Part 19

From the Original Painting by Daniel Sherrin.]

Near at hand is Warminghurst, once the Sussex home of William Penn, who bought the great house in 1676. One of his children died here and is buried in Coolham churchyard close by. Penn was wont to attend services at the meeting house not far away, which was built of timbers taken from one of his ships. It goes locally by the strange designation of "The Blue Idol"--just why, no one seemed to know--and we wandered long in unmarked byroads ere we found it. It is a mile and a half from Coolham, and one follows for a mile a narrow lane branching from the Billingshurst road.

The simple old caretaker lives in a modern addition to the chapel and tills the plot of ground in connection with it. The chapel is a low brick-and-timber building whose interior is the plainest imaginable; a half dozen high-backed benches, a platform pulpit without a stand, and a few books made up its furnishings. As at Jordans, the women sat during worship in a gallery which could be cut off by a sliding

## partition in case of interruption by persecutors. The old law forbade

the assembling of women in the Quaker meetings, but from the gallery they could participate in the services, yet could instantly be shut out of the room if the king's officers should arrive. Outside, the chapel is surrounded by greensward and tall trees, and the old man was mowing the grass in the tiny burying-ground. Services are still held at intervals, as they have been for the past two centuries or more. Probably the spot was chosen on account of its very retirement, since when the chapel was built it was a criminal offense for the Quakers to assemble in any place of worship. The chapel is unaltered and seems quite as remote and lonely as it must have been in Penn's time; and the spirit of that old day comes very near as one stands in the tiny room where the founder of the great American Commonwealth was wont to worship according to his conscience, coming hither from Warminghurst in his heavy ox-wagon.

[Illustration: THE "BLUE IDOL," PENN'S MEETING HOUSE, SUSSEX.]

We now begin an uninterrupted run to the east through Mid-Sussex over an unsurpassed road to Cuckfield, Hayward's Heath, and Uckfield. We continue on the London and Eastbourne road to Hailsham, from whence a digression of three or four miles brings us to the ruins of Herstmonceux Castle. Though styled a castle, it was really a great castellated country mansion, never intended as a defensive fortress. It reminds one in a certain way of Cowdray, though it lacks much of the beauty and grace of the Midhurst palace, and its conversion by its owner into a picnic ground also does much to detract.

The story of its destruction is peculiar. It was deliberately dismantled and partially torn down in 1777 by its owner, who used the materials in erecting a smaller house, now called Herstmonceux Place, which would be less expensive to maintain. It is interesting to know that Wyatt, the architect who dealt so barbarously with Salisbury and Hereford Cathedrals, was the advisor of this wanton destruction. The last descendant of the original owner died in 1662, and since then the estate has changed hands many times. It is now one of the most popular tripper resorts in Sussex and during the summer months the daily visitors number hundreds.

It is not our wont to trouble ourselves much with the sober history of such places, but there is one melancholy incident of the early days of the palace which has weird interest for the wanderer who stands amidst the shattered grandeur, and which we may best relate in the words of an English historian:

"Lord Dacre, of Herstmonceux, a young nobleman of high spirit and promise, not more than twenty-four years old, was tempted by his own folly, or that of his friends, to join a party to kill deer in the park of an unpopular neighbor. The excitement of lawless adventure was probably the chief or only inducement for the expedition; but the party were seen by the foresters; a fray ensued, in which one of the latter was mortally wounded and died two days after.

"Had Lord Dacre been an ordinary offender he would have been disposed of summarily. Both he and his friends happened to be general favorites. The Privy Council hesitated long before they resolved on a prosecution and at last it is likely they were assisted by a resolution from the King.

"'I found all the Lords at the Star Chamber,' Sir William Paget wrote to Wriothesley, 'assembled for a conference touching Lord Dacre's case. They had with them present the Chief Justice with others of the King's learned council, and albeit I was excluded, yet they spoke so loud, some of them, that I might hear them notwithstanding two doors shut between us. Among the rest that could not agree to wilful murder, the Lord Cobham, as I took him by his voice, was very vehement and stiff.' They adjourned at last to the King's Bench. The Lord Chancellor was appointed High Steward and the prisoner was brought up to the bar. He pleaded 'not guilty,' he said that he intended no harm, he was very sorry for the death of the forester, but it had been caused in an accidental struggle; and 'surely,' said Paget, who was president, 'it was a pitiful sight to see a young man brought by his own folly into so miserable a state.' The lords, therefore, as it seems they had determined among themselves, persuaded him to withdraw his plea and submit to the King's clemency. He consented; and they repaired immediately to the Court to intercede for his pardon. Eight persons in all were implicated--Lord Dacre and seven companions. The young nobleman was the chief object of commiseration; but the King remained true to his principles of equal justice; the frequency of crimes of violence had required extraordinary measures of repression; and if a poor man was to be sent to the gallows for an act into which he might be tempted by poverty, thoughtlessness could not be admitted as an adequate excuse because the offender was a peer. Four out of the eight were pardoned. For Lord Dacre there was to the last an uncertainty. He was brought to the scaffold, when an order arrived to stay the execution, probably to give time for a last appeal to Henry. But if it was so the King was inexorable. Five hours later the sheriff was again directed to do his duty; and the full penalty was paid."

