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, {83} or, according to another version of
the same legend, Lord Mounteagle there received the letter which
enabled him to frustrate the iniquitous scheme.

[Sidenote: 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 {84} 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 {85} of Sir John
Preston, the old Dagenham traditions have been religiously maintained.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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 {86} 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 {87} 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.'

[Illustration: THE THAMES AT WOOLWICH]

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 {88} 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 {89} 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 {90} 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 {91} 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.

[Sidenote: 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 {92} 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 {93} 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.

[Sidenote: 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 {94} 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.

[Sidenote: 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 {95} 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,
{96} later Lord Eardley, but was converted, in 1869, into a home for
aged seamen, and is now a noted school for boys.

[Sidenote: 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 {97} 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.

{98}

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 {99} 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

{100}

CHAPTER V

  GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS
  OF LONDON

[Sidenote: 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 {101} 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.

[Illustration: GREENWICH HOSPITAL WITH ST. ALPHEGE'S CHURCH]

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 {102} 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.  {103} 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
{104} 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 {105} 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.

{106}

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 {107} 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 {108} 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 {109} 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 {110} ...
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 {111} 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.

[Illustration: THE PAINTED HALL, GREENWICH HOSPITAL]

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, {112} 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.  {113} 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 {114}
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 {115} 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.

[Sidenote: 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 {116} 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 {117} 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 {118} 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.

[Illustration: RUINS OF ELTHAM PALACE]

[Sidenote: 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
{119} 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 {120} 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.

It was at Eltham in 1396 that the marriage was arranged between Richard
II. and the eight-year-old Isabella, daughter of Charles VI. of France,
and it was from the palace that the newly married pair went forth in
great state for the coronation of the bride in Westminster Abbey.
Isabella was but eleven years old when three years later her husband
{121} was deposed, and they were never again at Eltham; but Henry IV.
often held his court in the palace, spending Christmas there no less
than four times.  It was in it that he was first seized with the
illness that terminated fatally in Westminster Abbey in March 1413, and
there that his son and successor Henry V. spent much of the short time
he lived in England.  From Eltham Palace he hastened up to London in
January 1414 to deal with the Lollards.  Henry VI., after his long
minority, and before he realised how insecure was his tenure of the
throne, went to Eltham to superintend the restoration of the palace for
the reception of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and her infant son, the
ill-fated Prince Edward, but so far as the royal family was concerned
his labour was all in vain.  The queen never saw the home prepared for
her, and it was her bitter enemy Edward IV. who reaped the benefit of
her husband's improvements.  The new king became greatly attached to
his palace at Eltham, and some authorities attribute the building of
the banqueting-hall to him, though the probability is that he only
enlarged and beautified it.  In 1480 his third daughter Bridget was
born in the palace, and baptized in the private chapel, and in 1482,
three months before his sudden death, the king kept Christmas there
with great pomp, daily entertaining more than two thousand guests.  The
founder of the Tudor dynasty too, Henry VII., whose marriage with one
of Edward IV.'s daughters united the red and white roses, kept up the
traditions of Eltham hospitality, and did much to embellish the palace,
building, according to Hasted, a handsome {122} front towards the moat.
The sixteenth-century chronicler Lambarde gives a vivid description of
the fair residence at Eltham, but he also strikes the note of the
waning of its glory, for he remarks that the court was beginning to
prefer Greenwich to it.  Henry VIII., it is true, was sometimes at
Eltham, keeping Christmas there in 1515, when a mock tournament was
held in the banqueting-hall, and again in 1526 when he took refuge
there from the plague then raging in London, but he never really cared
for the palace as a residence.  In 1527 Cardinal Wolsey, who was still
in high favour, spent a fortnight at Eltham, drawing up there what are
known as the Statutes of Eltham, and are still honoured at the English
court for regulating the affairs of the royal household.  This was
perhaps the last time that any important gatherings assembled in the
once popular residence, for though Queen Elizabeth and James I. were
sometimes there, their visits were but brief.  Charles I. never lived
in the palace, but his favourite painter Sir Antony van Dyck was once
the guest of the king's physician Sir Theodore de Mayerne in what was
then Park Lodge, and Horace Walpole in his chatty _Anecdotes of
Painting_ refers to sketches made by the great master in the
neighbourhood.

After the death on the scaffold of Charles I., Eltham Palace was taken
possession of by parliament, and a report was drawn up of its
condition, in which it is stated that it consisted of a fair chapel, a
great hall, and several suites of apartments covering an acre of
ground, all very much out of repair.  {123} A little later the entire
building was sold for the modest sum of £2753, the chapel and all the
rooms were pulled down, and the grand banqueting-hall was converted
into a barn.  Several centuries elapsed before any effort was made to
rescue it from this degraded position, but in 1828, at the instance of
the Princess Sophia, who was then living at Greenwich, it was carefully
restored, and it now remains, with the picturesque ivy-clad bridge
spanning the moat, a notable witness to what must have been the beauty
and grandeur of the group of buildings of which it was once the most
remarkable feature.  The hammer-beam roof, in spite of the loss of most
of its pendants, ranks with that of Westminster Hall as a fine example
of combined lightness and strength of construction, and the effect of
the vast and lofty hall, with its grand bays at the upper end, must
indeed have been impressive before the windows by which it was lighted
from both sides were blocked up.

When Eltham Palace was pulled down, the three parks that had belonged
to it were also practically destroyed, all the venerable trees in them
having been cut down, so that, as remarked by a seventeenth-century
writer of somewhat gruesome tastes, there was scarcely one left to make
a gibbet, the deer were killed off, and what had long been one of the
most beautiful neighbourhoods near London was transformed into a scene
of desolation.

In spite of its many interesting associations there is now little that
is distinctive about modern Eltham.  Its church, however, retains the
quaint wooden tower and shingle spire of an earlier building, and {124}
there are a few fine old mansions in the neighbourhood, notably the
Elizabethan Well Hall, now a farmhouse, in which Sir Thomas More's
favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, lived for some time.

Two densely populated suburbs, that not long ago were remote and
secluded villages, picturesquely built on the Ravensbourne, are Lee and
Lewisham, the former connected with Eltham Palace by a subterranean
passage which was discovered in 1836, and is supposed to have formed
part of a complete system of communication between the latter and the
outer world.  Its exit from the Eltham end was protected by massive
iron gates beneath the moat, near to which a flight of steps led down
to a strong-room, probably used as a hiding-place for treasure, though,
strange to say, there are no local traditions concerning it.

[Sidenote: Chiselhurst]

All that is now left at Lee to recall the old days when it was an
outlying hamlet of Eltham, is the tower of the ancient parish church;
and Lewisham, the name of which means the homestead in the meadow, is
even more modernised, though its history can be traced back to
Anglo-Saxon times, when it seems to have formed part with Greenwich and
the two Coombes of one property that was given, as related above, by
Ethelruda, a niece of King Alfred to the Abbey of St. Paul's at Ghent,
in connection with which a Benedictine priory was founded at Lewisham,
the memory of which is preserved in the name of the Priory Farm
occupying its site.  Another suburb in close touch with Eltham is
Mottino-ham that retains more of its rural character than either {125}
Lee or Lewisham; and not far away are the still pretty villages of
Rushey Green, Catford, and Catford Bridge.  More celebrated than any of
these, however, is the important settlement of Chislehurst, that, owing
chiefly to the exceptional beauty of its situation on a lofty common,
defended from encroachment by a natural rampart of woods, seems likely
to be able long to defy the levelling influences which have spoiled so
many of the districts of outlying London.

