FOOTNOTES:
[5] Drew lots.
The Last of the Abbots
There are few sadder stories than that of Hugh Farringdon, 31st mitred abbot of the great Abbey of Reading. One of the foremost ecclesiastics in the kingdom at the time of his terrible death, even in Henry VIII.'s reign of terror, few men fell so far, so suddenly, and so fatally.
An Abbot of Reading was a member of the House of Lords. He had a revenue with his abbey, amounting to well nigh £20,000 per annum at the present day; one of the most charming country residences conceivable at Pangbourne, Bere Place, which still retains some few relics of its abbot owners; and, in the abbey itself; an abode whose magnificence, even amidst those grand ruins, we very feebly realise. The abbey precincts were at least thirty acres, in the midst of which the great church arose in size and grandeur not far short of that of Canterbury Cathedral itself.
The earlier portion of his abbacy seems to have been tranquil and happy. We read of no such grave disputes as in the case of Abbot Thorne. That 28th abbot seems to have carried fully out his name and crest. He was a thorn in many sides. We read of bitter complaints how he seized on the revenues of the Hospital for Poor Widows, and appropriated them to the uses of the Almoner of the abbey, and not content with this, laid hands also on St. Edmond's Chapel, which then stood at the end of Friar Street, which he made into a barn.
The 31st abbot was a very different man from the 28th. He had more of Mary than of Martha in him, as an old chronicler remarks somewhere of somebody else. There is reason to believe that he was a most amiable character. Mr. Kelly in his History of St. Lawrence has discovered the following interesting record of him amongst the receipts for pew rents:—
"1520. Setis—Item of my lord abbot for his moder's sete iiij d."
"A touching entry," says Mr. Kelly; "Hugh Faringdon, on his promotion to the abbey, though a man of humble extraction, did not forget to provide for the comfort of his poor aged mother."
It is true Leland speaks of him as an "illiterate monk." "Hugh Cook was a stubborn monk, absolutely without learning." Of course he was a monk, that goes without saying. With regard to his "stubbornness," there may be two opinions. As for being "absolutely without learning," he appears to have been one of those admirable in every age, who have raised themselves from a low rank to a high one by sheer force of character. A poor boy may still become Lord Chancellor or Archbishop of Canterbury.
He appears not to have had educational advantages. He deplores this in a letter of much dignified modesty. He had occasion to correspond with the University of Oxford. The Oxford authorities seem to have been in need of some stone from a quarry of the abbey, and had addressed a polite request to him. He "returns thanks to the University for considering him in the number of those learned persons who had been members of that learned body," but speaks of himself as one who had not the least pretences to that character. He styles himself a man of no erudition; laments that the fates had denied him the advantages of instruction in his youth, and states that he is still anxious to become a member of the University, and apply himself to that course of study which would suit his capacity, now become dull and feeble by length of years.
He was evidently a patron of learned men. Leonard Cox, Master of the Reading School, which, thanks to Henry VII., had been established in St. Lawrence's Hospice rescued from Abbot Thorne, dedicates his "Art of Rhetorick," 1539, to this last of the abbots.
He seems also to have been a good administrator, and an active magistrate, and we read of him as taking his place at the Bench at "Okingham," on 11th July, 1534, as one of the Justices of the Peace for the county. More than this he was a religious man. He took care that the Bible was read daily in the abbey. Dr. London, one of the commissionaries for dissolving the Monastery and Friary, reports to his superior, Lord Cromwell:—
"They have a gudde lecture in scripture daily redde in the chapter house, both in Inglishe and Latin, to the which is gudde resort, and the abbot is at it himself."
When the commissioners arrived, he does not seem to have opposed them, or held back anything. Dr. London at first reports favourably:—
"I have requested of my lord abbot the relics of his house, which he seledeted unto me with gudde will. I have taken an inventory of them, and have locked them up beside the high altar, and have the key in my keeping, and they be ready at your lordship's commandment."
Abbot Hugh made no resistance, and it might have been supposed the abbey would have escaped at least as well as the Friary; the Grayfriars having nothing to lose, were simply turned out into the street with a scanty pension, and their church given to the town for a town hall. How was it, then, that such a cruel fate overtook the principal monks here, for two others died with Hugh Faringdon on the same charge of high treason? Stowe says it was for denying the King's supremacy.
"The Act of Suppression passed in May, 1539, and in November following he was drawn, hanged, and quartered with two of his monks. The same day the Abbot of Glastonbury was executed, and shortly after the Abbot of Colchester."
It is here we get a clue, I think, to this extreme severity; these three leading Churchmen had all got involved in a treason plot. The Pilgrimage of Grace had very recently been suppressed. It had been assisted with money by various monasteries, and it would seem that these three great houses were specially compromised. Froude states this distinctly, speaking in the first instance of the Abbot of Glastonbury (History of England, Vol. III., ch. 16, p. 240):—
"An order went out for enquiry into his conduct, which was to be executed by three of the visitors, Layton, Pollard, and Moyle. On 16 September (1539) they were at Reading, on the 22nd they had arrived at Glastonbury ... the Abbot was placed in charge of a guard, and sent to London, to the Tower, to be examined by Cromwell himself, when it was discovered that both he and the Abbot of Reading had supplied the northern insurgent with moneys."
For this there could be no pardon. The insurrection had been too nearly successful. The principal leaders had suffered, and now their three supporters followed. Hugh Faringdon had not allowed the King's supremacy, but this might have been overlooked; he had been very favourably reported by London to Cromwell. But now the law took its course, that horrible and terrible death assigned to high treason.
Froude describes the aged Abbot of Colchester drawn through the town that dismal November morning; dragged to the top of Glastonbury Torre, there hanged, drawn, and quartered. It cannot be doubted that an equally ghastly scene was enacted at Reading. As accomplices in both instances, two monks were executed along with their principal.
The execution is supposed to have taken place here in front of the inner gateway, which still survives, and is a place of resort for the Berkshire Archæological Society. It may equally well have been at Gallows Common beyond Christ Church which was for long the ordinary place for executions. It would appear from St. Mary's registers that even in the eighteenth century twice in the year batches of prisoners were sent off there to the gallows: if so, the long and sad procession, as at Glastonbury, would traverse the whole length of the town. It was a most awful reverse of fortune. Both in 1532, and in 1535, we read of his receiving a gilt cup from the king as a New Year's present. He had even been on the commission for investigating how a manifesto from the leader of the insurrection in Yorkshire had got into circulation at Reading; but that fatal gift of money, which Cromwell had traced home to the Abbot of Glastonbury, and also to Abbot Hugh, was an act beyond pardon. He had been the king's favourite abbot, but was now convicted of high treason, and the sentence took its course.
"He leaves a name which long time will avail
To point a moral, and adorn a tale."
Siege of Reading.
"Full soon the curse of Civil War
Came all our harmless sports to mar:
When law and order ceased to reign,
And knaves did eat up honest men;
When brother against brother stood
And all the land was drenched in blood."
—"Donnington Castle."
THE INNER GATEWAY, READING.
"What a glorious thing must be a victory Sir!" an enthusiastic young lady once exclaimed to the Iron Duke. "The greatest tragedy in the world," he replied, "Madam, except a defeat!" A siege is bad enough: an interesting thing to read and tell of, but, though it only lasted ten days, an event burned deep into the memories of Reading; replete with all but ruin to very many of her citizens; and entirely destroying for all time that town's once famous cloth-trade. As the tide of war ebbed and flowed along the Thames valley, now one side was uppermost, and now the other, and, in either case, it was "woe to the vanquished." One time there were the king's demands, then presently those of the Parliamentary party; fines followed levied unmercifully on recusants as also loans wrung from, at length, unwilling supporters. A letter, still in the town archives, gives a vivid picture of the position of very many in those days in Berkshire and in Oxfordshire. It is a letter from G. Varney to the Town Clerk of Reading, not dated except from the prison into which the soldiers had cast him:—
"Going," says Varney, "to market with a load of corn, the Earl of Manchester's soldiers met with my men, and took away my whole team of horses, letting my cart stand in the field four miles from home; and I never had them more. When the king's soldiers come to us they call me Roundheaded rogue, and say I pay rent to the Parliament garrison, and they will take it away from me; and likewise the Parliament soldiers, they vapour with me, and tell me that I pay rent to Worcester and Winchester, therefore the Parliament say they will have the rent."
Still more pathetic is the petition to Parliament that presently was made: "That, since the time the two armies came into the town, your petitioners have had their sufferings multiplied upon them; the soldiers going to that height of insolence that they break down our houses and burn them, take away our goods and sell them, rob our markets and spoil them, threaten our magistrates and beat them; so that, without a speedy redress, we shall be constrained, though to our utter undoing, yet for the preservation of our lives, to forsake our goods and habitations, and leave the town to the will of the soldiers; who cry out they have no pay, have no beds, have no fire; and they must and will have it by force, or they will burn down all the houses in the town whatever become of them."
Such was the state of things which the mayor, with his twelve aldermen and twelve councillors of that day, had to grapple with: and a very difficult matter, as we shall see, he found it. Things were coming to a crisis here in 1643, in the April of which the ten-days' siege occurred; but they had long been leading up to this.
In 1636 the town was deeply stirred on the subject of ship-money; one party carried a resolution: "They who deny payment of ship-money to be proceeded against as the council of the corporation shall direct;" a little later another party seems to have got the uppermost, and the entry in 1641: "Agreed that those persons within the town which were distressed for ship-money shall have their moneys repaid them."
