Part 12

Hackleton, a large but rather characterless place, quickly follows upon Horton and Piddington, and is the last village before reaching Northampton, five miles away. Its position, the next place out of the town on the road to London, made it, in the days before railways a very special halting-place for drovers and the humbler wayfarers, and its inns were many. Superior to the rest was the “New Inn,” now a private residence, but for long years after it had retired from trade bearing on its front the legend “Wines and Spirits: Entertainment for Man and Beast”; with the not unnatural result that the privacy of the occupants was frequently invaded by seekers after that entertainment.

Little more than one mile from Northampton town, near by the junction of the road to Stony Stratford, where the highway assumes a magnificent breadth, stands on a grassy bank the finest of the famous Eleanor Crosses, raised by Edward the First to the memory of his Queen, Eleanor of Castile, who died of a lingering fever at Harby, in Nottinghamshire, November 28th, 1290. It is placed in a solitary position, on a grassy selvedge of the road, at a spot in the parish of Hardingstone, close by the grounds of what was once the Abbey of Delapré, or De Pratis, the Abbey of the Meadows, founded for an establishment of Cluniac nuns by Simon of Senlis, the crusading Earl of Northampton, in the late Norman period.

The dearly loved Queen of Edward the First died in what was then the remote district of Sherwood Forest, but the King decided that her body should rest at Westminster Abbey, and so, with impressive deliberation, the long journey was made.

[Sidenote: _QUEEN ELEANOR_]

Although travelling was a slow and tedious process in those days, it was not necessarily so slow as this lengthy funeral procession. On December 4th, the body of the Queen having been previously removed from Harby to Lincoln Cathedral, the solemn pageant set out for Westminster, but did not reach London until eleven days later, and the entombment did not take place in the Abbey until the 17th of the month. The reasons for the length of time taken are twofold, and are to be found in the pompous circumstances under which the journey was taken, and in the circuitous route chosen. The usual route was by way of Stamford and Huntingdon, and so by Royston and Cheshunt, but it was intended that the procession should pass through a more frequented line of country and districts where the Queen had been better known. Another object was to take some of the greater religious houses on the way, and thus have suitably dignified places where to rest at the close of every day. The route chosen was, therefore, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, West Cheap, and Charing.

The greatest magnificence marked the occasion, and twelve memorial crosses, of different design, were afterwards erected on the places where the bier had rested. Charity was given and masses paid for, and here at Hardingstone, close by the Abbey of Delapré, in whose chapel the body of the Queen rested for the night, this most beautiful of the three remaining crosses was erected. “Living, I loved her dearly,” the King wrote to the Abbot of Cluny, “and dead I shall never cease to love her”; and so with every care the great officers of State who accompanied the procession were directed to mark with particular care those resting-places the King thought sacred, so that no doubt might arise as to the exact spot where these memorials should be built.

The detailed accounts of the cost of these crosses exist to this day in the Record Office, where, inscribed in crabbed Latin on parchment rolls, they may be readily seen, if not so readily deciphered. From them may be gathered the names of the masons and the sculptors engaged: John de Bello being the chief architect of the crosses at Hardingstone, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, and St. Albans; and “Alexander le Imaginator,” otherwise Alexander of Abingdon, and William of Ireland the chief sculptors of the statues. Master Richard de Crundale was principal “cementarius,” or master-mason.

A very special care that the Cross should be frequented is to be observed in the remains of the stone-flagged pathway from Northampton, constructed at the time when the Cross was built, for the purpose of ensuring an easy journey to the spot, where the devout might pray for the soul of the departed Queen. The cost of this is set down in the accounts in payments of forty and sixty marks.

[Illustration: QUEEN ELEANOR CROSS.

_From a photograph taken before the restoration of 1881._]

In spite of the weathering of over six hundred years, and the mischief wrought by thoughtless people, the Cross is still a finely preserved work, and the graceful statues of the Queen under their protecting canopies in the upper stage are yet beautiful. But more than shoulder-high, the initials of the obscure, carved numerously in the stone, bear witness to that passion for remembrance that belongs to all classes, and has written itself deeply on venerable monuments such as this, in tree-trunks, on the margins of books, on walls, and on window-panes innumerable.

[Sidenote: _HOW NOT TO DO IT_]

Many restoring hands, and others that can scarcely be so described, have been laid upon “Queen’s Cross,” as it is locally styled. In the reign of Queen Anne, a good deal was done, and was complacently alluded to in a long Latin inscription on a huge tablet which, together with the Royal Arms, was actually affixed to the Cross, in company with a sundial on each of the eight sides. We may judge of the self-sufficient spirit of those “restorers” in this English version of the inscription: “For the perpetual commemoration of conjugal affection, the honourable Assembly of Magistrates, or Justices, of the County of Northampton, resolved to restore this monument to Queen Eleanor, nearly falling into ruins by reason of age, in that most auspicious year 1713, in which Anne, the glory of her mighty Britain, the most powerful avenger of the oppressed, the arbitress of peace and war, after that Germany had been set free, Belgium made secure by garrisons, the French overthrown in more than ten battles, by her own, and by the arms of her allies, made an end of conquering, and restored peace to Europe, after she had given it freedom.”