Originally but a remote and secluded hamlet scarcely known to the
outside world, Chislehurst has of late years become a centre of
archæological interest, for in addition to its other attractions it
enjoys the unique distinction of being in close touch with one of the
most remarkable and extensive systems of subterranean galleries and
caves, the ramifications of which are supposed to be many miles in
length, that have yet been discovered in England.  The existence of
this underground world was long known, but it is only recently, thanks
to the enterprise of Mr. Ryan, proprietor of the Beckley Arms Hotel, in
whose grounds there is an entrance to it, that it has been opened to
the public.  Mr. Ryan had many of the galleries and chambers cleared of
the rubbish--the accumulation of centuries--encumbering them, and
lighted them with electricity, so that it is now possible to explore
them without fear of being lost or buried alive.  The origin and
purpose of this wonderful net-work of excavations are alike unknown,
some experts claiming that they were used for Druidical worship, two
altar tables, probably used {126} for sacrifices, having been found;
whilst others are of opinion that they were used as hiding-places in
times of war, or as storehouses for grain and treasure.  Some few of
the smaller chambers, that are mere cells, can only be entered on all
fours, and could be defended by a single man, whilst the larger ones
are capable of holding as many as fifty people.  There were two ways of
gaining access to them, one by steps in the sides of the shafts pierced
here and there, the other with the aid of a notched pole which could
easily be removed, and Mr. Nicholls, Vice-President of the
Archæological Society, in a deeply interesting pamphlet on the subject,
expresses an opinion that in times of danger the whole population of
the district may have lived contentedly underground for weeks at a
time.  'The little colony,' he says, 'might be working in the fields or
tending their cattle; suddenly a cry of alarm is raised, the lookout
man rushes in and reports that the enemy is approaching in force.  If,'
he adds, 'the incursion were too strong to be resisted, there would be
an immediate stampede; the population would swarm down the shafts, and
in a few minutes not a sound would be left to guide the invaders.  Even
if the raiders succeeded in finding a shaft they would be practically
helpless, since one or two resolute men at the foot could hold it
against a host.'  Possibly the caves may have been used in succession
by many different tenants, the Britons after their defeat by the Romans
may have withdrawn into yet deeper recesses of the forests, and their
conquerors may have driven new galleries through the ancient moatings,
to be in {127} their turn supplanted by the Jutes, the Angles, and the
Saxons, so that could the whole story of the excavations be read, fresh
light might be thrown on much of the early history of Southern England.
As time goes on, and further explorations are made, new facts may come
to light, but at present, in spite of the many theories advanced, the
mystery remains unsolved.

Originally a dependency of Dartford, now a thriving manufacturing town,
the manor of Chislehurst, the name of which is supposed to signify a
wood of pebbles, was given by King John to a Norman noble known as
Hugh, Earl of St. Paul, and after many vicissitudes it became the
property, in 1584, of the Walsingham family, to whom it was granted on
a long lease by Queen Elizabeth.  The Walsinghams were already in
residence in Chislehurst, and the future minister, Sir Francis, was
born in the village in 1536, though exactly where is not known, the
so-called manor-house near the church, which is generally spoken of as
his birthplace, not having been built until 1584.

[Illustration: CHISLEHURST CHURCH AND COMMON]

The parish church of Chislehurst, though practically modern, was built
on the lines of its sixteenth-century predecessor, and with its lofty
spire presents a picturesque appearance.  It contains the altar tomb of
the Walsingham family and several other noteworthy memorials, including
a fifteenth-century brass in memory of Alan Porter, and a monument to
William Selwyn, designed by Chantrey.  The font is said to be of great
antiquity, and may possibly have been in use in Saxon times, and in
{128} the churchyard are some interesting old tombs, including that in
which rest the remains of Mr. and Mrs. Bonar, who were murdered by
their servant in 1813.

A well-preserved cock-pit, now fortunately disused, opposite the
church, is another Chislehurst link with the past, and in the
neighbourhood are some fine old mansions, of which the most noteworthy
is Camden Place, named after the antiquarian William Camden, who bought
it in 1609, but more celebrated as having been the scene of the cruel
fate of Mr. and Mrs. Bonar, and the home later of Napoleon III., who
died in it in 1873.  The widowed Empress Eugénie lived in it for some
time, and built the memorial chapel in connection with the little Roman
Catholic chapel in Crown Lane, in which rested the remains of her
husband, and later of her son, before their removal to the Mausoleum at
Farnborough, near her present home.  It was at Camden Place that the
Empress received the news of the death in South Africa of the Prince
Imperial, to whose memory she erected the fine cross outside the
entrance gates.

Within easy reach of Chislehurst, and sharing to some extent the beauty
of its surroundings, are the charming village of Beckley, that owns a
fine modern church and a picturesque tower, the latter now the property
of the Kent Water Company, and the thriving town of Bromley, the name
of which is derived from the broom that flourishes in the
neighbourhood.  The latter owns what was once the palace of the bishops
of Rochester, {129} built on the site of the ancient manor-house, and
now a private residence, in the grounds of which is a medicinal well
dedicated to St. Blaise, that used to be credited with miraculous
powers of healing, and is associated with the memory of King Ethelbert,
for to commemorate his conversion to Christianity special indulgences
were granted to those who drank its waters.  Another noteworthy feature
of Bromley is the well-restored parish church--in which rests the wife
of Dr. Johnson--rising from the highest point of the town, and
approached by an avenue of venerable elms from a picturesque lych gate,
whilst here and there in the town are a few quaint old houses, and a
little outside it the seventeenth-century buildings of Bromley College,
now a home for the widows and daughters of clergymen.

[Sidenote: Beckenham]

Another village of Kent that has of late years grown into a town is
Beckenham, prettily situated on a tributary of the Ravensbourne, in the
original straggling high street of which there remain, however, several
ancient half-timbered houses.  The old manor-house known as Beckenham
Place, too, is still standing, and the modern parish church is as
nearly as possible a reproduction of the old one that was pulled down
on account of its melancholy state of decay in 1885.  The
well-preserved lych gate, with an avenue of yews leading from it to the
southern entrance, is but little changed from what it was long years
ago, and in the rebuilding of the church care was taken to preserve the
old monuments, that include the altar-tomb of Sir Humphrey Style, who
died in 1552, and that of {130} Dame Margaret Damsell, who passed away
in 1563.

The history of Beckenham Manor can be traced back to pre-Norman times:
it was given by William the Conqueror to Bishop Odo of Bayeux, and in
the reign of Edward I. it was in the possession of the De la Rochelle
family.  Later it was owned, in right of his wife, by William Brandon,
who was standard-bearer to Henry, Earl of Richmond, and was killed at
the battle of Bosworth.  During the reign of Henry VII., Charles, Duke
of Suffolk, the son of this William Brandon, often visited Beckenham
Place, and is said to have there entertained Henry VIII. when that
monarch was on his way to meet his bride Anne of Cleves.

