Wiltshire

by Edith Olivier

  “The lists were superbly decorated, and surrounded by the pavilions belonging to the champions, ornamented with their arms, banners, and banner-rolls. The scaffolds for the reception of the nobility of both sexes who came as spectators and those especially appointed for royalty were hung with tapestries and embroideries of gold and silver. Every person, upon such occasions, appeared to the greatest advantage and, for the most part, decked in sumptuous array, and this in the case of the court ladies was certainly very sumptuous. We know that Richard’s mother, Queen Elinor, ‘possessed forty-two gowns of silk, linen, and wool, many of which were richly embroidered; six of her fourteen pairs of shoes had heels, and five pairs were embellished with embroidery in gold thread. She had five mantels of various colours bordered with ermine, a profusion of veils, and ten warm undershirts.’

  “We may also add the splendid appearance of the knights engaged in the sports; themselves and their horses were most gorgeously arrayed; and their esquires and pages, together with the minstrels, and heralds who superintended the ceremonies, were all of them clothed in costly and glittering apparel.”

  This famous tournament set a fashion in the neighbourhood which lasted for quite four hundred years. Tournaments were constantly held at Clarendon Palace, until Henry VIII gave it up for his modern palaces of Hampton Court and Nonesuch, and then the fashion was continued at Wilton.

  Aubrey writes, in the seventeenth century:

  “Tilting was much used at Wilton in the times of Henry Earle of Pembroke and Sir Philip Sydney. At the solemnization of the great wedding of William, the second Earle of Pembroke, to one of the co-heires of the Earle of Shrewsbury, here was an extraordinary shew; at which time a great many of the nobility and gentry exercised, and they had shields of pastboard painted with their devices and emblemes, which were very pretty and ingenious. There are some of them hanging in some houses at Wilton to this day, but I did remember many more. Most, or all of them, had relation to marriage. One, I remember, is a man standing by a river’s side angling, and takes up a rammes-horne: the motto Casus ubique valet (Ovid, de Arte Amandi). Another hath the picture of a ship at sea sinking in a storm, and a house on fire; the motto Tertia pestis abest; meaning a wife. Another, a shield covered with black velvet; the motto Par nulla figura dolori. This last is in the Arcadia, and I believe they were most of them contrived by Sir Philip Sydney. Another was a hawke lett off the hand, with her leashes hanging at her legges, which might hang her where’ere she pitcht, and is an embleme of youth that is apt to be ensnared by their own too plentifull estates.”

  King Richard’s purpose in starting tournaments to encourage “martial sports in his dominions” had been eminently successful; for even five hundred years after his day Thomas, Lord Pembroke, possessed “in his armourie at Wilton” arms enough for sixteen hundred men, horse and foot. Before the Civil Wars Aubrey says there had been “ musket and pikes for many hundreds of men; lances for tilting; complete armour for horsemen; for pike men etc. The rich gilt and engraved armour of Henry VIII. The like rich armour of Edward VI. In the late warres much of the armes was imbecill’d.”

  Four hundred years had to pass before a new type of tournament took place in Wiltshire. In 1923 a series of searchlight tattoos at Tidworth began on a very small scale, when the 2nd Cavalry Brigade staged a small performance in the grounds of Tidworth House. Their “control tower” consisted merely of “ two barrack-room tables behind a screen with a portable telephone to the lights on the roof of the mansion”. In this year the audience was merely a handful of local residents, but in 1938 it had swollen to a total of 150,000 persons. This would have surprised those who attended its predecessor in 1194.

  The Tidworth Tattoo was always a voluntary production, and its objects were to interest the men taking part in it, to show the spectators something of the many-sidedness of the British Army, and to raise money for Army charities. The organisers announced that “ no charge fell upon public funds, all Government property used being paid for out of the receipts, a very substantial sum being paid to the Treasury annually”.

  The Tattoo ground at Tidworth is almost as beautiful as the tournament ground at Salisbury must have been, and its beauty was much enhanced by countless lights and searchlights which played upon the landscape.

