Oxford Road, Observatory, Neptune, Cambridge
Discoveries.--Coton.--Madingley.--Hardwick.--Toft, St.
Hubert.--Childerley, Charles
I.--Knapwell.--Bourn.--Caxton--Eltisley, St. Pandiana,
Storm.--St. Neot's, Neotus and Alfred.--Paxton
Hill.--Godmanchester, Port Meadow.--Huntingdon, Cromwell's
Penance.--The Hemingfords.--St.
Ives.--Holywell.--Overcote.--Earith, the Bedford Rivers,
"Parallax."
Due westwards from Cambridge, turning leftwards out of the Via Devana
just beyond Magdalene College, runs what used to be the old coaching
road to Oxford. Till quite recently the milestones along it gave the
distance to that city, between which and Cambridge there was of old a
good deal of traffic, for the Universities were more closely connected
then than even now. Popularly this road was called the _Ad eundem_
road, a nickname referring to the not so long by-gone privilege by
which any graduate of either place might be admitted to the same
degree (_ad eundem gradum_) in the sister University simply on payment
of the fees and without any further examination. It is now spoken of
as the Madingley Road, from the first village along its course, or the
St. Neots Road, from the first town to which it leads. Thence it went
on to Oxford by way of Bedford, Buckingham, and Bicester.
A short two miles along this road brings us to the porticoed front and
white domes of the University Observatory, erected in 1822. More than
a century earlier its embryo had been set up on the summit of the
Great Gate Tower at Trinity College, for the benefit of Sir Isaac
Newton; but this seems to have been little used after the death of
that greatest of scientists. Even after the new Observatory was set up
a certain lack of keenness pervaded its work. Thus it came about that
Cambridge and England lost the glory of the discovery of Neptune, the
most distant planet of our Solar System.
For more than a decade the irregularities in the motion of Uranus
(itself not long discovered) had suggested to astronomers that there
must be another planet exterior to it, when, in 1841, John Couch
Adams, then only an undergraduate of St. John's College, set himself
to grapple with the arduous task of finding by analytical computation
the orbit and place of this supposititious body. So stupendous were
the difficulties that when, after four years of concentrated effort,
he submitted his results to the Astronomer Royal, begging that the
planet might be looked for in a certain spot (where we now know that
it actually was visible at the time), his suggestion received very
incredulous acceptance. Was it likely that a mere youth should have
solved this gigantic problem?
That very autumn of 1845 another young man, quite independently,
devoted himself to the same quest, the brilliant French mathematician
Leverrier. He, in the following summer, published the results he had
so far attained. Adams had never published; but these new results so
strikingly agreed with his that the Astronomer Royal's incredulity
gave way, and he desired that search should be made with the great
equatorial telescope, then newly erected at Cambridge through the
generosity of the Duke of Northumberland.
His injunctions were carried out; but the lack of a trustworthy star
map made the work long. And it was made longer by lack of promptitude.
The minute celestial object (only equal to a star of the eighth
magnitude) had been actually seen, but further observations were
needed to establish the fact that it was indeed a planet moving
amongst the stars around it. And these observations were delayed at
the crucial point by the observers adjourning for a cup of tea! When
they returned the sky had clouded over and no favourable night
occurred for many evenings after. Meanwhile Leverrier had called in
the aid of the Berlin Observatory; where there did exist a good star
map, and also the eagerness so sadly lacking here at Cambridge. The
very day his letter was received (23rd September, 1846), the great
Berlin telescope was directed to the spot which he indicated,--and
there was the planet.
The story goes that when the tidings of this overthrow of hope
reached Cambridge, and were reported to the Fellows of Trinity as they
sat at dinner in their Hall, it was as if a thunderbolt had fallen
amongst them:
"And all talk died, as in a grove all song
Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey;
Then a long silence came upon the Hall,"
broken at last by Adam Sedgwick, the venerable Professor of Geology,
who solemnly raised his clenched fist and brought it down upon the
High Table, not with violence but with a concentrated tension of
indignation, saying slowly, with an equal solemnity: "Confound their
lymphatic souls."[181] As for the Observatory, the blow thoroughly
roused it up; and ever since it has remained, both in material and
moral equipment, amongst the foremost of the great Observatories of
the world, where solid and useful work is continuously being done,
while up-to-date instruments, methods, and records are never to seek.
