unable to visit Milton when the latter first arrived at Chalfont, on account of his enforced sojourn in Aylesbury gaol. He had been, with several others, attending the funeral of a Quaker at Amersham, when the party was suddenly arrested by a magistrate, one Ambrose Bennett, who was on his way to Aylesbury Sessions. Ellwood was after a time released, but Penington and others remained in prison. Isaac Penington, it seems, never returned to The Grange at Chalfont. The house had, after the confiscation of his father's estates on account of the part which the Alderman had taken in the trial of the King, been given by Charles II. to the Duke of Grafton, and the son had only been allowed to remain there on sufferance. During his imprisonment his wife and children were ejected.

At Denham the Misbourn joins the Coln, but we will leave that place for a future excursion.

CHAPTER VI.

THE VALLEY OF THE CHESS.

Chesham Church and Monuments-Source of the Chess-The Bury -Chesham Bois-Latimers-Horace Walpole's Account of the Place-The Church-Chenies-The Village Green-The Manor-House-John Russell-His Exploits and his Honours -The Church-The Russell Chapel-Effigies and Historical Groups The Earls and the First Duke-Lord William Russell-Other Monuments and Brasses.

THE little river Chess, whose valley we are now about to enter, has but a short course. It rises in the high ground above Chesham, and enters the Coln at Rickmansworth. But what the valley loses in length it makes up for in beauty, and we shall find round the village of Chenies some of the prettiest woodland and river scenery in the county, the Thames valley only excepted.

We have now arrived at the easternmost border of the Hundred of Burnham, which stretches in a bow shape from the Thames to Hertfordshire, and here, on the edge of the county, we find the little town known as the Home on the Chess. Chesham differs from

Beaconsfield and Amersham in appearance, inasmuch as it does not altogether consist of one long street, but is clustered around its handsome church, which stands on a hill almost in the centre. Let us visit the church, for there is not much more to be seen in the town, with the exception of some old houses, unless we are interested in the manufacture of chairs and other articles formed from the wood of the beech-trees which grow so plentifully all around. We enter by a fine Decorated south porch, and find ourselves in a building not only architecturally interesting, but also containing many monuments well worth notice. A sort of south transept is the burial place of the family of Cavendish of Latimers, and the archway into the chancel has been bricked up. In this chapel we see the tomb of Sir John Cavendish, son of the Earl of Devon, a good example of early seventeenth-century style, and decorated according to the taste of the period with emblems of death, such as spade, scythe, and sculls, bound together by a tangled ribbon. This monument of 1618 contrasts very well with one of rather more than a hundred years' later date, which stands close by. This last is to the memory of Mary, wife of Sir Thomas Whichcote, who died in 1728. The artistic instinct in this case does not run

beyond a tall meaningless pyramid, with a medallion of the lady inserted at the base. In the chancel we can also compare monuments of different dates. Note, for instance, the coloured effigy of Richard Woodcock, represented preaching in his pulpit, and contrast this work of 1623 with a mourning figure, by Bacon, on the monument to Nicholas Skottowe and Grace his wife, who died in 1798 and 1792 respectively. There is more life and vigour about the quaintly conceived representation of the parson than there is about the cold classical correctness of the work of the later sculptor. Then, for a different style of work, look at the mural tablet to Richard Bowle, who died in 1626, and note its coloured and well-worked frame.

When we have finished with the church and its monuments, we shall perhaps stroll out of the town into the Bury Park, and look for the sources of the Chess amongst the watercress beds which fill the bottom of the valley. The stream rises with great force out of the chalk, and is able very soon to begin its work of turning mill-wheels, in addition to its ornamental duty of forming a lake in the park. The Bury House stands close to the church. It is a red-brick building of about the end of the seventeenth century or a little later, stand

ing in a good position on the side of the

hill.

Passing out of the town southwards, we soon arrive at the outlying chapelry of Chesham Bois, once the property of the family of De Bosco, and afterwards of that of Cheyne. In the much-restored church we find the tomb of Sir John Cheyne, who presented "Judicious " Hooker to the Rectory of Drayton Beauchamp, which is on the other side of Aylesbury.

We go on down the valley past several mills, until we come to a spot where the hills rise a little more steeply, and here we have on the one side Latimers and on the other Chenies. Let us visit the former place first. The house at Latimers stands pleasantly in the pretty park which runs down to the river, here dammed up so as to form a lake. Its stands on the site of a former mansion to which Charles I. was brought as a prisoner by the army. His son also slept here for a night when escaping to the Continent. Horace Walpole has given us some description of the old house and its surroundings. He writes on the 28th September, 1749, to his friend Mr. Montague, of a visit which he had been making to Harry Conway at Latimers. "This house which they have hired is large, and bad, and old, but of a bad age; finely situated on a hill in a beech-wood,