to the origin of this name, but in the earliest survey of the Chase the stream has the less romantic appellation of "Old Pond Gutter." In one of the Forty Hall deeds (temp. James I.), the bridge which crosses it is called "Cole's Bridge, otherwise Maiden's Bridge."

"When the manor of Worcesters was granted to the Cecils," observes Mr. Ford, "Elsynge Hall was reserved to the Crown; but in 1641 it was sold by Charles I., along with the 'Little Park' and 'The

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and the price low. Let them repair to the Coach and Horses, Drury-lane, where they shall have speedy passage every day. The coachman's name is Richard How."*

Myddelton House, mentioned above as occupying the site of the house where Sir Hugh Myddelton lived, stands at a short distance north-east from Forty Hall, and close by Maiden Bridge.

At the upper end of Baker Street, near Forty Hill, stands a good old-fashioned family residence,

Warren' adjoining (part of the Duchy of Lancaster), to Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery." It was the widow of this nobleman who wrote the oft-quoted letter to Sir J. Williamson, Secretary of State, who had "presumed" to propose a candidate for her borough of Appleby :"I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan't stand.-ANNE, Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery."

The following advertisement, which was published a few years after the death of the Earl of Pembroke, must refer to this house :-"At Enfield House are several wholesome baths erected, wet and dry, cold and moist, for several diseases; the rates are easy,

once the abode of the celebrated antiquary, Richard Gough. His father, Mr. Harry Gough, sometime M.P. for Bramber, and a director of the East India Company, &c., in 1723, purchased the property, which was much improved by his son. Mr. J. T. Smith, in his "Book for a Rainy Day," mentions having been introduced to the antiquary Gough at Forty Hill. Mr. R. Gough became possessed of this property on the death of his mother, in 1774, and continued to reside here, with the interruption of the various journeys connected with his topographical pursuits, until the time of his decease, in 1809. His extensive library

"Perfect Passages," Oct. 22, 1632.

of valuable books (with the exception of the department of British topography, which he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library at Oxford) was sold, in pursuance of his own directions, in 1810. Mr. Gough was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1767, and nominated director in 1771; he was also for some years a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was a great admirer and collector of stained glass, of which a few good specimens, the contributions of friends, were preserved in the windows of his house.

Mr. Gough's residence, still known as Gough Park, is a good two storeyed building, clearly not built at a more recent date than Queen Anne's reign. The New River winds through the grounds, and at the front and side of the house are two handsome gates of iron scroll work.

The father of John Howard, the philanthropist and prison reformer, was living at Enfield at the beginning of the last century, but he removed to Clapton about the time of the birth of his son, which occurred in 1727.* By some writers it has been doubted whether John Howard was really born here or at Clapton. His father was apparently in good circumstances, as he "paid the fine rather than serve the office of Sheriff of London."

Another distinguished resident at Enfield was Isaac D'Israeli, the father of Lord Beaconsfield. His house, afterwards used as the Eastern Counties railway-station, was a small mansion standing in its own grounds to the east of the town. It was of the Queen Anne period, and was remarkable for the beauty of the details of its brick-work. There is a view of it in Ford's "History of Enfield." The central part of it is now in the South Kensington Museum. "My father," writes the future Lord Beaconsfield, "who came up to town to read the newspapers at the St. James's Coffee House, found their columns filled with extracts from the fortunate effusion of the hour, conjectures as to its writer, and much gossip respecting Walcot and Harley. He returned to Enfield laden with the journals, and presenting them to his parents, broke to them the intelligence that at length he was not only an author, but a successful one."

Benjamin D'Israeli, Lord Beaconsfield's grandfather, appears to have been a man of considerable wealth; he was one of the founders of the "Stock Exchange" of London, and was regarded as a rival of the Rothschilds. Indeed, it is said that on one occasion, early in the present century, the Emperor of Russia, when he required to raise a loan, applied to him for help; and it was only on

* See "Old and New London," Vol. V., p. 521.

