SOME OUTLYING INGOLDSBY LANDMARKS

NETLEY ABBEY

Three miles from Southampton, in the county of Hampshire—or, as official documents still have it, the county of Southampton—is Netley Abbey, one of the scattered Ingoldsby landmarks outside Kent. It is not evident from the context in the Legends when or on what occasion the author visited Netley, nor does it appear to be explained in the "Life" by his son. The ruined abbey stands almost on the shores of Southampton Water, divided from that beautiful land and seascape only by a road and the gardens of a narrow fringe of villas. The site is naturally lovely, but has been spoiled and vulgarised by the neighbourhood of the great military hospital and the draggle-tailed, unkempt, and sordid line of mean shops and public-houses which that institution has conjured up. So surely as Government buildings—be they hospitals, offices, barracks, or prisons—are erected on any spot, that spot is certain to be spoiled, and this is assuredly no exception. Stucco-fronted public-houses of the "Prince Albert" and "Hero of the Alma" type and period jostle the struggling, compendious greengrocer's shop that deals at one and the same time in greengrocery, half a hundred weight of coals, firewood, and linen drapery, and the picnicker comes in crowds to the spot on Southampton's early-closing days.

How different this from Horace Walpole's description of the place in 1755: "How shall I describe Netley to you? I can only by telling you it is the spot in the world which I and Mr. Chute wish. The ruins are vast, and retain fragments of beautiful fretted roof pendent in the air, with all variety of Gothic patterns of windows wrapped round and round with ivy. Many trees are sprouted up among the walls, and only want to be increased with cypresses. A hill rises above the abbey, encircled with wood. The fort, in which we would build a tower for habitation, remains, with two small platforms. This little castle is buried from the abbey in a wood, in the very centre, on the edge of the hill. On each side breaks in the view of the Southampton sea, deep blue, glistening with silver and vessels; on one side terminated by Southampton, on the other by Calshot Castle, and the Isle of Wight rising above the opposite hills. In short, they are not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise. Oh! the purple abbots! what a spot had they chosen to slumber in! The scene is so beautifully tranquil, yet so lively, that they seem only to have retired into the world."

There are various derivations of the name of Netley, but the true one is doubtless from the Anglo-Saxon "Natanleage," a wooded district. Other "Netleys" occur in the New Forest, and the name compares curiously with that of the little hamlet of "Nately Scures," near Basingstoke, where the suffix derives from the Anglo-Saxon "scora," a shaw or coppice. The abbey was a Cistercian house founded in the reign of, and perhaps by, Henry III., who dedicated it not only to the Virgin Mary, to whom Cistercian houses were always inscribed, but also to his patron saint, Edward the Confessor. The beautiful abbey church escaped the usual fate which befell religious houses at the Dissolution, and remained practically uninjured until so late as the year 1700. Up to that period it had passed through several hands, and although converted into a private residence, with the nave as a kitchen and the other hitherto sacred precincts turned into account for more or less domestic use, the successive owners had allowed no spoliation of its architectural features. But when in 1700 it became the property of Sir Berkeley Lucy, its doom was sealed. He sold the materials of the church to a certain Taylor, a Southampton builder, and Taylor made arrangements to pull the great building down. But Taylor, like Joseph, had a dream. He dreamt that, while engaged in taking down the church roof, the keystone of the vaulting near the great east window fell from its place and killed him. The dream probably had its origin in the warnings that had been given him by superstitious friends some days before, not to touch the abbey with the hands of a spoiler. They would not, they said, for riches untold "be concerned in the demolition of holy and consecrated places." Taylor was equally superstitious and the warning preyed upon his mind, and the dream was the result. The next day he hurried off to another friend, a Mr. Watts, schoolmaster in Southampton and the father of that celebrated divine Dr. Isaac Watts, author of "How doth the little busy bee" and other improving verse. Mr. Watts, schoolmaster, seems to have been an unworthy progenitor of that highly moral cleric, and gave the troubled Taylor the cynical advice "to have no personal concern in pulling down the building." This admirable, if somewhat forbiddingly rationalistic, counsel was, however, disregarded by the unhappy contractor, who, when actively engaged among his workmen was felled to the ground exactly in the manner he had dreamt. The falling keystone crushed his skull in, and the genius of the place was thus avenged. The workmen, who had heard the story of the dream and had laughed at it, then left off work in terror, and no one else was found bold enough to proceed with it. To this we owe the fact that the ruins are still in existence, but it seems a pity that the vengeful spirit could have found no method of getting his blow in before the abbey was almost wholly unroofed. Had Taylor been slain by the first stone wrenched from the groining the swiftness of the retribution would have rendered it even more dramatic, and would have resulted in the beautiful building being roofed to this day.

