Part 10

Two accounts are given of this meeting of Henry the Eighth and Anne of Cleves. They agree neither with themselves nor with that other account in which the King is made to call her a "Flanders mare":--"As she passed toward Rochester," writes Hall, the Chronicler, "on New Yeres Even, on Reynam Down, met her the Duke of Norffolke, and the Lord Dacre of the South, and the Lord Mountjoye, with a gret company of Knyghtes and Esquiers of Norffolke and Suffolke, and the Barons of thxchequer, (_sic_) all in coates of velvet with chaynes of golde, which brought her to Rochester, where she lay in the Palace all New Yeres Day. On which day the Kyng, which sore desyred to see her Grace, accompanyed with no more than viii persons of his prevy chaumbre, and both he and thei all aparelled in marble coates, prevely came to Rochester, and sodainly came to her presence, which therwith was sumwhat astonied; but after he had spoken and welcomed her, she with most gracious and lovyng countenance and behavior him received and welcomed on her knees, whom he gently toke up and kyssed; and all that afternoone commoned and devised with her" (whatever that may mean), "and that night supped with her, and the next day he departed to Grenewich and she came to Dartford." Now hear how different a complexion Stow puts upon this meeting, and then tell me what you think of the difficulties of history-writing:--

"The King being ascertained of her arivall and approch, was wonderfull desirous to see her, of whom hee had heard so great commendations, and thereupon hee came very privately to Rochester, where hee tooke the first view of her; and when he had well beheld her, hee was so marvelously astonished that hee knew not well what to doe or say. Hee brought with him divers things, which hee meant to present her with his owne hands, that is to say, a partlet, a mufler" (Indian shawls had not yet been introduced), "a cup, and other things; but being sodainly quite discouraged and amazed with her presence, his mind changed, and hee delivered them unto Sir Anthony Browne to give them unto her, but with as small show of Kingly kindness as might be. The King being sore vexed with the sight of her, began to utter his heart's griefe unto divers: amongst whom hee said unto the Lord Admirall, 'How like you this woman? Doe you think her so personable, faire, and beautifull as report hath beene made unto mee of her--I pray you tell me true?'"

Whereupon the Lord Admiral discreetly replied no word of dispraise, because people with opinions had in those days an excellent chance of losing their heads; merely remarking that she appeared to have a brown complexion rather than the fair one that had been represented to his Majesty.

"Alas!" replied the King, "whom shall men--to say nothing of kings--trust? I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been shewed to me of her, either by pictures or report, and am ashamed that men have praised her as they have done; and I like her not." Which, of course, was final.

Queen Elizabeth, of course, was here, not once but thrice, and on her first visit she stayed at the "Crown" inn, "which," says Francis Thynne, "is the only place to intertaine Princes comming thither." It was, indeed, the place where her father stayed, and where, according to one account, Anne of Cleves lodged; and was the scene of the inimitable colloquy between the carriers in _Henry the Fourth_, just previous to the robbery on Gad's Hill. The "Crown," of course, is gone now, and an ugly building, bearing the same sign, but dating only from 1863, stands on its site.

[Sidenote: "ROGUES AND PROCTORS"]

On the last day of her visit, the queen was entertained by "that charitable man but withal most determined enemy to Rogues and Proctors," Master Richard Watts, whose almshouse for the lodgment of six poor travellers bears still upon its front the evidence of his aversions. Controversy has long raged around the term "proctor," and the victory seems to rest with those who declare that the class thus excluded from the benefits of Master Watts' charity was that of the "procurators" who were licensed by the Pope to go through the country collecting "Peter's pence"; but I have my own idea on that point, and I believe that the "proctors" referred to were not papists, but either "proctors that go up and downe with counterfeit licences, cosiners, and suche as go about the countrey using unlawfull games"; or the "proctors" especially and particularly mentioned in the Statute Edw. VI. c. 3, s. 19, licensed to collect alms for the lepers who at that time were still numerous in England. These privileged beggars were deprived of their immunity from arrest by the "Act for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdie Beggars" (39 Eliz. c. 4), wherein "all persons that be, or utter themselves to be _Proctors_, procurers, patent gatherers, or collectors for gaols, prisons, or hospitals"[5] are, together with "all Fencers, Bearewards, common players of Interludes, and Minstrels" to be adjudged Rogues and Vagabonds. Now it is sufficiently remarkable that this Act was passed (perhaps with the strenuous help of Master Watts, who was a Member of Parliament, and who we see hated proctors so ardently) at about the time when the "Six Poor Travellers" was built, and the reasons for refusing admission either to a true Proctor of a lazar-house, or to a pretended one, must be sufficiently obvious.

