Cornish Characters and Strange Events

Of the crew of the Windsor Castle three had been killed and two severely wounded; but of that of Le Jeune Richard there were twenty-one dead upon the deck, and thirty-three were wounded.

From the very superior number of the privateer's crew still remaining – thirty-eight men – whereas Captain Rogers had only fifteen available, great precautions had to be taken in securing the prisoners. They were accordingly ordered up from below, one by one, and each put in irons. Any attempt at a rescue being thus effectually guarded against, the packet proceeded, with her prize, to the port of her destination, which fortunately for the former was not far distant.

This achievement reflected the highest honour upon every officer, man, and boy that was on board the Windsor Castle, but especially on Captain Rogers. Had he stayed to calculate the chances that were against him, the probability is that the privateer would have ultimately succeeded in capturing the packet, whose light carronades could have offered very little resistance at the usual distance at which vessels engage; and where any small crew, without such a coup de main– indeed, without such a leader – could never have brought the combat to a favourable issue.

For his intrepid conduct Rogers received the thanks of H.M. Postmaster-General; promotion to the rank of captain, with command of another packet, 100 guineas besides his share of the prize (although no prize allowance was usual); the freedom of the City of London; and an illuminated address, with a sword of honour, from the inhabitants of Tortola.

In London, a gentleman named Dixon, unacquainted with Rogers, sought and obtained his friendship, and then commissioned Samuel Drummond to make a picture of the action, in which the hero's full-length portrait should appear. Whilst the painting was in progress, one day Rogers ran up against a man in the street so closely resembling the officer he had shot, that he held him by the button and begged as a favour that he would allow a distinguished artist to paint his portrait. The gentleman was not a little surprised, but when Rogers informed him who he was and why he desired to have him painted, he readily consented. He was conducted to the studio, and there stood as portrait-model for the French swordsman by whom Rogers had been so nearly cut down. When completed, the painting was retained by Mr. Dixon, but it was engraved in mezzotint by Ward.

The painting in course of time passed to the first owner's grandson, Mr. James Dixon, whose daughter at his decease in 1896 became possessed of it, and presented it to the nation, and it is now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital.

Captain Rogers died at Holyhead January 11, 1825. His and his wife's portraits were preserved by her relatives, and eventually given to the only surviving daughter or her descendants.

In Johns and Nicolas's Calendar of Victory, 1855, is an account of this sea-fight; also in the European Magazine of 1808, with a portrait of the gallant captain. Also in James's Naval History of Great Britain (1820), Vol. IV.

Rogers's own account, condensed, is to be found in a paper by Rev. W. Jago, "The Heroes of the Old Falmouth Packet Service," in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, XIII, 1895-8.

JOHN BURTON, OF FALMOUTH

Joseph Burton, of Stockport, Lancashire, came, for what reason is unknown, to Cornwall in 1830, and set up a china and glass shop at Bodmin; and married at Launceston a Miss Clemo.

Old Joseph was a sturdy Radical and Nonconformist. He was a vigorous and loud supporter of the Ballot Society, the Liberation Society, and the United Kingdom Alliance. He was also a vehement and "intemperate" teetotaler. He died at Bodmin 19th July, 1876. John was one of a whole string of children, and as the "cloam" shop did not bring in a large profit, and John was one among many, he had to go into life very inefficiently equipped with education. But he had inherited from his father a masterful spirit, and had his own independent views, and it was soon a case between them of flint and steel, and sparks flew out.

John and his brother Joe were sent round the country hawking pots and glass.

"I well remember the 24th December, 1853," said John Burton. "Myself and brother Joe (who afterwards became a well-known auctioneer) rose at five o'clock in the morning, fed the horse, and made a start at 5.45 a.m. with a wagon-load of goods. The morning was dark, and when we came to Callywith turnpike gate it was closed. We knocked Henry Mark, the toll-keeper, up to let us through. He looked out of the window and at first refused to let us pass until daylight. We firmly told him that we would certainly unhang the gate and pass through without paying the toll. This fetched the old man down, with his long coat, knitted night-cap, with horn lantern in his hand. He opened the gate and told us, 'You Burtons ought to be poisoned for breaking a man's rest.' A lot we cared for his curses. Fairly on the road, we were as happy as sandboys. Having delivered the goods, and fairly on the way home, we stopped at the Jamaica Inn, where the old mail-coaches used to change their horses, to feed our horse, not forgetting ourselves. After giving old Dapper his feed of oats, we went into the inn kitchen, where we ordered a hot meal. The landlady asked, 'What would you like?' She suggested a hot squab pie, which she took out of a huge kitchen range well loaded with burning turf, the odour of which increased our appetite considerably. We polished off the pie and pocketed the crust to eat on the moors when homeward bound."

