CHAPTER X RIVERSIDE SURVEY FROM MORTLAKE TO RICHMOND [Sidenote: Mortlake] Few villages near London have undergone such vicissitudes of fortune as Mortlake, of which Wimbledon, Putney, and Barnes were once dependencies, but which is now a somewhat uninteresting suburb, redeemed from the commonplace by its situation on the river alone, and but for the one day in the year, when the University boat-race is run, and it is crowded with those interested in the contest, deserted by all but its residents. A great brewery and numerous malt-kilns replace the palace that was long a private residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of the famous tapestry manufactory, founded in 1619 by Sir Thomas Crane, in which, under the direction of the Italian Verrio, work equal to that done in France was produced, not a trace remains. Gone, too, is the mansion by the water where lived the famous astrologer Dr. Dee, who was there often visited by Queen Elizabeth, but who in spite of the great reputation he long enjoyed, died in absolute poverty in 1608; and it is impossible to identify the sites of the houses that are known to {219} have been occupied by Sir Philip Francis, the bitter enemy of Warren Hastings, Henry Addington, the first Lord Sidmouth, prime minister when the Peace of Amiens was signed, Sir John Barnard, whom Sir Robert Walpole called the one incorruptible member of Parliament, all of whom, as well as Dr. Dee, are buried in Mortlake church, and commemorated by monuments or tablets in it. The pottery works, too, which to a certain extent made up for the loss of the tapestry manufactory when the latter was removed to Windsor, though they flourished for nearly a century, were abandoned about 1800, and it is only the expert collector who now remembers that the quaint Toby Philpot jugs were first made in them, and that a peculiar kind of white stoneware was produced in a rival factory hard by. [Illustration: THE SHIP INN, MORTLAKE] The church of Mortlake was founded as early as 1348, when the parish was first cut off from that of Wimbledon, but it has been so often restored that, but for the lower portion of the tower, it retains scarcely anything of its original structure. Above its western entrance is the unusual inscription, 'Vivat Rex Henricus VIII.,' and on an oaken screen in the chancel is an interesting painting representing the Entombment, by the Dutch artist Van der Gutch, who lived for some little time at Mortlake during the last decade of the eighteenth century. In the Roman Catholic cemetery that adjoins the Protestant churchyard rest the remains of the famous Oriental scholar and traveller, Sir Richard Burton, and his devoted wife, in an ornate tomb, representing an Arab tent, that was erected before her death at the expense of {220} Lady Burton, who, in spite of her husband's well-known heterodox opinions, was determined that the world should believe him to have died in what she considered the only true faith.