Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/571

 Thames, here branches into several streams, traditionally said to be artificial channels cut by Alfred the Great in order to leave the Danish robber's fleet high and dry in the rank Essex meadows. The streams now feed powder and silk mills. Waltham belonged to Tovi, the standard-bearer of King Canute, whose son, Athelstan, proving a prodigal, squandered his money, and sold this, with other of his father's estates. Edward the Confessor bestowed Waltham on Earl Harold, his brother-in-law, the son of Godwin, who built and endowed an abbey at Waltham, giving each of the canons a manor, and the dean six. It is thought by many historians that when, on that fatal October day, Harold fell on the Sussex hill, slain by the Norman arrow, his dead body was brought to the abbey at Waltham that he had endowed. A monument—always, at least, shown as his all through the middle ages—was opened in the reign of Elizabeth, and found to contain a male skeleton. William the Norman, trampling over the grave of his dead enemy, soon laid his heavy hand upon the Essex abbey, hallowed by a Holy Crucifix from Montacute (Somersetshire). He rent from the monks' sacristies many rich chalices and jewelled robes, but left the frightened canons the right to their fat Essex meadows and the rank pastures by the river Lea. Henry the Second dissolved this foundation, the canons having grown dissolute and revelling. In 1177, on the eve of Pentecost, the king himself visited Waltham, when sixteen new canons of the Augustine order from Cirencester, Oseney, and Chichester were inducted, and the church was exempted from episcopal jurisdiction. The king then confirmed to the canons all the land given by Harold, and added Siwardston and Epping; and Richard Cœur-de-Lion afterwards added Harold's park, the village of Nassing, and several hundred acres of land. The Abbot of Waltham was one of those proud mitred barons entitled to a seat in parliament. The present church was formerly the nave of the old abbey. At the Dissolution, the revenues of Waltham Abbey were nine hundred pounds three shillings and fourpence.

The extent and limits of the port of London are closely connected with the reaches along the Essex shore. They are bounded by a straight line running from the North Foreland, in Kent, to the opposite Essex promontory, the Naze (the Nose), the said line cutting through the Gun-fleet beacon, including all within that line westward, with all the channels, streams, and tributary rivers feeding the Thames as far up as London Bridge, but excepting the known rights, liberty, and privileges, of the ports of Sandwich and Ipswich. Within the port, three Harbour Masters rule supreme: one from London Bridge to Wapping Dock Stairs; the second from Wapping to Limehouse; and the third from Limehouse to Bugsby's Hole. About a mile and a half from Leigh, near Southend, where the dull coast rises into low cliffs, there is a terminal stone marking the limit of the jurisdiction of the Conservators of the Thames.

The crow, as he flits past the low-lying Essex shore, where "the miles are long, the stiles high, and the calves good," passes many spots of legendary and historical interest. There Southend towers on its wooded hill, with its gravel strand stretching below, with the long bowsprit of a jetty looking across at the forts and dockyards. At South Benfleet the Danes were fond of landing. At Canewdon there was a Roman station, and the ruins of Hadleigh castle, close by, show traces of Roman herringbone work. From Langdon Hills, near Stamford-le-Hope, whose church can be seen plainly from the higher slopes of Plumstead Common opposite, the windings of the Thames can be discerned for forty miles, from London to the Nore, where the river is fifteen miles wide. At Leigh, eight centuries ago famous for grapes, in the days when wine was made in England, there is an oyster fishery, founded in 1690. At Bell House, famous for its great elm trees and fine deer, Queen Elizabeth, who did not disdain to make friends of her subjects, was once entertained. Then the crow's black wings, fanned by the fresh free river air, flit past the bold cliffs of Prittlewell, where, some years ago, fishermen could see in the deep water remains of the submerged church of Milton. At Razleigh there is a Danish camp, and at Rochford stands the Hall where poor Anne Boleyn was born. At Lawless Court, close by, a curious old manorial custom still prevails, as eccentric as some of the old feudal ways of doing homage to the suzerain. A copyhold court is held on King's Hill, between midnight and cock-crow, on the first Wednesday after Michaelmas; and every tenant is fined to the amount of double his rent for each hour of absence. The minutes are made by the steward with a piece of coal, and the business is all transacted in mysterious whispers. The custom is said to have been established, as a punishment, by a lord of the manor who had discovered a conspiracy of the tenants against himself. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, this little Essex village (Rochford) gave the title to an earldom long since extinct. And now the crow presents arms, as well as he can without any, as he passes Tilbury fort, sacred to the memories of Sheridan and Queen Elizabeth. Henry the Eighth built a block house here on the site of a chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, and Charles the Second enlarged it into a full-sized fort, ready for the Dutch. Tilbury is stronger than it looks, for its inner moat is one hundred and eighty feet broad; it has two brick redoubts on the land side, and the whole district can be easily laid under water. The esplanade, mounted with cannon, is extensive, and the bastions are the largest in England. It was at Tilbury, in April, 1588, that the Earl of Leicester marshalled his twenty-two thousand pikemen and hagbuteers, and his one hundred horse, to protect London; and here the lion-hearted queen rode through the lines of the camp, and afterwards made that brave speech which showed her to be of the true metal.

A few weeks more, and the great Armada