A STRANGER IN OUR GATES
When that simple-minded German, Pastor Moritz, who visited England towards the close of last century, grew tired of London, he determined, he says, to visit Derbyshire; and, making the necessarypreparations for his excursion, set out on June 21, 1782, for Richmond, though why he should have gone to Richmonden routefor Derbyshire is difficult to understand. He took with him four guineas, some linen, and a book of the roads, together with a map and a pocket-book, and (for he had his appreciations) a copy of “Paradise Lost.”
Thus equipped, he enjoyed for the first time what he calls the “luxury of being driven in an English stage,” from which expression and our own people’s doleful tales of eighteenth-century travelling in England, we may infer that the public conveyances of the Pastor’s native land were particularly bad. The English coaches were, according to him, viewing them with the eye of a foreigner, “quite elegant.” This particular one was lined in the inside, and had two seats large enough to accommodate six persons; “but it must be owned,” he goes on to say, “that when the carriage was full the company was rather crowded.” By which we may gather that the seats rather discommoded than accommodated.
The only passenger at first was an elderly lady, but presently the coach was filled with other dames, who appeared to be a little acquainted with one another, and conversed, as our traveller thought, in a very insipid and tiresome manner. Fortunately, he had his road-book handy, and so took refuge in its pages by marking his route.
The coach stopped at Kensington, where a Jew would have taken a seat, but that luxurious conveyance was full inside, and the Israelite was too proud to take a place amongst the half-price outsiders onthe roof. This naturally annoyed the travellers, for they thought it preposterous that a Jew should be ashamed to ride on the outside. They thought he should have been grateful for being allowed to ride on any side in any way, since he was but a Jew. In this connection Mr. Moritz takes occasion to observe that the riding upon the roof of a coach is a curious practice. Persons to whom it was not convenient to pay full price sat outside, without any seats, or even a rail. By what means passengers thus fastened themselves securely on the roofs of those vehicles he knew not, but he constantly saw numbers seated there, at their ease, and apparently with perfect safety.
On this occasion the outsiders, of whom there were six, made such a noise and bustle when the insiders alighted, as to almost frighten them, and I suspect the ladies were rendered horribly nervous by the only other man who rode inside the coach recounting to them all kinds of stories about robbers and footpads who had committed many crimes hereabouts. However, as this entertaining companion insisted, the English robbers were possessed of a superior honour as compared with the French: the former robbed only; the latter both robbed and murdered, doubtless on the principle of that classic proverb which assures us that dead men tell no tales.
THE HIERARCHY OF THIEVES
“Notwithstanding this,” says our traveller, “there are in England another species of villains, who also murder, and that oftentimes for the merest trifles, of which they rob the person murdered. These are called footpads, and are the lowest class of Englishrogues, amongst whom, in general, there reigns something like some regard to character.
“The highest order of thieves (!) are the pickpockets or cutpurses, whom you find everywhere, and sometimes even in the best companies. They are generally well and handsomely dressed, so that you take them to be persons of condition; as indeed may sometimes be the case—persons who by extravagance and excesses have reduced themselves to want, and find themselves obliged at last to have recourse to pilfering and thieving.
“Next to them come the highwaymen, who rob on horseback, and often, they say, even with unloaded pistols, they terrify travellers in order to put themselves in possession of their purses. Among these persons, however, there are instances of true greatness of soul; there are numberless instances of their returning a large part of their booty where the party robbed has appeared to be particularly distressed, and they are seldom guilty of murder.
“Then comes the third and lowest and worst of all thieves and rogues, the footpads before mentioned, who are on foot, and often murder in the most inhuman manner, for the sake of only a few shillings, any unfortunate people who happen to fall in their way.”
The coach arrived, one is glad to say, unharmed at Richmond, despite forebodings of disaster; but the pirates on board (so to speak) demanded another shilling of the Pastor, although he had already paid one at starting.
At Richmond he stayed the night, and in theevening he took a walk out of the town, to Richmond Hill and the Terrace, where his feelings during the few enraptured minutes that he stood there seemed impossible for his pen to describe. One of his first sensations was chagrin and sorrow for the days wasted in London, and he vented a thousand bitter reproaches on his irresolution in not quitting that huge dungeon long before, to come here and spend his time in paradise.
