Cripps the Carrier: A Woodland Tale

The little village of Beckley lies or rather lay many years ago in the quiet embrace of old Stow Wood well known to every Oxford man who loves the horn or fusil. This wood or forest (now broken up into many straggling copses) spread in the olden time across the main breadth of the highland to the north of Headington between the valley of the Cherwell and the bogs of Otmoor. Beckley itself though once approached by the Roman road from Alchester must for many a century have nursed its rural quietude withdrawn as it was from the stage-waggon track from High Wycombe to Chipping Norton through Wheatley Islip and Bletchingdon and lying in a tangle of narrow lanes leading only to one another. So Beckley took that cheerful view of life which enabled the fox to disdain the blandishments of the vintage and prided itself on its happy seclusion and untutored honesty. But as all sons of Adam must have something or other to say to the rest and especially to his daughters this little village carried on some commerce with the outer world; and did it through a carrier.