Tke Dover Road 'JiftJ^S. ^ Ji^RP£f\ > ^ //- JOHNA.SEAVERNS TUFTS UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 3 9090 014 562 769 Webster family Library of Veterinary Mediane Cummings School of Veterinary Mediane at Tufts University 200 Westtx>ro Road North Grafton, MA 015S6 THE DOVER ROAD HISTORIES OF THE ROADS — BY — Charles G. Harper. THE BRIGHTON ROAD : The Classic Highway to the South. THE GREAT NORTH ROAD : London to York. THE GREAT NORTH ROAD : York to Edinburgh. THE DOVER ROAD : Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. THE BATH ROAD : History, Fashion and Frivolity on an old Highway. THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD : London to Manchester. THE MANCHESTER ROAD : Manchester to Glasgow. THE HOLYHEAD ROAD : London to Birming- ham. THE HOLYHEAD ROAD : Birmingham to Holyhead. THE HASTINGS ROAD : And The " Happy Springs of Tunbridge." THE OXFORD. GLOUCESTER AND MILFORD HAVEN ROAD : London to Gloucester. THE OXFORD, GLOUCESTER AND MILFORD HAVEN ROAD • Gloucester to Milford Haven. THE NORWICH ROAD An East AngUan Highway. THE NEWMARKET. BURY, THETFORD AND CROMER ROAD. THE EXETER ROAD : The West of England Highway. THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD. THE CAMBRIDGE, KING'S LYNN AND ELY ROAD. MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY. The DOVER ROAD Annals of an Ancient Turnpike By CHARLES G. HARPER Illustrated by the Author and from Old Prints and Portraits o k Hartford, Connecticut EDWIN VALENTINE MITCHELL First Published 1895. Second and HtvLsed Edition 1922. Manufactured in England by C. Tinling & Co., Ltd. 53, Victoria Stret^t, Liverpool, and 187, Fleet Street, London. /T has been said, by whom I knoiv not, that " jwefaces to books are like signs to public-houses ; they are intended to give one an idea of the kind of enter- tainment to be found within.'' But this preface is not to be like those ; for it would require an essay in itself to give a comprehensive idea of the Dover Road, in all its implications. A road is not merely so many miles of highway, more or less well-maintained. It is not only sojnething in the surveyor's way ; but history as well. It is life, touched at every point. The Dover Road — the highway between London and that most significant of ajjproaches to the Continent of PREFACE Europe — would have been something much more in its mere name had it not been for the accident of London : one of the greatest Occidents. It ivould have been considered a part of the great road to Chester and to Holyhead : the route diagonally across England, from sea to sea, which really in the first instatice it was. For the Dover Road is actually the initial limb of the Watling Street : that prehistoric British trackway adopted by the Romans and by them engineered into a road ; and it would seeju that those Roman engineers, instructed by the Imperial authorities, considered rather the military and strategic needs of those times than those of LoNDiNiuM ; for London was not on the direct road they made ; and it was only at a later date, zvhen it was groivn commercially, they constructed an alternative route that served it. It would be rash to declare that more history has been enacted on this road than on any other, although we may suspect it ; but certainly history is more spectacular along these miles. Those pageants and glittering processions are of the i^ci'^t : they ended in 1840, when raihvays were about to supplant the road ; when the last distinguished traveller along these miles. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, came up by carriage to zved Queen T^ictoria. CHARLES G. HARPER. February, 1922. THE ROAD TO DOVER London Bridge (Surrey side) to- Borough (St. George's Church) Kent Street Newington (" Bricklayers' Arms New Cross . Deptford Blackheath . Shooter's Hill Shoulder of Mutton Green Belle Grove Welling Crook Log . Bexley Heath Crayford (Cross River Cray) Dartford (Cross River Darent) John's Hole Horn's Cross Greenhithe Northfleet . Gravesend (Jubilee Tower) Milton Chalk Street Gad's Hill (" Falstaff " Inn) Strood (Cross River Medway) Rochester (Guildhall) . Chatham (Town Pier) . Rainham .... THE DOVER ROAD London Bridge (Surrey Side) to- MIT.F.S Moor Street 34^ Newington .... 36| Key Street 38 Chalk Well 39 Sittingbourne (Parish Church) 40 Bapchild .... 41i Radfield .... 41| Green Street 421 Ospringe .... 451 Preston .... 461 Boughton-under-Blean . 49 Boughton Hill 50 Dunkirk .... 5U Harbledown 54 Canterbury (Cross River Stour) 55i Gutteridge Gate . 57 Bridge (Cross River Stour) . 581 Halfway House . 62f Lydden .... 65| Temple Ewell 671 Buckland .... 69 Dover ..... 70| LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Mercery Lane, Canterbury . Frontispiece South Gateway, Old London Bridge . The " George " Old Telegraph Tower, Tooley Street . The " Spur " Inn Saturday Night in the Old Kent Road Greenwich Observatory .... Arms of Spielman and his first wife . Dart ford Church ..... The " Bull " Inn, Dartford Dartford Bridge ..... Riverside, Gravesend .... Denton Chapel . . . . . Joe Gargery's Forge .... Ancient Carving — Chalk .... Sailors' Folly ...... Jack come home again .... The Light Fantastic. Bank Holiday at Chalk Gad's Hill Place. Residence of Charles Dickens The " Falstaff," Gad's Hill A Good Samaritan ..... Rochester Castle and the Medway High Street, Rochester : Eastgate House . Jack in his Glory ..... PAGE 6 7 10 15 21 26 52 54 56 59 69 80 81 82 83 84 85 92 94 111 116 122 123 THE DOVER ROAD PAGE The liniisioii of Eiigland : England . . . 127 The Invasion of England : Erance . Paid off at Chatham Key Street ..... Yard of the " Lion " Hotel, Sittingbourne Osi)ringe : a June hop-garden . '' Sir William Courtenay " " Courtenay " Westgate, Canterbury The Due de Nivernais The Blaek Prinee's Arms and Badge " A Gorgeous Creature William Clements . 131 135 148 160 167 177 180 190 193 205 215 216 218 223 227 231 239 241 Dover Castle, from the Folkestone Road : Sunrise 251 Bridge . " Old England's Hole " Barham Downs Watling Street : Moonrise Floods at Alkham : The Drellingore Stream St. Radigund's Abbey .... Of all the historic highways of England, the story of the old Road to Dover is the most difficult to tell. Xo other road in all Christendom (or Pagandom either, for that matter) has so long and continuous a history, nor one so crowded in every age with incident and associations. The writer, therefore, who has the telling of that story to accomplish is weighted with a heavy sense of responsibility, and though (like a village boy marching fearfully through a midnight chiu'chyard) he whistles to keep his courage warm, yet, for all his outAvard show of indifference, he keeps an awed glance upon the shadows that beset his path, and is prepared to take to his heels at any moment. And see what portentous shadows crowd the long reaches of the Dover Road, and demand attention ! Cjcsar's presence haunts the weird plateau of Barham Downs, and the alert imagination hears the tramp of the legionaries aloniJ[ Watlino- Street on moonlit 2 THE DOVER ROAD nights. Shades of Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Normans people the streets of tlie old towns throngh which the highway takes its course, or crowd in warlike array upon the hillsides. Kings and queens, nobles, saints of different degrees of sanctity, great blackguards of every degree of blackguardism, and ecclesiastics holy, haughty, proud, or pitiful, rise up before one and terrify with thoughts of the space the record of their doings Avould occupy ; in fine, the wraiths and phantoms of nigh upon two thousand years combine to intimidate the historian. How rich, then, the road in material, and how embarrassing the accumulated wealth of twenty centuries, and how impossible, too, to do it the barest justice in this one volume ! Many volumes and bulky should go toward the telling of this story ; and for the proper presentation of its pageantry, for the due setting forth of the lives of high and low, rich or poor, upon these seventy miles of highwa}^, the rugged- wrought periods of Carlyle, the fateful march of Thomas Hardy's rustic tragedies, the sly humour and the felicitous phrases of a Stevenson, should be added to the whimsical drolleries of Tom Ingoldsby. To these add the lucid arrangement of a Macaulay shorn of rhetorical redundancies, and, with space to command one might hope to give a glowing word-portraiture of the Dover Road ; while, with the aid of pictorial genius like that possessed by those masters of their art, Morland and Rowlandson, illustrations might be fashioned that would shadow fortli the life and scenery of the wayside to the admiration of all. Without these gifts of the gods, who shall say he has done all this subject demands, nor how sufliciently narrate within the compass of these covers the doings of sixty generations ? The Dover Road, then, to make a beginning with our journej^ is measured from the south side of London Bridge, and is seventy and three-quarters of a mile long. THE COACHES II If we had wished, in the first year of the reign 'of Queen Victoria, to proceed to Dover with the utmost expedition and despatch consistent with coach- travelUng, we should have booked seats in Mr. Benjamin Worthy Home's " Foreign Mail," which left the General Post-Office in Saint Martin's-le-Grand every Tuesday and Frida}^ nights, calling a few minutes later at the " Cross Keys," Wood Street, and finally arriving at Dover in time for the packets at 8.15 the following morning ; thus beating by half an hour the time of any other coach then running on this road. If, on the other hand, we objected to night travel, we should hs,ve had to sacrifice that half-hour, and go by either the " Express," which, starting from the " Golden Cross," Charing Cross, at 10 a.m. every morning, did the journey in nine hours ; or else by the " Union " coach, which, travelling at an equal speed, left the " White Bear," Piccadilly, at 9 a.m. Not that these were the only choice. Coaches in plenty left town for Dover ; the " Eagle," the " Phoenix," Worthington's Safety Coaches, the " Telegraph," the " Defiance," the " Royal Mail," and the " Union Night Coach," starting from all parts of London. The famous " Tally-ho Coach," too, between London and Canterbury, left town every afternoon, and did the fifty-four miles in the twinkling of an eye — that is to say (with greater particularity and less vague figure of speech) in five hours and a half ; while Stanbury and Rutley's fly-vans and wagons conveyed goods and i^assengers who could not afford the fares of the swifter coaches between the " George," Aldermanbury, and Dover at the rate of six miles an hour. Besides these methods of conveyance, numerous coaches, vans, omnibuses and carriers '-carts plied between the Borough and Chatham, Rochester and 4 THE DOVER ROAD Strood ; or served the villages between London and Gravesend. Indeed, at this period, we find the crack coaches, the long-distance mails, starting from London city, leaving to the historic inns of Southwark only the goods- wagons, the short-stages, and the carriers '- carts. In 1837, also, you could vary the order of your going to Dover by taking boat from London to Gravesend, Whitstable, or Heme Bay, and at any of those places waiting for the coach. The voyage to Heme Bay took six hours, and the coach journey from thence to Dover occupied another four, the whole costing but ten shillings ; which, considering that you could get horribly sea-sick in the six hours between London and Heme Bay, and had four hours of jolting in which to recover, w as decidedly cheap, and not to be matched nowadays. The traveller of this time would probably select the " Express " from the " Golden Cross," because this was a convenient and central starting-point from which that excellent coach started at an hour when the day was well-aired. The coachman of that time was the ultimate product of the coaching age, and we who travel by train do not see anything like him. He owed something to heredity, for in those days son succeeded to father in all kinds of trades and profes- sions much more frequently than now ; for the rest of his somewhat alarming appearance he was indebted partly to the rigours of the weather and partly to the rum-and-milk for which he called at every tavern where the coach stopped — and at a good many where it had no business to stop at all. As a result of these several causes, he generally had cheeks like pulpit cushions, puffy, and of an apoplectic hue, and a plum- coloured nose with red spots on it ; he was, in fact, what Shakespeare would call a " purple-hued malt- worm," He shaved scrupulously. A rugged beaver hat with a curly brim and a coat of many capes would have identified him as a coachman, even if the evidence of his face had failed, and his talk, which consisted of LONDON BRIDGE 5 " G^^-hups," biting repartees administered to passing Jehus, and contemptuous references to the railways, which were just beginning to be spoken of, was solely professional. Some of these latter-day coaches went direct from the West End, over Westminster Bridge, and so to the Old Kent Road, but others had to call at various inns on the way to the City, and so came over London Bridge in the approved fashion. Ill And the London Bridge by which they would cross in 1837 was a very different structure from that driven over by their forbears of twenty years previously. So late as 1831, Old London Bridge remained that, built in 1176, had thus for nearly seven hundred years borne the traffic to and from London, and had stood firmly centuries of storms and floods, and all the attacks of rebels from Norman to late Tudor times. Its career was closed on the 1st of August, 1831, when the new bridge, that had taken seven years in the building, was opened. The old bridge crossed the Thames at a point about a hundred feet to the eastward of the present one ; the city approach leading steeply down a narrow street by Monument Yard, and passing close under the projecting clock of Saint Magnus the Martyr. The view was eminently picturesque, with the many and irregular pointed arches of the bridge ; the rush of water in foaming cascades through the narrow openings ; the weathered stonework, and the curious old oil-lamps ; and the soaring Monument with the fantastic spire of St. Magnus, seen from Southwark, in the background. This was the aspect of Old London Bridge at any time between 1750, when the houses that had been for centuries standing on it were removed, and 1831, when the bridge itself 6 THE DOVER ROAD was destroyed with pick and shovel. In previous ages there were gates both at the London and the Southwark ends, and on these fortified gateways ^ouf^ GaTeiJj-. Old Lon^n "^r'l (^e were stuck the heads of many traitors to the State and martyrs to reUgious opinions. The heads of Sir Wilham Wallace, Jack Cade, Bishop) Fisher of Rochester, Sir Thomas More, and of many another, were once to be seen here ; and in Queen Elizabeth's time, when John Visschcr made a drawing of London BRIDGE FOOT 7 Bridge, so maii}^ were the rotting skulls that the SoutliAvark gate-house wore not so much the appearance of an entry into the capital of a civilised kingdom as that of a doorwa}^ to some Giant Blunderbore's bloodstained castle. " Bridge Foot " was the name of the Southwark THE " OEOEGE.' end of London Bridge. It was a narrow lane leading to Southwark High Street, paved with knobbly stones and walled in with tall houses. Bridge Foot is a thing of the past, and London Bridge Station stands on the site of it. " High Street, Borough," too, is very different from not only meditcval days, but even from coaching times. The many old inns that used to front toward the street, dating their prosperity 8 THE DOVER ROAD back to the twelfth century, and their fabric to some time subsequently to the fire of 1676, are nearly all either utterly demolished, or are put to use as railway receiving offices. The "Queen's Head" is gone; the " George," most interesting of all that remain here, is threatened ; the " Spur " is left, little changed ; the " Half Moon " is still the house for a good chop or steak and a tankard of ale ; but the " White Hart," where is it ? Where the " Tabard," the " King's Head," the " Catherine Wheel," the " Boar's Head," the " Old Pick my Toe," or the " Three Widows " ? In vain will the curious who pay pilgrimage to Southwark seek them. There still are many cavernous doorways, stone-flagged passages, and great court- yards ; but nothing more romantic than railway vans is to be seen in the most of them, and the yard Avhere Sam Weller w^as first introduced to an admiring public is quite gone. The most romantically named of the Southwark inns now left is undoubtedly the " Blue Eyed Maid," so named, possibly, in connection with Tamplin's " Blue Eyed Maid " coach that used to run between Southw^ark and Rochester in the twenties. The building, though, does not share the romanticism of its name. Near it, let into the seventeenth-century brick frontage of No. 71, High Street, is the old sign of the " Hare and Sun," the trade-mark of Nicholas Hare ; and this, together with the stone half-moon sign in the yard of the " Half Moon Inn," is the sole relic of the many devices that once decorated the street. The hop trade has taken almost undivided possession of the place nowadays. The Hop Exchange is over the way, and hop-factors are as frequently to be met with here as diamond-merchants in Hatton Garden ; and with their coming the old-fashioned appearance of Southwark High Street is gone. Even when Hogarth painted his " Southwark Fair," in 1733, the street was suburban, and in the distance, seen betw^een the crowds gathered round old St. THE TELEGRAPH TOWER 9 George's Church, are the hills and dales of Kent. The church was pulled down in the following year, and the present building put up in its place. The fair was suppressed in 1762. At that time, Kent Street was the only way to the Dover Road, and, even then, the dirt and over- crowding in that notorious thoroughfare were phenomenal. Englishmen were ashamed of this disgraceful entrance into London, and one Avhose duty lay in bringing a representative foreigner from Dover to London craftily contrived that he should enter the Metropolis at night, when the dirty tenements of Kent Street, by which their carriage would pass, would be hidden in darkness. When Newington Causeway was made, and direct access gained to the Old Kent Road, the horrors of Kent Street were no longer to be braved by travellers. The street is here still, but somewhat civilised, and now called " Tabard Street " ; but to " give a bit of Kent Street " is yet understood to mean language for which Billingsgate has also been long renowned. A singular structure standing in Tooley Street, and visible for a very great distance up or down the river, was the so-called " Telegraph Tower," which was burned down in the great fire of August, 1843. It had at one time been a shot-tower, and had always com- pletely dwarfed its next-door neighbour, St. Olave's Church. It was very ugly, and so its loss was a distinct gain ; but with its disappearance went all recollection of the old system of signalling that had no rival before the electric telegraph was introduced in 1838. This system was introduced in 1795, at the suggestion of the Rev. Lord George Murray, afterwards Bishop of Saint David's. He proposed to the Admiralty to erect signal-posts or towers on the heights between London and the coast, and upon experiments being made, it was found easily practicable to send messages in this way to our ships in the Downs. That year. 10 THE DOVER ROAD then, witnessed the estabhshment of a hne of telegraph- towers between the Admiralty and Deal, with a brancli OLD TELEGRAPH TO WEE, TOOLE Y STREET. to Sheerness, The original apparatus of revolving shutters was in use until 1816, when it was changetl SOUTHWARK 11 for a. semaphore system, resembling very closel}^ that in use upon railways at the present day, the chief peculiarity beino- that, instead of only two movements of the semaphore arms, each one could be made to assume six different positions. Some old prints of the Admiralty buildings in Whitehall show a telegraph- station of this kind upon the roof, with the little wooden cabin in which were stationed the men (generally four) whose duty it was to read through telescopes the signals from the nearest station, and to work the shutters or semaphores above their own. One of these stations has given the name of " Telegraph Hill " to that knoll at Hatcham, by New Cross, which was opened as a public park so recently as April, 1895. From hence was signalled news of Nelson and Trafalgar, of Wellington and Waterloo ; here worked the arms that carried orders from the Admiralty to the admirals in the Downs to sail east or west ; to proceed home or fare forth to foreign stations ; to summon Courts Martial, and to put the sentences of those stern drum-head tribunals into execution. IV The Southwark of Chaucer's time was a very different place. For one thing, it was a great deal smaller. The year in which his Canterbury Pilgrims were supposed to set out has generally been fixed at 1383, and at that time the whole country had only recently been smitten with three great pestilences, which had carried off nearly half the population of England. London numbered probably no more than thirty thousand inhabitants. Southwark was comparatively a village ; a village, too, not with the odious surroundings of later years, but a pleasant spot over the water from the City, where great prelates had their palaces, and whence a short walk of five minutes 12 THE DOVER ROAD or so would bring you into the open country, and among the fragrant hedgerows of the Kent Road. No picture exists of Southwark as Chaucer saw it, but when an ingenious Dutchman — one Antony van der Wyngrerde — made a drawing of Southwark and London Bridge, in 1546, this historic part of the " Surrey side " was still distinctly rural. Orchards and pleasant gardens are seen clustering round St. George's Church, and stretching away to the site of the present Kent Street, and bosky woods flourished where the tall wharves of Bankside are crowded together. Where are those orchards, woods, and gardens now ? Where is Winchester House, the grand palace of the Bishops of Winchester, that looked upon the river ? Where its neighbour, Rochester House ? Where, too, is Suffolk House, the princely residence of the Dukes of Suffolk ? Gone, all of them, like the morning dew ; and the only recognisable object in Van Wyngrerde's drawing is the tower of St. Mary Overie's Church that still, as " St. Saviour's," rears its four pinnacles above the Southwark of to-day. The most famous of all the inns of Southwark was the " Tabard," famous not only as an ordinary house of good cheer, but as a hostelry immediately under the protection of the Church, whereto resorted many good folk bent on pilgrimage. The Abbot of Hyde Monastery at Winchester was the owner of the ground upon which the original " Tabard " was built, and he built here not only an inn (which it is to be supposed he let out) but also a guest-house for the brethren of Hyde, and all others of the clergy who resorted to London to wait on the Bishop of Winchester, whose grand palace stood close by. In 1307 did the Abbot of Hyde build the " Tabard," and Chaucer gave it immortality in 1383. At that time the landlord was the Harry Bailly of the " Canterbury Tales " ; a real person, probably an intimate friend of Chaucer's, and Chaucer's description of him is most likely to be a careful CHAUCER'S PILGRIMS 13 ]3ortraiture of the man, his appearance, his speech, and his ways of thought. He was a considerable person, this host. He was a Member of Parhament, and his name is an index of his importance, for Baihff of Southwark his ancestor, Henry Tite, or Martin, had been made in 1231, and himself held the position through so long a line of grandfathers and great-grandfathers that their name had become merged in that of his civic office. So Chaucer's description we know to be very truth, so far as his worth and position are concerned : — A seemly man uur hoste was withal For to have been a marshal in a hall. A large man was he, with eyen steep, A fairer burgess is there none in Chepe ; Bold of his speech, and wise, and well ytaught ; And of manhood lacked righte nought, Eke thereto he was right a merry man. This explains the host's sitting at supper with his guests, even with such gentlefolk as the knight and his son, the squire, and with the Lady Abbess. Thus is he able to take charge of and assume leadership over his party on the road to Canterbury, and to reprove or praise each and all, according to his mind. The " Tabard " is, of course, only a memory now, and, indeed, so often had it been patched and repaired, that but little of the original could have been standing when the great fire of Southwark, in 1676, swept away many of the old inns. But the "" Talbot," as it was called in later times, stood until 1870 on the site of the older building, and was itself so venerable that many good folks were used to believe it to have been the veritable house where those old-time pilgrims lay before setting out on their journey. To that shrine of St. Thomas crowds of pilgrims flocked from every part of the Christian world. Rich and poor, high and low alike, left court and camp, palace or hovel. The knight left his castle, the lady her bower ; the merchant his goods, the sailor his ship ; and the ploughman forsook his tillage to partake U THE DOVER ROAD in the blessings that radiated from Becket's resting- place in Canterbury Cathedral. From such varied ranks of society are Chaucer's pilgrims drawn. A knight whose manhood had been spent in battle at home or in Palestine is at their head. He had been present at the taking of Alexandria ; had fought with the Germans against Russia, and had campaigned in Granada against the Moors. Yet his is a meek and Christian-like deportment, and he is in truth a very perfect, gentle knight. With him is his son, the squire, a boy of twenty, who had already made one campaign against the French, and had borne himself well, both in battle and in the tourney. Love deprives him of his sleep, and for love he writes sonnets and attires himself in smart clothes, broidered over with flowers like a May meadow. In attendance on this love-lorn swain is a yeoman clad in Lincoln green and bristling with arms. Sword and buckler, a dagger in his belt, with bow and arrows complete his equipment. Following upon these comes firstly Madame Eglantine, a lady prioress whose noble birth is seen both in her appearance and in the nicety with which she eats and drinks. With a sweet, if rather nasal, tone she chants portions of the Liturgy, and speaks French by preference ; but it is the French, not of Paris, but of " Stratford-atte-Bow." So high-strung is her sensibility that she would weep if she was shown a mouse in a trap, or if her little dog was beaten with a stick. She wears — somewhat inconsistently, considering her religious profession — a brooch bearing the inscription. Amor vincit omnia. Next this dainty lady comes a fat monk of the Benedictine Order, whose shaven crown and red cheeks are as smooth as glass, and whose eyes shine like burning coals, both by reason of lust and good living. He is dressed in a fashion no holy monk should affect, for the sleeves of his robe are trimmed with the finest fur, and a golden love-knot pin holds his hood in place. Clearly ring the bells on his horse's bridle ; hare-hunting and a feast off a fat swan are THE "sruii" I.XX. CHAUCER'S PILGRIMS 17 more to him than the rule of St. Benedict and all the holy books in his cell. Beside this disgrace to his religious 23rofession is a mendicant friar who is no whit better than his fellow, for he can sing tender songs to his harp, treats the country-folk in the taverns, and knows well how to please the women with timely gifts of needles and knives. Follow these a merchant and two learned men. Well does the merchant know the rate of exchange, and better still does he know how to secure his own interest. Not so the clerk of Oxenford, hollow-cheeked and lean, dressed in threadbare clothes and riding a bare-ribbed horse. As yet he is unbeneficed; but his books are his only joy. His fellow is a law Serjeant in good practice, and at his heels comes the Franklin, a representative of a very large class who held land of their own, but were not of gentle birth. A lower social stratum is represented by a haber- dasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dj^er, and a tapster ; all of consideration in their own grade, and likely to become aldermen some day. As Avealthy as any is the miller, a big-bodied fellow, with a spade beard, red, like a fox, and as cunning. He well knows how to take a share of the corn his customers bring him to grind. He wears a white coat and a blue hood ; plays on the bagpipes, and tells stories fitted to make the young and innocent blush. The wife of Bath is every whit as indelicate. She has been married five times, and of love, says Chaucer, " she knew the olde dance." Therefore she is privileged. A shipman from Dartmouth has with him a bottle of Burgundy stolen from his captain's cabin, from which he thinks it no sin to drink when on pious pilgrimage. A doctor of physic, a cook, a poor parson, a ploughman, a reeve, or estate agent, a manciple, and two disgraceful characters — a summoner and a pardoner — make up the total of the company. The summoner has a fiery face, which nothing but abstinence from drink will assuage ; and the pardoner is totally without conscience or morals of any kind. He makes a good living by 18 THE DOVER ROAD selling pardons from the Pope, and gets more by the sale of relics in one day than the parson can earn in two months. When these pilgrims rode forth on that April morning — nine and twenty of them — from the " Tabard," to seek Becket's shrine, they started from the ultimate suburb of London. Picture that, Londoners of to-day, who find streets unceasing until Blackheath is gained, and no true roadside country this side of Gravesend ! The thymy air then blew in at the casements of the many inns of Southwark, and the views thence extended over fields and meadows where countless chimneys now pollute the sky. Some way down the Kent Road ran a little stream across the highway — " Saint Thomas a Watering " the ford was called, and here the pilgrims made their first halt — And forth we riden a litel more than pas, Unto the watering of Saint Thomas, And then our host began his hors arrest. Saint Thomas's Road marks the site of this stream, and the " Thomas a Becket " inn perpetuates a house of call for w^ayfarers ; but the fame of all these things — of the heretics, the cutpurses, the varied thieves and beggars who were executed here, with their quarters stuck on poles by the ford by way of warning, is lost in the latter-day commonplace of the Old Kent Road. Yet, at this place, which was something more than a mere water-splash, and the Golgotha of this road out of London, many met their end through being born a little in advance of their time. This was, and is yet, a criminal offence ; but it is no longer capital. If, for example, the unfortunate John Penry, AVelsh scholar and graduate alike of Oxford and Cambridge, religious reformer and prime mover in the " Martin Marprelate " tracts, directed against the Episcopal bench, had but been born fifty years later, he would have been honoured, instead of meeting here an ignominious end. He was hanged at St. Thomas a Watering, May 29, 1593, MILESTONES 19 and was a victim to the vengeance of my lords spiritual in general, and of Archbishop Whitgift in particular. There are milestones on the Dover Road. Of course. Mr. F's aunt, in Little Dorr it, kncAV something about them, but not much. Her knoAvledge was general, not particular. We read in Chapter XXIII : — " A diversion was occasioned here by Mr. F.'s aunt, making the following inexorable and awful statement : ' There's milestones on the Dover Road.' Clennam was disconcerted by this. ' Let him deny it if he can,' continued the venomous old lady. He could not deny it. There are milestones on the Dover Road." We will not grow excited about this incontrovertible fact. But not many people can say where the first milestone from London on this highway is to be found. Although, in fact, it is at the end of the first mile from the south side of London Bridge, no one in these days would suspect such a relic of surviving in London streets. It stands where the Old Kent Road begins, on the left-hand side as you go south, with an iron plate on it, proclaiming this to be "1 mile from London Bridge." The stone, greatly battered, stands pro- minently, on an elevated kerb. Just because we associate milestones with country roads and hedgerows, we look upon this, standing in that crowded urban region, as curious ; but when it was first set up, this was on the very verge of the country. We have heard much of the Old Kent Road in recent years. People who never so much as suspected the existence of it, grew familiar with its name, in the refrain of a comic song dealing with costermongers. The music-halls in 1891 reverberated with the name. 20 THE DOVER ROAD But that is all done with. The Old Kent Road is not to be described in a phrase, nor thought of as the coster's paradise. It is in fact a road of many aspects. But how to catalogue the kinds of them that dwell here ? It cannot well be done. Shopkeepers of every kind and degree ; private residents of a more than average decent respectability ; publicans, the landlords of public-houses of a prodigious bigness ; family doctors — these are the more salient classes of the Old Kent Road. The coster ? you ask. Nay, but he does not " inhabit " here. He (shall I phrase it thus ?) pervades the road — the " road," bien entendu, not the houses that line the road — and it is only on Saturday nights, when frugal housewives fare forth, cheapening necessary provisions, that you who seek shall find him, with his booths and shallows, his barrows and crazy trestles ; his naphtha-lamps flaring gustily, his voice raucous, his goods striking both eye and nose in no uncertain manner. At such times the kennel becomes a busy mart, where you may purchase most articles of daily food at a price much below the current quotations in shops. Here a shilling possesses the purchasing power of a half-crown expended in the West End, and at this bon marche the artisan's table is fully furnished forth for a sum which would give the dwellers in mid-London pause. I have said that the Old Kent Road is eminently respectable ; and so it is. But it is also (the natural sequence of respectability) not less eminently dull. It is only when Saturday evening comes, with its street- market commencing as the light dies out of the sky, that this long road becomes rea'ly interesting. Then it takes on an aspect of mystery, and is filled with flickering lights and shadows from the yellow gas-lamps and the gusty naphtha-flares that illuminate the dealings of Mr. 