saw a tombe in the middle of the quire, covered with a pall of silke, and set about with lights of waxe: and demanding whose tombe it was, he was answered, that it was the tombe of Rosamond, that was some time lemman to Henry II, who for the love of her had done much good to that church.' 'Then,' said the churlish priest, 'take out of this place the harlot, and bury her without the church, lest Christian religion should grow in contempt.' Thus the bishop cast his stone, and we contrast his words with those of the teacher whose gentle reproof will be an example for all time. And now some massive ivy-clad walls and mullioned windows is all that remains of the abbey of 'nunnes' called Godstow. Ten miles farther would bring the travelers to Bablockhithe and to dinner time, and this is all enchanted ground, for here the 'Scholar Gipsy' of Glanvill's tale and Matthew Arnold's verse Oxford riders blithe, Returning home on summer nights, have met Perhaps Shelley knew Glanvill's old tale of the 'lad in the University of Oxford who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there; and at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gypsies. . . . After he had been a pretty while well exercised in the trade there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. . . . He told them that the people he was with were not such imposters as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them. . . that himself had learned much of their art, and when he had compassed the whole secret, he intended to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.' Thus old Glanvill. It is a story that would have delighted Shelley, who would be apt to note that he and the young scholar had much in common: the same Alma Mater had ministered to them both, financial trials had beset them, they were dreamers of dreams, wanderers and seekers after the mysterious; but the scholar's friends saw him no more; he died long, long ago and no one knows his name, or where he found a resting place. At the Maybush Inn, New Bridge, half way between Oxford and Lechlade, the party must have rested, for this part of the journey was completed in two days, and no other inns near. The accommodation of the 'Maybush' was surely of the simplest. It was so when we spent some quiet days there ten years ago, but clean and comfortable, and the host was so old that he might have heard at first hand of Shelley's visit, an event which would probably be remembered, for strangers rarely explored the little river then. The doorway of the inn gives on to the old bridge, for it is new in nothing but its name. In the recesses of the parapet which spans its Gothic arches lean and watch the ducks and flitting fish, and commend the craft of the monks who builded so stoutly six hundred years ago. one may And close at hand, its inlet hidden with rushes and with willows, the Windrush meets the Thames; and surely fairy godmothers must have chosen such names as the Dance, the Evenlode, and the Windrush for these little tributaries: they are suggestive of meads, and flowers, and birds and all that makes the summer countryside pleasant. The journey draws to an end, but there remains Kelmscot Manor to note, and it was here, about 1870, that William Morris came to live, and with him Dante Gabriel Rossetti. No one has loved the Thames more truly than the great craftsman (his romance, News from Nowhere, should be read by all who love it too) who rests in the little churchyard at Kelmscot, within sound of the undertone of its still small voice. And, at last, Lechlade. This oldfashioned town (the guide books call it quiet and dull) has changed but little since Shelley's visit; the New Inn, at which the party probably put up, is as he knew it, and it is pleasant to see in the coffee-room a little engraved portrait of the poet, with a copy of the elegy. Within a few yards is the church dedicated to St. Lawrence, whose reputed fate is reminiscent of the last sad rites on the beach at Spezzia. The churchyard, where Shelley mused of graves, of worms and epitaphs and composed 'A Summer Evening Churchyard,' is a peaceful resting place. Many hours has the writer passed there with the sexton and an attendant robin, while the old man with pickaxe and with spade shaped the narrow cell and discussed of his ancient craft, 'that builds stronger than the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter.' This spot, so peaceful and retired, led the poet to hope that death doth hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch do keep. The 'obscurest glen' mentioned in the first verse of the poem seems to be a poetic fiction: there is no glen, obscure or otherwise, to be seen from the churchyard: only, from the further gate, a prospect over pasture fields toward the river. It was Shelley's ambition to visit the source of the Thames; but this is im possible by boat, as the diminished stream is usually only navigable for a few miles above Lechlade: the source is far off among the Cotswold Hills. The furthest point which the party reached was a mile or two beyond the beautiful old church at Inglesham, still unspoiled by the heavy hand of the restorer. Here the river runs over shallows, 'where the weeds became so enormously thick and high that all three of us tugging could not move the boat an inch; the water also, a little further on, was so shallow that it barely covered the hoofs of some cows standing in the middle to drink.' Shelley must have enjoyed all this to the full: the river bright and sparkling on the