Master Watts entertained the Queen at his house on Boley (? Beaulieu) Hill on the last day of her visit, and when that courtly man apologised for the "poor cottage" (he didn't mean it, but 'twas the custom so to do) Her Majesty is supposed to have graciously answered "Satis," and so Satis House it remained, and the hideous building that now stands upon its site still bears, grotesquely enough, its name.

Quite a train of miscellaneous Royalties and celebrities came here after Elizabeth's second visit in 1582; the Duke of Sully; James the First, who angered the seafaring population because he didn't care for the ships, loved hunting, and was afraid of the cannon--James the First again, with Christian the Fourth of Denmark and Prince Henry; Prince Henry by himself in 1611; Frederick, Elector Palatine of Bohemia; Charles the First on two occasions, on the second of which "the trane-bands ... scarmished in warlike manner to His Majesties great content"; the French Ambassador, in 1641, who thought Rochester was chiefly observable on account of its Bridge "furnished with high railings, that drunkards, not uncommon here, may not mix water with their wine"; and nineteen years later, Charles the Second, on his "glorious and never-to-be-forgotten Restoracion."

How Charles was feted here, and how he stayed at the beautiful old place that has taken the name of "Restoration House" from this visit, these pages cannot tell; the story is too long.

[Sidenote: PEPYS]

And here, in the name of all that's lewd and scandal-mongering, comes old Pepys again. It is no use trying to keep him out of one's pages: suppress him at one place, and he recurs unfailingly at another, with a worse record than before. I discreetly "sat on" him at Deptford, but here he is at Rochester, "goin' on hawful," to quote one of Dickens' characters (I forget which, and the society of so many Kings and Queens on the Dover Road is so fatiguing that I have neither sufficient time nor energy to inquire).

Well then, it was in 1667[6] that Mr. Samuel Pepys came here, and, putting up at the "White Hart," strolled into the Cathedral, more intent upon the architecture than the doctrine, it would seem; for when service began he walked out into the fields, and there "saw Sir F. Clark's pretty seat." And so "into the Cherry Garden, and here he met with a young, plain, silly shopkeeper and his wife, a pretty young woman, and I did kiss her!" And after this they dined, and walked in the fields together till dark, "and so to bed," without the usual "God forgive me!" which, considering how he had shirked the Cathedral service, and how questionable had been his conduct in the Cherry Garden, was more needful than ever, one would think.

[Illustration: HIGH STREET, ROCHESTER: EASTGATE HOUSE.]

Twenty-one years after this date came James the Second on two hurried visits to Rochester within a few days of one another. If he had had time, and had been in a sufficiently calm frame of mind, he might have reflected on the vicissitudes of Kings in general, and of his own Royal House in

## particular; but being shockingly upset, and in a mortal terror lest he

should lose his head as thoroughly in a physical sense as he had already done in a figurative way of speaking, he lost that opportunity of coolly reviewing his position which, had it but been seized, would have led him to return to London and stay there. It is not a little sad to reflect that, had the gloomy and morose James not been a coward, the House of Stuart might still have ruled England. At any rate, men did not love the taciturn Prince of Orange and his Dutchmen so well but what they would have gladly done without him and have taken back their King, if that King had only shown a little more spirit and a little less of religious bigotry. William could not but perceive that his principles and not his person were acclaimed, and when he gave the King leave to retire to Rochester, he both knew that James desired an opportunity to escape from the kingdom, and hoped he would use it. And he did use the chance so gladly given him, secretly departing from Rochester in the small hours of a December morning, and making for Ambleteuse on the French coast in a fishing-smack.

[Illustration: JACK IN HIS GLORY. _From a painting by Julius Caesar Ibbetson._]

XXIV

This was the last romantic event that befell at Rochester, and it fitly closed a stirring history.

But Chatham and Rochester, although outward romance had departed, did not cease to be interested in naval and military affairs. Indeed, they have grown continually greater on them.

[Sidenote: HOGARTH'S SATIRES]

It was in 1756 that the plates of _England_ and _France_ were published by Hogarth. We were suffering then from one of those panic fears of invasion by the French to which this country has been periodically subject, and these efforts were consequently calculated to have a large sale. Hogarth, of course, after his arrest for sketching at Calais, was morbidly, vitriolically patriotic, and his work is earnest of his feelings. The English are seen drilling in the background of the first plate, while in front of the "Duke of Cumberland" inn a recruit is being measured, and smiles at the caricature of the King of France which a grenadier is painting on the wall. A long inscription proceeds from the mouth of His Most Christian Majesty, "You take a my fine ships, you be de Pirate, you be de Teef, me send you my grand Armies, and hang you all, Morbleu," and he grasps a gibbet to emphasize the words. Meanwhile, a fifer plays "God Save the King"; a soldier in the group has placed his sword across a great cheese; and a sailor has guarded his tankard of beer with a pistol.

