The Old Dog and Duck

by Albert Jack

  Three Scottish noblemen – William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, Arthur Elphinstone, 6th Baron Balmerinoch, and Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat – were caught and immediately sent for trial in London, where all three were found guilty of high treason. Elphinstone and Boyd were publicly beheaded on Tower Hill in London on 18 August 1746. Unrepentant to the end, Elphinstone made a speech on the scaffold which he ended with the following words: ‘If I had a thousand lives, I would lay them all down in the same cause.’ Lord Lovat, meanwhile, was beheaded on 9 April the following year, the last man ever to be executed on Tower Hill.

  In 1759, during the Seven Years’ War, when England and France were yet again pitted against each other, the French planned another invasion, with a force of 100,000 men. Again they were hopeful of Jacobite support from the north and Charles was invited to a meeting with the French foreign minister to discuss the arrangements. When he turned up drunk and belligerent, the unimpressed French swiftly abandoned their plans, and Charles lost for ever the chance to recover the thrones of England and Scotland. Any pub in England or Scotland bearing the name the Three Lords is either demonstrating its support for the Young Pretender or reminding you that, however treacherous the ruling classes can be, at least some of them get their comeuppance (one pub sign has the executioner’s axe prominently displayed). But don’t let that stop you from enjoying a drink there.

  The Three Tuns

  WHEN THREE UNITS ARE DEFINITELY MORE THAN ENOUGH…

  A tun is an old English unit of volume, evolving from a combination of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon systems of weights and measures that were eventually replaced in 1824 by the imperial system. A tun, the equivalent of 256 gallons, was the largest unit of liquid measure for a wine cask. It is four times larger than the Hogshead, another well-known name for a pub. In between comes the 128-gallon butt (it’s easy to see why that didn’t catch on as a pub name).

  Three tuns appear on the crest of the Worshipful Company of Vintners, alongside a brace of swans (see THE SWAN WITH TWO NECKS). Hence three tuns displayed outside an inn or tavern demonstrated a connection with the company. The Vintners’ motto, ‘Vinum Exhilarat Animum’, is a Latin expression meaning ‘wine cheers the mind’. I’ll drink to that.

  The Tickled Trout

  DOES TROUT TASTE BETTER WHEN IT’S POACHED?

  While the Trout is quite common as a pub name, the Tickled Trout is more unusual, although a number of British pubs and hotels are so called. In either case, they are usually situated either on or close to a river. For hundreds of years, boys have been taught how to trap animals for the pot, usually a rabbit or a hare, and poaching has been common in times of economic hardship. Lads from families living near a river or lake would have also been taught trout tickling, the art of catching a fish by hand and a more discreet way of fishing than using a rod and tackle, which might alert the gamekeeper. If done properly, the trout will go into a trance-like state after a minute or so (think of what happens when you rub a dog’s stomach) and can then easily be caught and thrown on to the nearest bit of dry land. Despite the risks, ticklers were usually able to escape the long arm of the law, or the short baton of the gamekeeper. Thomas Martindale, in his book Sport, Indeed (1901), explains how it was done:

  The fish are watched working their way up the shallows and rapids. When they come to the shelter of a ledge or rock it is their nature to slide under it and rest. The poacher sees the edge of a fin or the moving tail, or maybe he sees neither; instinct, however, tells him a fish ought to be there, so he takes to the water very carefully and stands up near the spot. He then kneels on one knee and passes his hand, turned with fingers up, deftly under the rock until it comes into contact with the fish’s tail. Then he begins tickling with his forefinger, gradually running his hand along the fish’s belly and further towards its head until it is under the gills. Then comes a quick grasp, a struggle, and the prize is wrenched out of his natural element, stunned with a blow on the head, and landed in the pocket of a poacher.

  But Martindale wasn’t the first to record the art of trout tickling. For that we can go right back to the seventeenth century and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (written in around 1601). In the play the lady-in-waiting Maria refers to Malvolio, whom she is conspiring to trick into acting foolishly, as ‘the trout that must be caught with tickling’ (Act 2, Scene 5).

  The illicit practice continues to this day. As recently as 2004, a young man was fined £100 by New Forest magistrates for ‘tickling two large sea trout’. The newspaper article, under the headline ‘Poacher is Fined for Trout Tickling’, explained how the lad had ‘waded into the river and caught the fish with his bare hands – a method known as tickling – while they were spawning’.

  The Trouble House

  (Near Tetbury, Gloucestershire)

  A PUB THAT LIVES UP TO ITS NAME

  Most pubs, at some point or other, could earn themselves this nickname, especially where I grew up; it goes with the territory. However, this pub, on the road between Tet-bury and Cirencester, is peculiarly deserving of the title. It seems to attract trouble like a magnet.

  In the early part of the nineteenth century the pub, known then as the Wagon and Horses, had become very dilapidated and the landlord decided to rebuild it. But the costs mounted and, halfway through the reconstruction, he fell into such financial difficulty that he hanged himself in despair. The pub was then sold and the new landlord continued with the rebuilding but then he, too, ran into money problems, which so weighed upon him that he also committed suicide, this time by drowning.