On one evening of each week during term time any member of the
University may see the practical working of the place, and bring
friends with him.
[Footnote 181: The discovery of Neptune is by no means the only
discovery the honour of which has been lost to Cambridge through that
scientific temper of mind which is loth to publish investigations at
an early stage of their verification. Months before Marconi introduced
wireless telegraphy to the public it had been practised here by
Professors Rutherford and Sir J. J. Thomson; the first serious
messages being exchanged, over a distance of two miles, between the
Cavendish Laboratory and the Observatory. At the same Laboratory the
Roentgen rays were being investigated ere yet Roentgen became a
household word. And long years before Bunsen and Kirchoff (in 1859)
published the true explanation of Fraunhofer's dark lines in the solar
spectrum, that explanation had been given to his pupils by yet another
Cambridge Professor, Sir George Gabriel Stokes. Such indifference to
mere fame reminds us of the old saying that an Oxford man looks as if
all the world belonged to him, a Cambridge man as if he did not care
whom it belonged to.]
A mile further we reach the foot of the chalk slope which bounds the
Cam valley. At this point lanes diverge to the right and left. The
latter almost immediately brings us to Coton, a tiny village with a
tiny, but most picturesque, fourteenth century church, having a
(restored) Norman chancel, a pretty spire, and a yet prettier south
doorway. There is, too, a massive rood screen, and a curious
"palimpsest" Table of Commandments, the original sixteenth century
lettering showing beneath repainted characters of the seventeenth
century. Altogether the place is well worth the slight divergence
needed to visit it, more especially as the lane between it and our
road gives a view of Cambridge almost comparable to the prospect of
"That sweet City, with her dreaming spires"
which the Cumnor slopes (as Matthew Arnold sings) provide for
Oxonians. Coton can also be reached from Cambridge by a delightful
field path beneath overhanging oaks, which runs straight from Garret
Hostel Bridge. Coton spire (as has been already mentioned) is the
"objective" of the Trinity avenue, though the view has long been
closed out by the growth of the branches.
The other lane, to the right, which leads to Madingley, is also worth
traversing. From its hedgeless "switch-back" terraces we look
northwards across the valley, not of the Cam but of the Ouse, bounded
by the uplands of the island of Ely, ten miles away at the nearest
point, and nearly twice as far where the ridge is crowned by the dim
and distant towers of the cathedral. Conspicuous in the nearer
distance is the red-brick mass of the Ladies' College at Girton, some
three miles away from us. Madingley, to which half a mile or so of
this prospect leads us, is a little place of steep pitches and
tree-shaded lanes, very different from the usual Cambridgeshire
village, but with a special charm of its own. It has a pretty little
church nestling beneath a fine Elizabethan hall of red-brick. Both
church and hall contain portions of the spoil of the church of St.
Etheldreda, which once stood at Histon and was pulled down by Mr.
Justice Hinde, the first builder of Madingley Hall, to whom the sacred
edifice was given by Henry the Eighth. Its Norman font is now in
Madingley Church, while part of its roof is still to be seen in the
Hall.
At Madingley Hall King Edward the Seventh was quartered while an
undergraduate of Trinity College. Tradition asserts that it once
sheltered another monarch, the ill-fated Charles the First, in a
momentary attempt to escape from the clutches of the rebel army during
his enforced residence at the neighbouring Hall of Childerley, as will
be narrated in connection with that place. The Hall has, since that
date, passed from one family to another, and is now the seat of
Colonel Harding, D.C.L.
[Illustration: _Coton._]
Madingley is a centre of pretty lanes. Besides that already spoken
of, another, an avenue of greenery, leads northwards to the Via
Devana, another westwards to the village of Dry Drayton, and another
up the hill southwards, to rejoin our St. Neots road on the summit of
the ridge. Here we are 220 feet above the sea, overlooking the valley
of the Ouse to the north and to the south that of the Cam, or, rather,
of its tributary the Bourn Brook. The road keeps the highest ground,
almost on the level, while a succession of lanes to the right and left
lead down to the villages on either slope.
