e Marquis of Northampton, has written an admirable
monograph on the annals of the house of his ancestors. Its builder was
Sir William Compton,[35] who by his valour in arms and his courtly
ways gained the favour of Henry VIII, and was promoted to high honour
at the Court. Dugdale states that in 1520 he obtained licence to
impark two thousand acres at Overcompton and Nethercompton, _alias_
Compton Vyneyats, where he built a "fair mannour house," and where he
was visited by the King, "for over the gateway are the arms of France
and England, under a crown, supported by the greyhound and griffin,
and sided by the rose and the crown, probably in memory of Henry
VIII's visit here."[36] The Comptons ever basked in the smiles of
royalty. Henry Compton, created baron, was the favourite of Queen
Elizabeth, and his son William succeeded in marrying the daughter of
Sir John Spencer, richest of City merchants. All the world knows of
his ingenious craft in carrying off the lady in a baker's basket, of
his wife's disinheritance by the irate father, and of the subsequent
reconciliation through the intervention of Queen Elizabeth at the
baptism of the son of this marriage. The Comptons fought bravely for
the King in the Civil War. Their house was captured by the enemy, and
besieged by James Compton, Earl of Northampton, and the story of the
fighting about the house abounds in interest, but cannot be related
here. The building was much battered by the siege and by Cromwell's
soldiers, who plundered the house, killed the deer in the park,
defaced the monuments in the church, and wrought much mischief. Since
the eighteenth-century disaster to the family it has been restored,
and remains to this day one of the most charming homes in England.

[35] The present Marquis of Northampton in his book contends that
the house was mainly built in the reign of Henry VII by Edmund
Compton, Sir William's father, and that Sir William only enlarged
and added to the house. We have not space to record the arguments
in favour of or against this view.

[36] _The Progresses of James I_, by Nichols.

[Illustration: Window-catch, Brockhall, Northants]

"The greatest advantages men have by riches are to give, to build, to
plant, and make pleasant scenes." So wrote Sir William Temple,
diplomatist, philosopher, and true garden-lover. And many of the
gentlemen of England seem to have been of the same mind, if we may
judge from the number of delightfu