Petersham,

Surrey,

February, 1904.

THE ROAD TO NEWMARKET, THETFORD,
NORWICH, AND CROMER.

London (General Post Office) to—	MILES
Shoreditch Church	1½
Cambridge Heath	2½
Hackney Church	3½
Lower Clapton	4
Lea Bridge (Cross River Lea.)	5½
Whip’s Cross	6¾
Snaresbrook (“The Eagle”)	8
Woodford (St. Mary’s Church)	9
Woodford Green	9¾
Woodford Wells (“Horse and Well” Inn)	10¼
Buckhurst Hill (“Bald-faced Stag”)	11
Loughton	13
Wake Arms	15
Epping	18
Thornwood Common	20¼
Potter Street	2½
Harlow (Cross River Stort: Stort Navigation, Harlow Wharf.)	24½
Sawbridgeworth	26¾
Spelbrook	28½
Thorley Street (Cross River Stort.)	29½
Hockerill, Bishop Stortford	30½
Stansted Mountfitchet	33½
Ugley	35½
Quendon	36½
Newport (Cross Wicken Water.)	39
Uttlesford Bridge, Audley End (On right, Saffron Walden, 1½ mile; on left, ½ mile, Wendens Ambo.)	40¼
Littlebury	42¼
Little Chesterford (Cross River Cam.)	43¾
Great Chesterford	44½
Stump Cross	45¼
Pampisford Station, Bourn Bridge (Cross Bourn Stream, or Linton River.)	48½
Six Mile Bottom Level Crossing, Six Mile Bottom Station.)	54½
Devil’s Ditch	58½
Newmarket (Clock Tower)	60½
“Red Lodge” Inn (Cross River Kennett.)	65½
Barton Mills (Cross River Lark, Mildenhall, on left, 1 mile.)	69¾
Elveden	77
Thetford (Cross Rivers Little Ouse and Thet.)	80¾
Larling Level Crossing	85¾
Larlingford (Cross River Thet.)	88¾
Attleborough	94¾
Morley St. Peter Post Office	97
Wymondham	100¾
Hethersett	104¼
Cringleford (Cross River Yare.)	106¾
Eaton	107¼
Norwich (loop road) (Cross River Wensum.)	109¾
Upper Hellesdon	110½
Mile Cross	111
Horsham St. Faith	114¼
Newton St. Faith	115½
Stratton Strawless	117½
Hevingham	118
Marsham	120
Aylsham (loop road) (Cross River Bure.)	121½
Ingworth	123½
Erpingham	125½
Hanworth Corner	126¾
Roughton	128½
Crossdale Street	131
Cromer	132
To Thetford, through Bury St. Edmunds.
Newmarket (Clock Tower)	61¾
Kentford (Cross River Kennett.)	66
Higham Station	68½
Saxham White Horse	71½
Risby	73
Bury St. Edmunds	75½
Fornham St. Martin	77½
Ingham	79¾
Seven Hills	81¾
Barnham	85½
Thetford	87¾

	PAGE
The Norwich Mail in a Thunderstorm on Thetford Heath. (From a Print after J. Pollard)	Frontispiece
The Norwich Stage, about 1790. (From a Painting by an Artist unknown)	5
The “Expedition,” Newmarket and Norwich Stage, about 1798. (From the Painting by Cordery)	9
Rye House	21
The “Eagle,” Snaresbrook: the Norwich Mail passing, 1832. (From a Print after J. Pollard)	41
The “White Hart,” Woodford. (From a Drawing by P. Palfrey)	45
Birthplace of Cecil Rhodes	59
Henry Gilbey	63
The “Crown,” Hockerill, demolished 1903. (From a Drawing by P. Palfrey)	67
The “White Bear,” Stansted. (From a Drawing by P. Palfrey)	71
The “Old Bell,” Stansted. (From a Drawing by P. Palfrey)	75
London Lane, Newport: where Charles the Second’s Route to Newmarket joined the Highway	85
The Devil’s Ditch and Newmarket Heath, looking towards Ely	125
Yard of the “White Hart,” Newmarket	147
Newmarket: the “Rutland Arms”	153
“Angel Hill,” Bury St. Edmunds	181
Mildenhall	195
Barton Mills	199
The “Nuns’ Bridges” on the Icknield Way, Thetford	217
The “Bell Inn,” Thetford, and St. Peter’s Church	221
Castle Hill, Thetford, in 1848. (From an old Print)	229
Wymondham	279
The “Unicorn,” Norwich and Cromer Coach. (From a Print after J. Pollard, 1830)	295
“St. Fay’s”	311
Blickling Hall	319
Cromer in 1830.(From a Print after T. Creswick, R.A.)	343
Cromer	349

