'iVMM^ikSv ■ :::-. m ' ■ . ■ : :. ■ , ■ ■ ■'■■■■ New fork g>tate (^allege of Agriculture At dfantEtt llHiuccaity Hihran} Cornell University Library DA 660.M92 Pilgrimages to old homes, llll I ll ll III III III 3 1924 014 023 828 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014023828 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES By FLETCHER MOSS OF THE OLD PARSONAGE DIDSBURY, ESQJJIRE One or His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County Palatine of Lancaster ENGLAND Published by the Author from his Home 'The Old Parsonage, Didsbury January 1906 u gOT> SAVE TOU, ur "Too blede " on a stone. It is strange this man came from Shrewsbury, which may be said to be the centre of our pilgrimages, and the tale-telling that he complains of is solace to more strangers than we know of. For instance, in a magazine called the Idler, page 99, October 1905, Mr. It. Barr, the editor, who bought a copy of my last book, has written : " < Jet, when you can, a book entitled 'Pilgrimages to < *ld Homes,' which will cost you ten shillings and sixpence, and will be worth ten and a half times the money. It is written by the Reverend \sic] Fletcher Moss . . . and is published, as all books should be, by the author, at the Old Parsonage in Didsbury. The photographs in this book are most excellent, taken by an amateur, X, who takes, developes. and prints his own pictures. They are the best I have ever seen done in any book or magazine. Mr. Barr will have no need to buy a copy of this book ; but as L am rather tired of publishing books at half-a-guinea anil seeing them resold for two or three guineas, the price of this will begin at a guinea. And — we would fain go on more pilgrimages, what- ever the heretics and the critics and the scoffers may say. FLETCHER MOSS. 'I'm 10 ( a, i> Parsonage Didsbury. IN THE BURNESS, STANDON HALL Contents WELLS GLASTONBURY VVALFORD BALL— STANDON CHARTLEY SOMKIiFOKl) TTTBl'ltV UROXDEN 'nil-: STANDISH PEW IN CHORLEY CHURCH, LANCA- SHIRE EOGHTON TOWER YALE BALA— WREXHAM -VYRNWY .... HADDON HALL SOMERSET - BRADFORD - ON - AVON NORTON ST. PHILIP — ML'CHKLNEY ATHKLNKY TAUNTON— CROWCOMBE — CLEEVE DUNSTER - EXMOOR DULVERTON SOMERSET BATH— LYTES CARY NUNNEY SOUTH WRAXALL— GREAT CHALFIELD MONTACUTE— STOKE-SUB-HAMDON BARRINGTON COURT - BUR -DUNSTEB .... ... COMPTON WYNY'ATES BADDESLEY CLINTON THE HOUSE OF THE SKULL (WARDLEY HALL) . WORCESTER— TEWKESBURY — BIRTS-MORTON HUD- DINGTON— CLEEVE PRIOR EVESHAM -HARVING- TON 44 76 Si 95 1 Oi) 124 157 2(11 ■76 Xll CONTENTS HANDFOBTH HALL PARK HALL SLADE HALL THE RIDDINGS MORPHANY HALL— BITS OF OLD CHESHIRE SPORT THE OLD PARSONAGE, DIDSBURY PAGE 315 327 343 35 2 354 356 360 INDEX 389 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES WELLS— GLASTONBURY NO sooner were the last words of mv last book written than I wondered where we should go on pilgrimage when the summer came upon the earth again. There was no doubt that, given health and strength, we should seek and find some famous, perhaps forgotten, English home ; but where? For we have always shunned the noisy crowd, the beaten track, and wandered oft' among the lonely hills, or by the quiet brooks, or to the moated hall, to find the homes of those who have lived and died in the long ago. Then the happy thought came to me that- we had never seen the birthplace of our English nation. A thousand years have passed away since, in a, lonely swamp, an English king first kindled into life our nation, laws, and literature. Near by it is tlu' desolate ruin where the religion of Christ was brought to our island home of Britain almost another thousand years before ; and, in the silted fields below, men now dig the prehistoric graves of those whose homes were here even before the Christ was heard o\'. To the laud we now call Somerset, the summer seat of the Anglo-Saxons, long-recorded legends tell A 2 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES that Joseph of Arimathea, who begged the body of Christ for burial in his own sepulchre, then left Ins country for a better land, found it in the vale or isle of Avalon. A great prize to the Romans were their Aqua? Solis, the health-giving waters of the sun, which even now at Bath are bubbling, boiling, rushing, as if two thousand years were nought to them. Under the high-altar at Glastonbury was the grave of Arthur, the hero of romance, the semi-mythic king of the poets ; and near by St. Dunstan seized the Devil by the nose with his tongs, warning him not to come there again. Here in the marshes of Athelney King Alfred burnt the cakes, and welded together the scholars and the soldiers of the English, struggling for life and freedom, to be the founders of our nation, its history, and its literature. The great desire of that great kino- was the furtherance of education; and my education was lacking in respect to him until I had paid a pilgrimage to the place where he had struggled for his life, his lands, and his home. By the train that we had often journeyed by in other years we ventured further south and booked for Bristol. Leading was soon dropped to watch the charming country Hitting past. Here come, and swiftly go. ( Vtmbermere obelisk, Battlefield ( Lurch, the towers and spires of Shrewsbury, the white-faced cattle under the big trees, the lichened roofs of homely farms, the encircling hills of Church Stretton, a lonely heron fishing in the On, the ghostly towers of Stokesav, the stately fane of Ludlow, the hop-yards and orchards of Hereford, the black mountains of Radnorshire, the grimy works whose smoke now spoils the pleasant hills of Wales, and then, with snorts and jerks, we rush into the darkness of the Severn Tunnel, to emerge again into daylight for the short run to Bristol. Gladly