VOL. 59,-No. 13.] LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPT. 23, 1826. [Price 6d. RURAL RIDE, sort, with a white covering on him, and five women and four men : From SALISBURY to WARMINSter, when I arrived, there were five from WARMINSTER to FROME, Couple of us. I joined the congrefrom FROME to DEVIZES, and gation, until they came to the from DEVIZES to HIGHWORTH. litany; and then, being monstrously hungry, I did not think myself bound to stay any longer. I wonder what the founders would say, if they could rise from the "Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, "even to make the poor of the land to fail: say❝ing, when will the new moon be gone that we 66 may sell corn? And the Sabbath, that we may "set forth wheat, making the Ephah small and grave, and see such a congrega "the Shekel great, and falsifying the balances "by deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver, tion as this in this most magnifi"and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and self cent and beautiful cathedral? I "the refuse of the wheat? Shall not the land "tremble for this; and every one mourn that "dwelleth therein? I will turn your feasting "into mourning, saith the Lord God, and your "songs into lamentations."-AMOs, chap. viii. ver. 4 to 10. wonder what they would say, if they could know to what purposes the endowments of this Cathedral are now applied; and above all HEYTESBURY, (WILTS) THURS- things, I wonder what they would DAY, 31st AUGUST, 1826.-This say, if they could see the halfplace, which is one of the rotten starved labourers, that now minisboroughs of Wiltshire, and which ter to the luxuries of those who was formerly a considerable town, wallow in the wealth of those en-,' is now but a very miserable affair. dowments. There is one thing; Yesterday morning I went into at any rate, that might be abstainthe Cathedral at Salisbury about ed from, by those that revel in the, o'clock. When I got into the riches of those endowments; namenave of the church, and was look-ly, to abuse and blackguard those ing up and admiring the columns of our forefathers, from whom the and the roof, I heard a sort of endowments came, and who erecthumming, in some place which ed the edifice, and carried so far appeared to be in the transept of towards the skies that beautiful the building. I wondered what it and matchless spire, of which the was, and made my way towards present possessors have the imputhe place whence the noise ap-dence to boast, while they reprepeared to issue. As I approached sent as ignorant and benighted it, the noise seemed to grow louder. creatures, those who conceived At last, I thought I could distin- the grand design, and who exeguish the sounds of the human cuted the scientific and costly voice. This encouraged me to work. These fellows, in big white proceed; and, still following the wigs, of the size of half a bushel, sound, I at last turned in at a door- have the audacity, even within way to my left, where I found a the walls of the Cathedrals thempriest and his congregation assem-selves, to rail against those who bled. It was a parson of some founded them; and RENNELL and 2 B Printed and Published by WILLIAM COBBETT, No. 183, Fleet-street. press it, is not so deep, and the sides of it not so steep, as in the case of the Avon; but the villages are as frequent; there is more than one church in every mile, and there has been a due proportion of mansion houses demolished and defaced. The farms are very fine up this vale, and the meadows, particularly at a place called STAPLE FORD, are singularly fine. They had just been mowed at Stapleford, and the hay carried off." At Stapleford, there is a little cross valley, running up between two hills of the down. There is a little run of water about a yard wide at this time, coming down this little vale across the road into the river. The little vale runs up three miles. It does not appear to be half a mile wide; but in those three miles there are four churches; namely, Stapleford, Uppington, Berwick St. James, and Winterborne Stoke. The present population of these four villages, is 769 souls, men, women, and children, the whole of whom could very conveniently be seated in the chancel of the church at Stapleford. Indeed, the church and parish of Uppington seem to have been united with one of the other parishes, like the parish in Kent which was united with North Cray, and not a single house of which now remains. What were these four churches built FOR within the distance of three miles? There are three parsonage houses still remaining; but, and it is a very curious fact, neither of them good enough for the parson to live in! Here are seven hundred and sixty souls to be taken care of, but there is no parsonage house for a soulcurer to stay in, or at least that he will stay in; and all the three STURGES, while they were actually, literally, fattening on the spoils of the monastery of St. SWITHIN, at Winchester, were publishing abusive pamphlets against that Catholic religion, which had given them their very bread. For my part, I could not look up at the spire and the whole of the church at Salisbury, without feeling that I lived in degenerate times. Such a thing never could be made now. We feel that, as we look at the building. It really does appear