There are other things than ancient history that make Old Sarum memorable. It was the head and front of the electoral scandals that brought about the great Reform Act of 1832. Although it contained neither a single house nor an inhabitant, Old Sarum survived as a Parliamentary borough until that date, and regularly returned two members. Lord John Russell, introducing the Reform Bill to the House of Commons, remarked that Old Sarum was a green mound without a single habitation upon it, and like Gatton, also an uninhabited borough, returned two members, while great towns like Birmingham and Manchester were entirely without Parliamentary representation. The two members sent to Parliament were merely the nominees of the Lord of the Manor, elected by two dummy electors who, shortly after each dissolution of Parliament, were granted leases in the borough of Old Sarum--leases known as ‘burgage tenures.’ Their voting done, they quietly surrendered their leases, which were not granted again until a like occasion arose. The elections took place at the ‘Parliament Tree,’ which, until 1896 (when it was blown down in a snowstorm), stood in a meadow between the mound and the village of ‘Stratford-under-the-Castle.’ It was supposed to have marked the site of the Town Hall of the vanished town. Cobbett, riding horseback past the spot, anathematised this ‘rotten borough’ and the system that allowed such things. He calls it ‘The Accursed Hill.’ The only house standing near is the ‘Old Castle Inn.’ Beyond it the road dips steeply to the downs, and so continues, with regular undulations, unsheltered from storms or frosts, or the fierce heat of the summer sun, to Amesbury. [Illustration: OLD SARUM (AFTER CONSTABLE, R.A.).] [Sidenote: _AMESBURY_] Amesbury is a sheltered village, lying in a valley between these downs. It was on the alternative coach route taken by the ‘Telegraph,’ ‘Celerity,’ ‘Defiance,’ and ‘Subscription’ coaches, which, leaving Andover, came by Weyhill, Mullen’s Pond, and ‘Park House Inn.’ This way came the ‘Telegraph’ coach on its journey to London, 27th December 1836, through the thick of that terrible snowstorm of which we find copious mention on every one of the classic roads. It began when they reached Wincanton, and from that place they struggled on up to the Plain, where it was a white world of scurrying snowflakes, howling winds, and deep drifts. Down into Amesbury, and to the hospitable ‘George’ there, was but a momentary respite, for the determined coachman, although immediately snowed up in the open country beyond the village, sent for help and, assisted by a team of six fresh post-horses with a post-boy to every pair, charged up the hills in the direction of Andover, with that fortune which is said to favour the brave. That is to say, he and His Majesty’s mails got through to London, where the story was duly chronicled in the papers of the period.