The rapidly growing suburb of Shortlands--the birthplace of the
historian George Grote--connects Beckenham with Bromley, and in touch
with it are several noted mansions, including the Georgian Langley
House, Eden Lodge, named after the first Lord Auckland, who lived in it
for many years, and was often visited by William Pitt, and the
eighteenth-century Kelsey House, on the site of an earlier residence
that is often referred to in the records of the reigns of Henry III.
and his successors.

{131}

CHAPTER VI

OUTLYING LONDON IN NORTH-EAST SURREY

[Sidenote: Dulwich]

Of the many villages of Northern Surrey that have during the last
half-century been converted into popular suburbs of London, few have
had a more interesting history than Dulwich, which has, moreover, in
spite of all the changes that have taken place in it and its
surroundings, retained something of the sylvan character that
distinguished it when it was a mere outlying forest hamlet of the
monastery of Bermondsey.  On the dissolution of the religious houses
the manor of Dulwich was given by Henry VIII. to Thomas Calton, from
whose descendants it was bought in 1606 by the famous actor and Lord
Mayor of London, Edward Alleyn, who on his retirement from the stage
took up his residence in the ancient mansion belonging to it, from
which he watched the rising up of the 'Chappell, Schoole House and
Almshouses' that formed the nucleus of the celebrated college founded
by him, to which he gave the beautiful name of God's Gift.

In his delightful retreat the generous patron worked out the details of
his scheme with the aid of his architect and other helpers, and in its
grand {132} old hall he probably received the first master and warden
of his new foundation, and nominated the earliest recipients of his
bounty.  From the Dulwich manor-house, too, are dated many of the
letters still preserved, that reveal the difficulties with which Edward
Alleyn had to contend before he could obtain the royal sanction
necessary to the permanent success of his enterprise, his chief
opponent, strange to say, having been the enlightened Lord Bacon, then
Lord Chancellor of England, who was anxious that he should endow
learning rather than relieve poverty.  In 1619, however, the victory
was finally won, for on the 21st June of that year the Great Seal of
England was affixed to letters patent granting leave to Edward Alleyn
'to found and establish a college in Dulwich to endure and remain for
ever to the glory of Almighty God.'  God's Gift College, thus started
on its long and useful career, originally consisted of a master and a
warden, both to be of the same name as the founder, four fellows, six
poor brethren, six poor sisters, and twelve poor scholars to be
selected from four London parishes.  Later, however, the founder
somewhat extended his scheme, admitting eighty instead of twelve
students, and allowing the children of non-resident parents to share in
the benefits of the college on the payment of a small fee.

[Illustration: DULWICH COLLEGE]

The land included with the 'Chappell, Schoole House and Almshouses' in
Edward Alleyn's munificent gift extended from the heights now covered
with houses, known as Champion and Denmark Hill, across the valley in
which nestled the village of Dulwich, {133} to the lofty ridges now
occupied by Sydenham and Forest Hill, the value of which has increased
more than a thousandfold since the death of the donor, so that it
became absolutely necessary to modify the original rules, which, in
spite of Alleyn's earnest desire to provide for future contingencies,
were from the first wanting in the elasticity necessary to meet the
inevitable changes that time brings about.  Not until 1857, however,
was any radical transformation effected, but at that date an Act of
Parliament was passed fully meeting the necessities of the case.

The buildings erected under the superintendence of Alleyn fell into
decay soon after their completion, and those replacing them suffered
much during the Civil War, when troops were quartered in the chapel,
who not only defaced the walls and desecrated the altar, but melted
down the leaden coffins enshrined in it to convert the material into
bullets.  After the death of Charles I., whose cause had been espoused
by the fellows, all the revenues and lands of the college were
confiscated by Cromwell, but on the accession of Charles II. they were
restored to their owners, and they have never since been tampered with.

The ancient college buildings have been well restored, and retain the
old entrance-gates of finely wrought iron surmounted by the crest and
motto of the founder.  They are grouped about a central square, and
consist of a chapel, in the chancel of which Edward Alleyn is buried, a
dining-hall, and an audit room, in which is an interesting collection
{134} of portraits, a library containing more than five thousand
volumes, a schoolroom, and a kitchen.  Adjoining the quadrangle, on the
south-west, is the comparatively modern picture-gallery, built after
the designs of Sir John Soane for the reception of a fine collection of
pictures bequeathed to the college in 1811 by Sir Francis Bourgeois, on
the singular condition that he and his friends, Monsieur and Madame
Desenfans, from whom he had inherited the paintings, should be buried
near them.  Their remains rest in a mausoleum connected with the
gallery, that was thrown open to the public in 1817, and contains,
amongst many other priceless treasures, masterpieces by Rembrandt,
Murillo, Velasquez, Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds.  The new
school buildings at Dulwich were built under the superintendence of Sir
Charles Barry after the radical change in the constitution of the
college, and were opened in 1870.  They include a noble central block
with a spacious hall, a lecture-theatre and library, whilst two wings
connected with them afford accommodation for a large staff of masters
and some eight hundred boys.

[Sidenote: Sydenham]

Although the fame of its college and gallery has long since eclipsed
that of its spa, Dulwich was at one time much frequented by the wealthy
citizens of London, who resorted there to drink the waters of a spring
near the Green Man Inn, the site of which was later occupied by the
private school of Dr. Glennie, pulled down in its turn in 1825, in
which Lord Byron was a pupil for two years.  There was a rival well in
the neighbouring hamlet of Sydenham {135} that was even more popular,
but all traces of both are now lost, and there is absolutely nothing
about the densely populated neighbourhood dominated by the Crystal
Palace, to recall the days when Campbell lived in the old house still
standing on Peak Hill, where he wrote 'Gertrude of Wyoming,'
'O'Connor's Child,' and the 'Battle of the Baltic.'  The view from the
terrace of the palace itself is of course much the same in its general
features as that upon which the poet looked down, but the forest in
which he used to wander, that gave its name to Forest Hill, is replaced
by a sea of villas with no special character about them.  Fortunately
the palace, in spite of the north wing having been destroyed by fire in
1866, is a dignified-looking structure.  It was built with the
materials and partly on the plan of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and
the public are to be congratulated on the fact that its three hundred
acres of grounds preserve some of their original rural character when
the district was one of the most beautiful near London.

[Illustration: THE CRYSTAL PALACE]

Anerley, once famed for its tea-gardens; Gypsy Hill, long the haunt of
Zingari squatters; Norwood, or the wood north of Croydon; Streatham,
long the home of Mrs. Piozzi, with whom Dr. Johnson often stayed; and
Penge, that appears in an early nineteenth-century map as a town with
one inn, the Crooked Billet, were all for many centuries outlying
settlements, each with a distinctive charm of its own, the last-named
set in the midst of a wide-stretching common crossed by the Croydon
Canal with many picturesque locks, now replaced by the {136} iron road,
the levelling influence of which is apparent on every side.