  This alone, you might think, would be enough to make the place seem a little unlucky, but the troubles didn’t stop there. The early nineteenth century was also the period of the Swing Riots (see also THE IRON DUKE), a follow-up to the Luddite Rebellion of 1811–12, in which textile workers, fearing that the growing mechanization of the Industrial Revolution would leave them without work, went about destroying the new looms. Some years later, growing economic hardship following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, together with fears that new farm machinery would threaten their already meagre livelihoods, sparked a similar uprising, this time among agricultural workers in the south of England. In Gloucestershire at around that time, feeling was intense and any new machinery had to be delivered with the utmost secrecy. One day a carter was attempting to deliver a hay-making machine to a farm near the pub. Although he went about it as clandestinely as he could, his mission was discovered. His horses were set loose and his wagon and its troublesome cargo were burned.

  With their blood up, the local farm workers went on the rampage, seeking out and destroying any other machinery they could find on farms nearby. Growing in size and hot-headedness, the mob had reached the Wagon and Horses when they were met by the local militia, who eventually quelled the violence, no doubt with a little violence of their own. Following this incident, but evidently not put off by it, a wealthy landowner bought the inn, did it up (amazingly, without falling into debt) and renamed it the Trouble House.

  However, it could well be that the unusual name of the pub has nothing to do with the troubles that have beset it over the years. The ground near the pub is regularly flooded and is known historically as the Troubles. Meanwhile the pub itself has lent its name to a couple of other local features. A copse known as Trouble House Cover lies to the north, while not far from the pub was its own railway station. Opened in 1959, the Trouble House Halt was the only station in England built specifically to serve a pub. It closed in 1964 (thanks to Dr Beeching, to whom a coffin filled with empty bottles was sent on the last train from the Halt) but is one of a list of stations commemorated in the song ‘The Slow Train’ by Flanders and Swann.

  The Tumbledown Dick

  THE PRODIGAL SON WHO BECAME HEAD OF THE REALM

  England’s most reluctant ruler, Richard was born on 4 October 1626, the third and least favourite of Oliver Cromwell’s sons. As Parliament’s forces became increasingly successful in the Civil War, Oliver grew more an
d more powerful. Richard is believed to have served as a captain in Sir Thomas Fairfax’s New Model Army during the late 1640s, although, unlike his father, with little distinction.

  After Charles I was beheaded in 1649 (see THE KING’S HEAD), England became a commonwealth. A raft of laws were passed, banning everything from football to Christmas. Drunkenness was seen as ungodly and pubs and revelry generally were frowned upon: the popularity of the new government waned dramatically as a result. In 1653, after wars with Ireland and Scotland, a protectorate was established, with Oliver Cromwell taking the title of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. He was sworn in with a ceremony in which he wore plain black clothing, rather than any monarchical regalia. However, from this point on previously republican Cromwell signed his name ‘Oliver P’, standing for ‘Oliver Protector’ – in a similar style to that used by English monarchs – and it soon became the norm for others to address him as ‘Your Highness’.

  During the 1650s, Richard’s lack of ambition appeared to be troubling his father, to the point where, in 1653, he was not included in his father’s ‘Barebones Parliament’, although his younger brother, Henry, was. When Oliver became Lord Protector in 1653, Richard was offered no public role and instead his dissatisfied father wrote to his father-in-law: ‘I would have him mind and understand business, read history and study cosmography and mathematics – these things are good, with subordination to the things of God. Better than idleness or mere outward worldly contents. There are things fit for public service, for which a man is born.’ Richard, on the other hand, excelled at idleness, regularly exceeded his allowance, running up embarrassing debts, and, to his father’s dismay, ignored religion completely.

  But blood finally proved thicker than water and in 1657 Cromwell began to include Richard in affairs of state. In June that year, he was at his father’s side during his second installation as Lord Protector, and the following month was given the role of Chancellor of Oxford University. By December, the prodigal son had even become a member of the Council of State. On the day of Oliver Cromwell’s death the following year, Richard was informed that he was the new leader, but he wasn’t ready to succeed his father.

  Unlike Cromwell senior, Richard had no real military or political experience and therefore failed to win any meaningful respect from either the army or Parliament. To make matters worse, he had inherited a regime that was in debt to the tune of £2 million – billions in today’s terms – and desperate measures had to be taken. In April 1659, when Parliament threatened cuts to reduce army funding, the generals presented a petition to Richard Cromwell, which he, in turn, passed on to Parliament. Ignoring the petition, Parliament instead passed two resolutions banning any further meetings of army officers without the express permission of the Lord Protector and Parliament, and insisting that officers swear an oath promising never to disrupt or prevent the business of Parliament by force.

  The army responded predictably by demanding the dissolution of Parliament. Richard refused but when hostile troops began to gather at St James’s in London, he was forced to concede. Having given in to the troops’ demands, his next mistake was to refuse an offer of heavily armed support from the French ambassador. By then, he was being ridiculed and mocked by enemies and supporters alike, his nicknames ranging from Queen Dick to Tumble-down Dick.

