the Taborites. It far exceeded that of the 
 later French revolutionists, for it taught that a woman was equal 
 to a man. Grace elevated all to the same level. 
 
 The movement was so universal that the wealthy classes were in 
 dismay. In 1421 the Commune of Prague, under their leader, 
 John of Zelew, obtained a majority in the city council. " Noble 
 city of Prague," wrote a chronicler, " it was not the lower classes 
 who formerly governed thee. Now the citizens, the best known 
 by their birth, their riches, and their virtues, are put to death or 
 exiled, while tailors, shoemakers, working men of all kinds, fill the
 
 ITS STRUGGLES IN BOHEMIA. 365 
 
 council ; strangers even are found there ; peasants, who have come 
 from no one knows where." However, the wealthy and virtuous 
 class knew how to deal with such adversaries. Allying themselves 
 with a portion of the Radicals, they obtained the majority at the 
 next elections. John of Zelew was then invited to a conference 
 with the council; he went, and found himself caught in a 
 trap; he and his ten companions being executed there and 
 then. 
 
 The civil war went on until the decisive battle of Lepau, when 
 the people were thoroughly defeated ; their great captain, 
 Procopius Magnus, a former monk, fell surrounded by his 
 officers, and nearly the whole of his army. A few hundred fugi- 
 tives, made prisoners during the next few days, were traitorously 
 burnt. 
 
 Thus the lords of Bohemia came out victorious from this great 
 struggle, and the fetters were bound tighter than ever on the necks 
 of the people. In place of the equality of all human beings, and 
 the emancipation of women proclaimed by the Taborites, the 
 Catholic and Utraquist oligarchy based their parliament on the 
 suffrages of a few hundred families ; even the ancient customs of 
 the old Bohemian nobility were gradually set aside in favour of such 
 ideas as an " eldest son," as " the captivity " of a married woman 
 to her husband, and as the right of a brother to dispose of his 
 sisters either in marriage or in a convent. 
 
 The people, politically ruined, turned for consolation to the 
 source which had inspired all their efforts, and He in whom they 
 had trusted did not leave them comfortless. A poor man, Peter 
 of Chilcicky, received a view of Christian truth than which few 
 ever approached nearer the spirit and teaching of the discourses 
 by the Lake of Gennesaret. 
 
 Chilcicky was opposed to all dogma, all power, all war. " Love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself," 
 was the essence of his teaching. He objected to every attempt to 
 defend the Truth by the sword. The Gospel, he said, could only 
 conquer by Love. The Church must disembarrass itself from all 
 power, all wealth, from every tie which binds it to the earth. 
 Power both in Church and State was of pagan origin, and there- 
 fore no Christian man could accept any public charge or power.
 
 36.6 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Equality ought so to prevail among Christians in the presence of 
 good, of faith, of charity, that they cannot recognise royalty, nor 
 public functions, nor any titles, nor distinctions. In religious 
 matters the laws emanating from Pope or Emperor were not 
 obligatory. " I have already said," he wrote in the " Sit'viry " (the 
 Net of the Faith), " that class distinctions are the body of Anti- 
 christ, as well as these municipalities and these coats-of-arms where 
 one feels the inspiration of Satan." 
 
 The people, he taught, ought not to pay either taxes, tribute, 
 dues, interest, nor to perform the forced labour. The true 
 Christian, however, cannot demand justice from the Royal Courts, 
 or seek their protection. To do so is to put one's confidence 
 and hope in a man, and to seek to be avenged by force. To 
 support outrages with resignation, to suffer persecution, and to 
 forget them, such is the duty of every religious man. In his 
 view, war was murder, and its continuance had the effect of turn- 
 ing a whole people into a nation of assassins. He wished that 
 criminals should not be punished but converted, and the severest 
 penalty he would admit was banishment from the country. 
 
 His writings drew around him a crowd of disciples at Chelcice, 
 and afterwards at Kunvald (1457). They called themselves 
 Brethren of the Law of Christ, or the United Brethren. Soon 
 they spread into Moravia, into Silesia, into Brandenburg, and into 
 Poland. Without any apparent means their agents travelled 
 everywhere; their poverty, obscurity, democratic sympathies, 
 assisting their object to an extent money and organising energy 
 can never attain. 
 
 II. 
 
 IN Sebastian Brandt's once popular book, " The Ship of Fools," 
 the first edition of which appeared in 1494, the author complains 
 " of the arrogance and pride of the rude men of the country." 
 Nothing can more forcibly set forth the rise of the people in the 
 fifteenth century than the tirade of this excellent imperial 
 councillor. The Crusades, the renascence of pagan learning, the 
 rise of commerce, and the discovery of new worlds, the invention
 
 THE FEUDAL TYRANNY. 36? 
 
 of printing and of gunpowder, and even the Black Death, all 
 fought like the stars in their courses against feudalism. If in the 
 midst of the revolution caused by these important events, the serf 
 not only dragged his head out of the collar, but sometimes 
 became grasping and usurious, who was to blame but the society 
 that set him the example ? 
 
