The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Skirts of the Great City, by Mrs. Arthur G. Bell

WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY
ARTHUR G. BELL
AND SEVENTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I

HAMPSTEAD AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS

In his remarkable work Les Récits de l'Infini , the famous French astronomer, Camille Flammarion, hit upon a somewhat original device to bring vividly before his readers the fact that the heavenly bodies are seen by the dwellers upon earth, not as they are now, but as they were when the light revealing them left them countless ages ago. Having endowed an imaginary observer with immortality, he takes him from star to star, showing him all the kingdoms of the world at the various stages of their development, and finally makes him a witness of the Creation by the aid of the light that first shone upon the waters of chaos. Unfortunately, the student of history cannot hope to share the supernatural facilities of vision of Flammarion's hero, but for all that he can lay to heart some of the lessons of the astronomer's story by bringing to bear upon his task the sympathetic imagination which alone can enable him to reconstruct the past, and by remembering that that past should be judged not by the light of modern progress, but by such illumination as was available { 2} when it was still the present. No matter what the subject of study, the accumulation of facts is of little worth without the power of realising their interdependence, and this is very specially the case with the complex theme of London, in which an infinite variety of conflicting elements are welded into an unwieldy and by no means homogeneous whole, for in spite of the obliteration of landmarks and the levelling influences of modern times, each of its component parts has a psychological atmosphere of its own. Illusive, intangible, often almost indefinable, that atmosphere affects everything that is seen in it, and is a factor that must be reckoned with, if a trustworthy picture of the past or present is to be called up. The truth of this is very forcibly illustrated in the outlying suburbs of London, with which the present volume deals, for though these suburbs now appear to the cursory observer to bear the relation of branches to a parent stem, many indications prove that they were all not so very long ago independent communities, which were gradually absorbed by their aggressive neighbour, whose appetite grew with what it fed upon, and is still unsatisfied. This is very notably the case with Hampstead, which less than a century ago was still a mere village, the history of which can be traced back for more than a thousand years, and which, through all its vicissitudes, may justly be said to have been true to itself, for its inhabitants have from first to last resisted with more or less success every attempt to merge its individuality in that of the metropolis.

The name of Hampstead, originally spelt Hamstede, signifies homestead, and the first settlement on the site of the present suburb is supposed to have been a farm, situated in the district now known as Frognal, round about which a hamlet grew up that was until after the Reformation included in the parish of Hendon. The earliest historical reference to Hamstede occurs in a charter bearing date 978, in which Edward the Peaceable granted the manor to his minister Mangoda, and many theories have been hazarded to explain the difficulty arising from the fact that the king died in 975, the most plausible of which is that the copyist was guilty of a clerical error. In any case, a later charter, issued by Ethelred II. in 986, gave the same manor to the monks of Westminster, a gift confirmed by Edward the Confessor, and retained until the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century.

A touch of romance is given to the laconic description in Doomsday Book of the Hamstede Manor, by the mention of Ranulph Pevrel as holding one hide of land under the abbot, for that villein married the Conqueror's former mistress, the beautiful Ingelrica, and the fact that the lovers were in fairly prosperous circumstances is proved by Ranulph having owned nearly six times as much land as any other dweller on the estate. Incidentally, too, the effect of the Conquest on the value of property is reflected in the sudden decrease in that of the manor of Hamstede, which was worth one hundred shillings under Edward the Confessor, and only fifty under his successor.

Unfortunately, next to nothing is known of the history of the little settlement on the hill in Norman and mediæval times, but at the Reformation the manor was included in the newly formed see of Westminster, whose first bishop, Thomas Thirlby, appears to have lost no time in dissipating the episcopal revenues, for much of his property, including that at Hampstead, soon reverted to the Crown. The manor was given in 1550 by Edward VI. to Sir Thomas Wrothe, and after changing hands many times in the succeeding centuries, it became the property about 1780 of Sir Spencer Wilson, to whose great-nephew, Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, it now (1907) belongs.

The history of the neighbouring manor of Belsize greatly resembles that of Hampstead, for it was given in the thirteenth century to the monks of Westminster by means of a grant from Sir Roger Brabazon, chief justice of the King's Bench. It remained the property of the abbey until the time of Henry VIII., when it was transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, who leased it to a member of the Wade or Waad family, whose descendants held it until 1649. Since then it has been sold many times, and the manor has been occupied by many celebrities, including Lord Wotton and his half-brother the second Earl of Chesterfield, but in 1720 it was converted into a place of amusement, and gradually sank into what was known as a 'Folly House,' the resort of gamblers and rakes. Closed in 1745, possibly on account of its evil reputation, it was restored a few years later to the dignity of a { 5} private residence, and between 1798 and 1807 it was the home of the famous but ill-fated Spencer Perceval, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the latter date, and Prime Minister two years later. Some sixty years ago, the ancient mansion with the grounds in which it stood were sold for building, with the inevitable result that the rural character of what had long been one of the most charming spots near London, was quickly destroyed. Belsize and Hampstead are now for all practical purposes one, though two hundred and forty acres of the former still belong to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, whilst the bounds of the latter as accepted by the Commission of 1885 remain precisely what they were in Anglo-Saxon times before the cataclysm of the Conquest that removed so many landmarks.

It is difficult, indeed almost impossible, to determine when Hampstead first became a separate parish, but there is no doubt that it was still a part of Hendon in the early years of the sixteenth century, for it can be proved that the rector of the mother church was then paying a separate chaplain, whose duty it was to hold services in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin that is supposed to have occupied the site of the present Church of St. John. It is, however, equally certain that before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, Hampstead had its own church-wardens, for in 1598 they were summoned to attend the Bishop of London's visitation.

At whatever date Hampstead seceded from Hendon, the chapelry of Kilburn seems to have { 6} been from the first included in the new parish, and the history of this chapelry is so typical of ecclesiastical evolution that it deserves relation here. The story goes that the first settler in the wilds of Kilburn was a hermit named Godwin, who some time in the reign of Edward I. built himself a cell on the banks of the little stream, the name of which, signifying the cold brook, is very variously spelt—the usual form being Keybourne, which rose on the west of the Heath, flowed though the district now known as Bayswater, fed the Serpentine, and finally made its way to the Thames, but has long since been degraded into a covered-in sewer. Shut in by a dense forest, of which Caen Wood is a relic, the lovely spot was an ideal retreat for meditation and prayer, but the recluse soon tired of its seclusion. He returned to the world, gave his little property to the all-absorbing Abbey of Westminster, by whose abbot it was a little later bestowed upon three highly born ladies named Christina, Emma, and Gunilda, who, fired with enthusiasm by the example of the saintly Queen Matilda, whose maids of honour they had been, had resolved to devote the rest of their lives to the service of God. Leaving behind them all their wealth, they took up their abode in the remote hut, but they were not left entirely to their own devices, for small as was the community it was raised to the dignity of a sisterhood of the Benedictine order, and a chaplain was soon sent to hold services and superintend the daily routine of the sisters' life. This chaplain was none other than the ex-hermit Godwin, and it is impossible to help { 7} wondering whether there may not perhaps have been some secret attachment between him and one of the fair maidens. His readiness to return to a place he had intended to leave for ever is certainly suggestive, but his conduct appears to have been in every way exemplary, and he remained at his post till his death. Meanwhile the three original occupants of the nunnery had been joined by several other ladies, a new chaplain was appointed, the little oratory with which Christina, Emma, and Gunilda had been content was enlarged into a chapel, and a considerable grant of land was bestowed upon the community, which continued to grow until what had been but an insignificant settlement had become an important priory, owning much property in the neighbourhood and elsewhere. Strange to say, however, this prosperity was presently succeeded by a time of great distress, for in 1337 Edward III. granted a special exemption from taxation to the nuns because of their inability to pay their debts. It would, indeed, seem that the sisters had not after all been able to manage their own temporal affairs successfully, but had been too generous to the many pilgrims who claimed their hospitality as a right, but very little is really known of the later history of the priory, except that when under the name of the Nonnerie of Kilnbourne it was surrendered to the commissioners of Henry VIII. its annual value was assessed at £74, 7s. 11d. The nuns whose lives had been given up to aiding the poor and distressed were now compelled to beg their daily bread, the rapacious king exchanged their lands for certain { 8} estates owned by the Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem. Later, the site of the ancient priory was granted to the Earl of Warwick, and after changing hands many times it became the property of the Upton family, one of whom built the spacious church of St. Mary close to the spot where Godwin's little oratory once stood. Near to it is the headquarters of the hard-working sisters of St. Peter's, who carry on under the modern conditions of densely populated Kilburn the traditions of their gentle predecessors, the memory of whose old home is preserved in the names of the Abbey and Priory Roads. Not far away, too, rises the stately spire of the noble Church of St. Augustine, one of Pearson's finest Gothic designs, so that the whole neighbourhood would seem, in spite of all the changes that have taken place, to be still haunted by the spirits of those who withdrew to it so many centuries ago to worship God in solitude.

Although actual historical data relating to the bygone days of Hampstead are few, it is possible, with the aid of a little imagination, to call up various pictures of different stages in its long life-story which, even if not strictly accurate in detail, may serve to give a fairly true impression. When, for instance, Ranulph Pevrel brought his bride to the homestead of which he was the chief villein, the whole of the present Heath and the surrounding districts were wild uncultivated lands, with here and there a little clearing representing the sites of the future villages of Highgate, Hendon, Hornsey, Willesden, and Kilburn; whilst deep in the recesses { 9} of the woods were many bubbling springs, the fountain-heads of the Holbourne, the name of which is preserved in that of Holborn, also called the river of Wells, because of the many rills that fed it, but generally known as the Fleet, which gave its name to Fleet Road in Haverstock Hill, and Fleet Ditch and Fleet Street in London; the Brent, which joins the Thames at Brentford; the Tybourne, or double brook, so called because its two arms encircle the Isle of Thorney; and the Westbourne, of which the rivulet beside which Godwin built his cell was one of the many tributaries.

On the banks of these picturesque streams groups of pilgrims no doubt often halted to rest on their way from London viâ the Roman Watling Street, to worship at the tomb of England's first martyr at St. Albans, or at the nearer forest shrines dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, of which there is known to have been one at Willesden, one at Muswell Hill, where the Alexandra Palace now stands, and one at Gospel Oak, which is supposed to owe its quaint name, of comparatively recent origin, to the fact that portions of the Gospel used to be read beneath a spreading oak at the ceremony of beating the bounds of the parish, discontinued since 1896.

It is also certain that the Highgate and Hampstead forests were a favourite hunting-ground of the civic authorities and wealthy citizens of London, but this, of course, would check rather than promote the opening out of the woodlands, and for more than a century and a half after the Conquest there was little or no building on the northern heights. { 10} Gradually, however, as the population of the city increased, attention was drawn to the many advantages enjoyed by Hampstead, of which its plentiful water-supply was the chief. There were many water-mills on the upper courses of the streams, whose 'clack,' according to a Norman writer of the twelfth century, was delightful to the ear, and almost from time immemorial the Heath has been looked upon as a paradise by the washerwomen of the neighbourhood, who long enjoyed certain privileges, including that of washing the linen of the royal family. What is now called Holly Hill used to be called Cloth Hill, because it was the public drying-ground, and even now it is sometimes used for that purpose.

It seems certain that the chalybeate wells of Hampstead were known to the Romans, but they were practically forgotten until the sixteenth century, when they were rediscovered, but little notice was taken of them until the close of the seventeenth century, when the value of their medicinal properties was recognised and the foundations were laid for the conversion of Hampstead into a fashionable health resort. It will be interesting to take a farewell look at the old-world hamlet on the eve of its transformation, which can be done with the aid of a Field Book in a manuscript volume now in the Hampstead Free Library, describing a survey made in 1680, showing that waste lands stretched on either side of the main road to London, and that there were but half a dozen houses in what are now High and Heath Streets, of which one was the King { 11} of Bohemia Tavern, the site of which is occupied by one bearing the same name, that keeps green the memory, dear to the people of Protestant England, of the Elector Palatine Frederick V., who was elected king of Bohemia in 1619. There was also an inn where Jack Straw's Castle now stands, and one known as Mother Haugh's not far away. The gibbet on which a murderer was hung in chains in 1693 rose up on the west of the North End Road, and on the very summit of Mount Vernon was the mill that gave its name to Windmill Hill. Such were some of the features of Hampstead when in in 1698 the Countess of Gainsborough, on behalf of her infant son the earl, then lord of the manor, gave to the poor of the parish the six acres of land that are now known as the Well's Charity Estate, the administration of which was entrusted to fourteen trustees, who appear to have been aware from the first of the exceptional value of the chalybeate wells on the property. They were of course careful to safeguard to the people to whom they were responsible the right to drink the waters on the spot, and to carry them away for use at home at certain hours of the day, but subject to various restrictions. They leased the well to a succession of tenants, who exploited it with more or less success. The temporary booths and shelters that at first sufficed for the visitors to the well were soon supplemented by substantial buildings, and a brisk trade was done at the Flask Tavern in Flask Walk, where the waters were bottled, that was only pulled down a few years ago, { 12} and has been replaced by a new inn bearing the same name.

Advertisements in the London press, notably one in the Postman for 20th April 1700, reflect the efforts made by the lessees of the well to attract custom, and prove that the waters were sold in various parts of the city at the rate of 3d. per flask, and that the messengers who fetched it from the well were expected to return the flasks daily. The public buildings which gathered about the famous chalybeate springs included a long room in which balls and other entertainments were given, a pump-room where the waters were dispensed, a public-house for the supply of less innocuous drinks, a place of worship known as Sion Chapel, which as time went on became a kind of Gretna Green, for any one could be married in it for five shillings; raffling and other shops, stables, and coach-houses. Gardens, with an extensive bowling-green, were laid out, and in fine weather open-air concerts were given; in a word, no pains were spared to attract the beau monde .

A new era now began for Hampstead, for it became the fashion for London doctors to recommend the drinking of the waters on the spot. Novelists, including Fanny Burney and Samuel Richardson, laid the scenes of some of their most exciting episodes at the spa, and on every side stately mansions, standing in their own grounds, rose up for the wealthy patrons who elected to have private residences at Hampstead. What is still known as Well Walk, and was then a beautiful grove, was the favourite promenade of the patients { 13} who came to take the waters, and some of the later buildings of the spa are still standing, including the long room, that is now a private residence, after going through many vicissitudes, it having at one time served as a chapel, and at another as a barrack.

The fame of the Hampstead spa seems to have been fully maintained throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, and many are the descriptions in the contemporary press of the gay and, alas, often rowdy scenes that took place in it; but at the beginning of the nineteenth century, though the entertainments were still attended by middle-class crowds, who replaced the aristocratic gatherings of days gone by, faith in the efficacy of the waters died out, and all that now recalls their fame is a commemorative drinking-fountain in Well Walk. To atone for this, however, a reputation of a nobler kind than that of a mere pleasure or health resort was growing up for Hampstead, for by this time it had become the favourite home of many men and women of genius, culture, and refinement, who were able to appreciate its intrinsic charm, and by their association with it have conferred upon it a lasting glory. In some cases the actual houses, in others only the sites of the houses occupied by them can be identified, and their favourite open-air resorts have been again and again described. In what is now the High Street, in a stately mansion, part of which alone remains, the site of the remainder being occupied by the Soldiers' Daughters' Home, lived the high-minded politician Sir Henry Vane, and from it he was taken in 1662 to be beheaded on Tower Hill, in spite of the fact { 14} that he had opposed the execution of Charles I. and had been pardoned by Charles II. Later, the same house was occupied by Bishop Butler, and in the garden is still preserved the ancient mulberry-tree beneath which he and his ill-fated predecessor loved to sit. A little lower down the hill still stands Rosslyn House, much changed, it is true, since it was the home of the famous lawyer Alexander Wedderburn, who became Lord Chancellor in 1793, for the beautiful grove of Spanish chestnuts that once surrounded it is replaced by the houses of Lyndhurst Road.

The poet Gay was a constant frequenter of the spa at Hampstead, and often visited his friend, the brilliant essayist Sir Richard Steele, in his charming retreat on the site of the present Steele's Studios, opposite to which was the ancient hostelry, the Load of Hay. Gay may possibly often have met Addison and Pope, perhaps even have gone with them to meetings of the famous Kit Cat Club at the Upper Flask Tavern, now a private residence known as Heath House, to which Richardson's heroine, Clarissa Harlowe, is said to have fled from her dissipated suitor Lovelace, and in which lived for many years and died, the learned annotator of Shakespeare, George Steevens, who bought the tavern in 1771.

To the Bull and Bush Inn, still standing in the Hendon Road, the great painter Hogarth often repaired, and in its garden is a fine tree planted by him, whilst later Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds used frequently to visit it. The actor { 15} Colley Cibber, the more famous David Garrick, and the poet Dr. Akenside, were fond of strolling on the Heath, and to lodgings near the church came Dr. Johnson, who when there sometimes received a call from Fanny Burney, who was often at the spa, as is proved by her vivid description of it in Evelina . At North End House, now known as Wildwoods, not far from the Bull and Bush Inn, lived the elder Pitt, Lord Chatham, during his temporary insanity, shut up in a little room, with an oriel window looking out towards Finchley, and the opening in the wall still remains through which his food and letters were handed to him. Caen Wood, or Kenwood House, was the country seat of the great advocate, Lord Mansfield, whose London house was burned by the Gordon rioters in 1780, and a short distance from it is the famous hostelry of the 'Spaniards,' described by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge and alluded to in the Pickwick Papers , that is said to have derived its name from its having been at one time occupied by the Spanish ambassador to the court of James I. To the 'Spaniards' the followers of Lord George Gordon marched after their mad proceedings in the City, and it was thanks to the courage and promptitude of its landlord, Giles Thomas, that it and Caen House were saved from destruction.

No less famous than the 'Spaniards' is the ancient inn known as 'Jack Straw's Castle,' now transformed into a modern hotel, the name of which has never been satisfactorily explained, for it is really impossible to connect it with the devoted follower of Wat Tyler, with whom it was long supposed to have been { 16} associated. To it the beau monde used to repair after the races that were held on the Heath, before Epsom and Ascot rivalled it in public favour. Dickens and his friends were fond of going to supper at Jack Straw's Castle in summer evenings, and of late years it has been a favourite meeting-place of authors and artists, Lord Leighton, amongst many others, having been a frequent guest.

Within easy reach of the 'Spaniards' and Jack Straw's Castle, in a house still named after him, dwelt the great lawyer Lord Erskine, who defended Lord George Gordon at the latter's trial for high treason, securing his acquittal; and the broad holly hedge dividing the garden from the Heath, as well as the wood of laurel and bay trees, on what is known as Evergreen Hill, are said to have been planted by his own hands. At Heath House, on the highest point of the Heath, lived Samuel Hoare, the enlightened lover of literature and defender of the oppressed, who was the first to advocate the cause of the negro in England, and amongst his many distinguished guests were the poets Samuel Rogers, Wordsworth, Crabbe, Campbell, and Coleridge, the noted writer John James Park, the first historian of Hampstead, whose work, on its Topography and Natural History, published in 1814, is still the chief authority on the subject up to that date; the philanthropist William Wilberforce, and the not less devoted Sir Samuel Buxton, who succeeded him in 1824 as leader of the anti-slavery party.

Bolton House, on Windmill Hill, was long the home of the cultivated sisters Joanna and Agnes { 17} Baillie, with whom Sir David Wilkie sometimes stayed, and Mrs. Barbauld, whose husband was minister of the Presbyterian chapel on Rosslyn Hill, lived first in a house near to them, and later in one in Church Row. Mrs. Siddons, after her retirement from the stage, occupied for several years the house known as Capo di Monte, overlooking the beautiful Judges' Walk, beneath the elms of which assizes are said to have been held in 1663, when the Great Plague of London was raging. The poet-painter William Blake sometimes stayed at a farm at North End, the same later frequented by John Linnell; and the Vale of Health, in which stood the picturesque cottage owned by Leigh Hunt, will be for ever associated with the memory of that eloquent writer and of the greater John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, all of whom are known to have visited him there. Keats was with him for some days in 1816, and in 1817 took rooms in what is now No. 1 Well Walk, where he wrote the greater part of Endymion . Later he went to board with his friend Charles Armitage Brown in a house at the bottom of John Street, known as Lawn Bank, and marked by a tablet, next door to which lived Charles Wentworth Dilke, later editor of the Athenæum , by whom the poet was introduced to Fanny Brawne, with whom he fell in love at first sight. Hyperion , the Eve of St. Agnes , and five of the six celebrated sonnets were written at Lawn Bank, and Keats was looking forward to his marriage with his beloved Fanny when the illness which was to prove fatal began. She and her mother nursed him with the { 18} utmost devotion, but nothing could save him, and he was already doomed when he left them to go to Rome in 1821. His memory is still held in great honour in Hampstead, but it was reserved to an American lady, Miss Anne Whitney, who presented his bust to the Parish Church in 1895, to give practical proof of a desire to do him honour in the district he loved so well.

The Arctic explorer, Sir Edward Parry, is said to have had his headquarters at Hampstead; Prince Talleyrand lived in Pond Street during his exile from France; and Edward Irving, founder of the Irvingite sect, is said to have had a house there for a short time. The historian Sir Thomas Palgrave resided on the Green from 1834 to 1861; the poet William Allingham died in Lyndhurst Road in 1889; the novelist Diana Muloch, and the less celebrated Elizabeth Meteyard, were often in the neighbourhood. The mother of Lord Tennyson shared Rosemount, in Flask Walk, with her daughter, and was often visited there by her illustrious son. Sir Rowland Hill, the famous Postmaster-General, resided for thirty years and died at Bertram House, near St. Stephen's Church, and Hampstead was long the home of the novelist Sir Walter Besant and the well-known bibliophile Dr. Garnett.

What may perhaps be called the art era of Hampstead, when it became associated with the names of the most distinguished painters of England, was inaugurated at the end of the eighteenth century by the arrival there of George Romney, who took a house on the hill long supposed to have been that { 19} now known as the Mount, in Heath Street, though the recent discovery of a deed of tenancy seems to prove it to have been Prospect House on Cloth Hill, now the Constitutional Club. However that may be, the artist soon found his new quarters too small, and built on to them a large studio for the painting of historic pictures, which Flaxman, who visited him in it, called a fantastic structure, and in which, later, when it had become the Holly Bush Assembly Rooms, Constable gave lectures on landscape painting to the members of the Literary and Scientific Society of Hampstead. Romney did little or no work in Hampstead, for his health was already undermined when he embarked on his new enterprise, and his sojourn left no permanent impress on the neighbourhood, when he fled to Kendal to die in the arms of his long-neglected wife.

Far otherwise was it with Constable, who has done more than any one man to interpret for future generations what Hampstead was in the first half of the nineteenth century, for the Heath and the grand views from its summit inspired some of his finest landscapes, and many of his most charming drawings give details of its scenery. Even before his marriage in 1816 Constable used constantly to go up to Hampstead from his London lodgings to paint, and in 1821 he took a small cottage, No. 2 Lower Terrace, still very much what it was then, for his wife and their three little children. There they lived until 1826, when they removed to the present No. 25 Downshire Hill, but in 1827 Constable gave up his London studio, and settled down permanently { 20} with his family in Well Walk, at which house is uncertain, some saying it was No. 40, others No. 46. There his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, died, and her loss made him cling to Hampstead more closely than ever. She was buried in the churchyard of St. John, where later her husband was laid to rest beside her.

Though the fame of no one of them is quite equal to that of Constable, many other resident artists have aided in maintaining the æsthetic traditions of Hampstead. Some of the best works of William Collins were produced in a house on the Green, and his friend Edward Irving often visited him there. Sir Thomas Beechey retired to Hampstead after his long career of activity; Edward Duncan, Edward Dighton, and Thomas Davis, all resided for some time and died there. Paul Falconer Poole was looked upon as a Hampstead artist par excellence , for he worked in the neighbourhood for some twenty-five years. William Clarkson Stanfield was devoted to the old town, and lived in what is now the Public Library, in Prince Arthur Road, from 1847 to 1865, when he removed to Belsize Park Gardens, then St. Margaret's Road, dying in his new home in 1869. Alfred Stevens, who lived for some time in Hampstead, and died there in 1875, executed the beautiful monument to the Duke of Wellington for St. Paul's, in the temporary church of St. Stephen's, which he rented for the purpose. The sculptor John Foley passed away at the Priory, Upper Terrace, in 1874, and in 1888 Frank Holl died in the house he had built for himself in Fitz-John's Avenue. The last { 21} twenty years of the long life of Miss Margaret Gillies, one of the first Englishwomen to adopt art as a profession, were spent at No. 25 Church Row, and Mrs. Mary Harrison, one of the first members of what is now the Old Water-Colour Society, resided for sixteen years and died at Chestnut Lodge. Even more intimately associated with Hampstead than any of these was George du Maurier, for he turned its scenery and the familiar incidents of its Heath to account in many of his clever drawings for Punch . 'It was,' says his friend Canon Ainger, writing in the Hampstead Annual for 1897, 'by the Whitestone Pond that the endless round of galloping donkeys suggested to him the famous caricature of the "Ponds Asinorum," and it was near a familiar row of cottages at North End that he saw the little creature of eight years old who told her drunken father "to 'it mother again if he dared."'

Du Maurier brought home his bride in 1862 to a house in Church Row, and it was there, and in New Grove House on the Upper Heath, to which he removed later, that his best work was done. He lived at Hampstead through the exciting time of the boom in his famous novel Trilby , which is said to have hastened his end, and on his death in 1896 he was buried in the churchyard of St. John.

The Parish Church of Hampstead replaces, as already stated, a much earlier chapel that was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. It was completed in 1745, and successfully enlarged in 1747 under the auspices of the beloved Canon Ainger, who was { 22} vicar from 1876 to 1895. It is a typical example of the style of the period of its foundation, and the ivy-clad tower that rises from the eastern end composes well with its surroundings, the eighteenth-century houses of Church Row forming a kind of avenue leading up to the main entrance.

The next oldest church in Hampstead is the Roman Catholic chapel of St. Mary in Holly Place, built in 1816, whose first minister was the French Abbé Morel, who was banished from France during the Revolution, and was visited in his retreat by many famous exiles, including the Duchesse d'Angoulême. He became so attached to his English home that he refused to return to his native land when he was recalled, and he died at Hampstead in 1852, leaving behind him a great reputation for sanctity. The year of his death was completed the Protestant church of Christ Church—the lofty spire of which is a notable landmark—associated with the memory of the Rev. Dr. Bickersteth, who, after ministering in it for thirty years, became Bishop of Exeter; and later were erected the churches of St. Saviour and St. Stephen's, that have been supplemented by many other places of worship of different denominations, so that the parish presents indeed a remarkable contrast to the time when the little sanctuary on the hill met the needs of the whole district.

To a certain Mrs. Lessingham belongs the unenviable distinction of having been the first to alienate public land on the Heath by enclosing, in 1775, the grounds of what is still known as Heath { 23} House. Her right to do so was contested, but at the trial which ensued she came off victorious, and an example was set which has been all too often followed. The jury actually decided that the land in dispute was of no value, and the vital question at issue, of the power of the lord of the manor to grant permissions for enclosure, was left undecided. Not until 1870 were any really efficient steps taken to preserve for the people the use of the beautiful Heath, but at that date the nucleus of the present extensive estate was secured in perpetuity. Two hundred acres of land were then bought by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and to them were later added the 265 acres of Parliament Hill, the name of which is said by some to commemorate the fact that the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot watched from it for the blowing up of the Houses of Parliament, whilst others associate it with Cromwell's having placed cannon on it to defend the capital. In 1898 the property of the nation on the northern heights was still further augmented, through the combined efforts of many public societies and private individuals, by the acquisition of the celebrated and beautifully laid out Golder's Hill estate, with the house that once belonged to David Garrick, and was used as a convalescent home for soldiers after the South African war.

Hampstead Heath, with its dependencies, is now universally acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful of the many beautiful open spaces near London, and is the resort on Sundays and Bank { 24} holidays of thousands of pleasure-seekers. The views from it, especially from Parliament Hill, are magnificent, embracing London with the dome of St. Paul's, the Tower, and the Houses of Parliament, the Surrey Hills, Harrow, Highgate, Hendon, and Barnet, differing but little, if at all, from what they were when Leigh Hunt and John Keats enjoyed them, and Constable painted his famous landscapes.

CHAPTER II

HIGHGATE, HORNSEY, HENDON, AND HARROW

Perched on a hill that is twenty-five feet higher than the loftiest point of Hampstead Heath, Highgate originally commanded as fine a prospect as it, but unfortunately many of the best points of view are now built over, though from the terrace behind the church, and parts of the cemetery, some idea can still be obtained of the beautiful scene that was the delight of Hogarth and of Morland, of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and many other artists and poets who, at one time or another, resided on the hill.

The name of Highgate is generally supposed to be derived from the Tollgate that used to stand at the entrance to the Bishop of London's park, a two-storied house of red brick, built over an archway that was pulled down in 1769, and to which there are many references in the ancient records of Middlesex. Norden, for instance, in the Speculum Britanniæ bearing date 1593, says: 'Highgate, a hill, over which is a passage, and at the top of the same hill is a gate through which all manner of passengers have their waie; the place taketh the name of this highgate on the hill.... When the { 26} waie was turned over the saide hill to leade through the parke of the Bishop of London, there was in regard thereof a toll raised upon such as passed that waie by carriage.'

The Gate House Inn, though considerably modified, still remains to preserve the memory of the building at which the tolls were levied, and in it the quaint ceremony of swearing on the horns was practised until quite late in the nineteenth century. On the subject of this ceremony there has been of late years much learned controversy, but the most plausible explanation of its origin appears to be that the horns—after which, by the way, so many London inns are named—on which the oath was sworn, were merely the symbol of the gatekeeper's right to exact toll from the drovers of the sheep or cattle who passed beneath the archway. The conversion of the custom into an apparently unmeaning farce was probably the result of a harmless frolic indulged in by some gay young travellers that, to use a slang expression, 'took on' with the public, and was gradually expanded into the complex burlesque purporting to give the initiated, by virtue of the oath on the horns, the freedom of Highgate. The ceremony has often been described, and is referred to in the much quoted lines of Byron, who, with a party of friends, once took the oath:—

'Many to the steep hill of Highgate hie,
Ask ye Boeotian shades the reason why:
'Tis to the worship of the solemn horn,
Grasp'd in the holy hand of mystery,
In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,
And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till morn.'

Until about 1850 it was customary at the inn to stop every stage-coach that passed, and from its passengers select five to whom to administer the oath. These five were led into the principal room, the horns, mounted on a long pole, were produced, and in the presence of a number of witnesses the neophytes were compelled to listen uncovered to the following absurd speech from the landlord:—

'Take notice what I now say ... you must acknowledge me to be your adopted father. I must acknowledge you to be my adopted son. If you will not call me father, you forfeit a bottle of wine. If I do not call you son, I forfeit the same. And now, my good son, if you are travelling through this village of Highgate and you have no money in your pocket, go, call for a bottle of wine at any house you may think proper to enter, and book it to your father's score. If you have any friends with you, you may treat them as well, but if you have any money of your own you must pay for it yourself, for you must not say you have no money when you have.... You must not eat brown bread when you can get white, unless you like brown the best.... You must not kiss the maid while you can kiss the mistress, unless you like the maid best, but sooner than lose a good chance you may kiss them both. And now, my good son, I wish you a safe journey through Highgate and this life. I charge you, my good son, that if you know any in this company who have not taken this oath, you must cause them to take it or make each of them forfeit a bottle of wine.... So now, my son, God bless you; kiss the { 28} horns or a pretty girl if you see one here, whichever you like best, and so be free of Highgate.'

The horns or the girl duly kissed as the case might be, and the oath administered, other absurd speeches were made, the farce often ending in somewhat rowdy merriment. Long after the custom was discontinued, too, the crier of Highgate kept a wig and gown in readiness to be donned by any one desirous of obtaining the freedom of Highgate, and the expression 'he has taken the oath' came as time went on to signify he knows how to look after his own interests. In the Gate-House Inn a huge pair of mounted horns is still preserved, and a few years ago a party of enthusiastic local antiquarians amused themselves by going through the ancient farce according to the best authenticated traditions, but whether any of the newly made freemen availed themselves of the privilege of kissing mistress or maid is not recorded.

One of the earliest historical references to Highgate is in the grant made by Edward III. in 1363 to a certain William Phelippe, 'as a reward for his care of the highway between Highgate and Smithfelde, of the privelege of taking customs of all persons using the road for merchandize,' and it has been suggested that this Phelippe may have been one and the same with the 'nameless hermit' who preceded the holy man William Litchfield, to whom in 1386 the Bishop of London gave, to quote his own words, 'the office of the custody of our chapel of Highgate beside our Park of Hareng, and of the house to the same chapel annexed.' This chapel and hermitage were successively occupied by several recluses, the { 29} last of whom is supposed to have been a certain William Foote, on whom they were conferred in 1531. The dwelling-house was given in 1577, by Queen Elizabeth, to a favourite protégé of hers named John Farnehame, whose lease was later transferred to the founder of the 'Publique and Free Grammar School of Highgate,' Sir Roger Cholmeley, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Edward VI., who fell into disgrace with Queen Mary, and after suffering imprisonment for some years, lived in great retirement at Hornsey. Sir Roger obtained a licence to build a school, and Bishop Grindal gave him the old Hermitage Chapel, with two acres of land, under certain conditions, one being that the people of Highgate as well as the pupils should have the use of the chapel. It was to serve, in fact, as a kind of chapel of ease to Hornsey, an incidental proof that there were already at the time of the agreement a number of inhabitants in the hamlet of the Highgate. Sir Roger Cholmeley died before the projected work was begun, but his wishes were carefully carried out by his trustees, and the first stone of the institution, which was to have such a long career of usefulness, was laid in 1576.

It does not appear quite clear whether the old Hermitage Chapel was pulled down to give place to a new one, or enlarged to meet the needs of the increased congregation, but in any case the school chapel was the only place of worship in Highgate until 1834, when the parish was separated from Hornsey, and the fine Gothic church of St Michael, the lofty spire of which is a landmark for many miles { 30} round, was erected. Five years later the cemetery, that is still the most beautiful suburb of the dead near London, was consecrated, and since then many famous men and women have been buried in it, including the philosopher and chemist Michael Faraday; the eloquent writer Henry Crabb Robinson; the lawyers Judge Payne and Lord Lyndhurst; the artists John James Chalon, Sir William Ross, and John George Pinwell; the poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti; the theologian Frederick Maurice; the novelists George Eliot and Mrs. Henry Ward; the pugilist Tom Sayers; and the no less celebrated cricketer John Lillywhite.

For many years the land round the old school chapel had served as a cemetery, and in it was buried in 1534 the poet Samuel Coleridge, who had lived for many years in Highgate, and when a year later the old school chapel was replaced by the present one, a beautiful Gothic building designed by Cockerell, it was wisely decided to erect the latter over the tomb, that is now enclosed in a crypt approached by a flight of steps from the western side of the building. The new schoolhouse, classrooms, etc., completed in 1869, that replace those that had been in use for some four centuries, and in which many men of note were educated, including Nicolas Rowe the dramatist, harmonise well with the chapel, and the institution bids fair long to maintain in the future the reputation it won in the past.

Highgate no doubt owed its early prosperity and rapid growth during the last hundred and fifty years to its situation at the junction of the two main roads { 31} from London that meet in the High Street, not far from the old village green, in the midst of which there used to be a pond, now filled in and planted with trees, round about which the village lads and lasses were wont to dance, and the elder residents to gather to gossip of a summer evening. Before the Bishop of London consented in 1386 to allow a road to be made through his park, Highgate could only be reached by a narrow lane, by way of Crouch End, Muswell Hill, and Friern Barnet, but the new thoroughfare very quickly became the chief highway to the north, and is associated with many noteworthy events and royal progresses. It remained, indeed, without a rival until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when an Act of Parliament was passed sanctioning a licensed company to make a way from the foot of Highgate Hill to join the main road, a principal feature of which was the piercing of a tunnel seven hundred and sixty-five feet long by twenty-four wide and nineteen high, which, alas, was but poorly engineered, for it fell in with a great crash before it was opened to traffic. The tunnel was then replaced by the present fine archway, spanning the road, that was completed in 1813, and for the use of which a toll was levied until 1876, when it was finally remitted.

Unfortunately the once beautiful village of Highgate has of late years been transformed into a somewhat prosaic suburb, but a few relics remain to bear witness to more picturesque days gone by. At the foot of the ascent, a little above the Archway Tavern, opposite the Dick Whittington public-house, { 32} is a railed-in stone supposed to occupy the exact site of the one on which the penniless boy, the future Sir Richard Whittington, rested, weary and worn from his long tramp on foot, and heard the bells ring out: 'Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London Town.'

Within sight of this stone are the Whittington Almshouses, that represent those of the ancient foundation of Sir Richard in Paternoster Row, and were built in 1822 by the Mercers Company, as trustees of the Lord Mayor's will made in 1421, bequeathing the funds for erecting and endowing a college of priests and choristers, and building homes for thirteen poor men. With their picturesque chapel and general air of comfort, it must be owned that they contrast favourably with the ancient almshouses not far off in Southwood Lane, that were founded in 1658 by Sir John Wollaston, and added to seventy years later by Edward Pauncefoot.

Within the grounds of Waterlow Park, part of which was given to the public by Sir Sydney Waterlow, is the famous Lauderdale House, built about 1650, that was long the residence of the infamous Viceroy of Scotland under Charles II., the Duke of Lauderdale, who was probably often visited in it by his venial tool, Archbishop Sharp. To Lauderdale House the dissipated king brought the merry-hearted Nell Gwynn, and it was here that she is said to have forced her royal lover to acknowledge himself to be the father of her boy, the future Duke of St. Albans, by threatening to drop the child out of the window if he refused to do so.

Quite close to Lauderdale House, in a cottage that was pulled down in 1869, lived the poet-patriot Andrew Marvell, who was the friend of Milton and the bitter enemy of his fair neighbour Nell Gwynn, who tried in vain to soften his animosity. Opposite to Marvell's cottage, in Cromwell House, now a branch of the Ormond Street Children's Hospital, resided General Ireton and his wife Bridget, the daughter of the Protector; and a little higher up, in what is now called the Bank, was Arundel House, the seat of the Earls of Arundel, supposed to have been at one time the residence of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, and to have been visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1589 and James I. in 1604. It is, however, more famous as having been the death-place of Francis Bacon, who expired in it in 1626, his end having been hastened, it is popularly believed, through an experiment he tried on his way from London with a view to finding out whether flesh could be preserved in snow.

The courageous William Prynne, who was so cruelly maltreated on 30th June 1637, and his fellow-sufferers for conscience' sake, Dr. Bastwick and the Rev. Henry Burton, were often at Highgate; to the house of Sir Thomas Abney, Dr. Watts came more than once; and the famous Jacobite prelate, Bishop Atterbury, was the frequent guest of his brother Dr. Atterbury, when the latter was minister of Highgate chapel. In a house on the Green lived and died Dr. Henry Sacheverel, the leader of the Tory party in the struggle of 1709, and the intimate friend of Addison. Sir Richard Baker, author of the Chronicles of England , who died in the Fleet Prison in great { 34} poverty in 1645, wrote much of his valuable work in a house on the Hill. The famous Calvinistic Methodist, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, who chose the eloquent preacher Whitefield as one of her favourite chaplains, resided for some time in Highgate; and Church House on the Green was long the home of Sir John Hawkins, the author of the Standard History of Music , who used to drive to London every day in a coach and four.

Hogarth, whilst he was apprentice to a silversmith, was fond of going to the still standing but much altered Flask Inn, outside which the Whitsun morris-dancers used to foot it merrily for the 'honour of Holloway,' as described in the popular comedy Jack Dunn's Entertainment , first published in 1601. The great painter is said to have delighted in making sketches of the frequenters of the bar at the Flask Inn, especially of the tipsy brawlers, whose distorted grimaces he hit off to the life. At another well-known hostelry, the Bull Inn, on the Great North Road, looking down upon Finchley, George Morland, an artist of a very different type to Hogarth, was a familiar figure, for he found plenty of congenial subjects near by, and was on friendly terms with the drivers of all the stage-coaches that halted at the tavern. He used, it is said, to settle his score with mine host with sketches which, if they could now be traced, would be worth as many hundreds of pounds as shillings they then represented.

Occupying a commanding position on the west of the Green was the stately mansion Dorchester { 35} House, the seat of Henry, Marquis of Dorchester, from whom it was purchased in the reign of Charles II. by the eccentric philanthropist William Blake, who turned it into a school that ceased to exist in 1688. The mansion, after various vicissitudes, was pulled down; and in one of the houses, now No. 3 The Grove, that were built on its site, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived as the paying-guest of a surgeon named Gilman for nineteen years. There he was often visited by Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Henry Crabb Robinson, Edward Irving, Mr. and Mrs. Cowden Clarke—the latter of whom has eloquently described her stay with the poet in her charming book, My Long Life —and Thomas Carlyle, who dwelt enthusiastically on the glorious view from the windows of the house, that is still, by the way, much what it was in Coleridge's time.

The parish church of Highgate, in which there is a tablet with a long inscription to the memory of Coleridge, and part of the cemetery occupy the site of the mansion-house built in 1694 by Sir William Ashurst, then Lord Mayor of London, and the villas of the present Fitzroy Park replace a fine old house erected in 1780 by Lord Southampton, and named after him. In one of the new houses on this beautiful estate lived the well-known sanitary reformer Dr. Southwood Smith, and near to the Park is Dufferin Lodge, the seat of Lord Dufferin, that was the maiden home of the eloquent writer, the Honourable Mrs. Norton, grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

In a little house known as the Hermitage, on West Hill, where a modern terrace now stands, and opposite to which there used to be an ash-tree popularly supposed to have been planted by Nelson when he was a boy, dwelt the notorious gambler Sir Wallis Porter, who was often joined there by the Prince Regent; and it was in it that the forger Henry Fauntleroy is said to have long lain hidden from the officers of the law in search of him. In Millfield Lane, and in the charming little Ivy Cottage, now enlarged and known as Brookfield House, the famous comedian, Charles Mathews, dwelt for many years. Millfield Cottage, next door to it, was for a time a favourite retreat of John Ruskin, and in the same lane, as related by Leigh Hunt in his Lord Byron and his Contemporaries , John Keats presented his brother poet with a volume of his poems, the first of many generous gifts.

West Hill, Highgate, is associated with several interesting memories. It was on it that Queen Victoria, in the year after her accession, was saved from what might have been a very serious accident by the landlord of the neighbouring Fox and Crown Inn, who arrested the frightened horses of the royal carriage, at the risk of his own life, as they were dashing down the steep descent. In West Hill Lodge the poets William and Mary Howitt lived and worked for several years, and not far from their old home is Holly Lodge, once the residence of the Duchess of St. Albans, and long the home of the generous and hospitable Baroness Burdett-Coutts, a worthy successor of her aristocratic predecessor, who { 37} built in Swain's Lane hard by a group of model cottages known as Holly Village.

In the picturesque cottage opposite to the chief entrance to the grounds of Holly Lodge the philanthropist Judge Payne died in 1870; David Williams, founder of the Royal Literary Fund, and Dr. Rochemond Barbauld, husband of the authoress, were at different times ministers of the Presbyterian chapel in Southwood Lane; and on the site of the once notorious Black Dog Tavern, on the hill going down to Holloway, are the chapel and home of the Passionist Fathers, from which, instead of the ribald songs of drunken revellers, perpetual prayers now go up for the restoration of England to the mother church of Rome.

Little now remains of the beautiful forests which were for many centuries one of the most distinctive characteristics of the northern heights of London, though there are still some unenclosed portions of the vast estate that belonged to the Bishop of London, such as Highgate and Caen Woods, where it is possible to forget for a time the near neighbourhood of the ever-growing towns of Hampstead and Highgate. Equally rapid has been the transformation of the two mother parishes of Hendon and of Hornsey, that from isolated picturesque villages have grown into suburbs of the great metropolis. The latter especially retains scarcely anything to recall the days when it was a favourite summer retreat of the Bishop of London, who had a palace in the park of Haringay, as it was called, until the time of Elizabeth, on Lodge Hill, on the outskirts of { 38} what later became the property of Lord Mansfield. The little forest hamlet of Haringay, in which the bishop's retainers used to live, was probably situated in the heart of the wood, now replaced by Finsbury Park, and its one inn, pulled down so recently as 1866, became in course of time first a noted tea-house, and later a place of resort of the aristocracy, who used to practise pigeon-shooting in its garden.

With Hornsey Park are associated many interesting historic memories. It was, for instance, in it that the discontented nobles used to meet to concert measures against the hated favourite of Richard II., Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford. In its palace the Duchess of Gloucester and her confederates, the astrologer Richard Bolingbroke and the Rev. Canon Southwell, concocted the plot against the life of Henry VI., and it was there that the last-named was accused of invoking at the celebration of mass the blessing of God on the evil enterprise, an incident turned to account by Shakespeare in his play of Henry VI . Through Hornsey and Highgate rode Richard III. when still Duke of Gloucester, after the sudden death of Edward IV., accompanied by the doomed boy-king Edward V., and it was in the outskirts of the park that the royal procession was met by the mayor and corporation of London. Almost on the same spot Henry VII. was later welcomed by the loyal citizens of his capital on his way back from a successful expedition against Scotland, and there is a tradition that after the execution at Smithfield, in 1305, of the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace, his dismembered remains were { 39} allowed to rest for a night, on their way north, in the bishop's chapel.