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

	PAGE
Will Kemp and his Tabourer	xvii
Ambresbury Banks	55
“Sapsworth”	56
Windhill, Bishop’s Stortford	62
Hockerill	66
Ugley Church	79
“Monks’ Barns”	83
Ancient Carving at “Monks’ Barns”	84
“Nell Gwynne’s House,” formerly the “Horns” Inn	91
“Hospital Farm,” and “Newport Big Stone”	93
Wendens Ambo	96
Audley End	99
Saffron Walden	103
House formerly the “Sun” Inn	105
Arms of Saffron Walden	109
“Mag’s Mount”	122
Barclay of Ury on his Walking Match	134
The “Boy’s Grave”	169
Little Saxham Church	173
Marman’s Grave	189
Avenue near Newmarket	190
Elveden	203
Elveden Gap	207
Gateway, Thetford Priory	213
Castle Hill, Thetford	231
The “Old House,” Thetford	243
“Bridgeham High Tree”	245
The “Scutes,” Peddar’s Way	249
The Ruined Church of Roudham	251
Larlingford	253
Wilby Old Hall	255
Attleborough	258
Wymondham Church	270
Hethersett Vane	286
Cringleford	288
Eaton “Red Lion”	292
St. Peter Mancroft, and Yard of the “White Swan”	298
Gateway, Strangers’ Hall	302
The Strangers’ Hall	303
Caricature in Stone, St. Andrew’s Hall	306
Caricature in Stone, St. Andrew’s Hall	307
Tombland Alley	308
Stratton Strawless Lodges	314
“Woodrow” Inn, and the Hobart Monument	325
Ingworth	327
Felbrigg Hall	330

The road to Newmarket, Thetford, Norwich, and Cromer is 132 miles in length, if you go direct from the old starting-points, Shoreditch or Whitechapel churches. If, on the other hand, you elect to follow the route of the old Thetford and Norwich Mail, which turned off just outside Newmarket from the direct road through Barton Mills, and went instead by Bury St. Edmunds, it is exactly seven miles longer to Thetford and all places beyond.

There are few roads so wild and desolate, and no other main road so lonely, in the southern half of this country. There are even those who describe it as “dreary,” but that is simply a description due to extrinsic circumstances. Beyond question, however, it must needs have been a terrible road in the old coaching days, and every one who had a choice of routes to Norwich did most emphatically and determinedly elect to journey by way of that more populated line of country leading through Chelmsford, Colchester, and Ipswich. Taken nowadays, however, without the harassing drawbacks of rain or snow, or without head-winds to make the cyclist’s progression a misery, it is a road of weirdly interesting scenery. It is not recommended for night-riding to the solitary rider of impressionable nature, for its general aloofness from the haunts of man, and that concentrated spell of sixteen miles of stark solitudes between Great Chesterford and Newmarket, where you have the bare chalk downs all to yourself, are apt to give all such as he that unpleasant sensation popularly called “the creeps.” By day, however, these things lose their uncanny effect while they keep their interest.

There are in all rather more than fifty miles of chalk downs and furzy heaths along this road, and they are all the hither side of Norwich. You bid good-bye to the chalk downs when once Newmarket is gained, and then reach the still wild, but kindlier, country of the sandy heaths.

Cromer was not within the scheme of the London coach-proprietors’ activities in the days of the road. It was scarce more than a fishing village, and the traveller who wished to reach it merely booked to Norwich, and from thence found a local coach to carry him forward. To Norwich by this route it is exactly two miles shorter than by way of Colchester and Ipswich. Let us see how public needs were studied in those old days by proprietors of stage-coach and mail.

