The ancient town of Marlow is also situated in the southern part of this county, and the quiet rich beauty of the scenery round it is not surpassed in any part of England.
Stony Stratford was one of the resting-places of Queen Eleanor, and Edward I. erected a beautiful cross here, which unhappily has been destroyed. Here also Richard III., when Duke of Gloucester, seized the uncles of Edward V., and sent them with Sir Thomas Vaughan to Pontefract.
Colchester in Essex was formerly a walled town, and traces of the walls still remain. They are nearly eight feet in thickness. The manufacture of baize was introduced here in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and many Flemish names and faces are to be found among the inhabitants. Maldon, in this county, and Braintree, contain many old buildings. Waltham Abbey and Waltham Cross are familiar to every Londoner, and fortunate indeed we may consider ourselves that such splendid relics have been spared to our generation.
The gable at Ockwells lights a fine old hall. The house was used for some time as a farm. This is the only illustration of Berkshire, for the county is so full of interest and beauty that it has been considered best to reserve it for a second series of the present work. It is impossible to do more than notice such places as Steventon, Abingdon with its thousand associations, Cumnor, and the many places of interest in the Vale of the White Horse. Bray is in the eastern part of the county, near Maidenhead, and is celebrated for its vicar, who changed his religion four times during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth; and in reply to one of his parishioners who accused him of inconsistency, he said he adhered strictly to his principles, which were to live and die Vicar of Bray.
“And this indeed I will maintain
Unto my dying day, sir,
Whatever King in England reign,
I’m to be Vicar of Bray, sir,”
as the ballad has it.[5]
In approaching such a county as Oxford, the difficulty is to deal with subjects that are not already too familiar. The city of Oxford has been described a hundred times, and Pugin and Le Keux have almost exhausted its picturesque colleges and halls in their woodcuts and steel engravings. Woodstock is one of the first places an Oxford student or his friends visit, and great as the attractions of its park or palace may be, there is little in it that comes within the scope of the present work.
Banbury, in the northern part of the county, is an admirable example of a fine old English town. Its noble church was, it is said, destroyed by an alderman who was also a builder, and who erected the present unsightly edifice in its place. The Castle of Banbury, which was built by the Bishop of Lincoln in the twelfth century, stood a long siege during the wars of Charles I., and the Parliamentarians ordered its demolition when they obtained possession of it. The bars, five in number, were standing until the present century, but now they are destroyed. The names are peculiar, and differ considerably from those we commonly find applied to city gates: St. John’s Bar, Sugar Bar, North Bar, Cole Bar, and Bridge Gate. The old Banbury cross, familiar in nursery rhymes, has lately been destroyed.
