Godstow.—Fair Rosamund.—Blenheim.—Water-works at Enstone.—Four-shire Stone.—Road to Worcester.—Vale of Evesham.—Hop-yards.—Malvern Hills.
The coach by which we were to proceed passes through Oxford between four and five o'clock in the morning; we left our baggage to be forwarded by it, and went on one stage the preceding day, by which means we secured a good night's rest, and saw every thing which could be taken in upon the way. Two of our Oxford acquaintances bore us company: we started soon after six, and went by water, rowing up the main stream of the Isis, between level shores; in some places they were overhung with willows or alder-bushes, in others the pasture extended to the brink; rising ground was in view on both sides. Large herds of cattle were grazing in these rich meadows, and plovers in great numbers wheeling over head. The scenery was not remarkably beautiful, but it is always delightful to be upon a clear stream of fresh water in a fine summer day. We ascended the river about a league to Godstow, where we breakfasted at a little ale-house by the water-side.
This place is celebrated for the ruins of a nunnery, wherein Fair Rosamund was buried, the concubine of King HenryII., a woman as famous for her beauty and misfortunes as our Raquel the Jewess, or the Inez de Castro of the Portugueze. The popular songs say that Henry, when he went to the wars, hid her in a labyrinth in the adjoining park at Woodstock, to save her from his queen. The labyrinth consisted of subterranean vaults and passages, which led to a tower: through this, however, the jealous wife found her way, by means of a clue of thread, and made her rival choose between a dagger and a bowl of poison; she took the poison and died. The English have many romances upon this subject, which are exceedingly beautiful. But the truth is, that she retired into this convent, and there closed a life of penitence by an edifying death. She was buried in the middle of the quire, her tomb covered with a silken pall, and tapers kept burning before it, because the king for her sake had been a great benefactor to the church; till the bishop ordered her to be removed as being a harlot, and therefore unworthy so honourable a place of interment. Her bones were once more disturbed at the schism, when the nunnery was dissolved; and it is certain, by the testimony of the contemporary heretical writers themselves, that when the leather in which the body had been shrouded within the leaden coffin was opened, a sweet odour issued forth. The remains of the building are trifling, and the only part of the chapel which is roofed, serves as a cow-house, according to the usual indecency with which such holy ruins are here profaned. The man who showed us the place, told us it had been built in the times of the Romans, and seemed, as well he might, to think they were better times than his own. The grave of Rosamund is still shown; a hazel tree grows over it, bearing every year a profusion of nuts which have no kernel. Enough of the last year's produce were lying under the tree to satisfy me of the truth of this, explain it how you will.
From hence we walked to Blenheim, the palace which the nation built for the famous Duke of Marlborough; a magnificent monument of public gratitude, befitting such a nation to erect to such a man. The park in which it stands is three leagues in circumference. It is the fashion in England to keep deer within these large, and almost waste, inclosures: the flesh of these animals is preferred to any other meat; it is regarded as the choicest dainty of the table, and the price at which it sells, when it can be purchased, is prodigious. They were standing in groups under the fine trees which are always to be found in these parks, others quietly feeding upon the open lawn: their branching antlers, their slender forms, their spotted skin, the way in which they spring from the ground and rebound as they alight, and the twinkling motion of their tails which are never at rest, made them beautiful accompaniments to the scenery.
We went over the palace, of which, were I to catalogue pictures, and enumerate room after room, I might give a long and dull account. But palaces, unless they are technically described to gratify an architect, are as bad subjects for description as for painting. Be satisfied when I say that every thing within was splendid, sumptuous, and elegant. Would it interest you more to read of the length, breadth, and height of apartments, the colour of hangings, and the subjects of pictures which you have never seen?
