CHAPTER IX

I HAVE now detained the reader long enongh for the present among the breezy uplands of the Cotswold. In the present chapter I shall quit the plateau and descend into the fertile plain which lies at the foot of the hills, known far and wide as the Vale of Evesham. Not that I shall wander far from the hill country, but before returning to it I must visit the villages which dot the base of the slopes from Quinton in the extreme north as far as Winchcombe. Between this place and Cheltenham the escarpment, which trends steadily to the south-west, reaches its highest point in Cleeve Cloud, 1070 feet, while in the vale to the north are the outlying eminences of Oxenton, Dumbleton and Bredon.

From Campden I descend to Battle Bridge near the station. How long the place has been so called I do not know, and what the battle commemorated was, can only be guessed. Pierre de Langtoft, in a chronicle written in the reign of Edward the First, records that in 689, Ine, king of the West Saxons, defeated a coalition of British chiefs in a field under "Kampdene," and it has been suggested that this spot is the locality intended. If so, it must have been the last spasmodic effort of the Welsh to assert their independence anywhere to the east of the Severn.

At Ebrington (locally Yabberton) on the opposite hill lived Sir John Fortescue, a member of the Devonshire family of that name, and author of the De Landibus Legum Anglia and other

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works relating to constitutional history. He was Lord Chief Justice of England under Henry the Sixth, and a devoted adherent of the Lancastrian cause. After the final defeat of the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, he submitted to the new régime, and retired to the estate he had purchased at Ebrington, where he died at a very advanced age. On the north side of the chancel he lies in effigy in his judicial robes, coloured to the life. It has generally been inferred that the whole monument was erected as late as 1677; but this is a mistake, owing to a misinterpretation of the Latin inscription set up in that year by the Fortescue of the day. The words "Marmoreum hoc monumentum " must refer only to the marble tablet containing the inscription, and not to the effigy, which is of stone and of a much earlier date. This is clear from the words of Wood, who was at Ebrington in Oct., 1676, the year before the tablet was erected: "Going forthwith into the church, I found in the chancell a raised monument of free stone joyning to the north wall and theron the proportion of a man laying on his back, habited in certaine long robes. It is the constant tradition there that it is the monument of Sir John Fortescue. . Fortescue of Devonshire, lord of this mannour, is about to set up an inscription over this monument."

There are also monuments to the Keyte family, who formerly owned large estates in these parts. A gruesome story is told of Sir William Keyte, who lived at Norton House, on the beautiful slopes of the hills near Aston Subedge. Driven out of his mind by dissipation, he set fire to his house one evening in the autumn of 1741 and perished in the flames. Nothing loth to point a moral and adorn a tale, Mr. Wildgoose in The Spiritual Quixote narrates the particulars at length to a party of his Derbyshire friends. Another branch of the family lived at Hidcote House, two miles north of Ebrington. The centre and one wing of this fine old manor house is still standing; over the door are the arms of Keyte impaling Spencer, and the initials of Francis Keyte of Hidcote, who married a sister of the

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second Sir Thomas Spencer of Yarnton. They had a daughter who, according to Wood, was anything but a credit to the family. We have already met with Captain Hastings Keyte, a brother of Francis, at Stow.

It is a stiff climb to the top of Ilmington Downs, where, at a height of nearly 850 feet, the road enters Warwickshire; a few yards to the left of the road is an eminence commanding a most extensive view in every direction. The village of Ilmington lies at the foot of the steep grassy slopes a couple of miles further on. It is a quiet unpretending little place, with a few good old houses and many thatched cottages of the rich yellow stone we first met with at Deddington. It is much frequented in summer by unambitious ruralisers from Birmingham, and indeed boasts a chalybeate spring, which, had the tide of fashion set this way, might perhaps have made it a rival to Leamington. But Ilmington has seen its best days. When the smaller landed gentry were to be found everywhere up and down the countryside, there was more than one family of importance here. On the other side of the hill is Foxcote, a fine eighteenth century mansion, the seat of the Cannings, a branch of the famous Bristol family, since the time of Henry the VI., and still in the possession of their descendant, Mr. Canning Howard, of Corby Castle. Then there were the Palmers at Compton Scorpion, and the Brents at Stoke Lark. The manor-houses of these families still exist. That at Compton Scorpion was the birthplace of Sir Thomas Overbury, whose mother was a Palmer. His father's family resided at Bourton-on-the-Hill, a few miles to the south. These Palmers came to an end in 1763 with one Dorothea Palmer, the widow of the last Squire. If the following story is true, one cannot help thinking that the proposal to put up any memorial to her in the church must have met with opposition from the rector of the day. But, in fact, a small brass plate records that she was by birth a Lyttleton, and in virtue of this descent she quarters the arms of Plantagenet on her shield of arms. The story in question, for which I can

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find no other authority than local tradition, relates that the old lady (she died in her seventy-seventh year), finding that complaints were made of her failing to attend church, jolted across the fields one Sunday morning in a common farm cart, entered the church, and having anathematised the parson, church and congregation in a loud voice returned home as she had come. For the rest of her days she is said to have kept within the law by appearing once a quarter at a Quaker's meeting.

The old house of Stoke Lark, once the home of the Brents, lies in a retired valley to the west of the village. Like Compton Scorpion, it is now occupied as a farmhouse, but you may still trace its terraced gardens sloping down to what were not long since fish-ponds, but which are now drained and choked with weeds. Another brass tablet in the church depones that the founder of the family appeared at Ilmington about the year 1487 under the assumed name of John Buston. He was one of the Brents of Cossington, in Somerset, but the reason for his disguise can only be a matter of conjecture; perhaps he had involved himself so deeply in the Yorkist cause as to make concealment advisable. Be this as it may, in ten years' time he found himself in a position to woo and win the daughter and heiress of the lord of Stoke Lark, one George Colchester; and there his descendants continued to flourish up to the close of the seventeenth century.

A deep rich country lies between the foot of the hills and the Avon to the north and west of Ilmington. The whole is intersected by a network of pleasant lanes, and the hedges are bright in summer with the great willow herb and the large white bindweed, interspersed with the crowded umbels of the tall angelica. I am bound for Mickleton, but instead of riding straight there I resolve to make the circuit of the beautiful Meon Hill, already mentioned, in order to see the picturesque village of Quinton, which lies on its northern side. Here I am but six miles from Stratford; but I must not wander any further into Shakespeare's country, especially as I under