II

The Newmarket and Thetford route was not a favourite one with the earliest coachmasters. Its lengthy stretches of unpopulated country rendered it a poor speculation, and the exceptional dangers to be apprehended from Highway-men kept it unpopular with travellers. The Chelmsford, Colchester, and Ipswich route on to Norwich was always the favourite with travellers bound so far, and on that road we have details of coaching so early as 1696. Here, however, although there were early conveyances, we only set foot upon sure historic ground in 1769, when a coach set out from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7 a.m., and conveyed passengers to Norwich at £1 2s. each.

In that same year a “Flying Machine,” in one day, is found going from the “Swan with Two Necks” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in summer at 12 o’clock noon. For this express speed of Norwich in one day the fare was somewhat higher; £1 8s. was the price put upon travelling by the “Flying Machine”; but in winter, when it set forth on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, at the unearthly hour of 5 a.m., the price was 3s. lower.

In 1782 a Diligence went three times a week, at 10 p.m., from the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane; as also did a “Post Coach,” at 10 p.m., from the “Swan with Two Necks,” the “Machine” at midnight, and “a coach,” name and description not specified, from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at 10 p.m. There were thus at this time four coaches to Norwich. In 1784 the “Machine” disappears from the coach-lists of that useful old publication, the Shopkeepers’ Assistant, and in its stead appears for the first time the “Expedition” coach. This new-comer started thrice a week—Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays—from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at the hour of 9 p.m. Evidently there were stout hearts on this route in those times, to travel thus through the terrors of the darkling roads.

In 1788 the “Expedition” is found starting one hour earlier: in 1790, another two hours. In 1798 it set out from the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, so early as 3.45 p.m., and had begun to go every day. Calling on the way at its original starting-point, the “Bull,” it left that house at 4 p.m., and continued on its way without further interruption.

What the “Expedition” was like at this period we may judge from the very valuable evidence of the accompanying illustration, drawn in facsimile from a contemporary painting by Cordery. It was one of the singular freaks that had then a limited vogue, and is a “double-bodied” coach, designed to suit the British taste for seclusion. How the passengers in the hinder body entered or left the coach is not readily seen, unless we may suppose that the artist was guilty of a technical mistake, and brought the hind wheels too far forward. The only alternative is to presume a communication between fore and hind bodies.

This illustration, so deeply interesting to students of coaching history, was evidently, as the long inscription underneath suggests, designed in the first instance as a pictorial advertisement, and doubtless hung in the booking-office of the coach at the “Bull” in Bishopsgate Street. That quaintly-mispelled programme shows its speed, inclusive of stops for changing and supper, to have been six miles an hour.

The difficulties in the way of the coaching historian are gravely increased by the omissions and inaccuracies that plentifully stud the reference books of the past. Thus, although the Shopkeepers’ Assistant omits all notice of the “Expedition” after 1801, we cannot admit it to have been discontinued, for it is referred to in a Norwich paper of 1816, in which we learn that it left Norwich at 3 p.m. and arrived at London at 9 a.m., a performance slower by half an hour than that of eighteen years earlier. From this notice we also learn the fares, which were 35s. for insides and 20s. out.

In 1821 it left London at 5.30 p.m., and in 1823 at 5 p.m. We have no record of its appearance at this time, but the double-bodied coach had probably by then been replaced by one of ordinary build. The old-established concern seems, however, to have lost some of its popularity, for on April 10th, the following year, 1824, the proprietors discontinued it, and started the “Magnet”—so named, probably, because they conceived such a title would have great powers of attraction. If the mere name could not have brought much extra custom, at least the improved speed was calculated to do so. The year 1824 was the opening of the era of fast coaches all over the country, and the “Magnet” was advertised to run from the “White Swan” and “Rampant Horse,” Norwich, at 4 p.m., and arrive at London 7 a.m. These figures give a journey of fifteen hours, a considerable improvement upon the performances of the old “Expedition,” but the return journey was one hour better. Leaving the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at 7 p.m., the coach was at Norwich by 9 o’clock the next morning.

