Eltham

“ Having been restored to the royal favour by Edward II. who made him lord of the Isle of Man, the bishop died at Eltham on the 3rd of March 1311. A man of great courage and energy, chaste and generous, Bek was remarkable for his haughtiness and ostentation. Both as a bishop and as a private individual he was very wealthy, and his household and retinue were among the most magnificent in the land. He was a soldier and a hunter rather than a bishop, and built castles at Eltham and elsewhere. ”

“ His festivities rivalled those of Richard the Second. Here his daughter Bridget, afterwards a nun of Dartford, was born. Henry the Seventh was another builder: he stayed at Eltham often. Henry the Eighth came here once at least, but he preferred Greenwich as a residence as soon as that house was built. Elizabeth also came here only once or twice, preferring Greenwich, and James the First is only recorded to have visited Eltham once. After this time Eltham ceased{93} to be a Palace. In 1646 Robert Earl of Essex died here [1] ; the Manor was sold after Charles's death. ”

“ In the year 1270 Henry III. kept Christmas at his Palace of Eltham with the Queen and his nobles. After this the name of Anthony Bec, Bishop of Durham and Patriarch of Jerusalem, is connected with the place. He built a great{91} deal, but I know not if any ruins of his yet remain. He died at Eltham in 1311, presumably in the Palace, for there seem to have been no other buildings. Now we come back to the kings, and we find historical associations in plenty, though not of a kind which is moving or interesting. ”

“ Elm street, Gray’s Inn lane.‡
Elstree, a village in Hertfordshire, situated on an eminence, within a mile of Stanmore, and in the road from Watford to High Barnet. It is also called Eaglestree, Illstree, and Idlestree.
Eltham, a town in Kent, seven miles from London in the road to Maidstone. Here a palace was built by Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, who bestowed it upon Queen Eleanor, the wife of Edward I. King Edward II. constantly resided in this place, and his son being born here, was on that account called John of Eltham. ”

“ Lord Egremont, a younger son of the Earl of Soho, controlled large amounts of railway stock, and it was said held a mortgage on the family castle. To prove to his father and mother that no law of primogeniture could disinherit him, appeared to George Eltham an object worth striving for.
With these thoughts simmering in his heart he met Antony Hallam at Oxford. They speedily became friends. Antony wanted money also. But in him the craving arose from a more domineering ambition. He wished to rule men, to be first every-where. ”

“ By his will, dated 11 Sept. 1680, after devising certain premises to Clare Hall, Cambridge, for establishing two Kentish fellowships, he left his houses in the town of Eltham and a field (sold in 1866 to the commissioners of woods and forests for 650l.) to the Clothworkers' Company to establish six almshouses for four people from Eltham and two from Chislehurst, allowing them 5l. each a year. ”

“ I will build a house far larger and more splendid than this. There shall be a Lord Hallam, an Earl Hallam, perhaps. Gold will buy any thing that is in the market.”
“Get thee out o’ my sight! And I’ll tell Lord Eltham varry plainly what I think o’ his meddling in my affairs. ”

“ The front door was open. A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and something else. Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed. He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
"The man is mad!" he snapped. "Heaven knows what lurks there! He should not have gone alone!"
Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern. The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly. Stumbling over stumps and lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergyman knelt amongst the bushes. ”

“ EFFIGY OF JOHN OF ELTHAM.
[Pg 59]
His downfall was the sign for a new outbreak in Scotland. Bruce broke the thirteen years' truce; and the boy-king, Edward the Third, marched against him only to meet with fresh disaster. The tide of fortune however was turning. Isabella and her favorite were fast becoming [Pg 60] odious to the nation; and in 1330 Edward, the future conqueror of Cressy, with his own hands arrested Mortimer at Nottingham, whence he was hurried to execution. The Queen-mother went into lifelong seclusion at Castle Rising in Norfolk ”