The landlady of the inn was so noted for the copiousness and the loudness of her talking to the servants that our traveller could not get to sleep until it was very late; but, notwithstanding this, he was up by three o’clock the next morning to see the sun rise over Richmond Hill. Alas! alas! the lazy servants, who cared nothing for such sights, did not arise till six o’clock, when he rushed out, only to be disappointed at finding the sky overcast.
And now, having finished his breakfast, he seized his staff, his only companion, and proceeded to set forth on foot. Unfortunately, however, a traveller in this wise seemed to be considered as a sort of wild man or eccentric creature, who was stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by all. There were carriages without number on the road, and they occasioned a troublesome and disagreeable dust, and when he sat down in a hedge to read Milton, the people who rode or drove past stared at him with astonishment, and made significant gestures, as who should say, “This is a poor devil with a deranged head,” so singular did it appear to them that a man should sit beside the public highway and read books.
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Then, when he again resumed his journey, the coachmen who drove by called out now and again to ask him if he would not ride on the outside of their coaches; and the farmers riding past on horseback said, with an air of pity, “’Tis warm walking, sir;” and, more than all, as he passed through the villages, every old woman would come to her door and cry pitifully, “Good God!”
And so he came to Windsor, where, as he entered an inn and desired to have something to eat, the countenances of the waiters soon gave him to understand that they thought our pedestrian little, if anything, better than a beggar. In this contemptuous manner they served him, but, to do them justice, they allowed him to pay like a gentleman. “Perhaps,” says Pastor Moritz, “this was the first time these pert, be-powdered puppies had ever been called on to wait on a poor devil who entered the place on foot.” To add to this indignity, they showed him into a bedroom which more resembled a cell for malefactors than aught else, and when he desired a better room, told him, with scant ceremony, to go back to Slough. This, by the way, was at the “Christopher,” at Eton. Crossing the bridge into Windsor again, he found himself opposite the Castle, and at the gates of a very capital inn, with several officers and persons of distinction going in and out. Here the landlord received him with civility, but the chambermaid who conducted him to his room did nothing but mutter and grumble. After an evening walk he returned, at peace with all men; but the waiters received him gruffly, and the chambermaid,dropping a half-curtsey, informed him, with a sneering laugh, that he might go and look for another bedroom, for the one she had by mistake shown him was already engaged. He protested so loudly at this that the landlord, who was a good soul, surely, came, and with great courtesy desired another room to be shown him, which, however, contained another bed.
Underneath was the tap-room, from which ascended the ribaldries and low conversation of some objectionable people who were drinking and singing songs down there, and scarcely had he dropped off to sleep before the fellow who was to sleep in the other bed came stumbling into the room. After colliding with the Pastor’s bed, he found his own, and got into it without the tiresome formality of removing boots and clothes.
The next morning the Pastor prepared to depart, needlessly annoyed by that eternal feminine—the grumbling chambermaid, who informed him that on no account should he sleep another night there. As he was going away, the surly waiter placed himself on the stairs, saying, “Pray remember the waiter,” and when in receipt of the three-halfpence which our traveller bestowed, he cursed that inoffensive German with the heartiest imprecations. At the door stood the maid, saying, “Pray remember the chambermaid.” “Yes, yes,” says the Pastor (a worm will turn), “I shall long remember your most ill-mannered behaviour,” and so gave her nothing.
Through Slough he went, by Salt Hill, to Maidenhead. At Salt Hill, which could hardly be called a village, he saw a barber’s shop. For putting his hairin order, and for the luxury of a shave, that unconscionable barber charged one shilling.
Between Salt Hill and Maidenhead, this very much contemned pedestrian met with a very disagreeable adventure. Hitherto he had scarcely met a single foot-passenger, whilst coaches without number rolled every moment past him; for few roads were so crowded as was the Bath Road at this time.
