his future proceedings. He was accordingly
invited to attend the next meeting of
the committee, which he did, and received
a three hours' drilling with great
composure. He promised to adopt all the
suggestions which were made, and to carry out
all the plans which were proposed. Walter
Joyce, who happened to be present, was
much amused at Mr. Bokenham's great
amiability and power of acquiescence, and
was about saying so to Mr. Byrne, who was
seated next him, when he was startled by
hearing the candidate say, in answer to a
question from one of the committee as to
whether any one was in the field on the
Tory side,

"Oh yes; an old gentleman named Creswell,
a retired manufacturer of great wealth
and position in those parts."

"Is he likely to make a strong fight?"

"Well, ya-as!" drawled young Bokenham.
"Old boy's not supposed to care
particularly about it himself, don't you
know, but he's lately married a young wife
—doosid pretty woman, and all that kind
of thing—and they say she's set her heart
on becoming the memberess."

"Do you hear that?" whispered Byrne
to Joyce.

"I do!" replied Walter. "This man is
a fool, but he must be got in, and Mr.
Creswell must be kept out, at all hazards."

And Jack Byrne grinned.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE EAST (ESSEX). BARKING TO BRAINTREE.

THE restless inquisitive bird, his wings still
wet with the soft spray of the Atlantic, rising
from his favourite perch, the massive gold cross
upon the airy summit of St. Paul's great dome,
bears away for the flat green pastures, soaking
vapours, and river-side marshes of fertile
Essex, the calf-breeding, oyster-rearing,
teazle-growing county, of a million acres and
four hundred thousand inhabitants. The patient
toilers in the saffron, hop, and carraway fields;
the men scooping out Colchester oysters for
Billingsgate; the Maldon fishermen, red-faced
and scale-bespangled as Tritons; the drovers
of Pleshy bringing the wayward calves to Essex
railway stations; the heavy-built Dutch sailors
at Harwich, will not observe the silent bird as
he drifts by, a mere black flake against the
rainy sky, reconnoitring, like a military spy
from a balloon, the marshy, well-wooded, well-
watered county that forms the dull muddy
shore of the Thames from Blackwall, at the
confluence of the Lea, to Shoeburyness.

At Barking the bird first alights on the
banks of the Roding. Barking was the Barging
of the Saxons— "the fort in the meadow"
—and the blunt lines (so long is Time in
effacing man's work) may still be traced of the
old walls that, perhaps, Saxon thanes raised to
protect their churls or neatherds from those
Danes who sacked and burnt London in 835.
Whether the Danish robbers—as good sailors
as horsemen—had discovered the juicy richness
of Essex beeves as early as the time of Alfred,
who twice rebuilt London, is uncertain, Dr.
Dryasdust kindly informs us; but this at least
is sure, that in 870 the hardy Norsemen ran
up Barking Creek, and massacred or carried
off a whole convent of Benedictine nuns,
planted at Barking in 670 by Erkenwald,
a Saxon Bishop of London. King Edgar
raised again the shattered and desecrated
convent of Barking, where so much martyrs'
blood had been shed by the rude Pagan hands.
After the death of this amorous, wolf-slaying,
monk-beloved king, his widow, Elfrida (to win
whom Edgar had murdered her first husband),
was made abbess of Barking, and the convent
became a royal one, inferior only to Wilton,
Winchester, and Shaftesbury. The Barking
abbess was lady paramount of all the manors
in the half hundred, and a very great lady,
therefore, at Chadwell, Ilford, and Ripple, and
much to be honoured wherever her plain black
and white robes were seen, whether she angled
with her nuns upon the Thames, or ambled on
her palfrey towards the cool green glades of
Epping. Through the pointed arch of that
square embattled Barking gateway many
generations of half-willing sisters of the convent
have passed to their living death within, and to
their burial without, the icy prison walls. The
abbey remained wealthy for eight or nine
centuries, for even at the Dissolution it was valued
at one thousand and eighty-four pounds six
shillings and twopence (a large sum for those
times), and Edward the Sixth, feeding his noble
bloodhounds with rich sops, as Henry the
Eighth had done his ravening pack, granted
Barking Convent to Lord Clinton.

When the Conqueror had slain Harold on
the cliff, borne down through brave Kent upon
sturdy and pugnacious London, and burnt
Southwark, just as a slight sample of what he
could do, he retired to the little quiet Essex
village of Barking, where the London port-
reeves, aldermen, and burgesses swore fealty
to him, while his fighting Bishop of Rochester,
Gundulphus, was building a White Tower on
the site of Cæsar's river-side castrum. There,
amid the green meadows, with an outlook on
Barking Creek, the fierce Norman received
homage from those proud chieftains so slow to
surrender, Morcar, Earl of Northumberland, and
Edwyn, Earl of Mercia. When William returned
to town to raise his banners upon his new White
Tower, Bainard, one of his barons, built a castle
in Upper Thames-street (Carron lron Company),
and Gilbert de Montfichet another in Blackfriars
(Times Office, Printing-house-square);
so there was a triple curb in the mouth of poor
prostrate London. One great man at least has
therefore trodden the streets of the Essex market
town. And what else does Barking boast? Well,
an Elizabethan market-house, and the right