QUENDON, a scattered little village prettily situated where the road broadens out and curves slightly, with broad margins of grass, bears a resemblance to Trumpington, on the Cambridge Road. In advance of the cottages stands a picturesque modern well-house and fountain, with a beautifully designed horse-trough, “given to Quendon and Pickling in memory of Caroline Mary Cranmer-Byng,” as an inscription states. Quite at the end of the village is the “Coach and Horses” inn, a survival of posting and coaching days, very much in its old condition. Beyond it the open road leads into Newport. Newport, whose name has nothing whatever to do with a water port, derives that title from its situation on a new road—a new gate, or door, or portal—made at some unrecorded time through the Forest of Essex. It is now nothing but a village, as picturesque and delightful as any on the road, but fallen from its ancient importance, and overshadowed by Saffron Walden, only three miles away. Time was—a very long while ago—when Newport had a market and Saffron Walden had none. At that time Newport was one of the many manors belonging to Harold, and it continued to be a Royal manor for some time after the Conquest; coming afterwards into the hands of the Magnavilles. There was a castle at Newport in those days, and a lake, whence the old name for this place of “Newport Pond.” Tradition tells that the pond or lake was situated where the railway station is now, but of it and of that castle no traces have survived. The fortunes of Newport fell, and those of Saffron Walden began to rise, when the Empress Maud, somewhere about 1142, authorised Geoffrey de Magnaville to transfer the market to Walden, and although, some sixty years later, in 1203, King John granted Newport the right to hold an annual fair, this stricken town never recovered from the blow inflicted by the loss of its market privileges. A century later the Manor of Newport belonged to an historical character—that Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II., who was executed, murdered, or done to death in 1310 on Blacklow Hill, near Warwick, by insurgent Barons, jealous of his influence over the King. The fate of Gaveston seems to prove how dangerous was the stinging gift of satire in the early part of the fourteenth century. That unfortunate man, raised by the King to the highest offices of State, of course became hateful to others not so successful, and his splendour, his arrogance, and, above all, the wittily offensive nicknames he showered upon that baronial crew, aggravated the original offence beyond endurance, so that they finally seized and beheaded him. It will be allowed that this eminently practical retort was even more stinging than the original satire, and certainly forbade a rejoinder.