The Life of Thomas Wanless, Peasant

The grandfather of Thomas Wanless had been a small Warwickshire yeoman, whom the troublous times towards the latter end of the last century, family misfortunes, and the pressure of the large landowners, had combined to reduce in circumstances. His son Jacob had, therefore, found himself in the position of a day labourer on the farms around Ashbrook, raised above his fellow labourers only by the fact that he could sign his name, and that, through his wife, he owned a small freehold cottage with about a quarter of an acre of garden in the village.

His unusual literary accomplishments, and his small possession did little to relieve him from the common miseries which pressed more or less on all, but most, of course, on the lowest class, during the years that succeeded the "glorious" Napoleonic wars. The winter of 1819, therefore, found him wrestling with the bitter energy of a hungry despair to get bread for a family of six children. The task proved too much for him, and he was reluctantly driven to let his oldest boy Thomas go to work on the Whitbury farm for a shilling a week. Thomas had been trying to pick up some inkling of the art of reading at a dame's school in the village, but had not made much progress-could, when thus launched on the world, do no more than spell out the Sermon on the Mount, or the first verses of the 1st chapter in John's Gospel, and ere a year was well over he had forgotten even that. There were no demagogues in those days disturbing peaceful villages with clamours for education; no laws prohibiting the labour of little children at tasks beyond their strength.

The squires, the parsons, and the larger farmers had the law in their own hands, and combined to keep the lower orders in ignorance, giving God thanks that they had the power so to do. The sporting parson of Ashbrook of that day even thought it superfluous to teach those d--d labourers' brats the Catechism. He appeared to think his duty done when he had stumbled through the prayers once a week in church. That, at least, was the range of his spiritual duties. For the rest, he considered it of the highest moment that his tithes should be promptly paid; that all poaching should be summarily punished, and that the hunting appointments of the shire should always be graced by his presence. It was also a point of duty with him always to vote true blue, and never to miss a good dinner at any aristocratic table within his reach. He would say grace with fervour, and drink the good wines till his face grew purple and his eyes bloodshot. If he had another mission in life, it was to do his best to divert in sublime disregard of merit or human wants, the charity which some reluctantly contrite sinner of former days had left for the poor of the parish, to the use of creatures who had excited his good feeling by their obsequiousness.

So it came to pass that little Thomas Wanless was launched on the world at the early age of eight, at the age when the well-to-do begin to think of sending their children to school. Clad in a sort of blue smock and heavy clog boots; patched, not over-warm breeches and stockings, Thomas had to face the wintry blasts in the early morning, for it was a good mile walk to Whitbury Farm. There, all day long, he either trudged wearily by the sides of the horses at plough, often nearly frozen with cold, or did rough jobs about the cattle or pigs in the muck-littered farmyard. Weary, heavy hearted, and hungry, the lad came home at night to his meagre supper of thin oatmeal porridge, or of black bread flavoured with coarse bacon, washed down sometimes with a little thin ale or cider. Often he had for dinner only dry bread and a little watery cheese, and rarely or never any meat or milk. Supper over the boy crept straight to bed. For two years this was the life the boy led, and at the end of these two years his wage was but eighteenpence a week. No food was given him save, perhaps, an occasional hunch of bread surreptitiously conveyed to him beneath the apron of a dairymaid endowed with fellow feeling. What need to fill up the picture of these years-who does not know it now? The long autumn days spent watching the corn, often, weary with watching, and hungry, falling asleep by the hedge side. The dreary winters, the hard pallet, and still harder fare, the scant clothing and chilled blood, the crowded sleeping rooms and wan stunted figures; find you not all the history of lives like this set forth in Parliamentary Blue Books for legislators to ponder over and mend, if they can or care. Thomas Wanless suffered no more hardships than millions that have gone before him, or that follow after to this day, bearing on their weary, patient shoulders the burden of our magnificent civilization. He and the others suspected not that this was their allotted mission in our immaculate order of society; but the concrete sufferings of his lot he could feel. For him the harsh words and cruel blows of the farmer were real enough, and, in the misery of his present sufferings, his young life lost its joy and hope. For him the birds that sang in the sweet spring time brought no melody of heaven, the autumn with its golden grain no joy. He knew only of labour, and men's hardness, and was familiar mostly with hunger and cold and pain. The divine order of the British Constitution had ordained it-why should he complain? If my lord and my lady lived in wasteful luxury, if proud squires and their henchmen trod crops under foot in their pursuit of sport, totally regardless of a people's necessities; if vermin, strictly preserved, ate the bread of the poor in order that the lordly few might indulge the wild brute passion for slaughter, deemed by them a mark of high-breeding, what was that to Thomas and his kind? Had not those people a right to their pleasure? Was not the land theirs, by theft or fraud it might be, but still theirs by a power none dared gainsay? All that was as clear as day, and religion itself was distinctly on the side of the upper classes. The Church through its tithes shared in their exclusive privileges, and the parson of the parish was a diligent guardian of property. On the rare occasions when he preached a sermon his theme was the duty of the poor to be contented and obedient. Men who dared to think, he classed as rioters, who, like poachers and rick-burners, were an abomination to the Lord. Who so dared to question the divine order of British society, deserved, in the parson's view, everlasting death. Wealth, in short, according to this beautiful gospel, was for them that had it or could steal it within the lines of the constitution, and for the poor there was degradation, hunger, rags, and, by way of hope, a chance of the pauper's heaven.

It must be all right, of course; but somehow, gradually, to little Thomas it did not appear so. Very young and ignorant as he was, strange thoughts began to stir within him. At home he saw his father sinking more and more into the hopeless state of a man whose only earthly hope was the parish workhouse; he saw his mother beaten to the earth with the weary work of rearing a family of six children, without the means of giving them enough to eat. One by one these went out, like himself, from their little three-roomed cottage to try and earn the bread they needed. The girls worked in the fields like the rest. All were, like himself, uneducated, and, in spite of all, the wolf could hardly be kept from the door when bread was dear, as it often was in those days. His father's wages never averaged more than 8s. a-week the year round. But what did that matter? Had not the parish provided a poorhouse, and did it not give bread of a kind to every miserable groundling whom it could not drive beyond its bounds? They ought surely to have been contented. Yet Thomas, who saw and often felt their hunger, and contrasted it with the coarse profusion at the farm, and the pampered condition of the squire's menials at the Grange-he doubted many things.