 Side by side with Brandt's satire on " the rude men of the 
 country," one ought to study what the legists say of the condition 
 of these rude men while these changes were going on, a condition 
 which continued in some countries for centuries later. In his 
 " Histoire des Paysans," M. Eugene Bonnemere quotes Renaudon 
 as naming no less than ninety-seven seignorial rights which the 
 lords in various places claimed as due from the enfranchised serfs. 
 These exactions varied from pettifogging claims on the honey 
 that the villein's bees extracted from the lord's flowers, on the 
 rain-water that ran down the ruts of the roads, or for the dust the 
 herds made in going from one pasture to another, until they 
 reached what was nothing but organised pillage in the right called 
 De prise de glte et de pouvoirie. What the lords left, the clergy 
 took ; there was hardly a circumstance in life out of which the 
 latter did not extract a fee. 
 
 Under such a load of exactions it is not surprising that the 
 French peasants thought freedom no boon, and that their king, 
 Louis X. (1315), had to goad them by insults and taxes to accept 
 his generous offers to permit them to purchase their enfranchise- 
 ment by "paying a sufficient recompense for the emoluments 
 which their continuance in servitude was able to bring him or his 
 successors." This system of exaction, instead of lessening, grew 
 heavier with each generation. The discovery of gunpowder so 
 altered mediaeval warfare that a different mode of fortification 
 had to be adopted, the expense of which was extracted from 'the 
 villein. A sense of the terrible debt owing to the peasants, the 
 ages of wrong during which they had been treasuring up their 
 wrath, rendered the lord afraid to put arms into their hands ; he 
 was therefore obliged to employ mercenaries, a class of profes- 
 sional fighters who were the scourge of Europe. 
 
 If we want to realize the condition of the labouring classes in 
 these last days of feudalism, we ought to read the complaint of the
 
 368 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 poor commons and labourers of France given by Monstrelet, in 
 his Chronicles, commencing with a doleful Helas ! helas I helas ! 
 helas! and in which they cry to all the classes above them to 
 regard their visages si pitieux et si palles, and their limbs which are 
 no longer able to sustain them. As they go from house to house 
 every one tells them God will provide. " Alas ! " they cry, " we 
 are not dogs but Christians, and in God we are all brothers ! " 
 
 Little chance had the labourer in making his appeal on such 
 grounds. For if the agonies of feudalism had rendered its " rude 
 men of the country " " insolent," and changed some of the trem- 
 bling "gaspers" into greedy "graspers," it had produced in the 
 wealthier classes a kind of delirium. A glance at the fashions of 
 the age is sufficient. A bal masque in a lunatic asylum, a con- 
 gregation of fiends ; such is the effect of its civil and military 
 costume. Brandt says : 
 
 " Some theyr neckes charged with colers and chaynes, 
 As golden withythes : theyr fingers full of ringes, 
 Theyr neckes naked : almost to the raynes, 
 Theyr sleeves blasinge like a cranys winges." 
 
 Add to this, tight-fitting hose coming up over the haunches, the 
 two halves of the body being of different and incongruous colours, 
 Absolom-like curls, surmounted by a jaunty hat with a peacock's 
 feather, shoes snouted with a metal pike, 'a finger long, looking 
 upwards, and ugliness inconceivable, wearing over them a clog 
 also snouted and piked, these courtiers of the fifteenth century 
 looked more like great winged insects than men. Every one, says 
 Brandt, dressed above their station, and many mortgaged their 
 land or sold it outright to keep up these outrageous fashions. 
 
 The military costume seemed expressly devised to terrorize. 
 The helmets were in some cases arranged so as to give their 
 wearers the appearance of a grimacing monster ; in others a hor- 
 rifying effect was produced by surmounting them with all kinds of 
 outrageous forms, coloured brilliantly, and rendered dazzling by 
 long mantlets streaming and curling. There is a battle by Uccello 
 in the Louvre, in which the head-dresses of the combatants dance 
 about on the black background like great Chinese lanterns. The 
 whole harness was in keeping ; if the feet did not look like a 
 ponderous wedge, they took the form of a vulture's claw.
 
 THE PEASANTS COMBINE IN SUABIA. 369 
 
 These " hollow devils " did not express the character of every 
 one who shut himself up in them, but they were typical of a ruling 
 class, who wished to make the world believe that at a push they 
 were all capable of atrocities such as those committed by the 
 bastard of Vauru, who, commanding for the Dauphin at Meaux, 
 had an elm near the moat of that city on which were always 
 swinging from eighty to a hundred corpses, mostly insurgent 
 peasants. 
 