  “The word ‘Tattoo’ is derived, from the Dutch ‘Taptoe’—‘Tap’ an Alehouse and ‘Toe’ to close. When the British Army was reorganised by William of Orange, the signal for the troops to return to Barracks was the sounding of ‘Taptoe’, at which the Alehouses closed and the men returned for the nightly muster. ‘Taptoe’ or ‘Tattoo’, as it is now termed, is the time which elapses between the sounding of the First and Last Posts.”

  Like their predecessors in the twelfth century the first task before the organisers of the Tidworth Tattoo was to arrange for the great numbers of actors and spectators who would be moving about the roads. It is extremely amusing to compare these regulations with those made in 1194. The twentieth-century rules were all intended for the crowds themselves rather than for the “Earls and Barons” who were to control them. It was a wonderful feat of organisation. The Tattoo arranged for 1939 was abandoned because of the expected outbreak of war, but these arrangements had all been made, and we can still see the list of five hundred and thirty-two railway stations, including Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Devonshire, Cornwall and the remotest parts of Wales, from which special trains were to have been run. Travellers coming by road found the most direct routes prepared for them, and in the twenty miles round Tidworth special posts pointed the way to each separate parking-ground, while an army of traffic commissioners, police and officials of the motoring societies were there to help. Arrangements were made for caravans to be parked for the night and these could be used for sleeping in, while such accessories of comfort as cushions, overcoats and rugs could be hired. This was an impressive development of the regulations made in 1194.

  Tidworth Park, the site of the Tattoo, lies in a hollow between very beautifully wooded downs, and the whole of this landscape came into the mise-en-scène. In 1938, the last Tattoo before the war, the plan well represented the fighting forces of the day. The first scene was a parade of the massed bands of seventeen regiments. They marched on to the field to the music of the March from Verdi’s Aide, and the fine marching of these bandsmen had great beauty. The Tattoo then illustrated the history of the British Army, beginning with a drill display by the Earl of Bath’s Regiment in 1685, wearing the elaborate uniforms of that date. Then came the capture of Namur in the same year, with again a wonderful display of uniforms, ending with the surrender of Marshall Boufflers to William of Orange. Later scenes showed the modern army at various physical training exercises, and finally came a sham fight between tanks and gunfire. These military scenes were interspersed with circus episodes and scenes from children’s books. Finally, all the actors reappeared on the scene carrying different coloured torches, which were gradually extinguished and the arena left in darkness, till the lights reappeared in the form of a Union Jack. At the end, the many thousands of performers and spectators joined in singing Bishop Ken’s “ Evening Hymn”.

  Between these two great organised festivals of military art came 740 years of country sports enjoyed by country people who love life in the open air.

  In Wiltshire, as in most other parts of England, shooting and hunting have ever been among the chief country pursuits; but the attitude of the Anglo-Saxons towards field sports was that of most primitive people—they shot and hunted in the first place for the table. The Normans accentuated the idea of sport in this traditional custom. One of William the Conqueror’s favourite officials was his huntsman, and for this post he chose a Saxon, Waleran the Venator. This man originally had property in the neighbourhood of West Dean, and William made him Hereditary Ranger of the New Forest, a position held certainly by five subsequent generations of his family. Waleran also owned property between Salisbury and Cranborne, and he is said to have built the delightf
ul Norman church at West Harnham. He or his son was the first presentee of the living of Stapleford, where he also had an estate, and where the lid of his stone coffin was found a few years ago built into the wall of the church. It bears a carving representing Waleran himself, wearing the hunting horn which was evidently the badge of his rangership. The Waleran family also possessed the estate of Wardour for some time.

  Two or three hundred years later Edward III hunted from Clarendon Palace, with King John of France and King David of Scotland, both of whom were prisoners of war. The name of the inn at Whaddon—The Three Crowns—is said to date back to this episode.

  In those early days hunting was very unlike what it is today. The sportsmen sat on their horses and the game was driven past them, to be shot at with bow and arrow from a stationary position. In 1574 Queen Elizabeth joined at Clarendon Palace in this somewhat indolent version of the sport, and there was erected “ a very pleasant banquet house of leaves for her to dine in”. Such alfresco meals were generally a chief part of her day’s hunting.

