had been baptized. It had been his parish church, and was hallowed in his memory by many associations of family griefs as well as joys; for there he had buried several of his children in early life, amongst others his two eldest-born sons. The church of St. Matthew, however, has long since ceased to exist, though its registers have been preserved: it was destroyed in the great fire of 1666, and the monumental record of Sir Hugh's last resting-place perished in the common ruin.

The popular and oft-repeated story of Sir Hugh Myddelton having died in poverty and obscurity is only one of the numerous fables which have accumulated about his memory.* He left fair portions to all the children who survived him, and an ample provision to his widow.† His eldest son and heir, William, who succeeded to the baronetcy, inherited the estate at Ruthin, and afterwards married the daughter of Sir Thomas Harris, Baronet, of Shrewsbury. Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir William, married John Grene, of Enfield, clerk to the New River Company, and from her is

*The tradition still survives that Sir Hugh retired in his old age to the village of Kemberton, near Shiffnal, Salop, where he lived in great indigence under the assumed name of Raymond, and that he was there occasionally employed as a street paviour! The parish register is said to contain an entry of his burial on the 11th of March, 1702; by which date Hugh Myddelton, had he lived until then, would have been about 150 years old! The entry in the register was communicated by the rector of the parish in 1809 to the Gentleman's Magazine' (vol. lxxix., p. 795), but it is scarcely necessary to point out that it can have no reference whatever to the subject of this memoir.

† On the 24th June, 1632, Lady Myddelton memorialised the Common Council of London with reference to the loan of 30007, advanced

to Sir Hugh, which does not seem to have been repaid; and more than two years later, on the 10th Oct., 1634, we find the Corporation allowed 1000l. of the amount, in consideration of the public benefit conferred on the city by Sir Hugh through the formation of the New River, and for the losses alleged to have been sustained by him through breaches in the water-pipes on the occasion of divers great fires, as well as for the "present comfort of Lady Myddelton. It is to be inferred that the balance of the loan of 3000l. was then repaid. Lady Myddelton died at Bush Hill on the 19th July, 1643, aged sixtythree, and was interred in the chancel of Edmonton Church, Middlesex. On her monumental tablet it is stated that she was "the mother of fifteen children."

BOOK

lineally descended the Rev. Henry Thomas Ellacombe, M.A., rector of Clyst St. George, Devon, who still holds two shares in the New River Company, as trustee for the surviving descendants of Myddelton in his family. Sir Hugh left to his two other sons, Henry and Simon,* besides what he had already given them, one share each in the New River Company (after the death of his wife) and 400l. a-piece. His five daughters seem to have been equally well provided for. Hester was left 9007., the remainder of her portion of 19007.; Jane having already had the same portion on her marriage to Dr. Chamberlain, of London. Elizabeth and Ann, like Henry and Simon, were left a share each in the New River Company and 500l. a-piece. He bequeathed to his wife, Lady Myddelton, the house at Bush Hill, Edmonton, and the furniture in it, for use during her life, with remainder to his youngest son Simon and his heirs. He also left her all the "chains, rings, jewels, pearls, bracelets, and gold buttons, which she hath in her custody and useth to wear at festivals, and the deep silver basin, spout pot, maudlin cup, and small bowl;" as well as the keeping and wearing of the great jewel given to him by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, and after her decease to such one of his sons as she may think most worthy to wear and enjoy it." By the same will Lady Myddelton was authorised to dispose of her interest in the Cardiganshire mines for her own benefit; and it afterwards appears, from documents in the State Paper Office, that Thomas Bushell," the great chymist," as he was called, purchased it for 4007. cash down, and 4007. per annum during the continuance of her grant, which had still twenty-five years to run after her husband's death.

66

Besides these bequeathments, and the gifts of land, money, and New River shares, which he had made to his other children during his lifetime, Sir Hugh left numerous other sums to relatives, friends, and clerks; for instance, to

* Simon's son Hugh was created a Baronet, of Hackney, Middlesex, in 1681. He married Dorothy, the

daughter of Sir William Oglander, of Nunwell, Baronet.

Richard Newell and Howell Jones, 301. each, "to the end that the former may continue his care in the works in the Mines Royal, and the latter in the New River water-works," where they were then respectively employed. He also left an annuity of 20l. to William Lewyn, who had been engaged in the New River undertaking from its commencement. Nor were his men and women servants neglected, for he bequeathed to each of them a gift of money, not forgetting "the boy in the kitchen," to whom he left forty shillings. He remembered also the poor of Henllan, near Denbigh, "the parish in which he was born," leaving to them 201.; a similar sum to the poor of Denbigh, which he had represented in several successive Parliaments; and 5l. to the parish of Amwell, in Hertfordshire. To the Goldsmiths' Company, of which he had so long been a member, he bequeathed a share in the New River Company, for the benefit of the more necessitous brethren of that guild, "especially to such as shall be of his name, kindred, and county.'

