It is to its lock and its near vicinity to Bushey Park and Hampton Court that Teddington owes its ever-increasing prosperity. In Saxon times, when its name--the meaning of which is obscure, for the suggestion that it signifies the Tide-end Town is untenable--was spelt Totyngton, it was a mere hamlet of Staines, yet the honour of having been its original manor-house has been claimed for three mansions, each of which is said to have served as a hunting-lodge to Queen Elizabeth. Only one of these is still standing, that built by Lord Buckhurst some years after the maiden queen had passed away; and the more famous residences at one time occupied by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the noted Quaker William Penn, who in 1688 dated his protest against being called a Papist from Teddington, have also been pulled down; whilst of the parish church, in which the latter may often have worshipped, the only relic is the sixteenth-century southern aisle, the rest of the building dating from the eighteenth century. It contains, however, a few interesting monuments, including one to the faithful servant of Charles I., Sir Orlando Bridgman, who represented his doomed master at the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht; and on one of the walls is a tablet to the memory of the famous beauty, Peg Woffington, who, after her tragic breakdown when acting as Rosalind in 1757, retired to Teddington, where she died three years later. [Illustration: BUSHEY PARK] [Sidenote: Bushey Park] The riverside scenery above Teddington, especially near the long picturesque island opposite Thames Ditton, is very charming, and away from {291} the water is the beautiful Bushey Park, that rivals in popularity even its neighbour of Hampton Court. Long jealously reserved for the use of its royal owners, the estate, which is more than eleven hundred acres in extent, has been open to the public since 1752, when a certain Timothy Bennet, a local shoemaker, succeeded, by dint of dogged persistence, of winning a free passage through it for ever, or, to be more strictly accurate, in obtaining the restoration of ancient rights that had been filched away. The story goes that Bennet, who, as he sat at work in his shop, had been in the habit of watching the number of pedestrians who passed through the park on their way to and from Kingston, was moved to bitter indignation when he learned that the gates had been closed by order of the ranger, Lord Halifax. He consulted a lawyer, declaring that he would gladly spend all his savings, which amounted to about £700, to win back the old privilege, and was told that all that was needed was for him 'to try the right.' A notice was therefore served on the ranger, who summoned Timothy before him, thinking to overawe him easily, but the shoemaker's rough eloquence so won upon the great man that the latter, in spite of all the opposition of the lawyers on the side of the Crown, ordered the