CHAPTER IX

Hills Road.--Gog-Magogs.--Vandlebury.--Babraham, Peter Pence.--Old Railway.--Hildersham, Brasses, Clapper Stile.--Linton.--Horseheath.--Bartlow, St. Christopher, Battle of Assandun.--Cherry Hinton, War Ditches, Saffron.--Teversham.--Fulbourn, Brasses.--Wilbraham.--Fleam Dyke, Wild Flowers, Butterflies, Ostorius, Last Cambs Battle.--Balsham, Battle of Ringmere, Massacre, Church Brasses, Grooved Stones.

At Burwell we are within touch of Exning, Fordham, and Soham, so that we have now exhausted the interest of the Cambridge-Newmarket Road. Next in order comes the Via Devana, which when it leaves Cambridge for the south-east is denominated the "Hills Road." The reason for this is that it shortly brings us to the most ambitious elevation neighbouring the town, no less than 220 feet in height, and bearing the high-sounding name of the Gog-Magog Hills.

The origin of this curious appellation is still to seek. According to some archaeologists it is derived from the prehistoric figure of a giant which was formerly to be seen on the slope, traced there by cutting away the turf along the outline of the shape, such as that still extant near Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire. This, if it ever existed, has long since disappeared. Others consider the name to be a seventeenth century skit on the gigantic height of the hills. Others again see in it a dim traditional recollection of the days when a set of gigantic barbarians really were, for a time, quartered here. This was in the reign of the Roman Emperor Probus (277 A.D.), who leavened his mutinous British forces with prisoners from the Vandal horde lately defeated by the Romans on the Danube. From one such detachment, placed here in garrison, the name of Vandlebury is supposed to have clung ever since to the great earthwork on the summit of the Gog-Magogs.

That earthwork, however, is of far older date, being of British, or even earlier, inception. It is a triple ring of gigantic ramparts, like those of Maiden Castle near Dorchester, and nearly a mile in circumference. All is now buried in the shrubberies of Gog-Magog House, the seat successively of Lord Godolphin and of the Dukes of Leeds.[147] But before being thus planted out it must have been one of the most striking examples in the kingdom of such fortifications. Till the eighteenth century it was a favourite scene of bull-baiting and other illegal sports amongst undergraduates, because the bare open country all round made it impossible for the authorities to surprise the offenders. Vandlebury was the original home of the legend, used by Sir Walter Scott in _Marmion_, which told how in the ancient camp, by moonlight, an elfin warrior would answer the challenge of any adventurous knight bold enough to encounter him in single combat.

[Footnote 147: It is now the residence of H. Gray Esq. In the stable yard a monument records the celebrated "Godolphin," one of the first Arabs (or, more probably Barbs) to be imported, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, for the improvement of our thoroughbred stock.]

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the then Duchess of Leeds here set up for her tenantry one of the earliest rural elementary schools. Children of both sexes were taught in this institution to read and to sew, the boys making their own smock frocks. The boys might, if they would, also learn, as an extra, to write; but not the girls, for Her Grace considered that it would deleteriously affect their prospects in domestic service if they were possessed of the dangerous power of deciphering their employers' correspondence.

Our road climbs the hill to the gate of Gog-Magog House, and plunges down into woodlands on the other side, in a fashion very unlike the usual Cambridgeshire highway, to meet the infant stream of the Granta[148] on its meandering way to Cambridge. Our further course is amongst the pretty villages along its valley, the best-wooded vale in all the county. First of these comes Babraham (anciently Bradburgham), with a pretty little Saxon-towered church snuggling in the park beside the Hall. Babraham is noted for the epitaph of an old-time swindler, who was enabled to pocket the Peter Pence[149] which he collected under Queen Mary by sharing his spoil with Queen Elizabeth. It runs thus:

"Here lies Horatio Palavazene, Who robbed the Pope to lend the Queen." "He was a thiefe." "A thiefe? Thou liest; For why? he robbed but Antichrist. Him Death with besome swept from Babram Into the bosome of old Abram. But then came Hercules with his club, And struck him down to Beelzebub."

[Footnote 148: This branch of the Granta is more properly called the Bourne.]

