scarce any writer on the subject since his time who has not made the rules and practice of Walton his very foundation. It is therefore with the greatest propriety that Langbaine, in his "Lives of the English Dramatic Poets," calls him "the common father of all anglers." The river that he seems mostly to have frequented for this purpose was the Lea, which has its source above Ware, in Hertfordshire, and falls into the Thames, as we have seen, a little below Blackwall; unless we suppose that the vicinity of the New River to the place of his habitation might sometimes tempt him out with his friends-honest Nat and R. Roe, whose loss he so pathetically deplores in his preface of the "Complete Angler"-to "spend an afternoon there." In the above work, the kindness of old Izaak's nature often peeps out, as when he tells his friend and disciple or scholar who had caught his first chub, "it is a good beginning of your art to offer your first fruits to the poor, who will thank both you and God for it." "He was no ascetic, for he liked the barley-wine, the good liquor that our honest forefathers did use to drink of,' and he loved such mirth as did not make friends ashamed to look on one another the next morning.' His humour is sometimes quite comic, as when, after instructing his listener and companion in the art of impaling a frog upon a hook, and securing the upper part of its leg by one loop to the arming wire, he naïvely adds, 'In so doing, use him as if you love him." " According to Izaak Walton, the river Lea affords fine sport to the angler, not only in perch, chub, pike, barbel, dace, roach, gudgeon, and other common fish, but also in trout. He speaks of the Lea meadows as flowery above the average, and even of the milkmaids of the neighbourhood as prettier and more charming than their sisters in other parts; but in this last respect he probably mixed up too much of the poet with the philo sopher. His serene heart, in fact, is ever going out in admiration of the clear stream in its shallows, pools, and flowery banks; the shady trees, the odorous honeysuckle, the green pastures, the disporting of the lambs, the hum of the bee, the clouds and sky, and the song of the linnet and the lark, the blackbird and thrush. "The book," writes its reviewer, "will ever be a favourite with all that love virtue and angling,' as did its author, who was at peace with himself and all creation excepting otters." Yet, in spite of this, Byron could write of Walton reproachfully in the following couplet"That quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet Should have a hook and a small trout to pull it." Rennie, in one of his notes on the "Complete Angler," tells a good story anent this river. An old river Lea angler being daily seen in one particular spot hereabouts, a brother angler conceived that the place must be the resort of abundance of fish, and therefore commenced his operations there one summer morning before daybreak. The usual attendant of the place arrived some hours after, and threw in his line. After a long silence, the first-comer remarked that he was out of luck, not having caught a single fish in this hole, which he had noticed to be such a favourite with his brother of the rod. "Sir," replied the old stager, I confess that long custom has made me very partial to the spot; but as for fish, I assure you that here I have angled regularly for forty years, and have never had a bite as yet!" The "Jolly Anglers" inn, at Lea Bridge, a little to the east of Upper Clapton, is of itself sufficient to indicate that the stream hereabouts is largely frequented by the lovers of Walton's "gentle art." It is also, during the summer months, much frequented for the purposes of bathing and boating, and the number of fatal accidents arising from the unskilful management of small craft by youths who can neither row nor swim is lamentably great. "It will not be long ere we shall be at Tottenham High Cross; and when we come thither, I will make you some requital of your pains."-Izaak Walton. The Division of the Parish into Wards-Extent and Boundaries of the Parish-Early History of Tottenham-The Manor owned by King David Bruce of Scotland-Other Owners of the Manor-The Village of Tottenham-The Hermitage and Chapel of St. Anne-The "Seven Sisters"-The Village Green-The High Cross-The River Lea at Tottenham-Bleak Hall-Old Almshouses-The "George and Vulture' -The Roman Catholic Chapel of St. Francis de Sales - Bruce Castle-The Parish Church-The Chapel and Well of St. Loy-Bishop's Well-White Hart Lane-Wood Green-Tottenham Wood-Concluding Remarks. WE descend the sloping ground to the north of Stamford Hill, and following the roadway-the river Lea running parallel with our course through the green fields on our right-we soon enter the village of Tottenham. This village, or, as it is generally called, Tottenham High Cross, is de scribed at some length in the "Ambulator" (1774). It is stated that "the present Duke of Northumberland and the late Lord Coleraine