III
Table of Contents Although the road to Newmarket lay, as we have seen, chiefly through Epping, Chesterford, and Bishop's Stortford from the earliest days of coaching, this route was, in earlier times of travel, but one of several. A favourite way was along the Old North Road, through Enfield, Ware, Puckeridge, and Royston, whence wayfarers might branch off to the right, by way of Whittlesford and Pampisford, or might go through Melbourn, Harston, and Cambridge. Travellers were shy of venturing into the glades of Epping Forest, infested beyond the ordinary run with dangerous characters, and rather braved the rigours of the open downs than encounter the terrors of the shrouded woodlands. James I., with his passion for the chase and his hunting-palace at Royston, early established a fox-hunting lodge at Newmarket, and had, with his magnificent palace of Theobalds, at Cheshunt, a series of reasons for travelling this route. The road was bad, of course, in those times: they all were. The only difference in them was that when all were bad others were merely worse. But when any particular road became a kingly route, attempts were made to improve it, and thus we read that so early as 1609 one Thomas Norton, "way-maker" to his Majesty, was at work on the problem of repairing "the highewayes leadinge to and from the Citty of London to the towns of Royston and Newmarkett, for his Maties better passage in goeing and cominge to his recreations in those parts." No silly nonsense, you will observe, about public benefit, nor anything in the way of excusing the thing on the ground of the King's business demanding it. His Majesty's amusements, we are frankly allowed to see, were at stake, and that was reason sufficient.
Mr. Thomas Norton was not, after all, paid very much for his services. In 1609 he received £29 10s., and a pittance continued afterwards to be doled out to him.
The way to Newmarket, however, still continued to be a matter of individual taste and fancy. When James was visited there in February, 1615, by Mr. Secretary Winwood on State business, he journeyed by Epping, Chesterford, and Bishop's Stortford, returning the same way. He travelled with a wondrous rapidity, too, when we consider what travelling then was; and although he did complain of "a sore journey, as the wayes are," did actually succeed in returning to London in one day, by dint of having on his way down made arrangements for coaches to be "laid for him" at three several places. Two years later the Swedish Ambassador travelled to Newmarket to pay his respects to the King. He went by Royston in two days, sleeping at Puckeridge the first night, and returned by Cambridge, Newport (where he stayed the night), and Waltham.
In 1632 the surveyor of highways is found solemnly adjuring the parishes and the roadside landowners to perform the duties laid upon them by the General Highway Act of 1555, and to repair the "noyous" ways by which Charles I. was proposing to travel to Royston and Newmarket. The malt traffic, which thirty years later had grown so heavy on this road that toll-gates became necessary to keep it in repair, appears already to have been a great feature, for the surveyor urged the restriction on this occasion of the number of malt-carts, and prohibited waggons drawn by more than five horses.
We gain from the pages of Samuel Pepys a glimpse of what these royal journeys were like in the time of Charles II. When you have read it you will conclude that even a modern penny tramway ride has more majesty, and certainly seems to be safer. He notes in his diary, under March 8th, 1669, that he went "to White Hall, from whence the King and the Duke of York went, by three in the morning and had the misfortune to be overset with the Duke of York, the Duke of Monmouth, and the Prince (Prince Rupert) at the King's Gate in Holborne, and the King all dirty, but no hurt. How it came to pass, I know not, but only it was darke, and the torches did not, they say, light the coach as they should do."
It would puzzle most Londoners in these days to tell where the King's Gate was situated. The last landmark that stood for it was swept away in 1902, when the east side of Southampton Row was demolished, and with it the narrow thoroughfare of Kingsgate Street, in the rear, to make way for the new street from Holborn to the Strand. The student of Dickens will recollect that Mrs. Gamp lived in Kingsgate Street: "which her name is well-beknown is S. Gamp, Midwife, Kingsgate Street, High Holborn"; but in the time of James I. and the Stuart kings it was a narrow, and it would also seem, by Pepys' account, a muddy, lane leading from the pleasant country road of Holborn to another and longer lane called then as now, when it is a lane no more, "Theobalds Road." The lane was provided with a barred gate, and was used exclusively by the King and a few privileged others on the way to Theobalds Palace and Newmarket.
