Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England.

Episode 341 Night Sadventurer

Let me take you away from all those everyone, transport you to places more exotic where

you can let your imagination fly like a bird. I am talking of course of Gravesend. Gravesend

is apparently quite a big place now. In 1623 it was still a busy little place, though

of course much smaller than now. But there was a bit of a cottage industry, mills, and since

it lies in northwest Kent on the south bank of the River Thames not far from the estuary,

there was also a ferry operating there. One of Gravesend's many, many claims to fame. He

said it is the place where six years earlier a boat had landed for tragic reasons. Rebecca

Rolf or Pocca-Hontas on her way back to her native America died and was put ashore

and buried there. Anyway ferry, that's a thing, there's a ferry, not a ferry across the

Mersey, but across the mighty River Thames, a river so mighty that a friend from a land

down under, whether they have proper rivers, on seeing it for the first time, used the word

Creek, which was rude. But anyway, it's the early morning of the 18th of February, 1623,

and the ferryman is waiting on the north bank for a mark. When upcladded to very fine

bid at Gentlemen, dressed in the very best quality clothing with the most exquisite tailoring.

Boatmen noticed things like that, it's a well-established fact, Mike Gronney told me.

The two Gentlemen called each other John and Thomas Smith. They were an odd pair. As the

ferryman pulled away at his hauser, admiring the tailoring, he also had to notice something

odd about their bids, they kept moving across their faces in the most bewildering way

until the Boatmen began to think he'd had one too many last night of his wife's ale.

Until then, it clicked. God's bodykins, they were wearing falsies. Good gully had

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