Peter the head of your church?--Dr. Rabbits of Ealing
told us so."

The Father said, "Yes, he was."

"But Saint Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday that his
wife's mother lay sick of a fever." On which the Father again laughed,
and said he would understand this too better soon, and talked of other
things, and took away Harry Esmond, and showed him the great old house
which he had come to inhabit.

It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which were
rooks' nests, where the birds at morning and returning home at evening
made a great cawing. At the foot of a hill was a river, with a steep
ancient bridge crossing it; and beyond that a large pleasant green flat,
where the village of Castlewood stood, with the church in the midst, the
parsonage hard by it, the inn with the blacksmith's forge beside it, and
the sign of the "Three Castles" on the elm. The London road stretched
away towards the rising sun, and to the west were swelling hills and
peaks, behind which many a time Harry Esmond saw the same sun setting in
after years.

The Hall of Castlewood was built with two courts, whereof one only, the
fountain-court, was now inhabited, the other having been battered down in
the Cromwellian wars. In the fountain-court, still in good repair, was
the great hall, near to the kitchen and butteries. A dozen of
living-rooms looked to the north, and communicated with the little chapel
that faced eastwards, and the buildings stretching from that to the main
gate, and with the hall (which looked to the west) into the court, now
dismantled. This court had been the more magnificent of the two until the
Protector's cannon tore down one side of it before the place was taken
and stormed. The besiegers entered at the terrace under the clock-tower,
slaying every man of the garrison, and at their head, my lord's brother,
Francis Esmond.

The Restoration did not bring enough money to the Lord Castlewood to
restore this ruined part of his house, where were the morning parlours,
and above them the long music-gallery. Before this stretched the
garden-terrace, where the flowers grew again which the boots of the
Roundheads had trodden in their assault, and which was restored without
much cost, and only a little care, by both ladies who succeeded the
second viscount in the government of this mansion. Round the
terrace-garden was a low wall with a wicket leading to a wooded height
beyond, that is called Cromwell's Bat