At the end of the hospital stood St. James's Chapel, built over the West Gate of the town, which we left by the footpath leading both under the church and its tower, on our way to Stratford-on-Avon.



We walked the eight miles which separated the two towns at a quick speed, and, leaving our luggage at the "Golden Lion Inn" at the entrance to Stratford, we went to explore that town, and soon arrived at the birthplace of Shakespeare, one of the few houses in England where no fire is ever lit or candle lighted. It was a very old-fashioned house built with strong oak beams, the ceiling of the room in which Shakespeare was born in 1564 being so low that visitors could easily reach it, and they had written their names both on it and the walls until there was scarcely an available space left. Written with lead pencil, some of the autographs were those of men distinguished in every rank of life both past and present, and would doubtless have become very valuable if they had been written in a book, but we supposed Visitors' Books had not been thought of in those days. We wondered if the walls would ever be whitewashed again, and this thought might have occurred to Sir Walter Scott when he scratched his name with a diamond on one of the window panes. It was at another house in the town that Shakespeare wrote his plays and planted a mulberry-tree in the garden. This mulberry-tree used to be one of the objects of interest at Stratford, nearly every pilgrim who arrived there going to see it. There came a time when the house and garden changed hands, and were sold to a clergyman named Gastrell, who we were sorry to learn was a countryman of ours, as he belonged to Cheshire. He had married a "lady of means," who resided at Lichfield, and they bought this house and garden, we supposed, so that they might "live happily ever afterwards"; but the parson, who must have had a very bad temper, was so annoyed at people continually calling to see the mulberry-tree that he cut it down. It was probably owing to this circumstance that he had a furious quarrel with the Corporation of Stratford because they raised the rates on his property. When he complained that they were excessive and the surveyor insisted on their being paid, Gastrell ended the matter by pulling the house down to the ground, and leaving the neighbourhood, so we supposed it was then a case of—

Where he's gone and how he fares Nobody knows and nobody cares.

Eventually the site became a public garden, where a slip of the mulberry-tree may still be seen.



Shakespeare died in 1616, and was buried in the church at Stratford, where on the ancient stone that covered his remains were inscribed in old English characters the well-known words:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here, Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.

Shakespeare's threatened curse was doubtless one reason why his bones had remained undisturbed, for it was no uncommon occurrence in his time for the bones of the dead to be removed from a tomb and to be replaced or mingled with those of a stranger, for even the tomb of his daughter, who died in 1649, shared that fate, her epitaph being effaced and replaced by another of a person in no way related to the Shakespeare family, but who was buried in the same grave.

In one corner of the church was a tomb bearing the effigy of John O'Combe, who we thought might have hailed from the neighbourhood of the old abbey of that name which we passed the night before. In spite of his benefactions recorded in the church, he was looked upon as a usurer, because he charged 10 per cent, for his money. He was at one time a friend of Shakespeare, and often asked the poet, who was no doubt acquainted with his rate of interest, to write him an epitaph. When at length he acceded to his request he greatly offended Combe by writing:

"Ten in the hundred" lies here en-graved, 'Tis a hundred to ten if his soul be saved. If any one asks who lies in his tomb— "Oho" quoth the devil "'tis my John O'Combe."

Shakespeare bought the house in which he wrote his plays from the Clopton family, calling it "New Place," and a sorrowful story was connected with the Clopton vault in Stratford Church. Sir Hugh Clopton, who was buried there, was Lord Mayor of London in 1492, and had a very beautiful young daughter named Charlotte, who, according to her portrait, which was still in existence, had light blue eyes and pale golden hair. In the time when a plague was raging in Stratford she was said to have been found sitting in a chair in the garden apparently dead, and was at once carried to the vault to be buried. A few days afterwards another member of the family died of the plague, and was also taken to the vault; but when the torch-bearers descended the steps leading into the vault, the light from their torches revealed the form of Charlotte Clopton leaning against the side of the tomb. They were stricken with horror, but had arrived too late to save her, as she was now quite dead. The poor girl must have been in a trance when they carried her to the vault, and in her agony of hunger had bitten a piece of flesh from her own shoulder!

We found the "Golden Lion" quite a comfortable hotel, and had a first-class tea there in the company of an actor from London, who, like ourselves, was exploring the country hereabouts, though perhaps from a different point of view, and who had a lot to tell us about Shakespeare and his plays. He had been to a village named Bidford a few miles away where there was an old-fashioned inn, in the courtyard of which Shakespeare and his friends had acted his Midsummer's Night Dream long before it appeared in London. It was at that inn that Shakespeare on one occasion had too much to drink, and when on his way home to Stratford he lay down under a thorn tree to sleep off the effects; the tree was fenced round later on in memory of that rather inglorious event. Although we were temperance men, we had to admit that the old inns where the stage-coaches stopped to exchange passengers and horses had a great attraction for us, and it was not without a feeling of regret that we found them being gradually closed throughout the country we passed through. They had mostly been built after the same model, the gateway or door at the entrance being arched over and placed in the centre of the front of the hotel. Through this archway the coaches, with passengers and luggage, could pass in and out, a door on each side of the entrance leading into different sections of the inn. The yards of the inns were in the form of an oblong, generally roofed over, and along each side were the out-offices, storerooms, and stables, with a flat roof overhead, extending backwards as far as the bedroom doors, and forming a convenient platform for passengers' luggage as it was handed on and off the roof of the coach. The outside edge of the platform was sometimes ornamented with a low palisade, which gave the interior of the covered yard quite a pleasant and ornamental appearance.



Such was the character of the inns that existed in the time of Shakespeare, and although sanitary regulations in later times required the horses to be provided for in stable-yards farther in the rear, very little structural alteration in the form of the inns had taken place.

The actor told us that in Shakespeare's time nearly all the acting outside London and much within was done in the courtyards of these inns. The actors travelled in two covered wagons or coaches, and when they arrived at the inn they were drawn into the inn yard, while two members of the party went out into the town or village vigorously beating a drum to announce the arrival of the actors, almost the entire resident population, men, women, and children, following them to the inn yard to listen to the play, which custom, he said, was referred to by Shakespeare in one of his plays in the passage:

The Actors have come and the rout are following!

The covers were then taken off the top of the wagons and placed round the sides of the wheels, to act as screens while the actors changed their dresses, which had to be done underneath the coaches. Meanwhile boards, kept at the inns specially for that purpose, were fastened over the tops of the wagons, and on these the actors performed their plays. The squire, or lord of the manor, had the right to see the plays free of charge, and when he came, a bar of wood was placed across the entrance to one of the horse-boxes to keep off the spectators who thronged the inn yard. From these people the actors collected what money they could, while those who were better able to pay were accommodated on the platform above the stables, which commanded a better view of the play.

When theatres were built, he informed us, they were modelled in the same shape as the yards of these inns, their arrangement being also the same: the stage represented the boards on the wagons and the actors dressed underneath it, the pit corresponded to the inn yard, the gallery to the platform over the stables, the boxes to the place railed off for the squire. The actor was not sure about the stalls, and thought these were instituted at a later period; but we reminded him that stalls were a necessary adjunct to stables.



He also told us that the actors had a language peculiar to their profession, which also dated from the time when they acted in the country inn yards, for even when they travelled by train they were always "on the road," and when acting in the theatre they were still "on the boards."

We asked him if he knew about Shakespeare's stealing the deer from Charlecote Park, Sir Thomas Lucy's property, and he said he did; but the report was not quite correct, for at that time the park was surrounded by Common Land, and it was there that Shakespeare shot the deer, which only went into the park to die. Shakespeare followed it, and as he was removing the carcase he was caught and summoned; the case hinged on whether he had his weapon with him or not. As that could not be proved against him, the case was dismissed. It appears that the Law of England is the same on that point to-day as in the time of Shakespeare, for if a man shoots a hare on his own land, and it dies on adjoining land belonging to some one else, he has a perfect right to remove it, providing he does not take his gun with him, which would constitute a punishable offence. We were sorry to leave the hotel, as we should have been very comfortable there, and the actor, who wanted to hear of our adventures, did his best to persuade us to stay; but our average must be made up, and I particularly wanted to celebrate my birthday on the following Sunday at Oxford.

