CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XIVA wonderful collection of tombs—A tombstone inscription by Shakespeare—A leper's door—Relics—Manufacturing the antique—Curiosity shops—The Golden Chapel—"The Great Bell of Tong"—White Ladies Nunnery—The grave of Dame Joan—Boscobel and its story—A tradition about the "Royal Oak."Externally Tong church strikes the rare and happy note of individuality; however beautiful our country churches may be, those in the same county of the same period are but too apt to repeat familiar forms; there is no freshness about them to attract. Now Tong church is an original conception, original without being strange, and it possesses the excellent and pleasing merit of good proportion. Its central tower is octagonal, rising from a square base, with the four corners of its base tapering off to the octagonal above; the tower is crowned by a graceful steeple with spire lights, which spire lights "are perhaps nearly unique." The roof of the church has manifestly been purposely kept low, the better to reveal its embattled parapets and pinnacles. Thought is apparent everywhere in its design. It is a cathedral in miniature, and a beautiful miniature too. At the west end of the building stand the crumbling arches of its former college, and in the churchyard is a cross that marks the plot of ground set apart for theburial of unbaptized children, to me a fresh feature of a churchyard.The interior of the church, with its many truly magnificent altar-tombs, proved vastly more noteworthy and interesting than I expected; the clerk, too, was both interesting and well-informed, and evidently took a pride in the building. He did not go round conveying information in a parrot-like and irritating fashion as some clerks do, as though repeating guidebook-gathered information learnt by heart, and glad to get it done. The tombs are all exceedingly beautiful and well-preserved; they have happily survived the Puritan's rage and the church-wardens' era undamaged. The effigies on them of the noble lords and brave knights of old provide an object-lesson as to the wearing and to the details of ancient armour; those of their ladies reveal the elaborate dresses worn in days of yore, and the changing fashions of head-gear, all so faithfully rendered one could almost reconstruct the armour and renew the dresses from the sculptured stone. The oldest tomb (for they were all pointed out to me in due chronological order) is that of Sir Fulke de Pembruge (who is represented in chain armour of the period of the Crusades), with Dame Elizabeth his wife by his side; though the clerk said "some antiquaries who have examined the tomb have thrown a doubt as to whether the effigy of the lady is really that of the knight's wife, from the fact that the base of the tomb below her effigy has undergone alteration and is not quite in keeping with the other part. It has even been suggested that possiblythe effigy may have been removed from elsewhere and placed there for convenience, in careless past days." In truth, to do such a monstrous thing would have needed very careless days indeed. Still, in times past stranger things were done in the name and under the cloak of church restoration. I learnt that Sir Fulke predeceased his wife some years, and I formed a theory, satisfactory at any rate to myself, that quite possibly this Sir Fulke de Pembruge had first been buried beneath a single altar-tomb, and that some years later his wife might have been laid by his side, and this would account for the slight difference in the details of this under portion of the tomb, which has manifestly been added at a little later period. Quite a plausible explanation it seems to me; then wherefore seek for a more improbable one?There were several other stately tombs to various members of the Vernon family, who owned not only the Castle of Tong, but also Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, hallowed now by the story of Dorothy Vernon. Each mail-clad image of the noble house,With sword and crested head,Sleeps proudly in the purple gloomBy the stained window shed.Sir Henry Vernon, who died in 1515, the founder of the Golden Chapel and the donor of the Great Bell of Tong, has a very elaborate tomb adjoining the chapel; both his effigy and that of his wife are coloured. But the most magnificent monument of all is that of Sir Thomas Stanley, who, by the long inscription on it, we learn, "married Margaret Vernonone of the daughters and cohairs of Sir George Vernon of Haddon in the Covntie of Derbie, knighte." His wife's effigy lies beside his. This tomb is of considerable interest because a verse attached to it, the clerk informed me, is said to have been written by Shakespeare. Sir William Dugdale, the antiquary (born 1605, deceased 1686)—I note how long lived antiquaries often are—declares positively that it was written by Shakespeare and by no one else. Now Sir William Dugdale is no mean authority. This is the verse:Not monumentall stone preserves our fame,Nor sky aspyring piramids our name.The memory of him for whom this standsShall outlive marble and defacers' hands.When all to Tyme's consumption shall be geaven,Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in Heaven.In spite of Sir William Dugdale's assertion, most people are of opinion that this verse is not of sufficient merit to warrant Shakespeare's authorship; still, to me at least, it appears equal to the well-known and much-quoted epitaph that the poet composed for himself, which is inscribed over his grave in Stratford-on-Avon church. Truly there is the difficulty of dates to be considered. Now when Sir Thomas Stanley died Shakespeare was but twelve years old; however, as frequently was the case, the monument might not have been erected until some few years after Sir Thomas Stanley's death, and again the verse may not have been written then. It may be that the verse, which is apart from the inscription, was an after-thought, placed there at a little later time. Therefore, as far as dates are concerned, there is nothing impossible in Shakespeare having composed the verse when a young man. Here is a promising matter for antiquaries to dispute about!FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH.BOSCOBEL.Next the clerk called my attention to the fine old fifteenth-century stained glass of the west window, found some years back under the floor of the church, presumably placed there for safety from the Puritan fanatics. Also he pointed out the boldly carved royal coat-of-arms set up against the north wall of the church "to celebrate the capture of Napoleon Bounaparte." Then he showed me the old Collegiate Choir stalls, on one of the panels of which is a very curious and cunningly conceived carving representing the Annunciation; at the base of the panel is shown a vase with lilies growing from it, and these are so contrived to subtly suggest the Crucifixion where the flowers expand. A quaint and poetic conception cleverly carried out. "A carving quite unique," the clerk told me; certainly I had seen nothing like it before. I wonder how the medieval carver got his inspiration?Next we inspected the Golden, or the Vernon Chapel, built in 1510, a copy on a smaller scale of the Henry VII. Chapel in Westminster Abbey. The fan-vaulted roofing of this is very fine, and both the roof and walls still plainly show traces of gilt and colouring. In a niche in the west wall and under a richly carved canopy is the figure of Sir Arthur Vernon represented as preaching, this Sir Arthur Vernon being "a priest of the College."During the restoration of the church his brass was discovered beneath the floor of the chapel, though why it should have been floored over I cannot imagine; now it has been recovered and exposed for all men to read who know the Latin tongue. The original altar stone (of rough sandstone with five crosses on it) has also been recovered from the floor, and has been returned to its former rightful position, suitably elevated, at the east end of the chapel, and above it is a faded fresco of the Crucifixion. On the south wall is also a quaint brass to Ralph Elcock—Cellarer of the College.Next we went to the vestry, and I noticed that the door entering to it had three large round holes in the top. According to the clerk this door was originally an outer one and known as the lepers' door, the holes being for the use of lepers to observe the service from the churchyard. I have come upon lepers' or low-side windows galore, but never upon a so-called lepers' door before. As, for reasons already given, I do not believe in lepers' windows, it naturally follows I could not agree with the clerk that this was ever a lepers' door. More probably, I thought that the holes were merely made in the door to afford an outlook from the vestry into the church, but that explanation was too simple to satisfy the clerk, it robbed the door of its romance. In the vestry is preserved a library of rare old tomes, also a richly embroidered ecclesiastical vestment said to have been worked by the nuns of White Ladies. Amongst the treasures of the church is a tall and richly chased silver-gilt andcrystal cup, given by Lady Eleanor Harries in 1625, but the cup itself is of very much older date and is probably of foreign craftsmanship. What was the original purpose of this I cannot say; possibly it was a monstrance—it could hardly have been intended for a Communion cup.Since I was at Tong I have heard that an American collector had offered a large sum for this cup, £800 I think I was told. I am glad to say that the church authorities forbade its sale. "England," as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, "is one vast museum," but even the vastest museum, if continually deprived of its treasures, must become depleted in time. As I travel on I am continually hearing of art treasures, of ancient furniture, of fine oak panelling, ruthlessly removed from old houses, of old family pictures and portraits, old pewter, old fireplaces, old everything, having been purchased by Americans, millionaire or otherwise, and conveyed across the Atlantic; how far true I cannot say, but I have also heard that there are sundry manufactories abroad and at home of sham antiques, of old masters, old pottery, "Toby Jugs" in particular, and furniture, kept busily employed for the benefit chiefly of Americans. Of late I was informed that Shakespearian relics are booming, and those of Charles I. run a close second, and the trade is a profitable one, for the prices of these "rare" articles are high, or they would not be considered genuine. Perhaps this explains where all the old furniture comes from, and the store of ancient things one finds, now that motorists scour the land, displayedconveniently to catch the eye of the passer-by in countless village curiosity shops; also the growth of these shops, and why their stores never grow less. A short time ago it came to my knowledge that a lady consulted an authority on old china as to the genuineness of a dessert service she had purchased on the understanding that it had "been in one family for over two centuries," whereupon the lady made the unwelcome discovery that the factory in which it was produced only opened in 1850!Old worm-eaten oak from old houses pulled down and from old churches being restored is utilised in making careful copies of ancient Elizabethan and Jacobean furniture, so the wood of these is old enough and genuinely worm-eaten. I recently visited a village, through which motorists frequently pass, where there is a large curiosity shop literally crammed with "genuine" ancient furniture mostly made yesterday, but the copies I saw were so good and had such a look of ancientness as to deceive many an innocent purchaser. Two "monks' tables" were on sale there, suits and bits of rusty and knightly armour, made I fancy, in spite of the easily obtained rust, not more than a dozen years or so ago in Germany, where they do the thing very well, old sun-dials, old dressers, Elizabethan chairs, early water-clocks and bracket clocks of the Cromwell era, and I know not what else; all most cleverly reproduced even to the signs of wear—done by a wire brush, I believe—and the cutting of initials and dates of centuries past on tables and chairs. A gentleman who had been to Japan told me that he discovereda craftsman there who was most clever in reproducing old brass Cromwell clocks, works and all, even to the English makers' names and ancient dates upon them; these were sent over to England, and he showed me one that he had purchased, and so skilfully was the original imitated, even to the presumed wear of the works, that I was astounded at the cleverness of the fraud.But to return to the vestry of Tong church, said the clerk to me, "Have you heard of the Great Bell of Tong?" I had not till he mentioned it. I waited for him to tell its story that I knew was coming. I have forgotten how much he declared it weighed, but I believe it was considerably over two tons. "It takes three men to start it," he went on, "but when once started one man can keep it going. It was presented to the church in 1518 by Sir Henry Vernon. It is only rung on Christmas Day, Easter Day, Whit-Sunday, and St. Bartholomew's Day, on the birth of a child to the Sovereign and an heir to the Prince of Wales, or when the head of the Vernon family visits Tong."Dickens confessed that it was to Tong church that he brought Little Nell with the schoolmaster in theOld Curiosity Shop, and this is how he describes it: "It was a very aged, ghostly place; the church had been built many hundred years ago, and once had a convent or a monastery attached," referring doubtless to the decayed College, "for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while other portions of the old buildings, which hadcrumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as though they too claimed a burial-place, and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men."Leaving Tong I got amongst narrow winding lanes in my search after White Ladies, and a rare difficulty I had in discovering that remote spot. "It's not a good country for strangers to find their way about in," exclaimed one old body of whom I asked direction, and I quite agreed with her, it was not. I kept on asking for White Ladies of any one I saw, but the lanes were very deserted and I met few people on them, and their answers to my queries were none too clear. Indeed they reminded me in indirectness of a reply that a Shropshire gentleman assured me he once received from a villager. He was asking the villager how long her father had been dead, and she said quite calmly, "If he had lived till to-morrow he would have been dead a week." Country folk, for some inexplicable reason, never seem capable of giving a plain answer to the simplest question. They appear to love to go round it, perhaps because they like to talk. After all I really think I should have missed White Ladies, for it is hidden from the road and only reached by an ill-defined footpath through a wood and then over a field, had I not been bold enough to call at a farmhouse where I received clear instructions how to find the ruins. Fortunately they were not very far off, "only about a mile farther on," so I could not well go astray, for I had only to follow the lane till I came to "a little wicket at the corner of the wood."I was glad of it, for I felt weary of wandering without arriving anywhere.What is left of White Ladies Nunnery consists almost wholly of its despoiled Norman church, if church be not too dignified a term for so small a building, roofed now only by the sky and paved with rough and tangled grasses, the foot of its walls being fringed with flourishing weeds. There are few architectural features of note about the building except its ornamented north doorway and its rounded Norman windows, the carving of this doorway being little the worse for the weathering of centuries. The ruins stand silent and solitary in a large meadow, and around the meadow stretch deep woods for far away, and beyond the woods are distant hills, that day faintly outlined in palest blue against the sky; these woods are the relics of the once famous forest of Brewood. It is a lonely spot to-day, and must always have been a lonely one; its only approach is by a lane, and then over the quiet fields. There solitude dwells. Close to the ruins once stood the old half-timber hall of the Giffards (an old print I have seen represents this as it was in 1660—a low, rambling, and most picturesque building surrounded by walls, and with a quaint gabled gate-house in front), of which now not a vestige remains. Thither came Charles II., fleeing in hot haste from the fatal battle of Worcester—fatal to the Royal cause at least, for Cromwell called it his "crowning mercy." It is always so, to the victor the battle is a triumph, the God of Hosts is with him. Is it not recorded that Cromwell once exclaimed to his troopers whilstcrossing a river, "Trust in God," followed quickly by "but keep your powder dry"?Within the ruined walls of the convent church are many ancient tombstones, for it was long a burial-place of Roman Catholic families. The oldest of these doubtless dates from pre-Reformation days, possibly being those of some important ecclesiastic, for it is adorned with foliated crosses beautifully carved, though without inscription as far as I could discover. But, to me, the most interesting tombstone of all bore no ornamentation but was briefly inscribed:Here lieth the bodie of aFriend the King did callDame Joane but now sheeIs deceased and gone.Interred Anno Do. 1669.There Dame Penderel lies.Boscobel was not far away; I simply followed the lane trustingly, and soon I beheld the great chimney and roof-trees of that ancient and historic house peeping through the trees. I came upon it suddenly and unawares. I was prepared to be disappointed with Boscobel; I always am prepared to be disappointed with historic places, for one gets so worked up with enthusiastic descriptions of them that but too often the reality leaves one cold and disenchanted, for who can romance to order? Where historic events have happened, I demand, perhaps unreasonably, a fitting background. The romantic incident of the stay and concealment of Charles II. at Boscobel calls for a picturesque setting, and there I found it. Boscobel is still, as of old, remote amongstthe woods, and suits the story to perfection. Though externally the house has lost somewhat of the patina of age by renovation, yet it impressed me. Had I come upon it unknowingly the very aspect of it with its old-fashioned garden and quaint summer-house would have caused me to stop, for it had that indefinable thing—a look of romance. Never yet have I come upon a house with that special look that has not earned it. A man writes his character on his face; so does an old house.I did not know whether this storied home would be shown to strangers, but there I found a soft-spoken dame of dignified manner, who not only showed me over it, but told me its tale again so well and so freshly that in its old-world and pleasant panelled chambers the present seemed almost a dream and the past a reality. So strong was the influence of the place upon me that I almost expected to see the faithful Dame Joan appear approaching along one of the dusky passages, or even the hunted king himself. If ever a house were haunted by past presences, that house is Boscobel. I even thought it remotely possible that the grey-haired dame who showed me the place might be a descendant of the Penderels. I confess I had a longing to ask her if she were not of the good old stock, and should have done this but from fear of being disillusioned; but whether she were or no, for the sentiment of the thing, so I pleased to fancy her. Indeed I thought I traced a resemblance in her features