The ivy-clad tower, bearing the arms of Bishops Savage and Warham, who occupied the see of London, the former from 1497 to 1500, the latter from 1500 to 1504, is all that now remains of the ancient church of Hornsey that was founded at the end of the fifteenth century. The new building that was skilfully added on to the tower was begun in 1832, and is said to have been constructed of the materials of the bishop's palace. It contains little of interest except a kneeling effigy of a certain Francis Masters, a boy of about sixteen, and the monument to the Rev. Dr. Atterbury, removed from Highgate Chapel on its demolition, but in the churchyard is the tomb of the poet Samuel Rogers, who died in London in 1855.

Hendon, which for many centuries has enjoyed the singular privilege, first granted in 1066, of immunity from all tolls, has retained far more of its ancient rural character than either Highgate or Hornsey, for in spite of the many modern villas that have of late years sprung up within its boundaries, it is still a village in touch with the open country. Its church, though not architecturally beautiful, is finely situated on a lofty hill, and its picturesque, well laid out churchyard, in which rest Nathaniel Hone the painter and Abraham Raimbach the engraver, commands a charming and extensive view, taking in Harrow, Edgware, Stanmore, Elstree, and Mill Hill, with the distant heights of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.

The ancient manor of Hendon belonged at the time of the Conquest to the abbots of Westminster, but changed hands many times between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The old manor-house (replaced first by an Elizabethan mansion and later by the present Hendon Place, built about 1850) was sometimes occupied by the ecclesiastical owners, and in it, as the guest of the reigning abbot of Westminster, Cardinal Wolsey rested in Holy Week 1530 on his way from Richmond to York after his fall. In 1757 the manor-house was sold by the Earl of Powis, to whose family it had long belonged, to the actor David Garrick, since whose death it has changed hands more than once.

The various rivulets that unite to form the Brent take their rise in Hendon parish, and within its bounds is the beautiful open space, three hundred and fifty acres in extent, known as the Wyldes, a name that probably means the lonely or the unenclosed, that was for more than four centuries the property of Eton College, to which it was given in 1449 by the founder, Henry VI. Part of this fine estate has recently been bought for the public and added to Hampstead Heath, and the remainder, if the necessary funds can be collected, is to be acquired for the formation of a garden suburb, which, if it is ever laid out according to the present plans, will be an ideal addition to the attractions of the northern heights of London. The ancient home farm of the Wyldes is still standing on the edge of Hampstead Heath, but it remains a private residence, and is not included in the scheme of purchase. { 41} Its fine barns and outhouses have been thrown into one house, the red-tiled roofs and weather-boarded walls of which present very much the same appearance that they did several centuries ago, and the quaint old homestead, long known as Collin's Farm, but now renamed the Wyldes, has long been a favourite haunt of artists and authors. In it the painter John Linnell and his family resided for a long time, receiving amongst their many guests Constable, Morland, and Blake; and when they removed to London in 1827 their rooms were occupied successively by Samuel Lever, Charles Dickens, and Birket Foster. Ford Madox Brown, Edward Carpenter, the Russian author Stepniak, and Olive Schreiner were often at the Wyldes; and the whole neighbourhood of Hendon was dear to Mrs. Alfred Scott Gatty, the authoress of Parables from Nature , who spent much of her girlhood at the vicarage.

Within an easy walk of Hendon, on the right bank of the Brent, is the still picturesque village of Kingsbury, supposed to occupy the site of one of Cæsar's camps, and to have got its name from its having been the property of King Edward the Confessor, who gave it to the Abbey of Westminster. The quaint little church of St. Andrew, said to be built of Roman bricks and to retain traces of Saxon work, all now hidden in a coating of rough cast, is set on a hill amidst venerable elm-trees dominating the village, which contains many typical old-fashioned cottages, and on the east is the beautiful Kingsbury Lake, or Welsh Harp, an artificial reservoir some three hundred and fifty acres in extent, formed on { 42} the eastern course of the Brent as a source of supply for the Regent's Park Locks, a most successful piece of engineering work, presenting the appearance of a natural sheet of water, that is a favourite haunt of a great variety of water-fowl, and is well stocked with fish. Unfortunately, the opening of the Welsh Harp racecourse and station, both named after an ancient inn hard by, has done much to destroy the peaceful seclusion of the beautiful district of Kingsbury, but country lanes still lead from it in many directions, in one of which, running eastward towards Edgware Road, is the farmhouse called High or Hyde House, in which Oliver Goldsmith lived for some time, calling his temporary home the Shoemakers' Paradise, because of a tradition that it was built by a votary of St. Crispin, the patron saint of workers in leather. There many choice spirits visited the poet, and Boswell relates that he once called at the Shoemakers' Paradise, and Goldsmith being out at the time, he nevertheless, 'having a curiosity to see his apartments, went in and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the walls with a black lead pencil,' evidently notes for the History of Animated Nature .

Two miles north of Hendon, with which it is connected by a beautiful lane leading through fields, is the village of Mill Hill, the church of which, a somewhat commonplace structure, was founded in 1829 by the philanthropist William Wilberforce. Opposite to it is the Congregationalist College, that occupies the site of the beautiful Botanic Garden laid out by the well-known botanist Peter Collinson, the { 43} friend and fellow-worker of Linnæus, who was often with him at Mill Hill; and not far off is St. Joseph's College of the Sacred Heart, with a fine chapel and campanile, the latter surmounted by a statue of the patron saint, that is a landmark for many miles round.

From the loftier Highwood Hill, close to Mill Hill, a noble view is obtained of the beautiful Harrow Weald, that stretches away in a north-westerly direction to Harrow-on-the-Hill, and is dotted with picturesque villages and hamlets, some of which are still unspoiled by the invasion of the builder. The Hill, crowned by the parish church and famous school of Harrow, rises up abruptly from an undulating plain, and forms a conspicuous feature of the whole neighbourhood, for it is visible from many widely separated points of the northern, southern, and south-western suburbs of London. The name of Harrow, that is a modern adaptation of the Herges of Doomsday Book, is differently interpreted by scholars, some being of opinion that it signifies the church, others the military camp on the hill. In any case, the manor was held soon after the Conquest by Archbishop Lanfranc, and remained in the possession of his successors until 1543, when Archbishop Cranmer exchanged it with Henry VIII. for other property. Three years later it was given to Sir Edward, afterwards Lord, North, and after changing hands several times, it passed to the Rushout family, to whose present representative it now belongs.

The exact site of the ancient manor-house of { 44} Harrow is not known, for its ecclesiastical owners early removed to a mansion at Haggeston, now Headstone, near Pinner, supposed to have been close to the present manor farm. However that may be, it seems certain that in 1170, soon after his return home from France, the great Archbishop Thomas à Becket spent several days at Harrow-on-the-Hill, for the story goes that he was on that occasion so grievously insulted by the rector of the parish, the Rev. Nizel de Sackville, that he revenged himself by excommunicating him from the altar of Canterbury Cathedral on the following Christmas Day, just four days before his own assassination in the same building. The parish church of Harrow was built by Archbishop Lanfranc, who died just before its consecration, a ceremony that was performed by his successor, the greatly venerated St. Anselm, who, it is related, was interrupted during the service by two canons sent by the Bishop of London to contest his right to officiate on the occasion. The sacred oil, it is said, was carried off by the emissaries, so that the service could not proceed, and the point at issue was later submitted to St. Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, the sole remaining Saxon prelate of England, who decided in favour of St. Anselm, since which time the special rights at Harrow of the Archbishop of Canterbury have never again been called in question.

All that now remains of the building associated with Archbishop Lanfranc and St. Anselm is the lower portion of the tower, the western gateway, which has well-preserved Norman pillars, and a finely { 45} sculptured lintel. The massive stone font is, however, probably the very one in which baptisms took place in the eleventh century. The main body of the present church—that was recently well restored and enlarged under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott—dates from the fifteenth century. Its most noteworthy features are the lead-encased wooden spire, the stone porch with the priest's chamber above it, and the open timber roof with figures of angels playing on musical instruments on the corbels. In the church are several interesting fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth century brasses, and in the churchyard is a much defaced ancient tombstone known as Byron's Tomb, on which the poet, who was educated at Harrow, was fond of resting, and to which he referred in an often-quoted letter to his publisher, Mr. John Murray, dated May 26, 1822, and also in the well-known lines—

'Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay;
Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wander'd,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray.'

The view from Byron's Tomb, now enclosed within railings, from the terrace outside the churchyard, the school buildings, and other points of vantage on the Hill, is not perhaps quite so inspiring as that from Hampstead Heath immortalised by Constable, but there is a quiet charm about it, and it is very extensive, embracing parts of Surrey, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire, with Windsor Castle, the Crystal Palace, and Leith Hill Tower as its most conspicuous features.

The chief interest of Harrow is, of course, the famous school, that ranks second only to Eton amongst the great centres of education in England, and is intimately associated with the memory of many distinguished men, including amongst the headmasters Dr. Vaughan, who ruled from 1844 to 1859, and his successor Dr. Butler, who held office until 1885; while amongst the students were the intrepid traveller James Bruce, the Oriental Sir William Jones, the accomplished scholar Dr. Samuel Parr, Admiral Lord Rodney, the witty writer Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the novelist Theodore Hook, the statesmen Sir Robert Peel, Lord Ripon, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, and Sir Spencer Perceval, Cardinal Manning, Archbishop Trench, the philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury, and, most celebrated of them all, the poet Lord Byron.

Founded in 1571 by John Lyon, a yeoman of the hamlet of Preston, to whom there is a fine brass in Harrow Church, the school had in it from the first the elements of growth, and its interests were watched over with untiring care for twenty years by its generous originator. No detail was too trivial for his consideration, and the statutes laid down by him were eminently practicable yet sufficiently elastic to allow of future development, though their simple-hearted author certainly never dreamt of what that development was to be. The salaries of the masters, the books to be used, were all specified; and it is a noteworthy fact that very special stress was laid on the exercise of shooting, all parents being bound to give their boys 'bowstrings, shafts, { 47} and braces,' that they might practise archery, which at that time represented what rifle-shooting does now. To arouse the ambition of the students, a prize of a silver arrow was given every year to the best marksman out of six or twelve carefully selected competitors, and it was not until 1771 that the ancient custom was discontinued by the then headmaster, Dr. Heath, on account, he said, of the rowdy crowds who used to flock from London to witness the contests, and the serious interruption it caused in the routine of the school work. The butts at which the students, in picturesque costumes of white and green, used to shoot, and the little hill on which they stood, are gone, their place being taken by modern houses; but the silver arrow made for the competition of 1772 is preserved in the school library, a silent witness to John Lyon's recognition of the fact, on which Lord Roberts and other enlightened patriots are now laying such stress, that every boy should learn how to aid in the defence of his native country.

The first endowment of Harrow School was made in 1575, when Lyon bequeathed to the governors certain lands at Harrow and Preston; but it was not until 1615, twenty years after his death, that his instructions were carried out for the building of a 'large and convenient schoolhouse, three stories high, with a chimney in it, and meet and convenient roomes for the schoolmaster and usher to dwell in, and a cellar under the said roomes to lay in wood and coales ... divided into three several roomes, one for ye master, the second for ye usher, and the { 48} third for ye schollers.' Until 1650 this house met all the requirements of the institution, the students boarding, as they do now, in outlying houses; and the big class-room, known for many generations as the Fourth Form Room, with the three small apartments above it and the attic called the Cockloft, still remain much what they were four hundred years ago, and are venerated by all Harrovians as the most ancient portion of their beloved school. The rest of the present buildings are all modern; a new wing with a speech-room, class-rooms, and a library, were added in 1819, and in 1877 it was in its turn supplemented by yet another speech-room. The chapel now in use replaces two earlier ones, and was built in 1857, after the designs of Sir Gilbert Scott. The Vaughan library, commemorating the headmaster after whom it is named, was opened in 1863; and the beautiful Museum buildings, that are perhaps the most satisfactory from an æsthetic point of view of the recent erections, were completed in 1886.

CHAPTER III

SOME INTERESTING VILLAGES NORTH OF LONDON,
WITH WALTHAM ABBEY AND EPPING FOREST

Of the many beautiful villages north of London that have of late years been transformed into suburbs of the ever-growing metropolis, few retain any of their original character, or can, strictly speaking, be called picturesque. Tottenham, in spite of its fine situation, with the river Lea forming its eastern and the New River its western boundaries, is to all intents and purposes a town, the restored High Cross, about which there has been so much learned controversy, the ancient parish church, and two or three old houses near the green, alone bearing witness to the good old times when the quaint poem of The Tournament of Tottenham was written. It is much the same with Edmonton, where, in the still standing Bay Cottage, Charles Lamb lived for some time and died, and in the churchyard of which he and his sister are buried, and where John Keats served his apprenticeship to a surgeon and wrote his earliest poems. It bears but a faint resemblance to the village into which John Gilpin of immortal fame dashed on his famous ride after { 50} his vain attempt to pull up at the Bell Inn, on the left-hand side of the road from London. The once charming little hamlet of Whetstone, too, a short distance further north, where, according to local tradition, the soldiers halted to sharpen their swords on the way to Barnet Field, is rapidly losing its rural appearance. On the other hand, the scattered settlement of Friern Barnet—beyond the completely modernised Finchley—with its picturesque church that retains a fine Norman doorway, is still quite a country place; whilst Edgware, the two Stanmores, Elstree, High Barnet, East Barnet, and Enfield, though they too are already marked for destruction, are as yet full of the aroma of the past. Edgware, situated on the ancient Watling Street, prides itself on owning the forge in which Handel, having taken refuge from a storm, was inspired by the rhythmic beats of the hammer on the anvil with the famous melody of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith'; and it also owns several quaint old inns, one of which, the Chandos Arms, preserving the memory of the great mansion—known as The Canons, because it occupied the site of a monastery—that was built for the Duke of Chandos whilst he held the lucrative post of paymaster to the forces, but was pulled down after his death by his successor. Fortunately, however, the richly decorated private chapel of The Canons, in which Handel was organist from 1718 to 1721, and containing the organ on which he played, is still preserved as part of the parish church of Little Stanmore, or Whitchurch, a pretty village about half a mile from Edgware, and in its graveyard Handel and the { 51} blacksmith whose name is so closely associated with his are buried not far from each other.

Great Stanmore, near to which are the eighteenth-century mansion known as Bentley Priory, replacing a suppressed monastery, and the beautiful Stanmore Park, the seat of Lord Wolverton, is beautifully situated on a hill commanding very extensive views, and has two churches, one now disused, containing some interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century effigies, the other a somewhat uninteresting modern building. The chief charm of the old-fashioned village of Elstree, originally called Eaglestree, because it was much frequented by eagles, is the fine artificial reservoir haunted by water-fowl, which is nearly as extensive as that of Kingsbury, and it also owns a beautiful old Elizabethan mansion.

High Barnet, also known as Chipping Barnet, is a far more important place than Edgware or the Stanmores, and is supposed to date from Anglo-Saxon times. Its site, with that of East Barnet, both once covered with the forest of Southaw, belonged to the abbots of St. Albans, to whom Henry I. granted the privilege of holding a weekly market in it, and it is still the chief cattle-mart of the district, a great fair taking place there every year in September. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, founded in the early part of the fifteenth century, and in which is a fine monument to Thomas Ravenscroft, a local worthy of the seventeenth century, was originally very characteristic of the time at which it was built, with a well-proportioned nave and aisles, and square embattled tower; but it has been added { 52} to from time to time, with unsatisfactory results. To make up for this, the ancient grammar-school, now used as a dining-hall only, the charter of which was granted by Queen Elizabeth to her beloved Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is much what it was when completed in 1575, the new buildings that supplement it being quite distinct.

On the common, about a mile from High Barnet, there is a spring of medicinal water that was held in high esteem in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is often referred to in contemporary records. A farmhouse now occupies the site of the old spa, but the actual well, though covered over, is even now occasionally resorted to by invalids, to whom the water is supplied by means of a small pump. The chief claim to distinction of the village is, however, that it is near to the scene of the great battle of 1471 between the Lancastrians and Yorkists, at which the former were defeated, the mighty king-maker, the Earl of Warwick, was slain, and Edward IV. firmly established on the throne.

There has been much heated controversy concerning the actual place where the great struggle took place, but it is now generally supposed that the fiercest fighting occurred on Hadley Green, half a mile north of Barnet, extending thence along the ridge sometimes called Gladsome Heath, and sometimes Monken Mead. An obelisk, locally known as the Highstone, with a rudely carved inscription commemorating the victory, was set up in 1740 by Sir Jeremy Sambook, about two hundred yards from the spot where it now stands at the junction of the St. Albans { 53} and Hatfield roads, and the low ground sloping down from Monken Mead is marked on old maps as Deadman's Bottom, an incidental proof that it was there the bodies of the dead were buried after the battle.

The village of Monken Hadley, that is rapidly becoming a suburb of High Barnet, is very picturesquely situated along a green and common, all that now remain of the once famous Enfield Chase, and its fine old church, built some twenty years after the great battle, and well restored in 1845-50, looks down upon the scene of that historic event. Not far from it still stands the trunk of a huge oak, that has been identified as the 'gaunt and lifeless tree' on which, as related by Lord Lytton in the Last of the Barons , Adam Warner was hanged by Friar Bungay, and at the foot of which the victim's daughter fell down insensible close to the shattered fragments of the mechanical invention from which her father had hoped so much; and a little distance off is an elm known as Latimer's, because the zealous Protestant after whom it is named, who was later to die for his belief, is said to have sometimes preached beneath it.

East Barnet, a pretty village nestling in a charming valley, is the mother parish of the other communities of the same name, and its manor was part of that of High Barnet at the time of the Conquest. Its church, recently enlarged and modernised, was founded as early as the twelfth century, but it has few historic memories. Some writers, however, assert that it was from the house of Thomas Conyers { 54} at East Barnet that the unfortunate Arabella Stuart, whose marriage to William Seymour so greatly incensed James I., escaped, disguised as a man, on 3rd June 1611, only to be taken prisoner immediately after her embarkation in the boat that was to have borne her to France, whence she was removed to the Tower, there to die four years later, without having again seen her husband.

The extensive parish of Enfield, through which flows the New River, and of which the Lea forms the eastern boundary, is divided into four parts, known as the Town, the Chase, the Bull's Cross, and Green Street. It is finely situated on the borders of what was once a famous royal hunting-ground, that although now almost entirely enclosed, is not yet built over. The actual town is one of the most prosperous of the suburbs of London, for it is the seat of a thriving Government small-arms factory, employing several hundred hands. The whole district is full of interesting historic memories, for even in the eleventh century, as proved by the descriptions in Doomsday Book, Enfield was a populous village, and the parish included no less than eight manors—Enfield proper and Worcesters, that long belonged to the Crown; Durants, Elsynge or Norris, Suffolks, Honeylands, Pentviches, and Goldbeaters, each with a palace and park of its own. The children of Henry VIII. were educated at Enfield, and it was there that Prince Edward heard of his father's death. In 1552 the young king settled the chief manor of Enfield on his sister Elizabeth, and also built for her the palace, of which a small, but very picturesque, portion still { 55} remains in the High Street, but the future queen appears to have spent the short time of liberty enjoyed by her before she was imprisoned by the jealous Mary at Elsynge Hall, of which no trace is left. It was there, too, that she and her escort probably put up, when in 1557 her indulgent gaoler, Sir Thomas Pope, allowed her to take part in a hunt in Enfield Chase, and she certainly often held her court in it during her long and prosperous reign. Of the chief manor-house of Enfield all that has been preserved is a fireplace incorporated in the library of a private house in the so-called Old Park, whilst the mansion of Worcesters, the other royal demesne, is represented by a seventeenth-century house known as Forty Hall—in which, by the way, there is a fine collection of pictures—designed by Inigo Jones for Sir Nicolas Raynton, to whom the estate was given in 1616 by the then owner, the Earl of Salisbury.

Of the other manor-houses of Enfield the memory alone survives, but the neighbourhood is still rich in fine old private mansions, of which the most note-worthy are Enfield Court and Foxhall, and on Chase side is an ancient cottage in which Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have lived for some time not far from which was the 'odd-looking gambogish house' in which Charles Lamb, writing in 1825, declared he would like to spend the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, the beautiful and characteristic Market Hall was pulled down some little time ago, to be replaced by a modern and not very satisfactory Gothic cross, and the church, that dates from the thirteenth century, has lost much of its venerable { 56} appearance through injudicious restoration. It still retains, however, several well-preserved and most interesting monuments, including that to Lady Tiploft, who died in 1446, one to Sir Nicolas Raynton and his wife, who passed away two centuries later, and one to Mrs. Martha Palmer, the last the work of Nicolas Stone, the famous seventeenth-century sculptor.

Although, strictly speaking, neither Waltham Cross, Waltham Abbey, nor Epping Forest can be called suburbs of London, they are in such intimate touch with the capital, that a point may well be strained to include them in a publication intended to serve to some extent as a guide to beautiful places within easy reach of the city. Waltham Cross, a hamlet of Cheshunt, is specially noteworthy, as owning one of the crosses (well restored in 1883) that were set up by Edward I. to mark the resting-places of the body of his beloved queen Eleanor on the way to her tomb at Westminster, and it also greatly prides itself on the possession of the actual inn at which the bearers of the coffin rested for a night, the signboard bearing the legend, 'Ye Old Four Swannes Hostelrie, 1260.' The town of Waltham Abbey, or Waltham Holy Cross, that may possibly ere long be the seat of a new bishopric, a low-lying, straggling settlement, intersected by the Lea, which here divides into several branches, is a far more important place than its namesake of Cheshunt parish, with which it is often confounded, for it is the seat of a great Government gunpowder manufactory, the works of which occupy an area of { 57} some two hundred acres. It owes its chief fame, however, to what was once one of the grandest abbey churches of England—of which the nave, that is amongst the oldest places of worship in Great Britain, alone remains—that was built by Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, on the site of an earlier one founded by Tovi or Tovig, standard-bearer to Canute the Great, to enshrine a remarkable crucifix that was found on his estate in Somersetshire. The story goes that the place where the precious relic had been buried for many centuries was revealed in a dream to a smith, and that after it had been dug up, an attempt was made to send it to Glastonbury. The twelve red oxen and twelve cows harnessed to the cart in which the crucifix was placed, refused, however, to move in that direction, and Tovi therefore bade the drovers make for Waltham or Wealdham, as the village was then called, the name meaning the homestead in the forest. Directly their heads were turned northwards the animals set off at so rapid a pace that the escort could hardly keep up with them, and they needed no guidance till they reached the site of the abbey, when they halted of their own accord. This was at once accepted as a proof that it was the divine will that the church should be erected there, and the work was begun at once, the crucifix meanwhile working many miracles in the temporary shelter in which it was housed. After the death of Tovi the estate of Waltham was forfeited by his son Athelstan to King Edward the Confessor, who gave it to his brother-in-law Harold. The Saxon earl, who was a very devout { 58} Catholic, considered the church unworthy of the priceless treasure it enshrined, and he lost no time in having it pulled down, to replace it with a stately building that was consecrated in 1060. To it he often went to pray, the last time on the eve of the battle of Senlac, when it was popularly believed that the sad issue of the struggle was foreshadowed by a significant omen, for as the king prostrated himself before the miraculous crucifix the figure of the Lord bent its head, and gazed into the suppliant's face with an expression of infinite sorrow. But a few days afterwards the dead body of the last of the Saxon kings was brought to the abbey he had loved so well, and buried in front of the high altar, whence it is said to have been later removed to a tomb some little distance from the present church. During the reign of Elizabeth this tomb was opened, when it was found to contain the skeleton of a man of great stature, but there is no absolute evidence that it was that of the unfortunate Harold.

After being despoiled of its treasures by William the Conqueror, and suffering many things at the hands of his successors, the beautiful church of Waltham was given in 1187 to a branch of the Augustinian order by Henry II., who added greatly to the monastic buildings and was from the first a liberal patron of the abbey. It was for many centuries a favourite resort of the English kings, probably on account of the fine hunting-grounds in its immediate neighbourhood, and it was there that Henry VIII. received from Cranmer the joyful news that a device had been hit upon for justifying the { 59} divorce from Katharine of Aragon on which his heart was set. It was at Waltham, too, that the Reformation may in a certain sense be said to have begun, for it was there that the king first decided on the drastic measures which inaugurated it. Harold's foundation shared the fate of the rest of the religious houses, and was given to Sir Anthony Denny, to whom there is a beautiful though much defaced monument in the church, that was well restored in the early nineteenth century. Of the monastic buildings, however, that were associated with so many historic memories, the only relics now remaining are a single gateway, a small vaulted chamber in a market garden once part of the abbey grounds, a few fragments of the walls, and some subterranean arches. A quaint little bridge spanning the Corn-Mill stream, a tributary of the Lea, is still called Harold's Bridge, and a picturesque modern mill occupies the site of the one that belonged to the monks of the abbey.

The immediate neighbourhood of Waltham Abbey is still thoroughly rural in character, well-watered undulating districts dotted here and there with beautiful seats—amongst which Copped Hall and Warlies Hall are the chief—replacing the forests which once extended over nearly the whole of Essex, including with what is now known as Epping Forest, the so-called Harold's Park—the name of which is still retained by a farm—that was given by Richard I. to a branch of the Augustinian order.

At the ancient Copped Hall—so named from the { 60} Saxon cop , signifying the top of a hill—that occupied the site of the present nineteenth-century mansion, the Princess Mary lived during the brief reign of her brother, and from it she addressed in 1551 a remarkable letter protesting against the prohibition to have mass celebrated in her private chapel. There, too, she received the messengers who brought back the king's unfavourable reply, and gave to the chief of them, no less a personage than the Lord Chancellor himself, a ring to be delivered to His Majesty, who was to be informed 'that she would obeye his commandements in all things excepte in theis matters of religion towchinge the mass.' It is noteworthy that three years later, when the tables were turned on the Protestants by the accession of Mary, the same Lord Chancellor should have received orders from her 'to be presente at the burning of such obstinat persons as presently are sent downe to be burned in diverse partes of the county of Essex.'

Originally part of the great forest of Essex, the beautiful woodlands of Epping, in spite of all the changes through which they have passed, still retain something of their primeval character, and enshrine in their recesses some few relics even of pre-Norman days, of which the most noteworthy are the two camps of Ambresbury Banks and Loughton, for each of which it has been claimed that it was the stronghold from which Queen Boadicea watched the last stand of her army against the invaders, and the massacre of the women and children who had come, as they fondly hoped, to rejoice over a victory! { 61} Whether this or any of the many other theories advanced be true, it is certain that long before the Conquest, Epping Forest, which at that date included some sixty thousand or seventy thousand acres, was the property of the Saxon kings, and that in Norman times it was strictly preserved for the royal pleasure, the game-laws being terribly severe and most rigidly enforced. The killing of a stag was in fact more severely punished than the murder of a man, for in the former case the eyes of the offender were put out, whilst for the latter crime a money payment was often accepted. The first king to sanction any disafforesting was Stephen, who allowed certain districts to be cleared for cultivation, and his example was followed by John, who reluctantly gave up the portion north of the main road between Stratford and Colchester, the concession having been wrung from him by the united barons, who compelled him to sign the Charter of Forests, the wording of which is very significant of the terrible oppression to which the people were subjected at the time. Later the concessions were confirmed by Henry III. and by Edward I., who had at first shown signs of going back from the promises of his predecessors, but in 1301 he was brought to a better mind by means of a heavy bribe of money. Gradually, through grants to nobles, unauthorised enclosures, etc., the forest lands belonging to the Crown were reduced to about a third of what they were at the Conquest, and a survey made in 1793 estimated the still uncultivated woods and wastes at twelve thousand acres only. From that date until the middle of the { 62} nineteenth century the history of the once magnificent forest was one of constant encroachment, one beautiful tract after another having been sold and enclosed, for the officers of the Crown interpreted their duty to be to turn the land to as great a money profit as possible rather than to preserve it for the enjoyment of its owners or of the people to whom at various times certain rights had been granted. In 1850 some six thousand acres only were left, and in the next twenty years these were reduced to little more than half that amount. Fortunately, however, about this time public feeling began to be aroused on the subject, and thanks to the enlightened efforts of a number of influential men, amongst whom special recognition is due to the members of the Commons Preservation Society, the matter was brought before Parliament, and in 1882 five thousand five hundred acres were bought by the Corporation of London for the nation, including the woodlands beginning near Chingford and stretching northwards beyond Theydon Bois, parts of which are still much what they were when royal parties used to go forth to hunt from the palaces of Chigwell, New Hall, and Writtle, and when the post of Lord Warden of the Forest was eagerly sought by the great nobles, whilst a far less picturesque portion extends southwards to Wanstead Flats and Aldersbook Cemetery.

Some two miles from Waltham Abbey begins what is known as the Sewardstone district, supposed to be named after a noted Saxon thane, that is dotted with picturesque hamlets, from one of which, known as Sewardstone proper, a pretty lane leads { 63} to High Beech Green, a straggling village that once belonged to the Priory, with a good modern church, near to which is the loftiest point of the Forest: High Beech Hill, 759 feet high, that commands a very beautiful view. According to popular tradition, Dick Turpin used to lie in wait in a cave at the base of this hill for the travellers he intended to rob, undeterred by fear of betrayal at the hands of the landlords of the neighbouring Robin Hood and King's Oak inns, now represented by modern hotels, the latter named after the stump of a venerable oak known as Harold's—the very one that inspired The Talking Oak of Tennyson, who wrote it and Locksley Hall in a house near by, since pulled down; whilst in the still standing Fairmead House, then a private lunatic asylum, the half-crazy peasant poet John Clare, who lived in it from 1837 to 1841, composed some of his beautiful descriptions of the forest scenery.

It was from a height not far from the King's Oak that Queen Victoria, on 6th May 1882, set a seal on the gift of the forest to the people by declaring it free and open to them for ever, and on the south of Beech Wood opens the beautiful lane that winds through the still virgin woods to what is known as Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, supposed to occupy the site of the original manor-house of Chingford Earls, the history of which can be traced back to early Saxon times. However that may be, the lodge with its high-pitched roof and gables, its massive timber supports and ceiling beams, projecting chimneys and wide ingle-nooks, broad oak { 64} staircases and spacious outside landings, the main structure is a very typical example of fifteenth and sixteenth century domestic architecture. The fact that the highest landing is still called the 'horse block' recalls the tradition that good Queen Bess used to ride up to the door of the great reception-room at the top of the house, and that she may have done so is proved by the fact that the feat—not a very difficult one after all—was successfully achieved for a wager some few years ago by a man on an unbroken pony.

The village of Chingford, or the King's Ford, close to the Lodge, and a beautiful sheet of water, named after the present ranger, the Duke of Connaught, is charmingly situated on the edge of the forest, and the ancient church, now disused, about a mile from the new Gothic building that has supplanted it, is extremely picturesque. The parish originally included two manors—the one already referred to in connection with Queen Elizabeth's Lodge and that known as Chingford St. Paul's, which, until it was seized by Henry VIII. belonged to the Metropolitan Cathedral. It was held before the Conquest by a Saxon thane named Ongar, and the manor-house that replaced his old home, now a farm, is still standing, though the present lord of the manor lives in Hawkwood House a little distance off.

From Connaught Water a good road, known as the Green Ride, leads to Ambresbury Bucks and Epping, and another called the Rangers to Buckhurst Hill and Loughton. Buckhurst Hill, from { 65} which for many years the famous Easter Hunt used to start, must once have been one of the loveliest villages in the forest, and is still charming in spite of the many new houses that have been built. Its name has been very variously explained, some supposing it to commemorate the aristocratic poet of Elizabethan times, Lord Buckhurst, others that the original form was Book Forest, signifying a tract reserved in otherwise open moorlands by royal charter. Before the Easter Hunt was transferred to Beech Hill there were many descriptions in the contemporary press of the scenes that used to take place at Buckhurst, notably one that appeared in the Morning Herald in the week after Easter 1826, in which the writer gloats over the gay costumes worn 'by the three thousand merry lieges then and there assembled' to watch the uncarting of the stag that, when released, marched proudly down between an avenue of horsemen 'wearing a chaplet of flowers round its neck, a girth of divers-coloured ribbons, and a long blue-and-white streamer depending from the summit of its branching horns, adding that when it caught a glimpse of the hounds and huntsmen waiting for it, it bounded sideways, knocking down and trampling all who crowded the path it chose.' The account ends by stating that the stag was finally caught at Chingford, 'nobody knows how, for everybody returned to town before the end except those who stopped to regale afresh and recount the glorious perils of the day.'

The picturesque village of Loughton, perched on high ground above the valley of the Roding, about a { 66} mile from Buckhurst Hill, was originally a mere appanage of the manor of the same name that was given by Harold to the Abbey of Waltham, and after the Reformation was presented by Edward VI. to Sir Thomas Davey, only to revert to the Crown in the reign of Mary, since which time it has changed hands again and again. Its ancient church is now a mere ruin, but it has been supplemented by a fairly satisfactory modern building in the Norman style. The old manor-house, in which Queen Elizabeth and James I. were guests at different times, was destroyed by fire in 1836, with the exception of part of the great hall, now incorporated in a farm, and the fine wrought-iron entrance gates. In olden times the inhabitants of Loughton enjoyed, in addition to the privileges common to all of pasturing their cattle in the forest and turning out their pigs at Michaelmas to eat beechwood and acorns, that of lopping the trees in the vicinity of their village, and it was the interference of the lord of the manor with the undue exercise of this right that inaugurated the agitation which in the end had the happy result of securing to the whole nation the priceless possession of Epping Forest.

Not far from Loughton is the scarcely less charming village of Chigwell, the name of which calls up the memory of Charles Dickens, for in it were laid many of the most exciting scenes of his immortal romance, Barnaby Rudge . It was, however, by the way in the King's Head, a low, rambling, half-timbered building with a projecting upper story, not in that now known as the Maypole, that John Willett and his { 67} cronies are described as meeting to gossip together and in which the sturdy but obstinate landlord awaited the coming of the rioters. The ancient hostelry seems to have altered but little since the great novelist used to delight in going down to what ne called 'the greatest place in the world, with such a delicious old inn opposite the churchyard, such beautiful scenery,' etc., and it is much the same with the church, with its noble Norman doorway approached by an avenue of venerable trees. The chief manor-house, known as Chigwell Hall, on the site of one that belonged to Harold, is still standing, but a modern grammar-school replaces that founded by Harsnett in 1629; and the home of the Harewoods, in the garden of which Dolly Varden was, as related by Dickens, robbed of her bracelet by Hugh of the Maypole, was long represented by an ancient red-brick mansion that was burnt down a few years ago.

Chigwell Row, that was long a beautiful secluded hamlet noted for its spring of mineral water, from which the name of Chigwell is derived, is now, alas, a mere suburb of uninteresting modern houses, and is chiefly remembered as having been the home of the peasant who posed for Gainsborough's famous picture of the 'Woodman.' Close to it begins the extensive parish of Woodford—named after the old ford over the Roding that is now spanned by a bridge—in which are many villages rapidly growing into towns, such as Woodford Green and Woodford Wells, given by Earl Harold with seventeen other manors to Waltham Abbey. That of Woodford { 68} remained in its possession until 1540, when it was confiscated with the rest of ecclesiastical property by Henry VIII., but the old manor-house, now a convalescent home for children, founded by Mrs. Gladstone, is still standing.

The extensive parish of Walthamstow has shared the fate of that of Woodford, for it is becoming a densely populated district with little to recall the past. Its name is supposed to signify a storehouse, but whether of food, of weapons, or ammunition, there is no evidence to show. Its manor belonged, at the time of Edward the Confessor, to the Saxon, Waltheof, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and though it was confiscated by William the Conqueror, he later restored it to its former owner in recognition of his early submission. Moreover, Waltheof was allowed to marry the king's niece, who, however, was the cause of his ruin, for she betrayed to her uncle a plot in which her husband was implicated. Waltheof paid for his disloyalty with his life, and his estate was bequeathed by his widow to the elder of their two daughters, by whose marriage with Ralph de Toni it passed into the possession of the family of that name, for which reason the manor is still known as that of Walthamstow Toni, though it is now the property of the descendants of Lord Maynard, by whom it was bought in the seventeenth century. The once scattered hamlets of Whip's Cross, so called because it was the starting-point for the whipping of deer-stealers, Woodford Side, Higham Hill, and many others now practically form part of the town of Walthamstow, to which also belongs a narrow { 69} strip of land, called the Walthamstow Slip, running right through the adjoining parish of Leyton, that was won under curious circumstances not long ago. It was in olden times the custom, if the place in which a dead body was found could not meet the expenses of burial, that the parish in which the interment took place should be paid with as much land as those carrying the corpse could cover holding each other's hands and walking one behind the other. An unknown man was found in the Lea, and his remains were taken to Walthamstow by way of Leyton, with the result that the latter had to yield up a slice of its territory to the former.

The mother church of Walthamstow, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, dates from the sixteenth century, and contains some interesting monuments, including one by Nicholas Stone to the memory of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Thomas Merry, and their four children, and one to Sir Gerard Conyers, Lord Mayor of London, who died in 1737. The rest of the places of worship are all modern, and have nothing distinctive about them, but in addition to the chief manor-house Walthamstow owns several fine mansions, including those of Higham Bensted and Walthamstow Sarum or Salisbury Hall, the latter named after Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury.

The low-lying districts of Walthamstow parish, which before the Thames embankment was made were constantly flooded, were some years ago turned to good account by the East London Waterworks Company for the formation of their fine reservoirs, { 70} which resemble a vast lake dotted with picturesque islets. During the progress of the excavations, moreover, many very important geological discoveries were made, with the aid of which the whole life-story of the valley of the Lea can be read backwards to the time when the forest of Essex was the home of the elephant, the elk, the reindeer, and the wild ox, as well as of the red and fallow deer of modern times.

Wanstead, the name of which may possibly be a corruption of the word Woden's Stede, or the place sacred to Woden, near to which many traces of Roman occupation have been found, was not very long ago a pretty rambling village on the very outskirts of the forest, but is now practically a town; and close to it is the somewhat dreary district known as Wanstead Flats, once a beautiful furze-clad common with clumps of fine old trees that has given place to brickfields and gravel-pits. The manor of Wanstead has, however, an interesting history, for it was once the property of the Abbey of Westminster, and owned a famous manor-house known as Naked Hall Hawe, that was pulled down in the sixteenth century by its then owner, Lord Chancellor Rich, who built in its place a stately mansion, in which Queen Mary rested on her way from Norwich to be crowned in London, and Queen Elizabeth was more than once entertained by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who had bought the estate in 1577. Later it changed hands again and again, and in 1683, as proved by an entry in John Evelyn's diary, it was owned by Sir Joshua Child, to whom there is an interesting monument in the parish church, whose { 71} son replaced the Earl of Leicester's house with an even more magnificent one, which he filled with art treasures, and that was considered one of the finest private residences in England. In 1794, through the death of the then owner and his only son within a few months of each other, the valuable estate passed to Miss Tylney Long, then a mere child, during whose long minority the mansion was let to the Prince of Condé, and was for a time the house of Louis XVIII. and other members of the French royal family. Unfortunately Miss Long married a profligate spendthrift, the Honourable W. Tylney-Long Wellesley, who quickly dissipated his wife's wealth, necessitating the sale of the Wanstead property. The art treasures were dispersed, and the mansion sold for building materials, but fortunately the gardens and grounds were bought for the nation by the London corporation, and thrown open to the public in 1882.

CHAPTER IV

HAINAULT FOREST, WOOLWICH, AND OTHER
EASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

The once beautiful district known as Hainault Forest, said to have been named after the wife of Edward III., extending on the north to Theydon Bois, on the west to Leytonstone, on the east to Havering-atte-Bower, and on the south to Aldborough Hatch, belonged in early Norman times to Barking Abbey, and passed, at the dissolution of the monasteries, to the Crown. It was almost as favourite a resort of the Tudors and Stuarts as Epping Forest itself, and is nearly as full of interesting historic associations, but for all that it was condemned in the middle of the nineteenth century as unprofitable waste ground, and in 1851 an Act of Parliament was passed empowering the Government to destroy or remove the deer that had for so many centuries haunted its recesses, to cut down the trees, and to sell the land for farming or building. All too rapidly the work of destruction proceeded, but fortunately, before it was completed, it was finally arrested on the initiative of Mr. North Buxton, whose efforts to save the little remnant left were { 73} seconded by the London County Council and various local corporations, with the result that, in 1906, eight hundred acres were bought and secured to the public as a recreation ground. It was of course too late to restore to the forest anything of its ancient charm, for its dense groves of oak and beech were gone for ever, but some few delightful woodlands still remained. Many trees have been planted, and even now certain outlying villages retain something of their original rural character, especially Aldborough Hatch, the name of which signifies an ancient mansion near a hatch or gate of the forest—that has now, however, receded far from it—and Barking Side. The latter, once a secluded spot in a densely wooded neighbourhood, is celebrated as having been near the scene of the famous Fairlop Fair, that was founded in the eighteenth century by Daniel Day, a wealthy blockmaker of Wapping, and for more than two centuries was frequented every year by thousands of pleasure-seekers from the east end of London. The fair took its name from a wide-spreading oak about a mile from the still standing Maypole Inn, beneath which Daniel Day used to entertain his tenants at midsummer; but it was celebrated long before his time. Many allusions are made to it in the contemporary press, notably in the once popular Fairlop Fair song, in which its nickname is explained in the following quaint rhyme—

'To Hainault Forest Queen Anne she did ride,
And beheld the beautiful oak by her side;
And after viewing it from the bottom to the top,
She said to her court: "It is a Fair lop."'

Long after the death of Daniel Day, which took place in 1769, the blockmakers of London used to hold an annual beanfeast beneath the Fairlop oak, going to it, it is said, in a vehicle shaped like a boat, drawn by six horses; and although the tree was blown down in 1820, and its site is now enclosed in a private garden, many merrymakers still resort to Barking Side to be present at a kind of parody of the ancient fair. The trunk of the oak was used to make the pulpit of Wanstead Church and that of St. Pancras in Euston Road, and the fact that its memory was still held dear long after its fall is proved by its name having been given to the boat presented by the London Foresters to the Lifeboat Society in 1865.

Although, as from Hainault Forest itself, much of the glamour and romance of the past has for ever departed from the once beautiful country, between it and the Thames, that is now a mere suburb, and not a very interesting suburb of London, some few of its hamlets and villages still bear the impress of the long ago, and are intimately associated with important episodes of English history. Near to the still independent market town of Romford, for instance, is the village of Havering-atte-Bower, that gives its name to the ancient Liberty, including the extensive parishes of Romford, Havering, and Hornchurch, and is built on the site of a royal palace, once the favourite resort of Edward the Confessor, and of many of his successors. The name of Havering has been very variously explained, the most poetic and also the most probable interpretation { 75} being that it commemorates a beautiful legend relating to the saintly founder of Westminster Abbey to the effect that he gave to St. John the Evangelist, who had appeared to him in the guise of a pilgrim, a ring from his own finger. Many years afterwards, when King Edward was at the consecration of a church in Essex, two pilgrims from the Holy Land came to him to tell him that the beloved disciple had met them in Jerusalem, and charged them with a message for him. The king at once inquired 'Have ye the ring?'—a sentence that was later converted into Havering—to which the pilgrims replied by producing it. The message was to the effect that St. John would meet the original owner of the ring in Paradise a fortnight later, a prophecy that was fulfilled, for King Edward passed away at that time. Some say the church in which the singular meeting took place was at Waltham, others that it was a chapel on the site of the present church of Romford, dedicated to St. Edward the Confessor and St. Mary the Virgin, whilst yet others think it was that which stood where now rises the modern church of St. John the Evangelist at Havering, which contains a font used in the Saxon building that preceded it.

The manor of Havering has remained Crown property to the present day, though the park in which the Confessor's house stood has been cut up and let on leases. The so-called royal palace, that was probably merely a hunting lodge, was replaced after the Conquest by a more convenient residence, called the Bower, to which the English kings were { 76} fond of resorting. There Edward III., a disappointed and disillusioned man, spent several months of the last year of his life, after he had named the unworthy son of the beloved Black Prince his successor, and there Edward IV., a year before his death, won great popularity with the citizens of London by the hospitality he showed to the 'maire and aldermen,' as related in Hall's Chronicle , who observes, 'No one thyng in many daies gatte him either more hartes or more hertie favour amongst the comon people.' Edward VI. was often at the Bower before he came to the throne; Queen Elizabeth, to whom the people of Havering were devoted, for she secured to them many of their ancient privileges, was as fond of it as of any of her palaces at Enfield, and her successor James I., never failed to visit it once a year. After his time, however, it, for some unexplained reason fell into disrepute, and was allowed to become a complete ruin. By the middle of the nineteenth century not a trace of it remained, and it is now represented by a new Bower House, a short distance from its site, built in 1729 for a private lease-holder.

Not far from the old hunting lodge there was another royal residence, known as Prygo, which was for a long time reserved for the use of widowed queens, but was given by Elizabeth to Sir John Grey, a relation of the ill-fated nine days' queen. After changing hands again and again, the historic relic, which might well have been bought for the nation, was sold for building material and pulled down, with the exception of one wing, which was { 77} later incorporated in a house built in 1852, that retains the quaint old name.