The sight of a meeting of fox-hunters, and of the rush of their horses across the cultivated land, filled him with wrath even then. The life he saw around him had no unity in it. Thus it happened that, by the time he was 13, though still stunted in body, he had begun to assert some amount of dogged independence, and was driven away from Whitbury farm because he flew at his drunken master for striking him with the waggoner's whip.

With some difficulty he got work after this, at 2s. a week and his dinner, on a small dairy farm called the Brooks, which lay a mile further from the village, on the Stratford Road. There he got better treatment. His master was a quiet hard-working man, who had himself a hard struggle to meet his rent, maintain his stock of nine cows, and get a living. His own troubles had tended rather to soften than harden his nature. Thomas, though having to work early and late, at least always got his warm dinner, and often received a draught of milk from the motherly housewife. Here, therefore, he began to grow; his stunted limbs straightened out; his chest expanded, and, by the time he was seventeen he gave the promise of becoming a more than usually stalwart labourer.

While Thomas was still new at this dairy farm, and while the remembrance of his defiance was still fresh in the minds of farmer Pemberton, of Whitbury, and his family, he was subjected to an outrage which almost killed him, and left a mark on his mind which was fresh and vivid to the day of his death. Farmer Pemberton's sons resolved to have a lark with the "impudent young devil." Their first idea was to catch Thomas as he came home at night, and, after trouncing him soundly, duck him in the stinking pond formed by the farm sewage. On consulting their friend, the eldest son of Lawyer Turner, of Warwick, he, however, said that it would be better to frighten the little beggar into doing something they might get him clapped into jail for. Led by this young knave, the farmer's three sons disguised themselves by blackening their faces and donning old clothes. Then, armed with bludgeons and knives, they lay in wait for Thomas as he came home from work in the gloom of an October evening. Their intention was to seize him, and amid great demonstrations of knives and fearful imprecations, order him to take them to Farmer Pemberton's rickyard. Once there they intended to force him to set fire to some straw in the yard, and then seize him for fire-raising. As young Turner said, they might easily in this way swear him into jail for a twelvemonth.

This diabolical plot was actually and literally carried out upon this poor, ignorant, peasant lad by four young men, supposed to be educated and civilised; and it might have had all the disastrous consequences they could have wished but for an accident. A labourer on the farm overheard part of the conversation of the plotters as they marshalled themselves on the night of the expedition, and, as soon as the coast was clear, stole off to warn the boy's father. Jacob Wanless and he at once roused the neighbours; and, after a delay of perhaps twenty minutes, half a dozen men started for Whitbury Farm, while as many took the Stratford Road to try to save the boy from capture.

The latter party was too late; Thomas was caught near a cross-road about a quarter of a mile from the farm. Two disguised men rushed upon him from opposite sides of the road with savage growls, their blackened faces half hid in mufflers. Brandishing clubs and knives, they demanded his name. Thomas gave one piercing yell of terror and dashed forward, but was seized and held fast. Gripping him by the collar of his smock till he was nearly choked, young Turner again demanded his name, and, on Thomas gasping it out, roared in his ear, "then you are the villain we want. You must take us to farmer Pemberton's rickyard and stables. We are rick-burners, and will kill you unless you obey." Whereat he flourished a knife, and drew the back of it across his own throat, with a significant gurgle. Thomas trembled in every limb, tried to speak, but his tongue failing him, burst into a wail of crying instead, and sank to the ground. The scoundrels laughed hoarsely, and, amid a volley of oaths, hauled him to his feet. Then forcing him on his knees, Turner ordered him to swear to lead them to the place, and keep faith with them. As the boy hesitated, they stood over him crying, "Swear, swear, you obstinate pig, or you die," and Turner held the knife to his heart. Thoroughly cowed and terror stricken, Thomas gasped out, "I swear." A man on each side then laid hold of him, hauled him to his feet and led him towards the farm, the other two ruffians acting guards, muttering foul oaths, and brandishing their cudgels within an inch of his face in a way that froze his very heart's blood with terror.

Arrived at the barn, they produced a tinderbox, and, lighting a match, ordered Thomas to set fire to a heap of loose straw that lay near the barn door. Thomas refused. A dim glimmer of the fact that he was being hoaxed had risen through his fears. He thought he knew the voices of at least two of his tormentors, and he grew bolder. Twice the order was repeated amid ominous handling of knives, but he sullenly bade them light the straw themselves, and thrust his hands into his pockets. After a third refusal one of the Pembertons struck him in the face a blow that loosened three of his teeth, and made his nose bleed profusely. Then once more he was asked to light the straw, but the only reply was a piercing cry for help. In a moment a gag was thrust into his bleeding mouth, and he was flung on the ground, where they proceeded to pinion his hands and his feet. Before completing the tying, Turner hissed into his ear, "Hold up your hand to say you yield, you little devil, or we will beat you to death." But Thomas lay still, so the whole four of them commenced to push him about with their feet, and to strike him with their sticks, amid growls and horrid oaths. Then Thomas lost consciousness. When he awoke again he was at home in his mother's bed. His mother was kneeling by his side weeping bitterly, and his father stood over him holding a feeble rushlight, watching for the return of life. The boy was in great pain, especially about the legs and abdomen, and could not move his left arm at all. His face was swollen, his lips and gums lacerated and sore, and he lay tossing in pain till the grey morning light, when he dropt off into a fitful sleep. A fortnight elapsed before he was able to resume work.