It was quite dark as we crossed the river bridge on our way to Kineton, ten miles distant, and we soon lost sight of the lights of Stratford; as we left we could see the church being lit up for evening service. A man on the bridge in directing us the way to Kineton told us we should pass the park where "old Shakespeare stole the deer," and he seemed to think he was a regular poacher there. We could not see the deer, but we heard them as we passed alongside the park, the noise resembling that of a pig, but not nearly so loud. We soon afterwards arrived at a fair-sized village about half-way between Stratford and Kineton, where we recrossed the river and, turning towards the right, walked along a lonely road for an hour or two, until we reached Kineton, where we intended to stay the night. We were, however, doomed to disappointment, for, as the railway was being cut through there, the whole place was completely filled with engineers and navvies, who had taken up all the accommodation. There was not even a chair "to be let," so we were obliged to move on in the hope that we might come to some house or village on the road where we could obtain lodgings for the night. We had already walked thirty miles and were sleepy and tired and could not walk quickly enough to keep ourselves warm, for the night was damp with fog and very cold, and our quick walk had caused us to perspire, so that we were now in what might be termed a cold sweat, a danger to which we were often exposed during these later stages of our long journey. Fortunately for us, however, the cuttings from the sides of the hedges and ditches, which extended for miles, had been tied in neat little bundles, possibly for sale, and deposited on the sides of the road, and every now and then we set fire to one of these and stayed a few minutes to warm ourselves, expecting every moment to attract the attention of a policeman, and get ourselves into trouble, but none appeared. The last quarter of the moon was now due, and although we could not see it through the misty clouds overhead, it lighted up the air considerably when it rose, so that we could then see the fields on either side of the road, especially when we came to an upward gradient. We gradually became conscious of what appeared to be a great black cloud in front of us as we climbed up the road, and were astonished when we perceived that instead of a cloud it was a tremendous hill, towards which our road was leading us. We had been walking for days through a level country, and did not expect to come to a hill like this, and this strange and sudden development sharpened us up a little, for we had only been walking at about the rate, including stoppages, of one mile per hour, so we walked steadily up the hill, and presently came in sight of some large trees, from which we knew that we were approaching civilisation; we had not seen a single habitation or a living being of any kind since leaving Kineton. On the other side of a field to the left of our road we could see a rustic-looking shed which we resolved to visit, so, climbing over the fence, we walked cautiously towards it, and found it was an ancient store-shed for hay and straw. We listened attentively for a few moments and, as there was no wind, we could have heard the breathing of a man or of any large animal that might have been sleeping there; but as all appeared quiet, we sat down on the dry straw thankful to be able to rest our weary limbs if only for a short time.

We had some difficulty in keeping ourselves awake, but we durst not go to sleep as the night was so very cold, and there was a rough floor immediately above us which had caused us some uneasiness. When we heard the footsteps of some small animal creeping stealthily amongst the straw over our heads, as if preparing to make a spring, we decided to evacuate our rather eerie position. It might have been a rat or more likely a cat, but as we did not care for the company of either of these animals, we lost no time in regaining the road.

As we approached the top of the hill we came to some quaint-looking houses, which appeared much too large for their occupiers to take in visitors at that early hour of the morning, especially two tramps like ourselves. We were almost sure that one of the houses was an inn, as it had a sign on the wall, though too high up for us to read in the dark. Presently we passed what appeared to be an old castle.

We could now only walk very slowly, or at a speed that my musical brother described as about equivalent to the "Dead March in Saul," and at seven o'clock in the morning reached the entrance to the town of Banbury, exciting considerable curiosity among the men we met on the way to their work in the country.

We called at the first respectable-looking inn that we came to, where the mistress informed us we could not have two beds, "as the other people hadn't got up yet," but a gentleman who had to leave early was just getting up now, and we "could have his bed if we liked." We were glad to accept the offer lest in going farther we might fare worse. We could hear the gentleman's heavy footsteps on the floor above our heads, and as soon as the room was prepared we got into the bed he had vacated, which was still quite warm, extremely thankful to get in anywhere, and in spite of the noises usual in inns on Saturday morning we "slept like bricks" until eleven o'clock, the hour arranged for our "call."

(Distance walked forty-two and a half miles.)

Saturday, November 4th.



We were quite surprised to find that the night before we had been walking along the site of one of the most famous battles—because it was the first—in the Great Civil War of the seventeenth century, named after the strange hill we had walked over, and known to history as the "Battle of Edge Hill." We learned that had we crossed it on a fine clear day instead of in the dark we should have obtained a splendid view over the shires of Warwick, Gloucester, and Worcester, and portions of other counties besides. The hill itself stood in Warwickshire, but we had crossed the boundary into Oxfordshire on our way to Banbury some time in the early hours of the morning. The Royalist Army, under King Charles I, had encamped a few miles from Banbury, when Prince Rupert sent the king word that the army of the Parliament, under the command of the Earl of Essex, had arrived at Kineton. The king's army had left Shrewsbury two days before Essex's army departed from Worcester, and, strange as it might appear, although they were only about twenty miles away from each other at the start, they travelled almost side by side for ten days without either army knowing the whereabouts of the other. The distance between them was only six miles when the news reached the king, who, although the day was then far advanced, resolved to give battle at once. The Earl of Lindsey, who had acquired his military experience fighting in the Low Countries, was General of the king's army, while the king's nephew, Prince Rupert, the finest cavalry officer of his day, commanded the Horse, Sir Jacob Astley the Foot, Sir Arthur Aston the Dragoons, Sir John Heyden the Artillery, and Lord Bernard a troop of Guards. The estates and revenues of this single troop were estimated to be at least equal to those of all the members who, at the commencement of the war, voted in both Houses of Parliament; so if money could have won the battle, the king's army ought to have been victorious; the king, moreover, had the advantage of a strong position, as his army was well placed under the summit of the hill. The battle was fought on Sunday, October 23rd, 1643, and resulted in a draw, and, though the armies stood facing each other the next day, neither of them had the heart to take the initiative or to fight again, for, as usual in such warfare, brother had been fighting against brother and father against son; so Essex retired to Warwick and the king to Oxford, the only town on whose loyalty he could depend. But to return to the battle! The prayer of Sir Jacob Astley, the Commander of the king's foot soldiers, has been recorded as if it were one of the chief incidents on that unhappy day, and it was certainly admirable and remarkable, for he said, "O Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me!" and then in place of the usual "Amen" he called out "March on, boys!" Prince Rupert, with his dashing and furious charge, soon put Essex's cavalry to flight, pursuing them for miles, while the right wing was also driven back; but when the king's reserve, commanded by Sir John Byron, saw the flight of both wings of Essex's army, they made sure that the battle was won, and, becoming anxious for some share in the victory, joined the others in their chase. Sir William Balfour, however, who commanded Essex's reserve, seeing the advantage this afforded him, wheeled about upon the Royal Infantry, now left without horse, and dashed in amongst them, slaying right and left. Lindsay fell mortally wounded, and was taken prisoner, and his son in trying to save him shared the same fate, while the Royal Standard Bearer, Sir Edmund Verney, was slain and the standard taken; but this was afterwards recovered. When Rupert returned from his reckless chase, it looked more like a defeat than a victory. Both armies had suffered severely, and when Mr. Fisher, the Vicar of Kineton, was commissioned by Lord Essex to number those killed on the side of the Parliament, he estimated them at a little over 1,300 men, all of whom were buried in two large pits on land belonging to what was afterwards known as Battle Farm, the burial-places being known as the Grave Fields. As these were about half-way between Radway and Kineton, we were quite near them when we were lighting the fires on the sides of the road the night before, and this may have accounted for the dreary loneliness of the road, as no one would be likely to live on or near the fields of the dead if he could find any more desirable place. It was at the village of Radway where tradition stated the king and his sons breakfasted at a cottage in which for many years afterwards the old table was shown to visitors on which their breakfast stood, and it was on the hill near there where the boy-princes, Charles and James, narrowly escaped being captured as they were watching the battle that was being fought on the fields below.

We were in no hurry to leave Banbury, for we had not recovered from the effects of our long walk of the previous day and night, and were more inclined to saunter about the town than to push on. It is astonishing how early remembrances cling to us in after life: we verily believed we had come to Banbury purposely to visit its famous Cross, immortalised in the nursery rhyme:

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady get on a white horse; She's rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. And she shall have music wherever she goes.



The rhyme must, like many others, have been of great antiquity, for the old Cross of Banbury had been removed by the Puritans in the year 1602, and its place taken by a much finer one, recently erected to commemorate the marriage of the Emperor Frederick of Germany to the Princess Royal of England. The fine lady and the white horse were also not to be found, but we heard that the former was supposed to have been a witch, known as the Witch of Banbury, while the white horse might have been an emblem of the Saxons or have had some connection with the great white horse whose gigantic figure we afterwards saw cut out in the green turf that covered the white chalk cliffs of the Berkshire Downs. The nursery rhyme incidentally recorded the fact that the steps at the base of the Cross at Banbury were formerly used as a convenience to people in mounting on the backs of their horses, and reminded us of the many isolated flights of three or four stone steps we had seen on our travels, chiefly near churches and public-houses and corners of streets, which had been used for the same purpose, and pointed back to those remote times when people rode on horseback across fields and swampy moors and along the pack-horse roads so common in the country long before wheeled vehicles came into common use.

We had eaten Eccles cakes in Lancashire, and Shrewsbury cakes in Shropshire, and had walked through Scotland, which Robbie Burns had described as—

The Land o' Cakes and brither Scots,

but we had never heard of Banbury cakes until we walked through the streets of that town, and found that the making of these cakes formed one of its leading industries. The cakes in Scotland were of a sterner, plainer character than those farther south, the cakes at Banbury being described as a mixture between a tart and a mince-pie. We purchased some, and found them uncommonly good, so we stowed a few in our bags for use on our way towards Oxford. This industry in Banbury is a very old one, for the cakes are known to have been made there as far back as 1602, when the old Cross was pulled down, and are mentioned by Ben Jonson, a great dramatist, and the friend of Shakespeare. He was Poet Laureate from 1619, and had the honour of being buried in Westminster Abbey. In his comedy Bartholomew Fair, published in 1614, he mentions that a Banbury baker, whom he facetiously named Mr. "Zeal-of-the-Lord Busy," had given up the making of these cakes "because they were served at bridals and other profane feasts." This baker, we imagined, must have been a Puritan, for from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to that of Charles II Banbury had been noted for the large number of Puritans who lived there, and for their religious zeal; they had even been accused of altering the names of the staple industries of the town from "Cakes and Ale" to "Cakes and Zeal," and were unpopular in some quarters, for Braithwaite in his Drunken Barnaby cuts at them rather savagely:

To Banbury came I, O profane one: Where I saw a Puritane one Hanging of his cat on Monday For killing of a mouse on Sunday.