 III. 
 
 At the very time that Savonarola began to withstand Lorenzo 
 d'Medici, telling him that the Lord spares no one, and has no 
 fear of the princes of the earth, the first drops of the coming 
 storm fell in Germany. The opening act of the great rising of the 
 German peasants occurred in 1491, at Kempten, in Suabia. Two 
 years later their famous league of the Bundschuh \vas formed. 
 The adoption of a peasant's shoe as their cognisance was a stroke 
 of genius, full of humour and the most touching truth. The con- 
 federate peasants held nocturnal meetings on the summit of the 
 Hungersberg, one of the highest mountains in the Vosges. In 
 1502, the Bundschuh appeared in the See of Spire, where seven 
 thousand peasants rose, declaring that they wished to be as free 
 as the Swiss. Both these risings failed through treachery, and 
 their leaders were executed. 
 
 In a short time the insurrection broke out again at Lehn, not 
 far from Freiburg in Bavaria. Its leader selected emissaries 
 among the wandering mendicants, who induced the peasants of 
 Elsass, of the Mark of Baden, of the Black Forest, and of a great 
 part of Suabia, to declare for the Bundschuh. They held their 
 meetings in the valley of the Kinzig, an affluent of the Rhine in 
 Wurtemburg, and issued a manifesto in which their complaints and 
 their demands touching the woods, pasture-lands, hunting-grounds, 
 and fisheries were clearly stated. However, they too were put 
 down, and their leaders, with the exception of the chief, who 
 escaped, suffered death. 
 
 It was in the realm of the dissolute Duke Ulrich of Wurtem- 
 burg that the next revolutionary society was formed. The con- 
 
 2 B
 
 370 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 federates admitted into their society only working men, day 
 labourers, and small proprietors, as they feared the middle classes 
 more than the great nobles. All of a sudden six thousand peasants 
 appeared in arms in the valley of Rems. Duke Ulrich, finding 
 his threat to whip them home had no effect, obtained the support 
 of the middle classes by certain concessions and then fell on the 
 peasants. He gave up entire communes to be pillaged by the 
 lansquenets, who burnt the cottages, violated the women, and 
 compelled the men to choose between kneeling abjectly, or having 
 their legs cut off with a scythe. Any one who knew of a member 
 of the Society of Poor Conrad and did not denounce him, were he 
 father or brother, was to be put to death. 
 
 This happened in 1510; before ten years had passed away 
 Luther, like another Prospero, had said the word that unchained 
 the storm. It was one of those propitious moments when the 
 powerful seem to have the making of a new world in their own 
 hands. Ulrich von Hutten and his friend Franz von Sickingen, 
 vainly attempting to seize the opportunity, were defeated; both 
 died soon after, Sickingen of his wounds, Hutten apparently of 
 chagrin. 
 
 The cause of justice which these great men had tried to make 
 that of Germany fell once more into the hands of the poor and 
 ignorant. A few months after Hutten's death the peasants formed 
 the confederation called the Evangelical Brotherhood. 
 
 Not far from the borders of Bohemia is the little town of 
 Zwickau. Here, during Luther's confinement in the Wartburg, 
 arose the sect of the Anabaptists. This movement, which puzzled 
 and infuriated Luther, and through his treatment of which he 
 finally lost the greater part of his influence, is not difficult to under- 
 stand. Luther had hailed the Bible as a charter of deliverance 
 from the tyranny of Roman superstition ; the Anabaptists hailed 
 the doctrine of the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit as a deliver- 
 ance from the oppression of Lutheran teaching. Both were steps 
 in the assertion of individual liberty, both were fraught with 
 danger, but especially that of the Anabaptists, because it was the 
 profounder, the more universal truth. Luther by his roughness 
 hardened the hearts of these seekers after truth, and turned 
 mysticism into fanaticism, and a desire for justice into a cry for
 
 THE PROPHET OF REVOLUTION. 371 
 
 vengeance. He had delivered the people from the priests, but 
 now he wanted to hand them over to the custody of the theolog- 
 ians. They cried out by the voice of the Anabaptists that they 
 would have neither the one nor the other, but that they would be 
 guided by the Spirit of God, for in that alone would there be 
 liberty. 
 
 The founders of Anabaptism were Nicholas Storch and Max 
 Thomas, variously described, but who probably were cloth-makers ; 
 Max Stubner, at one time a student lodging with Melanchthon, 
 and Thomas Munzer. 
 
