Staines is one of the oldest towns in Middlesex, here or hereabouts appearing to have stood the Roman station Ad Pontes, by which the road to Silchester and Bath crossed the river. The whole vicinity has been found rich in Roman remains. The original town lies about its parish church in the valley of the Colne, that works its mills; but the floods of this sluggish delta have washed a later growth to the east, and it shows a new red church on the Thames bank, where a terrace of dignity looks across to the boathouses lining the Surrey side. A meaner quarter straggles on to the dull flats of Staines Moor behind the railway, from which High Street curves spaciously down to the bridge, for long the nearest neighbour of London Bridge. In our great-grandfathers’ day Staines Bridge was crossed by some three dozen coaches daily; and who can count the myriad wheels that now make this short straight cut through Middlesex into Surrey!
Near its bridge stands what is taken for the town’s godfather, London Stone, marking from times immemorial the limit of the City’s jurisdiction up the Thames, as ascertained and asserted by repeated visits of the Lord Mayor and Corporation, which seem now to have fallen into abeyance. Here I would call up the spirit of Matthew Arnold to rebuke for me that young lion of the Daily Telegraph who, in criticizing my book on Surrey, growled at its mention of a notable Lord Mayor’s progress nearly three generations ago as made to Staines, and not rather to Oxford. For once a critic is wrong: the goal of the official journey was Staines, the circumgression to Oxford being tacked on as an after-thought, or piece of by-play. Even thus let me conclude this chapter with an excursus further up the river, to justify my accuracy by giving a faithful account of that Thames Anabasis that might have been forgotten but for the reverend Xenophon—his Lordship’s chaplain, to wit—who enshrined the record in a leaden volume, now worth its weight in silver.
The civic fathers, we are told, having resolved to assert the City’s prerogative at Staines, were tempted by an invitation to connect with that time-honoured ceremony a pleasure-trip to Oxford. To Oxford, then, the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress travelled by land, and the first part of the chronicle is taken up in describing most minutely the circumstances of this extra jaunt. A whole page goes to the start, including a description of the coachman’s countenance, “reserved and thoughtful” as became his important charge, and the “four high-spirited and stately horses” which, “having been allowed a previous day of unbroken rest, ... chafed and champed exceedingly on the bits by which their impetuosity was restrained.” But the murmurs of the admiring crowd were “at length hushed by the opening of the hall door”; then, “as soon as the female attendant of the Lady Mayoress had taken her seat, dressed with becoming neatness, at the side of the well-looking coachman, the carriage drove away—not, however, with that violent and extreme rapidity which rather astounds than gratifies the beholders, but at that steady and majestic pace which is always an indication of real greatness.” The chaplain, our author, was of the party, though he modestly keeps himself in a back seat. Thus he can assure us that the roads were “in excellent order, and that the whole face of creation gleamed with joy.” It is not every day that creation sees an actual Lord Mayor faring forth over Middlesex roads.
At Hounslow a powder-mill happened to blow up, as if to salute the passage of the City potentate; but without further excitement he reached Oxford, joined there by several Aldermen and officials, who were forthwith entertained by the local municipality, while “it must here be mentioned that the Lady Mayoress and other ladies of the party, to the number of eight, ordered dinner at the ‘Star,’ and spent the evening in their own society.” But let us pass over a long account of the illustrious strangers being fêted, lionized and addressed by Town and Gown, and come to that great day, Thursday, July 27, 1826, when the City Barge, having taken nearly a week to make the upward voyage, lay in waiting by the banks of Christ Church meadow, with its ten splendid scarlet silk banners waving gently in the rising sun, beside the shallop of the Thames Navigation Committee and another large boat, in which came his lordship’s Yeomen of the Household, together with that most important functionary the cook, “who was at the time of embarkation busily engaged in preparing a fire in a grate fixed in the bow of the boat.” So at last, “amidst shouts of reiterated applause from the surrounding multitudes, the City Barge, manned by the City watermen in scarlet liveries, and all the other boats in attendance on his lordship, were simultaneously launched on the broad bosom of the princely Thames”—a sight not to be seen by this degenerate age unless on the front page of its Illustrated London News.