The Academy at Banbury was famous as the place where Dean Swift began to write his famous satire entitled Travels of Lemuel Gulliver, the reading of which had been one of the pleasures of our schoolboy days. He was said to have copied the name from a tombstone in the churchyard.

There were several charming old gabled houses in the town, and in "Ye Olde Reindeere Inn" was a beautiful room called the "Globe," a name given it from a globular chandelier which once stood near the entrance. This room was panelled in oak now black with age, and lighted by a lofty mullioned window extending right across the front, while the plastered ceiling was considered to be one of the finest in the county of Oxford. In the High Street stood a very fine old house with, three gables erected about the year 1600, on which was placed an old sun-dial that immediately attracted our attention, for inscribed on it appeared the Latin words, "Aspice et abi" ("Look and Go"), which we considered as a hint to ourselves, and as the Old Castle had been utterly demolished after the Civil War, and the fine old Parish Church, "more like a cathedral than a church," blown up with gunpowder in 1740 "to save the expense of restoring it," we had no excuse for staying here any longer, and quickly left the town on our way to Oxford.



The Latin motto "Look and Go" reminded my brother of an old timber-built mansion in Staffordshire which, as it stood near a road, everybody stayed to admire, its architectural proportions being so beautiful. It was said that when the fugitive King Charles was in hiding there he was greatly alarmed at seeing a man on the road staring stedfastly at the house, and as he remained thus for a considerable period, the king at last exclaimed impatiently, "Go, knave, what lookest at!" Long after the king had departed the owner of the house caused his words to be carved in large characters along a great beam extending in front of the mansion, which travellers in the present day still stay to admire, though many take the words as being meant for themselves, and move on as we did at Banbury, but perhaps more slowly and reluctantly.

We had the valley of the River Cherwell to our left, and at Deddington we saw the site of the old castle from which Piers Gaveston, the unlucky favourite of Edward II, was taken by the Earl of Warwick. He had surrendered to "Joseph the Jew," the Earl of Pembroke, at Scarborough on condition that the barons spared his life, but Warwick said he never agreed to that, and as Gaveston had greatly offended him by nicknaming him the "Black Hound" or the "Black Dog," he took him to Warwick Castle and wreaked his venegance upon him by cutting off his head.

By what we called a "forced march" we arrived at the grounds of the famous Palace of Woodstock, and were lucky in meeting with a woodman who took us across the park, where we had a fine view of the monument, the lake, and the magnificent Palace of Blenheim.



Woodstock is a place full of history and in a delightful position, with woods still surrounding it as in the days of yore, when it was the abode of kings and a royal residence. A witenagemot, or supreme council, was held here by King Ethelred in the year 866, and Alfred the Great pursued his literary work here by translating the Consolations of Boethius, and in the grounds he had a deer-fold. In Domesday Book it is described as a royal forest, and Henry I had an enclosure made in the park for lions and other wild beasts, which he surrounded by a very high wall, in which menagerie he placed the first porcupine ever seen in England, presented to him by William de Montpellier. The country people at that time imagined that the quills of the porcupine were weapons which the animal could shoot at those who hunted it. Henry II resided at the palace with the lady of his love, the Fair Rosamond. She was the second daughter of Walter, Lord de Clifford, who built his castle on a cliff overlooking a ford on the River Wye at Clifford in Herefordshire, and his daughter Rosa-mundi (the rose of the world) was born there. She had a local lover whom she discarded when Prince Henry appeared on the scene, and finally Henry took her away to Woodstock, where he built magnificent apartments for her and her children, the entrance to which was through an intricate maze in the castle grounds. The rear of the buildings adjoined the park, so that Rosamond and her children could pass out at the back into the park and woods without being perceived from the castle. Queen Eleanor was naturally jealous when she heard that she had been superseded in the king's affections, and it was said she tried all available means to discover the whereabouts of the Fair Rosamond, but without success, until she contrived to fasten a thread of silk to one of the king's spurs, which she afterwards followed in the maze in the castle grounds to the point where it had broken off at the secret entrance. She waited for her opportunity, and when the king was away she had the trap-door forced open, and, taking a large bowl of poison in one hand and a sharp dagger in the other, found Rosamond near a well in the park and commanded her to end her life either with one or the other. Rosamond took the poison, "and soe shee dyed," and the well ever since has been known as Fair Rosamond's Well; we afterwards found another well of the same name in Shropshire. She had two sons, one of whom became the Earl of Salisbury and the other Archbishop of York; an old ballad runs:—

But nothing could this furious queen Therewith appeased bee: The cup of deadlye poyson strong. As she knelt on her knee,

She gave this comlye dame to drink, Who took it in her hand; And from her bended knee arose And on her feet did stand.

And casting up her eyes to heaven, She did for mercy calle; And drinking up the poyson strong. Her life she lost with-alle.

Edward III and his Queen Phillipa resided at Woodstock in the fourteenth century, and it was here that the Black Prince, who figured so largely in English history, was born. A nice little love story was connected with their court. The king had a page and the queen had a damsel, who fell deeply in love with each other, and whenever they got a chance walked out in the beautiful park and woods which surrounded the castle, where the young man made some poetry about the "Cuckoo and Nightingale," whose notes they so often heard amongst the sylvan beauties of Woodstock. The king was pleased with the poetry, and the young page became quite a favourite with him. He afterwards became known as the "Father of English Poetry." His name was Chaucer, and he achieved immortality by his "Canterbury Tales." He was not only successful in his own love affairs, but assisted John o' Gaunt with his, and was instrumental in obtaining for him the hand of Blanche of Lancaster, who had inherited from her father, the Duke of Lancaster, an enormous fortune, of which Kenilworth formed a part. Chaucer wrote an allegorical history of that love story in his poem entitled "Chaucer's Dream," and John o' Gaunt being a true friend, as was shown by his protection of his friend John Wiclif, the great reformer, Chaucer had no reason to regret the services he had rendered, for his fortunes rose with those of John o' Gaunt, whose great power and wealth dated from the marriage. Chaucer described Woodstock Park as being walled round with green stone, and it was said to have been the first walled park in England. Richard III held a tournament in it at Christmas 1389, at which the young Earl of Pembroke was accidentally killed. Henry VII made additions to the palace, and built the front gate-house in which his granddaughter Elizabeth, afterwards Queen of England, was imprisoned by command of her sister Mary, when she wrote with charcoal on one of the window shutters:

Oh, Fortune, how thy restless wavering state, Hath fraught with cares my troubled witt. Witness this present prysoner, whither Fate Could bear me, and the joys I quitt; Thou causeth the guiltie to be loosed From bonds wherein an innocent's inclosed, Causing the guiltless to be straite reserved, And freeing those that Death hath well deserved; But by her malice can be nothing wroughte, So God send to my foes all they have thought.

A.D. 1555—Elizabeth, "Prisoner."

In Cromwell's time Woodstock suffered severely, and the castle was defended for the king by a great warrior, Captain Samuel Fawcett, who would have been buried beneath the ruins rather than surrender had not the king ordered him to hand it over to the Parliament.

The manor and park continued to be vested in the Crown until the time of Queen Anne, who bestowed it on her famous general, the Duke of Marlborough, as a reward for his numerous victories abroad, so that he might have a home worthy of him. The nation voted the successful soldier half a million of money wherewith to build a magnificent palace to be named after one of his greatest victories, and Blenheim was the result.

We were astonished at the enormous size of the mansion, in which, we heard, many art treasures were stored, and the woodman told us that the wall that enclosed the mansion and the park was more than eleven miles long. A lofty column, with a statue of the great duke on the top, in the garb of a Roman warrior, had been erected in the park, the base of which monument was covered with inscriptions containing thousands of words, including more names of battles won than we had seen on any monument previously. The Battle of Blenheim was fought in 1704, and forms the subject of Southey's well-known poem in which he describes old Kaspar sitting before his cottage door on a summer evening after his day's work was done, while his grandchildren, little Wilhelmine and her brother Peterkin, were playing on the green before him. The children had found something in the stream hard by, and had brought it to Kaspar to explain to them what it was that they had found "that was so large and smooth and round." We could almost imagine we could see old Kaspar taking it up in his hand and explaining to the children that it was the skull of some poor fellow amongst the thousands who had been slain in that great battle, and describing the misery that followed it, to teach them, and all mankind, the curse of war.



Then followed the questions of the little children, often difficult to answer as everybody knows, and which even puzzled, old Kaspar himself:

"Now tell us all about the war, And what they killed each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried, "Who put the French to rout; But what they killed each other for I could not well make out. But everybody said," quoth he, "That 'twas a famous victory."

"And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win." "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin:— "Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory."

We found a very comfortable hotel at Woodstock where we got a splendid tea, and stayed some time, with an inward desire to stay longer; but we wanted to reach Oxford that night, and so walked on in the dark and arrived at the Temperance Hotel there at ten o'clock p.m.