we leave the train and take to the cycles and the road. Progress is slow, for the bills are so steep WELLS 3 we cannot ride either up or down. The makers of the road do not seem to have tried to make good gradients, or to have cut off the tops of the little steep hills and tilled in the valleys. In two hours we had barely gone ten miles, having walked quite as far as we had ridden. It was wearying after the long railway journey, hut gradually we rise on to the Mendips, where the air is sharp and the roads are better. They are hounded with low stone walls brilliant with the flowers of the golden stonecrop. All around are line views of rolling hills and dales. In the exhilarating air fatigue wears oil, and the last three miles to Wells give us the best and perhaps the longest free-wheeling that we had ever had. The descent begins on high ground, and is not too steep. At first it is almost above the trees : then through the pine-woods with their refreshing aroma : then through the beeches, where the air becomes heavier, the woods more luxuriant, without a, check we <_dide for miles right into the clean little city of Wells. Wells is one of the few towns or cities in England that may be said to he finished. Of course the cathedral is not finished. Few churches are lucky enough to escape the restorer, and scaffolding hides the Hue west front of the cathedral. Whether they are merely scrubbing or whitewashing the statues or taking the birds' nests we could not properly see. In the tiny city itself there do not seem to he any new buildings, or any toil or traffic. No one appears to hurry ; it would he undignified to run ; all men move slowly and respectably as if they were fully conscious of behaving decorously in the shadow of the great cathedral which dominates the town. There are many interesting things to note. Quaint old houses built of whitish stone, many of them having little gardens where the escallonia, magnolia, and arbutus flourish. On almost every wall the purple valerian flowers in profusion. The gable of a house 4 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES supports a fig-tree full of figs, and altogether the vege- tation is of a brighter and more vivid hue than our northern clime will give to us. Hound the bishop's palace is a moat, the largest we had ever seen, with clean water slowly flowing round. On the outer side of the moat, by the water's edge and standing close together, are enormous trees, whose long branches stretch across the broad water, the raised footpath THE MOAT beneath them, and the road beyond. Strolling round about we seek for the famous Vicars' Olose, a broad street of old-fashioned homes, whose gardens nearly meet at the footpath in the centre, with an elaborate stone gate- house and arch across the street which separates it from the cathedral. This private way across the public road is a continuation of the cathedral, adjoining the very handsome chapter-house and extraordinary stairway of stone. Whether seen from the inside or the outside, these buildings are very curious and beautiful. There iATEHOUSE BETWEEN THE BISHOPS PALACE AND T1I10 51 ARK KT-l'I.AC'K, WELLS 6 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES is the grand west front of the cathedral rising from its spacious lawn with fine encircling trees ; the road alongside with quaint old churchy houses, the homes of vicars choral, deans, or other dignitaries, all bound together by the arched gateway and the roofed bridge of stone, while ancient figures, large as life, move on the cathedral's northern wall to strike the fleeting hours on a wondrouslv elaborated clock. We wander round the spacious market-place, with its gushing fountain ; note old buildings in the Crown Inn yard ; pass under the stately gatehouse, to find we are by the bishop's moat again, and beyond it is an enormous barn, centuries old, apparently used now as a gym- nasium and drill-shed. Further on is an open park, and in the gathering gloom we linger to listen to the night- ingale, who gives a trill or two to make us wish for more, then cpiietlv goes to sleep, leaving us to do the same. The next morning was wet, and we soon found the most comfortable place at Wells m which to spend a rainy day is the beautiful cathedral. We explored it up and down, even to the crypt and the wonderful chapter-house. The inverted arches under the central tower are very striking with many other tilings more than we can tell. Then we mustered up courage to cross the broad moat and bang at the massive door in the forti- fied gateway of the bishop's palace. An old soldier was on guard, who let us have a peep at a charming garden, with one of the oldest houses in England beyond the spacious lawn. Crumbling ruins, stately towers, deserted halls, stand all around. Among them flourishes luxuriant vegetation, trees and shrubs unknown to me. This might be Paradise if some angel were to show us round. We are told that the bishop and his lady are at home and must not be disturbed ; special leave should be had for cameras, the grass is very wet, and there are other objections, all of which melt away before the magic talisman. The tongue of our guide is unloosened. FORTIFIED HOME OF THE BISHOP 7 He is a Crimean veteran who discourses on history with the dates of various ruins, of the trees with their names, of lords, ladies, fossils, bishops, ruins, and bygones as if he knew them all and had watched many mm*** THE GATEHOUSE OF THE BISHOPS PALACE an idle pageant pass. Here is a thorn-tree with authentic pedigree from the Holy Thorn that blossomed at the Nativity, the staff of Arimathean Joseph from the Holy Land. When I remark that it is flowering now in .June, he calmly answers, " Come at Christmas : THE GARDEN OF THE BISHOP 9 see It then," and I feel that he has been schooled by the priests. Near it grew the finest specimen known of the Ailanthus, the Chinese tree of heaven, but the winds of heaven in the autumn blew it down, and in the Field newspaper the bishop asked counsel of common laymen as to the heavenly wood. Here also flourish the royal tree of Japan, a Catalpa from the Mississippi, a pomegranate, shrubs and climbers quite unknown to me, and on the ruined banqueting hall, now open to the skv, is the finest crop of figs I ever saw- The green irrass grows over this great hall, and climbers climb and twist among the weathered stones of towers and windows. It is a, beautiful memorial of priestly pride and episcopal revelry. Bishop Burnell built it in the thirteenth century, and Bishop Barlow destroyed it in the sixteenth. Older than it are parts of the present palace, built by Bishop Josceline seven hundred years ago, and not yet worn away. Ralph of Shrewsbury made the moat and all-encircling massive wall in the fourteenth. Centuries seem to linger lovingly here. The years may come and go, as in our busy cities, but decay and waste look idly on. Hall or palace, home after home, patched, restored, rebuilt, or ruined, the rain comes softly down on all alike, the works of the just and the unjust. From a terrace raised aloft above the garden one may see them all, and also see beyond the battlemented walls the open country and the distant hills. Here Bishop Ken paced to and fro as he composed those well-known hymns for morning and evening : — " Awake, my soul, mid with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run." "Glory to Thee, my God, this night, For all the blessings of tin; light." Lesser luminaries than a bishop might compose smooth verses if they had a place like this to meditate at BISHOP KES'S STEPS THE WATERS OF WELLS 13 eventide. High above these ruined homes there shine the stately towers of the cathedral; all around them rushes the never-failing waters of the wells, while in the garde] 1 there is peace. From these wells, the funs et oi'u/o of the little city, there wells up a bounteous flood of clear water which rolls over a small cascade, then girdles round the palace, filling the spacious moat, the finest moat in England, and then, till recent years, supplied the common folk with all they needed in the town. Our guide says these wells are bottomless ; no plummet vet has found the bottom, and the water comes straight up. When I ask him how it is the water is not boiling hot, he seems quite shocked at levity on a sacred subject in a bishop's garden. Then it occurs to me what a tremendous power this supply of water to the city must have given to the bishops in the olden time. If some poor sinners lacked faith or were too ardent for reform, the bishops merely cut their water off and promptly brought them to believe in anything. As the day wore on the weather went worse. A north-east wind brought gloomier skies with fitful storms. The roads were bad and the light was bad, so we decided to leave our things at the inn and so by train to Glastonbury to wander round that famous land on foot. The utter ruin that has befallen the famous and once magnificent abbey of Glastonbury has left so little for the pilgrim of to-day to look upon that one wonders how so great a destruction could, in England, come to that shrine where her Christianity began and where for ages her kings and mighty men were buried. The scanty remnants of the great abbey are an exceedingly lofty corner of the central tower, broken off about the chancel arch, and, on the southern side, the pointed windows with some ornamented bits of wall. The twenty columns of the long-drawn-out nave have THE CATHEDRAL, WELLS GLASTONBURY 15 vanished, and beyond, where once the eastern window stood, a mansion jars on one's senses as an incongruous receiver of stolen goods. Even the ruins of St. .Joseph's or the Lady Chapel seem to he utterly neglected, although it has been often extolled as one of the most beautiful or richly sculptured chapels in the world. On that site have been chapels for nigh two thousand years, the earliest, primitive enough, of wattles and sticks. That was encased and added to, but in 1 1 84 the abbey and all were burnt, and this marvel of carved stone was begun. Below it is the well, the usual fountain of clear water, to which all our ancient churches came. The wonderful history of this place cannot now be lost, as the stately buildings themselves are lost. It may be hard to tell truth from untruth, actual fact from more or less mysterious legend, but for a few rough outlines of what has here happened let us take the following. Tradition said that the apostles Philip and James came to this island sanctuary. There were no doubts in the belief that Joseph of Arimathea, who begged the bodv of Christ for burial in his own garden, fled here with the Holy Grail, the chalice which held the last drops of the Holy Blood, invisible to all but the pure, and the Holv Thorn winch grew and flourished, always blossoming at the Nativity. The first abbot was St. Patrick, who was said to be 1 1 1 years old when he died, and was buried here in 472. That seems very early in the dark ages. Then came other saints whose names we have heard before, Bridget and David. The latter gave a splendid sapphire to the abbey, and when the authorities prudently asked the Welsh saint where he got it from, his reply was, "It came down from heaven," an answer which enormously increased its value and his fame. But another Welshman came in time and stole it back again, adding murder to his crime. He was the great Defender of the Faith who K. GLASTONBURY ABBEY ST. JOSEPH'S CHAPEL, GLASTONBUIIV