Chapter VIII (2)

What stir, what turmoil, have we for the nones?
Stand back, my masters, or beware your bones!
Sirs, I'm a warder, and no man of straw,
My voice keeps order, and my club gives law.
Yet soft,--nay stay--what vision have we here?
What dainty darling this--what peerless peer?
What loveliest face, that loving ranks enfold.
Like brightest diamond chased in purest gold?
Dazzled and blind, mine office I forsake,
My club, my Key, my knee, my homage take.
Bright paragon, pass on in joy and bliss;--
Beshrew the gate that opes not wide at such a sight as this!

Elizabeth received most graciously the homage of the herculean porter and then passed through the guarded tower amidst the sounds of trumpets and other instruments stationed on the tower and in various parts of the castle, and dismounted near Mortimer's Tower, which was as light as day as she walked across the long bridge built especially for her and lit with torches on either side. She had no sooner stepped upon the bridge than a new spectacle was provided, for as soon as the music gave signal that she was so far advanced, a raft on the lake, disposed as to resemble a small floating island, illuminated by a great variety of torches, and surrounded by floating pageants formed to represent sea-horses, on which sat Tritons, Nereids, and other fabulous deities of the seas and rivers, made its appearance upon the lake, and, issuing from behind a small heronry where it had been concealed, floated gently towards the farther end of the bridge. On the islet appeared a beautiful woman, clad in a watchet-coloured silken mantle, bound with a broad girdle, inscribed with characters like the phylacteries of the Hebrews. Her feet and arms were bare, but her wrists and ankles were adorned with gold bracelets of uncommon size. Amidst her long silky black hair she wore a crown or chaplet of artificial mistletoe, and bore in her hand a rod of ebony tipped with silver. Two nymphs attended on her, dressed in the same antique and mystical guise. The pageant was so well managed that the Lady of the Floating Island, having performed her voyage with much picturesque effect, landed at Mortimer's Tower with her two attendants, just as Elizabeth presented herself before that outwork. The stranger then in a well-penned speech announced herself as that famous Lady of the Lake renowned in the stories of King Arthur, who had nursed the youth of the redoubted Sir Lancelot, and whose beauty had proved too powerful both for the wisdom and the spells of the mighty Merlin. Since that period she had remained possessed of her crystal dominions, she said, despite the various men of fame and might by whom Kenilworth had been successively tenanted. The Saxons, the Danes, the Normans, the Saintlowes, the Clintons, the Montforts, the Mortimers, the Plantagenets, great though they were in arms and magnificence, had never, she said, caused her to raise her head from the waters which hid her crystal palace. But a greater than all these great names had now appeared, and she came in homage and duty to welcome the peerless Elizabeth to all sport which the castle and its environs, which lake or land, could afford! The queen received the address with great courtesy and the Lady of the Lake vanished, and Arion, who was amongst the maritime deities, appeared upon his dolphin in her place. But amidst all this pageantry Sir Walter throws a side-light on Mervyn's Tower, where we see a prisoner, a pale, attenuated, half dead, yet still lovely lady, Amy Robsart, the neglected wife of Leicester, incarcerated there while her husband is flirting with the queen in the gay rooms above. Her features are worn with agony and suspense as she looks through the narrow window of her prison on the fireworks and coloured fires outside, wondering perhaps whether these were emblems of her own miserable life, "a single spark, which is instantaneously swallowed up by the surrounding darkness--a precarious glow, which rises but for a brief space into the air, that its fall may be lower."