Dear me!

A charming afterthought, showing that the justices could descend from Imperial heights to domestic levels, was the placing of a pair of stocks at the base.

In 1762 it was thought necessary to have another shy at the venerable relic, and evidence long remained of it, in another tablet, with the words, “Again repaired and restored in the second year of King George the Third, and of our Lord 1762.” The combination of loyalty and piety is rich indeed.

Again, in 1832 a restoration was effected, at a cost of £300. Happily, no more tablets were affixed, and more happily still, the existing ones were removed. Further, in 1884, the restorations of earlier years were re-restored at a cost of £320. The shattered cross crowning the structure, destroyed at some remote period, has never been replaced.

XVIII

Whatever the truth of the old saying that the traveller might know, by the smell of the leather and the noise of the lapstones, when he was within a mile of Northampton, it scarcely holds good now, for although bootmaking, the ancient and distinctive trade of the town, is still its great staple industry, and is, as every one knows, infinitely larger and more important than ever before, it is scarcely to be distinguished at this distance.

[Sidenote: _NORTHAMPTON_]

Of course, as everywhere, the distant view of the town is nowadays largely a prospect of gasometers, and unless the traveller already knew of Northampton’s bootmaking trade he might, entering by the London Road and Cotton End, well believe he was come to a town of breweries, another Burton-on-Trent: for there, beside the railway level-crossing and the river Nene, stands the great brewery of Phipps & Co.

“Northampton on the Nene”: that is a piece of school geography not readily forgotten, but, however greatly that information may bulk in the memory, both by reason of its alliteration and being so early insisted upon, the river Nene is not, truth to tell, so very much in evidence. The uninstructed might suppose it to be a canal, and a dirty one at that.

It is not a prepossessing entrance, this narrow street of old and grimy, but not ancient, houses and third-rate shops, that leads up into the town, but many surprises await the explorer who, primed with armchair knowledge, sets out upon the road to correct his reading by his own observation. Such an one would find that only strangers speak of “Northampton” as spelled, giving full value to the “North.” To the townspeople it is “N’Thampton.” Each style seems quaint to those who favour the other.

The stranger would expect to find Northampton, as a factory town, a place of squalor and grime; but coming here, and emerging into the market-place from the not very pleasing entrance, his expectations are utterly shattered. There are few towns of the size of Northampton—whose population is now considerably over 89,000—that are so bright and clean, and prosperous-looking, as this; and the stranger, to whom its Radical politics are familiar, and to whom its choice for many years of such Parliamentary representatives as Mr. Henry Labouchere and Bradlaugh argued (reasonably or not I will not declare) brutality and atheism, is pleasurably surprised at not finding the ancient and beautiful churches of the town become “temples of Reason,” lecture-halls, or other things in the secular way. Nor does he perceive, as he had half-anticipated, scowling Radical-Atheists engaged in violence, or shouting insults after the clergy and every person with a good coat upon his back. The picture thus drawn seems farcical, but it does by no means belie the ideas of a great many people who have never been in Northampton and instinctively form a picture of it from tales of its ancient election turbulence and from its choice of representatives in modern times. Northampton is nothing like that: dignity and beauty characterise its chief streets, and municipal effort so long ago as 1864 sought to beautify the town with a splendid Guildhall. Poetry springs—albeit unconsciously—even in the breasts of its Town Councillors and Poor Law Guardians: where none would seek it. Sir William Gilbert makes Bunthorne suspect, in _Patience_, that

Nature, in all thy works Something poetic lurks, Even in colocynth and calomel

[Sidenote: _POETRY_]

How true that is! Even in the prosaic person of a Poor Law Guardian, the fount of true poesy may be bubbling, all unknown; as in that of a member of the Board of Guardians at Northampton, who, in January 1907, challenged the workhouse master’s expenditure of £6 10s. on marking-ink. Said he (he bore the great name of Dickens), lisping in numbers:

I want to speak to you and the Board very plain; I trust my appeal will not be in vain; I hope you will pause and seriously think Before ordering any more marking-ink.

It does not quite scan, but to a man who speaks poetry unawares, inspired by such a domestic detail as marking-ink, a little practice should make perfect. To what heights might he not rise on the subject (say) of baths or drains!