We had seen a few bonfires on our way, but when November 5th happened to fall on a Sunday, causing the ceremonies of the "glorious fifth" to be celebrated either a day sooner or a day later, the proceedings invariably fell flat and lost their eclat; but Oxford was notorious on Gunpowder Day for a faction fight known as the Gown and the Town fight, which generally began in front of the church dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, and on that day more heads were damaged in the city than on any other day in the year, the fight always ending in a number of both parties being taken care of for the night. But the custom was now dying out, and as our entry into the city was on November 4th, probably these festivities had not taken place or we had arrived too late to witness them.

(Distance walked twenty miles.)



Sunday, November 5th.

I was roused in good time this morning by my brother knocking at my door and wishing me many happy returns of my birthday, consequently we were able to go out in the town before breakfast and see how Oxford looked in the daylight. As we walked through the principal streets we were astonished at the number of towers and spires on the churches and colleges, which appeared in every direction, and the number of trees and gardens which surrounded them. We saw the Martyrs' Memorial, which we must have passed as we entered the city the previous night, an elaborate and ornate structure, fully seventy feet high, with a cross at the summit. The monument had been erected at a cost of L5,000, to the memory of Bishops Ridley and Latimer, who were burnt to death near the spot, October 16th, 1555, and of Archbishop Cranmer, who followed them on March 21st, 1556; their statues in Caen stone filled three of the niches. The memorial was decorated after the manner of the Eleanor Crosses erected by King Edward I in memory of his wife, the Queen Eleanor, and the inscription on the base was as follows:

To the Glory of God and in grateful commemoration of His servants—Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, prelates of the Church of England; who near this spot yielded their bodies to be burned, bearing witness to the sacred truths which they had affirmed and maintained against the errors of the Church of Rome, and rejoicing that to them it was given not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for His sake. This monument was erected by public subscription in the year of our Lord God MDCCCXLI.

Ridley and Latimer were burned together on the slope of the city near Balliol College, where stakes had been placed to receive them. On the day of their execution they were brought from their prison and compelled to listen to a sermon full of reproaches and uncharitable insinuations from the preacher, Dr. Smith, who took his text from the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians: "If I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it availeth me nothing."



Each of the bishops expressed a desire to reply to the sermon, but neither of them was allowed to do so, and they were led to the place of execution. Ridley was told that if he would recant, his life would be spared, but he replied, "So long as the breath is in my body I will never deny my Lord Christ and His known truth. God's will be done in me."

His companion, Latimer, before he removed his prison dress, looked like a withered and bent old man, but afterwards appeared quite changed, and stood upright, "as comely a father as one might lightly behold." He distributed several small articles he had about him amongst his friends who stood near him, and said, "Well, there is nothing hid but it shall be opened"—a remark he had often made before—and then he prayed aloud to the Almighty, concluding with the words, "I beseech Thee, Lord God, take mercy on this realm of England, and deliver the same from all her enemies."



After embracing each other they were chained to the stakes, and the faggots of wood piled around them, while a brother-in-law tied a bag of gunpowder round Ridley's neck. As the fires were being lighted, the brave old Latimer uttered these memorable words:

"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out!"

He then received the flame in his hands, as if embracing it, and, stroking his face with it, died apparently without pain.

Ridley lived longer, but when the powder exploded, he fell dead at Latimer's feet. Latimer had often prayed during his imprisonment that he might shed his heart's blood for the truth, and that God would restore His gospel to England, and preserve the Lady Elizabeth. As his body was consumed, the bystanders were astonished at the quantity of blood that gushed from his heart. His words proved to be prophetic, for the fires of the martyrs restored the light to their country, and spread like wildfire throughout the land, carrying all before them. How strong must have been their belief when, with the offer of life held out to them, they elected to die for the faith "which is in Christ Jesus."

Cranmer had signed a recantation and was brought to St. Mary's Church to proclaim his adhesion to the Roman faith, but instead of doing so, he created a great sensation by boldly repudiating all he had said in favour of Romish assumption. He said it was contrary to the truth; and "as for the Pope," he continued. "I refuse him as anti-Christ." A great uproar followed. The preacher shouted, "Stop the heretic's mouth!" and Cranmer was immediately led out to be burnt, suffering death on that same day, March 21, 1556. A portion of the stake to which he was fastened and the band of iron which was placed round his waist were still preserved at Oxford.

Mary, who was Queen of England at that time, was a zealous Roman Catholic, and the Reformers were looked upon as heretics, and punished accordingly. So many of them were executed during her reign, that she became known to history as "Bloody Mary." Her sister Elizabeth was known to favour the Protestants, and as she would follow as Queen of England, her life was often in danger. It was for her preservation that Latimer so often prayed. Mary's reign was a short one, but Elizabeth was spared to reign over England for the long period of forty-four years. Foxe's Book of Martyrs describes the horrible sufferings of many of these martyrs, and, though an awful book to read, was one of the few books extensively published in our early days, chained copies being placed in many churches, some of which we saw on our journey.



A small group of excited people were standing near the Martyrs' Memorial, and we passed several others in the city. On inquiry we were informed that the body of a murdered woman had been found during the night, on the Banbury road. On hearing this news I must confess to feeling some slight apprehension when I considered the strong prima facie case that could have been made against us: our travel-stained appearance, faces bronzed almost to the colour of the red soil we had walked over, beards untrimmed and grown as nature intended them, clothes showing signs of wear and tear, our heavy oaken sticks with worn ferrules, and our suspicious and seedy-looking bags; our late arrival last night, and, above all, the fact that we had entered the town by the very road on which the murder had been committed! What if we were arrested on suspicion! I had been practically arrested under far less suspicious circumstances the previous year, when we were walking home from London.



Just before reaching Nottingham we saw a large concourse of people in an open space some distance away from our road; out of curiosity we went to see what was going on, and found it to be a cricket match just finishing. Two men in the crowd to whom we spoke told us that great interest was being taken in the match, as a man named Grace was taking part in the game. We waited till the end, and came along with the two men towards the town. We had to cross the bridge over the River Trent, and my brother had already crossed when he found I was not following. So he turned back, and saw me talking to a policeman in the centre of the bridge. "What's the matter?" he shouted, and I replied, "He wants to look in my bag." My brother made use of some expression quite unusual to him, and a regular war of words ensued between him and the officer; as we declined to open the bag, he requested us to follow him to a small temporary police office that had been built on the side of the bridge. Meantime a crowd of men had collected and followed us to the station; every pane of glass in the office windows was occupied by the faces of curious observers. The officer quite lost his temper, saying that he had had men like us there before. We asked him to break the bag open, but he declined to do so, and made himself very disagreeable, which caused my brother to remark afterwards that we ought to have thrown him over the parapet of the bridge into the river below, if only to cool his temper. It would have pleased us to stay and fight the matter out, but we had a friend meeting us at Buxton to accompany us on the last day's march home, and were obliged to give in on that account; so we opened the bag, and it was amusing to see the crestfallen appearance of the officer when he saw the contents, and his fiery temperature almost fell below zero when we told him we should report the matter to his chief. We heard in the town that some of the squires on that side of Nottingham had been troubled with poachers on their estates, and the police had orders to examine all persons with suspicious-looking parcels coming into the town by that road, whether by vehicles or on foot. About a fortnight before our adventure the same policeman had stopped a man who was carrying a similar bag to mine, and found in it a complete set of housebreaker's tools. He had been complimented by the magistrates for his smart capture, so possibly our reluctance to open the bag, and its similarity to that carried by the housebreaker, had confirmed him in his opinion that he was about to make a similar capture. Another thought, however, that occurred to me was that the man I was walking with might be "known to the police," as I noticed he disappeared in the crowd immediately the officer approached. But be that as it may, we wrote to the Chief Constable of Police at Nottingham soon after we reached home, who replied very civilly, and said he hoped we would not proceed with the case further, as just then the police in that neighbourhood had very difficult duties to perform, and so the matter ended.



But to return to Oxford. My brother only smiled at my fears, and remarked that being apprehended by the police would only be a small matter compared with being taken to prison and put on the treadmill, a position in which he boasted of having once been placed. When he happened to mention this to a tramp on the road, I was greatly amused to hear the tramp in a significant and confidential tone of voice quietly ask, "What was you in for?"

He was only a small boy at the time, and had gone with our father, who was on the jury, to the county prison. Part of the jury's business in the interval was to inspect the arrangements there, which of course were found in applepie order. My brother was greatly impressed by his own importance when the man in livery at the head of the procession repeatedly called to the crowd, "Make way for the Grand Jury!" He saw the prisoners picking "oakum," or untwisting old ropes that had been used in boats, tearing the strands into loose hemp to be afterwards used in caulking the seams between the wood planks on the decks and sides of ships, so as to make them water-tight; and as it was near the prisoners' dinner-time, he saw the food that had been prepared for their dinner in a great number of small tin cans with handles attached, each containing two or three small pieces of cooked meat, which he said smelled very savoury.

Finally they came to the treadmill, and as no prisoners were on it, some of the jury expressed a wish to try it; one of the jurymen seeing my brother, who was the only child present, kindly took him on and held him by the hand. When all were in position the wheel was started slowly, and as one step went down they mounted the next, and so on up the stairs, but they never got to the top! The steps creaked under them as the wheel turned slowly round, and a prison officer stood behind them with a big stick, which he was careful not to use on any of the jurymen, though my brother heard him say he had to use it sometimes on the prisoners. As the wheel turned round it moved some kind of machinery which they could not see.