First comes a southward turn to Hardwick, the church of which is so
conspicuous an object in the view from the roof of King's College
Chapel. Here, in 1644, "Mr. Mapletoft, parson thereof, with a wife and
seven children, had these articles exhibited against him, viz., that
he refused to read anything from the Parliament, but read many things
from the King at Oxford with great boldness; that he prayeth not for
the Parliament nor hath found them any arms at all; that he is a man
devoted to many superstitious ceremonies, and commonly useth
altar-worship, east-worship, and dropping-worship,[182] and after his
sermon came out of the pulpit into the chancel and there made an end
of his will-worship." Whereupon, by the Earl of Manchester's warrant,
he was promptly ejected and sequestrated. The previous year the church
had been purified by Dowsing, who notes with disgust that for dealing
with "ten superstitious pictures and a cross" he was here paid only
3s. 2d. instead of the 6s. 8d., which was his regular fee.
[Footnote 182: _I.e._ genuflecting.]
The great iconoclast has the same grievance in the adjoining village
of Toft, where he got "only 6s. 8d." for a specially heavy
"purification" of the church, involving the destruction of
"twenty-seven superstitious pictures in the windows, ten others in
stone, three inscriptions, _Pray for the souls_, divers _Orate pro
animabuses_ [sic] in the windows, and a bell _Ora pro anima Sancta
Katharina_." The "pictures in stone" were doubtless the alabaster
images of the reredos, fragments of which are still preserved in the
church, exquisite in modelling and colour. The most noticeable is a
headless figure of St. Hubert, the mighty hunter of legend, who was
converted by meeting a white hart with golden horns (supposed to be an
emblem of Christ), and received from St. Peter a key wherewith to cure
hydrophobia. The key is here in his hand, with a dog beneath it, and
the golden-horned hart couched by his side.
Just before we reach the seventh milestone from Cambridge another
south-running lane diverges to Caldecote, with its retired little fane
on the hill-side over the Bourn, a very oasis of devotional peace and
quietude. Confronting it across the stream is the steeple of Kingston,
where there is a fine fourteenth century fresco in the north aisle,
and a delicious little niche in the western wall of the tower,
outside.
[Illustration: _Cottage at Toft._]
At the point where this lane leaves the road, another, looking like a
mere farm road, turns off northwards. This leads to Childerley Hall,
now a farm house, but in 1647 of sufficient consequence to serve as a
sleeping place for Royalty. Hither King Charles the First was brought
by his captors, when carried off by Cornet Joyce from Holmby House in
Northamptonshire, as has been already narrated.[183] He was not
altogether an unwilling captive, for both he and the Army hoped to
arrive at some mutual accommodation which would make both independent
of that Parliamentary control of which both were heartily wearied.
[Footnote 183: See p. 182.]
He was treated, accordingly, with the utmost respect; and during his
stay at Childerley Hall[184] (from Saturday, June 5, to Tuesday, June
8), the students of Cambridge "flocked apace" to pay their homage to
him. "He is exceedingly cheerful," writes a contemporary scribe,[185]
"shows himself to all, and commands that no scholler be debarred from
kissing his hand, for which honour they return humble thanks and
_Vivat Rex_; and there the Sophs are in their gowns and caps as if no
further than Barnwell." Nay, even the great chiefs of the army, the
men who at Marston and Naseby had faced and conquered him, Fairfax,
Ireton, and Whalley, and Cromwell himself, came hither to join in this
hand-kissing, and, one after another, to be astonished at the ability
and graciousness which their distressed Sovereign showed in the
private interview granted to each in turn.
[Footnote 184: Childerley was then the seat of the Cutts family.]
[Footnote 185: Quoted in _East Anglia and the Civil War_ by Mr.
Kingston.]
But, if local tradition is to be trusted, beneath all this gallant
show of gracious acquiescence in the inevitable, there lurked in the
King's heart a deep conviction that the hope on which it was founded
was forlorn indeed. For this tradition tells of a truly desperate dash
for freedom, the success of which was all but impossible. It has been
constantly handed down at Madingley Hall that on one of these June
midnights a white figure knocked at the door, and a subdued voice
asked for "Jack" (Sir John Cotton, a noted loyalist, whose seat the
Hall was at that time). He came, and found this mysterious visitor
none other than the King himself, disguised in a peasant's smock, and
imploring concealment till he could escape from the country. By a
secret stair, traces of which still exist, he was conducted to a
hiding place in the roof. But it was too late; his flight had been
discovered, and the pursuing troopers were already out in search of
him. Madingley Hall would, of course, be amongst the very first places
to be suspected of harbouring him, and the wild venture ended in
despair. All was hushed up; for both he and his captors wished to keep
up the fiction that he was with them willingly.