As it is, the ruins are now open to the sky, and time and the seasons have wrought more havoc in the two centuries that have passed than was inflicted by Taylor or his men. Time, weather, and vandal visitors, that is to say—these last we must by no means forget. Not that they are likely to be forgotten by the pilgrim to this shrine, for the walls are hacked and inscribed with the pocket-knives and pencils of two centuries of holiday-makers, pricked[Pg 261]
[Pg 262] on to it by a noble rage for immortality manifesting itself in this ignoble way. The earlier scrawls of John Jones or William Robinson have themselves, almost by lapse of time, come within the range of archÆology. From 1700 to about 1860 these, almost as destructive as the tooth of time, had their wicked will of the place, and it was under such circumstances and the added desecrations of bottled beer, drunken fiddling, and rowdy picnicking, that Barham saw it:

Since the dawning of the 'sixties, a better taste has prevailed, and promiscuous jollification has been checked alike by the levying of an entrance fee and by an improvement in manners; but the providing of teas within the ruins is objectionable, and the quality of the "Souchong" and its accompanying sawdusty cake might easily be better—it could not possibly be worse.

It is best to visit Netley when the crowd may reasonably be expected to have left. At such a time, shortly before sunset, the spot is most impressive. The jackdaws, who seem to have the right of domicile in all ruinated buildings, have gone, clamorous, to bed in the chinks of wall and airy gable, and one shares the smooth lawns only with the robins, whose pretty confidence in the harmlessness of human beings is the most touching thing in so-called "wild" nature. The first stanza of Barham's poem is excellently descriptive of the time and place, save that "roofless tower" is a poetic figure unwarranted by facts—Netley Abbey has no towers:

He then goes on to enlarge upon the legend of a refractory nun having been walled up alive in the abbey, and to meditate upon the justice of Heaven fallen upon Netley in the time of Henry VIII.:

The context gives the date of the ruin of the fabric as at that period; but we have already seen that this took place quite a hundred and sixty years later. The curious, too, might ask what the nun was doing in a Cistercian monastery. It is not a little singular to note that Barham has made no use, and indeed no mention, of the picturesque legend of Taylor's death.

THE DEAD DRUMMER

A LEGEND OF SALISBURY PLAIN

Salisbury Plain is, as Ingoldsby rightly assures us, bleak and barren. It is remarkable to note that, although as he truly says in the legend itself he was never there, he catches exactly the spirit of that dreary Wiltshire table-land, and describes it with such insight, picturesqueness, and economy of words and space as never at any other time have been used to give a proper mental picture of that vast solitude. It is far removed from the Ingoldsby Country proper, and might easily have been more loosely described in those opening lines; but they are perfect, alike topographically and for the production of that mental picture required to start the tale of horror.

The exact spot on the plain described in the legend where the two sailors, overtaken by the storm, vainly seek shelter, and where the vision of the dead drummer appears, can, thanks to the precision of the verse, be readily found. It is in the central and wildest spot of the wilderness, two miles almost due east of the small village of Tilshead. Let us here refer to the legend:

Black Down the surrounding expanse is named. Bare and bleak, the close grass a wan sage-green, the white road divides across the treeless undulations, with a signpost directing right and left to Devizes and Lavington, exactly as described. But alterations are now in the making, and when completed will thoroughly alter and abolish the solitude of the place. "They have spoiled my battlefield," exclaimed the Duke of Wellington when he revisited Waterloo and found it stuck full of monuments; and the "East Camp" on the right of this spot, and the "West Camp" on the left, with all the permanent buildings and the great masses of troops now established on the plain, are changing it beyond recognition. Where the bustard lingered longest and the infrequent traveller came timorously, the bugles blow and crowded battalions manoeuvre every day.