'Enery 'AAvkins with his clients ; and I am quite sure that, if Rembrandt was living now, he would choose such a time and place as the best subject for a picture in all London. One spot in IN THE OLD KENT ROAD 21 especial he would select. Taking a tramcar from the " Elephant and Castle," he would ask the conductor to set him down by the bridge that crosses the Grand Surrey Canal, where the great gasometers of the South London Gas Company rear themselves high in - ■ " r m^' 1 '''*'^ ■ ,^ s^. dm i ^ 1 ■ i m ■ p SATURDAY XIGHT IX THE OLD KEXT ROAD. air above mean houses and third-rate shops. Arrived here, he would select, as the best j^oint of view, the broad entrance of a large public-house, outside of which the omnibuses stop in their career between the Borough and New Cross ; and it is very likely that the thing which happened to me while sketching here would also befall him ; that is to say, some short-sighted or dull-witted old lady would probably dig him in the ribs with the ferrule of her umbrella, and say, " Young 22 THE DOVER ROAD man, how long before your 'bus starts ? " And, after all, I suppose one must not be satirical at the expense of that very worthy person the British matron ; for, to a superficial glance, a sketch-block may be not unlike an omnibus way-bill ; and who but a mad impressionist would see sketchable material in an ugly gasometer ? And who other than a reckless Bohemian would be so far indifferent to public opinion as to sketch outside a gin-palace ? The Old Kent Road of from seventy to eighty years ago presented a very different aspect from that with which those are familiar who travel nowadays up and down its great length in tramcars. It was distinctly rural. The few houses that were to be seen here in coaching days were chiefly inns, with swinging signs creaking, and horse-troughs lining the roadside, and the " Kentish Drovers," that now wears much the same appearance as any other London public- house, was a veritable rustic house of call for country- men driving their sheep and cattle to London markets. " The Bricklayers' Arms " (a 'scutcheon, needless to say, unknown to heraldry), " The World Turned Upside Down," the " Thomas a Becket," and the " Golden Cross," at New Cross, were scarcely less rural. It was at the " Golden Cross " that Pitt and Dundas, overtaken on the road from Dover to London by bad weather, put up for the night, and drank seven bottles of port before they went to bed. Imagine, though, the condition of the roads, and locomotion upon them, when two Cabinet Ministers could think it not only convenient, but merely prudent, to halt for the night when so near London as New Cross ! The Londoner who can take 'bus, tram, or train, and reach the City in less than half-an-hour, can scarce picture the necessity which faced those distinguished travellers. DEPTFORD 23 VI When the old coachmen had got through New Cross Gate, which stood where the " ^larquis of Granby " occupies the junction of the Deptford and Lewisham roads, they found themselves in the country, with Deptford, a busy but small and compact place, yet some distance ahead. Also, they had entered the county of Kent. Nowadays, it is difficult for the uninstructed to tell where New Cross ends or Deptford begins, for there is never a break in the houses all the way, while the street presents no attractions whatever ; and even though the " good view of part of the Greenwich Railway, the carriages of which may be seen in motion to and fro " (a view which the local guide-book, published in 1837, considered worthy a visit from London), remains to this day, together with several other railways to keep it company, one does not find crowds of visitors hanging on the delirious delights of the several New Cross stations. The Deptford of to-day is no place for the pilgrim. Instead of reminiscences of Kenilworth and Queen Elizabeth, of Drake and Peter the Great, it is rich in " stores " and " emporiums." A workhouse stands where Sayes Court afforded shelter under its roof, and amusement in its gardens, for the Czar ; the Trinity House of Deptford Strond has been removed to Tower Hill ; and perhaps the most remarkable thing in modern Deptford is the Foreign Cattle Market. And yet here Elizabeth knighted Francis Drake, in 1581, on that good ship the Golden Hind, in which he had '' compassed the world " ; and here, on a site now occupied by cattle and by business premises, was the greatest dockyard in England at the most inter- esting period of English naval history. It was at Deptford, they say, in 1593, that Christopher Marlowe, that bright particular star of poesy, was slain, while yet in his thirtieth year. AVe 24 THE DOVER ROAD know too little of him, and no portraiture has come down to show us what manner of man this was who wrote divinely and lived (if we may believe the scribes) sottishly, after the manner, indeed, of the fraternity of his fellow-dramatists. It should seem, by some contemporary accounts, that he was killed by a rival in the affections of some saucy baggage ; but there were not wanting those who asserted that the poet was assassinated by some myrmidon of the Church, whose priests he lost no opportunity of reviling. To lend some colour to this, there remains a pamphlet, printed in 1618, entitled — what a title ! — " The Thunderbolt of God's Wrath Against Hard-hearted and Stiff-necked Sinners." It says, " We read of one Marlowe, a Cambridge Scholler, who was a poet and a filthy play-maker ; this wretch accounted that meeke servant of God, Moses, to be but a conjuror, and our Sweet Saviour to be but a seducer and deceiver of the people. But harken, ye brain-sicke and prophane poets and players, that bewitch idle cares with foolish vanities, what fell upon this prophane wretch ; having a quarrell against one whom he met in the street in London, and would have stab'd him ; but the partie perceiving his villany prevented him with catching his hands, and turning his own dagger into his braines ; and so blaspheming and cursing he yeelded up his stinking breath. Marke this, ye players that live by making fools laugh at sinne and wickedness." VII Leaving " dirty Deptford," that being the contu- melious conjuction by which the place has generally been known, any time these last hundred years or so (and far be it from me to deprive any place of its well-merited title, whether good or ill), the road ascends steeply to Blackheath, past some fine old BLACKHEATH 25 mansions which, having been built in the days of Queen Anne and the earher Georges, and having long housed the aristocracy who at one time frequented the place, became afterwards the homes of rich City merchants. Finally, when the " schools for young ladies " are gone which now occupy them, and give so distinct a scholastic air to this suburb, they will doubtless disappear amid a cloud of dust and the clinking of trowels, while on their sites will rise the unchanging pattern of suburban shops ! Blackheath is one of the finest suburbs of London ; a town girt round with many particularly beautiful outskirts. Strange to say, it has not been spoiled, and though thickly surrounded with hovises, remains as breezy and healthful as ever ; perhaps, indeed, since highwayman and footpad have disappeared, and now that duels are unknown, Blackheath may be regarded as even more healthy a spot than it was a hundred years ago. The air which gave Bleak Heath its original name, and nipped the ears and made red the noses of the " outsides " who journeyed across it on their way to Dover in the winter months, is healthful and bracing, and is not so bleak as balmy in the days of June, when the sun shines brilliantly, and makes a generous heat to radiate from the old mellow brick wall of Greenwich Park that skirts the heath on its northern side. Outside the gate of that steepest of all parks stood Montagu House, whence the Earl of Chesterfield wrote those famous letters to his son — letters whose precepts, if carefully and consistently followed, would have infallibly sent their recipient to the Devil. Montagu House is gone now, pulled down long ago, and the site where the worldly Dormer wrote, pointing out to his son the way to perdition, is now a part of the Heath. Gone, too, is the garden where the phenomenally vulgar and undignified Princess Caroline of Wales, who lived here from 1797 to 1814, might have been seen, and ivas seen one morning, sitting in 26 THE DOVER ROAD the grounds in a gorgeous dress, looped up to the knees, to show the stars with which her petticoats were spangled : with silver wings on her shoulders, and drinking from a peAvter pot of porter, after the use and wont, between the acts, of the pantomime fairies of Drury Lane. With this Princesse au cafe chantant disappears the last vestige of royalty hereabouts, and Greenwich, lying down beyond the Park, has only dim memories of Henry the Eighth, and Queen Elizabeth, who was born in the palace of Placentia beside the Thames. GREEXWICH OBSERVATOrvY If you venture into the Park, and stand upon Observatory Hill, you can at once glimpse London and gain an idea of how plebeian Greenwich has become. But its history is not yet done, and on this ver}^ spot, in 1893, a chapter of it was made by a foreign Anarchist who blew himself up in the making ; and when the park keepers came and gleaned little pieces of him from ON THE HEATH 27 the November boughs, the incident shaped more picturesquely than any other happening on this spot that I can think of. As for Blackhcath, it seems that when, in older days, people had assignations on the Dover Road, they generally selected this place for the purpose ; whether they were kings and emperors that met ; or ambas- sadors, archbishops, rebels, or rival pretenders to the crown, they each and all came here to shake hands and interchange courtesies, or to speak with their enemies in the gate. It is very impressive to find Blackhcath thus and so frequently honoured by the great ones of the earth ; but it is also not a little embarrassing to the historian who wants to be getting along down the road, and j^et desires to tell of all the pageants that here befell, and how the high contending parties variously saluted or sliced one another, as the case might be. Indeed, to write the history of Black- heath would be to despair of ever seeing JDover, and so, instead of beginning with Aulus Plautius, or any of the masterful Roman generals who doubtless had something to say to those cerulean Britons on this spot, I will skip the centuries, and only note the more outstanding and interesting occasions on which the heath has figured largely. Hie we then from the first to the fourteenth century, when, in 1381, Wat, the Tiler of Dartford, encamped here as leader of a hundred thousand insurgents. The fount and origin of this famous rebellion has ever been popularly sought in the historic incident of Dartford, in which the tax- gatherer lost his life ; but a discontent had long been smouldering among the people, which needed only an eloquent happening of this nature to be fanned into a flame. The Poll Tax was one of the greatest grievances of the time, and the high rent of land was even more burdensome. The price of land might, perhaps, have been borne with, for it was of gradual growth, and regulated more or less by the law of su))i)]y and demand, but the Poll Tax 28 THE DOVER ROAD was a new burden, and one exacted harshly from the people by the nobles among whom the Government had farmed it. Then, too, the state of serfdom in which the villeins existed was odious to them at this lapse of time, when men began to aspire to some- thing better than to be the mere pawns of kings and nobles, sent to fight for feudalism on foreign battlefields, or in fratricidal conflicts at home. The days were drawing to a close when it was possible for kings to issue prescriptions for the seizing of artisans to be set to work on the building of royal palaces and castles ; documents couched in this wise : '' To our trusty and well-beloved Richard, Earl of Essex : Know ye that it is our pleasure that you do take and seize as many masons, carpenters, braziers, and all kinds of artificers necessary to the reparation of our Castle of Windsor, and that this shall be your warrant for detaining them so long as may be necessary to the completion of the work." With grievances old and new, it wanted but little to set the home counties in revolt, and so we find the cause of the Dartford tiler to have been Avarml}^ taken up, not only throughout his native Kent, but also, across the river, in Essex. The tiler's neighbours swore they would protect him from punishment, and, marching to Maidstone, appointed him leader of the commons in Kent. The Canterbury citizens, less enthusiastic, were overawed by the number of the rebels, and several of them slain ; five hundred joining in the march to London, while a dissolute itinerant priest, that famous demagogue John Ball, was enlarged from prison and appointed preacher to the throng, rousing them to iury by the rough eloquence and apt illustration with which he enlarged upon his text — When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman ? From Blackheath to London marched this great REBELS 29 rabble. The king, with his cousin Henry, Earl of Derby ; the xlrchbishop of Canterbury, and a hundred knights and sergeants were retired for safety to the Tower, whence they issued by boat to receive the petitions of the insurgents. Ten thousand of them waited at Rotherhithe, and by their fierce yells and threatening appearance so terrified the king's attend- ants that, instead of permitting him to land, they took advantage of the tide, and returned. This behaviour disappointed Tyler, who saw no hope of concessions from the king's advisers. He and his men burst into London, and, joined by the discontented host from Essex and Hertfordshire, under the leadership of one John Rakestraw (who has come down to us through the ages as Jack Straw, and whose camping-ground on Hampstead Heath bears to this da}^ the old inn known as " Jack Straw's Castle "), plundered the town, burning the Palace of the Savoy and all the buildings and records of the Temple. Fear eventually led the Court party to grant the four chief demands of the people ; the abolition of slavery ; the reduction of the rent of land to fourpence an acre ; free liberty of buying and selling in all fairs and markets ; and a general pardon for past offences. Had Tyler and Rakestraw been content with these concessions, it is probable that all would have been well ; but their ambition had grown with success, and they trusted to further violence for greater advantage. Rushing into the Tower at the head of four hundred men, they murdered there the Archbishop of Canterbury and five others, and, retaining no less than twenty thousand followers in the City, intercepted the king as he rode out the following morning attended onl}^ by sixty horsemen. With boorish insolence, Tyler lay hold of the king's bridle, when AValworth, Lord Mayor of London, stabbed him in the throat. Falling from his horse, the rebel leader was despatched by an esquire. The courage and tact of the young king are historical, and the way in which he quelled the hostility of the 30 THE DOVER ROAD insurgents, and drew their sympathies to himself, is well known ; but the revocation of the charters of emancipation was a piece of faithlessness Avhich makes the inquirer doubtful of the sincerity in which they were first granted, and the less inclined to blame Wat the Tiler for his excesses. Thus tamely ended this, at one time, most formidable rebellion. The south gateway of London Bridge received its leader's head, ancl the lieges who fared by that frowning archway, together with those others who felt no loyalty, were invited to look upon the head of a traitor. But some day Wat the Tiler of Dartford will have his monument, and, truly, there are few figures in our history that so well deserve one, for he was one of the first to stir a hand for the English people against the exactions of a largely alien nobility. Blackheath Avitnessed no other Avarlike gathering for the matter of seventy years ; but it was in the meanwhile the scene of many peaceful displays. VIII And here (says Stowe) came, in 1415, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, with four hundred citizens in scarlet, and with white and red hoods, to receive Henry the Fifth on his return from the victories in France, of which that of Agincourt was the greatest. " The gates and streets of the City were garnished and apparelled with precious cloths of arras, containing the history, triumphs, and princely acts of the kings of England, his progenitors, which was done to the end that the king might understand what remembrance the people would hand to their posterity of these his great victories and triumphs. The conduits in the City ran none other but goocl sweet wines, and that abundantly. There were also made in the streets many towers and stages, richly adorned, and on the height of them sat CARDINAL WOLSEY 31 small children, apparelled in semblance of angels, with sweet-tuned voices, singing praises and lauds unto God : for the victorious king would not suffer ditties to be made and sung of his history, for that he would wholly have the praise given unto God ; neither would he suffer to be carried before him, nor showed unto the l^eople, his helmet, whereupon his crown of gold was broke and deposed in the field by the violence of the enemy, and great strokes he had recei\'ed, nor his other armour that in that cruel battle Avas so sore broke." But perhaps the most remarkable meeting on Blackheath was that which assembled to escort the cardinars hat, designed for Wolsey. When that particularly haughty prelate learnt that the insignia of his promotion was on its way from Rome in charge only of an ordinary messenger, he deemed it essential to his importance that a more imposing method of conveyance should be provided. Previoush% therefore, to the arrival of the Pope's messenger on our shores, Wolsey caused him to be met and decked out with robes and trappings suitable to so important an occasion. That glorified pursuivant of Papal authority was, therefore, brought along the road from Dover to Blackheath with the greatest show of deference and consideration, and here, on this waste, the hat was met by great numbers of the clergy and nobility, who conducted it to London and to Westminster Abbey in great triumph. Wolsey's hat, however, comes out of chronological sequence. Let us then j^ut back the clock of history again to the year 1450, when Jack Cade's rebellion peopled Blackheath with a menacing host. These were the early days of the quarrels of the rival Roses. England was losing — whether by bad generalship or by trend of unavoidable circumstances it matters not — the provinces of France won by Henry the Fifth whose feeble son now reigned ; the kinghead around whose ill-balanced kingship raged the quarrels and 32 THE DOVER ROAD family jealousies of the Dukes of York, Suffolk, Somerset, and Buckingham. The king was unpopular with half his subjects, and all of them raged with wounded pride and grief at the loss of France. The name of Mortimer was a power in the land, and the head of that ancient family Avas the Duke of York, who had probably the greatest following of feudatory tenants in England. To take advantage both of the prevailing discontent and of the Mortimer prestige came Jack Cade, an Irish adventurer, at the head of twenty thousand followers, and encamped on Black- heath. Cade was undoubtedly the Duke of York's catspaw, but his sudden success in gaining adherents is something of a mystery ; for, although he proclaimed himself a cousin of the duke, he was an obviously ignorant clown, a fact seized upon by Shakespeare with grand effect in Henry VI, part i, act 4, where he makes Cade's companions to be Dick the Butcher, Smith the Weaver, and others of a like humble estate, whose asides upon Cade's proclaiming himself a Mortimer and his wife a descendant of the Lacies are very amusing. " My father was a Mortimer," says Cade, to which Dick the Butcher rejoins, whispering behind his hand, that " he was an honest man, and a good bricklayer ; " while as to his wife's descent from the Lacies, he remarks that " she was, indeed, a pedlar's daughter, and sold many laces " — a punning speech that, were it the work of a modern dramatist, would be received with a howl of execration. Cade retired from Blackheath to Sevenoaks on an equal force being sent to oppose him, but there turned at bay n\)o\\ his pursuers, and the Royal army dispersed, leaving London at the mercy of this rabble- ment. There the fickle mob wavered and Cade fled, presently to suffer the fate that befell so many in those bloody days. The last occasion on which Blackheath has figured largely was really romantic. The date 1660, the occasion the Restoration of His Gracious Majesty THE RESTORATION 33 King Charles the Second to the throne of his ancestors. Romantic it was because of the home-coming of the interesting exile who had fled, years before, for his life ; and was now come, greatly daring, to meet, not only his loyal citizen-subjects here, but to stand again face to face with the veteran regiments of the army which had finally crushed the Royalist hopes at Worcester Fight. No one knew how they would behave. Commanded by Loyalist officers, they were drawn up here to meet the king, but, amid all the rejoicings of the people, that Puritan soldiery looked on, scowling, and not all the personal charm of the king, nor the enthusiasm of the people, could chase away the sadness with which they looked upon the undoing of that work in which they had gained their scars. Charles and his brothers of York and Gloucester moved about, unarmed, graciously acknowledging the shouts of " Long live King Charles ! " and receiving old supporters who saw this glorious Restoration with tears of joy running down their cheeks ; and their gay demeanour showed their courage, for little was wanting to make the Ironsides declare for the Commonwealth, and, spurring their horses, change this scene of rejoicing to one of blood and dismay. But the moments of suspense were safely passed ; the king pressed on to London, and the Restoration was accomplished. It is in the pleasant pages of Woodstock that one reads how the old cavalier. Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, " having a complacent smile on his face and a tear swelling to his eye, as he saw the banners wa^'e on in interminable succession," came here to witness the return of his sovereign. Here, too, came Colonel Everard, and xA.lice, his wife ; Joceline Joliffe, who wielded quarterstaff so well, and with him Mistress Joceline ; Wildrake, from Squattlesea-mere, and Beavis, old and feeble, a shadow of the great wolf-hound he had been. To this little company came Charles, and, dismounting, asked for the old knight's blessing, who, ha\'ing witnessed this day, was content to die. 34 THE DOVER ROAD And England was " merry England " again. The maypole reappeared upon the village green, ginger was hot i' the mouth once more, cakes and ale dis- appeared down hungry and thirsty throats, and none declared eating and drinking to be carnal sins ; folks sang songs and danced where had been only the singing of psalms in nasal tones and walking circum- spectly ; close-cropped polls grew love-locks again, and sad raiment gave place to the revived glories of ancient doublet and hose whose colours mocked the sun for splendour. For ten years had the people gone in a penitential gait that allowed neither gaiety nor enjoyment of any kind to pass unreproved, and now that all England was rejoicing that a pharisaical Puritanism had been overthrown, what wonder that young men and maidens who were too young to recollect the old England that existed before the Commonwealth plunged now into the wildest excesses, aided and abetted by old and middle-aged alike. The pendulum had swung back, and from whining religiosity the people turned to the extreme of licentiousness. And so at last to leave the historic aspect of Black- heath, which I had begun to fear would detain me until a volume had been made of it. Leaving the heath by the Dover Road, which still follows the old Watling Street, the way is bordered by apparently endless rows of villas, and the outskirts of Kidbrook and Charlton village are passed before one comes to where the fields, bordered by hedgerows, first come in sight, and even these are disfigured by great boards, offering land to be let for building-plots. This is, indeed, a neighbourhood where the incautious stranger takes a villa overlooking meadows, for the sake of the view, and finds, on waking up one fine morning, the builders putting in the foundations of a new house which will eventually hide his prospect ; or where, having taken a month's holiday, he returns, to find a new street round the corner, with a brand new public- SHOOTER'S HILL 35 house, and a piano-organ playing the latest comic song, where {eheii, fugaces .') meads and orchards gladdened his eyes a few short weeks before. IX As one proceeds through Charlton village, j^ast an oddly-named public-house, " The Sun in the Sands," and the uncharted wilderness of Kidbrook, Shooter's Hill comes into view, and the long line of " villas " ends. Just beyond the seventh milestone from London is another little public-house, the " Fox under the Hill," followed shortly by the " Earl of Moira," overlooked by the great buildings of the new Fever Hospital which the London County Council has set up here, to the disgust of all the dwellers round about. Next to this come the great dismal buildings of the Military Hospital, where soldier-invalids crawl about the courtyards, or, happily convalescent, lean over the balconies, smoking and chatting the hours away. Funerals go frequently hence, for here are always many poor fellows struggling with death, invalided home from the cruel heats of India, and many are the sad little processions that go with slow step and rumbling of gun-carriages to the God's Acres of East Wickham and Plumstead. But up among the young oak coppices, the lush grass, and the perennial springs of Shooter's Hill, all is peaceful and pleasant. You can hear the Woolwich bugles sing softly through the summer air ; birds twitter overhead, the robustious crowings of arrogant cocks, the sharp ring of jerry-builders' trowels comes up from below, the winds whisper among the oaks and rustle like the frou-frou of silk through the foliage of the silver-beeches — ^while London toils and moils beyond. Distant smoke drives before the wind in earnest of those metropolitan labours, and kindly 36 THE DOVER ROAD obscures many vulgar details ; but if you cannot see Jerusalem or Madagascar from here, nor even Saint Paul's, you can at least view that most commanding object in the landscape near by, Beckton Gasworks, and on another quarter of the horizon shines the Crystal Palace, glittering afar off like a City of the Blest, which indeed it is not, nor anything like it. Directly in front, the sky-line is formed by the elevated table- land of Blackheath, while in mid-distance the few remaining fields of Charlton are seen to be making a gallant stand before the advances of villadom. Shooter's Hill was not always a place whereon one could rest in safety. Indeed, it bore for long years a particularly bad name as being the lurking-place of ferocious footpads, cutpurses, highwaymen, cut-throats, and gentry of allied professions who rushed out from these leafy coverts and took liberal toll from wayfarers. Six men were hanged hereabouts, in times not so very remote, for robbery with murder upon the highway ; the remains of four of them decorated the summit of the hill, while two others swung gracefully from gibbets beside the Eltham Road. The " Bull " inn, standing at the top of the hill, was in coaching days the first post-house at which travellers stopped and changed horses on their way from London to Dover. The " Bull " has been rebuilt in recent years, but tradition says (and tradition is not always such a liar as some folks would have us believe) that Dick Turpin frequented the road, and that it was at this old house he held the landlady over the fire in order to make her confess where she had hoarded her money. The incident borrows a certain picturesqueness from lapse of time, but, on the wiiole, it is not to be regretted that the days of barbecued landladies are past. Our old friend Pepys has something to say of what he did or what was done to him on Shooter's Hill, under date of April 11, 1661 ; but it was, at any rate, not a happening of any great note, and moreover, Mr. Pepys' prattle sometimes becomes tiresome, and HIGHWAYMEN 37 so we will pass him by for once in a way. His fellow diarist, Evelyn, was here in 1699, for he writes, under August, " I drank the Shooter's Hill waters." A very much more important person. Queen Anne, to wit (who, alas ! is dead), is also said to have partaken of the mineral spring which made Shooter's Hill a minor spa long years ago. The spring is still here, and it is this which makes the summit of Shooter's Hill so graciously green and refreshing. People no longer come to drink the waters, but he who thirsts by the wayside and sports the blue ribbon, may, an he please, instead of calling at the " Bull," or the " Red Lion," across the road, quench his thirst at a drinking-fountain, which is something between a lich-gate and a Swiss chalet, erected here in recent years. So long ago as 1767 a project was set afoot for building a town on the summit of Shooter's Hill, but it came to nothing, which is not at all strange when one considers how constantly the dwellers there would have been obliged to run the gauntlet of the gentlemen whom Americans happily call " road- agents." And here is a sample of what would happen now and again, taken, not from the romantic pages of " Don Juan," nor from Dickens' " Tale of Two Cities," but from the sober and truthful columns of a London paper, under date of 1773. " On Sunday night," we read, " about ten o'clock. Colonel Craige and his servant were attacked near Shooter's Hill by two highwajauen, well mounted, who, on the colonel's declaring he would not be robbed, immediatel}^ fired and shot the servant's horse in the shoulder. On this the footman discharged a pistol, and the assailants rode off with great precipitation." That they rode off ^nth nothing else shows how effectually the colonel and his servant, by firmly grasping the nettle danger, plucked the flower safety. It was by similarly bold conduct that Don Juan put to flight no fewer than four assailants on this very spot. Arrived thus far from Dover, he had 38 THE DOVER ROAD alighted, and was meditatively pacing along the road behind his carriage when But there ! It had best be read in Byron's verse, and let no one cry out upon me for quoting " Don Juan," and say the thing is nothing new, lest I, in turn, call fie upon him for an undue acquaintance with that " wicked " poem — . . . Juan now was borne, Just as the day began to wane and darken, O'er the high hill which looks, with pride or scorn, Toward the great city. Ye who have a spark in Your veins of Cockney spirit, smile or mourn, According as you tako things well or ill ; Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill ! A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts ; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy ; A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool's head — and there is London Town ! Don Juan had got out on Shooter's Hill : Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity ; While everything around was calm and still, Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he Heard ; and that bee like, bubbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with their scum. i say Don Juan, wrapt in contemplation, Walk'd on behind his carriage, o'er the summit, And lost in wonder of so great a nation. Gave way to it, since he could not o'ercome it. " And here," he cried, " is Freedom's chosen station ; Here peals the people's voice, nor can entomb it Racks, prisons, inquisitions ; resurrection Awaits it, each new meeting or election. " Here are chaste wives, pure lives ; here people pay But what they please ; and, if that things be dear, 'Tis only that they love to throw away Their cash, to show how much they have a year. Here laws are all inviolate ; none lay Traps for the traveller ; every highway's clear : Here " — here he was interrupted by a knife. With, — " Damn your eyes ! Your money or your life ! These freeborn sounds proceeded from four pads. In ambush laid, who had perceived him loiter Behind his carriage ; and, like handy lads, Had seized the lucky hour to reconnoitre, In which the heedless gentleman who gads Upon the road, unless he prove a fighter. May find himself, within that isle of riches, Exposed to lose his life as well as breeches. DON JUAN 39 Juan did not understand a word Of English, save their shibboleth, " God damn ! " And even that he had so rarely heard, He sometimes thought 'twas only their " Salaam," Or " God be with you ! " and 'f.s not absurd To think so ; for, half English as I am (To my misfortune), never can I say r heard them wish " God with you," save that way. But if he failed to understand their speech, he interpreted their actions accurately enough, and, drawing a pocket-pistol, shot the foremost in the stomach, who, writhing in agony on the ground, and unable to discriminate between Continental nation- alities, called out that " the bloody Frenchman " had killed him. His three companions did not wait to discover that it was not a Frenchman, but a Spaniard. No, they promptly ran away, and left their fellow to die, which he presently did, and Don Juan, after an interview with the coroner, proceeded on his road in wonderment. " Perhaps," he thought, " it is the country's wont to welcome foreigners in this way." Shooter's Hill is pictured excellently well in A Tale of Tzvo Cities ; the time, " a Friday night, late in November, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five," the occasion the passing of the Dover Mail. The coachman was " laying on " to the horses like another Macduff, and the near leader of the tired team was shaking its head and everything upon it, as though denying that the coach could be got up the hill at all ; while the passengers, having been turned out to walk up the road and case the horses, splashed miserably in the slush. The time was " ten minutes, good, past eleven," and the coachman had but just finished addressing the horses in such strange exclamations as " Tst ! Yah ! Get on with you ! ^ My blood ! " and other picturesque, not to say lurid, phrases, when sounds were heard along the highway. Sounds of any sort on the road could not at this hour be aught than ominous, and so the passengers, who w^re just upon the point of re-entering the coach, shivered and 40 THE DOVER ROAD wondered if their purses and watches were quite safe which were lying snugly perdu in their boots. " Tst ! Joe ! " calls the coachman, from his box, warningly to the guard. " What do you say, Tom ? " " I say a horse at a canter coming up," replies Tom. " I say a horse at a gallop, Tom," rejoins the guard, entrenching himself behind his seat, and cocking his blunderbuss, calling out to the passengers at the same time, " Gentlemen, in the King's name, all of you ! " The mail stopped. The hearts of the passengers within thumped audibly, and if one could not see how they blenched, it was only owing to the obscurity of the mildewy inside of the old Mail. There they sat, in anxious expectancy, amid the disagreeable smell arising from the damp and dirty straw, and the relief they experienced when it was not a highwayman who rode up to them, but only a messenger for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, who sat shivering among the rest, may (in the words of a certain class of novelists) '' be better imagined than described." There is but one criticism I have to make cf this ; but it is a serious point. There was no Dover Mail coach in 1775, for the earliest of all mail coaches, that between Bristol and London, was not established before 1784. The mails until then were carried by post-boys on horse-back. Of Severndroog Castle, built on the crest of Shooter's Hill during the last century, I shall say nothing, because, for one thing, it is of little interest, and, for another, whatever has to be said about it belongs to the province of the Guide Books, upon whose territory I do not propose to infringe. I want to give a modicum of information with the maximum of amusement, with which declaration of policy I will proceed along the road to Dover. Directly one comes to the crest of the hill there opens a wide view over the Kentish Weald. Reaches of the Thames are seen, peeping through foliage ; TRAMPS 41 distant houses and whitewashed cottages shine clearly miles away, and the spire of Bexley Church closes the view in front, where the road ends dustily. Along this road comes daily and all day a varied procession of tramps. The traveller looks down upon them from this eyrie with wonderment and dismay ; the cottagers, the householders and gardeners hereabouts, see them pass with less surprise and additional misgivings, for their gardens, their hen-roosts, clothes-lines and orchards pay tribute to these Ishmaelites to whom the rights of property are but imperfectly known. This is why the gates and doors along the Dover Road are so uniformly and resolutely barred, bolted, chained, and padlocked ; for these reasons ferocious dogs roam amid the suburban pleasances, and turn red eyes and foaming mouths toward one who leans across garden- gates to admire the flowers with which the fertile soil of Kent has so liberally spangled every cultivated spot ; and to them is due the murderous -looking garnishment of jagged and broken glass with which every wall-top is armed. " Peace must lie down armed " on the Dover Road ; the citizen must lock, bolt, and bar his house o' nights, and does well to exhibit warning placards, " Beware of the Dog ! " He does better to tip the policeman occasionally to keep an especially vigilant look-out, and it is not an excess of precaution that so frequently covers the flower-beds with wire-netting. X There is, indeed, no road to equal the Dover Road for thieves, tramps, cadgers, and miscellaneous vagrants, either for number or depravity. Throughout the year they infest alike the highways and byways of Kent, but the most constant procession of them is to be seen on the great main road between London and the sea. A great deal of begging, some petty pilfering. 42 THE DOVER ROAD and a modicum of work in the fruit season and during the hop-harvest suffice to keep them going for the greater part of the year, while the winter months are fleeted in progresses from one casual ward to another in the numerous unions along the road. Phenomenally ragged, bronzed by the sun, unshaven, unshorn, they are met, men, women, and children alike, at every turn, for many miles, especially between Southwark and Canterbury. The sixteen miles' stretch of road between Canterbury and Dover is comparatively unfrequented by them ; but Gravesend, Dartford, Crayford, and Bexley Heath are centres of the most disgraceful mendicanc}^ " Lodgings for travellers " at fourpence a night, or two shillings a week, are a feature of these places, and how prominent a feature cannot be guessed by any one who has not been there. Whole families on the tramp are to be met with between these places, and long vistas of them are gained along any particularly straight piece of road. They are everything that is dirty and horrible, but they are perfectly happy and quite irreclaimable, many of them being hereditary tramps. Philanthropic societies inquire into the tramp ; classify him, endeavour to cleanse him and restore him to some place in society, but all to no purpose. He is quite satisfied with himself ; he likes dirt, and dislikes nothing so much as either moral or physical cleansing. That is one reason why he seeks the shelter of the casual ward only as a last resource. He has to undergo a bath there, and feels as chilly when his top-dressing of grime is removed as you and I would be were we turned naked into the streets. To reform your tramp it would be essential to snare him at a very early age indeed, and, even then, I am not sure but that his natural traits would break out suddenly, like those of any other wild beast kept in captivity. The truth is, tramping is a very old profession, and hereditary in a degree very few good people imagine. TRAMPS' SIGNS 43 Unlettered, but highly organised, trampdom has a lingua franca of its own, and its signs are to be read, chalked on the fences and gateposts of the Dover Road, as surely as one could read a French novel. The argot and the sign-language of the road are not difficult to acquire by those who have observant eyes and ears to hearken, but, like all languages, they are ever changing, and the accepted signs of yesteryear are constantly superseded by newer symbols. Little do the country-folk understand the significance of the chalk-marks on their gates and walls. Does the portly yeoman suspect that the \ on his gatepost means " no good " ? And how mixed would be the feelings of many a worthy lady w^ere the inner meaning of 0 revealed to her — " Religious, but good on the whole." Were the eloquence of that mark discovered to her, she would know at once how it was that the poor men, with their ragged beards and their toes peeping through their boots, were so unfailingly pious and thankful for the cold scran and the threepenny-piece with which she relieved their needs, asking a blessing on her and hers until they were out of sight, when they " stowed " the piety and threw the provisions into the nearest ditch, calling in at the next roadside pub to take the edge off their thirst with that threepenny-piece. It may safely be said that the tramp is not grateful. He is, indeed, altruistic, but his altruism he saves for his kind, and he exhibits it in the danger-signals he chalks up in places the brotherhood wot of. There are degrees of danger, as of luck. Some good-hearted people become soured by many calls on their generosity, and one can readily understand even the mildest- mannered of elderly ladies becoming restive when the sixth tramp appears at the close of the day. Other people, too, lose their generosity with the bedding-out plants which one of the fraternity has " sneaked " from the front garden under cover of night. In the first instance, the sign A (which means " Spoilt by too many callers ") is likely to be found somewhere 44 THE DOVER ROAD handy, and in the second that innocent-looking triangle is apt to become □> the English of which is " Likely to have you taken up," even if it does not become O = " Dangerous. Sure of being quodded." XI Passing many of these undesirable waj^farers, one comes, in a mile — fields and hedgerows and market- gardens on either side— to Shoulder of Mutton Green, a scrubby piece of common-ground shaped like South America — but smaller. Hence the peculiar eloquence of its name. The Kent County Council has set up a large and imposing notice-board at the corner of the green which bears its name and a portentous number of bye-laws, and when the sun is low and shadows slant (the board is so large and the green so small), the shade of it falls across the green and into the next field. And now comes Belle Grove, spelled, as one may see on the stuccoed cottages by the wayside, with a pleasing diversity. Belle Grove, Bell Grove, and Belgrove ; and one would pin one's faith on the correct form being the second variety, because the place is not beautiful, nor ever could have been. To Bell Grove, then, succeeds Welling, and Welling is a quite uninteresting and shabby hamlet fringing the road, ten-and-a-quarter miles from London Bridge. The new suburban railway from London to Bexley Heath crosses the road, and has a station — a waste of sand, stones, and white palings — here. The place, says Hasted, in his " History of Kent," was called Well End, from the safe arrival of the traveller at it, after having escaped the danger of robbers through the hazardous road from Shooter's Hill," which derivation, though regarded as a happy effort of the imagination, is considerably below the dignified level of a county historian. Indeed, I seem to see in this the TO BEXLEY 45 irresponsible frivolity of the guards and coachmen of the Dover ]\Iail. Why, the thing reeks of coaching wit, and how Hasted, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, could have included in his monumental work (which took him forty years to write) so obvious a witticism, is beyond my comprehension. Shall I be considered pedantic if I point out that the place-name, with its termination wg, carries with it evidence of being as old as Saxon times, and denotes that here was the settlement of an ancient tribe, or patriarchial family, the Wellings ? I will dare the deed and record the fact, remarking, meanwhile, that if other county historians were as little learned as Hasted, and equally speculative, they would seem more human, and their deadly tomes become much more entertaining. But, after this, it Avould not beseem me to do else than record the fact that the new suburban district springing up beside the road, half a mile past Welling, is called " Crook Log." Why " Crook Log," and whence came that singular name, are things " rop in mistry," and I will run no risks of becoming fogged in rash endeavours to elucidate the origin of this place-name. Half a mile onward, and then begins Bexley Heath. " Once upon a time," that is to say, before an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1817 for enclosing what was then a wide, wild tract of desolate heath-land, Bexley Heath was entirely innocent of buildings. The old village of Bexley lies a mile and a half to the right of the road, and is as rural, peaceful, and pleasant as Bexley Heath is mean and wretched. Between here and the village lies Hall Place, a Tudor mansion of great size and stately architecture, largely distinguished for its chequer-board patterning of flint and stone. The property was once that of the family called " At-hall," from their residence here, in an earlier mansion. The Tudor flint-and-stone building we now see was built by Sir Justinian Champneis, a Lord Mayor of London, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In less than a hundred years the Champneis 46 THE DOVER ROAD were succeeded by the Austens, who made alterations, until 1772, when it passed to Sir Francis Dashwood, in whose family it yet remains. In the neighbourhood of Bexley Heath, and also at Crayford and places beside the Thames near Dartford are some singular shafts of unknown age or purpose, sunk into the soil, frequently to a depth of a hundred feet, through the chalk of which this district chiefly consists. " Danes' Holes," the country-folk call them, and they are traditionally supposed to have been constructed as hiding-places to which the old inhabitants of these parts could retire when the Northmen's piratical fleets appeared in the estuary of the Thames. Antiquaries have a theory that these singular pits were sunk by our neolithic forbears in search of flints. The antiquaries, however, are most probably wrong, because flints were to be found readily enough by the men of the Stone Age, without going to the trouble of mining for them ; and no one has yet arisen to show that neolithic man was more likely than we, his descendants, to give himself unnecessary labour. We will, therefore, assume that the legendary name of " Danes' Holes " shadows forth the purpose of these shafts a great deal more correctly than the ingenious theories of antiquaries, made to fit personal pre- dilections ; the more especially as legendary history is generally found to square with facts much more frequently than scientific pundits would have us believe. These remarkable pits commence with a trumpet- shaped orifice Avhich immediately contracts into a narrow shaft, broadening at the bottom into a bulb-like chamber, not unremotely resembling in shape the tube and bulb of a thermometer. " By a curious coinci- dence," says one who has long been familiar with these strange survivals, '' the shape of the Bexley shafts is exactly that of a local beer-measure which is held in great estimation. In several houses may be seen an advertisement that " beer is sold by the yard." CRAYFORD 47 XII Leaving Bexley Heath, the road becomes suddenly beautiful, where it loses the last of the mean shops — the cats' -meat vendors, the tinkers, the marine stores — that give so distinct and unwholesome a cachet to its long-drawn-out street. The highway goes down a hill overhung with tall trees, with chestnuts and hawthorns, whose blossoms fill the air in spring with sweet and heavy scents ; but, in the hollow, gasworks contend with them, and generally, it is sad to say, come off easy victors. Follows then a nondescript bend of the road which brings one presently into Crayford, fifteen miles from London. Antiquaries are divided in opinion over the ancient history of Crayford. While some incline to the belief that it is the site of the Roman Noviomagus, others are prone to select Keston Common as the locality of that shadowy camp and city. The question will probably never be settled beyond a doubt, but the weight of evidence is strong in favour of Keston Common, eight miles away to the south-west. Here still exist the traces of great earthworks, covering a space of a hundred acres, while numerous finds of Roman coins and pottery have been made from time to time. At Crayford, on the other hand, the only presumptive evidence is to be found in this having been that old Roman military way, Watling Street, and, in the very slender thread of allusion to the name of Noviomagus, supposed, on the authority of Hasted, to be extant in the title of the half-forgotten manor of Newbury. But, however vague may be the connection between Noviomagus and Crayford, certain it is that here, in 457, was fought that tremendous battle between the Saxons under Hengist, and the Britons commanded by Vortigern, a conflict in which four thousand of the Romanised Britons were slain. It was in 449 that 48 THE DOVER ROAD Hengist and Horsa, brother-chiefs* of the Jutish- Saxons, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, at the invita- tion of Vortigern, who sought their aid against the Picts and the Sea-rovers. They came in three ships, and their original force could scarcely have numbered more than five hundred men. But, having warred for the Britons, and fought side by side with them against the Scots, they soon perceived how defenceless was the land. " They sent," says the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, " to the Angles, and bade them be told of the Avorthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land." In response to this invitation, there came from over sea the men of the Old Saxons, the Jutes, and the Angles ; and, six years after the landing of the two brothers, these treacherous allies, strengthened in number, felt strong enough to attempt the seizure of Kent. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found, and, through the mists that hang about the scanty records of that time, we hear first of the Battle of Aylesford, fought in 455, in which the Britons experienced their first great defeat. Here, though, Horsa Avas slain, and to Hengist, with his son Esc, was left the foundation of the Saxon kingdom of Kent. The Battle of Crayford for a time left all this fertile corner of England to the Saxons. " The Britons," says the chronicler, " forsook the land of Kent, and in great consternation fled to London." But, though enervated by long years of luxury, and so greatly demoralised by defeats, the Britons had yet some force left. Vortigern, " the betrayer of Britain," as he has come down to us in the pages of history, was overthrown by another enemy, a rival British prince, that doughty Romanised * The real names of these two brothers are unknown. They took the names by which they are known in liistory from the banners under which their men fought ; banners which bore the cognizance of a white iiorse : Hengist and Horsa being merely the Jutish-Saxon words for " horse " and " mare." The Danish, indeed, still use the word " hors " for mare, and a survival of the old badge of these fierce pagans is still to be met with in the familiar white horse of Brunswick-Hanover. The prancing steed that remains to this day the Kentish device, with its dauntless motto " Tnvicta," is also a survival from the days when Hengist and Horsa founded the first Saxon kingdom in Britain. A QUAINT EPITAPH 4d chieftain, Aurelius Ambrosianus, who, after defeating that weak king, gathered up the scattered patriots, and feU upon the Saxons with such fury that they were driven back to that Isle of Thanet which had originally been given them for their services against the Scots of Strathclyde. " Falchions drank blood that day ; the buzzard buried his horny beak in the carcases of the slain ; the eagles feasted royally on the flesh of them that fell ; and the whitening bones of the Northmen long afterwards strewed the fair land of Kent." Eight years later, the work of Aurelius began to be undone, and in another eight years the veteran Hengist and his son had completed the foundation of their kingdom. Crayford, it will thus be seen, is a town of con- siderable historic interest ; but, apart from this claim upon one's attention, it has, I fear, no attraction whatever. But here is Crayford church, in whose yard is one of the quaintest epitaphs imaginable :— " Here lies the body of Peter Isnell, thirty years clerk of this parish. He lived respected as a pious and mirthful man, and died on his wa}^ to church, to assist at a wedding, on the 31st of March, 1811, aged 70. The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory, and as a token of his long and faithful services. The life of this Clerk was just three -score and ten, Nearly half of which time he chauuted Amen. In his youth he was married, like other young men ; But his wife died one day, so he chaunted Amen. A second he married — she departed— what then ? He married and buried a third, with Amen. Thus, his joys and his sorrows were treble ; but tlien His voice was deep bass as he sung out Amen. On the horn he could blow, as well as most men So his horn was exalted in sounding Amen. But he lost all his wind after three-score and ten And here, with three wives, he waits, till again The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen. The distance l^etween Crayford and Dartford is but two miles, past White Hill ; and all the way are fruit E 50 THE DOVER ROAD gardens, tramps, and odious little terraces of brick cottages with tiny gardens in front, whose brilliant, old-fashioned flowers — sweet-williams, marigolds, and polyanthuses — put to shame these wretched efforts of the builder. There is, half a mile from Crayford, beside the road, an iron post with the City of London arms and the legend, " Act 24 & 25 Vict. cap. 42," in relief. This wayside pillar marks at once the limits of the London Police District, and the boundary of the area affected by the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Act of 1861 . The City of London has been entitled from time immemorial to levy dues on all coal entering the metropolis, and this privilege, regulated from time to time, was abolished only in 1889. Two separate duties of twelve pence and one penny per ton were confirmed by this act and authorised to be levied upon coals, culm, and cinders ; while the acts dating from 1694, imposing a tax of four shillings per tun on all kinds of wine were at the same time confirmed and renewed, and the radius made identical with the London police jurisdiction, instead of the former limit of twenty miles. These boundary marks were ordered to be set up on turnpike and public roads, beside canals, inland navigations, and railways, and are frequently encoun- tered by the cyclist and pedestrian, to whom their purpose is not a little mysterious. The duty on coals entering London amounted in 1885 to no less than £449,343, and on wines to £8,488. By far the greater part of these amounts was, of course, collected on the railways and in the i:)ort of London. Originally imposed for the maintenance of London orphans, the wine dues became, like the coal duties, great sources of income, by which many notable London improvements, among them the Victoria Embankment, have been carried out. DARTFORD 51 XIII Dartford, to which wc now come, is a queer Httle town, planted in a profound hollow, through which runs its wealth-giving Darent. Mills and factories meet the eye at every turn. Not smoking, grimy factories of the kinds that blast the Midland counties, but cleanly-looking boarded structures for the most part, own brothers to flour-mills in outward aspect ; places where paper is manufactured, and nowadays drugs and chemicals. Dartford is industrial to-day, but there are old-fashioned nooks, and some of the street-names are intriguing : " Bullace Lane " and " Overy Street,"' for example. Few people nowadays knoAV what is a " bullace," It is, or was, a small wild plum, of the damson kind. And here is the traditional home of paper-making in England, for it was in Dartford, in the reign of Good Queen Bess, that John Spielman (majesty, in the person of Gloriana's successor, James the First, knighted him for it in 1605) introduced the art of paper-making to these shores. What induced that man of gold and jewels and precious stones (he was jeweller to Her Majesty) to take up paper-making, I do not know ; but he made a very good thing of it, commercially speaking, and no wonder, Avhen he had sole license during ten years for collecting rags for making his paper withal. Besides introducing the manufacture of paper, Sir John Spielman added the lime-tree to our parks and gardens, for he brought over with him from his native place, Lindau, in Germany, two slips from some U7iter den linden or another, and planted them in front of his Dartford home, where they flourished and became the progenitors of all the limes in England. If you step into the quaint old church of Dartford, you will see, as soon as your eyes become accustomed to the gloom, the tomb of Sir John Spielman and his 52 THE DOVER ROAD wife, with their effigies, properly carved, painted and gilt, while in various parts of the church may be found what is said to be his crest, the fool's cap, which ARMS OF SPIELMAN A^D HIS FIEST WIFE. he used as a water-mark on a particular size of paper. " Foolscap " paper derives its name from that water- mark ; and thus, though the term now indicates a size, it was originally a trade-mark. The mark may have been derived, not from any crest, but from the long cap worn by the figure on his wife's shield of arms ; although it was greatly changed in the process. At the same time, it is to be noted that the fool's cap water- mark occurred on paper made in Germany in 1472. THE SPIELMANS 53 The presence of the badge in the church shows that the paper-maker had a good deal to do with the reparation of the building. In 1858 an association styling themselves the " Legal Society of Paper Makers," of whom I know nothing, restored Spielman's tomb. The strange heraldic coat-of-arms of Spielman will be noticed. It is, and looks, German, and is of an extravagant nature that would utterly discompose an English herald. Spielman's coat exhibits a blue serpent with a red crest, standing on his tail on a gold background, between six golden lions on a red field, the whole of this singular device based on a green mount. His wife's arms, impaled with his own, are a man clothed in a long black gown, with a long cap, holding in his hand an olive branch, and standing on a red mount inverted. The crest is : a savage, wreathed about the temples and loins with ivy. Motto : Arte et fortuna. The epitaph is in German. Spielman's first wife died in 1607. In 1609 he married again, and deceased in 1626, leaving by the second wife three sons and one daughter. The fortunes of the Spielmans were short-lived. His second wife was living in 1646, but seems to have had little interest in the business, which about 1686 was in possession of a Mr. Blackwell. Meanwhile the Spielman family had declined to poverty, and in 1690 " goody Spielman," widow of his grandson George, was in receipt of Is. 6d. weekly relief ; and in 1696 the wife of a John Spielman was receiving 2s. The Spielman paper mill stood where the gas-mantle factory of Curtis and Harvey is now found. There is a curious sundial actually in the church ; oddly placed on a stone foundation on the splayed sill of the south-east window. It is dated 1820, and records the hours only from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. A brass to John Donkin (1782-1846) shows liim with head and shoulders. The inscription states it was placed here because it was not considered proper that one 54 THE DOVER ROAD who had placed ancient men and times on record should himself be forgotten. We may be thankful that Spielman did no more to the church, for, had he rebuilt it, we should have lost one of the finest and most picturesque churches on the OT^I>:t4^ ■^^^^^^i^S^^^^ DARTFORD CHURCH. Dover Road, whose tall tower, severely unornamental, with clock oddly placed on one side, is such a pro- minent feature of Dartford. Gundulf, that famous architect-bishop of Rochester, to whom Rochester Keep, Dover Castle, the White Tower of the Tower of London, portions of Rochester Cathedral, and a number of other buildings, civil, ecclesiastical and military, are ascribed with more or less show of authority, is supposed to have built Dartford tower, not so much for religious as for defensive uses. For hereby runs the Darent across the road, and no bridge s])anncd the ford when Gundulf s tower was first built. It therefore guarded THE "BULL" 55 the passage until the neiohbouring hermit, who Hved in a fine damp eell by the riverside, sueeeeded in collecting enough money Avherewith to build a bridge whose successor forms an excellent leaning-stock on Sundays to the British workman waiting anxiously for the public-houses to open. There is in the church a small thirteenth century lancet window in the west end wall of the north aisle, which is pointed out as the window of the cell occupied by the hermit who tended the ford. It commanded the road ; and no doubt the hermit was often knocked up at night by travellers desiring to be guided over the river. In 1903 a charming picture in stained glass was added, " The Hermit of the Ford," showing a bearded and hooded man holding up a lantern. The ford was not superseded until 1461, when the first bridge was built. This remained until the present bridge replaced it, in 1754. On that occasion, the churchyard on the south side of the church was curtailed, for widening the road, and an angle of the church itself was in 1792 shaved off for the footpath, as can be seen to this day. The old inns of Dartford are very numerous. Most of them, unfortunately, have been cut up into small beer- houses and tenements since the coaches were run off the road by steam, but one fine old galleried inn, the " Bull," remains to show what the coachinoj inns of lono^ ago were like. The courtyard is now roofed-in with glass, and the little bedrooms behind the carved balusters of the gallery are largely given up to spiders and lumber. But, fortunately for those who care to see what an old galleried inn was like, the changes here have consisted only of additions instead, as is only too usual, of destruction. There is a curious detail, too, about the " Bull," and that is the whimsical position of its sign in a place where ninety out of a hundred people never see it. The " bull in a china-shop " is proverbial, but a bull among the chimney-pots is something quite out of the common. It is here, though, that the effigy of a great black bull may be seen, reared up 56 THE DOVER ROAD aloft in a place between the constellations and the beasts of the field. There is one modern incident in connection with the " Bull " at Dartford which shows how inflamed were the passions of the workinfj class in favour of Georcfe the Fourth's silly and indiscreet wife, and this THE " BULL " INX, DARTFORD. incident happened while the monarch was changing horses here. It was a journeyman currier who showed his sympathy with Queen Caroline, and he did so by thrusting his head in at the carriage window, and roaring in the face of startled majesty, " You are a murderer ! " which can be taken neither as a compli- ment nor a statement of fact — unless, indeed, we agree with that mathematically inclined cynic who held that a " fact " was a lie and a half. Pastor Moritz, in his account of a seven weeks' tour WAT TYLER 57 in England, tells us how he passed through Dartford. He was by no means a distinguished person, but what he has to say of his travels is interesting, as contributing to show how others see us. He came into England by way of the Thames, May 31, 1782, and landed (he says) just below Dartford — probably at Greenhithe — to which place he walked in company with some others, and there breakfasted. He was fresh from the dreary, sandy ^lark of Brandenburg, and this fair county of Kent delighted him hugely. At Dartford he saw, for the first time, an P^nglish soldier. That rol^ust Tommj^ struck him with admiration, both for the sake of his red coat and his martial bearing. " Here, too, I first saw " (says he) (" what I deemed a true English sight) two boys boxing in the street." The party separated at Dartford, and, taking two post-chaises at the " Bull," drove to London, the Pastor " stunned," as it were, by a constant rapid succession of interesting objects, arriving at Greenwich nearly in a state of stupefaction. Dartford will ever live in history as being the starting-point of Wat the Tyler's rebellion of 1381. Tradition places the scene of Wat's murderous attack on the tax-gatherer opposite the " Bull," where once was Dartford Green. The Green has long since gone, but the story never stales of how the Tyler dashed out the tax-gatherer's brains with his hammer. It is, for one thing, a tale that appeals strongly to an over-taxed community, sinking under burdens imposed chiefly for the support of imperial and local bureaucracy ; and I fear that if some modern tax-collector met a similar fate, many worthy people, not ordinarily bloodthirsty, would say, " Serve him right ! " The particular impost which caused the trouble five hundred years ago was the odious Poll-tax, a hateful burden that had already caused wide discontent throughout England, and needed only a more than usually unpleasant incident to cause ill feelings to break out in ill deeds. That incident was not lacking. 58 THE DOVER ROAD At Dartford, one of the collectors had demanded the tax for a youniv girl, daughter of he who is known to history as Wat Tyler. Her mother maintained that she was under the age required by the statute. The tax-collector grew insolent and overbearing, and, it seems, was proceeding to a delicate investigation — like that which procured Mr. W. T. Stead three months' imprisonment some years ago — when the Tyler, who had just returned from work, killed him with a stroke from his hammer. How Wat the Tyler was appointed by popular acclamation leader of the Commons in Kent ; how, at the head of a hundred thousand insurgents, he marched to Blackheath, are matters rather for the history of England than for this causerie along the Dover Road. XIV The old coachmen had an exciting time of it when either entering or leaving Dartford. They skidded down West Hill, when coming from London, to the imminent danger of their necks and those of their passengers, and they painfully climbed the East Hill, on their way out of the tovm. toward Dover. When several accidents had occurred to prove how hazardous to life and property were these roads, the turnpike- trustmongers reduced their steepness by cutting through the hill-tops. This was about 1820. Although the roads were thus lowered, they still have a remarkably abrupt rise and fall, and the traveller in leaving the town for Dover can gain from halfway up the slope of the East Hill quite an extended view over Dartford roof-tops. He, however, remains to sketch at peril of some inconvenience, for the tramps who frequent Dartford take a quite embarrassing interest in art. Somewhere at this end of the town stood the Chantry MARTYRS 59 of St. Edmund the Martyr, a halting-place at which j^ilgrims on their way to Canterbury stopped to pray and to kiss the usual relics. The site was probably where the Dartford Cemeter}^ now stands beside the road, on the border of what is now called Dartford Brent, a wide expanse of common land known in other times as Brent, or Burnt Heath. This place came very near to being the site of a battle between DARTFORB BRIDGE. the Yorkists and the Lancastrians, for here it was that the rival armies first confronted one another ; but, instead of coming to blows, their leaders held a parley ; and so, fair words on their lips, but with deceit in their hearts, they went up to London. Many years later, on July 19, 1555, to be precise, Dartford Brent reappears in history as the place on which three Protestant martyrs, Christopher Wade, Margaret Pollen, and Nicholas Hall, were burnt at the stake, and since then the annals of the place have been quite uninteresting. The gilt-crested spire of the memorial to them peers up on the skyline of the road-cutting, on 60 THE DOVER ROAD the way up to the Brent. It stands in the old cemetery, on the left. Donkin, the historian of Dartford, wrote in 1844 : — " On the Brent are the outlines of the ' Deserter's Grave,' cut in the turf, formerly frequented by the scholars of Hall Place School : the sod of which is still continued to be cut away by the country people in memory of the unknown, traditionally said to have been shot in the adjoining pit." Some light on this tradition is shed by an item in the churchwardens' accounts :— 1679. Payed the coroner for selling on a soldier that hanged himself ]3s. (V/. Payd lor a stake to drive through him 0.?. 6rf. Drink for the Jury Is ed. Here the road branches — the Dover Road to the left, the Roman Watling Street to the right ; although, the Roman road being older and itself based on an immeasurably more ancient British trackway, it would be more fitting to say that it is the existing Dover Road which branches off from the parent trunk road. From this point of departure on the Heath, until at the north end of Strood High Street the ways again come to a meeting, over eleven miles of the original route have been abandoned for what in mediaeval times proved to be the more convenient route round by the waterside at Greenhithe and Gravesend. But although not for many centuries have these eleven miles or so of abandoned Roman way been in use as a through route, they are not all lost. The first three miles across the Heath form a good local road, which then turns off to the right, leaving the Watling Street to climb the hill of Swanscombe, steeply up, as a tangled lane amid the dense woods. It is a very considerable elevation. Here and there the footpath deviates from the original Roman line, and the ridges, banks and hollows of it can occasionally be glimpsed amid the undergrowth ; but in any case it seems evident that the Watling Street in these eleven miles WATLING STREET 61 was not straight, but re-aligned in some four limbs or individually straight stretches, partly to avoid going- over the extreme crest of Swanscombe Hill. On the shoulder of that hill there was at the time of the road being made or remodelled by the Romans a British village, established inland here away from the Thames estuary probably as being a safer place than any settlement by the riverside. Here, on the slope of the hill, the Watling Street is cut through by the vastly deep and broad excavation in the chalk made by the activities of the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers. The construction of it may even thus be studied in section. Below, in the levels of Springhead, Avhere a lane takes up the line of the ancient road, there may have been that Roman station called Vagniacce ; although it may possibly have been by the waterside at Northfleet or Southfleet, for it is by no means certain that the Romans themselves had no lesser riverside route along the line of the present Dover Road. However, to lay down a dogma upon so uncertain a matter as the Roman road-system in Britain proves to be would not commend itself to those best qualified by study to judge. From Springhead the Watling Street continued through Cobham Park, and so at length to a junction with the Dover Road, as already noted, at Strood. IMeanwhile, the more or less modern highway goes on through a dusty district where the builder is contending with the country, and, judging from appearances, he seems likely to get the best of it. All around are glimpses of the Heath, and problematical-looking settlements of houses and institutions are grouped together on the sky-line, with weird, bottle-like towers, extravagantly grotesque, like the architecture of a nightmare, or " Ahce in Wonderland." The City of London Lunatic Asylum is here beside the road ; penitentiaries and their like are grouped about ; a huge black windmill stands awfully on the Brent ; 62 THE DOVER ROAD while everywhere are puddles, bricks, old boots, old hats, and fragments of umbrellas. Dartford Brent is a singular place. At the old hamlet of John's Hole, just past here, called often in coaching days, " Jack-in-the-Hole," was one of the Dover Road turnpikes. The old toll-house still remains beside the way. To this succeeds, at a distance of three quarters of a mile, the melancholy roadside settlement of Horns Cross, where a post-office, two inns, and a blasted oak look from one side of the road, across great fields of barley, to the broad Thames, crowded with shipping, below. Stone Church, one of the most beautiful and interesting in Kent, stands on a hill-top, a short distance from the left-hand side of the road, and commands a wide \'iew of the Thames. To architects and lovers of architecture it is remarkable on account of the striking similarity its rich details bear to those of Westminster Abbey, and it is generally considered that the architect of the one designed the other. This is the more remarkable since the Abbey, with this exception of Stone Church, stands alone in England as a beautiful and peculiarly personal example of Gothic thirteenth-century architecture as practised in France. The architect of Westminster Abbey must have been of French nationality ; and so curiously similar, in little, are not only the details of both church and Abbey, but also the varieties of stone of which they are built, that they are most unlikely to have been the work of different men. Greenhithe lies off the road to the left hand, and fronts on to the Thames. The road, all the way hence to Northfleet, is enclosed by high walls with tall factory-chimneys on either side ; or passes between long rows of recent cottages alternating with cabbage- fields in the last stage of agricultural exhaustion. Docks ; huge and ancient chalk-pits ; great tanks of lime and whitening, and brickfields are everywhere about, for Greenhithe and Northfleet are, and have THE QUARRIES 63 been for many years, the chief places of a great export trade in flints, chalk, and lime. The flints are sent into Derbyshire, and even to China, where they are used in the making of porcelain ; and many thousands of tons are shipped annually. The excavation of chalk and flints during so long a period has left its mark — a very deep and ineffaceable mark, too — upon this part of the road, and, to a stranger, the appearance presented by the scarred and deeply quarried countryside is wild and wonderful. Spaces of many acres have been quarried to a depth, in some places, of over a hundred and fifty feet, and many of these great pits have been abandoned for centuries, accumulating in that time a large and luxuriant growth of trees and bushes. Others are still being extended, and present a busy scene with men in white duck, corduroy, or canvas working clothes cutting away the chalk or loading it into the long lines of trucks that run on tramAvays down to the water's edge. Not the least remarkable things in these busy places are the great bluffs of chalk left islanded amid the deepest quarries, and reaching to the original level of the land. They rise abruptly from the quarry floors, are generally quite inaccessible, and have been left thus by the quarrymen, as con- taining an inferior quality of chalk, mixed with sand and gravel, which is not worth their while to remove. In midst of scenery of this description, and sur- rounded by shops and modern houses, stands Northfleet Church, beside the highway. It is a large Gothic building of the Decorated period, and has been much patched and repaired at different times without having been actually " restored." There are some mildly interesting brasses in the chancel ; but the massive western embattled tower is of greatest interest to the student of other times, for it was built, like many of the church towers in the Welsh marches and along the Scots borders, chiefly as a means of defence. The enemies who were thus to be guarded against at Northfleet were firstly Saxon pirates, then the fierce 64 THE DOVER ROAD and faithless Danes, and (much later) the French. This defensible tower at Northfleet was largely rebuilt in 1628, but a part of it belongs to the end of the fourteenth century, and it even retains fragments of an earlier building, contemporary with the terrible Sea-rovers who sailed up the estuary of the Thames, burning and destroying everything as they passed. A significant sign of the quasi-military uses of this extremely interesting tower is the tall stone external staircase that runs up its northern face from the churchyard to the first-floor level. The small doorway that opens at the head of this staircase into the first floor was originally the only entrance to the tower, and before the churcli could be finally taken the enemy would have had to storm these stairs, exposed to a fire of cloth-yard shafts from arrow-slits, and of heavy stones cast down upon them from the roof. XV Northfleet adjoins, and is now continuous with, Gravesend. It is a busy place, engaged in the excavation of chalk and flints, and in ship-building. Here, too, were " Rosherville Gardens," or shortly, " Rosherville." A suburb of that name is here now. but the Rosherville of the Early and Middle Victorians is a thing of the past, and the place has been sold to an oil company. Jeremiah Rosher was the inventor and sponsor of those once-famed Gardens. It was so far back as the 1830's that he conceived the grand idea of building a new towii between Northfleet and Gravesend, on an estate he owned here, beside the Thames. The idea remained an idea only, for although a pier was built and the Gardens formed, Rosher never lived to see his " ville," in the sense of being a town. But his Gardens were a hugely-compensating success. It is not given WATERCRESS 65 to many to make a success of a hole (unless the hole is a mine), and the site of that celebrated Cockney resort was, and is, nothing else ; being in fact one of the oldest and largest of the chalk-quarries, excavated to a depth of one hundred and fifty feet in some parts. There a curious kind of rusticity was tempered with an equally curious urban flavour ; there the succulent shrimp and the modest watercress (" Tea ninepence ; srimps and watercreases, one shilling "), were supple- mented romantically by the strains of husky bands. There art was represented by broken-nosed plaster statues of Ceres and a variety of other heathen goddesses, some supporting gas-lamps in sawdusty bars and restaurants ; others gracing lawns and flower-beds. To those who delighted in plaster statues grown decrepit and minus a leg or an arm, like so many neo-classic Chelsea pensioners, Rosherville was ideal. " Where to spend a happy day," as the advertise- ments used to invite — " Rosherville." The watercress consumed there, and at the other popular places near by, came from Springhead, which will be found in the country at the back of Gravesend. In 1907 died the last survivinor dauojhter of the man who " invented " watercress as an article of food. It was about 1815 that William Bradbery, of S^^ringhead, began to cultivate from a green weed that grew in the ditches this favourite addition to tea-tables. He cultivated with care, and laid out extensive beds, then, when he had a marketable crop, sold it locally. It soon became a famous table dainty, and nothing would satisfy him but the patronage of London. He filled an old tea-chest with cress, and, with this on his back, trudged off to the metropolis, a score or more miles away. The sample was satisfactory, and he quickly developed a London trade. Bradbery (it is said) when he was building up his London connection, paid a vocalist to go at night from one place of entertainment to another, singing a song in 66 THE DOVER ROAD praise of the famous brown cress from the waters of Springhead. Be that as it may, Bradbery made a fortune by cultivating his cress on the extended area. He seized an opportunity where another man would not have seen one. Watercress is now cultivated largely, and in numerous districts. It is known, botanically, as nasturtium officinale. Electric tramcars now rush and rattle through Northfleet and Rosherville, and no one contemplates journeying to these scenes with the object of spending a " happy da}^" The great group of semi-ecclesiastical looking buildings on the left is " Huggens' College." Almshouses continue to be built, for the fountain of benevolence is not yet dried up. It was in 1847 that this foundation came into existence, pursuant to the will of John Huggens (born 1776), who was a barge- owner and corn-merchant of Sittingbourne. Lookinor upon a world rather astonishingly full of almshouses for people of humble birth, he conceived the somewhat original idea of founding what, with extreme delicacy, he termed a " College " for gentlemen reduced to poor circumstances. The establishment, strictly secluded behind enclosing walls, in well-wooded grounds, houses fifty collegians. Huggens himself, in stony effigy, is seen over the gateway, seated in a frockcoat and an uncomfortable attitude, and displaying a scroll or the charter of his " College." The bountiful gentleman is sadly weatherworn, for the factory fumes of this industrial district have wrought havoc with the Portland stone from which he is sculptured. Huggens was wise among the generation of benefactors : he founded his charity in his own lifetime, and personally supervised it. He died in 1865, and his body lies in Northfleet churchyard. We will now proceed to Gravesend, noting that in 1787 the slip road between the " Leather Bottle " at Northfleet and the beginnings of Chalk, two miles in GRAVESEND 67 length, was made. It Avould, in the language of to-day, applied to incandescent gas-mantle burners and to avoiding roads alike, be called a " by-pass." Gravesend was at one time a place remarkable alike for its tilt-boats and its waterside taverns. The one involved the other, for the boats brought travellers here from London, and here, in the days of bad roads and worse conveyances, they judged it prudent to stay overnight, commencing their journey to Rochester the following morning. To the town of Gravesend belonged the monopoly of conveying passengers to and from London by water, and it was not until steamboats began to ply up and down the reaches of the Thames that this privilege became obsolete. Thus it will be seen that, besides being a place of call for ships, either outward bound or proceeding home, Gravesend was in receipt of much local traffic. The railway has, naturally, taken away a large proportion of this, but has brought it back, tenfold, in the shape of holiday trippers, and the continued growth of the town is sufficient evidence of its prosperity. One first hears of Gravesend in the pages of Domesday Book, where it is called " Gravesham " ; but the difficulty of distinctly pronouncing the name led, centuries ago, to the corrupted termination of " end " being adopted, first in speech, and, by insensible degrees, in writing. It has an interesting history, commencing from the time when the compilers of Domesday Book found only a " hyhte," or landing-place, here, and progressing through the centuries with records of growth, and burnings by the French ; with tales of Cabot's sailing hence in 1553, followed by Frobisher in 1576, to the incorpora- tion of the town in 1568, and the flight of James the Second, a hundred and twenty years later. Gravesend was not, in the sixteenth century, a model town. Its inhabitants paved, lighted, and cleansed their streets, accordingly as individual preferences, industry, or laziness dictated. Spouts, pipes, and projecting eaves poured dirty water on pedestrians who 68 THE DOVER ROAD were rash enough to walk those streets in rainy weather, and people threw away out of window anything they wished to get rid of, quite regardless of who might be passing underneath ; and so, whether fine or wet, those who picked their way carefully along the unpaved thoroughfares, stood an excellent chance of being drenched with something unpleasant. An open gutter ran down the middle of the street, full of rotting refuse ; every tradesman hung out signs which sometimes fell down and killed people, and in the night, when the wind blew strong, a concert of squeaking music filled, with sounds not the most pleasant, the ears of people who wanted to go to sleep. Things were but little less mediaeval in the middle of the seventeenth century, although the trade and importance of Gravesend had greatly increased. Troubles arose then on account of the disorderly hackmen, " foreigners and strangers " — any one not a freeman or a burgess was a " foreigner " — who plied between Gravesend and Rochester, and took away the custom that belonged of right to members of Gravesend guilds. Two years later the Corporation of Gravesend was distinctly Roundhead in its sympathies, for in 1649 we find the town mace being altered, the Royal arms removed, and those of the Commonwealth substituted, at a cost of £23 10^. Od. In 1660, things wore a very different complexion, for in that year the Gravesend people welcomed Charles the Second with every demonstration of joy. They had the mace restored to its former condition at a cost, this time, of £17 105. Od., and allowed the mayor and another £2 5s. 7d. for going up to London to see that the work was done properly. They paid £3 10^. Od. for painting the king's arms ; 14^. to one John Phettiplace for " trumpeters and wigs " ; and 5s. to Will Charley " for sounding about the country." Having done this, they all got gloriously drunk at a total cost of £12 15s. 8d., of which sum £10 7^. 8d. was for wine, and £2 8^. Od. for beer. 70 THE DOVER ROAD It was, indeed, during this latter half of the seven- teenth century that Gravesend experienced one of its great periods of prosperity ; and so the loyalty was well rewarded. Of this date are many of the fine old red-brick mansions in the older part of the town, together with the Admiralty House, official residence of the Duke of York when Lord High Admiral. To Grav^esend he came as James the Second, a prisoner. Embarking from Whitehall, on December 18, 1688, he reached here as late as nine o'clock at night. The next morning he was conducted hence to Rochester in the charge of a hundred of the Prince of Orange's Dutch Guards, and a melancholy journey it must have been for him, if his memory took him back to the time when, twenty-eight years before, he came up the road with his brothers, Charles the Second and the Duke of Gloucester, happily returning from exile. To Gravesend came Royal and distinguished travellers on their way from Dover to London, and hence they embarked for the City and Westminster, escorted, if they were sufficiently Royal or distinguished by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and the City Guilds, and fitly conducted in a long procession of stately barges by this most impressive entrance to the capital of England. And even ordinary travellers preferred this route. For two reasons : the river-road was much more expeditious than the highway in those pre- MacAdamite daj^s, and by taking it they escaped the too-pressing attentions that awaited them on Shooter's Hill and Blackheath at the hands of Captains Gibbet and Pick-Purse. XVI Many of these distinguished travellers on this old highway have left written accounts of their doings, and very interesting readings they make. Foremost among the " distinguished " company was Marshal de Bassompierre. He came to England in 1626, on an OLD-TIME TRAVELLERS 71 Embassy from the King of France, and arrived at Dover on the 2nd of October. There he stayed to recruit, for the sea, as usual, had been unkind, until Sunday, the 4th, departing thence on that day for " Cantorbery," where he slept the night, going on the Monday as far as " Sitimborne," and on Tuesday to " Rocheter " and Gravesend, where he was met by the Queen's barge. Three months later, and he was returning home. On December 1st he began his fare- wells at the ^ourt of Saint James's, and bade adieu to, amongst others, such fearful wild fowl as the Earl of Suffolc and the Duke of Boukinkam ; this last the dissolute " Steenie " — none other ! On the 5th, imagine him at Dover with an equipage of five hundred persons shivering on the brink of the Channel, and stormbound there for fourteen days at a cost of 14,000 crowns. This imposing company embarked at last, and, after braving winds and sea for a whole day, were compelled to put back again. When they did finally set off, they were five days crossing to Calais, and it was found necessary to jettison the Ambassador's two carriages en route, in which was, alas ! 