But to return to Oxford again. We were not suspected of being concerned in the murder, nor did we venture to inquire whether the culprit had been found, for fear that we might be suspected of being concerned in the case; but if a police raid had been made on the Oxford Temperance Hotel—most unlikely thing to happen—we should have been able to produce a good record for that day, at any rate, for we attended four different services in four different places of worship. The first was at Christ Church, whither we had been advised to go to listen to the choir, whose singing at that time was considered to be the best in Oxford. Certainly the musical part of the service was all that could be desired. There were more than twenty colleges at Oxford, and we had a busy day, for between the services we looked through the "Quads," with their fine gardens and beautiful lawns, hundreds of years old. In the services, every phase of religious thought in the Church of England seemed to be represented—the High Church, the Low Church, and the Broad Church; and many men in all vocations and professions in life had passed through the colleges, while valuable possessions had been bequeathed to them from time to time, until Oxford had become a veritable storehouse of valuable books, pictures, and relics of all kinds, and much of the history of the British Empire seemed to have been made by men who had been educated there. It would have taken us quite a week to see Oxford as it ought to be seen, but we had only this one day, and that a Sunday.



Christ Church, where we went to our first service, one of the finest buildings in Oxford, was founded by the great Wolsey in the reign of Henry VIII. It contains the statue and portrait of the Cardinal, and in the Library his Cardinal's Hat, also his Prayer Book—one of its most valued possessions, beautifully illuminated and bound in crimson velvet set with pearls and dated 1599. The famous bell of Christ Church, known as the "Great Tom," weighing about 17,000 lbs., is tolled every night at five minutes past nine o'clock—101 times, that being the original number of the students at the college—and at its solemn sound most of the colleges and halls closed their gates. The students were formerly all supposed to be housed at that hour, but the custom is not now observed—in fact, there was some doubt about it even in the time of Dean Aldrich, the author of the well-known catch, "Hark! the bonny Christ Church bells," published in 1673:

Hark the bonny Christ Church Bells 1 2 3 4 5 6— They sound so wondrous great, so woundy sweet As they trowl so merrily, merrily. Oh! the first and second bell. That every day at four and ten, cry, "Come, come, come, come to prayers!" And the verger troops before the Dean. Tinkle, tinkle, ting, goes the small bell at nine. To call the bearers home; But the devil a man Will leave his can Till he hears the mighty Tom.

The great bell originally belonged to Oseney Abbey, and hung in the fine cupola over the entrance gate, named after it the "Great Tom Gate," and had been tolled every night with one exception since May 29, 1684.

The statue of Wolsey, which now stood over the gateway, was carved by an Oxford man named Bird in the year 1719, at the expense of Trelawny, Bishop of Winchester, one of the seven bishops and hero of the famous ballad—

And shall Trelawny die?

At the time of the Restoration Dr. John Fell was appointed Vice-Chancellor, and he not only made the examinations very severe, but he made the examiners keep up to his standard, and was cordially hated by some of the students on that account. An epigram made about him at that time has been handed down to posterity:

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know, and know full well, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.

William Penn, the Quaker, the famous founder of the Colony of Pennsylvania, "came up" to Christ Church in 1660, but was "sent down" in 1660 for nonconformity.



But we were more interested in a modern student there, C.L. Dodgson, who was born in 1832 at Daresbury in Cheshire, where his father was rector, and quite near where we were born. There was a wood near his father's rectory where he, the future "Lewis Carroll," rambled when a child, along with other children, and where it was thought he got the first inspirations that matured in his famous book The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, which was published in 1865—one of the most delightful books for children ever written. We were acquainted with a clergyman who told us that it was the greatest pleasure of his life to have known "Lewis Carroll" at Oxford, and that Queen Victoria was so delighted with Dodgson's book Alice in Wonderland, that she commanded him if ever he wrote another book to dedicate it to her. Lewis Carroll was at that time engaged on a rather abstruse work on Conic Sections, which, when completed and published, duly appeared as "Dedicated by express command to Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria." The appearance of this book caused some surprise and amusement, as it was not known that the Queen was particularly interested in Conic Sections. No doubt Her Majesty anticipated, when she gave him the command personally, that his next book would be a companion to the immortal Alice.

Our friend the vicar, who told us this story, rather surprised us when he said that Lewis Carroll did not like the sea, and had written a "Sea Dirge," which, when recited at parochial entertainments, generally brought "down the house" at the conclusion of the ninth verse:

A SEA DIRGE

There are some things like a spider, a ghost. The income tax, the gout, an umbrella for three. That I hate, but the thing I hate the most, Is a thing they call the sea.

Pour some salt water over the floor. Ugly I'm sure you'll allow that to be, Suppose it extended a mile or more, That would be like the sea.

Beat a dog till it howls outright— Cruel, but all very well for a spree; Suppose it did so day and night, That would be like the sea.

I had a vision of nursery maids, Tens of thousands passed by me, Each carrying children with wooden spades, And that was by the sea.

Who could have invented those spades of wood? Who was it that cut them out of the tree? None, I think, but an idiot could— Or one who loved the sea.

It is pleasant and dreamy, no doubt to float With thoughts as boundless and souls as free, But suppose you are very unwell in the boat— Then how do you like the sea?

Would you like coffee with sand for dregs? A decided hint of salt in your tea? And a fishy taste in the very eggs? Then by all means choose the sea.

And if with such dainties to drink and eat You prefer not a vestige of grass or a tree, And a chronic condition of wet in your feet, Then—I recommend the sea.

There is an animal people avoid. Whence is derived the verb to flee, Where have you been by it most annoyed? In lodgings by the sea.

Once I met with a friend in the street, With wife and nurse and children three; Never again such a sight may I meet, As that party from the sea.

Their looks were sullen, their steps were slow, Convicted felons they seemed to be,— "Are you going to prison, dear friend?"—"Oh no; We're returning from the sea!"



Every college had some legend or story connected with it, and University College claimed to have been founded by King Alfred the Great, but this is considered a myth; King Alfred's jewel, however, a fine specimen of Saxon work in gold and crystal, found in the Isle of Athelney, was still preserved in Oxford. Guy Fawkes's lantern and the sword given to Henry VIII as Defender of the Faith were amongst the curios in the Bodleian Library, but afterwards transferred to the Ashmolean Museum, which claimed to be the earliest public collection of curiosities in England, the first contributions made to it having been given in 1682 by Elias Ashmole, of whom we had heard when passing through Lichfield. In the eighteenth century there was a tutor named Scott who delivered a series of lectures on Ancient History, which were considered to be the finest ever known, but he could never be induced to publish them. In one of his lectures he wished to explain that the Greeks had no chimneys to their houses, and created much amusement by explaining it in his scholarly and roundabout fashion: "The Greeks had no convenience by which the volatile parts of fire could be conveyed into the open air." This tutor was a friend of the great Dr. Johnson, and seemed to have been quite an original character, for when his brother, John Scott, who was one of his own pupils, came up for examination for his degree in Hebrew and History, the only questions he put to him were, "What is the Hebrew for skull?" to which John promptly replied "Golgotha," and "Who founded University College?" to which his reply was "King Alfred!" Both the brothers were very clever men, and the tutor developed into Lord Stowell, while the pupil was created Lord Eldon.



Jesus, the Welsh College, possessed an enormous silver punch-bowl, 5 feet 2 inches in girth, which was presented in 1732 by the great Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, who was known as the King in Wales. Over his great kitchen mantelpiece there he had the words "Waste not, want not," a motto which did not appear to apply to the punchbowl, for the conditions attached to it were that it was to become the property of him who could span it with his arms and then drain the bowl empty after it had been filled with strong punch. The first condition had been complied with, and the second no doubt had been often attempted, but no one had yet appeared who had a head strong enough to drain the bowl without assistance, so it still remained the property of the College!



Magdalen College—or Maudlen, as they pronounced it at Oxford—as easily distinguished from the others by its fine tower, rising to the height of 145 feet, the building of which dates from the end of the fifteenth century. We took a greater interest in that college because the rector of Grappenhall in Cheshire, where we were born, had been educated there. An ancient May-day custom is still observed by the college, called the "Magdalen Grace" or the "May Morning Hymn," this very old custom having been retained at Magdalen long after others disappeared. On May-day morning the choristers ascend to the top of the great tower and enter the portion railed off for them and other men who join in the singing, while the remainder of the space is reserved for members of the University, and other privileged persons admitted by ticket. They wait until the bell has sounded the last stroke of five o'clock, and then sing in Latin that fine old hymn to the Trinity, beginning with the words:

Te Deum patrem colimus.

My brother, however, was sure our rector could never have sung that hymn, since in cases of emergency he always appealed to him to start the singing in the Sunday school—for although a very worthy man in other respects, he was decidedly not musical.

Among the great Magdalen men of the past are the names of Cardinal Wolsey, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Addison, Gibbon, Collins, Wilson, John Hampden, and John Foxe, author of the Book of Martyrs. The ecclesiastical students included two cardinals, four archbishops, and about forty bishops; and my brother would have added to the Roll of Honour the name of our rector, the Rev. Thomas Greenall, as that of a man who conscientiously tried to do his duty and whom he held in lasting remembrance.



There was a kind of haze hanging over Oxford, which gave me the impression that the atmosphere of the neighbourhood was rather damp, though my brother tried to persuade me it was the mist of antiquity; but when I found the rivers Thames (or Isis) and the Cherwell encircled the city on three sides, and that its name was derived from a passage over which oxen could cross the water, and when I saw the stiff clay of the brickfields, I was confirmed in my opinion.