[Sidenote: Hayes]

From the somewhat melancholy fate that has overtaken so much of Kent
and Surrey, the wildly beautiful Keston Common has so far escaped, and
the villages of Hayes and Keston, both on its north-western edge, are
still unspoiled.  The former has a well-restored Early English church,
its Georgian rectory is a fine example of the domestic architecture of
its period, and near to it is the celebrated Hayes Place, built in 1757
by the great orator and statesman, Lord Chatham, whose favourite home
it was.  In it, two years after its completion, was born his even more
famous son, William Pitt the younger, whose childhood was passed in a
small house connected with Hayes Place by a covered-in passage, for his
father was already suffering from the depression which so often clouded
his happiness, and, as related by Horace Walpole, who was a frequent
guest of Lord Chatham, the harassed statesman 'could not bear his
children under the same roof, nor communication from room to room, nor
whatever he thought promoted noise.'  When in 1766 the elder Pitt
inherited another property elsewhere Hayes Place was sold to the
Honourable Thomas Walpole, but its previous owner was taken ill soon
afterwards, and entreated the purchaser to let him have it back.  He
was convinced, he said, that he could recover nowhere else, and his
whim was humoured, with the best results.  Lord Chatham returned to his
old home, which was his chief residence until his death.  There he
received George II.  {137} and George III., as well as the leading
politicians of the day; and there the young General Wolfe dined with
him on the eve of sailing for Canada.  The younger William Pitt was now
the constant companion of the 'oracle of Hayes,' as his father was
affectionately called by his intimates, imbibing from him no doubt much
of the practical wisdom that from the first distinguished him; and he
it was who had the melancholy privilege of carrying the stricken
minister from the House of Lords when he fell down insensible after his
noble speech against the unworthy terms of peace proposed by the Duke
of Richmond.  The dying statesman was taken back to Hayes Place, where
in a small room on the ground floor he breathed his last four weeks
later.

After the death of Lord Chatham, Hayes Place was sold, and since then
it has changed hands many times, but fortunately its various owners
have respected it for the sake of its memories, and but for the
addition of a new entrance-hall it remains practically what it was
during the occupancy of its first owner.  It is the same with the
stables, that are some little distance from the house, which have been
kept as they were when the old earl and his sons used daily to go down
to inspect the horses, and in one corner of the yard is a platform from
which, according to tradition, William Pitt the younger used to
rehearse his speeches in the presence of his father and the rest of the
household.

Keston village, originally a dependency of the manor of the same name
that was once the property {138} of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, consists of a
few old houses and cottages, some grouped about the Red Cross Inn, also
known as Keston Mark, possibly because it is situated on an ancient
boundary, others on the common near a picturesque windmill.  Its
church, a humble little sanctuary, with a nave and chancel only,
contains a fine Norman arch, possibly a relic of an earlier building,
and in its quiet graveyard rests the novelist Mrs. Craik, better known
as Miss Muloch.

[Sidenote: Holwood House]

On Keston Common, in a spring known as Cæsar's Well, rises the
Ravensbourne, which widens close by into a series of ponds overshadowed
by venerable trees, and near to them, within the grounds of Holwood
House, are the remains of a Roman camp in which, according to some
authorities, Aulus Plautius awaited the coming of the Emperor Claudius
to receive the homage of the conquered Britons.  Whether there be any
foundation for this belief or not, there appears at one time to have
been an important Roman settlement on Holwood Hill, a complete villa,
the foundations of a temple, and many bricks and tiles having been
unearthed at different times.  Keston is, however, now chiefly
celebrated for its connection with William Pitt, who lived for many
years in a house that occupied the site of the present mansion in
Holwood Park.  Even when still a child living on his father's estate at
Hayes, Pitt longed, as he often told his friends, 'to call the wood of
Holwood his own,' and great was his delight when, in 1785, two years
after he became Prime Minister, he was able to purchase it.  The table
at {139} which he used to write is still preserved in Holwood House,
and the park was laid out by him.  Many of its trees were planted by
his own hand, and others, already venerable when he became their owner,
are associated with interesting incidents of his career.  One noble
wide-spreading oak near the chief entrance to the park is specially
revered, because of the tradition that Pitt and William Wilberforce
were seated beneath it when they arranged the opening of the campaign
against slavery, a fact commemorated by a quotation from one of the
latter's letters that is cut in the back of a stone seat marking their
resting-place, placed in position by Lord Stanhope in 1862.  'I well
remember,' said the philanthropist, 'after a conversation with Mr.
Pitt, in the open air, on the root of an old tree at Holwood, just
above the steep descent into the vale of Keston, I resolved to give
notice, on a fit occasion, to bring forward the abolition of the
slave-trade.'  The important meeting probably took place in 1787, and
Wilberforce was often at Holwood House during the first few of the
nineteen years' struggle thus inaugurated, finding distraction from his
ever accumulating worries in aiding his host in his amateur woodcraft.
In his diary for April 7, 1790, for instance, he records how he sallied
forth with Pitt and Grenville, then Speaker of the House of Commons,
'armed with bill-hooks, cutting new walks from one large tree to
another through the thickets,' neither of them dreaming how soon the
beautiful estate would cease to belong to their host who, a little
later, was compelled to part with it.  It was {140} sold for £15,000, a
very large sum for those days, and, after changing hands more than
once, was bought by a Mr. John Ward, who, with little respect for its
memories, pulled down the old house to make room for an ornate villa in
the Italian style, and cleared away much of the woods that had been the
Prime Minister's especial pride.

[Sidenote: West Wickham]

Though not quite so picturesquely situated as Keston, the neighbouring
villages of Farnborough and Downe--the former associated with the name
of Sir John Lubbock, who lived for some years at High Elms, the latter
with that of Charles Darwin, who long resided at Downe House--have
something of its quiet charm.  West Wickham, too, though it has
unfortunately recently been discovered by the jerry-builder, is still a
pretty place, the older cottages and farms clustering about Wickham
Court, erected on the site of the original manor-house in the reign of
Edward III. by Sir Henry Heydon, but almost entirely rebuilt in the
time of Henry VIII.  The Heydons were near relations of Anne Boleyn,
who is said to have passed some of her happiest days at Wickham Court
when her royal suitor was courting her, a tradition confirmed by the
true-lovers' knot in which her initials and Henry's are intertwined,
engraved on one of the windows in the dining-hall.  Very often,
probably, the enamoured pair paced to and fro on the smooth
bowling-green or on the long grass walk, still known as Anne Boleyn's,
between the dense yew hedges, that remain unchanged to this day.
Sometimes, too, it is related, the fair Anne would await the coming of
her lover in a little Gothic {141} tower, to which a subterranean
corridor gave access, and the two may possibly have explored together
the secret passages that led beneath the grounds of the mansion to
Hayes Common and elsewhere.  A new entrance was made to Wickham Court
by Sir Charles Farnaby, the ancestor of the present owner, but the rest
of the house is much what it was when completed in the sixteenth
century, and is a fine example of Tudor domestic architecture.  The
massive oaken door, with its huge iron bolt, may be the very one that
was so often flung open to admit the guests of the Heydons, including
Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, to pass through to the banquets held in
the great hall.  It bears the marks of many a siege, and must have
received very rough usage in the troublous times of the Stuarts, when
the gloomy dungeon beneath the north-west turret served sometimes as a
prison to the enemies, sometimes as a hiding-place to the friends of
the owner of the property.

The church of West Wickham, which, with the creeper-clad turrets and
chimneys of the court form a charming group when seen from a distance,
was rebuilt at the same time as the latter by Sir Henry Heydon, and
owns some fine sixteenth-century windows, including one representing
scenes from the legend of St. Catherine.  There are also some
well-preserved monuments and brasses in the nave and chancel, and in
the churchyard, entered by an ancient lych gate, with a tiled roof, are
some interesting old tombs.

