Thames, here branches into several streams,
traditionally said to be artificial channels cut
by Alfred the Great in order to leave the
Danish robber's fleet high and dry in the rank
Essex meadows. The streams now feed powder
and silk mills. Waltham belonged to Tovi,
the standard-bearer of King Canute, whose
son, Athelstan, proving a prodigal, squandered
his money, and sold this, with other of his
father's estates. Edward the Confessor
bestowed Waltham on Earl Harold, his brother-
in-law, the son of Godwin, who built and
endowed an abbey at Waltham, giving each of
the canons a manor, and the dean six. It is
thought by many historians that when, on
that fatal October day, Harold fell on the
Sussex hill, slain by the Norman arrow, his
dead body was brought to the abbey at
Waltham that he had endowed. A monument
—always, at least, shown as his all
through the middle ages—was opened in the
reign of Elizabeth, and found to contain a male
skeleton. William the Norman, trampling over
the grave of his dead enemy, soon laid his heavy
hand upon the Essex abbey, hallowed by a
Holy Crucifix from Montacute (Somersetshire).
He rent from the monks' sacristies many rich
chalices and jewelled robes, but left the
frightened canons the right to their fat Essex
meadows and the rank pastures by the river
Lea. Henry the Second dissolved this foundation,
the canons having grown dissolute and
revelling. In 1177, on the eve of Pentecost,
the king himself visited Waltham, when sixteen
new canons of the Augustine order from
Cirencester, Oseney, and Chichester were inducted,
and the church was exempted from episcopal
jurisdiction. The king then confirmed to the
canons all the land given by Harold, and added
Siwardston and Epping; and Richard CÅ“ur-
de-Lion afterwards added Harold's park, the
village of Nassing, and several hundred acres
of land. The Abbot of Waltham was one of
those proud mitred barons entitled to a seat in
parliament. The present church was formerly
the nave of the old abbey. At the Dissolution,
the revenues of Waltham Abbey were nine
hundred pounds three shillings and fourpence.

The extent and limits of the port of London
are closely connected with the reaches along
the Essex shore. They are bounded by a
straight line running from the North Foreland,
in Kent, to the opposite Essex promontory, the
Naze (the Nose), the said line cutting through
the Gun-fleet beacon, including all within that
line westward, with all the channels, streams,
and tributary rivers feeding the Thames as far
up as London Bridge, but excepting the known
rights, liberty, and privileges, of the ports of
Sandwich and Ipswich. Within the port, three
Harbour Masters rule supreme: one from London
Bridge to Wapping Dock Stairs; the second
from Wapping to Limehouse; and the third
from Limehouse to Bugsby's Hole. About a
mile and a half from Leigh, near Southend,
where the dull coast rises into low cliffs, there
is a terminal stone marking the limit of the
jurisdiction of the Conservators of the Thames.

The crow, as he flits past the low-lying
Essex shore, where "the miles are long, the
stiles high, and the calves good," passes many
spots of legendary and historical interest.
There Southend towers on its wooded hill, with
its gravel strand stretching below, with the
long bowsprit of a jetty looking across at
the forts and dockyards. At South Benfleet the
Danes were fond of landing. At Canewdon there
was a Roman station, and the ruins of Hadleigh
castle, close by, show traces of Roman herring-
bone work. From Langdon Hills, near
Stamford-le-Hope, whose church can be seen plainly
from the higher slopes of Plumstead Common
opposite, the windings of the Thames can be
discerned for forty miles, from London to the Nore,
where the river is fifteen miles wide. At Leigh,
eight centuries ago famous for grapes, in the
days when wine was made in England, there is
an oyster fishery, founded in 1690. At Bell
House, famous for its great elm trees and fine
deer, Queen Elizabeth, who did not disdain to
make friends of her subjects, was once
entertained. Then the crow's black wings, fanned
by the fresh free river air, flit past the bold
cliffs of Prittlewell, where, some years ago,
fishermen could see in the deep water remains
of the submerged church of Milton. At
Razleigh there is a Danish camp, and at Rochford
stands the Hall where poor Anne Boleyn was
born. At Lawless Court, close by, a curious
old manorial custom still prevails, as eccentric
as some of the old feudal ways of doing homage
to the suzerain. A copyhold court is held on
King's Hill, between midnight and cock-crow,
on the first Wednesday after Michaelmas; and
every tenant is fined to the amount of double
his rent for each hour of absence. The minutes
are made by the steward with a piece of coal,
and the business is all transacted in mysterious
whispers. The custom is said to have been
established, as a punishment, by a lord of the
manor who had discovered a conspiracy of the
tenants against himself. In the reign of Henry
the Eighth, this little Essex village (Rochford)
gave the title to an earldom long since
extinct. And now the crow presents arms, as well
as he can without any, as he passes Tilbury fort,
sacred to the memories of Sheridan and Queen
Elizabeth. Henry the Eighth built a block
house here on the site of a chapel of St. Mary
Magdalen, and Charles the Second enlarged it
into a full-sized fort, ready for the Dutch.
Tilbury is stronger than it looks, for its inner
moat is one hundred and eighty feet broad; it
has two brick redoubts on the land side, and the
whole district can be easily laid under water.
The esplanade, mounted with cannon, is
extensive, and the bastions are the largest in
England. It was at Tilbury, in April, 1588,
that the Earl of Leicester marshalled his twenty-
two thousand pikemen and hagbuteers, and his
one hundred horse, to protect London; and
here the lion-hearted queen rode through the
lines of the camp, and afterwards made that
brave speech which showed her to be of the
true metal.

A few weeks more, and the great Armada