The Jamaica Inn is in the midst of the Bodmin Moors. In the time of the mail-coaches from London by Exeter to Falmouth it was a house of great repute. But when the trains ran, and coaches were given up, it fell from its high estate, was converted into a temperance house, was far from clean, harboured innumerable fleas, and did little business. Of late it has entirely recovered its credit. It stands nine hundred feet above the sea. There are now there at Bolventor a church and a school. A bleak, wind-swept moor all about it. Dozmare Pool, haunted by Tregeagle, is near by – and in June the meadows around are a sheet of gold from the buttercups. But to return to John Burton's reminiscences.

"When the landlady came in and saw that we had finished the pie, she looked with amazement towards us.

"'Why, drat you boys, whativer have 'ee done with the pie?'

"'Why, ate'n, missus. Do'y think us called the horse in to help us, or what?'

"'No,' she smartly replied, 'I should 'a thawt you had the Bodmunt Murlicha (Militia) here to help 'ee out. I never seed such gluttons in my life.'

"When we asked what we had got to pay, she said, 'Sixpunce for the crist, threepunce for the suitt, ninepunce for the gibblets, and eightpunce for apples, onions, spice, currants and sugar, and fourpunce for baking 'un; two dishes of tay, tuppunce; that'll be two and eightpunce altogether, boys.'

"'All right, missus, here's the posh.'

"She asked us out of bravado if we could eat any more. We said, 'Yes, we could do with some Christmas cake.'

"She politely told us that she shouldn't cut the Christmas cake until the next day. 'But you can have some zeedy biscays, if you like.'

"'All right.' And in she brought them, which we also polished off. Afterwards she demanded fourpence for them.

"'All right, missus, the fourpunce charged for baking the pie will pay for the biscuits, so us'll cry quits,' which joke the old woman swallowed with a good laugh."

John Burton proceeds to describe the Christmas merry-making at the inn that night. Jamaica Inn had not then become a temperance hotel. The moormen and farmers came in, the great fire glowed like a furnace. The wind sobbed without, and piped in at the casement – "the souls on the wind," as it was said, the spirits of unbaptized babes wailing at the windowpane, seeing the fire within, and condemned to wander on the cold blast without.

To the red fire, and to the plentiful libations, songs were sung, among others that very favourite ballad of the "Highwayman" —

I went to London both blythe and gay,
My time I squandered in dice and play,
Until my funds they fell full low,
And on the highway I was forced to go.

Then after an account of how he robbed Lord Mansfield and Lady Golding, of Portman Square —

I shut the door, bade all good night,
And rambled to my heart's delight.

After a career of riot and robbery, the Highwayman at length falls into the toils of Sir John Fielding, who was the first magistrate to take sharp and decisive measures against these pests of society. Then the ballad ends: —

When I am dead, borne to my grave,
A gallant funeral may I have;
Six highwaymen to carry me,
With good broadswords and sweet liberty.

Six blooming maidens to bear my pall;
Give them white gloves and pink ribbons all;
And when I'm dead they'll say the truth,
I was a wild and a wicked youth.

One of the local characters who was present on that Christmas Eve was Billy Peppermint. As he was overcome with drink, the young Burtons conveyed him from the Jamaica Inn about ten miles, and then turned him out of their conveyance, and propped him up against the railings of a house in Bodmin, as he was quite unable to sustain himself.

That night the carol singers were making their round, and as they came near they piped forth: "When shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, an angel of the Lord appeared, and – "

Whereon Billy roared forth —

When I am dead they'll say the truth,
I was a wild and a wicked youth,

and rolled over and fell prostrate on the ground.

In 1857 an event occurred which altered the direction of John Burton's activities.

He had been sent along with one of his father's hawkers named Paul Mewton with a crate of china on his head to S. Columb. On their way they called at Porth, and there Paul complained that he was not well, whereupon a Mr. Stephens, with whom they were doing business, produced a case of spirits and gave first Paul and then John Burton each a glass of very strong grog. Paul could stand it, but not so John, and as he was carrying his basket of "cloam" over a stile he lost his balance, and away went the crate and all its contents, which were shivered to atoms.

This was too much for Mr. Joseph Burton, a rigid teetotaler, and he had words with his son on the immorality of touching fermented liquor, and above all on the consequences of a loss of many shillings' worth of china.

The stile is still to be seen. On one side is inscribed, "Burton's Stile, 1857"; on the other is a carving of a gin-bottle, a water-jug, and a glass, with the legend beneath, "The Fall of Man."

This was the beginning of a series of altercations between John and his father, which led at last to John abandoning his parent, and in 1862 he set up in Falmouth on his own account with thirty shillings in his pocket. As Burton was wont to say of the world into which he had entered on his own account —

'Tis a very good world for to live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;