(Distance walked thirty miles.)

Tuesday, November 7th.

The “Bear Inn” at Hungerford, standing as it did on the great coach road from London to the West, had been associated with stirring scenes.  It was there that a gentleman who had fallen ill while travelling by the stage-coach had died, and was buried in the churchyard at Hungerford, with the following inscription on his gravestone: 

Here are deposited the remains of William Greatrake, Esqr., native of
Ireland, who on his way from Bristol to London, died in this town in the
52nd year of his age, on the 2nd August 1781
Stat nominis umbra

In the year 1769, some remarkably able and vigorous political letters signed “Junius” appeared in the London Public Advertiser.  They were so cleverly written that all who read them wanted to know the author, but failed to find out who he was.  Afterwards they were published in book form, entitled The Letters of Junius:  in our early days the author of these letters was still unknown, and even at the time of our walk the matter was one of the mysteries of the literary world.  The authorship of The Letters of Junius was one of the romances of literature.  Whoever he was, he must have been in communication with the leading political people of his day, and further, he must have been aware of the search that was being made for him, for he wrote in one of his letters, “If I am a vain man, my gratification lies within a narrow circle.  I am the sole depository of my own secret; and it shall perish with me.”  Controversy was still going on about the Letters of Junius, for early in the year of our walk, 1871, a book was published entitled The Handwriting of Junius Professionally Investigated by Mr. Charles Chabot, Expert, the object being to prove that Sir Phillip Francis was the author of the famous Letters.  The publication of this book, however, caused an article to be written in the Times of May 22nd, 1871, to show that the case was “not proven” by Mr. Chabot, for William Pitt, the great Prime Minister, told Lord Aberdeen that he knew who wrote the Junius Letters, and that it was not Francis; and Lady Grenville sent a letter to the editor of Diaries of a Lady of Quality to the same effect.

While Mr. Greatrake was lying ill at the “Bear Inn” he was visited by many political contemporaries, including the notorious John Wilkes, who, born in 1729, had been expelled three times from the House of Commons when Member for Middlesex; but so popular was he with the common people, whose cause he had espoused, that they re-elected him each time.  So “the powers that be” had to give way, and he was elected Alderman, then Sheriff, and then Lord Mayor of London, and when he died, in 1797, was Chamberlain of London.  Mr. Greatrake was born in County Cork, Ireland, about the year 1725, and was a great friend of Lord Sherburn, who afterwards