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THE PLACE OF SHILLINGSTONE IN HISTORY
Before the Dawn of History.
SHILLINGSTONE lies in a fold of the downs where the River Stour has cut through the chalk mass of Salisbury Plain and Cranborne Chase. If you climb the steps cut in the chalk of Shillingstone Hill, known as "Jacob's Ladder," you may see plainly what the country was before the dawn of history, Two miles to the north-west stand the bare, grassy summits of Hamble-don and Hod, each crowned with a triple line of earthworks, and between a rolling, luxuriant valley of timber and meadow, through which the Stour meanders from mill to mill, and the grey towers of Shillingstone and Childe Okeford Churches stand four-square among the trees. When the Romans came all this was marshy forest, infested with wolves, wild boar, deer and fox, and the Neolithic folk, whose pit-dwellings may still be seen upon Shillingstone Hill, pastured their sheep and cattle on the high lands and kept to the trackway and the ancient fords of Hanford and Okeford when they had to cross the forest. In times of danger they would retire behind their earthworks and fight for their existence. They buried their chiefs in the great barrows that lie dotted over the downs, and these memorials are all that is left of them. At the birth of Christ they were already a mixed race. Before the dawn of history England had been swept by waves of invasion, and all that has come down to us of these unrecorded tragedies is a variation in the shapes of the skulls found in the nameless graves of great but unknown chieftains.
The Roman Period.
Then came the Romans. It was in A.D. 43 that Aulus Plautius first led his legions into the West. One can picture the scenes of wild alarm into which the news of the invaders, carried by breathless messengers along the trackway, threw the peaceful villagers. The legions were irresistible and pitiless, and assuredly the terror of their proceedings lost nothing in the telling. All local feuds were forgotten in the common danger. Women and children, laden with the most precious of their household goods, crowded into the fortifications on Hambledon and Hod, driving their cattle before them. All the men fell to upon the defences, deepening the ditches, heightening the parapets, and cutting stakes for the stockade. As the legions drew nearer fugitives from the fallen strongholds in Wiltshire began to pour in, bringing ogres' tales of the legionaries on whose armour the shafts rained harmless, who came to the assault with the clash of shields and the roar of a myriad devils, who spared no prisoner, who, under cover of the smoke of burning roofs, feasted on the bodies of the slain. And when their own day came the nerves of the poor defenders of Hod were already unhinged and the place fell like the rest. In describing the policy of Ostorius Scapula, the successor to Aulus Plautius, Tacitus says that the constructed camps to keep the whole country on the south side of the rivers of Anton and Severn in check .1 The river Anton has been identified as the Avon or the Teste, more probably the latter. The group of camps on the Wansdyke may have been some of these. Hambledon and Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, were certainly adapted to the purpose by the Romans, and probably there were many others. They did their work. The tragedies, without which no conquest can be effected, passed unrecorded except by tradition, which died as the generations passed. With the Roman occupation a new era opened for Shillingstone—an era of profound peace and, if not of plenty, of increased comfort. The people had never been of unmixed stock even before the Romans came—that is shown by the shape of their heads—but now their blood was more mixed than ever. They were smaller and shorter than the men of this generation, but though there was a trickle of Italian or Continental blood in them from the legionaries who settled in the country and married native wives, they remained Britons, especially in Shillingstone, which lay rather remote from the main Roman roads which ran from Sorbiodunium (Salisbury) to the Mendips and from Badbury Rings (? Mons Badonicus) to Burnovaria (Dorchester)
1 " Detrahere arma suspectis cunctaque castris Antonam et Sabrinam fluvios cohibere parat"
Thanks to the researches of General Pitt Rivers[ 2 ]we now know a good deal about their manner of living. It must be remembered that sixteen centuries ago the climate of England was far wetter than it is at present. In the Romano-British village of Woodcuts, a few miles away, in a well 188 feet deep, a Roman bucket was found, but there was not a drop of water in the well. The village had, moreover, an elaborate system of surface drainage to carry off the excessive rainfall, and if rheumatoid arthritis ("poor man's gout") is a disease due to damp there is the further evidence that three out of sixteen skeletons discovered in Rotherley, a neighbouring village, suffered from it. They must have endured tortures from toothache, if we may judge from the number of skulls containing decayed teeth. At some time during the Roman occupation people were living in Shillingstone near the site of the house built by the late Major Forbes, called "Culyerhayes," for Roman pottery has been dug up in the garden, and a coin of Augustus was discovered in the churchyard. This part of the country, now so rural and sparsely populated, then supported a comparatively large population, for there were villages at Shroton, Rushmore, and Bokerly on Salisbury Downs, as well as many other places close by.