[Footnote 149: From the ninth century onwards the Pope could claim, by Royal grant, a penny a year from every house in England. This tribute was known as "Peter Pence." The phrase is now used amongst Roman Catholics for voluntary contributions to the Papal Exchequer.]

A curious fresco on the north wall of the church is thought to represent King Edward the Second.

A little beyond Babraham we cross the Icknield Street, on its way from Newmarket to Chesterford. Beside it runs, what is almost unknown in England, a deserted railroad, built by the Eastern Counties Railway Company (now the Great Eastern) in 1848, to afford direct communication between Newmarket and London, and abandoned, as a financial failure, in 1852, since which date the trains have gone round by Cambridge. Where this long disused line runs on the level it has melted back again into the adjoining fields, but the old cuttings and embankments and bridges still exist, and a weird sight they are.

At the adjoining villages of Great and Little Abington the road makes a picturesque zig-zag through the village street, and passes on, beneath a fine beech avenue, to Hildersham, where a pretty byway leads across the stream to the fourteenth century church. Here there are four good brasses (to members of the Parys[150] family), one of them showing the unique feature of a lance-rest fastened to the cuirass, and another (of 1530) being simply a skeleton. There are also two very striking recumbent effigies representing a crusader and his wife, each carved out of a single block of wood, now black with age. The churchyard here is effectively planted with junipers and fir trees, and the east end of the church is embowered in shrubs of rosemary, said to be the finest in Cambridgeshire.

[Footnote 150: The fourteenth century historian, Matthew Paris, is said to have belonged to this family.]

From Hildersham the road goes on to Linton, a mile or so further; while the two places are also connected by a specially pleasant footpath, starting from a fine old smithy, and so through the meadows by the clear trout-stream, and past the yews and thorn-trees of the moated grange of "Little Linton," while above rises (to nearly four hundred feet, a proud height in Cambridgeshire) the appropriately named Furze Hill, with some real gorse patches (also a proud distinction in Cambridgeshire) upon its ridge.

Before we reach Linton we cross the famous "Clapper" stile, which can best be described as formed by three huge sledge-hammers (of wood) with exceptionally long shanks, hinged near the head to an upright post, each about a foot above the next. Normally the three hammer-heads rest upon one another and look like a single post (about a foot from the first); but, on attempting to cross, the shanks (the ends of which are _not_ fastened but slide in a grooved post at their side of the stile) yield to our weight, the heads fly apart, and, when we are over, come together again with the "claps" whence the name of the stile is derived. How old this curious device is does not appear, but it is here immemorial. An effective sketch of this stile is given by Dr. Wherry, in his "Notes from a Knapsack."

Linton is a tiny town, smaller than sundry villages, but obviously not a village, with a long street of undetached houses (duly lighted) swinging down the slopes on either side the little river. There is a fine Perpendicular church, with some Norman work remaining in it, and a good tower, on the top of which an Ascension Day service is annually held. Against a wall are suspended two fire-hooks (much lighter than the one at St. Benet's, Cambridge) for the destruction of burning houses. (See note on page 38).

The main road here goes on, to pass out of Cambridgeshire into Suffolk, a few miles further, at the upland village of Horseheath, with its picturesque old-world village green on the hillside. The church here has a fine fourteenth century brass to Sir John de Argentine (a name familiar to readers of Sir Walter Scott, in the "Lord of the Isles")[151] and some notable monuments, somewhat knocked about, presumably by Dowsing, who records how he here "brake down four pictures of the prophets Ezekiel, Daniel, Zephaniah, and Malachi," besides other damage.

[Footnote 151: Local antiquarian research, however, considers that the name is more probably Audley. One of the Audleys of Horseheath (who were in no way connected with the Reformation Audleys, of Audley End and Magdalene College), distinguished himself at the battle of Poictiers.]

