Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors

by English Historical Fiction Authors

  The actual coach fare came to a guinea (getting on for a hundred dollars nowadays), and these figures have to be seen in the light of farm labourers having to get by on ten shillings a week!

  Why the turnpikes? Their frequency increased as a direct result of the Duke of Cumberland’s campaign against the Jacobites in 1745/6. Moving troops north to meet the rebels was handicapped by the dreadful state of the roads, and in the wake of the Duke’s criticism, Parliament encouraged local communities to form Turnpike Trusts. In return for filling in potholes and re-surfacing and maintaining the roads, each Trust was entitled to levy a toll.

  Within a couple of decades roads had improved dramatically—to the extent that some coach operators were able to run throughout the night. Think Georgian carriage lamps and think of a coach-and-four thundering through the darkness! The result was a dramatic decrease in journey times. The cost of travel in turn came down, as the operators reduced their overheads by cutting out the need to stay overnight, for instance on the journey between London and Bristol.

  Stand And Deliver...Your Tolls?: The Rise and Fall of the Turnpikes

  by J.A. Beard

  Of all the benefits of modern industrialized civilization, roads are perhaps one we take the most for granted. Perhaps quality roads and ease of transport seem not all that worthy of special attention. Many ancient civilizations, after all, had developed fine road networks. At the dawn of the Georgian age, however, the quality of many roads in England left much to be desired.

  First, let’s take a step back and consider many roads prior to the 18th century. During this period, the resources and funds for road maintenance were maintained mostly at the parish level. Paving of any form certainly was limited. This was adequate for making sure various local roads were decent, but the system didn’t do much to maintain the quality of distant roads and the intermediate roads connecting various far-flung locales.

  The net result was a haphazard system of road improvements of varying quality. Wheeled travel was often unpleasant and dangerous. Rugged road conditions and holes could easily lead to accidents.

  Inclement weather only made things worse, and England is far from an arid country. It was somewhat difficult to drive a coach through a muddied mess. Riding a horse was more manageable, but not necessarily comfortable or practical depending on one’s circumstances. Economic improvements, along with the accompanying transportation of heavier amounts of goods, also contributed to wear and tear on many a poor-quality road.

  Even if the Georgian-era traveler ignored the poor quality of the roads and the difficulties associated with weather, there also was the unpleasant issue of highwaymen. The increase in traffic and trade travel, particularly in the environs of London, hadn’t been lost on the criminal element. The lack of an organized police force, let alone anything akin to a highway patrol, only contributed to the problem. A swift, mounted criminal could wave a pistol and demand that someone, “Stand and deliver!” often with impunity despite the threat of execution or transportation to Australia.

  Things began to turn around for the often poor, sad, and unsafe roads of England at the beginning of the 18th century because of the Turnpike Acts. Following up on earlier parliamentary acts, in 1696, the first Turnpike Act was enacted, the first of many to follow.

  So what were these Turnpike Acts, why did they have to pass so many, and what did they have to do with road quality and highwaymen?

  These acts established Turnpike Trusts. These trusts were granted the responsibility of taking care of a certain portion of a road and were also granted several legal tools to do this, including two of particular importance: the right to collect tolls and the right to control access on roads through the use of both gates and men. The name turnpike itself comes from gate designs that involved pike-like constructions on crossbars that could be rotated, though not every tollgate necessarily had such a design, and now, of course, the word turnpike has evolved into just a general term for toll road.

  The trusts could each handle their various roads and road sections as they saw fit, so many would farm out the actual administration of the trusts to other enterprising people. These sort of trust subcontractors, as it were, would then do their best to efficiently run the trusts for a profit.

  In the early years of the system, the various turnpike roads weren’t necessarily all that much better maintained than before, but technichal advances led to general quality improvements, particularly in the latter half of the 18th century, which, in turn, fueled a massive expansion of the system, with a general slowing of expansion with the coming of the 19th century.

  While the trusts, in general, contributed to road improvements that helped reduce transport times and the general quality and safety of travel, they also improved general security. Although there were some other contributory factors, the rise of the turnpike system, particularly on high traffic roads, greatly contributed to the decline of highwaymen. The presence of so many guarded gates made post-robbery escapes far more difficult.

  Although there were nearly one thousand trusts in place by the end of the Regency, and thus the tail end of the Georgian era, in 1820, it’s important to note that the majority of roads in England were still maintained by parishes and other local entities. That being said, many major important roads were under the control of turnpike trusts.

  Although, like so many things, the decline of the turnpike system was multi-factorial, the most fundamental contributory factor was the rise of a swifter and more efficient means of mass transit: the railroads. By the end of the 19th century, a stronger central government, municipalities, and county councils took down the gates and took over the responsibility of maintaining the roads. Only a smattering of smaller private roads, tolled bridges, tolled tunnels, and the newer M6 Toll remain as the descendants, direct and indirect, of the extensive system that once covered tens of thousands of kilometers.