The twin towns of Leyton and Leytonstone, the latter not long ago a mere hamlet of the former, are both named after the Lea, and were, half a century ago, charming villages, near to which were many fine old mansions, the homes of wealthy City merchants, who have since deserted them for the more fashionable western suburbs. Some few of these houses, notably those known as Etloe and Rockholt, though turned to other uses, still remain, and near to the latter have been found traces of ancient entrenchments, that have led some authorities to identify the site of Leyton with that of the Roman Durolitum. The churches of both towns are modern, but that of St. Mary at Leyton, in which is buried the celebrated antiquarian John Strype, who was vicar of the parish for sixty-eight years, retains the tower of an earlier building, and contains some interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century monuments, including two to members of the Hickes family, which were recently removed from the chancel and set up at the west end. There are also several noteworthy brasses on the walls with quaint inscriptions, such as that relating to Lady Mary Kingstone, who died in 1577, and a tablet to the memory of the famous printer William Bowyer, who passed away in 1777; and in the churchyard rest many celebrities, of whom the best known outside Leyton are the dramatist David Lewis, and the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Strange, who died, the former in 1700, the latter in 1754.

Stratford on the Lea, named after the ancient ford that was in use between it and Bow, the Stratford-atte-Bow of Chaucer, till the river was spanned by the bridge built by Matilda, wife of Henry I., that was taken down as recently as 1839, was originally only an outlying hamlet of West Ham, but it has of late years grown into a densely populated manufacturing centre, well provided with modern places of worship, but retaining, alas, not a trace of the beautiful Cistercian abbey, founded in the twelfth century, that was once the pride of the whole neighbourhood. It is very much the same with Great Ilford, named after a ford over the Roding, which, though not yet so large as Stratford, is already a thriving town, almost its only relic of the past being the hospital, that now belongs, with the estate on which it is built, to the Marquis of Salisbury, originally founded for the use of thirteen lepers who had been in the service of King Stephen, by Adliza, Abbess of Barking, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St. Thomas of Canterbury. Little Ilford, on the other hand, on the south-west side of its greater namesake, is still not much more than a village, though from it, too, nearly everything of antiquarian interest has been improved away. The beautiful old church was pulled down some fifty years ago, but, fortunately, in its modern successor are preserved a few of the ancient monuments, amongst which is especially noteworthy that to William Waldegrave and his wife, who died, the latter in 1595, the former in 1616.

A century ago West Ham was one of the most { 79} picturesque villages of Essex, with many charming old mansions belonging to the wealthy City merchants in its immediate vicinity, but it is now a densely populated town, with scarcely anything about it to recall the olden times. The much modernised church of All Saints, however, retains its original foundations, a Norman clerestory and an early English nave, with which, unfortunately, the modern brick chancel and aisles are quite out of character. Some of the ancient monuments have also been preserved, notably the fifteenth-century tomb of a certain Robert Rook, that of Sir Thomas Foot, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1650, and that of William Fawcett, who died in 1631.

Not far from West Ham is the village of Upton, and near to it are some fine old houses, including that known as The Cedars, once the home of the famous Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, the enthusiastic advocate of prison reform, who was the sister of Mr. Samuel Gurney, a true, kindred spirit, almost as well known for his disinterested work for the poor and oppressed. The latter lived in what was known as Ham House, which was pulled down soon after his death in 1856, and eighteen years later the park in which it used to stand was bought for the people, partly by the Gurney family and partly by the corporation of London.

East Ham is another town of rapid growth, the nucleus of which was not long ago a charming village, still in close touch with the long ago. In early Norman times it was a dependency of Westminster { 80} Abbey, and the much modernised parish church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, retains portions of the ancient building that dated from about the eleventh century, whilst the old manor-house, now a farm, is still standing. There remains, however, a certain rural charm about the dependent hamlets of Flasket and Green Street, the former retaining an ancient mansion, in which Elizabeth Fry lived for many years before her removal to The Cedars, and the latter still priding itself on its ancient manor-house, now an agricultural training home for boys, that was once the seat of the noble Nevill family, to whom there is a good monument in the church. The home bears the inappropriate name of Anne Boleyn's Castle, because of a tradition, for which there is no historical information, that the ill-fated second wife of Henry VIII. was wooed in it, and, by a strange irony of fate, shut up in it later, to await the day of her execution, after her condemnation to death.

Greater even than the transformation which has taken place in Stratford and the Hams is that which has converted Barking from a straggling fishing village, dependent on the famous Benedictine abbey, after which it is named, that was founded in the ninth century by St. Erkenwald, into a thriving market town, that is still rapidly widening its boundaries. The abbey itself, that was burnt by the Danes in 870, and rebuilt a century later by King Edgar, is gone, but for all that something of the old romance and sanctity still seems to cling to the district it dominated, that was for centuries looked upon by the faithful as one of the most sacred in { 81} England. The first abbess was the saintly St. Ethelburga, sister of the founder, and she and St. Erkenwald were both buried in the abbey church. After the rebuilding of the abbey under Edgar, until the dissolution of the monasteries, its history was intimately bound up with that of the whole country, the holy women who successively held the office of abbess, many of them of royal birth, taking a very active share in politics, and unlike their successors in modern nunneries, exercising jurisdiction over men as well as women. Barking Abbey became celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the land for the miracles wrought in it, and also as a place of education for the daughters of aristocratic parents. The Abbess of Barking was one of the four ladies of England who were baronesses in their own right, a privilege that included, strange to say, the right to a seat in the Witenagemot, or Great Council, the predecessor of the Parliament the doors of which have ever been so jealously closed against women. The prosperity of the great abbey of Barking seems to have begun to decline about the middle of the fourteenth century through the flooding of some lands belonging to it, but it was still a very valuable property when it was confiscated by Henry VIII., who, with unusual generosity, gave to the then abbess an annuity of two hundred marks for the rest of her life.

The only remaining relics of the once beautiful and extensive abbey buildings are a few bits of the old walls and a massive gateway—that from which, according to local tradition, William the Conqueror { 82} set forth on his first royal progress through his newly acquired kingdom—which is known as 'The Five-bell Gate,' the curfew bell having been rung from the campanile above it, which used to bear the beautiful name of the Chapel of the Holy Rood, there having been a bas-relief of the Crucifixion on its walls.

The parish church of Barking, dedicated to St. Margaret—the churchyard of which is entered from the Five-bell Gate—retains parts of the original Norman building and of the early English additions to it, and contains several interesting old brasses; but, unfortunately, what was some years ago a very characteristic example of the transition between the two styles has been almost completely spoiled by so-called restoration, the massive piers having been whitewashed and the beautiful timber roof covered in with an over-ornamented plaster ceiling.

The town of Barking is rather picturesquely situated on the left bank of the Roding, about a mile above the creek named after it. It contains, however, very little of interest except the ancient market-hall, said to have been built by Elizabeth, and is practically an integral part of London over the Border, with long monotonous streets of small houses. Of the many mansions once occupied by wealthy merchants, the sixteenth-century Eastbury House, recently restored by its owner, is an isolated example, and is locally known as the 'Gunpowder House,' because of an unfounded tradition that the conspirators in the Guy Fawkes plot watched from it for the blowing-up of the Houses of Parliament, { 83} or, according to another version of the same legend, Lord Mounteagle there received the letter which enabled him to frustrate the iniquitous scheme.

The rapidly growing village of Dagenham, that will doubtless soon become a town, set in the midst of market-gardens in the low-lying districts east of Barking, retains far more than the latter the rural appearance it presented when it was part of the extensive abbey demesne. The ancient church, in spite of much necessary rebuilding, retains a fine piscina that was long bricked up, and other ancient relics, including an altar-slab bearing the marks symbolical of the Redeemer's wounds, and the tomb of Sir Thomas Ursuyk, who died in 1470, on which are effigies of himself, his wife, and their thirteen children.

Subject as it has been from the earliest historic times to inundation from the Thames, Dagenham has been from the first intimately associated with engineering enterprise. Discoveries were made in the early eighteenth century of what was at first taken for a submerged forest, but on examination proved to be relics of wooden embankments that were probably existing in pre-Roman times. In 1376 the breaking down of the banks of the Thames at Dagenham flooded the village and the whole neighbourhood, involving so heavy a loss to the Abbey of Barking that the then abbess had to appeal to King Edward I. for exemption from a payment due to him. How the mischief then done was repaired there is no evidence to show, but there are many allusions in contemporary records to later { 84} occurrences of a similar kind, all of which, however, sink into insignificance before the great calamity of December 17, 1707, when in a violent storm a breach four hundred feet wide was made in the Thames embankment, and one thousand acres were submerged. Many attempts were made to stop the gap, but it was not until 1715 that anything like success was achieved. At that date Captain Perry undertook the arduous task, and five years later he had reclaimed all but a comparatively small portion of the lost lands, the so-called Dagenham Breach or Dagenham Lake, a picturesque sheet of water much resorted to by anglers, being all that is now left to keep alive the memory of the famous disaster. About 1884 a company was formed to transform this lake into a dock, but fortunately, perhaps, for those who prefer beauty to utility, the enterprise failed for want of funds. Meanwhile Dagenham Breach had become associated with an institution still dear to the hearts of politicians—the annual ministerial whitebait dinner—for it was in a cottage on its banks belonging to Sir John Preston, M.P. for Dover, and president of the committee for inspecting the embankment at Dagenham, that that dinner was first eaten. In its inception a mere gathering of friends who met to enjoy the country air and to eat freshly caught whitebait in each other's company, the meeting gradually grew in importance as time went on, William Pitt having been often one of the guests. Later, the distance from town was found too great for ministers and city magnates, so it was transferred to Greenwich, where, since the death { 85} of Sir John Preston, the old Dagenham traditions have been religiously maintained.

The low-lying, marshy districts near Barking Creek, where the Roding flows into the Thames, and those between Dagenham and Woolwich, have unfortunately lost nearly all the country charm which distinguished them at the time of Sir John Preston, but the beautiful water highway intersecting them, that is associated with so many thrilling memories, and has been the scene of so many notable historic pageants, will ever lend to them a strong element of the picturesque. Constant changes in the tides, with never-ending variations in the traffic, dainty pleasure-craft, heavily laden barges, crowded steamers, and busy tugs succeeding each other in an unbroken procession, or momentarily forming picturesque groups to which the rarely absent mist and fog give an effective touch of mystery, render every reach of the Lower Thames full of inspiration to the artist. Even at Woolwich itself, one half of which is on the north and the other on the south of the river, there is still much that is attractive, in spite of the fact that the town is nearly everywhere divided from the water by the long lines of the dockyard and arsenal, and that strength and utility rather than beauty of structure are the distinguishing characteristics of those two centres of activity.

Originally a small fishing-village, the site of which is supposed to have been once occupied by a Roman camp, Woolwich, now one of the most important eastern suburbs of London, owes its prosperity { 86} chiefly to its having been chosen by Henry VIII. as his chief naval station. In its dockyard was built the famous ship called the Henrye Grace à Dieu , as proved by entries in an account-book, now in the Record Office, of the payments made to 'shippe-wrights and other officers working upon the Kinges great shippe at Wolwiche' from 1512 to 1515, when it was launched in the presence of Henry and Katharine of Aragon, who with their court and many invited guests dined on board at the royal expense. The career of the great Henrye Grace à Dieu was short, for it was destroyed by fire at Woolwich in 1553; but many other famous ships were built in the same dockyard, including some of those that went forth to meet the Spanish Armada, others that took part in the voyages of exploration of Hawkins and Frobisher, and the Royal Sovereign , nicknamed the 'Golden Devil' by the Dutch on account of its terrible powers, that was built in the reign of Charles I. In his famous Diary the gossipy Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Pepys, often alludes to Woolwich, which he constantly visited to inspect the dockyard, the ships, and the stores, making the journey from Greenwich sometimes by boat, sometimes on foot. He describes how he looked into the details of every department, examining the charges made for work done, and he strikes a melancholy and prophetic note when he says: 'I see it is impossible for the King to have things done so cheap as other men.' A somewhat later entry in the same journal calls up a picture of a very different kind of place to the crowded, busy, and somewhat squalid { 87} town of to-day, for on May 28, 1669, the writer says: 'My wife away down with Jane ... to Woolwich in order to [get] a little ayre, and to lie there to-night and so to gather May dew in the morning ... to wash her face with.' To quote Pepys again, he laments at the time of the scare about the Dutch, the sinking of so many good ships in the Thames off Woolwich, shrewdly remarking that these ships 'would have been good works to command the river below' had the enemy attempted to pass them, and adding, 'it is a sad sight while we would be thought masters of the sea.'

The gallant Prince Rupert was for some time in command at Woolwich, and greatly strengthened its defences, adding to them a battery of sixty guns. According to tradition, he lived in the house near the arsenal, now converted into a museum close to which was a lofty observatory named after him, comanding a fine view, which was unfortunately taken down in 1786. Throughout the whole of the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century, when wars and rumours of wars kept up a constant demand for new battleships, additions continued to be made to the great dockyard of Woolwich, which reached the zenith of its prosperity under the gifted engineers, Sir John Rennie and his son, who created a large reservoir, built a strong river wall, and proved themselves equal to meeting every emergency that arose. The dockyard soon became as celebrated for the iron vessels launched from it as for their wooden predecessors, but ere long even it failed to be able to produce the huge iron-clad { 88} men-of-war required for modern scientific warfare. On September 17, 1869, the fiat went forth that Woolwich dockyard should be closed, and soon after part of it was sold, whilst the remainder was converted into a Government storehouse for munitions of war.

The fame of the ancient dockyard was soon to be equalled, if not surpassed, by that of the Royal Arsenal that occupies the site of what was long known as the Warren, which was closely associated with the memory of the convicts who used to work in it and in the dockyard, living in the ancient vessels called the hulks that were moored in the river. The present arsenal is the successor of a very much more ancient military depot, for even if there be no real foundation for the popular tradition that Queen Elizabeth founded the latter, there are many references to it in early ordnance accounts, notably in one bearing date July 9, 1664, in which, in an estimate for repairs, occurs the item: 'for floaring a storehouse att Woolwich to keepe shipp carriages dry.' Sixteen years later an order was issued from the Admiralty that 'all ye sheds at Woolwich along ye proofe house, and ye shedds for carriages there, be forthwith repaired,' supplemented in 1682 by directions for building 'a new shedd at Woolwich, with all convenient speed, with artificers at ye reasonablest rates,' and in 1688 by instructions for the removal of all guns, carriages, and stores, then at Deptford, to Woolwich.

Founded in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the modern Arsenal of Woolwich is one of the most extensive and interesting institutions of the { 89} kind in the world. Exclusive of the outlying powder magazines in the marshes, the present buildings cover considerably more than three hundred acres, the ordinary staff of workpeople numbers some ten thousand, that is increased to forty thousand or fifty thousand in time of war. In the various departments the whole science of modern war material may be studied, whilst in the Royal Artillery Museum the history of the past is illustrated by a remarkably complete collection of weapons and models. On the wharf and pier in connection with the Arsenal the landing and embarkation of troops and the shipping of stores are constantly going on, troops are daily exercised and reviews are often held on the common outside the town, so that there is always something interesting to be seen at Woolwich, which in addition to its fine Dockyard and Arsenal, owns the Royal Military Academy that was founded by George II. in 1741, and is associated with the memory of many great soldiers.

Outside Woolwich is the lofty Shooters Hill, commanding a fine view of the Thames valley and London, that was in olden times a noted haunt of highwaymen, a fact to which it is supposed to owe its name. It is often alluded to by old chroniclers, notably by Phillpott, who declares that it was so called for the 'thievery there practised where travellers in elder times were so much infested with depredations and bloody mischief, that order was taken in the 6th year of Richard II. for the enlarging the highway'; but the evil was not remedied, for as late as 1682 Oldham wrote that 'Padders came { 90} from Shooters Hill in flocks.' In Hall's Chronicle there is a noteworthy description of a meeting on Shooters Hill between Henry VIII. and his queen and Robin Hood, which deserves quotation at length: 'And as they passed by the way,' he says, 'they espied a company of tall yeomen, clothed all in grene with grene whodes and bowes and arrowes to the number of ii C. Then one of them, which called himselfe Robyn Hood, came to the kyng desyring him to se his men shoote, and the kyng was content. Then he whistled, and al the ii C archers shot and losed at once, and then he whisteled agayne and they likewise shot agayne, their arrows whisteled by crafte of the head so that the noyes was strange and great and much pleased the kynge and quene and all the company.' So delighted, indeed, was Henry with the prowess displayed, that when the bold Robin 'desyred them to come into the grene wood and see how the outlaws lyve,' they readily consented. 'Then,' adds the chronicler, 'the hornes blew till they came to the wood under Shoters Hil, and there was an arbor made of boughs, with a hal and a great chamber very well made and covered with floures and swete herbes, which the kyng much praysed.' Encouraged by this success, the outlaw chief made a yet bolder venture, for though he must have known that he was risking the lives of all his merry men as well as his own, he said to the king, 'Outlawes brekefastes is venyson, and therefore you must be content with such fare as we use.' Even this bold confession of guilt, however, did not rouse the ire of the usually hasty monarch; he and his queen, says Hall, 'sate { 91} doune and were served with venyson and wyne by Robin Hood and his men to their contentacion.'

Writing more than a century after this notable meeting so typical of the time at which it occurred, the ubiquitous Pepys, who seems to have been here, there, and everywhere, tells how in a journey from Stratford to London he and his wife's maid rode under a dead body hanging on Shooters Hill, and that the reputation of the famous height was not much improved in Byron's time is proved by the fact that the poet makes his Don Juan shoot a man on it who had accosted him with the trite demand, 'your money or your life.' Now, however, all is changed: no longer is the Bull Inn—where, according to local tradition, Dick Turpin nearly roasted the landlady on her own kitchen fire, to make her confess where she kept her savings—the stopping-place of coaches; the ancient woods are replaced by the Military Hospital, the largest in Great Britain, named after Lord Herbert of Lea, who was Secretary of State for War when it was erected; trim villas and a modern church, that is already too small for its congregation. The one remaining relic of days gone by is the ugly Severndoorg Castle, a massive three-storied tower on the top of the hill, built by the wife of Sir William Jones, to commemorate his taking of the stronghold, after which it is named, on the coast of Malabar.

Less than a century ago, Plumstead, which with Burrage Town now forms the eastern suburb of Woolwich, was a mere isolated hamlet of the marshes, a dependency of the manor given in 960 { 92} by King Edgar to the abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, which after changing hands many times became the property of Queen's College, Oxford. The ancient manor-house, now a farm, still stands near the parish church—which is dedicated to St. Nicolas, the patron saint of fishermen—that, though greatly modernised, retains some few traces of the original building. Of the seat of the noble De Burghesh family, who once owned the site of Burrage Town, nothing now remains, though its memory is preserved in the name of Burrage Place, a row of uninteresting modern houses.

Between Plumstead and Erith is a low-lying district, now being rapidly built over, that is still known by the poetic name of Abbey Wood, in memory of the beautiful Lesnes Abbey to which it once belonged, of which a few traces are still preserved, including a doorway and some portions of the garden walls. Founded in 1178 by Richard de Lacy for a branch of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, the abbey remained in their possession till it was confiscated by Henry VIII., and its site is now the property of Christ's Hospital. Where the fine old Abbey Grange once stood, is the so-called Abbey Farm that was built on the old foundations, and not very long ago was surrounded by beautiful woods. It was due to the untiring energy of the monks of Lesnes Abbey, aided by their neighbours, the owners of Plumstead manor, that the marshes which are now such a valuable property were first drained, but their work was again and again undone by the breaking down of their embankments { 93} and the rushing in of the river. In 1527 two such breaches were made at Plumstead and Erith, and for more than thirty years the abbey lands near the Thames were one unbroken lake, all efforts to draw off the floods having been unavailing. In 1563, however, an Italian named Giacomo Aconzio, a refugee from religious persecution under the protection of Queen Elizabeth, offered to reclaim the submerged district, and an Act of Parliament was passed empowering him 'at his own cost and charges, during the term of four years, to inne, fence and win the said grounds or any parcel of them,' as a reward for which service he was to receive a moiety of the ground thus secured. Six hundred acres only were drained before the death of Aconzio, but the work begun by him was vigorously carried on after he had passed away, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century not more than five hundred acres remained under water. These, too, were eventually restored to cultivation, and since then no serious flood has occurred, though but for the prompt action of the engineers of the Woolwich Arsenal, when through an explosion of gunpowder at Crossness a breach one hundred yards wide was made in the river wall at Erith, the whole of the reclaimed lands would have been once more submerged.

Though all that are now left of the beautiful Abbey Woods are enclosed, glimpses of them can still be obtained here and there, and there are many beautiful walks in the neighbourhood, notably one to Lesnes and Burstall Heaths, the latter of which has recently been secured for the people, and one to the { 94} village of West Wickham, that owns a thirteenth-century church containing the remains of mural frescoes of scenes from the life of Christ. Crossness Point too, where is situated one of the outfalls of the metropolitan drainage works, is within easy reach of Woolwich and Erith, and is really quite a picturesque settlement, the engine-houses, master's villa, workmen's cottages and school, being grouped about a well-proportioned central chimney.

Finely situated on rising ground a little further down the river than Woolwich, and commanding a fine view up and down stream, the densely populated town of Erith, the name of which is supposed to mean the ancient haven, was long an important naval and commercial port, and is still a much frequented yachting station. Considerable doubt exists as to the identity of the first lord of the manor, but the estate was one of those seized by William the Conqueror, who gave it to his half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux. Several centuries later it was granted by Henry VIII. to Elizabeth, Countess of Salisbury, and it now belongs to the Wheatley family, one of whom replaced the old manor-house by a modern mansion. The ancient parish church that rises up from the borders of the marsh a little distance from the town, though it has been a good deal spoiled by restoration, is probably in its main structure much what it was when the famous meeting took place in it between the discontented barons and the commissioners of King John, at which, it is said, the terms of Magna Charta were first discussed. Some portions of the original timber roof remain, above the chancel arch there is a quaint { 95} figure of Christ with arms outstretched, and in the southern aisle is a hagioscope or squint, from which the altar can be seen. Some of the monuments, too, are interesting, notably that to the Countess of Salisbury, who was once the lady of the manor, and there are several good brasses, including two dating from the fifteenth century, one commemorating Roger Sinclair, the other John Aylmer and his wife.

The older portions of the town of Erith, with the background of hills stretching away to the Abbey Woods, retain a certain rural character, and at the annual fair held on Whit-Monday it resumes for a time something of its ancient appearance when it was the seat of a corporation and had its own weekly market. Another strong element of interest of a different kind is the fact that in its neighbourhood the whole life-story of the valley of the Thames can be read backwards, the excavations made for various purposes having laid bare the strata and revealed the remains of many animals, such as the elephant and the great cave tiger, that were extinct in Great Britain long before the historic era. Moreover, the draining of the marshes has brought to light the remains of what was at first supposed to be a submerged forest, but is proved to be the relics of early historic or prehistoric embankments, trunks and roots of a great variety of trees bearing unmistakable traces of human manipulation having been found in a bed of peat below the alluvial clay.

Within easy reach of Erith is the riverside village of Belvedere, destined probably soon to become a town, that takes its name from a mansion on high ground that was built in 1764 by Sir Samuel Gideon, { 96} later Lord Eardley, but was converted, in 1869, into a home for aged seamen, and is now a noted school for boys.

Further away from the Thames, though still to a certain extent in touch with it, is the romantic district collectively known as the Crays, watered by the river from which it takes its name, and in which are situated the town of Crayford and the villages of North Cray, Foot's Cray, Bexley, St. Paul's Cray, Mary Cray, and Orpington. The site of the first, the Crecgenford of the Saxon chronicle, was the scene, in 457, of a battle in which Hengist and his son Æsc fought against the Britons, slaying four thousand men, and here and there in the neighbourhood are many artificial caves with vaulted roofs, locally known as Dane holes, and popularly supposed to have been used as hiding-places for treasure in times of war, but which are possibly really parts of the great system of underground galleries and chambers that was recently opened at Chislehurst.

At the time of the Doomsday Survey, Crayford manor was the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sub-manors of Newbury and Marshal Court were bought, in 1694, by Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel, whose descendants sold the mansion belonging to them to the owner of a linen factory, who quickly converted it into a workshop, thus inaugurating the transformation of a mere hamlet into a thriving manufacturing centre, for it now owns many factories and mills employing a large number of work-people.

The church of Crayford, dedicated to the Apostle { 97} of the North, St. Paulinus, who did much good work in the Thames valley before he became Bishop of York, is a noteworthy structure, in the perpendicular style, with a fine timber roof that probably belonged to an earlier building. It is of somewhat unusual construction, having no nave but two very broad aisles connected by the chancel arch, and it contains some interesting monuments, including one to William Draper and his wife, who died, the former in 1650, the latter in 1652, and one to Dame Elizabeth Shovel, who passed away in 1752.

North Cray, about two miles from Crayford, is still a charming scattered hamlet, and from it a pathway leads across fields to Foot's Cray, the latter said to be named after Godwin Fot, who owned the manor at the time of Edward the Confessor. It passed, after changing hands several times, to the Walsingham family, and in its manor-house was born Sir Francis Walsingham, the Puritan statesman who was so bitter an enemy of the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. Foot's Cray owns a very interesting old church—unfortunately a good deal spoiled by unskilful restoration—with traces of Saxon and Norman work, and a little to the north of it is a fine eighteenth-century mansion belonging to the Vansittart family. Still more noteworthy is the relic of the once beautiful Ruxley church, now used as a barn, that is about three-quarters of a mile from Foot's Cray and deserves careful examination, the sedilia and piscina, with part of the original chalk walls faced with flint, having been preserved when the rest of the materials were sold for building.

Built on the river Cray, that is bridged over in its principal street, Bexley has recently grown almost into a town, but it is still a pretty place and owns an interesting old church—with a lofty tower surmounted by an octagonal spire—that is supposed to occupy the site of a Saxon chapel founded in the ninth century by Wilfrid, Archbishop of Canterbury. A beautiful Norman arch above the Early English southern doorway is probably a relic of a second building that preceded the present one. The latter, that dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century, was well restored some thirty years ago, when portions of a fine old rood screen were skilfully dovetailed into a modern one, the ancient oak stalls were replaced in the chancel, and several brasses that had long been buried were set up in their former positions, including one to the memory of the At Hall family—who owned the eighteenth-century Hall Place on the road from Bexley to Crayford—that bears the symbol of the horn, proving that they held their manor on what was known as a hornage tenure, a horn having been the token of a forester's office.

St. Paul's Cray, named after the much loved St. Paulinus, who was sent to England by St. Gregory in response to an appeal from St. Augustine for labourers to aid him in reaping the great harvest of souls in Kent, is situated in a beautiful valley, and its manor, now the property of the Sydney family, was one of those given by William the Conqueror to Bishop Odo of Bayeux. Its Early English church contains relics of a Norman building that formerly occupied its site, and it ranks with that of St. Mary { 99} Cray and the remains of that of Ruxley amongst the most interesting ecclesiastical survivals in the eastern counties of England. The church of St. Paul's Cray, which presents in its dignified beauty a marked contrast to the commonplace buildings of the modern mills that now make up the greater part of the village, is a noble cruciform structure with a grand nave upheld by massive pillars, a well-preserved piscina and other characteristic features. It should be studied with the somewhat earlier church of All Saints in the neighbouring village of Orpington, in which the transition from the Norman to the Gothic style can be very distinctly traced. The western doorway in the entrance porch, of which there is an ancient holy-water stoup, is one of the most beautiful examples of Norman work in England, and the piscina and sedilia in the chancel are also very fine.

Orpington, the name of which is supposed to signify rising springs, is a typical Kentish village in the heart of the hop country, and is closely associated with the memory of John Ruskin, many of whose famous books were produced at his private printing-press there. It owns, in addition to its beautiful church, a number of fine old houses, including the fifteenth-century Priory now in private possession, with massive walls and good Tudor windows, and the mansion known as Bark Hart, in which the first owner and builder, Perceval Hart, entertained Queen Elizabeth, which probably occupies the site of the old manor-house.

CHAPTER V

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS
OF LONDON

Occupying as it does a unique position on the Thames, which is here often crowded with British and foreign shipping, owning in the group of buildings collectively known as the Hospital one of the masterpieces of eighteenth-century domestic architecture, and in its park one of the most beautiful open spaces near the capital, whilst its Observatory gives to it the distinction of a leader in astronomical research, Greenwich has long ranked as one of the most important and popular suburbs of London. It is mentioned as Grénawic in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , and its history, which is intimately bound up with that of England, can be traced back to the time of Alfred the Great, when it was a mere scattered hamlet, the home of a few poor fishermen. In the days of the protracted struggle with the invading Northmen, their fleet often lay at anchor for months together near Greenwich, within easy reach of their camp on the high ground at the edge of Blackheath, now known as East and West Coombe, that until quite recently retained traces of { 101} their defensive earthworks. It was near Greenwich that the noble St. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been taken prisoner at the siege of that town in 1001, was massacred by the Danes on April 1, 1002, in revenge for his persistent refusal to buy his life at the expense of his friends, and it is supposed to have been on the actual scene of his martyrdom that the parish church was built many centuries afterwards.

The manor of Greenwich, with that of Lewisham, to which it originally belonged, was given by Ethelruda, a niece of King Alfred, to the monks of the Abbey of St. Peter at Ghent, who held it till it was seized by the Crown after the disgrace of Bishop Odo of Bayeux. When in 1414 the alien religious houses were suppressed, it was granted by Henry V. to the newly founded Abbey of Sheen, but later it again reverted to the Crown. There seems to have been a royal residence and chapel at Greenwich as early as the thirteenth century, for it is related that on a certain occasion King Edward I. made an offering of seven shillings and his son, the future Edward II., one of three shillings and sixpence, at each of the holy crosses in the chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin at Greenwich, though exactly where that chapel was situated there is no evidence to show. Later, Henry IV. made his will, dated 1408, at his manor-house of Greenwich, and his son Henry V. bestowed the estate on Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, for his life. On his death in 1417 it was given to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, uncle of the king, and some few years { 102} afterwards two hundred acres of land were added to the property, whilst permission was granted to its owner to build on to the manor-house, a concession confirmed and increased in 1437. The duke, aided by his wife Eleanor, quickly converted the ancient residence into a palace, to which he gave the name of the Pleasaunce, or Placentia, that occupied the site of the western wing of the present hospital—the crypt of its chapel being still preserved beneath the portion now used as a museum—and he began to build the tower that now forms part of the famous Observatory. In 1447, however, Duke Humphrey's work was suddenly cut short by his death, and the greatly improved property reverted to the Crown, to which it has ever since belonged. The park was added to and stocked with deer by Edward IV., and Henry VII. greatly improved the palace, building a brick front on the riverside. He also completed the tower begun by Duke Humphrey, and built a convent close to the palace for the Grey Friars, to whom Edward IV. had already, in 1480, given a chantry and a little chapel dedicated to the Holy Cross, that probably formed the nucleus of the new monastery. Henry VIII. was born at Placentia, and to the end of his life he had a very great affection for it, sparing no expense to beautify it. In its chapel he was married to his first wife, Katharine of Aragon; in its hall he presided over many stately banquets, and took part in its park in many a brilliant tournament. He and his court generally spent Christmas at Greenwich, and it was there, in 1511, that the first masked ball took place in England. { 103} The Princess Mary was born at Greenwich in 1516, and a year later her aunt, Mary, Queen-Dowager of France, was married with much pomp and ceremony, in the chapel of Placentia, to the Duke of Suffolk. In 1517 no less than three queens—Katharine of Aragon, Margaret of Scotland, and Mary, Queen-Dowager of the same country—were together at Greenwich, and in 1527 a grand entertainment was given there to the French ambassadors, who had come to ask the hand of the Princess Mary, then eleven years old, for the Duke of Orleans, the second son of the King of France, although she was already affianced to the Emperor Charles V. It was at Placentia, too, that the fickle Henry VIII. spent part of his honeymoon with Anne Boleyn, and thence that the newly wedded pair made their triumphal progress up the river for the coronation of the bride at Westminster on May 15, 1533, escorted by a long procession of gaily decked barges, bearing the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, the officers of the royal household, the bishops, and great nobles with their retinues, making up such a goodly pageant as had never before been seen on the Thames. In the autumn of the same year the Princess Elizabeth was born at Greenwich, and baptized in the chapel of the Grey Friars convent. For the next two years the happiness of her father and mother in each other seemed to be complete; they were often together at Placentia, dividing most of their time between it and Hampton Court Palace, but after the birth at the latter of Anne Boleyn's still-born son, the clouds that had already begun to { 104} gather before that event became more threatening than ever. At a tournament held in the palace park at Greenwich on May Day 1536, Henry found the excuse he had been long looking for for the condemnation of his wife. The unfortunate queen accidentally dropped a handkerchief, and the king chose to assume that it was meant as a signal for one of the competing knights. Without vouchsafing a word of explanation he started from his seat, called to a few attendants to follow him, and hastened off to London, ordering as he went the execution of Anne's brother. The next morning the same measure was meted out to the queen herself; she was hurried off to the Tower, her request that she might be allowed to take leave of her child being refused. On the 19th of the same month she was executed, her husband, to whom she had addressed a most pathetic appeal, having steadily declined to see her again. The death a year later of her successor, soon after the birth of the future King Edward VI., must have appeared a judgment on the double crime of murder and bigamy, for the king was married to Jane Seymour the day before the death of Anne, and it is just possible that even Henry's hardened conscience may have reproached him, for he avoided Greenwich, with its melancholy associations, for some little time after the loss of his third queen. In January 1540, however, it was the scene of the magnificent reception of the hated Anne of Cleves, whose reluctant suitor had decided to divorce her before the ceremony at which he promised to cherish her till death should part him { 105} from her. On the occasion of this mock marriage, that was celebrated in the private chapel of Placentia, the whole of the park and of the adjoining Blackheath, in spite of the inclement season of the year, was dotted with tents and pavilions of cloth of gold for the accommodation of the queen and her ladies. To quote from Hall's Chronicle , the 'esquires gentlemen pensioners and serving men (were so) well horsed and apparelled that whoever well viewed them might say that they for tall and comely personages and clean of limb and body' were able to give the greatest prince in Christendom a mortal breakfast if he were the king's enemy.' In the opinion of this partial chronicler, however, Henry himself, when he rode forth from the palace attended by all his great nobles and the foreign ambassadors, far excelled them all, so rich was his apparel, so gorgeous the trappings of his steed, 'so goodly his personage and his royal gesture.'

Neither the doomed Catherine Howard nor the more fortunate Catherine Parr, who, but for the fact that she survived her husband, would probably have shared the fate of her predecessor, were ever at Greenwich, but the palace there was the home for a short time of Edward VI., who spent the Christmas of 1552 there, and died in it in 1553. Queen Mary, too, occasionally resided at Placentia, leading an extremely quiet life, that was one day disturbed by an alarming incident, for a salute from a passing vessel was fired by mistake from a loaded gun, and a ball pierced the wall of the room in which she sat with her ladies, fortunately without injuring anyone.

It was Queen Elizabeth who restored to her birthplace something of the éclat it had enjoyed during her father's lifetime. She spent the greater part of several summers there, celebrating on April 23 the fête of St. George, the patron-saint of England, with great pomp, receiving foreign ambassadors in state, and giving audience to her own faithful subjects when it suited her humour and convenience. In the first year of her reign she reviewed in her park at Greenwich a large company of London volunteers, who had banded themselves together to aid her against the rebel Duke of Norfolk, and it was in the palace that she held her first chapter of the Order of the Garter, after which she went to supper with her devoted adherent, the Earl of Pembroke, at his seat of Baynard's Castle, who, the repast over, attended her whilst she indulged in her favourite pastime of boating on the Thames, the royal barge attended by hundreds of smaller craft passing to and fro again and again, to the delight of the crowds assembled on the banks to watch the brilliant scene.

Many significant stories are told of the doings of the maiden queen at Greenwich; how, for instance, she caused a dishonest purveyor of poultry to be hanged on the complaint of a farmer who boldly intercepted her on one of her progresses, crying in a loud voice, in spite of all the efforts of the attendants to silence him, 'Which is the Queen? Which is the Queen?' Elizabeth herself replied to him, listened to all he had to say, and granted his request without more ado, although he dared to assume that she had { 107} devoured the hens and ducks seized by her servant, declaring that she could eat more than his own daughter, who was blessed with a very good appetite.

Every year on Maundy Thursday it was the queen's habit to wash one of the feet of as many poor women as the years of her own life, and the ceremony on these occasions was alike lengthy and imposing. A service in the chapel inaugurated the proceedings, and the feet of the chosen women having been first thoroughly cleansed by members of the queen's household, her majesty entered the hall attended by her whole court, and performed her part with great condescension, kissing each foot she had washed with earnest devotion and making over it the sign of the cross. Gifts of wearing apparel and food were then presented to the women, one of them chosen beforehand receiving the costume worn by her majesty.

It is said to have been at Greenwich that Sir Walter Raleigh was first presented to the queen, and the oft-told episode of the cloak is by some authorities supposed to have taken place there, the gallant young courtier having flung down his richly decorated mantle on the landing-stage just in time to prevent his royal patron from wetting her feet as she alighted from her barge opposite the palace. Whether there be any truth in this version of the story it is certain that Raleigh was often at Greenwich, as was also his rival the handsome Earl of Essex, who was so soon to succeed him in the favour of the fickle queen. It may possibly have been from { 108} Placentia that Raleigh started for Ireland in 1587, and it was certainly there that he learned to love his future wife Bessy Throckmorton, one of the queen's maids of honour, jealousy of whom had much to do with his committal to the Tower in 1592.

To the end Queen Elizabeth retained her affection for Greenwich, and some of the last walks she took were in her beloved park there, in which is preserved a mighty hollow oak-tree, capable of holding no less than twenty people, that is still known as Queen Elizabeth's and is protected by a railing from injury. Her successor James I., however, cared little for the palace or its grounds, and bestowed them both in 1605 upon his wife, Anne of Denmark, who became much attached to her new possession. She greatly improved the old palace and began the building of another, to which she gave the name of the House of Delight. Her affection for Greenwich was shared by her son, Charles I., and his wife, Henrietta Maria, who were often in residence there before their troubles began, and had the House of Delight, which now forms the central portion of the Royal Naval School, completed by Inigo Jones. They opened negotiations, too, with some of the chief artists of the day, including Rubens, who was often their guest at Placentia, for the painting of the walls of the new palace, but the terms asked were prohibitive, and all too soon more pressing matters took up all the king's time and thoughts. After his fatal journey to Scotland Charles I. was never again at Greenwich and for some little time after his death the palaces there were deserted, but later Cromwell resided for { 109} some time in the older of the two. On the Restoration the Greenwich estate became once more the property of the royal family, and the widowed queen Henrietta Maria lived in one of the palaces for a short time. That of Placentia was, however, now in such a melancholy state of decay that it was decided to pull it down, and a new palace was begun on its site after the designs of Inigo Jones, of which, however, only one wing was completed, with which, says Pepys in his Diary , 'the king was mightily pleased,' but his majesty's ardour soon cooled, and writing in 1669 the gossipy journalist remarks: 'The king's house at Greenwich goes on slow but is very pretty.' Gradually the slowness became stagnation, Charles II. lost all interest in the work, and neither he nor his successors, James II. or William III., used the new palace as a residence. The wife of the latter, however, who cherished many happy memories of Greenwich, resolved to turn the royal buildings there to account by using them as a hospital for disabled seamen. The idea, it is said, first occurred to her after the great victory of La Hogue in 1692, at which so many English sailors were crippled for life; and without waiting for the return of her husband from Holland, she at once ordered various alterations to be made to render the building suitable for its new purpose. Later William entered very cordially into the scheme, and in 1694 the palace and the estate connected with it were formally given over to trustees 'for the relief and support of seamen of the Royal navy ... who by reason of age or other disabilities shall be incapable of further service { 110} ... and also for the sustenance of the widows and maintenance and education of the children of seamen happening to be slain or disabled in such sea service.'

Unfortunately Queen Mary died before the work inaugurated by her was completed, but William III. resolved to make the hospital a worthy memorial of her, and entrusted the task of supplementing the existing buildings with another of noble proportions to Sir Christopher Wren, under whom was to work as treasurer John Evelyn, and as secretary the famous dramatist and architect Sir John Vanbrugh, who in 1714 built the mansion known as Vanburgh Castle, still standing on Maize Hill on the eastern outskirts of the park, in which a number of French prisoners were shut up during the last war with France.

Greenwich Hospital was designed without fee by Sir Christopher, for love, as he said, of the cause of the seamen, and is considered one of his masterpieces. With his usual skill in subordinating detail to general effect and dovetailing the new on to the old, he made the colonnades connecting his work with that of his predecessors appear an integral part of a single harmonious scheme, and fortunately there is nothing incongruous with that scheme in the additions made since his death. As it now stands the hospital consists of four groups of buildings, named respectively after Charles II., Queen Anne, Queen Mary, and King William. The two first on either side of the great square face the river and are both handsome structures, but they are excelled in beauty of design by the two last. In Queen Mary's is the richly decorated chapel completed in 1789 { 111} that replaces an earlier building destroyed by fire in 1779, whilst King William's encloses the most important feature of all, the fine Painted Hall originally the refectory of the pensioners, that was decorated between 1708 and 1729 with a series of mural and ceiling paintings by Sir James Thornhill, and is now used as a national gallery for portraits of naval heroes and pictures of marine subjects, some of which, notably Turner's 'Battle of Trafalgar,' are real masterpieces. Many banquets to royal and other distinguished guests have been held in the Painted Hall, but the most memorable association with it is the fact that in it in 1806 the dead body of Lord Nelson lay in state for three days before it was taken by boat on January 8 to be interred in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Until 1865 Greenwich Hospital continued to be one of the most useful and appreciated charitable institutions of the United Kingdom, but at that date it was decided, in accordance with the wishes of the seamen, that they should be allowed pensions enabling them to live in their own homes. In 1869 the last of the inmates left, and four years later the buildings were re-opened as a naval college, those named after Queen Anne being set aside as a museum of naval relics, models of ships, etc., for the use of the students, to which, however, the public are admitted. From the first the new school throve in a remarkable way, and at the present day as many as a thousand pupils are received in it at a time.

The parish church of Greenwich, dedicated to St. Alphege, occupies the site of an earlier one, { 112} that in its turn is supposed to have replaced a chapel marking the spot where the martyrdom of the holy man it commemorated took place. The present building was completed in 1718, and is a fairly good example of the Renaissance style then in vogue. It contains a fine memorial window to its titular saint, who is represented in his bishop's robes raising the right hand in blessing, an ornate royal pew, some good carving by the famous Grinling Gibbons, and on one of the walls a quaint old painting representing Charles I. in prayer. In the crypt beneath rest Major-General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, the celebrated musician, Thomas Tallis, and the famous beauty, Polly Peacham, who became Duchess of Bolton, and resided with her husband the duke at Westcombe Park. In the same place was also interred the noted antiquarian, William Lombarde, who lived in the time of Elizabeth and founded the picturesque almshouses named after her, still to be seen opposite the modern railway station, but when the old church was pulled down his tomb was removed to Sevenoaks.

Greenwich Park, that was first roughly enclosed by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester and his wife Eleanor in 1433, was further protected some two centuries later by a brick wall erected by order of James I. The grounds were laid out by the famous landscape gardener, Le Nôtre, chosen by Charles II., who took a great interest in the progress of the work, himself planting many trees, including the noble avenue of Spanish chestnuts that is still one of the most noteworthy features of the park. { 113} It was the same monarch who decided to transform into an Observatory the tower built by Duke Humphrey, which had been the home for many years of the younger members of the royal family, and in which the Princess Mary, one of the daughters of Edward IV., died in 1482. Later the building, to which the inappropriate name of Mirefleur was given, was used as a prison, and in it Queen Elizabeth had the Earl of Leicester shut up after his marriage to the widowed Duchess of Essex. James I. gave the property to Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, founder of the still flourishing Trinity Hospital, and he greatly enlarged the Tower, converting it into a really fine mansion. The work of transforming it into an observatory was entrusted to Sir Christopher Wren, who found it necessary to have the greater part taken down, but he used the old materials; and in spite of the many additions that have been made since his time, the group of buildings, with their numerous turrets and domes, harmonise well with each other and their surroundings. Through Greenwich Observatory runs the meridian line from which longitude is reckoned, and from it the exact time is conveyed by electricity every day at one o'clock to the chief towns of Great Britain. In it elaborate records are made of the daily changes in temperature, the direction of the wind, and many other data of importance to astronomical and meteorological science. The great telescope, that is twenty-eight feet long and has an object glass of twenty-eight inches, is the most powerful anywhere in use, and near to the chief entrance is the huge astronomical clock that shows the { 114} true official time. Many distinguished men have held the important post of Astronomer-Royal at Greenwich, including Flamsteed, Halley, Bradley, and Sir George Airey, under whose enlightened auspices the observatory has won first rank amongst similar institutions elsewhere, a position it seems likely long to maintain if its interests are protected from the dangers that have recently begun to threaten them. The annual reports issued by the Astronomer-Royal are practically a history of astronomical science, and it is impossible to overestimate the value of the quiet, systematic, unremitting work done under his auspices all the year round, or of the unceasing vigilance of the experts whose business it is to make sure that all the instruments used are in the highest possible state of efficiency.