to those of faithful Dame Joan Penderel, whose painted portrait I saw hanging on the wall of the ancient oratory, possibly becauseI looked for it, and you often see what you look for. There can be no mistake about this portrait, for on it the artist has inscribed, as was the custom of the time, both her name and a date, thus: "Dame Penderel—Anno Dom. 1662," though her age at the time he has not recorded as was usual. Full of quiet character and motherly kindness is the face, a pleasure to look upon. Great is the contrast of this portrait with those of Charles II. and Cromwell (apparently excellent likenesses) hanging in the dining-room, for the king's features reveal a weak and pleasure-loving nature, whilst those of Cromwell are determined and austere.It was a happy time I spent at Boscobel, and I was fortunate to see it alone. I learnt from my guide that the house was built in 1540, so that it was over a century old when the king sought refuge there, and I further learnt that the name Boscobel originated from a suggestion made to John Giffard, its builder, by his friend Sir Basil Brooke, of Madeley Court, who had recently returned from Italy; and his suggestion was that the house, being seated in the heart of a forest, should be called Boscobel, from the Italian wordsbosco bello, meaning fair woods; so it was named. Passing through the hall I was shown first the fine oak-panelled dining-room, where is still preserved the very table that was used by the king. Much as it was then is the room to-day. On its walls hangs a copy of the Proclamation issued by the Parliament at the very time Charles II. was hiding there, offering a reward of £1000 for the discovery of the king, also declaringthat it was death without mercy for concealing him. It speaks well for the Penderel brothers, all poor men "of honest parentage but of mean degree" to whom a thousand pounds would have been a fortune, that even when closely questioned by the troopers when searching the house and woods around, each one in turn pleaded ignorance of the king's whereabouts, rejecting the proffered reward and risking death rather than betray their sovereign.Opening out of one of the panelled sleeping chambers in the upper part of the house is a small closet; a cunningly concealed trap-door in the floor of this gives access to a small hiding-hole, and from this hiding-hole is a secret stairway (or rather was, for it is closed up now) contrived in part of the big chimney-stack; this stairway led down to a concealed door at the foot of the chimney and so out into the garden, forming a way of escape from the hiding-hole should it be discovered. It was down this stairway that Charles II. made his escape into the woods when one of the brothers Penderel (four of whom were keeping constant and tireless watch on the roads around) gave the alarm that soldiers were approaching, and it was deemed safer for the king to hide in the woods than to remain in the house. So selecting a thick-leaved oak, some distance off, with a tall straight trunk that no one could imagine that a man could climb, Charles II. mounted into its upper branches by means of a ladder carried there by the faithful Richard Penderel, who hurriedly carried it back to an outhouse before the soldiers arrived. In connection with the familiar story ofthe king's hiding in this oak my guide related to me an incident that I had not heard before. It appears that the king took with him into the tree two pigeons in a bag, as had been arranged he should, and that when the soldiers rode past below, he released these pigeons as though the soldiers had disturbed them, this to show that no one could be concealed there. The story of the pigeons is told in a quaint carving on the top of an old oak box that is kept in one of the rooms of the house, and is so far confirmed. The carving gives a bold representation of the Royal Oak in full leaf with the two pigeons flying from it, and the soldiers in search below.Whilst the soldiers were searching the woods Dame Joan went out ostensibly to gather sticks for the fire; she engaged the soldiers in conversation, and so diverted their attention from the neighbourhood of the special oak where the king was. You may always trust a woman whose heart is in her task to fool any man.Alone in a field not far from the house and surrounded by an iron railing stands a flourishing and fair-sized old oak, known as the Royal Oak. Though this is doubtless on, or close to, the spot where the historic tree grew, it can hardly be the one in which the king hid; some authorities, however, blinking hard facts, boldly avow their belief in it. Now for these hard facts, though romance suffers thereby, and you may not hint such things at Boscobel, Dr. Stukeley, the antiquary, writing in 1713, declares that then the old tree was "almost all cutaway by travellers whose curiosity leads them to see it," and John Evelyn in his day writes that when he saw it "relic-hunters had reduced the original tree to a mere stump." Moreover, the king in his own account of his hiding said that he got into a tree that had been polled and was very bushy at the top. Now the present oak has never been polled, which is surely sufficient proof that it is not the original one. If I may judge from the various chests and other articles I have seen, and which are said to be made out of the wood of the original Royal Oak, it must have been the largest tree that ever grew; but the wise traveller does not take all such relics seriously. An ancient writer indeed declares that at one time in European churches there were shown to pious pilgrims portions of the true Cross which if collected together would be sufficient to load a big ship. Even the clerk of Tong told me that he owned a large oak chest made out of wood from the Royal Oak, and he is but one of many who own chests that have this reputation, to say nothing of chairs, tables, stools, and countless snuff-boxes, all made, and carved, from the wood of that wonderful tree—the treeWherein the younger Charles abodeTill all the paths were dim,And far below the Roundhead rode,And humm'd a surly hymn.Upstairs in the house, beneath what was formerly a cheese attic, is another hiding-place, a dark small hole at the top of the stair and entered by a trap-door in the floor, and here it was that Charles II.spent one uncomfortable night, cheeses being rolled over the trap-door for the better concealment of it. So my guide told me. Now the puzzling thing about this is, why, especially at night when the house was carefully locked and guarded, should it have been thought needful for the king to secrete himself in this cramped place? Surely he might have slept comfortably in bed, for there ought to have been ample time, when the soldiers knocked at the door and the alarm was given, and whilst the door was being slowly opened, for the king to have secreted himself; as it was he spent a most uncomfortable night to no purpose. Now when Charles II. was afterwards sheltered in Moseley Hall and was resting on a couch in a chamber (it chanced to be one afternoon), some soldiers made a surprise visit there, but on the servants rushing upstairs crying "The soldiers are coming," the king found ample time to reach his hiding-place, where he lay concealed in safety till the soldiers departed baffled. It speaks much for the cleverness of the contrivers of the hiding-holes both at Boscobel and Moseley that none of these holes, though carefully searched for, were ever discovered. Still it must have been a very unpleasant experience for the king, hidden away in a dark and dismal hole all the while the soldiers were busily searching the house, not knowing but that he might at any moment be discovered. Indeed, when his host had seen the soldiers safely away and came to release the king, the king exclaimed to him "he thought the time very long"—and little wonder; so might any one in so unfortunate a position. It issaid that Charles II. was the last person to be secreted in the hiding-holes at Boscobel. Possibly Boscobel was not so diligently searched as other houses were, owing to its being solely in the care of servants at the time, so less suspicion fell on it.Boscobel in its woods calls to my mind a saying of that quaint old worthy Thomas Fuller: "It is pleasant as well as profitable to see a house cased with trees. The worst is, where a place is bald of wood no art can make it a periwig."CHAPTER XVA town with two names—An amusing mistake—Abbot's Bromley and its quaint horn dance—Dr. Johnson doing penance at Uttoxeter—Burton-on-Trent—The "Hundreds All" milestone—Indoor wind-dials—Stone-milled flour—The old Globe Room at Banbury—Dick Turpin's pistol—A strange find.Leaving Boscobel by a winding lane I presently got on to the ancient Roman Watling Street at a forsaken-looking portion of it, though I fancy the whole of the street for most of the way is, more or less, deserted. I had never been on Watling Street before; it looks so uncompromisingly straight and so uninviting on the map that I never felt any desire to explore it, but now I had come to it by accident I thought it a very pleasant road, this portion at least, with its wide grassy margins, and there before us it stretched far away through a well-wooded and lonely country—a genuine bit of Old England, mellow and grateful to the eye. I forgave the road for its straightness on account of the long and goodly green vista it afforded me, reaching even to the far-away blue—and it was delightfully free from traffic. Now I am a selfish traveller, I do not care for much company on the way. Here I had the advantages of a good road with the loneliness of a lane.So along the old Roman street we went, passing but few human habitations, here a solitary inn, there a grey old farmstead, and every now and then a cottage, but that was all; it was pleasant driving, for there were no children, nor dogs, nor fowls for miles to trouble us, and all being safe we indulged in a burst of speed purely as a stimulant. Once on it I intended to follow the ancient street all the way to Daventry, but somehow I got wrong at a point where it takes one of its few bends, and unexpectedly found myself at Lichfield. Through Lichfield I drove without a stop, for I was not travelling to revisit familiar places, and Lichfield and its cathedral I knew long ago. The route I took through the city I took at a venture, but when I got into the country again I discovered by a signpost that I was journeying to King's Bromley—well, I would go to King's Bromley, it mattered little where I went, life is too short to trouble over trifles; I was out to see the country, one way was as good as another, provided it took me through pleasant scenery, and on this score I could make no complaint.About three miles from Lichfield, at a point where London was a good hundred and twenty miles away, I was amused by a solitary and leaning signpost with simply "To London" on it, and its arm pointed down a mere lane that one would imagine led to nowhere in particular. I remember some years back coming to another such solitary signpost in Hertfordshire with just "York" inscribed on its extended arm, but that was on the Great North Road and there was some excuse for it,though York was very far off. There is such a thing as character in even signposts, and I rather sympathise with signposts that deal with big distances, they impress me with their pride of importance.The next signpost we came to had "To Abbot's Bromley" on it; I felt uncertain whether this were a different place, but a man who was passing assured me that King's Bromley and Abbot's Bromley were one and the same. "It's a small town," said he, "with two names. You can call it which you please." I thanked him for the information. I wondered who he was walking leisurely on the country road clad in a shooting suit. He might have been a squire—or a gamekeeper. I thought I would find out, so I made further innocent inquiries about Abbot's Bromley. "It's a small town," said he; "you won't do much business there." I discovered he thought me a travelling commercial—of a glorified type, I hope. I did not mind for myself, but I felt the slight on my car; fortunately a car has no feelings, but my dog growled—manifestly he had. "In what line do you travel?" queried he quite politely, possibly with the idea of being helpful. Here was a poser. Could I tell a lie? Manifestly not, so I said I was out sampling scenery. "Well, I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed he, and before he had time to think the matter over I went my way. I hope when he realised his mistake, as I presume he did, he would not think I was offended, I was simply amused. I only wish I could have kept up the character, but I was hard put to do iton the sudden emergency. I wonder who he could have been? I am sorry now I drove on so hastily, but the situation was getting strained. It is the people you meet by the way as well as places that are interesting; at least I was glad to find that every motorist is not considered a millionaire. When I come to think of it, it was an idiotic thing to say that I was sampling scenery; still, was I not? The strange fact is that when occasionally I have, at country town inns, been thrown in the company of commercials, and have tried my best to play the part of one of them, I have ignominiously failed. I might invent a new proverb, "If you want to do a thing don't try to do it"; in your anxiety you are almost sure to overact your part. To make amends for being considered a commercial, the landlord of a certain country inn once took me for a real live lord travelling under an assumed name, and the more I tried to convince him of his error the more sure was he that he had made no mistake, he had seen my photograph as Lord Somebody in some paper; he was honoured to receive me, lords would have their whims; why should they not travel under assumed names if it pleased them? He would "my lord" me—and charged for it heavily in the bill.Abbot's Bromley, or King's Bromley, gave us quite a cheerful greeting. I saw one or two flags flying in the town; the village maids (it seemed but a village to me) were dressed in their best; some were carrying flowers and looked quite charming in a rustic way, and there were young men in attendance too, dressed in their black Sunday bestthat did not suit them a bit. So I would know what was happening. I ventured a joke on one of the prettiest maids. "I see you were expecting me," I said. It fell flat. "No, we weren't," she replied, "it's a bazaar," and without a further word she walked away. But another maid, who had overheard the conversation, graciously came up to me and explained: "We're having an open-air bazaar; will you come to it? We're going to have the horn dance." Then I became interested. What was the horn dance? I wondered; I did not remember having heard of such a thing before. I begged for information, saying I was a stranger that chance had brought that way. I hardly need have done this, for in country places everybody seems to know everybody and their business, so the good people doubtless knew I was a stranger, and most of them appeared to think I had been attracted from afar by the news of the bazaar with its special attraction of the horn dance. It was an eventful day for Abbot's Bromley, where eventful days I should imagine are a rarity. Then I learnt that Abbot's Bromley is one of the few places where the old hobby-dances are still kept up and take place yearly, but this was a special performance in aid of the bazaar. The horn dance, I understood, is carried out by ten or a dozen performers all gaily attired, and the characters are a Maid Marian, a fool, a man with a hobby-horse, and a man with a bow and arrow; then there are six dancers each of whom carries a pair of reindeer horns of large size. These reindeer horns are kept in the church tower,and are mounted on wooden skulls provided with handles. According to tradition these horns are those of reindeers that in times long past once roamed over the forests surrounding Abbot's Bromley.In my copy ofPaterson's Roads(that gives a short account of the various towns on the way), under Abbot's Bromley I find the following reference to this dance, from which it appears that it was then in abeyance: "The curious custom called the hobby-horse dance formerly prevailed here; it was generally celebrated at Christmas, on New Year's Day, and Twelfth Day, when a person carrying beneath his legs the semblance of a horse, made of thin boards, danced through the principal street, having a bow and arrow in his hands ... five or six other persons also dancing carrying six reindeers' heads on their shoulders."Abbot's Bromley struck me as a very pleasant and picturesque little place; it has no railway, and that is perhaps why it has such an old-fashioned look. I have always a liking for these little towns beyond railways. Most of its houses, built long years ago, are of black and white half-timber; and the ancient inn there is of half-timber too, that with its grey gables, its casement windows, its swinging sign, is suggestive of the coaching and Pickwickian days and all the lost romance of them. It took my fancy. It ought to have some story to tell of those "good old times," but I failed to find or to conjure one; for though the house remains much as it was, the actors are dead and gone—host, coach-farer, andhighwayman. It is the sort of inn you read of in Harrison Ainsworth's novels, though I doubt if any one reads them to-day. How rich in incident and picturesque description they are! I know I took my fill of them when I was a boy; now, alas! they have lost much of their flavour; yet they have changed not, the change must be in me. To complete the old-world picture of the place, Abbot's Bromley boasts of an ancient roofed-in Market Cross, with thick oak supporting-posts around. Only compare the sought-for picturesqueness of a model garden city with the natural unsought-for picturesqueness of such old towns as Abbot's Bromley, and oh, the difference! I left the little, forgotten town basking, but not sleeping, in the sunshine, for it was much alive and making merry that day.We had not gone far before a change came over the weather—I hope the open-air bazaar did not suffer from it. Overhead the sky grew dark and threatening, then came a sudden flash of lightning, loud thunder followed, then the rain in torrents. I wondered whether a motor-car with all its metal work was the safest place to be in, for the storm was severe; but there was nothing for it but to drive on, with such uncertain assurance as the saying of the farmer at Wem afforded that "lightning never strikes a moving object." In spite of that comforting dictum lightning is not to be trusted. Since then I have heard that a motor-car travelling on the road has been struck by lightning, and, though fortunately no one was hurt,the car was damaged. How the rain hissed down, and how the wind howled through and shook the trees, even blowing bits of their branches and leaves across the road! Still above the sound of the storm I could hear the steady beat of our pistons, as one hears the reassuring throb of the engines of a steamer in a gale at sea.The country appeared to be richly wooded, as far as I could judge; but what with the thunder and the lightning, the wind and the rain, I obtained but a vague impression of it. Then after the storm had done its worst, a town loomed up on a hill before us, and this proved to be Uttoxeter, a neat town neither attractive nor ugly, and that is the best I can say for it. Here, it may be remembered, Dr. Johnson, when in the height of his fame, stood in its market-place bare-headed in the rain, "exposed to the sneers of the standers-by," as an act of penance for his unfilial disobedience as a boy in refusing to watch his weary and infirm father's