The rescuing party had reached the farm barely in time to prevent the brutal ruffians from carrying their sport to perhaps a fatal conclusion. Guided by the curses and laughter, Jacob and his friends had rushed upon the savages in the midst of the kicking, and Jacob himself in a frenzy of rage wrenched a cudgel from the nearest of them, felled him to the earth with it, and dragged his son from amongst the others' feet. The man he struck happened to be Turner; and, seeing him down, the cowardly young Pembertons took to their heels before the slower moving labourers could capture them. Turner, all bleeding as he was, they attempted to take with them in order to give him into custody, but on the way to the village he tripped up one of his guards, wrenched himself free, and bolted. An outrage like this surely could not go unpunished. Jacob Wanless determined that it should not, and went to a Warwick lawyer, a rival of old Turner's, with a view to get redress. This lawyer, Overend by name, was a sort of pettifogger, who laid himself out for poor men's work. In his way he was clever enough; but, unfortunately, he often got drunk; and, even when sober, was hardly a match for old Turner. When Thomas's case came before the justices, Jacob, therefore, fared badly. Overend had just enough drink to make him violent and abusive, and the result was that his witnesses were so bamboozled and browbeaten by both Turner and the bench that they became confused, and gave incoherent answers; so it was not very difficult, false swearing being easy, for Turner and his clients to make Thomas the criminal. His attack on old Pemberton's person was raked up in proof of his bad disposition, and his presence in the farmyard was attributed to motives of revenge. As a result, instead of obtaining redress, Jacob's case was dismissed by the magistrates, and he and his son admonished. The chairman of the day, Squire Polewhele, of Middlebury, told Jacob he might be thankful that they did not put his son in jail for assault. There could be no doubt in his opinion that the young scamp had gone to farmer Pemberton's rickyard with malicious intent, for it was clear that he was an ill-conditioned rascal, and if his father did not take better care of his upbringing he might live to see him come to a bad end.

Such was Jacob's consolation. It took him and his son six months to pay Overend's bill of 30s. The unlucky labourer who had brought the news of the plot fared perhaps worse than anybody, for old Pemberton, at the instigation of his sons, turned him off at a moment's notice. It was nearly four months before the poor fellow could get another steady job, and he and his family were all winter chargeable on the rates.

As for the boy Thomas, his nervous system had received such a shock that it became a positive agony to him to have to trudge home from his work in the dark winter nights, and when his father was unable to go to meet him he always ran at the top of his speed past Whitbury farm, his heart within him palpitating like to burst. All his life long, so deep was the impression that fright made on him, a certain nervous tremor seized him whenever he found himself alone on a strange road on a moonless night.

The rest of the boyhood of Thomas Wanless was uneventful. He grew in mind and in stature, and suffered less withal from hunger than many of his order. At the age of twenty he took a wife, following in that respect the habits of those around him. 'Tis the fashion nowadays to inveigh against early marriages, and especially against the poor who marry early. By such a practice it is declared miseries are heaped upon them, and our pauper roll is augmented. This is an easy way to push aside one of the most perplexing social problems that this country has ever had to face. With the growth of wealth marriage has become a luxury even to the rich, and for the comparatively poor a forbidden indulgence. As a consequence of this the youth of the present day avoid marriage with all its hampering ties. A code of morals has thus grown up which may be said to be paving the way for a coming negation of all morality.

A young man may commit almost any crime against a young woman with impunity so long as he steers clear of all hints of marriage. The relations of the sexes are under this modern code utterly unnatural and fruitful of corruption. Nor can it be otherwise while a man is forbidden under penalty of social ostracism to take a wife. To marry is almost as sure a way to renounce the world, with all its hopes and advantages, as of old was the taking of a monastic vow. What the next generation will be, what licenses it will give itself under the modern restrictions which outrage all that is best in humanity, I must not venture to predict. But that corruption is spreading on all hands, that flippancy, folly, and worse, dominate the relationships of the young of both sexes is even now too apparent.

But I am travelling far from Thomas Wanless's history. He at all events felt no social restraint save that of poverty, which he did not fear, and so he married young. The lad had, indeed, little choice.

His mother died when he was 19, and one of his sisters, the youngest of the family, was also dead. The other had married and gone to a village five miles beyond Warwick. Of his three brothers, one only remained at home, a boy of 14. William, the next in age to himself, had been kidnapped at Gloucester, and carried off to sea in a Government ship; and the other boy, Jacob, had a place as stable-boy at Melton Priory, Lord Raven's place, near which his married sister lived. There was no woman, therefore, at home to cook food for the three that were left. His father was too broken down to dream of marrying again, there were no houses in the miserable overcrowded village where the three could be taken in to lodge together, and so, unless they separated, what could Thomas do but marry? He was willing enough, of course, being, like all country lads of his years, honestly in love; and so at twenty he brought home his wife to take his mother's place in the old freehold cottage, soon to be his own. Sarah Leigh was a year or two older than her husband, and had been an under-housemaid at the Grange, the family seat of Squire Wiseman, who was the greatest man of the parish, and lord of the manor. Her experiences there were not, perhaps, such as best fitted her to be a labourer's wife, and at first she was inclined to commiserate herself. But at bottom Sarah was a woman of sense, and by the time her second child arrived had grown into a staid, affectionate housewife, ever cheerfully busy in making her home comfortable.

Prudent or not, Thomas thus found himself in a humble and modest way happy. He was now acting as under-waggoner at a farm called Grimscote, near Warwick, and had as much as 9s. 6d. a week in summer, besides beer and extra money in harvest. In winter his work was also regular, though his wages were then only 8s. a week. His duties often took him considerable distances away from home. He was frequently at Coventry and Stratford-on-Avon, and he had once been as far as Worcester, and as his observant faculties were keen, he took mental notes of what he saw. Full of pity for the misery that he everywhere met, the feelings of his boyhood became keener, and his independence of spirit more out-spoken. Already this had attracted in a passing way the attention of the authorities, and some even went so far as to shake their wiseacre heads over him, and dubiously hint that he might be dangerous.