B 1 8 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HUMES took the jewels from the house of his God to deck the attire of his harlots. Twelve hundred years ago King Ine, the Saxon, built a church of stone where the British had had theirs of timber, and here was the grave of Arthur, the semi-mythic hero of romance whom poets rave about, the flower of kings, who was to rise again to lead the Briton in triumph over the hated English. Centuries after he had passed came Norman kings of England to satisfy themselves by sight and touch that he and Guinevere with their golden hair were really in their grave at Glastonbury, and the heir of the Plantagenets received the name of Arthur that he might be the founder of a line of British hums. But his uncle John killed him, and Ins mother Constance cried — " Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me ; Puts on his [Hetty looks, repeats his words. Oh ! in}' boy, my Arthur, my fair son ! My widow's comfort and my sorrow's cure ! " The first of the Tudor kings, being of British race, tried the name again and called his first-born Arthur, but they married the lad too young, and so he died. Many years afterwards the name did revive in the son of a family who long ago had settled in the district, for Arthur Wellesley (or Wesley), Duke of Wellington (whom I remember see- ing in the streets of Manchester), made it popular again. Many years after Arthur, with all the imaginary immaculate knights of the Bound Table, had gone to " where beyond these voices there is peace," a more real man and possibly useful saint was born near Glastonbury and called Dunstan. Educated at the abbey, he became a dreamer, wanderer, outlaw, hermit, musician, artistic worker in metals, visionary wrestler with the devil, abbot, teacher, statesman, archbishop, almost king — a great ruler of men though never popular. ST. DUX, ST AN 19 He died at Canterbury, and was there buried, a.d. 988, just as the fears of the approaching millennium were convulsing Christendom. Two hundred years after bis death, the abbey at Glastonbury, with all its con- tents, was burnt even to the bones of the saints. So other relics had to be invented, and three centuries of wordy warfare went on between Canterbury and Glastonbury as to who had got Dunstan, As the fame of bis relics at Glastonbury increased, they proved at Canterbury that his original grave had never been opened before, and there he was. In our days St. Dunstan s fame mainly rests on his feat of seizing the devil by the nose with his tongs while metaphorically be twisted the old gentleman's tail. We tried to emulate Ins good deeds when we were bovs, but only got into trouble. There is still preserved in the Bodleian Library at ( Word a book of his with scraps of writing in Greek and Latin, and British or Welsh. The glories of this great burial-place for generations of kings and saints increased until Glastonbury was one of the finest and wealthiest religious houses in the land. When the great robbery came, it bad eleven thousand ounces of plate besides the gold and the jewels. The shekels in the treasury, the costly furni- ture, the rich vestments, all were declared to be meet only for the king's majesty and for no one else. There- fore, the king's minister, Cromwell, wrote an order, of which this is a facsimile copy — £v «Af&*~ J •V 1 (FROM ABB'IT GASQUET's HISTORY) — " Item : The Abbott of Glaston to (be) tryed at Glaston and also executyd there wt his complycys." So they 2o PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES condemned them first, then tried them, having already got the hurdles and the pitch and the old abbot, who was eighty and sickly, also his accomplices, and without spending much time on them, dragged them up " Torre hyll" — that is, the high Tor whence all the country-side for many miles could see the "execucyon." All this was done that the courtiers might grab the spoils, and the pride and power of the great head of the Church be increased ; and now, where are they all? " The seyde Abbot's bodye being devyded into foure partes, and the hedde stryken off, whereof oone quarter stondythe at Wells, another at Bathe, and at Ylchester and Bridgwater the rest, and his hedde uppon the Abbey Gate of Glastonburye." What a glimpse of Merry England in ye olden time ! The celebrated Holy Thorn that blossomed at the Nativity, what became of it '. There was proof positive the wicked thing flowered at Christmas, so a zealous reformer chopped the poor tree down as if it had done grievous sin, and all we know is that he gashed his leg when chopping, and a splinter hit him in the eye. Any schoolboy would probably say, " Serve him jolly well right." Bound about the melancholy ruins we wander up to our knees in the long, wet grass — rich green grass, rank and luxuriant. Is the dust of heroes, martyrs, saints, or kino-s better for manure than that of common folk ? The associations and memories of two thousand years of history seem to be worth nothing here. The first home for Christian worship in our land or empire lies deso- late ; the flycatcher nests in the remnants of its con- secrated walls ; the shepster chatters and scolds from her cranny in the broken sculptures ; the carved stones have been taken for hovels, pigsties, or advertised at sixpence per cart load to mend the dirty roads. Let us hence. That wonderful building, the abbot's kitchen, was THE ABBOTS KITCHEN, GLASTONBURY B 2 22 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES the greatest surprise to me at Glastonbury. In the middle of a Meld is a beautiful stone hall, forty feet square at the bottom. Inside, each of the corners has been made into a fireplace, big enough to roast an ox whole. The chimney flues