A chapter of Hume.-The Village Cage.-The Copthorne Poachers.-A shop for three centuries.-The green-faced Soldan.-A griffin's hoof.Second-best fish.-Eleanor Cobham and the Witch.-Crowhurst.-A tree and a rubbish-heap.-An iron tombstone.-Fifteen daughters running.-Crowhurst Place.

LINGFIELD is not large enough, nor enough overbuilt and railway-ridden, to dare to the title of capital even of a distant corner of Surrey. But it stands above and apart from the quiet country round it, like a Bible in an old library. Near it, or in its streets, are some of the prettiest and most ancient timber houses in the county; the churchyard with its brick paths, its rose-beds, the red walls round it and its view of the Weald, has the serenity of deep meadowland and sunlit

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cloisters; the church itself, with its sculptured oak and baronial tombs, belongs to all English history from Crecy. If the churches of the surrounding parishes, with their brasses and their registers, make up an admirable local guide-book, the records of Lingfield church are a chapter of Hume.

The village itself is the pleasantest mixture of every style of Surrey cottage, brick and timber, weather-tiling, plain brick,

plain wood, and a queer row of square white-stuccoed buildings which looks as if it had been dumped inland from opposite shingle and dancing seas. It only lacks tamarisk to be sheer Worthing. The village centres on its pond; not a broad nor a very limpid piece of water, but distinguished by a pair of swans, and by a curious obelisk standing at its head

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DURANCE IN A CAGE

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The

which once may have marked a shrine. Built on to the bole of an old oak by the obelisk is an apartment engagingly labelled "Ye Village Cage." Other Surrey villages have had their cages, but only Lingfield has kept one. The door is massive and threatening, and you get the keys at the chemist's the other side of the road; or rather, a guide politely accompanies you and displays the cage's secrets. The cage not long ago fell into disuse. It was once used as a temporary lock-up for drunk or disorderly persons, or others who had traversed the local by-laws of morality. Local justice descended upon them, and they were cast into durance until morning should bring soberness with a headache, or, in more serious cases, until proper conveyance could be got round for Godstone. cage has seen at least one exciting rescue. This was some fifty or sixty years ago, when a number of desperate characters vaguely described as the Copthorne poachers were captured and haled into prison. As to the exact number of captives, tradition varies; but the legend which is the most respectful to the powers of the local constable sets it at eleven. The eleven were surrounded, the door of the dungeon closed on them, and the village tried to go to sleep. Darkness came on, and a daring deed. Other poachers stole into the village, got to work with picks and crowbars, took the roof off the dungeon and hauled out their comrades exulting. The village wisely did not attempt a recapture.

The cage saw its last tenant in 1882, and the story of the rescued poachers may still, perhaps, be heard from the mouth. of the oldest inhabitant, who was himself at one time a constable. As an expert in suppressing crime, he never liked the plan on which the cage was built. The floor is higher by two steps than the ground outside, and you had to go upstairs to it. In fact, you had to throw your prisoner upstairs—a most perilous business. It ought to have been built so that you could take him by the left leg and throw him downstairs like a Christian.

Caged prisoners at Lingfield were not always treated with the utmost rigour of the law. At one time the door was pierced by a grating, and through the grating kindly souls passed packets of tobacco. Liquor could not be passed in packets, but found its way in somehow. Afterwards in severer days the grating was closed, and prisoners neither drank nor smoked,

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MAN-TRAPS AND HANDCUFFS

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Its

as became their miserable condition. Nine years after the last captive languished behind the blocked grating the prison was taken over by the village for fresh purposes. Henceforward it was to be the museum, and was duly vested in trustees. collection still grows slowly. "Anything to do with village crime we make that our special subject," the curator informs you with a pleasing urbaneness. The collection includes a man-trap, a pair of handcuffs, a canvas bed which furnishes the museum whenever it is wanted as a mortuary, a pair of farmer's snowboots used a hundred years ago, and a pair of farmer's ordinary boots used more recently.

Of tiny village streets there is no more fascinating byway than the little road which leads up to the south door of Lingfield Church. On the right is the Star inn, taking its sign from the arms of the great lords of Sterborough who lie in the church; and built beside the inn a row of quiet cottages, perhaps once part of the inn. On the left one building stands out from the rest; an early sixteenth century timber house, admirably preserved, and of peculiar interest because after three hundred years it is still carrying on the business for which it was intended. It was built as a shop, and it is a shop still. Modern preference for plate glass and easily opened doors has changed the original plan of the ground floor, but the first floor remains almost as its builder left it, and its heavy girders with their rounded ends jutting out over the pavement below are a happy testimony to the worth of wealden builders and wealden wood. Wealden paint, on the other hand, has not improved. The girders are still dark and stained as oak (or is it chestnut ?) should be stained by age and weather. But a yard or two away there are beams as massive and as well-seasoned which flout the lapse of centuries with a flaring and be-varnished buff.

The church is noble and tranquil without and within. A chained Bible stands on a lectern; another Bible, "bought May the tenth 1683," as the inscription runs on the title-page, by William Saxby of Surry Esq., for the use and benefitt of all good Christians" is in use to-day. But the chief interest of the church to-day, as it has been its chief glory in the past, is its association with the great family of Cobham. The Cobhams of Sterborough-their castle stood two miles east of Lingfield, but has fallen-came of a line which through two of

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A GREAT SOLDIER

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the most eventful centuries of English history was sented in almost every battle, consulted in the most difficult diplomacy, and allied at last by marriage to an English king. Their family goes back to a Justice itinerant who settled in Kent; but the real founder of the Surrey branch was the Justice's grandson, the first Lord Cobham of Sterborough. He was one of the greatest soldiers of his day, and, from the ransoms he had for the prisoners he took in battle, one of the richest. It was to him, with Sir John Chandos and the Earl of Warwick, that Edward III entrusted the Black Prince at Crecy; at Poictiers he rescued the King of France; he was Lord Admiral of the King's fleet "from the mouth of the Thames westwards"; and to end it all, he died in his bed of the plague. His effigy on his tomb tramples a Soldan, whose face has been duly painted green by the artist-an interesting relic, according to Mr. J. G. Waller, of Crusaders' traditions. There were not enough names for colours in those days, and perhaps the soldiers trying to describe the olive skins of the Arabs, may have called them green. For some obscure reason, too, the Soldan with his green face and his red beard is intended by the artist to be alive. Nobody can say why that should be, but the sculptor doubtless knew. He was a careful and accurate man; you can still trace below Lord Cobham's left knee the fastenings of the Garter.

Lord Cobham's wife, Joan, was the author of one of the longest wills in existence. She remembered everybody, including the prisoners in chains at Southwark and the sick men in the hospitals. Her executor Robert Belknappe was to have "a horn made from a griffin's hoof with a silver core, and the said horn has a silver rim and two silver gilt feet." But she was most anxious, poor lady, about her soul. "Before everything else" there were to be said 7000 masses, immediately upon her death, and the priests were to have £29 35. 4d. for saying them. A penny a mass, that is, and the priests took But it was twelve years before they had said the

the pence.

masses.

The second Lord Cobham had mingled experiences of love and war. According to the inscription on his tomb, broken in the church but preserved in the College of Arms, he was "as brave as a leopard, a sumptuous entertainer, handsome, imperturbable, and courteous." He was a soldier, but the great