When Joudrain perks up for the honour of Knoll.
The “Cats” of course derived its sign from the arms of the lords of the manor, the Sackvilles of Knole, whose “supporters” are two leopards argent spotted sable, easily to be mistaken by the rustics of a land where leopards are not among the native fauna, for cats. It must have been an aristocrat among inns, for it remains still one of the noblest houses in Sevenoaks, with handsome red brick frontage of the time of William the Third or Queen Anne, with beautiful gardens in the rear, and others, equally beautiful, in front, on the opposite side of the road. It must have ceased to be an inn shortly after Tom Durfey wrote, for it has been in occupation as a private residence of the Austen family since about the middle of the eighteenth century.
Opposite is the very beautiful, characteristically “Queen Anne”-style house, “The Chantry,” standing next the church and on the site of a demolished ecclesiastical building. It has lately been most exquisitely restored.
The church itself, a large building with a tall tower, is of a somewhat uninteresting Perpendicular design. The curious may notice in the churchyard a stone to “Milenda,” wife of one Joseph Kennard.
A monument in the north aisle to William Lambarde, who wrote the “Perambulation of Kent,” and died in 1601, was removed from Greenwich. Among the others, there are singularly modest tablets to the Amhersts. The most important is that to the charitable Lady Boswell, who died 1692, aged apparently thirty-seven, for the inscription says: “During xxxvii years she conversed amõg us mortals.” She left sums for “fifteen of the poorest Children to be instructed in ye Catechism of ye Church of England,” and for the much more practical purpose of teaching them to “write and cast accompts” and to apprentice them to “handycraft trades or employments.” Her school is a prominent, and very grim, object on entering the town.
OLD MANSION, FORMERLY THE “CATS” INN.
The most famous native of Sevenoaks is undoubtedly the mediæval Sir William Sevenoke, whose career was remarkably romantic. According to all received accounts, he was a foundling, discovered as a baby in the hollow of a tree in the immediate neighbourhood of the town by one Sir William Rumpstede, who named him “William” after himself, and “Sevenoke,” or “Sevenoaks,” after the town; brought him up, and apprenticed him to Hugh de Bois, citizen and ferrer (or ironmonger), of London.
Let us linger a moment to consider how popular in ancient times was this finding of neglected children in casual places by charitable knights. The frequency of it is a little suspicious. The most famous foundling incident (after that of Moses) is the finding, early in the fourteenth century, of one of the ancestors of the Stanleys. According to the legend, Sir Thomas de Latham was walking with his lady, who was childless, in his park, when they drew near to a wild and lonely spot where they found a baby boy, dressed in rich swaddling clothes, in an eagle’s nest. The knight acted astonishment; the good unsuspecting lady looked upon the baby as a present from heaven. It was adopted and educated in the name of Latham, eventually succeeding to his father’s and his adopted mother’s property. In the course of years this foundling’s daughter Isabel married Sir John Stanley, who adopted the Eagle and Child crest still borne by the Earls of Derby.
But to return to William Sevenoke. He became a grocer, and eventually, in 1418, Lord Mayor of London, became Member of Parliament, was knighted, and was granted for coat of arms seven acorns. To him Sevenoaks owes its endowed Grammar School and almshouses. Whether they were descendants of his whose name became corrupted into Sennocke is not quite clear, but it is quite certain that the unlovely name of Snooks derives from a further debasement of it.