from these four great vaulted fireplaces turn inwards; the four corners of the square are cut off, and the building becomes octagonal, with eight ribs of stone to strengthen it. Then it slopes upward FIREPLACE acutely pyramidal to a double lantern seventy-two feet from the ground. Even the roof was of bevelled stone, all kept in good repair, and very interesting, though it did rather shock me to see the key to it that we had borrowed had been made in America. The jackdaws had worked so hard at bringing sticks for the nests they could not build in the lantern or flues that there was enough for a bonfire in the centre of the hall. The mournful effigy of an abbot looked sadly down on the vanished glory, and in the gloom I tried to picture to THE FEASTS OF THE CLERGY 23 myself the good old times when two or three oxen and as many sheep were being roasted whole for the feasts known as the church-ales. In the midst of a burning fiery furnace half naked scullions or serfs would turn the gigantic spits ; perspiring monks would do the hasting, while the superior clergy would keep an eye on the toothsome undercut of the loin for their own and the TITHE- BARN, O \. AST! IMS I: Y lord abbot's table ; while at times, it was said, five hundred pilgrims or paupers waited for the scraps. Another great monument of the feasting and plenty of the religious houses still exists in the enormous tithe- barn. It is of stone, cruciform in shape, ninety feet long, sixty wide, and thirty-six high, ornamented like a church, and big enough for all the horses and the waggons in the country to drive in fully laden, turn round, and come empty out. Having seen the wonderful kitchen and the sjiffantJc 24 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES storehouse, let us visit another monument showing the care our forefathers took in providing for their daily bread. In the olden time pilgrims were entertained at the abbot's expense. That was equivalent to the rate- pavers' expense of the present day ; but the only way in which we can now enjoy their hospitality is to go into the tramp ward. Within the precincts of the Abbey of Glastonbury there was a guest-house, or hostel for pilgrims, but the crowds who came increased so much that Abbot Selwood built and gave another hostel across the road from the abbey gates, and that identical house is still standing as an inn or hostel after more than four hundred years of use. Statements are often made about inns which are not correct, but the age of this richly-ornamented stone building is plain on the face of it, and it was originally built for an inn. The arms of Edward the Fourth are over the door with other shields, and between each of the crenellated battlements was a statue of an apostle — twelve apostles all in a row, watching who went into the public-house. Only one of them is there now. It may be the police objected to them. Thev make such curious objections nowadays to inns. The vaulted cellars are the same as they were, but are probably emptier than they used to lie. One of them contains a well of clear water, which is useful in many ways ; fur tradition savs it was used as a cell for the penance of those taken in the oldest and most respectable of sins, for as the water ran all over the flagged floor and there were not any seats the sinners could be left to cool and repent. As bona-hde pilgrims we took our ease in a real original pilgrim's inn where the charges have advanced with the times. We also visited the charming little museum where the treasures of the lately discovered lake- village are preserved. Professor Boyd Dawkins had urged me not to miss it or the site of the long- forgotten English Venice. It was certainly very THE PILGRIM S HOSTEL, GLASTONBURY 26 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES interesting— local relics of all ages legibly labelled, with- out rubbish. Here is a pilgrim's staff that was taken from beside a skeleton in a stone coffin in the abbey. It seems to be from four to five feet long, and to have been broken and spliced more than once. As it is in a glass case I could not be sure of the wood. It may be oak, ash, or crab, but is probably thorn— possibly from one of the offspring of the original Holy Thorn. There is no record of its work, but we may surmise it was a companion to its master on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Doubtless he trudged the weary way, painfully grasping Ins cherished staff in heat or cold, hunger or thirst, too- or storm. When his wandering's are done, the journey ended, the victory won, and he gains his home again — what hath he at last ? A grave in Glastonbury Abbey, with his treasured staff beside him. There he rests m peace tor ages, until he and his are all forgotten, and modern Christians violate his grave, taking the well-worn staff from the well-worn bones that thev may show it tor twopences. What did they do with the bones I They should be worth some- thing, if only for manure. Other bones and skulls are here, possibly a thousand years older than the other long-forgotten ones ; for they come from the still older, prehistoric village, where they adorned the palisades around the island homes. One of these heads has a big crack, showing where sword or battle-axe ended its aching tor ever. Another looks good enough to have been the head of Joseph of Arimathea ; for if he came to these primitive barbarians telling them of a risen Christ and the strange doctrine of love to one's enemies, what more likely than that they should kill the teacher of what, to them, was dangerous folly, and stick up his head on a spike, as even the Chris- tian teachers did in recent times { For after seventeen hundred and forty-five years of their teaching