There are two ways by which a man may go from Romsey, in the valley of the Test to Winchester, in the valley of the Itchen.  The more beautiful, for it gives you, if you will, not only Otterbourne, Shawford and Compton to the west of the stream, but Twyford to the east, the Queen of Hampshire villages, is that which makes for the Roman road between Winchester and Southampton, and following up the valley of the Itchen enters Winchester at last, by the South Gate, after passing St Cross in the meads.  The shorter road, though far less lovely, is in some ways the more interesting; for it passes Merdon Castle and Hursley, where the son of Oliver Cromwell lies, and for this cause I preferred it.

Merdon Castle, of which some few scanty ruins remain, was built by the Bishop Henry of Blois about 1138, and no doubt it served its purpose in the anarchy of Stephen’s time, but thereafter it seems to have become rather a palace than a fortress.  The manor of Merdon had always belonged to the See of Winchester, it is said, since 636, when it was granted to the Bishop by King Kinegils.  It remained with the Bishopric until the Reformation, when it was granted to Sir Philip Hoby to be restored to the Church by Queen Mary, and then again regranted to the Hoby family about 1559.  The manor had passed, however, by 1638 to Richard Major, a miser and a tyrant, who “usurped authority over his tentant” and more especially, for he was a fanatic Roundhead, “when King Charles was put to death and Oliver Cromwell was Protector of England and Richard Major of his Privy Council, and Noll’s eldest son, Richard, was married to Mr Major’s Doll.”  Thus Merdon came into the Cromwell family, another piece of Church property upon which that very typical sixteenth-century family had already grown exceedingly wealthy.  Richard Cromwell (as he called himself) lived at Merdon a good deal, till he succeeded his father in the usurped governance of England.  But when he was turned out in 1660 he found it safer to return to Merdon, but only for a little while, France offering him, as he wisely thought, a more secure asylum, not only from a charge of High Treason, but from his creditors.  While he was abroad, we learn he went under another name; not a new experience for one of his family, which seems to have had no legitimate name of its own, its members, Oliver amongst them, signing in important personal matters such as getting hold of the dowries of their wives, “Williams alias Cromwell.”  It would, therefore, be interesting to know under what alias this latest descendant of the infamous minister of Henry VIII. corresponded with the wife and family he had left at Merdon.  He did not return to Merdon till 1705, upon the death of his son Oliver.  His wife had died in 1676, and his time was soon to come.  He died at Cheshunt in 1712, and was buried with considerable pomp in Hursley church, where we may still see his monument, moved from the old church and re-erected in that built by the efforts of John Keble, vicar of this parish for thirty years, from 1836 to 1866.