Ladies and delicate persons did not attempt these long journeys on horseback, but went in “wagons” such as the four-horsed one in which Lord Hereford’s little boy was sent on a visit to Twickenham at the beginning of the Tudor period. There is a tradition that Sir Thomas Hungerford of Farley Castle, the first Speaker of the House of Commons, also went by “wagon” from Wiltshire to take his seat in Parliament.
In 1536 Henry VIII married Jane Seymour at Wulfhall on the borders of Savernake, and the wedding festivities took place in an enormous barn. This sounds very homely and bucolic, but the size and magnificence of their suites always gave splendour to the progresses of monarchs, even if their destination was only a barn. No list exists of the King’s attendants on the occasion of his wedding, but he cannot have had a less important suite than he had two years later, when he went for a weekend to Lord Hertford and was entertained in the same barn. This time the King had an escort of two hundred persons and the guests invited to meet them numbered another two hundred. They included Lady Hungerford, with eight servants and gentlewomen; Sir Anthony Hungerford, my Lady his wife, and eight servants; Master Wroughton, with five; my Lady Darell, with four; and Sir John Bridges, with eight.
About the same time Lord Hertford himself paid a round of visits, staying with, among other people, Lord Chief Justice Fitzjames, Lord Hungerford and Sir Henry Long. His host had to find stabling for forty horses at each stop, and the cavalcade was accompanied by the tinkling of four hundred harness bells, costing twelve-pence a hundred. Lord Hertford’s gilt-headed saddle had a seat of velvet fringed with gold and attached by six gilt “ nailes”, while his pillion cloth was lined with three yards of “Bokeram”.
During his short reign of six years Edward VI recorded in his diary that he went on progress through Wiltshire with the suite of as many as four thousand persons. This was exceptional, though the Venetian Legate at Queen Mary’s court reported to his government that English noblemen exceed all other nations in the number of their attendants, “so that the Earl of Pembroke had upwards of a thousand clad in his own livery”. When the Marquis de las Navas, Spanish Ambassador, arrived at Plymouth to negotiate the marriage of Philip of Spain with Queen Mary, he was met there by Lord Pembroke and Lord Dudley, who rode with him to Wilton. Ten miles from there the Royal Cavalcade was met by Lord Pembroke’s son,
“… My Lorde Harbartt, who had of hys owne humber cc horse, gentylmen ande yemen all well horsed and appoyntted; and, besydes, the Shryfe of the Shyre, wt the gentyllmen thereof, and theyre servantes, weere other cc horse;, so that in the whole they weere fowrehundrethe. And as thys Marques and Yerle wentt and rode to Wylton, theyre weere certeyn cowrses att the hare, whyche was so pleasantt thatt the Marques muche delyted in feyndynge th cowrses so reddelye apoynted.”
In the following July Lord Pembroke rode to Southampton to meet King Philip himself, and to go with him to the wedding at Winchester. Pembroke then had a retinue of two hundred mounted gentlemen, dressed in black velvet and wearing heavy gold chains. Also with him came a bodyguard of English archers, wearing the livery of the house of Aragon, tunics of yellow cloth, striped with bars of red velvet.
Even when King Charles I held his court at Oxford, during the Parliamentary War, he signed this special warrant, permitting the corpse of Lord Beauchamp to be conveyed from London to Bedwyn:
“Charles, by the grace of God, etc.
“To all our Commanders, Governors, Officers, and other Majors, Sherriffs, Justices of the Peace, Constables, and other our Ministers and loving Subjects, whome it may concerne Greeting.
“Our Command is that at sight hereof, ye permitt the corse of the Lord Beauchamp, (Sonne to the Lord Marquis Hertford) freely to pass all guards and Scouts from London to Beding in Wiltshire, where he is to be interd, and that ye permitt the gentlemen and others appointed to attend the same thither, in all thirteen persons, together with their coaches, horses, and necessaries to accompany the corps, without any lett or impediment, and afterwards to returne peaceably to London without any trouble or hinderance. Wherein ye may not faile. And for so doing this shal be your sufficient Warrant.”
