Above Walton Bridge are Coway Stakes, where Julius Caesar is supposed to have crossed the Thames in pursuit of Cassivellaunus, king of the Catuvellauni. The British chief drove sharpened stakes into the bed of the river, to block the ford, and built a palisade along the bank, where he waited for the enemy. They came on, cavalry and infantry, in spite of the stakes. The Catuvellauni would have met them, but fled in horror at the sight of an armoured elephant. A great cricketer is buried in Walton churchyard, and a great astrologer in the church. The cricketer was Lumpy Stevens, whom we met at Send. The astrologer was William Lilly, author of a yearly publication, _Merlinus Anglicus Junior_, a sort of Old Moore's Almanac. The prophecies of storms, fires and disasters were as dull reading then as they are now, but one or two entries in his _Life and Times_, written by himself, are illuminating, especially his record of family amenities, thus:-- "The 16th of February 1653/4, my second Wife died; for whose Death I shed no Tears. I had 500_l._ with her as a Portion, but she and her poor Relations spent me 1000_l._ _Gloria Patri, & Filio, & Spiritui Sancto: sicul erat in principio et nunc et semper, & in saecula saeculorum_: For the 20th of _April_ 1653, these Enemies of mine, _viz._ Parliament-men, were turned out of doors by _Oliver Cromwell_." "In _October_ 1654, I married the third Wife, who is signified in my Nativity by _Jupiter_ in _Libra_: And she is so totally in her Conditions, to my great Comfort." Lilly got into trouble with the Parliament men later. He had predicted a town in conflagration, and when the Fire of London occurred in 1666 he was accused of having caused it. He had to appear before a Parliamentary committee specially sitting on the matter, but he was able to satisfy the chairman that he had nothing to do with the fire. He admitted that he had drawn mysterious designs of persons in winding sheets and digging graves, which were to foretell the plague, and of towers and houses on fire, which might have meant the city of London blazing; but he had never fixed the exact year for these things to happen. So the committee let him off. If he had lived till the next century, when William the Third's horse had thrown his rider, and the Jacobite toast was "the little gentleman in black velvet," Lilly could have pointed with pride to other cabalistic drawings in his _Merlin_ One shows a mole walking about under a dragon; another, a mole attacking a crown. [Illustration: _Epsom._] CHAPTER XXIV EPSOM