A circle of tall elms closely surrounding the church casts a perpetual shade upon the building; Windsor Castle looking down from the opposite shore in feudal majesty upon it and the humble activities of these level fields.
That majestic pile indeed overlooks some remarkably mean surroundings which on close acquaintance derogate strangely from its dignity. Thus, resuming the road on the Berkshire side, from Bray to Windsor, the long, straight, uninteresting miles lead directly to Clewer, a village of disreputable appearance, now, to all intents, a Windsor slum; and what was a rustic churchyard has become something more in the likeness of a cemetery. In the roads, strewn with rubbish and broken glass, dirty children play.
Besides an inscription to “ye vertuous Mrs. Lucie Hobson, 1657,” who was, we learn, “a treu lover of a Godly and a Powerful ministry”—i.e. probably of a preacher who could bang the pulpit and punish the cushions—there is little of interest in Clewer church, with the one exception of a curious little brass plate, inscribed,
“He that liethe vnder this stone
Shott with a hvndred men him selfe alone.
This is trew that I doe saye
The matche was shott in ovld felde at Bray.
I will tell yov before yov go hence
That his name was Martine Expence.”
Local history tells us nothing of this hero, who apparently did not really shoot himself, as the inscription states, but seems at some period to have won a particularly hard archery contest, which was ever after his title to fame in this locality.