Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

Cottage at Toft.

At the point where this lane leaves the road, another, looking like a mere farm road, turns off northwards. This leads to Childerley Hall, now a farm house, but in 1647 of sufficient consequence to serve as a sleeping place for Royalty. Hither King Charles the First was brought by his captors, when carried off by Cornet Joyce from Holmby House in Northamptonshire, as has been already narrated.[183] He was not altogether an unwilling captive, for both he and the Army hoped to arrive at some mutual accommodation which would make both independent of that Parliamentary control of which both were heartily wearied.

He was treated, accordingly, with the utmost respect; and during his stay at Childerley Hall[184] (from Saturday, June 5, to Tuesday, June 8), the students of Cambridge "flocked apace" to pay their homage to him. "He is exceedingly cheerful," writes a contemporary scribe,[185] "shows himself to all, and commands that no scholler be debarred from kissing his hand, for which honour they return humble thanks and Vivat Rex; and there the Sophs are in their gowns and caps as if no further than Barnwell." Nay, even the great chiefs of the army, the men who at Marston and Naseby had faced and conquered him, Fairfax, Ireton, and Whalley, and Cromwell himself, came hither to join in this hand-kissing, and, one after another, to be astonished at the ability and graciousness which their distressed Sovereign showed in the private interview granted to each in turn.

But, if local tradition is to be trusted, beneath all this gallant show of gracious acquiescence in the inevitable, there lurked in the King's heart a deep conviction that the hope on which it was founded was forlorn indeed. For this tradition tells of a truly desperate dash for freedom, the success of which was all but impossible. It has been constantly handed down at Madingley Hall that on one of these June midnights a white figure knocked at the door, and a subdued voice asked for "Jack" (Sir John Cotton, a noted loyalist, whose seat the Hall was at that time). He came, and found this mysterious visitor none other than the King himself, disguised in a peasant's smock, and imploring concealment till he could escape from the country. By a secret stair, traces of which still exist, he was conducted to a hiding place in the roof. But it was too late; his flight had been discovered, and the pursuing troopers were already out in search of him. Madingley Hall would, of course, be amongst the very first places to be suspected of harbouring him, and the wild venture ended in despair. All was hushed up; for both he and his captors wished to keep up the fiction that he was with them willingly.

But they kept a tight grip upon him, and, when he left Childerley that Tuesday morning, would not allow him to ride on to his state prison at Newmarket through Cambridge (where the streets were being decked in his honour with "whole rose-bushes and strewn with rushes and herbs"), lest these demonstrations should kindle too ardent a flame of loyalty. He was accordingly carried round by way of Grantchester and Trumpington. Since that time Childerley Hall has been rebuilt, but the room in which the King slept is still to be seen. And hard by the Hall there still stands the unpretentious little red-brick chapel (now a barn) in which he worshipped on that memorable Sunday.

A mile further along the road, lanes again branch off north and south. The northern leads to the secluded hamlet of Knapwell, where a spring of ferruginous waters, held of old to be wonder-working, still justifies its ancient name of the Red Well. The southern brings us to Bourn, where the Bourn brook rises. On the slope above the stream stands the beautiful cruciform church, of late Norman and Early English architecture; the arches which open from the tower into the nave and the aisles being particularly noticeable. Bourn Hall is a fine Elizabethan mansion, the seat of J. Briscoe, Esq., and is the modern representative of a castle (the moat of which still exists) erected here by Picot, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire under William the Conqueror, and the scene of hard fighting in the Barons' War, when it belonged to the Peverells.

Eleven miles from Cambridge we cross the Ermine Street, a junction sufficiently important to have been selected by the wisdom of our ancestors as the site of a gibbet; the object being that as many as possible should see the gruesome spectacle of malefactors hanging in chains, and thus, if evilly disposed, take warning, or, if well disposed, be encouraged by this visible vindication of the Law's majesty. The gibbet has been gone for a century and more; but till quite lately the sign-post here directed the traveller simply TO LONDON and TO YORK on either hand, reminding us that this was the old North Road.

A mile along it, towards London, stands the little town of Caxton, from which the gibbet derived its name. A prosperous place in the old coaching days (as the size of its inns still testifies), it is now a mere village with 450 inhabitants. But it continues to boast itself a town. As the nearest point on the North Road to Cambridge, it was an important junction. The historian, Carter, writing in 1753, mentions that a mail was carried twice a week (on horseback) between Caxton and Cambridge; the only mail connection our University town then had, except with London and Bury St. Edmunds! We read also that, in the Jacobite rising of 1745, when it was seriously expected that the Stuart forces, after their wonderful success in reaching Derby, would march on to London, many Cambridge students, who cared little about the issue, secured windows at Caxton "to see the Scots pass by."

Sixty years before this another gleam of interest lights up the name of Caxton. In 1686 the Bishop, Francis Turner (one of the famous Seven prosecuted by James the Second and afterwards deprived by William the Third as a non-juror), made a strenuous effort to get Mattins and Evensong said daily, according to the Rubric, throughout his Diocese. The following characteristic letter addressed by him to the Vicar of Caxton was discovered in 1908 amongst the church muniments: