was queen. The great square hall is said with much probability to have been the abbey church, and if so three Earls of Salisbury, the “King-maker” Warwick, and the unhappy Edward Plantagenet, son of the Duke of Clarence, lie beneath the stones. We have lingered a little about Bisham, but few places are so well worth it.

Temple Lock, near by, recalls the Templars, and just above it is another grand old house, Lady Place, also on the site of an abbey. Sir Richard Lovelace, created Baron by Charles I, built here a magnificent mansion, described by Macaulay in his usual rolling style, in his History of England. The house, therefore, is younger than Bisham, but the abbey was older, having been founded as far back as 1086. A part of the crypt remains. Here in the dim depths was signed that document which changed the whole course of English history, the invitation to William of Orange to come over and take the throne. The chief conspirator was the second Baron Lovelace, who thus repaid the Stuarts who had ennobled his father!

At Greenlands also, about three miles above Lady Place and Hurley as the crow flies, but more by the winding river, we get another echo of the Civil Wars. We are told that “for a little fort it was made very strong for the King”. It belonged at that time to Sir Cope D’Oyley, a stanch Royalist, and when he died his eldest son followed in his steps, and held out even when the Parliamentarians planted their cannon in the meadows opposite and fired across the river. The marks of their balls are said to be still visible on the old walls. Greenlands now belongs to the Hon. W. F. D. Smith, heir to his mother, Viscountess Hambleden. An altogether peculiar case in the peerage this! When the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, First Lord of the Treasury, died, in October, 1891, he just missed the peerage destined for him. A month later it was conferred upon his widow with remainder to her son.

So much for a few of the interesting and romantic associations of the river. But it is not thus the holiday crowds regard it. They seek no meaning in place-names, no historical associations in the grand old mansions passed; to them the river is a playground merely, where every yard of a particular backwater is known, where a favourite boatman reserves a special boat or punt, and where crowds of fellow creatures may be sought or shunned as individual fancy prompts. We might paraphrase Wordsworth and say:

A place-name on the river’s brim,
A simple name it was to him,
And it was nothing more.

One might wander from subject to subject while treating of the Thames, finding in each matter enough for a book, indeed the variety of the subjects rivals in scope that famous conversation which ranged “from sealing-wax to Kings”. Romance, history, boating, flowers, regattas, and fish are but a few out of the vast number lying ready for choice, and space is limited.

MAIDENHEAD BRIDGE

The Thames swans are a feature to be by no means overlooked. They belong to the Crown, the Vintners’ and Dyers’ Companies, and so ancient are the rights of the companies in this matter that their origin is lost in the mist of antiquity. The annual stock-taking and marking of the swans gives occasion for a pleasant holiday every year about the middle of July; but though the privileged members of the companies and their friends are no longer conveyed in “gaily decorated barges”, they no doubt enjoy their excursion by steam launch just as much. “Swan-hopping”, as it is usually called, is really a corruption of “swan-upping”, meaning the process of taking up the swans to mark them according to their ownership. The Vintners used to mark their swans with a large V across the mandible, but this custom, having been protested against in the new spirit of tenderness which has swept over the country, they now give two nicks only, one on each side. The well-known tavern sign “The Swan with Two Necks” is really a corruption of this much-used mark of identification, and should be “The Swan with Two Nicks”.

The King is by far the largest owner, and as he has discontinued the custom of having a number of swans and cygnets taken for the royal table, it is probable that swans will increase on the river very rapidly. The swan has always been a royal bird, and in the time of Edward IV no one was permitted to keep swans unless he had a freehold of at least five marks annually. The order for the regulation of the Thames swans, in which this clause appears, runs to thirty clauses, and is a very quaint document. One sentence is as follows: “It is ordained that every owner that hath any swans shall pay every year ... fourpence to the Master of the Game for his fee, and his dinner and supper free on the Upping Days”.

These regulations show that the institution of swans on the Thames is a very ancient one, and the graceful, bad-tempered birds themselves add much to the beauty of the river.

The swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling, proudly rows
Her state with oary feet.
—Milton.

To light upon another subject. There is in the boating alone enough to occupy many volumes. We might start from the solid punt, furnished with chairs, and shoved out into midstream by three sober snuff-coloured gentlemen; there anchored by its own poles, while the three sit on their chairs in midstream, regardless of the obstruction they form to quicker nimbler mortals, fishing, or rather holding rods, as immovable as themselves, the livelong day. The punt plays such a small part in the whole proceeding, it might well fall outside the boating classification altogether—a mud island would do as well. It has not even the dignity of a ferry boat. From here, through all varieties of broad-beamed, blunt-nosed family boats, to the long slender racing skiffs or the canoe light as a dragon-fly on the wing, we could run the gamut in the Book of the Boat.

The distance between Hammersmith Bridge and Folly Bridge, Oxford, is 103 miles, and the extent and variety of boating on this stretch, to go no lower, is unequalled on any other river in England. The first weir is to be found below Richmond, and the first lock at Teddington. In 1578 there were 23 locks, 16 mills, 16 floodgates, and 7 weirs on the river between Maidenhead and Oxford. Thirty more locks and weirs were added in the next six years. When we find that “the locks were machines of wood placed across the river, and so contrived to hold the water as long as convenient, that is, till the water rises to such a height as to allow of depth enough for the barge to pass over the shallows”, we are not surprised to learn that exception was taken to the building of more locks, because so many people had been drowned! The barges were not charged for going up, but only for coming down, which seems a little unreasonable when we realize that “the going up of the locks was so steep that every year cables had been broken that cost £400”.

It is curious how easily the river may be divided into “zones”, each with its usual habitués quite distinct from those of other zones. Taking it generally, it may be said that the farther from London the more exclusive is the crowd, and this is perhaps because a very large number of Thames lovers live in London, and the accessibility and expense of the outing tend to thin out the number as the distance lengthens. The influence