DATCHET—RUNNYMEDE—WRAYSBURY—HORTON AND ITS MILTON ASSOCIATIONS—STAINES MOOR—STANWELL—LALEHAM AND MATTHEW ARNOLD—LITTLETON—CHERTSEY—WEYBRIDGE—SHEPPERTON.
By Datchet meads and the continuously flat shores of Runnymede, the river runs somewhat tamely, after the scenic climax of Windsor. The Datchet of Shakespearean fame it is, of course, hopeless to find. There is nothing Shakespearean in the prettily rebuilt village with suburban villas and railway level-crossing; and the ditch that used to be identified with that into which Falstaff was flung, “glowing hot, like a horseshoe, hissing hot,” has been covered over. At Old Windsor, the site of Edward the Confessor’s original palace, the little churchyard contains the tomb of Perdita Robinson, one of George the Fourth’s fair and foolish friends; and down by the riverside stands the old rustic inn, the Bells of Ouseley, whose sign puzzles ninety-nine of every hundred who behold it. Writers of books upon the Thames either carefully avoid doing more than mentioning the sign, or else frankly add that they do not understand what it means, or where Ouseley is—and small blame to them, for there is not any place so-called. What is meant is “Oseney,” the vanished abbey of that name outside Oxford, whose bells were of a peculiar fame in that day.
Runnymede is, of course, an exceptionally interesting stretch of meadow-land, for it was here, “in prato quod vocatur Runnymede inter Windelsorum et Stanes,” that at last the barons brought King John to book, and it was on what is now called “Magna Charta Island,” on the Bucks side, that the King signed the Great Charter, June 15, 1215.
There are many disputed etymologies of “Runnymede,” including “running-mead,” a scene of horseraces; and “rune-mead,” the meadow of council; but the name doubtless really derived from “rhine” a Saxon word that did duty for anything from a great river to a ditch. Compare the river Rhine and the dykes or drains of Sedgemoor, still known as “rhines.”[4] The meadows on either side of the Thames here have always been low-lying, water-logged, and full of rills.
The army of the Barons had encamped, five days before the signing of this great palladium of liberty, on one side of the river, and the numerically smaller supporters of the King on the other, the island being selected as neutral ground.
BACKWATER NEAR WRAYSBURY.
The island is occupied by a modern picturesque cottage in a Gothic convention, standing amid trim lawns and weeping willows, near the camp-shedded shore, its gracefulness entirely out of key with those rude times. A little cottage contains a large stone with an inscription bidding it to be remembered that here that epoch-making document was executed, and further, that George Simon Harcourt, Esq., lord of the manor, erected this building in memory of the great event. It is an excellent example of a small modern person seeking to wring a modicum of recognition out of great historic personages and events.