to all drinkers; the Bletchingley
cobbles ran beer. As a disfranchised borough, it ended with a flash of
distinction; its last members were Thomas Hyde Villiers and Lord
Palmerston.

Other Rectors of Bletchingley were gentler souls than Dr. Harris. One of
them, William Hampton--he belonged to a remarkable line of Hamptons,
seven generations, and all clergymen--left a pretty passage in his will.
He bequeathed to his granddaughter, Judith Herat, a plot of ground in
Bletchingley, because, as he wrote, "she is very like her mother and
beareth the name of her great-grandmother my mother a gratious woman."
Another, Thomas Herring, rose to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Not
everybody would have recommended him. Swift abused him. Herring preached
a sermon in Lincoln's Inn and condemned Gay's _Beggar's Opera_, and
Swift went to the attack in the _Intelligencer_. "I should be very sorry
that any of the clergy," he wrote "should be so weak as to imitate a
Court Chaplain who preached against the _Beggar's Opera_, which probably
will do more good than one thousand sermons of so stupid, so
injudicious, and so prostitute a divine." Swift would have quarrelled
with his biographer, who gives him an engaging character:--

"His person was majestic; he had a gracefulness in his behaviour and
gravity in his countenance, that always procured him reverence. His
pronunciation was so remarkably sweet and his address so insinuating
that his audience immediately on his beginning to speak were
prepossessed in his favour."

[Illustration: _Bletchingley._]

Few manors in Surrey have passed through more distinguished hands than
Bletchingley. At the Conquest it was given to the great Richard de
Tonebrige, and perhaps he built Bletchingley Castle. He was pretty well
off for land in Surrey, for he held thirty-eight manors in that county
alone. He was the head of the de Clares, and they held Bletchingley for
eight generations. The most famous of them was the Red Earl who knew how
to change sides between Simon de Montfort and Henry III so as to be
cursed as a traitor six centuries ago and recognised by later
generations as a patriot and a statesman, who could curb the barons as
well as resist the King. He was the last but one of the de Clares to
hold Bletchingley, and it was during his absence, at the battle of
Lewes, that a Royalist party destroyed the Castle. His son died at the
head of his horse at Bannockburn, and the manor came