Nothing New on the Land (The Agricultural Lord Palfrey Book 3), page 19
“My lord?”
“Far too crippled to spend hours hanging about for the convenience of the fat man, Samways! I showed willing, appeared in the correct places and was seen to do so – I may even have gained credit for forcing myself out when the old wound was playing up. The food was awful!”
“Very wise, my lord!”
“I shall keep the house tomorrow, Samways. It will be noticed. Do not tell Lord Montgomerie – he believes the affliction to be genuine and I would not wish to upset him.”
The Montgomeries returned at close to midnight, having suffered through the festivities and then waited an hour and more in the crush of those seeking their carriages.
“Are ye well, Palfrey?”
“It’s nothing, Montgomerie! I came close to losing the leg and it sometimes chooses to remind me of the fact. All I need do is rest the damned thing for a day or two and it will be well for the rest of the year and more. I was lucky to keep it and need to remember that fact.”
“A reminder of what might have been, in fact, Palfrey.”
“Just that, old fellow! So many thousands of others suffered far more on that day – I feel ashamed of myself to make complaint of so minor an affliction.”
A last glass and they made their way to their bedchambers, a long day over.
“The Queen was turned away from three doors, so I am told, Palfrey.”
There was little else to discuss at the breakfast table.
“So I understand, Montgomerie. By way of being a little too much of a good thing. Better she should have made her request to enter and then turned away in dignified retreat. My driver said he was told by one closer to her that she seemed unwell.”
The new King was thoroughly crowned and the opportunity for the Queen to cause embarrassment seemed past. It was now a question of negotiation of the sum that would encourage her to leave the country again, and that was not so urgent. The lady would have no other opportunity to be such a nuisance again.
“She should have taken the hundred thousand a year she was offered last month, Palfrey. She will be lucky to get fifty thou’ this time round.”
A week and the Montgomeries returned to Wales, fun over for the year. Nat took carriage as well, heading out of the smokes of London to the clean air of his estate.
“Are we to return to London for the Little Season, my lord?”
“No. I think not, Samways. We can remain here until the spring. If I go to Town again this year I shall most likely be pulled into public life. I have no wish at all to be associated with this government, or with the plotting around the formation of the next. Intellectually, I am attracted towards the policies of the freetraders and those who will support Trade and Industry generally. Self-interest says I should be part of the Landed Interest. I do not care quite enough to have to make a choice between them. Add to that, I have no desire to re-enter the marriage market, not as yet. Eventually, I know I must do so, before the children grow too old to easily accept a new mama. But not this year, Samways.”
“Next, my lord?”
“Must it be so?”
“I believe so, my lord. A hostess for the Hall is an essential if we are to resume our place as leader of this part of the county. I do believe we should do just that, my lord. Sir Angus’ man said much the same to me very recently, and he will be passing on his master’s opinions. You may remember we were instrumental in Sir Angus’ remarriage – a most successful endeavour, by the way, my lord. The lady is in a promising condition and the house and estate have all benefitted from her activity since her marriage. Sir Angus too has shown happier.”
The wise man listened to his valet. Samways would to an extent be repeating much that he had heard from others in the neighbourhood.
“April of ‘22 will see us in London, Samways, and myself accepting the invitations and dancing with the best.”
“More than that, one cannot ask for my lord. Will Lord Montgomerie be present, my lord?”
“Not in the coming year. His second girl will come out the year after, I believe. She is what, fifteen or sixteen now?”
“At that age, my lord. A pleasant miss, bright and well-trained in the ways of gentility. One would expect her to catch the eye of a lesser gentleman, a three or four thousand a year man, my lord, unless she is so fortunate as to attract one of the catches of the Season, which is never impossible.”
Nat was aware that he would be one of those catches, but the girl was a little too close by blood for his taste. He had married a cousin for love. He would not marry another for convenience.
“What is the word locally, Samways?”
The valet and the butler would between them hear everything that was happening in the county.
“Mr Wrayford tells me that Sir Angus is to purchase a few hundred acres across Christchurch way, my lord. He has his eye out for anything that will increase his holdings sensibly but does not wish to venture too far distant from Poole itself. There is an estate towards Torbay, my lord, in poor condition and all sheepwalk and not a pound an acre as a result. Superficially tempting to us, my lord, but carries with it too much of a burden of local disputes to be wise.”
“Thank you, Samways. We shall not indulge!”
“Other than that, my lord, Dash has received a letter from his son on the Slave Coast. The boy is, as you may gather, alive and thriving, is already busy and learning his trade. He has hopes for his future, believes he may make money.”
The boy would not have sent back a missive full of gloom and doom, even so it was good to hear that he had not been instantly killed by the fevers.
“Good of the lad to write home, Samways. Dash was not happy to let him go to so dangerous a location, especially at his age.”