the head of a relative of mine was spiked on Temple Bar in PREHISTORIC HOMES ON PILES 27 London, by order of the head of the ( ihurch, because he upheld the cause of the rightful king of England against the German George. To return to our dried bones. Some of them show what the epicures of those days ate. The familiar swine and cattle are there ; also stags, roe-deer, otter, and the loner-vanished beaver. Swans and cranes appear to have been common birds, and even the strange pelican. Thousands of hard clay pellets that would be thrown from slings at these various wildfowl are there, with weapons and tools in stone, bone, horn, wood, bronze, and iron. Pottery and gla,ss, rings and brooches, remnants of looms, crucibles, querns —all show these loncf-forsrotten folk were fairly civilised, and with a. last look at the famous canoe, eighteen feet of an oak-tree's trunk hollowed out into a, substantial boat, we hurry on. Downhill, across the moors, as they term the marshes here, we started for our tramp to the long- buried dwellings that once were built on piles amid the swamp. The rain was ceasing, and the light of midsummer should not fail for hours or I dare not have ventured over miles of morass. Ruins of the abbey showed 111 walls along the lane, and lmilhoned windows let 111 light to a, cart-shed, hut soon we were in a land of dykes and ditches, deep and broad, in all directions among the Hat fields, with rows of pollard willows as the only guides to keep the wearied traveller on his way when another inch or two of water hid the road from the dee}) blackness that hounded it on either side. What an impassable, impregnable country this must once have been ! We found the site of the long-buried, prehistoric British village, the forgotten homes of the aborigines of our fen. Circular mounds very slightly raised above the fields are all there is to see, but every mound once held a hut built on piles of oak above the water, pro- bably of wickerwork all daubed with clay. There 28 P1LG1UMAGES TO OLD HOMES were sixty or seventy of these huts, with floors of clay in Livers to the depth of five feet. They were eighteen to thirty-five feet in diameter, and about six feet high. They were probably dome-shaped, with a central post, and thatched with reed. Since they were built the peat has accumulated around them to the depth of six to ten feet. There is now sixteen feet of peat below the level of the field, and the bottom of the peat is said to he about "mean tide level" of the sea, which is fourteen miles distant. Where or how could they bury their dead '. Did they sink them for the eels and the pike ? Their island homes were safe refuge where men could not walk and boats could not float. Sour buttercups grow rank over them now, and in wet herbage to my waist I wandered round a lonelv heron fishing where our web-footed forefathers dwelt. Carefully feeling my way back to the road and X, who sat upon a gate, we tramp on. A drowned gold- finch on the path reminds me how very rare those showy birds are now. Starlings nest in the pollard willows, and all around a continuous distant monotone of cuckoo sounds. In the wet an untended cow has cast forth her burden and carefully licks her new- born calf. Hats dive in the water at every few steps, and on the bank a duck cowers over her brood ready to tumble all into safer hiding. As the daylight slowly fades, innumerable bats flit all around in constantly increasing numbers. For two hours we go tramping on until we reach the little Norman church of Goldnev upon higher ground, and can look back to where the Tor and Tower of Glastonbury gleam white against black clouds gathering round the misty fen : — " The island valley of Avilinn, Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns, And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea." A STORMY SUNDAY 29 Fine poetic language of his lordship, the late Poet Laureate. It may be poetic licence, for which we use a harsher word as the north-easter howls and shrieks through us with drenching sleet and ram in the balmy month of June. He that endureth over- cometb. We must tramp hack and go to bed. It rained all night, and the next morning, Sunday, seemed wetter than ever. As Monday was little better, we abandoned hope and tied homewards. Those three days made a record for rainfall in that part of the country. It was said that six inches of rain fell in the upper Thames valley, and the cricket ground at Bath was three feet under water. At Wells, where we were, the storms from the north-east were almost incessant, and as the Assizes were being holden in the city the little procession of the civic dignitaries was rather damped. I determined to go to the cathedral service, but X objected to Popish processions. We had come to the parting of the ways, and for the first time we parted. Without attempting any description of the stately, beautiful Cathedral of Wells, I may say that the chancel or choir is like a church within the greater church, and at its portals, where many were being turned away, I ventured to ask if they could find me a seat. The man's answer surprised me : " Yes, sir ; I will take you to a stall." Goodness knows who he mistook me for, but grey homespun seemed rather out of place under a canopy of sculptured stone in ample seat of carved oak. There was a blare of trumpets, and all the rulers of the little city, the judges, the sheriffs, the counsellors, the treasurers, the clergy, with many humbler folk, came in long procession to pray for all sorts and conditions of men and to look at one another. First were a few specimens of the majesty of the law, rather red and swelled about the face. Then the fire brigade, very uncomfortable in white gloves. A mayor in