At first the Parliamentary Party were in the ascendency; then 1642 came. Edgehill was fought 23rd October, then the king took Banbury, and then marched upon Reading. Henry Martin, M.P., afterwards the regicide, had been appointed by the Parliament governor of Reading; but, upon the royal advance, at once withdrew with his small garrison and fled to London. The king arrived here on November 4th, from which time matters certainly became sufficiently exciting.
"The game of Civil War will not allow
Bays to the victor's brow.
At such a game what fool would venture in,
Where one must lose, yet neither side can win?"
—Cowley.
Yet every day saw the game played more and more in earnest. Charles reached Reading, 4th November, 1642, having sent on the following missive on the previous day: "Whereas I have received information that the bridge on the river Thames at Causham was lately broke down, our Will and express Command is that ye immediately upon sight hereof cause the said bridge to be rebuilt, and made strong and fit for the passage of our army by time 8 of the clock in the morning as the bearer shall direct; of this you may not fail at your utmost peril."
The mayor at this time was a firm royalist. One of the Diurnals of the other side thus records his endeavours: "At the king's coming to Reddinge a speech was made unto him by the mayor of the town, wherein after he had in the best words he could devise bid him welcome thither, for want of more matter he concluded very abruptly." This is malicious enough, but nothing to the story that follows: "Not long after he invited Prince Robert (sic) to dine, providing for him all the dainties that he could get, but especially a woodcock, which he brought in himself. Prince Robert gave him many thanks for his good cheer, and asked him whose was all that plate that stood upon the cupboard? The mayor, who had set out all his plate to make a show, and besides had borrowed a great deal of his neighbours to grace himself withal, replied, 'And please your Highness the plate is mine!' 'No!' quoth the prince, 'this plate is mine,' and so accordingly he took it all away; bidding him be of good cheer, for he took it, as the Parliament took it, upon the public faith."
Lord Saye and Sele, just before, however, had carried off two large baskets, full of the Christ Church plate, at Oxford, for parliamentry purposes.
Now almost every day has its event, and dates must be regarded.
November 8th.—The town is startled by a peremptory order to impress all the tailors in Reading, and within six miles round, to make clothes for the garrison, with which they are to be honoured; Sir Arthur Ashton is appointed governor, with a salary from the town of £7 per week; he is soon able to lend the poor corporation £100. At once he begins to fortify; all are forced to assist; those who do not come to work being fined 7d. per day; forts and chains are placed at the end of every street, and the Oracle, or cloth factory at once is utilized as a barrack.
It is an interesting fact, that through the pious care of a wealthy citizen, Reading still possesses the old gates of the Oracle. There they are in honourable retirement at the top of St. Mary's Hill; the Kenrich crest in one place, the initials, J.K., of the founder of this factory for poor clothiers, in another; the date 1526 still in another part; all being in very fair state of preservation. How few of the busy many that pass those gates every day think of the scenes that these have witnessed, and could tell of, if walls had voices as well as ears!
"When Puritan and Cavelier
With shout and psalm contended!
And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's prayer,
With sound of battle blended!"—Whittier.
And now the corporation wait upon King Charles and assure him they will "assist him with counsel, and their purses, to the best of their ability." He probably preferred the latter, for—
November 9th.—We have notice of a consultation had "about the execution of the king's warrants," and on
November 17th.—"A tax is levied to pay those great charges which are now layed upon the borough concerning cloth, apparell, victualls, and other things for his Majestie's army." Then on
November 28th.—The king goes off to Oxford, and henceforth they are left to Sir Arthur's tender mercies: about this time we find a pathetic entry: "A noate of all such charges as have been disembursed, since the King's Majestie came first to Reading, for provisions, clothes for the soldiers, and for the king's own use;" being £6697, truly a prodigious sum for those times; but it is speedily followed by fresh requisitions. As the year opens it appears probable that Reading will be attacked, and so on 3rd March, 1543, a letter arrives from the king, ordering Sir Arthur to provision Reading for three months, to provision Greenlands a fortified country house just below Henley, to send out scouting parties to watch the enemy, and to prevent carriage of supplies to London. This rouses the Parliament. Essex is ordered to march on Oxford, taking Reading in his way; but the governor now is all ready for him. Mapledurham House and Cawsham have now been made into fortified out-posts, and, on the arrival of Essex's "trumpet," Colonel Codrington in his diary tells us the governor returned the stubborn answer that "he would either keep the town or die inside it!" There can be no doubt he would have made a resolute resistance; he was a brave and capable soldier, but, being wounded in the head by a tile dislodged by a cannon ball, on the third day of the siege, his place was taken by a Colonel R. Fielding, as next in seniority. The sad history of the gallant soldier is worth following further. At the capitulation he went to Oxford; there he managed to lose a leg, and presently turns up in Ireland, unluckily for him, at Drogheda. Cromwell storms, determined, after the inhuman massacres of Protestants, on making a harsh example of the Irish garrison, and Sir Arthur, now in command there, strange to say, has his brains knocked out with his own wooden leg, which the soldiers imagined was filled with gold pieces—they did find two hundred about his person—the very thing which Hood imagined long after of his unhappy heroine.
"Gold, still gold! hard, yellow, and cold,
For gold she had lived, and she died for gold,
For a golden weapon had killed her!
And the jury, its forman a gilder,
They brought it in a Felo di Se
Because her own leg had killed her!
Price of many a crime untold,
Good or bad, a thousand fold,
How widely gold's agencies vary!
To save, to curse, to ruin, to bless,
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a bloody Mary!"
There is a portrait of Sir A. Aston at the Reading Public Library, a middle aged man with a large square chin and most determined expression. Sir Jacob Astley, after governor here, and made Baron Reading, is also in the Library, a pleasant looking old gentleman.
The town was very strongly and securely fortified, I quote from the diary of Sir Samuel Luke, Scout Master for the parliament after the surrender, when he had just been over it: "They had only three ways out of the town, where they had built three sconces, one at Forbury, one at Harrison's Barn, and another at the end of Pangbourn lane; the Forts were very well wrought, and strong both with trenches and pallisades; the town entrenched round so that if any man of the Parliamentary side should have delivered up a place as this town, he would have deserved a halter."
"It would appear," writes Mr. Childs, "that earth works were thrown up in a rude square, extending from Grey Friars Church and the present prison on the north, to midway in Kendrick Road, and to Katesgrove Hill on the south; and from about the line of Kendrick Road on the east to Castle Hill on the west. Redoubts were thrown up at intervals, and on the top of Whitley Hill a strong fort known as 'Harrison's Barn.'"
This Sir Samuel appears to have been a stout and able soldier, but, unfortunately for him, he had the misfortune to fall into the hands of Butler, who has pilloried him as the well-known Hudibras. Dr. Johnson says, writing of Butler, "The necessitudes of his condition placed him in the family of Sir S. Luke, one of Cromwell's officers, and a Presbyterian magistrate. Here he observed much of the character of the sectaries." Certainly he did, and recorded much; and though very much is gross caricature, still it is thus that Sir Samuel must be content to come down to us.
"When civil dudgeon first grew high,
And men fell out they knew not why:
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a colonelling.
He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skilled in analytic;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west tide:
On either side he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute.
For his religion it was fit
To match his learning and his wit.
'Twas Presbyterian true blue,
For he was of the stubborn crew
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun:
And prove their doctrine or the dox
By apostolic blows and knocks.
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipped God for spite.
Quarrel with mince-pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend plum-porridge.
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose."
On Sir Arthur's refusal to surrender, the town was at once assailed, the Royalist out-posts at Caversham being easily driven in, the bridge broken down, and batteries planted there commanding the town. This was April 15th. The Earl of Essex had at this time some 16,000 foot, and 300 horse, a force which in the course of a week was nearly doubled. His headquarters were at Southcote, leaving Colonel Skippon in charge of the siege works in the meadows at the N.W. of the town, on the old Battel Abbey estate, where was most of the fighting; whilst Lord Gray of Warwick sat down before the town, on the S.E. parts, with 7,000 horse and foot. Codrington tells us the Earl held a council of war, at which it was debated whether to storm or not. The cavalry were for attempting it, the infantry against, and this latter opinion prevailed, the garrison being supposed to be stronger than it really was. We read in the "Perfect Diurnal" of February 10th, "They are 4,000 strong in the town; some works are cast up as high as the houses; they have made use of all the clothier's wool in the town, and made wool-packs thereof." "There is nothing like leather," as is well known; but it may be doubted whether bales of cloth are benefited by a week's cannonading. No wonder the cloth-trade languished after that involuntary employment of the stock-in-trade.
And now we will come to dates, making use of our two friends' diaries. It is a pity we have not also a Royalist record to check them by. But first we will take a look at the army investing. They are most of them young troops, and with officers at present unversed in siege operations: but some have already fought at Edgehill, notably the Saye and Sele "Blue Coats;" Colonel Nathanael and Colonel John Fiennes commanding them, would both be there, and perhaps his lordship. Hampden's "Green Coats" would also add to the variety, with the London train bands "Red Coats;" this red was a colour that Cromwell afterwards adopted for the whole of the British army, and which, it need hardly be remarked, is now "the thin red line which never wavers," and which more than once has confronted both cavalry and artillery successfully.
April 17th. Writes Sir Samuel:—"Our lines got within musket shot of the town."
April 18th.—"The enemy appeared on Cawsham hills under General Ruven, went to Sonning, and put down (up?) the river in boats 600 musketeers, with several waggon loads of ammunition; which we could not hinder because we had broken down Cawsham bridge."
