NORTHAMPTON.
Above the church is a great sluice, below it a bridge, which may be reckoned as the head of the port of Boston. Here sea-going vessels may be seen afloat at high tide, or stranded on the mud bank at low water. The sea itself is about four miles away, and the dead level of the fens extends all around the town. Except the church there is little of interest in Boston, but probably its tower is surpassed by none in the kingdom, in either its fine design or its extensive prospects.
PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.
From the table-land about Naseby, much of which lies at an elevation of some six hundred feet above the sea, flow two of the rivers which ultimately pass through the fenland into the Wash. These are a source of the Nen and the Welland. Near the springs of these rivers, on the undulating upland not far from Naseby, was the last great struggle in the field between Royalist and Roundhead; Charles and Rupert on one side, Cromwell and Fairfax on the other, “looked one another in the face.” Both sides were brave enough; but on the one were rashness and incapacity, on the other discipline and skill; so that before four hours had passed the king’s army was shattered before the “new model,” and he became “like a hunted partridge flitting from one castle to another.”
Thus the Nen has its sources quite on the western side of the county—thence each feeder flows through a pleasant rolling region, where pastures alternate with cornfields, and both with copses, broadening its valley, as it proceeds, until they join and reach the chief town of the county, by which time the water meadows bordering its banks are of considerable extent. Northampton is a town which has increased rapidly in size, and in consequence diminished rapidly in attractiveness. While it possesses some very interesting remains of ancient days, its older buildings for the most part are those of a midland market town of the last century, and these have been seldom replaced with the more imposing structures erected at the present day; thus, if we except the new Town Hall, the chief additions to Northampton are blocks of factories, and rows of small houses, monotonous wildernesses of red bricks and purple slates. The place is very old, but the politics that prevail are very modern; for some years one of its parliamentary representatives was the late Mr. Bradlaugh.
ROCKINGHAM VILLAGE AND CASTLE. / GATEWAY OF THE CASTLE.
This slope above the Nen, where its course begins to bend towards the north, was a town full a thousand years ago, when it bore the shorter name of “Hamtune.” For a considerable time it was in the hands of the Danes; it was burned by them in 1010, and harried by the forces of Morkere a year before the Norman Conquest. The successors of William often kept court here, for the Forest of Rockingham—which then spread over a large part of the county—was a favourite hunting ground, and many councils and parliaments were held in the castle. In its hall Becket confronted Henry II., and at a later date, the constitutions of Clarendon were ratified. Its annals have not always been peaceful. De Montford struggled for it with Prince Edward, and the Duke of York with Henry VI. Once Northampton seemed in the way to become a seat of learning, for owing to the state of feeling between “town and gown” in the year 1260 the students abandoned Oxford and settled there; their stay, however, was not long, the “town” found that a proud stomach would soon be an empty one, and made interest with the king to recall the “gown,” so the Nen did not replace the Isis.