Just before the Abbey is reached, approached by a way that allows little more room than is needful for a cart to pass, is an open square of very old houses, a most picturesque corner of the old town, that bears the somewhat curious appellation of Romeland. { 12} How and why the place came to be so called it is not easy to determine; but the abbots of Waltham, whose seat was at Copt Hall, had their London house on or adjacent to a site in the parish of St. Mary-at-Hill, adjoining what is now Billingsgate Market, which was also called Romeland. To the rent of this, as well as the market square at Waltham, the Pope laid claim, and the latter was then known as Romescot or Peter’s Piece. It is to this circumstance, probably, that the place owes its name.
It was in the house of Master Cressy, a long-fronted structure, which stands on the left of the entrance to Romeland, that, in 1533, Cranmer, Fox, and Gardiner discussed the question of Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon. Then it was that Cranmer “struck the keynote of the Reformation,” by claiming “for the Word of God that supremacy which had been usurped by the popes for centuries.” Fuller refers to this as a significant circumstance and says: “Thus did Waltham give Rome the first deadly blow in England.”
Bluff King Hal was very partial to Waltham and enjoyed the hunting in the forest. He frequently stayed at his house in the Romeland, still standing at the north-east corner. There are many stories, often with the “merry monarch” for a hero, connected with his patronage of Waltham. One day he left his hunting companions and returned to Waltham in the guise of one of his attendants, and, being invited to the abbot’s table, ate heartily of the sirloin of beef placed before him, to the great admiration of his host. “Well fare thy heart,” the latter toasted his guest, “here is a cup of sack, and remember the grace of thy master. I would willingly give one hundred crowns on condition that I could feed as heartily on beef as thou dost! Alas! my weak stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken.” The king pledged his host, and thanked him; in due time he departed as secretly as he had come. A little while after, the abbot was suddenly arrested and conveyed to the Tower, where he was kept for some days on bread and water. Then a sirloin of beef was set before him, of which he ate heartily. The king entered in the midst of the meal, and demanded of his prisoner payment of the hundred crowns, which, when the abbot recognised the trap into which he had fallen, he gladly paid.