  In the seventeenth century Aubrey writes of Philip, Lord Pembroke:

  “His Lordship had also Morocco horses, and for race horses, besides Peacock and Delavill, he had a great many more kept at the parke at Ramesbury and at Rowlinton. Then for his stagge-hunting, brooke-hawking and land-hawking, what number of horses were kept to bee fitt at all seasons for it, I leave the reader to guesse, besides his horses for at least halfe a dozen coaches. Mr Chr. Wroughton guesses not lesse than an hundred horses. ‘This present Earl (1680) has at Wilton 52 mastives and 30 greyhounds, some beares, and a lyon, and a matter of 60 fellowes more bestiall than they.’ …

  “His Lordship had all sorts of hounds, for severall disports: sc. harbourers (great hounds) to harbour the stagges; and also small bull-dogges to break the bayes of the stagge; fox-hounds, finders, harriers, and others. His Lordship had the choicest tumblers that were in England, and the same tumblers that rode behind him he made use of to retrieve the partridges. The setting-doggs for supper-flights for his hawkes. Grayhounds for his hare warren, as good as any were in England. When they returned from hawking the ladies would come out to see the hawkes at the highest flying, and then they made use of their setting dogges to be sure of a flight. His Lordship had two hawkes, one a falcon called Shrewsbury, which he had of the Earle of Shrewsbury, and another called the little tercel, which would fly quite out of sight, that they knew not how to shew the fowler till they found the head stood right. They had not little telescopes in those dayes; those would have been of great use for the discovery which way the hawke’s head stood.”

  From this it will be seen that till the end of the seventeenth century all kinds of field sports were indiscriminately combined; but in the beginning of the eighteenth century hunting, shooting, coursing and hawking all became separate. The first regular pack of foxhounds in Wiltshire (perhaps even in England) belonged to the fourth Lord Arundel of Wardour who died in 1712. This pack was the predecessor of the present South and West Wilts Hounds; and now in the county there are five or six separate packs of foxhounds, besides harriers, beagles and otter-hounds.

  But even at the present time an ardent Wiltshire sportsman, Mr Beaven, writes in his Sportsman’s Fireside Memories that “it is still possible to shoot in a small acreage, as I have done quite recently, pheasants, partridges, ducks, quail, snipe, woodcock, hares, rabbits, and an occasional roe-deer; while there are still even today one or two old sportsmen who have seen a bustard on Salisbury Plain.”

  The zenith of pheasant and partridge shooting came in the nineteenth century. Preserving pheasants was a great art and the head keepers on great estates were like generals marshalling the sportsmen as well as the game into fatal contact. Pheasant shooting in Grovely was very famous in the days of Edward VII and George V, when many country people used to assemble at the most difficult beats to watch the famous sportsmen of the day.

  Salisbury Plain is the kind of country made for coursing and hawking, and both of these old-fashioned sports were actively carried on until 1939, while coursing has begun again even since the war. The headquarters of the coursing club is at the Druid’s Lodge, where it is still possible to find on the days of the meets, an ardent group of farmers each with his couple of greyhounds met to hunt the hare. As you approach Druid’s Lodge the whole Plain slowly appears to be peopled by walking figures of individual beaters converging on the course; and their deliberate progress directs all the hares of the countryside towards the coursing ground. As each hare passes the slipping point a couple of well-trained greyhounds is let in pursuit. It seems that the hare cannot have a chance with these two enormous enemies speeding along behind him. They know the game. They are trained to it. The hare is an amateur. But as these great enemies are about to spring upon him, nine times out of ten he doubles back and scampers off in the opposite direction, leaving his pursuers with no one to pursue. And how utterly baffled the greyhounds look! Then the greyhounds’ owners go and lead them in, but as they come off the coursing ground it is obvious that coursing has none of the sensuous physical effect upon the greyhounds that fox-hunting has upon foxhounds. Why is this? Because greyhounds have no scent. They pursue only by their wonderful powers of sight, and coursing seems to them almost like the intellectual chase of a research professor following, one after the other, some lost historical clues.