bookstall set up there for a while. It is a well-known story, but the actual sight of the spot where that touching incident took place made me realise it the more.Having viewed the market-place, made historic by this event, we took the first road handy out of the town, mildly wondering where we were going next. There was a sense of pleasurable excitement in not knowing our destination. I have a friend who does this sort of thing when he goes a-cycling, and who, like myself, travels to see the country, little caring where he goes. If a windy day he simply lets the wind settle his direction, for he always makes apoint of cycling with the wind behind him; he finds it much easier so, and when it blows hard he finds himself blown along with the minimum of exertion. So he never troubles about any plan, but when he starts out in the morning he just glances at the way of the wind and goes contentedly with it. Capricious though this mode of travelling be, yet it rendered fortunate results. When he traced me out on the map one or two tours he had made in this haphazard fashion, I felt bound to confess that no planned tour could have turned out better, and it took him to many odd out-of-the-way and pleasant places he would probably never have seen otherwise. Truly I did not consult the wind, but on the other hand I did not consult my map unless I wished to make for any special spot, and I also toured fortunately so, to the discovery of interesting places, for the most of my journey.This time it was a milestone that revealed the fact we were bound for Burton-on-Trent. Now to Burton I had no desire to go; Burton is a big town, but the road was a very pleasant one, so I kept to it. The country was fine and open, with glorious views to the south, where undulating hills bounded the distant blue. We passed one or two stately old and dignified homes standing "amid their tall ancestral trees"; then the rain came on again, and in the pouring rain we passed through Tutbury, where afterwards I learnt there are the slight remains of a castle; but I saw nothing of them, for I was thinking more of the rain and the road than anything else: the rain was blinding, solittle wonder I missed them. It was not a moment for seeing castles or anything else.I was not pleased at having to drive through Burton, for I expected to find it a busy town with much traffic in its streets, and this was the first large and busy town I had to pass through during the whole of my outing; I had merely skirted Shrewsbury, so that did not count. Yet never have I passed through a large and busy town so easily as I passed through Burton; its streets are wide, and for a wonder I found the traffic on them, much of it brewers' drays, kept well to its side of the road, so I was soon into the country again.Just beyond Burton I had a choice of two roads, and was doubtful which to take, when I saw a signpost with "To Watling Street" upon it—merely to that old highway and not to any inhabited place. This decided me; I would rejoin the famous Watling Street, of which I had a pleasant memory. I knew it avoided big, bustling towns, and that was no small recommendation. A long rise brought me into a very pleasant country, and into welcome blue skies and warm sunshine. Such varied samples of weather had I that day—the blackest of clouds and the bluest of skies, cold pelting rain and the brightest of sunshine. The scenery was delightfully rural all the long and lonely way to Atherstone, where we should be on the Watling Street again, excepting that at one spot there were some collieries on a near hill that spoilt the prospect for a while; but I looked the other way. These passed, we traverseda fine undulating country, made up of meadows, fields, and woods, and ever and again wide views of much charm opened out before us; and there the air blew sweet and bracing, with the rare freshness that follows rain. I pulled up at one quiet spot under the shelter of some overhanging trees for refreshment and for a rest, and there I stopped for an hour or more, and not a soul either driving, riding, cycling, or afoot went by. It was a cross-country road, apparently little used, and one to be enjoyed for its quietude and rural pleasantness. It surprised me how often I came upon such long stretches of almost deserted roads; we travelled far on that stage before we met a human being. Perhaps when I pulled up it was the hour of the day when the good old-fashioned country folk are mostly indoors dining, and the labourers resting from their work, so no one was about; but that does not account for the rest of the road later on being so forsaken.Atherstone is one of the order of far-extending thoroughfare towns that flourished in the old coaching days, and that seem to have fallen half asleep since, for the chief concern of such towns was with the road and its traffic, though Atherstone is not so sleepy as most of them are. All that I could discover of any interest in the place was an old milestone set up against the ancient "Red Lion Inn" there; this, curiously enough, stands just one hundred miles respectively from London, Liverpool, and Lincoln, as the following inscriptions on it show:—ToToToLiverpoolLondonLincoln100100100Miles.Miles.Miles.A man who was quietly watching me copying these inscriptions, when I had done my copying, exclaimed, "That be a famous old milestone. The drivers of the old coaches as stopped at the inn used always to call their passengers' attention to it." On returning home I looked up in myPatersonfor the name of the chief inn at Atherstone, and found it was "The Red Lion."It seems strange that to-day, when so much loving regard is shown to the preservation of old houses, and to the careful restoration of them backwards to the intention of their ancient architects, that our many quaint and friendly-looking old coaching inns should have found such few patrons to preserve their fascinating features. Standing by the roadside, how delightfully picturesque they often are, when unaltered and—save the mark!—unimproved. Many, in truth, are poems in buildings (and the term is not strained in regard to them) with their many-gabled, time-toned fronts; their signs often gaily painted, swinging on an upright post without, to proclaim their useful business; their great arched doorways under which the loaded coaches drove and landed their passengers at ease sheltered from the rain and undisturbed, or their ample porches that spoke a welcome as plain as any uttered word. Some are of half-timber and some are of stone. Perhaps those of half-timber are the more picturesque,but nearly all are pleasing to the eye; some, alas! are going to sad decay, such as that fine specimen of an old English roadside hostelry, "The Bell" at Stilton, which used to be both afamous and aflourishing house in its day, and which gave its name to the well-known cheese that the landlord of the time used to sell to his guests—indeed I believe it was considered the thing to buy a cheese at "The Bell" to take home with you. One of these old inns Ashby-Sterry has pictured to us in verse, and well the picture suits many an inn I know:'Tis a finely-toned, picturesque, sunshiny place,Recalling a dozen old stories,With a rare, British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face,Suggesting old wines and old Tories.Ah! many's the magnum of rare crusted port,Of vintage no one could cry fie on,Has been drunk by good men of the old-fashioned sortAt the Lion."The Lion," white or red, was in the past—I am not sure that it is not even to-day—by far and away the favourite sign; "The White Hart," I think, came second. These old inns, both outwardly and inwardly, have suffered sadly from neglect, and from the mania for show that does not spell comfort. Yet when simply, decently cared for, and unaltered, how charming and restful their old-time interiors are with their snug, low, brown-beamed, ceilinged parlours, sometimes panelled and with big ingle-nooks, their mullioned windows with their lattice panes, often deeply recessed with a seat in them, their cool and cosy bars and odd nooks and curious corners. That delightful Jacobean hostelry, "TheWhyte Harte," to wit, at Broadway in Worcestershire, with its genuine old-world atmosphere and quiet comfort, may be given as a good example of one. Some of these old hostelries were provided with a quaint device in the shape of an indoor wind-dial worked by a vane without, so that travellers overnight could judge by it of the next day's possibilities, and learn from the direction of the wind whether it were likely to be hot or cold, wet or fair. One of these interesting and useful indoor wind-dials may still, I believe, be seen in London at the Buckingham Palace Hotel; at least one was there and working but a year or two ago, and I understand that they are being introduced into modern homes. There are still some things we may learn from our ancestors.At Atherstone I was again on the ancient Watling Street, and I followed it to Daventry as far as it is at present opened out to the south. Again it led me through a lonely country of field and forest, unexciting but very pleasant, a country fragrant with the scent of wild flowers and the refreshing odours of the woods. I did not dally at Daventry, for the little town appeared to me featureless, and finding from my map that Banbury was but sixteen miles away, I thought to spend the night in that place as being of greater interest; moreover, I had recently read in my morning paper an account of the old historic Globe Room there at the "Reindeer Inn," with the further unwelcome information that its fine oak panelling, with its richly carved fireplace and its elaborately enriched plaster ceiling, had allbeen sold and were to be removed, and I wished to see it—if not too late. In this room Cromwell, it is said, held a council of war in October 1642 just before the battle of Edge Hill, so it had (oh, that pathetic word "had"!), besides the charm of its ancient picturesqueness, the additional interest of being with little doubt the place of that historic gathering. Now the fine old room has been gutted. So the "vast museum" of England is being despoiled! Whatever were the citizens of Banbury about to permit of such a thing; could they not have subscribed the price demanded for the panelling and decorative work (comparatively a paltry sum when divided amongst so many), and have retained that beautiful, historic, and ancient room intact? You cannot replace or purchase history. Even taking the meanest, most commercial view of the transaction, surely it would have well repaid the town to have bought and to have preserved that fine old chamber so intimately associated with Banbury, for I know it brought many tourists from afar to see it, some from even across the wide Atlantic; now perhaps they will not desire to go to Banbury and spend their money there, for it has little else but some ancient houses to show. Years ago the iconoclastic Banbury folk pulled down their exceptionally fine and interesting old church, "one of the most magnificent in the shire," even destroying its fine monuments, to save the little needed to keep it and them in repair, to say nothing of having done away with their "goodly crosse" of nursery renown, though a later generation has replaced itwith a poor and meaningless substitute. What child would now "ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross"? It is not worth riding to or talking about.But I am a little previous, not having arrived at Banbury yet; our road to that town was either up or down hill all the way, but there was nothing to grumble at in this, for the scenery was rewarding and the motor had to do the climbing. At the top of one hill we came upon a lonely old windmill going to decay, its gaunt arms standing darkly profiled against the sky and shaking with every gust of wind. It had a weird and haunted look, though I never heard of a mill being haunted; precisely what is it, I wonder, that gives certain buildings such an uncanny look? There must really have been some magic about that mill, for I photographed it and only got a ghostly result on my film. I have never seen a ghost, but to my astonishment three intelligent people have declared, and positively declared, to me that they have done so. A little later will be found a reference to this matter. Now a ghost is a visible object and ought to be capable of being photographed: what would I not give to see a genuine photograph of a ghost! When next I sleep in a haunted room I must take my camera with me on the off chance of a ghost appearing, so that I may snap him! Though I fear my chances are but slight, for I have slept in haunted rooms where other people are reported to have seen "things," but saw nothing—not even in my dreams, which were undisturbed. Why will "things" appear to others and not to me?Years gone by, and not so many years either, you might from one spot have seen half a dozen or more windmills busily at work where now by chance you may see one; and in those past years you might have seen farmers' waggons slowly wending their way to the mill loaded with sacks of corn to be ground, or wending their way back white with fat sacks of flour. Now, except possibly in some parts of Sussex, to see a windmill with its hurtling sails is a rare sight. Grieved indeed am I that it should be so, for as a child I dearly loved the merry bickering windmill—what child does not? Now I have grown to man's estate I have not lost the old love of the sight of one. There is something very cheery and fascinating in watching the mill sails whirling round and round in their never-completed journey, now grey in shade, now white in the glance of the sun. But I sadly fear the dear old picturesque windmill is doomed, unless the manufactured article flour, not the raw material wheat, is taxed. I am no politician—I think I have said so already—for in an age when it seems to me, to misquote Macaulay, "all are for the party and none are for the State," the business of politics, as one of the Georges, I forget now which, remarked, "is not to my fancy." I preach neither free trade nor tariff reform; I have not studied the question, and I do not profess to know the facts of the case without study, as some people do—even members of Parliament who vote for their party right or wrong; it would probably cost them their seat and four hundred golden sovereigns a year if they did otherwise. But thisI know, for I have tested it, that stone-ground flour produced by the old-fashioned windmill is infinitely sweeter, more nutritious, and more wholesome than the foreign roller-mill flour that is so starchy, "hence the present-day indigestion and the decay of teeth." Then, again, there is the fact, of which some clever people lose sight, that by importing flour and not wheat to grind at home we lose the valuable asset of "waste" as a fattening food for fowls, pigs, and cattle.The village of Charwelton was the only one on the way of which I retain a memory, and this I remember on account of a fine and very old two-arched Gothic bridge of stone there by the side of, and parallel to, the road, manifestly intended only for foot passengers, so narrow is it, a carriage bridge in miniature, so solidly built and buttressed as though it spanned a rushing river and had to resist its strivings. Now the road was dry and no water flowed under the bridge; I could only presume that water had once flowed there. So I asked a man, who was idly standing by, about it. "The road be flooded in the winter time," said he, "and then us use the bridge. The water be quite deep at times and the horses on the road have to ford it. That bridge be seven hundred years old, they do say." It looked it. He appeared inclined to talk, so I let him, not knowing what might be coming. "It's a slow place Charwelton be," he went on, "there's no getting away from that. The church be a mile away from the village, and that don't encourage you to go to it. You see, the place were badlyknocked about during the war, so I suppose they built a new village here, and let the church bide there." He spoke of "the war" as though it were of recent date; I was mystified, till I discovered he meant the Civil Wars when Charles I. was fighting for his crown!I noticed nothing further on the way to Banbury but a big mounting-block of stone standing by a grassy margin of the road, an interesting survival, and a somewhat unusual thing to see, so I stopped to inspect it, and on it I discovered inscribed—Thomas High of WardenSet up this. Ivly, 1659.It is still there to keep green the memory of this Thomas High, though I should imagine that few ever read the inscription or make use of the stone. I wonder why he put it up in that lonely spot, where, even in the old days, few people would be likely to need it. Now you rarely see a horseman on the road unless it be a huntsman; I doubt if the mounting-block has been used for these fifty years back.At Banbury I went to the "White Lion"; there was also, I afterwards found, a "Red Lion" in the same street, a cosy-looking hostelry with an ancient front of the fifteenth century that appealed to me. InPaterson's RoadsI note both these inns mentioned as existing in the coaching days. The "Red Lion" is the more picturesque of the two, but I was very comfortable at the "White." During the evening I hunted up mine host and inquired of him about theGlobe Room. Alas! I had come too late to see it, for he told me that it had already been stripped of its panelling, its finely carved oak fireplace removed, its enriched plaster ceiling had been taken down, and all these had been carted away. I felt provoked with the Banbury people; I told the landlord so. I do not think I shall ever stay in Banbury again. I learnt of one curious and interesting find that had been made in the room. On pulling down the panelling there had been discovered hidden behind it a double-barrelled pistol with flint locks; the pistol was inlaid with gold and had the maker's name, "Baker, London," engraved upon it, and above the name the Prince of Wales's feathers. The pistol bears the following inscription: "Presented to Dick Turpin at the White Bear Inn, Drury-lane, February 7th, 1735." How came it there, I wonder, and who presented it to that famous highwayman? Of the genuineness of the pistol I think there can be but little doubt. Dick Turpin, it may be remembered, was hanged at York on 7th April 1739, four years after the pistol was presented to him. Writing of Dick Turpin reminds me of the myth of his renowned ride to York that Harrison Ainsworth in hisRookwoodromanced about; now the credit of this surprising exploit really belongs to another of the fraternity, one Nick Nevison, of earlier time; this knight of the road robbed a traveller at Gad's Hill in Kent one morning at 4A.M., and furiously riding on to York reached that city at 8P.M.on the evening of the same day, and so established an alibi and saved his neck, at leaston that occasion. The skeleton of a poor unfortunate cat was also found behind the panelling; I wonder if it was that of the historic cat that was hanged as recorded by Drunken Barnaby?To Banbury came I, O prophane-One!Where I saw a Puritane-OneHanging of his cat on Monday,For killing of a mouse on Sunday.The landlord of "The White Lion," a pattern of civility, called my attention to "the famous wistaria" that is trained along the walls of the outbuildings of his ancient inn. This wistaria, he informed me, was the largest and finest in the kingdom, its branches extending for over two hundred feet. He was manifestly proud of it, and I duly admired it, but I had seen many fine wistarias before; I would rather have seen the Globe Room. There is little or nothing now left in Banbury to tempt the pilgrim to linger there. So I took my departure the next morning, and that early.

