THE WEALD OF KENT.
Proceeding eastward along the chalk-downs and over the border into Kent, we reach the Wealden formation, the "wooded land" of that county—so named by the Saxons—which stretches between the North and South Downs, the chalk-formations bordering this primeval forest, but now almost entirely transformed into a rich agricultural country. The Weald is a region of great fertility and high cultivation, still bearing numerous copses of well-grown timber, the oak being the chief, and furnishing in times past the material for many of its substantial oaken houses. The little streams that meander among the undulating hills of this attractive region are nearly all gathered together to form the Medway, which flows past Maidstone to join the Thames. It was the portions of the Weald around Goudhurst that were memorable for the exploits of Radford and his band, the originals of G. P. R. James's Smugglers. Goudhurst church-tower, finely located on one of the highest hills of the Wealden region, gives a grand view on all sides, especially to the southward over Mr. Beresford Hope's seat at Bedgebury Park. In this old church of St. Mary are buried the Bedgeburys and the Colepeppers. Their ancient house, surrounded by a moat, has been swept away, and the present mansion was built in the seventeenth century out of the proceeds of a sunken Spanish treasure-ship, Sir James Hayes, who built the house, having gone into a speculation with Lord Falkland and others to recover the treasure. This origin of Bedgebury House is recorded on its foundation-stone: it has been greatly enlarged by successive owners, and is surrounded by ornamental gardens and grounds, with a park of wood, lake, and heather covering two thousand acres. In the neighboring church of Kilndown, Field-marshal Beresford, the former owner of Bedgebury, reposes in a canopied sepulchre. Just to the eastward is Cranbrook, the chief market-town of the Weald, the ancient sanctuary of the Anabaptists and the historical centre of the Flemish cloth-trade, which used to be carried on by the "old gray-coats of Kent." Their descendants still live in the old-time factories, which have been converted into handsome modern houses. Edward III. first induced the Flemings to settle in Kent and some other parts of England, and from his reign until the last century the broadcloth manufacture concentrated at Cranbrook. When Queen Elizabeth once visited the town she was entertained at a manor about a mile from Cranbrook, and walked thence into the town upon a carpet, laid down the whole way, made of the same cloth that her loyal men of Kent wore on their backs. In Cranbrook Church were held the fierce theological disputes of Queen Mary's reign which resulted in the imprisonment of the Anabaptists and other dissenters by Chancellor Baker. Over the south porch is the chamber with grated windows known as "Bloody Baker's Prison." Among the old customs surviving at Cranbrook is that which strews the path of the newly-wedded couple as they leave the church with emblems of the bridegroom's trade. The blacksmith walks upon scraps of iron, the shoemaker on leather parings, the carpenter on shavings, and the butcher on sheepskins. In an adjacent glen almost surrounded by woods are the ruins of Sissinghurst, where Chancellor Baker lived and built the stately mansion of Saxenhurst, from which the present name of its ruins is derived. The artists Horsley and Webster lived at Sissinghurst and Cranbrook for many years, and found there frequent subjects of rustic study. The Sissinghurst ruins are fragmentary, excepting the grand entrance, which is well preserved. Baker's Cross survives to mark the spot where the Anabaptists had a skirmish with their great enemy; and the legend is that he was killed there, though history asserts that this theological warrior died in his bed peaceably some time afterwards in London.
RUINS OF SISSINGHURST.
Near Lamberhurst, on the Surrey border and on the margin of the Teise, is the Marquis of Camden's seat at Bayham Abbey. Its ruins include a church, a gateway, and some of the smaller buildings. It was once highly attractive, though small, and its ruined beauty is now enhanced by the care with which the ivy is trained over the walls and the greensward floor is smoothed. Ralph de Dene founded this abbey about the year 1200, and after the dissolution Queen Elizabeth granted it to Viscount Montague. It was bought in the last century by Chief-Justice Pratt, whose son, the chancellor, became Marquis of Camden. The modern mansion is a fine one, and from it a five-mile walk through the woods leads to Tunbridge on the Medway. Chief among the older remains of this pleasantly-located and popular town is Tunbridge Castle, its keep having stood upon a lofty mound above the river. This "Norman Mound," as it is called, is now capped with ruined walls, and an arched passage leads from it to the upper story of the elaborate gate-house, still in excellent preservation. Richard Fitzgilbert built the keep, and ruled the "League of Tunbridge," but his castle, after a long siege by Henry III., was taken away from his successor, who assumed the name of Gilbert de Clare. From the De Clares the stronghold passed to the Audleys and Staffords, and it is now held by Lord Stafford. The gate-house is a fine structure, square in form, with round towers at each corner. The ruins are richly adorned with mouldings and other decorations, and within is a handsome state-apartment. Tunbridge is a quiet town, standing where five of the tributaries of the Medway come together, over which it has as many stone bridges. One of these streams, the Tun, gives the town its name. In St. Stephen's Church, a badly mutilated building with a fine spire, many of the De Clares are buried, and the quaint half-timbered building of the "Chequers Inn" helps maintain the picturesque appearance of the Tunbridge High Street. The spa of Tunbridge Wells, with its chalybeate springs and baths, is a few miles southward, but the days of its greatest glory have passed away, though fashion to a moderate extent still haunts its pump-room and parade. This famous watering-place stands in a contracted valley enclosed by the three hills known as Mount Ephraim, Mount Zion, and Mount Pleasant.
| TUNBRIDGE CASTLE. | PENSHURST PLACE. |
PENSHURST CHURCH.
