251 CHAPTER X. Spenser's Bridal of the Thames and Medway.-The Mutiny at the Nore. Sheerness and Queenborough. - The Legend of our Lady of Gillingham. M EDWAY, as Spenser sings, was by nature intended to pay tribute to Thames, but prefers rather to roll on its own course, an independent flood, only mingling with the mightier river in the embraces of the ocean, where the career of both is at an end, "like lovers, in their lives estranged, but in their death united." Long had the Thames, as we in records read Before that day, her wooéd to his bedde; Till now at last relenting, she to him was wedde. What reader of that old bard does not remember his gorgeous description of the bridal, the Thames attended by all his tributary streams, and the Medway by hers; the Bridegroom, That full fresh and jolly was, All decked in a robe of watchet hue, On which the waves glittering like crystal glass, Could weenen whether they were false or trew. He wore, that seemed strange to common view, And then the Bride, without the coronet of a royal city on her bank— The lovely Medua came, Clad in a vesture of unknowen geare And uncouth fashion, yet her well became, That seemed like silver sprinkled here and there, With glittering spangs, that did like stars appeare, And waved upon like water chamelot, To hide the metal; which yet every where Bewrayed itself, to let men plainely wot It was no mortal work that seemed and yet was not. Her goodly locks adown her back did flow From under which the dewy humour shed, But the place of their bridal, as the poet calls their confluence into the sea, has sterner recollections than such as these; for here took place, in 1797, that famous mutiny of the fleet, which spread so much alarm throughout the nation, occurring as it did, at a time when Europe was convulsed by the struggle of contending principles, and England was watched by jealous and powerful enemies, eager to take advantage of her weakness. The mutiny of the Nore will always render the confluence of the Thames and Medway a memorable spot in the annals of England. Sheerness, whose |