THE PASTOR AND THE FOOTPAD
In one place the road led along a low, sunken piece of ground, between high trees, so that one could see but a little way ahead, and just here a fellow in a brown frock and round hat, with an immense stick in his hand, came up to him. His countenance was suspicious. He passed, but immediately turned back and demanded a halfpenny to buy bread, for he had eaten nothing (so he said) that day.
The Pastor felt in his pocket, but could find nothing less than a shilling. Very imprudently, I should say, he informed the beggar of that fact, and begged to be excused.
“God bless my soul!” said the beggar, which pious invocation so frightened our timid friend that he, having due regard to the big stick and the brawny hand that held it, gave the beggar a shilling. Meanwhile a coach came past, and the fellow thanked him and went on his way. If the coach had come past sooner, he “would not,” he says, “so easily have given him the shilling, which, God knows, I could not well spare. Whether a footpad or not, I will not pretend to say; but he had every appearance of it.”
And so this unfortunate traveller marches off to the Oxford Road, and we are no longer concerned with him.
A fine broad gravel stretch of highway is that which, on leaving Salt Hill, takes us gently down in the direction of the Thames, which the Bath Road crosses, over Maidenhead Bridge. The distance is four miles, with no villages, and but few scattered houses, on the way. Two miles and one mile respectively before the Bridge is reached are the wayside inns, called “Two Mile Brook” and “One Mile House.” Near this last is the beautiful grouping of roadside elms, sketched in the accompanying illustration, “An English Road.” Half a mile onward, the Great Western Railway crosses the road by a skew-bridge, and runs into Taplow station. Taplow village lies quite away from the road, but has an outpost, as it were, in the old, with the curious sign of the “Dumb Bell.” Beyond this, the intervening stretch of road as far as Maidenhead Bridge is lined with villas standing in extensive grounds. Here the traveller renews his acquaintance with the Thames, and passes over a fine stone bridge, built in 1772, from Bucks to Berks. This bridge succeeded a crazy timber structure, which itself had several predecessors. It is one of these early bridges that is mentioned in the declaration of a hermit who obtained a licence to settle here and collect alms. Such roadside hermits were common in the Middle Ages. They were licensed by the Bishop of their diocese, and were often useful in keeping bridges and highways in good order; the alms theyreceived being, indeed, very much in the nature of voluntary tolls for these services. On the following declaration, Richard Ludlow obtained his licence:—
AN EARLY TOLL-KEEPER
“In the name of God, Amen. I, Richard Ludlow, before God and you my Lord Bishop of Salisbury, and in presence of all these worshipful men here being, offer up my profession of hermit under this form: that I, Richard, will be obedient to Holy Church; that I will lead my life, to my life’s end, in sobriety and chastity; will avoid all open spectacles, taverns, and other such places; that I will every day hear mass, and say every day certain Paternosters and Aves: that I will fast every Friday, the vigils of Pentecost and All Hallows, on bread and water. And the goods that I may get by free gift of Christian people, or by bequest, or testament, or by any reasonable and true way, receiving only necessaries to my sustenance, as in meat, drink, clothing, and fuel, I shall truly, without deceit, lay out upon reparation and amending of the bridge and of the common way belonging to ye same town of Maidenhead.”
AN ENGLISH ROAD.
There is, perhaps, no more delightful picture along the whole course of the Bath Road than the view from Maidenhead Bridge up river, where the house-boats, gay with flowers and Japanese lanterns, are gathered beside the trim lawns of the riverside villas, with the gaily dressed crowds by Boulter’s Lock beyond, and the wooded heights of Clieveden closing in the distance. Maidenhead shows the river at its most fashionable part.
It was at the “Greyhound” Inn, Maidenhead,that the unhappy Charles the First bade farewell to his children, July 16, 1647. He was in charge of his Roundhead captors at Caversham, and had been allowed to come over for two days. The Prince of Wales was abroad, but the Duke of York, then fifteen years of age; the Princess Elizabeth, two years younger; and the seven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, were brought to him. The affecting scene is said to have drawn tears even from Cromwell.
Maidenhead Bridge—the wooden one which preceeded the present structure—might have been the scene of a desperate encounter, but happened instead to have witnessed an equally desperate and farcical devil-take-the-hindmost flight on the part of the Irish soldiers of James the Second, who were posted here to dispute the passage of the Thames with the advancing forces of William of Orange.