From the immediate vicinity of the Observatory, especially from Flamsteed Hill, a fine view is obtained of the river with its shipping—the Isle of Dogs, and its church, connected by a subway with the mainland, and the country between Greenwich and London; but, unfortunately, the long famous prospect from One Tree Hill, so called after a single giant growth that formerly surmounted its summit, is now nearly shut out by trees and shrubs, the planting of which it is impossible to justify, for they were certainly not needed. In spite of this, however, Greenwich Park remains one of the most beautiful and popular open spaces within easy reach of the capital. The deer which roam about in it are so tame that they will eat out of the hands of strangers, and even when it is crowded { 115} with holiday-makers it still retains something of the old-fashioned aroma of days long gone by. The Ranger's Lodge, now used as a restaurant and meeting-place for local clubs, that has one entrance from Greenwich Park and another from Blackheath, so that it forms a kind of link between the two, is a fine old mansion associated with many interesting memories of the time when the post of Ranger was held by noble or royal personages. It was once the home, for instance, of the famous Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, and later of the Dowager-Duchess of Brunswick, whose daughter, the unhappy Caroline, Princess of Wales, lived near by in the now destroyed Montague House, going once a week to see her child, the Princess Charlotte, who was under the care of her mother. In comparatively recent times the Lodge was occupied by Prince Arthur of Connaught when he was studying at the Woolwich Academy, and in its grounds, recently added to the public park, is a model of a fort built by him, and a curious bath bearing a quaint inscription.

The common known as Blackheath, probably because of its sombre appearance, that adjoins the parish of Greenwich, is all that is left of a vast unenclosed tract of country, which between the time of St. Alphege and the early years of the nineteenth century often played an important part in the history of England. On it, in June 1381, Wat Tyler and his followers were encamped for some days, their numbers constantly increasing, before the march to London that was to end so disastrously. There Richard II. and his young { 116} bride Isabel of France, Henry V. and his victorious troops fresh from Agincourt, and Henry VI. after his coronation at Paris, were at different times met by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, who had come from the city to welcome them. There, too, after the tragic death of their leader, the adherents of Jack Cade knelt, with halters round their necks, before Henry VI. to plead for pardon; and there, a few months later, the same monarch, with his army around him, awaited the coming of the Duke of York, whose claim to the throne was stronger than his own, resolved, in spite of all his promises to the contrary, to have him sent a prisoner to London. It was on Blackheath that the son of the Duke, Edward IV. halted, in 1471, to receive the congratulations of the citizens of London on his return from Paris after signing the famous treaty of peace with Louis of France, and there, twenty-six years afterwards, Henry VII. met and cut to pieces the rebels from Cornwall, who had marched to London under the joint leadership of Lord Audley and the sturdy blacksmith Michael Joseph, whose burial-place, a mound locally known as the Smith's Forge, from which Whitefield used to preach, is marked by a group of fir-trees. To Blackheath came, in 1519, the Papal legate Cardinal Campeggio, to take counsel with the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, and there in the same year the High Admiral of France, the chivalrous Bonivet, attended by many young French gallants in gorgeous array, was welcomed with great pomp by the Earl of Surrey, who held the same office { 117} in England. During the reigns of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, Charles I., and Charles II., Blackheath was, as a matter of course, the scene of many a pageant besides the one already alluded to in connection with Greenwich, when the wooer of so many fair women went forth from his palace there to receive his bride, the unattractive Anne of Cleves. The last great historical gathering which took place on the Heath was that of May 29, 1660, when the army was drawn up on it to welcome back Charles II., an event graphically described by Macaulay, who remarks: 'In the midst of the general joy at the restoration, one spot [Blackheath] presented a dark and threatening aspect, for though the king smiled, bowed, and extended his hand graciously to the lips of the colonels and majors, all his courtesy was in vain. The countenances of the soldiers were sad and lowering, and had they given way to their feelings the festive pageant in which they reluctantly formed a part would have had a mournful and bloody end.'

It was in the reign of James I., who introduced in his southern dominions the favourite game of Scotland, that was founded what is now the oldest athletic society of England, the Blackheath Golf Club, the history of which is one of unbroken continuity, for it has flourished ever since, surviving the popular fair, that until it was suppressed by Government in 1873 used to take place in May and October of every year. Blackheath is now in fact a local playground rather than a factor in the national life; much of it has been built over, and the little village { 118} named after it has become a populous town. There remain, however, a few fine old mansions to recall the days gone by, notably that known as Morden's College at the south-eastern corner of the still unenclosed common, built in 1694 by Sir John Morden as a home for twelve decayed merchants, and added to later to meet the needs of the forty pensioners now received in it, the value of the property left in trust for the charity by the owner having greatly increased since his death.

The village of Charlton, on a hill about halfway between Greenwich and Woolwich, with its seventeenth-century church that has been well restored, and its many old cottages, is now much what Blackheath was a century ago, but it seems likely ere long to lose its picturesque appearance. It will always, however, retain the advantage of commanding a fine view of the Thames valley, and it is still in touch with much beautiful scenery. Its manor-house, known as Charlton House, said to have been designed by Inigo Jones, is a good example of the domestic architecture of the period at which it was built, and probably occupies the site of the ancient homestead that with the rest of the estate of Charlton was given by William the Conqueror to Bishop Odo of Bayeux.

Two miles south-east of Greenwich is the popular suburb of Eltham, the name of which is a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon Ealdham, signifying the ancient homestead, that was in olden times an important town with a royal palace, of which the banqueting-hall alone remains. Given with { 119} Charlton and many another valuable property in southern England to Bishop Odo of Bayeux by William the Conqueror, the manor of Eltham passed through many vicissitudes, reverting again and again to the Crown, and becoming after the Restoration the property of Sir John Shaw. The date of the erection of the palace, the ruins of which are situated near to the picturesque mansion known as Eltham Court, is unknown, but it is referred to as a royal residence in the supplement to the thirteenth-century Historia Major of the famous Latin chronicler Matthew Paris, that is supposed to have been added by William Rishanger, a monk of St. Albans Abbey. In any case it seems certain that Henry III. spent Christmas of 1270 in it, though it was probably not then completed, and Edward II. and his wife Queen Isabella were very fond of it. It was in it that their son John, familiarly called John of Eltham, was born, and there his elder brother Edward III. took his young bride, Philippa of Hainault, in 1328. The first parliament of his reign was held in it, and he was residing there just before he broke free from the pernicious influence of his mother, whom he banished to Rising Castle. It was at Eltham that the famous banquet was given to the captive king John of France by Edward III. and the Black Prince in 1363, at which probably the princess royal, who was to become the wife of the prisoner, was present; and there the English monarch presided, the year before the death of his beloved son, over the parliament that met after the { 120} conclusion of the long war with France. Richard II., who was made Prince of Wales at Eltham in 1375, spent a good deal of time there during his minority, and went there after his marriage in 1382 to his first wife Anne of Bohemia, who shared his affection for the palace. The royal couple kept Christmas at Eltham in 1384, 1385, and 1386, receiving on the last occasion Leo, King of Bohemia, who had come to England to plead for aid against the Turks, and also a less welcome deputation of the faithful Commons who had sought an audience to remonstrate with the young king on his extravagance.

In 1395, a year after the death of Queen Anne, which was such a bitter grief to Richard, the French historian Froissart, who was then engaged in writing his famous Chronicles , went to Eltham to present one of his books to the widowed king, and was present at a council, of which he gives a very graphic account. He was also, he relates, admitted to a private audience in the monarch's bedroom and he tells how he laid his gift upon the bed and how greatly the recipient appreciated it, for he dipped eagerly into the manuscript here and there reading portions of it aloud.

It was at Eltham in 1396 that the marriage was arranged between Richard II. and the eight-year-old Isabella, daughter of Charles VI. of France, and it was from the palace that the newly married pair went forth in great state for the coronation of the bride in Westminster Abbey. Isabella was but eleven years old when three years later her husband { 121} was deposed, and they were never again at Eltham; but Henry IV. often held his court in the palace, spending Christmas there no less than four times. It was in it that he was first seized with the illness that terminated fatally in Westminster Abbey in March 1413, and there that his son and successor Henry V. spent much of the short time he lived in England. From Eltham Palace he hastened up to London in January 1414 to deal with the Lollards. Henry VI., after his long minority, and before he realised how insecure was his tenure of the throne, went to Eltham to superintend the restoration of the palace for the reception of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and her infant son, the ill-fated Prince Edward, but so far as the royal family was concerned his labour was all in vain. The queen never saw the home prepared for her, and it was her bitter enemy Edward IV. who reaped the benefit of her husband's improvements. The new king became greatly attached to his palace at Eltham, and some authorities attribute the building of the banqueting-hall to him, though the probability is that he only enlarged and beautified it. In 1480 his third daughter Bridget was born in the palace, and baptized in the private chapel, and in 1482, three months before his sudden death, the king kept Christmas there with great pomp, daily entertaining more than two thousand guests. The founder of the Tudor dynasty too, Henry VII., whose marriage with one of Edward IV.'s daughters united the red and white roses, kept up the traditions of Eltham hospitality, and did much to embellish the palace, building, according to Hasted, a handsome { 122} front towards the moat. The sixteenth-century chronicler Lambarde gives a vivid description of the fair residence at Eltham, but he also strikes the note of the waning of its glory, for he remarks that the court was beginning to prefer Greenwich to it. Henry VIII., it is true, was sometimes at Eltham, keeping Christmas there in 1515, when a mock tournament was held in the banqueting-hall, and again in 1526 when he took refuge there from the plague then raging in London, but he never really cared for the palace as a residence. In 1527 Cardinal Wolsey, who was still in high favour, spent a fortnight at Eltham, drawing up there what are known as the Statutes of Eltham, and are still honoured at the English court for regulating the affairs of the royal household. This was perhaps the last time that any important gatherings assembled in the once popular residence, for though Queen Elizabeth and James I. were sometimes there, their visits were but brief. Charles I. never lived in the palace, but his favourite painter Sir Antony van Dyck was once the guest of the king's physician Sir Theodore de Mayerne in what was then Park Lodge, and Horace Walpole in his chatty Anecdotes of Painting refers to sketches made by the great master in the neighbourhood.

After the death on the scaffold of Charles I., Eltham Palace was taken possession of by parliament, and a report was drawn up of its condition, in which it is stated that it consisted of a fair chapel, a great hall, and several suites of apartments covering an acre of ground, all very much out of repair. { 123} A little later the entire building was sold for the modest sum of £2753, the chapel and all the rooms were pulled down, and the grand banqueting-hall was converted into a barn. Several centuries elapsed before any effort was made to rescue it from this degraded position, but in 1828, at the instance of the Princess Sophia, who was then living at Greenwich, it was carefully restored, and it now remains, with the picturesque ivy-clad bridge spanning the moat, a notable witness to what must have been the beauty and grandeur of the group of buildings of which it was once the most remarkable feature. The hammer-beam roof, in spite of the loss of most of its pendants, ranks with that of Westminster Hall as a fine example of combined lightness and strength of construction, and the effect of the vast and lofty hall, with its grand bays at the upper end, must indeed have been impressive before the windows by which it was lighted from both sides were blocked up.

When Eltham Palace was pulled down, the three parks that had belonged to it were also practically destroyed, all the venerable trees in them having been cut down, so that, as remarked by a seventeenth-century writer of somewhat gruesome tastes, there was scarcely one left to make a gibbet, the deer were killed off, and what had long been one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods near London was transformed into a scene of desolation.

In spite of its many interesting associations there is now little that is distinctive about modern Eltham. Its church, however, retains the quaint wooden tower and shingle spire of an earlier building, and { 124} there are a few fine old mansions in the neighbourhood, notably the Elizabethan Well Hall, now a farmhouse, in which Sir Thomas More's favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, lived for some time.

Two densely populated suburbs, that not long ago were remote and secluded villages, picturesquely built on the Ravensbourne, are Lee and Lewisham, the former connected with Eltham Palace by a subterranean passage which was discovered in 1836, and is supposed to have formed part of a complete system of communication between the latter and the outer world. Its exit from the Eltham end was protected by massive iron gates beneath the moat, near to which a flight of steps led down to a strong-room, probably used as a hiding-place for treasure, though, strange to say, there are no local traditions concerning it.

All that is now left at Lee to recall the old days when it was an outlying hamlet of Eltham, is the tower of the ancient parish church; and Lewisham, the name of which means the homestead in the meadow, is even more modernised, though its history can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times, when it seems to have formed part with Greenwich and the two Coombes of one property that was given, as related above, by Ethelruda, a niece of King Alfred to the Abbey of St. Paul's at Ghent, in connection with which a Benedictine priory was founded at Lewisham, the memory of which is preserved in the name of the Priory Farm occupying its site. Another suburb in close touch with Eltham is Mottino-ham that retains more of its rural character than either { 125} Lee or Lewisham; and not far away are the still pretty villages of Rushey Green, Catford, and Catford Bridge. More celebrated than any of these, however, is the important settlement of Chislehurst, that, owing chiefly to the exceptional beauty of its situation on a lofty common, defended from encroachment by a natural rampart of woods, seems likely to be able long to defy the levelling influences which have spoiled so many of the districts of outlying London.

Originally but a remote and secluded hamlet scarcely known to the outside world, Chislehurst has of late years become a centre of archæological interest, for in addition to its other attractions it enjoys the unique distinction of being in close touch with one of the most remarkable and extensive systems of subterranean galleries and caves, the ramifications of which are supposed to be many miles in length, that have yet been discovered in England. The existence of this underground world was long known, but it is only recently, thanks to the enterprise of Mr. Ryan, proprietor of the Beckley Arms Hotel, in whose grounds there is an entrance to it, that it has been opened to the public. Mr. Ryan had many of the galleries and chambers cleared of the rubbish—the accumulation of centuries—encumbering them, and lighted them with electricity, so that it is now possible to explore them without fear of being lost or buried alive. The origin and purpose of this wonderful net-work of excavations are alike unknown, some experts claiming that they were used for Druidical worship, two altar tables, probably used { 126} for sacrifices, having been found; whilst others are of opinion that they were used as hiding-places in times of war, or as storehouses for grain and treasure. Some few of the smaller chambers, that are mere cells, can only be entered on all fours, and could be defended by a single man, whilst the larger ones are capable of holding as many as fifty people. There were two ways of gaining access to them, one by steps in the sides of the shafts pierced here and there, the other with the aid of a notched pole which could easily be removed, and Mr. Nicholls, Vice-President of the Archæological Society, in a deeply interesting pamphlet on the subject, expresses an opinion that in times of danger the whole population of the district may have lived contentedly underground for weeks at a time. 'The little colony,' he says, 'might be working in the fields or tending their cattle; suddenly a cry of alarm is raised, the lookout man rushes in and reports that the enemy is approaching in force. If,' he adds, 'the incursion were too strong to be resisted, there would be an immediate stampede; the population would swarm down the shafts, and in a few minutes not a sound would be left to guide the invaders. Even if the raiders succeeded in finding a shaft they would be practically helpless, since one or two resolute men at the foot could hold it against a host.' Possibly the caves may have been used in succession by many different tenants, the Britons after their defeat by the Romans may have withdrawn into yet deeper recesses of the forests, and their conquerors may have driven new galleries through the ancient moatings, to be in { 127} their turn supplanted by the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, so that could the whole story of the excavations be read, fresh light might be thrown on much of the early history of Southern England. As time goes on, and further explorations are made, new facts may come to light, but at present, in spite of the many theories advanced, the mystery remains unsolved.

Originally a dependency of Dartford, now a thriving manufacturing town, the manor of Chislehurst, the name of which is supposed to signify a wood of pebbles, was given by King John to a Norman noble known as Hugh, Earl of St. Paul, and after many vicissitudes it became the property, in 1584, of the Walsingham family, to whom it was granted on a long lease by Queen Elizabeth. The Walsinghams were already in residence in Chislehurst, and the future minister, Sir Francis, was born in the village in 1536, though exactly where is not known, the so-called manor-house near the church, which is generally spoken of as his birthplace, not having been built until 1584.

The parish church of Chislehurst, though practically modern, was built on the lines of its sixteenth-century predecessor, and with its lofty spire presents a picturesque appearance. It contains the altar tomb of the Walsingham family and several other noteworthy memorials, including a fifteenth-century brass in memory of Alan Porter, and a monument to William Selwyn, designed by Chantrey. The font is said to be of great antiquity, and may possibly have been in use in Saxon times, and in { 128} the churchyard are some interesting old tombs, including that in which rest the remains of Mr. and Mrs. Bonar, who were murdered by their servant in 1813.

A well-preserved cock-pit, now fortunately disused, opposite the church, is another Chislehurst link with the past, and in the neighbourhood are some fine old mansions, of which the most noteworthy is Camden Place, named after the antiquarian William Camden, who bought it in 1609, but more celebrated as having been the scene of the cruel fate of Mr. and Mrs. Bonar, and the home later of Napoleon III., who died in it in 1873. The widowed Empress Eugénie lived in it for some time, and built the memorial chapel in connection with the little Roman Catholic chapel in Crown Lane, in which rested the remains of her husband, and later of her son, before their removal to the Mausoleum at Farnborough, near her present home. It was at Camden Place that the Empress received the news of the death in South Africa of the Prince Imperial, to whose memory she erected the fine cross outside the entrance gates.

Within easy reach of Chislehurst, and sharing to some extent the beauty of its surroundings, are the charming village of Beckley, that owns a fine modern church and a picturesque tower, the latter now the property of the Kent Water Company, and the thriving town of Bromley, the name of which is derived from the broom that flourishes in the neighbourhood. The latter owns what was once the palace of the bishops of Rochester, { 129} built on the site of the ancient manor-house, and now a private residence, in the grounds of which is a medicinal well dedicated to St. Blaise, that used to be credited with miraculous powers of healing, and is associated with the memory of King Ethelbert, for to commemorate his conversion to Christianity special indulgences were granted to those who drank its waters. Another noteworthy feature of Bromley is the well-restored parish church—in which rests the wife of Dr. Johnson—rising from the highest point of the town, and approached by an avenue of venerable elms from a picturesque lych gate, whilst here and there in the town are a few quaint old houses, and a little outside it the seventeenth-century buildings of Bromley College, now a home for the widows and daughters of clergymen.

Another village of Kent that has of late years grown into a town is Beckenham, prettily situated on a tributary of the Ravensbourne, in the original straggling high street of which there remain, however, several ancient half-timbered houses. The old manor-house known as Beckenham Place, too, is still standing, and the modern parish church is as nearly as possible a reproduction of the old one that was pulled down on account of its melancholy state of decay in 1885. The well-preserved lych gate, with an avenue of yews leading from it to the southern entrance, is but little changed from what it was long years ago, and in the rebuilding of the church care was taken to preserve the old monuments, that include the altar-tomb of Sir Humphrey Style, who died in 1552, and that of { 130} Dame Margaret Damsell, who passed away in 1563.

The history of Beckenham Manor can be traced back to pre-Norman times: it was given by William the Conqueror to Bishop Odo of Bayeux, and in the reign of Edward I. it was in the possession of the De la Rochelle family. Later it was owned, in right of his wife, by William Brandon, who was standard-bearer to Henry, Earl of Richmond, and was killed at the battle of Bosworth. During the reign of Henry VII., Charles, Duke of Suffolk, the son of this William Brandon, often visited Beckenham Place, and is said to have there entertained Henry VIII. when that monarch was on his way to meet his bride Anne of Cleves.

The rapidly growing suburb of Shortlands—the birthplace of the historian George Grote—connects Beckenham with Bromley, and in touch with it are several noted mansions, including the Georgian Langley House, Eden Lodge, named after the first Lord Auckland, who lived in it for many years, and was often visited by William Pitt, and the eighteenth-century Kelsey House, on the site of an earlier residence that is often referred to in the records of the reigns of Henry III. and his successors.

CHAPTER VI

OUTLYING LONDON IN NORTH-EAST SURREY

Of the many villages of Northern Surrey that have during the last half-century been converted into popular suburbs of London, few have had a more interesting history than Dulwich, which has, moreover, in spite of all the changes that have taken place in it and its surroundings, retained something of the sylvan character that distinguished it when it was a mere outlying forest hamlet of the monastery of Bermondsey. On the dissolution of the religious houses the manor of Dulwich was given by Henry VIII. to Thomas Calton, from whose descendants it was bought in 1606 by the famous actor and Lord Mayor of London, Edward Alleyn, who on his retirement from the stage took up his residence in the ancient mansion belonging to it, from which he watched the rising up of the 'Chappell, Schoole House and Almshouses' that formed the nucleus of the celebrated college founded by him, to which he gave the beautiful name of God's Gift.

In his delightful retreat the generous patron worked out the details of his scheme with the aid of his architect and other helpers, and in its grand { 132} old hall he probably received the first master and warden of his new foundation, and nominated the earliest recipients of his bounty. From the Dulwich manor-house, too, are dated many of the letters still preserved, that reveal the difficulties with which Edward Alleyn had to contend before he could obtain the royal sanction necessary to the permanent success of his enterprise, his chief opponent, strange to say, having been the enlightened Lord Bacon, then Lord Chancellor of England, who was anxious that he should endow learning rather than relieve poverty. In 1619, however, the victory was finally won, for on the 21st June of that year the Great Seal of England was affixed to letters patent granting leave to Edward Alleyn 'to found and establish a college in Dulwich to endure and remain for ever to the glory of Almighty God.' God's Gift College, thus started on its long and useful career, originally consisted of a master and a warden, both to be of the same name as the founder, four fellows, six poor brethren, six poor sisters, and twelve poor scholars to be selected from four London parishes. Later, however, the founder somewhat extended his scheme, admitting eighty instead of twelve students, and allowing the children of non-resident parents to share in the benefits of the college on the payment of a small fee.

The land included with the 'Chappell, Schoole House and Almshouses' in Edward Alleyn's munificent gift extended from the heights now covered with houses, known as Champion and Denmark Hill, across the valley in which nestled the village of Dulwich, { 133} to the lofty ridges now occupied by Sydenham and Forest Hill, the value of which has increased more than a thousandfold since the death of the donor, so that it became absolutely necessary to modify the original rules, which, in spite of Alleyn's earnest desire to provide for future contingencies, were from the first wanting in the elasticity necessary to meet the inevitable changes that time brings about. Not until 1857, however, was any radical transformation effected, but at that date an Act of Parliament was passed fully meeting the necessities of the case.

The buildings erected under the superintendence of Alleyn fell into decay soon after their completion, and those replacing them suffered much during the Civil War, when troops were quartered in the chapel, who not only defaced the walls and desecrated the altar, but melted down the leaden coffins enshrined in it to convert the material into bullets. After the death of Charles I., whose cause had been espoused by the fellows, all the revenues and lands of the college were confiscated by Cromwell, but on the accession of Charles II. they were restored to their owners, and they have never since been tampered with.

The ancient college buildings have been well restored, and retain the old entrance-gates of finely wrought iron surmounted by the crest and motto of the founder. They are grouped about a central square, and consist of a chapel, in the chancel of which Edward Alleyn is buried, a dining-hall, and an audit room, in which is an interesting collection { 134} of portraits, a library containing more than five thousand volumes, a schoolroom, and a kitchen. Adjoining the quadrangle, on the south-west, is the comparatively modern picture-gallery, built after the designs of Sir John Soane for the reception of a fine collection of pictures bequeathed to the college in 1811 by Sir Francis Bourgeois, on the singular condition that he and his friends, Monsieur and Madame Desenfans, from whom he had inherited the paintings, should be buried near them. Their remains rest in a mausoleum connected with the gallery, that was thrown open to the public in 1817, and contains, amongst many other priceless treasures, masterpieces by Rembrandt, Murillo, Velasquez, Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The new school buildings at Dulwich were built under the superintendence of Sir Charles Barry after the radical change in the constitution of the college, and were opened in 1870. They include a noble central block with a spacious hall, a lecture-theatre and library, whilst two wings connected with them afford accommodation for a large staff of masters and some eight hundred boys.

Although the fame of its college and gallery has long since eclipsed that of its spa, Dulwich was at one time much frequented by the wealthy citizens of London, who resorted there to drink the waters of a spring near the Green Man Inn, the site of which was later occupied by the private school of Dr. Glennie, pulled down in its turn in 1825, in which Lord Byron was a pupil for two years. There was a rival well in the neighbouring hamlet of Sydenham { 135} that was even more popular, but all traces of both are now lost, and there is absolutely nothing about the densely populated neighbourhood dominated by the Crystal Palace, to recall the days when Campbell lived in the old house still standing on Peak Hill, where he wrote 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' 'O'Connor's Child,' and the 'Battle of the Baltic.' The view from the terrace of the palace itself is of course much the same in its general features as that upon which the poet looked down, but the forest in which he used to wander, that gave its name to Forest Hill, is replaced by a sea of villas with no special character about them. Fortunately the palace, in spite of the north wing having been destroyed by fire in 1866, is a dignified-looking structure. It was built with the materials and partly on the plan of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the public are to be congratulated on the fact that its three hundred acres of grounds preserve some of their original rural character when the district was one of the most beautiful near London.

Anerley, once famed for its tea-gardens; Gypsy Hill, long the haunt of Zingari squatters; Norwood, or the wood north of Croydon; Streatham, long the home of Mrs. Piozzi, with whom Dr. Johnson often stayed; and Penge, that appears in an early nineteenth-century map as a town with one inn, the Crooked Billet, were all for many centuries outlying settlements, each with a distinctive charm of its own, the last-named set in the midst of a wide-stretching common crossed by the Croydon Canal with many picturesque locks, now replaced by the { 136} iron road, the levelling influence of which is apparent on every side.

From the somewhat melancholy fate that has overtaken so much of Kent and Surrey, the wildly beautiful Keston Common has so far escaped, and the villages of Hayes and Keston, both on its north-western edge, are still unspoiled. The former has a well-restored Early English church, its Georgian rectory is a fine example of the domestic architecture of its period, and near to it is the celebrated Hayes Place, built in 1757 by the great orator and statesman, Lord Chatham, whose favourite home it was. In it, two years after its completion, was born his even more famous son, William Pitt the younger, whose childhood was passed in a small house connected with Hayes Place by a covered-in passage, for his father was already suffering from the depression which so often clouded his happiness, and, as related by Horace Walpole, who was a frequent guest of Lord Chatham, the harassed statesman 'could not bear his children under the same roof, nor communication from room to room, nor whatever he thought promoted noise.' When in 1766 the elder Pitt inherited another property elsewhere Hayes Place was sold to the Honourable Thomas Walpole, but its previous owner was taken ill soon afterwards, and entreated the purchaser to let him have it back. He was convinced, he said, that he could recover nowhere else, and his whim was humoured, with the best results. Lord Chatham returned to his old home, which was his chief residence until his death. There he received George II. { 137} and George III., as well as the leading politicians of the day; and there the young General Wolfe dined with him on the eve of sailing for Canada. The younger William Pitt was now the constant companion of the 'oracle of Hayes,' as his father was affectionately called by his intimates, imbibing from him no doubt much of the practical wisdom that from the first distinguished him; and he it was who had the melancholy privilege of carrying the stricken minister from the House of Lords when he fell down insensible after his noble speech against the unworthy terms of peace proposed by the Duke of Richmond. The dying statesman was taken back to Hayes Place, where in a small room on the ground floor he breathed his last four weeks later.

After the death of Lord Chatham, Hayes Place was sold, and since then it has changed hands many times, but fortunately its various owners have respected it for the sake of its memories, and but for the addition of a new entrance-hall it remains practically what it was during the occupancy of its first owner. It is the same with the stables, that are some little distance from the house, which have been kept as they were when the old earl and his sons used daily to go down to inspect the horses, and in one corner of the yard is a platform from which, according to tradition, William Pitt the younger used to rehearse his speeches in the presence of his father and the rest of the household.

Keston village, originally a dependency of the manor of the same name that was once the property { 138} of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, consists of a few old houses and cottages, some grouped about the Red Cross Inn, also known as Keston Mark, possibly because it is situated on an ancient boundary, others on the common near a picturesque windmill. Its church, a humble little sanctuary, with a nave and chancel only, contains a fine Norman arch, possibly a relic of an earlier building, and in its quiet graveyard rests the novelist Mrs. Craik, better known as Miss Muloch.

On Keston Common, in a spring known as Cæsar's Well, rises the Ravensbourne, which widens close by into a series of ponds overshadowed by venerable trees, and near to them, within the grounds of Holwood House, are the remains of a Roman camp in which, according to some authorities, Aulus Plautius awaited the coming of the Emperor Claudius to receive the homage of the conquered Britons. Whether there be any foundation for this belief or not, there appears at one time to have been an important Roman settlement on Holwood Hill, a complete villa, the foundations of a temple, and many bricks and tiles having been unearthed at different times. Keston is, however, now chiefly celebrated for its connection with William Pitt, who lived for many years in a house that occupied the site of the present mansion in Holwood Park. Even when still a child living on his father's estate at Hayes, Pitt longed, as he often told his friends, 'to call the wood of Holwood his own,' and great was his delight when, in 1785, two years after he became Prime Minister, he was able to purchase it. The table at { 139} which he used to write is still preserved in Holwood House, and the park was laid out by him. Many of its trees were planted by his own hand, and others, already venerable when he became their owner, are associated with interesting incidents of his career. One noble wide-spreading oak near the chief entrance to the park is specially revered, because of the tradition that Pitt and William Wilberforce were seated beneath it when they arranged the opening of the campaign against slavery, a fact commemorated by a quotation from one of the latter's letters that is cut in the back of a stone seat marking their resting-place, placed in position by Lord Stanhope in 1862. 'I well remember,' said the philanthropist, 'after a conversation with Mr. Pitt, in the open air, on the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent into the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice, on a fit occasion, to bring forward the abolition of the slave-trade.' The important meeting probably took place in 1787, and Wilberforce was often at Holwood House during the first few of the nineteen years' struggle thus inaugurated, finding distraction from his ever accumulating worries in aiding his host in his amateur woodcraft. In his diary for April 7, 1790, for instance, he records how he sallied forth with Pitt and Grenville, then Speaker of the House of Commons, 'armed with bill-hooks, cutting new walks from one large tree to another through the thickets,' neither of them dreaming how soon the beautiful estate would cease to belong to their host who, a little later, was compelled to part with it. It was { 140} sold for £15,000, a very large sum for those days, and, after changing hands more than once, was bought by a Mr. John Ward, who, with little respect for its memories, pulled down the old house to make room for an ornate villa in the Italian style, and cleared away much of the woods that had been the Prime Minister's especial pride.

Though not quite so picturesquely situated as Keston, the neighbouring villages of Farnborough and Downe—the former associated with the name of Sir John Lubbock, who lived for some years at High Elms, the latter with that of Charles Darwin, who long resided at Downe House—have something of its quiet charm. West Wickham, too, though it has unfortunately recently been discovered by the jerry-builder, is still a pretty place, the older cottages and farms clustering about Wickham Court, erected on the site of the original manor-house in the reign of Edward III. by Sir Henry Heydon, but almost entirely rebuilt in the time of Henry VIII. The Heydons were near relations of Anne Boleyn, who is said to have passed some of her happiest days at Wickham Court when her royal suitor was courting her, a tradition confirmed by the true-lovers' knot in which her initials and Henry's are intertwined, engraved on one of the windows in the dining-hall. Very often, probably, the enamoured pair paced to and fro on the smooth bowling-green or on the long grass walk, still known as Anne Boleyn's, between the dense yew hedges, that remain unchanged to this day. Sometimes, too, it is related, the fair Anne would await the coming of her lover in a little Gothic { 141} tower, to which a subterranean corridor gave access, and the two may possibly have explored together the secret passages that led beneath the grounds of the mansion to Hayes Common and elsewhere. A new entrance was made to Wickham Court by Sir Charles Farnaby, the ancestor of the present owner, but the rest of the house is much what it was when completed in the sixteenth century, and is a fine example of Tudor domestic architecture. The massive oaken door, with its huge iron bolt, may be the very one that was so often flung open to admit the guests of the Heydons, including Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, to pass through to the banquets held in the great hall. It bears the marks of many a siege, and must have received very rough usage in the troublous times of the Stuarts, when the gloomy dungeon beneath the north-west turret served sometimes as a prison to the enemies, sometimes as a hiding-place to the friends of the owner of the property.

The church of West Wickham, which, with the creeper-clad turrets and chimneys of the court form a charming group when seen from a distance, was rebuilt at the same time as the latter by Sir Henry Heydon, and owns some fine sixteenth-century windows, including one representing scenes from the legend of St. Catherine. There are also some well-preserved monuments and brasses in the nave and chancel, and in the churchyard, entered by an ancient lych gate, with a tiled roof, are some interesting old tombs.

In a wood not far from West Wickham is the grand old hollow oak painted by Millais as the { 142} hiding-place of his 'Proscribed Royalist,' and the village itself is associated with the memory of many other famous men. Before Lord Chatham bought the mansion at Hayes in which his celebrated son was born, he lived for some years at South Lodge, and in a smaller house dwelt the Latin chronicler Gilbert West, who was often visited in his retreat by William Pitt the younger, Lord Lyttelton, and the eccentric merchant poet Richard Glover.

Another ancient and still picturesque village of Surrey is the beautifully situated Addington, the name of which is supposed to signify the town of the Edings, though who these Edings were history does not say. The manor is referred to in Doomsday Book as being held under the king by Tezelm, a cook in the royal service, and from that time to the accession of George III. the owners of the property were bound to observe the quaint custom of preparing a dish, or providing a substitute to do so, for the monarch's consumption on the day of his coronation. The last time the strange ceremony was performed was in 1760, when Mr. Spencer, then lord of the manor, presented to the newly crowned monarch a dish of pottage made according to an ancient recipe, and containing an extraordinary number of ingredients.

Early in the fifteenth century a manor-house that was more of a stronghold than a private home, was erected at Addington, on what is still known as Castle Hill, but it was pulled down in 1780 and replaced by a less ambitious building on another site, that later became a summer residence of the Archbishops of { 143} Canterbury, to whom the property passed by purchase in 1807. With the chapel and library, added in 1830, it now presents a very dignified appearance, and is surrounded by a beautiful park.

The parish church of Addington, though it has been much modified by restoration, retains a fine Norman arch dividing the nave from the chancel, some early Gothic arcades and three very ancient windows, with a good modern one to the memory of Archbishop Tait, who with his wife and one of his sons lie buried in the churchyard, close to Archbishop Longley. In the chancel are some quaint old monuments, notably one to some members of the Leigh family, and several interesting brasses, including that to the memory of Thomas Hatteclyff, who was one of the Masters of the Household of Henry VIII., and died in 1540.

There is little very distinctive about the modern village of Addington, though it retains a few quaint old cottages, and is celebrated for its inhabitants' love of flowers. It is, however, set down in very beautiful scenery, that seems likely long to remain unspoiled. Within easy reach of it and of Croydon, the former residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, are several other pretty villages and hamlets, including Shirley, with a good modern church, finely situated on the edge of a breezy common; Woodside, that is rapidly losing its rural character through its proximity to the racecourse and railway; and Addiscombe, once famous for a fine old mansion, long the residence of Lord Liverpool, which was pulled down in 1863. When Lord Liverpool, who { 144} became Prime Minister in 1809, was at Addiscombe, his predecessor in that office, William Pitt, was often his guest, and the story goes that on one occasion the latter had a narrow escape from sudden death, for he and a party of politicians, who had been dining with the Tory statesman, dashed through the turnpike gates, without paying the toll. The keeper, supposing them to be highwaymen, fired his blunderbuss at the offenders, but with such bad aim that no one was hurt—somewhat, it was rumoured at the time, to the regret of Pitt's many enemies, who would gladly have heard of his removal from their path.

In a charming district east of Croydon are several other still picturesque villages that are gradually being drawn into the ever-widening circle of outlying London, amongst which must be specially noted Sanderstead, perched on the brink of the chalk-downs some 550 feet above the sea level. Mentioned in the will of its Anglo-Saxon owner in 871 as Sansterstede, the manor was in the possession one hundred and ninety-five years later of the abbey of St. Peter's, Westminster, and in the family of the Wigsells, to whom it now belongs, is preserved an interesting memorial of that ownership in the form of a deed bearing the abbey seal, recording the exchange of half a hide of land for a piece of equal value at Papeholt.

Although it has unfortunately been somewhat spoiled by restoration, the general appearance of the fifteenth-century parish church of Sanderstead, with its square tower and shingled spire, is much what it { 145} was when, in 1676, the mansion replacing the old manor-house—that is said to have been constructed of the materials of a twelfth-century monastery—was completed, and amongst the monuments preserved in it are three of considerable antiquarian interest: that of Joanna Ownstead, who died in 1587; that of her brother, John Ownstead, who was for forty years in the service of Queen Elizabeth, and passed away in 1601; and that to Mary Bedell bearing the date 1655. Within a short walk of Sanderstead is the village of Purley, generally believed to be named after William de Pirelea, who bought the land on which it and the mansion known as Purley Lodge are built, some time in the twelfth century, from the abbot of the neighbouring Monastery of Hide, of which no trace now remains. The date of the building of Purley Lodge is not known, but it is famous as having been the residence of John Bradshaw, who was President of the High Court of Justice that condemned Charles I. to death. Later it was the home of William Tooke, who often received in it his more celebrated friend, the Rev. John Horne, who took the name of his host in gratitude for the kindness shown to him in the long struggle with the Government during the War of Independence. After the imprisonment of Horne for getting up a subscription for the widows and orphans of those who fell at Lexington, or, as he expressed it, were murdered by the king's troops, Tooke gave him an asylum at Purley, and it was there that he completed the quaint Epea Ptroenta , to which he gave the sub-title of the 'Diversions of Purley.' On his { 146} death William Tooke bequeathed £8000 and Purley Lodge to Horne, who, though he had a house at Wimbledon, where he died in 1812, was often at Purley. He wished to be buried in the garden of the Lodge, and had prepared his grave and tombstone, the latter bearing the inscription—'John Horne Tooke, late Proprietor and now occupier of this spot, born in June 1736, died in—aged—contented and grateful'—but his relatives disregarded his instructions, and he rests in the parish where he breathed his last.

Other still secluded hamlets of north-east Surrey are Farley, with a very interesting Norman and Early English church, and a quaint old moated manor-house, now a farm, and Warlingham, long celebrated for its beautiful common, that was, alas, enclosed in 1864 with the exception of five acres that were reserved for a recreation-ground, the latter with a well-restored old church of uncertain date, the first, according to tradition, in which the service of Edward VI. was used.

Warlingham was one of the four hams or homes on the hill occupied before the Conquest by the Saxon tribe known as Wearlingas, the other three having been Woldingham, Chelsham, and Caterham, near to all of which extensive remains have been found of early encampments and defences. Woldingham, that gives its name to a new suburb close by, is still a village, though its doom is evidently sealed, and it is the same with Chelsham, but Caterham has already grown into a town. Picturesquely built, partly in a beautiful valley and partly on the { 147} slope of a hill, it retains, however, some interesting relics of the long-ago, including a well-restored fourteenth-century church, and all four of the ancient hams are in touch with beautiful scenery, lofty and breezy commons commanding fine views alternating with well-wooded undulating districts.

CHAPTER VII

CROYDON, CARSHALTON, EPSOM, AND OTHER
SUBURBS IN NORTH-WEST SURREY

Situated near the source of the Wandle at the entrance to a beautiful valley that is shut in on the east by wooded hills, and on the west and south-west by breezy uplands, the prosperous modern town of Croydon occupies the site of a very ancient settlement that owned before the Conquest a church and a mill, as proved by the detailed description given of it in Doomsday Book. Now one of the largest and most important, though by no means the most picturesque of the Surrey suburbs of London, Croydon, the name of which is variously interpreted to mean the chalk hill, the crooked or winding valley, and the village of the cross, is associated from very early times with the history of the Church in England. Its manor, the value of which was assessed at the Conquest at sixteen hides and one virgate, was given by William I. to Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, to whose successors it long belonged, though the palace that in course of time replaced the ancient manor-house was deserted by them in the middle of the eighteenth century and { 149} was later altogether superseded by that at Addington already referred to.

Combining, as did most of the episcopal residences of mediæval times, the strength of a fortress and the latest refinements of domestic architecture, the palace of Croydon before its partial destruction must have been a kind of epitome of the various styles that succeeded each other between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, or, to quote the words of Archbishop Herring writing in 1754, 'an aggregate of buildings of different castes and ages.' Fortunately it still retains its three most distinctive features, the banqueting-hall, the guard-room, and the chapel, with some few relics of the many outbuildings for the use of its owner's retainers, and those of his guests, that once covered a vast area. In spite of all its manifest advantages, however, it was never a favourite residence of the archbishops, who, though many of them spent large sums upon it, are said to have complained constantly of its unhealthy situation. Henry VIII., too, often spoke of it in a disparaging way, and Lord Bacon once declared it to be 'a very obscure and dark place.'

Of the existing buildings the oldest is the guard-chamber, with a fine stone ribbed roof and a beautiful oriel window, a true gem of Gothic architecture. Built between 1396 and 1415 by Archbishop Arundel—who is chiefly remembered for his devotion to Henry Bolingbroke, at whose coronation as Henry IV. he officiated in 1399, and for his bitter hostility to the Lollards—the guard-chamber was the scene, in 1587, of the stately ceremony when { 150} Queen Elizabeth gave to Sir Christopher Hatton the seals of office of Lord Chancellor of England, that dignity having been refused by the then reigning Archbishop Whitgift, whose memory is held in high honour at Croydon as the founder of the famous hospital and other charities bearing his name.

Of somewhat later date than the guard-chamber, for it was built by Archbishop Stafford between 1443 and 1452, and restored in the seventeenth century by Archbishops Laud and Juxon, the great hall is still, in spite of much defacement, a noble structure, with a fine timber roof and a beautiful late Gothic porch. It is associated with many important historic memories, for in it, when in residence at Croydon, the archbishops held their court, receiving visits from the reigning sovereign and the great nobles and statesmen. It was there that Archbishop Cranmer, in 1553, condemned the heretic John Firth to the stake, at which he was himself to suffer three short years afterwards; there that Queen Mary, with Cardinal Reginald Pole as her adviser, presided over her first council after her beloved husband had left her and she had realised how hopeless was the task of winning his affections; and there her successor, Elizabeth, gave frequent audience to Archbishop Parker, whom she had made primate soon after her accession, and whom she sorely embarrassed by expecting him to give her and her whole court hospitality for several days at a time. In the great hall at Croydon, too, the virgin queen received the French ambassador after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, taking his breath away by { 151} introducing him to his fellow-guests as the man who had plotted to bring about her own death; and it was there, perhaps, that the doomed Archbishop Laud penned much of the journal that reveals the secret springs of his severely criticised actions.

To Croydon, after the see of Canterbury had been vacant for fifteen years, came the newly appointed Archbishop William Juxon, the faithful friend who had ministered to Charles I. to the bitter end, in spite of the contempt the ill-fated monarch had shown for his wise counsels; and later the palace was tenanted for a few weeks at a time by Archbishop Sheldon, builder of the theatre named after him at Oxford, and by his successors: Sancroft, suspended in 1689 for his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary; Tillotson, the famous preacher who attended Lord Russell on the scaffold; Tenison, Herring, Hutton, and Dr. Cornwallis; none of whom, except Archbishop Herring, who wrote of it in loving terms, showed any affection for their Surrey home.

The chapel of Croydon Palace, built under Archbishops Laud and Juxon between 1633 and 1663, occupies the site of a much earlier place of worship that is often referred to in ecclesiastical records. No trace of it, however, remains, and its successor has suffered much in the various vicissitudes through which it has passed. It was divided from the see of Canterbury in 1780, and secularised in 1807, after which it served for some time as an armoury for the local militia, and was put to other even less dignified usages. In 1887 it was bought, with the { 152} banqueting-hall, by the Duke of Newcastle, who presented both to the sisters of the Church Extension Society, and it is now an orphanage under the care of the Kilburn sisters.

The Saxon church of Croydon, or Croidene, as it was then spelt, referred to in the Doomsday Survey—whose priest, Ælffic by name, was one of the witnesses to a will still extant dated 960—probably rose, as did its Norman successor, from an islet in the midst of the head-waters of the Wandle, which united to form that tributary of the Thames in what was known as My Lord's or Laud's Pond in the palace grounds. Near to this church were a great water-mill and a huge dam, but this was not the mill of Doomsday Book, all trace of which is lost. The huts of the original settlement, of which a few interesting relics were discovered when the excavations were made for the railway, probably extended from the church in the direction of Beddington, but those that formed the nucleus of the new town, and were chiefly occupied by charcoal-burners, were grouped near the church on the Haling side. Until the completion in 1850 of the admirable modern system of drainage, the whole of the now healthy district of Croydon was frequently flooded, and for several centuries the inundations were looked upon as supernatural visitations that could not be averted, but were tokens of impending evil or good fortune. References to this strange belief are of frequent occurrence in the contemporary press, the seventeenth-century antiquary John Aubrey, to quote but one { 153} case in point, writing: 'Between this place (Caterham) and Coulsdon ... issues out sometimes a bourne which overflows and runs down to Croydon. This is held by the inhabitants to be ominous, and prognosticating something remarkable approaching, as it did before the happy restoration of Charles II. in 1660; also before the Plague of London in 1665.'

The walls of the church in which the priest Ælffic officiated were skilfully incorporated in the Gothic building that was begun in 1382, completed in 1442, and well restored in the sixteenth century; but unfortunately the latter, with the exception of the Norman walls and Early English tower, was destroyed by fire in 1869. A new building, however, soon rose out of the ruins of its predecessor, in which these two distinctive features were skilfully retained, and the lines of the ancient fabric were followed; but, strange to say, little attention was given to the old monuments, amongst which those to Archbishops Grindal, Whitgift, and Sheldon were the most remarkable, all of which were seriously damaged by the fire, which also destroyed several interesting epitaphs and some quaint frescoes that were discovered in 1845 beneath the whitewash disfiguring the walls.