This was very cleverly managed, as the town had at first only twenty barrels of gunpowder altogether. Now their artillery would be well supplied; and the barges ran up by the Kennet in perfect safety into the very heart of the town. Immediately after this a battery was planted on the Thames bank by Essex, that effectually 'shut the door' north of the Kennet; but, by this time, 'the horse was stolen,' or, at least, the powder safe housed! On this day a cannon burst, killing four men and wounding half-a-dozen more of the besiegers; but what was much more serious for the King's party on this day, the Governor got a hurt that at once totally incapacitated him, and a mere seniority officer, a Col. Richard Fielding, took the command.
On the 19th there was a brisk sally, but repulses of the garrison. "On that night His Excellency advanced his batteries and placed his ordinance within less than pistol shot of Harrison's Fort." Stout old Skippon is here: and is in deadly earnest, like Cromwell, however unwilling Essex and Manchester may be to go to extremities.
April 20th. Says our Chronicler:—"Lord Gray pushes closer up."
April 21st is an eventful day. "Battered the town," says the diary, "got up within pistol shot of one of their choicest bulwarks in a place called the Gallows Field." On this day it is that St. Giles steeple comes to grief; now we will copy Codrington. "They planted ordinance on a steeple, but our cannons were levelled against it with such dexterity, that both cannoniers and cannon were soon buried under the ruins."
April 22nd.—"Flower, sent by the King to say he was coming to raise the siege, swam in with despatches, but is caught going back, and so the plan frustrated." Essex reversed his batteries, and so was ready to give the approaching Royalists a hot reception.
April 23rd.—An unlucky spy is seized, who had volunteered the perilous work of blowing up the siege ammunition train; he is hung in sight of the rampart, which is retaliated on the next day.
April 24th.—"A sudden sally; they got into our trenches, and killed four men; but were driven back with loss of twelve, but we could not get out the bodies of our men. Lord Gray got within pistol shot of Harrison's Barn."
This seems to have frightened Col. Fielding, who evidently was not the stuff that heroes are made of.
Hark! Hark! like the roar of the billows on the shore,
The cry of battle rises along the charging lines:
For Love!' 'For the Cause!' 'For the Church!' 'For the Law!'
For Charles, King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!
25th April, 9 a.m.—The town hung out a white flag, and sent "a drum to beat a parley, which His Excellency gave way to." If Fielding had but held out another day, and had co-operated with the King's forces, the town might have been relieved, and Essex driven away; for a few hours after, Charles makes a determined attack in force upon Caversham Bridge, which is only repulsed after heavy fighting, and through Essex being able to give his undivided attention. "The fight began," says Codrington, "about Cawsham Bridge, and on both sides great valour and resolution was expressed. After less than half-an-hour's fight, the enemy began to give ground, leaving about 300 arms, and many of their men behind them; their Horse also, which came down the hill to assist the Fort, were gallantly repulsed; about a hundred were slain upon the spot, among whom Sergt. Major Smith, in whose pocket was found good store of gold."
This settled the matter. Charles retired unmolested to Caversham House, where Fielding was allowed to go to him on April 26th. He obtained leave to surrender, the picked troops of the garrison being urgently required for service elsewhere. This permission, of course, did not clear Fielding, who was tried afterwards by court martial and sentenced to be beheaded, but the King did not allow the sentence to be carried out.
April 27th.—The surrender takes place. "He was pardoned," says Clarendon, "without much grace; his regiment was given to another, and he resolved as a volunteer; in this capacity he fought desperately through the war when danger was most rife, but in vain. So difficult a thing it is to play an after game of reputation in that nice and jealous profession of arms." "As they march out at Friar's Corner," says Sir Samuel, "at the same place when, as is recorded further, the soldiers plundered the houses of four Grand Malignants who had given information to the Governor of such persons as were inclined to the cause of the Parliament, and had therefore paid a double tax to the weekly contribution." This, perhaps, was as little as could be expected from a victorious cause; and Sir Samuel again concludes all very characteristically and satisfactorily too, as regards the God-fearing soldiers of the Commonwealth.
April 30th, "being the Sunday, was spent in preaching and hearing God's word, the churches being extraordinarily filled, and soldiers and all men carrying themselves very civilly all the day long."
Sickness appears to have broken out amongst Essex's young soldiers encamped on the marshy meadows on the N.W. of the town, which may have had something to do with the easy terms granted. The Mercurius Aulicus, the Court Journal, has a story that "a soldier said that Essex caused five great pits to be dug at a distance from his camp, into which he cast the slain to conceal their number." The Earl stayed here until July, and ordered a heavy contribution for the pay of the soldiers. The Corporation, however, waited upon him to represent "they had been so impoverished by the late siege, and the exactions of His Majesty, as to be utterly unable to raise any more money amongst them." And this excuse seems to have been graciously accepted. Charles' "little finger," in money matters, was of necessity "thicker than the Parliament's loins," and this lead considerably to the declining of his cause. When the tide of war turned a couple of years after, he appeared again here, and stayed at Coley; but we do not hear then of any more forced benevolences; indeed he conferred a real benefit, by having the fortification "slighted," which no doubt the burgesses received with extreme satisfaction. So the siege ended. Sieges in those days were trying to reputations. Colonel N. Fiennes, at Bristol, and then Prince Rupert at the same place, whether justly or not, were heavily censured for surrendering, and both of them came very near to sharing the fate of Fielding. That old lamentation was speedily verified; but with this we have happily no further connection.
"Lament! Lament!
And let thy tears run down,
To see the rent
Between the robe and crown!
War, like a serpent, has its head got in,
And will not cease so soon as 't did begin."
Reading Abbey.
It is hardly necessary to state that in rather early days, when the Thames flowed into the Rhine and Great Britain was a part of a greater continent, there was no Reading Abbey. Neither was there sometime after, when the city was a swamp between the Thames and the Kennet, and some few huts clustered round the Roman station Ad Pontes, where the legions crossed from Londinium on their way to the rich and important town of Calleva. We may possibly date our abbey's beginning from the third or fourth century. It may have been a chapel of ease to that interesting little church lately uncovered, and alas! covered up again, at Silchester. At any rate we are on firm ground when, towards the end of the tenth century, we locate a nunnery here, founded by Queen Elfreda, who at last began to repent of her various crimes. She had, perhaps, some excuse for arranging with the King to get rid of her first husband, who had deceived his royal master, lead astray by her fatal beauty. Thus she attained the throne to which she had no doubt been destined; but it was going too far to retain it by the murder of the son of her predecessor, Queen Ethelfleda; which is one of the horrid memories that clings round Corfe Castle. And now we leap to the beginning of the twelfth century and get on still firmer ground, when Henry I., at the height of his power, and also beginning to feel a little compunction, resolved to make reparations by founding what should be an abbey of world-wide magnificence.
He certainly succeeded. I mean with his abbey, though I am not prepared to go as far as do the chroniclers of his predecessor:—
"King Ethelbert lies here,
Closed in this polyander.
For building churches straight he goes
To heaven without meander."
Henry I. never did things by halves, and they could build in those days. His architect had carte blanche, and with wonderful speed there arose that glorious fabric whose ruins we weep over, and use for our flower shows. The abbey covered some thirty acres. It was surrounded with a wall, vast and strong, except where guarded by the Kennet, and four huge embattled gateways opened out to the four quarters. Almost all its stones are now gone. "It pitieth," or it ought to pity the by-passers to see some in the wall of that house in Hosier Street, some very few on the site, and oh, 18th century! many cartloads vandalised into a bridge on the road to Henley, near where the Druid's temple of despoiled Jersey adds another sorrow to the scenery. But at its dedication in 1164, in Henry II.'s time, the abbey and the abbey church must indeed have been magnificent. The latter was a cruciform building 420 x 92 feet in dimensions, without an aisle, covering the vast space between the Forbury and the gaol. Its extent is well shown, by the notices the Corporation has lately put up under the skilled guidance of those two chiefest of experts, the Secretary and Treasurer of the Berkshire Archæological Society. After the dedication ceremony, the King, and his still friendly Beckett, would doubtless adjourn to the magnificent Consistory, the great Hall, one of the largest and finest in England, destined to see so many Parliaments, and other national assemblings.
The inner gateway still remains, restored, perhaps, almost too modernly; close inspection will, however, show the old gate hinges and portcullis way; closer investigation still may even discover the dog badge of the last abbot, and a dolphin with the red rose of Lancaster on its tail, probably also belonging to the same period. Here the humble burgesses used to bow themselves before the Lord Abbot, and listen whilst he was pleased to indicate which of them might fulfil the then limited office of mayor. In front of this, as some say, the last abbot and his two accomplice monks died the awfully cruel traitor's death, having been convicted of sending supplies to the northern rebels in their so-called Pilgrimage of Grace. It has much pleasanter modern memories, being lent by the good town to the Berkshire Archæological Society, and being the scene in its fine old chamber of many interesting archæological gatherings. But I have strayed a long way from 1164. The second Henry's reign was no doubt its golden period; more memories cluster about the abbey in the twelfth century than at any other time. Here, the year before, in 1163, had occurred "the Fight on the Island," when, much to Henry's regret, de Bohun fell beneath the spear of de Montford.
"His fame, as blighted in the field,
He strove to clear by spear and shield;
To clear his fame in vain he strove,
For wondrous are His ways above.
