re the family portraits of a noble
lineage. Of Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Sidney and heiress of Sir John
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Ben Jonson wrote this epitaph:

"Underneath this sable hearse
Lies, the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death! ere thou hast slain another
Learned and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."

Sir Philip Sidney was her brother, born at Penshurst in 1554. The estate
came through various owners, until, in the reign of Henry II., it was
granted to Sir William Sidney, who commanded a wing of the victorious
English at Flodden. Sir Philip, we are told, would have been King of
Poland had not Queen Elizabeth interposed, "lest she should lose the
jewel of her times." Algernon Sidney, beheaded on Tower Hill, was his
descendant. Penshurst is now held by Baron de l'Isle, to whom it has
descended through marriage. On the estate stands the quaint old
Penshurst Church with its ivy-covered porch. The Eden River falls into
the Medway near Penshurst, and alongside its waters is the well-known
castellated residence which still survives from the Tudor days, Hever
Castle, where, it is said, Anne Boleyn was born. Sir Geoffrey Boleyn,
her great-grandfather, who was Lord Mayor of London in the reign of
Henry VI., began Hever Castle, which was completed by his grandson,
Anne's father. It was at Hever that King Henry wooed her. The house is a
quadrangle, with high pitched roofs and gables and surrounded by a
double moat, and is now a farm-house. Here they show the visitor Anne
Boleyn's rooms, and also the chamber where her successor, Anne of
Cleves, is said to have died, though this is doubted. King Henry,
however, seized the estate of Hever from his earlier wife's family, and
granted it to his subsequently discarded consort after he separated from
her. Northward of Tunbridge, and near Sevenoaks, is Knole, the home of
the family of Hon. L. S. Sackville-West, the present British minister at
Washington. It is one of the most interesting baronial mansions in
England, enclosed by a park five miles in circumference.

[Illustration: HEVER CASTLE.]

[Illustration: GATEWAY OF LEEDS CASTLE.]

Proceeding eastward towards the outskirts of the Weald, we come to Leeds
Castle, once the great central fortress of Kent. Standing in a
commanding position, it held the road leading to Canterbury and the
coast, and it dates probably from the Norman Conquest. Its moat
sur