Part 54
The Avon (this is the _third_ Avon that I have crossed in this Ride) falls into the Severn just below Tewkesbury, through which town we went in our way to Mr. Hanford's. These rivers, particularly the Severn, go through, and sometimes overflow, the finest meadows of which it is possible to form an idea. Some of them contain more than a hundred acres each; and the number of cattle and sheep, feeding in them, is prodigious. Nine-tenths of the land, in these extensive vales, appears to me to be pasture, and it is pasture of the richest kind. The sheep are chiefly of the Leicester breed, and the cattle of the Hereford, white face and dark red body, certainly the finest and most beautiful of all horn-cattle. The grass, after the fine rains that we have had, is in its finest possible dress; but, here, as in the parts of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire that I have seen, there are no turnips, except those which have been recently sown; and, though amidst all these thousands upon thousands of acres of the finest meadows and grass land in the world, hay is, I hear, seven pounds a ton at Worcester. However, unless we should have very early and even hard frosts, the grass will be so abundant, that the cattle and sheep will do better than people are apt to think. But, be this as it may, this summer has taught us, that our climate is the _best for produce_, after all; and that we cannot have Italian sun and English meat and cheese. We complain of the _drip_; but it is the drip that makes the beef and the mutton.
Mr. Hanford's house is on the side of Bredon Hill; about a third part up it, and is a very delightful place. The house is of ancient date, and it appears to have been always inhabited by and the property of Roman Catholics; for there is, in one corner of the very top of the building, up in the very roof of it, a Catholic chapel, as ancient as the roof itself. It is about twenty-five feet long and ten wide. It has arch-work, to imitate the roof of a church. At the back of the altar there is a little room, which you enter through a door going out of the chapel; and, adjoining this little room, there is a closet, in which is a trapdoor made to let the priests down into one of those hiding places, which were contrived for the purpose of evading the grasp of those greedy Scotch minions, to whom that pious and tolerant Protestant, James I., delivered over those English gentlemen, who remained faithful to the religion of their fathers, and, to set his country free from which greedy and cruel grasp, that honest Englishman, Guy Fawkes, wished, as he bravely told the King and his Scotch council, "_to blow the Scotch beggars back to their mountains again_." Even this King has, in his works (for James was an author), had the justice to call him "the English Scaevola"; and we Englishmen, fools set on by knaves, have the folly, or the baseness, to burn him in effigy on the 5th November, the anniversary of his intended exploit! In the hall of this house there is the portrait of Sir Thomas Winter, who was one of the accomplices of Fawkes, and who was killed in the fight with the sheriff and his party. There is also the portrait of his lady, who must have spent half her life-time in the working of some very curious sacerdotal vestments, which are preserved here with great care, and are as fresh and as beautiful as they were the day they were finished.
A parson said to me, once, by letter: "Your religion, Mr. Cobbett, seems to me to be altogether _political_." "Very much so, indeed," answered I, "and well it may, since I have been furnished with a creed which makes part of an Act of Parliament." And, the fact is, I am no Doctor of Divinity, and like a religion, any religion, that tends to make men innocent and benevolent and happy, by taking the best possible means of furnishing them with plenty to eat and drink and wear. I am a Protestant of the Church of England, and, as such, blush to see, that more than half the parsonage-houses are wholly gone, or are become mere hovels. What I have written on the "Protestant Reformation," has proceeded entirely from a sense of justice towards our calumniated Catholic forefathers, to whom we owe all those of our institutions that are worthy of our admiration and gratitude. I have not written as a Catholic, but as an Englishman; yet a sincere Catholic must feel some little gratitude towards me; and, if there was an ungrateful reptile in the neighbourhood of Preston, to give, as a toast, "Success to Stanley and Wood," the conduct of those Catholics that I have seen here has, as far as I am concerned, amply compensated for his baseness.
