Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

Tumultuously eloquent Kingsley gives here an impression which, as an overture to the stirring story of Hereward the Wake may not have been guiltless of anachronism; but it suits our purpose the better. He is too severe, in this case as in others, on the Roman Catholic clergy. Most likely the Gervii were not immigrants from oversea, not historical immigrants at any rate. Their traditions, it may well be, were of that Druidism which the Romans understood so little. Outlaws and desperate men, Saxon and Dane, naturally drifted to the Fens, bringing in their own traditions, and became one people with them. Sledges the denizens of the Fens doubtless used, and snowshoes perhaps, in the days of Hereward, when the Fens were indeed the last stronghold of the English; but one would like to see some kind of evidence for skates. As for the merrymaking on the ice, the friendly visits and the like, the chances are that they were as much the products of a happy imagination as the ancient Fenman's joy in the wild north-easter. Life really was hard and lonely for him. He probably cursed the north-easter as heartily as a rheumatic man does now, and if he welcomed the frost it was because it enabled him to approach and kill the more easily the wild birds with which the Fens teemed. In the main he was hunter, fisher, fowler, and that was why he resisted civilization. Junketings on the ice belonged to a later period altogether. Oliver Cromwell resisted the reclamation of the Fens because he thought he saw in it a subtle device of the great to enrich themselves. The Fenman resisted it because he was a fowler and a fisher, and the draining reduced the area of his happy hunting grounds and of the waters of which he was free and out of which he could make a scanty living. Men might call him "slodger," "yellow-belly"—the first word sounds like the very quintessence of churned mud, the second is eloquent of sickness—and he might grumble at the hardships of his lot. Still he knew no other way of living. He could snare the myriad wildfowl, many of them no longer known in England, which haunted the fastnesses of the reeds as no other man could. He knew the flight of each kind at every hour of the day and at every season of the year. No man so cunningly as he could capture the mighty luce or pike, noosing him sometimes, at others, and especially in winter, catching him with baits, craftily let down through a hole in the ice, or could so artfully trap the fat eels wherewith the clergy of Ely or of Crowland might turn a fast in the letter into a feast in the spirit. With his stilts and his leaping pole he could travel over the marshes with the most astonishing celerity; but that he enjoyed his life so keenly as Kingsley would have us believe is in the last degree unlikely.

Still the Fenman knew the life, and he knew his powers. He had no ambition to drive the slow oxen, to turn the fertile furrow, to garner the golden grain. Indifferent to questions of national welfare he was, as of course. The rustic of to-day is absolutely indifferent to considerations of the kind. He likes to see the straw so heavy that it cannot be cut by machines, laid by storms so that the sickle must needs be employed, because that means more work for men. Time was, and that not so very long ago, when, following the example of the artisans and weavers of manufacturing England, Hodge rioted and broke up the thrashing machines and the like, which did the work of twenty men and more. "It stands to reason," he used to say, "that such newfangled notions are bad for the likes of us." It stood to reason, from the Fenman's point of view, that to drain the Fens would be to leave him without the only occupation for which he was fit; it probably never occurred to him that he might adapt himself to altered circumstances and become a regular worker, tied to fixed hours, instead of an amphibious wanderer, fowling and fishing when he pleased, or when necessity drove him to exertion. Who shall blame him? Certainly not the sportsman, the naturalist, or the botanist, who have felt a pang of regret as they have watched, elsewhere than in the Fens it may be, the marsh that always held snipe, from which the bittern has been known to rise, in the recesses of which some almost extinct herb survived, converted into a fruitful field. Yet what man familiar with the life of the country has not felt these regrets, even while he knew all the time that the change was for the public good and that his own livelihood would not be directly affected? Is it possible, then, not to sympathize with the resistance of the Fenmen, who knew nothing of "the public good" and saw their livelihood, or the chance of obtaining it, destroyed before their helpless eyes. It was the old story. One man's meat is another man's poison all the world over and for all time; and there can be no progress, no wholesale and beneficial change in the ways of life, without much incidental tribulation. Nevertheless, when all things are weighed in the balance, not a scintilla of doubt remains that the draining of the Fens was begun and continued, as the old knight in Hereward the Wake said, "by the inspiration of God." It banished a few birds; but we could better spare a few kinds of birds than preserve them with the fevers and the agues which were the inseparable accident of their haunts. It was the end of the "slodgers" and the "yellow-bellies," who were but a handful of men; but in their place are thousands of human beings who, in spite of agricultural troubles which the drainers of the Fens could not by any means have foreseen, are at least sufficiently clad and fed, and decently housed.