The Guildhall, already referred to, is a building of extremely ornate character, designed by Godwin, with a florid, many-niched and canopied front, furnished with statues of the chief makers of Northampton’s history, and with even the capitals of its columned vestibule carved after the mediæval manner with groups of tiny figures. But in 1864 architectural sculptors had but begun to recover the forgotten arts of the mediæval craftsman, and the execution of the designs is at once coarse and feeble. The interior, except the light and very fine, but barbarically coloured great hall, is of a truly Gothic gloom.

We first find mention of “Hamtune,” as it was originally styled, in the Saxon Chronicle, when the Middle Angles occupied this district of the kingdom of Mercia. Then the Danes, who came first to ravage, settled in this part of the country, and the history of the town, which even then was a considerable place, for very many years remained one of fighting, and the victories of first one and then another. So often as it was burned, it was again rebuilt: no difficult matter then, when the houses were chiefly of timber. In 1065, the year before the coming of the Conqueror, it was again burnt, in the jealous struggles between the Saxon rulers; and there can be little doubt that, wearied of being ground to powder between the upper and the nether millstones of these ambitions, the people of Hampton were not altogether averse from being ruled by a stronger hand, in whose time a little peace might be assured.

Certain it is that Northampton flourished under Norman rule, perhaps more than any other provincial town. The great castle then built has utterly disappeared, but other signs of great expansion remain, in the ancient Norman churches; and history tells us how favourite a place this was with the Norman and the Plantagenet sovereigns, who hunted in the vast surrounding forests, and held council in the great hall of the castle. The most famous of these councils was that of 1164, when Becket’s ultimate fate was foreshadowed. The fierce contest for the supremacy of the Church, or of its subordination to the State in the person of the monarch, had for some time past been in progress. A number of charges had been preferred against the Archbishop, and he was summoned to Northampton to meet them. He arrived and was refused the ceremonial kiss of peace by the King: his bishops renounced his authority, and when he marched to the hall of the castle, carrying his own archiepiscopal cross, the King and court withdrew, leaving him and a few faithful attendants alone. Dwell upon the scene for a moment, and picture the ominous and dramatic grandeur of it. Becket, already threatened with exile or death, fled to the coast and expatriated himself for six years; returning at last to his martyrdom at Canterbury.

[Sidenote: _HISTORY_]

The battles of Northampton in after years carried on the early warlike associations of the town: the first in 1264, when the revolting barons shut themselves up here, and the town and castle were besieged and taken by Prince Edward; the second in 1460, when the Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians with great slaughter, in the Delapré meadows outside the town, and captured the person of Henry VI. himself. By all historic precedents Northampton should have been the scene of a contest in the long struggle between King Charles and his Parliament; but, fortunately for the burgesses, who were commercial folk and not greatly interested, the castle was too far gone in decay to be useful to either side, and the great Northamptonshire battle of Naseby was fought twelve miles away.

Boots and shoes were Northampton’s chief interest, and whoso would might fight for King or Parliament, so only the business of the town were let alone; but in 1648 the town supplied Cromwell’s army with fifteen hundred pairs. The beginnings of this ancient trade go deep down into history. King John bought a pair of boots described as “single-soled.” The transaction is recorded in Latin—“pro 1 pari botarum singularum,” and the price was twelve pence, probably for cash, for no one who could possibly help himself would have thought of giving credit to so shabby a fellow as King John.

And so throughout the centuries. Scarce a war happened but Northampton benefited by the increased demand for shoe-leather. Old Fuller in the long ago declared that it “may be said to stand chiefly on other men’s legs,” and there is probably a deep-seated conviction in the minds of the townsfolk that the state of the boot-and-shoe trade is a more sure index of the prosperity of the nation than that of the iron and shipbuilding trades, usually regarded as the chief indicators of the national welfare.

This conviction of the prime importance of foot-gear has in its time led to some quaint doings; notably when Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort came through the town in 1844, when the Mayor gave the Prince—who did not want them—a pair of boots. I suspect there have been many thousands of wayfarers through the town who _did_ sorely want a pair, and never had the offer.

[Illustration: NORTHAMPTON: MARKET PLACE AND ALL SAINTs’ CHURCH.]

Thousands of pairs of mud-boots were despatched hence to the Army in the Crimea; but whence came the brown paper and cardboard boots supplied by contractors to our poor fellows in that mismanaged campaign? Not from Northampton, I trust.

[Sidenote: “_VOTE EARLY, AND OFTEN_”]

Of the Northampton Parliamentary elections, famed in the long ago for the bitterness with which they were fought, none are more celebrated than the “great spendthrift election,” waged in 1761 between my lords Northampton, Spencer, and Halifax, for the privilege of nominating a member. The enormous expenses incurred were not the most remarkable thing about this contest, although they were unprecedented; nor was the fourteen days’ duration of the poll a thing unheard of. The really startling feature was the heaviness of that poll. Northampton had not only voted its full strength of 930 electors, but 217 over. A petition followed, and was settled, in the sporting manner of the age, by a toss. Lord Spencer won, and nominated his man—who resided in India.

