in the south transept, Thomas, and Alicia his
wife held the manor of Ashford in the sixteenth century. Alicia was the
daughter of Sir Andrew Judde to whom the manor of Ashford had been
mortgaged in the time of Henry VII. Her son, Sir Michael Smyth, lies
close by. The family were later ennobled and bore the title of
Viscounts Strangford.

For the outside world, however, Sir John Fogge is not Ashford's
greatest son. This honour belongs surely to Jack Cade whom Shakespeare
speaks of as the "headstrong Kentish man John Cade of Ashford," and
who, according to the poet, if headstrong, proved in the end so feeble-
minded that in Shakespeare's play we might seem to have a picture of
one suffering from general paralysis of the insane. Jack Cade, however,
was, as we are beginning to realise, a much greater and more
significant figure than Shakespeare allows us to see.

But Ashford is not made for lingering, it is all for departure, the
roads, if not the trains, lead swiftly away north, south, east and
west. As for me I went by the south-west road which said twelve miles
to Tenterden.

I went under a fine rain on a day of married white and blue, and even
before I had forgot Ashford, which was long before I crossed the Stour,
the rain had ceased, the sun shone forth and a great wind came out of
the marsh and the sea full of good tidings, so that climbing up to
Great Chart I laughed in my heart to be in England on such a day and on
such a road.

Great Chart, as I saw while still far off, is a village typical of this
country that I love, if indeed a place so completely itself is typical
of anything: a little English village, but it outfaces the whole world
in its sureness of itself, its quietness and air of immemorial
antiquity. Many a city older by far looks parvenu beside Great Chart.
Let us consider, with tears if you will, what they are making of Rome
and be thankful that our ways are not their ways. For what wins you at
once in Great Chart is the obvious fact that it has always stood there
on its hill over the Weald, and as far as one may see at a glance, much
the same as it stands to-day. And what delights you is the church there
on the highest ground, on the last hill overlooking the great Weald, a
sign in the sky, a portent, a necessary thing natural to the landscape.

What you see is a rectangular building with three eastern gables over
three Decorated windows, a long nave roof over square Perpendicular
windows and cl