It is not always, it is not indeed often, that the reflections appropriate to a scene throng into one's mind when that scene is visited. Sometimes, at the foot of Niagara, for example, thoughts refuse to come into the mind at all; it is only afterwards that with Dickens one reflects, it was surely only afterwards he reflected, that the one abiding impression left by Niagara is the remembrance from time to time that a like mass of water is still falling, and falling, and falling, yesterday to-day and for ever. But, in relation to the Fens, I can truthfully say that most of these thoughts ran through my mind as we rolled along the road. Details of course did not. I had forgotten about Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and Rennie, but I remembered the great deeds of the House of Bedford and boyhood's delight in Hereward. As the road followed the sinuous bank of cabined Ouse, as I looked at the flat fields of rich black soil in which the corn showed green or of pasture springing into life, I felt to realize that on these very places the reeds had whispered and, as Sir Bedivere said to King Arthur, so man might have reported, to Hereward if you will, "Nought heard I, save the waves wap and the waters wan." Each church with its hamlet rose a little above the general level of the plain, making it the easier to understand that each stood on firm ground, once an island among the marshes, upon which the church had set her beacon light. If Downham Church, which we passed, might be taken as a sample—and it may be with safety—then the more leisurely topographers who have gone before are abundantly justified in saying that the churches of the Fen country are of an uncommon stateliness and beauty. This place, by the way, shares with North Walsham the honour of having taken a share in the education of Nelson.

With such thoughts flooding into the mind we were quickly, or seemed to be quickly, at Ely, of which something has been written before, and no more shall be written. The road thence to Cambridge needs no fresh description, and at Cambridge, for our purposes, the account of this expedition might end but for one small incident of a doubly instructive character. First, however, let it be said, since the "Bull" has been praised before, that on this occasion it turned out to have been unhappily chosen as a place at which to take luncheon. Appetites were ravenous, but the meal was not a success. Perhaps because it was vacation time, the house was not prepared for guests. At any rate, the stair-carpets were "up"; but Cambridge is a big place, on an important highway, and, in fact, the guests were many and the mutton was tough. So, somewhat dissatisfied, to Royston and home, quite a long way but, so far as Royston, familiar already, and beyond that outside the present manor. Still, an incident occurring in the next manor must be recorded, because it was an incident, because it was germane to the motor-car and its little brother the motor-cycle, and because it had a double moral. It so fell out that somewhere, between Luton and Dunstable, if memory serves accurately, we were proceeding at a fittingly careful pace, and keeping scrupulously to the proper side of a not too wide and very meandering road. Suddenly, round the corner in front of us, appeared a motor-cycle, on its proper side of the road too, but proceeding at a good pace, the motor-cyclist having a young woman on a bicycle in tow. If she had kept her head all would have been well. As it was she lost it, fell head over heels into the ditch on her near side of the road, and suffered nothing worse than a shaking, which, indeed, she deserved. In due course she was picked up, placed in the tonneau, and taken back to her mother, while I held her bicycle as it rested on our near foot-board. It appeared to be the first time this very penitent damsel had tried this suicidal method of progression; let us hope it was also the last; for that it is suicidal, potentially at any rate, there is no kind of doubt. She was really in some danger, for she was just as likely to tumble into the road as into the ditch. Mr. Johnson could have stopped in time to avoid her if she had, because he was going carefully, and with a due regard to the potential dangers of the road. But I know a good many other drivers with regard to whom I should be sorry to say confidently that they could be relied upon to have been driving with equal care in the same circumstances. It was the kind of incident which made one think.

