CHAPTER XXI.

TWICKENHAM MEADS.

BETWEEN the bridges of Hampton and Kingston the Thames makes a bold reach of about a couple of miles, skirting in its way two sides of Hampton Court park. From the Surrey side of the river the palace is seen to great advantage, with the avenues of noble trees diverging from it in various directions. From the towing-path, which is carried along the Middlesex side of the stream, the prospect is of another kind, but not unpleasing. Thames Ditton, with its couple of aits, and the punts and boats that lie off the ferry, makes a pretty little rustic river-side picture-Hofland, I think, has painted or sketched it more than once. After passing Thames Ditton the buildings straggling along the opposite bank engage attention; and soon the dark irregular mass of houses forming Kingston town comes into view, with the old church tower rising above them, and backed by some uplands, just distant enough to partake of an aerial hue; while the broad placid river and the bridge add a very picturesque finish to the scene.

Kingston-upon-Thames is a long quiet town, without anything very rememberable in its appearance. A few years ago it had a rather more than usually countrified air, considering its nearness to London-but that is pretty well worn off now. It has a town-hall with a statue of Queen Anne in

front, and some other public buildings, but none remarkable for size or elegance. Some portions of the church are of ancient date, but the church itself has been so often repaired, altered, and beautified, as no longer to retain any feature of interest.

But though the town possesses few objects of which it can boast, it is proud of its history. From the earliest times it was a place of importance. Antiquarian inhabitants contend that there was a Roman town, or a considerable station, on the site of, or close by, the present town; Gale says, improbably enough, it was the Tamesis of Antoninus ; it has also been claimed as the place where Cæsar crossed the Thames. Thus much is certain, that many Roman articles have been found in the town ; and the vestiges of a cemetery a little distance from it. In the Saxon times it was a royal town; the name Cyningestane having been bestowed on it from its possessing the stone on which the Saxon kings sat at their coronation. A list is confidently given of some eight or nine Saxon monarchs, ending with Ethelred in 978, who were crowned here. It was at Kingston that the unseemly event is said to have occurred at the coronation of Edwy in 955, which not only led to desperate evil in the following years of his reign, but has in our own day stirred up plenteous strife and some scandal among the historians. Before his coronation, Edwy, though quite a youth, had married Elfgiva, a lady of great beauty, but, according to the ecclesiastics, who strongly opposed the marriage, within the proscribed limits of relationship. During the feast which followed the coronation, Edwy suddenly left the table where the nobles were carousing, and withdrew to the chamber

of Elfgiva. The nobles appear to have complained of the absence of the King, and Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, loudly expressing his indignation at the sovereign preferring the society of women to that of his counsellors, called upon some one to compel him to return. Dunstan, the fiery abbot of Glastonbury, at once rushed into the royal apartment, and having angrily reviled Elfgiva and her mother, dragged the King back by force to the hall.

The remainder of the story belongs not to Kingston. How the lady brought the King to banish the haughty priest-her own seizure by Odo, and his brutal branding of her face with a heated iron, and afterwards sending her to Ireland as a slave; her escape to England, capture, and murder by being hamstrung and left to perish (a kind of punishment, "though cruel, not unusual in that age," as an historian of this age mildly puts it) ;—all this is well known, as is also the deposition of Edwy, and his speedy death; or may be seen in the histories of his reign.

In the Domesday-book Kingston is stated to be a royal demesne. It owes its first charter to John. A meeting, which led to no result, is said to have taken place here between Prince Edward and Simon Montfort in 1263; in the next year Henry III. took and demolished a castle which stood at Kingston, and which was held by the Earl of Gloucester for the Barons. Sir Thomas Wyat, when marching to London, on his revolt against Mary, after the execution of Lady Jane Grey, crossed the Thames at Kingston: the bridge had been broken by the Queen's council, in order to prevent his passage, but it was hastily repaired by his followers. In the great civil war Kingston

was the theatre of some encounters, though none of much consequence. Soon after the battle of Edgehill, Rupert was defeated in a skirmish here. After the "battle of Brentford," the Royal army for awhile occupied Kingston; and it was here that the last feeble effort was made to revive the Royal cause. When the King was a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, and the Royalist troops were everywhere disbanded, the Earl of Holland, the Duke of Buckingham, and his brother, Lord Francis Villiers, succeeded in collecting about six hundred men. They made this town their head-quarters, and issued addresses to the citizens of London, calling upon them to arise, and rescue their sovereign. The Parliament, as soon as it heard of the rising, despatched some troops of horse from Windsor against them. A skirmish ensued on Surbiton Common, just outside Kingston, when the Royalists were speedily routed; Villiers was slain, Holland was taken shortly afterwards, but Buckingham escaped.

Norbiton and Surbiton-corruptions, as is believed, of North and South Barton (or demesne)— are hamlets attached to Kingston; they contain some good residences, but have no claim to separatė notice. Surbiton, since the opening of the SouthWestern Railway, has become quite a village of villas. Kingston is joined to Hampton Wick by a neat stone bridge, erected a few years back, at an expense of 40,0007. The bridge whose place it supplied was one of the oldest on the river.

From Kingston the Thames flows on pleasantly enough to Teddington, a little quiet out-of-the-way village that has remained for the last quarter of a century unaltered, while every other place around

;

it has been in course of constant mutation. Somehow it appeared to get, year by year, more isolated neither railway nor pier came nigh it, hardly a new house was erected in it or an old one modernized, and the fields remained unencroached upon by cot or villa. Within the last few months, however, a railway has been brought within a mile or two of it, but whether it will effect any change remains to be seen. It is the last thoroughly rural sequestered village we shall find on this side of London. A few anglers repair thither during the fishingseason, and it is the halting-place of a good many pleasure-parties, who "in sweet summer time row their boats as far as the lock: but else its quiet is little disturbed even by visitors. The village contains, with many little shops, some good houses. The church is a brick building of small pretensions and little beauty. Teddington lock is the first on the Thames, and the tide, which flows but feebly for some miles lower, is here finally arrested. The little village, with the broad sheet of foaming water that rushes over the weir, looks extremely pretty from the river.

Teddington has had many inhabitants who have been celebrated in their day, and in very different ways. Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester occupied a house here. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was resident in Teddington in 1688; the letter which he wrote in that year, in order to clear himself from the charge of being a Papist, was dated from this place. It may appear singular to those who know him only by common fame, that such a suspicion should for a moment have rested on his drab coat; but there was abundant reason for it. He had been a busy and pliant tool of