fur. 30 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES Aldermen in robes. Common councillors in go-to-meet- ing black. Choristers and vicars choral. The Bishop, before whom stalked an ascetic-looking priest grimly grasping with both hands a gigantic crozier. Beadles or vergers (I hope the titles of all these gentlemen are correctly stated) with beautiful little silver maces. The blaze of the High Sheriffs uniform, and last, but by no means least, the towering colossal figure of his Majesty's Judge of Assize in full-bottomed Happing wig and robes of scarlet and drab, Mr. Justice Lawrance, six feet four without his boots and wig. The service was good, and the sermon was about two sparrows being sold for a farthing, though according to another text the price was less if you took a quantity, and as we were worth many sparrows Ave should have better houses, which was all right with a little more boiling down. I have somewhsre read that after Sedge- moor, the last battle fought in England and near to Wells, some of the prisoners were brought to the cathedral, had a long sermon by the bishop inflicted on them, and were then hanged. The poor men might have been hanged first. They had thought that among the many bastards of his Sacred Majesty, the Duke of Monmouth must lie right, for had he not cured the King's Evil by his mere touch? The grand procession retired with the pomp and ceremony with which it came. X was waiting in the nave, where he had been wandering about all the time, until he found a seat behind the altar where he thought no one saw him and he could listen to the music. But lie knew not the subtleties of the satellites of the church. They had marked him down for the collection, followed him even there, and actually said " Thank you, sir," when they got something. After lunch the deluge still descended, and in despair we went to church again. This time X accompanied me, though it was difficult to keep him still. His noncon- THE TRIBUNAL, GLASTONBURY 32 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES formist conscience fidgeted at the elaborate perform- ance ; only the music soothed him, for music is one of his pleasures and indulgences. The anthem was Men- delssohn's " Hear my prayer, God." Suddenly he was still, with keen gaze and riveted attention. A boy's voice was pouring forth aspirations for wings, for the wings of a dove, that he might flee far away and be at rest, for ever and ever at rest. The storm might rage without, hut as those flute like notes rose amid the chiselled arches and soared aloft where on the glistening stone the iewelled light shone through glass of hues so brilliant that none can equal now, dim echoes seemed to come from far on high — '"for ever at rest." Who doth not long for rest ] Petty troubles seemed to fade and fly away. Cares and worries were forgotten as a peaceful calm came o'er us. The nonconformist conscience sighed itself to rest. HOESINGTOK CROSS WALFORD HALL IN the springtide, when " a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast," I was bidden to a bridal, as the old folks would say, or, in more modern phrase, invited to a wedding. An old bachelor who has survived the perils of life and goes to a wedding is like the skeleton at Grecian feasts — an object of pity, scorn, and dread. It is better for all parties that he should abstain ; but in this case the bride-ale was at an old home where many generations of my kindred have lived and died, and therefore I obeyed the summons as to a gathering 1 of the clan. In my youno-er days there were several old homes of the family, but all are now gone, save one. Three ancient halls were within three miles of one another in a beautiful, hilly, fertile part of north-western Stafford- shire. Mees Hall, where my father was born, is now in ruins, and "the desolate home of my fathers" is one of the most picturesque illustrations in my last book. Standon Hall, a fine old black and white house, is mentioned in most of my writings, principally in " Folk-Lore." Walford Hall is still tenanted by relations, and four generations of them may be seen there now. In it my father's mother was born ; from it she was married at seventeen, and to it she returned as a widow, to die. It seems strange to our hurryino- life for any one to be born, to be married, and (after rearing a dozen children) to die at the same house. Walford is a not uncommon name in England. I believe it to be another form of Wellford. The 33 c 54 PILGE IMAGES TO OLD HOMES nearest field to this house is still called the Wellyard, and in the manor-rolls is mention of the town well. The present "town" consists of three farmhouses, one of them having part of the moat in the garden. Fifty years ago I helped to empty one of the little pools, or wells, in the hillside where the cattle drank, and was astonished to capture some big hsh. Two, I remember, STANDON HALL were trout ; the one I took to Didsbury weighing three and a half pounds. The manor of Standon, Staundon, or Stawn, appears to have had a Vyse of Walford as bailiff in 1422 ; the rent of all Walford then being fifty-seven shilling's and twopence. In 1 564 Humphrey Vyse of Walford, gent,, buys the manor, and for about two hundred years the Vyse family hold it and live at Walford Hall, not at Standon Hall. Then the old home is advertised for sale by auction ; new owners ami new tenants come, and shortly the picturesque, black and white, gabled Hall with its dormer windows is bricked up into an AN ANCIENT COFFER 3 b ugly, respectable, Georgian farmhouse, the goal of many a pilgrimage. A curious relic of the Vyses is their cotter, or deed- chest, where they probably kept, as in a safe, the court- rolls of the manor, many of them being