are they more abundant than within an hour's walk of our
present locality. So, taking Ashley Park, Burwood Park, Pains Hill
and many others, as well as the Coway Stakes--said by one school of
antiquarians to have been planted in the Thames by Caesar, and by
another to be the relics of a fish-weir--Walton Church and Bradshaw's
house, for granted, we shall turn to the east and finish the purlieus
of Hampton with a glance at the old Saxon town of Kingston-on-Thames.
Probably an ardent Kingstonian would indignantly disown the impression
our three words are apt to give of the place. It is a rapidly--growing
town, and "Egbert, the first king of all England," who held a council
at "Kyningestun, famosa ilia locus," in 838, would be at a loss to
find his way through its streets could he revisit it. It has the
population of a Saxon county. Viewed from the massive bridge, with
the church-tower rising above an expanse of sightly buildings, it
possesses the least possible resemblance to the cluster of wattled
huts that may be presumed to have sheltered Egbert and his peers.

[Illustration: PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.]

A more solid memento of the Saxons is preserved in the King's
Stone. This has been of late years set up in the centre of the town,
surrounded with an iron railing, and made visible to all comers,
skeptical or otherwise. Tradition credits it with having been that
upon which the kings of Wessex were crowned, as those of Scotland down
to Longshanks, and after him the English, were on the red sandstone
palladium of Scone. From the list of ante-Norman monarchs said to
have received the sceptre upon it the poetically inclined visitor will
select for chief interest Edwy, whose coronation was celebrated in
great state in his seventeenth year. How he fell in love with and
married secretly his cousin Elgiva; how Saint Dunstan and his equally
saintly though not regularly beatified ally, Odo, archbishop of
Canterbury, indignant at a step taken against their fulminations and
protests, and jealous of the fair queen, tore her from his arms, burnt
with hot iron the bloom out of her cheeks, and finally put her
to death with the most cruel tortures; and how her broken-hearted
boy-lord, dethroned and hunted, died before reaching twenty,--is a
standing dish of the pathetic. Unfortunately, the story, handed down
to us with much detail, appears to be true. We must not accept it,
however, as an average illustration of life in that age of England.