In a wood not far from West Wickham is the grand old hollow oak painted
by Millais as the {142} hiding-place of his 'Proscribed Royalist,' and
the village itself is associated with the memory of many other famous
men.  Before Lord Chatham bought the mansion at Hayes in which his
celebrated son was born, he lived for some years at South Lodge, and in
a smaller house dwelt the Latin chronicler Gilbert West, who was often
visited in his retreat by William Pitt the younger, Lord Lyttelton, and
the eccentric merchant poet Richard Glover.

[Sidenote: Addington]

Another ancient and still picturesque village of Surrey is the
beautifully situated Addington, the name of which is supposed to
signify the town of the Edings, though who these Edings were history
does not say.  The manor is referred to in Doomsday Book as being held
under the king by Tezelm, a cook in the royal service, and from that
time to the accession of George III. the owners of the property were
bound to observe the quaint custom of preparing a dish, or providing a
substitute to do so, for the monarch's consumption on the day of his
coronation.  The last time the strange ceremony was performed was in
1760, when Mr. Spencer, then lord of the manor, presented to the newly
crowned monarch a dish of pottage made according to an ancient recipe,
and containing an extraordinary number of ingredients.

Early in the fifteenth century a manor-house that was more of a
stronghold than a private home, was erected at Addington, on what is
still known as Castle Hill, but it was pulled down in 1780 and replaced
by a less ambitious building on another site, that later became a
summer residence of the Archbishops of {143} Canterbury, to whom the
property passed by purchase in 1807.  With the chapel and library,
added in 1830, it now presents a very dignified appearance, and is
surrounded by a beautiful park.

The parish church of Addington, though it has been much modified by
restoration, retains a fine Norman arch dividing the nave from the
chancel, some early Gothic arcades and three very ancient windows, with
a good modern one to the memory of Archbishop Tait, who with his wife
and one of his sons lie buried in the churchyard, close to Archbishop
Longley.  In the chancel are some quaint old monuments, notably one to
some members of the Leigh family, and several interesting brasses,
including that to the memory of Thomas Hatteclyff, who was one of the
Masters of the Household of Henry VIII., and died in 1540.

There is little very distinctive about the modern village of Addington,
though it retains a few quaint old cottages, and is celebrated for its
inhabitants' love of flowers.  It is, however, set down in very
beautiful scenery, that seems likely long to remain unspoiled.  Within
easy reach of it and of Croydon, the former residence of the
Archbishops of Canterbury, are several other pretty villages and
hamlets, including Shirley, with a good modern church, finely situated
on the edge of a breezy common; Woodside, that is rapidly losing its
rural character through its proximity to the racecourse and railway;
and Addiscombe, once famous for a fine old mansion, long the residence
of Lord Liverpool, which was pulled down in 1863.  When Lord Liverpool,
who {144} became Prime Minister in 1809, was at Addiscombe, his
predecessor in that office, William Pitt, was often his guest, and the
story goes that on one occasion the latter had a narrow escape from
sudden death, for he and a party of politicians, who had been dining
with the Tory statesman, dashed through the turnpike gates, without
paying the toll.  The keeper, supposing them to be highwaymen, fired
his blunderbuss at the offenders, but with such bad aim that no one was
hurt--somewhat, it was rumoured at the time, to the regret of Pitt's
many enemies, who would gladly have heard of his removal from their
path.

In a charming district east of Croydon are several other still
picturesque villages that are gradually being drawn into the
ever-widening circle of outlying London, amongst which must be
specially noted Sanderstead, perched on the brink of the chalk-downs
some 550 feet above the sea level.  Mentioned in the will of its
Anglo-Saxon owner in 871 as Sansterstede, the manor was in the
possession one hundred and ninety-five years later of the abbey of St.
Peter's, Westminster, and in the family of the Wigsells, to whom it now
belongs, is preserved an interesting memorial of that ownership in the
form of a deed bearing the abbey seal, recording the exchange of half a
hide of land for a piece of equal value at Papeholt.

[Sidenote: Purley]

Although it has unfortunately been somewhat spoiled by restoration, the
general appearance of the fifteenth-century parish church of
Sanderstead, with its square tower and shingled spire, is much what it
{145} was when, in 1676, the mansion replacing the old
manor-house--that is said to have been constructed of the materials of
a twelfth-century monastery--was completed, and amongst the monuments
preserved in it are three of considerable antiquarian interest: that of
Joanna Ownstead, who died in 1587; that of her brother, John Ownstead,
who was for forty years in the service of Queen Elizabeth, and passed
away in 1601; and that to Mary Bedell bearing the date 1655.  Within a
short walk of Sanderstead is the village of Purley, generally believed
to be named after William de Pirelea, who bought the land on which it
and the mansion known as Purley Lodge are built, some time in the
twelfth century, from the abbot of the neighbouring Monastery of Hide,
of which no trace now remains.  The date of the building of Purley
Lodge is not known, but it is famous as having been the residence of
John Bradshaw, who was President of the High Court of Justice that
condemned Charles I. to death.  Later it was the home of William Tooke,
who often received in it his more celebrated friend, the Rev. John
Horne, who took the name of his host in gratitude for the kindness
shown to him in the long struggle with the Government during the War of
Independence.  After the imprisonment of Horne for getting up a
subscription for the widows and orphans of those who fell at Lexington,
or, as he expressed it, were murdered by the king's troops, Tooke gave
him an asylum at Purley, and it was there that he completed the quaint
_Epea Ptroenta_, to which he gave the sub-title of the 'Diversions of
Purley.'  On his {146} death William Tooke bequeathed £8000 and Purley
Lodge to Horne, who, though he had a house at Wimbledon, where he died
in 1812, was often at Purley.  He wished to be buried in the garden of
the Lodge, and had prepared his grave and tombstone, the latter bearing
the inscription--'John Horne Tooke, late Proprietor and now occupier of
this spot, born in June 1736, died in--aged--contented and
grateful'--but his relatives disregarded his instructions, and he rests
in the parish where he breathed his last.

Other still secluded hamlets of north-east Surrey are Farley, with a
very interesting Norman and Early English church, and a quaint old
moated manor-house, now a farm, and Warlingham, long celebrated for its
beautiful common, that was, alas, enclosed in 1864 with the exception
of five acres that were reserved for a recreation-ground, the latter
with a well-restored old church of uncertain date, the first, according
to tradition, in which the service of Edward VI. was used.

[Sidenote: Caterham]

Warlingham was one of the four hams or homes on the hill occupied
before the Conquest by the Saxon tribe known as Wearlingas, the other
three having been Woldingham, Chelsham, and Caterham, near to all of
which extensive remains have been found of early encampments and
defences.  Woldingham, that gives its name to a new suburb close by, is
still a village, though its doom is evidently sealed, and it is the
same with Chelsham, but Caterham has already grown into a town.
Picturesquely built, partly in a beautiful valley and partly on the
{147} slope of a hill, it retains, however, some interesting relics of
the long-ago, including a well-restored fourteenth-century church, and
all four of the ancient hams are in touch with beautiful scenery, lofty
and breezy commons commanding fine views alternating with well-wooded
undulating districts.