CHAPTER XIII

FROM KING'S LYNN AS CENTRE

Part I

King's Lynn—The Globe Hotel—English hotels—Reform necessary but difficult—Centre of exploration in adjacent country—Early history of Lynn—Little known—Not Roman—Important in the eleventh century—Formerly Lynn Episcopi—Lynn Regis since Henry VIII—Chapel of Red Mount—Stopping-place for pilgrims—"King John's" cup and sword—Possibly that of King John of France—Early prosperity of Lynn—Contribution against the Armada—Lynn during the Civil War—Sir Hamon le Strange—Cromwell at siege of Lynn—Custom-house and Guildhall—A city of merchants—Lynn and Eugene Aram—Bulwer's novel and the facts—Was Aram guilty?—The theatre—Sea-faring men—To Peterborough viâ Wisbech—Its association with the Fens—The cathedral—Cathedrals as books in stone—Crowland.

Part II

To Castle Rising—Once a port—Once a borough—The keep and surroundings—The mystery of the earthworks—Not Roman probably—A suggestion—Robert de Montault's feud with Lynn—Rising and the She Wolf of France—Not so harshly imprisoned after all—Wolferton—Sandringham—Always beautiful country—The house—Sports and pastimes of royalty—Dersingham—Snettisham—The Hunstantons and the Le Stranges—"Twthill"—A suggested derivation—Brancaster—The Peddars way—The Saxon pirates—Brancaster described by Mr. Haverfield—Excavation needed—Burnham Deepdale—Burnham Thorpe—The birthplace of Nelson—To Fakenham—Rainham Hall—The early Townshends—Elmhan—Once seat of bishopric—Earthworks—East Dereham and George Borrow—His description—Cowper—Swaffham—The first Coursing Club—Castle Acre—The Castle's story clear—That of the earthworks all darkness.

Part I

For the purposes of this chapter we will sleep, if it please you, and take our meals occasionally, at the Globe Hotel, standing in the south-west corner of the spacious square at King's Lynn, where, in fact, I have often stayed for many days together. That is why the "Globe" is recommended, not with any extremity of warmth, but just as an ordinary and rather old-fashioned hotel, such as one may expect to find—sometimes the expectation is vain—in a really old-fashioned town like Lynn. It is no sumptuous palace, but it provides plain and wholesome food, fair liquor, and clean bedrooms at about the normal English price. That is much too high, of course, judged by the Continental standard, and some day one may hope that the mysterious reason why English hotel-keepers, having to pay less than the generality of their contemporaries abroad for that raw material of dinners, of which they too often forget to change the original condition, charge more highly for the results and certainly, to all appearance, do not thrive so consistently. They would answer, most likely, that the hotel-keepers of provincial France and of parts of Switzerland can afford to charge their very modest prices because they can safely rely on a regular influx of travellers, principally English, German, and American. "I can never tell," says Boniface, "how many will want dinner on any day. Whether five come or fifty, all expect dinner; I must always be prepared for them"—very often he is sadly unprepared—"and my prices do not do much more than cover my expenses. Many a beautiful joint have I provided, for I never buy anything but the very best, that has had to be thrown away." Quote to him hotels abroad, such as we all know, where guests are taken in en pension, and fed fairly well, at from six to nine francs a day, or put it at 5s. to 7s. 6d. to simplify matters, and, while it is plain that he does not really believe you, he will bring up again the same old argument. Nor can you persuade him that a large part of the annual exodus to the Continent is due to knowledge that touring in England is, so far as food and accommodation go, so very dear, and often so remarkably nasty by comparison with touring on the Continent that men are driven abroad. Individually, however, Boniface is in rather a difficult position. Our beautiful islands, for they are very lovely in many kinds of loveliness, and our roads (which, if not equal to those of France, seem to an American to have attained an almost ideal perfection) will never attract their due share of voluntary travellers until the general average of hotels shall be improved, and the general average of charges shall be reduced. Even then some years must elapse before the reform would be realized as well as known, and the set habits of the travelling public, the public which travels of its own free-will and for its own pleasure, might be slow to change. They also, like the hotel-keepers, are English men and English women, Scots and Irish of both sexes, not easy to move out of a fixed groove. In any case the pioneer, the paragon among hotel-keepers, who should attempt to gain custom by setting an example of prices really moderate, not moderate according to English standards, would almost certainly court bankruptcy. One swallow does not make a summer; the certainty of finding one cheap and comfortable hotel on a tour would not suffice to turn the stream of tourists into the route on which that hotel lay.

