Beohrtric, King of Wessex, is said to have been buried at Wareham, and here for a time lay the body of Edward the Martyr. Wareham was a favourite landing-place of the Danes, and despite its vicissitudes was important enough to sustain two sieges in the wars of Stephen and Maud, to be twice taken and once burnt. Wareham was once the chief port of Poole Harbour; but while Poole flourished Wareham decayed. Unlike other Dorset towns it stood by the Cavaliers, but as the inhabitants were lacking in martial skill and a sufficient body of troops, the town was made a kind of shuttlecock by the contending parties. The last misfortune of the town was its almost total destruction by fire in 1762. All things considered, it is little wonder, therefore, that in spite of its age Wareham has so few antiquities. The castle has left but a name, the priory little more; but reconstruction has spared the most interesting feature of St Mary's Church--the Chapel of St Edward--which is said to indicate the temporary burial-place of Edward the Martyr, whose marble coffin is now to be seen near the font. If we follow the road from where the town is entered across the picturesque old bridge we pass the Black Bear, a spacious old inn, with an excellent effigy of Bruin himself sitting grimly on the roof. The Red Lion is the inn mentioned by Hardy in _The Hand of Ethelberta_. The queer ivy-covered little Chapel of St Martin, on the left side of the main street, at the top of the rise from the Puddle, is visited by antiquaries from all the counties of England. It is one hundred and seventy years since regular services were held here. The roof beams are very ancient and still hold their own without any other aid. The interior is vault-like and eerie, and about the old place there hangs an atmosphere which has no affinity with the everyday world, but which reeks up from long-neglected tombs--a mystic vapour, sluggish and faintly discernible. An inscription on the north wall is to the memory of a surgeon, his wife and four children. The surgeon died in 1791, at the age of eighty-one, from an "apoplectic fit." It is rather a puzzle why the doctor was buried in this church, for in 1791 no parson had officiated here for fifty years or more. The pilgrim will be interested in the _Devil's Door_, by the altar, a memory of early Christian superstition. It was the custom to open this door when the church bells were rung, to allow the devil to flee. CHAPTER XI MY ADVENTURE WITH A MERRY ROGUE Here With my beer I sit, While golden moments flit. Alas! They pass Unheeded by; And, as they fly, I, Being dry, Sit idly sipping here My beer.