introduced a new family who came from Shap Abbey, in Westmoreland, which had been granted to Thomas, first Lord Wharton, as a reward for his services as Warden of the Scottish Marches. The husband of Jane Goodwin was the fourth Lord Wharton. He was a strong but not a fanatical supporter of the Puritan party, to which his marriage with Goodwin's daughter would attach him. In religion he was a Presbyterian, and he left by will a rent charge on certain estates for the purpose of providing Bibles, copies of a catechism called "The Grounds and Principles of the Christian Religion," and other books, for the use of children in several parishes in Buckinghamshire, most of them in the neighbourhood of Wooburn. Lord Wharton lived to a great age, and was actually amongst those who invited the Prince of Orange to England. The latter subsequently visited his venerable supporter at Wooburn. Thomas, the third son and the successor of Philip, Lord Wharton, was a man of very different character, and occupied a much more prominent position than his father had done, though not unfortunately on account of his virtues. In 1706, he was created Earl of Wharton; in 1708, he was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; in 1715, he became Marquis of Wharton, and in that year he died. He was a keen sportsman, and his stud of race-horses and kennel of greyhounds could be matched nowhere in the kingdom. In politics he was a strong Whig, admired and trusted by his own party, but feared as well as hated by his opponents. Some idea of the extravagance of Wharton may be formed from the fact that he expended £10,000 on laying out the grounds at the old palace alone, besides what he did in adding to the episcopal building so as to make it a mansion worthy of himself. His unfortunate wife -for she was surely such-was Anne Lee, the second daughter of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley and Quarrendon, the latter place being in Buckinghamshire. She died at the age of twenty-six, thirty years before her worthless husband. Philip, the son of Earl Thomas, succeeded his father in 1716, but he is hardly connected with Wooburn. Alternately Jacobite and Hanoverian, he was created Duke of Northumberland by King James, and Duke of Wharton by King George. In character he appears to have much resembled his father, and Pope in his "Moral Essays " seems, as it were, to be describing both Whartons, for surely the lines "A rebel to the very king he loves, He dies sad outcast of each church and state," must apply to Duke Philip, who died in exile and poverty in the monastery of the Charitable Friars at Tarragona in 1731, a convert, it is said, to the Church of Rome, leaving behind him two volumes of poems and essays. "Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule? Comets are regular, and Wharton plain." We shall not find any remains of the Episcopal Palace, unless it be the fragment of a garden wall. A modern house occupies its site. John Longland, Dean of Salisbury and Chancellor of Oxford, who favoured the divorce of Henry VIII. from Katharine of Arragon, built much of it. He also gave to the parish church the second bell, which bears his name. The church stands close to the water side. It contains monuments of the Goodwin family, and that of the first Lord Wharton of Wooburn, a handsome mural monument of grey marble. We note that the Goodwins are described as of Uburne. From this some have supposed that the original name of the place was Up-burne, but it is well known that the first letter of the word Wood was frequently unpronounced in former days, so we may still consider that the village takes its name from the Burn flowing through the wood. Another celebrity connected with Wooburn was Francis Viscount Lovell, who held the manor of Wooburn Deyncourt, to which he succeeded through his grandmother. He was that minister of Richard III. whose name has been handed down in the rhymes of the unfortunate William Colingbourne as "Lovell the dog." His estates at Wooburn were escheated to the Crown, but except for the fact that he held the property, Lovell does not seem to have had much to do with the place though he was steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. Minster Lovell, in Oxfordshire, where he met with his tragic fate, being apparently starved to death in a subterranean chamber, is at some distance. The interest of Wooburn is, as we have already said, chiefly connected with the history of those who have had to do with the place, so after looking round the very handsome and interesting church which contains other objects. worth notice besides the monuments of the Goodwins and Whartons, we will pass on up the valley of the little burn. We may notice that the Wyck has in this, the lower part of his course, a good deal of work to do in the matter of the manufacture of paper. We passed paper mills at Cowes End, and again at Wooburn. Others we find at Londwater and at Wycombe Marsh, and all are within a few miles of one another. A manufacturer of some note, John Bates, had the last-mentioned mills rather more than a century ago. He was specially successful in the production of paper fitted for the reception of impressions from engraved plates, and he received the gold medal of the Society of Arts for his inventions. Five miles from Wooburn we enter the important and bustling town of High, or Market Wycombe, the centre of the chair-making trade, the raw material for which is supplied by the beech woods which clothe the adjacent hills. Wycombe is an ancient place. Its name proclaims its Saxon history, as it is sometimes called Chipping, or Cheaping Wycombe, and was, therefore, a market town in early days. But earlier people than the Saxons had settled in this pleasant spot in the valley of the Wyck, for Roman remains have been discovered in the Rye, or Common Meadow, to the south of the town. In other matters, too, the place has an ancient record, since the municipality dates from the time of Henry I. In coaching days also it had much importance, situated as it was on the great high road from London to Oxford, which runs across the centre of the county. |