ROYAL VISITS 237 



compound word thus obtaiued meaniug " the Fortified 

 place at the Waters." 



To follow the fortunes of Akemauceaster, or Bath, 

 as it eventually became, through the Saxon period 

 to the present time would be an exercise too pro- 

 longed for these pages. That Kings and Princes 

 and ecclesiastics visited it then we know, and that 

 the Normans built a great Abbey church where the 

 present building of Bath Abbey stands is an easily 

 ascertainable foct ; but all the comings and goings of 

 the great ones of the earth during the succeeding 

 centuries would form Ijut a bald catalogue. It is 

 only when we come to the middle of the seventeenth 

 century that we need pick up the thread of the nar- 

 rative again, at the visits of the Queen of Charles the 

 First in 1644 ; of Charles the Second, the Duke and 

 Duchess of York, and Prince Rupert in IG60 ; the 

 Queen of James the Second, 1687 ; and the Princess 

 Anne, 1692; and as Queen Anne, 1702. Truly, a 

 brilliant list for such a small place as Bath then was. 



But these Royal visits did not greatly benefit the 

 place, as we may judge when we read that from 1592 

 to 1692, Bath had increased by only seventeen houses. 

 Why was this ? I conceive it to have been owing to 

 the extraordinary apathy of the people of Bath, who 

 had not provided the slightest accommodation for 

 those who then drank the waters, Of what use was 

 it for Sir Alexander Frayser, physician to Charles the 

 Second, sending all his patients hither instead of to 

 Continental health-resorts like Aix, if they had to 

 drink the waters at a pump standing on the open 

 pavement ? and imagine the delights of bathing when 