As early as the year 726 a prince named Didan settled at Oxford, and his wife Saxfrida built a nunnery there for her daughter Frideswyde, so that she could "take the veil" in her own church. As she was considered the "flower of all these parts," we could not understand why this was necessary, especially as she was sought in marriage by Algar, King of Leicester, described as "a young and spritely prince," and who was so persistent that he would not accept her refusal, actually sending "ambassadors" to carry her away. These men, however, when they approached her were smitten with blindness; and when Frideswyde saw that she would not be safe in "her own church" nor able to remain in peace there, she fled into the woods and hid herself in a place that had been made as a shelter for the swine. King Algar was greatly enraged, and, breathing out fire and sword, set out for Oxford. As he still pursued her, he too was smitten with blindness; and she then returned, but did not live long, as she died in 739. St. Frideswide's Chapel was said to have been built over her shrine, around which Oxford, the "City of the Spires," had extended to its present proportions.

Oxford is also mentioned in A.D. 912 in the Saxon Chronicle, and Richard Coeur de Lion, the great Crusader, was born there in 1156, and often made it his home. The city was besieged on three different occasions—by Sweyne, the King of Denmark, in 1013, by William the Conqueror in 1067, and by Fairfax in 1646—for it was one of the King's great strongholds.



EIGHTH WEEK'S JOURNEY

Monday, November 6th.

We had been very comfortable at our hotel, where I had spent a very pleasant birthday at Oxford, and was sorry that we could not stay another day. But the winter was within measurable distance, with its short days and long dark nights, and we could no longer rely upon the moon to lighten our way, for it had already reached its last quarter. We therefore left Oxford early in the morning by the Abingdon Road, and soon reached the southern entrance to the city, where in former days stood the famous tower from which Roger Bacon, who died in 1292, and who was one of the great pioneers in science and philosophy, was said to have studied the heavens; it was shown to visitors as "Friar Bacon's study."



A strange story was told relating to that wonderful man, from which it appeared he had formed the acquaintance of a spirit, who told him that if he could make a head of brass in one month, so that it could speak during the next month, he would be able to surround England with a wall of brass, and thus protect his country from her enemies. Roger Bacon, on hearing this, at once set to work, and with the aid of another philosopher and a demon the head was made; but as it was uncertain at what time during the next month it would speak, it was necessary to watch it. The two philosophers, therefore, watched it night and day for three weeks, and then, getting tired, Bacon ordered his man Myles to watch, and waken him when it spoke. About half an hour after they had retired the head spoke, and said, "Time is," but Myles thought it was too early to tell his master, as he could not have had sleep enough. In another half-hour the head spoke again, and said, "Time was," but as everybody knew that, he still did not think fit to waken his master, and then half an hour afterwards the head said, "Time is past," and fell down with a tremendous crash that woke the philosophers: but it was now too late! What happened afterwards, and what became of Myles, we did not know.

In the neighbouring village of North Hinksey, about a mile across the meadows, stands the Witches' Elm. Of the Haunted House beside which it stood hardly even a trace remained, its origin, like its legend, stretching so far back into the "mists of antiquity" that only the slenderest threads remained. Most of the villages were owned by the monks of Abingdon Abbey under a grant of the Saxon King Caedwalla, and confirmed to them by Caenwulf and Edwig. The Haunted House, like the Church of Cumnor, was built by the pious monks, and remained in their possession till the dissolution of the monastery, then passing into the hands of the Earls of Abingdon.



The last tenant of the old house was one Mark Scraggs, or Scroggs, a solitary miser who, the story goes, sold himself to the Devil, one of the features of the compact being that he should provide for the wants of three wise women, or witches, who on their part were to assist him in carrying out his schemes and make them successful. In everything he seemed to prosper, and accumulated great hoards of wealth, but he had not a soul in the world to leave it to or to regret his leaving in spite of his wealth.

At length the time approached when his terrible master would claim him body and soul, but Scraggs worked out a scheme for evading his bond, and for a time successfully kept Satan at bay and disposed of the three witches by imprisoning them in a hollow tree close by, on which he cast a spell which prevented them from communicating with their master the evil one, or enabling him to find them. This spell was so successful that Scraggs soon felt himself secure, but one day, venturing beyond the charmed circle, he was immediately seized by the Devil, who attempted to carry him off by way of the chimney, but failed, as the shaft was not sufficiently wide for the passage of the man's body. In the struggle the chimney was twisted in the upper part, and remained so till its total destruction, while Satan, rinding he could not carry off his body, tore him asunder, and carried off his soul, dashing the mutilated remains of the miser upon the hearth beneath. The death of Scraggs dissolved the spell which bound the witches, and their release split the tree in which they were confined from the ground to the topmost branch.

The great uproar of this Satanic struggle aroused the neighbourhood, and the miser's body, when it was discovered, was buried beneath the wall of the church—neither inside nor outside the sacred edifice. Ever afterwards the house was haunted by the apparition of old Scraggs searching for his lost soul with groans and hideous cries, until at last the old mansion was pulled down and its very stones were removed.

The old shattered and knarled elm alone remained to keep alive the legend of this evil compact. The story, improbable as it may appear, no doubt contained, as most of these stories do, the element of fact. Possibly the old man was a miser who possessed wealth enough to become the source of envy by some interested relations. Perhaps he was brutally murdered, perhaps, too, the night of the deed may have been wild with thunder and lightning raging in the sky. Probably the weird story, with all its improbable trappings, was circulated by some one who knew the truth, but who was interested in concealing it. Who knows?

[Illlustration: HINKSEY, AN OXFORDSHIRE VILLAGE IN WHICH THE ROAD WAS CONSTRUCTED BY RUSKIN AND A BAND OF OXFORD STUDENTS.]

We were now passing through scenes and pastures, quiet fields and farms, of which many of Oxford's famous students and scholars had written and sung. Matthew Arnold had painted these fields and villages, hills and gliding, reedy streams in some of his poems, and they were the objective of many of his Rambles:

Hills where Arnold wander'd and all sweet June meadows, from the troubling world withdrawn.

Here too in one of these small hamlets through which we passed Ruskin with a gang of his pupils in flannels started roadmaking, and for days and weeks were to be seen at their arduous task of digging and excavation, toiling and moiling with pick, spade, and barrow, while Ruskin stood by, applauding and encouraging them in their task of making and beautifying the roads of these villages which he loved so well.



This experiment was undertaken by Ruskin as a practical piece of serviceable manual labour, for Ruskin taught in his lectures that the Fine Arts required, as a necessary condition of their perfection, a happy country life with manual labour as an equally necessary part of a completely healthy and rounded human existence, and in this experiment he practised what he preached. The experiment caused no little stir in Oxford, and even the London newspapers had their gibe at the "Amateur Navvies of Oxford"; to walk over to Hinksey and laugh at the diggers was a fashionable afternoon amusement.

The "Hinksey diggings," as they were humorously called, were taken up with an enthusiasm which burned so fiercely that it soon expended itself, and its last flickering embers were soon extinguished by the ironic chaff and banter to which these gilded youths were subjected.

The owner of the estate sent his surveyor to report the condition of the road as they had left it, and it is said that in his report he wrote: "The young men have done no mischief to speak of."

The River Thames, over which we now crossed, is known in Oxford as the "Isis," the name of an Egyptian goddess—though in reality only an abbreviated form of the Latin name Tamesis. As the Thames here forms the boundary of Oxfordshire, we were in Berkshire immediately we crossed the bridge. We followed the course of the river until we reached Kennington, where it divides and encloses an island named the Rose Isle, a favourite resort of boating parties from Oxford and elsewhere. It was quite a lovely neighbourhood, and we had a nice walk through Bagley Woods, to the pretty village of Sunningwell, where we again heard of Roger Bacon, for he occasionally used the church tower there for his astronomical and astrological observations. He must have been an enormously clever man, and on that account was known as an alchemist and a sorcerer; he was credited with the invention of gunpowder, and the air-pump, and with being acquainted with the principle of the telescope. In the time of Queen Mary, Dr. Jewel was the rector of Sunningwell, but had to vacate it to escape persecution; while in the time of the Civil War Dr. Samuel Fell, then Dean of Christ Church, and father of John Fell, was rector. He died from shock in 1649 when told the news that his old master, King Charles, had been executed. He was succeeded as Dean by John Fell, his son.



We soon arrived at Abingdon, and were delighted with the view of the town, with its church spire overlooking it as we approached to the side of the Thames, which now appeared as a good-sized river. As we stopped a minute or two on the bridge, my brother got a distant view of some pleasure boats, and suggested we should stay there for the rest of the day, to explore the town, and row up and down the river! He had evidently fallen in love with Abingdon, but I reminded him that our travelling orders were not to ride in any kind of conveyance during the whole of our journey, and that, if we got drowned, we should never get to the Land's End, "besides," I added, "we have not had our breakfast." This finished him off altogether, and the pleasure-boat scheme vanished immediately we entered the portals of a fine old hostelry, where the smell of bacon and eggs recalled him from his day dreams. We handed our luggage to the boots to take care of, and walked into the coffee-room, where to our surprise we found breakfast set for two, and the waitress standing beside it. When we told her how glad we were to find she had anticipated our arrival, she said that the bacon and eggs on the table were not prepared for us, but for two other visitors who had not come downstairs at the appointed time. She seemed rather vexed, as the breakfast was getting cold, and said we had better sit down to it, and she would order another lot to be got ready and run the risk. So we began operations at once, but felt rather guilty on the appearance of a lady and gentleman when very little of the bacon and eggs intended for them remained. The waitress had, however, relieved the situation by setting some empty crockery on another table. Having satisfied our requirements, we tipped the waitress handsomely while paying the bill, and vanished to explore the town. We were captivated with the appearance of Abingdon, which had quite a different look from many of the towns we had visited elsewhere; but perhaps our good opinion had been enhanced by the substantial breakfast we had disposed of, and the splendid appetites which enabled us to enjoy it. There were other good old-fashioned inns in the town, and a man named William Honey had at one time been the landlord of one of the smaller ones, where he had adopted as his sign a bee-hive, on which he had left the following record:

Within this Hive we're all alive, Good Liquor makes us funny; If you are dry, step in and try The flavour of our Honey.

