§4 THE BATH ROAD 



The Earl of Berkeley seems to have been somewhat 

 unduly twitted about this encounter. Society was 

 quite resigned to seeing highwaymen hanged, although 

 it made heroes of them while they were waiting in the 

 "stone jug" at Newgate for that fatal morning at 

 Tyburn ; but it appears to have considered the shoot- 

 ing of one of them an unsportsmanlike act. 



Lord Chesterfield, however, should have been quite 

 the last man to sneer at the Earl on this score, for he 

 himself was under a very well-deserved public censure 

 for having prosecuted l)r. Dodd, his son's tutor, for 

 forgery, with the result that the Doctor was hanged. 

 Accordingly, when he sarcastically asked Lord Berkeley 

 "how many highwaymen he had shot lately," it is 

 pleasing to record that he was readily reduced to 

 silence by the retort, " As many as you have hanged 

 tutors ; but with much better reason for doing so." 



XIV 



It is just beyond Cranford Bridge that the pumps 

 which are so odd a feature of the Bath Road begin. 

 They line the highway on the left-hand side going 

 from London, and are all situated in the same position 

 as shown in the illustration. They are of uniform 

 pattern, and are placed at regular intervals. These 

 pumps are relics of the coaching age, but are peculiar 

 to the Bath and some stretches of the Exeter roads. 

 Placed here for keeping the highway well watered in 

 the old days of road-travel, they have evidently long 