CHAPTER XIVA wonderful collection of tombs—A tombstone inscription by Shakespeare—A leper's door—Relics—Manufacturing the antique—Curiosity shops—The Golden Chapel—"The Great Bell of Tong"—White Ladies Nunnery—The grave of Dame Joan—Boscobel and its story—A tradition about the "Royal Oak."Externally Tong church strikes the rare and happy note of individuality; however beautiful our country churches may be, those in the same county of the same period are but too apt to repeat familiar forms; there is no freshness about them to attract. Now Tong church is an original conception, original without being strange, and it possesses the excellent and pleasing merit of good proportion. Its central tower is octagonal, rising from a square base, with the four corners of its base tapering off to the octagonal above; the tower is crowned by a graceful steeple with spire lights, which spire lights "are perhaps nearly unique." The roof of the church has manifestly been purposely kept low, the better to reveal its embattled parapets and pinnacles. Thought is apparent everywhere in its design. It is a cathedral in miniature, and a beautiful miniature too. At the west end of the building stand the crumbling arches of its former college, and in the churchyard is a cross that marks the plot of ground set apart for theburial of unbaptized children, to me a fresh feature of a churchyard.The interior of the church, with its many truly magnificent altar-tombs, proved vastly more noteworthy and interesting than I expected; the clerk, too, was both interesting and well-informed, and evidently took a pride in the building. He did not go round conveying information in a parrot-like and irritating fashion as some clerks do, as though repeating guidebook-gathered information learnt by heart, and glad to get it done. The tombs are all exceedingly beautiful and well-preserved; they have happily survived the Puritan's rage and the church-wardens' era undamaged. The effigies on them of the noble lords and brave knights of old provide an object-lesson as to the wearing and to the details of ancient armour; those of their ladies reveal the elaborate dresses worn in days of yore, and the changing fashions of head-gear, all so faithfully rendered one could almost reconstruct the armour and renew the dresses from the sculptured stone. The oldest tomb (for they were all pointed out to me in due chronological order) is that of Sir Fulke de Pembruge (who is represented in chain armour of the period of the Crusades), with Dame Elizabeth his wife by his side; though the clerk said "some antiquaries who have examined the tomb have thrown a doubt as to whether the effigy of the lady is really that of the knight's wife, from the fact that the base of the tomb below her effigy has undergone alteration and is not quite in keeping with the other part. It has even been suggested that possiblythe effigy may have been removed from elsewhere and placed there for convenience, in careless past days." In truth, to do such a monstrous thing would have needed very careless days indeed. Still, in times past stranger things were done in the name and under the cloak of church restoration. I learnt that Sir Fulke predeceased his wife some years, and I formed a theory, satisfactory at any rate to myself, that quite possibly this Sir Fulke de Pembruge had first been buried beneath a single altar-tomb, and that some years later his wife might have been laid by his side, and this would account for the slight difference in the details of this under portion of the tomb, which has manifestly been added at a little later period. Quite a plausible explanation it seems to me; then wherefore seek for a more improbable one?There were several other stately tombs to various members of the Vernon family, who owned not only the Castle of Tong, but also Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, hallowed now by the story of Dorothy Vernon. Each mail-clad image of the noble house,With sword and crested head,Sleeps proudly in the purple gloomBy the stained window shed.Sir Henry Vernon, who died in 1515, the founder of the Golden Chapel and the donor of the Great Bell of Tong, has a very elaborate tomb adjoining the chapel; both his effigy and that of his wife are coloured. But the most magnificent monument of all is that of Sir Thomas Stanley, who, by the long inscription on it, we learn, "married Margaret Vernonone of the daughters and cohairs of Sir George Vernon of Haddon in the Covntie of Derbie, knighte." His wife's effigy lies beside his. This tomb is of considerable interest because a verse attached to it, the clerk informed me, is said to have been written by Shakespeare. Sir William Dugdale, the antiquary (born 1605, deceased 1686)—I note how long lived antiquaries often are—declares positively that it was written by Shakespeare and by no one else. Now Sir William Dugdale is no mean authority. This is the verse:Not monumentall stone preserves our fame,Nor sky aspyring piramids our name.The memory of him for whom this standsShall outlive marble and defacers' hands.When all to Tyme's consumption shall be geaven,Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in Heaven.In spite of Sir William Dugdale's assertion, most people are of opinion that this verse is not of sufficient merit to warrant Shakespeare's authorship; still, to me at least, it appears equal to the well-known and much-quoted epitaph that the poet composed for himself, which is inscribed over his grave in Stratford-on-Avon church. Truly there is the difficulty of dates to be considered. Now when Sir Thomas Stanley died Shakespeare was but twelve years old; however, as frequently was the case, the monument might not have been erected until some few years after Sir Thomas Stanley's death, and again the verse may not have been written then. It may be that the verse, which is apart from the inscription, was an after-thought, placed there at a little later time. Therefore, as far as dates are concerned, there is nothing impossible in Shakespeare having composed the verse when a young man. Here is a promising matter for antiquaries to dispute about!FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH.BOSCOBEL.Next the clerk called my attention to the fine old fifteenth-century stained glass of the west window, found some years back under the floor of the church, presumably placed there for safety from the Puritan fanatics. Also he pointed out the boldly carved royal coat-of-arms set up against the north wall of the church "to celebrate the capture of Napoleon Bounaparte." Then he showed me the old Collegiate Choir stalls, on one of the panels of which is a very curious and cunningly conceived carving representing the Annunciation; at the base of the panel is shown a vase with lilies growing from it, and these are so contrived to subtly suggest the Crucifixion where the flowers expand. A quaint and poetic conception cleverly carried out. "A carving quite unique," the clerk told me; certainly I had seen nothing like it before. I wonder how the medieval carver got his inspiration?Next we inspected the Golden, or the Vernon Chapel, built in 1510, a copy on a smaller scale of the Henry VII. Chapel in Westminster Abbey. The fan-vaulted roofing of this is very fine, and both the roof and walls still plainly show traces of gilt and colouring. In a niche in the west wall and under a richly carved canopy is the figure of Sir Arthur Vernon represented as preaching, this Sir Arthur Vernon being "a priest of the College."During the restoration of the church his brass was discovered beneath the floor of the chapel, though why it should have been floored over I cannot imagine; now it has been recovered and exposed for all men to read who know the Latin tongue. The original altar stone (of rough sandstone with five crosses on it) has also been recovered from the floor, and has been returned to its former rightful position, suitably elevated, at the east end of the chapel, and above it is a faded fresco of the Crucifixion. On the south wall is also a quaint brass to Ralph Elcock—Cellarer of the College.Next we went to the vestry, and I noticed that the door entering to it had three large round holes in the top. According to the clerk this door was originally an outer one and known as the lepers' door, the holes being for the use of lepers to observe the service from the churchyard. I have come upon lepers' or low-side windows galore, but never upon a so-called lepers' door before. As, for reasons already given, I do not believe in lepers' windows, it naturally follows I could not agree with the clerk that this was ever a lepers' door. More probably, I thought that the holes were merely made in the door to afford an outlook from the vestry into the church, but that explanation was too simple to satisfy the clerk, it robbed the door of its romance. In the vestry is preserved a library of rare old tomes, also a richly embroidered ecclesiastical vestment said to have been worked by the nuns of White Ladies. Amongst the treasures of the church is a tall and richly chased silver-gilt andcrystal cup, given by Lady Eleanor Harries in 1625, but the cup itself is of very much older date and is probably of foreign craftsmanship. What was the original purpose of this I cannot say; possibly it was a monstrance—it could hardly have been intended for a Communion cup.Since I was at Tong I have heard that an American collector had offered a large sum for this cup, £800 I think I was told. I am glad to say that the church authorities forbade its sale. "England," as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, "is one vast museum," but even the vastest museum, if continually deprived of its treasures, must become depleted in time. As I travel on I am continually hearing of art treasures, of ancient furniture, of fine oak panelling, ruthlessly removed from old houses, of old family pictures and portraits, old pewter, old fireplaces, old everything, having been purchased by Americans, millionaire or otherwise, and conveyed across the Atlantic; how far true I cannot say, but I have also heard that there are sundry manufactories abroad and at home of sham antiques, of old masters, old pottery, "Toby Jugs" in particular, and furniture, kept busily employed for the benefit chiefly of Americans. Of late I was informed that Shakespearian relics are booming, and those of Charles I. run a close second, and the trade is a profitable one, for the prices of these "rare" articles are high, or they would not be considered genuine. Perhaps this explains where all the old furniture comes from, and the store of ancient things one finds, now that motorists scour the land, displayedconveniently to catch the eye of the passer-by in countless village curiosity shops; also the growth of these shops, and why their stores never grow less. A short time ago it came to my knowledge that a lady consulted an authority on old china as to the genuineness of a dessert service she had purchased on the understanding that it had "been in one family for over two centuries," whereupon the lady made the unwelcome discovery that the factory in which it was produced only opened in 1850!Old worm-eaten oak from old houses pulled down and from old churches being restored is utilised in making careful copies of ancient Elizabethan and Jacobean furniture, so the wood of these is old enough and genuinely worm-eaten. I recently visited a village, through which motorists frequently pass, where there is a large curiosity shop literally crammed with "genuine" ancient furniture mostly made yesterday, but the copies I saw were so good and had such a look of ancientness as to deceive many an innocent purchaser. Two "monks' tables" were on sale there, suits and bits of rusty and knightly armour, made I fancy, in spite of the easily obtained rust, not more than a dozen years or so ago in Germany, where they do the thing very well, old sun-dials, old dressers, Elizabethan chairs, early water-clocks and bracket clocks of the Cromwell era, and I know not what else; all most cleverly reproduced even to the signs of wear—done by a wire brush, I believe—and the cutting of initials and dates of centuries past on tables and chairs. A gentleman who had been to Japan told me that he discovereda craftsman there who was most clever in reproducing old brass Cromwell clocks, works and all, even to the English makers' names and ancient dates upon them; these were sent over to England, and he showed me one that he had purchased, and so skilfully was the original imitated, even to the presumed wear of the works, that I was astounded at the cleverness of the fraud.But to return to the vestry of Tong church, said the clerk to me, "Have you heard of the Great Bell of Tong?" I had not till he mentioned it. I waited for him to tell its story that I knew was coming. I have forgotten how much he declared it weighed, but I believe it was considerably over two tons. "It takes three men to start it," he went on, "but when once started one man can keep it going. It was presented to the church in 1518 by Sir Henry Vernon. It is only rung on Christmas Day, Easter Day, Whit-Sunday, and St. Bartholomew's Day, on the birth of a child to the Sovereign and an heir to the Prince of Wales, or when the head of the Vernon family visits Tong."Dickens confessed that it was to Tong church that he brought Little Nell with the schoolmaster in theOld Curiosity Shop, and this is how he describes it: "It was a very aged, ghostly place; the church had been built many hundred years ago, and once had a convent or a monastery attached," referring doubtless to the decayed College, "for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while other portions of the old buildings, which hadcrumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as though they too claimed a burial-place, and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men."Leaving Tong I got amongst narrow winding lanes in my search after White Ladies, and a rare difficulty I had in discovering that remote spot. "It's not a good country for strangers to find their way about in," exclaimed one old body of whom I asked direction, and I quite agreed with her, it was not. I kept on asking for White Ladies of any one I saw, but the lanes were very deserted and I met few people on them, and their answers to my queries were none too clear. Indeed they reminded me in indirectness of a reply that a Shropshire gentleman assured me he once received from a villager. He was asking the villager how long her father had been dead, and she said quite calmly, "If he had lived till to-morrow he would have been dead a week." Country folk, for some inexplicable reason, never seem capable of giving a plain answer to the simplest question. They appear to love to go round it, perhaps because they like to talk. After all I really think I should have missed White Ladies, for it is hidden from the road and only reached by an ill-defined footpath through a wood and then over a field, had I not been bold enough to call at a farmhouse where I received clear instructions how to find the ruins. Fortunately they were not very far off, "only about a mile farther on," so I could not well go astray, for I had only to follow the lane till I came to "a little wicket at the corner of the wood."I was glad of it, for I felt weary of wandering without arriving anywhere.What is left of White Ladies Nunnery consists almost wholly of its despoiled Norman church, if church be not too dignified a term for so small a building, roofed now only by the sky and paved with rough and tangled grasses, the foot of its walls being fringed with flourishing weeds. There are few architectural features of note about the building except its ornamented north doorway and its rounded Norman windows, the carving of this doorway being little the worse for the weathering of centuries. The ruins stand silent and solitary in a large meadow, and around the meadow stretch deep woods for far away, and beyond the woods are distant hills, that day faintly outlined in palest blue against the sky; these woods are the relics of the once famous forest of Brewood. It is a lonely spot to-day, and must always have been a lonely one; its only approach is by a lane, and then over the quiet fields. There solitude dwells. Close to the ruins once stood the old half-timber hall of the Giffards (an old print I have seen represents this as it was in 1660—a low, rambling, and most picturesque building surrounded by walls, and with a quaint gabled gate-house in front), of which now not a vestige remains. Thither came Charles II., fleeing in hot haste from the fatal battle of Worcester—fatal to the Royal cause at least, for Cromwell called it his "crowning mercy." It is always so, to the victor the battle is a triumph, the God of Hosts is with him. Is it not recorded that Cromwell once exclaimed to his troopers whilstcrossing a river, "Trust in God," followed quickly by "but keep your powder dry"?Within the ruined walls of the convent church are many ancient tombstones, for it was long a burial-place of Roman Catholic families. The oldest of these doubtless dates from pre-Reformation days, possibly being those of some important ecclesiastic, for it is adorned with foliated crosses beautifully carved, though without inscription as far as I could discover. But, to me, the most interesting tombstone of all bore no ornamentation but was briefly inscribed:Here lieth the bodie of aFriend the King did callDame Joane but now sheeIs deceased and gone.Interred Anno Do. 1669.There Dame Penderel lies.Boscobel was not far away; I simply followed the lane trustingly, and soon I beheld the great chimney and roof-trees of that ancient and historic house peeping through the trees. I came upon it suddenly and unawares. I was prepared to be disappointed with Boscobel; I always am prepared to be disappointed with historic places, for one gets so worked up with enthusiastic descriptions of them that but too often the reality leaves one cold and disenchanted, for who can romance to order? Where historic events have happened, I demand, perhaps unreasonably, a fitting background. The romantic incident of the stay and concealment of Charles II. at Boscobel calls for a picturesque setting, and there I found it. Boscobel is still, as of old, remote amongstthe woods, and suits the story to perfection. Though externally the house has lost somewhat of the patina of age by renovation, yet it impressed me. Had I come upon it unknowingly the very aspect of it with its old-fashioned garden and quaint summer-house would have caused me to stop, for it had that indefinable thing—a look of romance. Never yet have I come upon a house with that special look that has not earned it. A man writes his character on his face; so does an old house.I did not know whether this storied home would be shown to strangers, but there I found a soft-spoken dame of dignified manner, who not only showed me over it, but told me its tale again so well and so freshly that in its old-world and pleasant panelled chambers the present seemed almost a dream and the past a reality. So strong was the influence of the place upon me that I almost expected to see the faithful Dame Joan appear approaching along one of the dusky passages, or even the hunted king himself. If ever a house were haunted by past presences, that house is Boscobel. I even thought it remotely possible that the grey-haired dame who showed me the place might be a descendant of the Penderels. I confess I had a longing to ask her if she were not of the good old stock, and should have done this but from fear of being disillusioned; but whether she were or no, for the sentiment of the thing, so I pleased to fancy her. Indeed I thought I traced a resemblance in her features to those of faithful Dame Joan Penderel, whose painted portrait I saw hanging on the wall of the ancient oratory, possibly becauseI looked for it, and you often see what you look for. There can be no mistake about this portrait, for on it the artist has inscribed, as was the custom of the time, both her name and a date, thus: "Dame Penderel—Anno Dom. 1662," though her age at the time he has not recorded as was usual. Full of quiet character and motherly kindness is the face, a pleasure to look upon. Great is the contrast of this portrait with those of Charles II. and Cromwell (apparently excellent likenesses) hanging in the dining-room, for the king's features reveal a weak and pleasure-loving nature, whilst those of Cromwell are determined and austere.It was a happy time I spent at Boscobel, and I was fortunate to see it alone. I learnt from my guide that the house was built in 1540, so that it was over a century old when the king sought refuge there, and I further learnt that the name Boscobel originated from a suggestion made to John Giffard, its builder, by his friend Sir Basil Brooke, of Madeley Court, who had recently returned from Italy; and his suggestion was that the house, being seated in the heart of a forest, should be called Boscobel, from the Italian wordsbosco bello, meaning fair woods; so it was named. Passing through the hall I was shown first the fine oak-panelled dining-room, where is still preserved the very table that was used by the king. Much as it was then is the room to-day. On its walls hangs a copy of the Proclamation issued by the Parliament at the very time Charles II. was hiding there, offering a reward of £1000 for the discovery of the king, also declaringthat it was death without mercy for concealing him. It speaks well for the Penderel brothers, all poor men "of honest parentage but of mean degree" to whom a thousand pounds would have been a fortune, that even when closely questioned by the troopers when searching the house and woods around, each one in turn pleaded ignorance of the king's whereabouts, rejecting the proffered reward and risking death rather than betray their sovereign.Opening out of one of the panelled sleeping chambers in the upper part of the house is a small closet; a cunningly concealed trap-door in the floor of this gives access to a small hiding-hole, and from this hiding-hole is a secret stairway (or rather was, for it is closed up now) contrived in part of the big chimney-stack; this stairway led down to a concealed door at the foot of the chimney and so out into the garden, forming a way of escape from the hiding-hole should it be discovered. It was down this stairway that Charles II. made his escape into the woods when one of the brothers Penderel (four of whom were keeping constant and tireless watch on the roads around) gave the alarm that soldiers were approaching, and it was deemed safer for the king to hide in the woods than to remain in the house. So selecting a thick-leaved oak, some distance off, with a tall straight trunk that no one could imagine that a man could climb, Charles II. mounted into its upper branches by means of a ladder carried there by the faithful Richard Penderel, who hurriedly carried it back to an outhouse before the soldiers arrived. In connection with the familiar story ofthe king's hiding in this oak my guide related to me an incident that I had not heard before. It appears that the king took with him into the tree two pigeons in a bag, as had been arranged he should, and that when the soldiers rode past below, he released these pigeons as though the soldiers had disturbed them, this to show that no one could be concealed there. The story of the pigeons is told in a quaint carving on the top of an old oak box that is kept in one of the rooms of the house, and is so far confirmed. The carving gives a bold representation of the Royal Oak in full leaf with the two pigeons flying from it, and the soldiers in search below.Whilst the soldiers were searching the woods Dame Joan went out ostensibly to gather sticks for the fire; she engaged the soldiers in conversation, and so diverted their attention from the neighbourhood of the special oak where the king was. You may always trust a woman whose heart is in her task to fool any man.Alone in a field not far from the house and surrounded by an iron railing stands a flourishing and fair-sized old oak, known as the Royal Oak. Though this is doubtless on, or close to, the spot where the historic tree grew, it can hardly be the one in which the king hid; some authorities, however, blinking hard facts, boldly avow their belief in it. Now for these hard facts, though romance suffers thereby, and you may not hint such things at Boscobel, Dr. Stukeley, the antiquary, writing in 1713, declares that then the old tree was "almost all cutaway by travellers whose curiosity leads them to see it," and John Evelyn in his day writes that when he saw it "relic-hunters had reduced the original tree to a mere stump." Moreover, the king in his own account of his hiding said that he got into a tree that had been polled and was very bushy at the top. Now the present oak has never been polled, which is surely sufficient proof that it is not the original one. If I may judge from the various chests and other articles I have seen, and which are said to be made out of the wood of the original Royal Oak, it must have been the largest tree that ever grew; but the wise traveller does not take all such relics seriously. An ancient writer indeed declares that at one time in European churches there were shown to pious pilgrims portions of the true Cross which if collected together would be sufficient to load a big ship. Even the clerk of Tong told me that he owned a large oak chest made out of wood from the Royal Oak, and he is but one of many who own chests that have this reputation, to say nothing of chairs, tables, stools, and countless snuff-boxes, all made, and carved, from the wood of that wonderful tree—the treeWherein the younger Charles abodeTill all the paths were dim,And far below the Roundhead rode,And humm'd a surly hymn.Upstairs in the house, beneath what was formerly a cheese attic, is another hiding-place, a dark small hole at the top of the stair and entered by a trap-door in the floor, and here it was that Charles II.spent one uncomfortable night, cheeses being rolled over the trap-door for the better concealment of it. So my guide told me. Now the puzzling thing about this is, why, especially at night when the house was carefully locked and guarded, should it have been thought needful for the king to secrete himself in this cramped place? Surely he might have slept comfortably in bed, for there ought to have been ample time, when the soldiers knocked at the door and the alarm was given, and whilst the door was being slowly opened, for the king to have secreted himself; as it was he spent a most uncomfortable night to no purpose. Now when Charles II. was afterwards sheltered in Moseley Hall and was resting on a couch in a chamber (it chanced to be one afternoon), some soldiers made a surprise visit there, but on the servants rushing upstairs crying "The soldiers are coming," the king found ample time to reach his hiding-place, where he lay concealed in safety till the soldiers departed baffled. It speaks much for the cleverness of the contrivers of the hiding-holes both at Boscobel and Moseley that none of these holes, though carefully searched for, were ever discovered. Still it must have been a very unpleasant experience for the king, hidden away in a dark and dismal hole all the while the soldiers were busily searching the house, not knowing but that he might at any moment be discovered. Indeed, when his host had seen the soldiers safely away and came to release the king, the king exclaimed to him "he thought the time very long"—and little wonder; so might any one in so unfortunate a position. It issaid that Charles II. was the last person to be secreted in the hiding-holes at Boscobel. Possibly Boscobel was not so diligently searched as other houses were, owing to its being solely in the care of servants at the time, so less suspicion fell on it.Boscobel in its woods calls to my mind a saying of that quaint old worthy Thomas Fuller: "It is pleasant as well as profitable to see a house cased with trees. The worst is, where a place is bald of wood no art can make it a periwig."