But a more interesting road from Linton is that which continues along the Bourne Valley, and leads, not into Suffolk, but into Essex, which is here bounded by that stream. A mile beyond the town we pass Barham Hall, now a farm-house, but of old a Priory of the same Order that we found at Isleham,[152] a Cell (or Colony) of the Abbey of St. Jacutus de Insula in Brittany. Another mile brings us to Bartlow, where, hard by the church, stand the three huge tumuli from which the name of the village is said to be derived. How they came to exist is an unsolved problem. Remains found in them, when excavated in 1835, were reported to be Roman, but the science of archaeology was then in its infancy, and this report can hardly outweigh the wholly un-Roman appearance of the "Hills," as they are locally called. They look far more like British or Scandinavian work; but, indeed, three such mounds so close together are not found elsewhere, of any age.

[Footnote 152: See p. 183.]

The little church has an ancient fresco of St. Christopher, placed, as usual, opposite the entrance. For this Saint, by virtue of the legend which tells how he carried Christ over a river,[153] was in mediaeval times regarded as a special example for Christians in their going out and their coming in; to whom, therefore, was due their first and last thought in passing the doorway. More noteworthy is the Saxon tower, with its walls no less than six feet in thickness. For in this it is quite possible that we may have a part of the very "minster of stone and lime" raised by Canute in memory of his crowning victory over Edmund Ironside at Assandun.

[Footnote 153: The legend ran that St. Christopher was a giant heathen who heard of Christ and desired to serve Him. Enquiring how he could do this, he was told to devote himself to deeds of charity, which he did by carrying pilgrims over a dangerous ford. Finally, a child whom he thus transported proved to be Christ Himself, whence he gained the name of Christopher (the Christ-bearer).]

The location of that most dramatic of English battles, fought in the year 1016, is hotly disputed amongst historians; but there is much to be said for the early view which identifies Assandun with Ashdon in Essex, hard by Bartlow. For ten miserable years, under Ethelred the Unready, England had been ground in the dust, deeper and ever deeper, beneath the heel of the invading Dane. Year by year the degrading tribute wherewith she strove to buy off the foe had gone up by leaps and bounds. All hope seemed dead, when the accession of a hero to the throne roused the harried and exhausted nation into one last convulsive effort for freedom. Six times in as many months did Edmund of England and Canute of Denmark clash in battle. Five of these fields were indecisive, and then, on St. Luke's Day, 1016, the champions met once more at Assandun, perhaps on the slope still known as Bartlow End.

Treason decided the day against England. The fight began with a brilliant charge by Edmund at the head of his bodyguard, which crashed through the Danish phalanx "like a thunderbolt." But his absence from the English line enabled a traitorous noble, one Edric (who was always playing into Canute's hands, in hope of thereby making his own advantage), to raise a cry that the King was slain. A panic set in at once; and before Edmund could cut his way back, the whole army had broken, and was being fearfully cut up in its flight by the pursuing Danes. "And there the whole nobility of England was utterly destroyed." Edmund died of his exertions the same year; and Canute became King of England, the first monarch so to call himself. The native title had always been "King of the English." In thanksgiving he built a minster on the scene of his victory; and, as he had promised, he lifted up the head of Edric "above all the nobility of England"--upon the highest turret of the Tower of London. The "Roman" theory notwithstanding, the three Bartlow barrows may well be a memorial of this great fight, and so may the names of Castle Camps and Shudy Camps which attach to the furthest villages in this far-away corner of Cambridgeshire. The "Castle," however, of which only the moat now remains, was built later by De Vere, the first Earl of Oxford. Shudy Camps has a far-seen church on its lofty brow, visible even from Barrington Hill, on the other side of the Cam basin, fifteen miles away as the crow flies.

[Illustration: _Cherry Hinton Church._]

From the Via Devana, where it leaves Cambridge (just after the bridge over the Great Eastern Railway), there branches off to the left another road, which leads us to the scenes of earlier battles between Dane and Englishman. This is the Cherry Hinton Road, named after the first village along its course, some three miles on. Its long straight vista suggests at first sight the idea that it too may be a Roman road. In fact, however, it dates only from the enclosure of the land (about the beginning of last century), when the best ploughman in the village was employed, so the story goes, to drive his straightest furrow across the whole breadth of the Common Field as a guide for the road-makers. The older track between Cherry Hinton and Cambridge was by what used to be, till within the last fifty years, a pretty footpath across the fenny ground to the north of the field. It is fenny no longer, and the path has become for three-fourths of its length a somewhat dreary street through the dingy suburb of "Romsey Town."