How could the guiltless champion quail,
Or how the great ordeal fail!"
"The knights met on horseback," says Norroy Seagur, "clad in armour, (on the island just below Caversham Bridge; a street running down to it has lately been called De Montford Street), Montford attacked with such resolution as to hurl Henry of Essex out of the saddle, when being stunned and faint from loss of blood, he was taken up apparently dead." King Henry handed him over to the monks of Reading Abbey, under whose care he recovered, and at once joined the fraternity. Some years after, and following on that bad Beckett business, Henry was here again, for here, in 1185, came Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Master of the Temple with him, appealing for a crusade to all Christian Kings, and especially to King Henry, who, it was considered, especially needed that moral white-washing. What a sight for the abbey! They brought with them the Standard of the Kingdom of the Holy Land, the Keys of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and of the Tower of David. The King reverently received them all, but handed them back to the Patriarch until he could consult with his barons. Henry was too old to go, but numbers of the young nobility took the cross, and carried it in the van against the Infidel; and not least fiery Prince Richard, the king of all knight errants. He went off immediately on coming to the throne, and performed exploits which far exceed those imagined by Ariosto. Unfortunately he needed money, and had to carry off the golden cover his father gave for the chief abbey relic, the hand of St. James; but that doubtless would soon be replaced by the offerings of the home-staying faithful.
Also in this reign, and at its close, were several royal funerals. Henry I. of course had himself buried here, as it was said in a silver coffin, which caused some very ruthless explorations at the time of the Suppression. A stone coffin found here recently had a very distinguished origin suggested for it by a high local authority. In 1154, Prince William, eldest son of Henry II., was buried here near his grandfather. Also here was buried King Henry II.'s second wife, Adeliza; and thereby hangs a very complicated and curious tale.
READING ABBEY GATEWAY, LEADING TO THE VESTRY AND TREASURY.
In 1810 some workmen digging in the abbey precincts "found a box which contained a perfectly formed fleshy hand (writes Mrs. Climenson, in her almost universal 'History of Shiplake,') holding a slender rod surmounted by a crucifix." This, she says, is now in Mr. Scott Murray's Roman Catholic Chapel at Danesfield, and is considered to be the hand of St. James the Less, which was brought from Germany by the Empress Maud, and given by her to her father, who gave it to the Abbey. "It is in perfect preservation, a plump and well-shaped hand, small, and with taper fingers, and almond-shaped nails, so small it might well be a woman's." And it probably is, and the hand of Queen Adeliza. One almost regrets it was not left in its hoped-for last resting-place. There is something gruesome in such remains, especially, perhaps, in heaped-up skulls in museums. Those lines of a modern poet on such a sight are pathetic.
"Did she live centuries, or ages back?
What colour were those eyes when bright and waking?
And were your ringlets fair, or brown, or black?
Poor little head! that long has done with aching!"
In Stephen's days, in the interval between the Henries, the poor monks seem to have had rather an uncomfortable time of it. Stephen patronized them; he would have money, but he took it politely. When for a while his cause went down, and the Empress Queen arrived here, she was quite as exacting, and also bullied them most unmercifully. They must have been devoutly thankful when she at last went off to her continental possession; and when she came back for sepulchre would no doubt be able to receive her with greater equanimity. An English dean not long ago was accused of having "refused to bury a Dissenter." "On the contrary," he replied, "I shall feel the greatest pleasure in burying you all!"
Now we pass to the fourteenth century. Here, in 1359, Edward III. celebrated the marriage of his son John of Gaunt with Blanche, daughter of Henry Plantagenet. This was unquestionably the grandest wedding that ever happened, or could happen at Reading. The King of France, just lately taken prisoner at Poictiers, was part of the bridal party; so also a very famous Englishman, who came over here from his residence at Donnington Castle. Chaucer describes the whole thing at much length:—
"And the feste holden was in tentes,
As to tell you my intent is:
In a rome, a large plaine,
Under a wode, in a champagne;
Beside a river and a welle
Where never had abbeye ne selle;
Ben, ne kerke, hous, ne village,
In time of any man's age,
And dured three Months the feast,
In one estate, and never ceased.
From early of the rising of the sun,
Till the day spent was, and y-ronne;
In justing, dancing, and lustiness,
And all that served to gentilesse."
—The Dream.
From Edward III. we will pass, though not in immediate succession to Edward IV.'s time; and I am again indebted to Mrs. Climenson for calling attention to a picture in the British Museum of Reading Abbey about 1470, where "the widow Gray"—as the Lancastrians called her—where Edward IV.'s bride, Queen Elizabeth, is represented as standing under this very inner gateway, already mentioned, so dear to the heart of every citizen of Reading. The abbot is there to meet her on her disembarkation, with all fitting reverence. In the distance are the royal barges, at the abbot's landing, on the Kennet.
After this almost a century glides by uneventfully. Like the Vicar of Wakefield, though not accompanied as he was, the abbot's adventures do not seem to have got much beyond "changing from the blue room to the green," at least from the abbey to Bere Court and back again. There were squabbles with the rising town; the aldermen began to be what would be now called "uppish," but the abbot was practically omnipotent, and sometimes, as in Abbot Thorne's time, had a heavy hand which effectually kept town councillors in their proper places. We can hardly realise now what very great men those mitred abbots must have been—practically-popes in their own districts where they wielded both the temporal and spiritual sword pretty vigorously.
The Abbot of Reading had precedence over all except Glastenbury and St. Albans. He had vast revenues at his disposal, worth nearly £20,000, it is reckoned, of our money,—a handsome income even after allowing for the lavish hospitality and almsgiving expected and rendered. He had the power of making knights, which the local name "Whiteknights," and the hospice there, shows to have been pretty freely exercised; though the fact that every priest was at one time "Dominus," or "Sir so and so," occasions a little ambiguousness as to knights in these earlier centuries.
In Reading itself, as already remarked, the abbot, within the law, was almost absolute over the lives and properties of the township growing up under the abbey shadow; his household, and all about him, was modelled on a scale of more than princely magnificence, and it is to be doubted whether any, except the very highest nobility, could show anything like such an extravagant retinue.
The very list is exhausting: marshal, master of the horse, two keepers of the pantry, three cupbearers, four janitors, five pages, eight chamberlains, twelve hostellers (whose duty was to receive strangers), twenty huntsmen, thirty-one running footmen, and last, not least, an almoner. What wonder that such magnificence contrasted but badly by the side of the self-denying Grey Friars, and that the great Benedictine abbey broke down at last under its own greatness! Its last abbot was not the worst, nor the least deserving by any means, only he fell on evil days; and, when he stood by his own order, had little idea of the terrible significance of treason in the eyes of a Tudor.
At first Abbot Hugh was favourably reported on by the commissioners. "On Sep. 16, 1539," quotes Froude, "they were at Reading; on the 22nd at Glastenbury; but the abbot there, his answer appeared cankered and traitorous; he was sent to the Tower to be examined by Cromwell himself, when it was discovered that both he and the Abbot of Reading had supplied the northern insurgents with money."
Reading Abbey perished; on the other hand, the Grey Friars Monastery was simply dissolved, its monks frugally pensioned, and turned out into the street; their noble church was made into a guildhall, but preserved by that at any rate, and is now restored, and is the town's noblest relic of antiquity. Of the great Benedictine abbey, on the other hand, only the almost imperishable flint core survives of its mighty buildings. It may have plundered Silchester; it was itself for long a very stone pit for the builder. Its "record" is that of Rome, "Quod non fecerunt Barbari fecerunt Barberini"—the Roman princes made a stone quarry of the Colosseum. That bridge at Park Place is an almost equal barbarism, but before this, boat loads of abbey stones had gone down the river to help to build the Hospital of the Poor Knights of Windsor.
The roof of the great Consistory went to St. Mary's Church, in Reading, thus happily preserved, and where all may still see it. The panelling went to Merton College, Oxford. In fact by the time of James the plundering was complete; only land cannot run away, and so he conferred that upon Prince Henry, the then heir apparent of the kingdom.
Since then its history has been uneventful; granted at first to the Knollys family, it became at times a royal residence; the royal stables were extensive, and horses stood where monks had knelt. This seems to be alluded to, in that singular old poem, "Cantio Cygni," when Thamesis is spoken of as arriving at Reading.
"From hence he little Chansey Seeth, and hasteneth to see
Fair Reddingetown, a place of name, where clothy-woven bee,
This shows our Alfred's victories, what time Begsal was slain
With other Danes, who carcases lay trampled on the plain.
And here these fields y-drenched were with blood upon them shed,
Where on the prince, in stable now, hath standing many a steede."
King James, as has been stated, gave the abbey to his eldest son, and it passed, in due time, into the excellently guardian hands of the Reading Corporation. Musing amid the ruins of this ancient pile, we may call to mind the lives of the men who once lived and worked and prayed on this spot, of the kings and great men who thronged the minster church and held parliaments in the precincts, and all the mighty events in history which took place in this, the chiefest and grandest monastic house in England. The memory of the glories of Reading Abbey will not soon pass away.
The First Battle of Newbury, 1643.
By Edward Lamplough.
The armed phase of the great rebellion was in its second year, and neither party had achieved any great advantage. If the Royalists had thought to carry all before them in a summer campaign, they had found out their mistake; and it must have been equally evident to the Parliamentarians that they had embarked upon a struggle the end of which might prove bloody and disastrous to their cause.
