"Hail, sacred Spring! Thou ever-living Stream, Ears to the Deaf, Supporters to the Lame, Where fair Hygienia ev'ry morn attends, And with kind Waves, her gentle Succour lends. While in the Cristal Fountain we behold The trembling Limbs, Enervate, Pale and Cold; A Rosy Hue she on the face bestows, And Nature in the chilling fluid glows, The Eyes shoot Fire, first kindled in the Brain, As beds of Lime smoke after showers of Rain; The fiery Particles concentred there, Break ope' their Prison Doors and range in Air; Hail then thou pow'rful Goddess that presides O'er these cold Baths as Neptune o'er his Tides, Receive what Tribute a pure Muse can pay For Health that makes the Senses Brisk and Gay, The fairest Offspring of the heavenly Ray." At one time there was a famous house of refreshment and recreation, either called the Cobham's Head, or the Sir John Oldcastle--or there were one of each. Authorities differ, and, although I have spent some time and trouble in trying to reconcile so-called facts, I have come to the conclusion that, for my reader's sake, _le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle_. There is a tradition that Sir John Oldcastle who was a famous Lollard in the time of Henry V., either had an estate here, or hid in a house of entertainment there, during his persecution for faith. But the whole is hazy. We know that there was a Sir John Oldcastle, who was born in the fourteenth century, and who was the fourth husband of Joan, Lady Cobham, in whose right he took the title of Lord Cobham. We know also, that he enjoyed the friendship of Henry V., and was of his household. But he got imbued with the doctrines of Wyclif, was cited to appear, more than once, before the ecclesiastical authorities, declined the invitations, and was duly excommunicated. He wrangled with the priests, got committed to the Tower, escaped and hid in Wales, was accused of heading a trumpery insurrection, and was, finally, captured, tried, and hanged in chains alive, upon a gallows in St. Giles' Fields, when, fire being put under him, he was slowly roasted to death in December, 1417. A pious nobleman, like the late Lord Shaftesbury, for instance, was not popular at that time, if we may believe a few lines from "Wright's Political Songs from Edward II. to Henry VI." "Hit is unkindly for a Knight That shuld a kynges castel kepe, To bable the Bible day and night, In restyng time when he shuld slepe, And carefoly away to crepe; For alle the chefe of chivalrie, Wel ought hym to wail and wepe, That swyche[49] lust is in Lollardie."