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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

HIGHGATE, HORNSEY, HENDON, AND HARROW

Highgate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hornsey

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

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

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

Hendon

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

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

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

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

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

Harrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

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

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

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

High Barnet

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

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

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

Monken Hadley

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

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

Enfield

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

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

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

Waltham Holy Cross

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

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

Waltham Abbey

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

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

Epping Forest

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

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

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

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

Buckhurst Hill

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

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

Chigwell Row

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

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

Walthamstow

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

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

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

Wanstead

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

CHAPTER IV

HAINAULT FOREST, WOOLWICH, AND OTHER
EASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

Hainault Forest

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

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

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

Havering-atte-Bower

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

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

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

Leyton

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

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

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

Upton

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

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

Barking Abbey

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

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

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

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

Dagenham

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

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

Barking Creek

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

Woolwich

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumstead

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

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

Crossness Point

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

Erith

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

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

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

North Cray

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

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

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

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

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

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

Orpington

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

CHAPTER V

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS
OF LONDON

Greenwich

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blackheath

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

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

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

Eltham

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

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

The Skirts of the Great City

THE SKIRTS OFTHE GREAT CITY

CHAPTER I

HAMPSTEAD AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS

CHAPTER II

HIGHGATE, HORNSEY, HENDON, AND HARROW

CHAPTER III

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

CHAPTER IV

HAINAULT FOREST, WOOLWICH, AND OTHEREASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

CHAPTER V

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBSOF LONDON

THE SKIRTS OF
THE GREAT CITY

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

HAINAULT FOREST, WOOLWICH, AND OTHER
EASTERN SUBURBS OF LONDON

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS
OF LONDON