' Where King Charles once slept* 69 



liked. The story was a rambling narrative of an amour 

 in some foreign country. The lady, to conceal a meeting 

 with her paramour, which took place in the presence of 

 her son, who was an imbecile (or, in her own words, had 

 * no more sense than God gave him ' a common country 

 expression for a fool), went upstairs and rained raisins on 

 him from the window. The son told the husband what 

 had happened ; but, asked to specify the time, could only 

 fix it by, ' When it rained raisins.' This was supposed to 

 be merely a fresh proof of his imbecility, and the lady 

 escaped. 



In this imperfect narrative is there not a distorted 

 version of a chapter in the ' Pentameron ' ? But how did 

 it get into the mind of an illiterate old woman in an out- 

 of-the-way village ? Nothing yet of Waterloo, Culloden, 

 Sedgmoor, or the Civil War ; but in the end an old man 

 declared that King Charles had once slept in an old house 

 just about to be pulled down. But then ' King Charles ' 

 slept, according to local tradition, in most of the old 

 houses in the country. However, I resolved to visit the 

 place. 



Tall yew hedges, reaching high overhead, thick and 

 impervious, such as could only be produced in a hundred 

 years of growth and countless clippings, enclosing a green 

 pleasaunce, the grass uncut for many a year, weeds over- 

 running the smooth surface on which the bowls once rolled 

 true to their bias. In the shelter of these hedges, upon 

 the sunny side, you might walk in early spring when the 

 east wind is harshest, without a breath penetrating to chill 

 the blood, warm as within a cloak of sables, enjoying that 

 peculiar genial feeling which is induced by sunshine at 

 that period only, and which is somewhat akin to the sense 

 of convalescence after a weary illness. Thus, sauntering 



