THE GREAT WEST WINDOW, FAIRFORD, DISPLAYING THE “DOOM.”
The other windows are of distinctly inferior interest, displaying as they do mostly saints, but some of the smaller lights repay close attention. In them you see the persecutors of the Church, set forth with every horrific detail of innate malignity; while, hovering over a representation of the Crucifixion is seen a batlike devil, awaiting the last breath of the impenitent thief, to secure his escaping soul.
These remarkable windows owe their preservation to the care taken of them by William Oldisworth of Fairford, during the Puritan upheaval, probably with the aid of Lady Verney, wife of Sir Thomas Verney, lord of the manor. She was daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund, the last of the Tames, and interested, of course, in seeing that the gifts of her ancestors were in safe keeping. The glass was, accordingly, carefully removed and buried in Fairford Park. There it remained until the restoration of order, when it was exhumed and replaced. A tall classic column stands as a monument to this singular history.
It is not always so easy a matter as you might suppose to hire a boat at Lechlade for the thirty-two miles’ voyage to Oxford; which, after all, is not only the best way of seeing the Thames, but the Thames Valley villages also. Unless considerable notice is given, especially if it be the week before Bank Holiday, the boat-proprietor is extremely chary of letting his craft out of sight, and it becomes a matter of favour and delicate negotiation to secure a boat, even though you tender good value in coin of the realm for its hire. The proprietor’s point of view is that it is all very well for pleasuring folk to drop easily down to Oxford with the stream in two days, but it remains for him, or one of his men, to get it back against stream; not so easy a matter, even though the stream be gentle. In fact, the demand for boats for the trip is not sufficiently large for special arrangements for cartage back by road to be made; and that familiar summer sight anywhere between Richmond and Oxford, a slowly-progressing van, laden with boats, rolling along the intervening miles of highway, is not visible here. But, although the hiring is, as already said, somewhat difficult, the explorer has at least the satisfaction of finding the Upper River secluded and unspoiled.
Immediately below Lechlade begins that long and ever-increasing series of locks by which the Thames Conservancy has converted the river into an astounding succession of toll-gates; with this result, that you are not long out of sight of one lock before another comes in view; while lock-cuts in addition grow longer, as well as more numerous, and tend to make the river in many places very formal. But, at any rate, the true river-course, leading to the weirs, or often round by what are now backwaters, is by contrast, and by disuse, rendered often a very paradise of wild, untended life.
