while the dancers and skittle-players revelled
at the door of the thatched country inn,
where everybody could partake at the fountain-
head of the special dainties of Epping and of
Waltham hundred, hissing sausages, pork as
white as chicken, rich mellow cream, and fresh
country butter that smells of the meadow
flowers. No wonder that from Elizabeth's days
to those of Johnny Gilpin, "Hey for Epping
upland!" has been a London holiday cry.

By-the-by, would any kind Member of
Parliament some night inquire what is a royal chase,
and why Epping should remain one without
forest and without deer? Also, who has a right to
alienate from the people the ten thousand acres
of Epping and Hainault, and grant permission
to build villas and rear plantations? Also,
who pays the lord warden, and four verderers,
and what they do for their money? The
answers might be interesting to real economists
who are not merely pretending to retrench.

Every Easter Monday, an unfortunate, tame,
highly educated, and knowing stag used to be
turned out at Epping, to be pursued by a
shambling pack of aldermen, grooms, shopmen,
sporting touts, and novices of all kinds.
George Cruikshank caricatured the hunt, and
indeed a more pitiful and ludicrous shadow of
the royal sports of the Norman kings could
hardly have been presented. It seemed to be
a rule that no one inured to the pigskin was
permitted to ride, and Osbaldeston or Assheton
Smith would not have marched through
Coventry with such a rabble rout of Whitechapel
chivalry, for twice ten thousand pounds.

South-east of Epping, across the river Roding,
stretch the once scrubby wilds of Hainault,
disforested in 1851. Here, among the thorn and
hazel bushes, once rose the great Fairlop oak
that was blown down by a February storm in
1820. This giant patriarch, with a trunk
forty-eight feet in circumference, was five
centuries old. Bursting the acorn just before the
death of Henry the Fifth, it had known all
the storms of the Tudors and Stuarts, had out-
lived Queen Anne and three of the Georges, and,
eventually overcome by the accession of George
the Fourth, submitted to Fate the year that
glorious monarch ascended the throne. An
ancient fair used to be held under the great
tree, the first Friday of every July. This social
gathering was originated by Mr. Daniel Day,
an eccentric pump and block-maker of Wapping,
who, having a small estate hard by, used to
annually repair to the oak's pleasant shadow
and feast a party of friends on rural beans and
bacon. Wishing to perpetuate the pleasure
he had himself experienced under the kindly
oak of Fairlop, Mr. Day bequeathed a fund to
keep up the custom. The tree, from which a
man-of-war could easily have been built,
contributed timber to form a pulpit for St. Pancras
Church, and the site of the oak is still kept in
remembrance by the merry picnic parties that
still make the spot their rendezvous.

It was in a cave in Epping Forest that
Dick Turpin, a Whitechapel butcher by
profession, hid when hard pressed on the road,
circa 1730. This low rascal, who was never of
"the high Toby," and not, indeed, a true highway-
man at all, was the son of a farmer of
Hempstead. He began by stealing cattle at
Plaistow, and selling the hides at Waltham
Abbey. He first joined smugglers and ran
brandy in the hundreds of Essex, and then a
gang of deer-stealers in Epping Forest. His
first burglary with violence was at Loughton,
where he and his companions stole four hundred
pounds, and tortured the old woman of the
house. He next broke into a house at Barking,
and carried off seven hundred pounds. His
men then forced the cottage of a Mr. Mason,
keeper of Epping Forest, and in smashing a
china punch-bowl a hoard of one hundred and
twenty guineas showered down upon their
heads. A reward of one hundred pounds being
offered, and two of the gang seized and hung
in chains, Turpin and his men betook
themselves to a cave large enough to hold them and
their horses, between the King's Oak and the
Loughton road, in Epping Forest. The cave
was in a thicket, so ambuscaded with thorn-
bushes and brambles, that the rascals could
observe travellers without being themselves seen.

No inn would give them shelter now, and
even the pedlars carried pistols. It was near
this cave that Turpin first dipped his hands in
blood. A gentleman's servant and a higgler
went out, armed, to try and earn the reward of
one hundred pounds by taking Turpin. The
thief, seeing them beating the covert, mistook
them for poachers, and called out, "You'll find
no hares, man, in that thicket!" "No," said the
servant, presenting his gun, "but I've found a
Turpin," and bade the rogue surrender. Turpin,
speaking in a friendly way, gradually backed
into his cave, and, seizing a loaded gun he had
placed at the entrance, shot his captor dead on
the spot; the higgler instantly fled. For some
time Turpin skulked about the forest, but,
being at last hunted by bloodhounds, he left
this retreat for ever. Soon after this, while
he was waiting for his wife at a public-
house at Hertford, he was recognised by a
butcher to whom he owed money, and had to
make his escape by leaping out of a window.
On his way to London with his associates,
King and Potter, Turpin stopped a Mr. Major,
near the Green Man, in Epping Forest, and
changed horses with him. Watch being set
round the Red Lion, in Whitechapel, where
Turpin left the stolen horse, King was seized
when he came to fetch it, and, in firing at the
constable Turpin shot his friend by accident.
Dick then rode into Yorkshire, and lived by
stealing horses in Lincolnshire and selling
them in his own neighbourhood. He was at
last seized, tried, found guilty, and hanged at
York in April, 1739. He talked to the hang-
man for half an hour, bowed carelessly to the
spectators, and at last flung himself savagely
from the ladder.

Waltham Abbey is too near Epping for the
crow to pass it unnoticed, since it has a legend
of its own that connects it with Hastings and
Harold. The river Lea, that runs into the