We shall not be far wrong if we identify Towcester with the town at which the coach with Tom Brown on board stopped for breakfast, and the “well-known sporting house,” famous for its breakfasts, with the “Saracen’s Head.” A half-past seven breakfast, in a low, dark, wainscoted room, hung with sporting prints; a blazing fire, and a card of hunting fixtures stuck in the mantel-glass. Twenty minutes for breakfast, with such a spread as pigeon-pie, ham, cold boiled beef, kidneys and steak, bacon and eggs, buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea, smoking hot—why, an irresolute man would waste some of those precious minutes in considering where to begin. But the hungry are not at such a loss, and certainly little Tom Brown could not have been, for he ate kidney and pigeon-pie and drank coffee till his skin was as tight as a drum, and then had sufficient time to pay the head waiter in leisurely manner and to stroll calmly to the door, to see the horses put to.

And then, all being ready, they are off again. “Let ’em go, Dick!” says the coachman, and the ostlers fly back, drawing off the horse-cloths like lightning. Along the High Street goes the “Tally-Ho,” with passing glimpses into first-floor windows, where the burgesses are seen shaving; past shops and private houses, where shopboys are cleaning windows and housemaids doing the steps, and out of the town as the clock strikes eight.

A very pretty glimpse, this, of the “good old times,” but the coaches did not always hark away so triumphantly; as, for example, when, on a day in March, 1829, an axle of the celebrated “Wonder” coach broke in Towcester street, and the unfortunate coachman was killed in the inevitable upset. The hilly eight miles or so between Towcester and Weedon Beck witnessed many thrilling escapades in the coaching sort. One eminence, rejoicing in the name of Dirt House Hill, was the scene of a violent collision, in which the Holyhead Mail and the Manchester Mail came into disastrous contact, June 29th, 1838. It was one of the closing smashes of the Coaching Age. Here is the official account:—

“Both coaches were in fault. The Holyhead coach had no lamps, and the explanation of their absence was that the 28th June was the Coronation Day of our beloved Queen, and the crowd was so great in Birmingham that, in paying attention to getting the horses through the streets, and having lost considerable time in so doing, in the hurry to get the coach off again the guard did not ascertain if the lamps were with the coach, or not. The Manchester coach, at the time of the accident, was attempting, when climbing the hill, to pass the Carlisle Mail, and was ascending on the wrong side of the road. The horses dashed into each other, with the result that one of the wheelers of the Holyhead Mail, belonging to Mr. Wilson, of Daventry, was killed, and the others injured, one seriously. The harness was old and snapped like chips, or more serious would have been the consequences; and had not the horse killed been old and worn out, the sudden concussion would have been more violent, and might have deprived the passengers of life. As it was difficult to decide which of the two coachmen was most in the wrong, it was left to the two coachmasters to arrange affairs between themselves.”

In Telford’s reports mention is made of no fewer than seven hills cut down and hollows filled on this stretch of road, with an aggregate length of cutting and embanking of two and a half miles. Yet, even so, this remains the most trying part of the route; so much so, that the two hillsides past Foster’s Booth are laid with granite kerbs for the purpose of easing the pull-up for horses drawing heavy-laden waggons. The place oddly named Foster’s or Forster’s Booth is said, on the authority of Pennant, to have derived that title from a wayside booth established by “one Forster, a poor countryman.” It grew at length into a scattered street of houses and carrier’s inns, and so remains.

Stowe Hill, the last of this hunchbacked company leading to Weedon, acquires its name from the village of Stowe-Nine-Churches, whose scattered houses and one church lie on the hill-top, hid from the road by lanes and windy coppices. The title of “Nine Churches” is rather lamely said to arise from nine benefices having been included in the lordship of the manor in ancient times, but a much more picturesque origin is found in the legend of the triumphant diabolism that foiled eight previous attempts to erect the church on other sites. Every night, the stones of the eight ill-fated buildings set up in the daytime were removed by a mysterious shape “summat bigger nor a hog,” but the existing church, the ninth, was suffered to grow to completion. As it is of Saxon origin, this fearful legend itself perhaps goes back to that superstitious time.

Stowe Church is remarkable for the fine monuments it contains: those of Sir Gerald de l’Isle, about 1250; Lady Carey, 1630; and Dr. Turner, 1714. The first is the Purbeck marble effigy of a cross-legged knight, shield on arm, and clad in chain-mail. That of Lady Carey, “the most elegant,” says Pennant, “that this or any other kingdom can boast of,” is a white marble sleeping figure raised on a black and white marble altar-tomb. This beautiful work of Renaissance art was by the “Master Mason” of James I. and Charles I.—Nicholas Stone, who executed it and set it up here “for my Lady,” as he says in his still-existing correspondence, ten years before her death; “for the which,” he adds, “I had £220.” Although of the most delicate workmanship, it remains, strange to say, in perfect preservation; even the sharp beak of the very savage-looking griffin at the foot of the effigy quite uninjured.

The monument to Dr. Turner, who does not lie here, but at Oxford, where he was President of Corpus Christi College, is a huge mass, occupying a great wall space. He was a non-juring pluralist, who, unlike his brother non-jurors, held successfully to what he had gotten. An effigy of him, very wiggy and gowny, stands in midst of alcoves, scrolls, and volutes, representing him, like some reverend acrobat, standing on a globe and holding a book in his hand. Religion, beside him, offers a cross and a temple, which he seems disinclined to take, and an all-seeing eye—like that blood-freezing eye in Martin’s “Belshazzar’s Feast”—radiates down upon the group.