The “Magnet,” unfortunately, was no sooner started than it met with a mishap. On the midnight of May 15th the up coach, crossing the bridge over the Cam at Great Chesterford, about midnight, ran into a swamp, and the passengers who did not wish to drown had to climb on to the roof and remain there, while the water flowed through the windows. Eventually the coach was dragged out by cart-horses. The swamp is still there, beside the road.

Meanwhile, the down coach came along, and had only just crossed the bridge when the arch, forced out by the swollen state of the river, burst, with a tremendous crash. Another coach, approaching, received warning from the guard of the “Magnet” swinging his lantern. Had it not been for his timely act, a very grave disaster must have happened, and the passengers of the coach very properly set afoot a subscription for him.

Meanwhile the Royal Mail was going every week-day night, at 7 p.m. from the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, and from the “Flower Pot,” Bishopsgate Street, an hour later. It ran to the “King’s Head,” Norwich, and went by Bury St. Edmunds, continuing that route until January 6th, 1846, when—the last of the coaches on this road—it ceased to be.

In 1821 the “Times” day coach left the “Blue Boar,” Whitechapel, at 5.45 every morning, going by Bury; the “Telegraph” day coach, by Barton Mills and Elveden, started from the “Cross Keys,” Wood Street, at 6.45 a.m., and got to Norwich in 13 hours; a coach from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, travelling by Bury, left at 7 a.m.; from the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, a “Light Post” coach set out, by Barton Mills and Elveden, at 5.30 p.m., arriving at the “White Swan,” Norwich, in 15½ hours, at 9 a.m.; and a coach by the same route from the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, at 6.30 a.m., arriving at 8 p.m.

In addition to these were the so-called “single” coaches: i.e., those not running a down and an up coach, but going down one day and returning the next. These were the conveyance from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at 5.30 a.m., on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, by Barton Mills and Elveden, reaching the “White Swan,” Norwich, in 12½ hours (the best performance of all); and the “Norwich Safety,” by Bury, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from the “Bull and Mouth” at 7.30 p.m.; a very slow, as well as a self-styled “safe” coach, for it only reached Norwich at 11 a.m.; thus lagging 15½ hours on the road.

The “Phenomenon,” or “Phenomena,” as it was variously styled, left the “Boar and Castle,” 6, Oxford Street, where the Oxford Music Hall now stands, at 5.30 a.m., and the “Bull,” Whitechapel, at 6.30, and went a route of its own, by Chelmsford, Braintree, Sible and Castle Hedingham, Sudbury, Bury, and Scole, to Norwich. To Bury, especially, went three coaches, two of them daily, and one thrice a week.

The Norwich Mail, by Newmarket and Bury, had in the meanwhile been abandoned by Benjamin Worthy Horne, of the “Golden Cross,” and had been taken over by Robert Nelson, of the “Belle Sauvage.” It was the only mail he had. He horsed it as far as Hockerill, and it is eminently unlikely that he and his partners down the road did much more than make both ends meet. For Post Office purposes the Mail was bound to go by Bury, which involved seven miles more than by the direct route, and it had to contend with the competition of the “Telegraph” day coach, going direct, and at an hour more convenient for travellers. So this Mail never loaded well, and coachmasters were not eager to contract for running it. The Post Office, accustomed to pay the quite small amounts of 2d. and 3d. a mile, paid 8d., and then 9d., per mile for this, to induce any one to work it at all, and it was contemplated to entrust the mail-bags to stage-coaches along this route, when the railway came and cut off stage and mail alike.

This Norwich Mail was not without its adventures. It was nearly wrecked in the early morning of June 15th, 1817, when close to Newmarket, by a plough and harrow, placed in the middle of the road by some unknown scoundrels. The horses were pitifully injured. A year or so later it came into collision on the Heath with a waggon laden with straw. A lamp was broken by the force of the impact, and straw and waggon set ablaze and destroyed.

