a night of victory: and behold! to the ordinary display
what a heart-shaking addition! horses, men, carriages, all are dressed
in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons." The brilliancy of the
royal liveries, the thundering of the wheels, the tramp of those
generous horses, the sounding of the coach horn in the calm evening air,
and last, but not least, the intense enthusiasm of travellers and
spectators alike, as amid such cries as "Salamanca for ever!" "Hurrah
for Waterloo!" they cheered and cheered again, letting slip the dogs of
victory throughout those old English villages,--all these things must
have united the hearts of the classes and masses in one common bond,
rendering such occasions memorable for ever in the hearts of the simple
country folk. In small towns like Burford and Northleach, situated five
or six miles from any railway station, the prosperity and happiness of
the natives has suffered enormously by the decay of the stage coach; and
even in smaller villages the cheering sound of the horn must have been
very welcome, forming as it did a connecting link between these remote
hamlets of Gloucestershire and the great metropolis a hundred
miles away.

Fairford Church is known far and wide as containing the most beautiful
painted glass of the early part of the sixteenth century to be found
anywhere in England. The windows, twenty-eight in number, are usually
attributed to Albert Duerer; but Mr. J.G. Joyce, who published a treatise
on them some twenty years ago, together with certain other high
authorities, considered them to be of English design and workmanship.
They would doubtless have been destroyed in the time of the Civil Wars
by the Puritans had they not been taken down and hidden away by a member
of the Oldysworth family, whose tomb is in the middle chancel.

John Tame, having purchased the manor of Fairford in 1498, immediately
set about building the church. He died two years later, and his son
completed the building, and also erected two other very fine churches in
the neighbourhood--those at Rendcombe and Barnsley. He was a great
benefactor to the Cotswold country. Leland tells us that the town of
Fairford never flourished "before the cumming of the Tames into it."

You may see John Tame's effigy on his tomb, together with that of his
wife, and underneath these pathetic lines:

"For thus, Love, pray for me.
I may not pray more, pray ye:
With a pater noster and an ave: