A Hertfordshire Valley. 5 



none daring or caring to make you afraid. Or to vary your 

 experience you may take the canal towing-path, and trudge 

 over its loose' gravel until you heave a sigh of thankfulness 

 in Uxbridge, of which it was once said that the only thing 

 to be noticed respecting it was the house in which the 

 Commissioners appointed to arrange the litde differences 

 between Charles Stuart and his bristle-backed Parliament 

 sat fourteen days in conference, and never arrived at a 

 satisfactory conclusion after all. 



The first sight of Rickmansworth from the window of 

 your railway carriage is a very pleasant one, the taper spire 

 of the parish church rising out of the trees as one always 

 likes to see it rise in country places, where ecclesiastical 

 rooks and episcopal jackdaws like to claim a share in the 

 benefits which Church and State bestow upon the land. 

 There is a rare colony of these garrulous belfry haunters at 

 Rickmansworth, and sometimes the approach of the train, 

 though it is the slowest railway travelling in the kingdom, 

 sends them wheeling over spire and trees in noisy clouds. 



Very peaceable and — if I might say it without offence of 

 a town in which I have spent many happy hours — very 

 humdrum is Rickmansworth. Of course, like other old- 

 fashioned places with a history, it has had its excitements. 

 Take, as a specimen, the matter set forth on a timeworn 

 black-letter document in the British Museum, bearing date 

 1525 and beginning: "Be it knoun to all cryste people 

 which joyeth in theyr hartes of ye power of God shewed by 

 his own precyous body i fourme of brede in ye chyrche of 

 Rykmersworthe where wretched and cursed people cruelly 

 and wylfully set fyre upon all ye ymages." This was the 

 head and front of the offending, and the cardinal of the 

 period liberally offered indulgences to whomsoever would 

 aid in restoring the cremated effigies. Rickmansworth 