had seats here; and there are also a great number of pretty houses belonging to the citizens of London." The parish of Tottenham is very extensive, or, at all events, was so, until sundry ecclesiastical districts were formed out of it. It was divided into four "wards,” thus enumerated in the "Ambulator:"-" 1. Nether Ward, in which stands the parsonage and vicarage; 2. Middle Ward, comprehending Church End and Marsh Street; 3. High Cross Ward, containing the hall, the mill, Page Green, and the High Cross; 4. Wood Green Ward, which comprehends all the rest of the parish, and is considerably bigger than the three other wards put together." Bedwell, in his "History of Tottenham," describes the parish as being nearly fifteen miles in circumference. "It is divided," he writes, "on the east, from Walthamstow, in Essex, by the river Lea; on the north it meets the parish of Edmonton; on the west it is bounded by Hornsey and Friern-Barnet; and on the south by Hackney and Stoke Newington. The western division is watered by the circuitous progress of the New River; and a little brook, termed the Mosell, which rises at Muswell Hill, passes through the village, and shortly unites with a branch of the Lea." 549 Simon, from whom the king took away the estate and gave it to David, the son of Malcolm III., King of Scotland, who then married Simon's mother Maud. Their son Henry, their grandson Malcolm, and their great-grandson William the Lion, held it until the last joined Prince Henry against his father, Henry II., who ejected William, and restored it to its rightful owner Simon; but after his death the king gave it back to William, and he to his brother David, who then took the title of Earl of Huntingdon. On his death the manor probably fell to the share of his second daughter Isabel, who married the father of Robert Bruce, the competitor with John Baliol for the crown of Scotland, and afterwards king. It was he who made Tottenham his place of residence, and, as we shall presently see, gave the house the name of Bruce Castle, or rather, as it was then called, Le Bruses. On his revolt from Edward I. his property in England was forfeited, and came into the hands of the Crown. After this the manor was split up among different persons, to whom the king gave it in return for some service or other, but it appears that it never went down to the descendants of the owner, but always reverted to the Crown after his death. In the reign of Henry VI. we find that there were several lesser manors, which went by the following names :-Bruce's, Pembroke's, Mocking's, and Dawbeney's. These were named from their owners, and were held on condition that whenever the king went to war in person the owner should furnish him with a pair of silver spurs gilt. David Bruce, King of Scotland, having thus become possessed of this manor and church, the latter, after it had belonged to the Earls of Northumberland and Chester, was given to the monastery of the Trinity, in London; but King Henry VIII. granted it to William, Lord Howard of Effingham, who being afterwards attainted, it again reverted to the king, who thereupon granted it to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, to whom it still belongs. The first that we hear of Tottenham is in the reign of Edward the Confessor, when it formed part of the possessions of Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon. He took a prominent part in opposing the Norman invasion, but not long after he joined William, and married Judith, the niece of that king. From that time until his death, although he professed to be on William's side, still he was continually intriguing with the English, and a few years after his marriage he was betrayed by his wife and beheaded. Judith, however, was allowed to keep the manor of Tottenham, or, as it was then called, Toteham, on condition that she should pay to the king every year the value of five hides, equal to about 100 Norman In the "Beauties of England and Wales" it is shillings. There is a curious old record in the stated that the manor of Tottenham, after having Domesday Book which mentions this fact, and also been held for several generations by three distinct that the land consisted of ten carucates, or plough- families-and called respectively by the names of lands. A carucate is estimated at about 240 acres, the manor of Bruses (or Bruce), the manor of and thus the whole estate would be 2,400 acres. Baliols, and the manor of Pembrokes-was in the The value of the land, including a wood for 500 reign of Edward I. given to William Dawbeny, hogs and a weir worth 35., amounted to £25 15s."in consideration of his military services." King and three ounces of gold. After the death of Judith the manor passed to her daughter Maud, who married a Norman noble, Simon de St. Liz. He died in the reign of Henry I., leaving a son Henry VIII. gave the whole estate to Sir William The centre of Tottenham is occupied by a large triangular enclosure, called the Green. Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, from whose romance of the "Star Chamber" we have quoted in the previous chapter, introduces to our notice some of the rustic scenes which may have been witnessed here at the period at which the plot of his story is laid. The following are some of his remarks :— who made Tottenham their place of meeting when elms in a circle, with a walnut-tree in the middle. the Scottish queen came up from the North. The Of these trees we have given an illustration, when manors thus united have, it is stated, ever since describing the Seven Sisters' Road, which was that time passed through the same hands. Early named after them. It was traditionally asserted in the seventeenth century they were purchased by that a martyr had been burnt on the spot where Hugh, second Lord Coleraine, from whom they the trees were originally planted more than five descended to his next brother, the third lord, who hundred years ago; but the tradition wants verificompiled an essay towards a "History of Totten-cation. ham." His lordship's family name of Hanger may perhaps be still commemorated here by the name of Hanger Lane, though there is another possible derivation of the term from the hanging woods which fringed it. On the death of the third Lord Coleraine, the manor of Tottenham did not devolve upon his eccentric brother, the fourth and last lord, of whom we have already spoken in our account of Chalk Farm, but were bequeathed to a natural daughter of the third lord; but as the lady was an alien, the estates were escheated to the Crown. The lady, however, having married Mr. James Townsend, an alderman of London, the lands were subsequently granted to that gentleman, and have since changed hands by sale on several occasions. At Tottenham the first ambassador from the "Emperor of Cathair, Muscovia, and Russeland," who had been wrecked on the coast of Scotland, was met in 1556 by a splendid procession of the members of the Russia Company, then lately founded for carrying on traffic with that country. The main street of the village of Tottenham is formed of good houses, irregularly built, along each side of the great northern road, with a few smaller streets branching off at right angles on either hand. The situation is unpleasingly flat, and the buildings for the most part straggling and unequal, yet partaking little of a rural character. On the east side of High Street, and at a short distance southward from the Cross, stood formerly the Hermitage and Chapel of St. Anne. It was a small square building, constructed chiefly of brick, and had a narrow strip of ground annexed to it, stretching away along by the highway southward from the building to the "Seven Sisters." The "Hermitage" was a cell dependent on the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in London, and its site is now covered by the "Bull" public-house; whilst on the strip of ground mentioned above a row of houses has been erected called Grove Place. The "Seven Sisters," as we have already remarked, is the sign given to two public-houses at Tottenham. In front of that at Page Green, near the entrance of the village, were planted seven "Long before Jocelyn and his companion reached Tottenham, they were made aware, by the ringing of bells from its old ivy-grown church tower, and by other joyful sounds, that some festival was taking place there; and the nature of the festival was at once revealed as they entered the long straggling street, then, as now, constituting the chief part of the pretty little village, and beheld a large assemblage of country folk, in holiday attire, wending their way towards the Green for the purpose of setting up a May-pole upon it, and making the welkin ring with their gladsome shouts. All the youths and maidens of Tottenham and its vicinity, it appeared, had risen before daybreak that morning, and sallied forth into the woods to cut green boughs and gather wild flowers for the ceremonial. At the same time they selected and hewed down a tall, straight tree-the tallest and straightest they could find; and, stripping off its branches, placed it on a wain, and dragged it to the village with the help of an immense team of oxen, numbering as many as forty yoke. Each ox had a garland of flowers fastened to the tip of its horns; and the tall spar itself was twined round with ropes of daffodils, bluebells, cowslips, primroses, and other early flowers, while its summit was surmounted with a floral crown, and festooned with garlands, various-coloured ribands, kerchiefs, and streamers. The foremost yokes of oxen had bells hung round their necks, which they shook as they moved along, adding their blithe melody to the general hilarious sounds. When the festive throng reached the village, all its inhabitants-male and female, old and young-rushed forth to greet them; and such as were able to leave their dwellings for a short while joined in the procession, at the head of which, of course, was borne the Maypole. After it came a band of young