THE “NAG’S HEAD,” THAME.
The “Crown and Treaty House” inn at Uxbridge, long known to would-be beery rustics by the affectionately wistful name of the “Crown and Treat Ye,” is a genuinely historic house. It stands away beyond the tramway terminus, facing the road at the very extremity of Uxbridge town, as you cross canal and river and so leave Middlesex for Buckinghamshire; and although very much of its real antiquity is disguised by modern paint and plaster, it is in fact the surviving portion of the great mansion built in 1575 by one of the Bennet family, and, at the opening of the war between King and Parliament, in the occupation of one “Mr. Carr.”
The meeting here of leading spirits on either side of the contending forces was well meant. It began January 20th, 1645, and was convened for the purpose of “taking into consideration the grievances of which each party complained, and to propose those remedies which might be mutually agreeable.” Unfortunately, little sincerity attended the actual meeting. The King’s party were unyielding, and the military successes of the Parliament rendered the leaders of that side ill-disposed to give away in talk that which they had won in the field. Moreover, like most conferences in which religious as well as political questions were the subjects of discussion, those debates only further inflamed mutual hatreds and further sundered the already wide points of disagreement.
YARD OF THE “GREYHOUND,” THAME.
There were sixteen commissioners on either side, and for three weeks they argued without coming to any settlement. Neither side would give way, for either was convinced of its ability to finally crush the other by force of arms. Much blood had already been shed, indecisively, and passions ran high. Uxbridge was selected as a kind of half-way house between London, held strongly by the Parliament, and Oxford, as strongly held for the King; and when the empty verbiage was done, the propositions put forth scouted, and the pretensions disallowed, the parties separated, falling back respectively to London and to Oxford, to recommence those hostilities for which they were spoiling. Treaty, therefore, there was not: only an ominous truce between Right Divine and People’s Will.
The Earl of Clarendon, in his History of the Rebellion, gives an interesting account of these fruitless meetings:
“There was,” he says, “a good house at the end of the town which was provided for the Treaty. Above was a fair room in the middle of the house, handsomely dressed up for the Commissioners to sit in; a large square table being placed in the middle with seats for the Commissioners; one side being sufficient for those of either party: and a rail for those who should be thought necessary to be present, which went round. There were many other rooms on either side of this great room for the Commissioners to retire to, when they thought fit to consult by themselves, and there being good stairs at either end of the house they never went through each other’s quarters, nor met, but in the great room.”
Neither side used the house, except for these meetings, the Royalists being appropriately accommodated at the “Crown,” which then stood in the middle of the High Street, in the centre of the town, opposite the still-existing “White Horse,” and the Parliament people at the “George.”