now in tlie William Salt Library at Stafford. This coffer was, like some other furniture I have known in country houses, GEANDMOTHBE BESSY MOSS From >t paintiwj by BEN. Faulknek, c. 1S40 too big to he got out of the house, and so heavy or clumsy that nobody liked it. It is made of six slabs of oak, varying m thickness from an inch to an inch and a half. The length is seven feet four, breadth one foot five, height two feet seven — from the ground one foot. There is no carving whatever, excepting a, small plain cross at each end ; hut tins probably dates it in pre-Reformation times. As we know that Humphrey 36 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES A T yse of Walford Hall bought the manor] of Standon in 1564, and previously his family had been bailiffs, we may be sure that oak-trees were cut down at Walford in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, arid six thick planks of them joined into a coffer within the house, where it remained for centuries, and after the house was rebuilt around it. This coffer had sometime been painted white, and tradition says it had been sold or valued at half-a- crown. It was used as a blanket-chest, but the heavy lid trapped many fingers, and it was given to me. Six men were required to move it ; and all went well until the Loudon and North Western Railway Company got hold. They delivered it at Didsburv with the front utterly smashed and pieces missing. They denied all liability, as they had told the waggoner who took it to them they would only carry it at "owner's risk," and that it should have been safely packed. An inch and a half of solid old oak is stronger than a brick wall, and they did not even deliver the pieces. Another old wooden plank that had held cheese for generations was used to mend the coffer, and I sat down with the robbery by the railway company ; for experience had then been teaching me that to go to law was to fall faster into the clutches of robbers, or as the old folks would say, "Out of the frying-pan into the fire." Along the great south road where I have tramped, ridden on horseback, driven in coach or gig, I now ride a bike ; and as the reader of my books should know the Cheshire country fairly well, let us begin this pilgrim- age on the further side of what is known as Newcastle in the Potteries. As we near Trentham we leave the grimy desolation of the land where wealth is made for the rich beauty of the land where wealth is spent. Well-kept fences, young trees carefully guarded, old trees preserved, neat A FAMILY TALE $j farms, handsome lodges, are all redolent of a dukedom. Round sheds thickly thatched, with here and there a hound or hunter, remind one of the kennels of a hunt. As the road mounts into the hills of a park- like country, there are fanciful cottages at the way- side, where temperance drinks are displayed by neatly dressed maids : for the Duchess of Sutherland encourages temperance ; and it seems doubtful whether the scene is real, or whether some fair damsel will not step from cottage garden with a glass of lemonade, smgmg like a fairy in an opera. In fine air and scenery the road winds upwards, and memory brings unhidden to my thoughts a family tradition of my great-grandfather, Thomas Moss, who, m a dark night of the winter of IJ7-, rode for miles along this lonely way, then a mere track across desolate hills, having the dead body of Izaak Wood slung across the pommel of his saddle. He had seen Wood at New- castle market ; found him drowned at the ford of a little river ; hoisted the heavy burden on to his own horse, and wearily plodded homewards. At the Ram Inn, Clifford's Wood, which to-day is a, lonely farmhouse on high land at cross roads, he sought admittance, but was refused. The host in his bed would not want unnecessary risks, and knew the dangers of the times and country. Moss and his horse were tired with the ghastly burden, and lie called out : " If you don'r fot him, I'll swot him.'' In my boyhood I was often told if anything had to he dumped, or thrown down heavily, to '"swot it, like your great- grandfather did old Izaak Wood.'' The drowned man was a freeholder who fanned his own land, and was known as Wood of ( !oates. I remember a grandson of Ins who weighed three hundred and sixty pounds ; had nineteen children, and boasted lie could drink twenty glasses of ale at a sitting. But the times have changed. If the above authentic 38 PILGRIMAGES TO OLD HOMES figures were divided by two, or even by three, the results would now be considered more fashionable. Even I, after being reared in the faith of " Church and State," have forsaken the ways of my fathers, and ride a bike instead of the horse of my younger days. How could any one do the work of a good Samaritan or carry a corpse on a bicycle '. The land of my sires is before me : miles of fertile country all around, and miles of good roads downhill towards home. There is danger in rabbits that scurry about and might get mixed up in the wheels. A brace of partridge are nearly run over as they fluff themselves in the dust : their tails spread like blazing tans as they jump into flight. Startled waterhens scutter away in the lower grounds, and many things there are to see ; but the pace was too good, as one rolls downhill in fair weather, to notice aught beyond the exhilaration of rapid easy movement. The valley is crossed, and, walking uphill, I come to the little church and churchyard where so many of my kindred lie. It is nearly hidden in big trees, the rectory and a. few cottages being the only houses near ; but there is evidently excitement and commotion among the neighbours. The rooks seem noisier than ever, being disturbed or jealous of the fuss. The peewits plaintively cry ]>ee-