men, armed with the necessary implements for planting the shaft in the ground; and after them a troop of maidens, bearing bundles of rushes. Next came the minstrels, playing merrily on tabor, fife, sackbut, rebec, and tambourine. Then followed the Queen of the May, walking by herself—a rustic beauty, hight Gillian Greenford-fancifully and prettily arrayed for the occasion, and attended, at a little distance, by Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the hobby-horse, and a band of morrisdancers. Then came the crowd, pell-mell, laughing, shouting, and huzzaing-most of the young men and women bearing green branches of birch and other trees in their hands. "The spot selected for the May-pole," he adds, "was a piece of greensward in the centre of the village, surrounded by picturesque habitations, and having on one side of it the ancient cross. The latter, however, was but the remnant of the antique structure, the cross having been robbed of its upper angular bar, and otherwise mutilated, at the time of the Reformation, and it was now nothing more than a high wooden pillar, partly cased with lead to protect it from the weather, and supported by four great spurs." 551 cross speedily afterwards sank to decay, for at the Bedwell, in speaking of the "Eleanor crosses," does not venture to assert that this is one of the series, but remarks that "it was against the corps should come thro' the towne re-edified and peradventure raised higher." It will be remembered by the reader of Izaak Walton's "Complete Angler" how, in the opening scene, "Piscator" cries out to his friends "Venator" and "Auceps," who are on their way to the On the eastern side of the street, not far from the centre of the village, and close by the northeast angle of the Green, stands the high cross, whence this particular "ward" or division of the parish receives its second name. The structure forms a very interesting feature in the antiquities of Tottenham. Lysons, in his "Environs of London," states that "the hie crosse" is mentioned in a Court Roll, dated 1456; and Norden, in his "Speculum Britanniæ" (1593-1620), says, "Tottenham High Cross was a hamlet belonging to Totten-"Thatched House," in Hodsden, “You are well ham, and hath this adjunct High Cross of a wooden cross there lately raised on a little mound of earth." Bedwell, in his history of the parish, written in 1631, describes the appearance of the cross some fifty years previously as "a columne of wood, covered with a square sheet of leade to shoote the water off every way, underset by four spurres." He adds: "There hath been a cross here of long continuance, even so long as since that decree was made by the Church that every parish should in places most frequented set up a cross, but whether it were such at the first as afterwards it is manifest it was I much doubt of, for that it hath been of an extraordinary height, and from thence the towne gained the addition of alta crucis."* Notwithstanding the preservatives spoken of by Bedwell, the * "A Brief Description of the Towne of Tottenham High Cross, in things as are there to be seen and observed; collected, digested, and written by William Bedwell, Pastor of the parish, 1631." Middlesex, together with an historical narrative of such memorable overtaken, gentlemen. A good morning to you. I have stretched my legs up Tottenham Hill to overtake you, hoping your business may occasion. you towards Ware;" and how "Auceps," in reply, agrees to bear him company as far as Theobalds, at Cheshunt. In fact, the long street of Tottenham is the direct road not only to Theobalds, but to Enfield and Edmonton, and so on to Ware and Hatfield. On reaching Tottenham Cross, "Piscator" thus addresses his fellows, "Venator" and the "Scholar :" "And pray let us now rest ourselves in this sweet shady arbour, which Nature herself has woven with her own fine fingers; it is such a contexture of woodbines, sweet-briars, jessamine, and myrtle, and so interwoven as will secure us both from the sun's violent heat and from the approaching shower. And being sat down, I will requite a part of your courtesies with a bottle of sack, milk, oranges, and sugar, which, all put together, make a drink like arbours, overgrown with jessamine, sweetbriars, and decked with all gay flowers-these are the matemyrtle, to say the least, a little overdrawn. Almost every illustrated edition of the "Complete Angler" has an engraving of a fishery and ferry here, called "Bower Banks ;" and no wonder, for the river Lea, as it flows by Tottenham, is very charming, especially in its old course about the Mill. The author of "Rambles by Rivers" thus sketches the scene at this point:-" An old pollard willow, with an angler under its shadow rials of the picture; and he who has not his heart gladdened as he gazes on them, has yet to learn that there are things in heaven and earth not dreamt of in his philosophy. Walton was not one of these: 'The meanest flow'ret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, |