152 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



his wife ; and in due course lost his way for three or 

 four miles about Cobham, at the very moment when he 

 was hoping to be seated at dinner at Guildford. 



In 1668 the Portsmouth and Guildford Machines left 

 London (as the South-Western Railway leaves it now, 

 but not quite so quickly) by Vauxhall, Battersea, 

 Wandsworth, and so on to Putney Heath ; and so the 

 route is marked in Carey's Itinerary. In more modern 

 times however the Portsmouth coaches felt it incumbent 

 upon them to appear (like everything else that was 

 fashionable) in Piccadilly, and, starting from the White 

 Bear, made the best of their way to Putney without 

 troubling to cross the Thames till they got there. 



Most of us connect Putney in our minds with the 

 Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, and attempts more or 

 ^less successful to see it ; but the place has a histor}- 

 other than an aquatic one — was indeed the birthplace of 

 two very celebrated men, and the scene of a third one's 

 death. At Putney was born Thomas Cromwell, black- 

 smith first of all, and afterwards, according to Mr. 

 P'roude, the most despotic minister who ever governed 

 I^ngland. " Fierce laws," writes the same picturesque 

 historian, " fiercely executed — an unflinching resolution 

 which neither danger could daunt, nor saintly virtue 

 move to mercy — a long list of solemn tragedies weigh 

 upon his memor)'. Be this as it will, his aim was noble." 

 He certainly made it hot for the monks, having no doubt 

 learned the lesson in very early days at his father's forge, 

 the site of which is still somewhat apocryphally pointed 

 out, south of the Wandsworth Road. 



At Putney also was born, " April 7th, O.S., in the year 

 one thousand seven hundred and thirty-.seven "^ — as he 

 writes it in that delightful autobiography, ^vhich will 

 always be read, I fear, in spite of Mr. Ruskin's thunders 

 — PLdward Gibbon, whom we have met already down the 

 Plxeter Road at Blandford, carousing and masquerading 

 as a militiaman. The house in which the future author 

 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was born 