Punch was not such a rare show in the country as a live Lord Mayor. Crowds of people on the tow-path escorted the procession from Oxford; then every town and village near the banks furnished a new contingent of eager spectators. “Distant shouts of acclamation perpetually re-echoed from field to field, as the various rustic parties, with their fresh and blooming faces, were seen hurrying forth from their cottages and gardens, climbing trees, struggling through copses, and traversing thickets to make their shortest way to the water side.” No wonder the children ran, for the Lord Mayor and Mr. Alderman Atkins scattered handfuls of half-pence from their stately craft. At Caversham the condescension of true greatness was still more markedly exhibited in a moving incident recorded with long-drawn waggery, the gist of it being the picking out of a most uncouth and ludicrous-looking rustic mounted upon a “gaunt and rusty pony,” whom, flinging him a piece of money, his Lordship overwhelmed with the honour of a commission to ride on to Reading as his avant-courier.
Having started from Oxford at seven, the convoy reached Reading when “the sun had whirled down his broad disk into the west; and the evening twilight just served to show obscurely the tranquil stream of water over which the vessel glided, and the shapeless forms of country by which it was surrounded.” Here the voyagers spent the night at the “Bear Inn,” re-embarking next morning amid the ringing of bells and the firing of guns, not to speak of a band of music now taken on board. They dined at Clieveden, which prompts the author to a homily on the shortcomings of Dryden’s Buckingham, balanced by a seven-page eulogium on the virtues of the late George III. The local gentry and officials did not fail to pay their respects to the passing Admiral of the Thames, and were invited on board “with all the usual forms of politeness.” As we have seen, the distinguished tourists occasionally indulged themselves in mild jocosity; but on the whole their mood was one of becoming admiration, and their chaplain can assure us that “no recourse was had in any single instance throughout the voyage either to cards or dice, or to any other of those frivolous expedients to which the evening hours of life are sacrificed.”
The next night was spent at Windsor, where some score of pages go to celebrate the Castle apartments in a true “God bless the Regent and the Duke of York!” spirit of British loyalty. Delayed till noon by sight-seeing, the procession then got afloat for Staines, and whereas, above Windsor, the state barge had almost stuck in the mud, it now made better way in deeper water, and “left a long, undulating track behind” as it passed beneath that royal abode, “lifting up its lordly pile as if to receive the prostrate homage of the surrounding country.”
Hitherto the voyage had been more of a pleasure jaunt, but at Staines came to be enacted the real business of this Lord Mayor’s show in partibus. Duly arrayed in their robes and emblems of office, to the music of national airs, amid multitudes of the surrounding inhabitants, our City fathers descended to the shore, and three times solemnly circumambulated their western landmark—let us trust in true course of the sun, though on that pagan feature of the rite its reverend chronicler is not explicit.
When the procession halted, the Lord Mayor took his station near the City Boundary; and directed the City Sword to be placed on the Stone, in token of his Lordship’s jurisdiction. It was also a part of the ceremony—which, though important, is simple—that the City Banner should wave over the Stone. At the request, therefore, of the Lord Mayor, Lord Henry Beauclerk, a lad of very prepossessing appearance, of the age of fourteen, dressed in naval uniform, and brother to His Grace the Duke of St. Albans, mounted the Stone, and held the City Banner during the performance of the ceremony. The Lord Mayor now received a bottle of wine from one of the attendants, and broke it, according to ancient custom, on the Stone. The Water-Bailiff then handed his Lordship a glass of wine, who drank, ‘May God preserve the City of London!’ In this he was joined by the young nobleman and the assembled company. Orders were then given that the following inscription should be engraven on the pedestal which supported the Stone:
“The Right Honourable
WILLIAM VENABLES,
Lord Mayor of the City of London
and
Conservator of the River Thames,
Viewed the Western Boundary of the
City’s Jurisdiction on the said River,
Marked by the Ancient Stone
Raised upon this Pedestal,
Erected A.D. 1285,
On the 29th day of July, A.D. 1826.
God preserve the City of London!”