Part 10 (2/2)
There was this virtue about the Parish Stocks, that it was a wholesome correction always ready. It was not necessary to caution a man as to what he might say, before clapping him in the stocks. Nor was much formality needed--he was drunk, quarrelling, fighting, or brawling, it was enough; and the man who could not stand was provided with a seat at the expense of the parish. Indeed, I am told that in one parish, near Royston, a farmer, who was himself generally in the same condition, finding one of his men drunk, would remark that one drunken man was enough on a farm, and would bundle the other drunkard off to the stocks without the least respect for, or care about, informing a magistrate thereof!
The Parish Stocks were, as may be supposed, sometimes tampered with, and became the medium of practical jokes, of which, perhaps, the best story on record is that of a Chief Justice in the stocks. The story is as follows:--
Lord Camden, when Chief Justice, was on a visit to Lord Dacre, his brother-in-law, at Alely in Ess.e.x, and had walked out with a gentleman to the hill where, on the summit by the roadside, were the Parish Stocks. He sat down upon them, and asked his companion to open them, as he had an inclination to know what the punishment was. This being done the gentleman took a book from his pocket and sauntered on until he forgot the Judge and his situation, and returned to Lord Dacre. The learned Judge was soon tired of his situation, but found himself unequal to open the stocks! He asked a countryman pa.s.sing by to a.s.sist him in obtaining his liberty, who said ”No, old gentleman, you were not placed there for nothing”--and left him until he was released by some of the servants who were accidentally going that way! Not long after he presided at a trial in which a charge was brought against a magistrate for false imprisonment and setting the plaintiff in the stocks. The counsel for the defendant made light of the charge and particularly of setting in the stocks, which, he said, everybody knew, was no punishment at all! The Lord Chief Justice rose, and, leaning over the Bench, said, in a half whisper--”Brother, were you ever in the stocks?” The Barrister replied, ”Really, my Lord, never.”--”Then, I have been,” rejoined his Lords.h.i.+p, ”and I do a.s.sure you, brother, it is not such a trifle as you represent!”
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One cannot refrain from expressing a lingering sense of regret over the last of its kind, whether of the last of the Mohicans, or the last minstrel. The parish of Meldreth, I relieve, stands alone in the Cambridges.h.i.+re side of the Royston district as still possessing the visible framework of its old Parish Stocks, thanks to the commendable interest taken in the preservation of old time memorials by Mr. George Sandys, of Royston, by whom the Meldreth Stocks were some time ago ”restored,” or, rather, the original pieces were brought more securely together into one visible whole. The parish of Meldreth, too, affords, I believe, one of the latest, if not the latest, instances of placing a person in the stocks, when, some forty or fifty years ago, a man was ”stocked” for brawling in Church or some such misbehaviour. These stocks, when they were renovated by Mr. Sandys, had lost the upper part which completed the process of fastening an offender in them, but such as they then were will be seen in the ill.u.s.tration on the opposite page, which is reproduced from an excellent photograph taken by Mr. F.
R. Hinkins, of Royston. The original upper part has since been found and placed in position by Mr. A. Jarman, of Meldreth.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD PARISH STOCKS AT MELDRETH.]
Some other things deserve to be mentioned as old penalties besides actual punishment for crimes. One of these was the penalty for _felo de se_, so well described by Hood in his punning verses on Faithless Nelly Gray and Ben Battle, the soldier bold, who hung himself, and--
A dozen men sat on his corpse, To find out how he died; And they buried Ben at four cross-roads, With a stake in his inside.
In 1779, John Stanford, who hung himself at the Red Lion, Kneesworth, was found to be a _felo de se_, and was ”ordered to be buried in a cross-road.”
In 1765, the coroner's inquest who sat upon the body of one, Howard, a schoolmaster of Litlington, who, ”after shooting Mr. Whedd, of Fowlmere, cut his own throat,” found a verdict of _felo de se_, upon which he was ordered to be buried in the high cross-way, but whether a stake was placed through the body, either in this or the Kneesworth case, is not stated. The custom of burying a _felo de se_ at four cross-roads continued long after the barbarous and senseless indignity of driving a stake through the body was discontinued, and persons still living remember burials at such spots as the entrance to Melbourn, and at similar spots in other villages. Another penal order was for the body to be ”anatomised” after execution, as in the case of a man named Stickwood for murdering Andrew Nunn, at Fowlmere, in 1775.
Sometimes as an alternative penalty for crimes was the system of enlistment for the Army and Navy, with which may be coupled the high-handed proceedings of the ”Press-gang.” The Press-gang {88} was practically a recognised part of the machinery of the State. The law, as to recruiting, sanctioned what would now be considered most tyrannical proceedings; justices of the peace were directed to make ”a speedy and effectual levy of such able-bodied men as are not younger than seventeen nor more than forty-five, nor Papists.” The means for enforcing this, not only along river-sides, but often in inland country villages, was often brutal, and led to determined resistance and sometimes loss of life. There is a story in Cornwall of a bevy of girls dressing themselves up as sailors, and acting the part of the Press-gang so well that they actually put their own sweethearts to flight from the quarries in which they were working!