his refusal that he placed the negotiation in the hands of the house of Rothschild. He was, as Lord Beaconsfield tells us, "a man of ardent character; sanguine, courageous, speculative, and fortunate; with a temper which no disappointment could disturb, and a brain, amid reverses, full of resource. He made his fortune in the midway of life, and settled at Enfield, where he formed an Italian garden, entertained his friends, played whist with Sir Horace Mann (who was his great acquaintance, and who had known his brother at Venice as a banker), ate maccaroni (which was dressed by the Venetian consul), sang canzonettas, and notwithstanding a wife who never pardoned him for his name, and a son who disappointed all his plans, and who to the last hour of his life was an enigma to him, lived until he was nearly ninety, and then died in 1817, in the full enjoyment of prolonged existence." The date here given, however, is evidently a mistake, for in the Gentleman's Magazine for December, 1816, occurs the following notice of Mr. D'Israeli's death: "On the 28th of November, at Stoke Newington, in his eightyseventh year, Benjamin D'Israeli, Esq." It is remarkable that Lord Beaconsfield never had the curiosity to pay a visit to Enfield, to see his father's house, though he mentions it in the preface to the collected edition of his father's works, quoted above.

At Chase Side Charles Lamb and his sister were living at the close of the life of the former, in 1833. One day in that month (December 19th) he strolled into the "Crown and Horseshoes" inn, as usual, and having taken a drop too much, fell down on the ground on his way home. His face was injured, and a murder having taken place on that day at Enfield, he was for a moment suspected of complicity in it. He was charged, with others, before the magistrates; but the matter was soon explained, and he was set at liberty. He died in the following year.

Major Cartwright, the distinguished politician and writer of the last century, whose burial-place at Finchley we had occasion to notice,* was a native of Enfield. Charles Babbage, the inventor of the calculating machine, passed his early years here, at a school kept by the Rev. Stephen Freeman, in " a large brick house, at the upper end of Baker Street," and where he had as a schoolfellow Captain Marryat, the naval novelist. Frederick Joyce, the inventor of the percussion-cap, was likewise a pupil at this school. Sir William Grey, Lord Bramwell, and his brother Sir Frederick J. Bramwell, the distinguished civil engineer, were edu

* See ante, p. 339.

cated at the Palace School, under Dr. May. Sir Ralph Abercromby was educated here, by the same master as Isaac D'Israeli. Mrs. André, the mother of the unfortunate Major André, lived at Forty Hill, as also did Dr. Birkbeck.

The unfortunate Lady Cathcart, who was forcibly abducted from Tewin Water by her husband, Colonel Maguire, who imprisoned her in Ireland, was a native of Enfield, being a daughter of one Mr. Malyn, of the Chase, a partner in the brewery in Southwark which afterwards was Thrale's. It is said that Sir Richard Steele, meeting her, when quite young, on horseback in the Chase, was so struck with her beauty that he could never forget it, and that he always regarded her as the pattern of loveliness. She died in 1789. The story of her abduction is told in the "Tales of Great Families" (2nd series). She was met by her Tewin

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bury tenants at Barnet on her return from Ireland; they drew her carriage all the way home; and when upwards of eighty she danced at the Hertford ball.

Lady Cathcart does not appear to have been the only beautiful woman in Enfield, for in the early part of the last century the town was remarkable for the number of handsome women among its inhabitants, a fact which is commemorated by a local poet, a Mr. H. Baker, in 1725, in a dull poem of 140 lines, full of quaint conceits, which is published in extenso at the end of Robinson's "History of Enfield," and from which we quote two couplets:

"But much superior in each heavenly grace
Appear the fair ones of the Enfield race;
Born to command, supremely bright they shine,
And with their eyes assert the right divine."

By a Chase is meant a large space of open or forest land, either natural or artificial, and set apart for the purposes of those field sports in which almost all kings and princes, from the days of Xenophon and Cyrus, and those of Herodotus and Xerxes, and even from the ages of Babylonian and Assyrian splendour, have so constantly indulged. The successors of Charlemagne, the French sovereigns of the House of Capet, kept up the tradition, which they handed on in their turn to William the Conqueror and the rest of our Norman kings, under whom the "New" Forest, in Hampshire, was made a royal "Chase," at the cost of sad cruelties, it is to be feared, to the luckless inhabitants. There were other royal chases in Sherwood, Whittlebury, and Needwood Forests, whose broad glades were kept alive during the winter season by the horn of royal hunters in the days of the Plantagenets and Tudors.

