THE OGLA_NDER MEMOIRS.*

THE author of the interesting writings called The Oglander

Memoirs was a local worthy who, born in the Isle of Wight during the reign of Elizabeth, died there under the Cromwellian Protectorate. He may be defined as an active county magistrate, with a taste for genealogy and antiquities, but taking a much more vivid interest in his contemporaries on the island; and the attractiveness of his realistic notes lies in the fact that they are alive with personalities from end to end. The papers do not con- sist of a consecutive story, carried on from year to year; they are not even a diary of events ; there is nothing in the least formal about them. Mr. Long says that the manuscripts contain matters of " a very miscellaneous and varied character, written in different volumes, and often—as if on the spur of the moment —[paper, perhaps, being scarce]—on the blank leaves of ledgers and account-books without the least order or arrangement." But therein evidently lurks the secret of that simplicity, fresh- ness, and spontaneity which make them so agreeable. Sir John, one might say, wrote for himself, and if he has written for posterity, he had no thought of so doing. The product is not a manufacture, still less a work of art ; but it has qualities and merits which are sometimes wanting in both; it is un- affected, natural, genuine. The consequence is, that through the disjointed sketches of the busy Knight, we, after the lapse of more than two centuries, are able to see the men and women among whom he lived, to note their persons, characters, manners and customs, and look at an animated picture of a little piece of England, which, although cut off from "the mayne," and subject to maritime influences, may in some sort be regarded as a sample of the whole. Nor are the great folk absent from the scene ; for King James is a visitor, and King Charles appears more than once, alike as a flourishing and a fallen monarch ; Buckingham is a prominent personage ; and besides these, a host of courtiers and ministers glance across the pages from time to time. But while the tragedy at Portsmouth is simply but graphically told, and the glimpses of the Stuarts are impressive, still the main attrac- tion of the memoirs is the lifelike description of society in the Isle, the little world which Sir John so dearly loved.

Mr. Long has written a pleasant as well as instructive intro- ductory sketch of the condition of the Island, which shows that in the youth and early manhood of Sir John it was self- contained, prosperous, and happy, not overstocked with population, but tolerably well provided with the necessaries of life. The people lived in houses built of stone, they had gardens and orchards, there were many yeomen-farmers, plenty of common land, and the Island was famous for the breed of its horses and the fineness of its wool. But there were no roads, and little was exported except corn and wool ; while some alum and copperas rewarded enterprise. The rate of wages and the prices of provisions were fixed by justices, and generally there was a kind of paternal government, tempered by usage and common-law rights. The golden age, however, in the Isle was always somewhere in the past. By the time Charles I. was on the throne, the dark period had begun. Uttering his complaint, to himself, in 1629, Sir John says :—

"In Quene Elizabeth's tyme it wase otherwyse—money wase as plentiful in yeomens' parses as nowe in ye best of ye genterye, and all ye genterye full of monys and owt of debt ; ye market full, commodities ventinge themselves att moste hygh rate pryces, and mean of warr att ye Cows whych gave greats rates for owre commodityes, and exchanged other goode ones with us. If you had an3rthinge to sell you should not have needed to have looked for a chapman, for you could not almoste asks butt bane, all 'The °glassier Momotrs Extracts from the MSS. of Sir J. Oglander, St, of Nunwell, Isle of Wight, Deputy-Governor of Portsmouth and Deputy-Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight, 1696-164.v. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by W. H. Long. London : Reeves and Turner. thinges weare exported and imported att yours harte's desior ; your tenantes rych, and a bargayne coold not stand aft any rate ; the State was well ordered; we had in a good mannor warms with Spayne, and peeace with ffrance, and ye Low Counterymen wears owre servantes, not owre maystors ; then itt was Insula fortunata : nowe—Insula infortunata."

That was written under the stress of the disastrous expeditions to Rochelle, the cruelties of the Dutch in the Spice Islands, the fear of descents from the French, and the dilapidation which the policy of Charles and Buckingham brought about; but there seems to have been much truth in it, and a real falling- off from the golden days of Queen Bess.

Sir John asserts that the coach he set up was the second ever seen in the Island, and that his "hop-garden wage ye fyist

in ye island that wase made accordinge to arte. I browght 2 men from Farman to plant myne, and I had in itt 1,000 lbs. of hoppes in a yere, being not full an aker of grownd." When he drove in his coach, he had to go through the fields by farm tracts, and open gates as he went. "Till near the end of the last century," Mr. Long remarks, "the road from Newport to Yarmouth was studded with more than fifty gates, and they were still more numerous at the back of the Island." The decay that fell upon it, Sir John thinks, arose either from many attorneys who made it their habitation, or the absence of

men-of-war off the coast, who sold cheap and bought dear ; and a propos of the former reason, he tells this grotesque anecdote :— " I haue herd itt by tradition and partlye know itt to be true, that not onlye heretofore there wase no lawyer nor attournye in owre Island; but in Sir George Carey's tyme an attourney comminge to settle in ye Island wase, by his commands, with a pownd of candela lyghted hangings .att his breeche, with belles about his legges, hunted owt of the Island : insomuch as owre awncestors lived here so quietly and securelie, being neither troobled to London nor Winchester, so they seldom or nevor went owt of ye Island."