{148}

CHAPTER VII

  CROYDON, CARSHALTON, EPSOM, AND OTHER
  SUBURBS IN NORTH-WEST SURREY

[Sidenote: Croydon]

Situated near the source of the Wandle at the entrance to a beautiful
valley that is shut in on the east by wooded hills, and on the west and
south-west by breezy uplands, the prosperous modern town of Croydon
occupies the site of a very ancient settlement that owned before the
Conquest a church and a mill, as proved by the detailed description
given of it in Doomsday Book.  Now one of the largest and most
important, though by no means the most picturesque of the Surrey
suburbs of London, Croydon, the name of which is variously interpreted
to mean the chalk hill, the crooked or winding valley, and the village
of the cross, is associated from very early times with the history of
the Church in England.  Its manor, the value of which was assessed at
the Conquest at sixteen hides and one virgate, was given by William I.
to Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, to whose successors it long
belonged, though the palace that in course of time replaced the ancient
manor-house was deserted by them in the middle of the eighteenth
century and {149} was later altogether superseded by that at Addington
already referred to.

[Illustration: THE OLD PALACE, CROYDON]

Combining, as did most of the episcopal residences of mediæval times,
the strength of a fortress and the latest refinements of domestic
architecture, the palace of Croydon before its partial destruction must
have been a kind of epitome of the various styles that succeeded each
other between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, or, to quote the
words of Archbishop Herring writing in 1754, 'an aggregate of buildings
of different castes and ages.'  Fortunately it still retains its three
most distinctive features, the banqueting-hall, the guard-room, and the
chapel, with some few relics of the many outbuildings for the use of
its owner's retainers, and those of his guests, that once covered a
vast area.  In spite of all its manifest advantages, however, it was
never a favourite residence of the archbishops, who, though many of
them spent large sums upon it, are said to have complained constantly
of its unhealthy situation.  Henry VIII., too, often spoke of it in a
disparaging way, and Lord Bacon once declared it to be 'a very obscure
and dark place.'

Of the existing buildings the oldest is the guard-chamber, with a fine
stone ribbed roof and a beautiful oriel window, a true gem of Gothic
architecture.  Built between 1396 and 1415 by Archbishop Arundel--who
is chiefly remembered for his devotion to Henry Bolingbroke, at whose
coronation as Henry IV. he officiated in 1399, and for his bitter
hostility to the Lollards--the guard-chamber was the scene, in 1587, of
the stately ceremony when {150} Queen Elizabeth gave to Sir Christopher
Hatton the seals of office of Lord Chancellor of England, that dignity
having been refused by the then reigning Archbishop Whitgift, whose
memory is held in high honour at Croydon as the founder of the famous
hospital and other charities bearing his name.

Of somewhat later date than the guard-chamber, for it was built by
Archbishop Stafford between 1443 and 1452, and restored in the
seventeenth century by Archbishops Laud and Juxon, the great hall is
still, in spite of much defacement, a noble structure, with a fine
timber roof and a beautiful late Gothic porch.  It is associated with
many important historic memories, for in it, when in residence at
Croydon, the archbishops held their court, receiving visits from the
reigning sovereign and the great nobles and statesmen.  It was there
that Archbishop Cranmer, in 1553, condemned the heretic John Firth to
the stake, at which he was himself to suffer three short years
afterwards; there that Queen Mary, with Cardinal Reginald Pole as her
adviser, presided over her first council after her beloved husband had
left her and she had realised how hopeless was the task of winning his
affections; and there her successor, Elizabeth, gave frequent audience
to Archbishop Parker, whom she had made primate soon after her
accession, and whom she sorely embarrassed by expecting him to give her
and her whole court hospitality for several days at a time.  In the
great hall at Croydon, too, the virgin queen received the French
ambassador after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, taking his
breath away by {151} introducing him to his fellow-guests as the man
who had plotted to bring about her own death; and it was there,
perhaps, that the doomed Archbishop Laud penned much of the journal
that reveals the secret springs of his severely criticised actions.

To Croydon, after the see of Canterbury had been vacant for fifteen
years, came the newly appointed Archbishop William Juxon, the faithful
friend who had ministered to Charles I. to the bitter end, in spite of
the contempt the ill-fated monarch had shown for his wise counsels; and
later the palace was tenanted for a few weeks at a time by Archbishop
Sheldon, builder of the theatre named after him at Oxford, and by his
successors: Sancroft, suspended in 1689 for his refusal to take the
oath of allegiance to William and Mary; Tillotson, the famous preacher
who attended Lord Russell on the scaffold; Tenison, Herring, Hutton,
and Dr. Cornwallis; none of whom, except Archbishop Herring, who wrote
of it in loving terms, showed any affection for their Surrey home.

The chapel of Croydon Palace, built under Archbishops Laud and Juxon
between 1633 and 1663, occupies the site of a much earlier place of
worship that is often referred to in ecclesiastical records.  No trace
of it, however, remains, and its successor has suffered much in the
various vicissitudes through which it has passed.  It was divided from
the see of Canterbury in 1780, and secularised in 1807, after which it
served for some time as an armoury for the local militia, and was put
to other even less dignified usages.  In 1887 it was bought, with the
{152} banqueting-hall, by the Duke of Newcastle, who presented both to
the sisters of the Church Extension Society, and it is now an orphanage
under the care of the Kilburn sisters.

The Saxon church of Croydon, or Croidene, as it was then spelt,
referred to in the Doomsday Survey--whose priest, Ælffic by name, was
one of the witnesses to a will still extant dated 960--probably rose,
as did its Norman successor, from an islet in the midst of the
head-waters of the Wandle, which united to form that tributary of the
Thames in what was known as My Lord's or Laud's Pond in the palace
grounds.  Near to this church were a great water-mill and a huge dam,
but this was not the mill of Doomsday Book, all trace of which is lost.
The huts of the original settlement, of which a few interesting relics
were discovered when the excavations were made for the railway,
probably extended from the church in the direction of Beddington, but
those that formed the nucleus of the new town, and were chiefly
occupied by charcoal-burners, were grouped near the church on the
Haling side.  Until the completion in 1850 of the admirable modern
system of drainage, the whole of the now healthy district of Croydon
was frequently flooded, and for several centuries the inundations were
looked upon as supernatural visitations that could not be averted, but
were tokens of impending evil or good fortune.  References to this
strange belief are of frequent occurrence in the contemporary press,
the seventeenth-century antiquary John Aubrey, to quote but one {153}
case in point, writing: 'Between this place (Caterham) and Coulsdon ...
issues out sometimes a bourne which overflows and runs down to Croydon.
This is held by the inhabitants to be ominous, and prognosticating
something remarkable approaching, as it did before the happy
restoration of Charles II. in 1660; also before the Plague of London in
1665.'

The walls of the church in which the priest Ælffic officiated were
skilfully incorporated in the Gothic building that was begun in 1382,
completed in 1442, and well restored in the sixteenth century; but
unfortunately the latter, with the exception of the Norman walls and
Early English tower, was destroyed by fire in 1869.  A new building,
however, soon rose out of the ruins of its predecessor, in which these
two distinctive features were skilfully retained, and the lines of the
ancient fabric were followed; but, strange to say, little attention was
given to the old monuments, amongst which those to Archbishops Grindal,
Whitgift, and Sheldon were the most remarkable, all of which were
seriously damaged by the fire, which also destroyed several interesting
epitaphs and some quaint frescoes that were discovered in 1845 beneath
the whitewash disfiguring the walls.