  Top Ten Tourist Attractions in London, 1780

  by Mike Rendell

  Look at a current list of the most popular tourist attractions in London and you would probably come up with a Top Ten which would include the British Museum, the Tate Modern, the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the London Eye, the Science Museum, the V&A, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Works, the National Maritime Museum, and the Tower of London. Throw in St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and you have a dozen of the most popular sites in the capital, visited by millions of people every year.

  But sight-seeing is not new, and it begs the question: what would that list have looked like if it had been prepared 250 years ago? Which museums had opened their doors? Where were the popular art galleries? Would it have been that different from our modern list?

  Of course, I do not have admission figures for the Georgian era, but what I do have is my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s diaries, and in these I can see what he liked to visit—and perhaps the results are not so different from today’s tourist attractions. Sure, we didn’t see the London Eye in the 1780s, but we did have something else which gave panoramic views of the city before skyscrapers and tower blocks interrupted the scene. My ancestor Richard Hall may not have had the Tate Modern, but he had other galleries and exhibitions to look at, and here follows my own Top Ten from the 1780s—a personal selection of places to visit if the hero or heroine in your novel is coming to London.

  The Tower

  It may no longer have been the home of the Astronomer Royal, but it did have lots of other things—the Royal Regalia, the Royal Menagerie, and the Royal Mint.

  It may come as a surprise that tourists could call round and watch the coins being minted, but that is exactly what my ancestor Richard Hall did in 1771. The Tower was only a few hundred yards from his shop and home at One London Bridge. He and his friends would have seen half guineas being minted (small gold coins worth ten shillings and sixpence—the equivalent of perhaps £45/$70 in terms of current b
uying-power).

  They bought three pence worth of macaroons (almond-based sweets) and ate them as they wandered around, and they paid the driver to keep the horse-drawn carriage waiting outside so that they could avoid the rain on the journey home. Richard bought a pamphlet listing the royal regalia. It cost him an entrance fee of one shilling a head to view the coronation jewels, etc. because he went in a group (the rate went up by half as much again for solo visitors).

  The British Museum

  The British Museum opened in 1759 and Richard went to see it the following year. Visitor numbers were strictly controlled—you ordered a ticket some days in advance and were given a fixed time and date to call. Visitors were accompanied by a guide and taken round in groups of a dozen.

  The original museum was housed in Montagu House, pulled down in the 1840s. Entry was free and given to “all studious and curious Persons” and included the chance to see the vast collection of natural curiosities (shells, fossils, insects, and natural phenomena) built up by Sir Hans Sloane, as well as the magnificent bequest from George II of the old Royal Library.

  The Monument

  202 feet high, the Wren-designed Monument is exactly 202 feet from where the Great Fire of London broke out in Pudding Lane in 1666. The 311 steps up the winding staircase led to an amazing panoramic view of the city. Richard would have been able to look immediately below him and see his shop next to St. Magnus the Martyr Church, and at London Bridge crossing the Thames over to where he had been brought up as a youngster in Southwark.

  If he turned round and faced north, he would have observed how the rapidly expanding city had swallowed up farmland in the aftermath of the Great Fire, as far as the eye could see. The climb to the top was not for the fainthearted: there was no safety cage at the top until 1842, and there were several instances of people falling or jumping to their death.

  The Royal Academy

  Richard bought an engraving showing “the back front of the New Royal Academy” when he visited it in 1780. The building opened twelve years before, and by 1781 some 547 paintings were displayed. By 1801 the number had almost doubled, and in accordance with the taste of the day, paintings were displayed closely together, from floor to ceiling.

  Pictures at Spring Gardens (otherwise known as Vauxhall Gardens)

  For his one shilling admission in 1780 Richard would have been able to see all levels of London life. The gardens were frequented by anyone who was anyone (the Prince of Wales and his aristocratic buddies were regular visitors) as well as by the lowest of the low. Promenading gave the opportunity to see and be seen, and as darkness fell, the place was illuminated with oil lamps, music was played, and guests took their seats in the fifty or so supper boxes. Each was adorned with a different painting, and in the daytime these were available for the general public to view.

  Cox’s Museum

  James Cox was a jeweller who made fabulous bejewelled automata (i.e. items with clockwork moving parts). At one stage he claimed to have a thousand silversmiths and jewellery workers in his employ, turning out objects for places such as the Imperial courts in Russia and China.

  He opened a museum at Charing Cross to display some of his wares. Entrance was not cheap (Richard would have paid ten shillings and sixpence per head to go in—and then forked out the same again for the official catalogue). But what a spectacle! He would have been greeted by a gold dais, surmounted by giant paintings of King George II and his Queen, painted by the court painter Zoffany. From there he would have been led through a succession of salons, each exhibiting things such as full sized tigers and elephants made of silver and gold, studded with precious stones. He may have seen the gorgeous life-sized silver swan, with its articulated neck which enabled it to bend forward and appear to pull a silver fish from the water (still in working order today, and nowadays to be seen at the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle).