A wonderful collection of tombs—A tombstone inscription by Shakespeare—A leper's door—Relics—Manufacturing the antique—Curiosity shops—The Golden Chapel—"The Great Bell of Tong"—White Ladies Nunnery—The grave of Dame Joan—Boscobel and its story—A tradition about the "Royal Oak."

Externally Tong church strikes the rare and happy note of individuality; however beautiful our country churches may be, those in the same county of the same period are but too apt to repeat familiar forms; there is no freshness about them to attract. Now Tong church is an original conception, original without being strange, and it possesses the excellent and pleasing merit of good proportion. Its central tower is octagonal, rising from a square base, with the four corners of its base tapering off to the octagonal above; the tower is crowned by a graceful steeple with spire lights, which spire lights "are perhaps nearly unique." The roof of the church has manifestly been purposely kept low, the better to reveal its embattled parapets and pinnacles. Thought is apparent everywhere in its design. It is a cathedral in miniature, and a beautiful miniature too. At the west end of the building stand the crumbling arches of its former college, and in the churchyard is a cross that marks the plot of ground set apart for theburial of unbaptized children, to me a fresh feature of a churchyard.

The interior of the church, with its many truly magnificent altar-tombs, proved vastly more noteworthy and interesting than I expected; the clerk, too, was both interesting and well-informed, and evidently took a pride in the building. He did not go round conveying information in a parrot-like and irritating fashion as some clerks do, as though repeating guidebook-gathered information learnt by heart, and glad to get it done. The tombs are all exceedingly beautiful and well-preserved; they have happily survived the Puritan's rage and the church-wardens' era undamaged. The effigies on them of the noble lords and brave knights of old provide an object-lesson as to the wearing and to the details of ancient armour; those of their ladies reveal the elaborate dresses worn in days of yore, and the changing fashions of head-gear, all so faithfully rendered one could almost reconstruct the armour and renew the dresses from the sculptured stone. The oldest tomb (for they were all pointed out to me in due chronological order) is that of Sir Fulke de Pembruge (who is represented in chain armour of the period of the Crusades), with Dame Elizabeth his wife by his side; though the clerk said "some antiquaries who have examined the tomb have thrown a doubt as to whether the effigy of the lady is really that of the knight's wife, from the fact that the base of the tomb below her effigy has undergone alteration and is not quite in keeping with the other part. It has even been suggested that possiblythe effigy may have been removed from elsewhere and placed there for convenience, in careless past days." In truth, to do such a monstrous thing would have needed very careless days indeed. Still, in times past stranger things were done in the name and under the cloak of church restoration. I learnt that Sir Fulke predeceased his wife some years, and I formed a theory, satisfactory at any rate to myself, that quite possibly this Sir Fulke de Pembruge had first been buried beneath a single altar-tomb, and that some years later his wife might have been laid by his side, and this would account for the slight difference in the details of this under portion of the tomb, which has manifestly been added at a little later period. Quite a plausible explanation it seems to me; then wherefore seek for a more improbable one?

There were several other stately tombs to various members of the Vernon family, who owned not only the Castle of Tong, but also Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, hallowed now by the story of Dorothy Vernon. Each mail-clad image of the noble house,

With sword and crested head,Sleeps proudly in the purple gloomBy the stained window shed.

Sir Henry Vernon, who died in 1515, the founder of the Golden Chapel and the donor of the Great Bell of Tong, has a very elaborate tomb adjoining the chapel; both his effigy and that of his wife are coloured. But the most magnificent monument of all is that of Sir Thomas Stanley, who, by the long inscription on it, we learn, "married Margaret Vernonone of the daughters and cohairs of Sir George Vernon of Haddon in the Covntie of Derbie, knighte." His wife's effigy lies beside his. This tomb is of considerable interest because a verse attached to it, the clerk informed me, is said to have been written by Shakespeare. Sir William Dugdale, the antiquary (born 1605, deceased 1686)—I note how long lived antiquaries often are—declares positively that it was written by Shakespeare and by no one else. Now Sir William Dugdale is no mean authority. This is the verse:

Not monumentall stone preserves our fame,Nor sky aspyring piramids our name.The memory of him for whom this standsShall outlive marble and defacers' hands.When all to Tyme's consumption shall be geaven,Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in Heaven.

In spite of Sir William Dugdale's assertion, most people are of opinion that this verse is not of sufficient merit to warrant Shakespeare's authorship; still, to me at least, it appears equal to the well-known and much-quoted epitaph that the poet composed for himself, which is inscribed over his grave in Stratford-on-Avon church. Truly there is the difficulty of dates to be considered. Now when Sir Thomas Stanley died Shakespeare was but twelve years old; however, as frequently was the case, the monument might not have been erected until some few years after Sir Thomas Stanley's death, and again the verse may not have been written then. It may be that the verse, which is apart from the inscription, was an after-thought, placed there at a little later time. Therefore, as far as dates are concerned, there is nothing impossible in Shakespeare having composed the verse when a young man. Here is a promising matter for antiquaries to dispute about!

FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH.

FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH.

FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH.

BOSCOBEL.

BOSCOBEL.

BOSCOBEL.

Next the clerk called my attention to the fine old fifteenth-century stained glass of the west window, found some years back under the floor of the church, presumably placed there for safety from the Puritan fanatics. Also he pointed out the boldly carved royal coat-of-arms set up against the north wall of the church "to celebrate the capture of Napoleon Bounaparte." Then he showed me the old Collegiate Choir stalls, on one of the panels of which is a very curious and cunningly conceived carving representing the Annunciation; at the base of the panel is shown a vase with lilies growing from it, and these are so contrived to subtly suggest the Crucifixion where the flowers expand. A quaint and poetic conception cleverly carried out. "A carving quite unique," the clerk told me; certainly I had seen nothing like it before. I wonder how the medieval carver got his inspiration?

Next we inspected the Golden, or the Vernon Chapel, built in 1510, a copy on a smaller scale of the Henry VII. Chapel in Westminster Abbey. The fan-vaulted roofing of this is very fine, and both the roof and walls still plainly show traces of gilt and colouring. In a niche in the west wall and under a richly carved canopy is the figure of Sir Arthur Vernon represented as preaching, this Sir Arthur Vernon being "a priest of the College."During the restoration of the church his brass was discovered beneath the floor of the chapel, though why it should have been floored over I cannot imagine; now it has been recovered and exposed for all men to read who know the Latin tongue. The original altar stone (of rough sandstone with five crosses on it) has also been recovered from the floor, and has been returned to its former rightful position, suitably elevated, at the east end of the chapel, and above it is a faded fresco of the Crucifixion. On the south wall is also a quaint brass to Ralph Elcock—Cellarer of the College.

Next we went to the vestry, and I noticed that the door entering to it had three large round holes in the top. According to the clerk this door was originally an outer one and known as the lepers' door, the holes being for the use of lepers to observe the service from the churchyard. I have come upon lepers' or low-side windows galore, but never upon a so-called lepers' door before. As, for reasons already given, I do not believe in lepers' windows, it naturally follows I could not agree with the clerk that this was ever a lepers' door. More probably, I thought that the holes were merely made in the door to afford an outlook from the vestry into the church, but that explanation was too simple to satisfy the clerk, it robbed the door of its romance. In the vestry is preserved a library of rare old tomes, also a richly embroidered ecclesiastical vestment said to have been worked by the nuns of White Ladies. Amongst the treasures of the church is a tall and richly chased silver-gilt andcrystal cup, given by Lady Eleanor Harries in 1625, but the cup itself is of very much older date and is probably of foreign craftsmanship. What was the original purpose of this I cannot say; possibly it was a monstrance—it could hardly have been intended for a Communion cup.

Since I was at Tong I have heard that an American collector had offered a large sum for this cup, £800 I think I was told. I am glad to say that the church authorities forbade its sale. "England," as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, "is one vast museum," but even the vastest museum, if continually deprived of its treasures, must become depleted in time. As I travel on I am continually hearing of art treasures, of ancient furniture, of fine oak panelling, ruthlessly removed from old houses, of old family pictures and portraits, old pewter, old fireplaces, old everything, having been purchased by Americans, millionaire or otherwise, and conveyed across the Atlantic; how far true I cannot say, but I have also heard that there are sundry manufactories abroad and at home of sham antiques, of old masters, old pottery, "Toby Jugs" in particular, and furniture, kept busily employed for the benefit chiefly of Americans. Of late I was informed that Shakespearian relics are booming, and those of Charles I. run a close second, and the trade is a profitable one, for the prices of these "rare" articles are high, or they would not be considered genuine. Perhaps this explains where all the old furniture comes from, and the store of ancient things one finds, now that motorists scour the land, displayedconveniently to catch the eye of the passer-by in countless village curiosity shops; also the growth of these shops, and why their stores never grow less. A short time ago it came to my knowledge that a lady consulted an authority on old china as to the genuineness of a dessert service she had purchased on the understanding that it had "been in one family for over two centuries," whereupon the lady made the unwelcome discovery that the factory in which it was produced only opened in 1850!

Old worm-eaten oak from old houses pulled down and from old churches being restored is utilised in making careful copies of ancient Elizabethan and Jacobean furniture, so the wood of these is old enough and genuinely worm-eaten. I recently visited a village, through which motorists frequently pass, where there is a large curiosity shop literally crammed with "genuine" ancient furniture mostly made yesterday, but the copies I saw were so good and had such a look of ancientness as to deceive many an innocent purchaser. Two "monks' tables" were on sale there, suits and bits of rusty and knightly armour, made I fancy, in spite of the easily obtained rust, not more than a dozen years or so ago in Germany, where they do the thing very well, old sun-dials, old dressers, Elizabethan chairs, early water-clocks and bracket clocks of the Cromwell era, and I know not what else; all most cleverly reproduced even to the signs of wear—done by a wire brush, I believe—and the cutting of initials and dates of centuries past on tables and chairs. A gentleman who had been to Japan told me that he discovereda craftsman there who was most clever in reproducing old brass Cromwell clocks, works and all, even to the English makers' names and ancient dates upon them; these were sent over to England, and he showed me one that he had purchased, and so skilfully was the original imitated, even to the presumed wear of the works, that I was astounded at the cleverness of the fraud.

But to return to the vestry of Tong church, said the clerk to me, "Have you heard of the Great Bell of Tong?" I had not till he mentioned it. I waited for him to tell its story that I knew was coming. I have forgotten how much he declared it weighed, but I believe it was considerably over two tons. "It takes three men to start it," he went on, "but when once started one man can keep it going. It was presented to the church in 1518 by Sir Henry Vernon. It is only rung on Christmas Day, Easter Day, Whit-Sunday, and St. Bartholomew's Day, on the birth of a child to the Sovereign and an heir to the Prince of Wales, or when the head of the Vernon family visits Tong."

Dickens confessed that it was to Tong church that he brought Little Nell with the schoolmaster in theOld Curiosity Shop, and this is how he describes it: "It was a very aged, ghostly place; the church had been built many hundred years ago, and once had a convent or a monastery attached," referring doubtless to the decayed College, "for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while other portions of the old buildings, which hadcrumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as though they too claimed a burial-place, and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men."

Leaving Tong I got amongst narrow winding lanes in my search after White Ladies, and a rare difficulty I had in discovering that remote spot. "It's not a good country for strangers to find their way about in," exclaimed one old body of whom I asked direction, and I quite agreed with her, it was not. I kept on asking for White Ladies of any one I saw, but the lanes were very deserted and I met few people on them, and their answers to my queries were none too clear. Indeed they reminded me in indirectness of a reply that a Shropshire gentleman assured me he once received from a villager. He was asking the villager how long her father had been dead, and she said quite calmly, "If he had lived till to-morrow he would have been dead a week." Country folk, for some inexplicable reason, never seem capable of giving a plain answer to the simplest question. They appear to love to go round it, perhaps because they like to talk. After all I really think I should have missed White Ladies, for it is hidden from the road and only reached by an ill-defined footpath through a wood and then over a field, had I not been bold enough to call at a farmhouse where I received clear instructions how to find the ruins. Fortunately they were not very far off, "only about a mile farther on," so I could not well go astray, for I had only to follow the lane till I came to "a little wicket at the corner of the wood."I was glad of it, for I felt weary of wandering without arriving anywhere.

What is left of White Ladies Nunnery consists almost wholly of its despoiled Norman church, if church be not too dignified a term for so small a building, roofed now only by the sky and paved with rough and tangled grasses, the foot of its walls being fringed with flourishing weeds. There are few architectural features of note about the building except its ornamented north doorway and its rounded Norman windows, the carving of this doorway being little the worse for the weathering of centuries. The ruins stand silent and solitary in a large meadow, and around the meadow stretch deep woods for far away, and beyond the woods are distant hills, that day faintly outlined in palest blue against the sky; these woods are the relics of the once famous forest of Brewood. It is a lonely spot to-day, and must always have been a lonely one; its only approach is by a lane, and then over the quiet fields. There solitude dwells. Close to the ruins once stood the old half-timber hall of the Giffards (an old print I have seen represents this as it was in 1660—a low, rambling, and most picturesque building surrounded by walls, and with a quaint gabled gate-house in front), of which now not a vestige remains. Thither came Charles II., fleeing in hot haste from the fatal battle of Worcester—fatal to the Royal cause at least, for Cromwell called it his "crowning mercy." It is always so, to the victor the battle is a triumph, the God of Hosts is with him. Is it not recorded that Cromwell once exclaimed to his troopers whilstcrossing a river, "Trust in God," followed quickly by "but keep your powder dry"?

Within the ruined walls of the convent church are many ancient tombstones, for it was long a burial-place of Roman Catholic families. The oldest of these doubtless dates from pre-Reformation days, possibly being those of some important ecclesiastic, for it is adorned with foliated crosses beautifully carved, though without inscription as far as I could discover. But, to me, the most interesting tombstone of all bore no ornamentation but was briefly inscribed:

Here lieth the bodie of aFriend the King did callDame Joane but now sheeIs deceased and gone.Interred Anno Do. 1669.

There Dame Penderel lies.

Boscobel was not far away; I simply followed the lane trustingly, and soon I beheld the great chimney and roof-trees of that ancient and historic house peeping through the trees. I came upon it suddenly and unawares. I was prepared to be disappointed with Boscobel; I always am prepared to be disappointed with historic places, for one gets so worked up with enthusiastic descriptions of them that but too often the reality leaves one cold and disenchanted, for who can romance to order? Where historic events have happened, I demand, perhaps unreasonably, a fitting background. The romantic incident of the stay and concealment of Charles II. at Boscobel calls for a picturesque setting, and there I found it. Boscobel is still, as of old, remote amongstthe woods, and suits the story to perfection. Though externally the house has lost somewhat of the patina of age by renovation, yet it impressed me. Had I come upon it unknowingly the very aspect of it with its old-fashioned garden and quaint summer-house would have caused me to stop, for it had that indefinable thing—a look of romance. Never yet have I come upon a house with that special look that has not earned it. A man writes his character on his face; so does an old house.

I did not know whether this storied home would be shown to strangers, but there I found a soft-spoken dame of dignified manner, who not only showed me over it, but told me its tale again so well and so freshly that in its old-world and pleasant panelled chambers the present seemed almost a dream and the past a reality. So strong was the influence of the place upon me that I almost expected to see the faithful Dame Joan appear approaching along one of the dusky passages, or even the hunted king himself. If ever a house were haunted by past presences, that house is Boscobel. I even thought it remotely possible that the grey-haired dame who showed me the place might be a descendant of the Penderels. I confess I had a longing to ask her if she were not of the good old stock, and should have done this but from fear of being disillusioned; but whether she were or no, for the sentiment of the thing, so I pleased to fancy her. Indeed I thought I traced a resemblance in her features to those of faithful Dame Joan Penderel, whose painted portrait I saw hanging on the wall of the ancient oratory, possibly becauseI looked for it, and you often see what you look for. There can be no mistake about this portrait, for on it the artist has inscribed, as was the custom of the time, both her name and a date, thus: "Dame Penderel—Anno Dom. 1662," though her age at the time he has not recorded as was usual. Full of quiet character and motherly kindness is the face, a pleasure to look upon. Great is the contrast of this portrait with those of Charles II. and Cromwell (apparently excellent likenesses) hanging in the dining-room, for the king's features reveal a weak and pleasure-loving nature, whilst those of Cromwell are determined and austere.

It was a happy time I spent at Boscobel, and I was fortunate to see it alone. I learnt from my guide that the house was built in 1540, so that it was over a century old when the king sought refuge there, and I further learnt that the name Boscobel originated from a suggestion made to John Giffard, its builder, by his friend Sir Basil Brooke, of Madeley Court, who had recently returned from Italy; and his suggestion was that the house, being seated in the heart of a forest, should be called Boscobel, from the Italian wordsbosco bello, meaning fair woods; so it was named. Passing through the hall I was shown first the fine oak-panelled dining-room, where is still preserved the very table that was used by the king. Much as it was then is the room to-day. On its walls hangs a copy of the Proclamation issued by the Parliament at the very time Charles II. was hiding there, offering a reward of £1000 for the discovery of the king, also declaringthat it was death without mercy for concealing him. It speaks well for the Penderel brothers, all poor men "of honest parentage but of mean degree" to whom a thousand pounds would have been a fortune, that even when closely questioned by the troopers when searching the house and woods around, each one in turn pleaded ignorance of the king's whereabouts, rejecting the proffered reward and risking death rather than betray their sovereign.

Opening out of one of the panelled sleeping chambers in the upper part of the house is a small closet; a cunningly concealed trap-door in the floor of this gives access to a small hiding-hole, and from this hiding-hole is a secret stairway (or rather was, for it is closed up now) contrived in part of the big chimney-stack; this stairway led down to a concealed door at the foot of the chimney and so out into the garden, forming a way of escape from the hiding-hole should it be discovered. It was down this stairway that Charles II. made his escape into the woods when one of the brothers Penderel (four of whom were keeping constant and tireless watch on the roads around) gave the alarm that soldiers were approaching, and it was deemed safer for the king to hide in the woods than to remain in the house. So selecting a thick-leaved oak, some distance off, with a tall straight trunk that no one could imagine that a man could climb, Charles II. mounted into its upper branches by means of a ladder carried there by the faithful Richard Penderel, who hurriedly carried it back to an outhouse before the soldiers arrived. In connection with the familiar story ofthe king's hiding in this oak my guide related to me an incident that I had not heard before. It appears that the king took with him into the tree two pigeons in a bag, as had been arranged he should, and that when the soldiers rode past below, he released these pigeons as though the soldiers had disturbed them, this to show that no one could be concealed there. The story of the pigeons is told in a quaint carving on the top of an old oak box that is kept in one of the rooms of the house, and is so far confirmed. The carving gives a bold representation of the Royal Oak in full leaf with the two pigeons flying from it, and the soldiers in search below.