 Born exactly three centuries before the terrible year of Venge- 
 ance, Munzer is the Prophet of Revolution. As his birthplace, 
 the Hartz Mountains, it is only when seen in the gathering storm, 
 or when, the damp mist of fanaticism ascending, the great spectre 
 of insurrection surged above a nature supposed to be the peculiar 
 abode of diabolic influence, that Munzer appears grand. Yet 
 this thorny, irritable, restless man had, as his native hills, a head 
 of granite and a heart full of precious ore. He loved truth, 
 justice, and the Cause of the Poor with a passionate vindictiveness 
 which rendered him guilty of the very errors he most detested. 
 His father had been hanged by the Graf von Stolberg, for what 
 reason does not appear. Nor are we told how he came to be a 
 priest and a reformer. He was at first a follower of the Witten- 
 berg school, but finding Luther's doctrine of inspiration too 
 narrow, he set up the standard of revolt. The idea of a per- 
 manent inspiration led him to study the works of Joachim of 
 Calabria, who in the Middle Age had been regarded as a prophet. 
 They taught a doctrine which was afterwards mysteriously de- 
 scribed as " the Eternal Gospel." It spoke of the reign of the 
 Holy Spirit when the letter of human erudition would pass away 
 and the Spirit would himself write His words on men's hearts, so 
 that a true society of brothers and sisters would arise, the godly 
 among men becoming the organ of the Spirit ; such words as 
 priests and clergy would no longer be heard. This doctrine 
 worked on Munzer like the interior fires in a volcanic land. The 
 mingled ore and dross soon burst forth in destructive lava. 
 Munzer preached a social revolution. 
 
 And he was but a type of Germany itself, for the whole land was
 
 372 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 soaked with this same doctrine and believed implicitly in it. The 
 various sects in the Catholic Church reproached each other with 
 it, their guilt with reference to it being very much in proportion 
 to the light and heat of their evangelic faith. The Franciscans 
 were probably the most inclined to believe with Joachim of 
 Calabria, and although the old and the new sects were often 
 bitter foes, there was at bottom a profound unity in the work of 
 the Franciscans, the Lollards, the Beghards, and the Hussites. 
 It was through their common influence that Germany was so 
 saturated by a doctrine which was no other than that of the 
 Eternal Gospel, and which after all is no misnomer. 
 
 For in reality this Eternal Gospel is but the quintessence of 
 the Bible. And at this very moment (1522-3) Luther's trans- 
 lations of the New Testament and of the Pentateuch had appeared 
 and were being widely made known to a people who, up till then, 
 had only seen the " Biblia Pauperum," a sort of picture-book of 
 Christian Doctrine. 
 
 When the seething heart of Germany heard, as something 
 almost new, of the constitution and laws of the free Common- 
 wealth which Moses founded, it must have responded to the cry 
 of the Psalmist : " I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great 
 spoil." For it was great spoil indeed to find that God's Word gave 
 them the right to a far happier and nobler society than that in 
 which they groaned. The Pentateuch told them of a state of which 
 the Author was no other than the Eternal Himself, where every man 
 was free, and where each family had its inalienable right in the land. 
 
 In the New Testament they learnt that those among whom this 
 divine commonwealth had been founded had proved unworthy, 
 and another people had been chosen, taken from among all 
 nations. No words could exceed in strength those of the New 
 Testament when it spoke of the honour and privilege of this elect 
 race. Foreknown, predestinated, regenerated, justified, a chosen 
 generation, an holy nation, a peculiar people, kings and priests 
 unto God, it was they who were finally to reign on the earth. 
 
 The writings of Luther and other of the reformers, disseminated 
 far and wide in the form of little tracts or booklets illustrated with 
 cuts by Cranach, had taught thousands of poor men that this high 
 honour was assured to those who exercised repentance towards
 
 THE ANABAPTIST FAITH. 373 
 
 God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must be dull 
 indeed if we cannot imagine the elevation of spirit such a faith 
 would produce in any man. The children of generations of down- 
 trodden serfs needed a strong tonic to enable them to struggle 
 with the descendants of those who had been their masters for ages, 
 and who still possessed all the wealth, power, and culture of this 
 world. 
 
 As in every movement, there were two sections the one 
 moderate, averse to the sword, wishing to conquer by endurance ; 
 the other, extreme and eager to proclaim the war. In its original 
 and final phases Anabaptism, with the exception of its maintenance 
 of the ordinances, very closely resembled the views of the Society 
 of Friends. But at this crisis the moderate party was gradually 
 drawn into the vortex and supported the insurrection. 
 