The only other building of note in modern Croydon is the Whitgift
Hospital, erected between 1596 and 1599 by the archbishop after whom it
is named, for the reception of twenty-two old men and sixteen old
women, and for the education of twenty poor children, ten boys and ten
girls, who were under the care of a warden and schoolmaster, the latter
also {154} acting as chaplain.  Well restored in 1860, and supplemented
later by a modern college that receives as many as three hundred boys
at a time, the actual hospital still presents very much the appearance
it did during its founder's lifetime, and is a good example of
Elizabethan architecture.  In its hall, a spacious apartment with some
fine stained glass, is preserved a black-letter Bible, said to have
been given to the school by Queen Elizabeth; and in the room known as
the treasury above the entrance-gate are several valuable MSS.,
including the letters-patent granted to Whitgift.

[Illustration: THE WANDLE NEAR CARSHALTON]

[Sidenote: Carshalton]

To the extensive parish of Croydon belong a number of outlying villages
that were not long ago picturesque riverside hamlets, but are now
rapidly developing into populous suburbs, with little to distinguish
them from each other.  There is still, however, a certain rural charm
about Waddon, with its ancient mill, and Beddington, with its
well-restored fourteenth-century church, in which are some interesting
monuments to the Carews, retains something of the dignity that
characterised it when its hall was the seat of that famous family.  The
history of Beddington can be traced back to Roman times, for near to it
have been found the remains of a villa and foundry, with other relics
left behind them by the conquerors from Italy; its manor is referred to
in Doomsday Book as owning a church and two mills, and it was the
property in the early fourteenth century of Sir Nicholas Carew.
Forfeited in the reign of Henry VIII. by another Sir Nicholas, who was
beheaded in 1539 for his {155} supposed share in the Cardinal Pole
conspiracy, it was restored to his son by Queen Elizabeth, who was
often the guest of the new owner.  The manor-house was either rebuilt
or added to for her reception, and is said to have been a grand example
of the architecture of the time, but it was unfortunately pulled down
in 1709, with the exception of the great hall that was preserved in its
successor, and now forms the nucleus of an orphanage for girls that was
completed in 1866, its site, with the still existing buildings of the
Carew mansion and twenty-two acres of its grounds, having been bought
by the corporation of that institution in 1857.  Not far from
Beddington is the still pretty village of Wallington, famous for the
beautiful gardens laid out in the low-lying meadows in which it is
situated by the enthusiastic botanist Alfred Smee; and adjoining it is
the more important Carshalton, that, in spite of much building in the
neighbourhood, retains several picturesque features, notably one or two
old mills on the Wandle.  Known before the Conquest as Oulton, or the
Old Town, a name implying great antiquity, Carshalton is supposed to
have received the prefix now distinguishing it because of its position
on cross-roads.  In the Doomsday Survey no less than five manors are
mentioned as included in Oulton that were later consolidated into one,
and were owned until the time of Stephen by the powerful De Mandeville
family.  Confiscated then because of its owner's devotion to the cause
of the Empress Maud, it has since changed hands many times, and of the
ancient manor-house, {156} associated with many memories of Norman
times, not a trace now remains.  To atone for this, however, in
Carshalton Park--soon, alas! to be built over--is a fine
eighteenth-century mansion, now a Roman Catholic convent, in which long
lived the great lawyer Lord Hardwicke, replacing a much earlier
building that was for some years the home of Dr. Ratcliffe, founder of
the library at Oxford bearing his name.  Another interesting old house
in Carshalton is Stone Court, now the rectory, that once formed part of
a much larger mansion, pulled down in 1800, that belonged at one time
to Nicholas Gwynesford, Sheriff of Surrey in the reigns of Henry VI.,
Edward IV., and Henry VII., and who was also Esquire of the Body to the
two latter monarchs.

[Illustration: CARSHALTON POND]

The church of Carshalton was founded in the fourteenth century, but
with the exception of the lower part of the tower, it has been entirely
rebuilt.  It contains, however, a very fine fifteenth-century brass to
the memory of Thomas Ellymbridge, a servitor of Cardinal Morton, and
several interesting old monuments, including one to the Nicholas
Gwynesford mentioned above, and one to Sir William Scawen, the devoted
friend of William III., who owned Stone Court from 1729 to his death.
Close to the churchyard is another relic of the long-ago, a railed-in
and arched-over spring, known as Queen Anne Boleyn's well, because of a
tradition that its water suddenly gushed forth beneath the feet of her
horse as she was riding with her husband from Nonsuch Palace to
Beddington, a legend not borne {157} out by historical fact, for the
palace was not begun until three years after Henry VIII.'s second wife
was beheaded.  Probably the spring was in use long before the sixteenth
century, as it is but one of several feeders of the Wandle that flows
through Beddington, widening in the centre of the old village into a
pond, that is referred to by Ruskin in the _Crown of Wild Olives_, near
to which there used to be several picturesque old inns that were much
frequented in coaching days by Londoners on their way to and from Epsom
races.

[Sidenote: Sutton]

Some three miles from Carshalton, on the edge of the undulating downs,
that under different names extend for many miles on every side, is the
now populous town of Sutton, the last halting-place on the way to the
world-famous racecourse, that still owns the ancient though modernised
Cock Inn that is associated with so many memories, and the approaches
to which are still crowded with vehicles of every variety during the
race-weeks.  The property in Saxon days of Chertsey Abbey, Sutton, has
a long and well-authenticated history.  Its manor remained in the hands
of the monks until 1538, when it was given with those of Epsom,
Coulsden, and Horley to Sir Nicholas Carew, who, as related above,
already owned the neighbouring Beddington.  Since then it has changed
hands many times; in 1845 it was bought by a certain Thomas Alcock, who
was in a great measure responsible for the conversion of a secluded
hamlet, deserted by all but the resident farmers and their dependants,
into a busy and prosperous suburb.

{158}

Two still beautiful though rapidly growing villages, within easy reach
of Sutton, are Cheam and Ewell, both of which were long in close touch
with the famous Nonsuch Palace, part of the site of which is now
occupied by a nineteenth-century castellated mansion in the Elizabethan
style, the only relics of its predecessor being the foundations of the
banqueting-hall, that still remain in an orchard, near the long avenue
of trees leading up to the entrance of the new house, that was once
part of the now built over park.

The village of Cheam, situated on high ground commanding a fine view of
the Downs, clusters about a modern church with a good spire, close to
which is preserved the chancel of a much more ancient place of worship,
containing some interesting monuments, including one to Lord John
Lumley, the famous book collector, whose library was bought by James I.
on the death of its owner in 1609, and is now in the British Museum,
whilst in the care of the rector of Cheam parish are some exceptionally
fine brasses, that were removed to preserve them from injury when the
old church was destroyed.