The November night had shrouded the river and the country side, when the sound of drums beating a Dutch march was heard. The soldiers, who had no heart in their work, did not remain to defend that strategic point, and bolted. They would have discovered, if they had kept their posts, that the martial music which lent them such agility was produced by the townsfolk of Maidenhead, who, in spite of that national crisis, appear to have been merry blades.
The “Bear” was the principal inn at Maidenhead in the coaching era, and owed much of its prosperity to the unwillingness of travellers who carried considerable sums of money with them to cross Maidenhead Thicket at night. They slept peacefully at the “Bear,” and resumed the roads in the morning, when the highwaymen were in hiding.
MAIDENHEAD THICKET
Maidenhead Thicket is really a long avenue lining the highway two miles from that town. It is a beautiful and romantic place, but its beauties were not apparent to travellers in days of old. The sinister reputation of the spot goes back for hundreds of years, and may be said to have arisen from the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Reading Abbey was despoiled. To that Abbey had resorted many hundreds of poor, certain of finding relief at its gates, and when its hospitality had become a thing of the past, these dependents simply infested the neighbourhood, and either begged or stole. As a chronicler of that time quaintly said: “There is great stoare of stout vagabonds and maysterless men (able enough for labour) which do great hurt in the country by their idle and naughtie life.” In those times the Hundreds were liable for any robberies committed within their boundaries; and in 1590 the Hundred of Benhurst, in which Maidenhead Thicket is situated, had actually to pay £255 compensation for highway robberies committed here. In fact, Maidenhead Thicket had for a long time an unenviablereputation for highway robberies, with or without violence, and the desperadoes had so little care whom they robbed that not even the Vicars of Hurley, who came over to officiate at Maidenhead once a week, were safe. This was so fully recognized that the Vicars of Hurley used to draw an annual £50 extra on account of their risks.
In later years a farmer, whose name was Cannon, was stopped one night on driving from Reading market. Two footpads compelled him to give up the well-filled money-bag he carried with him, and then let him go, consumed with impotent rage at his helplessness and the loss of his money.
Suddenly, however, he remembered that he had with him, under the seat of the gig, a reaping-hook which he had brought back from being mended at Reading. That recollection brought him a bright idea. Turning his gig round, he drove back to the spot where he had been robbed, by a back way. As he had supposed, the ruffians were still there, waiting for more plunder. In the dark they took the farmer for a new-comer, until he had got to close quarters with his reaping-hook, which they mistook for a cutlass. The end of the encounter was that one footpad was left for dead, and the other took to his heels. The farmer searched the fallen foe and found his money-bag, together, it was said, with other spoils, which he promptly annexed, and drove off rejoicing.
MAIDENHEAD THICKET.
After these tales of derring-do and robustious encounters, the story of the road becomes comparatively tame as it goes on and passes through Twyford and Reading.
THE “BELL AND BOTTLE” SIGN.
“BELL AND BOTTLE”
At the western end of Maidenhead Thicket, where, lying modestly back from the road, stands one of the innumerable “Coach and Horses” of the highway, the gossips of the adjacent Littlewick Green foregather and play bowls on the grass. Then comes Knowl Hill, where an old sign, swinging romantically from a wayside fir tree, proclaims the proximity of a curiously named inn, the “Bell and Bottle.” What affinity have bells for bottles, or bottles for bells? “What,” as the poet asks (in quite a different connection), “is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?” But perhaps the original innkeeper was something of a cynic, and thus paraphrased the well-worn conjunction, “Beer and Bible.” Unfortunately for the inquiring stranger, the origin is “wrop in mistry.”
Down below Knowl Hill, past a chalk quarry on the right, is yet another inn—the neat and pretty “Seven Stars,” to be succeeded at the hamlet of Kiln Green by the “Horse and Groom,” gabled and embowered with vines, and facing up, not fronting, the road, in quite the ideal fashion. What the country here lacks in bold scenery it evidently gains in fertility, for the gardens of Kiln Green are a delightful mass of luxuriant flowers.