that if our forefathers had not made these buildings, we should have forgotten, before now, what the Christian religion was! At Salisbury, or very near to it, four other rivers fall into the AvoN. The Wyly river, the Nadder, the Born, and another little river that comes from Norrington. These all become one, at last, just below Salisbury, and then, under the name of the AVON, wind along down and fall into the sea at Christchurch. In coming from Salisbury, I came up the road which runs pretty nearly parallel with the river WYLY, which river rises at Warminster and in the neighbourhood. This river runs down a valley twenty-two miles long. It is not so pretty as the valley of the Avon; but it is very fine in its whole length from Salisbury to this place (Heytesbury.) Here are watered meadows nearest to the river on both sides; then the gardens, the houses, and the corn-fields. After the corn-fields come the downs; but, generally speaking, the downs are not so bold here as they are on the sides of the Avon. The downs do not come out in promontories so often as they do on the sides of the Avon. The Ah-ah !! if I may so ex parsonages are, in the return laid | I dare say, a thousand times talkbefore Parliament, represented to ed about this Steeple Langford, be no better than miserable la- and about the beautiful farms and bourers' cottages, though the pa-meadows along this valley. I have rish of Winterborne Stoke, has a talked of these to my children a church sufficient to contain two or great many times; and I formed three thousand people. The truth the design of letting two of them is, that the parsons have been re- see this valley this year, and to ceiving the revenues of the livings, go through Warminster to Stroud, and have been suffering the par- and so on to Gloucester and Hesonage houses to fall into decay.. reford, but, when I got to EverHere were two or three mansion ley, I found that they would houses, which are also gone, never get along fast enough to get even from the sides of this little into Herefordshire in time for run of water. what they intended; so that I To-day has been exceedingly parted from them in the manner I hot. Hotter, I think, for a short have before described. I was retime, than I ever felt it in Eng-solved, however, to see Steeple land before. In coming through Langford myself, and I was ima village called WISHFORD, and patient to get to it, hoping to find mounting a little hill, I thought a public-house, and a stable to the heat upon my back was as put my horse in, to protect him, great as I had ever felt it in for awhile, against the flies, which my life. There were thunder tormented him to such a degree, storms about, and it had rained at that to ride him was work as hard Wishford a little before I came to as threshing. When I got to Steeit. My next village was one that ple Langford, I found no publicI had lived in for a short time, house, and I found it a much more when I was only about ten or miserable place than I had reeleven years of age. I had been membered it. The Steeple, to sent. down with a horse from which it owed its distinctive appelFarnham, and I remember that Ilation, was gone; and the place went by Stone-henge, and rode up altogether seemed to me to be and looked at the stones. From very much altered for the worse. Stone-henge I went to the village A little further on, however, I came of Steeple Langford, where I re- to a very famous inn, called mained from the month of June DEPTFORD INN, which is in the till the fall of the year. I remembered the beautiful villages up and down this valley. I also remembered, very well, that the women at Steeple Langford used to card and spin dyed wool. was, therefore, somewhat filled with curiosity to see this Steeple Langford again; and, indeed, it was the recollection of this village that made me take a ride into Wiltshire this summer. I have, parish of Wyly. I stayed at this inn till about four o'clock in the afternoon. I remembered Wyly very well, and thought it a gay place when I was a boy. I reImembered a very beautiful garden belonging to a rich farmer and miller. I went to see it; but, alas! though the statues in the water and on the grass-plat were still remaining, every thing seem ed to be in a state of perfect care. This DEPTFORD INN was a famous place of meeting for the Yeomanry Cavalry, in glorious anti-jacobin times, when wheat was twenty shillings a bushel, and when a man could be crammed into gaol for years, for only looking awry. This inn was a glorious place in the days of PEG NICHOLson and her KNIGHTS. Strangely altered now. The shape of the garden shows you what revelry used to be carried on here. Peel's Bill gave this inn, and all belonging to it, a terrible souse. The unfeeling brutes, who used to brandish their swords, and swagger about, at the news of what was called "a victory," have now to lower their scale in clothing, in drink, in eating, in dress, in horsetheir skins. This family of DEM-flesh, and everything else. They PIER seems to be one of these. are now a lower sort of men than What, in God's name, should have they were. They look at their made one of these a Bishop and rusty sword and their old dusty the other a Judge! I never heard helmet and their once gay regiof the smallest particle of talent mental jacket. They