shallows, the brown stones shining beneath, wrinkled rushes bending to the light air, the banks fringed with ancient willows whose roots weave a network of coral in the clear water, and the cattle standing in the midst to drink a happy time! Most of us can recall some such scenes, and the eyes get a little dim perhaps: Rarely, rarely comest thou, In old days there were two weirs be- It is a pity that the eleven miles of beautiful scenery between Lechlade and Cricklade should be lost to boating people, and the writer urged the Thames Conservancy some years ago, unsuccessfully, to reinstate the weirs. Every mile of our beautiful river should be made navigable. The Thames is a unique possession, though it has been neglected and vulgarized, and the charm of some of its reaches has been destroyed by the erection of buildings that would cause even a district surveyor to blush with shame. Disappointed in his project of exploring the sources of the Thames, Shelley, who throughout the trip had been in the wildest spirits, proposed that they should all extend the journey. His suggestion was that they should proceed through the Thames and Severn Canal, which joins the Thames at Lechlade, so to the Severn, and then, by the help of divers canals and rivers, to leave North Wales, and, traversing the inland counties, to reach Durham and the Lakes, so on to the Tweed, and hence to come out on the Forth, nor rest till we reach the Falls of the Clyde, when by the time we returned, we should have voyaged two thousand miles.' It is perhaps needless to say that there were then no waterways which would enable such a tour to be taken nor are there now and the ambitious project was nipped in the bud by the discovery that the fees for the journey on the Thames and Severn Canal alone would amount to twenty pounds. The old canal is now derelict, though in many of the sections water remains, and a walk along the towing-path on a spring or summer day is full of surprises and delights. Bird life is abundant: there are kingfishers and graceful terns, kestrels and herons, and all day long the warblers chuckle in the reeds, and the yellow-hammer complains of his little bit of bread and no cheese. There are otters, too, but these are seldom seen, and grass snakes, swimming and fishing among the weeds. The tour is over, and with it have passed some of the happiest days of Shelley's brief and chequered life. Often in imagination did he revisit such scenes and speak of the never-to be-forgotten beauty of those quiet reaches Whose turf, whose shades, whose flowers among [The King's Highway] THE REAL DICK TURPIN THE romance of the road owes a great deal to the picturesque figure of the highway. Give me a highwayman,' says Stevenson, speaking of the books he loved as a boy, ‘and I was full to the brim; a Jacobite would do, but the highwayman was my favorite dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw; and the words, "post-chaise," the "great North road," "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry.' It will always be a matter of keen regret to all lovers of the road that Stevenson did not live to write the classic novel of the highway. He began The Great North Road in 1884, and had written eight chapters before he laid it aside, but he never took it up again, and it was left a fragment when he died ten years later. If we had had a romance of the road by that master hand, the highwayman would be a much less shadowy figure than he is to most of us. The average person knows only one highwayman by name, and everything he can tell you about him is untrue, for Black Bess is a myth, and if the famous ride from London to York is not a myth, too, the credit of it certainly cannot be claimed for Dick Turpin. How does it happen, then, that this 'commonplace ruffian,' as he has been not unjustly called, should be the one highwayman whose fame has lasted down to our own day? Harrison Ainsworth's immensely successful novel Rookwood, published in 1834, is said to be the father of all the numerous stories and plays in which Dick has figured as hero, but the legend, for it is little else, had a strong hold on the popular imagination before Ainsworth's day. Turpin was the hero of my boyhood,' he tells us. 'I had always a strange passion for highwaymen, and have listened by the hour to their exploits, as narrated by my father, and especially to those of Dauntless Dick, that "chief minion of the moon." 'One of Turpin's adventures in particular, the ride to Hough Green, which took deep hold of my fancy, I have recorded in song. When a boy, I have often lingered by the side of the deep old road where this robbery was committed, to cast wistful glances into its mysterious windings, and when night deepened the shadows of the trees, have urged my horse on its journey, from a vague apprehension of a visit from the ghostly highwayman. And then there was the Bollin, with its shelving banks, that Turpin cleared at a bound; the broad meadows over which he winged his flight; the pleasant bowling-green of the pleasant old inn at Hough, where he produced his watch to the Cheshire squires, with whom he was on terms of intimacy; all brought something of the gallant robber to mind. No wonder, in after years, in selecting a highwayman for a character in a tale, I should choose my old favorite, Dick Turpin.' The song referred to, sung by Dick Turpin in Rookwood, is too long to quote, but the gist of it is that the bold highwayman robbed a solitary horseman, who happened to know him and swore that he