40,000 francs' worth of clothes. Also this unfortunate diplomat lost twenty- nine horses, which died of thirst on the voyage. Another French traveller. Monsieur Jouvin de Rochefort, greatly daring, visited our shores in 1670. He took the ordinary coach for " Gravesine," in order, as he says, to embark thence for London, passing on his way from Canterbury, Arburtoon, Baten, and Asbery ; Grinsrit, Sitingborn, Nieuvetoon, and Renem* and coming to Rochester through a strange place called Schatenne, which I don't find an3^where on the map, but suppose he means Chatham. All along the road he remarked a number of high poles, on the top of which were small kettles, in which fires were lighted to warn the countryside of the robbers who would come in * He meant Harbledown, Boughton, and Ospringe : Green-street, Sitting bourne, Xewington, and Rainham. 72 THE DOVER ROAD bands and plunder the villages, were it not for the courage of the villagers, who formed themselves into guards. These poles were about a mile distant from each other, and to every one there was a small hut for the person whose business it was to keep the beacons burning. " God be praised," though, he reached " Gravesine " safely ! Samuel de Sorbiere, Historiographer Royal to the King of France, visited our shores in 1663. The normal passage from Calais was three hours, but on this occasion seven hours were consumed in crossing, and although the weather was very fair, the " usual Disorder which those who are not accustomed to the sea are subject to " — but no matter ! To make matters worse, contempt and affronts were put upon him in Dover streets by some sons of Belial in the shape of boys who ran after him shouting, " a Monsieur, a Monsieur," and who, when they had retired to a safe distance, proceeded to the extremely impolite depth of calling him a " French dog," " which," says M. de Sorbiere, sweepingly, '' is the epithet they give us in England." Our traveller journej^ed to London by wagon, rather than take a post-chaise or even the stage- coach ; an extremely undignified thing for an Historiographer Royal to do, one would think. But then, 'twas the way to note the strange customs of these English ! The wagon was drawn by six horses, one before another, and beside them walked the wagoner clothed in black and appointed in all things like another Saint George. He had a brave mounteero on his head, and was a merry fellow who fancied he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself. Arrived at Gravesend, our traveller, for greater expedition, took boat to London, and so an end of him, so far, at least, as these pages are concerned. But this little crowd of scribbling foreigners who visited England and wrote accounts of their travels in these islands before the locomotive was dreamed M. GROSLEY 73 of, had much better opportunities of catching impressions than the railway train affords. They came up this way to London, as slowly as the poet's spring ; and, as a rule, they used their opportunities very well. For instance, here is the admirable M. Grosley, a kindly Frenchman who came over from Boulogne in 1765. He gives a most interesting account of his journey along the Dover Road on the 11th April. He embarked upon Captain Meriton's packet, which arrived, in compan}^ Avith a prodigious number of other ships, three hours before time, off Dover. Here they had to anchor for the tide to serve their landing, and the boisterous winds drove several vessels ashore, while Captain Meriton's passengers resigned themselves to death. When at length the}^ landed, half dead, an Englishwoman with her very amiable daughter and a tall old Irishman, who pre- tended to be an officer (and who doubtless " had a way with him "), landed with our traveller, and contrived that he should pay part of their fare, the only trick played upon M. Grosley (I am pleased to say) during his stay in England. The customs officers looked like beggars, but treated this foreigner like a gentleman, as indeed we may suppose he was, for he belonged to the Academy. However, a crown was levied on passing his luggage by an innkeeper who held the droit cle viscomte. All the inns were crowded with the miserable travellers just landed, and he with whom we are particularly concerned found it necessary to go into the kitchen of his inn and take off, with his own hands, one of the tranches de bceuf grilling on the coals. After this exploit, he cautiously went to bed at six o'clock in the afternoon, for there were not enough beds to go round, and possession was ever nine points of the laAV ! At three in the morning he was called upon to turn out in favour of a new arrival ; but, notwithstanding all the rout they made, he held to his four-poster until five, when he was turned out and the game of Box and Cox commenced. 74 THE DOVER ROAD The sole inhabitants of Dover (says our traveller) were sailors, ships' captains, and innkeepers. The height of the triumphal arches, on which the vast signboards of the inns spanned the narrow streets, and the ridiculous magnificence of the ornaments that headed them, were wonderful as compared with the little post-boys, children of twelve and thirteen years of age, who were starting every minute in sole charge of post-chaises. The great multitude of travellers with which Dover was crowded afforded a reason for dispensing with a police regulation which forbade public conveyances to travel on Sundays, and on that day he set out with seven other passengers in two carriages called (" called," you notice, like that street in Jerusalem that was " called " straight) " flying machines." There were six horses to a machine, and they covered the distance to London in one day for one guinea each person ; passengers' servants carried outside at half-price. The coachmen, who were most kindly disposed towards their horses, carried whips, certainly, but they were no more in their hands than the fan is in winter in the hand of a lady ; they only served to make a show with, for their horses scarcely ever felt them, so great was the tenderness of the English coachman with his cattle. But see the peculiar advantages of travelling on Sunday. There were no excisemen anywhere on duty, and even the highwaymen had ceased their labours during the night. The only knights of the road our travellers encountered were dangling from gibbets by the wayside in all the glories of periwigs and full-skirted coats. Unfortunately, the pace was marred by the frequent stoppages made to unload the brandy-kegs at the roadside inns from the boots of the coaches, where they had been stowed away in the absence of the gangers. Upon their way to Canterbury, the travellers, and our foreigner in particular, had for some time perceived that they were no longer in France, and when at length FOREIGNERS ON ENGLAND 75 they reached that bourne of pilgrims they were still further impressed with that fact by observing a fat man, who was just arisen from bed, standing at a bay windoAV during the whole time the flying machines changed their Pegasuses ; and, as they were unexpected the delay was considerable. But all this while the fat man stood there in his night-shirt, with a velvet cap on his head, contemplating them with folded arms and knitted brow, and with an expression which (in France) was to be seen only on the faces of them that had just buried their dearest friends. Also, the " young persons " of both sexes stood and stared — not to mince matters — like stuck pigs. The country which they travelled through from Dover to London was (so our traveller thought) in general a bad mixture of sand and chalk. They skirted some lovely woods as well furnished as the best-stocked forests of France — alas ! where are those Avoods now ? — and presently passed over commons covered with heath and stray broom, very high and flourishing all the year round. Those wild shrubs were left to the use of the poor of the several different parishes, but their vigour and thickness gave reason to conjecture that there were but few poor people in those parishes. The best lands were then, as now, laid out in hop-gardens. The wayside inns appealed strongly to our traveller. They Avere given, whether in town or country, to the making of large accounts, but then see how rich was the English lord who, as a class, frequented them. Anyway, they were possessed of a cleanliness far beyond that to be found in the majority of the best private houses in France. There was only one inn on the road from Paris to Boulogne to be mentioned in the same breath with the English houses, and that was one at Montreuil, frequented by English travellers. Between Canterbury and Rochester the coaches encountered an obstacle which savours rather of Don 76 THE DOVER ROAD Quixote's adventures than of Sunday travelling in this unromantic country. This was nothing less than a windmill which the country-folk, taking advantage of that usually coachless day, were moving entire. Less fiery than the Don, the travellers out- flanked the gigantic obstacle by dragging the coaches into the field beside the road. And of that road, M. Grosley has to say that it was excellent ; covered with powdered flints, and well kept, in spite of the exemption from forced labour which the countrymen enjoyed ; and here he quotes what Aurelius Victor has to say of the Emperor Vespasian's vast roadworks in Britain. The roadways had not long been in this enviable condition ; only, indeed, so recently as the days of George the Second had they been rescued from the bad state into which they had been suffered to fall during the civil wars, and, generally speaking, the English knew little or nothing of the art of road- making. The repairing of the high-roads was at the expense of them that used them. Neither rank nor dignity was exempted from the payment ot tolls ; the king himself was subject to them, and the turnpike would have been shut against his equipage if none of his officers paid the money before passing by. These high-roads had all along them a little raised bank, two or three feet broad, with a row of wooden posts whose tops were whitewashed so that the coach- men should see them at night. This was for the conveniency of foot-passengers. In places where the road was too narrow to admit of this arrangement, the proprietors of lands adjoining were obliged to give passage through their fields, which were all enclosed with tall hedges or with strong hurdles about four feet high, over which passengers leapt or climbed. Custom had so habituated the village girls to this exercise that they 'acquitted themselves in it with a peculiar grace and agility. The great attention of MILTON 77 the English to the conveniency of foot-passengers had several causes. Firstly, they set the highest value upon the lives of their fellow-creatures, and in that peculiar circumstance they sacrificed to pleasure and conveniency. Secondly, their laws were not exclusively made and executed by persons who rode in their chariots. Thirdly, as the English carriages moved as swiftly in the country as slowly in the town, the meeting with persons who were so foolish or so ill-geared as to walk a-foot would have been disastrous to those wayfarers ; and in so democratic a country as this the chariot-riders would have had a bad time in store for them for so small a matter as playing, as it were, the secular Juggernaut with pedestrians. Eventually this moralising Frenchman reached London through Rochester, which place was one ong street inhabited solely by ships' carpenters and dockyard men. At Greenwich, the shores of Thames loomed upon his enraptured gaze, agreeably confounded with long lines of trees and the masts of ships, and then came delightful London, and that haven where he would be — ah ! you guess it, do you not ? It was Leicester Fields, le Squarr de Leicesterre of a later seneration of Frenchmen. XVII Having thus disposed of this company of scribbling foreigners, I will get on to Milton-next-Gravesend, which immediately adjoins the town ; especially will I do so because, when the old waterside lanes have been explored, little remains to see besides Gordon's statue and the little cottage where he used to live. The high-road is not at all interesting, unless indeed a Jubilee clock- tower and a number of private houses of the Regent's Park order of architecture 78 THE DOVER ROAD may be considered to lend a charm ot it. Just beyond these houses comes Milton : a school, a church, and a public-house standing next one another. The church belongs to the Decorated period, and has a tower built of flints, stone, and chalk. During the last century the churchwardens had the repairing of the nave roof under consideration, and, in order to save twenty pounds on an estimate, they decided to remove the battlements, and to have a slated roof, spanning nave and aisles, and ending in eaves. The thing was done, against the wish of the Vicar and with the approval of the then Bishop of Rochester, and all who pass this way can see how barbarous was the deed. It had not even the merit of economy, for, by the time the work was completed, it had cost the churchwardens several hundreds of pounds more than had been anticipated. " Trifle not, your time's but short," says a very elaborate and complicated sundial over the south porch, looking down upon the road ; and, taking the hint, we will proceed at once from Milton Church to the public-house next door. But not for carnal joys ; oh no ! Only in the interests of this book will we make such a sudden diversion ; for, at the rear of the house, on the old bowling-green, is an interesting memorial of one of the jolly fellows Avho once upon a time gathered here on summer evenings and played a game of bowls when business in the neighbouring town of Gravesend was done for the day. to the memory Of Mr. Alderman Nynn, An lioneft Man, and an Excellent Bowler. Ciiique est sua Fama. Full forty long Years was the Alderman feen, The delight of each Bowler, and King of this Greene. As long he remember'd his Art and his Name, Whofe hand was unerring, unrival'd whofe Fame. His Bias was good, and he always was found To go the right way and to take enough ground. The Jack to the uttermoft verge he would fend For the Alderman lov'd a full length at each End. DENTON 79 Now mourn ev'ry Eye that hath feeii him difplay The Arts of the Game, and the Wiles of his play ; For the great Bowler, Death, at one critical Cast Has ended his length, and clofe rubb'd him at laft. F. W. pofuit, MDCCT.XXVI. And having duly noted this elegy of a truly admirable man, we may leave Milton, pausing but to look down upon the estuary of the Thames, where the great liners pass to and fro the most distant parts of the world, and also to consider the humours of a hundred years ago, when, as now, Milton was in the corporate jurisdiction of Gravesend, and w^hen it sufficed both to employ one watchman between them. This w^atchman was also Common Crier, and w^as supported, not by a salary, but (like a hospital) by voluntary contributions. And he did not do badly by the grateful Gravesenders, for he collected, one year with another, £60, w^hich, added to the market-gardening business he also carried on, must have made quite a comfortable income. A little way beyond Milton, w^here the road curves round to the right, there will be seen on the left an eighteenth-century mansion, standing in extensive grounds. Immediately wdthin the lodge-gates is what looks like a small church, surrounded by trees. It is older and far more interesting than it seems to be. Until 1901 it was, in fact, a roofless ruin ; but it was then restored by Mr. George M. Arnold, who then owned Denton Court, the name of the house. The church, now used as a private chapel by the owner of Denton Court, was in fact Denton Chapel, the place of worship of the parish of Denton, which was ecclesias- tically separate from Milton until 1879. Denton is a place so small that few maps condescend to notice it, but it is an ancient place, first named in a.d. 950, as " Denetune," when the manor w^as given by one Byrhtric to the Priory of St. Andrew at Rochester, which built this chapel of St. Mary. It was on the dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry the Eighth that it fell into ruin. 80 THE DOVER ROAD The chapel is. of Hterary interest, for it is the original of Barham's " Ingoldsby Abbe}^" In travelling between Canterbury and London by coach, Barham noticed the ruined walls standing up, silhouetted against the sky, and looking far more important than DENTON CHAPEL. intrinsically they were ; for this was then a cleared space, the new road near by having in 1787 been cut actually through the little churchyard. Commentators in various editions of the Ingoldsby Legends have stated sceptically " the remains of Ingoldsby Abbey will be found — if found at all — among the ' Chateaux en Espagne.' " That is not so ; for here it is. Barham himself, in a note to the legend " The Ingoldsby Penance," remarks the ruins are " still to be seen by the side of the high Dover road, about a mile and a half below the town of Gravesend." The great gate Father Thames rolls sun-bright and clear, Cobham woods to the right — on the opposite shore Laindon Hills in the distance, ten miles off, or more ; Then you've Milton and Gravesend behind — and before You can see almost all the way down to the Nore. CHALK 81 In Domesday Book Denton is written " Danitune," and it is generally held that the name comes from the raiding Danes, who certainly troubled this estuary ; but it is probalDly " Dene-town," the place in the vale ; perhaps in contradistinction to Higham, which is not far off. Chalk is the next place on the road, and Chalk is quite the smallest and most scattered of villages, beginning at the summit of the hill leading out of ^Milton and ending at Chalk church, which stands on a hillock retired behind a clump of trees nearly a mile JOE GARGERY'S FORGE. down the road, and far aAvay from any house. All the way the road commands long reaches of the Thames and the Essex marshes, and on summer days the singing of the larks high in air above the open fields can be heard. At Chalk, in 1836, Charles Dickens rented a honey- moon cottage, on his marriage Avith Catherine Hogarth. Great controversies arose some years ago, following upon what is said to be a wrong identification of the place with a residence called the " Manor House " ; and it was stated that the real dwelling in question was the weather-boarded and much humbler cottage at the fork of the old and new roads between Gravesend and Northfleet, still standing, and with a commemorative tablet on it. Opposite is " Joe Gargery's Forge." 82 THE DOVER ROAD Chalk church is a very much unrestored building of flint and rubble, dating from the thirteenth century. Its south aisle was j)ulled down at some remote period. There still remains, and in very good preservation, too, a singular Early English carving over the western door representing a grinning countryman holding an immense flagon in his two hands and gazing upward towards a whimsically-con- torted figure that seems to be nearly all head and teeth. Between the two is an empty tabernacle which at one time before the destruction of '' idolatrous statues " would have held a figure of the Virgin. The two remaining figures prob- ably illustrate the celebra- tion of " Church ales," a yearly festival formerly common to all English villages, and held on the day sacred to the particular saint to whom the church was dedicated. On these occasions there was used to be general jollity ; feasting and drinking ; manly sports, such as boxing, wrestling, and games at quarter-staff, would be indulged in, and the day was held as a fair, to which came jugglers and players of interludes and itinerant vendors from far and near. The Church, of course, being the original occasion of the merry-making, looked benignly upon it, and provided the funds for the malt ANCIENT CARVING— CHALK. THE "LORD NELSON 83 from which the so-called " Church ales " were brewed. There is one other item of interest at Chalk, and that is an old wayside tavern, the " Lord Nelson," one of those old houses that occupied, during last century, and the fir^t quarter of the nineteenth, a SAILORS' FOLLY. (.After Julius C'cesar Ibbet.oon). position between the coaching inn and the mere beer- house. This type of tavern is still very largely represented along the Dover Road, although the sailors who chiefly supported them are no longer seen tramping the highways between the seaports. The}^ have, most of them, little arbours and trim gardens with skittle- and bowling-alleys, and here the sailor would sit and drink, spin yarns, or play at bowls ; swearing 84 THE DOVER ROAD strange oaths, and telling of many a hard-fought fight. If he had kindred company, there would be, I promise you, a riotous time ; for no schoolboy so frolicsome as Jack ashore, and hard-won wages and prize-money, got at the cost of blood and wounds, he spent like water. Nothing was too expensive for him, nor, indeed, expensive enough, and if he was sufficiently fortunate to leave his landing-place with any money at all, he would very likely post up to town with the best on the road. JACK COME HOME AGAIX. holding, very rightly, that life without experiences was not worth the having. And of experiences he had plenty. He lived like a lord so long as his money lasted, and when he went afloat again he was shipped in a lordly state of drunkenness ; but once the anchor was weighed his was a slave's existence. Not that any word of his hardships escaped him ; he took them as inseparable from a seaman's life ; and, indeed, once the first rapture of his home-coming was over, the sea unfailingly claimed him again. And when ashore all his talk was of battles and storms ; he damned Bonaparte, believed that one Englishman could thrash three " darned parley voos," despised land-lubbers, i 86 THE DOVER ROAD and sang " Hearts of Oak " with an unction that was truh^ admirable. His faihnofs were onl}^ those of a free and noble nature, and it is very largely owing to his qualities of courage and tenacity that England stands where she is to-day. Let us not, however, decry, either directly or by implication, the sailors who now man our ships. They live in more peaceful times, and have neither the discomforts nor the hard knocks that were distributed so largel}^ years ago ; but they ha^c approved themselves no whit less stalwart than their ancestors who wore pigtails, fought like devils ; talked of Rodney, Nelson, Trafalgar, and the Nile, and finally dis- appeared somewhere about the time of the Battle of Navarino. It was for the delight and to secure the custom of these very full-blooded heroes that these old taverns with signs so nautical and bowling-greens so enticing were planted so frequently on this very sea-salty road, and now that the humblest traveller finds it cheaper to pay a railway-fare than to walk, they look, many of them, not a little forlorn. As for the " Lord Nelson," at Chalk, I fear it lies too near London suburbs to last much longer. Already, on Bank Holidays, when the Cockney comes to Gravesend, literally in his thousands, riotous parties adventure thus far, and dance in the dusty highwa^^ to sounds of concertina and penny whistle. Their custom will doubtless enrich the place, and presently a gin-palace will be made of what is now a very romantic and unusual inn, grey and time-stained ; its red roof-tiles thickly overgrown with moss and house-leek, and its gables bent and bowed with years. XVIII There is little to see or remark upon in the three miles between Chalk and Gad's Hill. Two old roadside GAD'S HILL 87 inns, each claiming to be a " half-way house " ; a lane that leads off to the right, towards the village of Shorne ; a windmill, without its sails, standing on the brow of a singular hill ; these, together with the great numbers of men and women working in the fields, are all the noticeable features of the road until one comes up the long, gradual ascent to the top of Gad's Hill. Gad's Hill is at first distinctly disappointing ; perhaps all places of pilgrimage must on acquaintance be necessarily less satisfactory than a lively fancy has painted them. How very often, indeed, does not one exclaim on standing before world-famed sites, '' Is this all ? " The stranger comes unawares upon Gad's Hill. The ascent is so gradual that he is quite unprepared for the shock that awaits him when he comes in sight of a house and two spreading cedars that can scarce be other than Charles Dickens' home. He has seen them pictured so often that there can surely be no mistake ; and yet He feels cheated. Is this, then, the famous hill where travellers were wont to be robbed ? Is this the place referred to by that seventeenth-century robber turned litterateur, John Clavell, who, in his " Recantation of an Ill-led Life," speaks so magniloquently of — Gad's Hill, and those Red tops of mountains, where good people lose Their ill kept purses. Was it here, then, upon this paltry pimple of a hill that Falstaff and Prince Hal, Poins and the rest of them, robbed the merchants, the franklins, and the flea-bitten carriers, who, Charles's Wain being over the chimneys of their inn at Rochester, set out early in the morning for London ? Was this the spot where Falstaff, brave amid so many confederates, added insult to injury of those travellers by calling them " gorbellied knaves " and " caterpillars," and 88 THE DOVER ROAD where Prince Henry, in his turn, alluded to the knight as " fat guts " ? Yes, this is the place, but how changed from then ! To see Gad's Hill as it was in those times it would be necessary to sweep away the rows of mean cottages that form quite a hamlet here, together with Gad's Hill Place, the hedges and enclosures, and to clothe the hillsides with dense woodlands, coming close up to, and overshadowing the highway, which should be full of ruts and sloughs of mud. Then we should have some sort of an idea how terrible the hill could be o'nights when the rogues* who lurked in the shadow of the trees pounced upon rich travellers, and, tricked out in vizards, hoods, disguise. Masks, muzzles, mufflers, patches on their eyes ; Those beards, those heads of liair, and that great wen Which is not natural, relieved them of their gold. And not only rogues of low estate, but others of birth and education, pursued this hazardous industry, so that Shakespeare, when he made the Prince of Wales and Sir John Falstaff appear as highwaymen on this scene, was not altogether drawing upon his imagination. Thus, when the Danish Ambassador was set upon and plundered here in 1656, they were not poor illiterates who sent him a letter the next day in which they took occasion to assure him that " the same necessity that enforc't ye Tartars to breake ye wall of China compelled them to wait on him at Gad's Hill." But travellers did not always tamely submit to be robbed and cudgelled, as you shall see in these extracts from Gravesend registers — " 1586, September 29th daye, was a thief e yt was slayne, buryed ; " and, again, " 1590, Marche, the 17th dale, was a theefe yt Avas at Gad'shill wounded to deathe, called Robert Writs, buried." Gad's Hill is not only memorable for the robberies * " Gad's," i.e. " rogues," Hill. MURDER 89 committed on its miry ways. Its story rises to tragic heights with the murder, on the night of October 15, 1661, of no less a person than a foreign Prince, Cossuma Albertus, Prince of Transylvania. This unfortunate Prince, who was on a visit to England to seek aid from Charles the Second against the Germans, was approaching Rochester, apparently on his return to the Continent, when his coach stuck fast in the October mud of Gad's Hill. He had already experienced the villainous nature of our high- ways, and so, knowing that it would be impossible to proceed further that evening, he resigned himself to sleeping a night on the road. Having wrapped himself up as warmly as possible, he fell off to sleep, whereupon his coachman, one Isaac Jacob, a Jew, took his sword and stabbed him to the heart, and, calling upon the footman, this precious pair completed the tragedy by dragging the body out of the coach, and, cutting off the head, flinging the mutilated remains in a neighbouring ditch. The first tidings of this inhuman murder were brought to a Rochester physician, who, riding past the spot some days afterwards, was horrified by his dog bringing him a human arm in his mouth. Meanwhile the murderers had possessed themselves of the Prince's clothes, together with a large sum of money he had with him, and, dragging the coach out of the ruts, had driven back to Greenhithe, where they left coach and horses to be called for. Not long afterwards, they were arrested in London, and, being brought before the Lord Mayor, the footman made a full confession. The trial took place at Maidstone, where Isaac Jacob, coachman, and Casimirus Karsagi, footman, were sentenced to death, the first being hanged in chains at the scene of the crime. The body of the ill-fated Prince of Transylvania was buried in the nave of Rochester Cathedral. Sixteen years later, we come to the ex])loits of that ingenious highwayman, Master Nicks, who, one 90 THE DOVER ROAD morning in 1676, so early as four o'clock, committed a robbery on this essentially " bad eminence," upon the person of a gentleman, who, from some unexplained reason, was crossing the hill at that unearthly hour. This, by the way, seems to disprove the wisdom of the early worm, who, to be caught, must of necessity be up still earlier than that ornithological Solon, the early bird. 