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CRANBROOK CHURCH

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rounding district, and when Fuller wrote "Kentish cloth at the present keepeth up the credit thereof as high as ever before," but it has now been supplanted by the manufacture of other districts, and to remind us of the bygone trade we have but the old gabled houses in which it was carried on, and such stories as that of Queen Elizabeth walking from Cranbrook to the neighbouring manor of Coursehorne entirely on a pathway of broadcloth made in the neighbourhood. The church stand

ing part hidden at an angle of the main street is an interesting building with many noticeable features, including a 'dipping place," constructed by a notable Anabaptist vicar here, known to those who read old works of controversial theology as "Johnson of Cranbrook." Born at Frindsbury, and educated at Canterbury, the non-juring divine belongs very fully to our county for, successively or as pluralist, the Rev. John Johnson held the livings of Hardres, Boughton-under

248

THE POETS OF CRANBROOK

CHAP.

Blean, Herne Hill, Margate, Appledore, and lastly-1707-1725 -Cranbrook, where he was known as a diligent parish priest, holding daily services in his church, and whence he issued his various works on divinity. More famous names associated with Cranbrook are those of Phineas Fletcher, the poet of "the Purple Island". wise, tender, and sweet voiced old fellow was born here when his grandfather was rector in 1582, and of Sydney Dobell, the singer of "Balder," who was born here in 1824.

دو

To Willsley Green, a little north of Cranbrook, the infant Douglas Jerrold was taken within a few weeks of his birth in Soho; there he passed his earliest years, and thither I like to believe his memory returned when he came to present the idyllic spot described in "The Chronicles of Clovernook "

"We will show every green lane about it; every clump of trees--every bit of woodland, mead and dell. The villagers, too, may be found, upon acquaintance, not altogether boors. There are some strange folk among them. Men who have wrestled in the world, and have had their victories and their trippings-up; and now they have nothing to do but keep their little bits of garden ground pranked with the earliest flowers; their only enemies, weeds, slugs and snails. Odd people, we say it, are amongst them. Men, whose minds have been strangely carved and fashioned by the world; cut like odd fancies in walnut-tree: but though curious and grotesque, the minds are sound, with not a worm-hole in them. And these men meet in summer under the broad mulberry-tree before the "gratis," and tell their stories—thoughts, humours; yea, their dreams.”

There are in this neighbourhood many fine trees, particularly grand conifers between Cranbrook and Sissinghurst.

Five miles to the north of Cranbrook is Staplehurst, with a good view of the valley of the River Beult, one of the most important tributaries of the Medway, and before reaching that town we have Frittenden, a mile or so to the right, returning from which attractive byroads lead to one of the old "stately homes of England "at Sissinghurst, passing on our way the Hammer Stream. This little tributary of the Beult as do other names in the neighbourhood, reminds us of the days when ironfounding was carried on extensively in the "hursts." But northward the tide of manufacture has taken its way, and ironfounding and cloth-making must be looked for far from these rural scenes.

The ruins of the Tudor Sissinghurst Castle, at some distance from the village, are well worth visiting. Sir Roger de Cover

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WALPOLE AT SISSINGHURST

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ley we may be sure would have gone out of his way for the purpose, for he was a diligent reader of Baker's "Chronicle of the Kings of England," as Addison has told us, always keeping the volume in his hall window and quoting it with approval.

Horace Walpole we know did go out of his way in 1752-and was not altogether gratified. "Yesterday," he wrote, "after twenty mishaps we got to Sissinghurst to dinner. There is a park in ruins, and a house in ten times greater ruins, built by sir John Baker, chancellor of the exchequer to queen Mary.

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A CHRONICLER ON HIMSELF

CHAP.

You go through an arch of the stables to the house, the court of which is perfect and very beautiful. . . . This has a good apartment, and a fine gallery a hundred and twenty feet by eighteen, which takes up one side the wainscot is pretty and entire; the ceiling vaulted and painted in a light genteel grotesque. The whole is built for show; for the back of the house is nothing but lath and plaster." Nearly half a century later than Walpole's visit the place was utilised for keeping French prisoners, since which it has been reduced to mere ruins. It was at this Castle that the unhappy Sir Richard Baker was born, but the literary works by which he is remembered were destined to be written from the confinement of the Fleet Prison. It was Sir Richard's grandfather, Sir John Baker, ambassador to Denmark for Henry VIII., and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Queen Mary, who built Sissinghurst. Sir John is reported to have been a severe opponent of his Anabaptist neighbours at Cranbrook, and an unfounded tradition says that he was killed during a broil with them at a place in the vicinity still known as Baker's Cross. The historian was the eldest son of Sir John's disinherited eldest son, and though born at the Castle does not seem to have been long associated with it. At the age of sixty-seven he was forced to take refuge in the Fleet Prison, and there during the last ten years of his life he wrote various works, including the "Chronicles" by which he was once better remembered, and of which he himself said "it is collected with so great care and diligence, that if all other of our chronicles were lost, this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages memorable, or worthy to be known." Contemporaries and successors passed far other judgments on the work, which has long since become obsolete. It is, however, with bitter feelings that we think of that son-in-law of his one Smith "who destroyed the manuscript of Sir Richard's autobiography; his devotional exercises and verses were little likely to do more than please his contemporaries, his "Chronicle" was doomed to be superseded, but from such of his works as we can judge we may well believe that the lost one might have had a lasting attractiveness. The destruction of a MS. book by any but the author thereof should rank with the worst of crimes. It is a kind of murder.

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Northwards from Cranbrook we found the Wealden country gradually declining towards the Beult and its tributaries,