would swing for the job. Turpin trusted to the speed of Black Bess to establish an alibi, and riding hell for leather across country arrived at Hough Green inside five minutes. The distance is about three miles, so Black Bess was doing a good thirty-six miles an hour! He passed the time of day with the squires on the bowlinggreen, and when his victim arrived in search of him they swore that he had been playing bowls at four o'clock, the exact time at which he was accused of having committed the robbery. It is a pretty story, but it sounds extremely improbable, and if it is founded on fact the hero of the alibi was not the historical Dick Turpin, who was never on such intimate terms with the Cheshire squires. Tradition loves to embellish an exploit of this kind by ascribing it to a famous personage, and Dick Turpin had come to be the paragon of highwaymen, just as Sherlock Holmes is the paragon of detectives. It was only a step from saying that a highwayman was a Dick Turpin to saying that he was Dick Turpin; it was a capital name for a knight of the road, and in that respect, at least, no fault can be found with the popular choice. But sad to say, the real Dick Turpin was entirely unworthy of his name and fame. He was born in 1706 at Hempstead, in Essex, where his name may still be seen on the baptismal register of the parish. His father kept what is now the 'Crown Inn,' and the circle of nine pollard trees opposite it is known as "Turpin's Ring.' Young Dick was apprenticed to a butcher in Whitechapel, and long after he had taken to the more lucrative trade of highwayman he figured in the papers as Turpin the Butcher. When he started business for himself at Waltham Abbey he married a girl called Palmer, whose name he took when the neighborhood of London became too hot for him and he had to retire into Yorkshire. The facilities which his lawful trade offered for disposing of stolen cattle tempted him to add thieving as a side-line, and he was detected in stealing some oxen belonging to a Plaistow farmer bearing the appropriate name of Giles. He then took to deer-stealing in Epping Forest, and from that proceeded to housebreaking, becoming a member of a notorious gang who terrorized Essex and the eastern suburbs of London. Their favorite 'stunt' was to raid a lonely house when all the able-bodied men were absent, and threaten, or even torture the inmates into giving up their money and valuables. The contemporary newspaper reports of their crimes make very unpleasant reading. A single example will suffice: 'On Saturday night last, about Seven o'clock, five Rogues enter'd the House of the Widow Shelley, at Loughton in Essex, having Pistols, etc., and threaten'd to murder the old Lady if she did not tell them where her Money lay, which she obstinately refusing for some Time, they threaten'd to lay her across the Fire if she did not instantly tell them, which she would not do; but her Son being in the Room, and threaten'd to be murder'd, cry'd out he would tell them if they would not murder his Mother, and did; whereupon they went up Stairs and took near £100, a Silver Tankard, and other Plate, and all Manner of Household Goods.' When this gang of house-breakers was broken up, two being hanged and one turning King's evidence, the two remaining members, Turpin and Rowden, took to the road as highwaymen, their favorite haunts being Putney Heath and Blackheath. Early in 1735 Turpin went into partnership with another famous highwayman, Tom King. They made their headquarters in Epping Forest, in a snug and well-concealed cave from which they could command a view of the road. Their retreat is said to have been large enough to conceal their horses, and for a time they made the neighborhood very unsafe for travelers. On the 4th of May, 1737, the cave was discovered by the servant of one of the underkeepers of the Forest, but Turpin shot the man dead with a carbine, and made good his escape. A few days later the house in which he was sleeping was surrounded, and he received warning only just in time to evade capture by climbing over the roofs, in the most approved manner of the cinema villain. The next recorded episode in his career begins near the 'Green Nan,' in Epping Forest, when he and two of his companions robbed a Mr. Major of a race-horse named 'White Stockings.' It was traced to the 'Red Lion,' in the White-chapel Road, and there, in a scuffle with the Bow Street runners, Turpin accidentally shot one of his accomplices, a brother of Tom King. The popular version of the story is that it was Tom King himself who was thus killed, and Ainsworth follows the tradition in Rookwood, where the incident, sentimentalized by the omission of all reference to a stolen horse, is transferred to Kilburn and forms the prelude to the Ride to York. Soon after this affair, Turpin decided that the neighborhood of London was no place for him, and retired to Yorkshire, taking the name of Palmer, and setting up as a horse dealer. He appears to have sold a good many more horses than he bought, but no one suspected his real character or antecedents till he was arrested early in 1739, on a charge of brawling. For shooting of a dunghill cock says a contemporary ballad, but omits to add that he threatened to shoot the owner of the cock next. While he was in custody a further charge of horsestealing was brought against him, and the account he was called upon to give of himself was proved to be a tissue of falsehoods. He was sent to York Castle to await his trial at the assizes, and, as |