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was the theatre of some encounters, though none of much consequence. Soon after the battle of Edgehill, Rupert was defeated in a skirmish here. After the "battle of Brentford," the Royal army for awhile occupied Kingston; and it was here that the last feeble effort was made to revive the Royal cause. When the King was a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, and the Royalist troops were every where disbanded, the Earl of Holland, the Duke of Buckingham, and his brother, Lord Francis Villiers, succeeded in collecting about six hundred men. They made this town their head-quarters, and issued addresses to the citizens of London, calling upon them to arise, and rescue their sovereign. The Parliament, as soon as it heard of the rising, despatched some troops of horse from Windsor against them. A skirmish ensued on Surbiton Common, just outside Kingston, when the Royalists were speedily routed; Villiers was slain, Holland was taken shortly afterwards, but Buckingham escaped.

Norbiton and Surbiton-corruptions, as is believed, of North and South Barton (or demesne)— are hamlets attached to Kingston; they contain some good residences, but have no claim to separate notice. Surbiton, since the opening of the SouthWestern Railway, has become quite a village of villas. Kingston is joined to Hampton Wick by a neat stone bridge, erected a few years back, at an expense of 40,0007. The bridge whose place it supplied was one of the oldest on the river.

From Kingston the Thames flows on pleasantly enough to Teddington, a little quiet out-of-the-way village that has remained for the last quarter of a century unaltered, while every other place around

it has been in course of constant mutation. Somehow it appeared to get, year by year, more isolated; neither railway nor pier came nigh it, hardly a new house was erected in it or an old one modernized, and the fields remained unencroached upon by cot or villa. Within the last few months, however, a railway has been brought within a mile or two of it, but whether it will effect any change remains to be seen. It is the last thoroughly rural sequestered village we shall find on this side of London. A few anglers repair thither during the fishingseason, and it is the halting-place of a good many pleasure-parties, who "in sweet summer time row their boats as far as the lock: but else its quiet is little disturbed even by visitors. The village contains, with many little shops, some good houses. The church is a brick building of small pretensions and little beauty. Teddington lock is the first on the Thames, and the tide, which flows but feebly for some miles lower, is here finally arrested. The little village, with the broad sheet of foaming water that rushes over the weir, looks extremely pretty from the river.

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Teddington has had many inhabitants who have been celebrated in their day, and in very different ways. Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester occupied a house here. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was resident in Teddington in 1688; the letter which he wrote in that year, in order to clear himself from the charge of being a Papist, was dated from this place. It may appear singular to those who know him only by common fame, that such a suspicion should for a moment have rested on his drab coat; but there was abundant reason for it. He had been a busy and pliant tool of

James's, and even he must have thought that Penn could have no strong antipathy to the creed, when he selected him as the proper person to endeavour to persuade the fellows of Magdalene College to admit the Roman Catholic president, whom the King had nominated. With the general and violent feeling that then prevailed, it is not wonderful that Penn should be regarded with jealousy. Long after the Revolution, he continued to be suspected of being a disguised Catholic, as well as of being concerned in plots for the restoration of his old master. The excellent Dr. Stephen Hales, celebrated alike as divine, naturalist, and philanthropist, ought to be mentioned as having once held the curacy of Teddington, if only on account of his having built the tower of the church and repaired the north aisle, chiefly at his own expense. He lived here for above fifty years, and now lies under the church tower. Paul Whitehead, worthless alike as poet and man, lived during the latter part of his life at Teddington. His body was interred in the church -with the exception of his heart, which, as already mentioned, was put in an urn and carried to High Wycombe, where it was deposited, with a curious mixture of Christian and heathen ceremonies, in the mausoleum of his worthy patron, Lord le Despencer. "Pretty Peg Woffington" is another She too lies in the

of the Teddington notables. church or churchyard.

A short distance below Teddington stands a neat cottage, once well known, where

"There lived a laughter-loving dame,

A matchless actress-Clive her name.'

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Mrs. Kitty Clive, as the reader of Boswell will

remember, was capable of pleasing off the stage as well as on-and also of being pleased. "Clive, Sir, is a good thing to sit by; she always understands what you say," was the great moralist's opinion of Kitty; while she used to say of him, “I love to sit by Dr. Johnson, he always entertains

one.

"This then is Little Strawberry Hill, Mr. Rambler?"

It is, good reader; and these are Twickenham Meads. For thus plodding slowly onwards, we have arrived at length at a place familiar by name to every one who has looked into the literature of the last century, and whose fame will last as long as the language in which it has been celebrated. The Parish Register of Twickenham, written about 1758,' by one who has contributed (after Pope) most largely to its renown, will save us the enumeration of many names, and be more agreeable to the reader than dry prose. Walpole's lines are not generally known to the present generation of readers; they are a choice sample of his courtly

taste:

"Where silver Thames round Twit'nam meads
His winding current sweetly leads;
Twit nam, the Muses' fav'rite seat,
Twit'nam, the Graces' lov'd retreat;
There polish'd Essex* wont to sport,
The pride and victim of a court.
There Bacon tun'd the grateful lyre
To soothe Eliza's haughty ire.
-Ah, happy had no meaner strain
Than friendship's dash'd his mighty vein!
Twit'nam, where Hyde,† majestic sage,
Retir'd from folly's frantic stage,

* Rob. Devereux, Earl of Essex.
+ Lord Clarendon

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