agreeably broken into little heights, duly fringed with wood, and bearing marks of comfortable long-continued cultivation. Here, on the edge of the firm green land, and looking over into the black marshes with their alder-trees and willow-trees, did Oliver Cromwell pass his young years. Drunken Barnabee, who travelled, and drank, and made Latin rhymes, in that country about 1635, through whose glistening satyr-eyes, one can still discern this and the other feature of the Past, represents to us on the height behind Godmanchester, as you approach the scene from Cambridge and the south, a big Oak-tree,—which has now disappeared, leaving no notable successor.
Veni Godmanchester, ubi
Ut Ixion captus nube,
Sic, etc.
And he adds in a Note,
Quercus anilis erat, tamen eminus oppida spectat;
Stirpe viam monstrat, plumea fronde tegit;—
Or in his own English version,
An aged Oak takes of this Town survey,
Finds birds their nests, tells passengers their way.[1]
If Oliver Cromwell climbed that Oak-tree, in quest of bird-nests or boy-adventures, the Tree, or this poor ghost of it, may still have a kind of claim to memory.
The House where Robert Cromwell dwelt, where his son Oliver and all his family were born, is still familiar to every inhabitant of Huntingdon: but it has been twice rebuilt since that date, and now bears no memorial whatever which even Tradition can connect with him. It stands at the upper or northern extremity of the Town,—beyond the Market-place we spoke of; on the left or river-ward side of the street. It is at present a solid yellow brick house, with a walled courtyard; occupied by some townsman of the wealthier sort. The little Brook of Hinchin, making its way to the Ouse which is not far off, still flows through the court-yard of the place,—
- ↑ Barnaba Itinerarium (London, 1818), p. 96.