Whilst the soldiers were searching the woods Dame Joan went out ostensibly to gather sticks for the fire; she engaged the soldiers in conversation, and so diverted their attention from the neighbourhood of the special oak where the king was. You may always trust a woman whose heart is in her task to fool any man.

Alone in a field not far from the house and surrounded by an iron railing stands a flourishing and fair-sized old oak, known as the Royal Oak. Though this is doubtless on, or close to, the spot where the historic tree grew, it can hardly be the one in which the king hid; some authorities, however, blinking hard facts, boldly avow their belief in it. Now for these hard facts, though romance suffers thereby, and you may not hint such things at Boscobel, Dr. Stukeley, the antiquary, writing in 1713, declares that then the old tree was "almost all cutaway by travellers whose curiosity leads them to see it," and John Evelyn in his day writes that when he saw it "relic-hunters had reduced the original tree to a mere stump." Moreover, the king in his own account of his hiding said that he got into a tree that had been polled and was very bushy at the top. Now the present oak has never been polled, which is surely sufficient proof that it is not the original one. If I may judge from the various chests and other articles I have seen, and which are said to be made out of the wood of the original Royal Oak, it must have been the largest tree that ever grew; but the wise traveller does not take all such relics seriously. An ancient writer indeed declares that at one time in European churches there were shown to pious pilgrims portions of the true Cross which if collected together would be sufficient to load a big ship. Even the clerk of Tong told me that he owned a large oak chest made out of wood from the Royal Oak, and he is but one of many who own chests that have this reputation, to say nothing of chairs, tables, stools, and countless snuff-boxes, all made, and carved, from the wood of that wonderful tree—the tree

Wherein the younger Charles abodeTill all the paths were dim,

And far below the Roundhead rode,And humm'd a surly hymn.

Upstairs in the house, beneath what was formerly a cheese attic, is another hiding-place, a dark small hole at the top of the stair and entered by a trap-door in the floor, and here it was that Charles II.spent one uncomfortable night, cheeses being rolled over the trap-door for the better concealment of it. So my guide told me. Now the puzzling thing about this is, why, especially at night when the house was carefully locked and guarded, should it have been thought needful for the king to secrete himself in this cramped place? Surely he might have slept comfortably in bed, for there ought to have been ample time, when the soldiers knocked at the door and the alarm was given, and whilst the door was being slowly opened, for the king to have secreted himself; as it was he spent a most uncomfortable night to no purpose. Now when Charles II. was afterwards sheltered in Moseley Hall and was resting on a couch in a chamber (it chanced to be one afternoon), some soldiers made a surprise visit there, but on the servants rushing upstairs crying "The soldiers are coming," the king found ample time to reach his hiding-place, where he lay concealed in safety till the soldiers departed baffled. It speaks much for the cleverness of the contrivers of the hiding-holes both at Boscobel and Moseley that none of these holes, though carefully searched for, were ever discovered. Still it must have been a very unpleasant experience for the king, hidden away in a dark and dismal hole all the while the soldiers were busily searching the house, not knowing but that he might at any moment be discovered. Indeed, when his host had seen the soldiers safely away and came to release the king, the king exclaimed to him "he thought the time very long"—and little wonder; so might any one in so unfortunate a position. It issaid that Charles II. was the last person to be secreted in the hiding-holes at Boscobel. Possibly Boscobel was not so diligently searched as other houses were, owing to its being solely in the care of servants at the time, so less suspicion fell on it.

Boscobel in its woods calls to my mind a saying of that quaint old worthy Thomas Fuller: "It is pleasant as well as profitable to see a house cased with trees. The worst is, where a place is bald of wood no art can make it a periwig."

CHAPTER XVA town with two names—An amusing mistake—Abbot's Bromley and its quaint horn dance—Dr. Johnson doing penance at Uttoxeter—Burton-on-Trent—The "Hundreds All" milestone—Indoor wind-dials—Stone-milled flour—The old Globe Room at Banbury—Dick Turpin's pistol—A strange find.Leaving Boscobel by a winding lane I presently got on to the ancient Roman Watling Street at a forsaken-looking portion of it, though I fancy the whole of the street for most of the way is, more or less, deserted. I had never been on Watling Street before; it looks so uncompromisingly straight and so uninviting on the map that I never felt any desire to explore it, but now I had come to it by accident I thought it a very pleasant road, this portion at least, with its wide grassy margins, and there before us it stretched far away through a well-wooded and lonely country—a genuine bit of Old England, mellow and grateful to the eye. I forgave the road for its straightness on account of the long and goodly green vista it afforded me, reaching even to the far-away blue—and it was delightfully free from traffic. Now I am a selfish traveller, I do not care for much company on the way. Here I had the advantages of a good road with the loneliness of a lane.So along the old Roman street we went, passing but few human habitations, here a solitary inn, there a grey old farmstead, and every now and then a cottage, but that was all; it was pleasant driving, for there were no children, nor dogs, nor fowls for miles to trouble us, and all being safe we indulged in a burst of speed purely as a stimulant. Once on it I intended to follow the ancient street all the way to Daventry, but somehow I got wrong at a point where it takes one of its few bends, and unexpectedly found myself at Lichfield. Through Lichfield I drove without a stop, for I was not travelling to revisit familiar places, and Lichfield and its cathedral I knew long ago. The route I took through the city I took at a venture, but when I got into the country again I discovered by a signpost that I was journeying to King's Bromley—well, I would go to King's Bromley, it mattered little where I went, life is too short to trouble over trifles; I was out to see the country, one way was as good as another, provided it took me through pleasant scenery, and on this score I could make no complaint.About three miles from Lichfield, at a point where London was a good hundred and twenty miles away, I was amused by a solitary and leaning signpost with simply "To London" on it, and its arm pointed down a mere lane that one would imagine led to nowhere in particular. I remember some years back coming to another such solitary signpost in Hertfordshire with just "York" inscribed on its extended arm, but that was on the Great North Road and there was some excuse for it,though York was very far off. There is such a thing as character in even signposts, and I rather sympathise with signposts that deal with big distances, they impress me with their pride of importance.The next signpost we came to had "To Abbot's Bromley" on it; I felt uncertain whether this were a different place, but a man who was passing assured me that King's Bromley and Abbot's Bromley were one and the same. "It's a small town," said he, "with two names. You can call it which you please." I thanked him for the information. I wondered who he was walking leisurely on the country road clad in a shooting suit. He might have been a squire—or a gamekeeper. I thought I would find out, so I made further innocent inquiries about Abbot's Bromley. "It's a small town," said he; "you won't do much business there." I discovered he thought me a travelling commercial—of a glorified type, I hope. I did not mind for myself, but I felt the slight on my car; fortunately a car has no feelings, but my dog growled—manifestly he had. "In what line do you travel?" queried he quite politely, possibly with the idea of being helpful. Here was a poser. Could I tell a lie? Manifestly not, so I said I was out sampling scenery. "Well, I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed he, and before he had time to think the matter over I went my way. I hope when he realised his mistake, as I presume he did, he would not think I was offended, I was simply amused. I only wish I could have kept up the character, but I was hard put to do iton the sudden emergency. I wonder who he could have been? I am sorry now I drove on so hastily, but the situation was getting strained. It is the people you meet by the way as well as places that are interesting; at least I was glad to find that every motorist is not considered a millionaire. When I come to think of it, it was an idiotic thing to say that I was sampling scenery; still, was I not? The strange fact is that when occasionally I have, at country town inns, been thrown in the company of commercials, and have tried my best to play the part of one of them, I have ignominiously failed. I might invent a new proverb, "If you want to do a thing don't try to do it"; in your anxiety you are almost sure to overact your part. To make amends for being considered a commercial, the landlord of a certain country inn once took me for a real live lord travelling under an assumed name, and the more I tried to convince him of his error the more sure was he that he had made no mistake, he had seen my photograph as Lord Somebody in some paper; he was honoured to receive me, lords would have their whims; why should they not travel under assumed names if it pleased them? He would "my lord" me—and charged for it heavily in the bill.Abbot's Bromley, or King's Bromley, gave us quite a cheerful greeting. I saw one or two flags flying in the town; the village maids (it seemed but a village to me) were dressed in their best; some were carrying flowers and looked quite charming in a rustic way, and there were young men in attendance too, dressed in their black Sunday bestthat did not suit them a bit. So I would know what was happening. I ventured a joke on one of the prettiest maids. "I see you were expecting me," I said. It fell flat. "No, we weren't," she replied, "it's a bazaar," and without a further word she walked away. But another maid, who had overheard the conversation, graciously came up to me and explained: "We're having an open-air bazaar; will you come to it? We're going to have the horn dance." Then I became interested. What was the horn dance? I wondered; I did not remember having heard of such a thing before. I begged for information, saying I was a stranger that chance had brought that way. I hardly need have done this, for in country places everybody seems to know everybody and their business, so the good people doubtless knew I was a stranger, and most of them appeared to think I had been attracted from afar by the news of the bazaar with its special attraction of the horn dance. It was an eventful day for Abbot's Bromley, where eventful days I should imagine are a rarity. Then I learnt that Abbot's Bromley is one of the few places where the old hobby-dances are still kept up and take place yearly, but this was a special performance in aid of the bazaar. The horn dance, I understood, is carried out by ten or a dozen performers all gaily attired, and the characters are a Maid Marian, a fool, a man with a hobby-horse, and a man with a bow and arrow; then there are six dancers each of whom carries a pair of reindeer horns of large size. These reindeer horns are kept in the church tower,and are mounted on wooden skulls provided with handles. According to tradition these horns are those of reindeers that in times long past once roamed over the forests surrounding Abbot's Bromley.In my copy ofPaterson's Roads(that gives a short account of the various towns on the way), under Abbot's Bromley I find the following reference to this dance, from which it appears that it was then in abeyance: "The curious custom called the hobby-horse dance formerly prevailed here; it was generally celebrated at Christmas, on New Year's Day, and Twelfth Day, when a person carrying beneath his legs the semblance of a horse, made of thin boards, danced through the principal street, having a bow and arrow in his hands ... five or six other persons also dancing carrying six reindeers' heads on their shoulders."Abbot's Bromley struck me as a very pleasant and picturesque little place; it has no railway, and that is perhaps why it has such an old-fashioned look. I have always a liking for these little towns beyond railways. Most of its houses, built long years ago, are of black and white half-timber; and the ancient inn there is of half-timber too, that with its grey gables, its casement windows, its swinging sign, is suggestive of the coaching and Pickwickian days and all the lost romance of them. It took my fancy. It ought to have some story to tell of those "good old times," but I failed to find or to conjure one; for though the house remains much as it was, the actors are dead and gone—host, coach-farer, andhighwayman. It is the sort of inn you read of in Harrison Ainsworth's novels, though I doubt if any one reads them to-day. How rich in incident and picturesque description they are! I know I took my fill of them when I was a boy; now, alas! they have lost much of their flavour; yet they have changed not, the change must be in me. To complete the old-world picture of the place, Abbot's Bromley boasts of an ancient roofed-in Market Cross, with thick oak supporting-posts around. Only compare the sought-for picturesqueness of a model garden city with the natural unsought-for picturesqueness of such old towns as Abbot's Bromley, and oh, the difference! I left the little, forgotten town basking, but not sleeping, in the sunshine, for it was much alive and making merry that day.We had not gone far before a change came over the weather—I hope the open-air bazaar did not suffer from it. Overhead the sky grew dark and threatening, then came a sudden flash of lightning, loud thunder followed, then the rain in torrents. I wondered whether a motor-car with all its metal work was the safest place to be in, for the storm was severe; but there was nothing for it but to drive on, with such uncertain assurance as the saying of the farmer at Wem afforded that "lightning never strikes a moving object." In spite of that comforting dictum lightning is not to be trusted. Since then I have heard that a motor-car travelling on the road has been struck by lightning, and, though fortunately no one was hurt,the car was damaged. How the rain hissed down, and how the wind howled through and shook the trees, even blowing bits of their branches and leaves across the road! Still above the sound of the storm I could hear the steady beat of our pistons, as one hears the reassuring throb of the engines of a steamer in a gale at sea.The country appeared to be richly wooded, as far as I could judge; but what with the thunder and the lightning, the wind and the rain, I obtained but a vague impression of it. Then after the storm had done its worst, a town loomed up on a hill before us, and this proved to be Uttoxeter, a neat town neither attractive nor ugly, and that is the best I can say for it. Here, it may be remembered, Dr. Johnson, when in the height of his fame, stood in its market-place bare-headed in the rain, "exposed to the sneers of the standers-by," as an act of penance for his unfilial disobedience as a boy in refusing to watch his weary and infirm father's bookstall set up there for a while. It is a well-known story, but the actual sight of the spot where that touching incident took place made me realise it the more.Having viewed the market-place, made historic by this event, we took the first road handy out of the town, mildly wondering where we were going next. There was a sense of pleasurable excitement in not knowing our destination. I have a friend who does this sort of thing when he goes a-cycling, and who, like myself, travels to see the country, little caring where he goes. If a windy day he simply lets the wind settle his direction, for he always makes apoint of cycling with the wind behind him; he finds it much easier so, and when it blows hard he finds himself blown along with the minimum of exertion. So he never troubles about any plan, but when he starts out in the morning he just glances at the way of the wind and goes contentedly with it. Capricious though this mode of travelling be, yet it rendered fortunate results. When he traced me out on the map one or two tours he had made in this haphazard fashion, I felt bound to confess that no planned tour could have turned out better, and it took him to many odd out-of-the-way and pleasant places he would probably never have seen otherwise. Truly I did not consult the wind, but on the other hand I did not consult my map unless I wished to make for any special spot, and I also toured fortunately so, to the discovery of interesting places, for the most of my journey.This time it was a milestone that revealed the fact we were bound for Burton-on-Trent. Now to Burton I had no desire to go; Burton is a big town, but the road was a very pleasant one, so I kept to it. The country was fine and open, with glorious views to the south, where undulating hills bounded the distant blue. We passed one or two stately old and dignified homes standing "amid their tall ancestral trees"; then the rain came on again, and in the pouring rain we passed through Tutbury, where afterwards I learnt there are the slight remains of a castle; but I saw nothing of them, for I was thinking more of the rain and the road than anything else: the rain was blinding, solittle wonder I missed them. It was not a moment for seeing castles or anything else.I was not pleased at having to drive through Burton, for I expected to find it a busy town with much traffic in its streets, and this was the first large and busy town I had to pass through during the whole of my outing; I had merely skirted Shrewsbury, so that did not count. Yet never have I passed through a large and busy town so easily as I passed through Burton; its streets are wide, and for a wonder I found the traffic on them, much of it brewers' drays, kept well to its side of the road, so I was soon into the country again.Just beyond Burton I had a choice of two roads, and was doubtful which to take, when I saw a signpost with "To Watling Street" upon it—merely to that old highway and not to any inhabited place. This decided me; I would rejoin the famous Watling Street, of which I had a pleasant memory. I knew it avoided big, bustling towns, and that was no small recommendation. A long rise brought me into a very pleasant country, and into welcome blue skies and warm sunshine. Such varied samples of weather had I that day—the blackest of clouds and the bluest of skies, cold pelting rain and the brightest of sunshine. The scenery was delightfully rural all the long and lonely way to Atherstone, where we should be on the Watling Street again, excepting that at one spot there were some collieries on a near hill that spoilt the prospect for a while; but I looked the other way. These passed, we traverseda fine undulating country, made up of meadows, fields, and woods, and ever and again wide views of much charm opened out before us; and there the air blew sweet and bracing, with the rare freshness that follows rain. I pulled up at one quiet spot under the shelter of some overhanging trees for refreshment and for a rest, and there I stopped for an hour or more, and not a soul either driving, riding, cycling, or afoot went by. It was a cross-country road, apparently little used, and one to be enjoyed for its quietude and rural pleasantness. It surprised me how often I came upon such long stretches of almost deserted roads; we travelled far on that stage before we met a human being. Perhaps when I pulled up it was the hour of the day when the good old-fashioned country folk are mostly indoors dining, and the labourers resting from their work, so no one was about; but that does not account for the rest of the road later on being so forsaken.Atherstone is one of the order of far-extending thoroughfare towns that flourished in the old coaching days, and that seem to have fallen half asleep since, for the chief concern of such towns was with the road and its traffic, though Atherstone is not so sleepy as most of them are. All that I could discover of any interest in the place was an old milestone set up against the ancient "Red Lion Inn" there; this, curiously enough, stands just one hundred miles respectively from London, Liverpool, and Lincoln, as the following inscriptions on it show:—ToToToLiverpoolLondonLincoln100100100Miles.Miles.Miles.A man who was quietly watching me copying these inscriptions, when I had done my copying, exclaimed, "That be a famous old milestone. The drivers of the old coaches as stopped at the inn used always to call their passengers' attention to it." On returning home I looked up in myPatersonfor the name of the chief inn at Atherstone, and found it was "The Red Lion."It seems strange that to-day, when so much loving regard is shown to the preservation of old houses, and to the careful restoration of them backwards to the intention of their ancient architects, that our many quaint and friendly-looking old coaching inns should have found such few patrons to preserve their fascinating features. Standing by the roadside, how delightfully picturesque they often are, when unaltered and—save the mark!—unimproved. Many, in truth, are poems in buildings (and the term is not strained in regard to them) with their many-gabled, time-toned fronts; their signs often gaily painted, swinging on an upright post without, to proclaim their useful business; their great arched doorways under which the loaded coaches drove and landed their passengers at ease sheltered from the rain and undisturbed, or their ample porches that spoke a welcome as plain as any uttered word. Some are of half-timber and some are of stone. Perhaps those of half-timber are the more picturesque,but nearly all are pleasing to the eye; some, alas! are going to sad decay, such as that fine specimen of an old English roadside hostelry, "The Bell" at Stilton, which used to be both afamous and aflourishing house in its day, and which gave its name to the well-known cheese that the landlord of the time used to sell to his guests—indeed I believe it was considered the thing to buy a cheese at "The Bell" to take home with you. One of these old inns Ashby-Sterry has pictured to us in verse, and well the picture suits many an inn I know:'Tis a finely-toned, picturesque, sunshiny place,Recalling a dozen old stories,With a rare, British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face,Suggesting old wines and old Tories.Ah! many's the magnum of rare crusted port,Of vintage no one could cry fie on,Has been drunk by good men of the old-fashioned sortAt the Lion."The Lion," white or red, was in the past—I am not sure that it is not even to-day—by far and away the favourite sign; "The White Hart," I think, came second. These old inns, both outwardly and inwardly, have suffered sadly from neglect, and from the mania for show that does not spell comfort. Yet when simply, decently cared for, and unaltered, how charming and restful their old-time interiors are with their snug, low, brown-beamed, ceilinged parlours, sometimes panelled and with big ingle-nooks, their mullioned windows with their lattice panes, often deeply recessed with a seat in them, their cool and cosy bars and odd nooks and curious corners. That delightful Jacobean hostelry, "TheWhyte Harte," to wit, at Broadway in Worcestershire, with its genuine old-world atmosphere and quiet comfort, may be given as a good example of one. Some of these old hostelries were provided with a quaint device in the shape of an indoor wind-dial worked by a vane without, so that travellers overnight could judge by it of the next day's possibilities, and learn from the direction of the wind whether it were likely to be hot or cold, wet or fair. One of these interesting and useful indoor wind-dials may still, I believe, be seen in London at the Buckingham Palace Hotel; at least one was there and working but a year or two ago, and I understand that they are being introduced into modern homes. There are still some things we may learn from our ancestors.At Atherstone I was again on the ancient Watling Street, and I followed it to Daventry as far as it is at present opened out to the south. Again it led me through a lonely country of field and forest, unexciting but very pleasant, a country fragrant with the scent of wild flowers and the refreshing odours of the woods. I did not dally at Daventry, for the little town appeared to me featureless, and finding from my map that Banbury was but sixteen miles away, I thought to spend the night in that place as being of greater interest; moreover, I had recently read in my morning paper an account of the old historic Globe Room there at the "Reindeer Inn," with the further unwelcome information that its fine oak panelling, with its richly carved fireplace and its elaborately enriched plaster ceiling, had allbeen sold and were to be removed, and I wished to see it—if not too late. In this room Cromwell, it is said, held a council of war in October 1642 just before the battle of Edge Hill, so it had (oh, that pathetic word "had"!), besides the charm of its ancient picturesqueness, the additional interest of being with little doubt the place of that historic gathering. Now the fine old room has been gutted. So the "vast museum" of England is being despoiled! Whatever were the citizens of Banbury about to permit of such a thing; could they not have subscribed the price demanded for the panelling and decorative work (comparatively a paltry sum when divided amongst so many), and have retained that beautiful, historic, and ancient room intact? You cannot replace or purchase history. Even taking the meanest, most commercial view of the transaction, surely it would have well repaid the town to have bought and to have preserved that fine old chamber so intimately associated with Banbury, for I know it brought many tourists from afar to see it, some from even across the wide Atlantic; now perhaps they will not desire to go to Banbury and spend their money there, for it has little else but some ancient houses to show. Years ago the iconoclastic Banbury folk pulled down their exceptionally fine and interesting old church, "one of the most magnificent in the shire," even destroying its fine monuments, to save the little needed to keep it and them in repair, to say nothing of having done away with their "goodly crosse" of nursery renown, though a later generation has replaced itwith a poor and meaningless substitute. What child would now "ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross"? It is not worth riding to or talking about.But I am a little previous, not having arrived at Banbury yet; our road to that town was either up or down hill all the way, but there was nothing to grumble at in this, for the scenery was rewarding and the motor had to do the climbing. At the top of one hill we came upon a lonely old windmill going to decay, its gaunt arms standing darkly profiled against the sky and shaking with every gust of wind. It had a weird and haunted look, though I never heard of a mill being haunted; precisely what is it, I wonder, that gives certain buildings such an uncanny look? There must really have been some magic about that mill, for I photographed it and only got a ghostly result on my film. I have never seen a ghost, but to my astonishment three intelligent people have declared, and positively declared, to me that they have done so. A little later will be found a reference to this matter. Now a ghost is a visible object and ought to be capable of being photographed: what would I not give to see a genuine photograph of a ghost! When next I sleep in a haunted room I must take my camera with me on the off chance of a ghost appearing, so that I may snap him! Though I fear my chances are but slight, for I have slept in haunted rooms where other people are reported to have seen "things," but saw nothing—not even in my dreams, which were undisturbed. Why will "things" appear to others and not to me?Years gone by, and not so many years either, you might from one spot have seen half a dozen or more windmills busily at work where now by chance you may see one; and in those past years you might have seen farmers' waggons slowly wending their way to the mill loaded with sacks of corn to be ground, or wending their way back white with fat sacks of flour. Now, except possibly in some parts of Sussex, to see a windmill with its hurtling sails is a rare sight. Grieved indeed am I that it should be so, for as a child I dearly loved the merry bickering windmill—what child does not? Now I have grown to man's estate I have not lost the old love of the sight of one. There is something very cheery and fascinating in watching the mill sails whirling round and round in their never-completed journey, now grey in shade, now white in the glance of the sun. But I sadly fear the dear old picturesque windmill is doomed, unless the manufactured article flour, not the raw material wheat, is taxed. I am no politician—I think I have said so already—for in an age when it seems to me, to misquote Macaulay, "all are for the party and none are for the State," the business of politics, as one of the Georges, I forget now which, remarked, "is not to my fancy." I preach neither free trade nor tariff reform; I have not studied the question, and I do not profess to know the facts of the case without study, as some people do—even members of Parliament who vote for their party right or wrong; it would probably cost them their seat and four hundred golden sovereigns a year if they did otherwise. But thisI know, for I have tested it, that stone-ground flour produced by the old-fashioned windmill is infinitely sweeter, more nutritious, and more wholesome than the foreign roller-mill flour that is so starchy, "hence the present-day indigestion and the decay of teeth." Then, again, there is the fact, of which some clever people lose sight, that by importing flour and not wheat to grind at home we lose the valuable asset of "waste" as a fattening food for fowls, pigs, and cattle.The village of Charwelton was the only one on the way of which I retain a memory, and this I remember on account of a fine and very old two-arched Gothic bridge of stone there by the side of, and parallel to, the road, manifestly intended only for foot passengers, so narrow is it, a carriage bridge in miniature, so solidly built and buttressed as though it spanned a rushing river and had to resist its strivings. Now the road was dry and no water flowed under the bridge; I could only presume that water had once flowed there. So I asked a man, who was idly standing by, about it. "The road be flooded in the winter time," said he, "and then us use the bridge. The water be quite deep at times and the horses on the road have to ford it. That bridge be seven hundred years old, they do say." It looked it. He appeared inclined to talk, so I let him, not knowing what might be coming. "It's a slow place Charwelton be," he went on, "there's no getting away from that. The church be a mile away from the village, and that don't encourage you to go to it. You see, the place were badlyknocked about during the war, so I suppose they built a new village here, and let the church bide there." He spoke of "the war" as though it were of recent date; I was mystified, till I discovered he meant the Civil Wars when Charles I. was fighting for his crown!I noticed nothing further on the way to Banbury but a big mounting-block of stone standing by a grassy margin of the road, an interesting survival, and a somewhat unusual thing to see, so I stopped to inspect it, and on it I discovered inscribed—Thomas High of WardenSet up this. Ivly, 1659.It is still there to keep green the memory of this Thomas High, though I should imagine that few ever read the inscription or make use of the stone. I wonder why he put it up in that lonely spot, where, even in the old days, few people would be likely to need it. Now you rarely see a horseman on the road unless it be a huntsman; I doubt if the mounting-block has been used for these fifty years back.At Banbury I went to the "White Lion"; there was also, I afterwards found, a "Red Lion" in the same street, a cosy-looking hostelry with an ancient front of the fifteenth century that appealed to me. InPaterson's RoadsI note both these inns mentioned as existing in the coaching days. The "Red Lion" is the more picturesque of the two, but I was very comfortable at the "White." During the evening I hunted up mine host and inquired of him about theGlobe Room. Alas! I had come too late to see it, for he told me that it had already been stripped of its panelling, its finely carved oak fireplace removed, its enriched plaster ceiling had been taken down, and all these had been carted away. I felt provoked with the Banbury people; I told the landlord so. I do not think I shall ever stay in Banbury again. I learnt of one curious and interesting find that had been made in the room. On pulling down the panelling there had been discovered hidden behind it a double-barrelled pistol with flint locks; the pistol was inlaid with gold and had the maker's name, "Baker, London," engraved upon it, and above the name the Prince of Wales's feathers. The pistol bears the following inscription: "Presented to Dick Turpin at the White Bear Inn, Drury-lane, February 7th, 1735." How came it there, I wonder, and who presented it to that famous highwayman? Of the genuineness of the pistol I think there can be but little doubt. Dick Turpin, it may be remembered, was hanged at York on 7th April 1739, four years after the pistol was presented to him. Writing of Dick Turpin reminds me of the myth of his renowned ride to York that Harrison Ainsworth in hisRookwoodromanced about; now the credit of this surprising exploit really belongs to another of the fraternity, one Nick Nevison, of earlier time; this knight of the road robbed a traveller at Gad's Hill in Kent one morning at 4A.M., and furiously riding on to York reached that city at 8P.M.on the evening of the same day, and so established an alibi and saved his neck, at leaston that occasion. The skeleton of a poor unfortunate cat was also found behind the panelling; I wonder if it was that of the historic cat that was hanged as recorded by Drunken Barnaby?To Banbury came I, O prophane-One!Where I saw a Puritane-OneHanging of his cat on Monday,For killing of a mouse on Sunday.The landlord of "The White Lion," a pattern of civility, called my attention to "the famous wistaria" that is trained along the walls of the outbuildings of his ancient inn. This wistaria, he informed me, was the largest and finest in the kingdom, its branches extending for over two hundred feet. He was manifestly proud of it, and I duly admired it, but I had seen many fine wistarias before; I would rather have seen the Globe Room. There is little or nothing now left in Banbury to tempt the pilgrim to linger there. So I took my departure the next morning, and that early.