“Brave boy to go, my lord. The smallholders have done well this year, it seems, the prices of vegetables and eggs and baconers going up a little in the towns and them producing heavily. There is a general feeling of content on the estate, my lord. The guano ships have come home and are busily shovelling their cargoes ashore, my lord. The sacks need be a little stronger, tending to rot out over a long voyage. They have received a mixed welcome. On the one hand, there is work for carters and labourers and the farmers have shown some delight at receiving such fertilisers. On the other hand, one might say, there is the nature of the substance itself and the feelings of the village goodwives as the laden carts pass through their streets. It might be suggested, my lord, that was one of the carts to stop and allow those who wished to fill wheelbarrows for their gardens, then its popularity might well increase.”
“I shall pass the word, Samways. The aim never was to make a profit from the substance, so as well give some away if it is to earn a degree of popularity among the people.”
“It will do the cabbages and potatoes a deal of good, my lord, and that will fill bellies in midwinter, which is always a point to consider.”
“More and more of potatoes to be seen, or so it appears, Samways.”
“Better eating than turnips and parsnips, my lord. They crop more heavily, as well. There is a degree of bias against them, for some reason, my lord. The Radical interest seems opposed to the potato.”
“Do we know why?”
Samways did not. He was sure there was an argument, but it had not been made to him.
“The man Cobbett is back from America, my lord. He fled, wisely enough, after the Six Acts were passed and is back again now it is clear that the Acts are hardly to be applied. He is remarkably foolish in some ways but does tend to publish interesting accounts of the countryside and its state. He is remarkably ignorant in some ways, my lord. He is, as an example, convinced that the national population is falling, because he sees fewer men and women in the agricultural villages of the South Country.”
Nat laughed, having played his part in shifting young men out of those villages, sending numbers of them to the rapidly growing towns of the North Country.
“All he knows is the little he sees, I presume. He is incapable of reading the reports of others. A pity!”
“It is, my lord. He is rabid against paper money and also dislikes the potato, quite why is unclear.”
“Believes in gold, I presume. Always the indicator of the crank, a demand that all money should be gold. It is just possible to have a policy that paper may be converted on demand to gold, but that cannot work in the long run. There will always be more paper than gold and eventually conversion will have to be suspended. Gold is a good like any other and has a price that will rise and fall. Trying to keep the price of gold constant must always fail. Denying that gold has a price is plain silly!”
Samways was not sure he agreed – he liked the solidity of gold in his hand. It was not his place to argue high finance with his master. He said no more.
“Have we any deserving poor who are not receiving the relief that is their right, Samways?”
“Not to my knowledge, my lord. There is only one case I know of a man on his beam ends, as they say, and he has neither wife nor children to suffer from his foolishness. He is Jabez Hackworth, my lord, who has always been too willing to use a fist, unable to control himself. He was one of Dash’s hands on his new land and took umbrage when Dash upbraided him for the quality of work he performed laying a hedge. He punched Dash and discovered that although Dash was twenty years his elder, he could, as they say, look after himself.”
“Well done, Dash! Knocked him down, did he?”
“More than that, my lord. Hackworth punched him in the mouth and he responded with a well-placed boot and a pair of backhanders, left and right, as he doubled over. Needless to say, he dismissed Hackworth as he lay there and sent his four other hands to throw him off the farm, giving him half an hour to pack a sack with his few possessions. Hackworth still lived with his old mother in her little cottage which Dash had permitted her to retain when her man died some few years since.”
“Has Dash evicted her?”
“No, my lord. Mr Moorman asked him not to and he agreed, once he had confirmed he had lost no teeth, that it would be unkind to do so. The old lady had been heard frequently to attempt to calm her son’s temper, had done what little she could.”
“Very right. Where is Hackworth now?”
“In the waste ground over the western boundary of the estate, my lord. He has thrown up a shack of sorts, weaving heather to make a roof in the scrub, barely waterproof, and there he has sat these last few days. He would have had a few pennies in his pocket, for not being one to drink too much, and he must be hoping to be forgiven and brought back to work. He will be coming to the end of his possibilities now, my lord.”
“I must talk to Moorman.”
Samways was uncertain of the wisdom of that course.
“There is little for us to do, my lord. He has left the estate and has, as yet, committed no crimes. If he chooses to starve, that is his affair.”
Nat stopped to consider and found he agreed with his valet. He would not instruct Dash to take the man back – that would be wrong. Dash had suffered assault and could have lost teeth, painful as well as a real problem when it came to chewing winter meals, which often tended towards tougher meats and solid root vegetables.
While Hackworth committed no crime, he was at liberty to remain squatting in the waste, even if he was not wanted.
“Who owns the waste between us and the New Forest, Moorman?”
“A stretch of a mile long and perhaps a little wider, my lord, south of the road to Fordingbridge. Full of gorse and heather and briars. A few sloes and damsons. Wild strawberries in summer – tiny fruit but sweet and picked over by the children. For ownership? Unknown, my lord. It must have had an owner, no land in the country is owned by nobody. Every piece of common and waste belongs to some person or village. The problem is, we do not know who, my lord. Not us – we have no deeds to it.”
“A part of the Forest, perhaps?”