  Time and time again Richard went back to see the display, taking a succession of guests with him throughout the 1770s.

  Don Saltero’s

  Don Saltero was in reality John Salter, and he ran a coffee house by the side of the Thames in Chelsea. He thought a Spanish variant of his name gave a little added colour—and his was no ordinary coffee shop. It was a veritable treasure trove of tat—a museum where display cabinets filled every space and exhibits hung down from the ceiling. Natural curiosities, holy relics, fossils, shells, coins, and medals—anything and everything was displayed. Entrance was free as long as the visitor bought a cup of coffee—or, as in Richard’s case, the visitor purchased an exhibit. Thirteen shillings appears to have been paid for shells, and I still have Richard’s collection today.

  Mrs. Wright’s Waxworks

  Before Madame Tussaud came to London (and got trapped here because of the war with France) there had been a succession of wax-works. The one Richard favoured was in Pall Mall and was run by an American woman called Mrs. Wright. She created a sensation with her models of the Great and the Good, and reportedly enjoyed playing tricks on people by arranging her models in life-like poses on a settee, and watching as the visitors tried to strike up a conversation! Mrs. Wright later sought a pension from the U.S. Government, claiming that she had in fact been acting as a spy while in England, sounding out politicians about their plans during the War of Independence and smuggling notes back to America, rolled up inside the wax effigies which she had made.

  The Leverian (Holophusicon)

  Writing in 1780, Richard Hall mentioned that he went with “Wife, Daughter, son Francis and Sophy to see Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum of Natural Curiosities—and curious they indeed are! Dined afterward at a steakhouse.”

  The Leverian as it was called (when it wasn’t going by the weird name of the Holophusicon) had opened in 1775 and entertained visitors for over twelve years. Inside were a small sample (well, 25,000!) of Sir Ashton’s vast collection of fossils, shells, and animals (birds, insects, reptiles, fish, monkeys and so on).

  Richard would have paid over twenty five shillings (equivalent to perhaps a hundred pounds or 150 dollars) for his party to explore the exhibition at Leicester House, and for this they would also have been able to marvel at some of the curiosities brought back by Captain James Cook from his Pacific voyages.

  The Royal Hospital

  Richard Hall noted in his diary that he and Martha (his daughter) went by boat to Greenwich and ate whitebait. He would have marveled at the beautiful buildings making up the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich (subsequently the Royal Naval College). Designed by Sir Christopher Wren and constructed in various stages throughout the first half of the century, the buildings could accommodate up to 1500 sick and injured sailors. When the Baroque Painted Chapel in the King William Court was finished, it was deemed far too grand for the sailors and it became a tourist attraction.

  What comes across from my ancestor’s diaries is how much time (and money!) he was prepared to spend entertaining friends and showing them the sights.

  Sir Sidney Smith and the Siege of Acre, 1799

  by M.M. Bennetts

  One of the perennial features of British history from Tudor times onwards is the rivalry with France for maritime power and influence and colonial possessions. This had already proved an economically crippling policy for France during much of the 18th century—it had spurred the Seven Years’ War during which France lost both her North American colonies and her navy, and it prompted the financing of the American Rebellion against Great Britain, which had ultimately bankrupted France and brought on the Revolution of 1789.

  Still, the French strategy of the day seemed to be, why abandon a losing game?

  In 1798, the young General Bonaparte convinced the Directory that conquering Egypt was just the ticket to curb Britain’s overseas expansion. It would give them a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, and they could wallow in their lust for ancient Oriental splendour and
knowledge. What could be better? The Egyptian government was weak, disorganized, and corrupt and therefore easy to topple, and their overlords, the Ottomans, weren’t paying much attention anyway. Right?

  Plus, with a charismatic leader like Napoleon, they could forge on up through the countries of the Middle East and seize Constantinople, thus bringing liberty, fraternity, and all those good things to the enslaved peoples of the Ottoman Empire. And from there, press on in the footsteps of Alexander the Great all the way to India and challenge British influence there.

  Yes, it would be the biggest land-grab in history, but what of that?

  The Directory were delighted with the prospect of removing young Bonaparte from Paris (let him go off and be someone else’s headache for a while)—he was getting too popular and he had the support of the army too. So they sanctioned the expedition.

  There was of course the now-famous chase around the Mediterranean by Admiral Nelson and the Fleet which ended with the Battle of the Nile, during which Nelson destroyed the French fleet, thus marooning the French army in Egypt. For which victory Lord Nelson became the ultimate national hero. But I don’t want to talk about that.

  The person I want to talk about is Captain Sir William Sidney Smith (1764-1840), an Englishman of extra-ordinary cunning and intelligence. He was said to be “of middling stature, good-looking, with tremendous moustachios, a pair of penetrating black eyes, an intelligent countenance, with a gentlemanly air, expressive of good nature and kindness of heart.”