 Certain Anabaptist confessions of faith give us an idea of the 
 beliefs of the two sections of the popular party. That of the most 
 peaceable may be gathered from the principles taught by Gabriel, 
 who was a disciple of Jacob Hutter, founder of the Herrnhutter, 
 who was a disciple of Nicholas Storch, the first of the mystics of 
 Zwickau. The points of the Gabrielist confession of faith were : 
 an elect people ordained to reign over the earth that they may 
 extirpate evil ; community of goods ; no alliance with the un- 
 regenerate, either in worship or marriage; adult baptism; the 
 Lord's Supper, a fraternal communion and memorial of Christ's 
 death ; faith, a gift of God ; no compulsion in matters of faith ; 
 prayer worthless unless inspired ; capital punishment, pleadings in 
 courts of law, oaths, and all absolute power incompatible with the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 Of the views of the more extreme party we have a summary by 
 Melanchthon, their enemy. He describes them as teaching that 
 sin is not in infants ; that they do not need any baptism ; that 
 innate weakness is not sin, sin only existing when a reasonable 
 man tolerates and favours his weaknesses ; that every infant, no 
 matter whether it be Turk or Pagan, enters heaven without 
 baptism, for all that God has made is good ; that a Christian who 
 rules by the sword can neither be prince nor regent, nor exert any 
 authority whatever; that Christians recognise as their superiors 
 only those who are servants of the Word of God ; that a Christian
 
 374 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 ought to possess no property, but live in fraternity and com- 
 munity, as did the apostolic society; that there can be no 
 marriage between one who has faith and one who has not, such a 
 marriage being prostitution. 
 
 These two summaries of the Anabaptist faith, as held in the 
 sixteenth century, give a very good idea of its spirit. But they 
 are undoubtedly imperfect, and are rather to be regarded as 
 accentuating the points of their witness than as giving a full 
 account of their creed. What they held in common with other 
 Christians was not the least important part of their faith. For 
 Anabaptism was simply the outcome in the sixteenth century of 
 that undercurrent of Christian faith and Christian tradition which 
 had probably never ceased among the oppressed and suffering 
 classes since it first flowed from the heart and the lips of the 
 Divine Man who appeared in the form of a poor and unlettered 
 Carpenter of Nazareth. 
 
 In this very doctrine of a permanent inspiration, the Anabaptists 
 were manifestly of the same faith as Thomas a Kempis, Francis of 
 Assisi, and Joachim of Calabria, while they appear in nearly all 
 particulars the direct descendants of the Brethren of the Unity, 
 the Taborites and the Lollards. 
 
 This faith, which had been filtering into the hearts of the poor 
 and suffering European people for fifteen centuries, and which 
 had burst forth time after time to renovate the established and 
 visible Church, was now working with such power that the people 
 felt courage enough to demand justice. A manifesto appeared in 
 the form of Twelve Articles, setting forth the popular griefs. The 
 first Article claimed the right to elect their own pastors; the 
 second an arrangement of the tithes in the spirit of their institu- 
 tion in the Old Testament ; the third is a good specimen of the 
 scope and spirit of the whole : 
 
 " In the third place, it has been the custom until now to oblige us to 
 be bondsmen, which is a miserable state of things, seeing that Christ, 
 by His oblivion-making blood, has released and ransomed the lowest 
 shepherd as well as the mightiest potentate, none being excepted. 
 Therefore it is written in the Scriptures that we are free, and we will 
 be free. Not that we will have no magistrates ; that is not what God 
 has taught us. We are bound to live according to the law, and not in
 
 THE TWELVE ARTICLES. 375 
 
 wantonness : to love the Lord our God, and in our neighbours to 
 recognise Him ; to do to them all we would have done to ourselves, as 
 our God in the Supper has commanded us in a parting word." 
 
 By the fourth it is affirmed to be contrary to justice and charity 
 that the poor should have no right to take game or catch birds or 
 fish in the streams. They add, that in conformity with the 
 Gospel, those who have bought such rights ought to receive an 
 indemnity. The fifth claims the woods and forests as the property 
 of the commune ; the sixth complains of the aggravation of the 
 services demanded the peasants would serve as their fathers 
 according to the Word of God ; the seventh requires strict main- 
 tenance of the agreements having reference to rent and taxes ; the 
 eighth suggests a tribunal of arbitration to settle differences be- 
 tween the lords and the peasants ; the ninth demands impartiality 
 in justice and the maintenance of old customs ; the tenth, that 
 fields and pasture-lands taken unjustly from the commune be 
 restored ; that the tax on the goods of deceased persons should 
 cease, as weighing heavily on widows and orphans ; and, finally, 
 the twelfth declares that they will give up any of the Articles 
 proved not to accord with the Gospel and the Word of God. 
 
 This manifesto appealed so directly to the Christian conscience 
 of the land, which Luther had done more than any before him to 
 awaken, that all Germany kings, nobles, peasants, friends, and 
 enemies looked to him to take the position of arbiter. 
 
