1701/2 Jan. the 17. I began again the Reading of this Hebrew Bible (wʰ is the sixth time of reading it) may the Spirit of Holiness help me and graciously Enable me to peruse it again to the Glory of God, and to the sanctification of my sinful and im’ortal soul. Amen, Lord Jesus, Amen.
The last record of his reading appears thus:
1701. xxxiii. 8ᵇʳᵉ the 3rd. I finished the ψalms again by the mercy of my Savʳ.
The numerals for “thirty-three” appear to indicate his thirty-third reading.
The almshouses on the north side of the churchyard, their front facing the sun, are pleasant with old-fashioned gardens. They were built by Henry Seymour, who in 1669 purchased the Kederminster estates from the son of Sir John Kederminster’s daughter and heiress, who had married Sir John Parsons, sometime Lord Mayor of London. Thus, in less than forty years the Kederminster hopes faded away and the property passed into the hands of strangers.
DATCHET—RUNNYMEDE—WRAYSBURY—HORTON AND ITS MILTON ASSOCIATIONS—STAINES MOOR—STANWELL—LALEHAM AND MATTHEW ARNOLD—LITTLETON—CHERTSEY—WEYBRIDGE—SHEPPERTON.
By Datchet meads and the continuously flat shores of Runnymede, the river runs somewhat tamely, after the scenic climax of Windsor. The Datchet of Shakespearean fame it is, of course, hopeless to find. There is nothing Shakespearean in the prettily rebuilt village with suburban villas and railway level-crossing; and the ditch that used to be identified with that into which Falstaff was flung, “glowing hot, like a horseshoe, hissing hot,” has been covered over. At Old Windsor, the site of Edward the Confessor’s original palace, the little churchyard contains the tomb of Perdita Robinson, one of George the Fourth’s fair and foolish friends; and down by the riverside stands the old rustic inn, the Bells of Ouseley, whose sign puzzles ninety-nine of every hundred who behold it. Writers of books upon the Thames either carefully avoid doing more than mentioning the sign, or else frankly add that they do not understand what it means, or where Ouseley is—and small blame to them, for there is _not_ any place so-called. What is meant is “Oseney,” the vanished abbey of that name outside Oxford, whose bells were of a peculiar fame in that day.