“No, my lord. I made my enquiries there and the verderers and agisters know nothing of it, except to think it a nuisance for being under no man’s hand. They suspect it was church land before the Civil War and fell into desuetude with none knowing what was the lawful holding afterwards. Some number of churches were cleared of what was seen as the trappings of Papist ritual, all burnt, including the ledgers and parish records. If the glebe was rich, then no doubt a local landholder discovered it to be his. Where it was poor land and hardly worthwhile, it reverted to waste.”
“And now is a damned nuisance. It would require a private Act of Parliament to bring it into our hand… That would cost the better part of a thousand and would take months. Leave it as it stands and inevitably more squatters will appear and be a source of every sort of trouble. Once one settles in, others will inevitably follow. Take a survey of the land, Moorman, give me a map with borders agreed with the New Forest people. It will only be us and them, I think. Ask if they want it – if they do, they are welcome to add it to the Forest. If not, we shall take it to ourselves.”
Moorman noted the instruction and agreed it to be wise. Once squatters arrived, they proliferated and were a source of all sorts of petty crime.
“What do we do with the land, my lord?”
“Add it to your jam enterprise, Moorman. More rows of blackberries and raspberries and perhaps damsons and sloes from what you say.”
“Very good, my lord. I have located a pottery that will produce earthenware jars and the first boiling should commence this autumn, my lord. I had thought we might print paper labels and stick them on the jars, my lord. Should it be Palfrey’s or Perry’s Jam, my lord?”
“Make it Palfrey’s and add a drawing of the Hall on the label, all very patrician – that will add sixpence to the price!”
Moorman laughed, but suspected it might be true. Snobbery sold, or so he had observed.
“What is to be done with Hackworth, my lord?”
“Watch out for him. He will be running short of money now and is countryman enough to know that he cannot survive hard winter in a shack with no cash coming in. He can take a rabbit or two and live off the land this month and next and possibly into October. Thereafter, he will find thin pickings indeed. When the snow comes, he will die. If he has anything between his ears, he will be starting to worry.”
“He is no more stupid than the normal run of mankind, my lord. That is to say, of course, that he is not at all bright.”
Nat obliged him with a laugh.
“Send a message to him – don’t honour him by speaking to him yourself – to the effect that we will pay him the cost of a passage west out of Bristol, or to Botany Bay if he prefers. If he is taken up in theft, he will hang. If he attacks the man who speaks to him, have him hunted down and he can swing at the next Assizes.”
Moorman wholeheartedly approved. He had no use for the violent and could see no contradiction in his desire to hang them.
“From London, my lord, the word that Queen Caroline lies on her deathbed!”
“Does she, by God! Has Prinny found himself a poisoner?”
“You must not be heard to say that, my lord!”
“Nor I must, Samways. I wonder just how many are thinking it this day?”
The King was not helped by the vague and contradictory medical reports of the next day as the Queen lay dying. The Mob was convinced she had died as a result of the abuse she had suffered, poor lady, and if none could put a finger on the precise cause of death, all knew how much she had been hated.
A letter arrived from O’Rourke. He had put up the shutters and locked and barred his doors and had retired to his living quarters upstairs from his office. There would be no business done for the next week, he much feared. He intended to read the last and much expanded edition of Adam Smith, thus to occupy himself profitably during his free time.
“What exactly does that mean, do you know, Samways?”
“I suspect it is a vulgarity, my lord. I believe Mr O’Rourke keeps a female companion, not necessarily the same one for too many months at a time. He is known to be open-handed with those whose time with him comes to an end, and so is regarded favourably among the local folk. He has made reference to a ‘short life and a merry’ on occasion.”
“Had I known him to be so wild, I might not have put him on as my man of business. Having done so, there is no point to making a change.”
“He is an able man, my lord. Importantly, he is utterly safe with our money. He would scorn to take an unlawful ha’penny.”
Nat was of the same opinion.
“I suspect that he invests his own savings as cannily as he does mine, Samways. Not too many years and he will be comfortable in his own right. I wonder what he will do then?”
“From the little he has said, my lord, I believe he will leave this country and settle at far. Canada is as likely as anywhere. No doubt he will take a respectable little wife and build a family in later life, when he has chosen to seek a quiet life, if he can ever bring himself to do so.”
They laughed together, with no bitterness. Neither man would face such an ending to their existence.
“Where will they bury the Queen, my lord?”
“At far. There will be no graveside in England to be a magnet for enemies of the King. She will go into a lead coffin, well-sealed, and will be packed off to the Germanies. Brunswick, is it not?”
“Disposed of with too little dignity, I fear, my lord.”
“Dignity and our King are strangers, Samways. They have never come into contact.”
“I have sent word to Hackworth, my lord. His reply was offensive, in the extreme. He will remain, he says, will not be driven off from the place of his birth.”
“Damned fool. Is he taking food from his mother, do you know?”
“Probably, my lord. How can we prevent that short of cruelty, my lord? What mother will not feed her son in his misery?”
“None, worthy of being called the name. Speak to her, Moorman. Try to persuade her that he will do far better at foreign.”
Moorman feared she would have no influence on her wild boy. He was not one to listen to the voice of reason.