The road through Hare Hatch to Twyford is flat and uninteresting. Twyford itself, an ancient place on the little river Loddon, is losing its antique character, from being the scene of much building activity. An old almshouse remains on the right hand, with the inscription, “Domino et pauperibus, 1640.”
The five miles between Twyford and Reading exhibit the gradual degeneracy of a country road approaching a large town; as regards the scenery, that is to say. The quality of the road surface remains excellent, and the width is generous—a circumstance probably owing to the especial widening carried out so far back as 1255, in consequence of the dangerous state of the highway, which was then narrow and bordered by dense woods wherein lurked all manner of evildoers.
Three miles from the town, and continuing for the length of a mile, is a pleasant avenue of trees. The deep Sonning Cutting on the Great Western Railway is then crossed, and the suburbs of Biscuit Town presently encountered.
“The run to Reading,” I learn from a cycling paper, “constitutes a pleasant morning’s spin from London.” I should like to call up one of our great-grandfathers who travelled these thirty-nine miles painfully by coach, and read that paragraph to him.
BISCUITS, SEEDS, AND SAUCE
Reading numbers over 60,000 inhabitants, andis rapidly adding to them. This prosperity proceeds from several causes, Reading being—
“’Mongst other things, so widely known,For biscuits, seeds, and sauce.”
The town, of course, stands for biscuits in the minds of most people, and the names of Huntley and Palmer have become household words, somewhat eclipsing Cock’s Reading Sauce, and the seeds of Sutton’s; while few people outside Reading are cognizant of its great engineering industries. So much for modern Reading, whose principal hero is George Palmer.
PALMER’S STATUE.
Mr. George Palmer, whose death occurred in 1897, enjoyed the distinction of having a statue erected to him during his lifetime, an unusual honour which he shared with few others—Queen Victoria, the great Duke of Wellington, Lord Roberts, Reginald, Earl of Devon, and, of course, Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Palmer’s fellow-townsmen elected to honour him in this way, and decided to have a statue which should be in every way true to life, and show the man “in his habit as he lived”—one in which the clothes should be as characteristic as the features. Our grandfathers would have represented him wrapped in a Roman toga, but those notions do not commend themselves to the present age, and so the effigy stands in all thesupremelyun-decorative guise of everyday dress: homely coat, and trousers excruciatingly baggy at the knees; bareheaded, and in one hand a silk hat and an unfolded umbrella. This is possibly the only instance in which these last necessary, but unlovely articles have been reproduced in bronze.
Ancient Reading knew nothing of biscuits or sauces. It was the home of one of the very greatest Abbeys in England. The Abbot of Reading ranked next after those of Westminster and Glastonbury, and usually held important offices of State. In the Abbey, Parliaments have been held, Royal marriages celebrated, and Kings and Queens laid to rest. Yet of all this grandeur no shred is left. There are ruins; but, formless and featureless as they are, they cannot recall to the eye anything of the architectural glories of the past, and the bones of the Kings have for centuries been scattered no man knows whither.
There are pleasant stories of Reading, and gruesome ones. Horrible was the fate of Hugh Faringdon, the last Abbot, who was, in 1539, with one of his monks, hanged, drawn and quartered for denying the religious supremacy of that royal wild beast, Henry the Eighth. The King had been friendly with him not so long before, and had presented him with a silver cup, as a token of this friendship.
THE KING AND THE ABBOT
One wonders if this unfortunate prelate was the same person as that Abbot of Reading mentioned by Fuller. The Abbot of that story was a man particularly fond of what have been gracefully termed the “pleasures of the table.” His eyes, as the Psalmist puts it, “swelled out with fatness,”—andhis stomach, too, for that matter. To him came one day a hungry stranger, fresh from the appetizing sport of hunting. He had lost his way, and craved the hospitality of the Abbey. That hospitality was extended to him, promptly enough, and he was seated at the Abbot’s own table.
It will readily be guessed that this hungry stranger was the King. He had wandered thus far, away from Windsor Forest and his attendants, and was genuinely famished. The Abbot, however, had no notion who he was; but he could see that this strayed huntsman was a very prince among good trencher-men, and envied him accordingly. “Well fare thy heart,” said he, as he saw the roast beef disappearing; “I would give an hundred pounds could I feed so lustily on beef as you do. Alas! my weak and squeezie stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken.”
