THE DOVER ROAD 241 



" sit up." Upon which a bystander named Morris knocked 

 the personal currier down, and the window of the post- 

 chaise was pulled up, and the post-boy told to drive on 

 as quickly as possible. 



But I cannot leave Dartford without visiting Place 

 House, a delightful record of the Middle Ages, standing 

 in immediate juxtaposition to an iron foundry and a rail- 

 way station, and approached by a narrow lane rich in 

 black mud. We are indebted for Place House, as well 

 as for much that is picturesque in England, to the monks 

 — or rather in this case (I beg the ladies' pardon) to the 

 nuns. For the house, founded by Edward the Third, was 

 a priory of Augustinians to which all the noble ladies in 

 Kent, who had discovered that life is not worth a potato, 

 retired serenely from a tedious world. After the disso- 

 lution, Henry the Eighth saw in it a desirable residence 

 for Anne of Cleves — Place House indeed was one of the 

 first manors granted to this little-married but much 

 dowered lady. In after times the manor was given with 

 many others by James the First to Robert Cecil, in ex- 

 change for Theobalds (the Stuart king's Naboth's vine- 

 yard), and here its history ends ; but it* is a charming 

 place to feast the eyes upon still, and is best looked at 

 from the farmyard. 



There is nothing much now to see or describe in the 

 eight miles which separate Dartford from Gravesend. 

 Cardinal Wolsey however was down this part of the 

 Dover Road in 1527, with his usual Brobdingnagian reti- 

 nue. The cardinal in his prosperous days must have 

 been a deuce of a person to ask to one's country-house — 

 as Sir John Wilshyre, of Stone Place, discovered on this 

 identical occasion. For Stone Place was not big enough 

 for Wolsey's nine hundred followers, and so most of them 

 had to put up at Dartford, and Sir John had to pay 

 the bill. 



People now go to Gravesend to embark on the P. and O. 

 steamers for the uttermost parts of the earth, and so it is 

 still a busy place. But it was always busy even in the old 



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