But they kept a tight grip upon him, and, when he left Childerley that
Tuesday morning, would not allow him to ride on to his state prison
at Newmarket through Cambridge (where the streets were being decked in
his honour with "whole rose-bushes and strewn with rushes and herbs"),
lest these demonstrations should kindle too ardent a flame of loyalty.
He was accordingly carried round by way of Grantchester and
Trumpington. Since that time Childerley Hall has been rebuilt, but the
room in which the King slept is still to be seen. And hard by the Hall
there still stands the unpretentious little red-brick chapel (now a
barn) in which he worshipped on that memorable Sunday.
A mile further along the road, lanes again branch off north and south.
The northern leads to the secluded hamlet of Knapwell, where a spring
of ferruginous waters, held of old to be wonder-working, still
justifies its ancient name of the Red Well. The southern brings us to
Bourn, where the Bourn brook rises. On the slope above the stream
stands the beautiful cruciform church, of late Norman and Early
English architecture; the arches which open from the tower into the
nave and the aisles being particularly noticeable. Bourn Hall is a
fine Elizabethan mansion, the seat of J. Briscoe, Esq., and is the
modern representative of a castle (the moat of which still exists)
erected here by Picot, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire under William the
Conqueror, and the scene of hard fighting in the Barons' War, when it
belonged to the Peverells.
Eleven miles from Cambridge we cross the Ermine Street, a junction
sufficiently important to have been selected by the wisdom of our
ancestors as the site of a gibbet; the object being that as many as
possible should see the gruesome spectacle of malefactors hanging in
chains, and thus, if evilly disposed, take warning, or, if well
disposed, be encouraged by this visible vindication of the Law's
majesty. The gibbet has been gone for a century and more; but till
quite lately the sign-post here directed the traveller simply TO
LONDON and TO YORK on either hand, reminding us that this was the old
North Road.
A mile along it, towards London, stands the little town of Caxton,
from which the gibbet derived its name. A prosperous place in the old
coaching days (as the size of its inns still testifies), it is now a
mere village with 450 inhabitants. But it continues to boast itself a
town. As the nearest point on the North Road to Cambridge, it was an
important junction. The historian, Carter, writing in 1753, mentions
that a mail was carried twice a week (on horseback) between Caxton and
Cambridge; the only mail connection our University town then had,
except with London and Bury St. Edmunds! We read also that, in the
Jacobite rising of 1745, when it was seriously expected that the
Stuart forces, after their wonderful success in reaching Derby, would
march on to London, many Cambridge students, who cared little about
the issue, secured windows at Caxton "to see the Scots pass by."
Sixty years before this another gleam of interest lights up the name
of Caxton. In 1686 the Bishop, Francis Turner (one of the famous Seven
prosecuted by James the Second and afterwards deprived by William the
Third as a non-juror), made a strenuous effort to get Mattins and
Evensong said daily, according to the Rubric, throughout his Diocese.
The following characteristic letter addressed by him to the Vicar of
Caxton was discovered in 1908 amongst the church muniments:
Ely,
_Sept. 11th, 1686._
GOOD BROTHER,
The good character I have received concerning you ... has given
me a particular confidence in yr. care to putt the directions of
my printed letter in practice. Yr. parish, if it be not so
numerous as I suppos'd, yet lyes on the Great Northern Roade; it
would be for our Churches Honor and for the consolation of well
dispos'd travellers to find Daily Prayers in yr. Church. I press
them all over the Diocese where it is practicable, but at Caxton
I wd. have them by all means, tho' you begin with a congregation
of but a widdow or two. Have them if you please at 6 or 7 in the
morning if that will be best for passengers. My good friend you
have been bredd in a camp to toyle and hardship. I know the
putting my orders in execution, that is the making of so many
careless people Christian indeed, will cost you a great deale of
labour. But do not grudge it; you are sure of as great a Reward
in Heaven; and in good time you may find your account by it
here.... In the mean time do your Business with all your might,
and sett into it presently, before the Visitation. By which you
will more than a little oblige, Sir,
Yr. affect. friend and Brother,
FRAN. ELY.
MR. SAY OF CAXTON.
P.S.--If you have no little Schoole in your town I shall wonder,
and you ought to procure one. If there bee one, then you need not
want a congregation for both morning and evening prayers.
