MARNEY TOWERS, ESSEX.
The little church near by, of earlier date than the towers, is also built of brick and has so far escaped the ravages of the restorer. It has three black marble tombs of old-time Marneys and one of these must be older than the church, for it bears the mail-clad effigy of a crusader who died in 1414. The interior has scarcely been altered in the four hundred years of its existence; and we hardly saw another to match it in genuine spirit of the olden time. The roof of the nave had been repaired out of sheer necessity, but the dark, sagging beams of the chapel had never been molested. Over the door a black letter inscription, with initial and decorations in still brilliant red, is devoted to a scathing denunciation of “ye riche,” so fierce as to seem almost modern. Perhaps the Marneys viewed it with the more complacency from the fact that their worldly possessions hardly accorded with their high station. One of the oddest features of the interior is the carved oaken effigies of four little monkeys perched on tall posts at either end of the family pews, and an ape is shown on the Marney arms. All because, tradition declares, a pet monkey snatched a prehistoric Marney while an infant from a burning mansion and lost its life to save the child.
[III]
SOME MIDLAND NOOKS AND THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY
It was not easy to get rooms at the University Arms, even though we had applied the week before. It was the close of the university year, for which event, the manageress assured us, many people had engaged rooms a full year in advance. We were late applicants, to be sure. However, we had the advantage of a previous acquaintance—a thing that counts for much in the English hotel—and, since nowhere else would do, we were soon comfortably established at the University Arms.
A stop of a day or two gives us the opportunity of seeing much of the gala life of the town, including the hotly contested boat races on the Cam. There are many events not directly connected with the university, among them the cart-horse parade, which includes hundreds of gaily decked work-horses, splendid fellows, and it is doubtful if any American town of twice the size of Cambridge could make anything like such a showing, all points of equine excellence considered. One sees very few poor-looking horses in England, anyway—outside of London. But what have we to do with horses? We are again on the road at the earliest opportunity, following the splendid highway to Huntingdon. The countryside through which we pass is crowded with memories of the Great Protector, but we shall give it no place in this chronicle of unfamiliar England.
The old Bell Inn at Stilton, on the Great North Road fourteen miles above Huntingdon, will arrest the attention of any one who has learned to discriminate. It is a relic of the time when this road was one of the busiest in all England—the coaching traffic between London, York and Edinburgh plying over it. The inn fronts directly on the street—a long, rambling building, with many gables, stone-mullioned windows and huge, square, clustered chimneys. It is built of sandstone, weatherworn to a soft, yellowish brown, and once rich in mouldings and carvings which are now barely discernible. Now only about half of the house is occupied and the stables have fallen in ruin. The village of Stilton is one of the sleepiest and most rural type. What a contrast the good old days must have presented when six and thirty coaches-and-four pulled up daily at the Bell and its hostlers led nearly one hundred horses to its capacious stables!