'Tis a nice point. However, Master Nicks, w^ho was mounted on a bay mare, effectually despoiled the traveller and rode away, reaching York on the afternoon of the same day. Dismounting there at an inn, he changed his riding- clothes and repaired to the bowling-green, where he found the Lord Mayor of York playing bowls with several other tradesmen. The artful rogue, in order to fix himself, the date, and the hour in that magistrate's memory, made a bet with him upon the game, took an opportunity to ask him the time, and by some means contrived to give him occasion to bear in mind the day of the month, in case he should chance to be arrested on suspicion of the affair. Sure enough, he was apprehended some time later, and when put upon his trial the jury acquitted him, as they held it impossible for a man to be at two places so remote in one day. After his acquittal, all danger being past, he confessed the truth of the matter to the judge, already doubtful of the jury's wisdom, and the affair coming to the knowledge of Charles the Second, his Majesty eke- named this speedy road-agent " Swiftnicks." This name conceals the identity of John, or William, Nevison, who was executed on Knavcsmire, York, in 1685. His exploit in thus riding from near Rochester to York is the original of the later, inferior and wholly fictitious story of Dick Turpin's ride from London to York, on Black Bess ; an exploit never performed by him. One presently becomes more tolerant of Gad's Hill, for, coming to Charles Dickens' house and the old " Falstaff " inn, almost opposite, there opens a view MRS. LYNN LINTON 91 over the surrounding country that is really fine, and the road goes down, too, towards Strood, in a manner eminently picturesque. The story is well known of how, even when but a " queer small boy," Dickens always had a great desire to, some day, be the owner of the place, and how his father, who would take him jiast here on country walks from Chatham, told him that if he " were to be very persevering, and were to work hard," he might some day come to live in it ; but it is not equally a matter of common knowledge that the house had been also the object of an equal affection, years before, to the Reverend Mr. Lynn, father of Mrs. Lynn Linton, who tells us how her early years were spent here, and how, when her father died, it was she who sold the estate to the novelist. She gives also a most picturesque account of Gad's Hill in those times. The coaches were still running when Mrs. Lynn Linton, as a girl, lived here. " Gad's Hill House stands a little way back from the road. The grand highway between London and Dover, not to speak of betAveen Gravesend and Rochester, it was as gay as an approach to a metropolis. Ninety-two public coaches and pleasure-vans used to pass in the day, not counting the private carriages of the grandees posting luxuriously to Dover for Paris and the grand tour. Soldiers marching or riding to or from Chatham and Gravesend, to embark for India, or on their return journey home ; ships' companies paid off that morning, and cruising past the gates, shouting and singing and comporting themselves in a generally terrifying manner, being, for the most part, half-seas over, and a trifle beyond ; gipsies and travelling tinkers ; sturdy beggars with stumps and crutches ; Savoyards with white mice, and organ-men with a wonderful wax doll, two-headed and superbly dressed, in front of their machines ; chimney-sweepers, with a couple of shivering, little, half-naked climbing boys carrying their bags and brushes ; and costermongers, whose small, flat carts were drawn by big dogs, were 92 THE DOVER ROAD also among the accidents and circumstances of the time. . . . Old Mr. Weller* was a real person, and we knew him. He was ' Old Chumley ' in the flesh, and drove the stage daily from Rochester to London, and back again." GAD'S HILL PLACE. RESIDEXCE OF CHARLES DICKEXS. It was here, then, that Dickens lived from 1856 to his death, on June 9, 1870, and thus Gad's Hill is, for many, doubly a place of pilgrimage. And, truly, the whole course of the Dover Road is rich in memories of him and of the characters he drew with such a flow of sentimentality ; and sentiment is more to the English- man than is generally supposed. Hence that amazing popularity which is only just now being critically inquired into, weighed and appraised, Dickens was a man of commanding genius. His observation was acute, and he reproduced with so photographic a fidelity the life and times of his early years that the " manners and customs of the English," during the first third of the nineteenth century, find no such * One ol the many originals of " Samivel's father " put forward. One was supposed to have been at Bath, another at Dorking ; and others still have claims to have originated this humorous character. DICKENS 93 luminous exponent as he. When, if indeed ever, the Pickwick Papers cease to amuse, they will still afford by far the most valuable evidence that could possibly exist as to the ways and thoughts, the social life and the conditions of travel, that immediately preceded the railway era. Superficial critics may hold that the most humorous book of the century is but a succession of scenes, with little real sequence and no plot ; they may also say that Mr. Pickwick, Messrs. Tupman, Snodgrass, Winkle, and the rest of that glorious company, were " idiots," but for genuine fun and frolic that book is still pre-eminent, and none of the " new humorists," with their theories and criticisms of the " old humour," have approached within a continent or so of it. Not that Dickens' methods were irreproachable. It was his pleasure in all his books to give his characters allusive names by which you were supposed to recognise their attributes at once. It is thus upon the stage, in pantomime or farce, that the clown's painted grin and the low^-comedian's ill-fitting clothes, red hair, and redder nose, proclaim their qualities before a word is spoken, and when Dickens calls a pompous fraud " Pecksniff," a vulgar Cockney clerk " Guppy," or a shifty, irresponsible, resourceful person " Swiveller," we know at once, before we read any further, pretty much what their characters will be like. This, of course, is not art ; it is an entirely indefeasible attempt to claim your sympathies or excite your aversions at the outset, independently of the greater or less success with which the author portrays their habits afterwards. We must, however, do Dickens the justice both to allow that he needed no such adventitious aids to the understanding of his characters, and to recognise that this kind of nomenclature was not i^eculiarly his own, but very largely the literary fashion of his time. The pranks of Falstaff and Prince Hal, whose doings were to be " argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest for ever," are commemorated, in a 9i THE DOVER ROAD fashion, by a large roadside inn, the " Falstaff," standing nearl}^ opposite Gad's Hill Place, the successor, built in the time of Queen Anne, of a lonely beerhouse, the resort of characters more than question- able ; more than kin to highwaymen, and much less than kind to unprotected wayfarers. 1/ THE " FALSTAFF," GAD'S HILL. From here the road goes steepl}^ all the way to Strood, over Coach and Horses' Hill, and through a deep cutting made by the Highway Board about 1830, in order to ease the heavy pull up from Rochester ; a cutting known at that time as '' Davies' Straits," from the name of the chairman of the Board, the Rev. George Davies. The view here, over house-tops toward the Medway, framed in on either side by this hollow road, is particularly fine, and I think I cannot come through Strood into Rochester without quoting a certain lieutenant who, with a captain and an " ancient " (by which last we understand " ensign " to be meant), travelled in these parts in 1635. " I am STROOD 95 to passe," says he, " to Rochester, and in the midway I fear'd no robbing, although I passed that woody, and high old robbing Hill (Gadds Hill), on which I alighted, and tooke a sweet and delightfull prospect of that faire streame, with her pleasant meads she glides through." The lieutenant's description is delightful, and if he drew the sword to such good purpose as he wielded the pen, why, I think he must have been a warrior of no little distinction. He says nothing of Strood ; and, indeed, I think Strood has through the centuries been entreated in quite a shabby and inadequate manner. The reason of this, of course, is that Strood is over the water and suburban to Rochester ; a kind of poor relation so to speak, and treated accordingly. But the place is old and historic, and celebrated not only for the great fight which the barons made in the thirteenth century against the king, when they fought their way across the bridge, and, taking possession of Rochester, sacked town, castle, and cathedral, but also for that exploit of the townsfolk who cut off the tail of one of Becket's sumpter-mules, whereupon that wrathful prelate cursed them, and caused them and their descendants to go with tails for ever. Thus the story which accounts for the county nickname of " Kentish long-tails," but I do not perceive that the Strood folks are so unusually decorated. Perhaps they are at pains to hide their shame. XIX Strood, too, deserves some notice. The place-name has been thought to derive from strata, " the street," standing as it does on that ancient way, the Roman Watling Street. But, in the recent advance in the study of place-names, it is held to be from the Anglo- Saxon " strode " : a marshy region. The original meaning of " Watling Street " is never 96 THE DOVER ROAD likely to be determined to the satisfaction of all antiquaries, and its age is equally a contested point. But that a street or a trackway of some kind, of an identical route with the present highway, ran between London and Dover long before Caesar landed can scarce be matter for doubt. That the Britons were barbaric and unused to commerce or intercourse with the Continent can scarcely be supposed, for Britain was the Sacred Island of the Druidical religion, and to it came the youth of Gaul for instruction at the hands of those high priests Avhose Holy of Holies lay, across the land, in remote Anglesey. Those priests were the instructors, both in religion and secular knowledge, of the Gaulish youth ; and, outside the civilisations of Greece and Rome, Britain was even then the best place to acquire a " liberal education." Up the rugged trackway of the Sarn Gwyddelin = the Foreigners' Road, from Dover to London, and diagonally across the island, came these youths ; and down it, to voyage across the Channel, and to take part with their Gaulish friends in any fighting that might be going, went those tall British warriors whose strength and fierceness surprised Ciesar in his Gallic War. Imports and exports, too, passed along this rough way ; skins and gold, British hunting-dogs and slaves were shipped to Gaul and Rome by merchants who, to keep the trade unspoiled, magnified the dangers of the sea-crossing and the fierceness of the people. Pottery, glass-beads, and cutlery they imported in return ; and this primitive " road " must have pre- sented a busy scene long before it could ha\x deserved the actual name. When Cicsar, eager for spoil and conquest, marched across country from Deal, and first saw the Sarn Gwyddelin from the summit of Barham Downs, it could have been but a track, never built, but gradually brought into existence by the tramping of students and fighting-men, and widened by the commerce of those exclusive merchants. Thus it remained for WATLING STREET 97 at lead ninety-eight years longer ; rough, full of holes, mires, and swamps, and crossed by many streams. Caesar came and went ; and not until Aulus Plautius and Claudius had overrun Britain, and probably not before many successive Roman governors had served here, and reduced this province of Britannia Prima to the condition of a settled and prosperous colony, was the Foreigners' Road made a via strata, a paved Roman Military Way. Its date might be anything from the landing of Aulus Plautius, in a.d. 45, to the time of Hadrian, the greatest of all road-builders, a.d. 120. Then it became a true " street," made in the thorough manner described by Vitruvius, and paved throughout with stone blocks ; the " strata " from which the word " street " is derived. Engineered with all that road-making science which, not less than their victories, has rendered the Romans famous for all time, the Watling Street, as the Romans left it, stretched from sea to sea. Starting from their three great harbour fortresses on the Kentish coast — from Rutupice, Partus dubris, and Lemanis, Englished now as Richborough, Dover, and Lympne — it converged in three branches upon their first inland camp and city of Diirovernwn, where Canterbury now stands. Proceeding thenceforward on the lines of the present Dover Road, the Roman road came to their next station of Durolevum, whose site no antiquary has fixed convincingly, but which might have been at either Sittingbourne, Ospringe, Davington, or Key Street. Thence it reached Durohrivae, which was certainly on the site of Rochester. Crossing the Medway by a trajectus, or perhaps even by a bridge of either stone or wood, the road passed through Strood, and branched off through Cobham, coming again to the modern highway at Dartford Brent. Perhaps it even had two branches here, one touching the river at Vagniacae, probably both Northfleet and Southfleet ; and the other keeping, as we have seen, inland until a 98 THE DOVER ROAD junction was effected near Dartford. But Avith its proximity to London, the story and the geography of WatHng Street grow not a httle confused. Where, for instance, the succeeding station of Noviomagus was situated no one can say with certainty. It might have been at Keston ; it probably was at Crayford ; or there inight have been two branches again, as some anti- quaries suggest. Through London, the Wathng Street went across England, past St. Albans and Wroxeter, and finally to Segontium, or the hither side of the Menai Straits, throwing off a branch to Deva, Chester. This and other great roads grew gradually to per- fection throughout the country for four hundred years. Towns and military stations dotted them at intervals, and in between the abodes of men the way was lined, after the custom of the Roman people, with tombs and cemeteries. This explains the many '' finds " of sepulchral urns and various relics beside the road. When the Saxons came, they could not pronounce the name by which the half-Roman people called this road, and so " Gwyddelin " became " watling " on their tongues, while " strata " was corrupted to " street." No new roads were made now, and, indeed, not until the Turnpike Acts of George the Third's time and the era of MacAdam was the art of road-making practised again in England. For ages the " roads " of this country were a byword and a reproach to us. By the middle of the twelfth century the Roman roads that had been made and kept in repair for hundreds of years fell into ruin, and the detritus and miscellaneous accumulations of twenty-five generations now cover the greater portion of them. At a depth varying from five to fourteen, and even eighteen, feet, excavators have come upon the hard surface of the original Roman road, and mosaic pavements of villas found at that extreme depth attest how the surface of a country may be altered only by the gradual deposit of vegetable matter. The thickest deposits are found in low-lying THE OLD ROADS 99 situations, where the flow of streams or rain-water has brought hquid earth to settle upon the deserted sites of an ancient civiHsation. This has occurred notably at such places as Dartford, Rochester, and Canterbury, all situated in deep valleys, where springs and storms have united to bring mud, sand, and gravel down from the hillsides, and thus to equalise in some measure the ancient irregularities of the scenery. While the hollows have thus been rendered less profound, the hill-tops and table-lands have remained very much as they were, and it is in these elevated situations that the line of Watling Street can most readily be traced, or could have been had not the stone pavings that composed the road been long ages ago abstracted. This long neglect of the roads made country journeys exceedingly difficult and dangerous. Travellers' tales in England during six or seven centuries are concerned with two great evils ; highway robbery and the shocking state of the roads ; and so deep and dangerous were some of the quagmires that, rather than attempt to cross them, coachmen would drive through wayside fields, and thus make a road for themselves. It was in this way that ancient highways became diverted, and the pedestrian Avho finds the route between two towns to be extraordinarily circuitous must often look to these circumstances for an explanation. The southern counties bore a bad reputation for impassable roads until about se^'enty years ago, and Kentish miles were long linked with Essex stiles and Norfolk wiles as prime causes of begu'.lement ; while the fertility of Kentish soil is joined with the muddy character of Kentish roads in two old county proverbs. Thus, " Bad for the rider, good for the abider,' expressed truths obvious enough to those who came this way a hundred years ago ; and " There is good land where there is foul way " would have said much for the excellence of Kent, where all the ways were foul. But if the traveller was not a landed gentleman, 100 THE DOVER ROAD except in the sense that he was generally covered with nmd from head to foot, the reflection that the county through which he waded deep in slush must be singularly fertile could scarce have afforded him much consolation for lost time and spoiled clothes. Here is a tale of an unfortunate horseman bogged on these miscalled " roads " which is quite eloquent of what old-time wayfaring was like. He comes to a suspicious-looking slough and hesitates. " Is there a good bottom here, my man ? " he asks of a country joskin regarding him with a wide smile. " Oo-ah ! yes, there's a good bottom to un," replies the countryman, and the traveller urges on his Avay until, within a yard or so, his horse sinks to the girth in liquid mud. " I thought you said there was a good bottom to this road," shouts the traveller. " Yes," rejoins the rustic, " soo there ees, but you a'n't coom to un yit, master." XX Stkood is one long street of miscellaneous houses, with fields and meadows running up to the back- yards ; with engine-shops, mills, wheelwrights, and a variety of other noisy trades clanging and clattering in the rear, and an old church on the hillside to the left, appropriately dedicated to that patron of thieves and sailor-men, Saint Nicholas. But whether or no " Saint Nicholas' clerks " looked in here to pray the saint to send them " rick franklins and great oneyers " across that " high old robbing hill," I should not like to say ; having though, the while, a shrewd suspicion that their piety was somewhat to seek, and that the shrine of the saint profited but little, if at all, from their ill-gotten gains upon the road. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the old houses here and at Rochester, and, indeed, along a great portion of the Dover Road, is the great use "CRISPIN AND CRISPIANUS" 101 of weather-boarding, chiefly on the upper storeys. An instance of this is seen at Strood at an inn, the " Crispin and Crispianus," standing in the main street. A still more interesting point about this old house is its pictorial swinging sign, overhanging the pathway — a representation of the two shoemaker brothers, Crispin and Crispian, at work, cobbling boots. The brothers were Christian martyrs who suffered death at Soissons, a.d. 287. How they came to serve as the sign of an inn is quite unknown. It has been suggested that, as Aglncourt was i'ought on Saint Crispin's Day, this old sign is of the warlike and patriotic order to which belong the Waterloo, Wellington, Nelson, Alma, and Trafalgar signs that are so plentiful on this road ; but it is a great deal more likely that it is a relic of the days when men made pilgrimages to Becket's shrine, when innkeepers found their account to he in calling their houses after some popular saint or another. A curious incident in connection with the " Crispin and Crispianus " must be noted before we pass on. It happened in 1830. One night ii: September of that year, a doctor who had only just then commenced practice in Strood was called in to see a man lying at the point of death in an upper room of the old inn. He hastened to the place, aid found a man lying in bed who told him that, although he was known only as an ostler, he was really the Earl of Coleraine, nephew of that notorious Colonel Hanger who is chiefly known as the riotous boon-companion of the Prince Regent in the early days of Brighton and the Pavilion. Colonel Hanger was the fourth earl, and succeeded his brother in the title, which he never assumed. He died, childless, in 1824, and the earldom became extinct. As Colonel Hanger was the youngest son of his father, and as no mention has ever been made of any of his elder brothers leaving sons, the matter is not a little mysterious, especially as the colonel's right to the title, had he chosen to use it, was not disputed. 102 THE DOVER ROAD However, the strange man who died on September 20, 1830, at the " Crispin and Crispianus " apparently satisfied Doctor Humphrey Wickham of the truth of his story, and that his real name was Charles Parrott Hanger, instead of " Charley Roberts," by which he had been knov/n at Strood and the neighbour- hood for twenty years. During this time he had acted as ostler at the coaching inns of Rochester and Chatham ; had tramped the country, selling laces, thread, tape, and other small wares ; and on Sundays shaved labourers. He had deserted his wife years before. She was long dead, and he had a son apprenticed to a firm of ironmongers at Birmingham. To this son he left all he was possessed of, makii.g the doctor his executor. It will not be imagined that this ex-ostler, dying in a room of the " Crispin and Crispianus," where he was lodged by the landlady out of charity, had anything to bequeath ; but the doctor paid over, as executor, the sum of £1000 to Charles Henry Hanger, the son of this eccentric. XXI And so, as Mr. Samuel Pepys might say, into Rochester. Rochester was to Dickens variously " Mudfog," " Great Winglebury," " Dullborough," and " Cloister- ham." It cannot be said that any of these names form anything like an adequate word-picture of the place. As names, they vary from good to indifferent, and very bad, but none of them shadow forth the real Rochester, which is rather a busy place than other- wise : none, for instance, are so happily descriptive as that under which a waggish fellow introduced a wealthy distiller to an assemblage of Polish notables — as " Count Caskowisky." I might pluck a feather from Dickens' wing with which to furnish forth a wounding ROCHESTER 103 shaft, and say of Rochester, under any of those pseudonyms, as Trabbs' boy said in another connection (and vet not deserve the title of " unhmited miscreant,") " Don't know yah ! " The somnolent place which Dickens drew — its High Street a narrow lane, its houses abodes of gloom and mystery — has not much existence in fact. It is, of course, heresy to say so (but it is none the less true), that although no other place was probably so well known to Dickens, and that from his youth upward, yet he never caught the true note of Rochester. That he loved the place seems obvious enough, but his was not the Gothic, mediaeval temperament that could really appreciate it aright. The test of this is found in the fact that although Dickens has written many glowing pages on Rochester, and apparenth^ yielded to none in his admiration for the old city, yet its appear- ance is far more beautiful to the stranger learned in Dickens-lore than anything he is prepared to see. Busy, beautiful Rochester, and none the less beautiful because busy. The traveller who first sees the old place, its castle and cathedral and the turbid Medway, from Strood, is fortunate in his approach, and will never forget the grand picture it makes. To his right stretches away for miles the broad valley of the Medway, with bold hills crowned with windmills, above, and the stream, diminishing in long perspective, below ; ^\dth jutting promontories where the factory- chimneys of Borstal and Wouldham stand up, clustered like the stalks of monstrous vegetables, and the red- sailed barges that drop down with wind and tide. Before him rise the great keep, the cathedral, and the clustered red roofs of the cit^^ with a glimpse of the High Street, the Town Hall and its great vane — a full-rigged ship — at the other end of the bridge. And all the while to his left is the shrieking and the screaming of the trains, rolling in thunder over the two railway bridges that absolutely shut out and ruin the view down the stream. The bustle, roar, and rattle of 104 THE DOVER ROAD the trains, the busy, yet silent, traffic of the river, the smoke rising in wreaths from those distant chimneys of Wouldham and Borstal, all bespeak labour and commerce, and all these rumours of a busy community blend finely with the shattered majesty of that ancient Castle, the solemnity of the Cathedral, and the noisy, yet restful, carving of the raucous rooks who circle round about those lofty battlements, their outcry mingled with the sobbing, moaning voices of the pigeons, and the shrill piping of querulous sea-birds. The bridge over which Mr. Pickwick leaned and meditated while waiting for breakfast has gone the way of many another old building referred to in that book which will presently have a quite unique archaeological value, so changed are the varied haunts of the Pickwickians. Necessity, they say, the call of progress, demanded the removal of the fine stone bridge of eleven arches that had spanned the Medway so efficiently for five centuries, and it was removed in 1856 ; but how cruel the necessity, and how heavy a toll we pay for our progression perhaps only those who had stood upon the ancient ways can tell. The masonry was so strong that it was found necessary to blow it up. Meanwhile, we must clear our minds from a very reasonable prejudice, and acknowledge that, as an example of modern engineering, the new Rochester Bridge is very fine. It is of iron, broad and graceful as its iron construction will allow, and it spans the river in three great arches. It cost £160,000, exclusive of approaches, to build, and was opened in 1856. The old bridge had a protecting balustrade which more or less effectually saved the lieges from being blown by furious winds into the water. Before the balustrade there were high iron railings, which were fixed according to the French Ambassador, the Due de Nivernais, " so that drunkards, not uncommon here, may not mix water with their wine." That the balustrade was not very greatly to be relied ROCHESTER 105 upon, and that Mr. Pickwick, bulky man as he was, ran a considerable risk when he leaned over the parapet, may be gathered when we read that on a night in 1836 a storm demolished a great stretch of it, and that the Princess Victoria, who was coming up the road from Dover, was content to be advised to stay over- night at the " Bull," rather than attempt to cross over to Strood. The riverside wore a somewhat different aspect then. Low and broken cliffs picturesquely shelved down to the water's edge where a neat embankment now runs, and the balustrades of the old bridge serve their old purpose on this new river- wall. The embankment is an improvement from an utilitarian point of view, but its long straight line hurts the artistic sense. The stranger should come into Rochester preferably on the evening of a summer's day, and, as first impressions must ever remain the most distinct, he should walk in over the bridge. At such times a golden haze spreads over the city and the river, and renders both a dream of beauty. The gilt ship on the Town Hall blazes like molten metal ; the " moon- faced clock " of the Corn Exchange is correspondingly calm, and the wide entrance-halls of the older inns begin to glow with light. You should have walked a good fifteen miles or more on the day of your first coming into Rochester, and then you will appreciate aright the mellow comforts of its old inns. But not at once will the connoisseur of antiquity and first impressions who thus enters the old city repair him to his inn. He will turn into the Cathedral precincts underneath the archway of Chertsey's Gate, and I hope he will not already have read Edwin Drood, because an acquaintance with that tale quite spoils one's Rochester, and leaves an ineffaceable mark of a modern sordid tragedy upon the hoary stones of Cathedral, Castle, and Close. It is as though one had come to the place after reading the unrelieved brutality of a newspaper report. Rochester demands a romance 106 THE DOVER ROAD of the Ivanhoe type ; chivalry or necessities of State should have ennobled slaughter here, but a tale of secret murder for private ends vulgarises and tarnishes the place, especially when it is told with all Dickens' wealth of local allusion. He had no comprehension of tragedy and romance other than those of the street and the police-court ; which is to say that he had better have left Rochester alone, so far as the Mystery of Edzvin Drood is concerned. If my imaginary traveller comes to Rochester without having read that tale he will be singularly fortunate. Otherwise he will have an uneasy feeling as he stands and gazes a moment upon the west front of the Cathedral, or peeps into the nave, that it ought to be re-consecrated. This, of course, is a tribute to Dickens' descriptive and narrative poAvers that clothe the doings of his characters with so great an air of reality ; but how unfortunate for those who like their murders to be decently old and historical that he should have brought the atmosphere of the police-court into the grave and reverend air of this ancient city. My traveller, happily unversed in all this, will gaze upon the Cathedral and the Castle Keep, where the rooks are circling to rest, and, coming again into the High Street, will turn to his inn, where appetite, sharpened by pedestrianism and fresh air, may be appeased as well now as in those days of heavy drinking and no less heavy eating, when seventy-two coaches passed through Rochester daily and the trains that thuiKier across the Medway were undreamt of. The inns of Rochester receive, as may well be supposed, many pilgrims who for love of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens, come hither, not alone frpm all parts of England, but from America, and even from foreign-speaking