But see how different are things across the Channel. Outside the _Sabot Royal_ a party of French grenadiers, lean and hungry-looking after their poor fare of _soupe maigre_, are watching one of their number cook the sprats he has spitted on his sword. A monk with a grin of satisfaction feels the edge of an axe which he has taken from a cart full of racks and other engines of torture destined towards the furnishing of a monastery at Blackfriars in London, of which a plan is seen lying upon this heap of ironmongery; and a file of soldiers may be seen in the distance, reluctantly embarking for England, and spurred forward by the point of the sergeant's halberd. Garrick wrote the patriotic verses that went with this picture, and you may see from them how constantly Englishmen have thought the French to be a nation of lean and hungry starvelings. That is, of course, as absurd as the unfailing practice of French caricaturists to whom the typical Englishman is a creature who has red hair and protruding teeth, and says "Goddam"--

With lanthorn jaws and croaking gut, See how the half-starv'd Frenchmen strut, And call us English dogs; But soon we'll teach these bragging foes, That beef and beer give heavier blows Than soup and roasted frogs.

The priests, inflam'd with righteous hopes, Prepare their axes, wheels, and ropes, To bend the stiff-neck'd sinner: But, should they sink in coming over, Old Nick may fish 'twixt France and Dover, And catch a glorious dinner.

[Illustration: THE INVASION OF ENGLAND: ENGLAND. _After Hogarth._]

[Sidenote: CHATHAM]

Few people, as Dickens says, can tell where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, but even now you become conscious of a gradual alteration in the character of the street as you leave Rochester High Street and come imperceptibly into Chatham; and even though the place has grown so large, and holds so very varied a population that the military and naval sections no longer bulk so largely as they used, they still make a brave show. An inhabitant of Chatham need never wish to visit London, because the triple towns of Chatham, Strood and Rochester--to leave out all count of Gillingham and New Brompton, which are to Chatham even as Hammersmith is to our own great metropolis--contain samples of nearly all that is to be seen in the Capital of the Empire, and much else besides. There is a Dockyard at Chatham two miles in length, from which there issues every day at the dinner-hour an army of artificers of every kind and degree--many thousands of them; and in this Dockyard are ironclads, making, repairing, and refitting together with vast military and naval stores, and all kinds of relics, foremost among which there is a shed, full of old and historic figure-heads; all that is left of the wooden walls that were such efficient bulwarks of England's power. _Agamemnons_, _Arethusas_, _Bellerophons_ are here, and many more. And all around are forts and "lines," barracks and military hospitals; and drilling, manoeuvring, marchings and counter-marchings, and all kinds of military exercises are continually going forward. The names of streets, courts, and alleys, would furnish a very Walhalla of naval heroes, and from all quarters come the sounds of riveting, the blasts of bugles, and the shouting of the captains; and when midday comes the noontide gun resounds from the heights of Fort Pitt, and all the ragged urchins who live on the pavements fall down as if they were shot, much to the terror of old ladies, strangers in these parts, who pass by.

There is still a fine old-time nautical flavour hanging about Chatham. It does not lie on the surface, but requires much patient searching amid mean and disreputable streets, and it is only after passing through slums that would affright a resident of Drury Lane that one finds curiously respectable little terraces, giving upon the waterside, with masts and yards, rigging, derricks, and other strange seafaring tackle peeping over the roof-tops; amphibious corners where a smell of the sea, largely intermixed with odours of pitch, tar, and rope, clings about everything; where men with a nautical lurch come swinging along the pavements, and where, if you glance in at the doorways which are nearly always open in summer, you will see full-rigged models of ships standing on sideboards, supported perhaps by a huge Family Bible, and flanked, most certainly, with strange outlandish shells, branches of coral, and other spoils of far-off lands.

But these things are not patent to he who goes only along the main road, turning to neither right nor left; and it is only a little exploration of byways that will convince you of Mr. Pickwick's summary remaining still substantially correct. "The principal productions" of the three towns of Rochester, Strood, and Chatham, according to Mr. Pickwick, "appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard-men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine-stores, hardbake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters." All of which might well have been written to-day, so closely does the description still apply; but when he goes on to remark that "the streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military," he clearly speaks of by-past times. "It is truly delightful," he says, "to a philanthropic mind to see these gallant men staggering along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent spirits." Delightful indeed! But since those days Tommy Atkins has been evolutionized into a very different creature.

XXV

[Sidenote: OUR LADY OF CHATHAM]

To plunge into mediaeval legends at Chatham will seem the strangest of transitions, and Chatham Parish Church will appear to most people the last place likely to have a story. Yet in demolishing the old building to make way for a new, the workmen found some fragments of sculpture which had a history. Amongst these was a headless group of the Virgin and Child.