* * *

In the years that elapsed between the close of the Napoleonic wars and the passing of the Reform Bill, as indeed often since, the debasement and misery of the agricultural poor rose to agony point, and soon after Thomas Wanless's marriage an outbreak of popular discontent, based on hunger, stirred a little the smooth surface of society. It became necessary, for very shame, to at least appear to do something for the pauperised masses on whose backs "society" was supported.

Accordingly, a pseudo philanthropic agitation was started in the rural districts with the object of bettering, or rather of seeming to better, the peasant's lot. Mass meetings were held, parsons and even bishops threw themselves into the movement, patronised it, and sought to guide it to a consummation safe for themselves and their "dear church," itself then so great a landowner.

For rustic miseries these high personages had one main panacea, and one only. This was not free land, fixity of tenure for the besotted farmers always so content to lie at the feet of their earthly lords; it was not disendowment of the Church and the distribution of its lands among the people from whom they had been taken originally by chicane and greed; nor was it the dismissal, with due payment, of those inheritors of the ancient marauders and appropriators of the soil, with all that is on it and under it, for whom the people have been kept as slaves for many generations. No; none of these things did the servants of the British deity, that idealisation of the sacred rights of feudal property, advocate. Far be such traitor conduct from them. Their cure for the agricultural distress was the "allotment system." To these reformers the free migration of labour, the abolition of that abomination of the poor law which prevented the poor from leaving their parishes, was as nothing compared with allotments. Landlords and parish authorities had but to permit the labourers to cultivate for themselves little patches of land, let to them at a good rent, and what opulence would these serfs not reach.

In the agitation on this tremendous reform, Thomas Wanless took a keen interest, and then first felt sorely his inability to read. He tried to recall the lessons of his childhood, but could not, and was ashamed to apply for help. Few, indeed, amongst his neighbours could have helped him. His wife was as uneducated as himself, so he had to be contented with gathering the purport of what was going on from those he met at market or mill. As far as his mind could comprehend the question it was very clearly made up. He was convinced that all this agitation about professed interest in the down-trodden labourers would do them no good, and he doubted whether any good was meant.

"It's not a bit of charity land we want," he always said. "What I maintain is that you and me an' the likes of us ought to get 10 acres or more at a fair honest rent if we can do wi' it, and let's take our chance. Why shouldn't I be able to keep cows and grow corn as well as the farmer? He often wastes more than three labourers' families could live on, and yet pays his rent. I tell ye, lads, this talk of 'lotments and half acres, and all that, is just damned nonsense, an' that's what it be."

Sentiments like these did not make Thomas popular with the upper powers, and had old Parson Field been alive he might have smarted for his freedom of speech. But the old parson had died shortly before the noise about allotments came to a head, and the new vicar was supposed to be of a different stamp. He was reputed to be a favourite of one of those strange fungoid excrescences of Christianity, the "Lord" Bishop of the diocese, who recommended him for the vacancy, and as he was young and ignorant of the world, he began his work with some moral fervour and a tendency to religious zeal. The Rev. Josiah Codling, M.A., of Jesus College, Cambridge, was in fact a young man of liberal, not to say democratic tendencies. He had been sufficiently impressed by some of the more glorious precepts of the faith he came to teach to wish in a general sort of a way to do good. Left to follow his higher impulses he probably might have led a life of active philanthropy, and the democratic thoroughness of the Christian faith might have enabled him to do something to lift the down-trodden people who formed the bulk of his flock. It was well, at all events, that Mr. Codling began with good intent. He was hardly warm in the parish before he went into the allotment agitation with the feverish enthusiasm of inexperience, and he also had the temerity to start a school. Dismissing the old parish clerk who had drowsily mumbled the "amens" and "we beseech Thee's" for nigh forty years, he brought a young man from Birmingham who knew something of the three R's, and was rumoured to have even conned a Latin primer, and constituted him parish clerk and schoolmaster. The vicarage coach-house was turned into a schoolroom till better could be provided, and the vicar and his assistant began, the one to hunt up pupils, and the other to guide their feet in the way of knowledge.

The farmers for a time looked on, scarce able to realise the meaning of this innovation, but the more they looked the less they liked what they saw. So they grumbled when they met in the churchyard on Sundays, and shook their heads portentously over their beer or brandy punch at market ordinaries, hinting that the "Squoire" should interfere. In their bovine manner they soon began to place stumbling-blocks in the vicar's path. A sudden demand for the services of boys and girls sprang up. Nearly every farmer in the district found that he needed a new ploughboy or kitchen wench, and the universal shilling rose to eighteenpence a week, from the sheer pressure of this demand. Nothing daunted, Parson Codling determined to start a night school, and if possible get the grown lads and young men to attend. He succeeded in inducing nearly thirty youths to come to this night class, and among the first to do so was Thomas Wanless. Here was his chance, he thought, and he seized it with avidity. Soon the numbers thinned away. Some left because they could see no good in learning, but most of them because their masters on hearing of the class threatened to dismiss them at once unless they promised to stop "going to play the fool with that young Varsity ninny o' a parson, as knew nowt o' plain country folks' wants;" and at the end of a month the young schoolmaster had only seven pupils. To these he stuck fast, and they made great progress that winter, for the poor pale-faced Birmingham lad was an enthusiast in his way. Thomas and he became close friends, and the former drank in the current political ideas which William Brown brought with him from Birmingham as a sponge drinks up water. Early and late, at every spare moment, Thomas was busy with his book, and by the time spring came round again he was able to read with tolerable ease the small county newspaper that found its way a week old from the Grange to the village inn. He had read the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and some other books lent him by the vicar, who looked upon him as his model scholar, and took glory to himself over the labourer's success.

