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Bow

of Henry I, to whom London and its vicinity were indebted for many other good works. She also built the bridge at Channel Lea, and bestowed a considerable sum for making and repairing the road between the two. Bridge long enjoyed the distinction of being the oldest stone bridge in England, and from its curved form, acquired the name, which was afterwards extended to the village beside it. London Bridge was not built of stone till about one hundred years afterwards.

Bromley-le-Bow, named from the same bridge, is the last of the pleasant villages that ornament the Lea, which is then lost amid the ship-yards, manufactories, and long straggling outskirts of the shipping districts of the metropolis. Divided into several branches, aided by canals, polluted by gasworks, and other useful but unfragrant factories, it loses its character of a retired and rural stream. Its very name is taken from it at the end of its useful career, and it unites itself with the Thames, neglected and unhonoured, under the name of Bow Creek.

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CHAPTER VII.

Shooter's Hill; its Robberies and Murders.

Henry VIII.

and his May Games. Charlton. Horn Fair. - King

John and the Miller's Wife.

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NCE more upon the Thames, we see the woody eminence of Shooter's Hill, castle-crowned, rising boldly to the right, and remaining visible for many miles, the most beautiful and most prominent object in the view. It was once in contemplation to build a town upon its summit, and a finer site could not have been selected either for pleasure or traffic. The lovely views it would have commanded up and down the Thames, northward over Essex, and Southward over the green vales of Kent, recommended it for the first, and its situation on the great Dover Road, would have made it very advantageous for the second. The project how

ever fell to the ground for want of encourage

ment.

Early in the sixteenth century a beacon was erected on the hill, to aid the navigation of the river, and a watch was appointed to guard the hill itself, which had from a very early age been notorious as the resort of highwaymen. Travellers were constantly robbed and murdered in its thickets; and in the reign of Richard II. orders were issued that the trees and underwood on each side of the road should be cut down, in order that they might not afford shelter to the freebooters. But still the place preserved its bad name, and in an old play of the time of Elizabeth, it is called the Hill of Murder. This name, however, was probably bestowed upon it, not so much for its assassinations committed by freebooters, as for a murder which had a love story for its foundation, and which excited much interest in the year 1573. One George Browne, enamoured of Mrs. Sanders, the wife of a wealthy merchant of London, determined to kill the husband that he might enjoy the wife; and being encouraged by the latter, and by another woman nained Drury, he lay in wait for him on Shooter's Hill, where it was expected he would pass, on his return to London from

St. Mary's Cray. The merchant, accompanied by his servant, passed the fatal hill at the expected time, and Browne, aided by a fellow named Roger Clements, or "trusty Roger," as the confederates called him, set upon them with daggers, and left them both apparently lifeless in the thicket. The poor merchant never breathed again; but his servant, though pierced with eleven wounds, revived a little in the freshness of the morning, and crawled to the nearest house on the road to Woolwich, where he gave information of his master's murder. All the accomplices were shortly afterwards arrested. The two women and " trusty Roger" were hanged at Smithfield, and Browne on a high gallows erected on the spot where his crime had been committed. The bad character of Shooter's Hill clung to it, and deservedly, long after the time of Elizabeth. In the reign of James I. it was said of the numerous thieves by whom Kent was infested, that they robbed at Shooter's Hill as if by prescription. No great improvement took place until the year 1739, when an act of Parliament was passed to widen the road over the hill. It is still a lonely spot, where thieves might find convenient shelter.

But the history of Shooter's Hill is not

wholly composed of incidents of robbery and murder. Many of its associations are of a pleasanter character. Hither came the princes of the House of Tudor and all their court "amaying;" and here for a time resided the rural poet Bloomfield. Hollinshed, and after him Strutt, have described the May festival of Henry VIII, in the days of his hot youth, upon the hill. The plan of the games was devised by the officers of his guards, who, to the number of two hundred, clothed all in Lincoln green, like Robin Hood and his men of old, waited for him at the bottom of the ascent. The captain of the guard played the part of Robin Hood, and had his Little John, his Friar Tuck, and his Maid Marian, all in their appropriate costume. The King, riding from Greenwich with his Queen Catharine of Arragon, and a brilliant assemblage of the handsomest youths and maidens of his court, was accosted by Robin Hood, who begged permission to show him the skill of his followers in archery. Permission having been granted, the sports commenced, and the foresters drew the cloth-yard shaft, and shot their arrows thick and strong, until the King had seen enough. Robin Hood then invited him to come into the merry green wood, and see

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