The dread of compulsory service was so great that the lot might fall upon men to whom the name of war was a terror. One case of this kind occurred in a village near Royston in which two men were drawn to proceed to Ireland for service, and one of them actually died of the shock and fright and sudden wrench from old a.s.sociations, after reaching Liverpool on his way to Ireland!
On the subject of pressing for the services, the following characteristic entry occurs in the Royston parish books for the year 1790:--
”Ordered that the Wife of March Brown be permitted to leave the House as she says her husband is Pressed and gone to sea, and that she came to the parish for a few clothes only, as she can get her living in London by earning two s.h.i.+llings a Day by making Breeches for Rag fair.”
Though the stocks and the gallows may seem a long way apart, yet they were really very near in the degrees of crime which linked them, and what now would appear a minor offence, had inevitably linked with it the ”awful sentence of the law.”
At the Bury St. Edmunds a.s.sizes, in 1790, 14 persons received sentence of death. The extraordinary number of persons who were hung as the a.s.sizes came round will be best understood by some figures of death sentences for the March a.s.sizes, 1792:--Hertford 2, Cambs. 4, Bedford 4, Northampton 5, Chelmsford 4, Oxford 2, Thetford 2, Bury 6, York 17, Exeter 16, East Grinstead 3, Derby 2, Nottingham 2, Leicester 2, Gloucester 6, Taunton 3, Kingston 12. At one only of the above a.s.sizes the number of prisoners of all kinds for trial was 85. In June, 1785, twenty-five persons were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey, and 15 of them were hung together the next week. In 1788 there were 81 capital convicts awaiting execution in Newgate, and in 1792 thirteen prisoners were sentenced to death for horse-stealing and lesser offences at a single sessions in London!
At the Herts. a.s.sizes in 1802, John Wood, a carpenter, of Royston, was ordered to be transported for fourteen years for having some forged bank notes concealed in his workshop. In the same year, {89} at the Cambs. a.s.sizes, William Wright, a native of Foxton, was sentenced to death and executed at Cambridge, for uttering forged Bank of England notes. At the Hertford a.s.sizes, in 1801, William c.o.x, for getting fire to a hovel of wheat at Walkern, was sentenced to death. Among other oddly sounding capital offences, I find that a man named Horn was sentenced to death at the Hertfords.h.i.+re a.s.sizes in 1791 for stealing some money from the breeches pocket of a man with whom he had slept.
At the Cambs. a.s.sizes, in 1812, Daniel Dawson was tried for an offence of poisoning a mare the property of William Adams, of Royston, and was sentenced to death, and executed at Cambridge about a fortnight afterwards.
Sheep-stealing, horse-stealing and highway robberies, were the chief offences with which capital punishment was connected, and a.s.sociations were formed to prosecute offenders. The parishes of North Herts. were especially notable for sheep-stealing cases. In 1825, at the Herts.
Spring a.s.sizes, a man named Hollingsworth was indicted for stealing 55 sheep and 17 lambs, the property of William Lilley, at Therfield. The jury found the prisoner guilty and ”the awful sentence of the law was p.r.o.nounced upon him,” so says the Chronicle--and at the July a.s.sizes in the same year, Francis Anderson, for stealing one ewe lamb, the properly of Edward Logsden, at Therfield, was found guilty and ”sentence of death was recorded.” At the Cambs. a.s.sizes in 1827, George Parry was indicted for sheep-stealing at Hauxton, and the judge ”pa.s.sed the awful sentence of death,” remarking that the crime of sheep-stealing had so increased that it was necessary to make a severe example.
One of the most remarkable adventures of the pursuit of horse-stealers in this district occurred in 1822, and actually formed the subject of a small book [now before me] bearing the following curious t.i.tle:--
”The Narrative of the persevering labours and exertions of the late Mr.
Owen Cambridge, of Ba.s.singbourn, Cambs., during his search for two horses, stolen from his stable in October and November, 1822; during which search he very unexpectedly found a pony which had been stolen from the stable of his neighbour, Mr. Elbourne; Printed by particular request. The Royston Press: Printed, published, and sold by J. Warren.”
If the reader is inclined to smile at a book with the strangest t.i.tle that perhaps was ever put upon a t.i.tle page, it should be said that the adventure recorded in this little book of thirty-two pages is really a most remarkable one, than which no ”Bow Street Runner” of those days, to say nothing of the modern police officer with the advantages of railways and telegraphs, had a stiffer task of detective work, or ever more distinguished himself for perseverance, energy and resource, than did Mr. Owen Cambridge in this memorable affair with its innumerable {90} journeys by coach to London, and to almost all the fairs in the home counties, at a cost of upwards of L200. The result was that many other crimes were brought to light, and a gang of horse-stealers was broken up; two of them were sentenced to death at the Beds. a.s.sizes, and the one who stole Mr. Cambridge's horses was sentenced to death at Cambridge, but, upon Mr. Cambridge's plea for mercy for the prisoner, sentence was commuted. It is perhaps worth placing on record that after the extraordinary searches, covering several weeks in London and elsewhere, Mr. Cambridge found the thief at home in his garden in Oxfords.h.i.+re, pa.s.sing as a respectable horse-dealer.
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