by Grant Allen
Shortly after the Reformation, however, the days of old Brighthelmstone began to be numbered. The sea encroached gradually upon the lowland beneath the cliff, and at last the fishing-village was entirely swept away. For more than a hundred years the name was only remembered as that of a country rectory, on the coast near Shoreham, which had once been a flourishing fisher town, but was now reduced to a small group of agricultural cottages. Three old lanes, East Street, West Street, and North Street, forming with the sea-front a little square district near the market-hall, still preserve for us the boundaries of all that then remained of Brighthelmstone. Charles II. hid here for a while on his way to France by Shoreham. About the middle of the eighteenth century the doctors had just begun to discover the seaside; and when that discovery was once made, the little valley in the Sussex downs was one of the most natural places in the world to which the invalids of London could be sent for change and fresh air. It was a certain Dr. Russell in the bustling and busy county town of Lewes, hard by, who has the credit of first casting an appreciative eye upon the quiet and unvisited nook by the sea at Brighthelmstone. At that time the Steyne was an open common, and sojourners put up at the old King’s Head in West Street. Lodgings soon began to be in demand. The houses of this transitional period can still be easily recognised in the district just ringing round the old square village, as well as in many of the streets lying within that ancient boundary. Towards the close of the eighteenth century the Prince of Wales took a fancy to Brighton, as the name had now for some time been abbreviated, and began to build the mongrel domes and minarets of the Pavilion. Under such patronage the new town grew rapidly. The chain-pier was thrown out into the sea at the point where the cliff subsides, and houses spread quickly up the hill towards St. Nicholas Church, as well as in the other direction towards the New Steyne and the Marine Parade on the cliff-top. The Old Steyne was also enclosed and cut up by roads; though what became of the stone from which it takes its name, and on which tradition asserts that the old fishermen used to dry their nets, cannot now be discovered. Shortly after, the big pseudo-Gothic church of St. Peter, at the end of the Steyne, was built by Barry — a singular monument of the first attempts in the direction of mediæval revival in England. Even during the coaching days Brighton grew with astonishing rapidity: it had as many as 7000 inhabitants in 1801, and by 1830 it was already a large town, with more than thirty coaches running daily to London. The square and crescent at Kemp Town had been built before that period; while the names of the streets and districts elsewhere generally give one a shrewd idea in passing of their probable date. The Reform Act made Brighton into a parliamentary borough with two members; and the railway of course turned it practically into a seaside suburb of London. Since then almost all that was old in the town has disappeared: the great line of marine terraces has covered the whole sea-front, from Kemp Town to Hove and Cliftonville; the ugly West Pier has been put into unhappy competition with its graceful but neglected eastern neighbour; the Aquarium has been stuck down on a reclaimed corner near the Pavilion; the old church has been rebuilt and modernised out of recognition; and the houses have spread inland over all the hills, or along the original valley far beyond the once beautiful viaduct on the London road, now choked and obscured by endless rows of modern brick-built cottages. Nothing remains to-day of the primitive Brighton except a forgotten philological fossil in the name of the Steyne and the queer old legal form of Brighthelmstone still employed in public documents for certain official purposes.
V. SOUTH-WEST
BATH
As everybody knows, during the first half of the eighteenth century Beau Nash was King of Bath. But most people probably imagine that the title was a purely fanciful one, invented on purpose for that fantastic potentate, and confined in its application to him alone. This, however, is not the case. Beau Nash only added fresh importance to an old traditional phantom office. From time immemorial, and certainly from the tenth century onward, the citizens of Bath were annually accustomed to elect a king; and it is even possible that the mock ceremony dates from a still more remote period, as a last nominal survival from the days of British independence in the west. Instead of Beau Nash being the first King of Bath, he was really the last king; and his predecessors went back in an unbroken line at least to Edgar the West Saxon, and perhaps to some far earlier local prince, whose reign preceded the English occupation, or even the Roman Conquest. Like the Rex in republican Rome, or the Basileus in democratic Athens, the shadowy king may have been the representative of some more ancient real sovereign. Indeed, the royal reminiscences which have always lingered about Bath are so numerous and so curious that the history of its kings deserves something more than a passing mention from county annalists.
