Cottage at Steeple Morden.
These parcloses seem to have been made to serve as confessional boxes, devices which were very rare in England before the Reformation. "Shrift," of course, was universal; but neither priest nor penitent were shut from view. The former sat in a chair, usually at the altar rail, while the latter knelt beside and facing him. In these parcloses the priest's head as he sat on the seat would be visible to those in the church, but the kneeling penitent would be hidden. That such was the purpose here would appear from the lines in old English lettering painted upon their sides:—
Ad . mortem . duram . Jhesu . de . me . cape . curam .
Vitam . venturam . post . mortem . redde . securam .
Fac . me . confessum . rogo . te . Deus . ante . recessum .
Et . post . decessum . cælo. mihi . dirige . gressum .
"Jesu, in Death's dark vale, be Thou my stay,
Make safe my Life to Come from every foe,
Grant me Confession, Lord, ere hence I go,
And then to Heaven do thou make straight my way."
From Guilden Morden a lane leads straight to Ashwell, leaving on the left Steeple Morden (which lost its steeple in the great storm of 1703), and Littlington, the cradle of Cambridgeshire Nonconformity, of which hereafter. Here the old parish Lock-up survives; a dismal den of red brick, some ten feet square, with iron-clenched door and closely-barred window.
CHAPTER XII
Oxford Road, Observatory, Neptune, Cambridge Discoveries.—Coton.—Madingley.—Hardwick.—Toft, St. Hubert.—Childerley, Charles I.—Knapwell.—Bourn.—Caxton—Eltisley, St. Pandiana, Storm.—St. Neot's, Neotus and Alfred.—Paxton Hill.—Godmanchester, Port Meadow.—Huntingdon, Cromwell's Penance.—The Hemingfords.—St. Ives.—Holywell.—Overcote.—Earith, the Bedford Rivers, "Parallax."
Due westwards from Cambridge, turning leftwards out of the Via Devana just beyond Magdalene College, runs what used to be the old coaching road to Oxford. Till quite recently the milestones along it gave the distance to that city, between which and Cambridge there was of old a good deal of traffic, for the Universities were more closely connected then than even now. Popularly this road was called the Ad eundem road, a nickname referring to the not so long by-gone privilege by which any graduate of either place might be admitted to the same degree (ad eundem gradum) in the sister University simply on payment of the fees and without any further examination. It is now spoken of as the Madingley Road, from the first village along its course, or the St. Neots Road, from the first town to which it leads. Thence it went on to Oxford by way of Bedford, Buckingham, and Bicester.