[Illustration: THE COCK INN, SUTTON]

The manor of Cheam belonged at the Conquest to the see of Canterbury,
but it was divided somewhat later into two parts by Archbishop
Lanfranc, who retained the eastern half himself, giving the western to
the abbot of Canterbury Monastery.  Both were, however, confiscated by
Henry VIII., and granted by Queen Elizabeth to Lord John Lumley, who
held them till his death, when they {159} passed to his nephew, Henry
Lloyd.  The two old manor-houses were pulled down in the eighteenth
century, but one of them is represented by a modern residence, known as
Lower Cheam House.  More interesting, however, is, or rather was until
quite recently, the early Tudor homestead, bearing the name of
Whitehall, containing a room called the council-chamber, because Queen
Elizabeth is said to have once presided in it over her council when she
was resident at Nonsuch Palace, which, according to local tradition,
was connected with Cheam by an underground passage that had an entrance
from a cellar beneath Whitehall.  In this cellar, that probably served
as a larder, the persecuted Protestants used to meet for worship in the
reign of Queen Mary, and later, by a strange irony of fate, it was
turned to account for the same purpose by the Roman Catholics of the
neighbourhood.

[Sidenote: Ewell]

Ewell, the name of which is a corruption of the Saxon Ætwelle,
signifying the village on the well, so called because it is close to
the springs forming the source of a stream known as the Hogsmill, that
joins the Thames at Kingston, was but a short time ago a secluded
village, but is now rapidly growing into a popular suburb.
Unfortunately its characteristic old market-hall has been pulled down,
and of the ancient church the tower alone remains, but in its modern
successor are preserved several old monuments, tablets, and brasses
commemorating residents of days gone by, and in the churchyard are some
ancient tombs with curious {160} inscriptions.  [Sidenote: Nonsuch
Palace]  Ewell, however, owes its chief distinction to its nearness to
the site of Nonsuch Palace, and the whole surrounding district is full
of memories connected with the Tudor sovereigns.  Situated in the still
sparsely populated parish of Cuddington, that owned a manor-house and
church at the time of the Doomsday Survey, the history of which can be
traced down to the sixteenth century, the property was acquired in 1539
by Henry VIII., who added it to his Hampton Court estate.  With his
usual reckless lavishness he resolved to clear away all the existing
buildings to make room for a palace that should excel all his other
residences.  He enclosed sixteen hundred acres as pleasure grounds, and
brought down from London a whole army of architects and workmen, under
whose auspices quickly rose up a truly beautiful structure, to which
the name of Nonsuch was given, because, said its proud owner, it had no
equal.  It was not quite completed when Henry's career was cut short by
death, and his son, Edward VI., seems to have cared nothing for it.  He
simply handed it over to the care of the then Master of the Revels, Sir
Thomas Carwardine, who evidently appreciated it greatly, for the story
goes that when Queen Mary came to the throne and instructed him to
vacate her palace at Nonsuch, he at first refused to leave it.  Indeed,
he remained till the royal retainers arrived, and many unseemly
quarrels took place between them and their servants about trivial
details such as the division of the produce of the royal gardens.
There were armed encounters in the park {161} before her majesty took
over the custody of the property, to which, however, she was really as
indifferent as her brother had been.  She actually decided that the
best way to save herself from further trouble connected with it would
be to pull down the palace and sell the materials.  It was saved from
this untimely fate only through the generosity of the Earl of Arundel,
who for love of his former master, who had taken such pride in it,
persuaded the queen to exchange it for certain fair lands in his
possession elsewhere.  The transfer having been duly arranged, the new
owner, as related by his biographer Lyons, proceeded 'fully to finish
the house in building, reparations, pavements, and gardens in as
complete and perfect sort as by the first intent and meaning of the
King.'  In it, thirty years after the first stone was laid, the Earl of
Arundel entertained Queen Elizabeth and her court for a week,
presenting her before she left with a costly set of plate.  So greatly,
indeed, did the maiden queen enjoy herself at Nonsuch that she longed
to become its owner, and when a few years later it passed from the
possession of her host to that of his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, she made
overtures to the latter for its purchase, which had, of course, the
force of a command.  During the rest of her life Elizabeth was often at
the palace, and from it many important state papers, and even more
interesting private letters, were dated.  It was there that took place
the remarkable interview with her disgraced favourite, the Earl of
Essex, after his return from Holland on Michaelmas Eve 1599, that {162}
is so vividly described by Rowland Whyte in an oft-quoted letter to Sir
Robert Sydney, in which he says: 'At about ten o'clock in the morning
my Lord of Essex lighted at Court Gate in post, and made all hast up to
the Presence, and so to the Privy Chamber, and stayed not till he came
to the Queen's Bedchamber, where he found the Queen all newly up, the
hair about her face; he kneeled unto her, kissed her hands, and had
some private speech with her, which seemed to give him great
contentment for coming from her Majesty to go shift himself in his
chamber, he was very pleasant, and thanked God, though he had suffered
much trouble amid storms abroad, he found a sweet calm at home.  'Tis
much wondered at here,' comments the writer, 'that he went so boldly to
her Majesty's presence, she not being ready, and he so full of dirt and
mire, that his face was full of it.'  It was this very boldness, as
Essex knew full well, that was his one chance with his angry mistress,
but this time it did not serve him long.  The memory was still fresh
with them both of the bitter quarrel six months before, when Elizabeth,
stung to the quick by his insolent assertion that 'her conditions were
as crooked as her carcase,' had boxed his ears and told him to go and
be hanged, and on the very night of his arrival at Nonsuch, after the
apparent reconciliation, the earl was ordered to consider himself a
prisoner.  A few days later he left the palace in custody, and the next
year he was beheaded in the Tower, all the appeals he had addressed to
the woman, to whom, in spite of all his plots against {163} her, he
pretended to the last to have been devoted, having been in vain.

On the death of Queen Elizabeth James I. gave Nonsuch Palace to his
consort, Queen Anne, and later Charles I. and Henrietta Maria were
often there, but its days of glory were already over.  It was
confiscated by Parliament after the death of the king, but restored to
the Crown on the accession of Charles II., who, when his widowed mother
had passed away, gave it and the park in which it stood to his
mistress, Lady Castlemaine, whom a little later he made Duchess of
Cleveland.  She, alas, valued not at all the memories of the historic
building, but as soon as it was legally secured to her, she had it
pulled down, let out much of the park in plots for building, and sold
the deer that used to wander about in it.  Thus suddenly ended the
brief career of Henry VIII's dream palace, that is but poorly
represented by its successor, a building erected in the early
nineteenth century after the designs of the then popular architect, Sir
Jeffrey Wyattville.  Part of the once beautiful park is now occupied by
the suburb of Worcester, but the grounds immediately surrounding the
new residence, through which there is a public footpath to Cheam and
Ewell, still retain much of their original charm, and some of the older
trees may possibly have been amongst those beneath which Queen
Elizabeth delighted to walk.

[Sidenote: Epsom]

Although it can scarcely, strictly speaking, be said to form a part of
outlying London, the town of Epsom is so intimately associated with the
{164} metropolis, to which it has from first to last owed its
prosperity, that an account of it may well be included in a book
dealing as much with the memories of the past as with the attractions
of the present.  Its history can be traced back to the seventh century,
when it is said to have been the residence of the holy abbess, St.
Ebba, after whom it is named, the daughter of King Ethelred the
Avenger, and sister of Kings Oswald and Oswy, whose story is very
variously told, certain chroniclers declaring that she suffered