 He cannot be accused of wanting courage at this supreme 
 moment, or of being untrue to his calling. He rebuked the 
 tyranny of the lords, affirming that they had no one to thank for 
 the terrible eruption which threatened Germany but their own 
 luxury and pride. " You are," he said, " as secular authorities, 
 butchers and blood-suckers of the poor people. You sacrifice 
 everything to your outrageous pride, until the people cannot and 
 will not endure you any longer." To the people he spoke more 
 tenderly, admitting the justice of many of their claims, but assur- 
 ing them that they would be terribly in the wrong if in the name of 
 the Gospel and as Christian men they thought of revolt. " The 
 Christian," he said, " is a martyr ; it is his business to endure all 
 wrongs ; cease, then, to talk about Christian right, and say rather
 
 376 THE POOR MAX'S GOSPEL. 
 
 that it is natural right you vindicate ; for the Christian religion 
 commands you to suffer 'in all things and to complain only to 
 God." 
 
 So far Luther was right ; both among Catholics and Heretics, 
 among peasants as well as among princes, all kinds of evil had 
 come from confusing the laws of the visible world with those of 
 the kingdom of Heaven. But he himself shows how deeply this 
 error is implanted in Christendom, since throughout his remon- 
 strance he falls into the same mingling of the two spheres. To 
 introduce into this great social and political struggle one of the 
 laws of the kingdom of Heaven the most opposed to the laws of 
 Nature ; " Resist not evil, but if a man strike thee on the one 
 cheek, turn to him the other also ; " to quote texts enforcing 
 Christian patience on men enduring a load of injustice, which 
 had crushed the life out of them and their ancestors for ages ; to 
 cry, " To suffer, to suffer, the cross, the cross, behold what the 
 law of 'Christ teacheth," was to show that the great Doctor of the 
 Bible had not himself understood its teaching, but was still en- 
 thralled in mediaeval confusions. 
 
 The doctrine of Grace, which he as well as all great Christian 
 teachers in every age have proclaimed, ought to have made it clear 
 to him that these admonitions of the New Testament were only- 
 intended for those who have received grace to understand and 
 obey them ; and that to represent them as binding on other men 
 is the surest way of destroying all their influence in the world. 
 His remonstrance, therefore, instinct as it is with a fervent desire 
 for the glory of God, the peace of Germany, and the welfare of its 
 oppressed people, really proposed that the sword of justice should 
 be sheathed, and that the greatest criminals should be left un- 
 punished, simply because they were the masters. It was endorsing, 
 at a supreme crisis in European history, Wiclif's frightful paradox, 
 " God must serve the Devil." Anabaptism of the fiercer type was 
 the reply to this monstrous proposition, and is another instance of 
 the truth of the words, " By thine own sins will I correct thee." 
 
 What drove the Christian conscience into still more inextricable 
 confusion was that Luther owed his extraordinary position to the 
 fact that he had taught with unusual force the doctrine called 
 " Evangelical," and had therefore intensified the idea that all who
 
 INSURRECTION OF THE GERMAN PEASANTS. 377 
 
 were not justified by faith were the thralls of Satan, more or less 
 his instruments, and certainly doomed to perdition. Were Chris- 
 tians to obey such men were they to allow their rulers to snatch 
 the very Bread of Life out of their mouths, and so force them and 
 their children into the kingdom of darkness ? It was no want of 
 charity to call rulers like Ulrich of Wiirtemberg, and Pope Alex- 
 ander II., limbs of the devil. Could St Paul's admonitions not to 
 resist the power refer to such ? " The Eternal Gospel " offered a 
 deliverance from this dilemma. It was not the letter of a former 
 inspiration, but a present, ever-living, ever-teaching Spirit that 
 was to be their guide. Besides, the last age of the world had 
 come, the long-expected Vindicator of Divine Justice was at hand, 
 and that time the Bible prophecies should be ushered in by a great 
 war in which the saints should take the kingdom and possess it for 
 ever and ever. 
 
 This idea of the " Reign of the Saints," this thought that the 
 time was at hand when Christ would take unto Himself His great 
 power and reign, and that His saints were to prepare the way by 
 taking a two-edged sword in their hand and executing vengeance 
 on the rulers of a doomed world, was the secret source of the 
 strength of the great revolt which now ensued. Leaders arose, 
 generally preachers or old soldiers ; but every class in society was 
 represented the wealthy middle class by the desperado James 
 Rohrbach, familiarly called Jacquet, the perpetrator of " the Terror 
 at Weinsberg ; " the higher class by the Chancellor Wendel Hipler, 
 who was the statesman of the movement ; and by the young noble, 
 Florian Geyer van Geyersberg, its Bayard. 
 
