came into the main road, broad and white, and teeming with vehicles—the first hint that London with its ceaseless turmoil is only twenty miles away.

Farther on the road toward the city we came to Uxbridge, another town where the new is crowding the old. Fortunately, the famous Treaty Inn has escaped. Here the emissaries of Charles I. met the representatives of Parliament in a vain effort to compromise the dispute that had plunged the nation into civil war. The room where the commissioners met, with its paneling reaching to the ceiling and its wealth of antique carving, is little changed, though it has been divided by a partition into a writing- and a dining-room. The excellent luncheon served was one of the surprises often met in these dilapidated and often unprepossessing old hostelries. In the time of the Parliamentary unpleasantness, this hotel was known as the “Crown,” and among its relics is an immense crown of solid oak weighing two or three hundred pounds, which was engaging the attention of an English party, one of whom ironically asked if this were the identical crown worn by Charles at the council. “Indeed it was,” replied another humorist in the party, “and thus originated the expression, ‘Uneasy lies the head which wears a crown.’”

Near Uxbridge, but lying a quarter of a mile off the main road, is the village of Denham. Here we came one fine Sunday afternoon, following the recommendation of an English friend. The village has no historic attraction and no famous man’s name has ever been associated with it. Neither has it mention in the books. Yet Denham is a delight—a sequestered little place nestling under a group of towering trees just far enough from the highroad to miss the dust and noise. The ancient half-timbered houses which border the street are redolent with the spirit of old-time England. The fine unrestored old church stands at the head of the street and the churchyard about it shows evidence of painstaking care. What a delight, it seemed to us, it would be to live in Denham—at least in English June time. One would have rural quiet, even somnolence, and might lie for hours on the turf under the great trees, meditating and looking at the sky; and if he should weary of so secluded and eventless a life, London, with all its mystery and charm, is less than an hour away—London, the most fascinating city in the world, despite its preponderance of bad weather and its world-famed fogs.

Charles Lamb delighted in Hertfordshire and spent much of his time at the Four Swans Inn at Waltham, a quaint old building just opposite Waltham Cross. We made several pilgrimages here; nor did the abbey grow less interesting upon repeated visits. From here it is only a little distance to St. Albans, a city proud of its great cathedral, whose hoary tower dominates the town. Quite different from the ordinary caretaker was the young clergyman, whose refined, classic face bespoke his intelligence and who showed us every detail of the great church, dwelling upon its many ancient and often unique features. Nor did he omit to call our attention to an epitaph of a very frank citizen of St. Albans, who, after sleeping three hundred years under the marble slab in the nave, still complains of his unhappy fate:

St. Albans is rich in antiquities. Indeed, you can still trace fragments of the Roman wall which surrounded the place when Albanus met his fate, and down near the river at the foot of cathedral hill is another “oldest house” in England. It is a quaint round structure, built, they say, more than a thousand years ago as a fishing-lodge for the monks, for it stands hard by a lakelike dam in the river. But today it has degenerated into a public house, and the broad-shouldered, black-bearded Irishman who kept the bar was well posted on St. Albans’ antiquities. He showed us the little house and garden and pointed out the Roman earthworks. Nor did he seem in the least disappointed that our patronage was limited to a few post card pictures, and, strange to say, he declined a gratuity. We returned to the George Inn, which enjoyed great prosperity in the coaching days, being on the main road to Holyhead. For four hundred years it had cheered the passing guest and its excellent dinner belied its generally dilapidated appearance. Its proprietors were just removing to the new and pretentious Red Lion over the way, but we did not learn whether this meant the final abandonment of the George.

It was with some difficulty that we located Rye House, which we supposed to be within Broxborne, but which really lies on a byroad two or three miles away. Though in a more or less secluded location, it is apparently the goal of innumerable pilgrims on gala days in the summer, especially Sundays. On the day of our arrival, the grounds were quite deserted and an appropriate quietude hovered over the old manor. Alas, though, we found it shorn of much of its picturesqueness, for it had fallen into the clutches of a large brewer, who was using it as an adjunct to dispose of his product—in fact, the mansion and its beautiful grounds have become little else than a summer beer garden.

Rye House figures in history as the seat of a plot, which contemporaries describe as “horrid,” to kill King Charles II. as he returned from a race meeting in Newmarket in 1683. Unfortunately, perhaps, the plot failed, owing to the king’s return a week earlier than expected, and there was no telephone to advise the Rye House assassins of the change of plan. A penny guide-book gives what purports to be the history of the crime, though I fear most of the romantic features are mythical. It relates how Ruth, the daughter of Rumsey, who devised the plot, listened at the door and learned the plan of the conspirators. Between her father and the king this devoted maiden never hesitated a minute, but hustled her lover away to Newmarket to warn Charles of his impending danger. After great difficulty the youth gained an audience with the king, and it is recorded that Charles only laughed at his story. Here, at least, is a touch of probability—Charles laughed at everything. Finding himself discredited, the lover became desperate; in his loyal zeal “he secretly set fire to the house in which the king resided in two or three places.” Our chronicler, having thus unceremoniously ousted his royal majesty from his comfortable quarters, has him proceed “in disguise” to London, stopping at Rye House, where he confronted and confounded his enemies and bestowed “substantial marks of his favor” upon Ruth Rumsey and her lover. What these substantial marks were our chronicler declareth not—better left to the imagination, anyway, for it would be far more in keeping with the character of Charles to say that he promised substantial marks of his favor and forgot all about it.

So much for Rye House legend. The facts are that the conspirators were apprehended and executed, and quite in accordance with his usual practices, the king made the circumstance an excuse for the removal of numerous of his enemies among the nobility who had nothing whatever to do with the plot. However, Rye House is quiet enough today and its only plots are the innocuous ones hatched over pots of beer in the minds of the trippers who throng it on Sundays and holidays.

The conspirators did not meet at the inn itself, but in the