A town with two names—An amusing mistake—Abbot's Bromley and its quaint horn dance—Dr. Johnson doing penance at Uttoxeter—Burton-on-Trent—The "Hundreds All" milestone—Indoor wind-dials—Stone-milled flour—The old Globe Room at Banbury—Dick Turpin's pistol—A strange find.

Leaving Boscobel by a winding lane I presently got on to the ancient Roman Watling Street at a forsaken-looking portion of it, though I fancy the whole of the street for most of the way is, more or less, deserted. I had never been on Watling Street before; it looks so uncompromisingly straight and so uninviting on the map that I never felt any desire to explore it, but now I had come to it by accident I thought it a very pleasant road, this portion at least, with its wide grassy margins, and there before us it stretched far away through a well-wooded and lonely country—a genuine bit of Old England, mellow and grateful to the eye. I forgave the road for its straightness on account of the long and goodly green vista it afforded me, reaching even to the far-away blue—and it was delightfully free from traffic. Now I am a selfish traveller, I do not care for much company on the way. Here I had the advantages of a good road with the loneliness of a lane.

So along the old Roman street we went, passing but few human habitations, here a solitary inn, there a grey old farmstead, and every now and then a cottage, but that was all; it was pleasant driving, for there were no children, nor dogs, nor fowls for miles to trouble us, and all being safe we indulged in a burst of speed purely as a stimulant. Once on it I intended to follow the ancient street all the way to Daventry, but somehow I got wrong at a point where it takes one of its few bends, and unexpectedly found myself at Lichfield. Through Lichfield I drove without a stop, for I was not travelling to revisit familiar places, and Lichfield and its cathedral I knew long ago. The route I took through the city I took at a venture, but when I got into the country again I discovered by a signpost that I was journeying to King's Bromley—well, I would go to King's Bromley, it mattered little where I went, life is too short to trouble over trifles; I was out to see the country, one way was as good as another, provided it took me through pleasant scenery, and on this score I could make no complaint.

About three miles from Lichfield, at a point where London was a good hundred and twenty miles away, I was amused by a solitary and leaning signpost with simply "To London" on it, and its arm pointed down a mere lane that one would imagine led to nowhere in particular. I remember some years back coming to another such solitary signpost in Hertfordshire with just "York" inscribed on its extended arm, but that was on the Great North Road and there was some excuse for it,though York was very far off. There is such a thing as character in even signposts, and I rather sympathise with signposts that deal with big distances, they impress me with their pride of importance.

The next signpost we came to had "To Abbot's Bromley" on it; I felt uncertain whether this were a different place, but a man who was passing assured me that King's Bromley and Abbot's Bromley were one and the same. "It's a small town," said he, "with two names. You can call it which you please." I thanked him for the information. I wondered who he was walking leisurely on the country road clad in a shooting suit. He might have been a squire—or a gamekeeper. I thought I would find out, so I made further innocent inquiries about Abbot's Bromley. "It's a small town," said he; "you won't do much business there." I discovered he thought me a travelling commercial—of a glorified type, I hope. I did not mind for myself, but I felt the slight on my car; fortunately a car has no feelings, but my dog growled—manifestly he had. "In what line do you travel?" queried he quite politely, possibly with the idea of being helpful. Here was a poser. Could I tell a lie? Manifestly not, so I said I was out sampling scenery. "Well, I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed he, and before he had time to think the matter over I went my way. I hope when he realised his mistake, as I presume he did, he would not think I was offended, I was simply amused. I only wish I could have kept up the character, but I was hard put to do iton the sudden emergency. I wonder who he could have been? I am sorry now I drove on so hastily, but the situation was getting strained. It is the people you meet by the way as well as places that are interesting; at least I was glad to find that every motorist is not considered a millionaire. When I come to think of it, it was an idiotic thing to say that I was sampling scenery; still, was I not? The strange fact is that when occasionally I have, at country town inns, been thrown in the company of commercials, and have tried my best to play the part of one of them, I have ignominiously failed. I might invent a new proverb, "If you want to do a thing don't try to do it"; in your anxiety you are almost sure to overact your part. To make amends for being considered a commercial, the landlord of a certain country inn once took me for a real live lord travelling under an assumed name, and the more I tried to convince him of his error the more sure was he that he had made no mistake, he had seen my photograph as Lord Somebody in some paper; he was honoured to receive me, lords would have their whims; why should they not travel under assumed names if it pleased them? He would "my lord" me—and charged for it heavily in the bill.

Abbot's Bromley, or King's Bromley, gave us quite a cheerful greeting. I saw one or two flags flying in the town; the village maids (it seemed but a village to me) were dressed in their best; some were carrying flowers and looked quite charming in a rustic way, and there were young men in attendance too, dressed in their black Sunday bestthat did not suit them a bit. So I would know what was happening. I ventured a joke on one of the prettiest maids. "I see you were expecting me," I said. It fell flat. "No, we weren't," she replied, "it's a bazaar," and without a further word she walked away. But another maid, who had overheard the conversation, graciously came up to me and explained: "We're having an open-air bazaar; will you come to it? We're going to have the horn dance." Then I became interested. What was the horn dance? I wondered; I did not remember having heard of such a thing before. I begged for information, saying I was a stranger that chance had brought that way. I hardly need have done this, for in country places everybody seems to know everybody and their business, so the good people doubtless knew I was a stranger, and most of them appeared to think I had been attracted from afar by the news of the bazaar with its special attraction of the horn dance. It was an eventful day for Abbot's Bromley, where eventful days I should imagine are a rarity. Then I learnt that Abbot's Bromley is one of the few places where the old hobby-dances are still kept up and take place yearly, but this was a special performance in aid of the bazaar. The horn dance, I understood, is carried out by ten or a dozen performers all gaily attired, and the characters are a Maid Marian, a fool, a man with a hobby-horse, and a man with a bow and arrow; then there are six dancers each of whom carries a pair of reindeer horns of large size. These reindeer horns are kept in the church tower,and are mounted on wooden skulls provided with handles. According to tradition these horns are those of reindeers that in times long past once roamed over the forests surrounding Abbot's Bromley.

In my copy ofPaterson's Roads(that gives a short account of the various towns on the way), under Abbot's Bromley I find the following reference to this dance, from which it appears that it was then in abeyance: "The curious custom called the hobby-horse dance formerly prevailed here; it was generally celebrated at Christmas, on New Year's Day, and Twelfth Day, when a person carrying beneath his legs the semblance of a horse, made of thin boards, danced through the principal street, having a bow and arrow in his hands ... five or six other persons also dancing carrying six reindeers' heads on their shoulders."

