e probably no more than vulgar speculators upon a
premium--"Stags," as we should say to-day--for a few years afterwards
we find a Williams in possession of one of the Hinkseys; he is
followed by the Perrots, and only quite late, and by purchase, do we
come to the somewhat more dignified name of Harcourt. The other
Hinksey, after still more varied adventures, ends up in the hands of
the Berties, obscure south-country people who date from a rich
Protestant marriage of the time.

Cholsey, again, with its immemorial traditions of unchanging
ecclesiastical custom, receiving its priests in Saxon times from the
Mont St. Michel upon the marches of Brittany, and later holding as a
manor from the Abbot of Reading, remains with the Crown but a very few
years. In 1555 Mary handed it over to that Sir Robert Englefield who
was promptly attainted by her successor. It gets in the hands of the
Knowleses, then of the Rich's, and ends up with the family of
Edwardes-seventeenth-century Welshmen, who, by a plan of wealthy
marriages, became gentlemen, and have now for 100 years and more been
peers, under the title of Kensington.

The mention of Sir Robert Englefield leads one to what is perhaps the
best example in the whole Thames Valley of this perpetual chop and
change in the holding of English land; that example is to be
discovered at Pangbourne.

Pangbourne also was monastic; and the manor held, as did Cholsey, of
Reading Abbey. In the race for the spoils Dudley clutched it in 1550.
When he was beheaded, three years later, and it passed again to the
Crown, Mary handed it (as she had handed Cholsey) to Sir Robert
Englefield. His attainder followed. Within ten years it changes hands
again. Elizabeth in 1563 gave it to her cofferer, a Mr Weldon. This
personage struck no root, nor his son after him, for in 1613, while
still some were alive who could remember the old custom and immemorial
monastic lordship of the place, Weldon the younger sold it to a
certain Davis.

Davis, one would hope--in that seventeenth century which was so
essentially the century of the squires, and in that generation also
wherein the squires wiped out what was left of the Crown and left the
King a salaried dependant of the governing class--Davis might surely
have attempted to found a family and to achieve some sort of dignity
of tradition. He probably made no such an attempt, but if he did he
failed; for only half-a-century later the unfortunate place changes
ha