Woodstock is near at hand; a good town, celebrated for smaller articles of polished steel, such as watch-chains and scissars, and for leathern gloves and breeches of the best quality. Here we dined: our friends from Oxford left us after dinner, and we proceeded about a league to Enstone, a village where the stage would change horses at a convenient hour on the following morning, and where we were told there were some water-works which would amuse us, if we were in time to see them. To effect this we left Woodstock the sooner. It was but a melancholy sight. The gardens had been made in the days of Charles I. above a century and half ago, and every thing about them was in a state of decay. The water-works are of that kind which were fashionable in the days when they were made;—ingenious devices for wetting the beholder from the sides, roof, floor, and door-way of the grotto into which he had entered, and from every object which excited his curiosity. Our inn furnished us with such a lodging as is called indifferent in England: but every thing was clean, and we had no cause for complaint. They brought us two sorts of cheese at supper, neither of which had I ever before met with; the one was spotted with green, being pleasantly flavoured with sage; the other veined with the deep red dye of the beet-root: this must have been merely for ornament, for I could not perceive that the taste was in the slightest degree affected by the colouring. There was upon both cheeses the figure of a dolphin, a usual practice, for which I have never heard any reason assigned.
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We rose at a wholesome hour, and were ready before six, when the coach came up. The morning was fine, and we mounted the roof. The country is uninteresting, hills of neither magnitude nor beauty, and fields intersected by stone walls. We passed through a town called Chipping-Norton, which stands on the side of a hill, and then descended into a marsh, from whence the little town on the hill side became a fine object. A few miles beyond, a pillar has been erected to mark the spot where the four shires of Oxford, Warwick, Worcester, and Gloucester meet; this latter one we now entered. Breakfast was ready for us at Moreton in the Marsh, a place which seems to have little else to support it than its situation on the high road from Worcester to London. Before we entered, the coachman pointed out to us the town of Stow in the Wold, built on a high hill to our left, where he told us there was neither fire, water, nor earth. Water was formerly raised from a deep well by means of a horizontal windmill, but this has fallen to decay.
The marsh ended at Moreton, and we entered upon a country of better features. We crossed the Campden Hills, ascending a long hill from Moreton, travelling about two leagues on the top, and descending to a little town called Broadway. From the height we overlooked the Vale of Evesham, or of the Red Horse, so called from the figure of a horse cut in the side of a hill where the soil is of that colour. This is one of the most fertile parts of England, yet is the vale less striking than the Vale of Honiton—at least in the point from which we saw it—because the inequalities, which may render it in parts more beautiful, prevent it from being seen as a whole. It is remarkable in English history as the place where Simon de Montford, son to the Champion of the Church against the Albigenses, was defeated and slain by prince Edward. The town from whence the vale derives its name is old, and has some fine remains of an abbey, which I wished to have examined more at leisure than the laws of a stage-coach would allow.
Our road to Worcester lay through this highly-cultivated valley. I was delighted with the fine pear-trees which wooded the country, and still more by the novel appearance of hop-yards, which I had never before seen, and which were now in full beauty. If this plant be less generous and less useful than the vine, it is far more beautiful in its culture. Long poles are fixed into the ground in rows; each has its separate plant, which climbs up, and having topt, it falls down in curly tresses. The fruit, if it may be called such, hangs in little clusters; it resembles the cone of the fir, or rather of the larch, in its shape, but is of a leafy substance, and hardly larger than an acorn. They use it in bittering beer, though I am told that there still exists a law which prohibits its culture as a poisonous weed, and that in the public breweries cheaper ingredients are fraudulently used. Hop-picking here is as joyous a time as our vintage. The English have two didactic poems concerning this favourite plant, which is more precarious than any other in its crop, being liable to particular blights, so that it often fails. It is cultivated chiefly in this province and in Kent, and is rarely attempted in any other part of the kingdom.
Malvern was in sight to the west; a range of mountains standing in the three provinces of Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford, and on the side where we beheld them rising immediately from the plain. This sierra is justly admired for the beauty of its form, and its singular situation. It is the first which I have seen in England, nor are there any other mountains between this and the eastern and southern coasts. Westward the mountainous part begins almost immediately behind it, and extends through the whole line of Wales. About three we reached Worcester, a fine and flourishing city, in the midst of this delightful country.