From that winter forth, however, the enthusiasm of the new vicar for education sensibly died away. Naturally fitful in disposition, he craved for immediate results, and, if they came not, his hopes were disappointed, and his efforts at once relaxed. The pressure of the upper powers of his parish was also beginning to tell on his unsophisticated mind. He met with little overt opposition, for that might have been both troublesome and impolitic. But quiet social forces worked on him continually to bring him round to a proper sense of his position as local priest of feudalism. When he dined out, which often happened, his host would chaff him on his attempts to make scholars of those loafing rascals of labourers. Squire Wiseman in particular gravely assured him that he was encouraging dangerous ideas among a very dissolute and indefinitely corrupt lot of pariahs. Educate them and they would altogether go to the devil.

"Tell you what it is, sir," shouted a half-drunk J.P. one evening as the vicar and some half dozen others sat over their wine after dinner at Squire Wiseman's: "Tell you what it is; we must get you a wife; blest if that wouldn't give you something better to do, my boy, than trying to make gentlemen of those damn'd skulking labourers."

The company ha ha'd with delight, and the parson blushed to the very root of his hair.

"Capital idea, 'pon my life!" said the host; "and I know just the girl for you, Codling-at least my wife does, for she was remarking only last night what a pity it was-"

"Please, sir," said the butler suddenly, after whispering for a short time with a maid who had entered the room, "Timms would like to speak wi' you. He says he's found poacher's snares in the Ashwood coppice, and he wants two or three fellows to help him watch the place."

"Damn the fellow! can't he let a man eat his dinner in peace! Tell him to go to the devil, Robins, and-and I'll see him to-morrow morning."

"Yes, sir. But, sir, Timms says-"

"Curse Timms, and you too! Do you hear what I say?" roared the squire, and Robins vanished.

The conversation did not get back to the subject of Codling's marriage; and the host, after playing absently with his glass for a minute or two, got up hastily, and muttering, "Excuse me, gentlemen, only I think I had better see Timms after all," left the room.

That night three poachers-a Warford villager and two shoemakers from Warwick-were caught in the coppice, and lodged in Warwick jail.

In two days it was all over Ashbrook village that the vicar was going to get married. The servants at the Grange had told the news to their friends in confidence.

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PLUS A LITTLE FIGHTING-THE "ALLOTMENT"

CURE FOR HUNGER.

The village gossips were right. Lady Harriet Wiseman did find the vicar a wife, though not just then. The vicar's young zeal, his vague ideas, had first to be moderated or abandoned. Bit by bit he was brought down to the prosaic realities of parish life, which embraced obligations unheard of in Holy Writ. That says nothing about the necessity for upholding feudalism. A mere twelvemonths' labour at reforming the morals and refining the minds of the rustics by means of the schoolmaster was not quite enough to bring young Codling to a proper sense of his position. A few more vagaries, a little further indulgence in the pleasure of sowing religious wild oats, and then the vicar would be ready to contract that highly advantageous marriage, which forms the goal of so many a parson's ambition.

That accomplished, Codling might be considered tamed. The one further aberration of his which we have to notice was his plunge into the allotment agitation. As the excitement over teaching the rustics their alphabet and multiplication table began to die out in his mind, this new whim came handily to take its place and prevent him from feeling like a deserter. Here, he declared, was the true remedy for the miseries of the rural poor; he had become convinced that to educate them first was to begin at the wrong end. The first thing was to make them comfortable in their homes, and then they might learn to read with more advantage. The schoolmaster was by no means to be thrown over, but meanwhile Codling said the most important thing was that the labourers should have patches of land to grow cabbages and potatoes.

The vicar's new fad, as it was called, did not excite the same amount of hostility amongst the squirearchy of the neighbourhood as his effort at education, but the farmers liked it as ill. Squire Wiseman was indeed opposed to the experiment, and had there been no other landed proprietor of influence in the parish, the vicar's fuss would have left no results. But fortunately, in some respects, for the labourers, nearly all Ashbrook village, and a good deal of the rolling meadow land to the south of it, and that lay between wooded knolls, belonged to an eccentric old fellow, named Hawthorn. The people called him Captain Hawthorn, perhaps to distinguish him from the Squire, but he had never known more of military life than three months' service as a subaltern in a militia regiment. This Hawthorn was an oddity. A dry, withered, rather small man, of between 50 and 60, slovenly in dress, and full of a sardonic humour, he was constantly to be met walking in the country lanes, and as often as not conversing with waggoners, poachers, and such country people as came in his way. He was therefore distrusted by the other big people of his neighbourhood; but the common people loved him. The new vicar had hardly been a week in the parish ere he was warned by the gentry to beware of this old man. Old Polewhele of Middlebury roundly declared that Hawthorn was an infidel; and the Dowager-Countess of Leigholm, Lady Harriet Wiseman's mother, felt sure that he was in league with the Evil One, for he was always muttering to himself, or else talking to a one-eyed, mangy, tailless cur, that followed him everywhere, and which had more than once snarled at her in a very vicious manner. Her ladyship, however, had a private grudge against him, in that he had on several occasions been wicked enough to win money from her at cards, and take it too-a crime she was never known to forgive.

Whatever his relationship with, or belief in, the unseen powers, Hawthorn alone of the landed gentry furthered Codling's latest project, and made it a success in spite of the fact that the fitful zealot was at the point of throwing the whole thing at his heels in disgust. Codling felt that he had a right to be disheartened when his projects were not adopted forthwith, and moreover, he was getting under weigh as a lover, and that made other occupations irksome. He had done all he could, he said to himself, and yet nobody was converted. Wiseman laughed at him good humouredly as usual, and the farmers sent old Sprigg of Knebesley, as their spokesman, to tell him that in their opinion "'lotments would be the ruin of all honest labour. Gi'e the labourers land," he said, "and they'll skulk at home instead of doin' an honest day's work for us. They're the laziest vagabonds in creation, and the only thing you can do is to keep them dependent on the rates, and when ye want 'em to work, stop supplies. Hunger's the only prod for cattle o' that kidney."

