in Finchley parish, but is too closely connected with the Heath to be left out in a description of it. [Illustration: _The Spaniards’ Garden._ (From a print by Chastelaine.)] The Spaniards was, perhaps is still, famous for its curiously laid-out garden, in which designs in coloured pebbles appear to have anticipated floral tapestry beds; and also for the fine views from the mound in it, from which the most salient objects in six counties could be seen. It was to the Spaniards, if I remember aright, that Oliver Goldsmith was wont to take his ‘Jolly Pigeon friends’ for what he called ‘a shoemaker’s holiday’ on the Heath; and it was to the Spaniards Tea-gardens that Mrs. Bardell and her friends betook themselves on that eventful summer afternoon when Dodson and Fogg took the widow in execution ‘on cognovit and costs.’[133] The memory of Charles Dickens, like that of the author of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ is thus indelibly associated with the Spaniards.[134] A visit to this tavern was not always so unadventurous a proceeding as at present, for a notice in the _Grub Street Journal_ of October, 1736, informs us that on the previous Sunday evening, between seven and eight, when Mr. Thomas Lane, a farrier of Hampstead, was coming home from the Spaniards, upon the Heath, near the house called Mother Huffs[135] three men in mean apparel jumped out of the bushes, and laying hold of him, robbed him of forty-five shillings. They afterwards stripped him, tied him neck and heels, and made him fast to a tree, in which condition he lay more than an hour, till a woman coming by, he cried out, and she released him. A warning to farriers and others to avoid tippling at the Spaniards till eight o’clock on Sunday evenings. It was to the astuteness of the landlord of the Spaniards that Lord Mansfield owed the saving of his house at Caen Wood from the fury of the mob in the Gordon Riots, who, after sacking and setting fire to the Earl’s town-house in Bloomsbury Square, started for Caen Wood with the intention of destroying that also. The course of the rioters lay through Gray’s Inn Lane to Hampstead. The afternoon was exceedingly sultry, and the men and boys composing the mob, heated and weary from their previous exertions and the march out, rejoiced at the sight of the well-known inn, and longed for its foaming tankards of ripe ale. The landlord, who knew of their intentions, affected rabble sympathies, and encouraged them to refresh themselves. While they did so, he secretly gave information to Lord Mansfield’s steward, who supplied additional barrels of ale from the Caen Wood cellars, and in the meantime sent off a messenger for the military. They fortunately were already on their way out, and quickly surrounded the house, made the ringleaders prisoners, and as many of their wretched followers as they could well secure. [Illustration: _Erskine House._]