countries, and the visitors' books testify not only to their opinions of the place but also of each other. Thus at one inn I read the signatures of a party of Germans, to which some THE "BULL" 107 prejudiced Briton, after sundry offensive remarks about foreigners in general and Germans in particular, adds, " They are everywhere, d n them ! " But I must confess that the following surprised me, even after a long acquaintance with the inanities of visitors' books. Some one had remarked " How like Rochester Cathedral was to a Catholic Church," whereupon some other idiot adds, " Of course it is Catholic, but not Roman Catholic." Really one scarcely knows whom to pity most. The " Bull " inn (how remarkably like its frontage is to that other " Bull " at Dartford) is much the same now as when Dickens wrote of it ; only there .are portraits of Dickens hanging on the staircase now, and the ball-room, with its " elevated den," is a place of solitude. They still show j^ou the rooms where Winkle and Mr. Pickwick slej^t, as though they were real people, and so great an affection do the members of the Pickwick Club command, that, while pointing out where Tracy Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass danced, the rooms occupied by the Princess Victoria are clean forgotten. So literature scores a success for once ; but I wdsh a too earnest loyalty had not altered the sign from the " Bull Inn " to the " Victoria and Bull Hotel " ! The hall is still " a very grove of dead game and dangling joints of mutton," and the " illustrious larder, with glass doors, developing cold fowls and noble joints and tarts, wherein the raspberry jam coyly withdraws itself, as such a precious creature should, behind a lattice- work of j^astry," still whets the appetites of incoming guests, just as though England stood where she did, and as if our trades were not ruined by foreign competition, our industries decayed, the army gone to the dogs, the navy to Davy Jones, the farmer to the workhouse, and the shoi^keeper to the Bank- ruptcy Court, as we are told they have. No doubt all these things have happened, or are in course of fulfilment, and I suppose the hotel-keepers keep up 108 THE DOVER ROAD their licences merely for the love of licensed victualling, while the " commercials " still travel the roads for old acquaintance's sake rather than for any business that may be doing. How disinterested of them ! XXII I NOTICE that there is a great tendency among those who have to describe Rochester Cathedral to dismiss it with the remarks that it is quite small, and that it was " restored " in 1825 and 1875. These, of course, are the merest ineptitudes of criticism, and if we allowed praise or censure to be awarded according to the bulk, then that hideous elephantine conventicle, Jezreel's Temple, on the summit of Chatham Hill, would easily bear away the bell. But size has little to do with a right appreciation of architecture. Chasteness of proportion, the degree of artistry shown alike in details and in the execution of the whole, are the sole considerations that shall weigh with those who take any sort of an intelligent interest in the architecture of cathedrals ; and the admiration of a thing that " licks creation " in the matter of measurement is senseless if it is not wedded to a proper perception of the justness of the parts that go to make its bulk. The Cathedral of Saint Andrew at Rochester is at least equally interesting with that of Canterbury ; and that this should be so is only natural, for one is the complement of the other. Canterbury was the earliest Cathedral in England ; the See of Rochester was established immediately afterwards, and was for many years not only intimately associated with that great metropolitan church, but was actually dependent upon it. Then, the early Norman Archbishops and Priors of Canterbury and the Bishops and Priors of Rochester were often intimate personal friends who ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL 109 had come over together from Normandy to England ; and the close relations thus established lasted for many years. The See of Rochester was founded by Saint Augustine about a.d. 600, and by him the first Bishop was consecrated, four years later. But when the Norman Conquest brought a new era of church building into England, Rochester Cathedral was rebuilt. Gundulf, the second Norman Bishop, the friend of Anselm and Lanfranc, the greatest military and ecclesiastical architect of his time, prepared to erect a new and grander edifice on the ruins of the Saxon church. The number and extent of this great architect's works are simply prodigious. How he could have packed into even his lengthy life the duties of a Churchman, which we are told by those who knew him he never missed for a single day ; the cares of statecraft which also fell to his lot ; and the building, not only of his Cathedral, but also of the Tower of London, Rochester Keep, Dartford Church, Mailing Abbey, and minor works, we are at a loss to conceive. He was con- secrated in 1077 and died in 1108, before he had completed his work here. Ernulf, Prior of Canterbury, succeeded him, and finished the building, which was consecrated in 1130, in the same year that witnessed the completion and consecration of Ernulf 's and Conrad's new Cathedral at Canterbury. Here, then, we see at once the close connection between the architectural history of these two neighbouring churches. Ernulf had a hand in both ; a very large share of the crypt, the west front, and a part of the nave of Rochester was his ; while at Canterbury the crypt and the choir were built in collaboration with Prior Conrad. These facts partly explain the unusual and beautiful feature of a choir raised many feet above the level of the nave, Avhich is characteristic both of Canterbury and Rochester Cathedrals, and seen nowhere else in England. And not only in these most prominent features of their architectural con- 110 THE DOVER ROAD struct ion are the two buildings alike ; their stories run curiously parallel, both in their building and in their destruction. Less than fifty years after their simultaneous consecration, both churches were partly destroyed by fire, and their ruined portions rebuilt in the Transitional Norman and Early English styles, by those two architects who are supposed to be one and the same person — William de Hoo, Bishop of Rochester, and that " William the Englishman " who succeeded French William of Sens in rebuilding the choir of Canterbury. At that time, allowing for the great difference in their relative sizes, the two Cathedrals must have borne a strong likeness to one another ; and when we look upon Ernulf's nave here, we look upon the likeness of the nave at Canterbury until that period, between 1390 and 1421, when Prior Chillendon replaced Lanfranc's work with the light and lofty, but exceedingly uninteresting. Perpendicular nave that now forms the western end of the Primate's Metropolitan Church. Fortunately for ourselves, who think Norman work not the flower of ecclesiastical architecture, but the most interesting and aesthetically satisfying next to the incomparable grace of the Early English period, Rochester was too poor a See to be able to embark on extensive schemes of rebuilding, and we are spared the rather vulgar ostentation of skill and wealth to which the Perpendicular style lends itself. Little could be added to the dignity and solemn majesty, the right proportions and impressive simplicity, of this massive Norman nave. Here came Cromwell, whose soldiers quartered their horses in the aisles, leaving the building so desecrated that a saw-pit sunk afterwards in the pavements seemed a scarcely worse use of the House of God. Here also eighteenth-century monumental masons have contrived monuments bad enough, even for the surroundings of classic architecture, but no less than an affront in this place ; while the half-learnt Gothic restorations of Cottingham, whose puerilities ST. WILLIAM 111 of seventy years ago were seen in the choir, are a sorrow to behold. A long line of tombs and effigies, from Bishops down to a Good Samaritan in seventeenth-century costume, carved grotesquely and all out of drawing, on the pavement of the Lady Chapel, claim attention, and easily first among them is the beautiful coloured effigy of Bishop John de Sheppey, discovered, built up in his recess, in 1825. The plain tomb of Gundulf is shown, and the resting-place of Bishop Walter de A GOOD SAMARITAX. Merton, drowned while crossing the Medway in a boat, 1277. The authorities of Merton College have restored and beautified the tomb of their founder, and it lies, painted and decorated, near the grave of St. William. Saint William of Perth was for long the chief glory and principal source of income to the Priory and monks of Rochester. He was a wealthy Scottish baker who, having amassed a fortune, probably both by overcharging for his bread and in the giving of shoit weight, determined to go on pilgrimage. He must have been a superlative rogue and cheat, for 112 THE DOVER ROAD nothing less than a pilgrimage to Jerusalem would serve his purpose. However, he never reached the Holy City ; for, having arrived at Rochester in 1201, and having contributed magnificently to the shrines there, he was murdered by his guide while journeying hence to Canterbury. At least, so runs the story, but I believe the monks themselves did the deed. They were exceedingly poor, having by some unexplained excesses squandered the wealth which the once highly venerated bones of Saint Paulinus had brought them, and they had already melted down the silver shrine of that Saint to pay their way withal. The competition of Canterbury, too, was killing, and the fame of Paulinus paled before that of Becket ; and so they probably conceived the idea of murdering the rich pilgrim in order to obtain at once a remunerative martyr of their own, and to i3ut themselves in funds with the wealth he carried about with him. If the Dean and Chapter of Rochester could in after years wilfully api3ropriate to their own uses an annual income of several thousands of pounds intended for educational purposes, and become thus common thieves and peculators, what scruples could be supjDOsed to hinder the monks of the dark ages from becoming murderers ? The south-east transept has a curious mural monu- ment to Richard Watts ; with a coloured and very life-like portrait-bust " starting out of it like a ship's figure-head," and underneath is a brass to the memory of Charles Dickens. On the eastern wall is a medallion profile of Joseph Maas, the singer, vulgar and amateurish beyond the power of words to tell. Rochester Cathedral is not rich in decorative carvings, but its two enriched doorways are famous. One is the beautiful Norman west door, of five receding arches, carved over with a profusion of characteristic Norman scrolls ; interlacing patterns ; semi-human and half -supernatural figures of appalling build and ferocious expression ; and flanked by two statues supposed to represent Henry the First and Queen ROCHESTER CASTLE 113 Matilda. The other is the unsurpassed Decorated doorway of the Chapter House, whose sculptured emblematic figures of the Church, and of angels, priests and bishops are at the other, and more beautiful, end of decorative art. Having seen all these things, the verger who has hitherto shepherded his flock of visitors through these upper regions, takes them down a flight of stone stairs and unlocks the door of the crypt. An ancient and mouldy smell rushes up from the dark labyrinth of pillars and indistinct arches, and the ladies of the party pretend to be terrified. But they might just as well be afraid of a coal-cellar, which is generally darker and dirtier, for neither bones nor coffins, nor anything more awful than a few shattered fragments of architectural carvings are to be seen. The usual legends current in most old places would have us believe that a subterraneous passage runs between Castle and Cathedral, and certainly they are sufficiently near one another for such a communication to have been made ; but these legends have never been resolved into fact. Near neighbours they are, and the Cathedral has suffered not a little at different times from this close proximity. For when Rufus besieged the Castle, and when, in 1215 and 1264, it was closely invested for respectively three months and a week, the Cathedral had its share of the violent doings that resulted in the Keep being undermined and the wooden bridge of Rochester burned. Gundulfs Tower had not been completed when that mighty master-builder died, and although it is generally ascribed to him, it seems really to have been finished under the supervision of an inexperienced architect employed by that Archbishop William de Corbeil to whom and his successors of Canterbury Henry the Second granted " the perpetual charge and constableship of the Castle of Rochester." This prelate died in 1139, and the irony of circumstances decreed that only one other of the Archbishops to whom the " perpetual constableship " was granted 114 THE DOVER ROAD should ever exercise the rights and privileges of the gift. This was Stephen Langton. The Castle was found to be too important in those times for it to be held by any other than the King, and so to the Crown it reverted. NoAv that it is ruined and open to the sky the Mayors of Rochester are CcV officio constables, and they wear a sword on grand occasions as an outward and visible sign of their dignity. Rochester Keep rises to a height of a hundred and twenty-five feet. Walls ranging from ten to twelve feet in thickness attest its old-time strength, and the ornamentation both of the State apartments, and of the Chapel on the third floor, betokens a considerable display made in those far-off times. But although one of the loftiest Norman keeps extant ; though strong and internally ornate, it seems to have been built by a copyist of Gundulf who perhaps had neither his resources nor his love of a neat and workmanlike finish. AVhatever the cause, certain it is that here we miss the close- jointed external ashlar that we are accustomed to see in such grand con- temporary Norman keeps as those of Castle Hedingham and Scarborough. Ashlaring has been only sparingly used for quoins and dressings of door- and window- openings, and the exterior of this keep chiefly shows a broad expanse of roughly set Kentish rag-stone. The result, although it does not commend itself architecturally, is at least bold and rugged and altogether satisfying to the artist. There is, according to a legend of unknown age, a vast treasure buried beneath the ground here ; concealed in some mysterious crypt Avhose door may only by rarest chance be found. From this door hangs a Hand of Glory, and not until the Hand is extinguished, finger by finger, can it be forced open. Absolute silence is to be observed by the adventurer while extinguishing the Blazing Hand, or the mystic power is broken. There was once, says a sequel to the foregoing legend, a bold and fortunate spirit who ROCHESTER BRIDGE 115 had by some means discovered this hidden door. He extinguished the guardian Hand, all but the thumb ; and, proceeding to snuff this out also, he uttered an incautious exclamation of triumph. The fingers instantly burst into flame again, and the man was dashed senseless to the ground ; nor was he ever again so fortunate as to recover the spot. xxni Rochester has had many Royal and distinguished visitors, and many of them \va,ve left traces of their sojourn in more or less quaint, instructive, and amusing accounts. When Edward the First came here in 1300, he gave seven shillings to the Priory for the shrine of Saint William, and twelve shillings compensation to one Richard Lamberd whose horse, hired for the King's service, was blown over Rochester Bridge into the Medway and drowned. On his return from Canterbury, nine days later, the King flung his shillings about in quite a reckless manner ; giving seven shillings each for the shrines of Saints Ithamar and Paulinus ; while bang Avent tAventy-one other shillings at Chatham, offered to the image of the Blessed Mary by the King, the Queen, and the Prince of Wales. The Bridge at Rochester, over which that unfortunate horse was blown, was at this time a crazy structure of wood, and so dangerous that most folks preferred crossing the Medway by boat. One unfortunate minstrel Avas bloAA'n into the Avater just as he reached the middle, and he AA'cnt floating doAA'n the stream harping the praises of Our Lady upon his harp, and calling out for her help at the same time in English, as the chronicler remarks — and this Avas his English : — Help usvyf, help usvyf, Oiyer me — I forga mi lyf. 116 THE DOVER ROAD By " usvyf " he meant " wife." " Help us, wife," which strikes us as being extremely familiar. The Holy Mother, notwithstanding this horrid jargon, was pleased to save him, and this pious " Harpur a Roucestre " landed about a league below the city, making his way forthwith to a church to offer up thanks, and followed by an immense crowd Avho had been watching the proceedings without attempting to save him, which is ever the wav of crowds. ROCHESTER CASTLE AND THE MEDWAY. Fourteen years later, the Queen of Robert Bruce was a State prisoner in Rochester Castle, with her sister and daughter, and here they remained until Bannockburn altered the complexion of affairs. King John of France, too, appears here, and in a grateful mood, for he was going back to his kingdom, and so, to please the saints, made an offering of forty crowns (valued at £6 136'. 4(/.) at the Cathedral, HENRY MEETS ANNE 117 departing for " Stiborne," and resting the night at Ospringe. Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, passed through " Rotschetter " in 1416, with a retinue of a thousand knights, on a visit to Henry the Fifth, and Henry the Seventh was here in 1492, 1494, and 1498, crossing over from Strood in a ferry-boat for which he paid £2, an expense which would have been quite unnecessary had the authorities kept the Bridge (then of stone, and about a century old) in decent repair. A few months later than his last visit, the King sent the Mayor of the town £5 toward its restoration, for funds were low, and the indulgences — to say nothing of the forty da3^s' remittances from Purgatory for all manner of sins — offered by Archbishop Morton to any one who would give towards the work, were but little in request. Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, was the next considerable personage here, and of how great a consideration he was may be gathered from the fact that he came up the road from Dover with a train of two thousand attendants. He and Henry the Eighth, who had gone down to Dover to meet him, stayed at Rochester on the night of Sunday, June 1, 1522, and went on to Gravesend the following day. Eighteen years later, the King, already a much-married man, came here to have a private view of his new matrimonial venture. Two accounts are given of this meeting of Henry the Eighth and Anne of Cleves. They agree neither with themselves nor with that other account in which the King is made to call her a " Flanders mare " : — " As she passed toward Rochester," writes Hall, the Chronicler, " on New Yeres Even, on Reynam Down, met her the Duke of Norffolke, and the Lord Dacre of the South, and the Lord Mount joye, with a gret company of Knyghtes and Esquiers of Norffolke and Suffolke, and the Barons of thxchequer, (sic) all in coates of velvet with chaynes of golde, which brought her to Rochester, where she lay in the Palace all 118 THE DOVER ROAD New Yeres Day. On which day the Kyng, which sore desyred to see her Grace, accompanyed with no more than viii persons of his prevy chaumbre, and both he and thei all aparelled in marble coates, prevely came to Rochester, and sodainl}^ came to her presence, which therwith was sumwhat astonied ; but after he had spoken and welcomed her, she with most gracious and lovyng countenance and behavior him received and Avelcomed on her knees, whom he gently toke up and kyssed ; and all that afternoone commoned and devised with her " (whatever that ma}^ mean), " and that night suj^ped with her, and the next day he departed to Grenewich and she came to Dartford." Now hear how different a complexion Stow puts upon this meeting, and then tell me what you think of the difficulties of history- writing : — " The King being ascertained of her arivall and approch, was wonderfull desirous to see her, of whom hee had heard so great commendations, and there- upon hee came very privately to Rochester, where hee tooke the first view of her ; and when he had well beheld her, hee was so marvelously astonished that hee knew not w^ll what to doe or say. Hee brought with him divers things, which hee meant to present her with his owne hands, that is to say, a partlet, a mufler " (Indian shawls had not yet been introduced), " a cup, and other things ; but being sodainly quite discouraged and amazed with her presence, his mind changed, and hee delivered them unto Sir Anthony Browne to give them unto her, but with as small show of Kingly kindness as might be. The King being sore vexed with the sight of her, began to utter his heart's griefe unto divers : amongst whom hee said unto the Lord Admirall, ' How like you this woman ? Doe you think her so personable, faire, and beautifull as report hath beene made unto mee of her — I pray you tell me true ? ' " Whereupon the Lord Admiral discreetl}^ replied no word of dispraise, because people with opinions had "ROGUES AND PROCTORS" 119 in those days an excellent chance of losing their heads ; merely remarking that she appeared to have a brown complexion rather than the fair one that had been represented to his Majesty. " Alas ! " replied the King, " whom shall men — to say nothing of kings — trust ? I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been shewed to me of her, either by pictures or report, and am ashamed that men have praised her as they have done ; and I like her not." Which, of course, was final. Queen Elizabeth, of course, was here, not once but thrice, and on her first visit she stayed at the " Crown " inn, " which," says Francis Thynne, " is the only place to intertaine Princes comming thither." It was, indeed, the place where her father stayed, and where, according to one account, Anne of Cleves lodged ; and was the scene of the inimitable colloquy between the carriers in Henry the Fourth, just previous to the robbery on Gad's Hill. The " Crown," of course, is gone now, and an ugly building, bearing the same sign, but dating only from 1863, stands on its site. On the last day of her visit, the queen was entertained by " that charitable man but withal most determined enemy to Rogues and Proctors," Master Richard Watts, whose almshouse for the lodgment of six poor travellers bears still upon its front the evidence of his aversions. Controversy has long raged around the term " proctor," and the victory seems to rest Avith those who declare that the class thus excluded from the benefits of Master Watts' charity was that of the " procurators " who were licensed by the Pope to go through the country collecting " Peter's pence " ; but I have my own idea on that point, and I believe that the " proctors " referred to were not papists, but either " proctors that go up and downe with counterfeit licences, cosiners, and suche as go about the countrey using unlawfuU games " ; or the " })roctors " especially and particularly mentioned in the Statute Edw. VI. c. 3, s. 19, licensed to collect alms for the lepers who at that 120 THE DOVER ROAD time were still numerous in England. These privileged beggars were deprived of their immunity from arrest by the " Act for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdie Beggars " (39 EUz. c. 4), wherein " all persons that be, or utter themselves to be Proctors, procurers, patent gatherers, or collectors for gaols, prisons, or hospitals "* are, together with " all Fencers, Bearewards, common players of Interludes, and Minstrels " to be adjudged Rogues and Vagabonds. Now it is sufficiently remarkable that this Act was passed (perhaps with the strenuous help of Master Watts, who Avas a Member of Parliament, and who we see hated proctors so ardently) at about the time when the " Six Poor Travellers " was built, and the reasons for refusing admission either to a true Proctor of a lazar- house, or to a pretended one, must be sufficiently obvious. Master Watts entertained the Queen at his house on Boley (? Beaulieu) Hill on the last day of her visit, and when that courtly man apologised for the " poor cottage " (he didn't mean it, but 'twas the custom so to do) Her Majesty is supposed to have graciously answered " Satis," and so Satis House it remained, and the hideous building that now stands upon its site still bears, grotesquely enough, its name. Quite a train of miscellaneous Royalties and celebrities came here after Elizabeth's second visit in 1582 ; the Duke of Sully ; James the First, who angered the seafaring population because he didn't care for the ships, loved hunting, and was afraid of the cannon — James the First again, with Christian the Fourth of Denmark and Prince Henry ; Prince Henry by himself in 1611 ; Frederick, Elector Palatine of Bohemia ; Charles the First on two occasions, on the second of which " the trane-bands . . . scarmished in warlike manner to His Majesties great content " ; the French Ambassador, in 1641, who thought * Collectors for " Ho.-pital Saturday " funds come within the meaning of this unrepealed Act. PEPYS 121 Rochester was chiefly observable on account of its Bridge " furnished with high raihngs, that drunkards, not uncommon here, may not mix water with their wine " ; and nineteen years later, Charles the Second, on his " glorious and never-to-be-forgotten Restoracion." How Charles was feted here, and how he stayed at the beautiful old place that has taken the name of " Restoration House " from this visit, these pages cannot tell ; the story is too long. And here, in the name of all that's lewd and scandal- mongering, comes old Pepys again. It is no use trying to keep him out of one's pages : suppress him at one place, and he recurs unfailingly at another, with a worse record than before. I discreetly " sat on " him at Deptford, but here he is at Rochester, " goin' on hawful," to quote one of Dickens' characters (I forget which, and the society of so many Kings and Queens on the Dover Road is so fatiguing that I have neither sufficient time nor energy to inquire). Well then, it was in 1667* that Mr. Samuel Pepys came here, and, putting up at the " White Hart," strolled into the Cathedral, more intent upon the architecture than the doctrine, it would seem ; for when service began he walked out into the fields, and there " saw Sir F. Clark's pretty seat." And so " into the Cherry Garden, and here he met with a young, plain, silly shopkeeper and his wife, a pretty young woman, and I did kiss her ! " And after this they dined, and walked in the fields together till dark, " and so to bed," without the usual " God forgive me ! " which, considering how he had shirked the Cathedral service, and how questionable had been his conduct in the Cherry Garden, was more needful than ever, one would think. Twenty-one years after this date came James the Second on two hurried visits to Rochester within a few * He was here also in 1661, giving a very amnsing account of how he was entertained, and how lie kissed and sang and danced : it is too long, though, for quotation here. But look it up. 122 THE DOVER ROAD days of one another. If lie had had time, and had been in a sufficiently calm frame of mind, he might have reflected on the vicissitudes of Kings in general, HIGH STREET, EOCHE TEE : EASTGATE HOUSE. and of his own Royal House in ])articular ; but being shockingly upset, and in a mortal terror lest he should lose his head as thoroughly in a physical sense as he had already done in a figurative way of speaking, he lost that opportunity of coolh^ reviewing his position which, lu d it but been seized, would have led him to return to London and stay there. It is not a little sad to reflect that, had the gloomy and morose James not been a coward, the House of Stuart might still have ruled England. At any rate, men did not love the taciturn Prince of Orange and his Dutchmen so well but what they would have gladly done without him and have taken back their King, if that King had only shown a HOGARTH'S SATIRES 125 little more spirit and a little less of religious bigotry. William could not but perceive that his principles and not his person were acclaimed, and when he gave the King leave to retire to Rochester, he both knew that James desired an opportunity to escape from the kingdom, and hoped he would use it. And he did use the chance so gladly given him, secretl}^ departing from Rochester in the small hours of a December morning, and making for Ambleteuse on the French coast in a fishing- smack. XXIV This was the last romantic event that befell at Rochester, and it fitly closed a stirring history. But Chatham and Rochester, although outward romance had departed, did not cease to be interested in naval and military affairs. Indeed, they have grown continually greater on them. It was in 1756 that the plates of England and France were published by Hogarth. We were suffering then from one of those panic fears of invasion by the French to which this country has been periodically subject, and these efforts were consequently calculated to have a large sale. Hogarth, of course, after his arrest for sketching at Calais, was morbidly, vitriolically l^atriotic, and his work is earnest of his feelings. The English are seen drilling in the background of the first plate, while in front of the " Duke of Cumberland " inn a recruit is being measured, and smiles at the caricature of the King of France which a grenadier is ])ainting on the wall. A long inscription proceeds from the mouth of His Most Christian Majesty, " You take a my fine ships, you be de Pirate, you be de Teef, me send you my grand Armies, and hang you all, Morbleu," and he grasps a gibbet to emphasize the words. Meanwhile, a fifer plays " God Save the King " ; a soldier in the group has placed his sword across a great 126 THE DOVER ROAD cheese ; and a sailor has ouarded his tankard of beer with a pistol. But see how different are things across the Channel. Outside the Sabot Royal a party of French grenadiers, lean and hungry-looking after their poor fare of soiipe vuiigre, are Avatching one of their number cook the sprats he has spitted on his sword. A monk with a grin of satisfaction feels the edge of an axe which he has taken from a cart full of racks and other engines of torture destined towards the furnishing of a monastery at Blackfriars in London, of which a plan is seen lying upon this heap of ironmongery ; and a file of soldiers may be seen in the distance, reluctantly embarking