Beside the coaches, there were many vans and waggons plying along the road, and some comparatively short-distance coaches. Thus there was the “Old Stortford” coach, daily, between London and Bishop’s Stortford, and the Saffron Walden coach, twice daily, from the “Bull,” Whitechapel; together with the Saffron Walden “Telegraph,” from the “Belle Sauvage,” on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Gilbey & Co.” had a coach plying the twelve miles between Bishop’s Stortford and Saffron Walden, twice daily. Coaching between London and Bishop’s Stortford ended when the “Northern and Eastern Railway”—long since amalgamated with the Great Eastern—was opened to that point, in 1841. All coaches between London and Norwich ceased to run early in 1846.

Although the road to Newmarket lay, as we have seen, chiefly through Epping, Chesterford, and Bishop’s Stortford from the earliest days of coaching, this route was, in earlier times of travel, but one of several. A favourite way was along the Old North Road, through Enfield, Ware, Puckeridge, and Royston, whence wayfarers might branch off to the right, by way of Whittlesford and Pampisford, or might go through Melbourn, Harston, and Cambridge. Travellers were shy of venturing into the glades of Epping Forest, infested beyond the ordinary run with dangerous characters, and rather braved the rigours of the open downs than encounter the terrors of the shrouded woodlands. James I., with his passion for the chase and his hunting-palace at Royston, early established a fox-hunting lodge at Newmarket, and had, with his magnificent palace of Theobalds, at Cheshunt, a series of reasons for travelling this route. The road was bad, of course, in those times: they all were. The only difference in them was that when all were bad others were merely worse. But when any particular road became a kingly route, attempts were made to improve it, and thus we read that so early as 1609 one Thomas Norton, “way-maker” to his Majesty, was at work on the problem of repairing “the highewayes leadinge to and from the Citty of London to the towns of Royston and Newmarkett, for his Ma^ties better passage in goeing and cominge to his recreations in those parts.” No silly nonsense, you will observe, about public benefit, nor anything in the way of excusing the thing on the ground of the King’s business demanding it. His Majesty’s amusements, we are frankly allowed to see, were at stake, and that was reason sufficient.

Mr. Thomas Norton was not, after all, paid very much for his services. In 1609 he received £29 10s., and a pittance continued afterwards to be doled out to him.

The way to Newmarket, however, still continued to be a matter of individual taste and fancy. When James was visited there in February, 1615, by Mr. Secretary Winwood on State business, he journeyed by Epping, Chesterford, and Bishop’s Stortford, returning the same way. He travelled with a wondrous rapidity, too, when we consider what travelling then was; and although he did complain of “a sore journey, as the wayes are,” did actually succeed in returning to London in one day, by dint of having on his way down made arrangements for coaches to be “laid for him” at three several places. Two years later the Swedish Ambassador travelled to Newmarket to pay his respects to the King. He went by Royston in two days, sleeping at Puckeridge the first night, and returned by Cambridge, Newport (where he stayed the night), and Waltham.

In 1632 the surveyor of highways is found solemnly adjuring the parishes and the roadside landowners to perform the duties laid upon them by the General Highway Act of 1555, and to repair the “noyous” ways by which Charles I. was proposing to travel to Royston and Newmarket. The malt traffic, which thirty years later had grown so heavy on this road that toll-gates became necessary to keep it in repair, appears already to have been a great feature, for the surveyor urged the restriction on this occasion of the number of malt-carts, and prohibited waggons drawn by more than five horses.

We gain from the pages of Samuel Pepys a glimpse of what these royal journeys were like in the time of Charles II. When you have read it you will conclude that even a modern penny tramway ride has more majesty, and certainly seems to be safer. He notes in his diary, under March 8th, 1669, that he went “to White Hall, from whence the King and the Duke of York went, by three in the morning and had the misfortune to be overset with the Duke of York, the Duke of Monmouth, and the Prince (Prince Rupert) at the King’s Gate in Holborne, and the King all dirty, but no hurt. How it came to pass, I know not, but only it was darke, and the torches did not, they say, light the coach as they should do.”