Such was the life and such the end of Sir Hugh Myddelton, a man full of enterprise and resources, an energetic and untiring worker, a great conqueror of obstacles and difficulties, an honest and truly noble man, and one of the most distinguished benefactors the city of London has ever known.

*Several of the descendants of Sir Hugh Myddelton, when reduced in circumstances, obtained assistance from this fund. It has been stated, and often repeated, that Lady Myddelton, after her husband's death, became a pensioner of the Goldsmiths' Company, receiving from them 201. a year. But this annuity was paid, not to the widow of the first Sir Hugh, but to the mother of the last Sir Hugh, more than a century later. The last who bore the title was an unworthy scion of this distinguished family. He could raise his mind no higher than the enjoyment of a rummer of ale; and

towards the end of his life existed upon a pension granted him by the New River Company. The statements so often published (and which, on more than one occasion, have brought poor persons up to town from Wales to make inquiries) as to an annuity of 100l. said to have been left by Sir Hugh and unclaimed for a century, and of an advertisement calling upon his descendants to apply for the sum of 10,000l., alleged to be lying for them at the Bank of England, are altogether unfounded. No such annuity has been left, no such sum has accrued, and no such advertisement has appeared.

CHAPTER V.

CAPTAIN PERRY

STOPPAGE OF DAGENHAM BREACH.

ALTHOUGH the cutting of the New River involved a great deal of labour, and was attended with considerable cost, it was not a work that would now be regarded as of any importance in an engineering point of view. It was, nevertheless, one of the greatest undertakings of the kind that had at that time been attempted in England; and it is most probable that, but for the persevering energy of Myddelton and the powerful support of the King, the New River enterprise would have failed. As it was, a hundred years passed before another engineering work of equal importance was attempted, and then it was necessity, and not enterprise, that occasioned it.

We have, in a previous chapter, referred to the artificial embankment of the Thames, almost from Richmond to the sea, by which a large extent of fertile land is protected from inundation along both banks of the river. The banks first raised seemed to have been in many places of insufficient strength; and when a strong north-easterly wind blew down the North Sea, and the waters became pent up in that narrow part of it lying between the Belgian and the English coasts, -and especially when this occurred at a time of the highest spring tides, the strength of the river embankments became severely tested throughout their entire length, and breaches often took place, occasioning destructive inundations.

Down to the end of the seventeenth century scarcely a season passed without some such accident occurring. There were frequent burstings of the banks on the south side between London Bridge and Greenwich, the district of Bermondsey, then green fields, being especially liable to be

submerged. Commissions were appointed on such occasions, with full powers to distrain for rates, and to impress labourers in order that the requisite repairs might at once be carried out. In some cases the waters for a long time held their ground, and refused to be driven back. Thus, in the reign of Henry VIII., the marshes of Plumstead and Lesnes, now used as a practising ground by the Woolwich garrison, were completely drowned by the waters which had burst through Erith Breach, and for a long time all measures taken to reclaim them proved ineffectual. There were also frequent inundations of the Combe Marshes, lying on the east of the royal palace at Greenwich.

But the most destructive inundations occurred on the north bank of the Thames. Thus, in the year 1676, a serious breach took place at Limehouse, when many houses were swept away, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the waters could be banked out again. The wonder is, that sweeping, as the new current did, over the Isle of Dogs, in the direction of Wapping, and in the line of the present West India Docks, the channel of the river was not then permanently altered. But Deptford was already established as a royal dockyard, and probably the diversion of the river would have inflicted as much local injury, judging by comparison, as it unquestionably would do at the present day. The breach was accordingly stemmed, and the course of the river held in its ancient channel by Deptford and Greenwich. Another destructive inundation shortly after occurred through a breach made in the embankment of the West Thurrock Marshes, in what is called the Long Reach, nearly opposite Greenhithe, where the lands remained under water for seven years, and it was with much difficulty that the breach could be closed.

But the most destructive and obstinate of all the breaches was that made in the north bank a little to the south of the village of Dagenham, in Essex, by which the whole of the Dagenham and Havering Levels lay drowned at every tide. A similar breach had occurred in 1621, which