built at one end or the other, so that they form actually a passage that leads to nothing. Since his death, the property has been sold, and has passed into strangers' hands. The endowment of the chapel has been transferred to one at Eastleigh, and the house to which it was attached belongs to a market garden.
The two parishes were near enough to the coast to be kept in anxiety by the French schemes for landing. The tenant of the Winchester College property at Otterbourne is said to have kept all her goods packed up, and to have stirred the fire with a stick all through one winter; and as late as between 1840-50, Mr. Bailey of Hursley still had in his barn the seats that had been prepared to fit into the waggons that were to carry the women into the downs in the event of a battle.
The Rev. John Marsh, who in 1808 collected the memoranda of Hursley and dedicated them to Sir William Heathcote, was curate of Hursley and incumbent of Baddesley. The Vicar was the Rev. Gilbert Heathcote, fifth son of Sir Thomas, second Baronet. He was afterwards Archdeacon of Winchester and a Canon of Winchester. He was a man of great musical talent, and some of his chants are still in use. The only other fact recollected of him was, that being told that he used hard words in his sermons, he asked a labourer if he knew what was meant by Predestination, and was answered, 'Yes, sir, some'at about the innards of a pig.' He generally resided there. Mr. Marsh remained curate of Hursley and was presented to the living of Baddesley. All this time Otterbourne had only one Sunday service, alternately matins or evensong, and the church bell was rung as soon as the clergyman could be espied riding down the lane. Old customs so far survived that the congregation turned to the east in the Creed, always stood up, if not sooner, when 'Alleluia' occurred at the end of the very peculiar anthems, and had never dropped the response, 'Thanks be to Thee, O Lord,' at the end of the Gospel.
The Holy Communion was celebrated four times a year, 35. 7d. being paid each time for the Elements, as is recorded in beautiful writing in 'the Church Raiting book,' which began to be kept in 1776. 'Washan the surples' before Easter cost 4s.; a Communion cloth, tenpence; and for washing and marking it, sixpence. A new bell cost £ 5:
But changes were beginning. The direct coaching road between Winchester and Southampton had been made, and many houses had followed it. The road that crosses Colden Common and leads to Portsmouth was also made about the same time, and was long called Cobbett's road, from that remarkable self-taught peasant reformer, William Cobbett, who took part in planning the direction.
Cobbett was a friend of Mr. Harley, a retired tradesman who bought the cottage that had belonged to a widow, named Science Dear, and enlarged it. Several American trees were planted in the ground by Cobbett, of which only one survives, a hickory, together with some straggling bushes of robinia, which Cobbett thought would make good hedges, being very thorny, and throwing up suckers freely, but the branches proved too brittle to be useful. About 1819 Mr. Harley sold his house and the paddock adjoining to Mary Bargus, widow of the Rev. Thomas Bargus, Vicar of Barkway in Hertfordshire, and she came to live there with her daughter Frances Mary. In 1622, Miss Bargus married William Crawley Yonge, youngest son of the Rev. Duke Yonge, Vicar of Cornwood, Devon, of the old family of Yonges of Puslinch. He then retired from the 52nd regiment, in which he had taken part in the Pyrenean battles, and in those of Orthez and Toulouse, and had his share in the decisive charge which completed the victory of Waterloo. They had two children, Charlotte Mary, born August 11th, 1823, and Julian Bargus, born January 31st, 1830.
CHAPTER IX-CHURCH BUILDING
A new era began in both Hursley and Otterbourne with the accession of Sir William Heathcote, the fifth baronet, and with the marriage of William Yonge.
Sir William was born on the 17th of May 1801, the son of the Rev. William Heathcote, Rector of Worting, Hants, and Prebendary of the Cathedral of Winchester, second son of Sir William, third baronet. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Lovelace Bigg Wither of Manydown Park in the same county. She was early left a widow, and she bred up her only son with the most anxious care. She lived chiefly at Winchester, and it may be interesting to note that her son remembered being at a Twelfth-day party where Jane Austen drew the character of Mrs. Candour, and assumed the part with great spirit.
He was sent first to the private school of considerable reputation at Ramsbury in Wiltshire, kept by the Rev. Edward Meyrick, and, after four years there, became a commoner at Winchester College, where it is said that he and Dr. William Sewell were the only boys who jointly retarded the breaking out of the rebellion against Dr. Gabell, which took place after their departure. However, in April 1818 he left Winchester, and became a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, where his tutor was the Rev. John Keble, only eight years older than himself, and not yet known to fame, but with an influence that all who came in contact with him could not fail to feel.
In 1821 Mr. Heathcote gained a First-class in his B.A. examination, and was elected Fellow of All Souls in November 1822. He began to read at the Temple, but in April 1825 he came into the property of his uncle, and in the November of the same year he married the Hon. Caroline Frances Perceval, the youngest daughter of Charles George Lord Arden. Both he and his wife were deeply religious persons, with a strong sense of the duties of their station. Education and influence had done their best work on a character of great rectitude and uprightness, even tending to severity, such as softened with advancing years. Remarkably handsome, and with a high-bred tone of manners, he was almost an ideal country gentleman, with, however, something of stiffness and shyness in early youth, which wore off in later years. In 1826 he became member for the county on the Tory interest.
As a landlord, he is remembered as excellent. His mother took up her abode at Southend House in Hursley parish, and under the auspices of the Heathcote family, and of the Misses Marsh, daughters of the former curate, Sunday and weekday schools were set on foot, the latter under Mrs. Ranger and her daughter, whose rule continued almost to the days of national education. One of his first proceedings was to offer the living of Hursley to the Rev. John Keble, who had spent a short time there as curate in 1826. It was actually accepted, when the death of a sister made his presence necessary to his aged father at Fairford in Gloucestershire; and for two years, during which the publication of the
About 1824 Mrs. Yonge began to keep the first Sunday school at Otterbourne in a hired room, teaching the children, all girls, chiefly herself, and reading part of the Church Service to them at the times when it was not held at church. The only week-day school was on the hill, kept by a picturesque old dame, whose powers amounted to hindering the children from getting into mischief, but who-with the instinct Mrs. Charles describes-never forgave the advances that disturbed her monopoly.
In 1826, as Mrs. Yonge was looking at the empty space of a roadway that had led into the paddock before it became a lawn, she said, 'How I should like to build a school here!'
'Well,' said her mother, Mrs. Bargus, 'you shall have what I can give.'
Mrs. Yonge contrived the room built of cement, with two tiny ones behind for kitchen and bedroom for the mistress, and a brick floor; and the first mistress, Mrs. Creswick, was a former servant of Archdeacon Heathcote's.
She was a gentle woman, with dark eyes and a lame leg, so that she could not walk to church with the children, who sat on low benches along the nave, under no discipline but the long stick Master Oxford, the clerk, brandished over them. Nor could she keep the boys in any order, and the big ones actually kicked a hole nearly through the cement wall behind them. At last, under the sanction of the Rev. Gilbert Wall Heathcote, who had succeeded his father as Vicar of Hursley, a rough cast room was erected in the churchyard, where Master Oxford kept school, with more upright goodness than learning; and Mr. Shuckburgh, the curate, and Mr. Yonge had a Sunday school there.
The riots at the time of the Reform Bill did not greatly affect the two parishes, though a few villagers joined the bands who went about asking for money at the larger houses. George, Sir William's second son, told me that he remembered being locked into the strong room on some alarm, but whether it came actually to the point of an attack is a question. It was also said that one man at Otterbourne hid himself in a bog, that the rioters might not