Leaving the ruined mansion we drop down to the seashore, passing Bexhill on the way to Hastings, which is now a modern city of sixty-five thousand people, its red-brick, tile-roofed houses rising in terraces overlooking the sea. Once it was an important seaport, but here the sea has advanced and wiped out the harbor, and it is now chiefly known as a watering-place. A few miles from the town was fought the Battle of Hastings, which stamped the name so deeply on English history and marked the overthrow of the Saxon dynasty. On a precipitous hill looking far over town and sea stands the scanty ruin of its castle, whose story is much clouded, though legend declares it was built by the Conqueror.

Far greater is the attraction of the unspoiled old towns of Winchelsea and Rye, a few miles farther on the coast road. A former visit gives them a familiar look, but we stop an hour in Rye. The receding sea robbed these towns of their importance hundreds of years ago, and their daily life is now quite undisturbed by modern progress. Each occupies a commanding hill separated by a few miles of low-lying land. A local writer makes the truest appeal for Rye when he declares that it gives us today a presentment of a town of centuries earlier. "Rye," he says, "is southern and opulent in coloring. There is here mellowness, a gracious beauty; one has the feeling that every house and garden is the pride and love of its owner, and indeed this impression is a true one, for it is the characteristic of Rye to inspire the loving admiration of its inhabitants, whether native-born or drawn thither in later life."

Rye has a magnificent church, the largest in Sussex, which overshadows the town from the very crest of the hill. A very unusual church it is, with a low cone-pointed tower and triple roofs lying alongside each other. At the end of the nave are three immense stone-mullioned windows, very effective and imposing, though the glass is modern. Queen Elizabeth presented to the church the remarkable old tower clock which has marked time steadily for more than three hundred years. The pendulum swings low inside, describing a wide arc only a little above the preacher's head.

[Illustration: THE HOSPITAL, RYE.

From Original Water Color by Theresa Thorp, A. R. M. S.]

Rye itself is quite as interesting as its church, a place of crooked lanes and odd buildings, among which the hospital pictured in such a realistic manner by our artist is one of the most notable. It is a splendid combination of stucco and timber, with red tiled gables and diamond-paned lattice windows. Much else there is in Rye to tempt one to linger, but the sun is setting and we are off on the fine level road to Folkestone. For the latter half of the distance we run along the very edge of the ocean--as we saw it, fifteen miles of shimmering twilight water. Those who are attracted by the gruesome will pause at the old church in Hythe to see the strange collection of human remains, thousands of skulls and bones, that are ranged on shelves or piled in heaps on the floor in the crypt. Whence these ghastly relics came, antiquarians dispute; but local tradition has it that a great battle was fought near Hythe, between the Britons and Danes, and these bones are the remains of the slain. Be that as it may, one does not care to linger--a mere glance at such a charnel house is quite sufficient.

Folkestone may well contest with Brighton, Bournemouth and Portsmouth for first honors among English watering-places. We have seen nearly all of them and we should be inclined, in some particulars, to give the honors to Folkestone; but let those who enjoy such places be the judges. Anyway, there are few statelier hotels in England than those on the east cliff and few that occupy a more magnificent site. At the Grand they are more willing to permit you to take ease than at most English hotels of its class. You are not required under penalty to be on hand for dinner at a certain hour, announced usually by a strident gong, and to make the pretense of swallowing an almost uneatable table d'hote concoction pushed along by a vigilant waiter bent on making all possible speed. This hotel and many others stand on the east cliff several hundred feet above the sea, but one may reach the shore by a lift, or if inclined to exercise, by a steep winding pathway. On moderately clear days, the white line of the French coast may be seen from the hotel.