To the westward of Tunbridge, and in the Medway Valley, is Penshurst, celebrated as the home of Sir Philip Sidney—a grand, gray old house, built at many periods, begun in the fourteenth century and not completed until a few years ago. It is a pretty English picture within a setting of wooded hills and silver rivers, the pattern from which Sidney drew his description of "Laconia" in Arcadia. The buildings, particularly their window-heads, are ornamented with the tracery peculiar to Kent. The great hall, the earliest of these buildings, has a characteristic open-timber roof, while its minstrel-gallery, fronted by a wainscot screen, is ornamented with the badge of the Dudleys, the "bear and ragged staff." Within these halls are the family portraits of a noble lineage. Of Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Sidney and heiress of Sir John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Ben Jonson wrote this epitaph:
"Underneath this sable hearse
Lies, the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death! ere thou hast slain another
Learned and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
Sir Philip Sidney was her brother, born at Penshurst in 1554. The estate came through various owners, until, in the reign of Henry II., it was granted to Sir William Sidney, who commanded a wing of the victorious English at Flodden. Sir Philip, we are told, would have been King of Poland had not Queen Elizabeth interposed, "lest she should lose the jewel of her times." Algernon Sidney, beheaded on Tower Hill, was his descendant. Penshurst is now held by Baron de l'Isle, to whom it has descended through marriage. On the estate stands the quaint old Penshurst Church with its ivy-covered porch. The Eden River falls into the Medway near Penshurst, and alongside its waters is the well-known castellated residence which still survives from the Tudor days, Hever Castle, where, it is said, Anne Boleyn was born. Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, her great-grandfather, who was Lord Mayor of London in the reign of Henry VI., began Hever Castle, which was completed by his grandson, Anne's father. It was at Hever that King Henry wooed her. The house is a quadrangle, with high pitched roofs and gables and surrounded by a double moat, and is now a farm-house. Here they show the visitor Anne Boleyn's rooms, and also the chamber where her successor, Anne of Cleves, is said to have died, though this is doubted. King Henry, however, seized the estate of Hever from his earlier wife's family, and granted it to his subsequently discarded consort after he separated from her. Northward of Tunbridge, and near Sevenoaks, is Knole, the home of the family of Hon. L. S. Sackville-West, the present British minister at Washington. It is one of the most interesting baronial mansions in England, enclosed by a park five miles in circumference.
HEVER CASTLE.
GATEWAY OF LEEDS CASTLE.
Proceeding eastward towards the outskirts of the Weald, we come to Leeds Castle, once the great central fortress of Kent. Standing in a commanding position, it held the road leading to Canterbury and the coast, and it dates probably from the Norman Conquest. Its moat surrounds three islands, from which, as if from the water, rise its walls and towers. This castle is now the residence of Mr. Wykeham Martin and contains many valuable antiquities. Also near the eastern border of the Weald is Tenterden, famous for its church-steeple, which Bishop Latimer has invested with a good story. The bishop in a sermon said that Sir Thomas More was once sent into Kent to learn the cause of the Goodwin Sands and the obstructions to Sandwich Haven. He summoned various persons of experience, and among others there "came in before him an olde man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little lesse than an hundereth yeares olde. When Maister More saw this aged man he thought it expedient to hear him say his minde in this matter, for being so olde a man, it was likely he knew most of any man in that presence and company. So Maister More called this olde aged man unto him, and sayd, 'Father, tell me if ye can what is the cause of this great arising of the sande and shelfs here about this haven, the which stop it up that no shippes can arrive here. Ye are the oldest man that I can espie in all this companye, so that, if any man can tell any cause of it, ye of likelihode can say most in it, or at leastwise more than any man here assembled.'—'Yea, forsooth, good master,' quod this olde man, 'for I am wellnigh an hundreth years olde, and no man here in this companye anything neare unto mine age.'—'Well, then,' quod Maister More, 'how say you in this matter? What think ye to be the cause of these shelfs and flattes that stop up Sandwich Haven?'—'Forsooth, syr,' quoth he, 'I am an olde man; I think that Tenterton Steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sandes. For I am an olde man, syr,' quod he, 'and I may remember the building of Tenterton Steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that Tenterton Steeple was a-building there was no manner of speaking of any flattes or sandes that stopped the haven; and, therefore, I thinke that Tenterton Steeple is the cause of the destroying and decaying of Sandwich Haven.' And even so to my purpose," says Latimer in conclusion, "is preaching of God's worde the cause of rebellion, as Tenterton Steeple is a cause that Sandwich Haven is decayed." Now this "olde aged man" had some excuse for his theory in the Kentish tradition, which says that the abbot of St. Augustine, who built the steeple, used for it the stones collected to strengthen the sea-wall of Goodwin Sands, then part of the main land. The next storm submerged the district, of which the Goodwins are the remains, and thus the steeple caused the quicksands, according to the Kentish theory.