The only other building of note in modern Croydon is the Whitgift Hospital, erected between 1596 and 1599 by the archbishop after whom it is named, for the reception of twenty-two old men and sixteen old women, and for the education of twenty poor children, ten boys and ten girls, who were under the care of a warden and schoolmaster, the latter also { 154} acting as chaplain. Well restored in 1860, and supplemented later by a modern college that receives as many as three hundred boys at a time, the actual hospital still presents very much the appearance it did during its founder's lifetime, and is a good example of Elizabethan architecture. In its hall, a spacious apartment with some fine stained glass, is preserved a black-letter Bible, said to have been given to the school by Queen Elizabeth; and in the room known as the treasury above the entrance-gate are several valuable MSS., including the letters-patent granted to Whitgift.

To the extensive parish of Croydon belong a number of outlying villages that were not long ago picturesque riverside hamlets, but are now rapidly developing into populous suburbs, with little to distinguish them from each other. There is still, however, a certain rural charm about Waddon, with its ancient mill, and Beddington, with its well-restored fourteenth-century church, in which are some interesting monuments to the Carews, retains something of the dignity that characterised it when its hall was the seat of that famous family. The history of Beddington can be traced back to Roman times, for near to it have been found the remains of a villa and foundry, with other relics left behind them by the conquerors from Italy; its manor is referred to in Doomsday Book as owning a church and two mills, and it was the property in the early fourteenth century of Sir Nicholas Carew. Forfeited in the reign of Henry VIII. by another Sir Nicholas, who was beheaded in 1539 for his { 155} supposed share in the Cardinal Pole conspiracy, it was restored to his son by Queen Elizabeth, who was often the guest of the new owner. The manor-house was either rebuilt or added to for her reception, and is said to have been a grand example of the architecture of the time, but it was unfortunately pulled down in 1709, with the exception of the great hall that was preserved in its successor, and now forms the nucleus of an orphanage for girls that was completed in 1866, its site, with the still existing buildings of the Carew mansion and twenty-two acres of its grounds, having been bought by the corporation of that institution in 1857. Not far from Beddington is the still pretty village of Wallington, famous for the beautiful gardens laid out in the low-lying meadows in which it is situated by the enthusiastic botanist Alfred Smee; and adjoining it is the more important Carshalton, that, in spite of much building in the neighbourhood, retains several picturesque features, notably one or two old mills on the Wandle. Known before the Conquest as Oulton, or the Old Town, a name implying great antiquity, Carshalton is supposed to have received the prefix now distinguishing it because of its position on cross-roads. In the Doomsday Survey no less than five manors are mentioned as included in Oulton that were later consolidated into one, and were owned until the time of Stephen by the powerful De Mandeville family. Confiscated then because of its owner's devotion to the cause of the Empress Maud, it has since changed hands many times, and of the ancient manor-house, { 156} associated with many memories of Norman times, not a trace now remains. To atone for this, however, in Carshalton Park—soon, alas! to be built over—is a fine eighteenth-century mansion, now a Roman Catholic convent, in which long lived the great lawyer Lord Hardwicke, replacing a much earlier building that was for some years the home of Dr. Ratcliffe, founder of the library at Oxford bearing his name. Another interesting old house in Carshalton is Stone Court, now the rectory, that once formed part of a much larger mansion, pulled down in 1800, that belonged at one time to Nicholas Gwynesford, Sheriff of Surrey in the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Henry VII., and who was also Esquire of the Body to the two latter monarchs.

The church of Carshalton was founded in the fourteenth century, but with the exception of the lower part of the tower, it has been entirely rebuilt. It contains, however, a very fine fifteenth-century brass to the memory of Thomas Ellymbridge, a servitor of Cardinal Morton, and several interesting old monuments, including one to the Nicholas Gwynesford mentioned above, and one to Sir William Scawen, the devoted friend of William III., who owned Stone Court from 1729 to his death. Close to the churchyard is another relic of the long-ago, a railed-in and arched-over spring, known as Queen Anne Boleyn's well, because of a tradition that its water suddenly gushed forth beneath the feet of her horse as she was riding with her husband from Nonsuch Palace to Beddington, a legend not borne { 157} out by historical fact, for the palace was not begun until three years after Henry VIII.'s second wife was beheaded. Probably the spring was in use long before the sixteenth century, as it is but one of several feeders of the Wandle that flows through Beddington, widening in the centre of the old village into a pond, that is referred to by Ruskin in the Crown of Wild Olives , near to which there used to be several picturesque old inns that were much frequented in coaching days by Londoners on their way to and from Epsom races.

Some three miles from Carshalton, on the edge of the undulating downs, that under different names extend for many miles on every side, is the now populous town of Sutton, the last halting-place on the way to the world-famous racecourse, that still owns the ancient though modernised Cock Inn that is associated with so many memories, and the approaches to which are still crowded with vehicles of every variety during the race-weeks. The property in Saxon days of Chertsey Abbey, Sutton, has a long and well-authenticated history. Its manor remained in the hands of the monks until 1538, when it was given with those of Epsom, Coulsden, and Horley to Sir Nicholas Carew, who, as related above, already owned the neighbouring Beddington. Since then it has changed hands many times; in 1845 it was bought by a certain Thomas Alcock, who was in a great measure responsible for the conversion of a secluded hamlet, deserted by all but the resident farmers and their dependants, into a busy and prosperous suburb.

Two still beautiful though rapidly growing villages, within easy reach of Sutton, are Cheam and Ewell, both of which were long in close touch with the famous Nonsuch Palace, part of the site of which is now occupied by a nineteenth-century castellated mansion in the Elizabethan style, the only relics of its predecessor being the foundations of the banqueting-hall, that still remain in an orchard, near the long avenue of trees leading up to the entrance of the new house, that was once part of the now built over park.

The village of Cheam, situated on high ground commanding a fine view of the Downs, clusters about a modern church with a good spire, close to which is preserved the chancel of a much more ancient place of worship, containing some interesting monuments, including one to Lord John Lumley, the famous book collector, whose library was bought by James I. on the death of its owner in 1609, and is now in the British Museum, whilst in the care of the rector of Cheam parish are some exceptionally fine brasses, that were removed to preserve them from injury when the old church was destroyed.

The manor of Cheam belonged at the Conquest to the see of Canterbury, but it was divided somewhat later into two parts by Archbishop Lanfranc, who retained the eastern half himself, giving the western to the abbot of Canterbury Monastery. Both were, however, confiscated by Henry VIII., and granted by Queen Elizabeth to Lord John Lumley, who held them till his death, when they { 159} passed to his nephew, Henry Lloyd. The two old manor-houses were pulled down in the eighteenth century, but one of them is represented by a modern residence, known as Lower Cheam House. More interesting, however, is, or rather was until quite recently, the early Tudor homestead, bearing the name of Whitehall, containing a room called the council-chamber, because Queen Elizabeth is said to have once presided in it over her council when she was resident at Nonsuch Palace, which, according to local tradition, was connected with Cheam by an underground passage that had an entrance from a cellar beneath Whitehall. In this cellar, that probably served as a larder, the persecuted Protestants used to meet for worship in the reign of Queen Mary, and later, by a strange irony of fate, it was turned to account for the same purpose by the Roman Catholics of the neighbourhood.

Ewell, the name of which is a corruption of the Saxon Ætwelle, signifying the village on the well, so called because it is close to the springs forming the source of a stream known as the Hogsmill, that joins the Thames at Kingston, was but a short time ago a secluded village, but is now rapidly growing into a popular suburb. Unfortunately its characteristic old market-hall has been pulled down, and of the ancient church the tower alone remains, but in its modern successor are preserved several old monuments, tablets, and brasses commemorating residents of days gone by, and in the churchyard are some ancient tombs with curious { 160} inscriptions. [Sidenote: Nonsuch Palace] Ewell, however, owes its chief distinction to its nearness to the site of Nonsuch Palace, and the whole surrounding district is full of memories connected with the Tudor sovereigns. Situated in the still sparsely populated parish of Cuddington, that owned a manor-house and church at the time of the Doomsday Survey, the history of which can be traced down to the sixteenth century, the property was acquired in 1539 by Henry VIII., who added it to his Hampton Court estate. With his usual reckless lavishness he resolved to clear away all the existing buildings to make room for a palace that should excel all his other residences. He enclosed sixteen hundred acres as pleasure grounds, and brought down from London a whole army of architects and workmen, under whose auspices quickly rose up a truly beautiful structure, to which the name of Nonsuch was given, because, said its proud owner, it had no equal. It was not quite completed when Henry's career was cut short by death, and his son, Edward VI., seems to have cared nothing for it. He simply handed it over to the care of the then Master of the Revels, Sir Thomas Carwardine, who evidently appreciated it greatly, for the story goes that when Queen Mary came to the throne and instructed him to vacate her palace at Nonsuch, he at first refused to leave it. Indeed, he remained till the royal retainers arrived, and many unseemly quarrels took place between them and their servants about trivial details such as the division of the produce of the royal gardens. There were armed encounters in the park { 161} before her majesty took over the custody of the property, to which, however, she was really as indifferent as her brother had been. She actually decided that the best way to save herself from further trouble connected with it would be to pull down the palace and sell the materials. It was saved from this untimely fate only through the generosity of the Earl of Arundel, who for love of his former master, who had taken such pride in it, persuaded the queen to exchange it for certain fair lands in his possession elsewhere. The transfer having been duly arranged, the new owner, as related by his biographer Lyons, proceeded 'fully to finish the house in building, reparations, pavements, and gardens in as complete and perfect sort as by the first intent and meaning of the King.' In it, thirty years after the first stone was laid, the Earl of Arundel entertained Queen Elizabeth and her court for a week, presenting her before she left with a costly set of plate. So greatly, indeed, did the maiden queen enjoy herself at Nonsuch that she longed to become its owner, and when a few years later it passed from the possession of her host to that of his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, she made overtures to the latter for its purchase, which had, of course, the force of a command. During the rest of her life Elizabeth was often at the palace, and from it many important state papers, and even more interesting private letters, were dated. It was there that took place the remarkable interview with her disgraced favourite, the Earl of Essex, after his return from Holland on Michaelmas Eve 1599, that { 162} is so vividly described by Rowland Whyte in an oft-quoted letter to Sir Robert Sydney, in which he says: 'At about ten o'clock in the morning my Lord of Essex lighted at Court Gate in post, and made all hast up to the Presence, and so to the Privy Chamber, and stayed not till he came to the Queen's Bedchamber, where he found the Queen all newly up, the hair about her face; he kneeled unto her, kissed her hands, and had some private speech with her, which seemed to give him great contentment for coming from her Majesty to go shift himself in his chamber, he was very pleasant, and thanked God, though he had suffered much trouble amid storms abroad, he found a sweet calm at home. 'Tis much wondered at here,' comments the writer, 'that he went so boldly to her Majesty's presence, she not being ready, and he so full of dirt and mire, that his face was full of it.' It was this very boldness, as Essex knew full well, that was his one chance with his angry mistress, but this time it did not serve him long. The memory was still fresh with them both of the bitter quarrel six months before, when Elizabeth, stung to the quick by his insolent assertion that 'her conditions were as crooked as her carcase,' had boxed his ears and told him to go and be hanged, and on the very night of his arrival at Nonsuch, after the apparent reconciliation, the earl was ordered to consider himself a prisoner. A few days later he left the palace in custody, and the next year he was beheaded in the Tower, all the appeals he had addressed to the woman, to whom, in spite of all his plots against { 163} her, he pretended to the last to have been devoted, having been in vain.

On the death of Queen Elizabeth James I. gave Nonsuch Palace to his consort, Queen Anne, and later Charles I. and Henrietta Maria were often there, but its days of glory were already over. It was confiscated by Parliament after the death of the king, but restored to the Crown on the accession of Charles II., who, when his widowed mother had passed away, gave it and the park in which it stood to his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, whom a little later he made Duchess of Cleveland. She, alas, valued not at all the memories of the historic building, but as soon as it was legally secured to her, she had it pulled down, let out much of the park in plots for building, and sold the deer that used to wander about in it. Thus suddenly ended the brief career of Henry VIII's dream palace, that is but poorly represented by its successor, a building erected in the early nineteenth century after the designs of the then popular architect, Sir Jeffrey Wyattville. Part of the once beautiful park is now occupied by the suburb of Worcester, but the grounds immediately surrounding the new residence, through which there is a public footpath to Cheam and Ewell, still retain much of their original charm, and some of the older trees may possibly have been amongst those beneath which Queen Elizabeth delighted to walk.

Although it can scarcely, strictly speaking, be said to form a part of outlying London, the town of Epsom is so intimately associated with the { 164} metropolis, to which it has from first to last owed its prosperity, that an account of it may well be included in a book dealing as much with the memories of the past as with the attractions of the present. Its history can be traced back to the seventh century, when it is said to have been the residence of the holy abbess, St. Ebba, after whom it is named, the daughter of King Ethelred the Avenger, and sister of Kings Oswald and Oswy, whose story is very variously told, certain chroniclers declaring that she suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Danes after disfiguring herself to escape a worse fate; others that she died peacefully at a great age, surrounded by her devoted nuns. However that may be, no trace now remains of the home of St. Ebba at Epsom, though some are of opinion that its site is occupied by the farm now known as the Court, replacing the manor-house that is referred to in the Doomsday Survey as an appanage of Chertsey Abbey, which also owned in the same district the manor of Horton, the homestead of which is now represented by an eighteenth-century mansion called Horton Place, two churches and two mills, with many acres of land. To these a park, now known as that of Woodcote, with 'right of free chase and free warren,' was added in the twelfth century, the whole property remaining in the hands of the abbot of Chertsey until 1538, when it was bought from him by Henry VIII., who, strange to say, actually paid for it. A few months afterwards it was given to Sir Nicholas Carew, who already owned so much real { 165} estate in Surrey, and on his execution for treason in 1539 it reverted to the Crown. In 1589 it was bestowed by Queen Elizabeth on Edward D'Arcy, one of the Grooms of the Chamber, passing after his death through many different hands, at one time being owned by Mrs. Richard Evelyn, sister-in-law of the famous diarist.

For many centuries Epsom remained a secluded hamlet scarcely known to any one but the owners of the great houses in the neighbourhood, who delighted in its charming situation at the edge of the breezy Banstead Downs. The discovery early in the seventeenth century, however, of medicinal springs on the adjacent common inaugurated a complete change, and Epsom Spa soon became a formidable rival to Tunbridge Wells and Hampstead as a favourite resort of the beau monde of the capital, who flocked to it in crowds to drink its waters and amuse themselves. In that entertaining storehouse of local information The Worthies of England , published in 1662, the Rev. Thomas Fuller gives a very graphic description of the finding of the springs at Epsom in 1618: 'One Henry Wicker,' he says, 'in a dry summer and great want of water for cattle, discovered in the concave of a horse or neat's footing some water standing ... with his pad staff he did dig a square hole about it and so departed. Returning the next day, with some difficulty he discovered the same place, and found the hole running over with most clear water. Yet,' he adds, 'the cattle, though tempted with thirst, would not drink { 166} thereof, it having a mineral taste therin.' He then relates the gradual growth in popularity of the spring thus accidentally discovered, but he himself evidently had his doubts as to the real efficacy of the waters, for he remarks that he does not wonder the citizens coming to Epsom from the 'worst of smokes into the best of airs find in themselves a perfective alteration.'

In 1621 the lord of the manor had a fence put round the well and a rough shelter erected for the use of those who came to drink from it; but in spite of many efforts made by those interested in advertising its merits Epsom did not become really fashionable for another forty years, probably because the people of London were too much occupied by the political troubles of the day to be able to give much attention to other things. Soon after the Restoration however, the golden age of the Banstead Wells began: a great hall for balls and other entertainments, houses, inns, and shops sprang up as if by magic: regular services of coaches were established between London and the rapidly growing town on the downs; and all through the summer the approaches to the latter were crowded with the equipages of those in search of health or pleasure. Charles II. was very fond of going to Epsom with his court, and one special occasion was long remembered when he was accompanied by his consort Caroline of Braganza, his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, and his illegitimate son, the future Duke of Monmouth, then a handsome boy of twelve years old, who was born the very year of his grandfather's { 167} death on the scaffold. The neglected queen, it is said, looked really beautiful for once, but for all that she was quite eclipsed by her rival in her husband's affections, who was triumphantly lovely. The king won all hearts by his gracious manner, and it was indeed impossible to help sympathising with him in his evident delight in the noble child, who kept close to him all day, and would have been a noble heir to the throne.

The popularity of Epsom was maintained throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, as proved by many references to its attractions in the contemporary press. John Toland, for instance, in a work published in the reign of Queen Anne, speaks of it as 'an enchanted camp ... where,' he quaintly observes, 'the rude, the sullen, the noisy, the affected, the peevish, the covetous, the litigious, the sharping, the proud, the prodigal, the impatient, and the impertinent become visible foils to the well-bred, prudent, modest, and good-humoured.' In the early years of the reign of George III., however, the efficacy of the Banstead waters began to be doubted, and changing fashions resulted in the abandonment of Epsom by the beau monde . All efforts to revive interest in the once beloved resort were unavailing, and though the mineral spring still exists in a private garden, its existence was soon practically forgotten. By a strange turn of the wheel of fortune, however, what the fickle goddess took away with one hand she gave back with the other, for thanks to Banstead Downs being the scene of what is looked upon as a national { 168} event, the running of the annual races known as the Derby and the Oaks, Epsom has long occupied a more important position than it did even in the eighteenth century.

According to local tradition James I., when resident at Nonsuch Palace, was the first to introduce horse-racing on the downs, but the earliest competitions referred to in the contemporary press were apparently between men, not horses. Pepys, writing as late as 1663, describes a foot-race between Lee, the Duke of Richmond's footman, and a certain Tyler, a famous runner. That horse-racing was practised in the reign of Charles I. is however, proved by the fact that in 1648 a meeting was held by the Royalists on Banstead Downs under pretence of looking on at it, on which occasion, as related by Clarendon in his History of the Rebellion , '600 horses were collected and sent to Reigate for the use of the King's adherents.'

Writing five years later, the dramatist Thomas Heywood says, 'Epsom is a place of great resort and commonly upon the market days all the countrye gentlemen appoint a friendly meeting ... to match their horses.' Charles II. was as fond of watching the racing as of attending the festivities at the spa, and it is generally supposed that it was his patronage that enabled Banstead to rival Newmarket in popular favour. However that may be, before the end of the eighteenth century the fame of the Epsom races had spread throughout the length and breadth of England, and advertisements { 169} of the principal events appeared in all the principal newspapers of the day. In an August number of the London Gazette for 1698, for instance, it is announced that the Banstead Downs Plate of £20 value will be run for on the 24th inst., being St. Bartholomew's Day; and the information is added that any horse may run for the said plate that shall be at Carshalton and certain other places specified, fourteen days before the Plate Day. Before many years of the eighteenth century had passed by Epsom had become practically the capital of the racing world, but the famous Derby and Oak Stakes were not instituted until 1779 and 1780. Both were founded by the then Earl of Derby, and were named, the former after him, the latter after his seat at Woodmansterne, a picturesque little village on the highest point of the Banstead Downs. As is well known, the May meeting, which lasts from the Tuesday to the Friday before Whitsuntide, during which these two great races are run, is the chief event of the racing year, and Derby Day is looked upon as a national festival, even members of Parliament taking a holiday in order to be present at the great event. A vast concourse of people assembles on the downs, and the scenes witnessed there and on the road to and from Epsom, that have been again and again eloquently described in poetry and prose, are without a parallel elsewhere. Scarcely less popular is the Oaks, often called the Ladies' Race, when only filly-foals are allowed to run, and the fair sex is always much in evidence among the spectators, but the { 170} excitement is generally less than on the Derby Day. The grand-stand of Epsom, the finest in England, commands a magnificent prospect, extending across the beautiful undulating downs beyond Windsor Castle on one side and London on the other. There are, moreover, many other fine points of view from the higher portions of the common, and the town itself, though deserted by all but its comparatively few residents except in race week, retains even now a certain picturesque appearance, with its clock tower rising up in the main street. The once much frequented assembly-rooms are now divided up into shops, and of the ancient church, in which the aristocratic drinkers of the waters used to worship, the tower alone remains. There are, however, several well-preserved eighteenth-century mansions in the neighbourhood, including Woodcote House, in which is a room with a ceiling painted by Verrio, and Pitt Place, in which Thomas, the second Lord Lyttelton, died suddenly on November 27, 1779, at the very time, it is popularly believed, predicted by the ghost of a girl he had wronged, who appeared to him as he was going to rest three days before the end.

The village of Banstead, that gives its name to the famous downs, and is associated with the memory of Hubert de Burgh, is finely situated 536 feet above the sea-level and commands a view even finer than that from the grand-stand on the racecourse. Its history can be traced back to Norman times, but it retains scarcely any relics of the past, its { 171} ancient church having been almost entirely rebuilt and most of its old houses pulled down. It is, however, in touch with much charming scenery, and from it may be reached many beautiful hamlets still far beyond the furthermost limits of outlying London.

CHAPTER VIII

WANDSWORTH, PUTNEY, BARNES, AND OTHER
SOUTHERN SUBURBS

A century ago a charming little hamlet, traversed by the limpid stream of the Wandle, after which it is named, and surrounded on every side by breezy undulating commons, the thriving, bustling, and, in its poorer quarters, somewhat squalid town of Wandsworth has now little that is attractive about it except two or three ancient mills which, with the tawny-sailed barges, generally grouped at the mouth of the river that here joins the Thames, present a really picturesque appearance. There is, moreover, something dignified about the massive eighteenth-century church of All Saints in the modern High Street, and it contains several interesting monuments, notably one to Alderman Smith, a native of Wandsworth, whose memory, though he passed away as long ago as 1627, is still held dear in the neighbourhood, for he bequeathed large sums of money for the relief of the poor, and also for giving them work, proving his recognition of the importance of the problem of the unemployed, which { 173} public-spirited philanthropists had evidently much at heart even at that early date.

Wandsworth is unfortunately associated with but few important historic memories, but towards the end of the seventeenth century many French Protestants, who had fled to England after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, took refuge in it, and in the Huguenots' cemetery, just outside the town on the way to Clapham, are several tombstones marking their burial-places. Later, the exiled Voltaire was for three years the guest at Wandsworth, in a mansion now destroyed, of Sir Everard Fawkener; and the famous novelist, George Eliot, lived for some time in a house in Southfields, still distinguished by a vine growing on it planted by her.

In 1792 was founded in the neighbouring hamlet of Garratt, now absorbed in Wandsworth, the club for checking encroachments on the common, that for several years enjoyed some little fame through the addresses of the candidates for election having been written by the witty dramatist, Samuel Foote, who made the Mayor of Garratt the hero of a popular comedy, the great actor, David Garrick, and the versatile patriot, John Wilkes. Through the instrumentality of this gifted trio a purely local question was turned to account to bring forcibly before the public the abuses that attended the election of members of Parliament, but unfortunately the Garratt ceremony degenerated by degrees into an occasion for mob meetings characterised by riotous behaviour, the candidates being chosen, not on account of their fitness for the dignity to be { 174} conferred on them, but for some accidental reason, such as a personal deformity or a caustic wit. The rowdy scenes that took place at these mock elections were immortalised in a series of clever etchings by the celebrated mezzotint engraver, Valentine Green, and the names of Sir John Harper, Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, and Sir Harry Dunstable, none of whom had any right to the titles they assumed, are still remembered as 'mayors' who successively held office. In 1796 the elections were suppressed, and the Garratt Club ceased to exist, but early in the nineteenth century the work it had inaugurated was completed by the purchase for the public of all that was still left of the once vast Wandsworth Common.

Though it has grown during the last fifty years as rapidly as Wandsworth, the adjacent suburb of Putney, thanks to its fine situation on the main stream of the Thames, has retained a distinction that is wanting to its neighbour on the Wandle. It is, moreover, in close touch with much beautiful scenery, and is associated with the names of many men who have left their mark in history and in literature. True, the ancient church, supposed to have been founded early in the fourteenth century, in which, according to tradition, Cromwell and his generals several times met to hold council during the Civil War, was, with the exception of the tower, replaced by a modern building in 1836; many a noble riverside mansion has been pulled down; and the quaint old wooden bridge, on which the tolls were long levied by collectors wearing blue cloth costumes and armed with copper-headed staves, { 175} was improved away in 1886 when the present solid structure was completed, but the view across the river to Fulham, and up and down stream, remains full of charm. The grand water highway that has witnessed so many historic pageants is alive, for the greater part of the year, with a great variety of picturesque crafts, and the towing-path on the Surrey side is the scene of constant activity in the spring and summer, for Putney is still the headquarters of boating men, and it has for a long spell of years been the starting-point of the world-famous Oxford and Cambridge boat-race witnessed by thousands of spectators, whilst in 1906 took place, over the same course, the contest between the Cambridge and Harvard crews that excited, if possible, an even greater amount of interest.

At a very early date Putney was included in the manor of Wimbledon, and is referred to in the Doomsday Survey as Putenhei, a name supposed to mean the landing-place, that was changed to Puttenheth before it was contracted into its present form. A local tradition, however, explains the word Putney in another and somewhat amusing fashion. The original parish churches of Fulham and Putney, that greatly resembled each other, were, it is related, built with their own hands by two sisters who had but one set of tools between them. They therefore took it in turns to use them, flinging them across the river to each other, the Fulham builder crying out, for instance, when she wanted the hammer, to heave it full home, the Putney one, when her turn came, shouting—'Put it nigh.' Whatever explanation of { 176} its name be adopted it seems certain that even before the Conquest the hamlet of Putenhei was a place of some little importance, for the last of the Saxon kings had a fishery there, and also owned the ferry that existed long before the erection of the wooden bridge alluded to above, and was valued at 20s. a year. Harold's immediate successor as holder of the property was Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, who paid no toll for crossing the river, but later it became customary for the lord of the manor to exact the payment of several salmon from the lessee of the fishery for the right of landing the spoil of the river on the Putney side, and up to the middle of the seventeenth century the three best salmon in every haul taken in March, April, and May were delivered at the manor-house of Wimbledon. About 1786, however, a money payment was substituted for value in kind, the amount varying from six to eight pounds per season until 1786, when for some unexplained reason, probably because of the decrease in the amount of fish taken, the landlord waived his right to tolls of any kind. For another thirty years, however, it was compulsory to present to the Lord Mayor of London all sturgeons or porpoises caught, the fishermen receiving one guinea for each of the former and thirteen shillings for each of the latter.

The Putenhei ferry continued to yield what was then considered a considerable revenue for many centuries, and a fine of 2s. 6d. was inflicted on any waterman who failed to exact a halfpenny from every stranger and a farthing from every inhabitant of Putney who availed himself of his services. In { 177} 1611 two delinquents, one hailing from Fulham, the other from Kingston, were summoned for carrying across divers persons at and near Kingston and Putney against the custom, and to the annoyance and prejudice of the owners of the common ferry, 'and having pleaded guilty and expressed contrition, they were, very much to their own surprise, let off with a reprimand.'

In 1727 the last owners of the ferry, Dr. Pethward and William Skelton, sold their rights to the custodians of the new bridge for £7999, 19s. 11d., the latter giving a further sum to the lady of the manor, the Duchess of Marlborough, for her share in the property, and £23 to the then Bishop of London, who, in virtue of his office, enjoyed the privilege of free passage of the river. Long before the eighteenth century, however, the need of some safer mode of transit was felt, for as traffic increased many accidents took place, through the upsetting of the ferry barges, collisions, etc. About 1629, for instance, Bishop Laud, lately appointed to the see of London, was nearly drowned with his whole suite when on his way one dark evening from Putney to his palace at Fulham, and for this reason he strongly advocated the building of a bridge, but more pressing affairs prevented him from taking any definite steps in the matter. When in 1642 the twin villages of Putney and Fulham were for the first time united by the temporary bridge of boats thrown across the river, after the battle of Brentford, by the Earl of Essex, Laud had left his palace at Fulham for the last time, for he was in the Tower awaiting the { 178} issue of his protracted trial. One of the forts that protected the linked lighters and barges, by means of which the defeated Parliamentary army passed over from Middlesex to Surrey, eager to retrieve the disaster at Brentford, is still standing, about five hundred yards below the present bridge, but the connection between the two banks was of course destroyed as soon as it had served its purpose, and it was not until 1871 that a bill was brought before Parliament for building a bridge to replace the ancient Putenhei ferry. It was, however, rejected by thirteen votes, and the reasons given for their opposition by the dissentients throw a singular light on the ignorance and prejudice of men sufficiently well educated to have secured election to the national assembly. The member for London, for instance, declared that 'a bridge so far up stream would not only injure and jeopardise the great and important city he had the honour to represent, and destroy its commerce, but would actually annihilate it altogether,' adding 'not even common wherries would be able to pass the river at low water, and would not only affect the interests of his majesty's government, but those of the nation at large.' This remarkable opinion was endorsed by the Lord Mayor of London, who believed 'that the piles of a bridge would stop the tide altogether,' and by Sir William Thompson, a truly typical Conservative, who went so far as to assert that if the bridge were built quicksands and shelves would be created through the whole course of the river ... and not a ship would be able to get nearer London than Woolwich. The limits of { 179} London,' he added, 'were set by the wisdom of our ancestors, and God forbid they should ever be altered.' This remarkable speech was delivered at a time when the rebuilding of the metropolis, after the Great Fire, was actively proceeding, and the most casual observer could not fail to realise how utterly inadequate to avert a catastrophe had been the wisdom of those who had set limits respected neither by the powers of nature nor by man. The city was indeed at that very time in the throes of a new birth; its old boundaries had been swept away, and out of the ashes of the picturesque but plague-haunted town of the past was rising up a new capital that was ere long to send forth outshoots in every direction, and eventually to absorb not only reluctant Putney, but many hamlets and villages even further afield than it.

Another fifty years were to pass away before the bridge between Putney and Fulham was actually built, and according to tradition it was George II., when Prince of Wales, who brought about what was then considered an extraordinary innovation, impelled thereto by the inconvenience to which he was put when hunting in the Surrey forests an incidental illustration of the great change that has taken place since the sites of Putney, Wimbledon, Barnes, and Richmond were the haunts of wild animals that used to go down to the river to drink, and if sorely pressed in the chase, were able to swim over to the further side. Sir Robert Walpole, father of the more celebrated Horace, was entrusted with the onerous task of carrying { 180} a bill through Parliament authorising the construction of the bridge, which was begun in 1727 and completed in 1729. It very quickly justified the predictions of its promoters, for in 1731 the revenue yielded by the tolls amounted to £1500 a year, a sum that was nearly doubled by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The tolls were not remitted until 1880, by which time the bridge was already in so lamentable a state of decay that it had to be pulled down. It was replaced by the present structure, which, though it cannot be called a work of art, has nothing unsightly about it, a commendation that cannot, unfortunately, be extended to the aqueduct of the Chelsea Waterworks that spans the stream a little higher up, and has done more to spoil the picturesque appearance of Fulham and Putney than anything else.

Connected with the parish church of Putney, which, as already stated, was rebuilt in 1836, is a gem of early sixteenth-century architecture, a little chapel with a beautiful fan tracery roof, built by Bishop West of Ely, who was the son of a baker of Putney, and greatly loved his native place. The chapel originally stood on the south of the chancel, but when the restoration of the main building took place it was carefully removed to its present position, and is still practically what it was when first completed, though the ancient window-frames have been filled in with modern stained glass. Unfortunately, some of the quaint monuments that were in the old church have been destroyed, but its { 181} successor still retains some interesting tombs with characteristic laudatory inscriptions, including those of Richard Lister, some time Lord Mayor of London, and his wife Margaret Diggs, and of Philadelphia Palmer, whilst in the Bishop's Chapel is a noteworthy brass to the memory of John Welbeck and his wife.

Less than a century ago Putney still owned many an historic mansion standing in its own grounds, including the so-called Palace, Fairfax House, Essex House, Windsor Lodge, and Putney House, but they have all, alas, been demolished, as has also the no less interesting gabled cottage by the riverside in which Henry VIII.'s hated minister Thomas Cromwell was born, and the more important Lime Grove House, standing well back from the village on the road to Wimbledon, in which the great historian Edward Gibbon first saw the light. Fortunately, however, their sites can still be identified, and are even now, to some extent, haunted by the memory of the great names associated with them. The palace, built about the end of the fifteenth century, and now represented by River Street and River Terrace, was a place of no little note, and was connected with the one occupied by the Bishop of London by a subterranean passage. Long the seat of the Waldeck family, the palace was owned in the reign of Elizabeth by Mr. John Lacy, a wealthy cloth-merchant, who several times entertained the maiden queen in it. Her first visit took place in 1579, and her last in 1603, when she was on her way to her beloved palace at Richmond, where she { 182} died two months later. To the Putney Palace came also her successor James I., just before his coronation, and thirty-nine years later it was for a time the headquarters of one of his son's most bitter enemies, General Lord Fairfax, who had succeeded the Earl of Essex in command of the Parliamentary army that was encamped at Putney during the three months of 1647 when Charles I. was a prisoner at Hampton Court. The mansion was then the property of the High Sheriff, Mr. Wymonsold, and after the Restoration it changed hands many times. Early in the nineteenth century the property was thrown into Chancery, and sold to a gentleman whose name, fortunately perhaps for his memory, has not been preserved, for he showed no appreciation for the associations connected with the beautiful old house, but had it pulled down to make room for totally uninteresting buildings. The only still existing relics of the palace are the iron entrance-gates, that were often flung open to admit Queen Elizabeth and her retinue, which were bought by a brush manufacturer of Putney, by whose descendants they are prized as heirlooms.

Fairfax House, named, not as is generally taken for granted, after the Parliamentarian leader, but a private gentleman, was until quite recently one of the most noteworthy features of the High Street, and the lawn overshadowed by trees, said to have been planted by Bishop Juxon in the happy days before his royal master's troubles began, is still in existence. Essex House, that stood not far from Fairfax House, is generally supposed to have been { 183} built by Queen Elizabeth's ill-fated favourite, and he may probably have been living in it when his royal mistress was the guest of Mr. Lacy at Putney Palace. It, too, was destroyed in the iconoclastic nineteenth century, but in a humble shop occupying part of its site is preserved a very significant relic of it—a ceiling bearing the coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth, set in a circlet representing the Prince of Wales's feathers and the Harp of Ireland, and with the initials of Essex and the queen worked into a true-lovers' knot.

Of Windsor Lodge, once, it is said, part of a convent, some remains were dug up a short time ago proving it to have been a fine building in the Gothic style; but of Putney House, in which George III. was often entertained by its owner, Mr. Gerard Van Neck, the memory alone survives, for after serving from 1839 to 1857 as a college for civil engineers, it was pulled down and is now replaced by a row of commonplace villas.

It is difficult to determine exactly where the cottage stood in which Thomas Cromwell was born, but it is well known that his father, who held a good position in Putney as a blacksmith, brewer, wool-merchant, and inn-keeper, owned a considerable amount of property under the lord of the manor of Wimbledon. Part of his land was by the Thames, and was known as the 'Homestall,' the probability being that the homestead in which the family lived, the brewery, and hostelry were three separate buildings grouped together not far from the parish church. In any case, the young Thomas must have { 184} been very familiar with riverside Putney; he often helped to load his father's barges with wool, to be taken down to the ships awaiting them below London Bridge, and he attended a day-school close to his home. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to his uncle John Williams, who was then overseer of Wimbledon Manor and lived in a homestead at Mortlake, on the site of which is a house still named after him. On the death of his master in 1502, Thomas Cromwell collected the Wimbledon rents till the appointment was given to his father, under whom he worked until 1504, when he fell into disgrace and ran away from home. What his crime was is not known, but his father never forgave him, and for many years his native place knew him no more. Walter Cromwell, too, seems to have lost the good position he had long held in Putney, and he would have died in absolute want but for the generosity of his son-in-law Morgan Williams, who gave him a little cottage on Wimbledon Green, near to his own brewery and inn, called the Crooked Billet, the site of which is now occupied by a group of small houses. In this cottage the elder Cromwell died in 1516, without having seen his son again. By this time, however, Thomas had returned to England and was already in the service of Wolsey, the Crooked Billet had passed into the hands of his sister and her husband, and all connection between him and the neighbourhood seemed to be finally severed. Strange to say, however, some twenty-three years later he became lord of the manor of the very estate on which he was born, and owner of the { 185} princely income it yielded which he had himself once helped to collect for another. No doubt he had sometimes in the interval landed at the steps near his old home when in attendance as secretary on Cardinal Wolsey, who often halted at Putney on his way up the river to Richmond or Hampton Court before the memorable occasion in 1529—ten years before his protégé became lord of the manor of Wimbledon, when in his sad journey to Esher after the Great Seal had been taken from him, he eluded the malice of his enemies by going by land, attended only by two or three faithful servants, riding up the then gorse and heather-clad Putney Hill towards the heath, which he intended to cross in a westerly direction. The story goes that the disgraced favourite was stopped before he reached the summit of the ascent by a messenger from the king, no less a personage than the Lord Chamberlain, Sir John Norris, who gave him a ring in token that he was once more forgiven. In his gratitude and surprise he is said to have hurriedly dismounted, to fall on his knees in the road, and give earnest thanks to God for this unexpected mercy. Sir John followed his example, their escorts looking on in amazement; and when the two great men rose up again, a deeply interesting conversation took place between them, Wolsey declaring that the tidings were worth half a kingdom, and bitterly regretting that he had nothing to send to his master to prove his deep appreciation of his goodness, adding, on second thoughts, 'but here is my fool that rides beside me, take him, I beseech thee, to court, and give him to his majesty; I { 186} assure you he is worth a thousand pounds for any nobleman's pleasure.'

If there be any truth in this graphic tale, it must have been with a light heart that the cardinal proceeded on his way; but, as is well known, the end was already close at hand: he was shortly afterwards charged with high treason, and died of a broken heart at Leicester Abbey on his way to London to stand his trial. Never again did he use the long familiar landing-stage at Putney, or make a stately progress up the river to his palace at Hampton Court. As the star of Wolsey set, however, another man, whose name is also closely associated with Putney, rose into prominence, for Edmund Bonner, who owed much to him, and lived in a house now destroyed at the foot of the hill, had by that time won the king's confidence, and in 1540 was rewarded for his tactful zeal by being made Bishop of London. His end, though not quite so dramatic as that of his first patron, but for whom he would probably have remained an obscure lawyer all his life, was sad enough, for he died in poverty and disgrace in the Marshalsea Prison, after his Putney home had passed into the hands of strangers.

Fortunately, in spite of all the encroachments of the builder in and near the once secluded hamlet of Putney, the heath, named after it, that is divided only by a road from the scarcely less beautiful Wimbledon Common, and extends on the other side to the charming park of Richmond, has been permanently secured to the public, and will probably ever remain one of the most popular of the open-air { 187} resorts near London. Its loftier portions command extensive views, and although until quite recently it had a somewhat sinister reputation as a favourite haunt of highwaymen, it is also associated with many interesting historic memories. On it, for instance, in 1648, when the doom of Charles I. was already practically sealed, the people of Surrey met to draw up a petition for the re-establishment of Episcopacy, and there soon after the Restoration Charles II. held a grand review of his army. In 1652 a duel took place on the heath between Lord Chandos and Colonel Henry Compton, in which the latter was killed; in 1798 William Pitt, then Prime Minister, met William Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, one of his most determined political opponents, and rendered the encounter abortive by firing in the air; and in 1809 occurred the meeting between the two great statesmen, George Canning and Lord Castlereagh, the result of a temporary estrangement only, in which the former was slightly wounded in the thigh, whilst the future Foreign Secretary, who was to do so much to promote the coalition against Napoleon, escaped unhurt. It is unfortunately impossible to identify exactly the scenes of these various duels, but the last is known to have occurred on what is now the garden of the private residence, Wildcroft, near an obelisk that was set up a century after the breaking out of the Great Fire of London to commemorate the discovery by David Hartley of a means for rendering buildings fireproof.

On the outskirts of Putney Heath are several houses that have been at one time or another { 188} occupied by persons of note, of which the most interesting is perhaps that in which William Pitt lived for some years and died. It occupies the site and retains the name of Bowling-Green House, a noted place of entertainment to which the fashionable world of London used to flock in the early eighteenth century to meet their friends at breakfast or at supper, and to take part in or watch the bowling matches that took place on the fine green belonging to the inn that is constantly referred to in the contemporary press, and was long considered the finest in England. The ancient hostelry was pulled down about 1760 and replaced a little later by the present Bowling-Green House, that was occupied for some little time by Admiral Cornwallis before the more famous William Pitt took possession of it, hoping to find in its quiet seclusion exemption from the many cares that harassed the closing years of his brief but chequered career. Already, before he took up his abode in his new home, the storm had broken that led to his resignation in 1801, and even after his return to office in 1804 nothing but disappointment, aggravated by physical suffering, awaited him. The disgrace of his trusted friend Lord Melville, who was often his guest at Putney, and with whom he there discussed, after the death of Nelson, the difficult question of what should be done for Lady Hamilton, was a bitter blow to him, and even the victory of Trafalgar failed to restore to him confidence in the future of the country he had loved and served so well. To the very last, however, Pitt retained an outward cheerfulness, and many anecdotes are told { 189} of the interviews that took place between him and his distinguished visitors in Bowling-Green House. Lord Brougham, for instance, relates how he and Lord Wellesley, the latter fresh from his triumphs in India, went together early in January 1806 to see the great peace minister, who though he was to pass away but a few days later, welcomed them gaily, declaring he would soon be well again, and showing the greatest interest in all the news they brought him. Strange to say, in spite of the devoted attachment of many friends, and the deep love of his gifted niece Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived with him for three years at Putney, Pitt is said to have died absolutely alone. The story has again and again been repeated that a messenger who called to inquire for him on the day of his death, after waiting a long time at the door, which stood open, went into Bowling-Green House unannounced, and found his way to the minister's bedroom, where the man who, a short time before, had been so popular, lay dead, unwatched by a single attendant. Whatever truth there may be in this report, there is no doubt that Pitt was deeply mourned throughout the length and breadth of England; a public funeral, and a grave in Westminster Abbey, were voted for him by an immense majority in the House of Commons, and his memory was long held dear in the neighbourhood in which he breathed his last. Lady Hester Stanhope is said never to have fully recovered from his loss; she indignantly refused the increase in the annuity granted to her by the king because that increase was suggested by Fox, her beloved uncle's { 190} political opponent, and a few years after Pitt's death she left England, to which she never returned, to embark on her extraordinary career in the East.

Not far from Bowling-Green House is a villa in which Mrs. Siddons and her daughters lived for two years; on the hill is a house in which Pitt resided before his removal to his last home; in another the portrait-painter, Henry Fuseli, died in 1825; in West Lodge, facing the common, some of Douglas Jerrold's essays were written; and in the Pines still lives the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. The neighbouring hamlet of Roehampton, too, has many interesting associations, for before the beautiful park that belonged to the manor was sold for building, there were many fine old mansions in it that were the homes of distinguished men. The estate was long the property of the Crown, but it was given by Charles I. to Sir Richard Weston, who added to the manor-house a chapel (the site of which is occupied by the present church) that was consecrated by Bishop Laud in 1632. Three years later the new owner, who had then become Earl of Portland, added many acres to his property, but his son and successor was compelled, in consequence of his losses during the Civil War, to sell his noble inheritance. It was bought in 1640 by Sir Thomas Lloyd, from whom it passed to the famous beauty, Christina, Duchess of Devonshire, who kept up a cipher correspondence with Charles II. during his exile. After the Restoration, Roehampton Park House was the scene of many a brilliant gathering, the king and queen { 191} having often been the guests of the duchess, but its memories did not save it from being again sold in 1698, and after changing hands several times it became the property of Lord Huntingfield, who pulled it down to replace it by a still standing villa known as Roehampton Grove. On part of the park was erected the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and the remainder was divided amongst different purchasers, but some few fine old mansions still remain to bear witness to the time when Roehampton was an aristocratic suburb, including the seat of the Earl of Leven and Melville, and Manresa House, now a Jesuit College, that was built for the Earl of Bessborough, and long bore his name.

Another village in intimate touch with Putney is Barnes, that some fifty years ago was a pretty riverside hamlet, but is now rapidly growing into a densely populated suburb, the pond on the green fed by the Beverley Brook, and the still unenclosed common alone preserving to it something of its rural character. The ancient church has been so often restored that, with the exception of the fifteenth-century tower, it retains little of the original structure, and most of the ancestral homesteads, that were once a distinctive feature of the neighbourhood, have been pulled down. Within the church, however, are preserved a few interesting memorials of the long ago, such as a brass in memory of William Millebourne, who died in 1415, and a tablet bearing an inscription to Edward Rose of London, who just before his death, in 1653, bequeathed £20 for the purchase of an acre of land, { 192} the proceeds of the cultivation of which were to be given to the poor of Barnes after the deduction of enough to keep his own tomb in repair, for the planting of more trees about his grave, and the preservation from injury by the erection of a wooden paling, instructions that were literally obeyed for a long spell of years. The eighteenth-century mural monument to Sir Richard Hoare is also noteworthy, and in the churchyard, which with its venerable trees has an old-world appearance, are several ancient tombs with quaint inscriptions, besides the one in which rests Richard Rose.