 Who can touch pitch and not be denied ? The very spirit of 
 Justice itself cannot work through human nature without the Spirit 
 of Love having to weep over much outrageous injustice and many 
 acts of desperate cruelty. No movement of this kind has ever 
 taken place without the friends of Justice finding themselves allied 
 with brigands and double-dyed traitors. If the commander-in- 
 chief, Goetz, the Knight of the Iron-hand, cannot be thus stigma- 
 tized, he at least had no real sympathy with his army, and was 
 only drawn into the movement by the hatred he shared in common 
 with the German nobility against the clergy and the burgher class. 
 Under the influence of leaders like Jacquet, the war became -
 
 378 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 sanguinary ; all the villagers were forced to join, and the peasant 
 hordes ranged over Germany like a new invasion of Huns and 
 Goths. From the French frontier to the Danube all Germany 
 was up ; there were at least a hundred thousand peasants in arms. 
 A moment of possible victory came when the peasant armies 
 surrounded Seneschal Georg, the general of the troops of the 
 Suabian Confederation ; but it was lost, and quickly after the 
 peasants were defeated in the battle of Boeblingen. The lords 
 took signal vengeance, and in expiation of the " Terror," Weins- 
 berg was set on fire. During four days and four nights a sea of 
 flames rose towards heaven. Two thousand people saved them- 
 selves ; but all else women, children, cattle, and houses fell a 
 prey to the devastating elements. As a 'foreground, Jacquet and 
 the Black Hofman, the Hecate of the war, underwent the agony 
 of being slowly roasted. 
 
 Miinzer was in despair, and his letters and his manifestoes are 
 the wild curses of a man who knows that both he and his cause are 
 lost. He met the German princes with eight thousand followers 
 at Frankenhausen. At the end of an hour the battle was lost, 
 and five thousand peasants lay dead or wounded on the field. 
 Miinzer was taken, and after being tortured was put to death. -On 
 the scaffold he exhorted the princes who were present to be good, 
 just, and equitable to the poor and feeble, often to read the Bible, 
 and especially the Book of Kings. " Do not think," he said, 
 " this will last for ever. One day, unless you are enlightened, I 
 shall be avenged. A man like me does not die." 
 
 But they took no heed of the prophet. The peasants were 
 slaughtered by hecatombs. The Seneschal Georg travelled over 
 the country accompanied by twelve executioners. From Ulm, 
 where the citizens had foreseen the demand and had apprenticed 
 persons to the executioner's art, the leader of its mercenaries ran 
 through Suabia and Franconia, putting all to death who fell into 
 his power. All who uttered the word " Gospel " he hanged ; this 
 hireling, Berthold Archelin by name, boasted that he had hung 
 twenty peasants a day. No doubt the 'prentice hands made the 
 most of the practice. The Margrave of Baireuth and Anspach 
 travelled from village to village with moving gibbets. In order 
 not to lose time, the Margrave generally seized the first hundred
 
 DEFEAT AND MARTYRDOM. 379 
 
 peasants and decapitated or blinded about twenty, cutting off the 
 wrists of the others. But nothing, perhaps, gives a more terrible idea 
 of the horrible brutality of the soldiery the German nobles employed 
 to maintain their power than the fate of Miinzer's wife, a poor young 
 woman of humble birth. On the eve of becoming a mother, she 
 was dragged into the camp of the Princes, to whom she had been 
 surrendered by the inhabitants of Mulhouse. Exposed to every 
 outrage, she asked for a weapon to kill herself. She was violated 
 in the presence of the army and died on the spot. 
 
 The slaughter of the sheep did not end with the first few months 
 of vengeance. Four years after the battle of Frankenhausen, 
 Charles V. issued a decree, ordaining that every Anabaptist, no 
 matter of what sex or age, must be put to death either by the 
 sword or by fire, or by any other means, and without any previous 
 judicial inquiry. After this, Anabaptist martyrdoms are continually 
 occurring. In more than one case the victims were undoubtedly 
 Christians of the highest order. George Wagner, who suffered at 
 Munich, was a man of such irreproachable conduct that even "the 
 prince was dolorously affected at having to send him to the stake." 
 His wife, holding her children in her arms, threw herself on her 
 knees, and begged him with sobs to let them save his life. But 
 he, "turning his eyes towards Heaven, said, 'My Father, many 
 things here below are dear to me. I love my wife, I love my 
 children, my friends, my life ; but Thou art still more dear than 
 wife, children, friends, or life. Nothing shall separate me from 
 Thy love. I am Thine, body and soul. I am ready to die for 
 Thee and the truth: Thou alone art the life.'" Another was 
 Balthasar Hiibmeier, who was burned at Vienna, in 1528; his 
 wife, who encouraged him at the stake, being drowned three days 
 afterwards in the Danube. Hubmeier, a pupil of Dr Eck, and 
 one time Professor of Catholic Theology at Ingolstadt, is believed 
 to have been the first who taught the principle of universal 
 religious liberty. In this he was centuries before his age, and of 
 course far in advance of all " the Reformers," who, to quote the 
 words of Dr Schaff, in his "History of the Creeds," "felt the 
 extermination of the Anabaptists necessary for the salvation of the 
 churchly Reformation and of social order." Luther, who showed 
 more heart than Melanchthon, writes to his brother-in-law :
 
