The bridge put Kew upon improving its roads. The King, at his own expense, to give work for the unemployed in winter, had a carriage-way made to Richmond, hitherto reached directly by a rough lane. Then the inhabitants of surrounding parishes got up a subscription to mend the ways on the Surrey side from Putney Bridge “in order that His Majesty may not be obliged to take the dusty road from Brentford when he honours them with his residence in summer.” So now we come to Kew’s palmy days, in the seventies of the eighteenth century, while George and Charlotte lived much here, before their flitting to Windsor; and many new houses were built to accommodate the attendants and hangers-on of the rustic Court. Mrs. Papendiek, who was brought up at Kew, gives us glimpses of the village in its state of transformation, among them such a curious one as this:-- The farmhouse, now Hollis’s, was Mrs. Clewly’s, who supplied the inhabitants with milk, butter, eggs, pork and bacon. She, becoming a widow, married a Mr. Frame, whose son, by a former marriage, lived upon housebreaking and footpad robberies. Upon his father becoming an inhabitant of Kew, the question was inquired into, when he said: “I always take care to act so as to escape justice. Blows and murders belong not to my gang; and if I am allowed to take my beer on the Green, and sit with my neighbours, without being insulted, I shall take care that no harm happen here. I am well aware of the bearings of the place.” We all spoke with him as a friend when we met; and of my father he asked for any trifle he wanted, and was never refused. This diarist had not always such a friendly experience of highwaymen, for on their way back from Vauxhall to Kew, her party was stopped and robbed at Mortlake. The encounter was so little expected that Mr. Papendiek had laid away his new watch in a corner of the coach, and when our schoolgirl, as she then was, heard the robbers say that the ladies should not be molested, she hid the watch for him; then, on her giving it back to its owner, the danger past, he rewarded her by making sheep’s eyes, which in time brought about a marriage.