y, when looking
over this lovely valley, with its woods, its verdure, its sweep of
hills, its feeling of the near river, we can well fancy how the
poet-heart of the great Earl must have longed to leave the trial, the
turmoil, the jangling, the treachery, the weary fears, the bitter
humiliations of his London captivity, and to taste once more the sweet
air, the pleasant sights, the calmness and the quiet of the country.
Hope and comfort must have come with the thought. One of the prettiest
pictures that I know, is an extract from a contemporary letter, in the
first volume of Mr. Craik's most interesting book, the "Romance of the
Peerage," telling of the Earl and Countess, during one of the daily
visits that she was at one time permitted to pay him when he was a
prisoner in Essex House, walking together in the garden, "now he, now
she, reading one to the other." The whole taste and feeling of the man,
the daily habit of his life, is shown in this little circumstance. And
this is the brave soldier who, when examined before the Privy Council, a
council composed of open enemies and treacherous friends, had been kept
nearly all the day kneeling at the bottom of the table. Tyranny drove
him into madness, and then exacted the full penalty of the wild acts
which that madness prompted. But Essex was a man in advance of his age;
the companion as well as the patron of poets; the protector of papist
and puritan; the fearless asserter of liberty of conscience! He deserved
a truer friend than Bacon, a more merciful judge than Elizabeth.

To the house of Knollys belongs another interesting association, that
strangest of genealogical romances, the great case of the Banbury
peerage. The cause was decided (if decided it can be called even now) by
evidence found in the parish register of Rotherfield Grays.

The place has yet another attraction in its difficulty of access; the
excellent ladies of the Court admitting few beyond their own immediate
connections and nearest friends. One class, to be sure, finds its way
there as if by instinct--the poor, who, as the birds of the air detect
the grain under the surface in the newly sown ground, are sure to find
out the soil where charity lies germinating. Few excepting these
constant visitors are admitted. But, besides the powerful introduction
of our mutual friend the rector, a nephew of theirs, and his most sweet
and interesting wife, had for some time inhabited the house which had
been the hom