The early history of Abingdon-on-Thames appeared, like others, to have begun with that of a lady who built a nunnery. Cilia was the name of this particular lady, and afterwards Hean, her brother, built a monastery, or an abbey, the most substantial remains of which appeared to be the abbey gateway; but as the abbey had existed in one form or another from the year 675 down to the time of Henry VIII, when it was dissolved, in 1538, Abingdon must have been a place of considerable antiquity. St. Nicholas's Church was mentioned in documents connected with the abbey as early as 1189, and some of its windows contained old stained glass formerly belonging to it, and said to represent the patron saint of the church restoring to life some children who had been mutilated and pickled by the devil. There was also a fine old tomb which contained the remains of John Blacknall and Jane his wife, who appeared to have died simultaneously, or, as recorded, "at one instant time at the house within the site of the dissolved monastery of the Blessed Virgin Marie, of Abingdon, whereof he was owner." The following was the curious inscription on the tomb:

Here rest in assurance of a joyful resurrection the Bodies of John Blacknall, Esquire, and his wife, who both of them finished an happy course upon earth and ended their days in peace on the 21st day of August in the year of our Lord 1625. He was a bountiful benefactor of this Church—gave many benevolencies to the poor—to the Glory of God—to the example of future ages:

When once they liv'd on earth one bed did hold Their Bodies, which one minute turned to mould; Being dead, one Grave is trusted with the prize, Until that trump doth sound and all must rise; Here death's stroke even did not part this pair, But by this stroke they more united were; And what left they behind you plainly see, An only daughter, and their charitie. And though the first by death's command did leave us, The second we are sure will ne'er deceive us.

This church, however, was very small compared with its larger neighbour dedicated to St. Helen, which claims to be one of the four churches in England possessing five aisles, probably accounting for the fact that its breadth exceeded its length by about eleven feet. The oldest aisle dates from the year 1182, and the church contains many fine brasses and tombs, including one dated 1571, of John Roysse, citizen and mercer of London, who founded the Abingdon Grammar School. There is also a stone altar-tomb in memory of Richard Curtaine, who died in 1643, and who was described as "principalle magistrate of this Corpe"; on the tomb was this charming verse in old English lettering:

Our Curtaine in this lower press. Rests folded up in nature's dress; His dust P.fumes his urne, and hee This towne with liberalitee.

Abingdon is fortunate in having so many benefactors, who seem to have vied with each other in the extent of their gifts; even the church itself is almost surrounded with almshouses, which, owing to their quaint architectural beauty, form a great attraction to visitors. It is doubtful whether any town in England of equal size possesses so many almshouses as Abingdon. Those near this church were built in the year 1446 by the Fraternity or Guild of the Holy Cross, and the fine old hospital which adjoined them, with its ancient wooden cloisters and gabled doorways and porch, was a sight well worth seeing. The hall or chapel was hung with painted portraits of its benefactors, including that of King Edward VI, who granted the Charter for the hospital. This Guild of the Holy Cross assisted to build the bridges and set up in the market-place the famous Abingdon Cross, which was 45 feet high. Standing upon eight steps, this cross had "eight panels in the first storey and six in the second; of stone, gilt and garnished, adorned with statuary and coats of arms, a mightily goodly cross of stone with fair degrees and imagerie." The design of the Abingdon Cross had been copied for other crosses, including, it was said, portions of those of Coventry and Canterbury; and it must have been of extraordinary beauty, for Elias Ashmole, who was likely to know, declared that it was not inferior in workmanship and design to any other in England. The cross was restored in 1605, but when the army of the Parliament occupied the town in 1644, it was "sawed down" by General Waller as "a superstitious edifice." The Chamberlain's Accounts for that year contained an entry of money paid "to Edward Hucks for carrying away the stones from the cross."



The records in these old towns in the south, which had been kept by churchwardens and constables for hundreds of years, were extremely interesting; and there was much information in those at Abingdon that gave a good idea of what was to be found in a market-place in "ye olden time," for in addition to the great cross there were the May pole, the cryer's pulpit, the shambles, the stocks, the pillory, the cage, the ducking-stool, and the whipping-post.

In the year 1641, just before the Civil War, Abingdon possessed a Sergeant-at-Mace in the person of Mr. John Richardson, who also appears to have been a poet, as he dedicated what he described as a poem "of harmless and homespun verse to the Mayor, Bayliffs, Burgesses, and others," in which are portrayed the proceedings at the celebration of the peace between the King and the Scots. Early in the morning the inhabitants were roused by "Old Helen's trowling bells," which were answered by the "Low Bells of honest Nick," meaning the bells of the two churches:

To Helen's Courts (ith'morne) at seven oth' clock, Our congregation in great numbers flock; Where we 'till Twelve our Orisons did send To him, that did our kingdom's Quarrels end. And these two Sermons two Divines did preach, And most divinely gratitude did teach.

After these five hours of service, the congregation again returned to church from two till four, and then proceeded to the cross in the market-place.

And thus we march'd: First with my golden Mace I pac'd along, and after followed mee The Burgesses by senioritee. Our Praetour first (let me not misse my Text), I think the Clergie-men came marching next; Then came our Justice, with him a Burger sage, Both marched together, in due equipage. The rest oth' Burgers, with a comely grace, Walked two and two along to th' market-place.

And when the procession arrived at the steps of the cross—

The Clerk was call'd, and he a Bible took, The hundred and sixt Psalme he out did look; Two thousand Quoristers their notes did raise And warbled out the Great Creator's praise!

After this came bonfires and wine and beer, and then the musketeers with rattling drums and fifes and colours flying, under the "skilfull Sergeant Corderoy," who fired off a barrel of powder before the well-known "Antelope Inn."

Abingdon was rather roughly handled during the Civil War, for, in addition to the "sawing off" of the cross, the horses of the Parliamentary Army were stabled in St. Helen's Church, an entry being afterwards made in the churchwardens' book of a sum paid "for nailes and mending the seats that the soldiers had toorne." The fines recorded during the Commonwealth were: "For swearing one oath, 3s. 4d.; for drawing Beere on the Sabboth Day, 10s. 0d.; a Gent for travelling on the Sabboth, 10s. 0d." Our journey might have been devised on a plan to evade all such fines, for we did not swear, or drink beer, or travel on Sundays. We might, however, have fallen into the hands of highway robbers, for many were about the roads in that neighbourhood then, and many stage-coaches had been held up and the passengers robbed.

There was a rather imposing County Hall at Abingdon, built towards the close of the seventeenth century, at which an ancient custom was performed on the coronation of a king. The mayor and corporation on those occasions threw buns from the roof of the market-house, and a thousand penny cakes were thus disposed of at the coronation of George IV, and again at the accession of William IV and of Queen Victoria.

An apprentice of a cordwainer in the town ran away in 1764, or, as it was worded on the police notice, "did elope from service." He was described as a "lusty young fellow, wearing a light-coloured surtout coat, a snuff-coloured undercoat, a straw-coloured waistcoat, newish leather breeches, and wears his own dark brown hair tied behind," so it appeared to us that he had not left his best clothes at home when he "did elope," and would be easily recognised by his smart appearance. We also noticed that about the same period "Florists' Feasts" were held at Abingdon, perhaps the forerunners of the "Flower Shows" held at a later period. In those days the flowers exhibited were chiefly "whole-blowing carnations," while the important things were the dinners which followed the exhibitions, and which were served at the principal inns.



