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overflowed its banks, and swept away all the frail wooden and thatched tenements of which they were composed. After this calamity, when the town was rebuilt, dams and weirs were constructed in the river to guard against future inundations, from which weirs Camden supposes it took its name of Ware; but "the nourrice of antiquitie," so seldom wrong, was wrong in this instance, as a reference to Domesday Book will show. It is now a busy, comfortable, substantial-looking place, well attended by "brothers of the angle," who love the stream by which it stands, and think with reverence upon the name of old Walton, whenever they "stretch their legs over Tottenham Hill towards Ware upon a fine, fresh, May morning."

From Ware to Hoddesdon, the New River runs within a very short distance of the Lea. Hoddesdon is a small place, chiefly famous for a curious fountain that has long stood in the market-place, and alluded to by Prior in his ballad of Down Hall. Down Hall itself, whither the poet retired, after he was discharged from prison, at the close of the year 1717, is in this neighbourhood, standing upon one of the tributary rivulets that feed the Lea near Harlow, where Locke is buried. He was

wearied of the ups and downs of politics, and, if we may believe him, found in his retirement more peace and happiness than he had ever known before; as he himself sings

The remnant of his days he safely past,

Nor found they lagged too slow, nor flew too fast.
He made his wish with his estate comply,
Joyful to live, yet not afraid to die!

This was the true philosophic frame of mind, but he did not live long to encourage himself in it. His health failed him in his darling seclusion, and he died in 1721. Of Hoddesdon and its inn, the Bull, still existing to receive the traveller, Prior makes the following mention in his ballad of Down Hall, wherein he ludicrously details his adventures on going to take possession of the snug villa which the kindness of his patron Harley provided for his declining years.

Into an old inn did their equipage roll,

At a town they call Hoddesdon, the sign of the Bull,
Near a nymph with an urn that divides the highway,
And into a puddle throws mother of tea.

Down, down, Derry down.

"Come here, my sweet landlady, pray, how d'ye do?
Where is Cicely so cleanly, and Prudence and Sue?
And where is the widow that dwelt here below?
And the ostler that sung about eight years ago?

Down, down, Derry down.

"And where is your sister, so mild and so dear,
Whose voice to the maids like a trumpet was clear ?"
By my troth," she replies, "you grow younger, I think;
And pray, Sir, what wine does the gentleman drink?

66

Down, down, Derry down.

Why, now let me die, Sir, or live upon trust,

If I know to which question to answer you

first.

Why things since I saw you most strangely have varied, The ostler is hang'd, and the widow is married.

Down, down, Derry down.

"And Prue left a child for the parish to nurse,
And Cicely went off with a gentleman's purse;
And as to my sister, so mild and so dear,
She has lain in the church-yard full many a year."
Down, down, Derry down.

"Well, peace to her ashes, what signifies grief?
She roasted red veal, and she powdered lean beef;
Full well she knew how to cook up a fine dish,
For tough were her pullets, and tender her fish."
Down, down, Derry down.

"For that matter, Sir, be ye squire, knight, or lord,
I'll give you whate'er a good inn can afford.

I should look on myself as unhappily sped,
Did I yield to a sister or living or dead!"

Down, down, Derry down.

As ample, it would be unkind to say, similar, -accommodation is still to be found at this ancient inn; which the traveller may perhaps feel an additional motive for patronizing, when he remembers that it ever boasted so illustrious

a guest as the author of the "Nut Brown Maid," and if he finds better fare than Prior did, so much the greater will be his satisfaction. The Thatched Inn, another old hostelrie, alluded to by Walton, has disappeared, no one knows how long ago. In the original edition of the "Complete Angler," Piscator replies to Venator, "that he knew the Thatched House very well, for he often made it his resting-place to taste a cup of ale there, for which liquor that place was very remarkable." It has been supposed, that a thatched cottage, once known by the sign of the Buffalo's Head, at the further end of Hoddesdon, towards Ware, was the house alluded to; but doctors differ upon the subject, and there is no certain light to guide the steps of the reverential angler.

The Rye-House, so called from its contiguity to the house of the same name, famous in the annals of Charles II, is the favourite resort of the anglers of the present day.

The Rye-House, not the little inn of which we have given the opposite view, but the old edifice, tenanted in Charles II.'s time by Rumbold, the maltster, has a melancholy celebrity in English history, and its name conjures up affecting remembrances of the good lives, and untimely deaths, of Russell and Sidney, the martyrs of liberty. Rumbold the maltster, and

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other weak or bad men, who were bound up in one common discontent, with the wise and good, against the misgovernment of Charles II. and the intrigues of his brother James, were no doubt concerned in a plot against the King's life; but Sidney and Russell were never proved to have taken part in it. The house stood on the high road to Newmarket, and Rumbold, the tenant, thought how easily the King might be shot there on his way to the races, whither he went once a year. "He laid a plan of his farm before some of the conspirators," says Hume," and showed them how easy it would be, by overturning a cart, to stop at that place the King's coach; while they might fire upon him from the hedges, and

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