Whether Bath and the surrounding country had any separate princes of their own at the time of the Roman invasion is not certain. But it is, at any rate, clear that two very large and important hill stations flanked the valley of the Avon — one of them on Little Solisbury and the other on Hampton Down, both overlooking the modern city. Such great hill-forts usually mark the capital of a little British chieftainship; and near them gather the big round barrows which cover the cromlech-tombs of the dead chieftains. The Bury or fort of Sul gave the later town, which gathered round the hot springs in the valley, its Roman name of Aquæ Sulis; but the old British title of Caer Badon has lingered on into modern Welsh as the ordinary form for the city of Bath; and to read in a Welsh newspaper of the present day of a “Caer Badon” carries one back in imagination over twenty centuries. At Bath itself, however, the name of Caer Badon now belongs only to the earthwork on Hampton Down. Tradition, too, gives us some warrant for believing that there may have been Kings of Bath even before the Roman conquest; for the story of Bladud, though it rests on no better authority than that of Geoffrey of Monmouth, an unblushing romancer, is probably based upon some real old British legend. Geoffrey was a Welshman with a considerable knowledge of Cymric folk-lore; and, like most other historical romancers, he often builds his romance upon facts or traditions of genuine illustrative value. His story of Bladud shows at least that Welshmen in his day connected Bath very closely with the old British princes; and it probably shows also that tales to that effect were then current at Bath itself. If there were local princes in the Avon vale before the Romans came, it is likely enough that they continued to retain a titular sovereignty under the Roman rule, as we know was the case in Sussex, where one Cogidumnus called himself King of the Regni, apparently in the same sense as our own titular feudatories in India call themselves the Nawab Nazim of Bengal or the Guicowar of Baroda. It is clear from the account given by Tacitus that Agricola found Britain still occupied by its native chiefs as persons of importance, and that he endeavoured to Romanise them without depriving them of their tribal authority, much as we ourselves Anglicised the Irish chieftains or the heads of Scotch clans by making them into earls and barons on the English pattern. At any rate, as soon as the Romans left, the tribes seem each to have reverted to their own recognised chieftains — exactly as during the Indian Mutiny the people of Banda rallied round their Ranee, or the Mahrattas round the adopted heir of the Peshwas.
For nearly two centuries after the departure of the legions, native Welsh kings ruled in Bath; and these are the only real historical kings of Bath of whose existence we can be sure. Towards the close of the sixth century, however, the West Saxons fought against Farinmail King of Bath, at Dyrham Park, and slew him, together with his two allies, Conmail of Gloucester and Condidan of Cirencester, petty Welsh princes like those of Powys and Gwent, or like the Lords of Snowdon in later days. The Dumnonian kings of Somerset were then driven farther west beyond the marshes of the Parret, and Bath fell into the hands of the English heathen. It is just possible that even after the English occupation the native Welsh of Bath, in their servile condition, may have still chosen themselves a titular king from year to year, if only for form’s sake; and, indeed, a curious document, noted by Sir Francis Palgrave, shows tha
t in Devonshire at least a Welsh [community] long continued to be ruled by [its] own Council of Elders, who made regular agreements with the English witan, just as in India the headman of the village and the local council are recognised even now by the British authorities. In any case, it seems clear that memories of the old Welsh royal house in Bath remained strongly fixed in the minds of the people, and that the city was especially connected with legends of the supposed but fabulous imperial British line. When all Britain was finally for the first time united under Edgar, the coronation of that king, “chosen by the Anglo-Britons,” as Florence of Worcester significantly remarks, took place at Bath; and the ballad in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle commemorating this great event carefully mentions “the ancient burgh” both under its English and its British name. From Bath, Edgar went direct to Chester, and there eight subject Welsh or other Celtic princes rowed him in state on the sacred Dee, the holiest of all the rivers of ancient Britain. We see the full significance of these steps when we remember that the minister who built up Edgar’s power was a Somerset man, Dunstan, born beside the old Welsh monastery of Glastonbury or Ynys Witrin, of which he was afterwards abbot — a monastery founded by the Welsh Dumnonian kings of Somerset and still retaining the original Welsh charters as late as the days of William of Malmesbury. Dunstan must have well known all the local importance of Bath, and the traditions of its connection with the old imperial British line; and it was not without reason that he selected this place for Edgar’s coronation fourteen years after his accession. No doubt to be crowned at Bath made a man not merely king of the English but emperor of Britain. Long after, when Swegen the Dane could not get into London, he went to Bath and obtained the allegiance of the West Welsh shires, and then “all folk held him for full king.” This traditional habit of regarding Bath as specially fitted for coronations is not more curious in its way than the connection of Rheims with the French kings, or the connection of Scone with the kings of Scots.