The old churches of Northampton are very fine, and highly interesting in their several ways. There are four of them: St. Peter’s, St. Giles’s, Holy Sepulchre, and All Saints’. It seems strange, considering how ancient is the distinctive trade, that there is no church dedicated to St. Crispin, the patron saint of bootmakers and cobblers. Of all these churches that of the Holy Sepulchre is the most archæologically interesting; but to most people it is the great church of All Saints, in the Market Square, that stands for Northampton. And rightly so, for it is not merely in the centre of the town, but in a most striking and emphatic position; it is also the church selected by the Corporation for its state attendance of Divine worship, as the fine Mayor’s Chair in it—inscribed “Anno Majoratus 2ᵈᵒ Ricardi White, Anno Dom. 1680”—proves; and its curious architectural appearance gives to Northampton a distinct personality among English towns. This is in its present form no mediæval building, but a very remarkable structure of the time of Charles the Second, as we may readily perceive from the statue of him, clad in flowing wig and Roman toga, that surmounts the pillared west front.

Along the entablature above the imposing Ionic colonnade runs the insertion: “This statue was erected in memory of King Charles II., who gave a thousand tun of timber toward the rebuilding of this church and to this town.” The circumstance that made the rebuilding necessary and prompted the gift of timber (which came from the neighbouring Forest of Whittlebury) was the almost complete destruction of the old building in the great fire of 1675, when six hundred houses were also burnt. The tall tower, cased, bell-turreted, and balustraded, is a relic of the incinerated church.

[Illustration: INTERIOR, CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.]

[Sidenote: _THE TEMPLARS’ CHURCHES_]

St. Sepulchre’s—properly the “Church of the Holy Sepulchre”—generally known as “Pulker’s Church,” or “St. Pulker’s,” one of the four round churches in England—or five if we may include the round chapel in Ludlow Castle—is ascribed to the influence of the Templars, whose churches were avowedly built on the model of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Like the Temple Church and others, it is the nave portion of the building that is circular; the choir and presbytery branching eastwards from it. It is in a massive and gloomy Transitional Norman style, the eight huge pillars surmounted by pointed arches. It is magnificent in its austerity and in the warm golden-brown hue of the stone.

St. Giles’s, of nearly all styles from Norman to Perpendicular, and St. Peter’s, a fine late Norman work, built about 1160, complete the ancient churches of the town, with the exception of the mouldering old St. John’s Hospital, now used as a French Catholic church.

XIX

The electric tramways, without which no town nowadays considers itself fully furnished, run far out to the north, through the extended boundaries of “Greater Northampton” to the village of Kingsthorpe: the prosperity of the town certified to every beholder in the long lines of newly completed streets butting on to the fields, and in the new boot and shoe factories, from which you do not indeed hear the noise of the lapstones—such things being obsolete in these days of machinery—but the purr and the humming of wheels.

Just outside the borough boundaries are even more factories, built there for the frugal purpose of avoiding the borough rates; and so, in one way and another, Kingsthorpe, which was not so long since a rural village, with quiet village green, has now been invaded by the restless spirit of the age. Even the village inn has been rebuilt by the inevitable Phipps & Co., and might now, to all appearance, save for the sign of it, be a Jacobean mansion, renovated.

[Sidenote: _A PUZZLING MONUMENT_]

The apparent prodigality of the highway authorities at Kingsthorpe, in the matter of milestones, is a standing wonder to all wayfarers, for there, side by side, are two cast-iron “stones,” each giving sixty-seven miles to London, with distances to other places. The explanation of this singularity is that here, in the old days, the Kingsthorpe and Welford Trust and the Northampton and Market Harborough Trust met. The “stone” erected by the first gives thirteen miles to Welford, twenty-nine to Leicester, and one to Northampton: the other indicates sixteen miles to Market Harborough and one to Northampton.

To the right of the road on to Brixworth rises among a group of trees on the skyline a tall obelisk that piques curiosity. Traversing muddy lanes to the base of it, the explorer afflicted with an inquiring mind discovers, to his disgust, that it bears no inscription, and local inquiries result only in vague rustic talk of its being a monument to the great Duke of Wellington. Research proves it to be to a Duke of Devonshire; but although the rustics are thus proved to be wrong, the attitude of mind that leads them astray is, it will be allowed, entirely in order. From father to son the story has been handed down that it is in memory of a Duke: what other Duke, therefore, should be possible than the great warrior who still bulks so large in their imagination? They rightly cannot conceive that a Duke who has merely succeeded to a dukedom, and just existed in that state, has a claim to such recognition. But the thing is not without its sardonic irony. Built to keep alive the memory of an obscure dead Duke, it is known in all the countryside as a monument to one whose fame will not die, and needs no such memorial.