So, perhaps, the complaints of motorists and others concerning the charges of English hotels (and Irish and Scotch hotels too) may be regarded as being rather in the nature of letting off steam than in that of using it in the hope of effecting any real result. The fault lies in the system; the system cannot be reformed without concerted action of hotel-keepers, of which there is no present evidence; and, if reform came, the actual reformers would probably be losers, although the next generation of hotel-keepers would reap a rich harvest. The process of reform would be, indeed, something like making pasture out of arable land, a costly enterprise, the profits of which are so long in coming that it is rarely undertaken by tenants for a short term. Since that is so we must take our hotels as we find them, praising some as being a little better than others when all might be vastly improved. On these principles the "Globe" at Lynn is recommended, although the "Crown" or the "Duke's Head" may, for all I know, be equally good. It may be added, too, that it used to be, perhaps still is, the hotel used by Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, whose Parliamentary connection with King's Lynn was long. His presence in it, however, argued nothing. It may have been the Conservative or Unionist hotel traditionally, as the "Royal" at Norwich is the Liberal House; or again, Mr. Bowles may have been no less independent in the choice of a hotel, even in his own constituency, than he was in selecting his lobby on a division in the House of Commons.

At any rate the "Globe" will serve as a resting-place. From it we will examine King's Lynn, thinking a little of its history and associations, and take a drive of a single day in the first part of the chapter; and in the second we will take, for purposes of writing, a considerably longer drive which, for those who desire to see a great number of interesting places at leisure, would be much better divided into two parts, or even three, than taken in a single piece. Only, having visited all the places named, by road too, but not expressly for the purpose of this book, I am disposed to recommend a return to Lynn for the night, if a day seems to be growing too long, rather than a sojourn at some outlying place in which the inn or hotel, where there is one, has not been tested on my vile body. For example, in this second drive, if my advice be taken, the traveller may find himself at Brancaster at about the time of afternoon tea. Even on a summer's day he will hardly be disposed to complete the programme suggested. He can easily run back to Lynn, in time to dress for dinner comfortably, along a different road from that which he took in coming, and if he likes to start again at the next point in the drive on the following morning, he can reach that again by a new series of roads. He is never likely to regret his return to Lynn, because it is really an exceedingly interesting and characteristic place.

"It was an old wild fancy that Catus Decianus," Boadicea's Roman contemporary in this country, "founded Lynn," says Mr. Haverfield; on the other hand, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it is supposed to have been a British settlement. Its origin is, in fact, "wrop up in mystery" rather more completely than is usual with old English towns. We know that the earliest entry in the Red Book of Lynn is 1309, and the last East Anglian bishop who occupied Thetford as his diocesan capital is believed to have built a church where St. Margaret's now stands. Presumably, therefore, Lynn was a place of some importance in his day, which was at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries. There is an odd tradition concerning the original church, of which not much is left, for in the eighteenth century the spire collapsed on to the nave in a gale of wind. The tradition, mentioned by Mr. Rye, is that the foundation was laid on woolpacks; "but I fancy this only came from some donation of wool, or of a wool subsidy, in aid of a partial rebuilding. Whatever it was built on its foundations certainly settled very much directly, for the tower leans over in such a Pisa-like way that it makes a nervous spectator quite uncomfortable to go inside it and look up, though the protecting piers have been there in their present places a trifle over seven hundred years or so." How to reconcile this with the fact that the spire was blown down on to the nave in 1741 is Mr. Rye's business, not mine. Besides that, the fragments of history connected with Lynn are so interesting that they will leave little, if any, space for those discourses on ecclesiastical architecture which are the principal parts of the generality of guide-books.