Charles resolved upon the capture of Gloucester. On the 10th of August, 1643, he sounded trumpets before the gates, and called upon the commandant to surrender. Colonel Massey, a soldier of fortune, was faithful to his trust, and the royal trumpeter returned to the King's camp accompanied by two deputies of "lean, pale, sharp, and dismal visages," the bearers of a written declaration that, by God's help, Gloucester should be maintained, under the King's command, as signified by both Houses of Parliament. To this defiance was attached the signatures of Governor Massey, the Mayor, thirteen aldermen, and many wealthy burghers. Enraged rather than discouraged, Charles broke ground before the walls, amid the smoking suburbs, which had been fired by the stubborn Parliamentarians, whose wives and daughters went forth to cut turfs for the renewal of the earthern ramparts, shot away by the fire of the besiegers. With attack and sally, and storm of cannon and musket bullets, the siege held for a time, then resolved into a blockade, and Charles was on the eve of winning by famine where steel and lead had failed, when the Earl of Essex bestirred himself, and came to the rescue with the trained bands of London and a body of horse. He arrived not a moment too soon, for the besieged were reduced to their last barrel of powder.
The caution of Essex might well have stimulated the besiegers to give him battle before the walls of Gloucester; he was, however, permitted to enter unopposed, and to secure the city by liberal supplies of provisions and ammunition, and by the reinforcement of the garrison. The object achieved, the return march was commenced, in the course of which Essex paid a surprise visit to Cirencester, cutting off two regiments of Royal horse, and seizing a considerable quantity of provisions which had been collected during the siege of Gloucester.
The opportunity of striking a very serious blow at the enemy now offered itself to the King, and he resolved to act. Essex's forces consisted principally of the City trained bands, held in little repute by his army, and supported by a small body of cavalry, inferior to the bold riders of Rupert in number and conduct. Essex cut off and destroyed, Charles might strike the capital, and stifle the rebellion in the nest that bred it.
So Rupert poured forth his gay cavaliers, with gleam of cuirass and rapier, to intercept Essex, and hold him at bay until Charles came up to strike; for, as usual, the Royalists knew nothing of Essex's movement until twenty-four hours after he had left Gloucester. First blood was shed at Hungerford, when Prince Rupert, seconded by the Queen's life-guards, struck Essex's rear, and found tough work with Stapylton's brigade. But night closing in, rapier and broadsword were sheathed. Here the Marquis de Vieuville, a gallant Frenchman, fell, mortally wounded, into the hands of the Parliamentarians.
The next day the two armies converged upon Newbury, but Charles won the race by two hours, and Essex lay in the open fields, alert and anxious, for a conflict on the morrow was inevitable.
Assisted by General Lord Ruthven, Charles made his disposition for the battle, holding Essex at bay, with all the advantages of a defensive position and a superior cavalry. His army held Speen Hill, with its right wing resting upon the Kennet; the left protected by a battery, and lying towards Shaw Fields. The rear was sufficiently defended by the river Lambourne and the artillery of Donnington Castle. Thus the Parliamentarians were barred from the London road by the cavaliers.
Although Charles had taken up a defensive position, sunrise of the following morning, September, 20th, 1643, set the skirmishers free, and shots rang along the front from hedge and cover, as the soldiers felt their way towards the closer, sterner business of the day. Essex's first aim was to take up a position on Speen Hill. He lead the attacking force, which consisted of his own regiment, Barclay and Balfour's horse, Stapylton's brigade, and Lord Roberts' regiment of foot. His lordship had cast aside buff and corslet, and fought in his white holland shirt. Essex, a notable swordsman, found brisk work with the cavaliers on Speen Hill, but he won and held his position, although the young Earl of Carnarvon held him long in deadly play, charging straight through his rank. Pierced, but not routed, the troops were reformed, and obstinately maintained the struggle. It proved fatal to the gallant Carnarvon, who, according to Lord Clarendon, was run through the body by a passing trooper. Sir Roger Manley, however, states that the Earl was laid low by a shot, which struck him in the head, while leading the pursuit. Essex, although successful in this movement, was separated from the infantry, who fought the real battle, and, by their stubborn valour, held the Royal army at bay.
Had Charles maintained a purely defensive position, Essex would have been compelled to force the fighting. His inferiority in cavalry would have told heavily against him, and his infantry would probably have failed to force a passage through the Royal army. The ardour of the skirmishers in the first hours of the day probably drew him into the battle, which soon became general.
The London trained bands, under Skippon, received their baptism of blood in Newbury marsh and meadows, where they were drawn up, with the cavalry on the flanks. Rupert was seconded that day by some of the boldest and fiercest cavalrymen in the Royal armies; and he poured them again and again, a raging flood of foaming horse and men, upon the Parliamentarians. Pressing up to the very edge of flashing pike-points, with desperate stroke and thrust, and discharge of pistols, the gallant cavaliers strove to reach the sturdy Londoners; only to fall back from the fierce pike-thrust, while the snorting war-chargers reared and swerved from the iron front, and the grim musketeers poured in their heavy fire from the rear, emptying many a saddle, and sorely thinning the ranks of the King's bold riders.
Fighting under the King's eye, the cavaliers did all that could be expected from the most devoted loyalty; but Skippon's pikemen were beating back the repeated surges for their very life's sake; for the honour and safety of London, and for Essex's preservation. Once let that tide break in, and Rupert's revenge would be terrible. Three times, in quick succession, the London Blues were charged by two regiments of Royal horse, bent at all hazards to break in, but the musketeers plied their shot so thick and fast, and made such great havoc in the charging ranks, that the cavaliers drew off, after their third charge, and made no further attempt.
Triumphant as the Parliamentarians were in beating back the spirited charges of Rupert's gallant cavalry, the toil and strain of battle fell heavily upon them, and stung into sudden action by the galling fire of the Royal batteries, they made a somewhat disordered dash towards Donnington, with the intention of spiking the cannon, the Red London trained bands leading. Rupert saw the movement, and was quick to seize the only opportunity of victory that presented itself. In an instant he was upon them with "Byron's Blacks" and Colepepper's brigade; but as quickly the pikes were brought to bear, the musketeers poured in their shot, and the first charge was beaten back; before it could be renewed, Skippon had got the brave fellows ready, the front ranks kneeling, and a forest of long pikes presented to the plunging chargers. The utmost valour of the cavaliers could achieve nothing against the iron formation, while the regular and destructive fire of the musketeers swept the front, and strewed the field with dead and wounded men and horses.
Essex had had another tough encounter with a chosen band of Royalists, who, making a long detour, and adopting the broom and furze twigs which Essex's men wore to distinguish them from the King's men, fell furiously upon his ranks. The conflict that followed was to the death, for if the Royalists were incensed by the stubborn resistance that they met, and by their heavy losses, the Parliamentarians were not the less fiercely revengeful when, after the long strain of that terrible day, they rallied all their energies to beat back the perfidious attack of the Royalists. The desperate melée terminated in favour of Essex's troops, who beat off and chased the Royalists back.
The last scenes of the battle had taken place under the gathering glooms of the September night, and Skippon having succeeded in joining Essex's cavalry, nothing more could be effected until the morrow. The exhausted armies reluctantly parted, and silence settled over the field that had, during the long day, re-echoed the furious and dreadful sounds of war. Under the peaceful heavens lay 6,000 dead and wounded men, to be carted into the town by the humane burghers, when there was a great outcry for surgeons, always, alas, far too few in number to meet the requirements of war.
Both armies rested on the field, and stood to arms, ready to renew the battle, when the day broke again upon Newbury. Essex had secured his retreat, and could expect to achieve no more. Rupert could force the fighting with no greater skill and daring than he had already exercised, and with no greater prospect of penetrating the ranks of Skippon's pikemen. Essex drew off, unmolested, about noon, but Rupert fell upon his rear near Aldermaston, and inflicted some loss upon his troops. His march upon London was not, however, interrupted, and he entered the city in triumph, having fought a battle that was in all ways honourable to his army, whether nominally a victory or defeat. If the King claimed the honour of the field, it was indeed a barren honour. At every point he had been repulsed, although his cavalry had sacrificed itself with unmeasured devotion. He had not kept Essex out of Gloucester, and he had not cut off his retreat upon London.
During the battle Essex lost a trained band colonel and a few officers; but Charles lost many gallant and distinguished gentlemen, chief of whom were the Earls of Sunderland and Carnarvon, and the virtuous and talented Lord Falkland. The wounded included some of the first cavalry officers in the Royal army, Lords Chandos, Peterborough, Andover, and Carlisle, Sir Geo. Lisle, Sir Charles Lucas, and Colonels Gerrard, Constable, and Darcy.
In the pages of Clarendon will be found an elaborate account of the virtuous and unfortunate Falkland, who had a strong presentiment that he would perish in the conflict, and he accordingly put on clean linen, and arrayed himself in his richest apparel.
Essex, before marching off, issued orders for the burial "of the dead bodies lying in and about Enborne and Newbury Wash." Charles imposed similar duties upon the mayor of Newbury, expressly intimating that the wounded Parliamentarians were to receive every attention, and, on their recovery, be sent on to Oxford.
Essex carried with him into rejoicing London "many colours of the King's cornets;" and was there publicly thanked for what his party were disposed to regard as a victory over the King and his gallant cavaliers.
The Second Battle of Newbury, 1644.
When the second battle of Newbury was fought, the great rebellion had received a decided impetus in favour of the Parliamentarians. Marston Moor had been fought and the greenest laurels of Rupert had withered in one summer's night before the walls of York. The glory of Essex waned before the brilliant achievements and solid successes of Cromwell and Fairfax. The period of drawn battles and disputed victories was passing away.
