Robbers and speakers

Today I’ve been juggling two tasks. In the morning to went to the university library to look for anything useful in their copy of Montague Knight’s (and William Austen-Leigh’s) Chawton Manor and its owners; a family history. Its text is available on Archive.com of course, but I wanted to see if there was any interesting marginalia in Southampton’s copy. Sadly, the only addition was cutting from a relatively magazine, slipped between the pages to provide a colour reproduction of  the naive but informative painting of the house that hangs in the Tapestry gallery, and which is also in the printed book as a line drawing.

But I did make some notes from the text. I got caught up in the story of Adam Gurdon: “who was disinherited and outlawed with other adherents of Simon, Earl of Leicester, has been described as a ‘ woody height in a valley near the road between the town of Alton and the Castle of Farnham.’ This region was not disafforested until the end of Henry Ill’s reign, and was a favourite ambush for outlaws, who there awaited the merchants and their train of sumpter horses travelling to or from Winchester. Even in the fourteenth century the warders of the great fair of St. Giles, held in that city, paid five mounted sergeants-at-arms to keep the Pass of Alton during the continuance of the fair, according to custom. […] There is a picturesque story of a personal encounter between Adam Gurdon and Prince Edward. The prince, we are told, ‘ desirous of putting an end to the troubles which had so long harassed the Kingdom, pursued the arch-rebel into his fast- nesses ; attacked his camp ; leaped over the entrenchments, and singling out Gurdon, ran him down, wounded him, and took him prisoner. He raised the fallen veteran from the ground, he pardoned him, he admitted him into his confidence, and introduced him to the Queen, then lying at Guildford, that very evening. This unmerited and unexpected lenity melted the heart of the rugged Gurdon at once; he became in an instant a loyal and useful subject, trusted and employed in matters of moment by Edward when King, and confided in till the day of his death.”

I was also researching speakers. I met with Ed last week, and between us, we decided there were five spaces that we need a speaker in. Meanwhile I’ve been ruling out Bluetooth speakers, which can’t deal well with swapping between streaming from different devices, and decided that we need wi-fi speakers. Which is a curse, because I had hoped to spend a few tens of pounds on each speaker. Active wi-fi speakers cost hundreds. But today I think I identified one which meets my needs – less than £150 each, doesn’t require a proprietary app and works with AirPlay for iOS and DLNA for Android and Windows. They are even rechargeable with a 10-12 hour battery life (though I’ll believe that when I test it with the regular switching  between devices these will have to cope with), so I won’t be tied to power outlets when choosing where to place them. I’ve ordered two to test them, both on their own and in different rooms. If they work as I hope, I’ll get another three. If they don’t do what I expected, well at least I’ll have done soem early Christmas shopping. 🙂