But we must not leave Abingdon without giving an account of another benefactor to the town, though rather on different lines, of whom a detailed account was given in Jackson's Oxford Journal of November, 1767, from which it appeared that State lotteries were in vogue at that time in England. The story chiefly related to a Mr. Alder, a cooper by trade, who kept a "little public house" called the "Mitre." His wife had handed him L22 to pay the brewer, but instead of doing so he only paid him L10, and with the other twelve bought a ticket for the lottery, the number of which was 3379. The following precise account, copied from the Journal, will give the result, and show how events were described in newspapers in those days, the punctuation being carefully attended to, a more extensive use made of capital letters to distinguish the more important words, and some words written separately which now are joined together:

Last Friday about one o'clock in the morning a Messenger in a Post Chaise and Four arrived Express at the Crown and Thistle in Abingdon, Berks., from the Office where his Ticket was sold and registered, to give Mr. Alder the owner of it, the most early Advice of his good Fortune, upon which Mr. Powell immediately went with the Messenger to carry this important Intelligence. Mr. Alder was in Bed, but upon being called jumped out, and opened the Window; when Mr. Powell told him he had brought good News, for his Ticket was come up a Prize. Mr. Alder replied that he knew very well it was only a Joke, but nevertheless he would come down and drink with him, with all his Heart. This Point being settled, both Mr. Alder and his Wife came down; when the Prize still continued to be the Subject of Conversation whilst the Glass went round, and it was magnified by Degrees, till at length Mr. Alder was seriously informed that this Ticket was the Day before drawn a Prize for Twenty Thousand Pounds, and that the Gentleman then present was the Messenger of his Success. Though the utmost Precaution had been used, it is natural to suppose that so sudden and unexpected an Acquisition must produce very extra ordinary Emotions: Mr. Alder, however, supported him with great Decency, but almost immediately slipped out into the Yard behind his House, where he staid some little Time, probably to drop a joyful Tear, as well as to offer an Ejaculation for these Blessings of Providence; but at his Return into the House, we are told, he manifested a most open and generous Heart: He was immediately for doing good, as well as rewarding every one who had in any wise been instrumental in the Advancement of his Fortune. Mr. Powell was welcome to the Use of Half the Money without Interest; his Son, and all his Neighbours were called; he kept open House, set the Bells a'ringing, and came to the following Resolutions, viz.: That the Messenger that came down, and the two Blue-coat Boys who drew the Prize, should be handsomely rewarded; that he would give Mr. Blewitt, Owner of the Abingdon Machine, at least a New Body for his Stage, on which should be painted the Cooper's Arms, together with the Number of his Ticket, 3m379; that he would clothe all the Necessitous of his own Parish; and likewise give a Couple of the finest fat Oxen he could purchase to the Poor of Abingdon in general, and lay out the price of these Oxen in Bread, to be distributed at the same time. To the Ringers, in Number, fourteen, he gave Liquor in Plenty, and a Guinea each; and calling for a wet Mop, rubbed out all the Ale Scores in his Kitchen. In a Word he displayed a noble Liberality, made every Body welcome; and what is highly to be applauded, showed a charitable Disposition towards the Relief of the Poor.

We could imagine the joviality of Mr. Alder's customers when they found their ale scores so generously cancelled, which must have been fairly extensive, seeing that it required a "mop" to remove them from the inside of his kitchen door. We had often seen these "scores" at country inns behind the doors of the rooms where the poorer customers were served. It was a simple method of "book-keeping," as the customers' initials were placed at the head of a line of straight strokes marked by the landlord with white chalk, each figure "one" representing a pint of beer served to his customer during the week, and the money for the "pints" had to be paid at the week's end, for Saturday was the day when wages were invariably paid to working men in the country; as scarcely one of them could write his own name, it was a simple method of keeping accounts that appealed to them, and one that could easily be understood, for all they had to do, besides paying the money, was to count the number of strokes opposite their names. In some places it was the custom to place P. for pint and Q. for quart, which accounted for the origin of the phrase, Mind your p's and q's, so that the phrase, becoming a general warning to "look out," was originally used as a warning to the drinker to look at the score of p's and q's against him. We once heard of a landlord, however, whose first name was Daniel, and who was dishonest. When a customer got "half-seas over" and could not see straight, he used a piece of chalk with a nick cut in it, so that when he marked "one" on the door the chalk marked two; but he was soon found out, and lost most of his trade, besides being nicknamed "Dan Double-chalk." The custom of keeping ale scores in this way was referred to in the poem of "Richard Bell," who was—

As plodding a man, so his neighbours tell, as ever a chisel wielded.

Richard's fault was that he spent too much money at a public-house named the "Jolly Kings," and—

One night, 'twas pay night! Richard's score Reach'd half across the Parlour door. His "Pints" had been so many And when at length the bill was paid, All that was left, he found, dismay'd, Was but a single penny!

If Mr. Alder's customers had spent their money as freely as Richard had spent his, we could imagine their feelings of joy when they found their ale scores wiped out by Mr. Alder's wet mop!

But during all the Jollity occasioned by this Event (the Journal continued), it seems Mrs. Alder was in no wise elated, but rather thought the having such a great deal of Money a Misfortune; and seemed of Opinion that it would have been better to have had only enough to pay the Brewer, and a few Pounds to spare; for it would now certainly be their Ruin, as she knew well her Husband would give away all they had in the World, and indeed that it was presumptuous in him at first to buy the Ticket. The Presumption alluded to by Mrs. Alder, we find, is that she had made up the Sum of 22l. for the Brewer, which her Husband took from her for that Purpose, but he having a strong Propensity to put himself in Fortune's Way, only paid 10l., and with the other Twelve purchased the Ticket.

On Thursday last Mr. Alder set out for London, with Mr. Bowles of Abingdon, Attorney-at-Law; in order to Cheque His Ticket with the Commissioners Books, and take the Steps necessary for claiming and securing his Property.

Subsequent reports in the Journal described Mr. Alder as clothing the poor and distributing bread and beef throughout the whole place, and of being elected a churchwarden of St. Helen's, a result, we supposed, of his having become possessed of the L20,000.



We now bade farewell to Abingdon and walked in the direction of Salisbury Plain, for our next great object of interest was the Druidical circles of Stonehenge, many miles distant. As we had to cross the Berkshire Downs, we travelled across the widest part of the Vale of the White Horse, in order to reach Wantage, a town at the foot of those lonely uplands. We had the great White Horse pointed out to us on our way, but we could not see the whole of it, although the hill on which it stood was the highest on the downs, which there terminated abruptly, forming a precipitous descent to the vale below. The gigantic figure of the horse had been cut out of the green turf to the depth of two or three feet, until the pure white chalk underneath the turf had been reached. The head, neck, and body were cut out in one waving line, while the legs were cut out separately, and detached, so that the distant view showed the horse as if it were galloping wildly. It was 374 feet long, and covered an acre of land, and was supposed to have been cut out originally by the army of King Alfred to celebrate his great victory over the Danes at the Battle of Ashdown, about three miles distant. It was, however, held by some people that the origin of the horse was far beyond the time of King Alfred, as the shape strongly resembled the image of the horse found on early British coins. Certainly there was a British camp quite near it, as well as a magnificent Roman camp, with gates and ditch and mounds still as complete as when the Romans left it. It was, moreover, close to the Icknield Way, 856 feet above sea-level, from which portions of eleven counties could be seen. On a clear day a view of the horse could be obtained from places many miles distant, its white form showing clearly against the green turf surrounding it.



Occasionally the outline had been obscured by the growth of turf and weeds, and then the lord of the manor had requisitioned the services of the inhabitants of several of the pretty villages near the downs, who climbed up to the horse at the appointed time and, armed with picks, spades, and brushes, "scoured" the horse until it was quite white again, and its proportions clearly shown. After their work was done a round of merry-making followed, the occasion being celebrated by eating and drinking to the health of his lordship at his expense. The first verse in the "White Horse Ballad," written in the local dialect, was:

The ould White Horse wants zettin' to rights. And the Squire has promised good cheer; Zo we'll gee un a scrape to kip' un in shape, And a'll last for many a year.

A Roman road skirted the foot of the White Horse Hill, and on the side of this road was a strangely shaped sarsen-stone called the "Blowing Stone." It was quite a large stone, in which holes had been formed by nature, running through it in every direction like a sponge. It was said to have been used by King Alfred to summon his troops, as by blowing down one of the holes a booing sound was produced from the other holes in the stone. On a later occasion my brother tried to make it sound, and failed to do so, because he did not know the "knack," but a yeoman's wife who was standing near, and who was quite amused at his efforts to produce a sound, said, "Let me try," and astonished him by blowing a loud and prolonged blast of a deep moaning sound that could have been heard far away. The third verse in the ballad referred to it as:

The Blewin Stun, in days gone by, Wur King Alfred's bugle harn, And the tharn tree you med plainly zee. As is called King Alfred's tharn!

The thorn tree marked the spot where the rival armies met—the pagans posted on the hill, and the Christians meeting them from below—it was through the great victory won on that occasion that England became a Christian nation.

We were now in "King Alfred's country," for he was born at Wantage in 849, but his palace, if ever he had one, and the thorn tree were things of the past, and what traces there were of him in the town were very scant. There were King Arthur's Well and King Arthur's Bath; the most substantial building bearing his name was the "King Alfred's Head Inn," where we called for light refreshments, and where in former years the stage-coaches plying between Oxford and London stopped to change horses. Wantage must have been a place of some importance in ancient times, as a Witenagemote was held there in the year 990 in the time of Ethelred, at which the tolls were fixed for boats sailing along the Thames for Billingsgate Market in London.



There were several old inns in the town, and many of the streets were paved with cobble-stones. Tanning at one time had been the staple industry, a curious relic of which was left in the shape of a small pavement composed of knuckle-bones. Early in the century the town had an evil reputation as the abode of coiners, and when a man was "wanted" by the police in London, the Bow Street runners always came to search for him at Wantage.

We had now to climb to the top of the downs, and after about two miles, nearly all uphill, reached the fine old Roman camp of Segsbury, where we crossed the Icknield Way, known locally as the Rudge or the Ridge-way—possibly because it followed the ridge or summit of the downs. It had every appearance of having been a military road from one camp to another, for it continued straight from Segsbury Camp to the Roman camp on the White Horse Hill, about six miles distant. The "Rudge" was now covered with turf, and would have been a pleasant road to walk along; but our way lay in another direction along a very lonely road, where we saw very few people and still fewer houses.