After crossing the Ermine Street we come to Eltisley, where there is a
pretty Village Green and a good village inn; and the church, though
small, has some fine Early English work. It is dedicated to St. John
the Baptist and St. Pandiana (or Pandionia), an obscure personage,
said by Leland to have been a Scottish[186] princess, who found in
this remote spot a refuge from the importunities of her suitors, and
was here buried by the side of a spring still known as St. Pandiana's
Well. Her nunnery perished after the Conquest, and in the fourteenth
century her body was translated into the church, along with that of
the yet more obscure St. Wendreda,[187] a purely Cambridgeshire saint,
whose name is also connected with the church of March, and with a
"well" near Newmarket.
[Footnote 186: _I.e._ Irish. The name of the Scots lingered on in
their original home for many centuries after it became more famous in
North Britain, whither they began to migrate in the fifth century.]
[Footnote 187: See Miss Arnold Forster's Studies in Church
Dedications, chap. xxxi.]
The village is the scene of a dramatic tale found in Roger of
Wendover, under the date 1234. A famine was raging, and the hungry
poor invaded the ripening harvest-fields and devoured the crops, "for
which they may scarce be blamed. Of the farmers, however, (who ever
from their avarice, look upon the poor with an evil eye,) many were
highly wroth at this pious theft. And they of Alboldesley hied them
all on the next Sunday (July 16th) to the church, and with tumult
required the priest to excommunicate upon the spot all who had thus
plucked their wheat-ears. But one pious man alone adjured him in God's
name to pronounce no such sentence for _his_ crops; adding that he was
right well content that the poor should take from him in their need,
and that he commended to the Lord's care whatsoever was left.
"Now scarcely had the priest perforce begun the curse, than there
suddenly arose such a storm of thunder, lightning, whirlwind, rain and
hail, that the corn in the fields was torn from the ground as by a
blast from hell; and all that grew therein, and the cattle, and the
very birds, were destroyed, as though trodden down by carts and
horses. But that just man found his land without trace of harm. And
thus it is clear that as the angels sing Glory to God in the Highest,
so on earth is there Peace toward men of Good-will.
"This storm began on the borders of Bedfordshire (at Eltisley), and
passed eastwards through the Isle of Ely. And here is a wondrous
thing. Such crops as still stood when it was over were found so
rotted that neither horse nor ass, steer nor pig, goose nor hen, would
eat thereof." A cyclone of precisely the same character devastated
Essex on June 24, 1897, and was as capricious in its visitations.
At Eltisley we reach the termination of the long ridge which has kept
us at an upland level all the way from Madingley, and our road now
runs rapidly down into the valley of the Ouse. We reach that noble
stream at the old-world, but thriving, town of St. Neots, where there
is a fine old bridge and a magnificent church. The name of this place
is locally pronounced not _Neats_, but _Notes_. This last is the
correct form, for the name is derived from Neotus, the eldest brother
and friend of King Alfred, whom that greatest of our monarchs
recognised as the good genius of his life.
The original name of this notable personality was Athelstane. He was
the eldest grandson of Egbert, the first "King of the English," and
held, accordingly, the under-kingship of Kent, at that time the usual
appanage of the heir-apparent. This dignity he resigned to enter
Religion, at the Abbey of Glastonbury, under the name of Neotus. A
special bond of affection united him with his youngest brother,
Alfred, who, as an enthusiastic boy of seventeen, took this dearest of
brothers as his spiritual guide and counsellor. When, five years
later, the successive deaths of the intervening brethren brought him
to the throne, we read that the inconsiderate zeal with which he
suppressed abuses drew anxious warnings from St. Neot, who foresaw
that this overweening course would surely bring disastrous
consequences.
"But Alfred heeded not the reproof of the man of God, nor listed what
he foretold. Wherefore (seeing that a man's sins must needs be some
way punished, either in this world or in that which is to come), the
Righteous Judge and True willed that he should not be unpunished here,
that so he might be spared hereafter."[188]
[Footnote 188: The Chronicle of St. Neots.]
The punishment was that sudden and disastrous Danish inroad which
overwhelmed the whole of the kingdom, and drove Alfred himself into
hiding at Athelney. While he was there St. Neot died at the
neighbouring Glastonbury. We read there, ere his departure, the saint
had promised that as he had been Alfred's spiritual guide in life, so
should that spiritual guidance and wardship still abide with him.