The people had begun to move down from the high land as much as the forests and swamps would allow them. the villages were surrounded by a slight entrenchment as a protection, probably from wolves rattier than from human enemies for in the Pax Romana they had nothing to fear from them. Their domestic animals were a pony like the Exmoor breed (kept for food rather than work, though some of them were shod with iron shoes); cattle like the Kerry cow of these days as to size, but horned like the Short-Horn; thin leggy sheep, such as one may now see only in St Kilda; long-legged tusked swine nearly related to the wild boar, and does of all sizes, from the mastiff to the terrier Their houses were of wattle and daub, with frames of sawn timber fastened with nails and roofed probably, with thatch. They grew wheat in small enclosures near the village and ground it in stone querns; their wheat was little inferior to our own grown at the same levels. They were agriculturists, not warriors or hunters; the few spearheads belonged, doubtless, to boar-spears. At any rate, they rarely ate venison. We can only guess at the constitution of their society. Besides the poor beehive huts there were in every village rectangular houses, plastered, painted, and warmed with hypocausts on the Roman pattern, and in these there were remains of furniture which indicated some degree of comfort. Probably they belonged to retired legionaries, or well-to-do Roman colonists, who had settled down with a retinue of slaves of the subject race. They had Samian ware of the finest quality, rare pottery of green and yellow glaze, chests of drawers with chased bronze handles, glassware. On their slender fingers, they wore bronze rings set with stones or enamel, brooches of fine mosaic and highly decorated fibulae for fastening the garment at the right shoulder and the loins. They could read and write, for iron styli and tablets have been found.
2 Excavations in Bokerly and Wansdyke, Dorset and Wilts, by Lieut.-General Pitt Rivers 1892. Privately printed
In a people so civilised they showed a surprising indifference to their dead. The villages were full of rubbish pits into which the kitchen refuse was thrown, and when these were filled up they and the surface drains were used as graves. This custom, common to most of the British tribes, has been useful to explorers, because if they had buried their dead in distant barrows there would be no means of dating the skeletons, whereas with their coins and property about them there is convincing evidence of date and identity. There is no clue to their religion. People who treat their dead without reverence are usually lacking in the religious sense, and there is at least a dark suspicion, from the number of infant skeletons found, that they were addicted to infanticide.
The Saxon Invasion
So must have lived the people of Shillingstone for ten generations, and so might they have continued to live had not the Roman Empire rotted at the core. In the reign of Honorius, the garrison in Britain had to be withdrawn to save the Western Empire from dangers nearer home. Wave after wave of white savages was sweeping over the civilised and Christian Eastern provinces of Roman-Britain, and generations of peace had sapped their capacity for self-defence. The invaders were inured to arms; in stature and physique they were superior to the natives1 There was surely no more tragic episode in history than the extinction by fire and sword of the Roman civilisation in Britain. Roman Dorsetshire flew to arms, and for a few feverish months they accomplished a great work that may be seen today in Bokerly Dyke from Blaydon Hill Wood on the Salisbury Downs to the ancient forest of Cranborne Chase, in fact, right across the open country mid the Roman road for a distance of four miles, they threw up a rampart defended by a deep fosse and this must have been garrisoned by the men of the whole countryside. The fosse cut through one of their villages, Woodyates, deserted, no doubt, as being too near the enemy. The defence may have been continued through the forest by a breastwork of felled trees. This rampart may be identical with the Vindogladia of the Itinerary of Antoninus which Stukeley derives from the Celtic Vint,= white, and Gladh= rampart, an apt description of the entrenchment of chalk cutting right across the green of the Downs. The dyke did its work. The Saxons received a check at Badbury, and after their first settlement round the Solent they left Dorsetshire alone, and probably for several generations, when Somerset was already Saxonised, the people of Shillingstone remained Romano British.