Some transient successes had attended the royal arms, and Essex had been defeated in Cornwall; but with his army reinforced and reorganised, he was prepared to try conclusions with His Majesty on their old battle ground. With Essex there marched the Earl of Manchester, Skippon, Waller, and Colonels Ludlow and Cromwell. In consequence of the sickness of Essex, the supreme command devolved upon Manchester.
Charles was on the qui vive from the 21st, to Saturday the 26th October; but being ill-informed of the movements of his dangerous adversaries, he was ultimately out-manœuvred, his communications with Oxford cut off, and his rear threatened.
Mr. P. Blundell, F.S.A., in his interesting paper on the "Two Battles of Newbury," thus describes the disposition of the opposing armies:—
"On the next day, Friday, and on Saturday, the 26th, Symond's diary records pithily 'noe action'—both sides, in fact, were busied with their deadly preparations, for all men knew that their next meeting would be a stern and bloody one. The King's horse burned to avenge their recent overthrow on Marston Moor, and Skippon's infantry were resolute to win back the credit they had lost in Cornwall.
"The beleaguered Cavaliers now exerted themselves to retrieve their error, by adding to the strength of their position, throwing up entrenchments and mounting extra batteries. The Earl of Manchester with his vanguard held the lower portion of the town, and Cromwell's Ironsides with some infantry who formed the right wing of the Parliamentarian army, lay still, but not inactive, upon the south side of the Kennett, near Ham Mill, and 'thence, as soon as it was day,'—says Symonds—'they put a tertia of foot over a bridge which they had made in the night.'
King Charles again led the Cavaliers in person, the young Prince of Wales accompanying him, and the Earl of Brentford acting as Lieutenant-General. The royal standard waved upon Speen Moor, about a mile more northerly than its position during the previous battle, and the main body of the Cavaliers held Speen mainland and the upper town of Newbury, with their lines extending towards the Castle, while their extreme left rested a little below the present site of Donnington turnpike, and crossed the lane which intersects the meadows behind and round about Shaw House, then known as "Dolemans," occupied for the King, and fortified so strongly as to be, in military parlance, 'the key to the entire position.' The river Lambourn flowed along their front; Sir Bernard Astley's and Sir George Lisle's cavalry were stationed round about the fields betwixt the town and Shaw, and 'Dolemans' not only was well garrisoned by musketry and pikes, but had each hedge and hollow of its garden ground and pleasance, well lined with ambushed skirmishers and marksmen."
The burghers of Newbury maintained their accustomed neutrality, to the great disgust of the King, who, complaining that they rendered him no account of the movements of his enemies, stigmatised them as "wicked Roundheads."
The morning of the battle was spent in a distant cannonade, and the desultory skirmishing in which so much martial energy was usually expended. The royal forces made no movement to force the fighting, and Manchester held his hand in the expectation of reinforcements.
During the first movements of the battle, about mid-day, Charles and his son were in some danger of falling into Waller's hands. They were posted at Bagnor, with their guards in attendance, when the Parliamentarians, having seized Speen, made a rapid push for Bagnor. The danger of Charles was imminent, when Colonel Campfield came up on the spur with the Queen's Life Guards, charged furiously, broke the Parliamentarians, and followed them in headlong and vengeful pursuit. Shippon marked the fiery Cavaliers as they swept on in triumph, and threw out a strong body of infantry to check the pursuit, and afford Waller an opportunity of rallying; but as quickly the fierce Goring and the Earl of Cleveland burst upon the pikemen, threw them into confusion, and bore them sternly back, holding them in deadly play; but the pikemen and musketeers, whether fighting for king or Parliament, were seldom or never routed, and they bore nobly up, dressed their line, and made a stubborn stand; driving off the impetuous Goring with stinging pikes and hail of bullets. Again the persistent Cavaliers fell on, and the pikes trembled before the rushing tide of horse and men as they fell slowly back. Goring eagerly followed up his advantage, when the Parliamentarians opened their ranks, and allowed the assailants to pass through, then reformed to cut off their retreat, and opened a destructive fire. Thus entrapped the Cavaliers fought desperately, Goring cutting his way through with a handful of followers, but leaving Cleveland in the hands of the enemy.
Dolemans, the key of the position, was assailed by Manchester with 3,000 foot and 1,200 horse, a force by no means too powerful for the arduous task to be attempted. Astley and Lucas were not slow to meet the assailing forces, and the sonorous psalms of the Parliamentarians ceased as the battle surges closed. A stubborn and sanguinary conflict ensued, but Manchester could make no serious impression upon his enemies. Cromwell, holding his troops, ready to strike when the opportune moment arrived, beheld the setting of the sun and the closing shades of night, while the field was as stubbornly contested as ever. He accordingly prepared to strike with his cavalry.
Dividing his brigade, he sent one division to the assistance of Manchester, and with the other fell upon the King's left on Speen Moor. The king and the young prince fled on the spur to find safety beneath the cannon of Donnington, while the Life Guards threw themselves upon Cromwell's troopers, in a gallant attempt to arrest his advance. Vain was their devotion. The Ironsides smote them hip and thigh, shattered their formation, and drove them from the field in headlong flight.
"Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row,
Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes
Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the accurst."
A harder fate befell the second division. Involved among the hedges and avenues of Dolmans, they were decimated by the fire of the royal musketeers, furiously charged by the cavalry, and driven off in the utmost disorder, after sustaining a loss of 500 men. Edmund Ludlow made a gallant attempt to relieve them, and cover their retreat.
With this last desperate conflict the battle ceased, not to be renewed. The King drew off, and Manchester showed no disposition to attempt any further operations against him. The second battle of Newbury was thus not less hardly fought nor indecisive in its results than was the first.
It is said that the disgust of Cromwell was so great, that it influenced him, to make his accusation against Manchester, with the resulting self-denying ordinance, and its remarkable and wide-extending results.
Mr. Blundell's paper has been closely followed, but the matter necessarily condensed in this sketch.
Binfield and Easthampstead, 1700-1716, and the Early Years of Alexander Pope.
By Rev. C.W. Penny, m.a.
There are few more pleasant and charming country villages in Berkshire than the two adjoining parishes, whose names stand at the head of this chapter. The undulating surface of the land, consisting for the most part of well-wooded and well-watered pastures, and a better soil than prevails in most of the surrounding heaths, must from the first have made an agreeable oasis in this part of the old Forest of Windsor. While their convenient situation, abutting north and south of the old high road, which ran from Reading past Wokingham to Windsor, and so to London, brought these secluded villages into touch, not only with the chief town of the county, but also with the busier life of the Metropolis. And thus, even two hundred years ago, they were an attractive place of residence for many old families that have long since died out and passed away.
The early history of almost every village centres round its church. And the church at Binfield is no exception to the rule. It lies embowered with trees at the further end of the village, nestling against the slope of a steepish hill. And although the ruthless hand of modern restoration has dealt somewhat hardly both outside and inside with the fabric itself, yet enough of hoar antiquity remains to attract the notice of even the most careless visitor. The venerable but somewhat dumpy tower is built, like those of Warfield and All Saints', Wokingham, of the conglomerate "puddingstone" of the district, and bears significant testimony to the scarceness of good building materials at the date of its erection. For these rugged irregular fragments must have been collected with infinite pains and labour when the "iron pan," as it is called, of the surrounding heath country was broken up, and the land first brought under cultivation.
As we approach the south door, the fine open timbered perpendicular porch, a feature which is characteristic of the churches of the neighbourhood, cannot fail to strike the eye. It is of unusual size, and the carved oak woodwork, black with age, is of superior workmanship.
The interior of the church is full of interest to the antiquary and the archæologist. For though the roof and arches are low, the pillars and windows poor, and the general architectural effect mean and disappointing, yet the floor and walls are crowded with inscribed and carved gravestones and memorial tablets of no ordinary character. These, as well as other relics of a bygone age, at once arrest attention.
To begin with the latter first; on a desk near the pillar as we enter is a black letter copy of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the Four Gospels, which at one time was ordered to be provided in every church at the cost of the parish. The copy is almost perfect, and has been carefully re-bound.
Then there is what the successive restorations have left of the fine Jacobean pulpit, with its date, "Ano. Dom. 1628," still upon it; and beside it, though unhappily upon the wrong side, is the elaborate hour-glass stand of hammered iron-work, consisting of oak leaves and acorns, alternately with vine leaves and bunches of grapes, together with three coats-of-arms, said to be those of the Smiths' and Farriers' Company. This is probably of the same date as the pulpit, if we may judge from the very similar iron frame-work which is attached to the pulpit in Hurst Church, and which bears the date 1636. The pulpit at Binfield has been sadly mutilated; its pedestal and staircase are gone; and its massive sounding-board has been relegated to the ignominious silence and seclusion of the vestry. But, in 1628, it must have been the handsomest pulpit of its kind in the neighbourhood.
On the floor of the sacrarium is a small brass, a half-length figure of a priest, represented with a stunted beard, and the apparels of the amice and albe ornamented with quatrefoils. Underneath is this inscription in Norman French:—
Water de Annesfordhe gist icy,
dieu de sa alme eit mercy.
It is one of the oldest brasses in the kingdom, for the said "Water" was rector of Binfield in 1361. Another remarkable fact about it is, that out of the seven inscriptions of this church recorded in 1664-6 by E. Ashmole in his "Antiquities of Berks," this is the only one which has survived the successive restorations. The other six have entirely gone.