“ Another suburb in close touch with Eltham is Mottino-ham that retains more of its rural character than either {125} Lee or Lewisham; and not far away are the still pretty villages of Rushey Green, Catford, and Catford Bridge. More celebrated than any of these, however, is the important settlement of Chislehurst, that, owing chiefly to the exceptional beauty of its situation on a lofty common, defended from encroachment by a natural rampart of woods, seems likely to be able long to defy the levelling influences which have spoiled so many of the districts of outlying London. ”

“ Here he leered at Edith. "I am much occupied with my mechanical studies in London, and am seldom at Eltham House. I hope you may be always able in your heart to do without me." He was standing leaning his misshapen, crooked body on his misshapen, crooked stick. He did not move his right hand from his waist, into which it was packed and driven by the weight of his body upon the handle of the stick. He put his long, lean, left, dark hand on his right breast, and bowed low by swinging himself to the right and downward on the crook of his stick. "Miss Grace will see, oh! ”

“ When he talked to Ethel—and the vicar's wife took good care that they should talk together a great deal—his conversation was of a sort that she seldom heard at Walton Magna. It was full of London and Oxford, of boat-races at Iffley and cricket matches at Lord's; of people and books whose very names Ethel had never heard—one of them was a Mr. Mill, she thought, and another a Mr. Aristotle—but which she felt vaguely to be one step higher in the [Pg 4] intellectual scale than her own level. ”

“ Elwood had burst out in defence—it was Miss Ethel May’s book, and should not be taken away—it was Miss Ethel as she looked to; and when it seemed that Mrs. Ledwich had said something disparaging of Miss Ethel, either as to youth, judgment, or doctrine, Mrs. Elwood had fired up into a declaration that “Miss Ethel was a real lady—that she was! and that no real lady would ever come prying into other folk’s work and finding fault with what wasn’t no business of theirs,” with more of a personal nature, which Flora could not help enjoying, even while she regretted it. ”

“ Pawle looked his young assistant over with an amused expression.
"You haven't the old practitioner's flair, Viner, my boy!" he said. "When one's got to my age, and seen a number of queer things and happenings, one's quick to see possible cases. Look here!—if Wickham was really Lord Marketstoke, and that girl across the hall is his daughter, she's probably—I say probably, for I don't know if the succession in this case goes with the female line—Countess of Ellingham, in her own right!" ”

“ Passing through a wild, grand, and picturesque country, they at length arrived in Virginia. At a day's distance from the place of destination, their little stock of provisions gave out. At noon they reached a house, and begged for some dinner; but all assistance was denied them, with many imprecations upon the royalists. "Seizing some maize, I begged our hostess to give me some of it to make a little bread. She replied that she needed it for her black people. 'They work for us,' she added, 'and you come to kill us.' Captain Edmonstone offered to pay her one or two guineas for a little wheat. ”

“ But certainly, though I have always been in good health, I never felt so well in my life as I do now. I feel as if some strong, divine elixir in my brains gave me a new sense of life. But I am talking too much of myself and my own sensations. What nonsense. Let us speak of something else. Young Ethel. I have a great respect for that gallant young officer, Elfie. And if your father comes to make us any sort of a long visit, I shall invite Ethel to stop at the parsonage, as he did during his last sojourn in Washington,” said Miss Rosenthal. ”

“ Why need you have feared it would be? We have no more right to force Ethel to do what is distasteful to her, than we should have to force it on ourselves," he added, turning to his wife. "You must see that, Sophia."
"But----" began Mrs. Castlemaine.
"No buts, as to this," he interrupted. "You are well able to pay and keep a governess--and, as Ethel justly observes, she would not be able to do anything with Flora. Miss Oldham could not do it. My opinion is, no governess ever will do it, so long as you spoil the child." ”

“ Like a good child who eats and digests what is given him, so Mr. Altham, even in his early manhood, had accepted life exactly as he found it, and had seldom wondered what it was all about, or what it was made of. ”

