Bluff King Hal was very partial to Waltham and enjoyed the hunting in the forest. He frequently stayed at his house in the Romeland, still standing at the north-east corner. There are many stories, often with the “merry monarch” for a hero, connected with his patronage of Waltham. One day he left his hunting companions and returned to Waltham in the guise of one of his attendants, and, being invited to the abbot’s table, ate heartily of the sirloin of beef placed before him, to the great admiration of his host. “Well fare thy heart,” the latter toasted his guest, “here is a cup of sack, and remember the grace of thy master. I would willingly give one hundred crowns on condition that I could feed as heartily on beef as thou dost! Alas! my weak stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken.” The king pledged his host, and thanked him; in due time he departed as secretly as he had come. A little while after, the abbot was suddenly arrested and conveyed to the Tower, where he was kept for some days on bread and water. Then a sirloin of beef was set before him, of which he ate heartily. The king entered in the midst of the meal, and demanded of his prisoner payment of the hundred crowns, which, when the abbot recognised the trap into which he had fallen, he gladly paid. On another occasion, when Henry was the guest of Sir Henry Colte, of Nether Hall, Roydon, the latter provided a novel entertainment for his royal guest. It is related that the knight and his men waylaid the monks on Waltham marsh one dark night, having been informed by spies that they were on a visit to Cheshunt nunnery, and, catching them in a buck stall (a trap used for deer) left them wallowing in the mire until dawn. Then the “knight of merry conceits” conducted his dejected captives to the king, and presented them to his majesty as the splendid game he had been able to secure. King Harry burst into a loud fit of laughter, and declared that, though he had “often seen sweeter, he had never viewed fatter venison.” The open space (Romeland), with its quaint high-gabled, stuccoed, and red-brick houses, is a busy scene on Tuesdays, when the cattle market is held here. On the eastern side, abutting upon the Abbey church, the tower of which comes charmingly into view over the house tops, is the ancient corn mill, which was given to the Abbey by Maud, Queen of Henry I., in 1108, in exchange for the site of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. She also restored to the Abbey certain lands, which had been alienated, known as the Abbey fields, which stretch northward from here; and moreover established two fairs for the town. Having so far diverged from the direct road to the Abbey, we may well go a little further, taking a narrow roadway that runs by the mill leading to the Abbey fields. The Abbey Gateway.