The history of Barnes can be traced back to Saxon times, its manor having been given by King Athelstan to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, who have held it ever since, though it has been leased to many different tenants. The village is probably named after some early occupant of the ancient homestead that occupied the site of the modern mansion known as Barn Elms, now the headquarters of the popular Ranelagh Club, that with a smaller house connected with it stands in well-cultivated grounds sloping down to the river. In the predecessor of the present Barn Elms Sir Francis Walsingham, who rented it on a long lease from 1579, often received his exacting mistress Queen Elizabeth, and there possibly he may have submitted to her some of the correspondence between the Queen of Scots and her adherents that had been intercepted by his spies. Elizabeth was at Barn Elms in 1588, the year after Mary's execution, when Walsingham had already retired from office, and { 193} was a comparatively poor man, but in spite of this the queen was attended by her whole court, who were entertained at her host's expense. In fact, as was the case with many other favourites, the sovereign's partiality nearly ruined the ex-minister, who when he died in 1590 left his widow scarcely enough money to keep up Barn Elms. She was, however, able to leave the lease to her daughter, one of the famous beauties of the day, who was three times married, first to Sir Philip Sidney, then to the Earl of Essex, and lastly to the Earl of Clanricarde. As Countess of Essex she resided for some time in her old home, but the house was deserted after her third wedding, and there is a gap in its history till 1663, when it or the smaller house connected with it was occupied by the then popular poet Samuel Cowley, who was there visited, it is said, by Milton and other contemporary literary celebrities. John Evelyn, and later Samuel Pepys, had both a great affection for Barn Elms, but the latter took a dislike to it after the tragedy that occurred in its grounds in 1678, when the Earl of Shrewsbury was mortally wounded in a duel with Charles II.'s infamous favourite George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. The wife of the former had left him to become the mistress of the latter, and the story goes that she was present at the encounter disguised as a page holding her lover's horse.

During the reign of George II. Barn Elms was the scene of many a merry entertainment, in which the great musician Handel sometimes took part, for it was tenanted by the famous Master of Revels at the { 194} English court, Count Heidegger, who was noted for his skill in improvising startling effects. He was succeeded on his death by the wealthy banker Sir Richard Hoare, and in the early nineteenth century it was the home of the editor of the Weekly Political Register , William Cobbett, who was aptly called the Ishmael of politics, for his hand was often against every other member of his own party. Somewhat later Barn Elms was rented by Sir Lancelot Shadwell, Vice-Chancellor of England, who was a noted swimmer and keenly interested in river sports. At his hospitable table were several times entertained the crews of the Oxford and Cambridge boats on the evenings of the annual race, that was rowed for the first time from Putney to Mortlake in 1848, the earlier contests having taken place on another course.

The historic Barn Elms house has long since ceased to be, but the smaller residence attached to it, which was known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as Queen Elizabeth's Dairy, is still standing. In it lived for many years, and died in 1735, the eminent bookseller Jacob Tonson, founder of the famous Kit Cat Club, to which belonged all the chief literary men of the day, including Sir Robert Walpole, Congreve, Dryden, Steele, and Addison, for whose accommodation Tonson added a gallery to his house which was hung with their portraits, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was then court painter. On the death of the owner the gallery was pulled down, and the portraits were { 195} removed to the seat of his family at Bayfordbury, but the surroundings of the meeting-place of the Club are even now much what they were in the eighteenth century.

The river at Barnes, that here makes a sudden bend to the north, is spanned by several bridges, and its banks are lined with good houses, some of which are associated with famous names. In one of those on the Terrace, for instance, resided the French political refugees the Count and Countess d'Antraigues, who were assassinated in 1812 by an Italian in their service; and in the mansion known as St. Anne's lived the famous eighteenth-century beauty Lady Archer. In an old house overlooking the common Henry Fielding wrote some of his novels, Monk Lewis composed his Crazy Jane in a cottage not far off that cannot now be identified; and amongst the rectors of the parish were the Latin scholar Dr. Hare, the eloquent preacher Henry Melvill, and the well-known hymn-writer, the Rev. John Ellerton. At Barnes, too, in a house now destroyed, lived and died the brother-in-law of Sir Francis Walsingham, Robert Beale, who was perhaps introduced to Queen Elizabeth at Barn Elms, and who was chosen by her for the painful mission of taking to Mary, Queen of Scots, the warrant for her execution, and in the same river-side village the zealous anabaptist Abrezer Coppe took refuge on his release from Newgate in 1651, where he had been imprisoned for a year for issuing his extraordinary pamphlet The Fiery Flying Roll . Disguised as a doctor, and calling himself Hiam, { 196} he divided his time between preaching and prescribing for patients, and managed to escape further persecution, dying a natural death in 1692, when he was buried under his assumed name in Barnes churchyard.

CHAPTER IX

WIMBLEDON, MERTON, MITCHAM, AND THEIR MEMORIES

Scarcely less interesting than the charming riverside districts of Surrey described above is the neighbouring parish of Wimbledon, that stretches southwards from Wandsworth, Putney, Roehampton and Barnes to Merton and Cheam, and westwards to Kingston, the river Wandle dividing it from Mitcham on the east. Long before the Conquest, Wimbledon Common, that was then but a small portion of vast unenclosed wild lands, was the scene of events that had their share in determining the fate of southern England, and since that epoch-making event it has again and again been associated with typical incidents of the national life. The remains of very extensive entrenchments on its south-western side, locally known as Bensbury, that were unfortunately almost destroyed in 1880 by the owner of the property, prove that it was at a very early date the scene of important military operations, but whether these entrenchments were the work of British, Roman, or Saxon hands there is no evidence to prove. Popular opinion, however, long since decided that Cæsar { 198} was the first occupier of the Rounds, as the earthworks were called, and the few still existing relics will probably always be associated with his name. Possibly, indeed, he may have halted on the common during the campaign of B.C. 54, and even have drank from the spring of pure water about a quarter of a mile from his supposed camp, that is preserved from defilement by a stone casing provided at the expense of Sir Henry Peek, who was for some time owner of the mansion known as Wimbledon House. It is as difficult to determine the origin of the word Wimbledon as it is to decide who was the maker of the so-called Cæsar's Camp. It is very differently spelt by various chroniclers, and the probability is that the two first syllables preserve the name of an early Saxon owner of the manor, and that the last simply means hill. In the Saxon Chronicle reference is made to a battle that took place at Wibbandune, possibly near the much-discussed camp, between Ceawlin, King of Wessex, and Æthelbricht, King of Kent, in which the latter was defeated, but Wimbledon is not mentioned in Doomsday Book, it having been one of many submanors belonging to Mortlake. It was separated from the latter by Henry VIII., to be bestowed upon Thomas Cromwell, who was then at the very zenith of his prosperity, for he had fulfilled his promise that he would make his master the richest monarch who had ever ruled over England. He was raised to the peerage as Baron of Okeham, and almost immediately afterwards created Earl of Essex. It was, however, but for one brief year that he was { 199} allowed to enjoy his new dignities and possessions, and it had scarcely ended before the fickle Henry turned against him. The once highly favoured minister was accused of treason, and eight weeks after he became an earl he was beheaded on Tower Hill. The manor of Wimbledon reverted to the Crown, and later it was given by the king to Catherine Parr for her life. On the death of her stepmother in 1547, Queen Mary bestowed it on Cardinal Pole, then only a deacon, with whom it was popularly believed she was in love before her marriage with Philip II. of Spain. Pole, however, never resided at Wimbledon, and the property was taken from him before his death, which took place the day after that of the queen, whose evil genius he had been. Queen Elizabeth granted the manor in 1576 to Sir Christopher Hatton, from whom it passed by purchase to Sir Thomas Cecil, son of the great statesman Sir William Cecil, better known as Lord Burghley. The new owner pulled down the old manor-house and replaced it by a magnificent structure, that until its demolition early in the eighteenth century by Sir Theodore Jansen was considered the finest private residence near London. It was designed by John Thorpe, whose architectural drawing for it, bearing the inscription, 'Wymbledon, an house standing on the edge of a hie hill,' is preserved in the Soane Museum. Queen Elizabeth was often the guest of Lord Burghley in the house he inherited from his father, the approaches to which appear to have been but little in keeping with its grandeur, as proved by an entry { 200} in the Kingston Churchwarden's book for 1599 recording the payment of twenty pence for mending the ways when the queen went from Wimbledon to Nonsuch.

Lord Burghley, who had been created Earl of Essex, before his death left his Wimbledon property to his youngest son, Edward Cecil, who received the title of Lord Wimbledon in 1626. The latter, who was an eloquent writer as well as a distinguished soldier, and is included in Horace Walpole's catalogue of royal and noble authors, died in 1638, at the beginning of the acute stage of the conflict between autocratic and constitutional government, and his heir sold his Wimbledon home to Queen Henrietta Maria, who was often there with her husband and children during the few years of happiness that remained to them. Only a short time before the end of his troubled career, Charles I. gave orders that some melon seeds from Spain should be planted in the gardens, but whether this was done or not is not known. The beautiful house and estate were sold in 1649 by the Parliamentary Commissioners to a Mr. Baynes, from whom they were soon afterwards purchased by General Lambert, who is said to have found great consolation for the troubles resulting from his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the Protector by cultivating flowers, the tulips and gilliflowers he raised at Wimbledon having been the finest that could be had for love or money.

After the Restoration Charles II. gave back the Wimbledon manor-house to his widowed mother, { 201} but it was too full of sad memories for her to care to live in it, and she sold it in 1661—the year, by the way, of the trial of General Lambert for treason—to John Digby, Earl of Bristol, who with the aid of the famous John Evelyn soon completely transformed it to suit his own taste. It was in the parish church of Wimbledon that the earl made his famous renunciation of the Roman Catholic religion, that was described by the French ambassador, who happened to be present, as an insolent and daring act; and it was whilst he was living in his half-finished mansion that he narrowly escaped arrest somewhat later when Charles II. sent messengers to arrest him. The Earl of Bristol died at Wimbledon in 1676, and his estate, after changing hands several times, was bought in 1717 by Sir Theodore Jansen, one of the promoters of the luckless South Sea scheme, who, with little reverence for the beauty and historic associations of the house, at once began to pull it down. Before he had time to build another he and his fellow-speculators were ruined, and the Wimbledon estate was sold by him to Sarah Jennings, the famous Duchess of Marlborough. She in her turn built a new and costly mansion which she bequeathed, with the rest of the property, to her grandson, John Spencer, to whose descendants it belonged—passing, in accordance with the custom known as borough English, to the youngest, not the eldest son—until 1871, when it was sold and broken up into a number of small holdings. The house built for the duchess, in which Hannah More was the guest, in 1786, of the Bishop of St. Asaph, was { 202} burned down in 1785, and the then owner replaced it with that still standing, known as Wimbledon Park House, that is associated with the memory of Sir William Paxton, the architect of the Crystal Palace, who began his career as assistant to his brother, who was head gardener for many years to the Cecil family.

At the present time Wimbledon, in spite of all the changes that have taken place in its general appearance, is one of the most beautiful of the London suburbs, and though it has lost its historic manor-house, it retains many fine old mansions that bear witness to its aristocratic associations. Amongst these, perhaps the finest is Eagle House, on the Green, a noble Jacobean structure, with ten gables, built by Robert Bell, a wealthy London merchant in the reign of James I., and occupied for some years, from 1789, by the Right Honourable William Grenville, the relation and colleague of William Pitt, who often visited him there, one of the bedrooms being still named after him. A house not far off, known as Wimbledon Lodge, was at the same time the home of the famous philanthropist, William Wilberforce, who in his Journal makes many allusions to his happy meetings at Eagle House with William Pitt, whom he sometimes persuaded to go to church with him.

At Chester House, another fine old mansion that faces the common, John Horne Tooke spent the last years of his life, and died in 1812, leaving instructions in his will that he should be buried in a mausoleum, still preserved in the garden; but his { 203} wishes were disregarded, for he rests in the churchyard of Ealing. Near the Crooked Billet, already referred to in connection with Thomas Cromwell, lived John Murray, founder of the publishing house named after him, and amongst his neighbours were William Gifford, the first editor of the Quarterly Review , and James Perry, the originator of the Morning Chronicle . Melrose House, on West Hill, now a home for incurables, was once the seat of the Duke of Sutherland. Madame Goldschmidt, better known as Jenny Lind, lived for several years in Wimbledon Park, and it was in Wresil Lodge that the celebrated Anglo-Indian statesman, Sir Bartle Frere, passed away.

The Parsonage of Wimbledon is a very picturesque old homestead, but there is little of interest about the modern parish church, that has had several predecessors, except the mortuary chapel connected with it that was built in the early seventeenth century as a family vault by Lord Wimbledon. There are, however, two or three noteworthy eighteenth-century tombs in the churchyard, that also owns a memorial to the celebrated American painter, Gilbert Stuart Newton, who died at Chelsea in 1835.

The chief glory of Wimbledon is now, as it has been for centuries, its breezy elevated common, that is more than a thousand acres in extent, and with Putney Heath, Richmond Park, Ham and Sheen commons, form an unbroken stretch of varied scenery unrivalled even in the heart of the country for its rural charm. Peaceful as Wimbledon Common now seems, however, it has witnessed { 204} many stirring and gruesome incidents, for it was long a favourite haunt of highwaymen and a noted place for duels. The secluded Coombe Wood on its outskirts, beloved of Constable and Stothard, where stands the house occupied by Lord Liverpool when he was Prime Minister, was the chief lurking-place of those lying in wait for unwary travellers, who were often not only robbed but murdered in broad daylight. It was no unusual thing for the bodies of criminals to be left hanging in chains till they rotted away near the spot where their worst deeds were done, and in a contemporary caricature of the duel already referred to between William Pitt and William Tierney, the remains of the notorious Jerry Abershaw, who suffered death at Kensington in 1735, are seen in the background dangling from a post close to the Windmill which is still such a picturesque feature of the common.

In 1789 occurred the encounter between Colonel Lennox, later Duke of Richmond, and the Duke of York, second son of George III., that caused much excitement at the time, for it was unusual for a commoner to challenge a prince of the blood, though the latter was in this case undoubtedly in the wrong, a fact of which he proved his sense by refusing to fire at his antagonist, who had to be content with discharging one bullet only that passed harmlessly through his adversary's hair. In 1807 a duel was fought in Coombe Wood, in which both parties were slightly wounded, between Sir Francis Burdett, the famous Conservative statesman, and Mr. Paull, who had been one of his agents { 205} in his successful candidature for Westminster; and in 1809 a certain Mr. Payne was mortally wounded in a duel on the common with a Mr. Clarke, who had made dishonourable proposals to his sister. More celebrated than either of these meetings, however, was that of 1839, when the Marquis of Londonderry met Henry Grattan, son of the famous Irish patriot of that name, and, after allowing his opponent to fire at him, discharged his own pistol in the air, a quiet way of proving his contempt for the duel as a mode of settling quarrels. A year later the future Emperor Napoleon III. challenged his fellow-countryman, Comte Léon, to a combat on Wimbledon Common, but a dispute having arisen between them when on the ground as to the weapons to be used, so much delay was caused that the police appeared on the scene and arrested the whole party, who were brought before the magistrate at Bow Street and bound over to keep the peace. Far more serious than this fiasco was the encounter, in the same year, between the Earl of Cardigan, later leader of the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, and Captain Harvey Tuckett, one of his officers, whom he had treated with unwarrantable harshness. The latter was seriously wounded, and public indignation against the earl was very great, but though he was tried by his peers in 1841 he escaped punishment through a legal quibble, his counsel having pretended that it was impossible to prove the identity of the sufferer with the Captain Tuckett named in the indictment.

By the middle of the nineteenth century duelling { 206} had quite gone out of fashion in England; and although a few hostile meetings have since taken place on Wimbledon Common, they have been mere farces unworthy of serious consideration. The beautiful open space has since then become associated with memories of a far more ennobling kind, for it has been the scene of many a great gathering of volunteers, which have made the name of Wimbledon known throughout the civilised world, and have done more, perhaps, than anything else to make military service popular in England.

It is usual to date the beginning of the great volunteer movement from 1859, when General Peel, then Minister of War, sanctioned the acceptance by the authorities of those who offered themselves to take part in the national defence, but the way had been long before prepared by the formation of local associations, amongst which that of Wimbledon, founded in 1799, was the first. A corps of cavalry and one of infantry were quickly formed, in which all the leading gentlemen of the parish were enrolled. The example thus set was eagerly followed, and in 1798 George III. reviewed on Wimbledon Common a regiment more than six hundred strong. By 1803 the volunteers numbered no less than 355,307, and there can be no doubt that had Napoleon realised the expectations of the people of England by invasion, the self-constituted army would have proved itself fully equal to the emergency. After the battle of Waterloo the volunteer force was disbanded; but the spirit which had animated it was not extinct, and when { 207} some years later a new war with France seemed imminent, a single spark was all that was needed to kindle anew the patriotic enthusiasm of the whole nation, which resulted in the formation of a new volunteer army, in many respects superior to its predecessor. In June 1860 Queen Victoria reviewed that army in Hyde Park, and a month later took place on Wimbledon Common the inauguration of the National Rifle Association, Her Majesty firing the first shot. From that time to 1887, when the meetings were transferred to Bisley, the volunteers encamped on the beautiful common every summer, representative teams from every part of the United Kingdom and some of the colonies taking part in the various competitions, which, with the reviews that terminated the operations, attracted thousands of spectators. Wimbledon Common is now comparatively deserted, but the memory of the volunteers is kept green by the fine flagstaff, the loftiest in England, that rises up a short distance from the windmill, and consists of the trunk of a single Californian pine that was towed across the Atlantic by a liner, and was the gift of a Canadian corps in acknowledgment of the hospitality received during a visit to the camp. Now and then, as when in 1906 the London companies of the Royal Volunteer Army Medical Corps and a party of Electrical Royal Engineers rehearsed first aid to the wounded after a fight supposed to have taken place in the night, the common is still turned to account as a practising-ground, but it is at present chiefly noted as being the headquarters of the { 208} London and Scottish Golf and the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Clubs.

Within easy reach of Wimbledon are a number of villages, including Merton, Morden, Malden, Mitcham, and Tooting, which, though they have all recently been promoted to the doubtful dignity of becoming suburbs of London, still retain some few relics of the days gone by when they were secluded woodland hamlets. Of these the most important is Merton—inseparably connected with the memory of Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton—the history of which can be traced back to the eighth century, when its site was the scene of a terrible tragedy, for it was there that in 784 the noble king of the West Saxons, Cynewulf, who was on a visit to a lady to whom he was deeply attached, was treacherously slain, with all his attendants, by the Ætheling Cyneheard, a crime that was fearfully avenged the day after, when the murderer and all his followers but one fell victims to the rage of Cynewulf's thanes. According to some authorities, it was near the Surrey Merton that the battle took place between the English and the Danes in 871, when King Æthelred was wounded to death, and at which his brother, the future King Alfred, was present; but it must be added that the balance of evidence is in favour of that important event, which inaugurated a new era for England, having occurred elsewhere. In any case, however, it is certain that Merton—the name of which is supposed to signify the town on the mere, from its vicinity to the ponds of the Wandle—was a valuable manor at the time { 209} of the Conquest, when it was the property of King Harold. It was confiscated by William I., and was retained by the Crown until it was bestowed by Henry I. on the so-called Gilbert the Norman, founder of the famous priory of Merton that was long the glory of the neighbourhood.

Originally a humble community of monks living in a small timber-built house near a Norman church, also built by Gilbert, the new settlement quickly attracted so many novices that it was soon decided to transfer it to a more extensive site, and in the course of a few years a stately structure, of which, unfortunately, but a few scanty relics remain, rose up on the banks of the Wandle. The first stone was laid by Gilbert the Norman in 1130, but he did not live to see the completion of his work, for he died the same year, after having carefully secured the property to the Augustinians. From the first the priory enjoyed many special privileges, including that of a seat in Parliament for its abbot and the right of sanctuary, of which Hubert de Burgh, who had acted as Regent during the minority of Henry III., availed himself when he was fleeing from the wrath of his ungrateful master in 1234. It was in the spacious hall of the priory that met, two years later, the great council of the nation that defeated the attempt of the king and pope, who were for once inspired by a common ambition, to force upon the people what was known as the 'Rule of the Canon Law for the legitimisation of children born before the wedlock of their parents.' Earls and barons alike stood firm, declaring that nothing { 210} would induce them to change the established laws of England; and it was not until several centuries later that what became known as the Statute of Merton was to a great extent nullified by the passing of the Legitimacy Act of 1858.

As time went on Merton Priory became a celebrated place of education, numbering amongst its pupils many boys who later rose to eminence, including Thomas à Becket, who was there for some time before he was sent to Pevensey Castle for his military training, and Walter de Merton, who became Lord High Chancellor of England in 1261, and founded in 1264 at the neighbouring village of Malden the college of Merton, that was transferred in 1274 to Oxford, and enjoys the distinction of having been the first institution in that city that was organised on collegiate lines.

Within easy distance of London, Merton was often visited by the reigning sovereigns, who repaid the hospitality they received from the abbot with constant gifts of land or money, so that by the time of the suppression of the monasteries the abbey grounds, that were enclosed by a wall, a few portions of which are still standing, were no less than sixty acres in extent, and its revenues amounted to more than a thousand pounds a year. In addition to this, the priory owned many estates in other parts of the country, with the advowsons of several churches, but all its property was snatched away by Henry VIII., who let the abbey on lease, but retained the manor of Merton, which remained the property of the Crown until 1610, when it was sold { 211} by James I. to a certain Thomas Hunt, since which time it changed hands again and again before its lands were broken up into small holdings and built upon. Of the ancient manor-house not a trace is left, though possibly the so-called manor farm may occupy its site, but the abbey remained uninjured for some time longer. It had been given by Queen Mary just before her death to the monastery of Sheen, but was reclaimed by her successor, who granted a long lease of it to the cofferer of the royal household, Gregory Lovell, who died at Merton in 1597; and was buried in the parish church. In 1610 the historic building was sold to a certain Thomas Hunt, who passed it on to his heirs in good preservation, as proved by the fact that it was one of the strong places fortified during the Civil War. In 1668 it became the property of a member of the Pepys family, and its purchase by his 'Cosen Tom' is referred to by Samuel Pepys in his Diary for that year. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the priory and chapel were still beautiful buildings, but long before the end they had been despoiled and converted into a calico-printing factory. Part of the materials were used to build a mansion that occupied the site of the modern house now called Merton Abbey, and a single Norman arch incorporated in the factory is all that remains to bear witness to the glory of the monastery founded by Gilbert the Norman. The railway connecting Wimbledon and Tooting runs right across what were once the abbey grounds; but in the portion belonging to the house referred to above are { 212} some fish-ponds that were probably used by the monks.

Fortunately the parish church of Merton, in which Lord Nelson, Sir William and Lady Hamilton often worshipped, with its tiled roof, squat timber tower, and octagonal spire, its Norman arch at the northern end and Early English pillars in the nave, retains, in spite of frequent restoration, very much the appearance that it did when first completed early in the twelfth century. Two of the ancient lancet windows remain, the arms of the priory in old stained glass have been worked into the modern east window, on the south wall is a mural monument, with kneeling effigies, to the memory of Gregory Lovell, his wife, and their eight children, and in the nave are the hatchments of the great families who at different times owned the manor of Merton, and also one bearing the arms of Lord Nelson that was presented after his death by Lady Hamilton. In the vestry is preserved the pew in which the lovers used to sit, and in the churchyard are several quaint old tombs, including that of the second wife of the famous bookseller, James Luckington, who lived for some years at Merton.

Opposite to the church is an interesting Elizabethan mansion standing well back from the road in extensive grounds, with fine entrance-gates of wrought iron, that was long erroneously supposed to have been the original manor-house of Merton, and close to the gates is a flight of stone steps that are said to have been used by Lord Nelson for mounting and dismounting when he rode to church from { 213} his beloved home on the Wandle, known as Merton Place, where he spent the happiest years of his life, and from which he went forth never to return five weeks before the battle of Trafalgar, in which he lost his life.

Unfortunately, absolutely no trace is now left of Merton Place, for it was sold in 1808 by Lady Hamilton, to whom it had been bequeathed, and its site is now occupied by a street of commonplace villas, the names of Nelson Place and the Nelson Arms alone recalling the days when the great naval hero was a familiar figure in the village. Opposite the railway station, however, is a ruined castellated gate overgrown with ivy that once gave access to the estate which Nelson and his beloved Emma called Paradise Merton, which witnessed the closing scenes of a romance without a parallel in history or fiction. On the improvement of that estate large sums of money were expended, and after the credulous or wilfully blind Sir William Hamilton had passed away, the long disowned but deeply loved Horatia was brought to live with her mother, her absent father betraying in his letters a deep solicitude for her welfare, as when he begs that 'a strong netting about three feet high may be placed round the Nile,' as he called the stream running through the grounds, 'that the little thing may not tumble in.'

Malden, the Anglo-Saxon name of which signifies the Hill of the Cross, has now even less that is distinctive about it than Merton, but it is noteworthy as having been the first site of the college referred to above, founded in 1240 by Walter de Merton, { 214} who at that date bought Malden Manor, the history of which can be traced back to the time of the Doomsday Survey, when with that of the neighbouring Chessington it was the property of Richard de Tonbridge. Merton College retained its estate at Mitcham until the dissolution of the monasteries, when Henry VIII. took 120 acres of it—now part of the populous suburb known as Worcester Park—to add them to the grounds of Nonsuch Palace. Later Queen Elizabeth confiscated the manors of Malden and Chessington with the advowsons of both livings for a term of no less than five hundred years, salving her conscience by paying a nominal rent of forty pounds, but in the reign of her successor the members of the college succeeded in bringing about a compromise, by the terms of which the then owner of the lease and his heirs were allowed to retain it for another eighty years.

The parish church of Malden, though it has been again and again restored, still retains traces of Saxon work in the walls of the chancel, that now serves as an aisle of the greatly enlarged building, and in the east window are the arms of Walter de Merton and of Bishop Ravis, who occupied the see of London in the early nineteenth century, whilst the position occupied by the altar in the first chapel is marked by a stone slab bearing the inscription: 'Here stood the Lord's Table on Maeldune, the Hill of the Cross for nigh a thousand years.'

Some two miles from Merton is the still secluded village of Morden, or the settlement on the great hill, the manor of which belonged at the time of the { 215} Conquest to the abbey of Westminster, and became the property of the Crown on the dissolution of the monasteries. It was granted by Edward VI. to Edward Whitchurch and Lionel Ducket, and since then has changed hands many times. Its ancient manor-house is still represented by a mansion known as Morden Hall, and its parish church retains the tower of a much earlier building, whilst on its walls hang many fine old brasses and a number of hatchments of great antiquarian interest.

The extensive parish of Mitcham, that stretches away from Merton and Morden to Beddington, Carshalton, and Croydon on the south, and on the east to Streatham and Norwood includes one of the most beautiful commons near London, set in a border of fields planted with lavender bushes and sweet-smelling herbs. It is associated, moreover, with many interesting memories, and at the time of the Conquest was an extremely valuable property, including no less than five manors that were later reduced to three, which changed hands so often that it is almost impossible to trace their history. It is enough to add that Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, owned a house at Mitcham that still bears his name, that Sir Walter Raleigh occupied another for some time that belonged to his wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton, and that in a mansion now pulled down Sir Julius Cæsar received Queen Elizabeth in 1598, an honour that according to his own account cost him considerably more than £700. On the banks of the Wandle, in a villa known as Grove House, lived Sir Thomas More, and two { 216} centuries later it was the home of a man of a very different type, Lord Clive, who in 1774, just before he took his own life, gave it to the great lawyer Alexander Wedderburn, the future Lord Chancellor of England, who had defended him at his trial. In 1789 Grove House was bought by the London banker Sir Samuel Hoare, who often showed hospitality in it to Hannah More, the Wilberforces and the Macaulays. Dr. Donne, the famous Dean of St. Paul, who died in 1631, was also at one time a resident at Mitcham; Charles Mathews, who was to make such a great reputation as a comedian, used to ride over on his pony for a gallop on Mitcham Common when he was at school at Clapham; and Dr. Johnson was fond of dining in the neighbourhood when he was the guest of Mrs. Thrale at Streatham.

The original village of Mitcham, picturesquely situated on the Wandle, that here works several mills, is now but the nucleus of a rapidly growing town; and it is very much the same with its neighbour Tooting, that retains little except the common, which is now its chief distinction, to recall the days when Queen Elizabeth was the guest of the lord of the manor, Lord Burghley, or those a century later, when the author of Robinson Crusoe lived in a little house on the road that still bears his name and founded the conventicle now replaced by the Defoe Presbyterian chapel. The ancient parish church of Tooting, of which that conventicle soon became a serious rival, was pulled down some eighty years ago to make room for a modern successor; of the beautiful convent of the Holy Cross, that once { 217} stood just without the village, and is said to have been connected with the church by a subterranean passage, not a trace remains; whilst a few dignified-looking mansions with wrought-iron entrance-gates, and the two inns known as the Castle and the Angel, are the only houses with any claim to antiquity.

CHAPTER X

RIVERSIDE SURVEY FROM MORTLAKE TO RICHMOND

Few villages near London have undergone such vicissitudes of fortune as Mortlake, of which Wimbledon, Putney, and Barnes were once dependencies, but which is now a somewhat uninteresting suburb, redeemed from the commonplace by its situation on the river alone, and but for the one day in the year, when the University boat-race is run, and it is crowded with those interested in the contest, deserted by all but its residents. A great brewery and numerous malt-kilns replace the palace that was long a private residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of the famous tapestry manufactory, founded in 1619 by Sir Thomas Crane, in which, under the direction of the Italian Verrio, work equal to that done in France was produced, not a trace remains. Gone, too, is the mansion by the water where lived the famous astrologer Dr. Dee, who was there often visited by Queen Elizabeth, but who in spite of the great reputation he long enjoyed, died in absolute poverty in 1608; and it is impossible to identify the sites of the houses that are known to { 219} have been occupied by Sir Philip Francis, the bitter enemy of Warren Hastings, Henry Addington, the first Lord Sidmouth, prime minister when the Peace of Amiens was signed, Sir John Barnard, whom Sir Robert Walpole called the one incorruptible member of Parliament, all of whom, as well as Dr. Dee, are buried in Mortlake church, and commemorated by monuments or tablets in it. The pottery works, too, which to a certain extent made up for the loss of the tapestry manufactory when the latter was removed to Windsor, though they flourished for nearly a century, were abandoned about 1800, and it is only the expert collector who now remembers that the quaint Toby Philpot jugs were first made in them, and that a peculiar kind of white stoneware was produced in a rival factory hard by.

The church of Mortlake was founded as early as 1348, when the parish was first cut off from that of Wimbledon, but it has been so often restored that, but for the lower portion of the tower, it retains scarcely anything of its original structure. Above its western entrance is the unusual inscription, 'Vivat Rex Henricus VIII.,' and on an oaken screen in the chancel is an interesting painting representing the Entombment, by the Dutch artist Van der Gutch, who lived for some little time at Mortlake during the last decade of the eighteenth century. In the Roman Catholic cemetery that adjoins the Protestant churchyard rest the remains of the famous Oriental scholar and traveller, Sir Richard Burton, and his devoted wife, in an ornate tomb, representing an Arab tent, that was erected before her death at the expense of { 220} Lady Burton, who, in spite of her husband's well-known heterodox opinions, was determined that the world should believe him to have died in what she considered the only true faith.

Pleasantly situated at a bend of the river between Mortlake and Kew, opposite to Chiswick and Isleworth, which present a very picturesque appearance from the towing-path on the Surrey side, and owning a green some twelve acres in extent, the ancient village of Kew still retains, in spite of the great number of modern houses in its parish, something of the rural charm that distinguished it before the beautiful gardens with which its name is now chiefly associated were laid out.

The original meaning of the word Kew, that used to be very variously spelt, Kayhoo, Kayburgh, and Kayo being some of the forms, has not been determined, but the settlement is supposed to date from very ancient times, bronze spear-heads and fragments of British pottery having been recently found in the bed of the river, near some piles that had probably served as the foundations of huts, a little above the old bridge that was replaced in 1903 by that known as King Edward VII.'s, it having been opened by him in 1904. The first actual reference to Kew, however, occurs in a thirteenth-century roll of the royal manor of Richmond, in which it was then included, although, strictly speaking, it remained a hamlet of Kingston until 1769, when it became a separate parish.

There appears to have been a small chapel of ease at Kew, the site of which is unknown, as early as { 221} 1532, and in it may sometimes have worshipped the Princess Mary, sister of Henry VIII. and widow of Louis XII. of France, with her second husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Norfolk, who owned a mansion near by, as did also Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester, ancestor of the inventor of the steam engine. Later, Kew was the home for a short time of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who had been sentenced to death, as well as his father, for his share in the conspiracy to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, yet for all that rose into high favour with Queen Elizabeth, to whom he paid assiduous court, though he was already married to the unfortunate Amy Robsart. Whether the maiden queen was ever his guest at Kew it is impossible to say, but after his death she paid several visits to Sir John Pickering, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, who owned a mansion near the green, now pulled down, and spent large sums on her entertainment in 1594 and 1595. The house that belonged to Robert Dudley was sold by him to Sir Hugh Portman, a merchant of Holland, for which reason it was long called the Dutch House, and is still standing just inside the chief gates of Kew Gardens. It is now known as the Palace, a very misleading name, that more rightly belonged to a much larger building that was opposite to it, and was called Kew House. The latter belonged in the early seventeenth century to a Mr. Bennett, and passed, as part of the marriage portion of his daughter, to her husband Sir Henry, later Lord Capel, who was the first founder of the famous gardens, that were referred to by Rowland { 222} Whyte in a letter to Sir Robert Sydney, dated August 27, 1678, 'as containing the choicest fruit of any plantation in England.' Lord Capel became, many years later, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and never returned to his Kew home, but his widow resided in it until her death in 1721, when she was buried in Kew church. The property then passed to Lady Elizabeth, grand-niece of Lord Capel, who had married Mr. Molyneux, private secretary to the then Prince of Wales. Molyneux was devoted to astronomical science, and whilst he was living at Kew he and the more celebrated James Bradley made a very important discovery in connection with the aberration of the fixed stars with the aid of a large zenith-sector, the spot in Kew Gardens where it used to stand being marked by a sundial, the gift, in 1830, of William IV.

In 1728 Lady Elizabeth Molyneux was left a widow, and in 1730 the Prince of Wales obtained from her a long lease of Kew House, which he did not live to profit by. On his untimely death, however, the Princess of Wales remained in it, and continued the work on the grounds begun by Lord Capel, entrusting the superintendence of the alterations to Sir William Chambers, then considered the leading architect of the day, who designed the lofty pagoda, the great orangery, and the various semi-classical buildings in the gardens, whilst Sir William Aston, a noted horticulturist, was chosen as advisory botanist. Before the Princess of Wales died in 1772 the appearance of the Kew estate was completely transformed, and when her son, George III., { 223} took possession of it, his wife Queen Charlotte continued constantly to add to the rare plants in its hothouses. So enamoured did the king become of Kew House that, a few years later, he bought the property from the then representative of the Capel family, retiring to it whenever possible to amuse himself with gardening and farming. He added several acres in Mortlake parish and part of the Old Deer Park of Richmond to the already extensive grounds, a considerable portion of which he converted into grazing land for a fine flock of merino sheep, in which he took a great pride. The house, a picturesque half-timbered building, soon became too small for its owner's ambitious schemes, and shortly before his first attack of insanity he had it pulled down to make way for a huge mansion, which, had it been completed, would have been more like a mediæval stronghold than a residential palace. It was scarcely begun, however, before the king's strange malady increased upon him, and after his death his son George IV., who hated Kew, which was associated with many sad memories for him, decided not to have it completed. In 1827 all that was left of it was cleared away, and its very site is now practically forgotten.

Meanwhile the Dutch House had become even more closely associated with the royal family than its opposite neighbour. It was occupied for some time by Queen Caroline, consort of George II., and in 1781 was bought by George III. for Queen Charlotte, who brought up her large family in it, for which reason it became known, first, as the Royal { 224} Nursery, and later as the Princes' House. It was in it that the unfortunate king was shut up when he lost his reason, whilst his wife and children resided in Kew House, and when the latter was pulled down the Dutch House became the chief suburban residence of the royal family. In its drawing-room, fitted up for the occasion as a chapel, were married, on July 11, 1818, the royal brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Kent, the latter the future father of Queen Victoria, who was born in 1819 in Kensington Palace. In it, too, on November 1818, Queen Charlotte died, and from that time the house was comparatively neglected. It is still the property of the Crown, is kept in good repair, and remains a noteworthy example of sixteenth-century domestic architecture, but it is never likely to be again used as a royal residence. On the other hand the gardens connected with it have become even more beautiful than they were in the time of the Georges. They were given to the nation by Queen Victoria in 1841, and since then, under the able direction of the distinguished botanists Sir William Hooker, his son Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir W. Thisselton Dyer, and their successors, they have become not only an endless source of delight to thousands of sightseers, but also a centre of scientific research. In the museums are preserved examples of a vast number of vegetable products, so that they form, with the infinite variety of growing plants in the grounds and houses, an all but perfect epitome of botany. Moreover, until quite recently, the Observatory, situated on the land filched for a time by George III. from the Richmond { 225} Deer Park, was for many years noted for the good astronomical work done in it, but unfortunately, though the building is still standing, the savants, who for so long studied the heavenly bodies from it, have been driven away by the electric trams running between Brentford and Twickenham, that caused such an oscillation of the delicate instruments in use that the accuracy of the observations taken was destroyed. Kew now knows the astronomers no more; they have taken refuge in a remote district in Dumfriesshire, where as yet no tramways disturb their peace, their departure marking the beginning of a new era for the neighbourhood in which they worked so long, and where commercial enterprise has won a complete, though somewhat inglorious, victory over science.

The parish church of Kew, that is still a royal chapel, rises from the green, on land presented by Queen Anne to the people, and dedicated in compliment to her to her namesake, the mother of the Virgin. It was completed in 1714, and is a fairly good example of early eighteenth-century ecclesiastical architecture, for though it has been considerably enlarged, the original style has been preserved. The great gallery at the western end was added by George III. for the use of his large family, and a supplementary chancel, with the mortuary chapel in which rest the remains of the Duke of Cambridge, youngest son of that monarch, was completed in 1833. According to popular tradition George III. was married in Kew Church to the beautiful Quakeress Hannah Lightfoot, whom he had wooed { 226} and won long before he saw his future consort, who, it is said, insisted on going through the ceremony of wedlock again in the same building, after the story of her husband's relations with her predecessor came to her ears. However that may be, the old place of worship is full of memories of the royal family; in it the blind King George of Hanover, who was born in a house now used as one of the Herbariums of the Botanic Gardens, was baptized, and there, many years later, the Duchess of Teck, who resided for a long time in Cambridge Cottage, still standing on the green, was married to the father of the present Princess of Wales. A stained-glass window commemorates the duchess, and amongst the hatchments on the walls are two unpretending tablets, one in honour of the portrait painter Johann Zoffany, the other of the more famous Thomas Gainsborough, both of whom are buried in the churchyard, the latter, in accordance with his own instructions, near his old friend Joshua Kirby, who was one of his first patrons.

Full of interest as is the history of Kew, it is surpassed in fascination by that of the neighbouring royal borough of Richmond, so varied have been the vicissitudes through which it has passed, and so many are the great names associated with it. Originally known as Syenes, and later as Sheen, Richmond was at the time of the Conquest included in the manor of Kingston, when it was but one of many riverside hamlets tenanted chiefly by fishermen. The Anglo-Saxon form of the word Sheen signifies gleaming or beautiful, and certain lovers of { 227} Richmond have assumed that it was from the first distinguished above its fellows by its charm, but this is scarcely borne out by evidence, for the name was in use when the sites of the future monasteries, palace, and town were still mere waste lands, often under water, and differing but little if at all from the adjoining districts up and down stream.

It seems certain that there was a manor-house at Sheen as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, and in it Henry I. resided for a short time, probably welcoming there his widowed daughter, Matilda, who on the death of her husband, Henry V. of Germany in 1126, returned to England to be accepted at the following meeting of the Witan as heiress-apparent of her father's kingdom. The Sheen estate was given later by Henry I. to a butler in his service named Michael Belet, but it was not long before it reverted to the Crown, to which it has ever since belonged. Edward I. was several times at Sheen, receiving the Scottish commissioners there in 1300, but the house he occupied was practically rebuilt and converted into a palace by Edward III., who often held his court in it, showing princely hospitality to many distinguished guests before the news of the death of his beloved son, the Black Prince, broke his heart. In it, deserted it is said by all his courtiers, and attended only by a single priest, the once powerful monarch died in 1377, his unworthy mistress, Alice Ferrers, having, when she saw the end was near, absconded with all the valuables she could carry away, including several valuable rings which she had torn off the fingers of her dying lover.

When the news of Edward's death reached London, his four surviving sons hastened down to the palace at Sheen to pay to their dead father the honours they had withheld from him during the closing years of his life; but whether the body was taken to Westminster for interment by road or by river history does not say. Soon after the funeral Richard II., then a boy of ten years old, received the formal announcement of his succession to the throne from a deputation of leading London citizens, who were received by him and his brother in the great hall, when the young king became so excited that he could not restrain his emotion, but kissed his guests all round on both cheeks. The next day he left his early home mounted on a white horse and robed in white, attended by all his great nobles, who also wore white in honour of the occasion, to make his public entry into his capital. A few years later he brought home to Sheen his beloved bride, Anne of Bohemia, and until her early death he was often there with her, holding regal state and entertaining hundreds of guests every day.

Considerable additions were made to the royal residence at Sheen by Richard's orders, and the superintendence of the works was entrusted to the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, who had been held in high esteem by Edward III., that monarch having granted him a pension in 1367, calling him in the deed of gift 'our beloved yeoman.' Chaucer became deeply attached to Sheen, but his connection with it was not a long one, for he presently fell into disgrace with his employer, who took away all his official { 229} appointments, and though later he was to some extent restored to favour, the king's love for his riverside home had by that time been turned to hatred. In 1394 Queen Anne died at Sheen, and so great was the grief of her husband, who, for all that, soon married again, that he ordered the palace to be razed to the ground immediately after the funeral, a grand and imposing ceremony in which all the chief nobles of England took part. Fortunately the royal commands were not fully carried out, for much of the interesting old building was left standing, and although it was neglected throughout the remainder of the reign of Richard II., it was sufficiently habitable in that of Henry IV. to be used as a residence by his son, the Prince of Wales. Indeed Henry V. was from the first very fond of Sheen, and soon after his succession to the throne he restored and added to the palace, converting it into what his biographer, Thomas Elmham, called 'a delightful mansion of curious and costly workmanship befitting the character and condition of a king.' Henry VI., who was but nine months old when his father died, may possibly have been at Sheen as a child, but the first well-authenticated visit paid by him to the palace was in 1441, when he issued a warrant from it to the sheriffs of the counties through which his aunt, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, whose husband had been Protector of England during his minority, was expected to pass, giving instructions for her reception. In 1445, the year of Henry's marriage to Margaret of Anjou, Sheen Palace was the scene of many a costly festivity, and ten years later it was to { 230} it that the unfortunate monarch was taken when his constitutional weakness had developed into positive insanity. Thence, after his recovery, he went forth to the fatal battle of St. Albans, at which he was defeated and taken prisoner by the Yorkists, and there he returned in 1456, when his mind was again unhinged, whilst his wife, with her beloved son, withdrew to Chester. Once more restored to mental health, Henry made a gallant effort to regain the reins of power, but he never again was king in anything but name, his palace at Sheen knew him no more, but before his tragic death in the Tower in 1471 it was twice tenanted by his hated rival Edward IV. The latter was there for a short time in the first year of his reign, and in 1465 he held a brilliant court in the palace, hoping by his lavish hospitality to reconcile the nobles to his secret marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, the discovery of which so alienated the kingmaker, the mighty Earl of Warwick, that he reverted to the Lancastrian side. At Sheen the queen's relations were very much in evidence, and it is said to have been there that her ladies paid her brother, Anthony Woodville, the compliment of presenting him with a golden garter embroidered with forget-me-nots. In 1467 the king gave the Sheen Palace to his wife, and she often resided in it during her husband's lifetime, possibly also occasionally in the brief reign of Richard III., and she probably hoped, after the murder of her sons, to be allowed to spend her remaining years there, especially as the new king was her son-in-law, but in this she was disappointed. Henry VII. liked the riverside home { 231} too much himself, and he lost no time in confiscating it, ordering the widowed queen to retire to a convent at Bermondsey, where she died not long afterwards. Richmond Now began a new era of glory for Sheen, the name of which the king changed to Richmond, he having been Earl of Richmond in Yorkshire before he was called to the English throne. What had hitherto been really more like a fortress than a palace was greatly enlarged, the moat which had surrounded it was filled in to make room for the various extensions, and the new buildings were lavishly decorated. When the insurrection headed by Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford carpenter, who claimed to be the heir of the murdered Duke of Clarence, broke out in Ireland in 1487, Henry called a council of war together at Richmond, and the following year the Princess Anne of York, fifth daughter of Edward IV., was the guest of the king in the palace. In 1492, after the termination of the war with France, a grand tournament was held partly in the grounds of the royal residence and partly on the green between it and the river, 'in the which space,' says the chronicler John Stow, writing about a century later, 'a combat was holden and doone betwixt Sir James Parker, knight, and Hugh Vaughan, gentleman usher, upon controversie for the arms that garter gave to the sayde Henry Vaughan ... and Sir James was killed incontinently at the first course, in consequence,' in the writer's opinion, 'of his having worn a false helmet,' an incident proving how real were the dangers attending the warlike pageants in which the Tudor sovereigns so greatly delighted.