The vicar was rapidly becoming convinced that he had made a mistake, but he had gone so far that he could hardly at once back out, so he resolved to make one final attempt to carry his point, in which he would obtain the aid of a brother parson. This device would, he thought, enable him to retreat gracefully from his false position. The man he summoned to his help was a Leicestershire rector, whose consuming zeal had induced him to become a sort of itinerant evangelist of the allotment system. What could be better than to get such a brilliant apostle to address a mass meeting at Ashbrook. With the failure of a prophet to convince landlords and farmers, Codling felt that his weak-kneedness might be justified.

The Rev. Henry Slocome's services were therefore secured, and notices of the coming meeting were posted on the church doors and in the neighbourhood for a fortnight in advance. As there was no building large enough, the meeting was to be held beneath the old elm on Ashbrook Green. The news excited great interest amongst the labourers who, on the Saturday evening in July when the meeting was held, gathered to the number of about 200 men and women from all the villages in the neighbourhood. A strange sight they presented as they stood with upturned faces around the waggon on which the vicar, the parish clerk, and the speaker of the evening were perched. Grey wizened faces, watery eyes, blueish hungry-like lips these men and women had-a weird, hopeless-looking, toil-bent congregation of the have-nots.

Young men were stunted and shrivelled with labour and want, and old men were gaunt and twisted with exposure, overwork, and rheumatism. Verily if allotments were to do these people good, the work of the self-chosen missionary, who had come to set the country on fire, was not to be contemned. But it boded ill for the success of his efforts that never a landed proprietor in the district gave the meeting his countenance. Just, however, as business began the crowd of labourers was recruited by from 20 to 30 young farmers and farmers' sons. These stood apart, ranging themselves on the left of the meeting near the churchyard wall, and rather behind the waggon. They were too far off to hear well, but near enough for interruptions, and they accordingly indulged frequently in groans, ironical laughter, or jeers at the labourers. Two of the Pembertons were there, the two who had succeeded their father at Whitbury farm, and there also was hulking young Turner from Warwick, half drunk as usual.

The labourers themselves were in high good humour, and indulged in a great deal of rough chaff at each other's expense. A noted poacher in particular came in for much attention, and amongst other things was asked if he would "haul a cove afore the justices if he caught him snaring rabbits in his 'lotment?" But all this was hushed when the vicar and his ally mounted the waggon and began proceedings. I cannot give you the speech of the Rev. Henry Slocome, for Thomas had but a dim recollection of it, his attention being too much occupied watching the ongoings of the farmers. These for a time contented themselves with making a noise, but that was far too tame a kind of fun to satisfy such bright sparks long, and they soon began to shy small pebbles among the crowd, aiming at such hats or sticks as were prominent. This raised a clamour which interrupted the meeting, and matters were brought to a crisis by one of these stones hitting Thomas Wanless on the cheek. It was a sharp-edged bit of flint which cut the cheek open, and made Thomas furious. Turning his bleeding face, now barely visible in the gathering dusk, to the crowd, and heedless of the vicar's shouts for silence, he exclaimed-"Lads, are you going to stand this stone-throwing any longer; are these slave-drivers to be allowed to bully us on our own village green?"

"No, no, no," shouted the labourers in a chorus.

"Let us thrash them, then," he replied, "and teach them that we have the right to live."

He was answered with a shout and a rush. In vain the orator parson and the vicar gesticulated and roared; in vain the parish clerk, at Codlings' suggestion, jumped from the waggon and tried to hold the people back. The tall figure of Thomas Wanless, the sight of blood on his face, his fiery looks and determined attitude, completely carried the labourers away. More stones too were thrown, and the jeers that accompanied them hurt almost more than stones. A conflict was now inevitable.

Seeing the younger labourers gathering round Wanless for an onset, Turner, ever the leader in mischief, hastily collected his forces, and drew them back against the churchyard wall. They had hardly time ere the labourers were upon them.

"Come on, boys," Wanless shouted, without waiting to form an array, hardly, indeed, waiting to see who was following him. Clenching his teeth and drawing himself together he dashed up the slope, and singling out Turner, closed with him, and sent his stick flying over the churchyard wall. A moment after Turner himself was rolling amongst the feet of those who had hurried after Wanless. The strife now became general, and for a time all was wild confusion. Gradually, however, the fight, as it were, gathered into knots round the leading men on either side. Big Tom Pemberton had been struck at by a puny little handful of pluck, whose slender frame and pinched face indicated an absence of stamina which ill-fitted him for a struggle with that stalwart bully. He was instantly caught by the throat and bent backwards. Had Wanless not happened to look that way Pemberton might have broken his back, for he proceeded to twist him round and double him over his knee, but Wanless was passing, and swift as lightning, his stick came down on Pemberton's head. The blow staggered him, and made him let go. Pushing him aside, Thomas seized the pale-faced lad and hurried him out of the fight. Turning, he skirted along the edge of the battle to cheer his comrades and help others that might be in distress, dealing a blow here, and tripping up a foe there, and dodging many a stroke aimed at himself. Comparatively scathless, but somewhat blown, he worked his way back to the thick of the struggle, and immediately found himself face to face with the other Pemberton, who had just ended a tough fight with the blacksmith, and like Wanless, was a little spent. He, however, made for Thomas the moment he saw him, and they closed in a fierce wrestle. They tugged and tore at each other for a moment or two, and then went down together, falling on their sides, Wanless, being, if anything, rather undermost. In the fight that followed for supremacy, Pemberton's greater weight, for he was fuller, taller, and stouter than Thomas, seemed to promise him the victory; but with a violent wrench, Wanless so far freed himself as to get his knees planted against Pemberton's body, when, with a final tug, he broke free and sprang to his feet. Bill Pemberton also scrambled up, and they then began hitting at each other wildly with their fists. A kind of ring gathered round them, each side cheering its champion, but the fight was not an equal one. The young farmer was too fat and heavy, and Thomas's random blows punished him fearfully. Blood trickled down his face, and he was gasping for breath before they had fought five minutes, and Thomas finished the contest by rushing at Pemberton and throwing him crashing amongst his followers' feet. They dragged him out of the melée, and, their fury redoubled, returned to make a combined onset on the labourers. Had they been at all equally matched in numbers, the farmers would now probably have driven their foes from the field, and, overmatched as they were, they twice forced the labourers back on the old folks, and women still huddled round the waggon eagerly watching the fight through the gathering darkness.