l A comparison of the Saxon skeletons with those, of Rotherly village gives the following results : .Rotherley males, 5 ft. 1.5 in.; females, 4ft. 9.6 in. Saxons at Winkelburg males, 5 ft. 0.9 in. ; females, 5 ft. 2.3 in. Males of the Bronze Age in this neighbourhood measured 5 ft 8 in. The Romano-British who came between the Bronze Age and the Saxons were the smallest of the three.
An interesting deduction on the physical type can be made from the remarks of the early chroniclers. The British characteristic is darkness of complexion, and the relative darkness of Dorsetshire (10 per cent. excess over blond) is even now greater than that of Somerset and Wiltshire (5 per cent brunette excess), and much greater than that of Hampshire. It is, in fact, as high as Cornwall. Dorsetshire, too, is a county of hamlets and scattered dwellings, and this is characteristic of Celtic communities and not of Saxon, but the laws of Ina l make it plain that an appreciable British population remained side by side with the later Saxon settlers. Perhaps it was not only due to the dyke, but to its inhospitable coastline, that Dorsetshire held off the Saxons until other parts of the coast had been colonised. However this may be, the conquerors of Dorset came not by sea, by way of the Frome Valley, but by land from the West through the vale of Blackmoor. Once conquered, Dorsetshire was rapidly absorbed in Wessex. A Bishop was set up at Sherborne and the evangelisation of the county proceeded rapidly, but there was another factor which tended to toleration of the Saxons, and this was the piratical incursions of the Danes. These were the most deadly of all the foreign enemies. The Romans and Saxons landed and set about the conquest of the country with soldiers. There was thus warning of their approach, but the Danes swooped down upon an unprotected coast village without any warning at all. They plundered and slew, and, pushing their raid far up the rivers, they would devastate a whole valley and in the morning they were gone, unpursued. No harbour was too difficult for them, no river too narrow for their craft. How far they penetrated the Stour is not recorded, but it was soon seen that the only effective resistance must be on the sea. Naval battles were frequent.' Ethelwulf, in 840, was defeated on Charmouth, but in 875 Alfred, putting out from Wareham, " fought against the crews of seven ships, took one of them and put the rest to flight." 2
1 Some authorities spell the name Inc, but Ina is most frequently found
2 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Volume I, 247-8
Land resistance was also organised. The Alderman and the Bishop led the County forces. Somerset and Dorset, and sometimes Wiltshire, fought together, and in 845 they inflicted a heavy defeat on the Danes at the mouth of the Parret. In 871 and 876 the victories of Merton and Ethandun put an end for a time to the Danish invasion, but enormous harm had been done by the occupation of Wareham and the spoliation of all the country round. Perhaps the Christian zeal of the new converts had something to do with their lack of virility, for we read that in 982 three ships ravaged Portland, and in 988 the Danish army " again wended eastward into the mouth of the Frome and everywhere they went up as far as they would into Dorset; and a great force was often gathered together against them, but as soon as they came together then was there ever through something flight determined on, and in the end they ever had the victory." I
1. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Volume I, 247-8
At the time of the Norman Conquest the landowners in Dorset were Anglo-Danish. The land grants of the Conqueror produced the Western Rebellion of 1008, in which Dorsetshire joined. William took a terrible revenge upon the towns, and even some of the Abbey lands at Sturminster Newton were taken away and given to Goscelin, the King's cook. Norman castles sprang up at Dorchester, Corfe, Wareham, and later at Bridport, and to clear the ground for them many private houses were demolished. But the change from Saxon to Norman land tenure was less violent in Dorset than elsewhere. Before the Conquest, Wareham was the most frequented port in the Channel, and Norman customs were already familiar. But under feudalism land passed rapidly into a few hands, and the great body of Dorset men fell into the estate of villeinage. The number of villeins at Shillingstone is not recorded, but in 1274, at the neighbouring village of Shroton, there were only freemen and ten villeins. The wages at this period were 3d. a day; Saturday was usually a holiday.