do not hang that either of them possessed. these up now in the "parlour" for This Rector of Wyly was another every body to see them: they hang of them. There was no harm in then up in their bed-rooms, or in them that I know of, beyond that a cockloft; and when they meet of living upon the public; but, their eye, they look at them as where were their merits? They a cow does at a bastard calf, had none, to distinguish them, and or as the bridegroom does at a to entitle them to the great sums girl that the overseers are about they received; and, under any to compel him to marry. If their other system than such a system children should happen to see as this, they would, in all human these implements of war twenty probability, have been gentle- or thirty years hence, they will men's servants, or little shop-certainly think that their fathers keepers. I dare say there is some were the greatest fools that ever lessness and neglect. The living of the breed left; and, if there be, of this parish of Wyly was lately I would pledge my existence, owned by DAMPIER (a brother of that they are, in some shape or the Judge), who lived at, and I other, feeding upon the public. believe had the living of MEON However, thus it must be, until STOKE. in Hampshire. This fel- that change come which will put low, I believe, never saw the pa- an end to men paying fourpence rish of Wyly but once, though it in tax upon a pot of beer. must have yielded him a pretty good fleece. It is a Rectory, and the great tithes must be worth, I should think, six or seven hundred pounds a year, at the least. It is a part of our system to have certain families, who have no particular merit; but who are to be maintained, without why or wherefore, at the public expense, in some shape, or under some name, or other, it matters not much what shape or what name. If you look through the old list of pensioners, sinecurists, parsons, and the like, you will find the same names everlastingly recurring. They seem to be a sort of creatures that have an inheritance in the public carcass, like the maggots that some people have in + • walked the face of the earth; | neighbourhood of New York, just and that will be a most filial and before I came home. He told me charitable way of thinking of them; his Canada story. I showed him for, it is not from ignorance that all the kindness in my power, and they have sinned, but from exces- he went away, knowing that I was sive baseness; and when any of just then coming to England. I them now complain of those acts had hardly got home, before the of the Government which strip Scotch newspapers contained them, (as the late Order in Coun- communications from a person, cil does) of a fifth part of their pretending to derive his informaproperty in an hour, let them re- tion from GOURLAY, relating to collect their own base and malig- what GOURLAY had described as nant conduct towards those perse- having passed between him and cuted reformers, who, if they had me; and which description was a not been suppressed by these very tissue of most abominable falseyeomen, would, long ago, have hoods, all having a direct tendency put an end to the cause of that to do injury to me, who had never, of which these yeomen now either by word or deed, done any complain. When they complain thing that could possibly have a of their ruin, let them remember tendency to do injury to this the toasts which they drank in GOURLAY. What the vile Scotch anti-jacobin times; let them re-newspapers had begun, the mamember their base and insulting lignant reptile himself continued exultations on the occasion of the after his return to England, and, 16th of August at Manchester; let in an address to LORD BATHURST, them remember their cowardly endeavoured to make his court to abuse of men, who were endea- the Government by the most foul, vouring to free their country from false and detestable slanders upon that horrible scourge which they me, from whom, observe, he had themselves now feel. never received any injury, or atJust close by this Deptford Inn tempt at injury, in the whole is the farm-house of the farm course of his life; whom he had where that GoURLAY lived, who visited; to whose house he had gone, has long been making a noise in of his own accord, and that, too, as the Court of Chancery, and who he said, out of respect for me; is now, I believe, confined in endeavoured, I say, to make his some place or other for having as-court to the Government by the saulted MR. BROUGHAM. This most abominable slanders against fellow, who is confined, the news-me. He is now, even now, putpapers tell us, on a charge of being ting forth, under the form of letinsane, is certainly one of the most ters to me, a revival of what he malignant devils that I ever knew pretends was a conversation that any thing of in my life. He went passed between us at my house to Canada about the time that I near New York. Even if what he went last to the United States. says were true, none but caitiffs as He got into a quarrel with the base as those who conduct the Government there about some- English newspapers, would give thing, I know not what. He came circulation to his letters, containto see me, at my house in the ing as they must, the substance of 1 |
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