But Wanless and his lieutenant, the young blacksmith, again and again rallied their forces and advanced to the attack. At last, edging round to the upper end of the churchyard, which lay aslant a considerable declivity, they bore down on the flank of the farmers' party, with a rush that carried everything before it. Before they could rally themselves, the farmers were huddled together, and, amid random blows, kicks, and oaths, driven pell mell clear off the green, as far as the vicarage gate. There they tried to make a stand, but the momentum and numbers of the labourers, now swollen by many of the women, were too much for them, and they were finally chased from the village, amid the derisive shouts of the victors. They retired, cursing and vowing vengeance as they went.

The fight over, the people, panting and exhausted, drew slowly together by the waggon once more, recounting their exploits and showing their wounds. One man had got his arm broken, and many had severe cuts, bruises, and sprains, but, on the whole, the damage done had been slight.

It was now almost dark, and the crowd soon began to ask whether there was to be any more speechifying. The old people, who had stayed by the waggon, thought the meeting must be at an end. "The vicar," they said, "had gone off in a huff, taking t'other parson wi' him, when he found nary a one mindin' a bit what he said." So the labourers were in doubts what to do. Some wanted to go home, having thrashed the farmers, "a good nights job enough;" others thought a deputation ought to go to the vicarage to try and mollify the parson, for after all allotments might be worth having.

Just as the dispute was waxing warm, the light of a lantern shone out from behind the tree, and, coming round to the waggon, attracted attention. Thinking it was the parsons come back, the labourers ceased their talk to listen; but what they heard was the voice of Captain Hawthorn swearing at his servant for not lighting the way better. The servant paid no attention to the oaths, but cast his light over the waggon, and exclaimed: "Here we are, sir. Here's where the strange cove was a spouting. But, by the Lord Harry! he's hooked it!" he added in a disappointed tone.

"Strange cove! What's that I hear, Francis? Francis, you scamp, don't you know that's blasphemy? Hooked it! He! he! D-- the fellow! that comes of picking up London servants." Then, changing his tone, the Captain almost shouted, "Help me up, Francis. I want to see these scoundrels. How the devil is a man to get into this waggon? Find me a chair, will you, eh?"

"Please, sir, can't you manage to mount by the wheel, sir," answered his servant, and after some trouble the Captain did get in by the wheel, swearing much, and followed by his servant with the lantern. The dog then wanted to mount also, but, being fat and heavy couldn't manage it, so sat down and began to yelp. This caused a fresh outburst of swearing, and ultimately Francis had to get out again and hoist the dog in, as the brute would allow none of the people to touch him.

Quiet and order being restored, Hawthorn stood forward, took the lantern from his servant's hand, and, raising it, proceeded very deliberately to survey the crowd before him. Most of their faces, and many of their names were well known to him; and he addressed some of those he knew with some characteristic greeting. The wounded men appeared to interest him specially, and it was ludicrous to hear him rate one fellow for being unable to protect his handsome face, and condole with another on the coming interview with his wife. He discovered the countenance of his own groom disfigured by a cut on the nose and a black eye, and he held the light over it, chuckling loudly, till the fellow fairly ducked under. "Ha, Silas, you thief," he said, "I have always told you that you would get punished some day for your vanity, and sure enough the dairymaid will marry the blacksmith in less than a month, if you show that face to her. Gad, you'll frighten my old mare out of her wits, too, with that diabolical figure-head of yours. You had better go home to your mother and get it mended."

"By heavens," he exclaimed, again casting his light on another face, "there's poacher Dick. Were you in the fray, Dick, my boy? No, no, it cannot be; he's been mauling the gamekeepers, and has taken refuge amongst you lads, eh?"

"No, no; he fought with us all square," was the answer, and the crowd laughed, and the Captain chuckled again and again.

Suddenly laying down the lantern he shouted, "Three cheers for the victors of Ashbrook fight," a call instantly responded to amid great good humour and much laughter.

"Three cheers for the Captain," called a voice in the crowd, and off went the huzzas again.

"Drop that nonsense, will you, boys; drop it, I say," roared the Captain, and added as soon as he could make himself heard above the din, "what the devil are you cheering me for? I didn't help you to win the fight, did I?"

"No, but you cheered us for it," answered a dozen voices together.

"And that's more than any other squire in Warwickshire would 'a' done," cried young Wanless.

"Is that you, Tom Wanless?" queried Hawthorn.

"Yes, sir."

"Then you are a damned fool, Tom, and know nothing about it. All Englishmen like to see pluck, don't they, you young rascal?"

The ironical tone of this query was perceptible to all, and raised an answering laugh of irony, amid which Wanless shouted back-

"We ain't Englishmen, we labourers, except when we list and let ourselves be shot by the thousand when some big chap with a handle to his name says, March! An' even then the big chaps get all the rewards, and such o' the common lot as escape hardly get leave to beg. No, no, sir; we ain't Englishmen, we are only Englishmen's slaves."

"Drop that, Tom Wanless," interrupted Hawthorn; "drop it. Good Lord, man, do you suppose I came here to listen to a speech from you, when I kept well without earshot of the parsons. And, Gad, that reminds me-Where are the parsons? Francis! Francis!"

"Yes sir, yes sir," answered that staid person, hurriedly coming forward.

