336 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



shortest way for those riding post to reach Northampton- 

 shire, or the counties beyond its borders. 



Early then in the November of 1605, certain elaborate 

 preparations which had been made for rapid travelling 

 between London and Dunchurch, eighty miles down 

 in Warwickshire, was the common talk of ostlers and 

 loafers at the chief posting-houses at St. Albans, 

 Dunstable, Towcester, and Daventry. At each of these 

 places a Mr. Ambrose Rookwood, a young Catholic 

 gentleman of fortune, well known on the road for his 

 splendid horses, had placed heavy relays. The heaviness 

 of these relays excited continual discussion. The con- 

 fused rumour of the tap-room, fed by chance travellers 

 on the road, decreed presently that these heavy relays 

 were to carry Mr. Ambrose Rookwood down to a great 

 hunting party, to be shortly assembled at Dunsmoor. 

 But when this hunting party was to take place, no one 

 seemed to know, or why the young Catholic gentleman 

 should have made such elaborate preparations to reach 

 it so hurriedly. 



And so the few intervening days passed till the 5th of 

 November, 1605, dawned grayly over London — amidst 

 torrents of driving rain and wild gusts of a west wind 

 which had gathered strength as the night waned, and by 

 daylight had grown into a hurricane — dawned on a city 

 distracted. Narrow streets were already crowded with 

 excited groups, who whispered, gesticulated, at street 

 corners. Some men but half dressed rushed from their 

 houses as if the rumour of some monstrous imminent 

 doom had startled them suddenly from sleep. Others 

 with drawn swords in their hands counselled all men to 

 arm in one breath, and, as now and again a woman's 

 shriek rose above the press cried in another, that there 

 was no cause for fear. Consternation was everywhere, 

 — but no fixed rumour prevailed. Only each man eyed 

 his neighbour suspiciously, only a vague feeling as of 

 some nightmare had seized upon London that the past 

 darkness had brought forth a portent 



