Quendon, a scattered little village prettily situated where the road broadens out and curves slightly, with broad margins of grass, bears a resemblance to Trumpington, on the Cambridge Road. In advance of the cottages stands a picturesque modern well-house and fountain, with a beautifully designed horse-trough, “given to Quendon and Pickling in memory of Caroline Mary Cranmer-Byng,” as an inscription states. Quite at the end of the village is the “Coach and Horses” inn, a survival of posting and coaching days, very much in its old condition. Beyond it the open road leads into Newport.

Newport, whose name has nothing whatever to do with a water port, derives that title from its situation on a new road—a new gate, or door, or portal—made at some unrecorded time through the Forest of Essex. It is now nothing but a village, as picturesque and delightful as any on the road, but fallen from its ancient importance, and overshadowed by Saffron Walden, only three miles away. Time was—a very long while ago—when Newport had a market and Saffron Walden had none. At that time Newport was one of the many manors belonging to Harold, and it continued to be a Royal manor for some time after the Conquest; coming afterwards into the hands of the Magnavilles. There was a castle at Newport in those days, and a lake, whence the old name for this place of “Newport Pond.” Tradition tells that the pond or lake was situated where the railway station is now, but of it and of that castle no traces have survived. The fortunes of Newport fell, and those of Saffron Walden began to rise, when the Empress Maud, somewhere about 1142, authorised Geoffrey de Magnaville to transfer the market to Walden, and although, some sixty years later, in 1203, King John granted Newport the right to hold an annual fair, this stricken town never recovered from the blow inflicted by the loss of its market privileges. A century later the Manor of Newport belonged to an historical character—that Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II., who was executed, murdered, or done to death in 1310 on Blacklow Hill, near Warwick, by insurgent Barons, jealous of his influence over the King. The fate of Gaveston seems to prove how dangerous was the stinging gift of satire in the early part of the fourteenth century. That unfortunate man, raised by the King to the highest offices of State, of course became hateful to others not so successful, and his splendour, his arrogance, and, above all, the wittily offensive nicknames he showered upon that baronial crew, aggravated the original offence beyond endurance, so that they finally seized and beheaded him. It will be allowed that this eminently practical retort was even more stinging than the original satire, and certainly forbade a rejoinder.

Later lords of the manor of Newport have been more fortunate, or have been such comparatively obscure persons that their misfortunes are scarcely historic. Indeed, with the passing of Gaveston, the annals of the place are purely domestic, but none the less interesting; Newport is, in fact, singularly full of interest. Prominent in its broad street stands the beautiful old house of timbered frame and brick nogging known locally as “Monks’ Barns,” and said to have once been used by the monastery of St. Martin-in-the-Fields as a country sanatorium, but much more likely to have been a Priest’s House at the time when Newport church was under the joint control of Westminster Abbey and St. Martin’s, and served from them. However that may be, this fine relic of the fifteenth century is now in secular occupation, and divided into two cottages. The interior is without interest; and its most beautiful and interesting feature the one most easily seen by the wayfarer—the fine old oak-framed oriel window looking upon the road and decorated with an elaborate and curious carving of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It was at Newport the route often taken Charles II. to Newmarket, by way of Rye House, passing Rickling Church End and Wicken Bonant, fell into the existing highway. It is still known as “London Lane”; the junction of roads remaining the most old-world corner of the village. The church, dominating the view at this point, looks almost cathedral-like, and its tower is strongly reminiscent of Great St. Mary’s, Cambridge; but the interior proves less imposing, and the bare nave and wide chancel, built in the later and less refined style of Gothic, disappointing.

A memorial tablet on the chancel wall, plain in design, but grotesquely ornate in the epitaph of the person it praises, hands down to us the memory of the many virtues of “Joseph Smith, M.A., of Shortgrove Hall.” It appears that the worthy Smith, who died in 1822, was private secretary to William Pitt. It would be easier to recount the few virtues he was not possessed of than to recite a list of those that, according to his executors, rendered him such a Phoenix. He—or they for him—wholly lacked humility.

Tragical memories are revived by the memorial window in the south aisle to the son of the vicar, one of the 130 who perished in the destruction by fire of the Theatre Royal, Exeter. An inscription tells how “This window was erected by loving friends in memory of Robert Morgan Tamplin, B.A., of Keble College, Oxford, who entered into his rest at Exeter, in the great fire, Monday, September 5th, 1887, aged 23 years.”

The church has a treasure of sorts in the musty, dusty old theological library, stored away in the parvise chamber, over the porch. It is a treasure not likely to be greatly coveted, nor are its constituent volumes frequently read, consisting, as they do, of dull black-letter discourses on just those religious matters in which the learned are of necessity as ignorant as the veriest clod. Not even the best-equipped of those disputants could pierce the veil that hides from us the other world, and now they are gone hence and acquired that knowledge, or just become extinct, they cannot enlighten ourselves. All they could do was to raise cloudy disputations, and the dust one bangs out of their ponderous folios is typical of their useless labours.

A more desirable treasure is the ancient muniment-chest kept jealously under lock and key in the vestry. It is a weighty affair, covered with gilt lead, in perforated patterns, and secured with five locks. Inside the heavy lid are barbarically coloured paintings of the Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul.

An early morning bell-ringing custom of immemorial antiquity is still maintained at Newport, but happily not with all its old-time severity. It was not until 1875 that the local revolt broke out, and the four o’clock-in-the-morning bell-ringing during the winter was modified, and replaced by an eight in the morning peal in the months between Michaelmas and Lady Day. Bell-ringing at Newport was wont to be greatly favoured, for there was a nightly curfew, followed by a number of strokes corresponding with the day of the month. Then there was the “gleaners’ bell,” at harvest-time, rung to tell the poor the corn had been carried and they might go into the fields and glean. But modern agricultural machinery leaves nothing to be gathered up, and so gleaning is a lost chance