Drayton, in the "Polyolbion," describes Enfield Chase thus :—

"A forrest for her pride, tho' titl'd but a Chace;

Her purlieus and her parks, her circuit full as large
As some, perhaps, whose state requires a greater charge.
Whose holts that view the east, do wistly stand and look
Upon the winding course of Lea's delightful brook."

Enfield Chase is or was-an extensive tract of land, lying chiefly to the north-west of the town, and stretching into several neighbouring parishes. The name first occurs, it is believed, in a record of the reign of Edward II. "Its form," as we learn from Mr. Ford's "History of Enfield,” was very irregular; its north and longest side was nearly straight, as was also its west side; its south and east sides were full of angles. Its greatest length

99.66

A term still in use in Hampshire and elsewhere to denote high

woods.

fallen nobleman to take his seat on the carpet and cushions that he had laid for him. But he de

In the notice of "Enfelde" in the "Domesday Survey," it is stated that there was "a park" here; but the term park, as used in that record, is of an indefinite character. At that period, and down to the time of its enclosure, the district is supposed by Lord Lyttelton to have formed part of the ancient forest of Middlesex. Previous to the reign of Edward II. it was called "Parcus Extrinsecus," the Outer Park, to distinguish it from the "Parcus Intrinsecus," the Home Park, or Great Park, as it was locally called-though, of course, far smaller than the Chase.

In very early times it formed part of the possessions of the Mandevilles, and afterwards of the Bohuns, their successors; but since the marriage of Henry IV. to the daughter and ultimate heiress of Humphrey de Bohun, it has belonged to the Duchy of Lancaster.

In 1483, the Chase, together with the manor of Enfield, is said to have been given by Richard III. to Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, as a reward for his services in raising him to the throne; but if so, it shortly after reverted to the Crown; for, having conspired with the Bishop of Ely to dethrone the king, and been betrayed by his servant, the duke was beheaded in the market-place at Salisbury, without going through the ceremony of a trial. Buckingham, it seems, had claimed the whole or the greater part of the immense inheritance of Humphrey de Bohun in right of descent, which Edward IV. had kept to himself.

The last holder of the dignity and estates of the great family of Bohun, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, executed on Tower Hill in 1521, was the wealthiest subject in England, the lineal representative of the Plantagenets, and the mortal enemy of Cardinal Wolsey, whom he had offended. On his way to the Tower from Westminster, he was led to his barge by Sir Thomas Lovel, of Forty Hall, who also treated him with respect, asking the

Lord High Constable and Duke of Buckingham, but now poor Edward Bohun, the poorest wretch alive." Holinshed calls him "a most wise and noble prince, and the mirror of all courtesy." With him became extinct the office of Lord High Constable of England, which had been hereditary in his family from the days of Magna Charta." On his attainder, his dukedom and earldom and estates were confiscated. His son Henry retained the title of Baron Stafford ; but he was so impoverished that he was glad to borrow the loan of a sovereign in the year before his death, in 1588. His son was even more embarrassed; and in 1639 his grandson was deprived by Charles I. of his rank and honour, on account of his poverty and abject condition." Thus ended a noble line, who had flourished for one-fourth of the entire Christian era.

The Chase now consists of a series of farms, of more or less value, and of gentlemen's seats; but in former times—that is, from the period when it became the "happy hunting ground" of royalty down to the time when the district was "dischased," in 1779—it was full of trees, and herds of deer roamed in its wild glades.

Whilst residing at Hatfield, under the charge of Sir Thomas Pope, the Princess Elizabeth was gratified by her host with a display of romantic magnificence, which was exactly agreeable to the taste of the times and of herself.

vited," writes Lucy Aikin, "to repair to Enfield, there to take the amusement of hunting the hart. Twelve ladies in white satin attended her on their ambling palfreys, and twenty yeomen, all clad in green. At the entrance of the forest she was met by fifty archers in scarlet boots and yellow caps, armed with gilded bows, one of whom presented to her a silver-headed arrow winged with peacock's feathers. The splendid show concluded, according to the established laws of the chase, by the offering of the knife to the princess as first lady on the field, and her taking say* of the buck with her own fair and royal hand."

Whilst staying with Sir Robert Cecil at Theobalds, on his way from Edinburgh to London, in 1603, King James spent a morning in Enfield Chase, whither he rode, "accompanied by many of the nobility; but his visit was cut short by the showers of rain. He rode," says an eye-witness, "the most part of the way from the Chase between two honourable persons of our land (England), the

Enfield.]