The alteration of the times gives him occasion to describe the past. "I haue knowen at mire Ordinarie at Nuport of Islanders 12 knyghtes and as many gentlemen, and nowe

[1627] scarce any." And again : "I haue sene with my Lord Sowthampton on St. George's Down, at Bowles, from 30 to 40 knyghtes and gentlemen, where owre meetinge was then twyse every weeke, Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, and we had an ordinarie theyre and cardes and tables. Mutamer." And he gives their names, as well as those of ten farmers and yeomen who were of the jovial party. There was much good fellowship, and doubtless roystering, but among the sedate of a harmless kind. He says of his great friend, Sir Richard Worsley, that when alone, he spent his " tyme att his booke," yet was very merry. "He delyghted much in flinging cuschions at one another's heddes only in sporte, and for exercise," mild "bear- fighting," in short. When he was a scholar in Winton College, "at a huntinge daye with a strype of hazel" twigge he lost one of his eyes ;" and the rough play recorded came to an end when, "with a cuschion at Gatcombe," says Sir John, "I wase lyke to putt foorth his other eye." These are trifles, but they bring us face to face with the men of that time. After a false alarm of the coming of a Spanish fleet, very well told, Lord Conway, the Captain of the Island, came on a visit, and we have this entry :—" When he came too Nuport I cawsed Elgor ye schoolmaster to provyde an oration, whych wase made unto him att ye schoolmaster's doors, by Keelinge one of ye schollers. Then ye Maior mett him with his Bretheren with tender of wyne and cakes." This was the Conway of whom King James, swearing, said that Buckingham had given him a secretary who could neither read nor write ; and Mr. Long says there still exist State papers of his endorsed "in my Lord's own hand," the clerks being unable to decipher or to specify more fully their contents. The Lord Treasurer Weston was so well pleased with a speech made by a scholar of the Newport Free School, "Mr. Bacon's sonn," that "he gave ye bwoye P.5," and altogether behaved in a magnificent fashion on his visit. King James was much taken, it seems, "with seeing ye littel bwoyes skirmishe, who he loved to see better and willyngior than menn ;" but it is not recorded that he gave them anything.

Sir John's sketches of incidents and persons are so plentiful, that we can only note a few. Of a Sir John Leigh we learn this :—

"He masyed one of Mr. John Dinglie's dawghtors of Woolverton, they being fyrst (so chosen) Lord and Ladle of a Sommerpole at a Whitsuntide in ye P'rosch of Shorwell; in those dayes that honest recreation wase very common, and not dishonourable, but as a meanes to make many matches, and to draws mutch good coin- .

paths togeathor, ye gayne whereof went to ye mayntenance of ye church I wase with him in ye peace 20 yeres, and most of that tyme noe other butt ourselves in ye Island ; he woold nevor differ in opinion, butt of a mild and good nature ; no schollar nor match redd, but verie paynful and willinge to doo what good he coold; verie pittiful and merciful ; in his latter tyme weepinge at every disaster."

Here is a quaint and interesting account in brief of a

notable :— •

" Mr. Emanuell Badd wase a verie poor man's Bonn, and bownd apprentice to one Bernard, a shoomaker in Nuport ; but by God's blessing and ye lease of 5 wyves he grewe very ritch, pourchased ye priory [of St. Helen's] and mutch other landes in ye Island ; at last he pourchased Chumsly fferme, which he had by his last wyfe, being a relict of Ludlee ; he was a verie honest man and a verie good frynd of mine."

As a contrast, take this picturesque sentence " Rychard Cooke, of Budbridge, wase Captayne of Sandam [San- down] Casten, a braue fellow, came alwayes to Arreton Church in his wroughte velvet gowne, and 12 of his sowldiers with halibardes wayghted upon him.'

William Oglander, the father of Sir John, fell in love with Ann Dillington, "as handsome a mayden as any wase in Hamshyre." His uncle, mother's brother, was hostile to the match, and his aunt took vengeance by making the " olde man, her husband," disinherit the young man, right heir to "£600 land a yere." Nevertheless, the youth was faithful :—

"Mr. Oglander, as soone as he was owt of his wardship, maryed Mrts. Dillington, and had not with her above £50, for in those tymes men maryed more for love than money ; he lived very hapily

and contentedly with her at Nunwell [the Oglander home] Butt by reason of ye often troubles betweene us and Spayne, and shoe being desiorous to be freed from those weekly affryghtes cawsed by often allarms cawsed her howsband to take a howse at Hampton, but not likinge that long they took ye Abbey of Bewlie and there lived some six yeres, where his wyfe dyed to his intollerable sorrowe and gryfe."

These are only specimens gathered by the way from genuinely interesting pages which it is impossible to sum- marise or do anything like justice to in a brief notice. The book is, in fact, a sort of graphic inventory of persons and places, habits and customs, in the Isle of Wight when the first set of Stuarts were Kings, and, of course, Sir John, all through, unconsciously paints himself. It is, indeed, one of the most amusing and instructive among the revivals of the past, and cannot fail to gratify the special as well as the general reader.