Cherry Hinton itself is not yet absorbed by Cambridge, and remains a bright spacious village, with a rarely beautiful church. The exquisite Early English chancel is lighted on either side by four couplets of lancet windows, in ideal proportion, while five equally ideal lancets serve for an East window. Both walls have an arcading of cinque-foil pattern; and the double piscina and the graduated sedilia are of no less merit. All this loveliness is within a fine oaken screen of the fifteenth century, and the rest of the church is not unworthy of it. The great quarry, whence the "clunch" of which the church is mainly built was drawn, is a conspicuous object on the hill-side above the village; and above that again, equally conspicuous, is the reservoir of the Cambridge Water-works, looking like a redoubt, on the summit of the slope. At the foot clear springs break out from the chalk, which are also utilised to supply the town.

Close to the reservoir there is an actual fortification, an ancient earthwork, known as the War Ditches, which the researches of Professor Hughes have shown to be of British date.[154] At the bottom of the fosse he discovered rough British pottery along with the bones of domestic animals, and above these a layer of disjointed human skeletons of both sexes and all ages, apparently due to a general massacre, in some prehistoric struggle, of men, women, and children, whose corpses were hurled over the parapet. Above these again came Romano-British remains. From this earthwork the line of an ancient dyke, now called Warstead Street, may be traced to the East Anglian heights near Horseheath.

[Footnote 154: Hughes' _Geography of Cambs_, p. 139.]

Till the nineteenth century the fields between Cherry Hinton and Cambridge were bright with the purple flowers of the saffron crocus, which was grown, as it was by the ancient Greeks and Romans, for medical use and for dyeing purposes. Its cultivation may very probably have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. The saffron here grown was considered the best in Europe, and fetched no less than thirty shillings a pound. But its use, after so many centuries, suddenly went out of fashion, and the plant is now wholly extinct in Cambridgeshire.[155]

[Footnote 155: _Ibid._ p. 96.]

From Cherry Hinton Church a green lane leads to Teversham, a short mile distant, but, except for pedestrians, more easily approached from the Newmarket Road. The church here is a pretty little structure, mainly Early English, with curious oval clerestory windows, and a nice Perpendicular screen. The octagonal pillars have floreated capitals. Dowsing's record of his destructions here is of special interest, inasmuch as the objects of his Protestant zeal were not, as usual, relics of pre-Reformation Popery, but the newly painted devices of the Laudian vicar, Dr. Wren (the Bishop of Ely and builder of Peterhouse Chapel). They consisted of the name JESUS, "in big letters" no fewer than eighteen times repeated, of those of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, and of texts from Scripture: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus," and "O come let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker." All these were "done out" as "idolatries"!

From the springs at Cherry Hinton the furrow-drawn road (passing on its way the County Lunatic Asylum) makes another bee-line of three miles to Fulbourn. Here the church is of special interest. There are no fewer than five mediaeval brasses, including one, almost life-size, of Canon William de Fulburne, 1380, which is notable as being, probably, the earliest known example of a priest vested in a cope. This ecclesiastic was one of Edward the Third's chaplains. In a wooden shrine on the north side of the chancel is a moribund effigy of John Careway, vicar here in 1433. This is beneath a sept-foiled arch, beside which is another strangely irregular arch over a sedile. There is also the very unusual feature of a fourteenth century pulpit of richly-carved oak.

The dedication of this church is as unusual. It is to St. Vigor, an obscure sixth century bishop of Bayeux, who has only one other church in England, at Stratton-on-the-Fosse in Somerset. Till late in the eighteenth century there was a second church here in the same churchyard, as at Swaffham Prior. This was All Saints', and was ruined by the fall of its tower in 1766. The ruins were gradually stolen, the wood going first, but it took ten years for the last of the bells to disappear.