This neighbourhood has witnessed some pretty thumping transfers from the Normans. Holland, one of Baring's partners, or clerks, has recently bought an estate of Lord Somers, called Dumbleton, for, it is said, about eighty thousand pounds. Another estate of the same Lord, called Strensham, has been bought by a Brummigeham Banker of the name of Taylor, for, it is said, seventy thousand pounds. "Eastnor Castle," just over the Malvern Hills, is still building, and Lord Eastnor lives at that pretty little warm and snug place, the priory of Reigate, in Surrey, and close by the not less snug little borough of the same name. MEMORANDUM. When we were petitioning _for reform_, in 1817, my Lord Somers wrote and published a pamphlet, under his own name, condemning our conduct and our principles, and insisting that we, if let alone, should produce "_a revolution_, and _endanger all property_!" The Barings are adding field to field and tract to tract in Herefordshire; and, as to the Ricardos, they seem to be animated with the same laudable spirit. This Osmond Ricardo has a park at one of his estates, called Broomsborough, and that park has a new porter's lodge, upon which there is a span new cross as large as life! Aye, big enough and long enough to crucify a man upon! I had never seen such an one before; and I know not what sort of thought it was that seized me at the moment; but, though my horse is but a clumsy goer, I verily believe I got away from it at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour. My companion, who is always upon the look-out for cross-ditches, or pieces of timber, on the road-side, to fill up the time of which my jog-trot gives him so wearisome a surplus, seemed delighted at this my new pace; and, I dare say he has wondered ever since what should have given me wings just for that once and that once only.
_Worcester, Tuesday, 26th Sept._
Mr. Price rode with us to this city, which is one of the cleanest, neatest, and handsomest towns I ever saw: indeed, I do not recollect to have seen any one equal to it. The _cathedral_ is, indeed, a poor thing, compared with any of the others, except that of Hereford; and I have seen them all but those of Carlisle, Durham, York, Lincoln, Chester, and Peterborough; but the _town_ is, I think, the very best I ever saw; and which is, indeed, the greatest of all recommendations, the _people_ are, upon the whole, the most suitably dressed and most decent looking people. The town is precisely in character with the beautiful and rich country, in the midst of which it lies. Everything you see gives you the idea of real, solid wealth; aye! and thus it was, too, before, long before, Pitt, and even long before "good Queen Bess" and her military law and her Protestant racks, were ever heard or dreamed of.
At Worcester, as everywhere else, I find a group of cordial and sensible friends, at the house of one of whom, Mr. George Brooke, I have just spent a most pleasant evening, in company with several gentlemen, whom he had had the goodness to invite to meet me. I here learned a fact, which I must put upon record before it escape my memory. Some few years ago (about seven, perhaps), at the public sale by auction of the goods of a then recently deceased Attorney of the name of Hyde, in this city, there were, amongst the goods to be sold, the portraits of _Pitt_, _Burdett_, and _Paine_, all framed and glazed. Pitt, with hard driving and very lofty praises, fetched fifteen shillings; Burdett fetched twenty-seven shillings. Paine was, in great haste, knocked down at five pounds; and my informant was convinced, that the lucky purchaser might have had fifteen pounds for it. I hear Colonel Davies spoken of here with great approbation: he will soon have an opportunity of showing us whether he deserve it.
The hop-picking and bagging is over here. The crop, as in the other hop-countries, has been very great, and the quality as good as ever was known. The average price appears to be about 75_s._ the hundred weight. The reader (if he do not belong to a hop-country) should be told, that hop-planters, and even all their neighbours, are, as hop-ward, _mad_, though the most sane and reasonable people as to all other matters. They are ten times more jealous upon this score than men ever are of their wives; aye, and than they are of their mistresses, which is going a great deal farther. I, who am a _Farnham_ man, was well aware of this foible; and therefore, when a gentleman told me, that he would not brew with Farnham hops, if he could have them as a gift, I took special care not to ask him how it came to pass, that the Farnham hops always sold at about double the price of the Worcester; but, if he had said the same thing to any other Farnham man that I ever saw, I should have preferred being absent from the spot: the hops are bitter, but nothing is their bitterness compared to the language that my townsman would have put forth.