It would puzzle most Londoners in these days to tell where the King’s Gate was situated. The last landmark that stood for it was swept away in 1902, when the east side of Southampton Row was demolished, and with it the narrow thoroughfare of Kingsgate Street, in the rear, to make way for the new street from Holborn to the Strand. The student of Dickens will recollect that Mrs. Gamp lived in Kingsgate Street: “which her name is well-beknown is S. Gamp, Midwife, Kingsgate Street, High Holborn”; but in the time of James I. and the Stuart kings it was a narrow, and it would also seem, by Pepys’ account, a muddy, lane leading from the pleasant country road of Holborn to another and longer lane called then as now, when it is a lane no more, “Theobalds Road.” The lane was provided with a barred gate, and was used exclusively by the King and a few privileged others on the way to Theobalds Palace and Newmarket.

The post went in those times from London to Newmarket by way of Shoreditch, Kingsland, Waltham, Ware, Royston, and Cambridge. In 1660 Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, went by Epping. Sleeping at Bishop’s Stortford overnight, he was at Newmarket next day. In October the following year Evelyn travelled by Epping, with six horses, changing three times only in the sixty-one miles—at Epping, Bishop’s Stortford, and Chesterford.

Ogilby in 1675, when the first edition of his Britannia was published, mapped out the road to Newmarket as part of the Old North Road as far as Puckeridge, and thence took it to Barley, Whittlesford, and Pampisford; yet Charles II. is not found travelling that way. He occasionally went by Epping, but chiefly through Waltham Cross and Hoddesdon, and thence by an obscure route past the Rye House, Hunsdon Street, Widford, Much Hadham, Hadham Ford, Patmore Heath, Stocking Pelham, Berden, Rickling Church End, and into Newport by a lane still known locally as “London Lane.” A house at Newport now known as “Nell Gwynne’s House,” and once the “Horns” inn, was at that time a halting-place often used by Nell, the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Rochester on their way to or from Newmarket races.

The very remoteness and obscurity of this route gave the conspirators of the Rye House Plot of 1683 their opportunity. Those plotters were not the thorough-paced scoundrels historians would have us believe, but men who, with a passionate hatred of Popish doctrines, and with a keen recollection of the approximation to civil and religious liberty enjoyed under the Commonwealth of more than twenty years earlier, viewed the growing absolutism of Charles’s rule and the advances of Popery with fear and rage. The King as a man, with his romantic story, his airy wit, his genial cynicism and lack of affectation, has always commanded affection, but as a ruler deserved hatred and contempt. The original conspiracy was comparatively harmless, and cherished the idea of a constitutional revolution. With dreamy eyes fixed upon the ideal of a Utopian Republic, it included such visionaries as Algernon Sidney, Lord William Russell, the Earls of Essex and Shaftesbury, John Hampden (grandson of the patriot), and Lord Howard of Escrick.

But an inner circle of less distinguished but more desperate men formed within this movement had other, and secret, designs. It was their intention to place the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, Charles’s natural son, upon the throne, and, as a preliminary, to “remove” the King. “No one would kill me to make you king,” Charles had once said to his brother James, Duke of York; but the intention of the Rye House conspirators was to assassinate both. These physical-force men worked long and silently, without the knowledge of the others. At their head was one Rumbold, a maltster, a colonel in Cromwell’s army, and with him Walcot, a brother officer in those old times. Rumbold was the occupier of a farm, the Rye House, an ancient building whose walls ranged with the narrow lane, miscalled a road, which ran—and still runs, as a lane—along the sloppy valley of the river Lea. The house had been built by a certain Andrew Ogard, who in the reign of Henry VI. had been licensed to construct a fortified dwelling here. The beautiful Gatehouse, in red brick, with picturesquely twisted chimneys and a fine oriel window, yet remains.