At the church the road divides. The northern branch meanders through the village past an ancient row of old-time almshouses to the station, beyond which it becomes a pretty lane leading to the adjoining villages of Great and Little Wilbraham. The church at the former has a tower arch of strikingly peculiar development, a tall lancet, flanked by segments of arches of much larger radius, inserted in the wall on either side, which support the central member somewhat in the fashion of flying buttresses. The parson here, "a widower with three small children" (as the Puritan report gloatingly points out), was ejected in 1644 by the Puritans, because "he said it was treason for any man to give any money against the King, and in his sermons discouraged his parish from doing anything for the Parliament, and that he never read any book coming from the Parliament." Caution should be observed in passing through these villages, as sundry well-seeming roads simply lead down to Fulbourn Fen[156] and end there. Springs feeding the fen are plentiful, and the ground is still very much of a swamp.

[Footnote 156: See p. 170.]

But the road to take from Fulbourn Church is that which winds away south-eastwards, for in less than three miles it will bring us to the Icknield Street,[157] close to the point where that famous war-path cuts through the no less famous Fleam Dyke. This is the best place for viewing and ascending that splendid prehistoric earthwork, the sister and rival of the Devil's Dyke. It makes a most fascinating byway to walk along, though it leads nowhither, ending abruptly where it dips down into Fulbourn Fen.[158] The dry chalk is clothed with flowers all the summer through. At Easter time we may here find the glorious purple Pasch-flower, that queen of all the anemone clan; later on "the turf is sweet with thyme and gay with yellow rock-rose, blue flax, milkwort, pink-budded dropwort, sainfoin, kidney vetch, and viper's bugloss, and here and there a bee orchis; with a dancing accompaniment of butterflies overhead, graylings, skippers, chalk hill and Bedford blues, and a host beside."[159]

[Footnote 157: See p. 171.]

[Footnote 158: Footpaths, however, lead across the fen from its termination to Fulbourn and to Wilbraham.]

[Footnote 159: Hughes' _Geography of Cambs_, p. 77.]

[Illustration: _Great Wilbraham Church._]

The air is inspiring and so also is the view, with Ely on the far horizon to the north; and the historical associations are not less so. We can imagine the oaken palisade which topped the dyke lined with the Icenian clansmen in their tartan plaids shouting defiance to the presumptuous Roman who dared to demand their arms; then the incredibly audacious onslaught which, along the whole length of the Dyke at once, carried Ostorius and his light-armed troops at one rush clear across the mighty ditch, and up the forty feet of precipitous slope beyond, to crown the parapet and whirl away the patriot levies in headlong flight; then the merciless pursuit which forbade any chance to rally, till the fugitives were stopped by their own second line of defence at the Devil's Dyke, and slaughtered like rats beneath its rampart.[160]

[Footnote 160: See p. 172.]

[Illustration: _Great Wilbraham._]

Or our thoughts may turn to the later day when here was beheld the last fight worthy to be called a battle ever fought in Cambridgeshire. It is the year 905 A.D.; the great Alfred has been dead four years, and his son Edward the Elder has been chosen King in his stead. For the English monarchy is still elective, though already with a strong tendency to become hereditary. And this tendency now gives trouble. When Alfred himself was made King his nephew Ethelwald Clito, son of his elder brother Ethelred, the late King, was passed over in his favour. At that fearful crisis, when it was doubtful whether even an Alfred could stem the Danish inrush, there could be no thought of choosing a child as King.

[Illustration: _Little Wilbraham._]

But the Danes are now quietly settled in the Eastern Counties, and Ethelwald has grown up to manhood, and is bitterly angry at being again passed over, this time for his cousin Edward. If the English will not choose him, he will try the Danes. So to the Danes he goes, with promises of unlimited loot if they will support him, and, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "entices them to break the peace," so that they cross the Watling Street, and make a ferocious raid into Mercia. "They took all they might lay hands on, and so turned homeward again. Then after them came King Edward, as fast as he might gather his force, and overran all their land between the Dykes and the Ouse, as far North as the Fens."

The Devil's Dyke and the Fleam Dyke are by this time known as "the two dykes of St. Edmund," and now play their latest part in history as defences. Edward is no Ostorius, being a valiant warrior of the cautious rather than the daring type, and the Fleam Dyke brings his avenging host to a standstill. Finally he resolves that to storm it would cost too much, and retires his command. But his levies from Kent are of another temper, and positively refuse to obey what they look upon as an ignominious order. One after another, seven royal messengers repeat it in vain; and finally the main body of the English army marches off under the Royal banner, leaving the mutineers still before the Dyke--probably at the very point where the Icknield Way cuts it.

