Depositum
Roberti Leightvn
Archiepiscopi Glasguensis
Apud Scotas
Qui Obij xxv. die Junij
Anno Dmi 1684.
Aetatis suae 74.
"Do you know," exclaimed the clerk, "I was showing this monument to an old lady one day who appeared to take a great interest in it, for she told me she had been recently reading about the Archbishop; then suddenly she said, 'I suppose you knew him well, being the clerk here. Do tell me exactly what he was like.' Now that's a true story." "What reply did you make?" queried I. "'Madam,' I said, 'do I really look over two hundred years old?'"
It may be remembered that the Archbishop used often to say that he thought "an inn the fittest place to die in, it looking like a pilgrim going home, to whom the whole world was an inn, and who was weary of the noise and the confusion of it." And he had his wish, for he died at the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane, London. Curiously enough, Cicero, centuries before, expressed himself much in the same way, for thus he wrote: "Ex vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo."
As I was leaving, the clerk told me that about a mile away, in a wild and wooded country, was Broadhurst, where the good Archbishop spent the last years of his life. "It's a funny tumble-down old building," he said, "and it used to have a moat right round it, but that's filled up; the road to it is very rough and rutty; a farmer has it now." I know not how it was, but though an ancient and picturesque home has an unfailing attraction for me, yet in this case I somehow neglected going just that little out of my way to see what I understood to be one. Truly "a very rough and rutty road" is not good for tyres, or car, but I could have walked it: why this did not occur to me at the time now passes my comprehension; it must have been a temporary lapse of sanity. Even geniuses have such lapses, for it is recorded of Sir Isaac Newton that he cut two holes in his study door, a large and a small one, for a favourite cat and her kitten to enter by! As to Broadhurst, I can only console myself that possibly (as Dr. Johnson once remarked of a place) "it is worth seeing, but not going to see."
CHAPTER IV
Dane Hill—Epitaphs—A wild bit of country—Ashdown Forest—Exploring—The use of maps—Curious inn signs—A Tudor home—The Devil's door—A medieval priest and guest house—Old-fashioned flowers—An ancient interior—Curious carvings—Roads in the old times—The window and hearth tax.
Out of Horsted Keynes we followed a friendly lane that quickly dipped down into a deep and wooded valley and then rose steeply to Dane Hill, an elevated spot that probably derives its name from an early Danish camp, or from some forgotten battle taking place there during the Danish occupation; its commanding situation suggests it may have been a fortified post. Place-names, preserved through generations, often mark spots where some far-off and unrecorded event has taken place, and I am inclined to think Dane Hill is one of these. I hunted through several volumes of general and local history, but failed to find any mention of a battle there; sometimes, however, tradition is founded on fact, though one cannot accept any tradition as trustworthy; still, where probability and tradition go hand in hand, I am inclined to give ear to tradition. Some day perhaps some Archaeological Society may go digging about Dane Hill and make discoveries.