The fact that this funeral took place in the midst of the Civil Wars shows that a ceremonial funeral was much too popular an event to be given up.
A quarter of a century later the Dowager Duchess of Somerset received this letter from her steward, Mr Gape, about the funeral of the first Duke, who was also buried at Bedwyn.
“May it please your Grace.
“We came safe with the hearse to Reading the first night, having Col. Cooke’s Mourning Coach and himselfe, Sir John Elwes (Nephew to my Lady Seymour) Mr Wingfield the Herauld and myself therein, drawne by my Lord Marquesse of Worseter’s six horses, having in all about eight or ten horsemen attending the Hearse and Coach. We bayted not, nor so much as dranke by the way. The next morning, between 5 and 6, we sett forth from Reading towards Hungerford, and came thither about 1 at noone. There the gentry of the countrey, viz, Sir Francis Popham, with his coach in mourning and sixe horses, and a gentleman of his kindred with him (but Sir Francis was in a light greyish suite). Sir John Elwes of Barton, Mr Giles Hungerford, Mr Pleydell of Mugehill, Mr Goddard, Mr Deane, Mr Hungerford of Chisbury, and many others of lesser note, together with many others of his late Grace’s Servants, tenants, farmers, bayliffs and some others.… After dinner, we removed towards Bedwyn, and came thither about 3 in the afternoone, and drove into the Churchyard; the Coffin was covered with blacke velvett, and a sylver plate nayled on it, having an inscription in a plate of sylver with his Grace’s Titles of Honor, a blacke velvett cushion with a ducal Coronett thereon. The Corps being taken out of the Hearse, was carried by some of his Grace’s Servants.… The Chauncell was hung round with blacke Bayes, having Escutsheons with his Grace’s Coat-Armes pinned thereon … there was much rudeness of the common people, amongst whom none suffered that I hear of, but myselfe, I having above a yard of the cloth of my long blacke Cloake cutt or rent off in the crowd at my going into the Church.”
The roads may have been bad and travel difficult in the old days, but in spite of this a funeral was as popular an entertainment as it has been ever since. As late as 1816 the coffin of the last Dame Hungerford was brought from Bath by torchlight, “ with much parade and procession of horses”, to be buried in the vault under the church at Yatesbury. This meant a journey of about twenty-two miles over roads about as bad as they ever had been in the Middle Ages.
Such ceremony is today a thing of the past, but it must have added greatly to the gaiety of the countryside. George VI came to Wiltshire more than once during the war to inspect his troops, and he travelled in no state. Efficiency is now the hallmark of monarchy. The King travelled in a black Daimler flying the Royal Standard and preceded by two pilot cars. Two more cars followed containing his staff. Policemen stationed at all cross-roads indicated to the wary that an important personage was on the road; and by some instinct a small crowd of country people assembled at certain points. But it was obvious that the days were over when a Royal Progress was a delight to the eye. The King can travel more quickly and easily from place to place than can his subjects on their less important journeys. And that’s all.
The main reason why people travelled in such large companies was that while there were no public vehicles, every traveller was solely responsible for his own safety on the roads. It was always possible to find oneself engulfed in a bog, or there might be robbers on the roads, and long journeys were often across very lonely country. However, in the sixteenth century the primitive wagon or “char” was replaced among the richer people by coaches introduced from Hungary, and there was more travelling upon the roads.