The powers of the Manor Lord were extraordinary. In 1240, one Thomas Cusin took Grinilda de Stokes, carried her into the fields and seized all her goods, and though it was not alleged that she had committed any fault she failed to obtain redress before a jury at Sherbornc Assizes. At this period poverty had produced a large criminal class. In 1244, the Sherborne Justices dealt with sixty Dorset men, of whom thirty were convicted of theft and fifteen of manslaughter arising from quarrels. The punishment for the graver crimes was outlawry or hanging. The outlaws became a serious menace; often they returned for their revenge; anyone might raise the hue and cry and kill the outlaw, but not seldom the outlaw burned and slew before he was caught; sometimes he took sanctuary in the church, and the people had to keep constant guard until he came out, or suffer a fine for their negligence. The criminal law was enforced not by police, for there were none, but by the community, which was liable to joint punishment for its neglect. Deaths by accident—by drowning under a mill wheel, by being burned alive, and by epilepsy—were common.
The fall of villeinage dates from the Black Death. This terrible scourge, which slew more than a quarter of the population, first appeared at Melcombe Regis in 1348, brought thither from abroad, and swept the county, spreading in every direction, laying its hand most heavily on the low-lying parts on the coast. Before the end of the year thirty parishes had lost their priests, and the county was almost destitute of labour. The visitation of 1361 was scarcely less fatal. The coasts were left undefended, and the wretched remnant had to feed the garrisons sent from other parts. The great land-owning monasteries never really recovered their position. So great became the demand for labour that it was impossible, despite the Statute of Labourers, to keep the villeins from deserting their manorial lords. The disturbances of the peasant rising in 1381 spread to Dorset, and the status of the agricultural labourer improved from this date. But in 1435 the county had touched the lowest depth of poverty, and taxation had to be remitted. In 1448 the copyhold tenants at Shroton, and probably Shillingstone as well, surrendered their holdings because they could no longer pay the rent, and the remainder were allowed to enclose the common land and till it for themselves. On the dissolution of the monasteries which had provided for the poor, a regular persecution of paupers set in, each parish hounding its poor out of the parish boundaries to avoid having to support them. It took three centuries for society to realise that it had a duty towards the poor which could not be left to private alms. They were arrested and whipped and confined in the stocks, but they swarmed at all the fairs and public gatherings, to the alarm and scandal of the peaceable villagers. For women convicted of minor offences there was the cucking stool. Upon this overburdened county there now fell the misery of tire Civil. War, and Shillingstone made a brief appearance, on the stage of history.
Dorset was Royalist. On the loss of Weymouth to the Parliament early in 1045 Cromwell himself went to the West. After Naseby the county suffered from both contending parties, and the Clubmen sprang into existence to enforce its neutrality. One of their banners bore the device:—
"If you offer to plunder or take our cattel
Be assured we will bid you battel"
They had a further aim—to hold the garrisons of Dorset until the King and Parliament agreed about their disposal the leaders were the clergy and smaller gentry; the rank and file, labourers. On 29th June, 1045, the Clubmen came into conflict with Massey's men at Sturminster Newton, and thereafter they became more definitely loyalist. Meanwhile, Fairfax, ignoring the Clubmen, was engaged in reducing the castles. Cromwell and Fairfax were before Corfe, but on August 2nd, learning that the Clubmen were massing at Shaftesbury, they despatched Fleetwood with 1,000 horse to capture the leaders. On learning that fifty had been captured, the Clubmen began to mass at Sutton Waldron, but Cromwell, who had heard of their rendezvous, marched to intercept them; he went up Duncliff Hill alone to parley with them, and so successful was his eloquence that they dispersed to their homes. On the following day he found a more formidable force of about 3,000 entrenched behind the ancient works on Hambledon, and here his eloquence failed, for Bravell, the minister of Compton, threatened to ( pistoll them that give back " ; they even repulsed a direct charge, but in the meantime Dcsborough brought up a body of horse from the side towards Hanford and took the defenders in rear. Many were killed in the first charge; the remainder threw down such arms as they had and fled. Three hundred prisoners were taken, and these were thrust under guard, for the night, into Shroton Church, which had been rebuilt twenty years before.