This is the Danes' opportunity. They have now safely deposited their plunder, and are ready for another outbreak. With their whole force they sally forth, and fall upon these stubborn Kentish men, and the fighting becomes desperate. The Kentish Alderman (who combined the offices of High Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant) is slain, so is the Danish King Eric, so is Ethelwald "the Atheling" himself, "and very many with them. And great was the slaughter there made on either hand; and of the Danish folk were there the more slain, yet won they the field."[161] And thus, after so many ages of warfare, does the Fleam Dyke, or Balsham Ditch, as it is also called, enter on its millennium of peace.

[Footnote 161: _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle._]

[Illustration: _Balsham Tower._]

For it played no part in the tragedy which, a hundred years after this last fight, is associated with its alternative name. Once more Danes and Englishmen are at hand-grips; but now it is no mere loose aggregate of private hordes pressing, each on its own, into the land, but Swend Forkbeard, the monarch of a great Scandinavian Empire purposing to add England also to his dominions. And under the weak sceptre of Ethelred the Unready, nothing beyond local resistance has been offered him; and here alone is the local resistance serious. East Anglia is under the governorship of the hero Ulfcytel, who has already given the Danes an unforgotten taste of his "hand-play," and he gathers her whole force to meet them at Ringmere. But the appalling tidings of what Swend has done elsewhere, "lighting his war-beacons as he went" throughout the length and breadth of the land, "with his three wonted comrades, fire, famine, and slaughter," have taken all the heart out of the English levies. For "all England did quake before him like a reed-bed rustling in the wind." The battle is speedily over. "Soon fled the East Angles; there stood Grantabryg-shire fast only."

Upon Cambridgeshire accordingly this vainly gallant stand brought down the special vengeance of the conquerors. To and fro went Danish punitive columns, and visited the district with a harrying even beyond their wont. "What they could lift, that took they; what they might not carry, that burned they; and so marched they up and down the land." And at Balsham, perhaps because of some local resistance, they are said to have killed out the entire population, man, woman, and child; save one single individual only, who successfully defended against them the narrow entrance to the Church steeple.

It is quite possible that this doorway is the very one which we see when we reach Balsham, where the Dyke ends, high on the East Anglian heights: for, though the church was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, the basement of the tower seems to be far older. Here we are four hundred feet up, and the air has quite an Alpine freshness, after the damp, sluggish atmosphere of the sea level at Cambridge. We feel well why the old Chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, speaks of "Balsham's pleasant hills."

[Illustration: _Cottage at Balsham._]

There are in this church two most noteworthy brasses, one a magnificent memorial, no less than nine feet in length, to John de Sleford, rector here, the rebuilder of the church. He was a distinguished personage, being Chaplain to Queen Philippa, Master of the Wardrobe to her husband King Edward the Third, and Canon both of Ripon and of Wells. The orphreys of his cope are embroidered with the figures of Saints, five on either side,[162] and in the canopy over his head his soul is being borne by angels to the Blessed Trinity with the prayer PERSONIS . TRINE . POSCO . ME: SVSCIPE . FINE. The other brass is no less magnificent in size and decoration, and commemorates a yet more magnificent pluralist, John Blodwell, who was Rector here in 1439, besides being Dean of St. Asaph, Canon of St. David's, Prebendary of Hereford, and Prebendary of Lichfield. He, too, has eight Saints on his cope, and eight more in his canopy.[163] Twelve Latin verses give a dialogue between himself and Death, whose words are incised, while his are in relief. The chancel has twelve fine stalls on either side, and a grand rood screen, all from the generosity of Rector Sleford. Yet another, and earlier, worthy connected with this place, is Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely and Founder of the earliest Cambridge College, Peterhouse.

[Footnote 162: SS. Mary, John, Katharine, Paul, Magdalene, John Baptist, Etheldreda, Peter, Margaret, Wilfrid.]

[Footnote 163: These are SS. Michael, James, Katharine, Gabriel, Margaret, ? ? John Baptist, Peter, Asaph, Bridgett, John, Andrew, Nicolas, Winifred.]

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