Since the fourteenth century the abbeys had been growing poorer, and now they had been abolished altogether. The bridges, which had been built and maintained by Abbey funds, fell into disrepair, as it was now nobody’s business to restore them. Consequently, in Tudor times, there was a succession of Highway Acts, in which road ma
intenance was put into the hands of a curious jumble of authorities. Village roads remained the responsibility of each manor through which they passed, and each had its own standard. Long-distance roads were becoming the King’s highways, but the village people remained outside all this, and the two road systems were as apart as ever. In Yatesbury, for instance, we get a very definite picture of two travel worlds living within sight of each other and remaining completely apart, unless by accident the stage coach rolled off the main road and upset in the village. In 1879 the Rev. A. C. Smith mentions the Roman road between Wans and Marlborough, which passes within two miles of Yatesbury and “was one of the great arteries of the Kingdom, connecting the west with all other parts, in the admirable network system by which the rulers of the world knew how to ensure communication”. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, he tells us, the course of this coach road was changed, bringing it nearer to Yatesbury, so that “a perpetual stream of communication was always pouring between the west of England and the capital; and a constant succession of stage coaches, post-chaises, fly-wagons, and heavy wains passed day and night, and all within sight of our village”. But did this affect the people of Yatesbury? Not at all; except on that one occasion when “ a more than common snowdrift blocked the road and a coach floundered so far out of the road as Yatesbury, a circumstance which served the gossips of the village with an anecdote never to be forgotten, and which they are never tired of repeating”.
That was the only way in which long-distance travel affected the people in the villages; they could laugh at the absurd antics of the ridiculous passers-by. Meanwhile they were content with their own local roads, consisting at Yatesbury of “six stone roads diverging on all sides from our village, like the six legs of an insect”, and all but one becoming in a very few yards soft muddy lanes.
From within this isolation the Yatesbury people could watch, four miles away to the east, the old British track-way between Pewsey and Overton Hill, and this was used a good deal in the nineteenth century. Sometimes the furtive figure of a smuggler was identified as he crossed the vision of a true Wiltshire moonraker in the village; and often drovers passed along with their herds. The two road systems were growing physically nearer, although they were still the two halves of the world, which each knew very little and cared less about how the other half lived.
For the greater part of the year the village of Yatesbury, like many others in Wiltshire, was self-supporting. Only after an exceptionally good harvest, when more corn had been grown than was required locally, did the farmers send some to market. Then, Mr Smith says, “the method pursued was to convey to the hard turnpike road, through the mile and a quarter of mud which intervened, first the market waggon, to be there loaded and then … the sacks of corn which were to compose the load; and six or eight horses could haul through the deepest ruts only a few sacks at a time.” This sounds, and was, a most laborious way of sending goods to market.
The neighbouring village of Cherhill was equally content to watch the traffic on the Bath to London road from a distance of about a mile and a half. As in the other Wiltshire villages, the local roads were “maintained” here till within the memory of man by the lord of the manor and his tenants. The lord supplied the chalk and flints, and the tenant farmers hauled them and laid them in proportion to the size and position of their holdings.
But until 1896 Cherhill produced its own transport for its own small local trade. This was the sale of sand from the Cherhill Low Sand Pits, and it was carried by a drove of donkeys belonging to “old Angell”. Aaron Angell and Levi Brittain
“would take a drove of donkeys varying in number from twelve to thirty or more, go to Cherhill Low Sand Pits, and load each donkey with three bags of sand, each bag holding one bushel. One donkey had to be loaded with blankets, pots and pans, as the men had to sleep out.… Sometimes these men would travel with their donkeys fifty miles from home, selling the sand at from 2s. 6d. to 7s. per bushel, according to the distance to be travelled.”
When the owners of the donkeys died the sand-carrying business was completely revolutionised, first by horses, and then by motor-cars.
Even travellers by coach met regular delays which nowadays would be considered extremely irksome. Before the route of the London—Bath road was changed it ran down Beacon Hill to Sandy Lane. On the return journey the gradient was too steep for the horses to drag the coach up the hill, and a team of oxen was kept in the meadows near the bottom. Here is a little lane called Hitchin Lane, and at this point the oxen were hitched on to the coach. It was a slow progress; and such inconveniences largely explain the philosophy with which Wiltshire villagers still meet the delays of life. Patience is in their bones.
Only a few months ago I was travelling by motor-bus from Salisbury to Devizes, when we found that the conductress on its last journey had by accident carried away the box containing the tickets and change required by our present conductress. She had gone with it on another circuit which would take an hour, so when we reached a point in the road where we should hit her off coming back, we pulled up and waited. We sat by the roadside for three-quarters of an hour, and while we did this, we most of us (myself included) missed our connection at Upavon. No one seemed concerned. This was what one expected to happen; “rather unfartunate” was the general opinion.
