If the name of Barley hints strongly of agricultural pursuits, it does not by any means derive it from that kind of grain. Its earliest Saxon name is "Berle," coming from the words "beorh" and "lea," and meaning a cleared space in a forest. Barley, in fact, stands on the final ridge where the Chiltern Hills end and the East Anglian heights and the forest of Essex begin, overlooking a valley between the two where the trees fell back and permitted a way through the primeval woods.
The restored and largely rebuilt church contains little of interest, but in the churchyard lies one whose career claims some notice. There the passing stranger may see a simple stone cross, bearing the words, "Heinrich, Count Arnim. Born May 10th, 1814. Died October 8th, 1883." Beside him lies his wife, who died in 1875. The story of Count Arnim is one of political enthusiasms and political and personal hatreds. One of the greatest nobles in conservative Germany, he early developed Radical ideas, and joined Kossuth in his struggle for Hungarian liberty, refusing to desert that ill-fated cause, and disregarding the call of his own country to arms. The neglect of this feudal duty rendered his vast estates liable to forfeiture, and placed him in danger of perpetual confinement in a military prison; a danger aggravated by the personal and bitter animosity of the all-powerful Bismarck, and the hatred of the relatives of two antagonists whom he had slain in duels. To escape this threatened lifelong imprisonment he fled to England, and, after much privation, established a school of fencing and physical exercise, under the assumed name of Major Loeffler. In the meanwhile he had married a German governess. His association with Barley arose from the then Rector resorting to his school for a course of exercise, and becoming in time a fast friend, to whom the Count disclosed his identity. The Rector interested himself in Arnim's fortunes, and went so far as to write to the German Emperor on behalf of his son, then growing to manhood. As a result of these efforts young Arnim was permitted to enter the German Army and to enjoy his father's estates. Unfortunately his mother accompanied him, and as, according to the savage notions of German society, she was not of noble birth and not ennobled by marriage, she was restricted to the servants' hall at every place her son visited, while he was received in the highest circles. Count Arnim had, in his long residence in England, adopted the sensible views prevailing here, and indignantly recalled his son. "I would rather," he said in a noble passage, "I would rather have my son grow up a poor man in England, in the service of his adopted country, than as a rich man in the service of his Fatherland, where he would have to be ashamed of his mother."
It was his friendship with the Rector that made the Count choose this as the resting-place of his wife and himself. His body was brought by train to Buntingford, and thence by road, being buried by the light of torches at midnight, after the old German custom.
XVII
A mile beyond Barley the road leaves Hertfordshire and enters Essex, but passes out of that county again and enters Cambridgeshire in another two miles. Midway, amid the solemn emptiness of the bare downs, the Icknield Way runs as a rugged chalk-and-grass track athwart the road, neighboured by prehistoric tumuli. Amidst all these reminders of the dead-and-gone Iceni, at the cross-roads to Royston and Whittlesford, and just inside the Cambridgeshire border, stands a lonely inn once known as the Flint House. Beside it is one of the Trinity Hall milestones, with the crescent badge of the college, and hands with fingers like sausages pointing down the weirdly straight and empty roads.
The two miles of road through Essex long bore the name of the "Recorder's Road." It seems that when in 1725 an Act of Parliament was obtained for mending the then notoriously bad way from Cambridge to Fowlmere and Barley "in the counties of Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire," the fact that two miles lay in Essex was overlooked. In consequence of this omission nothing was done to the Essex portion, which became almost impassable for carriages until the then Recorder of Cambridge, Samuel Pont, obtained the help of several of the colleges, and at last mended it.
A MONUMENTAL MILESTONE.
It is a good enough road now, though passing through very exposed and open country, with tumuli, the solemn relics of a prehistoric race, forming striking objects on the bare hillsides and the skyline. In cosy and sheltered contrast with these comes the village of Fowlmere, snugly nestled amid the elms and poplars aptly named "Crows' Parlour."
Fowlmere is a very Proteus in the spelling of its name. In Domesday Book it is set down as "Fugelesmare," and has at any time since then been written in half a dozen different ways, in which "Foulmere" and "Fowlmere" are the most prominent. Old-time travellers, who found the road inexpressibly bad, adopted the first of these two styles, and thought the place well suited with a name: others—and among them local patriots—adopted the variant less expressive of mud and mire. In so doing they were correct, for the village takes its name from a marshy lake or mere, thickly overgrown with reeds in ancient times, in whose recesses myriads of wild-fowl found a safe harbourage. Even when the nineteenth century had dawned the mere was still in existence, and wild-fowl frequented it in some numbers. To-day it is but a spot where watercress grows and the grass springs a thought more luxuriant than elsewhere.