Cromwell tried his eloquence upon the prisoners in Shroton Church, and "made them confess that they saw themselves misled." He informed Fairfax that they were "( poor, silly creatures whom if you please to send home, they promise to be very dutiful for lime to come and they will be hanged before they come out again.") This skirmish took place in full view of Shillingstone, and many of the men of our village took part in it, for when excavations were made in 1888, for the foundations of the north aisle, a row of bodies was found which, according to local tradition, were those of the men who fell on Hambledon fighting for King Charles. A coin of Augustus was dug up at the same time. Blandford and, perhaps, Shillingstone men took part in the Royalist rising in 1655. On the 12th March, the ill-fated band of Penruddock rode through Shillingstone to Sherborne, but on their way to Exeter they were attacked and subsequently tried at the Exeter Assizes. Five were hanged The Stour valley took fire again when Monmouth landed at Lyme, on llth June, 1685 On the 18th, when crossing Cranborne Chase with tired horses, he was captured at Woodyates, the site of the British village on Bokerly Dyke.
The records of the Bloody Assize at Dorchester contain no Shillingstone names. Throughout the eighteenth century, in spite of taxation and agricultural depression, the standard of comfort of the labourers had been improving. Wages, it is true, were only 6s. a week, but the introduction of the potato gave the labourer the power to keep a pig and added pork and potatoes to his ordinary diet of bread and cheese. About 1798 there grew up the remarkable custom of supplementing wages from the rates. Under this system pauperism and crime increased, and in 1830 there were riots in Hazelbury Bryan. In 1834 the Dorset labourer became famous in a case of national importance. An Agricultural Trade Union had succeeded in raising the weekly wage in Hampshire to I0 s.; the Dorset farmers consented to give their men the same, but afterwards they reduced them to 7s.The labourers then formed a Union of their own. The farmers took alarm. In February placards appeared threatening anyone who joined the Union with seven years' transportation under an Act of George III., against seditious meetings. Six men were arrested, tried at the Spring Assizes, and actually convicted and sentenced to seven years transportation. The Times thought the sentence too severe, though likely to be salutary, but it shocked the country. The question now became a national issue. On April 21st a procession—the first of the kind—30,000 strong, inarched through London to present a petition for the release of the unfortunate men, who had already sailed for Botany Bay. The Government gave way, but it took two years to remit the sentences, and four to get the men home; they were compensated with little farms in Essex. The labourer had little share in the prosperity of 1868. There 'was a custom of hiring whole families, and the women worked in the fields. The hiring-fair is now a picturesque survival and, instead of changing the employer once a year, the men either stick to the same farmer or work for themselves.
The amusements of the villagers in Jacobean times can have been little more than the May Day festivities and the annual fairs. We learn from the records of what the Puritans disapproved the kind of entertaining given by strollers in 1660: " the dauncing of divers creatures on ropes and dogs," "a puppet- show, called Patient Grizell, with music and six servants, "a motion of the witches of the north,". The usual relaxation was the alehouse for the Dorset man was described as "terribly addicted to beer," though how he could have indulged his taste on six shillings a week is hard to understand. Probably the gibe originated with the farmers who supplied free beer to his hands, and remarked ruefully upon the depth of their thirst when he came to pay the brewer.