  Before the year was out, so was Richard, having been forced from office, and the monarchy was restored in the shape of King Charles II (see THE ROYAL OAK). In 1660 Richard was forced into exile where, without funds, he lived as a guest of the French court. In 1680 he returned to England and lived extremely quietly in the village of Ches-hunt, Hertfordshire, under the assumed name of John Clarke, dying peacefully at the ripe old age of ninety-one in July 1712. Tumbledown Dick has since become an established figure of speech used to describe anything that does not, or cannot, stand firmly. Pubs were called Tumbledown Dick in celebration at the return of a hard-drinking, hard-living monarch who enjoyed a joke and a good pub.

  The Turk’s Head

  NOT A HUMAN HEAD BUT A NAUTICAL KNOT?

  Some have argued that this name, like THE SARACEN’S HEAD, was inspired by the grim trophies the Crusaders brought back home with them, but there could be another reason, especially if the pub is near the sea. In the villages along the south and west coasts of Britain there is a special knot used in the construction of fishing nets. It’s called the turk’s head because it resembles the large, top-heavy turban a Turk was thought to wear.

  Generally the signs outside Turk’s Heads pubs consist of paintings of swarthy individuals straight from The Arabian Nights, but the hotel in Chickerell in Dorset has a picture of the knot hanging outside it instead.

  The Turnpike

  WHERE ROAD RAGE LED TO RIOTING

  There was a time when a pub calling itself the Turnpike was at the cutting edge. A turnpike or toll road is a road or pathway that can be used by travellers for a fee, or toll, usually collected by a town authority responsible for its upkeep. ‘Turnpike’ can also mean the tollgate itself, the word deriving from a fixed barrier made of sharpened pikes that would have been placed across a road for defence purposes. Later, the turnpike would have been a proper gate that could then be opened to allow passage, closed to prevent it. In the Middle Ages, an era of dirt tracks, toll roads were the motorways, and turnpike inns or taverns the service stations of their day.

  In Tudor times each parish was made responsible for maintaining the roads that passed through it. During the late seventeenth century, this piecemeal approach to road maintenance caused acute problems. As trade increased, the growing numbers of heavy carts and carriages led to serious deterioration in the main routes into London but the local parishes didn’t have the resources needed for their upkeep. In 1706 Turnpike trusts were introduced by Act of Parliament to fund road maintenance and improvement all over the land. By the mid 1800s, there were over 1,000 Turnpike trusts controlling 30,000 miles of road, to which access was regulated by around 8,000 roadside tollgates and barriers.

  Like the Enclosure Acts being enforced at around the same time, in which common land was being taken into private ownership, the new system of toll roads was hugely unpopular. Suddenly communities that had freely used the routes for centuries were being charged to do so. Early legislation gave magistrates powers to punish anyone damaging turnpike property, such as defacing milestones, breaking tollgates or avoiding tolls. Opposition was particularly intense in mountainous regions where good routes were scarce. In 1839, new tolls on old roads sparked the Rebecca Riots in south and mid Wales. Tollgates were vandalized and destroyed by gangs of local men, gatekeepers being told that if they resisted they would be killed. In 1844, the ringleaders were caught and sentenced to transportion to Australia. (To this day there are, however, no pubs called the Turnpike in that part of Britain.)

  But the heyday of the turnpikes was a short one. Toll-gates began to be perceived as an impediment to free trade. The multitude of small trusts were frequently charged with being inefficient and corrupt, and with the development of the rail network the turnpike system was finally phased out. In 1888 an Act of Parliament gave responsibility for the road networks to the local county and borough councils. With that the tollgates were removed and many of the tollhouses put to other use, turned into travellers’ lodges or out-of-town taverns and hotels. Any establishment called the Tollhouse, the Tollgate or the Turnpike is likely to have once been part of a Turnpike trust.

  The Volunteer

  WHEN PUBS BECAME ARMY RECRUITING OFFICES

  It was in 1804 and midway through the Napoleonic Wars that the British government passed the Volunteer Act. The legislation was successfully used to raise an army of civilians to defend the coastline from a potential French invasion. But it was fifty years later that the Act was to really come into its own. Tensions flared between the two old adversaries once more after an assassination attempt on Emperor Napoleon III on 14 January 1858. The French blamed the English
after evidence that would-be assassin Felice Orsini had travelled to England to have his bombs made. British military resources, deployed in the Crimea and other parts of Europe, were already over-stretched and there was every chance that Britain itself could be left defenceless if further conflict broke out.

  When it did, thanks to the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, the British secretary of state for war issued a letter to all the county lieutenants of England authorizing them to form a volunteer rifle corps, especially around the coastal towns, most in need of defence if invasion was imminent. Using local inns and taverns displaying a ‘volunteer’ sign, the men were recruited in huge numbers, leading to the formation of volunteer regiments all over the country, otherwise known as the Riflemen. Alfred Tennyson captured the mood of the country in his own poetic call for volunteers, ‘Riflemen Form’, which was published in The Times (the first and last verse printed here):

  There is a sound of thunder afar,

  Storm in the south that darkens the day,