THE EARLY DAYS OF 



^lidw, the Saxons employed their time, and who was the kingf that 

 made this place his home, and how far his sovereign rule extended. 



And going further back, we should like to read some record of 

 those days, when the Georgics formed our farmers' vade mecum, and 

 when the soldier, who came here for an evening stroll from the 

 Roman Camp close by, talked Latin with a purer accent and greater 

 ease, than even the college tutor who adorns our village now. 



How eagerly we should listen to a diary kept by that still older 

 race which worshipped at the Rollright Stones, perched on the 

 summit of a neighbouring hill; for we should like to hear about their 

 sacrifices, and whether our village supplied any of their victims; and 

 where the Druids got their supply of mistletoe, as none grows in 

 the neighbourhood now. 



Of the ancient inhabitants of our village, so far back, it may be 



said : 



Their bones are dust, 

 Their swords are rust, 

 Their souls are with the saints — we trust. 



But before them, there appears to have lived a race, whose weapons 

 have defied the mouldering hand of time ; whose flint arrow-heads 

 and axes are now ploughed up, fresh as the day when they left the 

 cunning hand which made them ; to slay their fellow-men of 

 course, and also to do battle with the Mammoths, whose fossil 

 bones were found by cartloads, when the cutting which divides my 

 farm into two portions, was dug out by the navvies who made our 

 railroad. 



Wandering further up the stream of time ; what an eager crowd 

 of savants would assemble to hear a true and faithful history of that 

 huge boulder, which gives the name of " Great Stone " to one of my 

 fertile fields, and the time when many thousand feet of ice and snow 

 covered our village site. 



t In Doomsday book this village is called Canyngeham or King's home, and to the present day a residence 

 here is usually accounted so delightful, that the inhabitants are supposed to feel despondent, when out of 

 sight of the church tower. My old friend, Master Beauchamp, whose brief military career is mentioned in 

 another chapter, went a step further, for as he leant on his shepherd's crook beneath the trees on the village 

 green, he was wont to declare, that he would sooner be Aw«^ ai Kingkam than die a natural death elsewhere, 