Very like to Folkstone is Dover, but seven miles farther up the coast, and thither we proceed over a steep road closely following the sea. Dover was chief of the cinque ports of olden days and its small bay still affords shelter for shipping, including ocean-going steamers. But the first thing that catches the pilgrim's eye when he comes into Dover is the splendidly preserved, or rather restored, castle, which stands in sullen inaccessibility on the clifflike hill overlooking the city. We make the stiff climb up to the castle gateway, only to be halted by the guard with the information that we are an hour early. We have had such experiences before and we suggest that no possible harm can be done by admitting us at once.

"I really cawn't do it, sir," said the guard. "Some of the guards got careless in letting people in before hours and the Colonel says he will court-martial the next one who does it."

Of course this silences our importunity and we engage our soldier friend in conversation. Why did he enter the army?--Because a common man has no chance in England; he was going to the dogs and the army seemed the best opportunity open to him. He had enlisted three years ago and it had made a man of him, to use his own words. He rather looked it, too--a husky young fellow with a fairly good face.

The castle is strongly fortified and garrisoned by a regiment of soldiers. The interior of the court is largely occupied by barrack buildings, and of the ancient castle the keep is the most important portion left. It was built to withstand the ages, for its walls are twenty-three feet in thickness and it rises to a height of nearly one hundred feet. Within it is a well three hundred feet deep, supposed to have been sunk by the Saxon king, Harold. The primitive chapel dates from Norman times. There are also remains of the foundation of the lighthouse that occupied the commanding height, long

"ere the tanner's daughter's son From Harold's hand his realm had won."

Dover has other antiquities, among them a church so old that its origin has been quite forgotten. Roman brick was used in its construction, probably by Saxon builders. Over against the town gleams the white chalk of Shakespeare's Cliff, so called because of the reference in King Lear. Queen Elizabeth visited Dover and vented her wit for rhyming on its mayor, who, standing on a stool, began,

"Welcome, gracious Queen,"

only to get for his pains,

"O gracious fool, Get off that stool."

The eastern Kentish coast, lying nearest to the continent, once had many towns of importance that have since dwindled and decayed. Among these is Sandwich, once second of the cinque ports; but the coast line receded until it is now two miles away. The town contains some of the richest bits of medieval architecture in England. The wall which once surrounded it may still be traced and one of the original gateways is intact. We drove through the narrow crooked lanes that serve as streets in Sandwich, and could scarce believe the population no more than three thousand. The low lichen-covered buildings, with leaning walls and sagging, dull-red tiles, straggle over enough space for a city of three or four times the size. There is no touch of newness anywhere; no note of inharmonious color jars with the silver grays, grayish greens and brownish reds that prevail on every hand; no black and white paint destroys the beauty of the brick and timber fronts and gables. Most of the houses have but one story and the streets run with delightful disregard of straight lines and bid defiance to points of the compass. The two churches with splendid open-beamed oak roofs are well in keeping with the spirit of the surrounding twelfth and thirteenth century structures. They stand a mute evidence of the one-time greatness and prosperity of Sandwich. One of the old houses is pointed out as the stopping-place of Queen Elizabeth when she was touring the Kentish coast.

From Sandwich we skim along smooth, level roads to Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Margate, the last of the long chain of resort towns of the southeastern coast stretching from Land's End to the Thames River. What an array of them there is: Penzance, Torquay, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Brighton, Eastbourne, Bexhill, Hastings, Folkestone, Dover, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate, and a host of lesser lights. We have seen them nearly all and many more such places on the northern and western coasts, as well as a number of inland resorts. It is therefore a phase of England with which we have become fairly familiar, and the old towns and isolated ruins seem only the more charming and time-mellowed by contrast with the crowded and sometimes gaudy modern resorts. Margate, situated just at the mouth of the Thames on low-lying grounds, is one of the most pretentious of all.

A few miles out of Margate we turn from the main Canterbury road into a byway from which we enter the lanes through the fields and farmyards. The country is level and intersected everywhere by sluggish drains; but the wheatfields, nearly ready for the harvest, are as fine as we have seen in England. From afar we catch sight of the twin towers of the ruined church at Reculver, the object of our meanderings in the fen-land lanes. We halt in the tiny hamlet beneath the shadow of the grim sentinels on the sea-washed headland. The old caretaker hastens to meet us and is eager to relate the story of the ruin. Aside from the towers there is nothing but fragments of the walls; he points out clearly where portions of a Roman temple were incorporated into the Saxon church, and also the Saxon work that the Normans used. One hundred years ago, this remarkable church was nearly intact; but the rapid encroachment of the sea upon the brittle rock on which the structure stands convinced a short-sighted vicar that it would soon be undermined by the waves. It was therefore torn down, with the exception of the towers, and the stone used for a small church farther inland. The sea is now held in check by stone and timber riprap and though it gnaws at the very foot of the ruin, there seems little chance that it will farther advance. Besides the church there are the remains of a great Roman castrum, or fort, at Reculver: a strong wall, several feet high in places, once enclosed a space of considerable extent, though a large part has been inundated by the sea.