“ Ernescliffe, I should like you to say,” cried Ethel, “which do you think is the best, the name of it, or the thing?” Her eloquence always broke down with any auditor but her brother, or, perhaps, Margaret.
“Ethel!” said Norman, “how is any one to understand you? The argument is this: Ethel wants people to do great deeds, and be utterly careless of the fame of them; I say, that love of glory is a mighty spring.”
“A mighty one!” said Alan: “but I think, as far as I understand the question, that Ethel has the best of it.” ”

“ Elton returned, a very happy man. He had gone away rejected and mortified—disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He had gone away deeply offended—he came back engaged to another—and to another as superior, of course, to the first, as under such circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost. He came back gay and self-satisfied, eager and busy, caring nothing for Miss Woodhouse, and defying Miss Smith. ”

“ Meanwhile he was at work on an average three evenings in the week besides the Sunday. In West End drawing-rooms his personal gift had begun to tell no less than in this crowded, squalid East; and as his aims became known, other men, finding the thoughts of their own hearts revealed in him, or touched with that social compunction which is one of the notes of our time, came down and became his helpers. Of all the social projects of which that Elgood Street room became the centre, Elsmere was, in some sense, the life and inspiration. ”

“ He looked at Elsmere under his straight, black brows, imperiously. The youth felt the nervous tension in the elder man’s voice and manner, was startled by a confidence never before bestowed upon him, close as that unequal bond between them had been growing during the six months of his Oxford life, and plucking up courage hurled at him a number of frank, young expostulations, which really put into friendly shape all that was being said about Langham in his College and in the University. ”

“ Towards the end of 1722, Lord Altham—who had by this time picked up a mistress named Miss Gregory—removed to Dublin, and sent for his son to join him. He seemed very fond of the boy, and the woman Gregory for a time pretended to share in this affection, until she conceived the idea of supplanting him. She easily persuaded her weak-minded lover to go through the form of marriage with her, under the pretence that his wife was dead, took the title of Lady Altham, and fancied that some of her own possible brood might succeed to the title, for the estates were by this time well-nigh gone. ”

“ About sunrise, when it was announced that the British were coming, he went into the street and joined the people who were driving their cattle to Springfield. There he saw his father with a field-piece—a six pounder, which had formerly been used as an alarm piece. Thence the little boy proceeded to Bottle Hill, and found his second sister, Hannah, at the house of Mr. Sayre; and a day or two after, both the children set off on foot for Connecticut Farms, to see their mother. On their way, they were met by the nurse, Katy, with the two youngest children, in a chair belonging to Mr. Caldwell ”

“ A painful flush crossed Ethel's face; her eyelids dropped.
'You must not let this come between us, Ethel; it will make him more unhappy than he is, and I fear,' speaking still more gravely, 'that though he says so little about himself, that he must be very unhappy.'
Ethel tried ineffectually to control her emotion.
'I could not help it. You have no right to blame me, Mildred,' she said in a low voice.
'No, you could not help it! Who blames you, dear?—not I, nor Richard. It was not your fault, my poor Ethel, that you could not love your old playmate. ”

“ My Lord Elsingham, whom you met at dinner, is a peer of enormous wealth; he has just expressed himself greatly prepossessed in your favour. It rests with you to follow up this favourable impression, and he is your own—the coronet of a peeress will grace your temples. Your sister will, I trust, win the Duke; and in these two marriages we may defy fate itself. You, Helen, will prove my salvation! Do only but this, and the agony of the past will be compensated by the splendour of the future. ”

“ By his first wife, Margaret, daughter of Oliver Skinner, Altham had issue one child only, a son James, afterwards Sir James Altham of Oxhey, knight. This Sir James Altham married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Sutton of London, and had issue a boy, who died in infancy, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Frances. Elizabeth married Arthur Annesley, second Viscount Valentia and first Earl of Anglesey, whose second son, Altham Annesley, was created in 1680 Baron Altham of Altham, with limitation in default of male issue to his younger brothers. ”