The best description of the place as it was at that time is the following, extracted from the trial of the conspirators in 1683:—

“The Rye House in Hertfordshire, about eighteen miles from London, is so called from the ‘Rye,’ a meadow near it. Just under it there is a bye-road from Bishop’s Strafford to Hoddesden, which was constantly used by the King when he went to or from Newmarket; the great road winding much about on the right hand, by Stanstead. The House is an old strong building and stands alone, encompassed with a moat, and towards the garden has high walls, so that twenty men might easily defend it for some time against five hundred. From a high tower in the House all that go or come may be seen both ways, for nearly a mile’s distance. As you come from Newmarket towards London, when you are near the House, you pass the meadow over a narrow causeway, at the end of which is a toll-gate, which having entered, you go through a yard and a little field, and at the end of that, through another gate, you pass into a narrow lane, where two coaches at that time could not go abreast. This narrow passage had on the left hand a thick hedge and a ditch, and on the right a long range of buildings used for corn-chambers and stables, with several doors and windows looking into the road, and before it a pale, which then made the passage so narrow, but is since removed. When you are past this long building, you go by the moat and the garden wall, that is very strong, and has divers holes in it, through which a great many men might shoot. Along by the moat and wall, the road continues to the Ware River, which runs about twenty or thirty yards from the moat, and is to be past by a bridge. A small distance from thence, another bridge is to be past, over the New River. In both which passes a few men may oppose great numbers. In the outer courtyard, which is behind the long building, a considerable body of horse and foot might be drawn up, unperceived from the road; whence they might easily issue out at the same time into each end of the narrow lane, which was also to be stopt by overturning a cart.”

Here the conspirators, assembled to the number of fifty, hoped to make short work of the Royal brothers, in the darkness of night and the confusion of the sudden stoppage, and would in all probability have been successful had it not been for the fire of March 22nd, which burnt half the town of Newmarket and put the Court there to such inconvenience that the King hurriedly decided to return to London some days before he was expected back. Rumbold and his men were unprepared and the plot miscarried. The unforeseen had happened, and all their extensive armament was useless. We must spare a little admiration for the thoroughness of their equipment, which included six blunderbusses, twenty muskets, and between twenty and thirty pairs of pistols. These deadly articles were afterwards found to be referred to in the conspirators’ correspondence under the innocent pseudonyms of quills, goosequills, and crowquills. Powder was “ink,” and bullets “sand.”

That inevitable feature of every plot, the informer, was soon in evidence, and the greater number of the conspirators, constitutional and otherwise, were seized. After an unfair trial, Sidney and Russell, among the constitutionalists, were executed; Lord Howard of Escrick had turned evidence and so escaped punishment, the Earl of Essex committed suicide in prison, Shaftesbury had prudently, at an early stage, fled abroad, and Hampden was fined £44,000. The physical-force men were hanged. Rumbold escaped for awhile to Holland, but incautiously joined a later insurrection under the Duke of Argyle in the north, and was wounded and taken prisoner at the same time as his leader. It was the desire of the Government that, as one of the principals of the plot, he should be brought to England for execution, but it was feared that he would not survive the journey, and he was executed, under circumstances of revolting barbarity, at Edinburgh, being hoisted up by a pulley and hanged awhile, and then, still alive, let down, his heart torn out and carried on the point of a bayonet by the hangman.

Bishop Sprat, in his “True Account of the Horrid Conspiracy,” says Rumbold made a statement that he and some of his friends had resolved to cut off the King and his brother on their way to or from Newmarket, more than ten years earlier, and had lain some time in ambush for that purpose: “but his Majesty and his Royal Brother went the other way through the Forest; which, as the Wretch himself could not but observe, they have seldom or never done, before or since.”

We can find much subject for speculation in considering what would have happened had the Rye House Plot been successful and the King and his brother slain under the fire of Rumbold’s battery. There would still have been a James II.; not the sour bigot who bore that title, but James, Duke of Monmouth. And there would certainly have been no William III., and no Georges, and—but those historic Might Have Beens, how they can run away with the imagination, to be sure!