Sir Walter Scott described Kenilworth as "a place to impress on the musing visitor the transitory value of human possessions, and the happiness of those who enjoy a humble lot in virtuous contentment," and it was with some such thoughts as these in our own minds that we hurried away across fields and along lovely by-lanes towards Leamington, our object in going there by the way we did being to get a view of the great mansion of Stoneleigh, the residence of Lord Leigh, who was also a landowner in our native County of Chester. It seemed a very fine place as we passed through the well-wooded park surrounding it, and presently reached his lordship's village of Ashow, where the old church, standing on a small knoll at the end of the village, looked down upon the River Avon below, which was here only a small stream. The roofs of many of the cottages were thatched with straw, and although more liable to be set on fire than those covered with the red tiles so common in the County of Warwick, they looked very picturesque and had the advantage of not being affected so much by extremes of temperature, being warmer in winter and cooler in summer for those who had the good fortune to live under them. We noticed several alms houses in the village, and near the smithy had a talk with an old man who was interested to know that we came from Cheshire, as he knew his lordship had some property there. He told us that when a former Lord Leigh had died, there was a dispute amongst the Leigh family as to who was the next owner of the estate, and about fifty men came up from Cheshire and took possession of the abbey; but as the verdict went against them they had to go back again, and had to pay dearly for their trespass. He did not know where the Leighs came from originally, but thought "they might have come from Cheshire," so we told him that the first time they were heard of in that county was when the Devil brought a load of them in his cart from Lancashire. He crossed the River Mersey, which divided the two counties, at a ford near Warrington, and travelled along the Knutsford road, throwing one of them out occasionally with his pikel, first on one side of the road and then on the other, until he had only a few left at the bottom of his cart, and as he did not think these worth taking any farther, he "keck'd" his cart up and left them on the road, so there were persons named Lee, Legh, or Leigh living on each side of that road to the present day. The old man seemed pleased with our story and grinned considerably, and no doubt it would be repeated in the village of Ashow after we had left, and might probably reach the ears of his lordship himself.

Two of the Lees that the Devil left on the road when he upset his cart took possession of the country on either side, which at that time was covered with a dense forest, and selected large oak trees to mark their boundaries, that remained long after the other trees had disappeared. But in course of time it became necessary to make some other distinction between the two estates, so it was arranged that one landlord should spell his name Legh and the other Leigh, and that their tenants should spell the name of the place High Legh in one case and High Leigh in the other, so that when name-plates appeared on carts, each landlord was able to tell to which estate they belonged. There were many antiquities in the country associated with his Satanic Majesty, simply because their origin was unknown, such as the Devil's Bridge over which we had passed at Kirkby Lonsdale, and the Devil's Arrows at Aldborough, and it was quite possible that the remote antiquity of the Legh family might account for the legend connected with them. There were several facts connected with the Cheshire estate of the Leghs which interested us, the first being that my grandfather was formerly a tenant on the estate, and the squire had in his possession the rent rolls for every year since about 1289. A fact that might interest ladies who are on the lookout for a Mr. Wright is, that out of a hundred tenants on that estate at the present day, twenty-seven householders bear the name of Wright.

But the strangest incident connected with High Legh was the case of a young man who came from Scotland to work in the squire's gardens there. He had attended Warrington Market, and was returning over the river bridge when he stopped to look at a placard announcing a missionary meeting to be held in the town that night. He decided to stay, although he had quite seven miles to walk on his way home, and was so impressed by what he heard that he decided to become a missionary himself, and became one of the most famous missionaries of the nineteenth century. His name was Robert Moffat, and he laboured hard in South Africa, where his son-in-law, David Livingstone, following his example, also became a renowned explorer and missionary in the "Dark Continent."

Accept me for Thy service, Lord,
And train me for Thy will,
For even I in fields so broad
Some duties may fulfil;
And I will ask for no reward
Except to serve Thee still.
MOFFAT.

We soon arrived at Leamington, which was quite an aristocratic town, and different from any other we had seen on our journey, for it consisted chiefly of modern houses of a light stone colour, which contrasted finely with the trees with which the houses were interspersed and surrounded, and which must have appeared very beautiful in the spring time.

The chief object of interest there was the Spa, which although known to travellers in the seventeenth century, had only come into prominence during recent times, or since the local poets had sung its praises. In the introduction to a curious book, published in 1809 by James Bissett, who described himself as "Medallist to his Majesty King George the Third, proprietor of the Picture Gallery, public, news-room, and the museum at Leamington," there appeared the following lines:

Nay! Foreigners of rank who this look o'er
To try the Wells may quit their native shore;
For when they learn the virtues of the Spaw
Twice tens of thousands to the spot will draw,
As when its wondrous powers are pointed out
And men found cap'ring who have had the gout;
When pallid cheeks regain their roseate blush
And vigorous health expels the hectic flush
When those once hypp'd cast the crutch away;
Sure when the pride of British Spas they see
They'll own the humble instrument in me!

The Spa, it appeared, had been patronised by royalty on several occasions, and Queen Victoria in 1838 acceded to the request that the inhabitants might henceforth style the town the "Royal Leamington Spa." Benjamin Satchwell claimed to have discovered the principal well there in 1784, and on his tombstone in the churchyard appeared the following:

Hail the unassuming tomb
Of him who told where health and beauty bloom,
Of him whose lengthened life improving ran--
A blameless, useful, venerable man.