This city, or this neighbourhood, at least, being the birth-place of what I have called, the "Little-Shilling project," and Messrs. Atwood and Spooner being the originators of the project, and the project having been adopted by Mr. Western, and having been by him now again recently urged upon the Ministers, in a Letter to Lord Liverpool, and it being possible that some worthy persons may be misled, and even ruined, by the confident assertions and the pertinacity of the projectors; this being the case, and I having half an hour to spare, will here endeavour to show, in as few words as I can, that this project, if put into execution, would produce injustice the most crying that the world ever heard of, and would, in the present state of things, infallibly lead to a violent revolution. The project is to "lower the standard," as they call it; that is to say, to make a _sovereign pass for more than 20s._ In what _degree_ they would reduce the standard they do not say; but a vile pamphlet writer, whose name is Crutwell, and who is a beneficed parson, and who has most foully abused me, because I laugh at the project, says that he would reduce it one half; that is to say, that he would make a sovereign pass for two pounds. Well, then, let us, for plainness' sake, suppose that the present sovereign is, all at once, to pass for two pounds. What will the consequences be? Why, here is a parson, who receives his tithes in kind and whose tithes are, we will suppose, a thousand bushels of wheat in a year, on an average; and he owes a thousand pounds to somebody. He will pay his debt with 500 sovereigns, and he will still receive his thousand bushels of wheat a year! I let a farm for 100_l._ a year, by the year; and I have a mortgage of 2000_l._ upon it, the interest just taking away the rent. Pass the project, and then I, of course, raise my rent to 200_l._ a year, and I still pay the mortgagee 100_l._ a year! What can be plainer than this? But, the Banker's is the fine case. I deposit with a banker a thousand whole sovereigns to-day. Pass the project to-morrow, and the banker pays me my deposit with a thousand half sovereigns! If, indeed, you could double the quantity of corn and meat and all goods by the same Act of Parliament, then, all would be right; but that quantity will remain what it was before you passed the project; and, of course, the money being doubled in nominal amount, the price of the goods would be doubled. There needs not another word upon the subject; and whatever may be the national inference respecting the intellects of Messrs. Atwood and Spooner, I must say, that I do most sincerely believe, that there is not one of my readers, who will not feel astonishment, that any men, having the reputation of men of sound mind, should not clearly see, that such a project must almost instantly produce a revolution of the most dreadful character.
_Stanford Park, Wednesday, 27th Sept. (Morning)._
In a letter which I received from Sir Thomas Winnington (one of the Members for this county), last year, he was good enough to request that I would call upon him, if I ever came into Worcestershire, which I told him I would do; and accordingly here we are in his house, situated, certainly, in one of the finest spots in all England. We left Worcester yesterday about ten o'clock, crossed the Severn, which runs close by the town, and came on to this place, which lies in a north-western direction from Worcester, at 14 miles distance from that city, and at about six from the borders of Shropshire. About four miles back we passed by the park and through the estate of Lord Foley, to whom is due the praise of being a most indefatigable and successful _planter of trees_. He seems to have taken uncommon pains in the execution of this work; and he has the merit of disinterestedness, the trees being chiefly oaks, which he is _sure_ he can never see grow to timber. We crossed the Teme River just before we got here. Sir Thomas was out shooting; but he soon came home, and gave us a very polite reception. I had time, yesterday, to see the place, to look at trees, and the like, and I wished to get away early this morning; but, being prevailed on to stay to breakfast, here I am, at six o'clock in the morning, in one of the best and best-stocked private libraries that I ever saw; and, what is more, the owner, from what passed yesterday, when he brought me hither, convinced me that he was acquainted with the _insides_ of the books. I asked, and shall ask, no questions about who got these books together; but the collection is such as, I am sure, I never saw before in a private house.
The house and stables and courts are such as they ought to be for the great estate that surrounds them; and the park is everything that is beautiful. On one side of the house, looking over a fine piece of water, you see a distant valley, opening between lofty hills: on another side the ground descends a little at first, then goes gently rising for a while, and then rapidly, to the distance of a mile perhaps, where it is crowned with trees in irregular patches, or groups, single and most magnificent trees being scattered all over the whole of the park; on another side, there rise up beautiful little hills, some in the form of barrows on the downs, only forty or a hundred times as large, one or two with no trees on them, and others topped with trees; but, on one of these little hills, and some yards higher than the lofty trees which are on this little hill, you see rising up the tower of the parish church, which hill is, I think, taken all together, amongst the most delightful objects that I ever beheld.