BINFIELD CHURCH.
Immediately in front of the altar the floor is composed of a row of six black marble gravestones, each of which has a coat-of-arms elaborately sculptured at the head. That nearest to the centre is to the memory of Henry, fifth and last Earl of Stirling, of whose family we shall have more to say presently. The remaining five are remarkable as being all of them apparently placed to the memory of Papists who lived in the reign of Charles the II. Indeed, one of them, that, namely, nearest the north aisle, in memory of William Blount, "who dyed in the 21st yeare of his Age on ye 9th of May, 1671," has the letters, "C.A.P.D." engraved at the bottom in large capitals, which stand for the well-known pre-Reformation prayer, "Cujus Animae Propicietur Deus." And it is clear from the names of those commemorated in the other inscriptions that towards the end of Charles the II.'s reign there was a little colony of Papists residing at Binfield.
One of the oldest of these Roman Catholic families was that of Dancastle or Dancaster. They had been lords of the Manor of Binfield since the time of Elizabeth; and a member of the family, John Dancaster, had been rector of Binfield as far back as 1435. The gravestone in the chancel is to the memory of another member, also John Dancaster, who died in 1680, aged eighty-four. And from the coat-of-arms at the head of it: Az., a ball of wild fire Or., impaling, Sa., three lions passant in bend Arg., between two double cottises of the last, we are able to identify him as the "John Doncastle of Welhouse" in Ashmole's "Pedigrees of Berks," who married Mary, daughter of the Hon. John Browne, younger brother of Anthony, second Viscount Montague. About five years before his death, he and his neighbour, Mr. Gabriel Yonge, with his wife Elizabeth, whose gravestone comes next, were excommunicated by the then rector of Binfield, most probably for the non-payment of tithes or other ecclesiastical dues.
In an "Alphabetical List of the Recusants in the County of Berks," who entered the annual value of their estates for the purpose of being double taxed, pursuant to an Act passed in 1715, John Dancastle, probably the son of the above John Dancastle, is assessed at £234 10s., and his son, Francis Dancastle, at £1 17s. per annum. While to the south wall of Binfield Church is affixed a tablet which records the final extinction of the race. It was erected in memory of yet another John Dancastle, "the last of a respectable and ancient family, who after patiently enduring the most excruciating pains of the Gout, without intermission for upwards of sixteen years, obtained a happy release, and passed to a country where grief, sorrow, and pain are no more, Jany 29th, 1780. Aged 53 years. R.I.P."
The chief interest in the Dancastle family for us lies in the fact that it was owing to them that the poet, Alexander Pope, came to live at Binfield. About the year 1700, the representatives of this family at Binfield were two brothers, named Thomas and John. Very little is known about them except what may be gathered incidentally from the correspondence of Pope. It is believed that they lived at the Manor House at Binfield, and that it was owing to the friendship between Alexander Pope the elder and John Dancastle that the former was induced to settle at Binfield in 1700, when his son, the future poet, was just twelve years of age. After the migration to Binfield, the similarity of their tastes, for both were passionately fond of gardening, no doubt increased the intimacy; and we find that John Dancastle was the first witness to the elder Pope's will.
Scarcely anything is known for certain of the family history of the Popes before the settlement at Binfield, except that Pope's grandfather was a clergyman of the Church of England, and that he placed his son, the poet's father, with a merchant at Lisbon, where he became a convert to the Church of Rome. On his return to England, he seems to have been unsuccessful in his business affairs. Hearne, the antiquary, speaks of him (Diary, July 18th, 1729) as a "poor ignorant man, a tanner;" and elsewhere as "a sort of broken merchant," who had been "said to be a mechanic, a hatter, a farmer, nay, a bankrupt." But these were probably the false libels which were levelled against the son in after years in revenge for his keen and bitter satire.
It is now generally agreed that Mr. Pope, senior, was a linen draper in London at the time his son was born; and whatever may have been his success or want of success in that business, we know that, in 1700, he bought a small estate and house at Binfield, where he resided for the next sixteen years. He had an income, so Hearne tells us, of between three and four hundred a year.
The house can now hardly be said to exist. Pope himself described it as:—
"My paternal cell,
A little house with trees a-row,
And like its master very low;"
where the retired merchant employed his time chiefly in the cultivation of his garden, and as his son said;—
"Plants cauliflowers, and boasts to rear
The earliest melons of the year."
But successive owners have so pulled down and rebuilt it, that nothing now remains of the original house except one room, which tradition says was the poet's study. There is an engraving of this in E. Jesse's "Favorite Haunts and Rural Studies," published by J. Murray in 1847 (p. 90). The present house, formerly known as Pope's Wood, is now called Arthurstone, and belongs to J.W. Macnabb, Esq.
There is no doubt that besides the Dancastles and the other Papist families at Binfield, there were numerous Roman Catholics settled in the neighbourhood. In particular we find that Pope often visited, and was intimate with, the Blounts, of Mapledurham; the Carylls, of Ladyholt; and the Englefields, of Whiteknights. At the house of the last, he used to meet Wycherly, who introduced him to London life, and Miss Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the "Rape of the Lock." But it is not a little remarkable that the Popes at Binfield appear to have associated exclusively with their Roman Catholic friends. Throughout the whole of Pope's letters there does not appear a single allusion to the other county families that were undoubtedly residing at Binfield at this time, and whose gravestones cover a goodly portion of the floor of the church; for instance, the two branches of the Lee family and the Alexanders, Earls of Stirling.
Here then, from the age of twelve, the poet grew up a solitary, precocious child. He had indeed a half-sister, Magdalen, the only child of Mr. Pope's first wife. But she was a good deal, at least ten or twelve years, older than her brother, and at this time, or soon after, was married to a Mr. Rackett, and lived at Hall Grove, on Bagshot Heath. For a short time, a few months only after the settlement at Binfield he was placed under the charge of a priest, the fourth that had taught him in succession. "This," he says, "was all the teaching I ever had, and, God knows, it extended a very little way."
His parents indulged his every whim, and accordingly the boy spent his mornings in desultory reading, ranging freely and widely at will through English, Italian, and Latin literature. In the afternoons he wandered alone amidst the surrounding woods, and fed his imagination with musings upon the studies of the morning, or feasted his eyes with the beautiful landscape around him. In particular he is known to have haunted a grove of noble beech trees, still called Pope's Wood, which grew about half-a-mile from his father's house. On one of these was cut the words "Here Pope sang;" and for many years the letters were annually refreshed by the care of a lady residing near Wokingham. This tree was blown down in a gale, and the words were carved anew upon the next tree; but when this also fell some years ago the inscription was not renewed.[6]
Every evening on his return home the "marvellous boy" committed to paper the results of his communing with the Muses in the leafy grove. In this way he composed and wrote out many juvenile verses, amongst others an epic poem of more than four thousand lines, which in after years his matured taste consigned to the flames. So close an application, combined with complete isolation from all companionship of children of his own age, was certain in the end to affect disastrously his mental constitution as well as his bodily health. Accordingly we find that he never shook off the morbid self-consciousness which his solitary childhood had developed in him. And there is no doubt that his singular propensity to tricks and plots, which increased upon him with increasing age, even to the end of his life, was fostered by the atmosphere of evasion and deceit, in which, owing to the severe penal laws against Papists, he was necessarily brought up, and which in his case was never corrected by the wholesome training, if rough experience of a public school.
At the same time his intense application, untempered by any distraction of games or amusements, produced its natural results in a constitution by nature weakly, and began by the time he was sixteen years of age seriously to affect his health. He tried many physicians to no purpose, and finding himself daily growing worse thought he had not long to live. He therefore calmly sat down and wrote to take leave of all his friends. Amongst others he sent a last farewell to the Abbé Southcote, who lived near Abingdon. The Abbé, thinking that Pope's malady was mental rather than physical, went to his friend Dr. Radcliffe, the famous physician of Oxford, and described to him the boy's condition. Armed with full directions the Abbé hastened to Binfield, to enforce with all the ardour of friendship the doctors chief prescriptions—strict diet, less study and a daily ride in the open air.
In this way Pope, while riding in the Forest, began first to meet, then to know, and finally to be intimate with the squire of the neighbouring village. Easthampstead Park was at this time occupied by the veteran statesman, Sir William Trumbull, Knt. He had lived abroad for many years as ambassador, first at Paris and then at Constantinople. On his return home he had been appointed Secretary of State to William III., and now quite recently, in 1697, he had resigned all his appointments and had retired to end his days peacefully at home.
At this time he was a widower, his first wife, Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Charles Cotterell, having died in July, 1704. He soon after married Lady Judith Alexander, youngest daughter of Henry, 4th Earl of Stirling, who at that time was residing at Binfield, though in what house is not now known. Sir William was then almost seventy years of age, having been born apparently about the year 1636, and had no children. And thus it is easy to understand how the forlorn old man, riding often no doubt in the direction of Binfield in search of his second wife, frequently met the invalid poet as he left home in search of health, through the devious maze of drives in Windsor Forest, on which even then he was meditating to write a poem.
Long residence in France and Turkey had no doubt made Trumbull a citizen of the world. His capacious mind would have no room in it for the prejudices against Papists, which in England at that time were very strong, and in country districts banished them from ordinary society.
EAST HAMPSTEAD CHURCH.