One will never weary of Canterbury; come as often as he may he will always feel a thrill of pleasure as the great cathedral towers break on his vision. And indeed there is nothing of the kind in all Britain finer than these same towers. We reach the town later than we planned and hasten to the cathedral, but the guide, wearied with troops of holiday visitors during the day, tells us we are too late. We find means, however, to extend our time and to enlist his willing services; and thus we come to see every detail of the magnificent church as we could hardly have done earlier in the day. It has no place in this chronicle, this

"mother minster vast That guards Augustine's rugged throne,"

about which volumes have been written and with whose history and traditions the guide-books fairly teem. We have visited it before during a Sunday-morning service, but its vast dim aisles, its great crypts, its storied shrines and tombs, and the ivy-clad ruin of its old monastery, all make a strangely different impression when viewed in the deepening shadows of the departing day.

After sunset we wander about the old streets, where even the more modern buildings conform to the all-pervading air of antiquity. It is the close of the Saturday holiday and the main street is packed with a cheerful crowd of people of all degrees. Shop-keepers improve the opportunity to sell their wares and a lively trade is carried on at the open booths along the walks. One butcher is especially active in booming business, having a fellow in front of his place, a "barker," we would style him in the States, who bellows in a voice like a foghorn, "Lovely meat! the same that the king and nobility heats--lovely meat." Surely a recommendation that would shake the resolution of a confirmed vegetarian.

But we soon weary of the glare and noise of the crowded street. We wander into the crooked lanes that lead to the nooks and corners about the cathedral. We catch the towers from different viewpoints; as they stand, boldly outlined against an opalescent sky flecked with red-toned clouds, they form a fit study for the artist--and one of which the artist has often availed himself. The college court is full of shadows; how easy it would be to imagine a cowled figure stealing along in the dusk and passing from sight in the Norman entrance yonder--than which there is no choicer bit of medieval architecture in the Kingdom.

We have the whole of the following day to reach London; and what a superb day it is, the very essence of the beauty of English midsummer! We have been over the Rochester and Maidstone road before, so we take the narrow and hilly but marvelously picturesque highway that drops some fourteen miles straight southward. The country through which it passes is distinctly rural, with here and there a grove or a farmhouse. A little to one side is Petham, a quiet hamlet under gigantic trees, with a half-timbered inn seemingly out of all proportion to the possible needs of the place. The main road running from Hythe, near the coast, through Ashford to Tunbridge Wells, a distance of about fifty miles, is one of the finest in the Kingdom. It runs in broad, sweeping curves through a gently undulating country, and the grades are seldom enough to check the motor's flight. It had lately been re-surfaced and much of the way oiled or asphalted, quite eliminating dust. We pass much charming country, wooded hills, stretches of meadowland, fields of yellowing grains, and many sleepy villages, all shimmering in the lucent air of a perfect summer day. The sky is as blue as one ever sees it in England, and a few silvery-white clouds drift lazily across it. It is what the natives call a very warm day, but it seems only balmy to us.

[Illustration: ON THE DOWNS.

From Original Painting by Alfred Elias.]

Bethesden, Biddenden and Lamberhurst all attract our attention. The second has a very quaint old inn on the market square, with a queer little ivy-covered tower; but Lamberhurst hardly merits the extravagant praise given it by William Cobbett in his "Rural Rides"--"one of the most beautiful villages that man ever set eyes upon." Still, it may have altered somewhat since his time; there are few red-brick villas among the older cottages. It is, none the less, a pleasant place, rich with verdure and bright with flowers, and picturesquely situated on a gently rising hill. Coming on this road, one gets the best conception of the really magnificent situation of Tunbridge Wells, and cannot wonder that it has gained such popularity. The main part of the town lies in a depression in the undulating downs, its villas, houses and streets all set down on a liberal scale with plenty of room for trees, in whose luxuriant foliage the place is half hidden. All around stretches the wavelike succession of the hills, diversified with forest and bright with heather and gorse. Thackeray was very fond of Tunbridge Wells and his enthusiastic words in "Round About Papers" breathe much of the spirit of the place:

"I stroll over the common and survey the beautiful purple hills around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas which have sprung up over this charming ground since first I saw it. What an admirable scene of peace and plenty! What a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows the cloud-shadows across it, and murmurs through the full-clad trees! Can the world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful?"