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In 1606 Sir Robert Cecil again entertained King James, and also Frederick III. of Denmark, at Theobalds. About this time the extent of the Chase was considerably reduced, for, according to Clutterbuck's "Hertfordshire," "the king having become enamoured of this place, from its proximity to an extensive tract of open country favourable to the diversion of hunting (his favourite amusement), he prevailed upon his Minister to exchange it with him for his Palace of Hatfield, in the county of Herts. The king, having obtained possession of the manor, enlarged the park by taking in part of the adjoining Chase, and surrounded it with a wall of brick ten miles in circumference."

The Chase remained in the possession of the Crown till after the death of Charles I., when it was seized by the Commonwealth as public property, and, by an order of the House of Commons, was surveyed in 1650, when it was reported to contain 7,900 acres, its value being set down at rather more than £4,700 per annum. Shortly subsequent to that date the district had been divided into parcels and sold to different individuals. A considerable part was consequently enclosed, and several houses built. But the enclosure created great disturbances among those who claimed the right of common, and who were accustomed to obtain their fuel from this waste. In the Bodleian Library at Oxford is preserved an original survey of the Chase, a duplicate of which is in the possession of the vestry clerk of Enfield; it is entitled "A Description of Enfield Chase, situate in the Parish of Enfield, and County of Middlesex, as the same is now divided between the Commonwealth and the Commons, by Edmund Rolfe and Nicholas Gunter, in the year 1658." In this survey the gate of the Chase at Winchmore Hill is called " Highmore, alias Winsmore." The Pest House mentioned in Ford's "Enfield" (p. 311) is distinctly marked, standing on the present Green.

In his account of the state of England in 1685, Macaulay observes that Enfield Chase, though hardly out of the sight of the smoke of the capital, was "a region twenty-five miles in circumference, in which the deer wandered by thousands, as free as in the American forests;" still, there is no record of there ever having been more than 3,000 head of deer in Enfield Chase. The last wild boars which had been preserved, here and elsewhere, for the royal diversion, and had been, up to that time, allowed to ravage the cultivated

slaughtered by the exasperated rustics in the course of the Civil War. It is said that the last grey badger in Enfield Chase was not killed till ten or eleven years after the accession of Queen Victoria.

Evelyn makes the following entry in his "Diary" with reference to a visit which he paid to Enfield. On June 2nd, 1676, he writes :-"I went with my Lord Chamberlaine to see a garden at Enfield towne, thence to Mr. Sec. Coventry's Lodge in the Chase. It is a very pretty place, the house commodious, the gardens handsome, and our entertainment very free, there being none but my lord and myselfe. That which I most wondered at was, that in the compass of twenty-five miles, yet within fourteen of London, there is not a house, barne, church, or building, besides three lodges. To this lodge are three great ponds and some few inclosures, the rest a solitarie desert, yet stor'd with not less than 3,000 deere. There are pretty retreats for gentlemen, especially for those who are studious and lovers of privacy."

In a survey of the manor of Enfield, taken in 1686, it is stated that on a former perambulation the Chase had been found to contain 7,600 acres, of which 500 had been since enclosed in Theobalds Park. This enclosure, as stated above, was made by James I. while he resided at Theobalds. Though at that time the Chase was well stocked with deer, the Parliamentary Army during the Civil War destroyed the game, cut down the trees, and let out the ground into small farms. In this state it remained until the Restoration, when young trees were planted, and the Chase was again stocked with deer.

Another survey was taken in 1698, in order to a fall of timber, by which several new "ridings" were to be formed, and a square lawn of 300 acres laid out for the deer to feed in. The "ridings," marked out when the Chase was to be divided into farms at the time of the Commonwealth, and still distinguished by hedges and ditches, were CockFosters, and the Ridgeway from the gravel-pits by East Lodge to Ganna Corner.

Mr. Ford, in his "History of Enfield," says :"The Chase was formerly considered to have been a sheep-walk belonging to the family of Coningsby, of Wales, one of whom having a complaint lodged against him for having too many sheep, brought up a parcel of goats, which did great damage. This circumstance, it seems, gave rise to the right of sheep-walk on the Chase annexed to certain farms in this neighbourhood for a certain time of the year. Norden says, 'there ariseth a profit unto