  There is always one week in the year when the valleys in the Wiltshire Downs are suddenly scented with the violets which are appearing, and at the same moment the hawks arrive on the high ground. The Church House at Shrewton, only a few miles from Druid’s Lodge, till 1939 was the headquarters of the old hawking club. A few days before the Easter meeting, a black four-wheeled van could be seen driving cautiously along the roads. It was stalking the rooks, but these recognised it as soon as it appeared and at once flew away to any trees which were within half a mile’s distance. They knew the van contained the club hawks and that it was watching their rookery to learn their usual flights, but they never could get out of sight of it. Meanwhile the members of the club arrived, about twenty in number. They were a picturesque group in their green velveteen coats, some of them carrying their own hawks, though as time went on they nearly all used the club ones.

  This club has a long history. Mr Hutton writes, in Highways and Byways of Wiltshire, that:

  “It is the builder of Everley House, Sir Ralph Sadlier, that we think of upon these windy downs where the sport he loved still flourishes as nowhere else in England. Sir Ralph was a great falconer and even when he was sent to Tetbury as gaoler to Mary, Queen of Scots, he could not refrain from his favourite sport, nor from allowing his prisoner to share it with him.”

  The names of the hawks as enumerated by Isaak Walton are most romantic:

  “The gerfalcon and jerkin,

  The falcon and tassel-gentle,

  The laner and laneret,

  The bockerel and bockeret,

  The saker and sacaret,

  The merlin and jack-merlin,

  The hobby and jack:

  There is the stelletto of Spain,

  The blood-red rook from Turkey,

  The waskite from Virginia:

  “And there is of short-winged hawks,

  The eagle and iron,

  The goshawk and tarcel,

  The sparhawk and musket,

  The French pie of two sorts.

  “These are reckoned hawks of note and worth, but we have

  also of an inferior rank,

  The stanyel, the ringtail,

  The raven, the buzzard,

  The forked kite, the bald buzzard,

  The hen-driver, and other that I forbear to name.”

  In command of this fantastic army was the falconer, whose name carries with it all the romance of the days of chivalry. Today it indicates a now rare and very skilled mediæval craft. It was the falconer who was responsible for that black van, but before his hawks had arrived in that, they had had many months of careful training
. The falconer stole the baby hawks from their nests and put them in his “ nursery” on an isolated spot near some high trees. This was a square house built of hurdles, and one side of it was left open. For the first few weeks, like other babies, the young hawks did little but eat, although their food, unlike that of human babies, was raw meat twice a day. In a short time they poked their little heads out of their dwelling and soon were seen sitting outside it, but the falconer continued to feed them in the nursery to make sure that they should return. When they began to make their first little flights round and round, a loop was put round their legs so that they should not fly right away. Directly a young hawk begins to pursue anything, he has to be caught, or he will be gone altogether. At this time in their lives their food is placed upon blocks of wood standing in the open air, and when the falconer wants to catch any particular hawk he packs one of these blocks round with feathers concealing a lasso. The falconer holds the end of the string and hides in the hack-house (as the nursery is called, while hawk training is called hacking). Thus he secures the truant with the lasso. This art requires great expertness.

  There was a famous hawking match at Stonehenge in 1780, when Lord Orford brought “ten other gentlemen of the highest rank” for a match against ten Wiltshire gentlemen. The local paper says that although the match was undecided after five courses the sportsmen enjoyed it so much that they all decided they would come again.

  In 1853 there was another “ grand day’s hawking” on Mr Sainsbury’s farm near West Lavington. About fifteen hundred spectators watched the sport. The day was organised in honour of the Duke of St Albans, the Hereditary Grand Falconer of England, who brought his own six peregrines, and they flew after rooks and pigeons only. The peregrines were “ much admired in their caparisons”, and it was agreed that the females were much stronger and much more courageous than the males.