Nor was the discrepancy of their years, seventy and seventeen, any bar to their growing friendship. Like all solitary children, especially the children of aged parents, Pope, even when a boy, seems always to have preferred the company and friendship of elderly men. Another link too was doubtless their mutual incapacity for shooting and hunting, then, as now, the ordinary pursuits of country gentlemen. Sir William Trumbull's long absence from England throughout his youth (for he was educated at Montpellier, in France, during the troubles of the Commonwealth) and in middle life, when he was engaged in the service of his country abroad, indisposed him as an old man to begin a new kind of life, and Pope's crooked frame and feeble health forbad him altogether to join in such sports. In 1705 he wrote to his friend Wycherly:—
"Ours are a sort of inoffensive people, who neither have sense nor pretend to any, but enjoy a jovial kind of dulness. They are commonly known in the world by the name of honest, civil gentlemen. They live much as they ride, at random—a kind of hunting life, pursuing with earnestness and hazard something not worth the catching; never in the way nor out of it. I cannot but prefer solitude to the company of all these." ...
And in another letter he wrote to his friend Cromwell in the same strain:—
"I assure you I am looked upon in the neighbourhood for a very sober and well-disposed person, no great hunter indeed, but a great esteemer of that noble sport, and only unhappy in my want of constitution for that and drinking. They all say 'tis pity I am so sickly, and I think 'tis a pity they are so healthy; but I say nothing that may destroy their good opinion of me."
Besides this, an additional link in the chain which united the two friends was the similarity of their tastes in literature. Sir William Trumbull, who, in his early days, had been Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, had kept up his scholarship, and retained to the last day of his life his early fondness for Greek and Latin authors.
The results of this friendship were of immense advantage to Pope. His earliest published poems, The Pastorals, modelled on Virgil's Eclogues, were first submitted to and discussed with Trumbull, as they rode together about the Forest, and the first Pastoral with much propriety was dedicated to his venerable friend. It was Trumbull who first suggested to Pope that he should undertake the translation of the Iliad, and thereby laid the foundation of his affluence. But far more than this, when the poet first went to London, and seemed, under the guidance of the old reprobate Wycherly, to be falling into evil ways, it was Trumbull who implored him to retrace his steps. "I now come," he wrote, "to what is of vast moment, I mean the preservation of your health, and beg of you earnestly to get out of all tavern company, and fly away from it tanquam ex incendio." As long as Pope remained at Binfield, their friendship was warm and unabated. In striking contrast with every other intimacy between Pope and his friends no coldness or quarrel ever arose between them. In April, 1716, the Popes left Binfield and removed to Chiswick, and in the following December Sir William Trumbull died.
To return; in the meanwhile the elder Pope devoted himself to gardening, in the art of which, as we have seen, he was no mean proficient. A rival in the same pursuit was his friend, Mr. John Dancastle. And we find amongst the poet's correspondence a letter from Sir William Trumbull thanking Pope's father for sending him a present of "hartichokes" of superior size and excellence; and in another letter Mr. John Dancastle excuses himself, after the Popes had left, for not being able to procure them "some white Strabery plants" such as apparently the elder Pope had reared in the old garden at Binfield.
While the father was thus occupied in gardening, the son was gradually creeping into notice as a poet. His early poems and shorter pieces appeared at first in Tonson's or Lintot's "Miscellanies," or the "Spectator," and similar publications. But as he became more widely known, Pope ventured on independent publication by the then usual mode of introducing new works, namely by subscription. In this way his fine poems the Essay on Criticism, Windsor Forest, and the Rape of the Lock, all written and composed at Binfield, appeared successively in 1711, 1713, and 1714.
The first of these poems should be mentioned for two reasons. It led to Pope's first introduction to London life, when he made the acquaintance of the famous wits of the period, Steele, Addison, Gay, and Swift. And it also was the cause of the first of those literary quarrels in which Pope's talent for satire henceforth involved him more or less as long as he lived. Resenting some adverse criticism of his Pastorals, he inserted in the Essay on Criticism the following lines:—
"'Twere well might critics still their freedom take,
But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares tremendous with a threatening eye
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry."
John Dennis, the writer thus lampooned as "Appius," retorted in a prose pamphlet, in which he described his assailant as a "hunch-backed toad," and went on to say: "If you have a mind to inquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham for a young, short, squab gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals and the very bow of the god of love, you will be soon directed to him. And pray, as soon as you have taken a survey of him, tell me whether he is a proper author to make personal reflections."
In his poem Windsor Forest it was natural that Pope should commemorate his friendship and intercourse with Sir William Trumbull, by describing in graceful verse the peaceful occupations of his aged friend's declining years.
"Happy [the man], who to these shades retires,
Whom Nature charms, and whom the Muse inspires:
Whom humbler joys of home-felt quiet please,
Successive study, exercise, and ease.
He gathers health from herbs the forest yields,
And of their fragrant physic spoils the fields;
Now marks the course of rolling orbs on high;
O'er figured worlds now travels with his eye;
Of ancient writ unlocks the learned store,
Consults the dead, and lives past ages o'er.
Or looks on heaven with more than mortal eyes,
Bids his free soul expatiate in the skies,
Amid her kindred stars familiar roam,
Survey the region, and confess her home!
Such was the life great Scipio once admired,
Thus Atticus, and Trumbal thus retired."
Of the Rape of the Lock it will suffice to say that even now some critics reckon it as Pope's masterpiece. As a specimen of the Mock Heroic Epic Poem it has no rival in the English language. Here it chiefly concerns us as a true and lifelike picture of fashionable manners prevailing in country houses in the reign of Queen Anne.
The publication of these poems made frequent journeys to London necessary, in order to settle terms with the publishers and other literary business. The Rape of the Lock was immediately successful, three thousand copies being sold in four days, and it was at once reprinted. Pope's fame was therefore now established firmly, but hitherto the sums which he had received for his poems would seem to have been very inconsiderable. He appears to have received thirty pounds for Windsor Forest, and only half that sum each for the Essay on Criticism and the Rape of the Lock.
He now bethought him, therefore, of Sir William Trumbull's former suggestion that he should translate Homer, and in October, 1713, he issued his Proposals to the Public. His friends in London interested themselves in the subscription. Dean Swift, in particular, said he should not rest until he had secured for him a thousand pounds. And so flattering was the response, that in 1715 the family was enabled to live more at ease. It was now evident that their present abode was too far from London, for one who had constant negotiations with the book-sellers and the Popes determined to leave Binfield, and accordingly their house there was sold towards the end of 1715. It was bought by a Mr. Tanner, whose gravestone is one of those described in the beginning of this chapter as lying in front of the altar. He was probably a Papist, certainly a Non-Juror, for Hearne, who records the fact, terms him "an honest man," which is Hearne's well-known periphrasis for denoting those who were Jacobites in politics.
The last two years of his life at Binfield, Pope spent in translating the Iliad, or rather, for he was too poor a Greek scholar to read it in the original, in versifying other people's translations of it. Good old Sir William Trumbull no doubt helped him whenever a passage of extra difficulty perplexed the poet. And Mr. Thomas Dancastle, the Squire of Binfield, was so delighted with his young friend's enterprise that at infinite pains and labour he made a fair copy of the whole translation for the press. It also appears from Pope's MSS. that he occasionally indulged his affectionate and amiable mother in allowing her to transcribe a portion. But alas! poor Mrs. Pope had had but a slender education. In the single letter of hers, which has been published, the spelling is surprisingly phonetic. Alluding to a portion of the Iliad she writes to her son: "He will not faile to cole here on Friday morning, and take ceare to cearrie itt to Mr. Thomas Doncaster. He shall dine wone day with Mrs. Dune, in Ducke (i.e., Duke) Street; but the day will be unsirton, soe I thincke you had better send itt to me. He will not faile to cole here, that is Mr. Mannock." And the numerous corrections made in his own hand, sufficiently show that her mode of spelling gave Pope more trouble than all the subsequent inaccuracies of the printers.
Our period draws to its close. In June, 1715, the first volume of Pope's Homer, containing the first four books of the Iliad came out. It has been calculated that for the six volumes in which the translation was comprised Pope received from Lintot more than £5,000. And as the greater portion of this sum was paid in advance his circumstances at once became not only easy but affluent. The end of the year was spent in preparing to migrate to Chiswick. It must be remembered that the new year then began in March, and on March 20, 1715/16, Pope wrote to his friend Caryll as follows:—
"I write this from Windsor Forest, which I am come to take my last look and leave of. We have bid our Papist neighbours adieu, much as those who go to be hanged do their fellow-prisoners who are condemned to follow them a few weeks after. I was at Whiteknights, where I found the young ladies I just now mentioned [Theresa and Martha Blount] spoken of a little more coldly than I could at this time especially[7] have wished. I parted from honest Mr. Dancastle with tenderness, and from Sir William Trumbull as from a venerable prophet, foretelling with lifted hands the miseries to come upon posterity which he was just going to be removed from."
Sir William died in the December following in his 78th year, leaving an only son, also William Trumbull, barely eight years old. The subsequent history of Binfield and Easthampstead does not fall within the limits of this chapter. It must suffice to say that Pope occasionally visited the Dancastles, and possibly stayed with Lady Judith Trumbull. At all events he recommended his friend, Elijah Fenton, the poet, to be her son's tutor, and frequently corresponded with him at Easthampstead. Fenton continued to reside there even after young Trumbull grew to man's estate, and when Fenton died in 1730, Pope wrote the epitaph which is still to be seen inscribed upon the tablet erected by William Trumbull to his memory, on the north wall of Easthampstead Church.