[Illustration: THE INVASION OF ENGLAND: FRANCE. _After Hogarth._]

This was, in all probability, the effigy of Our Lady of Chatham, who, in pre-Reformation times, was famous for her miracles; and of whom Lambarde gives the following amusing story in his _Perambulations_: "It seems," says he, "that the corps of a man (lost through shipwracke belike) was cast on land in the parishe of Chatham, and being there taken up, was by some charitable persones committed to honest burial within their church-yard; which thing was no sooner done, but Our Lady of Chatham, finding herselfe offended therewith, arose by night and went in person to the house of the parishe clearke, whiche then was in the streete, a good distance from the church, and making a noyse at his window, awaked him. The man, at the first, as commonly it fareth with men disturbed in their rest, demanded, somewhat roughly, 'who was there?' But when he understoode, by her owne answer, that it was the Lady of Chatham, he changed his note, and moste mildeley asked ye cause of her comming; she tolde him, that there was lately buryed (neere to the place where she was honoured) a sinful person, which so offended her eye with his gastly grinning, that, unless he were removed, she could not but (to the great griefe of good people) withdrawe herselfe from that place, and cease her wonted miraculous working amongst them: and therefore, she willed him to go with her, to the ende that, by his helpe, she might take him up, and caste him again into the river. The clearke obeyed, arose, and waited on her towarde the churche; but the goode ladie (not wonted to walk) waxed wearie of the labour, and therefore was enforced, for very want of breath, to sit downe in a bushe by the way, and there to rest her: and this place (forsooth) as also the whole track of their journey, remaining ever after a greene pathe, the towne dwellers were wont to shew. Now, after a while, they go forward againe, and coming to the churcheyarde, digged up the body, and conveyed it to the waterside, where it was first found. This done, Our Lady shrancke againe into her shryne; and the clearke peaked home, to patche up his broken sleepe; but the corps now eftsoones floted up and down the river, as it did before; which thing being espyed by them of Gillingham, it was once more taken up, and buryed in their churcheyarde. But see what followed upon it: not only the roode of Gillingham (say they), that a while before was busie in bestowing myracles, was now deprived of all that his former virtue; but also ye very earth and place where this carckase was laid, did continually, for ever after, settle and sinke downewarde."

Barham has made good use of this story, you who have read the legend of _Grey Dolphin_ in the _Ingoldsby Legends_ will remember. He narrates, with a joyous irreverence, how, in consequence of the miraculous interposition of the Lady of Chatham (Saint Bridget, forsooth! "who, after leading but a so-so-life, had died in the odour of sanctity") masses were sung, tapers kindled, bells tolled, and how everything thenceforward was wonderment and devotion; the monks of Saint Romwold in solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of Saint Thomas a Becket in the centre. "Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water," continues Tom Ingoldsby, clerk in holy orders and minor canon of the Cathedral of Saint Paul, indulging at once his exuberant humour and his contempt of the Church of Rome, with its relics, miracles, bone-chests, and sanctified _aqua pura_. Meanwhile, the grinning sailor, "grinning more than ever," had drifted down the river, off Gillingham, and lay on the shore in all the majesty of mud, presently to be discovered by the minions of Sir Robert de Shurland, who bade them "turn out his pockets." But it was ill gleaning after the double scrutiny of Father Fothergill and the parish clerk; and, as Ingoldsby observes, "there was not a single maravedi."

[Illustration: PAID OFF AT CHATHAM. _After a Painting by R. Deighton, R.A._]

[Sidenote: "JEZREEL"]

From Saint Bridget to a weird, but yet not altogether unworldly, fanatic of recent years the transition would not be easy, were it not for the fact that the said fanatic's hideous temple still crowns Chatham Hill for all men to see, as a monument of the unfathomed and unfathomable credulity of mankind. The stranger who walks or cycles his way to Dover is told that this barrack-like building is "Jezreel's Temple," and that is about the extent of the information forthcoming. The unredeemed ugliness of the unfinished temple is at once repellant and exciting to curiosity, and the name of "Jezreel" wears such an Old Testament air that most people who pass by want very much to know who and what he was.

He was, as a matter of fact, a private soldier of the 16th Regiment, named James White, who, having been bought out of the Army by the members of a fanatical sect before whom he posed as a prophet, took the extraordinary names of "James Jershom Jezreel," and, with seventeen followers, founded a new sect, the New House of Israel, known by scoffers as the "Joannas." They were, in fact, mad enthusiasts like those whom Joanna Southcott had fooled, years before, and it is supposed that White took the name of "Jezreel" from the Book of Hosea, adding the other names to make a trinity of initial "J's," allusive to the Prophetess Joanna and her minor prophet, John Wroe.