thrown a rubbish-heap at the
tree, and that most of the rubbish has stuck--old tea-trays, broken
kettles, saucepan-lids, the sides of tin trunks. You then perceive that
over gaps and wounds in the vast and writhen shell there have been
bound, or nailed, or otherwise fastened a number of patches of thin
sheet iron, painted a peculiarly ugly red. These patches of paint shriek
with the names of a thousand cockneys, and the names suit the method of
mending the broken tree. Gus should be the name of the man who fixed
that patch; Erb, surely, daubed on that paint; Alf, I think, drove in
that nail. Could none of the foresters of the weald have helped a great
tree better in its old age? There should be methods of preserving a tree
which are not of necessity hideous; else, it would be better for the
giant to die as it pleased.

The church stands commandingly on a hill, overlooking level pastures and
woodlands. But the view to the west, with all its breadth and quiet, is
not more happy than the nearer picture to the east. Church gates stand
opposite few more charming medleys than the multiplied gables, tumbled
triangles, and oblongs of red tiles belonging to the roofs of the house
on the other side of the road. This fine old brick building, with its
formal garden path and clipped yews is now, like the Gainsfords'
manor-house a mile away, merely a farmhouse. But it was once the family
residence of the Angells, the other great family of Crowhurst after the
Gainsfords. Like the Gainsfords, the Angell family has disappeared. The
last John Angell died in 1784, and left a very curious will. His
property was to go to anyone who could prove _himself_ (not herself)
descended from an ancestor of his who lived in the reign of Henry VI.
Many claims followed; none were proved.

[Illustration: _Crowhurst Church and the old Yew._]

The house has one record at least of unrequited hospitality. This is an
extract from the parish registers:--

"1653. July 24.--William Hillyer sonne to ---- Hillyer of Bingfield
in Barkshire whoe coming as a stranger to M^r. Angell's house in
Crowhurst dyed: by whom being carefully attended by physiteans and
others in his sicknes and decently and in good fashion buried, the
father of the sayd William Hillyer refused to paye one farthing for
his physitean and buriall like an unnatural father."

Inside the church is a strange monument--a slab of Sussex iron, let into
the floor near the alt