It is from Edgar’s time that the institution of the mock King of Bath [may be] dated. The coronation of the first king of all England and overlord of Britain — Edgar himself even used the style of Imperator — was an event not likely to be forgotten in the little town. From that time forth the citizens of Bath annually elected one of themselves to be King of Bath in a mock-solemn assembly, held on the same date as Edgar’s coronation, “the Day of Pentecost.” Whether Edgar’s visit really gave origin to the custom, or whether it was one handed down from an earlier time, it would be difficult to decide; at any rate, the memory of Edgar blotted out the older memories, if such there were; and the annual feast was thenceforth said to owe its institution to the West Saxon king. All the old local histories give this as the reason— “that the citizens might hold in remembrance the name of Edgar, who was crowned at Bath Abbey in the year of our Lord 973.” If the King of Bath ever had any real duties, they were soon forgotten; and the office became something like that held by the Queen of the May or the Pape [or Evesque] des Fous. Still, it was kept up all through the Middle Ages, and on to the beginning of the eighteenth century, the day of election always remaining the same; which is hardly more surprising than the vitality of Guy Fawkes’ or of All Fools’ Day, and far less surprising than the still existent celebration of Marius’s victory over the Teutones at Mont Ste. Victoire, near Aix, on the anniversary of that distant event after nearly two thousand years. Until Beau Nash’s time, the honour seems to have been tenable for one year only, like the mayoralty in English towns; but Beau Nash, being always re-elected, held the crown for fifty years, so that it came at last to be regarded as a personal attribute. At his death, the memory of the annual ceremony appears to have died out, and there was never, apparently, another King of Bath. It is interesting to note in this connection that the last king was himself a Welshman; so that the royal line ended, as it began, with British blood. A mock mayor is still in the same way elected yearly at Colyford in Devon, and in several other small towns.
WELLS AND TAUNTON
The two chief towns of West Somerset have so much of their history in common that it is natural in dealing with the one to deal also at the same time with the other. Both appear to be comparatively recent in their origin — recent, that is to say, when considered side by side with such very ancient British fortresses as St. Albans, Colchester, or Norwich. The spot now occupied by Wells was probably a mere grassy basin, nestling among the craggy outliers of the forest-clad Mendips, long after the days of the Roman conquest or the first landing of the later English colonists. It lay for a hundred years upon the very mark or woodland border which separated the West Saxon realm from the dominions of the native Dumnonian princes. The West Saxons, after their capture of Bath, seem to have overrun the whole eastern portion of modern Somerset, including the Mendips, till they were checked by the dreary stretch of marshes, through whose reclaimed expanse the Axe now runs down between artificial embankments to the Bristol Channel. For a century the little river formed the recognised boundary of the two races; so that, as Mr. Freeman puts it, the unoccupied site of Wells was still in Welshland, while Wookey, a few miles off, was already in England. But shortly after the conversion of the West Saxons to Christianity, their king Cenwealh turned against the yet unconquered Welsh of Dyvnaint or Dumnonia. By two battles fought, one at Bradford and another at Pen, Cenwealh made himself master of central Somerset as far as the Parret. The new territory thus acquired of course included the site of Wells, but not that of Taunton. Mr. Freeman himself admits that west of the Axe the Welsh were not exterminated, or even enslaved, but merely reduced to the condition of tributaries; and it seems clear that most of the existing peasantry in the great peninsula which stretches from the Avon to the Land’s End are still, in his own phrase, “only naturalised Englishmen.” As yet, however, there was no Wells. Sixty years after Cenwealh’s conquests, a later West Saxon prince, Ini, turned once more upon the West Welsh of Dumnonia, and drove their king Geraint from the wide valley between the Quantocks and the Black Down, through whose midst the Tone flows placidly to join the marshy levels of the Parret near Bridgewater. In the very centre of the valley Ini built a great border-fortress against his Dumnonian enemies, and called it after the river, Taunton, or the town on the Tone.
