Old Roads and New Roads. Donne William Bodham
security of the Abbey, and for scouring the forests. Savage capital punishments – impalement, mutilation, hanging alive in chains – were inflicted on the marauders, who duly acknowledged these attentions by yet more atrocious severities upon the wayfarers who had the ill luck to be caught by them.
The insecurity of the old roads necessarily affected the manners of the time. He should have been a hardy traveller who would venture himself “single and sole,” when he might journey in company. The same cause which leads to the formation of the caravans of Africa and Asia, led to the collection of such goodly companies of pilgrims as wended their way from the Tabard in Southwark to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury; and the pursuit of travelling under difficulties produced for all posterity the most delightful of the poems of the great father of English verse.
Travelling in companies, in times when it was next to impossible to be on “visiting terms with one’s neighbours,” tended greatly to the improvement of social intercourse, and to the erection of roomy and comfortable inns for the wayfarers. It took Dan Chaucer only a few hours to be on the best footing with the nine and twenty guests at the Tabard.
“Befelle that, in that season3 on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devout corage,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nine and twentie in a compagnie
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felawship; and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
The chambres and the stables weren wide,
And wel we weren esed attè beste.
And shortly, whan the sonne was gone to reste
So hadde I spoken with hem everich on,
That I was of hir felawship anon.”
But the tenants of the waste and the woodland were not the only lords of the highway. The Norman baron drew little profit from the natural produce of his ample domains. In his way he was a staunch protectionist; but he left agriculture very much to take care of itself, and looked to his tolls, his bridges, and above all to his highways, for a more rapid return of the capital he had invested in accoutring men-at-arms, squires, and archers. We know, from ‘Ivanhoe,’ how it fared with Saxons, Pilgrims, and Jews, whose business led them near the castles of Front de Bœuf or Philip de Malvoisin: and we are certain that the Lady of Branksome kept, an expensive establishment, who were expected to bring grist to the mill of the lord or lady of the demesne, by turning out in all weathers and at all hours, whenever a herd of beeves or a company of pilgrims were descried by the watchers from Branksome Towers. For it must have taken no small quantity of beef and hides to furnish the Branksome retainers in dinners and shoe- and saddle-leather; since —
“Nine and twenty knights of fame
Hung their shields in Branksome Hall:
Nine and twenty squires of name
Brought them their steeds to bower from stall:
Nine and twenty yeomen tall
Waited duteous on them all:
They were all knights of mettle true,
Kinsmen to the bold Buccleugh.”
When the traveller carried money in his purse, or the merchant had store of Sheffield whittles or Woodstock gloves in his pack, the lowest dungeon in the castle of the Bigods was his doom; and he was a lucky man who came out again from those crypts which now so much delight our archæological associations, with a tithe of his possessions, or with his proper allowance of eyes, hands, and ears.
Even on the Roman roads, with their good accommodation of pavement, milestones, and towns, journeys were for the most part performed on foot or horseback. For before steel springs were invented, it was by no means pleasant to ride all day in a jolting cart – and the most gorgeous of the Roman carrucæ, or coaches, was no better. Pompous and splendid indeed – to pass for a moment from Norman and Saxon barbarism – must have been the aspect of the Queen of Roads within a few leagues of the capital of the world; splendid and pompous as it was to the actual beholder, it is perhaps seen to best advantage in the following description by Milton —
“Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in;
Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting or on return, in robes of state,
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power,
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits, on the Appian road,
Or on the Æmilian.”
As a pendant to this breathing picture oftan Old Road at the gate of the “vertex omnium civitatum,” we subjoin a note from Gibbon: —
“The carrucæ or coaches of the Romans were often of solid silver, curiously carved and engraved, and the trappings of the mules or horses were embossed with gold. This magnificence continued from the reign of Nero to that of Honorius: and the Appian Road was covered with the splendid equipages of the nobles who came out to meet St. Melania, when she returned to Rome, six years before the Gothic siege. Yet pomp is well exchanged for convenience; and a plain modern coach, that is hung upon springs, is much preferable to the silver and gold carts of antiquity, which rolled on the axle-tree, and were exposed, for the most part, to the inclemency of the weather.”4
The Anglo-Saxon generally travelled on horseback. The Jews were restricted to the ignobler mule. The former indeed had a species of carriage; and horse-litters, probably for the use of royal or noble ladies and invalids, are mentioned by Matthew Paris and William of Malmesbury. Wheel-carriages appear to have multiplied after the return of the Crusaders from Palestine – partly, it may be inferred, because increased wealth had inspired a taste for novel luxuries, and partly because the champions of the Cross had imbibed in the Holy War some of the prejudices of the infidels, and had grown chary of exposing to vulgar gaze their dames and daughters on horseback.5
The speed of travelling depends upon the nature and facilities of the means of transit. Herodotus mentions a remarkable example of speed in a Hemerodromus, or running-post, named Phidippides, who in two days ran from Athens to Sparta, a distance of nearly 152 English miles, to hasten the Laconian contingent, when the Persians were landing on the beach of Marathon. Couriers of this order, trained to speed and endurance from their infancy, conveyed to Montezuma the tidings of the disembarkation of Cortes; and so imperfect were the means of communication at that era in Europe, that the Spaniards noted it as a proof of high refinement in the Aztecs to employ relays of running postmen, from all quarters of their empire to the city on the Great Lake. The speed of a Roman traveller was probably the greatest possible before the invention of carriage-springs and railways. We have some data on this head. The mighty Julius was a rapid traveller. He continually mentions his summa diligentia in his journal of the Gaulish Wars. The length of journeys which he accomplished within a given time, appears even to us at this day, and might well therefore appear to his contemporaries, truly astonishing. A distance of one hundred miles was no extraordinary day’s journey for him. When he did not march with his army on foot, – as he often seems to have done, in order to set his soldiers an example, and also to express that sympathy with them which gained him their hearts so entirely – he mostly travelled in a rheda. This was a four-wheeled carriage, a sort of curricle, and adapted to the carriage of about half a ton of luggage. His personal baggage was probably considerable, for he was a man of most elegant habits, and sedulously attentive to his personal appearance. The tessellated flooring of his tent formed part of his impedimenta, and, like Napoleon, he expected to find amid the distractions
It is acknowledged on all hands that no people talk so much about weather as the English. It is also true that no literature contains so many descriptions of the sensations dependent on the seasons. A French or Italian poet generally goes to Arcadia to fetch images proper for “a fine day.” We, on the contrary, paint from the life. Chaucer luxuriates, in his opening lines of the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ on the blessings and virtues of “April shoures.” Our modern novelists are always very diffuse meteorologists. In lands where the seasons are unhappily uniform, the natives are debarred from this unfailing topic of conversation. Hajji Baba, in Mr. Morier’s pleasant tale, is amazed at being told at Ispahan, by the surgeon of the English Embassy, that “it was a fine day.” On the banks of the South American rivers, mosquitoes afford a useful substitute for meteorological remarks. – “How did you sleep last night?” “Sleep! not a wink. I was hitting at the mosquitoes all night, and am, you see, bitten like a roach notwithstanding.”
The historian might have added to this description of Roman carriages an allusion to the sumptuousness of Roman harness. Apuleius informs us that “necklaces of gold and silver thread embroidered with pearls encircled the necks of the horses; that the head-bands glittered with gems; and the saddles, traces, and reins were cased in bright ribbons.”
Not always, on horseback: for while the knight, as his Latin designation