The post went in those times from London to Newmarket by way of Shoreditch, Kingsland, Waltham, Ware, Royston, and Cambridge. In 1660 Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, went by Epping. Sleeping at Bishop's Stortford overnight, he was at Newmarket next day. In October the following year Evelyn travelled by Epping, with six horses, changing three times only in the sixty-one miles-at Epping, Bishop's Stortford, and Chesterford.
Ogilby in 1675, when the first edition of his Britannia was published, mapped out the road to Newmarket as part of the Old North Road as far as Puckeridge, and thence took it to Barley, Whittlesford, and Pampisford; yet Charles II. is not found travelling that way. He occasionally went by Epping, but chiefly through Waltham Cross and Hoddesdon, and thence by an obscure route past the Rye House, Hunsdon Street, Widford, Much Hadham, Hadham Ford, Patmore Heath, Stocking Pelham, Berden, Rickling Church End, and into Newport by a lane still known locally as "London Lane." A house at Newport now known as "Nell Gwynne's House," and once the "Horns" inn, was at that time a halting-place often used by Nell, the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Rochester on their way to or from Newmarket races.
The very remoteness and obscurity of this route gave the conspirators of the Rye House Plot of 1683 their opportunity. Those plotters were not the thorough-paced scoundrels historians would have us believe, but men who, with a passionate hatred of Popish doctrines, and with a keen recollection of the approximation to civil and religious liberty enjoyed under the Commonwealth of more than twenty years earlier, viewed the growing absolutism of Charles's rule and the advances of Popery with fear and rage. The King as a man, with his romantic story, his airy wit, his genial cynicism and lack of affectation, has always commanded affection, but as a ruler deserved hatred and contempt. The original conspiracy was comparatively harmless, and cherished the idea of a constitutional revolution. With dreamy eyes fixed upon the ideal of a Utopian Republic, it included such visionaries as Algernon Sidney, Lord William Russell, the Earls of Essex and Shaftesbury, John Hampden (grandson of the patriot), and Lord Howard of Escrick.
But an inner circle of less distinguished but more desperate men formed within this movement had other, and secret, designs. It was their intention to place the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, Charles's natural son, upon the throne, and, as a preliminary, to "remove" the King. "No one would kill me to make you king," Charles had once said to his brother James, Duke of York; but the intention of the Rye House conspirators was to assassinate both. These physical-force men worked long and silently, without the knowledge of the others. At their head was one Rumbold, a maltster, a colonel in Cromwell's army, and with him Walcot, a brother officer in those old times. Rumbold was the occupier of a farm, the Rye House, an ancient building whose walls ranged with the narrow lane, miscalled a road, which ran-and still runs, as a lane-along the sloppy valley of the river Lea. The house had been built by a certain Andrew Ogard, who in the reign of Henry VI. had been licensed to construct a fortified dwelling here. The beautiful Gatehouse, in red brick, with picturesquely twisted chimneys and a fine oriel window, yet remains.
RYE HOUSE.
The best description of the place as it was at that time is the following, extracted from the trial of the conspirators in 1683:-
"The Rye House in Hertfordshire, about eighteen miles from London, is so called from the 'Rye,' a meadow near it. Just under it there is a bye-road from Bishop's Strafford to Hoddesden, which was constantly used by the King when he went to or from Newmarket; the great road winding much about on the right hand, by Stanstead. The House is an old strong building and stands alone, encompassed with a moat, and towards the garden has high walls, so that twenty men might easily defend it for some time against five hundred. From a high tower in the House all that go or come may be seen both ways, for nearly a mile's distance. As you come from Newmarket towards London, when you are near the House, you pass the meadow over a narrow causeway, at the end of which is a toll-gate, which having entered, you go through a yard and a little field, and at the end of that, through another gate, you pass into a narrow lane, where two coaches at that time could not go abreast. This narrow passage had on the left hand a thick hedge and a ditch, and on the right a long range of buildings used for corn-chambers and stables, with several doors and windows looking into the road, and before it a pale, which...