Abbot's Bromley struck me as a very pleasant and picturesque little place; it has no railway, and that is perhaps why it has such an old-fashioned look. I have always a liking for these little towns beyond railways. Most of its houses, built long years ago, are of black and white half-timber; and the ancient inn there is of half-timber too, that with its grey gables, its casement windows, its swinging sign, is suggestive of the coaching and Pickwickian days and all the lost romance of them. It took my fancy. It ought to have some story to tell of those "good old times," but I failed to find or to conjure one; for though the house remains much as it was, the actors are dead and gone—host, coach-farer, andhighwayman. It is the sort of inn you read of in Harrison Ainsworth's novels, though I doubt if any one reads them to-day. How rich in incident and picturesque description they are! I know I took my fill of them when I was a boy; now, alas! they have lost much of their flavour; yet they have changed not, the change must be in me. To complete the old-world picture of the place, Abbot's Bromley boasts of an ancient roofed-in Market Cross, with thick oak supporting-posts around. Only compare the sought-for picturesqueness of a model garden city with the natural unsought-for picturesqueness of such old towns as Abbot's Bromley, and oh, the difference! I left the little, forgotten town basking, but not sleeping, in the sunshine, for it was much alive and making merry that day.

We had not gone far before a change came over the weather—I hope the open-air bazaar did not suffer from it. Overhead the sky grew dark and threatening, then came a sudden flash of lightning, loud thunder followed, then the rain in torrents. I wondered whether a motor-car with all its metal work was the safest place to be in, for the storm was severe; but there was nothing for it but to drive on, with such uncertain assurance as the saying of the farmer at Wem afforded that "lightning never strikes a moving object." In spite of that comforting dictum lightning is not to be trusted. Since then I have heard that a motor-car travelling on the road has been struck by lightning, and, though fortunately no one was hurt,the car was damaged. How the rain hissed down, and how the wind howled through and shook the trees, even blowing bits of their branches and leaves across the road! Still above the sound of the storm I could hear the steady beat of our pistons, as one hears the reassuring throb of the engines of a steamer in a gale at sea.

The country appeared to be richly wooded, as far as I could judge; but what with the thunder and the lightning, the wind and the rain, I obtained but a vague impression of it. Then after the storm had done its worst, a town loomed up on a hill before us, and this proved to be Uttoxeter, a neat town neither attractive nor ugly, and that is the best I can say for it. Here, it may be remembered, Dr. Johnson, when in the height of his fame, stood in its market-place bare-headed in the rain, "exposed to the sneers of the standers-by," as an act of penance for his unfilial disobedience as a boy in refusing to watch his weary and infirm father's bookstall set up there for a while. It is a well-known story, but the actual sight of the spot where that touching incident took place made me realise it the more.

Having viewed the market-place, made historic by this event, we took the first road handy out of the town, mildly wondering where we were going next. There was a sense of pleasurable excitement in not knowing our destination. I have a friend who does this sort of thing when he goes a-cycling, and who, like myself, travels to see the country, little caring where he goes. If a windy day he simply lets the wind settle his direction, for he always makes apoint of cycling with the wind behind him; he finds it much easier so, and when it blows hard he finds himself blown along with the minimum of exertion. So he never troubles about any plan, but when he starts out in the morning he just glances at the way of the wind and goes contentedly with it. Capricious though this mode of travelling be, yet it rendered fortunate results. When he traced me out on the map one or two tours he had made in this haphazard fashion, I felt bound to confess that no planned tour could have turned out better, and it took him to many odd out-of-the-way and pleasant places he would probably never have seen otherwise. Truly I did not consult the wind, but on the other hand I did not consult my map unless I wished to make for any special spot, and I also toured fortunately so, to the discovery of interesting places, for the most of my journey.

This time it was a milestone that revealed the fact we were bound for Burton-on-Trent. Now to Burton I had no desire to go; Burton is a big town, but the road was a very pleasant one, so I kept to it. The country was fine and open, with glorious views to the south, where undulating hills bounded the distant blue. We passed one or two stately old and dignified homes standing "amid their tall ancestral trees"; then the rain came on again, and in the pouring rain we passed through Tutbury, where afterwards I learnt there are the slight remains of a castle; but I saw nothing of them, for I was thinking more of the rain and the road than anything else: the rain was blinding, solittle wonder I missed them. It was not a moment for seeing castles or anything else.

I was not pleased at having to drive through Burton, for I expected to find it a busy town with much traffic in its streets, and this was the first large and busy town I had to pass through during the whole of my outing; I had merely skirted Shrewsbury, so that did not count. Yet never have I passed through a large and busy town so easily as I passed through Burton; its streets are wide, and for a wonder I found the traffic on them, much of it brewers' drays, kept well to its side of the road, so I was soon into the country again.

Just beyond Burton I had a choice of two roads, and was doubtful which to take, when I saw a signpost with "To Watling Street" upon it—merely to that old highway and not to any inhabited place. This decided me; I would rejoin the famous Watling Street, of which I had a pleasant memory. I knew it avoided big, bustling towns, and that was no small recommendation. A long rise brought me into a very pleasant country, and into welcome blue skies and warm sunshine. Such varied samples of weather had I that day—the blackest of clouds and the bluest of skies, cold pelting rain and the brightest of sunshine. The scenery was delightfully rural all the long and lonely way to Atherstone, where we should be on the Watling Street again, excepting that at one spot there were some collieries on a near hill that spoilt the prospect for a while; but I looked the other way. These passed, we traverseda fine undulating country, made up of meadows, fields, and woods, and ever and again wide views of much charm opened out before us; and there the air blew sweet and bracing, with the rare freshness that follows rain. I pulled up at one quiet spot under the shelter of some overhanging trees for refreshment and for a rest, and there I stopped for an hour or more, and not a soul either driving, riding, cycling, or afoot went by. It was a cross-country road, apparently little used, and one to be enjoyed for its quietude and rural pleasantness. It surprised me how often I came upon such long stretches of almost deserted roads; we travelled far on that stage before we met a human being. Perhaps when I pulled up it was the hour of the day when the good old-fashioned country folk are mostly indoors dining, and the labourers resting from their work, so no one was about; but that does not account for the rest of the road later on being so forsaken.

Atherstone is one of the order of far-extending thoroughfare towns that flourished in the old coaching days, and that seem to have fallen half asleep since, for the chief concern of such towns was with the road and its traffic, though Atherstone is not so sleepy as most of them are. All that I could discover of any interest in the place was an old milestone set up against the ancient "Red Lion Inn" there; this, curiously enough, stands just one hundred miles respectively from London, Liverpool, and Lincoln, as the following inscriptions on it show:—

A man who was quietly watching me copying these inscriptions, when I had done my copying, exclaimed, "That be a famous old milestone. The drivers of the old coaches as stopped at the inn used always to call their passengers' attention to it." On returning home I looked up in myPatersonfor the name of the chief inn at Atherstone, and found it was "The Red Lion."

It seems strange that to-day, when so much loving regard is shown to the preservation of old houses, and to the careful restoration of them backwards to the intention of their ancient architects, that our many quaint and friendly-looking old coaching inns should have found such few patrons to preserve their fascinating features. Standing by the roadside, how delightfully picturesque they often are, when unaltered and—save the mark!—unimproved. Many, in truth, are poems in buildings (and the term is not strained in regard to them) with their many-gabled, time-toned fronts; their signs often gaily painted, swinging on an upright post without, to proclaim their useful business; their great arched doorways under which the loaded coaches drove and landed their passengers at ease sheltered from the rain and undisturbed, or their ample porches that spoke a welcome as plain as any uttered word. Some are of half-timber and some are of stone. Perhaps those of half-timber are the more picturesque,but nearly all are pleasing to the eye; some, alas! are going to sad decay, such as that fine specimen of an old English roadside hostelry, "The Bell" at Stilton, which used to be both afamous and aflourishing house in its day, and which gave its name to the well-known cheese that the landlord of the time used to sell to his guests—indeed I believe it was considered the thing to buy a cheese at "The Bell" to take home with you. One of these old inns Ashby-Sterry has pictured to us in verse, and well the picture suits many an inn I know:

'Tis a finely-toned, picturesque, sunshiny place,Recalling a dozen old stories,

With a rare, British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face,Suggesting old wines and old Tories.

Ah! many's the magnum of rare crusted port,Of vintage no one could cry fie on,

Has been drunk by good men of the old-fashioned sortAt the Lion.

"The Lion," white or red, was in the past—I am not sure that it is not even to-day—by far and away the favourite sign; "The White Hart," I think, came second. These old inns, both outwardly and inwardly, have suffered sadly from neglect, and from the mania for show that does not spell comfort. Yet when simply, decently cared for, and unaltered, how charming and restful their old-time interiors are with their snug, low, brown-beamed, ceilinged parlours, sometimes panelled and with big ingle-nooks, their mullioned windows with their lattice panes, often deeply recessed with a seat in them, their cool and cosy bars and odd nooks and curious corners. That delightful Jacobean hostelry, "TheWhyte Harte," to wit, at Broadway in Worcestershire, with its genuine old-world atmosphere and quiet comfort, may be given as a good example of one. Some of these old hostelries were provided with a quaint device in the shape of an indoor wind-dial worked by a vane without, so that travellers overnight could judge by it of the next day's possibilities, and learn from the direction of the wind whether it were likely to be hot or cold, wet or fair. One of these interesting and useful indoor wind-dials may still, I believe, be seen in London at the Buckingham Palace Hotel; at least one was there and working but a year or two ago, and I understand that they are being introduced into modern homes. There are still some things we may learn from our ancestors.

At Atherstone I was again on the ancient Watling Street, and I followed it to Daventry as far as it is at present opened out to the south. Again it led me through a lonely country of field and forest, unexciting but very pleasant, a country fragrant with the scent of wild flowers and the refreshing odours of the woods. I did not dally at Daventry, for the little town appeared to me featureless, and finding from my map that Banbury was but sixteen miles away, I thought to spend the night in that place as being of greater interest; moreover, I had recently read in my morning paper an account of the old historic Globe Room there at the "Reindeer Inn," with the further unwelcome information that its fine oak panelling, with its richly carved fireplace and its elaborately enriched plaster ceiling, had allbeen sold and were to be removed, and I wished to see it—if not too late. In this room Cromwell, it is said, held a council of war in October 1642 just before the battle of Edge Hill, so it had (oh, that pathetic word "had"!), besides the charm of its ancient picturesqueness, the additional interest of being with little doubt the place of that historic gathering. Now the fine old room has been gutted. So the "vast museum" of England is being despoiled! Whatever were the citizens of Banbury about to permit of such a thing; could they not have subscribed the price demanded for the panelling and decorative work (comparatively a paltry sum when divided amongst so many), and have retained that beautiful, historic, and ancient room intact? You cannot replace or purchase history. Even taking the meanest, most commercial view of the transaction, surely it would have well repaid the town to have bought and to have preserved that fine old chamber so intimately associated with Banbury, for I know it brought many tourists from afar to see it, some from even across the wide Atlantic; now perhaps they will not desire to go to Banbury and spend their money there, for it has little else but some ancient houses to show. Years ago the iconoclastic Banbury folk pulled down their exceptionally fine and interesting old church, "one of the most magnificent in the shire," even destroying its fine monuments, to save the little needed to keep it and them in repair, to say nothing of having done away with their "goodly crosse" of nursery renown, though a later generation has replaced itwith a poor and meaningless substitute. What child would now "ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross"? It is not worth riding to or talking about.

But I am a little previous, not having arrived at Banbury yet; our road to that town was either up or down hill all the way, but there was nothing to grumble at in this, for the scenery was rewarding and the motor had to do the climbing. At the top of one hill we came upon a lonely old windmill going to decay, its gaunt arms standing darkly profiled against the sky and shaking with every gust of wind. It had a weird and haunted look, though I never heard of a mill being haunted; precisely what is it, I wonder, that gives certain buildings such an uncanny look? There must really have been some magic about that mill, for I photographed it and only got a ghostly result on my film. I have never seen a ghost, but to my astonishment three intelligent people have declared, and positively declared, to me that they have done so. A little later will be found a reference to this matter. Now a ghost is a visible object and ought to be capable of being photographed: what would I not give to see a genuine photograph of a ghost! When next I sleep in a haunted room I must take my camera with me on the off chance of a ghost appearing, so that I may snap him! Though I fear my chances are but slight, for I have slept in haunted rooms where other people are reported to have seen "things," but saw nothing—not even in my dreams, which were undisturbed. Why will "things" appear to others and not to me?

Years gone by, and not so many years either, you might from one spot have seen half a dozen or more windmills busily at work where now by chance you may see one; and in those past years you might have seen farmers' waggons slowly wending their way to the mill loaded with sacks of corn to be ground, or wending their way back white with fat sacks of flour. Now, except possibly in some parts of Sussex, to see a windmill with its hurtling sails is a rare sight. Grieved indeed am I that it should be so, for as a child I dearly loved the merry bickering windmill—what child does not? Now I have grown to man's estate I have not lost the old love of the sight of one. There is something very cheery and fascinating in watching the mill sails whirling round and round in their never-completed journey, now grey in shade, now white in the glance of the sun. But I sadly fear the dear old picturesque windmill is doomed, unless the manufactured article flour, not the raw material wheat, is taxed. I am no politician—I think I have said so already—for in an age when it seems to me, to misquote Macaulay, "all are for the party and none are for the State," the business of politics, as one of the Georges, I forget now which, remarked, "is not to my fancy." I preach neither free trade nor tariff reform; I have not studied the question, and I do not profess to know the facts of the case without study, as some people do—even members of Parliament who vote for their party right or wrong; it would probably cost them their seat and four hundred golden sovereigns a year if they did otherwise. But thisI know, for I have tested it, that stone-ground flour produced by the old-fashioned windmill is infinitely sweeter, more nutritious, and more wholesome than the foreign roller-mill flour that is so starchy, "hence the present-day indigestion and the decay of teeth." Then, again, there is the fact, of which some clever people lose sight, that by importing flour and not wheat to grind at home we lose the valuable asset of "waste" as a fattening food for fowls, pigs, and cattle.

The village of Charwelton was the only one on the way of which I retain a memory, and this I remember on account of a fine and very old two-arched Gothic bridge of stone there by the side of, and parallel to, the road, manifestly intended only for foot passengers, so narrow is it, a carriage bridge in miniature, so solidly built and buttressed as though it spanned a rushing river and had to resist its strivings. Now the road was dry and no water flowed under the bridge; I could only presume that water had once flowed there. So I asked a man, who was idly standing by, about it. "The road be flooded in the winter time," said he, "and then us use the bridge. The water be quite deep at times and the horses on the road have to ford it. That bridge be seven hundred years old, they do say." It looked it. He appeared inclined to talk, so I let him, not knowing what might be coming. "It's a slow place Charwelton be," he went on, "there's no getting away from that. The church be a mile away from the village, and that don't encourage you to go to it. You see, the place were badlyknocked about during the war, so I suppose they built a new village here, and let the church bide there." He spoke of "the war" as though it were of recent date; I was mystified, till I discovered he meant the Civil Wars when Charles I. was fighting for his crown!

I noticed nothing further on the way to Banbury but a big mounting-block of stone standing by a grassy margin of the road, an interesting survival, and a somewhat unusual thing to see, so I stopped to inspect it, and on it I discovered inscribed—

Thomas High of WardenSet up this. Ivly, 1659.

It is still there to keep green the memory of this Thomas High, though I should imagine that few ever read the inscription or make use of the stone. I wonder why he put it up in that lonely spot, where, even in the old days, few people would be likely to need it. Now you rarely see a horseman on the road unless it be a huntsman; I doubt if the mounting-block has been used for these fifty years back.

At Banbury I went to the "White Lion"; there was also, I afterwards found, a "Red Lion" in the same street, a cosy-looking hostelry with an ancient front of the fifteenth century that appealed to me. InPaterson's RoadsI note both these inns mentioned as existing in the coaching days. The "Red Lion" is the more picturesque of the two, but I was very comfortable at the "White." During the evening I hunted up mine host and inquired of him about theGlobe Room. Alas! I had come too late to see it, for he told me that it had already been stripped of its panelling, its finely carved oak fireplace removed, its enriched plaster ceiling had been taken down, and all these had been carted away. I felt provoked with the Banbury people; I told the landlord so. I do not think I shall ever stay in Banbury again. I learnt of one curious and interesting find that had been made in the room. On pulling down the panelling there had been discovered hidden behind it a double-barrelled pistol with flint locks; the pistol was inlaid with gold and had the maker's name, "Baker, London," engraved upon it, and above the name the Prince of Wales's feathers. The pistol bears the following inscription: "Presented to Dick Turpin at the White Bear Inn, Drury-lane, February 7th, 1735." How came it there, I wonder, and who presented it to that famous highwayman? Of the genuineness of the pistol I think there can be but little doubt. Dick Turpin, it may be remembered, was hanged at York on 7th April 1739, four years after the pistol was presented to him. Writing of Dick Turpin reminds me of the myth of his renowned ride to York that Harrison Ainsworth in hisRookwoodromanced about; now the credit of this surprising exploit really belongs to another of the fraternity, one Nick Nevison, of earlier time; this knight of the road robbed a traveller at Gad's Hill in Kent one morning at 4A.M., and furiously riding on to York reached that city at 8P.M.on the evening of the same day, and so established an alibi and saved his neck, at leaston that occasion. The skeleton of a poor unfortunate cat was also found behind the panelling; I wonder if it was that of the historic cat that was hanged as recorded by Drunken Barnaby?

To Banbury came I, O prophane-One!Where I saw a Puritane-OneHanging of his cat on Monday,For killing of a mouse on Sunday.

The landlord of "The White Lion," a pattern of civility, called my attention to "the famous wistaria" that is trained along the walls of the outbuildings of his ancient inn. This wistaria, he informed me, was the largest and finest in the kingdom, its branches extending for over two hundred feet. He was manifestly proud of it, and I duly admired it, but I had seen many fine wistarias before; I would rather have seen the Globe Room. There is little or nothing now left in Banbury to tempt the pilgrim to linger there. So I took my departure the next morning, and that early.

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