Of the early history, the really early history of Lynn, little is known. It had strong walls, relics of which remain, of uncertain date, save that they were not Roman. It belonged to the East Anglian bishops, or at any rate was in their temporal jurisdiction, until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, when it became Lynn Regis, no longer Lynn Episcopi. It was a stopping place for pilgrims on the way to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, who were encouraged to lay their offerings in the Chapel of the Red Mount, to which chapel, very small and very beautiful within, an ancient avenue still leads. Observe the distinct entrance and exit, testifying alike to the business aptitude of those who were in charge, and to the popularity of the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham. Lynn has a charter of 1216, given by King John, and preserves a sword and a cup alleged to have been given by him. Here "Murray" is "too clever by half," and himself supplies, if it had but occurred to him, a key which it was left to a local antiquary to apply to this historical problem. "The cup itself, in elegance of shape, might have come from the hand of Cellini. The figures in enamel of men and women hunting and hawking are extremely curious. Judging, however, from the costume and workmanship this cup cannot be older than the period of Edward III—the period of the greatest prosperity of Lynn. The sword also, although an inscription on one side of the hilt records that John took it from his side and gave it to the town, is really no older than the sixteenth century. Both articles seem to be substitutes for the original donations." That is not so certain. On the opposite page the same writer mentions a brass in St. Margaret's commemorating a Mayor of Edward III's time, and a representation below of the "Peacock's Feast" given by this same mayor to Edward III, who is represented at table, having before him a cup very like the one in question. Now Edward III not only visited Lynn, but also kept King John of France as an honoured prisoner for many years. He was as likely as not to take John with him to Lynn, and the chances are that the cup, as a local antiquary has suggested to Mr. Rye, was the gift of a king of France. As for the inscription on the sword, it is nothing. It was in the nature of things that whosoever gave the sword, the inscription should be placed upon it afterwards, and, as to a date suggested by workmanship, it would be very unsafe to rely upon it.

"Probably it was in the time of Edward III that, speaking relatively, Lynn was most prosperous." It is assumed that the statement was not made without evidence of some kind. Otherwise probabilities would seem to point in the opposite direction, and it would be natural to expect that, as the Fens were gradually subjugated, producing some things worth exporting and supporting men capable of buying things imported, the port provided for them by nature would grow in respect of trade. Still there is abundant evidence of its importance later than Edward III and long before the great and good work of reclaiming the Fens had been take seriously in hand. In the time of Elizabeth, Lynn and Blakeney (!), the latter now no longer worthy of mention as a port, furnished "2 shippes and 1 pinnace," a contribution equal to that of Ipswich and Harwich, to resist the Armada. Then, as we have seen, Oliver Cromwell resisted the first scheme of Fen-reclamation formed by the illustrious house of Bedford—the Protector of later years was then a resident at Ely and member for Cambridge in the House of Commons. Yet the value of Lynn was quickly made manifest during the Rebellion. Moved thereto by stout Sir Hamon le Strange of Hunstanton, Lynn showed itself to be veritably Lynn Regis, almost the only part of East Anglia that adhered to Charles. It was a matter of no small moment. Even afterwards, when the Restoration was being planned the projected seizure of Lynn was regarded by the planners and by Clarendon as an enterprise of exceptional value because Lynn was "a Maritime Town, of great importance in respect of the Situation, and likewise of the Good Affection of the Gentlemen of the Parts adjacent." To the first Charles it would have been of priceless value could he but have held it, for through it he could have secured from the Continent that supply of ammunition of which, almost from the beginning of the war, he was in sore need. With Sir Hamon le Strange for governor, 50 pieces of ordnance, 1200 muskets, and 500 barrels of powder, Lynn was held in a manner plainly showing how much value the King set upon it. The Parliamentary generals, however, were equally alive to the use that might be made of Lynn as a port from which to obtain supplies. First Manchester, and later Cromwell, took part in the siege; it is even said the "Virgin Troop" of Norwich, Puritan Amazons, took the field on this occasion. At any rate, in 1643 Lynn surrendered, to the grievous loss of Charles and the corresponding gain of the Parliament.