Note 253 — Chapter XX

Hot haste it was, indeed! Week after week the King made his army (which, though small, cannot have numbered fewer than two or three thousand men) cover distances that would be creditable to a solitary bicycle tourist on the macadamised roads of to-day. From Corfe Castle, in Dorsetshire, whither he had retreated on the landing of Louis, he dashed across England (via Bristol) to Cheshire, ravaged that district for over a fortnight, and was back at Corfe within six weeks of setting out. The very next day he was off again, and by a circuitous route of 155 miles (for his enemies' forces barred the direct way) reached Oxford within a week. A few days later another yet more wonderful week of 225 miles carried him from Reading to Lincoln; his daily stages being Bedford (45 miles), Cambridge (30), Castle Hedingham, in Essex (25), Stamford (70), Rockingham (10), and Lincoln (50). Here he remained ten days, during which he raised the siege of the castle; having also succeeded in relieving Windsor, for the Barons who were attacking it hastily broke up, and marched to Cambridge in hopes of cutting him off at this strategic point—the only place, as we have said,[253] where the Cam was passable for an army. It was doubtless to escape this danger that John undertook, on September 19th, the forced march of 70 miles from Hedingham to Stamford, which had perforce to be made via "the Great Bridge" of Cambridge.