“My brotherlaw were meeting me at Upavon to ’elp me wi’ this here basket; but there, ’is bus’ll be gone long afore we gets there. I wonder wh’er there be another tonight.”
“What will you do if there isn’t?” I asked.
“I shall just have to wait until the next do come. I think there be a seat I can rest on.”
“Yes, I can mind seeing one, just round the corner from where we do stop,” said an encouraging fellow-traveller.
And in fact there was only one among all the passengers to whom it seemed to matter that we had lost an hour on the road. She was obviously of the modern generation, for she was going to meet her child at the Central School, and she got into a panic at the thought of its rushing out of the school to be run over by a lorry.
Everyone tried in vain to comfort her. At last she proved her kinship with modern travel by leaping from the bus to become a hitch-hiker. She signalled vainly to every vehicle that passed till at last she was picked up by a tradesman’s van. Everyone in the bus thought this very funny and quite unnecessary.
The fact that each manor was responsible for repairing its own roads alone encouraged the idea that all roads only concerned the people of the place. A long distance road did not interest them. In Erlestoke, for instance, well into the nineteenth century, Mr Watson-Taylor speaks of
“the county road that skirts this part of the Plain, and further north the district road lately made in the track of an old Bridle Path; to the north and south there is no access from within the parish except by a rough track … the nearest hard roads were respectively seven miles and two and a half miles away. The grass slow-coach road from Bath to Salisbury, also crosses the parish, on the hill, but it was not then used for traffic except by an occasional gypsy van.… The records of the manor court in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries include the care of the roads as among the duties of the Homage which met at the cross at 8 a.m. on May 10th and November 25th, to ‘perambulate the bounds, landmarks and merestones’. The most important orders related to the scouring of ditches and water ways, and an inhabitant was once ‘presented’for encroaching on the highway for planting willows … another was ordered ‘ to set up railings at the end of his house to prevent a horseway which is prejudicial to the footway’.”
Similarly, at Winterbourne Stoke, the Court Baron declared that
“our custome is that the Lord at his Cost Do Maintain Stoppels Bridge.… Our custome is for the miller to provide a sufficient Bridge and to Maintain the same for the passing over cattle to a Ground called Mill Close.… Our Custome is for the Passonage Dung to be carried Accustomed Way, that is to say from London Way through part of Mr Dyke’s
field.”
It will be seen that these manor courts took more interest in footways and bridle-paths and in the parsonage dung than in the through London road; for their world was the world of footpaths, and to travel freely within it was of more importance than to embark in the “slow-coaches” into the unknown.
The earliest endowments of roadways relate only to local footpaths or roads; and it was not until 1888 that these became the responsibility of local government. Early in the fifteenth century, Walter, Lord Hungerford, first made a “safe footing” over Standerwick Marsh between Beckington and Warminster “ for the health of the soul of the Lady Katharine, his wife”; and in 1641 John Pierse, the chief Burgess of Devizes, gave fifty pounds to be used by the Mayor and Recorder on the maintenance of the causeways.
But the famous Wiltshire causeway was Maud Heath’s. This continues for about four and a half miles from the top of Wick Hill in Bremhill parish to Chippenham, passing through Tytherton, Kellaways and Langley Burrell. Maud Heath was a market woman who walked every week from her home at Bremhill to Chippenham market selling eggs and poultry. At the bottom of the hill she always had to plough her way through one of the worst bits of road in the county, all marsh and morass. She often fell down and even lost or broke her eggs, and her petticoats were always so coated with clay that it never seemed worth while to wash them during the week. She resolved that no one else should have to put up with what she had gone through, and during her lifetime she spent much of her savings in building a high raised stone walk along which people have kept dry ever since her day. She left a considerable sum of money in the hands of trustees to maintain her road.
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