"Thy guide have I been ever; thee and thine will I lead on." "I will
be thy captain, I will be thy champion; thou shalt be glad and rejoice
in me." "Lo, I will go before thy banner; thine enemies shall perish
at my presence." And when, a few weeks later, the King led on his
forces to the crowning victory over the Danes at Ethandune, he was
persuaded that this promise was being fulfilled. With the eye of
ardent faith he beheld the blessed spirit of his brother leading on
the Christian banners to the onset. "See ye not?" he exclaimed to his
men, "See ye not? That is indeed Neotus, Christ's glorious servant,
Christ's unconquered soldier; and through him is the victory even now
given to our hands."
Thus it came about that St. Neot remained the object of unforgotten
reverence, not only to Alfred himself, but to his heroic son and
daughter. The former christened after this sainted uncle his own
eldest son Athelstane, afterwards "Athelstane the Magnificent," the
mighty King of the English and Emperor of Britain; and when the latter
delivered Mercia from the yoke of the Danes, she called by his name
one of the fortress towns, which she founded on the Ouse to keep them
in check, St. Neots.
It is appropriate that one of the earliest and most spirited of the
Chronicles that record the great deeds of Alfred should have been
preserved for five centuries in the Church of St. Neots, and should
still be known as the "Chronicle of St. Neots."[189] The north aisle
of this church is known as the "Jesus Chapel," having been built by a
local mediaeval fraternity called "The Guild of Jesus." The sacred
monogram IHC, is to be seen on the beams of the roof inside and on the
buttresses outside.
[Footnote 189: To this Chronicle we owe some of the best known legends
in English History, the story of Alfred and the cakes, for instance.
It was probably written in the tenth century. (See my "Alfred in the
Chroniclers.")]
* * * * *
One of the most delightful routes of the district is that by which we
make our way along the Ouse from St. Neots to Ely, by way of
Godmanchester, Huntingdon, and St. Ives. On leaving St. Neots the road
climbs Paxton Hill, where its shady course overhangs a beautiful sweep
of the broad stream 120 feet below. Thence it drops to the river at
Paxton itself, where the church has some good Saxon features, and
thence continues along the water to the twin villages of Offord Darcy
and Offord Cluny, close together on the right bank, and so over
another little eminence to strike the river again at Godmanchester.
The etymology of this name shows it to have been a Roman station, and
Roman remains have been found here. It is commonly identified with the
_Durolipons_ of the Antonine Itinerary. Here the Via Devana, running
straight from Cambridge, strikes the Ermine Street, and the final
syllable of the Latin name suggests that the united roads crossed the
river by a bridge before separating on their respective lines towards
Chester and York. If so the bridge must have stood somewhere near the
present one, which, however, was not built till the thirteenth
century. Godmanchester is now a reposeful little town, with a uniquely
picturesque view across the verdant expanse of Port Holme, the largest
meadow, as it boasts itself, in the world, a wide, wide flat of breezy
grass, across which, more than a mile away, rise the buildings of
Huntingdon. In flood time, when this flat becomes a shining lake, the
scene is striking indeed.
From the northern end of the town a long causeway, pierced with many
arches to carry off these floods, leads across the fields to the
bridge, with its high pitch, its recessed and pointed buttresses, and
its old bridge-chapel (now used for secular purposes) on the central
span. Immediately behind lies the town of Huntingdon, larger and more
stirring than its elder sister Godmanchester. It owes its existence to
the same cause as St. Neots, being one of the fortresses erected by
the "Children of Alfred," Edward the Elder and his sister Ethelfleda,
"the lady of the Mercians," to ensure their pacification of these
parts when reconquered from the Danes. It is famous as the birthplace
of Oliver Cromwell, the entry of whose baptism, in 1599, is still to
be seen in the register of All Saints' Church. The same book contains
a record of his having been put to public penance, at the age of
twenty, for scandalous living. The register of St. John's (now united
to All Saints') tells us that the body of the unhappy Mary Stuart
rested in that church during its removal by her son, James the First,
from Peterborough Cathedral to Westminster Abbey.
From Huntingdon our road, keeping close in touch with the river,
takes us through the pretty villages of Hartford, Wyton, and Houghton,
to St. Ives. A yet prettier way is to recross the stream at Houghton
Lock and take a field-road across the meadows to the two Hemingfords,
Hemingford Abbots and Hemingford Grey. The latter is famous as the
birthplace of the Misses Gunning, who were the leading beauties of the
Court in the early days of the reign of George the Third, and married
into the highest families of the Peerage. Both churches stand on the
very brink of the Ouse, about a mile apart, their graceful steeples,
with that of Houghton to the north-east and that of St. Ives to the
north-west, watching as guardian sentinels over the rich Ouse meadows
between. All have spires, but that of Hemingford Grey lost its upper
part by an equinoctial gale in the middle of the eighteenth century,
and only the base now remains.
St. Ives is yet another of Edward the Elder's fortresses, and is
probably named from the Cornish town similarly designated. It is
possible that it may be even a colony from that far-off strand, which
had never swerved in its allegiance, planted here to leaven the
turbulent Danish elements around. Certain it is that here Ednoth,
Abbot of Ely, erected a church dedicated to St. Ivo. Who this saint
may have been originally is not known; probably he (or she) was one of
the many obscure Celtic saints whose names dot the map of Cornwall.
But there grew up in the eleventh century a wild legend that Ivo, a
Persian (!) bishop, had settled down in the neighbourhood. In the
fifteenth century a stone sarcophagus, found by a peasant when
ploughing, was declared to contain the body of this holy Oriental, and
was translated with due pomp to the neighbouring Abbey of Ramsey. St.
Ives was specially connected with this House, and it was an Abbot of
Ramsey who built the beautiful bridge, the ditto of that at
Huntingdon, by which we here recross to the left bank of the Ouse.
Our next point, on leaving St. Ives, is the tiny village of Holywell,
which we may reach either by road, through the hamlet of Needingworth,
or (preferably) by a field-path running westwards from near the
railway station. The little church here stands on a slope above the
river, and in the churchyard the holy well is still to be seen. But
the delight of the place is its strand along the Ouse, a rarely
picturesque medley of old houses on one side of the road and on the
other the broad clear stream, here crossed by a ferry. This road
continues (as a mere field-path) to another delicious ferry a mile
lower, with a charming little inn beside it, in a grove of lofty
trees. This lovely spot is named Overcote. Here travellers may cross
into Cambridgeshire and make their way along the "Hundred Foot"
embankment (so called because it is thirty yards in width) along the
river to Earith. For motors the way lies through Needingworth, and
past the pretty little Church of Bluntisham, with its three-sided apse
and its churchyard yews.
Earith is a hamlet of Bluntisham, but a much larger place, owing its
importance to its situation on the point where the great works
connected with the drainage of the fens have their beginning by the
diversion of the Ouse waters from their ancient bed into the two
"Bedford Rivers," the Old and the New, which from this point run
straight as a die (like the supposed "canals" in Mars) across the fen
to Denvers Sluice, twenty-two miles away. The former was made in 1630,
the latter in 1650, at the expense of what we should now call a
company, promoted by the Earl of Bedford. No such cuts exist elsewhere
in the world. Along them a clear horizon is to be obtained, and here,
accordingly, was conducted, some forty years ago, a decisive
experiment for proving the sphericity of the earth.
At that time a deluded gentleman, who called himself "Parallax," was
obsessed with the notion that the globe was a flat disc, and used to
go lecturing with great vigour on the subject. After these lectures he
invited questions, none of which were able to shake his belief. When
asked, for example, "Why does the hull of a ship disappear below the
horizon while the masts remain visible?" he would answer, "Because the
lowest stratum of air is the densest, and, therefore, soonest conceals
objects seen through it." In view of the present Polar exploration, it
may interest our readers to know that one of his points was the
absolute non-existence of the South Pole. "Explorers say they cannot
get near it, because of an icy barrier. Of course. That barrier is the
raised rim of our world plate, and they can but sail round and round
inside it." Finally he showed his wholehearted belief in his absurd
views by laying a heavy wager that no one would disprove them. The
stakes were deposited in the hands of judges, and the trial, under
agreed conditions, took place upon the New River. Three boats were
moored three miles apart, each provided with a cross-tree of equal
height. If the earth was spherical the central cross would appear
above the other to an observer looking through a telescope levelled
from the cross-tree of the boat at either end; if it was flat he would
see both the other cross-trees as one. "Parallax" declared that he did
so (!), but the judges decided against him, and the poor man lost his
money.