 380 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 " It is a lamentable thing that they should finish up in this way 
 with these poor people. But what is to be done ? God intends 
 that it may spread a terror in the people. Otherwise, Satan would 
 do worse than the princes do now." 
 
 IV. 
 
 God intends that it may spread a terror in the people. Here is the 
 secret of the long and doleful history of Christendom, ending after 
 nineteen centuries in its people being almost entirely alienated 
 from that which the Churches teach as the Gospel. 
 
 Poor people, it is sometimes said with surprise, believe they will 
 go to heaven simply because they have suffered so much on earth. 
 What is this but faith in the Justice of God ? 
 
 This obstinate belief in a final reign of Justice, the last consola- 
 tion of the poor and the oppressed, was the secret of the great 
 uprising we have been considering, and this was why they hailed 
 with such joy the first proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
 When the outcasts of Jerusalem found that the chief object that 
 Jesus Christ had was to proclaim a reign of Justice, and to 
 establish it on earth ; when they saw that with Him the advantage 
 of individuals was only regarded as it helped to establish or 
 illustrate the kingdom of Heaven ; when they found that in 
 pursuit of this object He was not afraid to rebuke offenders how- 
 ever pious, respectable, or highly placed faith in God and man 
 once more rose in their hearts, and in their unwonted joy they 
 made the streets of Jerusalem resound with the cry : " Blessed is 
 the King that cometh in the name of the Lord ; Hosanna in the 
 highest ! " 
 
 Such a view of the Gospel will not, I am conscious, appeal to a 
 society like ours, based on the idea that every individual necessarily 
 seeks his own advantage. What consoles the oppressed people is 
 not the promise of personal profit, even when it takes the form of 
 eternal felicity, but the certainty that Justice will be vindicated. 
 
 And because this Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven is not 
 preached in England, Christians have not recognised that the
 
 CHRIST IDENTIFIED WITH SUFFERING MAN. 381 
 
 primary object of their calling is that they should at all cost devote 
 themselves to bringing about the reign of Justice on earth. 
 
 To do so would doubtless involve the same results it has always 
 done. For injustice is to so great a degree the basis of our society, 
 and the progress of injustice is so rapid, that to make any real 
 stand against it will certainly lead to the charge of stirring up the 
 people, and possibly to a fate similar to His against whom this 
 accusation was first brought. 
 
 In the fourteenth century there was no book more popular than 
 " The Vision of Piers Plowman." The Individual Christian, the 
 poor hard-working Man, Human Nature, the Church, are all 
 represented in the character of Piers Plowman, and, by a pro- 
 foundly Christian thought, Jesus Christ in His suffering and 
 humiliation is so identified with Piers Plowman that the poet can- 
 not distinguish who it is he beholds. In the nineteenth passus he 
 falls into a dream during Mass : 
 
 " ' And sodeynly me mette 
 That Piers the Plowman 
 Was peynted al blody, 
 And com in with a cros 
 Before the comune people, 
 And right lik in all thynges 
 To oure lord Jhesus. 
 
 ' And thanne called I Conscience, 
 To kenne me the sothe ; 
 Is this Jhesus the justere quod I, 
 That Jews did to dethe ? 
 Or is it Piers the Plowman 
 Who peynted Hym so rede ? 
 
 ' Quod Conscience and kneeled tho, 
 This arn Piers armes 
 Hise colours and his cote armure 
 Ac he that cometh so blody 
 Is Christ with his cross, 
 Conquerour of Christene. ' " 
 
 This is the faith that has ever lain dormant in the heart of the 
 people, the faith that found voice and action in the fourteenth, 
 fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and again in our own times. If
 
 382 THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 that faith is mute to-day, it is because there is no heart in the 
 suffering poor. The rich have taken from them their one little 
 ewe lamb the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, and have 
 offered them in its place a changeling they do not care to 
 accept. 
 
 THE END.
 
 Date Due 
 
 RINTEO IN U.S.A. CAT. NO. 24 161
 
 1111 III II 11 Hill III 'I "'"'" 
 
 A 000 443 379 3