The King took the compliment and more beef, and, pledging his host, departed. Some weeks after, when the Abbot had quite forgotten all about the matter, he was sent for, clapped into the Tower, and kept, a miserable prisoner—not knowing what his offence might be, or what would befall him next—on bread and water. At length one day a sirloin of beef was placed before him, and he made such short work of it as to prove to the King, who was secretly watching him, that his treatment for “squeezie stomach” had succeeded admirably; so, springing out of the cupboard in which he had secreted himself, “My lord,” says he, “deposit presently your hundred pounds in gold, or else you go not hence all the days of your life. Ihave been your physician to cure you, and here, as I deserve, I demand my fee for the same.”
The Abbot was enlightened. He, as Fuller says, “down with his dust, and, glad he escaped so, returned to Reading, as somewhat lighter in purse, so much more merry in heart, than when he came thence.”
Little remains at Reading to tell of the coaching age. Where are the “Bear,” the “George,” the “Crown”? Gone, with their jovial guests, into the limbo of forgotten things, almost as thoroughly as the civilization of Roman Calleva—the Silchester of modern times—situated at some distance down the road from Reading to Basingstoke, and whose relics may be seen gathered together in the Reading Museum. To that collection should be added a set of articles used in the everyday business of coaching. They would be just as curious to-day as those Roman potsherds of a thousand years ago.
The Bath Road climbs, with some show of steepness, out of Reading, presently to enter upon that stretch of nearly seventeen miles of comparatively flat sandy gravel road which, for speed cycling, is the best part of the whole journey. The surface is nearly always splendid, save in very dry seasons, when the sand renders the going somewhat heavy, and the cyclist may well be surprised to learn that it was here, between Reading and Newbury, that Pepys andhis wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way, entirely through the badness of the roads.
THE STAGE WAGGON. (After Rowlandson.)
THE “BERKSHIRE LADY”
In spite of these modern advantages, the road is quite suburban and uninteresting until Calcot Green is passed, in two miles and a half. But it is here, amid the pleasant, though tame, scenery that Calcot Park, the home of the famous “Berkshire Lady,” may be sought.
The “Berkshire Lady” was the daughter of Sir William Kendrick, of Calcot, who flourished in the reign of Queen Anne. Upon the death of her father, she became sole heiress to the estate and an income of some five thousand pounds per annum. Rich, beautiful, and endowed with a vivacious manner, it is not surprising that she was courted by all the vinous, red-faced young squires in the neighbourhood; but she refused these offers until, according to an old ballad—
“Being at a noble weddingIn the famous town of Reading,A young gentleman she sawWho belonged to the law.”
We may shrewdly suspect that she not only “saw” him, but that they indulged in a desperate flirtation in the conservatory, or what may have answered to a conservatory in those times.
The “Berkshire Lady” was evidently a New Woman, born very much in advance of her proper era. For what did she do? Why, she fell in love with that “young gentleman” straight away, and so furiously that nothing would suffice her but tosend him an anonymous challenge to fight a duel or to marry her.
Benjamin Child—for that was the name of the young and briefless (and also impecunious) barrister—was astonished at receiving a challenge from no one in particular; but, accompanied by a friend, proceeded to the rendezvous appointed by the unknown in Calcot Park. Arrived there, they perceived a masked lady, with a rapier, who informed the pair that she was the challenger:—
“‘It was I that did invite you:You shall wed me, or I’ll fight you,So now take your choice,’ said she;‘Either fight, or marry me.’Says he, ‘Madam, pray what mean ye?In my life I ne’er have seen ye;Pray unmask, your visage show,Then I’ll tell you, aye or no.’”
The lady, however, would not unmask:—
“‘I will not my face uncover,Till the marriage rites are over;Therefore take you which you will,Wed me, sir, or try your skill.’”