As for the Rye House; at the beginning of the nineteenth century it had become a work-house, and so continued until 1840, when, under the Poor Law Amendment Act, it became necessary to provide less make-shift accommodation. To-day it is the resort of beanfeasters innumerable, who are set down at the Rye House station, and guzzle and swill at the gimcrack Rye House inn, where the Great Bed of Ware is the staple attraction; or take tea in the earwiggy arbours of the genuine Rye House, where there is a “Barons’ Hall” calculated to astonish any baron who might chance to come back from the wrack of centuries gone. There is, too, a would-be fearsome “dungeon” affair, with stalactites dependent from the roof, and looking, superficially, at least a thousand years old; but a confidential chat over a glass of ale with an informing stranger reveals the man who made them, and he is not yet even a centenarian

It behoves us now, after tracing this truly Royal route, to return and plod the plebeian path. Let us start from whence the road of old was measured, from busy Shoreditch.

Here the ordinary traffic of London streets is complicated by that of the heavy railway vans and trollies to and from the great neighbouring goods station of Bishopsgate, and the din and confusion are intensified by the stone setts that here have not been replaced by wood paving.

Upon all this maze of traffic the church of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, looks down with an eighteenth-century gravity. It is not old, as churches go, and looks, like all its fellows in the classic Renaissance of a hundred and fifty years ago, something alien and inhospitable. It marks the extension of London at that time, past the old bounds of Bishopsgate, Norton Folgate—whose name is supposed to be a corruption of Norton ’Fore the-gate, outside the City—and the ancient “Sordig,” “Sorditch,” or “Shordych,” an open sewer outside the walls. Popular legend, in this particular instance at fault, still ascribes the name to Jane Shore, the fallen favourite of Edward IV., who, in the words of a doleful old ballad, is said to have ended here:—

By the church the road turns acutely to the right, along the Hackney Road, to Mare Street and Cambridge Heath, where, at the junction of the roads, the first turnpike from London stood.

The ’Ackney Road—for it is thus that the inhabitants know it—is a broad artery athwart those wilds of Bethnal Green and Haggerston, where the Hooligans live—those sprightly hobbledehoys who find life all too dull and tame, and so spice it with the uncivilised frays that keep the police so actively employed. Boot and buckled strap play their part in the street-war between Hooligan and Hooligan, a warfare varied by unprovoked assaults upon unoffending citizens, who find themselves unexpectedly floored and their ears and noses being savaged off by the Hooligan teeth.

It is no new thoroughfare, the Hackney Road, and is merely the modern development of the country lane that once upon a time led into the fields immediately after Shoreditch church was passed. It follows exactly the same route as when Hackney was a pleasant country village, when Cambridge Heath really was a heath, and when the sheep grazed in the meadows of Hoxton. But it was a dangerous as well as a pretty road in those times, the scene during the long series of years between 1718 and 1756 of so many robberies and murders that the village residents of Hackney, weary of being clubbed separately, at last clubbed together and offered handsome rewards for the arrest of any of those footpads and Highway-men who rendered it unsafe to stir abroad. That it was not in 1732 a desirable place for an evening stroll may readily be gathered from the adventures that befell a worthy tradesman who, returning to London from Hackney about six o’clock in the evening, was set upon by two fellows, who robbed him of his money and pocket-book. He pleaded earnestly for the book to be restored to him, and happening to recognise one of the rogues, said, “Honest friend, one good turn deserves another. I was one of the jurymen who took compassion upon you last sessions at the Old Bailey, when you were tried for robbery and acquitted, although we all believed you to be guilty.”

To this the thief ungratefully replied, “Curse your eyes, you son of a bitch, learn to do justice another time and be damned”; and, knocking their unfortunate victim backwards into a slimy ditch, they both decamped.

The papers of the time, reporting this little incident, seem astonished at the violence of the language, but we moderns feel inclined to ask, “Is that all?” It is mildness itself compared with the foul language, the damning and cursing that may be heard to-day, without any provocation, at every street-corner.

But if the foodpads who infested the Hackney Road were the merest tyros in swearing, they seem to have been proficients in assassination, for many bodies, shot and stabbed, were continually found beside the road, and it was not until about 1756 that any degree of safety could be obtained. On January 15th, in that year, the way between Shoreditch and Hackney was lighted with lamps for the first time, and a military guard, with muskets loaded and bayonets fixed, patrolled the distance.