We only stayed a short time here, and then walked quickly through a fine country to the ancient town of Warwick, with Guy's Cliffe and Blacklow Hill to our right, the monument on the hill being to Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, the hated favourite of Edward II. Gaveston was beheaded on the hill on July 1st, 1312, and the modern inscription reads:

In the hollow of this rock was beheaded, on the first day of July
1312, by barons, lawless as himself, Piers Gaveston, Earl of
Cornwall, the minion of a hateful King, in life and death a memorable
instance of misrule.

Gaveston surrendered to the insurgent barons at Scarborough, on condition that his life should be spared; but he had offended the Earl of Warwick by calling him the "Black Hound of Arden," and the earl caused him to be conveyed to Warwick Castle. When brought before Warwick there, the Earl muttered, "Now you shall feel the Hound's teeth," and after a mock trial by torchlight he was led out of the castle and beheaded on the hill. Every one of the barons concerned in this rather diabolical action died by violence during the next few years.

As we crossed the bridge leading over the River Avon we had a splendid view of Warwick Castle, which had the reputation of being the finest example of a fortified castle in England, Sir Walter Scott describing it as "the fairest monument of ancient and chivalrous splendour which yet remain uninjured by time." It could boast of a continuous history from the time of Ethelfreda, the daughter of the Saxon King, Alfred the Great, and its towers rose to a considerable height, Cæsar's tower reaching an elevation of 174 feet. Here could be seen the famous and exquisite Vase of Warwick, in white marble, of unknown age and of fabulous value, said to have been found at the bottom of a lake near Hadrian's Villa, at Tivoli, in Italy. There were an immense number of curios in the castle, some of which were connected with that famous character Guy, Earl of Warwick, including his shield, sword, and helmet, and his kettle of bell-metal, twenty-six feet wide and capable of holding 120 gallons of water. We had no time to visit the interior of the castle, but it was interesting to read, in one of his letters, what Dr. Adam Clark saw there in 1797: "I was almost absolutely a prey to astonishment and rapture while I contemplated the painting of the wife of Schneider by Rubens, such a speaking canvas I never beheld." He saw the large Etruscan vases collected by Sir William Hamilton, some bronze cups dug out of the ruins of Herculaneum, and the bed in which Queen Anne slept and which, according to report, she wrought with her own hands. In the Armoury he was permitted to fit on some of the armour, and attempted also to wield the sword of Guy, Earl of Warwick, which weighed seventy pounds. He also examined the rest of Guy's gigantic equipments, not omitting his porridge-pot, which held no gallons and was filled every time an Earl of Warwick came of age. This Guy was not the famous King Maker, but the original Guy, who lived at a time when England was covered with thick forests in which savage beasts, now unknown, roamed at large, causing great havoc amongst the early settlers, both to their persons and their cattle. Of gigantic stature, he was renowned for his courage and prowess, and, being in love with the fair Felice at Warwick Castle, for her sake he performed prodigious feats of valour, both at home and abroad. Amongst other monsters which preyed upon and terrified human beings he killed the wild and fierce Dun Cow which infested Dun's Moor, a place we had passed by the previous day; and we were reminded of his prowess when we saw the sign of the "Dun Cow" displayed on inns in the country, including that on the hotel at Dunchurch. He went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he killed many Saracens, and when on his return he landed at Portsmouth, King Athelstane, ignorant of his name, asked him if he would become his champion in a contest on which the fate of England depended. The king told him that the Danes had with them a champion named Colbran, a gigantic Saracen, and that they had offered to stake their fortunes on a duel between him and an English champion, not yet found, on condition that if Colbran won, England must be given up to Anlaf, King of Denmark, and Govelaph, King of Norway. Guy undertook the fight willingly, and defeated and killed the gigantic Saracen, after which he privately informed the king that he was the Earl of Warwick. He secured the hand and affections of the fair Felice, but when the thoughts of all the people he had killed began to haunt him, he left her, giving himself up to a life of devotion and charity, while he disappeared and led the life of a hermit. She thought he had gone into foreign lands, and mourned his loss for many years; but he was quite near the castle all the time, living beside the River Avon in a cave in a rock, which is still called Guys Cliffe, and where he died. Huge bones were found and kept in the castle, including one rib bone, which measured nine inches in girth at its smallest part and was six and a half feet long; but this was probably a bone belonging to one of the great wild beasts slain by the redoubtable Guy. We were sorry we could not explore the castle, but we wanted particularly to visit the magnificent Beauchamp Chapel in St. Mary's Church at Warwick. We found this one of those places almost impossible to describe, and could endorse the opinion of others, that it was "an architectural gem of the first water and one of the finest pieces of architectural work in the kingdom." It occupied twenty-one years in building, and contains the tomb of Richard Beauchamp, under whose will the chapel was begun in 1443; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the haughty favourite of Queen Elizabeth, was also entombed here. We had too much to do to-day to stay very long in any place we visited, but we were interested in the remains of a ducking-stool in the crypt of the church, although it was far from being complete, the only perfect one of which we knew being that in the Priory Church of Leominster, which reposed in a disused aisle of the church, the property of the Corporation of that town. It was described as "an engine of universal punishment for common scolds, and for butchers, bakers, brewers, apothecaries, and all who give short measure, or vended adulterated articles of food," and was last used in 1809, when a scolding wife named Jenny Pipes was ducked in a deep place in one of the small rivers which flowed through that town. The following lines, printed on a large card, appeared hanging from one of the pillars in the aisle near the stool:

There stands, my friend, in yonder pool,
An engine called a Ducking Stool;
By legal power commanded down,
The joy, and terror of the town.
If jarring females kindle strife,
Give language foul, or lug the coif:
If noisy dames should once begin
To drive the house with horrid din,
Away! you cry, you'll grace the stool
We'll teach you how your tongue to rule.
Down in the deep the stool descends,
But here, at first, we miss our ends,
She mounts again, and rages more
Than ever vixen did before.
If so, my friend, pray let her take
A second turn into the lake;
And rather than your patience lose
Thrice and again, repeat the dose,
No brawling wives, no furious wenches
No fire so hot, but water quenches.

The stool was exactly like a chair without legs, fastened on one end of a long pole, in the centre of which was a framework with solid wooden wheels. The culprit was fastened in the chair with her face towards the men, who were at the other end of the pole, and who had to push and guide the machine through the narrow streets of the town until they reached the "deep hole," where the unfortunate woman had to be ducked overhead in the river. Her feet were securely tied to the top of the pole to prevent them from being hurt when passing through the town, and to hinder her from using them to keep her head above the water. The poet describes the "engine called a ducking-stool" as the "joy and terror of the town," but the "joy" could only have been that of the men, women, and children who could be spared to see the show, and knew the woman's scolding propensities. If she continued scolding after the first "duck," down she went again, and again, until, as we imagined, half filled with water, she was unable to scold further, and so the water triumphed in the end:

No brawling wives, no furious wenches
No fire so hot, but water quenches.

The tower of St. Mary's Church was built on four lofty arches, one of which formed the entrance to the church while the other three formed entrances to the street, the footpath passing through two of them.

We passed alongside the ancient and picturesque half-timbered building known as Lord Leicester's Hospital, which was one of the few buildings in the town that escaped the fire in 1694. It had been built by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth and of Kenilworth fame, to accommodate twelve poor men or brethren besides the master, who, according to Dugdale the famous antiquary, "were to be clothed in blew cloth, with a ragged staff embroydered on the left sleeve," and not to go into the town without them. The hospital dated from 1571, but what was formerly the banqueting-hall belonged to an earlier period, and owed its preservation largely to the fact that the timber of which the roof had been constructed was Spanish chestnut, a timber which grew luxuriantly in the forests of England, and resembled English oak. It was largely used by the monks in the building of their refectories, as no worm or moth would go near it and no spider's web was ever woven there, the wood being poisonous to insects. It is lighter in colour than oak, and, seeing the beams so clean-looking, with the appearance of having been erected in modern times, it is difficult for the visitor to realise that they have been in their present position perhaps for five or six centuries. Over one of the arched doorways in the old hospital appeared the insignia of the bear and the ragged staff, which was also the sign of public houses, notably that at Cumnor, the village of Amy Robsart. This we discovered to be the arms of the Earls of Warwick, originating during the time of the first two earls: the first being Arth or Arthgal of the Round Table--Arth meaning bear--and the second Morvid, who in single combat overcame a mighty giant who came against him with a club--a tree pulled up by the roots and stripped of its branches; and in remembrance of his victory over the giant the "ragged staff" ever afterwards appeared on the coat of arms of the Earls of Warwick.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Actors have come and the rout are following!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(_Distance walked forty-two and a half miles_.)

_Saturday, November 4th._

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

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

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

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

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

The Land o' Cakes and brither Scots,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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