But the true story of the dead drummer is very different from Ingoldsby's version. He has taken many liberties, both as regards scene and names, with the real facts of a remarkable case—for the legend is founded upon facts.

It seems that on Thursday, June 15th, 1786, two sailors paid off from H.M.S. Sampson at Plymouth came tramping up to London along the old Exeter Road. Their names were Gervase (or Jarvis) Matcham and John Shepherd. They came nowhere near Salisbury Plain, but pursued their course direct along the old coach road from Blandford towards Salisbury. Near the "Woodyates Inn" they were overtaken by a thunderstorm, when Matcham startled his messmate by showing extraordinary signs of horror and distracted faculties, running to and fro, falling on his knees, and imploring mercy of some invisible enemy. To his companion's questions he answered that he saw several strange and dismal spectres, particularly one in the shape of a woman, towards which he advanced, when it instantly sank into the earth and a large stone rose up in its place. Other large stones also rolled upon the ground before him, and came dashing against his feet. There can be no doubt that both Matcham and Shepherd were unnerved by the violence of the thunder and lightning, and that the terror of Matcham, who had very special reasons for fright, communicated itself to his friend to such a degree that when Matcham's diseased imagination saw moving shapes which had no existence, Shepherd readily saw them also. Thus, when the terrified Matcham fancied he saw numbers of stones with glaring eyes turn over and keep pace with them along the road, Shepherd very soon became afflicted with what specialists in mental phenomena term "collective hallucination."

They then agreed to walk on either side of the road, and so perceive, by the behaviour of the stones, which of them it was who had so affronted God. The stones then exclusively accompanied Matcham all the way to the inn, where he beheld the Saviour and the drummer-boy, very terrible and accusing. To the roll of a drum, and in a terrific flash of lightning, they dissolved into dust.

Thereupon, overcome by these terrors, Matcham made confession there and then to Shepherd of a murder he had committed six years earlier, on the Great North Road, and begged his companion to hand him over to the nearest magistrate, in order that the avenging spectres and justice might be satisfied. He was accordingly committed at Salisbury pending inquiries as to the truth of his confession.

Those inquiries disclosed a remarkable story. Matcham, it appeared, was the son of a farmer of Frodingham, Yorkshire. When in his twelfth year he had run away from home and became a jockey. In the course of this employment he was despatched to Russia, in charge of some horses sent by the Duke of Northumberland to the Empress, and, returning to London well supplied with money, dissipated it all in evil courses. He then shipped as a sailor on board the Medway man-o'-war, but after a short experience of fighting managed to desert. He had no sooner landed in England after this escapade than he was seized by one of the pressgangs then scouring the seaports, and shipped aboard the Ariadne. Succeeding, when off Yarmouth, in an attempt to escape, he enlisted in the 13th Regiment of Foot, but, deserting again near Chatham, set out to tramp home, through London, to Yorkshire, passing Huntingdon on the way. The 49th Regiment was then recruiting in that district, and this extraordinary Matcham promptly enlisted in it.

Shortly after having joined, he was sent on the morning of August 19th, 1780, from Huntingdon to Diddington, five miles distant, to draw some subsistence-money, between six and seven pounds, from a Major Reynolds. With him went a drummer-boy, Benjamin Jones, aged about sixteen, son of the recruiting sergeant. Having drawn the money, they returned along the high-road. Instead of turning off to Huntingdon, Matcham induced the boy to go on with him in the direction of Alconbury, and picking a quarrel with him because he refused to stop and drink at a wayside public-house, knocked him down at a lonely spot still known as "Matcham's Bridge" and cut his throat there. He then made off with the money to London, leaving the body by the roadside. Shipping again in the Navy, he saw six years of hard fighting under Rodney and Hood, being finally paid off, as at first described.

In the contemporary account of this remarkable affair, taken down from Matcham's own statements by the chaplain of the gaol at Huntingdon, whither he was conveyed for trial from Salisbury, he stated that he was drunk at the time when the crime was committed, and did it, being suddenly instigated by the Devil, without any premeditated design. Further, that he had never afterwards had a single day's peace of mind. He was duly found guilty, and executed on August 2nd, 1786, his body being afterwards gibbeted on Alconbury Hill.