"Humph, making love to the wenches at my very elbow, you graceless dog. Go and tell the vicar with my compliments, that I want to speak to him out here in this old waggon with the bottom half out. Gad, I'll be through it, I do believe, before you get back. Could that shouting fellow have stamped holes in it," he added to himself, as Francis disappeared. "Shouldn't wonder," and chuckling again at the idea, he sat down on the side of the waggon, quite oblivious of the expectant crowd around him. An impatient hum soon broke on his ear, and he lifted his head and called out, "Go home to bed, you mutinous pack; you'll be defrauding your masters of an hour's work to-morrow morning."

"No fear of that, sir; and we want to hear what you have got to say to us."

"Say to you! Ah, yes, to be sure I have something to say; but we must wait for the parson, boys."

"Here he comes! Here he comes!" shouted voices from the edge of the crowd, and after a little bustling the ruddy face of Codling, and the grey head of his friend gleamed over the side of the waggon in the dim candle-light.

"Glad to see you, sir, I'm sure," said Hawthorn to the vicar graciously; "and you, too, sir," turning to Mr. Slocome. "Sorry I didn't hear your speech; Gad, you have put new life into the boys; they've smashed the farmers. 'Pon my soul, sir, I didn't think they had it in them. You must be a powerful orator, and I wish I had been here sooner."

"Pardon me, sir, I have not the advantage," stammered Slocome. "I did not cause the fight, God forbid. I did all I could to stop it; my mission is not to stir up sedition, sir, but to preach peace." This last remark in a tone of high offence.

"He, he, he!" laughed the cynical squire. "Well, well, we shan't dispute the point. The boys did fight, and well, too, as you must allow. Licked the farmers, by Jove; and I tell you what, Mr. Vicar," turning again to Codling, "I mean to show my appreciation of their pluck by doing something for them. What do you propose it should be?"

"I'm afraid, sir," answered the vicar, pompously, "I can't abet you in your design, or lend it my countenance. I am deeply grieved that my humbler parishioners should have so far forgotten themselves as to create a disturbance in the village to-night. It has been my wish to do them good, and for that end I held this meeting, and brought my esteemed brother here to imbue their minds with the principles of forethought and thrift. But they interrupted his address with an unseemly riot, led, I am sorry to say, by a young man of whom I had hoped better things. Bitterness between man and man, class and class, has been created by the conduct of which you have been guilty to-night, my friends, and you may be sure, though I wish you well, it will be long before I again make the mistake of seeking to increase your material comforts." Turning again to Hawthorn, he added, "I must beg you to excuse me, sir, but I cannot remain here to behold a landed proprietor of this parish, the landlord, in fact, of these villagers, acting as an inflamer of sedition," and with lofty bow, and a wave of his hand, dimly visible to his listeners, Codling turned to go.

"Stay a moment," roared Hawthorn, reaching forth his stick as if to catch the vicar by the collar of his coat. "Stop, sir; don't let him go, boys, I also have something to say." The vicar stood still, looking rather foolish, and Hawthorn continued-"You have made an accusation against my tenants, and I, as their representative and spokesman, must ask you to substantiate those charges. I don't care a curse what you say about myself, but I'm not going to stand by and see these men slandered. Tell me, sir, who began the disturbance?"

"It was-I believe-I-fancy-some people on the outskirts of the meeting-people from Warwick I should imagine."

"Bah! can't you speak out like a man, instead of beating about the bush like a fool? Who began the disturbance?" The old Captain was clearly getting excited.

"The-the farmers and-but-" blurted out Codling.

"Ah! the farmers was it?" interrupted Hawthorn, "and would you have had these lads stand still like asses to be thwacked? Do you mean to come out here and deliberately blame my tenants for having spirit enough left to resent insult and abuse? A nice parson you are-a fine preacher of peace. Suppose it had been the other way, and the farmers had been taunted and stoned by the labourers until they turned and thrashed them. What would you have said then? No doubt that these wretches deserved their fate. I hate all this snivelling cant about the obligation of the poor to submit to whatever is put upon them."

Hawthorn spoke fast and bitterly, and, as he ended, his audience broke into ringing cheers much prolonged.

Codling stood dumb, and looked so cowed and sheepish that Slocome tried a diversion.

"Captain Hawthorn-I believe-and good people," he began, but his voice was drowned amid cries of "Silence-hold your tongue; we want to hear the Captain."

"I have a little more to say, my boys," Hawthorn answered. "My chief object in coming here, and in asking the Vicar to come here, was to tell you that I have decided to assign to you, the men of my own village, the twenty acre field just by on Warwick road, to be made into allotment gardens. I admire"-but he got no further. Shout upon shout, the men cheered, and the women wept and laughed by turns, as if the speaker had promised them all fortunes. The announcement was so unexpected, and the way it was made went so about the hearts of these poor villagers, that they could have hugged the old Captain to death for joy had he let himself within their reach. As it was, they crowded round the waggon to shake hands with him, hustling the Vicar and his friend out of the way, and it was fully five minutes before order could be restored. During the hubbub the Vicar and Mr. Slocome managed to slink away. What Codling may have thought about his own conduct on that evening no one can say, but he evidently resented Hawthorn's freedom of speech most bitterly. He was disgusted also that the people should have got their allotments so obviously without his help, and from this time forth he may be said to have abjured philanthropy. Henceforth he found it safer and much more pleasant to confine his attention to Church ritual and the worship of feudalism.

The labourers never missed the Vicar in their delight over Hawthorn's announcement. They wanted to escort him home in a body, but he would not hear of it. He peremptorily ordered them to go home to bed, and departed with his servant and his dog. A few of the younger men followed him to the end of the village, then sending a parting cheer after him quickly dispersed. Thus ended the great Ashbrook allotment meeting. It was a nine days' wonder in the neighbourhood, and the oddities of Hawthorn were held to be dangerous by the squires, while farmers cursed him for his liberality. But these things did not prevent the labourers from obtaining their allotments, and they were thereby rendered perhaps a degree less hungry for a time.

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