"Well, then," says the devil of laziness, "and could you not be contented to live here all the rest of your life; and never again pester yourself with the cursed politics?" "Why, I think I have laboured enough. Let others work now. And such a pretty place for coursing and for hare-hunting and woodcock shooting, I dare say; and then those pretty wild-ducks in the water, and the flowers and the grass and the trees and all the birds in spring and the fresh air, and never, never again to be stifled with the smoke that from the infernal Wen ascendeth for ever more and that every easterly wind brings to choke me at Kensington!" The _last word_ of this soliloquy carried me back, slap, to my own study (very much unlike that which I am in), and bade me think of the GRIDIRON; bade me think of the complete triumph that I have yet to enjoy: promised me the pleasure of seeing a million of trees of my own, and sown by my own hands this very year. Ah! but the hares and the pheasants and the wild ducks! Yes, but the delight of seeing Prosperity Robinson hang his head for shame: the delight of beholding the tormenting embarrassments of those who have so long retained crowds of base miscreants to revile me; the delight of ousting spitten-upon Stanley and bound-over Wood! Yes, but, then, the flowers and the birds and the sweet air! What, then, shall Canning never again hear of the "revered and ruptured Ogden!" Shall he go into his grave without being again reminded of "driving at the whole herd, in order to get at "the _ignoble animal_!" Shall he never again be told of Six-Acts and of his wish "to extinguish that _accursed torch of discord for ever_!" Oh! God forbid! farewell hares and dogs and birds! what, shall Sidmouth, then, never again hear of his _Power of Imprisonment Bill_, of his _Circular_, of his _Letter of Thanks to the Manchester Yeomanry_! I really jumped up when this thought came athwart my mind, and, without thinking of the breakfast, said to George who was sitting by me, "Go, George, and tell them to saddle the horses;" for, it seemed to me, that I had been meditating some crime. Upon George asking me, whether I would not stop to breakfast? I bade him not order the horses out yet; and here we are, waiting for breakfast.
_Ryall, Wednesday Night, 27th Sept._
After breakfast we took our leave of Sir Thomas Winnington, and of Stanford, very much pleased with our visit. We wished to reach Ryall as early as possible in the day, and we did not, therefore, stop at Worcester. We got here about three o'clock, and we intend to set off, in another direction, early in the morning.
RIDE FROM RYALL, IN WORCESTERSHIRE, TO BURGHCLERE, IN HAMPSHIRE.
"Alas, the country! How shall tongue or pen Bewail her now, _un_country gentlemen! The last to bid the cry of warfare cease, The first to make a malady of peace! For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn. But corn, like ev'ry mortal thing, must fall: Kings, conquerors, and, _markets most of all_."
LORD BYRON.
_Ryall, Friday Morning, 29th September, 1826._
I have observed, in this country, and especially near Worcester, that the working people seem to be better off than in many other parts, one cause of which is, I dare say, that _glove manufacturing_, which cannot be carried on by fire or by wind or by water, and which is, therefore, carried on by the _hands_ of human beings. It gives work to women and children as well as to men; and that work is, by a great part of the women and children, done in their cottages, and amidst the fields and hop-gardens, where the husbands and sons must live, in order to raise the food and the drink and the wool. This is a great thing for the land. If this glove-making were to cease, many of these women and children, now not upon the parish, must instantly be upon the parish. The glove-trade is, like all others, slack from this last change in the value of money; but there is no horrible misery here, as at Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Paisley, and other Hell-Holes of 84 degrees of heat. There misery walks abroad in skin, bone and nakedness. There are no subscriptions wanted for Worcester; no militia-clothing. The working people suffer, trades'-people suffer, and who is to escape, except the monopolizers, the Jews, and the tax-eaters, when the Government chooses to raise the value of money, and lower the price of goods? The whole of the industrious part of the country must suffer in such a case; but, where manufacturing is mixed with agriculture, where the wife and daughters are at the needle, or the wheel, while the men and the boys are at plough, and where the manufacturing, of which one or two towns are the centres, is spread over the whole country round about, and
## particularly where it is, in very great part, performed by females at
their _own homes_, and where the earnings come _in aid of the man's wages_; in such case the misery cannot be so great; and accordingly, while there is an absolute destruction of life going on in the hell-holes, there is no _visible_ misery at, or near, Worcester; and I cannot take my leave of this county without observing, that I do not recollect to have seen one miserable object in it. The working people all seem to have good large gardens, and pigs in their styes; and this last, say the _feelosofers_ what they will about her "antallectual enjoyments," is the _only_ security for happiness in a labourer's family.
Then, this glove-manufacturing is not like that of cottons, a mere gambling concern, making Baronets to-day and Bankrupts to-morrow, and making those who do the work slaves. Here are no masses of people, called together by a _bell_, and "kept _to it_" by a driver; here are no "patriots," who, while they keep Englishmen to it by fines, and almost by the scourge, in a heat of 84 degrees, are petitioning the Parliament to "give freedom" to the South Americans, who, as these "patriots" have been informed, use a great quantity of _cottons_!