6G THE BATH ROAD 



old-world air, can scarce be called picturesque. Tlie 

 huge sundial just mentioned, with its mis-spelled 

 legend, " So Fly's Life Away," gives it an interest, 

 and so does the record of how one Henry Colam was 

 arrested here one night toward the close of last century, 

 on the charge, " For that he did molest and threaten 

 certain of His Majesty's liege subjects upon the high- 

 way, in company with divers others, still at large." 

 Henry had, as a matter of fact, " with divers others," 

 attempted to rob the Bath Mail near this spot. He 

 failed in his enterprise, but Bow Street had him all 

 the same, and it does not require a very vivid 

 imagination to conjure up a picture of his end. 



Another old inn, which still stands at Turnham 

 Green, although greatly altered, has a history not to 

 be forgotten. 



At the " Old Pack Horse " (not by any means to be 

 confounded with the " Pack Horse and Talbot," a 

 (juarter of a mile nearer on the road to London) 

 assembled parties of the conspirators who, headed by 

 their two principals, named, oddly enough, Barclay 

 and Perkins,* plotted the assassination of King 

 William the Third, on February 15, 1G96. They 

 were authorized by the exiled James the Second 

 to do the deed, and had planned for forty of their 

 band to surround the King's carriage as he returned 

 from one of his weekly hunting expeditions from 

 Kensinoton Palace to Eichmond Park. His coach, 

 they knew, would pass along a narrow, morass-like 

 lane from the waterside on to Turnham Green, near 

 where the church now stands, and they were well 

 ■'• Stranger still, the chief informer -was named Porter. 



