nds again, and the Davises sell it to the Breedons.

The Breedons showed greater stability. They are actually associated
with Pangbourne for over a century, but even this experiment in
lineage broke down, through the extinction of the direct line. In
1776, by a sham continuity consonant to the whole recent story of
English land, it passes to yet another family on the condition of
their assuming the name of Breedon--which was not their own.

All up and down England, and especially in this Thames Valley, which
is in all its phases so typical and symbolical of the rest of the
country, this stir and change of tenure is to be found, originating
with the sharp changes of 1540, and continuing to our own day.

Anywhere along this Berkshire shore of the Thames the process may be
traced; even the poor little ruined nunnery of Ankerwike shows it. The
site of that quiet and forgotten community was seized under Edward VI.
by Smith the courtier. Then you find it in the pockets of the Salters,
after them of the Lysons. The Lysons sell it to the Lees, and finally
it passes by marriage to the Harcourts.

The number of such examples that could be taken in the Valley of the
Thames alone would be far too cumbersome for these pages. One can
close the list with Sonning.

Sonning, which had been very possibly the see of an early bishopric,
and which was certainly a country house of the Bishop of Salisbury,
did not pass from ecclesiastical hands by a theft, but it was none the
less doomed to the same mutability as the rest. In 1574 it was
exchanged with the Crown for lands in Dorset. The Crown kept it for an
unusually long time, considering the way in which land slipped on
every side from the control of the National Government at this period.
It is still royal under Charles I., but it passes in 1628 to Halstead
and Chamberlain. In little more than twenty years it is in the hands
of the family of Rich. Then there is a lull, just as there was in the
case of Pangbourne, and a continuity that lasts throughout the
eighteenth century. But just as a tradition began to form it was
broken, and in the first years of the nineteenth century Sonning is
sold to the Palmers.

Parallel to the rise of the squires and their capture of English
government has gone the development of the English town system. And
this, the last historical phase with which we shall deal in these
pages, is also very well and typically illustrated in the history of
the Thames V