Notice-boards upon a willowy eyot, and a fence athwart the stream, forbidding the passage of boats round the considerable backwater to the left, introduce us to a permanent line of eelbucks. Soon the bridge and church of Caversham appear afar; and, dimly, to the right, the chimneys and roofs of Reading. The Thames is again bordered on the north by hills, a continuation of the range which began at Hart’s Wood. From Mapledurham Lock, however, the river, instead of running parallel with the hills, made a detour, and ran side by side with the railway, until, at the Chasey Farm eelbucks, it turned north again to meet them. “There is not,” wrote Mary Mitford in her “Recollections of a Literary Life,” “such another flower-bank in Oxfordshire as Caversham Warren,” and this reference is to the breadth of country extending from the sedge-lined river to the tree-crowned chalk hills which have terminated their guardianship of the northern banks of the Thames. From the brow of the hills, upon which modern residences have of late years multiplied exceedingly, there are widespread prospects through which the silver Thames pursues the even tenor of its way, more beautiful from the distant standpoint than, for some miles above Caversham Bridge, it is when near at hand.
The bridge at Caversham is one of the plainest on the Thames, and this suburb of the county town is not in any way remarkable for its romantic adornments. The bridge was nevertheless of sufficient importance to draw from “Cawsam Hill” (the rustics to this day so pronounce the word Caversham) a furious onslaught from the troops of General Ruven and Prince Rupert, who “fell upon a loose regiment that lay there to keepe the bridge, and gave them a furious assault both with their ordnance and men—one bullet being taken up by our men which weighed twenty-four pounds at the least.” Sir Samuel Luke’s diary, in which this scrap of history is preserved, goes on to state that the “loose regiment” made the hill “soe hott for them that they were forced to retreat, leaving behind seven bodyes of as personable men as ever were seene.” And, according to Leland, there stood in the time of Henry VIII., at the north end of Caversham Bridge, “a fair old chapel of stone, on the right hand, piled in the foundation because of the rage of the Thames.” In consequence of the danger in which the meadows stood of floods, in the old pre-drainage days, when the river often played pranks unknown to modern times, the bridge was constructed of stone in its most critical part, but extended partly in wood by a number of arches over the pasturage. Before the days of the Cavaliers, as far back, indeed, as 1163, Caversham Bridge was the scene of a trial by battle, adjudged by His Majesty Henry II. Henry of Essex, the King’s Standard-bearer, had charged Robert de Montford with cowardice and treachery. At a fight in Wales the Standard-bearer had thrown down his flag and fled, and his plea was that he believed at the time that the king was killed. The trial by sword is said to have been performed upon one of the islands near the bridge, with almost fatal results to the challenger, for though he recovered from what were at first supposed to be mortal wounds, he was obliged to retire to the abbey, where he exchanged the accoutrements of the soldier for the habit of a monk.
The Thames leaves Reading to the right, but according to some topographers the town derived its name from the Saxon “Rheadyne” (“rhea,” a river), or from the British word redin (a fern), the plant, as stated by Leland, growing thereabouts in great plenty. Hall, however, makes light of these derivations, urging that the name simply meant that Reading was the seat and property of the Rædingas family. The Thames approaches close to the town below the pretty island, of about four acres in extent, which monopolises more than half the river, midway between Caversham Bridge and Lock; and is to the traveller by rail from London one of the earliest indications—with its line of willows on the farther bank, and the playing-fields intervening on the southern side—that the town is at hand. The facilities inherited by the inhabitants for bathing, boating, and angling are a boon appreciated to the full, and the Thames materially contributes to the reputation enjoyed by Reading as one of the most desirable country towns of England. The principal branch of the river below the swimming-baths sweeps to the left, but the navigable channel runs through the lock south of the small island. The divisions by islets and curvature of the course between the lock and Lower Caversham make the Thames a beautiful feature of the locality.
Full of historical memories (it is supposed that the Danes brought their war-ships up the Thames to the mouth of the Kennet), Reading is proudest, perhaps, of the abbey, of which so many interesting portions are well preserved in connection with the Forbury, the name given to the pleasure-grounds for the people, most creditably maintained by public subscription. There were four noted abbeys in the south of England—Glastonbury, Abingdon, St. Albans, and Reading, and Reading was not the least important. The wife of King Edgar founded the establishment as a nunnery, and Henry I. pulled it down to make room for two hundred Benedictine monks. It was given out that the hand of St. James the Apostle was deposited in the abbey, and the so-called relic “drew” a perennial inflow of support. Royal bones were laid in the abbey. Henry himself expressed a wish to be buried within its walls, and his body, accordingly, having been rudely embalmed at Rouen, was wrapped in bull-hides, and conveyed to Reading for ceremonial interment. At the Dissolution the royal tomb was destroyed and the king’s bones ejected, with other débris, to make room for a stable. But the abbey during its existence was a power in the land. In it John of Gaunt married his Plantagenet wife, and there the marriage of Henry IV. to Lady Grey was proclaimed. The abbots of Reading were peers of Parliament, ranking only below their brethren of Glastonbury and St. Albans. They had the right of coinage; they gave to the abbey much wealth; and amongst the relics was one sent to Cromwell, and described by the commissioner who was sent down to inquire into the revenues as “the principell relik of idolytrie within thys realme, an aungell with oon wyng that brought to Caversham the spere hedde that percyd our Saviour is syde upon the crosse.” The last abbot of Reading, defying the bulky Defender of the Faith, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, with a couple of monks, within sight of his own abbey gateway. What of the building was left after the energetic measures of bluff King Hal, was finally razed by Commonwealth victors. Portions, however, of the ancient chapel and chapterhouse are left, and the old gateway stands, patched up with modern materials, in excellent preservation on the south side of the Forbury. It is understood that the abbey stones have been worked up into some of the public buildings of the town, and some of them were undoubtedly carted right and left, far and near, for miscellaneous use. The most interesting fragment is a Norman archway belonging to the abbey mill, and still spanning the mill race known as Holy Brook.
FLOODED MEADOWS, FROM CAVERSHAM BRIDGE.
When the Plague raged in London, king, statesmen, and judges, with their courts, removed to Reading. Later, the royal troops held temporary possession of the town, and, after a ten days’ siege by the Roundheads, the garrison displayed a flag of truce. Charles, and the looting Rupert, operating from Caversham Hill, tried in vain to retrieve the disaster, and when they were driven back, the garrison surrendered. In the reign of James II. the royal troops and those of the Prince of Orange, had a tussle in Reading market-place, one December Sunday morning, James’s men, after a brief engagement, promptly leaving the enemy masters of the position. Archbishop Laud was a native of Reading; and John Bunyan, as related by Southey, was a frequent visitor to the town:—“The house in which the Anabaptists met for worship was in a lane then, and from the back door they had a bridge over the River Kennet, whereby, in case of alarm, they might escape. In a visit to that place Bunyan contracted the disease which brought him to the grave.” Valpy was head-master of Reading Grammar School; and Judge Talfourd was one of the later worthies of the clean, thriving, Berkshire capital.
The River Kennet, referred to in the previous paragraph, runs through Reading. The great abbey was built upon it, yet within view of the broader Thames flowing through the level meads northwards. The Hallowed or Holy Brook, in which the Reading schoolboy of to-day angles for roach and dace, was a timely tributary turned to ecclesiastical uses, and employed to grind corn for the Benedictines, and minister generally to the refectory. The Kennet is, with the Loddon in the same general portion of the home counties, one of the most considerable tributaries in the great watershed of the Thames. Drayton, as usual, fastening upon some quality that accurately describes the character of his stream, says:—
“At Reading once arrived, clear Kennet overtakes