In 1497 or 1498 a serious fire broke out in Richmond Palace, and the greater part of the older portion of the building was destroyed, but the king at once set a whole army of workmen to repair the mischief, and in 1501 he was back again in his favourite residence. There, in the early autumn of that year, took place the betrothal of his eldest son, Prince Arthur, with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Katharine of Aragon, and there, too, in January 1502, was signed the contract of marriage between the Princess Margaret of England and James IV. of Scotland that eventually resulted in the union of the two countries. Prince Arthur died five months after the wedding, and the king with unexpected generosity gave up the Richmond Palace to his widowed daughter-in-law, who, on June 25, 1503, was affianced to his second son, Henry, heir-apparent of the English throne, who was then only eleven years old. Henry VII. appears to have taken possession of the palace again very soon, for in 1503 he received in it Philip I. of Spain, who had been shipwrecked off the coast of England, holding great festivities in his honour. In 1506 another fire occurred, breaking out this time in the king's own bedroom, and he narrowly escaped a serious accident, for a gallery through which he had passed with the young Prince Henry collapsed just as he was leaving it. In this case, fortunately, the damage done was slight, and Henry spent much of the remainder of his life at Richmond, where he died in 1509, leaving behind him, it is said, a vast accumulation of treasure hidden away in secret chambers and cellars. After solemn { 233} services had been held in the private chapel of the palace, the body was taken by road with great pomp to be laid to rest in the beautiful but still unfinished chapel in Westminster Abbey, on which the king had spent fabulous sums during his lifetime, and for the completion of which he left £1000 in his will that he made at Richmond three weeks before his death.

Henry VIII. seems to have been at first as much attached to the Richmond Palace as his father had been. He spent the first Christmas after his accession there, and it was in it, on New Year's Day 1511, that his wife, Katharine of Aragon, gave birth to a son, whose advent was celebrated throughout the kingdom with extraordinary rejoicings. The infant on whom so much depended lived, however, but for six weeks, and his father is said to have looked upon his untimely death as a judgment on himself for having married his brother's widow. After the tragic event the king paid but a few short visits to Richmond, lending the palace there between whiles to distinguished guests, amongst whom was the Emperor Charles V. of Germany, who had come to England, in 1533, for his betrothal to the Princess Mary, then only four years old. That same year Henry leased the Richmond estate to Massey Villiard and Thomas Brampton for a term of thirty years at an annual rental of £25, 8s., but he evidently considered it still his own private property, for he made use of the palace whenever it suited his convenience. In 1526, for instance, when he had compelled Wolsey to give up to him the newly { 234} completed mansion at Hampton Court, he told the chagrined donor that he could live in his house at Richmond instead, a privilege of which the cardinal availed himself but seldom, so great was his unpopularity in the neighbourhood, the common people, especially those who had been in the service of Henry VII., bitterly resenting that what they irreverently called 'a bocher's dogge should be in the royall manor of Richmond.' For all that, however, Wolsey received Henry VIII. as his guest in it in 1528, when the feast of the patron-saint of England was celebrated with great solemnity in the chapel, all the companions of the Order of the Garter having been present. After his final disgrace the broken-hearted minister paid a last visit to Richmond, taking up his abode on his arrival as usual at the palace, but he soon received a peremptory message from his angry master telling him to withdraw to the Lodge in the Old Deer Park, the history of which is related below.

In 1535 Anne Boleyn, whose doom was already practically sealed, was for a short time at Richmond Palace, and, according to some authorities, it was in a house near by, then owned by Sir George and Lady Carew, that her successor in the king's affection, Jane Seymour, awaited, on the fatal 19th of May 1536, the arrival of her royal lover, to whom she had been married the day before.

It was at Richmond that Anne of Cleves resided whilst the negotiations were proceeding for her divorce from the fickle king, and when they were concluded Henry, in his relief at getting rid of the { 235} 'Dutch cow,' as he irreverently called her, gave her the estate for her life. She became much attached to the palace, and the story goes that the once hated wife several times entertained the king in it with such charming hospitality that he nearly fell in love with her. There was even at one time a rumour that she had become the mother of a son whose father was her divorced husband, and it was not until some of the scandalmongers had been publicly tried and severely punished that gossiping tongues ceased to wag on the subject. That Anne did cherish a hope, when Catherine Howard's influence was waning, of regaining her position as queen appears certain, but she had the sense soon to recognise that she had no chance of success, and she lived quietly on in her luxurious home until the death of Henry, when she had to resign it to Edward VI. The latter preferred Richmond Palace to any of his other residences, and spent as much of his time there as his physicians would allow; but they considered Hampton Court healthier, and insisted on his removal there when his health began to fail. It was at Richmond that took place, in the young king's presence, in the summer of 1550—some say in his private chapel, others in that of the neighbouring Carthusian monastery of Jesus of Bethlehem, of which an account is given below—the marriage of Lord Lisle to Lady Anne Seymour and that of Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester, to the ill-fated Amy Robsart, who was to pay so dearly for standing in the way of her husband's courtship of Queen Elizabeth. That same year Edward VI. received { 236} in the great hall of the palace the French ambassador, Marshal St. André, who had come from France to invest him with the order of St. Michael, on which occasion the courtly manners and generosity of the king completely won the hearts of all his guests.

Queen Mary was at the palace in 1553, and there received the news of the rebellion headed by Wyatt, which caused her to hasten to London, where her prompt action saved the situation. She returned to Richmond in triumph, and summoned her council to meet her there to discuss the arrangements for her marriage with Philip II. of Spain, on which she was determined in spite of the opposition of her subjects. Her happiest days were spent in the old palace on the green before she realised how vain were her hopes of winning her husband's affections and becoming the mother of an heir to the throne; but after her husband's return to Spain she took a dislike to Richmond. When the Princess Elizabeth was suspected of a plot against her sister's life she was sent from her prison in the Tower to Richmond Palace under the care of the stern Sir Henry Bedingfield, and she was so much pleased with her new place of confinement that she begged to be allowed to remain there. It was whilst she was at Richmond that she was offered a free pardon if she would renounce her claim to the throne and marry the Duke of Suffolk, but she firmly refused, and was therefore removed to Woodstock, where she was kept in close confinement, only escaping condemnation to death by pretending that she had been { 237} converted to Roman Catholicism. Later, when Mary's fears of her sister's disloyalty were allayed, and her beloved Philip was once more with her, a grand entertainment was given at Richmond, at which Elizabeth was present, and in the summer of 1558 the queen paid her last visit to the palace, contracting there, it was said, the chill which caused her death, though, as a matter of fact, she had long been in a critical condition of health.

With the accession of Elizabeth a fresh era of prosperity began for Richmond, which was one of the new queen's favourite places of residence, and to which she often went by water, her magnificent state barge escorted by a whole fleet of richly decorated boats bearing her retinue. In Richmond Palace Elizabeth received many of the suitors for her hand, including the young Eric IV., King of Sweden, whom she admitted to some little intimacy, even introducing him to her favourite astrologer, Dr. Dee of Mortlake, though she never had the slightest intention of accepting him; and there, too, she carried on a simultaneous flirtation with the Earls of Leicester and Essex, to the latter of whom she seems to have been really deeply attached. Even after both had passed away she kept up the old traditions, making a gallant attempt to hide the fact that her heart was broken, for she wrote love-letters, some of them from Richmond, to the young Lord Mountjoy; and on one occasion is said to have rewarded a commoner, Mr. William Sydney, with a kiss as a reward for his sprightly dancing of a coranto in her presence in the great hall of the { 238} palace. To the last Elizabeth loved her Richmond home; and it was in its chapel that she listened, not long before her death, to a sermon from Dr. Rudd, Bishop of St. David's, on the realistic description of old age in the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes, remaining, it is related, apparently unmoved even when the preacher, with extraordinary want of tact, referred to her own wrinkles as an example of the ravages of time. The discourse over, however, the queen rose, opened a window with her own hands as if to mark her displeasure, and turning to the doctor told him he could in future keep his disparaging observations to himself, adding, 'I see that some wise men are as big fools as the rest.'

According to some authorities it was at Richmond that the aged sovereign received the news that her beloved Earl of Essex had been executed, a tragedy she had hoped to have prevented, though she had signed his death-warrant, by her promise that she would pardon him at the last moment, however great his crime, if he sent back to her a ring she had given him. Unfortunately there is no reliable historical proof of the truth of the touching story that he did entrust the ring to be given to the queen to the Countess of Nottingham, who kept it back, only confessing the truth on her death-bed to Elizabeth, who shook her violently, declaring that God might forgive her, though she never would; but there is no doubt that the tragic end of the earl hastened her own death. She knew full well that she was doomed soon to follow her favourite to the grave, and often made covert allusions to her conviction, as when she { 239} said to Lord Howard, 'I am tied with a chain of iron round my neck, all is changed with me now.' The last few months of her life were spent at Richmond, and she passed peacefully away, after declaring she had no wish to live longer, on March 24, 1603, according to tradition, for which there seems, however, to be no convincing evidence, in a small room still in existence above one of the entrance-gates of the palace. Her body was taken down the river to Whitehall in the very barge she had so often used in life, and never again was Richmond the scene of a great historic pageant. James I. cared little for his property there, and gave it to his eldest son, Henry, of whom, as is well known, he was extremely jealous, preferring that he should not reside at court.

Prince Henry lived much at Richmond, receiving there, in 1606, the French and Spanish ambassadors, who were both eager to secure for their respective sovereigns an alliance with him, and during the last few years of his life he began to form the famous collection of pictures which is still, after going through many vicissitudes, one of the most valued possessions of the English royal family. He was resident at the palace during the whole of the summer before his untimely death, which took place at St. James's Palace in 1612, and was, according to his doctors, the result of over-indulgence in bathing in the Thames. He was deeply mourned by the people of Richmond, with whom he was extremely popular, on account of his genial unassuming manners. He left his pictures to his brother Charles, to whom { 240} the Richmond estate was transferred by their father in 1617. The new owner was often at the palace before his accession to the throne, constantly adding to the art treasures in it, and his beloved Steenie was often his guest there. It was from it that the two inseparable friends started in 1623 on their wild expedition to Spain, Charles intending to woo the Infanta incognito before committing himself to an engagement. Two months after Charles became king he was welcoming a very different bride, Henrietta Maria of France, on whom he bestowed the Richmond Palace as part of her marriage portion; and although they both preferred Whitehall and Buckingham Palace, the young couple were several times in residence there before their troubles began. The Richmond home was also turned to account as a place of education for their children, the princesses Elizabeth, Mary, and Anne were there for some years under the care of the Countess of Roxburgh, and there Anne died in 1640, from what her doctor called a 'suffocating cataar.' A year later her brother Charles was sent to Richmond with his tutor, Bishop Duppa, by the Parliament that was already at daggers drawn with his father, and there he enjoyed a time of comparative security and happiness before he became involved in the doom that overtook his parents, and started on his weary wanderings as the disinherited heir of a murdered father. During the four years' Civil War Richmond Palace was practically deserted, and in 1647 the pictures in it were taken down, those likely to spread papal doctrines being burned, and the others dispersed. In 1649 a { 241} survey of the property was made by order of Cromwell, when its value was assessed at £10,782, 10s. 2d., and shortly afterwards it was sold to aid in raising money to pay the arrears due to the soldiers of the Parliamentary army. The greater part of the historic building was pulled down, and in 1650 what was left of it was bought by Sir Gregory Norton, who had been one of the king's judges, and had signed the warrant for his execution. According to some authorities Sir Gregory resided in the dismantled mansion until his death, which took place in 1652, whilst others assert that he was turned out of it at the Restoration, when he narrowly escaped sharing the fate of the other regicides. However that may be, the palace, hallowed by so many memories, was certainly occupied for a short time by the widowed queen Henrietta Maria, who actually received in it, as her guest, the notorious Lady Castlemaine, one of Charles II.'s many mistresses, who had left him in a fit of temper at a moment's notice. The story goes that the king joined her at Richmond the next morning, in the hope of patching up a reconciliation, when he probably had a stormy interview with his mother, who must indeed have mourned over his many iniquities, and wondered that all his troubles should have taught him so little.

The Queen Dowager left Richmond for France, never to return, in 1665, giving over the palace to Sir Edward Villiers, who two years later either lent or rented it to a relative of his, Lady Frances Villiers, who had charge of the three young children of the Duke of York, the future James II., two of whom, { 242} the Dukes of Kendal and Cambridge, died in 1667. On the accession of James II., Richmond Palace was given back to the Crown, but the new king never lived in it, though he sent his infant son, who was to have such a melancholy career as the Pretender, to be cared for there. The child, who was so delicate that he had not been expected to live, throve in his new surroundings, and was taken back to Windsor in time to share his parents' flight on the landing of the Prince of Orange. After the new revolution the royal demesne at Richmond was long deserted, William III. and his consort having paid only flying visits to it. The Princess Anne, daughter of James II. by his first wife, who had been very happy there with her little brothers before their untimely death, begged hard to be allowed to live in it, but permission was refused, and it was not until the accession of George II. that it was again used as a royal residence. The palace was given by him to his wife, Queen Caroline, who built for the accommodation of the ladies of her court the four substantial mansions on the west side of the green that are still known as Maids of Honour Row. In 1770 Richmond Palace was for a few months the home of Queen Charlotte, who, as already stated in connection with Kew, had a great love for the whole neighbourhood. Since then, unfortunately, further portions of the grand old mansion, that at one time with its dependencies occupied ten and a half acres of ground, have been pulled down, and all that is now left are the entrance gateway—on which, carved in stone, is the coat of arms of Henry VII.—of what is still { 243} known as the Wardrobe Court, and a portion of the buildings that once surrounded the latter, which are leased by the Crown to different tenants, and still bear witness with their ornate internal decoration, their quaint nooks and corners, and their secret passages, to the good old days gone by, when they were but a small part of a stately palace, capable of accommodating hundreds of distinguished guests, that was the scene of many a courtly pageant and many an exciting intrigue.

CHAPTER XI

RICHMOND TOWN AND PARK, WITH PETERSHAM,
HAM HOUSE, AND KINGSTON

In addition to the many interesting historic memories connected with its palace, Richmond has associations with a number of important religious houses, of which, unfortunately, no actual trace now remains, though their names are preserved in those of certain modern roads.

Henry V., soon after his accession, founded in the Old Deer Park, near the site of the present Observatory of Kew, a Carthusian monastery, which he called the House of Jesus of Bethlehem, one of several endowed by him in expiation for his father's usurpation of the throne, which may possibly have been in Shakespeare's mind when in his Henry V. he made that monarch say, 'And I have built two chantries where the sad and solemn priests still pray for Richard's soul.'

The monastery of Jesus of Bethlehem seems to have been a very imposing group of buildings, covering several acres of ground, round about which soon gathered a considerable hamlet that was known as West Sheen. In the chapel connected with it { 245} continual prayers were offered up day and night for the soul of King Richard, and within its precincts was a hermitage called the Anchorites' cell, where dwelt the chaplain, whose stipend was fixed at twenty marks a year. The new community quickly gained a great reputation for sanctity, and its priors were all men chosen on account of their exceptional holiness, amongst whom the last, Henry Man, who died in 1536, was specially noted for his earnest faith, or what would at the present day be considered his credulity, for he firmly believed in the divine mission of the Holy Maid of Kent, who had during his term of office a great following of converts, and paid by her terrible death at Tyburn for her boldness in predicting the punishment of the king for his divorce of Katharine of Aragon.

To Sheen Monastery came Edward IV. and his wife Elizabeth in 1472, to take part in what was called the 'Great Pardon,' a special dispensation granted to all who had contributed to the expense of restoring the buildings, and to it some thirty years later fled Perkin Warbeck in the vain hope of obtaining sanctuary, for he was dragged from his refuge by the king's emissaries, by whom he was taken to London to be set in the stocks, first at Westminster and at Cheapside, before he was sent to the Tower, where his fellow-conspirator, the young Earl of Warwick, was already imprisoned.

It was at Sheen that the education of the future Cardinal Pole was begun, he having been sent there at the early age of seven. He remained under the care of the monks for five years, and returned to { 246} them in 1525 for two years of prayerful seclusion before the beginning of his long struggle with Thomas Cromwell over the question of the king's divorce. The memory of the saintly Dean Colet is also inseparably connected with the House of Jesus of Bethlehem, for some little time after his foundation of St. Paul's School, he built for himself a house on land acquired from the brethren, to which he withdrew when he felt his end approaching, passing peacefully away in it in 1519.

According to an old but not well-authenticated tradition, the dead body of James IV. of Scotland was brought to Sheen for interment after the fatal battle of Flodden Field, remaining in the monastery, however, unhouselled and unassoiled, though protected from decay by being wrapt in lead amongst a quantity of lumber in an upper chamber until 1552—a date, by the way, long after the dissolution of the religious houses—when it was found by some workpeople, who cut off the head to give it to a glazier in Queen Elizabeth's employ, and buried the rest of the remains. In 1539 the monks of Sheen wisely evaded the penalties of resistance to the high-handed proceedings of Henry VIII. by voluntarily surrendering their property to him, and although later Queen Mary reinstated them in their old home, they were again banished by her successor. Meanwhile the monastery had been occupied, first by Edward, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, to whom the estate had been granted by her husband, and later by the father of Lady Jane Grey, Henry, Duke of Suffolk, after whose { 247} death on the scaffold in 1554 it reverted to the Crown, by whom it was leased to successive tenants, passing in 1675 to Lord Brouncker and the more celebrated diplomatist and historian, Sir William Temple, the former taking possession of the Priory, the latter of a smaller house near by. It was to Sir William Temple that were addressed the famous love-letters of Dorothy Osborne, who when she became his wife lived with him in what he called his 'little corner at Sheen,' sharing his interest in the cultivation of his gardens, which became celebrated far and near for the vegetables and fruit grown in them.

It was at Sheen that Jonathan Swift, who was for some years secretary to Sir William Temple, first met his beloved 'Stella,' Hester Johnston, who was born on the estate, and is said to have been the daughter of its owner. Whether this be true or not, her education was entrusted by Sir William to Swift, and it was to her that the latter addressed the Journal , which is considered one of his most remarkable works. Soon after his accession to the English throne, William III., who had seen a good deal of Sir William Temple when the owner of the 'little corner at Sheen' was ambassador at the Hague, offered him the post of Secretary of State, and though the appointment was declined, the king used often to ride over from Hampton Court to stroll about in the Sheen gardens, when he and his host would discuss together, now affairs of vital importance to the kingdom, now the best soil in which to grow different varieties of fruit. Swift { 248} was generally in attendance at these meetings, and is said to have been taught by the royal guest how to cook vegetables in the Dutch style. Possibly little Hester, still a mere child, may have shared the royal instructions, that were continued at Moor Park, to which her reputed father withdrew in 1689, giving over the Sheen home to his only surviving son, John Temple. After the death of the new tenant, who had been made Secretary for War, but committed suicide four days afterwards in despair of being able to cope with the onerous duties of his office, Sir William took a great dislike to his once beloved property, and never again visited it. Meanwhile Lord Brouncker had passed away, and after changing hands many times, the monastery buildings, as well as the house that had been owned by Sir William Temple, were pulled down in the early eighteenth century, with the exception of one gateway belonging to the former, which was still standing in 1769, when it too was removed, because it interfered with the so-called improvements being made by George III. on his Kew estate. The hamlet, that owed its existence to the monastery, was also swept away, but its name is preserved in those of the suburb of East Sheen, the road leading to it and one of the gates of Richmond Park, near to which, amongst the many modern villas that have recently sprung up, still remain some few stately old mansions, notably that known as Temple Grove, that was once the home of Sir John, brother of Sir William Temple.

The House of Jesus of Bethlehem was not the { 249} only monastery founded at Sheen by Henry V., for he also endowed a home for some French monks of the Celestine order, but it was hardly completed before he sent the inmates back to their own land and confiscated the property, because he discovered on a surprise visit he paid them that his name was not mentioned in their prayers. Later, Edward II. built a convent at Sheen for Carmelite, and Henry VII. one for Observant friars, but the career of both was short, for the former was soon removed to Oxford and the latter was suppressed in 1534, though a building near the palace was long known as the Friary, whilst the memory of what must have been a very important community is still preserved in the names of Friars' Lane, leading down to the river, and Friar Stile Road in Upper Richmond.

The house in which Dean Colet passed away, that was confiscated with the rest of the monastery estate by Henry VIII., became known as the Lodge, and it was to it that Cardinal Wolsey was ordered to withdraw, as related above, on his last sad visit to Richmond. It was later successively leased to various tenants, and granted in the early eighteenth century to James, Duke of Ormond, who rebuilt or greatly added to it, residing in it till his impeachment in 1715, when it passed to his brother, the Earl of Arran, who sold it to the Prince of Wales, later George II., who was living in it with his wife, the Princess Caroline, when in 1727 the news of the death of his father was brought to him by Sir Robert Walpole. The new king gave the Lodge to the queen, who spent a great deal of money on it, { 250} laying out the grounds in a lavish fashion, and causing many extraordinary buildings to be erected in them, including a fantastic structure known as Merlin's Cave, a hermitage, a grotto, and a dairy. It was in this beloved retreat that Sir Walter Scott in his Heart of Midlothian laid the scene of the interview between Jeanie Deans and Queen Caroline that he prefaces with an eloquent description of Richmond Hill as it then was, and the inimitable view from it. After the death of Queen Caroline the Lodge was deserted for some little time, and in 1760 her grandson, George III., pulled it down, destroyed the beautiful terrace overlooking the river, and had the grounds ploughed up to add them to the grazing-grounds of his sheep and cattle, leaving not a trace of a home that was once as favourite a royal residence as the palaces of Richmond and Kew, though the Old Deer Park in which it stood, where archery, hockey, and other open-air competitions are now held, still seems to be haunted by the spirits of those who lived in it.

Of the many other fine old mansions that were long the pride of Richmond, few, alas, now remain. Gone, for instance, is Fitzwilliam House that fronted the green, in which George II. was the guest of Sir Matthew Decker on the day when he was proclaimed king, and where its noble former owner formed the priceless collection of rare books, illuminated missals, etc., bequeathed by him to Cambridge and preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Vanished, too, is the famous 'High walk' or 'terras on arches' that stretched from where the Vicarage now { 251} stands to one of the entrances to the grounds of the Lodge, and was a favourite promenade of the frequenters of the Richmond spa, which enjoyed a brief popularity in the early eighteenth century, as is also the humble group of houses known as Poverty Court, that were at one time occupied by some of the poorer members of the nobility. The great block of buildings erected in 1798 on part of the site of the old palace by the Earl of Cholmondeley, that later became associated with the notorious Earl of Queensberry, familiarly called 'Old O.,' in which the Prince of Wales, later George IV., and Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Duke of Clarence, later William IV., and Horace Walpole were amongst the many distinguished guests, was pulled down in 1830 and replaced by the modern villa that bears its name, though it is but a poor representative of its predecessor. Fortunately, however, between the fine bridge that replaced the ancient ferry in 1774 and Petersham, still stand facing the river and preserving much of the character of days gone by, several noteworthy survivals of the royal borough's palmy days, including the picturesque Bridge-House built by Sir Robert Taylor in the middle of the eighteenth century; the so-called Trumpeter's House, also known as the 'Old Palace,' a characteristic Queen Anne building with a pretentious porch, that owes its singular name to two figures of trumpeters that used to stand on either side of the entrance, Ivy Hall, the residence of William IV. when Duke of Clarence; Gothic House, long the home of the cultivated Madame de Staël-Holstein, daughter { 252} of the astute French minister Necker; and Buccleuch House, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, with many other members of the royal family, were the guests of the then owner in June 1844 at an open-air fête, when the river presented a scene almost as brilliant as in the days of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth.

Fortunately, the general aspect of Richmond Green, that when the palace was occupied by royalty was the scene of many a brilliant pageant, and later of many a hotly contested game of cricket, in which the chief experts of the day took part, is but little changed from what it was two centuries ago. Its wooden palings have been replaced by iron ones bearing the monogram of William IV., and the old sundial that long occupied its centre has been removed, but its limits have not been curtailed. It has a delightful old-world look about it, and there is nothing incongruous with it in the new buildings of the Free Library, or in the modern theatre associated with the name of Edmund Kean, who was at one time its lessee, that replaces, though on another site, the eighteenth-century building in which David Garrick and Mrs. Siddons are said to have acted, and that was the successor of a yet earlier one founded by the poet-laureate Colley Cibber. The narrow alleys leading from the town to the time-honoured Green are also thoroughly in keeping with it, and here and there a venerable red-brick mansion amongst the more modern buildings surrounding it redeems the ancient borough from the commonplace. The parish school and dust-bin, { 253} with the open refuse-heap that long occupied the site of the present crescent; the old watch-house that looked down upon them, with the adjacent pound and stocks, have all been improved away; but the houses of Heron, originally Herring Court, named probably after a former owner, in one of which Lord Lytton was often the guest of his brother, those in Ormond Road where dwelt the poetess Mrs. Hofland, Lichfield House, now the residence of the novelist Mrs. Maxwell (Miss Braddon), and Egerton House opposite to it, still strike the note of the past, that echoes also in the poetic name of the district known as the Vineyard, recalling the days when vines flourished on the slopes of Richmond Hill, and the almshouses of Sir Richard Wright and Bishop Duppa—both founded in the seventeenth century, though the latter was only transferred to its present site in 1852—received their first inmates. No longer do the shouts of the bargemen, who used to be harnessed to their crafts in groups of eight, tout for hire in Water Lane, and the quaint cry 'Man to horse!' by which their customers hailed them, clash with the shrill horn of the stagecoach that started for London twice a day, but at the junction of the Lane with King Street still stands part of the ancient Feather's Inn, once a noted place of resort of the beau monde , and not far from it is the little old-fashioned shop known as the Maid of Honour, because in it were sold the celebrated cakes bearing that name. Passed away, leaving no trace, however, are the Blue Anchor, Black Boy, and Queen Anne's inns, but near the { 254} summit of the famous hill, looking down upon the river, is the fine residence called Cardigan House, once the property of the earl whose name it bears, in the grounds of which is the medicinal spring near to which was erected in 1696 a place of entertainment called Richmond Wells, that was very much frequented until in 1696 the property was bought by two straight-laced maiden ladies named Houblin, who quickly put a stop to the gay gatherings that used to assemble in the theatre by having it pulled down.

Beyond Cardigan House are the beautiful public gardens occupying the site of Lansdowne House and part of the Buccleuch estate that were laid out after the designs of Sir Frederick, later Lord Leighton, and were opened in 1866, and a little higher up on the brow of the hill is the world-famous terrace, the view from which has been eloquently described again and again in poetry and prose, and has been made the subject of many a well-known painting. With Petersham Wood and village and the winding river in the foreground, it embraces the valley of the Thames as far as Windsor Castle, that can be distinctly seen on a clear day, and the distant Surrey hills varying in character with the season of the year, but ever full of fascination and inspiration to those who are able to appreciate its charm. Again and again the public have been threatened with the loss of the unique privilege of enjoying this unrivalled prospect, now one, now another of its exquisite details that has fallen into the market having been marked for { 255} destruction by the speculative builder, but in almost every case rescue has come sometimes at the very last moment by the intervention of some generous individual who has snatched the prey from the destroyer, as when in 1900 Sir Max Waechter bought the beautiful Petersham Ait or Glovers Islet and presented it to the Richmond Corporation. On the river side of the famous terrace are two massive-looking eighteenth-century mansions that, but for the memories associated with them, would be better away, known as the Wick, occupying the site of the Bull's Head Tavern and Wick House, the latter, though now considerably altered, originally designed by Sir William Chambers for Sir Joshua Reynolds, who lived in it for some years, receiving there many of his celebrated sitters, and more than once painting the view from its windows. At the end of the terrace—nearly opposite the entrance to Queen's Road, named after Queen Caroline, that was a century ago a mere muddy thoroughfare called Black Horse Lane—is the famous Star and Garter Hotel, that occupies the site of several earlier buildings, two of which were destroyed by fire. The first inn of the name—that commemorates the Earl of Dysart, a knight of the noble Order of Chivalry founded by Edward III., who owned the ground on which it stood—was built in 1738, and was but one of several hostelries dotted about near what was then known as the High Walk on the Green, amongst which was possibly a predecessor of the one opposite the picturesque modern Wesleyan College, named after { 256} the Lass o' Richmond Hill, about whom there has been so much amusing controversy, but whose identity has never yet been satisfactorily determined, some saying that she was Mrs. Fitzherbert, who at one time lived on the terrace, others that she was Lady Sarah Lennox, one of several ladies to whom George III. paid court before he married Queen Charlotte, whilst a few north-country sceptics declare that she was a rustic beauty of the Yorkshire Richmond.

It was not until the early nineteenth century that the Star and Garter began to gain the exceptional celebrity it still enjoys, but since 1838, when it was occupied by Louis Philippe, who was visited in it by the young Queen Victoria, it has been associated with the names of many illustrious guests, including the Princess Lieven, the widowed Queen Amelia, the ill-fated Archduke Maximilian, and the Duc d'Aumale.

Opposite to the Star and Garter is Ancaster House, soon, alas, to be replaced by residential flats, named after the Duke of Ancaster, from whom it was purchased by Sir Lionel Darrell, the favourite of George III., who gave to him a portion of the park, marking it off himself with his riding-whip, when he complained that he had not room for the hothouses he wished to build. In one of the large mansions facing the famous view lives Sir Frederick Cook, who owns a fine collection of paintings of the old masters, and a house in the adjacent Downe Terrace occupying part of the site of Bishop Duppa's almshouses referred to above, was the { 257} home at one time of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and later of Mrs. Ewing, the daughter of Mrs. Gatty.

The parish church of Richmond, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, replaces one of four ancient chapels that belonged to the Abbey of Merton. Its tower, a massive square structure, that has been again and again restored, is of much earlier date than the rest of the building, which has been several times added to. The general effect is not, however, inharmonious, and there is a simple dignity about the interior, that contains a number of interesting memorials of noted inhabitants of the royal borough, including a sixteenth-century brass to Robert Cotton, who was in the service of Queen Mary and Elizabeth, and one to Lady Dorothy Wright, who died in 1631. In the chancel is a monument to Lord Brouncker, who was cofferer to Charles II., and on the walls of one of the aisles are sculptures by Flaxman to the memory of the Rev. Mark Delafosse and the Honourable Barbara Lowther. The inscriptions to Mrs. Yates the great tragic actress, Lady Diana Beauclerck, the Rev. George Wakefield, Mrs. Hofland, and Edmund Kean, all of whom rest in the churchyard, are also noteworthy, but they are all surpassed in interest by the tablet commemorating the famous poet James Thomson, who lived for many years and died in 1748 in a cottage known as Rosedale, in the Kew Foot Road, that was later enlarged and now forms part of the Richmond Hospital, it having been bought by the Corporation in 1869. As is well known, Thomson greatly loved the scenery near his home, often { 258} referring to its charms in his poems; he wrote the Seasons in his garden, in a summer-house now destroyed, where he often received his fellow-poets Leigh Hunt and Pope, and the actor Samuel Quin, who once rescued him from a sponging-house into which he had drifted through his carelessness in money matters. Thomson was buried in the churchyard of the parish church, but when the latter was enlarged the new wall passed over his resting-place, which is near the brass tablet put up to his memory by Lord Buchan, at the west end of the north aisle, that bears the following inscription: 'In the earth below this tablet are the remains of James Thomson, author of the beautiful poems entitled the Seasons , the Castle of Indolence , etc., who died at Richmond, August 27, and was buried here August 29, 1748, O.S. The Earl of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man and so sweet a poet should be without a memorial, has denoted the place of his interment for the satisfaction of his admirers in the year of our Lord 1792.'

Beneath this sentence, that naively couples the name of its author with that of a man far greater than himself, is a quotation from Thomson's exquisite Winter that may well be given here, so typical is it of its writer's deeply reverent spirit:—

'Father of Light and Life! Thou God supreme,
O teach me what is good, teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit, and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious Peace and Virtue prove
Sacred, substantial, never-fading Bliss!'

Next to its fine position on a very beautiful reach of the Thames, the chief glory of Richmond—a glory shared, however, by five other parishes, Petersham, Ham, Kingston, Putney, and Mortlake—is its noble park, known as the New or Great Park, to distinguish it from the one that was connected with the palace. It comprises two thousand acres of charming undulating scenery, grand oak woods and plantations of other trees alternating with fern-clad dells and dales, in the midst of which are the picturesque Pen Ponds, so called because they are near the enclosures for the deer. From certain points, especially from the terrace between the Richmond Hill gate and the entrance to the grounds of Pembroke Lodge, just within which is a memorial to Thomson, grand views are obtained of the Thames valley with the river winding through it, whilst from the rising ground on the other side of the park the buildings of London and the twin heights of Highgate and Hampstead can be distinctly seen.

Originally part of a vast tract of uncultivated land known as Sheen Chase, of which Ham and Sheen Commons are relics, the Great Park was first enclosed in 1637 by Charles I., who had a lofty wall, ten miles in circumference, built round it, and stocked it with the red and fallow deer the descendants of which add so greatly to its attractions, thus converting it without any legal justification into a new hunting-ground for his own pleasure. This high-handed proceeding, involving as it did the appropriation of much private property, aroused { 260} bitter opposition at the time, not only from the actual owners of the confiscated estates, but also from Archbishop Laud, Bishop Juxon, and Lord Cottington, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who espoused the cause of the common people, their privileges of collecting firewood and turning their cattle out to graze having been interfered with. The result of the remonstrances of this powerful trio was that the king, though he would not yield up a yard of the ground he had so unfairly seized, ordered the provision, for the use of foot-passengers, of small gates and step-ladders, the latter of which was situated where the Coombe entrance, still known as the Ladder Gate, now is. Moreover, Charles granted to his ranger, in addition to the use of a house called Harleton Lodge, the site of which has not been identified, the right of pasturage for four horses, and allowed owners of carriages to drive through the park on payment of certain fees.

After the execution of the king, Parliament granted the park to the City of London, but on the Restoration it reverted to the Crown, to which it has ever since belonged. The rangership became a much coveted office that was held at different times by distinguished statesmen, including Sir Robert Walpole, who did much to improve the property, and built the famous old lodge that was pulled down in 1837. In 1751 the appointment of ranger was given to the Princess Amelia, who made a very bad stewardess, for she treated the estate as her own private property, shutting out the public { 261} entirely, and rendering herself so obnoxious that she was at last compelled to resign. She was succeeded by the Earl of Bute, and since his time the various restrictions to the enjoyment by outsiders of the beautiful park have been gradually removed, so that now all are free to wander at will amongst the woods and vales, or along the meandering Beverley Brook, to watch the grazing deer, that are no longer hunted, and to listen in the early spring to the songs of the nightingales or the harsh cry of the herons as they sweep down from their lofty nests to fish in the Thames. There are now six public carriage entrances to the park, and within its precincts are several old mansions standing in private grounds that are associated with interesting memories, amongst which the most famous is White Lodge, built by George II., and added to by the Princess Amelia, that was long the home of the Duchess of Kent, mother of Queen Victoria, and later that of the Duke and Duchess of Teck, parents of the present Princess of Wales, whose eldest son, the heir after his father to the English throne, was born in it. Close to Sheen Gate is a cottage once occupied by the famous naturalist Sir Richard Owen, and in Pembroke Lodge, once known as the Mole-Catchers, that was lent by George II. to the Countess of Pembroke, after whom it is named, the famous Prime Minister Earl Russell lived for some years and died. In the grounds of the Lodge are two mounds, one now called Henry the Eighth's, and marked in the oldest extant map of the park as the King's Standinge, { 262} because the much-married monarch was long erroneously supposed to have watched from it for the signal that Anne Boleyn's head had fallen; the other known as Oliver's Mount, because of the equally unfounded tradition that Cromwell looked down from it on a battle between the king's forces and his own, though exactly where the apocryphal battle took place is not suggested.

Between Richmond and Kingston is the still charmingly rural-looking village of Petersham, set down in beautiful scenery, for it is protected on the north and east by the park named after it and Ham Common, and is divided from the river by the famous meadows, that will never be built over, known as Ham Walks, beloved of the poet Gay and of his patroness the old Duchess of Queensberry, the 'Kitty' whose praises were sung by him and by Pope and Swift, and who lived in a river-side mansion that was later occupied by Lady Douglas.

Referred to as Patriceham or Peter's Dwelling in Doomsday Book, the hamlet of Petersham was for several centuries a dependency of St. Peter's Abbey at Chertsey, and its quaint little sixteenth-century church, that has a picturesque turret surmounted by a low spire, probably occupies the site of a much earlier building, relics of which may possibly have been incorporated in the chancel that is much older than the nave. In the little sanctuary, that can only hold three hundred worshippers, and is soon to be supplemented by a far more imposing-looking building now (1907) nearing completion, { 263} rest the remains of George Cole and his wife, whose house and grounds were amongst the properties confiscated by Charles I. for enclosure in the Great Park, and the church also contains a monument to the great navigator Captain George Vancouver, who is buried in the churchyard. There, too, rest Theodora Jane Cowper, the 'Delia' immortalised by her famous poet cousin, and the Misses Berry, the friends of Horace Walpole, who in their lifetime enjoyed some little reputation as authoresses, and resided in the neighbouring Devonshire House, that was also at one time the home of Lady Diana Beauclerck.

Adjoining Petersham is the little village of Ham, the history of which, though it is not mentioned in Doomsday Book, can be traced back to before the Conquest, its manor having been given by King Athelstan to his chief alderman, Wulgar. Until quite recently a mere hamlet of scattered cottages, Ham is now growing into a populous suburb, but it still owes its chief distinction to its association with the celebrated Ham House, which is, however, really in Petersham parish, and represents the home of the Saxon thane Wulgar.

A characteristic Jacobean mansion, with fine avenues of trees leading up to the Petersham and riverside entrances, Ham House was built in 1610 by Sir Thomas Vavasour, and after changing hands several times it became the property of the noble Dysart family. It was long the home of Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart, in her own right, who was one { 264} of the most beautiful and accomplished women of her time, and played an important part in the Civil War. Twice married, the second time to the Duke of Lauderdale, she is said to have won all hearts, even that of the stern, unbending Cromwell, and when her husband was taken prisoner after the battle of Worcester she went herself to plead his cause with the victorious general. Later, when the duke had become the leading spirit of the Cabal Ministry, Ham House was the scene of many of its meetings, and allusions to it are frequent in the contemporary press, notably in the journal of John Evelyn, who under date 27th August 1678 penned an enthusiastic eulogy on it. In the autumn of that year John Campbell, grandson of the lovely Countess of Dysart, who was to become known as the great Duke of Argyll, was born in it, and throughout his chequered career he retained a great affection for it. He died in 1743 in the neighbouring Sudbrook House (now a hydropathic establishment), that was his favourite residence when he was in England.

Charles II. is said to have taken refuge in Ham House on one occasion when fleeing for his life from his enemies, narrowly escaping capture, and his brother James II. was to have been sent there after his deposition in 1688, but he pleaded so earnestly against it, declaring it to be a cold and comfortless place in the winter, that he was allowed to go to Rochester. In the eighteenth century the reputation of Ham House as one of the most beautiful seats near London was fully maintained, in spite { 265} of the carping criticism to which it was subjected by Horace Walpole, one of whose nieces had married its owner, the Earl of Dysart. Queen Charlotte was a frequent visitor there, and later William IV. was often the guest of the famous Lady Dysart, who died at a great age in 1840. Since then the time-honoured building has been little altered, and to the art treasures accumulated by its early owners have been added many fine paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hoppner, Vandyck, and other great masters. It remains one of the very few historic mansions on the Thames that have escaped destruction, and those who now own it have given many proofs of their respect for its traditions.

To pass from Richmond, Petersham, and Ham, that still bear the unmistakable impress of the past, to modern Kingston and its suburbs Surbiton and Norbiton, is to enter a different world, so completely has the ancient city, which is referred to in a charter of King Edred bearing date 946 as the 'royal town where kings are hallowed,' been transformed since the days when the Saxon kings were crowned in it, sitting on the stone still preserved in a railed-in space opposite the Courthouse. There, as inscribed upon the venerable relic, Athelstan, Edmund, Edred, Edgar, Edward the Martyr, Ethelred II., and Edmund received their crowns; there the national councils assembled; and there took place the tragic scenes between Dunstan and the young king Edwy, whom the archbishop dared to follow to the chamber of his bride, Œlgifa, an intrusion the newly wedded wife never forgave, and { 266} that had much to do with her bitter hostility to her husband's adviser. In 1200 the reluctant King John was compelled to give the citizens of Kingston their first charter, and in the royal town Henry III. was defied in 1264 by the turbulent barons in the once formidable castle, the very site of which cannot now be determined. Into Kingston, in 1472, marched Falconbridge with fifty thousand men in pursuit of Edward IV., whose tenure of the throne was still insecure, to find the bridge, the only one that then spanned the river above the City of London, broken down, so that he was obliged to return by the way that he had come; and at Kingston many years afterwards, the ill-fated Katharine of Aragon, then a happy-hearted girl of sixteen, halted for a night on her way to be married to Prince Arthur, elder brother of the second husband who was to treat her so cruelly. In 1554 the doomed Sir Thomas Wyatt, in arms against Queen Mary, secured a temporary success by crossing the river at Kingston on a bridge of boats, and in 1647 the old town was for some months the headquarters of General Fairfax in command of the Parliamentarian troops. There a year later the last stand was made under the Earl of Holland of the Royalists, who were cut to pieces, their leader falling after a desperate resistance against fearful odds. Since then Kingston has enjoyed a long spell of peace and security, but it has lost the distinction that belonged to it in those days of unrest, retaining but very few survivals of the past. Its parish church, one of { 267} the largest in England, was founded in the early thirteenth century, but it has been almost completely modernised, part of its tower and the southern aisle of the chancel being all that are left of the original structure. It contains, however, some interesting monuments, notably the altar-tomb of Sir Anthony Benn, who died in 1618, and a seated marble statue of the Countess of Liverpool by Chantrey, with several fine brasses, including that to Robert Skern and his wife Joan, daughter of Alice Ferrers, and according to tradition of Edward III., and that to John Hertcombe and his wife, who died in 1477 and 1478.

A few old houses in the market-place are all that now remain of the many mansions that were once the pride of royal Kingston, but its fine situation on the Thames preserves to it something of the distinction it enjoyed for so long. It is, moreover, in touch with much beautiful Surrey scenery and within easy reach by water of many picturesque riverside villages, such as Thames Ditton, much frequented by boating men and anglers, and East Molesey on the junction of the Mole with the Thames opposite Hampton Court, a favourite resort of holiday-makers in the summer, when the towing-path is lined with gaily decorated house-boats and pleasure-crafts of great variety are constantly passing up and down stream.

CHAPTER XII

RIVERSIDE MIDDLESEX FROM FULHAM TO HAMPTON COURT

Although unfortunately much of the romantic beauty that for centuries distinguished riverside Middlesex has gone for ever, there still remain here and there picturesque survivals of the long-ago, recalling the days when it rivalled its opposite neighbour, Surrey, in rural charm. Some fifty years ago indeed, even Fulham, now indissolubly linked with London, was a country place, with market gardens sloping down to the Thames, and fishermen's cottages dotted here and there upon its banks. The manor of Fulham was given in the seventh century by the Bishop of Hereford, to whom it then belonged, to the holy St. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, and its history has ever since been intimately bound up with that of the Church in southern England. The ancient manor-house, that was long the favourite residence of St. Erkenwald's successors, is now represented by the palace, the older portion of which dates from the fifteenth century, it having been built by Bishop Fitzjames, whose arms surmount the gateway. In it lived for some time Bishop Ridley, who, with the equally { 269} famous Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, suffered death at the stake at Oxford in 1554, for their heretical opinions, and the no less steadfast Bishop Bonner, who was deprived of his see for refusing to take the oath of supremacy that meant the recognition of Queen Elizabeth as the head of the Church. To Fitzjames's building Bishop Fletcher, father of the famous dramatist, made considerable additions, including the present library, at one time used as a chapel, that contains with many valuable manuscripts and books a number of interesting portraits, such as those of Archbishop Sandys and Bishops Ridley and Juxon.

Early in the eighteenth century the greater part of the palace at Fulham was pulled down, and it was not until 1764 that the river front was rebuilt. The present chapel was added in 1869 by Bishop Tait, later Archbishop of Canterbury, and from time to time minor alterations have been made, the new and the old having, however, been so skilfully dovetailed together that the group of buildings with their encircling moat present a very harmonious general appearance. The ancient parish church, the date of the foundation of which is unknown, to which the charming Bishop's Walk leads from the palace, has also been reverently treated, the necessary restorations having been made with considerable care. In the well-kept churchyard rest many bishops and other celebrities, including Theodore Hook, the talented but dissipated novelist, who died in poverty and debt in 1841; and here and there amongst the sea { 270} of modern villas and rows of shops that make up the Fulham of to-day are a few old homesteads that still serve to keep the past in some slight degree in touch with the present. This is especially the case in the district of North End, where in a mansion now divided into two houses Samuel Richardson wrote Clarissa Harlowe and part of Sir Charles's Grandson , and where in residences that cannot now be identified lived at different times W. Wynne Ryland, the famous line-engraver who was hanged for forgery in 1783, Dr. Crotch, the musical composer, Edmund Kean, Mrs. Delaney, Jonathan Swift, and Jacob Tonson.

Even more Londonised than Fulham is its neighbour Hammersmith, the situation of which, however, on a picturesque reach of the Thames, that is here spanned by a suspension bridge, still preserves to it a certain charm. The seventeenth-century church, if not architecturally beautiful, is in harmony with its surroundings, and though the famous Brandenburg House, in which Queen Caroline passed away, and the ancient manor-house of Pullenswick, later known as Ravenscroft, at one time the home of Alice Ferrers, the heartless mistress of Edward III., have both been pulled down, the Dove Coffee-house, in which, in a room overlooking the river, Thomson wrote his beautiful poem of Winter , remains much what it was when it was one of the favourite haunts of the poet and his kindred spirits, Leigh Hunt, who lived in a little cottage hard by, and Pope, who often came down from his villa at Twickenham for { 271} a friendly chat. On what is known as the Lower Mall lived many celebrities when it was the fashionable quarter of Hammersmith, including the clever engineer Sir Samuel Morland, the trusted friend of Charles II.; Arthur Murphy the dramatist, Philip de Loutherbourg the artist, Charles Burney the Greek scholar, and greater than them all, the poet Coleridge; whilst in the adjoining Upper Mall, now destroyed, Queen Catherine, the neglected wife of Charles II., resided for some years after the death of her fickle husband. Later the celebrated Dr. Ratcliffe, who attended Queen Anne, had a house near by, next door to which lived the scarcely less noted non-juring Bishop Lloyd of Norwich. Long a centre of Roman Catholicism, Hammersmith at one time owned an important Benedictine convent, in which during the French Revolution many fugitive nuns from France took refuge, and part of the ancient buildings are now used as a college for priests; whilst the nunnery itself may be said to be represented by the modern Nazareth House, the headquarters of the devoted Little Sisters of the Poor.

Strange to say, though Hammersmith has all but lost in the rush and hurry of the present the impress of the past, its neighbour Chiswick has to a great extent retained its old-fashioned character. True, it has lost many of its ancient mansions, such as Chiswick Hall, long a favourite summer residence of the masters of Westminster School, and the quaint Red Lion Inn with the whetstone chained to the lintel of the door, beloved of artists { 272} and poets, has been improved away; but fortunately the house in which Hogarth lived for some years and died has been preserved, and Chiswick House, long the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, now a private lunatic asylum, is still much what it was more than a century ago. The venerable cedar-trees and antique statues in its grounds, with the noble entrance gateway designed in 1625 by Inigo Jones for Beaufort House, and given by Sir Hans Sloane to the owner of the estate in 1738, preserve to it even at this late day something of a classic and aristocratic character. Built between 1730 and 1736, on the site of an earlier Jacobean mansion, by the last Earl of Burlington, who enjoyed some little reputation as an architect during his lifetime, Chiswick House was greatly enlarged by his successor, who was fond of holding open-air fêtes in its gardens, which were almost as celebrated as those at Kew, and were for some years under the care of the distinguished botanist, Sir Joseph Paxton; but the mansion itself is now chiefly celebrated for the fact that in it the two great statesmen, Charles James Fox and George Canning, passed away, strange to say, in the same room, the former in 1806 the latter in 1827.

The Chiswick Mall, practically a continuation of that of Hammersmith though divided from it by coal wharves, etc., with its charming views up and down stream, a picturesque eyot rising from the middle of the river opposite to it, and the tower of the venerable parish church looking down upon it, is still one of the most delightful promenades on the { 273} Middlesex side of the Thames. The church, fitly dedicated to St. Nicolas, the patron-saint of fishermen, who still form a notable portion of the congregation, is a somewhat uninteresting modern successor of a very ancient foundation, but it fortunately retains, in addition to the tower, a few relics of the original nave and chancel, with several noteworthy monuments, including one to Charles Holland, the actor, erected by his friend David Garrick, and many inscriptions to the memory of celebrities who once lived in Chiswick, such as Mary, Countess of Falconbridge, and her sister Frances, daughters of Oliver Cromwell, and the famous beauties, Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, and Margaret Cecil, Countess of Ranelagh; whilst in the churchyard rest the artists Hogarth, Philip Loutherbourg, and James M'Neill Whistler, whose mother is buried beside him; the engravers William Sharp and James Fittler, the diplomatist Lord Macartney, and the Italian patriot Ugo Foscolo.

Connecting Chiswick with Brentford, and keeping up, as it were, the continuity of the traditions of the past, is the picturesque terrace of quaint old houses known as Strand-on-the-Green, extending for about half a mile along the banks of the river, which at high tide often invades it, washing over the defences that have been from time to time put up against it. Until about the beginning of the eighteenth century Strand-on-the-Green was but part of a fishing hamlet, but it gradually became transformed into a fashionable quarter, stately, well-built houses—in one of which lived the poet David Mallet, in another { 274} the artist Zoffany, and in another Joe Miller the jester—contrasting with picturesque cottages, such as the charming group still standing that were given to the poor in 1724 by a generous citizen, and rubbing shoulders with ancient inns, some of which are but little altered even now, and are frequented as of yore by fishermen and boatmen.

From Strand-on-the-Green the view of the Thames is no less fascinating than that from Hammersmith and Chiswick Malls, for even at low tide, when gleaming stretches of mud line the banks on either side, the colour effects are charming. Higher up, too, where the little river Brent—that with the Brentford Canal forms part of a great system of inland waterways—flows into the Thames, a touch of poetry still lingers, in spite of the fact that the once beautiful village named after the ancient ford has become one of the most prosaic of the Middlesex suburbs. The three-arched bridge that spanned the Brent a little above its mouth, at which a toll used to be levied on all cattle and merchandise and all Jews and Jewesses crossing it on foot or on horseback, though Christians were allowed to pass over free, is replaced by a modern one with but one arch; the house in which the notorious Noy, chancellor to Charles IL, decided on the re-imposition of the hated ship-tax has been pulled down; the ancient market-hall, with its high-pitched roof, that had been the scene of many a hotly contested election, and in which resounded during the riots of 1769 the cry of 'Wilkes and Liberty!' was pulled down in 1850 to make way for the present { 275} town-hall, and a little later its fate was shared by the famous half-timbered hostelry of the Three Pigeons, that may possibly have been visited by Shakespeare when it was tenanted by one of the actors in his company, John Lowen. Vanished, too, is the house in which John Bunyan lived at the beginning of his crusade against vice in high places; but here and there, in what is still known as the Half Acre district, that is intimately associated with the memory of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress , and also in the modern High Street, a few ancient tenements, with lofty, many-gabled roofs, survive to bear witness to olden times. Moreover, about half a mile from what is now known as New Brentford, though it is really more venerable than the rest of the town, is another link with the past: Burton House, a mansion occupying the site of the manor-house of Burston, or Budeston, that belonged before the suppression of the monasteries to St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and was later owned by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Brentford has more than once figured conspicuously in the history of England. Near to it, for instance, King Edmund Ironsides defeated the Danes in 1016, and in it a few days after the victory the gallant Saxon king was treacherously murdered. More than six hundred years later the town, then at the zenith of its prosperity, was besieged by Prince Rupert, and the parliamentary garrison driven out with great loss; but all too soon, in the opinion of the inhabitants, who were staunch partisans of the king, the tide turned again. Reinforcements { 276} arrived from London and encamped on the then open space of Turnham Green; Charles, who had started from Kingston to join Prince Rupert, was compelled to draw back, and presently Oliver Cromwell himself, fresh from victory, marched through Brentford in triumph.

After the Restoration Charles II. was several times in Brentford. Nell Gwynn is said to have lived there for some little time, as did also George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a member of the infamous Cabal Ministry, who was the first to celebrate in literature the two kings of Brentford, whom he introduced in his comedy of the Rehearsal , a parody on one of Dryden's tragedies written in 1671. Who these kings were when they lived, or even if they ever existed, neither tradition nor history has attempted to prove, but in the Rehearsal they figure as close friends, who appear on the stage hand in hand, and reign amicably together till they are deposed by two equally united usurpers.

Brentford owns two important churches, one dedicated to St. George, founded in 1770, with nothing very distinctive about it but containing a painting of the Last Supper by Zoffany, presented by the artist; the other, named after St. Lawrence, built in the eighteenth century on to the tower of a much earlier place of worship. Chancellor Noy, whose house was close by, is buried in it, and it is associated with the memory of John Horne Tooke, who was curate of it from 1760 to 1773, before his meeting with John Wilkes led to his abandonment of the clerical profession.

As the chief marketing-place of the barge population, whose women, in their picturesque sun-bonnets and rough-and-ready costumes, may often be seen hurrying through its streets, the old town on the Brent is still to some extent in touch with rural England; but from the adjacent Ealing, that is its parent parish, and from its dependencies Acton and Gunnersbury, all individual character seems to have been eliminated, little remaining to recall the days when the manor-house of Ealing was one of the outlying residences of the Bishop of London, and the whole neighbourhood was dotted with the country seats of the great nobles. Acton, the name of which signifies the oak-town, now a singular misnomer, was once the proud owner of a fashionable spa, but is now chiefly given over to washerwomen; and Gunnersbury, the history of which can be traced back to Saxon times, for it is named after Gunyld, a niece of King Canute, has lost nearly all its historic landmarks, though the modern Gunnersbury House, on the site of a mansion designed by Inigo Jones, once occupied by Princess Amelia, preserves to it a certain distinction.

Very different from Brentford, Ealing, Acton, or Gunnersbury is the not distant Greenford Parva, that, though it is scarcely more than eight miles from Hyde Park Corner, is still, and seems likely to remain, one of the most secluded-looking spots in suburban Middlesex. Romantically situated in the valley of the Brent in the midst of beautiful meadows, the hamlet of Greenford Parva, the name { 278} of which, now condensed into Perivale, is said to signify the green ford in the pure vale, consists of but a few farms and cottages, but it prides itself on the possession of a church of its own, a quaint little building of unknown dedication, uncertain date, and doubtful style, with a narrow nave, a yet smaller chancel, in the south-west corner of which is a tiny hagioscope, and a square wooden tower, surmounted by a low spire. Within this primitive structure, one of the smallest places of worship in England, is an old font, the lid of which bears the date 1665, and some very ancient stained glass has been skilfully dovetailed into the comparatively modern windows.

About two miles away from Perivale, in the same valley, is the scarcely less interesting Greenford Magna, also named after a ford on the Brent. Given by King Ethelred to the monks of the ancient monastery that preceded Edward the Confessor's foundation at Westminster, the manor of Greenford Magna remained the property of the latter until the dissolution of the monasteries, when it was confiscated by Henry VIII., by whom it was given somewhat later to the see of London, to which it still belongs. Its fourteenth-century church, dedicated to the Holy Cross, occupies the site of a Saxon chapel, and greatly resembles that of Perivale in style. It was well restored in 1871, when some of the fifteenth-century glass was successfully incorporated in the new windows, and it contains several well-preserved sixteenth and seventeenth century brasses.

Rivalling the two Greenfords in the romantic beauty of its situation is the little hamlet of West Twyford (so called to distinguish it from the comparatively commonplace village of East Twyford in the neighbouring parish of Willesden), situated partly on the Brent and partly on the Paddington Canal, at a spot where the river makes a very sudden bend. As its name implies, there were in ancient times two fords across the Brent that, according to tradition, were much used by the monks of the monastery that occupied the site of the mansion now known as Twyford Abbey, though there is absolutely no historic proof that any religious house ever existed there. A moated manor-house there certainly was, however, which was pulled down early in the nineteenth century, and there seems little doubt that on the site of the barn-like church of uncertain date was a much earlier chapel—possibly Norman—the property having been held in the eleventh century by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, who may have owned a clergy-house for the officiating priests. Strange to say, the little sanctuary, now included in the see of London, after changing hands with the manor to which it was attached again and again, long occupied the position of belonging to no parish. It was apparently overlooked when the new ecclesiastical survey was made, and until quite recently it had no incumbent, the owner of Twyford Abbey paying for the services held in it, and when he let his house stipulating that his tenant should provide a clergyman for six Sundays in the year.

Within easy reach of Brentford, in the neighbouring parish of Keston, is Oesterley Park, with the famous mansion named after it built by Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, who more than once entertained Queen Elizabeth in it, and which was later owned by the wealthy London merchant, Sir Thomas Child, whose son Robert added two sumptuously decorated wings to it, and formed the nucleus of a fine collection of pictures by the old masters. More interesting than Oesterley House is the celebrated Syon or Sion House, standing in a charming park between Brentford and Isleworth, and occupying the site of a convent of the same name that belonged to a community of Brigittines, a branch of the Augustinian Order founded by St. Bridget of Sweden. This was one of the religious houses endowed, as already related in connection with Richmond, by Henry V. in expiation of his father's usurpation of the English throne, the foundation-stone having been laid by the king himself in 1431. It was originally situated in Twickenham, but soon became far too small for the accommodation of the many holy women who craved admission, and Henry VI. sanctioned the removal of the nuns to a larger house in Isleworth parish, the possession of which was secured to them by Act of Parliament. When or by whom the predecessor of the present Sion House was built is not known, but it is supposed to have been erected at the expense of the Brigittines themselves, who had been joined by many wealthy ladies, and it eventually became one of the richest religious { 281} communities of southern England. Many stories are told of the devotion of the sisters, and also, alas! of the decline of piety amongst them as time went on, rumours having even been circulated of gross misconduct amongst them. These were probably, however, mere idle tales purposely spread about by enemies; but there is little doubt that the downfall of the community was hastened by its abbess's espousal of the cause of the so-called Holy Maid of Kent, against whom Henry VIII. was bitterly incensed. In any case, Syon Monastery was one of the first of the great religious houses to be suppressed, and it was turned to account by the king in 1541 as a prison for Catherine Howard whilst her mock trial was going on. By a strange irony of fate her husband's body rested in the chapel—in which she had often prayed during the last few days of her life—on its way to be interred at Windsor, and, according to a gruesome tradition, blood suddenly flowed from it, a proof in popular belief that the queen had been unjustly condemned, and that Henry was indeed her murderer.

The nunnery of Sion and the manor of Isleworth were given by Edward VI. to the Protector Somerset, who at once pulled down the conventual buildings, using the materials for the foundation of the present mansion, that was still uncompleted when its owner's career was cut short by his attainder for high treason. The property then reverted to the Crown, and in 1553 it was given by the young king to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had been mainly responsible for the downfall of the Protector. The { 282} duke seems to have finished the work of his predecessor, for soon after he took possession of Sion House his son, Lord Robert Dudley, brought home to it his bride, the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey; and it was there that the crown was offered to her on the death of Edward VI. Thence the nine days' queen started by river in a state barge, attended only by a few adherents, on her fatal journey to the Tower, whence four months later she was led forth to execution, after having looked down from her window on the mangled remains of her husband as they were being carried away to their last resting-place.

After the death on the scaffold of the Duke of Northumberland Sion House once more reverted to the Crown, and Queen Mary gave it back to the Brigittines, but few of them cared to return to their transformed old home; and two years later even those few were driven forth again by Queen Elizabeth, who lent the house first to one and then another of her favourites. In 1604 the estate was granted by James I. to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who nearly lost it through his complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, for which he suffered many years' imprisonment and had to pay a fine of £11,000. He returned to Sion House only a short time before his death, bequeathing it to his son, Algernon Percy, who was made guardian of the children of Charles I., the Dukes of York and Gloucester and the little Princess Elizabeth, who died the year of her father's execution. The royal prisoners, for such they were, appear to have been very happy in their Isleworth retreat, for they were { 283} often allowed to go and see their father at Hampton Court, and it was not until they were taken to London to bid him farewell, just before his death, that they realised how terrible was their own position.

By the marriage between Lady Elizabeth Percy and Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, Sion House became the property of the latter, and during his ownership it was lent for a time to the Princess Anne, later Queen of England, who there gave birth to a son who lived for an hour only, one of her seventeen children, none of whom grew up. The son of Charles Seymour gave Sion House to his daughter Elizabeth in 1748, and her husband, Sir Hugh Smithson, having been created Duke of Northumberland, it passed back to the old earldom, and has ever since remained in the same family. It was the new duke who gave to the historic mansion the character that now distinguishes it, for he made considerable alterations and additions, entrusting the work to the then renowned architect, Robert Adam, who is said to have consulted Sir Horace Walpole, then living at Twickenham, on the subject of the internal decorations. The gardens, originally laid out by the Protector Somerset, and greatly improved by later owners, were still further enriched with rare plants; hothouses and conservatories were built, and the estate was converted into one of the most charming on the Thames, beautiful lawns, shaded by venerable trees, sloping down to the waterside. The massive quadrangular mansion, with a square tower at each corner, and a noble { 284} parapet, the eastern front surmounted by the venerable stone lion, the badge of the Percy family, that was long a familiar figure on the Strand front of the now demolished Northumberland House, rises up in quiet dignity from the park which, though it has none of the varied scenery of its rival at Richmond, is full of quiet charm.

In addition to Sion House Isleworth still owns a few historic mansions, including Gumley House, named after a seventeenth-century owner; Shrewsbury House, once the home of Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury, both now convent schools; and Kendal House, long a noted place of entertainment, the last some little distance from the river, on the road to Twickenham. The church, said to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, though his plans were modified to save expense, is finely situated on a terrace looking down upon the Thames, and a wooded islet, presenting quite a picturesque appearance, especially when barges and other craft are waiting to be taken up or down stream by the tide. A little above Isleworth is the half-lock that has added so greatly to the usefulness of the upper river as a highway of traffic, and also to the healthiness of the districts on either side by keeping the mud constantly under water. Looking down upon it on the Middlesex side is the somewhat uninteresting suburb of St. Margaret's, occupying the site of the seat of the Marquis of Ailsa; and a little higher up stream is the beautiful park called Marble Hill, after the mansion still standing on it, that was bought in 1903 for the use of the public by the London { 285} County Council, aided by many private subscribers, including Sir Max Waechter, already mentioned in connection with the purchase of Petersham Ait. Marble Hill mansion is supposed to have been built in 1723 by Mrs. Howard, one of Queen Caroline's ladies-in-waiting, later Countess of Suffolk, after the designs of Lord Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, on a portion of the grounds of the neighbouring Orleans House, half the expense having been borne by George II. when he was still Prince of Wales. In laying out the grounds the owner had the benefit of the advice of Pope, then living at Twickenham, and also of Dean Swift, at that time in the service of Sir William Temple at Sheen, who is said to have prophesied that Mrs. Howard would certainly be ruined by her lavish outlay. That she was not is proved by the fact that she died at Marble Hill, leaving a fortune behind her; and later her old home was occupied by Mrs. Fitzherbert, who is said by some authorities to have been married in it to the Prince of Wales, later George IV., though others assert that the ceremony took place in her house in Park Lane. However that may be, she was certainly at her riverside home in 1795 when the wedding of her lover with the Princess Caroline of Brunswick took place, and she there held a little court of those loyal friends who believed in the legality of her union to the king.

Most picturesquely situated opposite the famous Petersham meadows and the no less celebrated Eel Pie Island, the resort on summer evenings of hundreds of pleasure-seekers, Twickenham, the { 286} name of which is supposed to have reference to the two streams that here flow into the Thames, was originally a hamlet of Isleworth that belonged, before the Conquest, partly to a monastery at Hounslow, and partly to the monks of Christchurch Abbey, Canterbury. On the suppression of the monasteries the property was added by Henry VIII. to the Hampton Court demesne; and later Charles I. gave the manor to Queen Henrietta Maria, to whom, after its temporary alienation by Parliament, it was restored on the accession of Charles II. The so-called manor-house of Twickenham, also known as Aragon Tower, occupies the site of an earlier building in which, according to tradition, Katharine of Aragon resided after her divorce; but the home of the Saxon owners of the property is supposed to have been in Twickenham Park, now built over, some authorities asserting that William the Conqueror himself lived in it for a short time. Whether this be true or not, there was not far from the first Sion House a mansion that belonged in the later sixteenth century to Lord Bacon, who entertained Queen Elizabeth in it in 1592. The brilliant prose writer was deeply attached to his Twickenham home, and grieved greatly when in 1601 he was compelled to sell it to meet his pressing necessities, receiving, it is said, only £1800 for it. During the next three centuries it changed hands again and again, and in 1803 its owner had it pulled down and sold the estate in plots for building. Its fate was later shared by many another historic home, but Cambridge House, named after the poet Richard { 287} Owen Cambridge, who occupied it for some years in the early nineteenth century, Orleans and York Houses still remain to bear witness to the days when Twickenham was an aristocratic suburb. The former is named after Louis-Philippe, who occupied it for some time when he was Duke of Orleans; the latter was for some time the property of Lord Clarendon, who settled it on his daughter, Anne Hyde, when she became the wife of James, Duke of York; and in it were born the Princesses Mary and Anne, who were both to become Queens of England.

A little higher up stream is a modern villa popularly known as Pope's, though as a matter of fact the house beloved of the poet, on which he lavished a fortune, was pulled down in 1807, and all that now remains to recall the time of his ownership is the subterranean passage leading from its grounds to the Teddington Road, that was once lined with an ornate shell grotto. It is fortunately far otherwise with the equally celebrated home of Horace Walpole, known as Strawberry Hill, that stands a little back from the river between Twickenham and Teddington, for though certain details have been modified it still retains the general appearance it presented when first completed by its owner. Originally a mere cottage, the future Strawberry Hill was bought by Walpole in 1747 from a certain Mrs. Chevenix, and the best years of the famous letter writer's life were spent in superintending its adornment. The guests he received at Twickenham included pretty well all the celebrities of the day, { 288} and his most important publications were issued from his private printing-press there. When on the death, in 1791, of his eldest brother's only son, he became Earl of Orford, he refused to take the title, preferring to remain plain Horace Walpole of Strawberry Hill; and before his death, which took place six years later, he bequeathed his beloved home to the sculptor Mrs. Damer in the hope that she would respect its traditions. In 1811 it became the property of the Dowager-Countess of Waldegrave, and since then it has changed hands several times, passing through various vicissitudes of neglect and restoration.

The parish church of Twickenham must have originally been a very picturesque feature of the village, and the ancient battlemented tower still presents a charming appearance from the river; but on to it was built, in the early eighteenth century, a barnlike red-brick structure that harmonises very ill with it, and is said to have been designed by Sir Godfrey Kneller, then churchwarden, who lived in a house near by—still known as Kneller Hall, now the Royal Military School of Music—and is buried beneath the central aisle, his contemporary Pope resting not far from him. Amongst the monuments in the church is one erected by the latter to the memory of his parents, which Lady Kneller tried in vain to persuade the poet to remove after the death of her husband, to make room for a memorial she wished to put up in his honour; and on the outer wall are some interesting tablets, including one to the famous comic actress Kitty Clive, who lived { 289} in a cottage belonging to Horace Walpole called Little Strawberry Hill, later occupied by the Misses Berry, to whom it was bequeathed for their lifetime, and one to the beloved nurse of Pope, bearing the following touching inscription: 'To the memory of Mary Beach, who died November 25th, 1725, aged 75, Alexander Pope, whom she nursed in his infancy, and constantly attended for twenty-eight years, in gratitude to a faithful servant, erected this stone.'

Little now remains in the populous modern suburb of Twickenham to recall the days when Dickens wrote in it his romance of Oliver Twist , certain scenes of which are laid at Isleworth, and the great artist Turner lived in Sandelcombe Lodge, that was recently sold by auction, fetching £865, but the view up and down stream is still practically the same as it was a century ago. The short reach between Strawberry Hill and Teddington Lock is one of the most beautiful on the Thames, charming alike when deserted but for a few barges being quanted slowly along, and when crowded with pleasure craft. Specially fascinating are the scenes that take place below the lock, when electric launches, skiffs, and punts, full of gaily dressed women and men in boating costume, await their turn for the opening of the gates; at the Rollers, and in the quiet pool above them, specially beloved of fishermen, that contrasts forcibly with the noisy weir, the foam-flecked rush of water forming a striking background to the groups of yachts and wherries moored to the Middlesex bank and beneath the Suspension Bridge.

It is to its lock and its near vicinity to Bushey Park and Hampton Court that Teddington owes its ever-increasing prosperity. In Saxon times, when its name—the meaning of which is obscure, for the suggestion that it signifies the Tide-end Town is untenable—was spelt Totyngton, it was a mere hamlet of Staines, yet the honour of having been its original manor-house has been claimed for three mansions, each of which is said to have served as a hunting-lodge to Queen Elizabeth. Only one of these is still standing, that built by Lord Buckhurst some years after the maiden queen had passed away; and the more famous residences at one time occupied by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the noted Quaker William Penn, who in 1688 dated his protest against being called a Papist from Teddington, have also been pulled down; whilst of the parish church, in which the latter may often have worshipped, the only relic is the sixteenth-century southern aisle, the rest of the building dating from the eighteenth century. It contains, however, a few interesting monuments, including one to the faithful servant of Charles I., Sir Orlando Bridgman, who represented his doomed master at the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht; and on one of the walls is a tablet to the memory of the famous beauty, Peg Woffington, who, after her tragic breakdown when acting as Rosalind in 1757, retired to Teddington, where she died three years later.

The riverside scenery above Teddington, especially near the long picturesque island opposite Thames Ditton, is very charming, and away from { 291} the water is the beautiful Bushey Park, that rivals in popularity even its neighbour of Hampton Court. Long jealously reserved for the use of its royal owners, the estate, which is more than eleven hundred acres in extent, has been open to the public since 1752, when a certain Timothy Bennet, a local shoemaker, succeeded, by dint of dogged persistence, of winning a free passage through it for ever, or, to be more strictly accurate, in obtaining the restoration of ancient rights that had been filched away. The story goes that Bennet, who, as he sat at work in his shop, had been in the habit of watching the number of pedestrians who passed through the park on their way to and from Kingston, was moved to bitter indignation when he learned that the gates had been closed by order of the ranger, Lord Halifax. He consulted a lawyer, declaring that he would gladly spend all his savings, which amounted to about £700, to win back the old privilege, and was told that all that was needed was for him 'to try the right.' A notice was therefore served on the ranger, who summoned Timothy before him, thinking to overawe him easily, but the shoemaker's rough eloquence so won upon the great man that the latter, in spite of all the opposition of the lawyers on the side of the Crown, ordered the road through the park to be reopened, and it has never since been closed.

The chief glory of Bushey Park is the triple avenue of horse-chestnuts, more than a mile long, that was planted by William III., who longed to reproduce in England some of the characteristics { 292} of his native land. When in full bloom the trees present an appearance of unique beauty, crowds from far and near flocking to see them, but even at other times the park is full of charm, forming one of the most delightful recreation-grounds near London. The rangership, long a coveted appointment, was at one time held by Lord North, the minister whose fatal policy brought about the American War of Independence; and later the Lodge, a substantial red-brick building near the Teddington entrance, was the residence of William IV. when Duke of Clarence.

The twin villages of Hampton Wick and Hampton, the former below, the latter above, the riverside grounds of Hampton Court, have little that is distinctive about them in spite of their exceptionally beautiful situation, looking down upon the Thames, which is here dotted with picturesque islets. Hampton Wick prides itself on having been for some years the home of the famous essayist Sir Richard Steele, who dated from what he called his hovel in it the dedication of the fourth volume of The Tatler to Lord Halifax, first ranger of Bushey Park, and builder of the Lodge referred to above. Hampton glories in still owning the house beloved of David Garrick, who often withdrew to it for rest between 1754 and 1779, receiving in it as his guests Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, and many other distinguished men, whom he used to entertain with night-fêtes in the grounds.

In Hampton Court the romantic interest of outlying London may perhaps be said to culminate, for { 293} no other place within easy reach of the capital is associated with quite so many thrilling memories, or has retained, in spite of all alterations, an equal number of the characteristic features of its evolution. In the quiet courts and cloisters overlooked by the picturesque gables and turrets of Wolsey's building, and in the beautiful gardens in which the anxious minister so often paced to and fro pondering over the many problems that harassed him, his spirit still seems to linger; the magnificent hall of Henry vili., in which took place so many stately banquets and gorgeous ceremonies, and the richly decorated chapel in which two of the despotic monarch's marriages were solemnised, appear to be haunted by the ghosts of his murdered wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and of the scarcely less ill-fated Jane Seymour, who paid with her life for the birth of the long-desired heir to the throne, and is said to be unable to rest in her grave because of her remorse for having been the cause of the execution of her predecessor. Now the young monarch, Edward VI., and his stern guardian, the Protector Somerset, loom forth from the dim past, and behind them the imagination conjures up the shadowy form of Mrs. Penn, who on the death of the infant prince's mother was chosen to be his nurse, and was greatly beloved not only by him, but by his father and sisters. Henry VIII. gave her an estate in the country, but she attended her foster-son wherever he went, and after his early death she resided in apartments reserved to her at Hampton Court, till she too passed away. She was buried in { 294} the parish church of Hampton, a full-length recumbent effigy portrait surmounting her tomb, that is still preserved in the modern Gothic building replacing an earlier place of worship; but her grave has been rifled of its contents, and since the desecration took place she has been supposed to haunt her old rooms, and many have asserted that they have seen her groping along in them with outstretched hands as if seeking for some lost treasure. To these phantoms succeed those of Edward's melancholy sister Mary and of her sombre bridegroom Philip, who repells her ardent expressions of affection with forbidding coldness, the ill-assorted pair in their turn giving place to the stately maiden queen Elizabeth and her train of richly garbed courtiers, all vying with each other in their eagerness to prove their devotion to her person. Again the scene changes, and the hapless Charles I. comes forth, closely attended by his guards, to walk for the last time round the precincts of the palace that has served as his prison, where but a little later his arch-enemy, Cromwell, was to reign supreme. Now a wedded pair as ill-assorted as Philip and Mary, Charles II. and the childless Catherine of Braganza, hold their court in the historic building, that was in the reign of William III. to be enlarged and redecorated, assuming much the appearance it now presents, for the Georges did little to alter it, and it has not been used as a royal residence since 1795.

In the time of Edward the Confessor the manor of Hamntone, as it was then called, was owned by { 295} the Saxon Earl Algar, and in the Doomsday Survey it is referred to as the property of the Norman, Walter de St. Valeric, its value being assessed at £39. It remained in the possession of the same family for a century and a half, after which it passed to Henry de St. Albans, who either presented or let it to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, then one of the most powerful religious communities of Europe, by whom it was held until 1514, when the then prior, Sir Thomas Docwra, granted a ninety-nine years' lease of it to 'The Most Rev. Father in God, Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of Canterbury,' at a yearly rent of £50. Before that all-important event in its history, however, the property had become greatly increased by gifts of land and money, and was already known as Hampton Court, the word court signifying, as is sometimes overlooked, merely that part of an estate in which the owner lives. That the Knights Hospitallers had a residence of some importance is proved by the fact that they occasionally received as their guests various members of the royal family, who, as early as the fourteenth century, showed a great predilection for Hampton. Many pilgrims, too, flocked from long distances to worship in the little chapel connected with the priory, that was credited with special sanctity, and to it in 1503 came Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII., to pray for the safe delivery of her expected child, and to spend a quiet week in retreat before returning by water to Richmond, where she died a month later.

The Knights Hospitallers had scarcely left their { 296} old home before the new owner began to pull it down, to make way for a building which he determined should rival in magnificence every other private residence in the kingdom. The grounds of the ancient manor-house, hitherto mere grazing lands, were converted into a park and enclosed within a massive red-brick wall bearing here and there a cross in black bricks, the emblem of the cardinal-archbishop, two or three of which still remain in spite of Henry VIII.'s orders, given as soon as he took possession of the property, that every trace of its having once belonged to the fallen minister should be removed. The site of the future palace and its gardens was encircled by a deep moat, traces of which can be made out on the northern side, an elaborate system of drainage was established, and a constant supply of pure water secured from the springs at Coombe Hill, three miles away, Wolsey proving himself far in advance of his time in his knowledge of sanitary science. The healthiness of his retreat thus secured, the work of building went on apace, a whole army of surveyors, architects, builders, and masons, etc.,—from amongst whom emerge the names of James Bettes master, Lawrence Stubbs paymaster, Nicolas Tounley comptroller of the works, and the Rev. Mr. Williams decorator,—toiling continuously under the superintendence of Wolsey himself, who was able to receive the king and queen for the first time in May 1516, when the royal party were entertained with all manner of pageants, masques, and mummeries, in some of which Henry himself took a prominent part.

The next few years were the happiest in the cardinal's life. He was still the king's most trusted servant, the master of boundless wealth, and no shadow from the melancholy future had as yet fallen across his path. Whenever he was able to get away from London, he hastened to his beloved home at Hampton, on which he continued to lavish vast sums of money, constantly adding to its art treasures, and causing his own apartments—several of which, including that known as his closet, remain as they were when occupied by him—to be decorated by the best artificers of the day.

It is, unfortunately, impossible now to determine the exact limits of Wolsey's buildings, but they appear to have occupied much the same area as those now standing, which include the additions of Henry VIII. and William III., so that they form a kind of epitome of domestic architecture from Tudor to Renaissance times. It is certain, however, that the west front and the utter or outer court with the clock tower, beneath which are the cardinal's arms in terra-cotta that somehow escaped Henry's jealous zeal, were entirely the work of Wolsey, and it must have been at the western gateway that he received his many royal and noble guests. At which date this beautiful residence was transferred by its builder to his exacting sovereign, who from the first seems to have greatly coveted it, is not known, but it is generally supposed to have been in 1525 or 1526 that the oft-told incident occurred, when Henry asked Wolsey why he had built himself so magnificent a house, to which with outer calmness but a sinking { 298} heart the cardinal replied, 'To show how noble a palace a subject may offer to his sovereign.' The gift was of course at once accepted, but the doomed minister was allowed to remain practically master of Hampton Court for some time longer, as proved by the fact that in 1527 he there received with great magnificence the French ambassador and his retinue, and that in 1528 he invited Archbishop Warham to spend a few days with him. As late, indeed, as 1529 Henry and Katharine of Aragon were again his guests, but before the year was over he had left his beloved home for ever. In August of that year the king took formal possession of the palace, accompanied not only by the queen, but by Anne Boleyn, for whom a beautiful suite of rooms had been set apart which she had long since chosen. Very soon the appearance of the palace was completely transformed, Henry's chief desire having apparently been to destroy everything that could remind him of the man he had once loved so well and trusted so entirely. A magnificent new hall with a beautiful hammer-beam roof replaced the one in which Wolsey had so often entertained his ungrateful master, a new chapel, new galleries, and new suites of apartments were built, the work going merrily on in spite of all the exciting events that were taking place in the rest of the palace. Hampton Court soon knew Katharine of Aragon no more, and Anne Boleyn, who had given birth in it to a still-born son, was succeeded by Jane Seymour, the change of queen making no difference in the daily routine, though the king gave orders for the initials A.B. to be { 299} changed to J.S. in the decorations of his wife's private apartments. Edward VI. was born, and his mother died in 1537, the former event being made the excuse for fresh expenditure on rooms for the infant prince, whilst the latter affected the widower but little, though he left Hampton Court before the funeral, declaring that he could not bear to be present at it. For some little time after the death of Jane Seymour the palace served chiefly as a nursery for the heir to the throne, and in 1540 Anne of Cleves resided in it for a short time whilst contentedly awaiting her divorce; but as soon as it was obtained she withdrew to Richmond, and the king brought home to Hampton Court his new bride, Catherine Howard, who really seemed likely long to retain his affection. From their beautiful riverside home the newly married pair started on an extended wedding trip, returning to keep Christmas at the palace, but before that festival came round again the enemies of Catherine had managed to poison her husband's mind against her. It was on All Souls' Day, 1541, when the king and queen were at mass in the chapel, that Cranmer secretly handed to the former a paper containing, it is said, convincing proof of Catherine's unfaithfulness, and with his usual impetuosity Henry at once decided to get rid of her. The unfortunate lady was ordered to withdraw to her own apartments, a strict guard was placed over her, and early the next morning the king rode away determined never to see her again. The story goes that in spite of the vigilance of her attendants Catherine managed to elude them all and { 300} to intercept her husband as he was leaving his bedroom, but he sternly refused to listen to her, and she was dragged away weeping and wringing her hands. Yet once more, in 1543, the king brought a bride to Hampton Court, the staid and tactful Catherine Parr, who managed successfully to play the rôle of mother to the three children of her predecessors, and, until her husband died, even to keep the peace with him.

During the last few years of his life Henry was constantly at the palace, and when he became too infirm to hunt at a distance he quietly set about enclosing within the boundaries of his Honour of Hampton a vast tract of country on the Surrey side of the river, taking in many manors and villages, including East and West Molesey, stocking the commons, meadows, and pastures with 'beasts of venery and fowls of warren,' and appointing officers to ensure the punishment of any who should offend against the laws of the chase, which were to be the same as those governing the ancient forests belonging to the Crown. To this very high-handed proceeding the owners of the property were compelled to submit, but after the death of the king his son had the enclosures taken down and the 'beasts of venery' removed, reserving the right, however, of restoring them at any future time, so that technically the lands in question still belong to the Crown.

Though Edward VI. and Queen Mary were both a good deal at Hampton Court, it was not until the reign of Queen Elizabeth that it was again the scene of such pageants as had been of constant occurrence { 301} during the reign of their father. The maiden queen, however, was greatly attached to it, often holding her court there, and it was in its great hall that the council met on October 30, 1568, which practically decided the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots, though it was not until December 4 of the same year, the day after a second consultation, when the Regent James, Earl of Murray, gave to the Queen of England the fatal casket containing the letters and poems that were supposed to prove his sister's guilt, that Elizabeth felt free to pronounce her doom.

In the reign of James I. the most important event that took place at Hampton Court was the meeting of the conference between the representatives of the Established Church and the Presbyterians, at which the king was said by the former to have greatly distinguished himself by his eloquence, whilst the latter dwelt angrily on his plausible duplicity, that really had a good deal to do with the inauguration of the troubles that finally brought his son to the scaffold. As is well known, Charles I. greatly loved Hampton Court; he was there for a short time after his accession with his newly wedded queen, then a mere child, and it was there, too, many years afterwards, that he had his last real intercourse with his children, who, as already related, were often allowed to visit him when they were living at Sion House under the care of the guardian appointed by the Parliament. Thence, alarmed by rumours of a plot against his life, the unfortunate king escaped on November 11, 1647, first to Oatlands and then to the Isle of Wight.

Whilst he was Lord Protector of England, Cromwell often resided at Hampton Court; in its chapel his beloved daughter Mary was married in 1657 to Viscount Falconbridge, and in one of its rooms her sister, Mrs. Claypole, died in 1658, after a short illness, to the bitter grief of her father, who had her body taken by river to Westminster, to be buried with almost regal pomp in Westminster Abbey. Her loss was indeed the death-blow of the harassed ruler, for though he lived three months longer he was never the same again. He was removed in a dying state from Hampton Court to Whitehall, and after he had passed away it was decided that the palace should be sold and its contents dispersed. Fortunately, however, the historic building escaped that fate, but though it was several times occupied by Charles II. and James II., it was not until the accession of William III. that it again played any important part in the history of England. From the first the newly elected monarch and his wife showed a very special predilection for their estate at Hampton, and Sir Christopher Wren was soon commissioned to add to the palace an extensive group of buildings that now, with the great hall of Henry VIII., form its most important features. Unfortunately Wren's alterations necessitated the pulling down of two of Wolsey's courts, that had been spared by the cardinal's royal supplanter, but in spite of this it must be conceded that the famous architect triumphantly achieved a most difficult task, for the magnificent state apartments designed by him, though in a totally different style from that of the { 303} earlier buildings, are yet not out of harmony with them.

Later, the grounds were as completely transformed as the Tudor palace itself had been. The fine terrace known as the Broad Walk was made, many new fountains were added to those already in the gardens, the still popular Maze or Labyrinth was planted, the beautiful gate called the Flower-Pot—from the baskets of flowers upheld by boys on the stone piers flanking it—was erected, and the yet more effective wrought-iron screens designed by Jean Tijou, a Frenchman in the employ of Sir Christopher Wren, recently, after various wanderings, restored to their original position, were set up at the riverside end of what is known as the Priory Garden, separating it from the towing-path.

Soon after their first arrival at Hampton Court William and Mary received as their guest the Princess Anne, daughter of the exiled James II., who had been married in 1683 to Prince George of Denmark. As heir-presumptive of the English throne, the princess was very cordially disliked by the king and queen, whose jealousy was greater than ever when, on July 4, 1689, she gave birth to a son, the Duke of Gloucester. The boy was baptized in the chapel of Hampton Court, William III. standing godfather, but the child died in 1700, two years before his mother became queen. As was not unnatural, considering all that she had suffered there, Anne cared little for Hampton Court, preferring her palaces at Kensington and Windsor, but she commissioned the painter Verrio and the sculptor Grinling Gibbons to { 304} supplement the already lavish decorations with ceiling paintings and mural carvings. Her successors, George I. and George II., on the other hand, were very fond of the palace, but they left it much as they found it, except that the former had the ceiling of the state bedchamber painted by Sir James Thornhill.

It was in the reign of George III., who never resided at Hampton Court, that the famous Black Hamburgh vine, the largest in England, was planted, and it was the same monarch who first turned the palace to account by assigning apartments in it to people of rank and distinction, to whom for one reason or another he wished to show favour. Since then, though it has never again been the abode of royalty, it has been the scene of many gatherings of celebrities. At one time, for instance, it was the home of the Countess of Mornington, mother of the great Duke of Wellington and the astute statesman Lord Wellesley, and in it lived for several years Mrs. Tom Sheridan, daughter-in-law of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, one of whose daughters was the Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament of 1839, and another the wife of the Marquis of Dufferin, whose son, the late Lord Dufferin and Ava, became Viceroy of India.

It was in 1838 that Queen Victoria decided to admit all her subjects free of fee to the state apartments and grounds of her palace at Hampton, a generous policy, the wisdom of which has been conclusively proved by the ever-increasing numbers of those who show their appreciation of the fine works { 305} of art preserved in the galleries and their delight in the beauty of the grounds. The grand old demesne is indeed a notable witness to the continuity of the present with the past, and to the close union between the people and their rulers, that in spite of the growth of democracy is still distinctive of England, and is her best hope for the future.

In addition to the many standard works on London as a whole, including those by Sir Walter Besant, Edward Walford, James Thorne, G. E. Mitton, and others, the author of the present volume has consulted William Howitt's Northern Heights of London ; The Records of Hampstead , edited by F. E. Baines; The Hampstead Annals; The Transactions of the Antiquarian and Historical Society of Hampstead; Wyldes and its Story , by Mrs. Arthur Wilson; Harrow, by J. Fischer Williams; Epping Forest , by Edward North Buxton; Chislehurst Caves and Dene Holes , by W. G. Nicholls; The History and Antiquities of Richmond, Kew, Petersham, and Ham , by G. Beresford Chancellor; Ham House , by Dr. Williamson; Bygone Putney , by Ernest Hammond; The History of Hampton Court , by Ernest Law; supplementing them by the collection of recent information on the spot in the various districts treated.

INDEX

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Skirts of the Great City

THE SKIRTS OF
THE GREAT CITY

CHAPTER I

HAMPSTEAD AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS

CHAPTER II

HIGHGATE, HORNSEY, HENDON, AND HARROW

CHAPTER III

SOME INTERESTING VILLAGES NORTH OF LONDON,
WITH WALTHAM ABBEY AND EPPING FOREST

CHAPTER IV

HAINAULT FOREST, WOOLWICH, AND OTHER
EASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

CHAPTER V

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS
OF LONDON

CHAPTER VI

OUTLYING LONDON IN NORTH-EAST SURREY

CHAPTER VII

CROYDON, CARSHALTON, EPSOM, AND OTHER
SUBURBS IN NORTH-WEST SURREY

CHAPTER VIII

WANDSWORTH, PUTNEY, BARNES, AND OTHER
SOUTHERN SUBURBS

CHAPTER IX

WIMBLEDON, MERTON, MITCHAM, AND THEIR MEMORIES

CHAPTER X

RIVERSIDE SURVEY FROM MORTLAKE TO RICHMOND

CHAPTER XI

RICHMOND TOWN AND PARK, WITH PETERSHAM,
HAM HOUSE, AND KINGSTON

CHAPTER XII

RIVERSIDE MIDDLESEX FROM FULHAM TO HAMPTON COURT

INDEX

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Skirts of the Great City

THE SKIRTS OF THE GREAT CITY

CHAPTER I

HAMPSTEAD AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS

CHAPTER II

HIGHGATE, HORNSEY, HENDON, AND HARROW

CHAPTER III

SOME INTERESTING VILLAGES NORTH OF LONDON, WITH WALTHAM ABBEY AND EPPING FOREST

CHAPTER IV

HAINAULT FOREST, WOOLWICH, AND OTHER EASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

CHAPTER V

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

CHAPTER VI

OUTLYING LONDON IN NORTH-EAST SURREY

CHAPTER VII

CROYDON, CARSHALTON, EPSOM, AND OTHER SUBURBS IN NORTH-WEST SURREY

CHAPTER VIII

WANDSWORTH, PUTNEY, BARNES, AND OTHER SOUTHERN SUBURBS

CHAPTER IX

WIMBLEDON, MERTON, MITCHAM, AND THEIR MEMORIES

CHAPTER X

RIVERSIDE SURVEY FROM MORTLAKE TO RICHMOND

CHAPTER XI

RICHMOND TOWN AND PARK, WITH PETERSHAM, HAM HOUSE, AND KINGSTON

CHAPTER XII

RIVERSIDE MIDDLESEX FROM FULHAM TO HAMPTON COURT

INDEX

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

THE SKIRTS OF
THE GREAT CITY

SOME INTERESTING VILLAGES NORTH OF LONDON,
WITH WALTHAM ABBEY AND EPPING FOREST

HAINAULT FOREST, WOOLWICH, AND OTHER
EASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS
OF LONDON

CROYDON, CARSHALTON, EPSOM, AND OTHER
SUBURBS IN NORTH-WEST SURREY

WANDSWORTH, PUTNEY, BARNES, AND OTHER
SOUTHERN SUBURBS

RICHMOND TOWN AND PARK, WITH PETERSHAM,
HAM HOUSE, AND KINGSTON