The most plausible identification of the home of Mr. Wardle is with
Cobtree Hall, which divides the parishes of Boxley and Allington, and it
is probable that the original of Muggleton was Town Malling, which is
also known as West Malling.

In the Jubilee Edition of _Pickwick_ Mr. Charles Dickens the Younger
introduced a woodcut of High Street, Town Malling, with a note to the
following effect:--

"Muggleton, perhaps, is only to be taken as a fancy sketch of a
small country town; but it is generally supposed, and probably with
sufficient accuracy, that, if it is in any degree a portrait of any
Kentish town, Town Malling, a great place for cricket in Mr.
Pickwick's time, sat for it."

Town Malling does not correspond with the description of Muggleton in
its distance from Rochester. It is only seven and a half, instead of
fifteen miles, from Rochester. And it is not a corporate town. But:

"Everybody whose genius has a topographical bent knows perfectly
well that Muggleton is a corporate town, with a mayor, burgess and
freemen, and anybody who has consulted the addresses of the mayor
to the freemen, or the freemen to the mayor, or both to the
corporation, or all three to Parliament, will learn from thence
what they ought to have known before, that Muggleton is an ancient
and loyal borough, mingling a zealous advocacy of Christian
principles with a devoted attachment to commercial rights; in
demonstration whereof, the mayor, corporation, and other
inhabitants have presented, at divers times, no fewer than one
thousand four hundred and twenty petitions against the continuance
of negro slavery abroad, and an equal number against any
interference with the factory system at home; sixty-eight in favour
of the sale of livings in the Church, and eighty-six for abolishing
Sunday trading in the street."

[Illustration: AYLESFORD]

If Town Malling has not had so distinguished a political history as that
which Dickens assigned to Muggleton, it has a pretty cricket ground,
not far removed from the High Street, and the reputation of having in
past years distinguished itself in the local cricket of this district of
Kent. It is not difficult to believe, then, that Dumkins and Podder here
made their gallant stand for All Muggleton against the Dingley Dellers,
and that at the Swan--otherwise the Blue Lion--the Pickwick fellowship
share