Fortunately, in spite of all the encroachments of the builder in and near the once secluded hamlet of Putney, the heath, named after it, that is divided only by a road from the scarcely less beautiful Wimbledon Common, and extends on the other side to the charming park of Richmond, has been permanently secured to the public, and will probably ever remain one of the most popular of the open-air {187} resorts near London. Its loftier portions command extensive views, and although until quite recently it had a somewhat sinister reputation as a favourite haunt of highwaymen, it is also associated with many interesting historic memories. On it, for instance, in 1648, when the doom of Charles I. was already practically sealed, the people of Surrey met to draw up a petition for the re-establishment of Episcopacy, and there soon after the Restoration Charles II. held a grand review of his army. In 1652 a duel took place on the heath between Lord Chandos and Colonel Henry Compton, in which the latter was killed; in 1798 William Pitt, then Prime Minister, met William Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, one of his most determined political opponents, and rendered the encounter abortive by firing in the air; and in 1809 occurred the meeting between the two great statesmen, George Canning and Lord Castlereagh, the result of a temporary estrangement only, in which the former was slightly wounded in the thigh, whilst the future Foreign Secretary, who was to do so much to promote the coalition against Napoleon, escaped unhurt. It is unfortunately impossible to identify exactly the scenes of these various duels, but the last is known to have occurred on what is now the garden of the private residence, Wildcroft, near an obelisk that was set up a century after the breaking out of the Great Fire of London to commemorate the discovery by David Hartley of a means for rendering buildings fireproof. [Sidenote: Bowling-Green House]