His

some distance from the 'Old Hall,' are the monuments of the Moretons, including one to the memory of the Recorder of London already mentioned. father was Bishop of Kildare and Meath, and his grandfather was a Prebendary of Chester, who had married a niece of Archbishop Laud. The Prebendary's brother was in high diplomatic employ, and had been sent by Charles I. as Ambassador to Genoa and to Tuscany. The family appear in their time to have allied themselves with the Breretons, Bellots, Rodes, Yardleys, Calveleys, Suttons, and Davenports, and others of the best Cheshire squires.

There was another branch of the family who were seated at another house in the neighbourhood, called Great Moreton Hall, which is thus described by Lysons in his 'Topographia Britannica' :

'It is a spacious building of timber and plaster, furnished with gables in the style of the early part of the seventeenth century. It has, however, been much altered of late, and previous to these alterations windows of comparatively modern appearance had been substituted for the original ones, and the timber work concealed by stucco. In front of the house used to stand the steps of an ancient cross, much resembling another at Lymme, in the same county. But these were removed about the year 1806.

These Moretons of Great Moreton, soon after the reign of Henry IV., became extinct, their property passing, by the marriage of an heiress, to the Bellets

or Bellots, of Gayton, in Norfolk (who at one time enjoyed a baronetcy, now long extinct), and from them, in the same way, or by bequest, to the Powises, who recently sold the estates to the father of the late owner, Mr. G. H. Ackers, who built a new mansion on the estate.

181

A SUMMER DAY AT CUMNOR.

WHO that has read Kenilworth' can fail to remember Cumnor Hall and Tony Forster and the sad fate of Amy Robsart? And who that has read Percy's 'Reliques' can call to mind without a tear the ballad of Mickle, which begins

The dews of summer night did fall;

The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall,

And many an oak that grew thereby?

And how many Oxford men have never forgotten the walk to Cumnor along the 'Seven-Bridge Road,' and the good-humoured face and nut-brown ale of the modern representative of old 'Giles Gosling,' whilom 'mine host' of the village inn of Cumnor, the Bear and Ragged Staff'? Among others, I remember the walk thither, and the church, and the inn, and the nut-brown ale too, as well as if I had gone on my pilgrimage there yesterday; so, with my reader's leave, I will act as his cicerone, in case he should like to pay Cumnor a visit whilst staying with