for England, and spurred forward by the point of the sergeant's halberd. Garrick wrote the patriotic verses that went with this picture, and you may see from them how constantly Englishmen have thought the French to be a nation of lean and hungry starvelings. That is, of course, as absurd as the unfailing practice of French caricaturists to whom the t3q)ical Englishman is a creature who has red hair and protruding teeth, and says " Goddam " — With lanthoni jaws and croaking gut. See how the hah-starv'd Frenchmen strut, And call us English dogs ; But soon we'll teach these bragging foes, That beef and beer give heavier blows Than soup and roasted frogs. The priests, inflam'd with righteous hopes, Prepare their axes, wheels, and ropes, To bend the stiff-neck'd sinner : But, should they sink in coming over, Old Nick may fish 'twixt France and Dover, And catch a glorious dinner. FcAV people, as Dickens says, can tell where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, but even now j^ou become conscious of a gradual alteration in the character of the street as you leave Rochester High Street and come imi^erceptibly into Chatham ; and even though the place has grown so large, and holds so very varied a population that the military and naval sections no CHATHAM 129 longer bulk so largely as they used, they still make a brave show. An inhabitant of Chatham need never wish to visit London, because the triple towns of Chatham, Strood and Rochester — to leave out all count of Gillingham and New Brompton, which are to Chatham even as Hammersmith is to our own great metropolis — contain samples of nearly all that is to be seen in the Capital of the Empire, and much else besides. There is a Dockyard at Chatham two miles in length, from which there issues every day at the dinner-hour an army of artificers of every kind and degree — many thousands of them ; and in this Dockyard are ironclads, making, repairing, and refitting together with vast military and naval stores, and all kinds of relics, foremost among which there is a shed, full of old and historic figure-heads ; all that is left of the wooden walls that were such efficient bulwarks of England's power. Agamemnons, Arethiisas, Beller- ophons are here, and many more. And all around are forts and " lines," barracks and military hospitals ; and drilling, manoeuvring, marchings and counter- marchings, and all kinds of military exercises are continually going forward. The names of streets, courts, and alleys, would furnish a very Walhalla of naval heroes, and from all quarters come the sounds of riveting, the blasts of bugles, and the shouting of the captains ; and when midday comes the noontide gun resounds from the heights of Fort Pitt, and all the ragged urchins who live on the pavements fall down as if they were shot, much to the terror of old ladies, strangers in these parts, who pass by. There is still a fine old-time nautical flavour hanging about Chatham. It does not lie on the surface, but requires much patient searching amid mean and disreputable streets, and it is only after passing through slums that would affright a resident of Drury Lane that one finds curiously respectable little terraces, giving upon the waterside, mth masts and yards, rigging, derricks, and other strange seafaring 130 THE DOVER ROAD tackle peeping over the roof-tops ; amphibious corners where a smell of the sea, largely intermixed with odours of pitch, tar, and rope, clings about everything ; where men with a nautical lurch come swinging along the pavements, and where, if you glance in at the doorways which are nearly always open in summer, you will see full-rigged models of ships standing on sideboards, supported perhaps by a huge Family Bible, and flanked, most certainly, with strange outlandish shells, branches of coral, and other spoils of far-off lands. But these things are not patent to he who goes only along the main road, turning to neither right nor left ; and it is only a little exploration of byways that will convince you of Mr. Pickwick's summary remaining still substantially correct. " The princij^al productions " of the three towns of Rochester, Strood, and Chatham, according to Mr. Pickwick, " appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard-men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine-stores, hardbake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters." All of which might well have been written to-day, so closely does the description still apply ; but when he goes on to remark that " the streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military," he clearly speaks of by-past times. "It is truly delightful," he sa^^s, "to a philanthropic mind to see these gallant men staggering along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent spirits." Delightful indeed ! But since those days Tommy Atkins has been evolutionized into a very different creature. XXV To plunge into mediaeval legends at Chatham will seem the strangest of transitions, and Chatham Parish Church will appear to most people the last place likely to have a story. Yet in demolishing the old building to OUR LADY OF CHATHAM 133 make way for a new, the workmen found some frag- ments of sculpture which had a history. Amongst these was a headless group of the Virgin and Child. This was, in all probability, the effigy of Our Lady of Chatham, who, in pre-Reformation times, was famous for her miracles ; and of whom Lambarde gives the following amusing story in his Perambulations : " It seems," says he, " that the corps of a man (lost through shipwracke belike) was cast on land in the parishe of Chatham, and being there taken up, was by some charitable persones committed to honest burial within their church-yard ; which thing was no sooner done, but Our Lady of Chatham, finding herselfe offended therewith, arose by night and went in person to the house of the parishe clearke, whiche then was in the streete, a good distance from the church, and making a noj^se at his window, awaked him. The man, at the first, as commonly it fareth with men disturbed in their rest, demanded, somewhat roughly, ' who was there ? ' But when he understoode, by her OAvne answer, that it was the Lady of Chatham, he changed his note, and moste mildeley asked ye cause of her comming ; she tolde him, that there was lately buryed (neere to the place where she was honoured) a sinful person, which so offended her eye with his gastly grinning, that, unless he were removed, she could not but (to the great griefe of good people) withdrawe herselfe from that place, and cease her wonted miraculous working amongst them : and therefore, she willed him to go with her, to the ende that, by his helpe, she might take him up, and caste him again into the river. The clearke obeyed, arose, and waited on her towarde the churche ; but the goode ladie (not wonted to walk) waxed wearie of the labour, and therefore was enforced, for very want of breath, to sit downe in a bushe by the way, and there to rest her : and this place (forsooth) as also the whole track of their journey, remaining ever after a greene pathe, the towne dwellers were wont to shew. Now, 134 THE DOVER ROAD after a while, they go forward againe, and coming to the churcheyarde, digged up the body, and conveyed it to the waterside, where it was first found. This done, Our Lady shrancke againe into her shryne ; and the clearke peaked home, to patche up his broken sleepe ; but the corps now eftsoones floted up and down the river, as it did before ; which thing being espyed by them of Gilhngham, it was once n^ore taken up, and buryed in their churcheyarde. But see wliat followed upon it ; not only the roode of Gillingham (say they), that a while before was busie in bestowing m3Tacles, was now deprived of all that his former virtue ; but also ye very earth and place where this carckase was laid, did continually, for ever after, settle and sinke downewarde." Barham has made good use of this story, you who have read the legend of Grey Dolphin in the Ingoldshy Legends Avill remember. He narrates, with a joyous irreverence, how, in consequence of the miraculous interposition of the Lady of Chatham (Saint Bridget, forsooth ! " who, after leading but a so-so-life, had died in the odour of sanctity ") masses were sung, tapers kindled, bells tolled, and how everything thenceforward was wonderment and devotion ; the monks of Saint Romwold in solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of Saint Thomas a Becket in the centre. " Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water," continues Tom Ingoldsby, clerk in holy orders and minor canon of the Cathedral of Saint Paul, indulging at once his exuberant humour and his contemjot of the Church of Rome, with its relics, miracles, bone-chests, and sanctified aqua imra. Meanwhile, the grinning sailor, " grinning more than ever," had drifted down the river, off Gillingham, and lay on the shore in all the majesty of mud, presently to be discovered by the minions of Sir Robert de Shurland, who bade them " turn out his pockets." But it was ill gleaning after the double scrutiny of Father Fothergill and the parish PAID OFF AT CHATHAM. After a Painting bi/ R. Deightnv, R.A. " JEZREEL " 137 clerk ; and, as Ingoldsby observes, " there was not a single maravedi." From Saint Bridget to a weird, but yet not altogether unworldly, fanatic of recent years the transition would not be easy, were it not for the fact that the said fanatic's hideous temple still crowns Chatham Hill for all men to see, as a monument of the unfathomed and unfathomable credulity of mankind. The stranger who walks or cycles his way to Dover is told that this barrack-like building is " Jezreel's Temple," and that is about the extent of the information forthcoming. The unredeemed ugliness of the unfinished temple is at once repellant and exciting to curiosity, and the name of " Jezreel " wears such an Old Testament air that most people who pass by want very much to know who and what he was. He was, as a matter of fact, a private soldier of the 16th Regiment, named James White, who, having been bought out of the Army by the members of a fanatical sect before whom he posed as a prophet, took the extraordinary names of " James Jershom Jezreel," and, with seventeen followers, founded a new sect, the New House of Israel, known by scoffers as the " Joannas." They were, in fact, mad enthusiasts like those whom Joanna Southcott had fooled, years before, and it is supposed that White took the name of " Jezreel " from the Book of Hosea, adding the other names to make a trinity of initial " J's," allusive to the Prophetess Joanna and her minor prophet, John Wroe. Not that " Jezreel " was mad. Not at all. To him as Prophet and Patriarch of these New Israelites was given up the whole property of those who entered the House, to be held in common ; and he made a very good thing of the infatuation of the hundreds of wealthy middle-class converts who had a fancy for this singular kind of communistic religion. It was an article of his followers' creed that they were the first portion of the 144,000, twice told, who will receive Christ when he comes again to reign a thousaixl years on earth. 13S THE DOVER ROAD To support his character as leader of this House, " Jezreel " pretended to have received a communication from a messenger of God, who inspired him to write an extraordinary farrago of Bibhcal balderdash, without argument, beginning, or end, called the " Flying Roll." The curious may obtain three volumes of this nonsense, but the only preternatural thing in these books of Extracts from the Flying Roll is their gross and unapproachable stupidity which completely addles the brain of him who reads them, hoping thereby to discover the tenets of the sect or any single thread of argument that may be followed for more than a consecutive prragraph or two. The effect upon one reading those pages is the same as that which Mark Twain tells us was produced on him when Art emus Ward, having plied him with strong drink, began purposely to enter upon a preposterous conversation, having a specious air of a grave and lucid argument, but which was merely an idiotic string of meaningless sentences. Mark Twain thought himself had gone daft, and felt his few remaining senses going ; and that is just what happens to any one who sits down and seriously tries to understand what " Jezreel's " Extracts are all about. In 1879, " Jezreel " married Clarissa Rogers, the daughter of a New Brompton sawyer ; and, assuming the name of " Queen Esther," she paid a visit, with the prophet, to America. This precious pair made an extraordinary number of converts in their preaching tours, and, returning to England, made Gillingham the headquarters of their New House of Israel. Schools and twenty acres of various buildings were built there at a cost of £100,000, and the " Temple," intended to hold 20,000 people, was commenced on Chatham Hill. But " Jezreel " died in 1885, chiefly of drink and the effects of sunstroke, before this work could be completed and the zealots, who were wont to go about with long hair tucked under purple-veh^et caps, began to wake up to a sense not only of their sumptuary folly, but also JEZREEL'S TOWER 139 of the phenomenal simpheity which they had exhibited in giving up their j^roperty to the House. " Queen Esther " was incapable of fooling these simple folk as completely as " Jezreel " had done, and minor prophets sprang up to dispute her sovereignty over the elect. Perhaps they were jealous of the state in which this quondam sawyer's daughter drove about in a carriage and pair, attended by liveried servants. Perhaps also they had visions and Divine inspirations. At any rate, " Queen Esther " presently drooped, and died in 1888, in her twenty-eighth year ; whereupon the sect swiftly collapsed under the rival seers who followed. Lawsuits succeeded to the fine religious frenzy in which the " Temple " was raised, and it still stands unfinished, visible on its hilltop over a great part of Chatham. It would be a pity to pull it down, or to complete it ; or, indeed, to do anything at all to it, for, as it is now, it furnishes perhaps as eloquent a sermon on human wickedness and folly as could well be delivered. The great tower, framed in steel and built of yellow brick with ornamental lines of blue Staffordsliire brick, has stone panels carved with a trumpet with a scroll, " The Flying Roll," suspended from it ; with the Prince of Wales feathers and the motto " I serve," and other devices. The unfinished tower itself cost £44,000. The foundation-stone was laid, as an inscription savs, 19th September, 1885, " by Mrs. Emma Cave, on behalf of the 144,000. Revelations {sic) 7th, 4." It was understood that ^Irs. Cave, who at that time owned a large part of Tufnell Park, found the money for the tower, selling her pro}:)erty for the cause. The unfinished tower was seized by the building contractors for debt, and offered for sale by auctioneers, who stated it " would do for a lunatic asylum, prison, infirmary, etc." This suggestion failed, and the contractors, unable to sell the incomplete carcase, let it to the sect under a lease, which terminated in 1905. There were at that time Jezreelite workrooms and printing-offices 140 THE DOVER ROAD in the basement. An American Jezreelite then appeared, one Michael Keyfor Mills, calling himself " Prince Michael," and proposing to complete. The founder's father-in-law, Edward Rogers, who had rented the place as a wholesale grocery warehouse, opposed him and secured an injunction against members of the sect who had supported the idea. Mills died at Gillingham in January, 1922, aged sixty-five. In 1908 a company was formed to demolish the building and sell the materials ; but when the upper floors had been taken down the concern became insolvent. In 1913 it was proposed to convert the building into a " Picture Palace," but the idea came to nothing ; and later, the property was offered at auction and withdrawn at £3,900. If there be any surviving Jezreelites of the " New and Latter House of Israel," who believe that the souls of only those who have lived since Moses can be saved, they will be able to look with satisfaction on the remains of their tower, which was built largely with the idea that five thousand of the elect would gather here at the destruction of the world. But in its present condition a good many of that number would be left outside ; and there might be expected an unseemly crush to get within, only that by this time the elect of this particular brand must be a very small coterie. XXVI Little else is to be seen or noted in leaving Chatham for Rainham. The shop in Avhich that singular old gentleman lived, with whom little David Copperfield made acquaintance, is not pointed out to the curious, and the identity of that apostrophizer of his lungs and liver, who exclaimed " Goroo, goroo," and tearfully asked David if he would go for fourpence, has been much disputed. " The House on the Brook," to which UPCHURCH WARE 141 the Dickens family removed when Mr. John Dickens' fortunes were low, is still to be seen, but " the Brook " has changed for the worse, and the visitor to Chatham who takes up the local papers will discover that it is pre-eminently the place where the Order of the Black Eye is conferred, on Saturday nights in especial, but more or less impartially throughout the week. It is not before Rainham is reached that the road becomes once more the open highway. Moor Street is passed, and here the Rainham orchards and the cherry orchards of Gillingham begin to stretch away to the levels of the Upchurch marshes. " Wealth without health " begins to be the characteristic of the country, for the marsh mists hang over the levels from early evening, through the night, to almost midday ; and agues, asthma, and bronchial complaints are the common lot. Many miles' length of submerged Roman pottery-works lie down in those Swale and Cooling marshes, and many have been, and are still, the " finds " of broken black " Upchurch ware " in the mud and ooze. Perfect specimens are discovered at rarer intervals. The proper method of searching for these vestiges of the Roman occupation is to equip one's self ^\ith a stout pair of sea-boots, and a " sou'wester," and to wade at low tide in the creeks, probing the slimy mud with iron rods. If the explorer is fortunate in his " pitch " he will discover pottery, broken or whole, by feeling his iron rod strike some- thing harder than the surrounding half-liquid cla}^ The joy of such exquisite moments is unfortunately sometimes marred by the " find " being but a lump of half-baked clay ; Roman, indeed, but not worthy of preservation. Still, when fragments of patterned ware are found, the discovery repays in interest for the time spent in mudlarking. Rainham Church heralds the village, raising up its white and four-square battlemented walls from beside the road. A large building, vnth a few late brasses ; a vault full of Tuftons, Earls of Thanet, of whom the 142 THE DOVER ROAD last died in 1863, unmarried ; and two life-sized marble statues of Tuftons, father and son, in that curious classic conve ition of the late seventeenth century which found such a delight in representing distinguished folk as Roman warriors. Nicholas Tufton, the earl, and his son, Avho died from wounds received in battle, are those thus represented here ; and the statue of the son, scupltured in a sitting position, is a really fine work of art. Beyond this, Rainham has not much to detain the explorer, and being a summer rendezvous for Chatham pleasure-parties and bean- feasters, it is apt to become dusty and riotous when the season of annual outings is at hand. The church seen some distance to the left of the road is that of Newington. In the \'cstry is displayed a copy of the last will and testament of Simon Tomlin, dated November 13, 1689. In this disposition of his worldl}^ effects are gifts to relatives and to the poor ; and to his brother-in-law, William Plawe of Stockbury, he leaves " my best beaver hatt and the sum of £15, lawful money of England." It is to be hoped that the legatee got his hat, but, as many provisions of the will do not appear to have been complied with, it seems doubtful. There was a priory of nuns established at Newington in early Norman times, but all that is now left of it is a striking legend which proves that when these pious ladies retired from the world they brought some of the world's worst characteristics with them. What they quarrelled about one night will never now be known, but when the morning dawned the Prioress was found strangled in her bed ; which goes to prove that the veil no more goes to make the nun tlian orders black, white, or grey furnish a monk fully forth in true monastic attributes. A clialk pit, about a mile south of the church, called significantly " Nun-pit," is shown as the place where those less holy than homicidal sisters were afterwards buried alive. Other accounts say that these nuns were removed to Minster, in Sheppey. NEWINGTON 143 However that may be, Heiir}^ the Second would have no more nuns here. He placed seven priests in the Prior}^ as secular canons, and gave them the manor, hoping that this religious house would in future have a less lurid career. But things, instead of improving, grew wcrse. One of the canons was found murdered in his bed, and four of the brethren were convicted of the crime. From these queer stories we come, appropriately enough, to a tale in which the Enemy bears a brave })art. AVhen Newington Church was being built, " ever so long ago," as the tale of gramarye has it, and the time came for the bells to be himg, the Devil, who, it is well known, hates the sound of church bells, conceited the grand plan of pushing the tower o>'er, so that the builders would give up the idea. Accordingly, he ventured down the lane one night, and, standing in the churchyard — as he could well do, because the place was not yet consecrated — placed his back against the tower, and, putting his feet against a wall on the other side of the road, pushed. No one knows what was the result, but as there is a tower here to this day — and a very fine one it is, too — it may be presumed that either Satan had altogether overrated his strength, or that the builders had built better than they knew. But if the Enemy failed in this, he at least succeeded in leaving his mark. Accordingly, here is the wall, and in it is a stone, and in that stone is a hole made by his toes ; while on another stone is the print of a very fine and large boot-sole — valuable evidence, because it not only proves the truth of the story but also shows us that the De^il wore a Blucher boot on one foot and let the other go unshod. If you ask me how it came about that the Devil could come here in the fourteenth century wearing a nineteenth-century boot, I must quote the showman who exhibited a wax model of Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel was seen to be reading the Times, and some one in the crowd pointed out the incongruous circumstance, to which the lU THE DOVER ROAD showman replied that Daniel, being a prophet, read the Times by anticipation ! And if a saint could anticipate the nineteenth century in newspapers, why should not the Fiend do the same in boots ? Peaceful cherry orchards stretch along the narrow valley, and the railway runs through them, giving glimpses to passengers of long rows of cherry trees with emerald grass flecked with sunlight and flocks of sheep feeding under the boughs ; and picturesque farmsteads standiniy in midst of fertile meads. XXVII The village of Newington stands on either side of the old Dover Road, w^hich is here identical with the famous Roman military via of Watling Street. It is situated in the centre of a district covered thickly with Roman remains, and the village itself dates from Saxon times, when it really was a " new town " as distinguished from the adjacent ruins of the ancient Roman station of Durolevum. All the ingenuity of archaeologists has been insufficient to determine at what particular spot this military post was established. Judde Hill, Sittingbourne, and Bapchild have been selected as probable sites of Durolevum, and certainly Bapchild and Sittingbourne are likely places for the original military post mentioned in the Itinerary of Antoninus. Both are situated within an easy distance of the measurements given by the itinerist, and at either place there w^as anciently a stream of water crossing the road, sufficient, perhaps, to warrant the prefix of " Duro," which, almost without exception, distinguishes the Roman military place-names on the Dover Road. That prefix was the Latini/ed form of the Celtic " dour," signifying a stream, and it is met with at : — Dubris = Dover. Durovernum = Canterbury, Durolevum = ? Bapcliild, Sittingbourne, or Ospriiige. DurobriviB = Rochester. ROMAN STATIONS 145 A military expedition would naturally be encamjied beside a stream, where the cavalry could water their horses, in preference to a waterless district ; and therefore, Newino^ton and Judde Hill, which both stand beyond an easy reach of flo^\ing water, cannot have such good claims to ha\'e been the site of Duro- levum as either Sittingbourne, or Bapchild, whose name, indeed, is a corruption of the Saxon Beccanceld, " the pool of the springs." The flow of water through- out the country must in those remote times have been much greater than now, for dense forests then covered a great part of the island, and induced rains and moisture. In fact, the Dover Road was until recent years remarkable for the number of considerable streams and trickling rills that flowed across it, either under bridges or across fords, and it is not so long since those that crossed the highway at Sittingbourne and Bapchild were diverted or dried up. They must have been broad streams when Caesar led his legionaries up the rough British trackway in pursuit of the Cantii, and the still very considerable brook that crosses the road at Ospringe would have then attained the dimensions of a river. It might be well to look to Ospringe for the original Durolevum, for the situation must have been admirable from a military point of view ; and, moreover, it was near, if not then actually on, the head of a navigable creek leading directly to the sea, where Faversham now stands. But when archaeologists leave the consideration of Caesar's and his successors' military station and seek the site of Durolevum to^Mi or city, they unaccountably lose sight of the fact that this Roman province of Britannia Prima was obviously Aery populous, and that Durolevum, instead of being a small isolated town, must needs have been the centre of a thickl}^ populated district of smaller towns, hamlets, and outlying villas, stretching for miles along the now solitary reaches of the Dover Road, and reaching down to the Upchurch marshes. 146 THE DOVER ROAD The era of the Roman colonization of Britain is so remote that few antiquaries even ever stop awhile to consider how long those hardy aliens occupied this island, or how effective that occupation was, either in a military or social sense. Four hundred years just measure the length of time the Romans were with us ; and what can not be done in so lengthy a period ! Four hundred years would suffice to create a high state of civilization from mere savagery, and that is what the Romans accomplished here in that space of time. They not only conquered, but they eventually pacified, the fierce and fearless Britons ; and they established export and import trades that rendered Britain the most prosperous colony of the Roman Empire, and the Romano-British merchants and people the wealthiest colonists of those times. Stately villas beyond the towns, but sufficiently near them to invoke, if needs were, the protection of the cohorts, rose up on all sides, where the rich traders in British produce took their ease or engaged themselves in cultivating the cherry and sweet-chestnut trees which they had introduced from the sunny hillsides of Italy. There is to this day a manor at Milton-next- Sittingbourne called " North- wood Chasteners," so called from an ancient grove of chestnuts (castaneas), the descendants of the first chestnut trees introduced by the Romans. Vast Roman potteries had their being in the lowlands beside the Medway ; Upchurch, Faversham, and Richborough furnished the tables of Roman Emperors and epicures with the " native " oysters that were even then famous and the cause of an immense trade ; while manufactures poured in from Rome to suit the British taste. Durolevum must, then, be sought amid the potsherds of a hundred settlements, any one of which might have been a suburb of that forgotten station ; but the site where the present village of Newington stands was probably fresh ground when the Saxons came and drove out with ruthless slaughter the luxurious and enervated ROMAN STATIONS 147 Romanized British, who speedily tell a prey to barbar- ians when once the Roman garrison was withdrawn. Archaeologists have remarked that the Saxons generally occupied the Roman towns that were left after the Romano-British fled from them ; but although they sometimes did so, there are many instances where they established towns on new sites closely adjoining the old, but carefully separated from them. Such was the case at AYroxeter, where the Saxons built an entirely new town, adjoining, but not actually on, the ruined and deserted city of Uriconium. Probably the Saxons found Durolevum wrecked in the internal struggles that rent Britain asunder after the legionaries were withdrawn ; and, being a Pagan and superstitious people, they shunned the almost deserted heap of ruins as being the abode of evil spirits. The stagnant and fetid wreck of a great city, whose fallen houses covered the bodies of many slaughtered citizens, and whose site was very likely overflowed with choked drains and freshets from the swollen streams, was not exactly the place to appeal to strangers, even though uncivilized, as a suitable site for dwelling upon ; and, indeed, it may readily be imagined that these rotting remains of a dead civilization would be infinitely more awe-inspiring to a barbaric race than to the few remaining Britons who had seen the place in all the pride and circumstance of better days. And, indeed, the black, polluted earth of a long-inhabited town, and the will-o' -wisps and phosphorescent bubbles bred from the corruption below, that would float at night uj^on the surface of the Avater, would have frighted most people of those superstitious times. Newington stands on elevated ground, away from such chances, but in its immediate neighbourhood have been found many Roman relics, and all around, the fields, the meadows, and the hillsides are rich in legends and broken pottery. Standard Hill is so called from a tradition that the Roman eagle was there displayed, and a field adjoining is known as Crockfield, from the 148 THE DOVER ROAD