The West Saxon kings seem to have pursued from the first a policy of conciliation towards the Welshmen of this newly-acquired territory; and West Somerset certainly became their favourite residence and their safest retreat. Ini took over the great Welsh sanctuary at Glastonbury — that Celtic Westminster where Arthur lay buried — and built a new church and monastery of his own beside the ancient wattled chapel of the Dumnonian kings, founded, as tradition asserted, by St. Joseph of Arimathea. But he wished, perhaps, to set an English abbey by the side of this old Welsh foundation; and, casting about for a spot on which to build it, his choice fell at last upon the site of Wells, a few miles north-east of Glastonbury. Nowhere could one find a better situation for an ecclesiastical town. Wood and water, the two great monastic needs, were there in abundance. The little grassy basin lay in the centre of a ring of limestone hillocks; and from the summit of the wooded Mendips came down the numerous springs, which gushed forth abundantly at the outcrop, and gave the spot its name of Wells. Around, beyond the hills, stretched a great morass, which the canons might reclaim with profit to themselves and the community at large. Here, then, Ini founded his wooden abbey, and settled his English brothers. From beginning to end, the town was thus a purely artificial one; it has had no trade and no manufactures; it has not even been to any great extent an agricultural centre; but it has depended entirely in all stages of its existence upon its ecclesiastical position. Ealdhelm, a kinsman of Ini, was appointed bishop of the new Welsh-kind diocese; and the West Saxon kings themselves had a manor and hall hard by at Wedmore, where, long afterwards, Alfred [made] his treaty with Guthrum and the Danes. The seat of the bishopric, however, was not yet at Wells: Ealdhelm’s bishop-stool was placed rather at Sherborne, in older-conquered Dorset. M
eanwhile, Devonshire was being slowly overrun by the West Saxons; and after the Danish invasion was over, Edward the Elder thought it well to establish a separate diocese for the Somerset folk, now fully Anglicised; whereas his father Alfred had appointed a Welshman, Asser, bishop of the still Celtic-speaking Devonians in the west. The new see was fixed at Wells, and an abbot of Glastonbury was its first occupant. Of this earliest cathedral nothing, of course, now remains. The Norman conquest left Wells where it was; but in the reign of Henry I. John de Villula, following the usual concentrating tendency of the time, attempted to remove the see to Bath. Wells must still have been a mere straggling village, grown up irregularly around the [minster]; while Bath had never ceased to be a walled town of importance since the Roman times. But the canons clamoured to have their bishop-stool restored to them; and a little later it was arranged that the bishop should in future be elected by the regulars of Bath and the seculars of Wells conjointly, and should take his style from both [minsters]. The old church was at the same time rebuilt; but early in the thirteenth century it was pulled down, and the present cathedral begun. Its architecture covers all the periods from Early English to Perpendicular. Throughout the mediæval era a small ecclesiastical town gathered around the cathedral; but its existing relics are almost entirely ecclesiastical — consisting of the walled and moated episcopal palace, the deanery, the vicar’s close [and St. Cuthbert’s Church]. The nature of the foundation saved it during the wreck of the monasteries; and the town is now no doubt larger than at any earlier period, though of course far less relatively important than formerly. It had once some petty textile manufactures; but it now subsists entirely on the cathedral and the small surrounding agricultural district.
