8 MARGARET CATCHPOLE CHAP. beachmen's colony and rambled through the quaint old "rows." But David would desert me when we reached Wickham Market, and I should have to find my own way to Framlingham; so I will leave him and Mr. Pickwick gazing together out of the stationer's window at the Ancient House, and venture out alone on to Rushmere Heath, finding consolation in the fact that no gibbet now swings its ghastly burden on that desolate waste land, and that I live in an age when I can approach the Kesgrave barrows without hearing the wailing of the spirits of the dead in the voice of the wind among the trees. Indeed, on such a morning as this, and on such a sunny, breezy plain, one can well do without human or fictive society. The warm breath of spring, fragrant with the fresh odour of the young seed leaves; the lengthening hazel and alder catkins, the purple dead nettles, the singing thrushes, blackbirds, wrens, and robins, all go far towards making up for the absence of human life from the long, white, turf-bordered road. So I am content to travel slowly along the border of Rushmere Heath, not only on account of the singing birds and the spring wild flowers, but because I remember that it was along this same Woodbridge road that the heroine of that “romantic but perfectly true narrative," the History of Margaret Catchpole, hastened, with her lover Will Laud, the daring smuggler, on the night of her escape from Ipswich Gaol. Will Laud was often afloat on the Orwell, or concealed in the river's quiet creeks, and it was from its bank that Margaret, beguiled, by the sham Dutchman's story, from the Priory Farm at Downham Reach on a harvest home night, anxiously scanned the dimming reaches for a glimpse of the smuggler's sail. There, too, she may have seen-and the Rev. R. Cobbold, in his "perfectly true narrative," says she did see-old Tom Colson, better known as Robinson Crusoe, the Orwell fisherman who had a horseshoe nailed to his crazy boat, and his body adorned with mystic signs and amulets. He it was, we are I MARGARET CATCHPOLE'S RIDE told, who on that fateful autumn night, when Laud and Luff had planned to carry off the faithful Margaret in their lugger, came down upon them on the shores of Downham Reach, and, laying about him with his long-handled cod-hook, beat them off and set the maiden free. But Margaret, although she escaped then, was fated to again become the victim of nefarious schernes, and in the end her enemies and unworthy friends succeeded in ruining her reputation and getting her transported to Botany Bay. Her story is well known in Suffolk, where the scenes of her escapades and those of her persecutors are still pointed out to the curious; but outside the county it arouses little interest. Yet her life, in its early stages, was a singularly eventful one, and her ride to London is as notable in its way as Turpin's legendary ride to York. Ever since she was a child living under her father's roof on the border of the Nacton heathland, Margaret had been renowned for her skill at riding; and it was a knowledge of this that led her enemies to concoct the scheme which brought her into trouble. Telling her that her lover despaired of ever seeing her again, fear of the excisemen preventing him from venturing into Suffolk, they persuaded her to take from her master's stables one of the best horses and ride to Laud's place of concealment. Not until she had donned a stableman's clothes and mounted the horse was she informed of her lover's whereabouts, and then she learned that he was hiding in London. Feeling that it was then too late to abandon her daring enterprise, she refused to think what might be its consequences, so at one o'clock on a May morning in the year 1797 she set out on her long ride. With only the ever-watchful stars to see her, she rode quietly out of Ipswich and on to the main road to London. Instead of troubling about the fearful penalty of horse-stealing in those days, all her thoughts were of the lover she was to meet and the happiness which, after a long period of heart-ache and unrest, they were to share. I fancy I can hear her draw a long breath of relief as she leaves the last town house behind her and sees before her, stretching like a white ribband between the shadowy fields, the silent deserted country road. The new foliage of the roadside trees, as yet untarnished by the dust the mails will set flying ere many weeks are gone, makes the night air fragrant; and the white blossoms of the blackthorn, just vanishing before the blooming of the may, are like a rime-frost on the hedgerows. Nightingales are singing in the copses; now and again an owl hoots in a dusky wood or flies heavily over the fields; but Margaret is heedless of all the sights and sounds of the fine May night; scarcely conscious even of the movements of the horse beneath her. She is thinking of the days when as a child she rode her father's plough horses home from the fields; of her first meeting with Laud in the little cottage in Nacton village street; of her night's experience on the shores of Downham Reach; and thinking of these things, and of the strange treatment she has received at her lover's hands, some doubt may have arisen in her mind as to how he would receive her, and the wisdom of again putting faith in his promises. But she has no thought of turning back; and when, within two miles of Colchester, the Ipswich mail dashes past her, she turns her head aside so that the driver may not see her face. The guard, however, recognises the horse, and calls to the driver that there must be "something wrong" for a groom to be riding at such a pace, and when he reaches Ipswich, and recounts what he has seen, the news soon spreads and the strawberry roan is missed from the stables. Of all this Margaret knows nothing, so cannot be aware that even while she is only a little more than halfway on her journey an Ipswich printer is striking off copies of a handbill about a stolen gelding, to be sent to London by the morning mail. At Marks Tey she makes the only pause in her long ride, and then only stops long enough to give her noble horse a feed of corn. This is at five o'clock in the morning, and she has already been five hours in the saddle. At Chelmsford she 12 MARGARET CATCHPOLE'S RIDE CHAP. dares not stop for fear her appearance there at such an early hour should excite suspicion. So she rides out of the dark into the dawn, her face white with weariness, but freshened by the cool breezes of the spring morning; she sees the owls fly home to the woods and the larks rise to welcome the new day; and the gallant roan, responsive to the longing of his rider's heart that she may soon rest in her lover's arms, thuds onward at the same fast even pace he has kept up all through the night. She passes through Stratford just at the time when people are at their breakfasts, and at half-past nine trots into the yard of the Bell Inn, in Aldgate, having ridden seventy miles in eight and a half hours. The identification of the adventurous girl in spite of her disguise, and her arrest on a charge of horse-stealing are matters of a few hours. After lying in Newgate and Ipswich gaol nearly three months, she is brought before Lord Chief Baron Macdonald at Bury Assizes, and condemned to death. Her demeanour at the trial, and the evidence of many friends, who are glad to testify to her previous good conduct, are not, however, without effect upon the court, and the judge promises to lay her case before the King, with a view to the commuting of her sentence to one of transportation. This is done as soon as the court rises, and in a few days a reply comes from the Home Office empowering the judge to deal with the case at his discretion. The sentence is commuted to one of seven years transportation; but much doubt is felt whether Margaret will really be sent to the new penal settlement at Botany Bay; it is considered highly probable she will serve her term in her own country. Until this is decided she is kept in Ipswich Gaol. There she remains nearly three years, and then, with the assistance of her lover Laud, who must have felt that he owed her much for the trouble he had brought her, effects her escape. They hope to be able to cross over in a smuggler's boat to Holland, and such a boat is to await them on Sudbourn beach. Just as the clock strikes midnight, Margaret lets her |