The friend advised Benjamin Child, Esq., to take his chance of her being poor and pretty, or rich and—plain (those being the usually accepted conjunctions), and to marry her, which he accordingly promised to do. He had a reward for his moral courage, for the lady unmasked and disclosed herself as the beautiful unknown with whom he had flirted at the wedding. That they “lived happily ever afterwards” we need find no difficulty in believing.
THEALE.
Many stories were current locally of this Mr. Child.One, in particular (certainly not a romantic one), related his great fondness for oysters, of which he was in the habit of consuming large quantities; in fact, he is said to have kept a museum of the tubs emptied by him, for one room in Calcot House was fitted round with shelves, upon which these empty mementos were arranged in regular order. It was his humour to show his friends this unique arrangement as a convincing proof of his capabilities in that particular branch of good living.
Upon the death of his wife, Calcot became unbearable to him, and he sold it. But, curiously enough, nothing could induce him to quit the house, and the new proprietor was reduced to rendering it uninhabitable to him by unroofing it. Mr. Child then retired to a small cottage in an adjoining wood, where he spent the rest of his days in retirement.
The Kendrick vault in the church of St. Mary, Reading, was exposed to view in 1820, when, among the numerous coffins found, was one bearing the inscription, “Frances Child, wife of Benjamin Child, of Calcot, first daughter of Sir W. Kendrick, died 1722, aged 35.” The coffin was of lead, and was moulded to the form of the body, even to the lineaments of the face. Mr. Child was the last person buried in this vault. His coffin, of unusually large dimensions, is dated 1767.
THEALE
Two and a half miles from Calcot Green, and we are at Theale, a village prettily embowered among trees, but possessing a large and extraordinarily bad “Carpenter’s Gothic” church, built about 1840, which looks quite charming at the distance of a quarter ofa mile, but has been known to afflict architects who have made its close acquaintance with hopeless melancholia. In fine, Theale church is a horrid example of Early Victorian imitation of the Early English style.
And now the road wanders sweetly between the green and pleasant levels beside the sedgy Kennet. Road, rail, river, and canal run side by side, or but slightly parted, for miles, past Woolhampton and the decayed town of Thatcham, to Newbury, and so on to Hungerford.
A short mile before reaching Woolhampton, there stands, on the left-hand side of the road, quite lonely, a wayside inn, the “Rising Sun,” a relic of coaching times. They still show one, in the parlour, the old booking-office in which parcels were received for the old road-waggons that plied with luggage between London and Bath, and talk of the days when the house used to own stabling for forty horses. A larger inn is the “Angel,” at Woolhampton, with a most elaborate iron sign, from which depends a little carved figure of a vine-crowned Bacchus, astride his barrel, carved forty years ago by a wood-carver engaged on the restoration of Woolhampton Church. Tramps and other travellers unacquainted with the classics generally take this vinous heathen god to be a representation of the Angel after whom the inn was named.
WOOLHAMPTON.
Woolhampton, once blessed with two “Angels,” has now but one, for what was once known as the “Upper Angel” has been re-named the “Falmouth Arms.” Although Woolhampton village possesses a railwaystation on the Hants and Berks branch of the Great Western Railway, travellers will look in vain for the name of it in their railway guides. If they will refer to “Midgham,” however, they will have found it under another title. Originally called by the name of the village, it was found that passengers and luggage frequently lost their way here in mistake for Wolverhampton, also on the Great Western, and so the name had to be changed.
THATCHAM.
THATCHAM
Three and a half miles from Woolhampton comes Thatcham, famed in the coaching age for its “King’s Head” inn, but now a decayed market town which has sunk to the status of a very dull village. A battered stone, all that remains of a market cross, stands in the middle of the wide, deserted street, enclosed by a circular seat, bearing an inscription recounting the history of the market, and the kinglyprotection which Henry the Third afforded the place against the “Newbury men.” But, kingly help notwithstanding, the “Newbury men” have long since snatched its trade away from Thatcham, which has become a village, while Newbury has grown to be a town of 20,000 inhabitants. The only interesting object in the long street is Thatcham Chapel, an isolated Perpendicular building, purchased for 10s.by Lady Frances Winchcombe in 1707. She presented it to a Blue Coat school which she founded in the village.
Newbury, the “hated rival,” is three miles down the road. Within a mile of it in coaching times, but now not to be distinguished from the town itself, is Speenhamland, the site of that famous coaching inn, the “Pelican,” whose charges were of so monumental a character that Quin has immortalized them in the lines:—
“The famous inn at Speenhamland,That stands beneath the hill,May well be called the Pelican,From its enormous bill.”
Alas! how are the mighty fallen! The Pelican is no longer an inn, but has been divided up, and part of it is a veterinary establishment.
RAIL AND RIVER: THE KENNET AND THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.
THOMAS STACKHOUSE
The most famous inhabitant of Newbury was that fifteenth-century clothier, that “Jack of Newbury,”whose wealth and public benefactions were alike considered wonderful in his day. The most notorious inhabitant was that scandalous Vicar of Beenham Vallance, near by, who flourished flamboyantly here between 1733 and 1752. Candour compels the admission that the Rev. Thomas Stackhouse, besides being the learned author of the “History of the Bible,” was also a great drunkard. That history, indeed, he chiefly wrote at an inn still standing on the Bath Road near Thatcham, called “Jack’s Booth.” He would stay there for days at a time, and write (and drink), in an arbour in the garden, going frequently from this retreat to his church on Sundays, where, in the pulpit, he would break into incoherent prayers and maudlin tears, asking forgiveness for his besetting sin, and promising reformation of his evil courses. But after service he was generally to be seen going back to his inn. Here one day a friend found him and reminded him that it was the day of the Bishop’s Visitation, a circumstance which he had quite forgotten. He went off, clothed disgracefully, and by no means sober. “Who,” asked the Bishop, indignantly, on seeing this strange creature—“who is that shabby, dirty old man?” The vicar answered the query himself. “I am,” he shouted, “Thomas Stackhouse, Vicar of Beenham, who wrote the ‘History of the Bible,’ and that is more than your lordship can do!” The historian of these things says this reply quite upset the gravity of the solemn meeting; and the statement may well be believed.
Camden says, “Newburie must acknowledge Speen as its mother,” and Newbury, in fact, was originallyan offshoot from Speen, which was anciently a fortified Roman settlement in the tangled underwoods of the wild country between the Roman cities of Aquæ Solis and Calleva (Bath and Silchester). The Romans called it “Spinæ,”i.e.“the Thorns,” a sufficiently descriptive title in that era. The Domesday Book calls it “Spone.” The fact of Speen having been the original settlement may be partly traced in the circumstance of its lying directly on the old road, while Newbury, its infinitely bigger daughter, sprawls out on the Whitchurch and Andover roads, which run from the Bath Road almost at right angles.
There are quaint houses at Newbury, and old inns; some of them, like the “Globe” or the “King’s Arms,” converted into shops or private houses, while others perhaps do a brisker trade in drink than in good cheer of the more hospitable sort. There are the “White Hart,” and the “Jack of Newbury,” with a modern front, and others. The Kennet divides the town in half, and runs under a bridge which carries the street across its narrow width, bordered with quaint-looking houses. Here is the old Cloth Hall, a singular building, neglected now that the weaving trade has decayed; and on the west side of the bridge stands the parish church with a small brass in it to the memory of the great “Jack,” and a very economical monument to a certain “J.W.C.,” 1692, just roughly carved into the stonework of a buttress at the east end.
AT THE 55TH MILESTONE.
INSCRIPTION.NEWBURY CHURCH.
It is strange to think that only twenty-seven years ago (in 1872, as a matter of fact), at Newbury, a rag and bone dealer who for several years had been wellknown in the town as a man of intemperate habits, and upon whom imprisonment in Reading Gaol had failed to produce any beneficial effect, was fixed in the stocks for drunkenness and disorderly conduct at Divine service in the parish church. Twenty-six years had elapsed since the stocks had last been used, and their reappearance created no little sensation and amusement, several hundreds of persons being attracted to the spot where they were fixed. The sinful rag man was seated upon a stool, and his legs were secured in the stocks at a few minutes past one. He seemed anything but pleased with the laughter and derision of the crowd. Four hours having passed, he was released.