[Illustration:  SADDLER’S ROW, PETWORTH.]

The author of Rural Rides thus describes Petworth:  “The park is very fine and consists of a parcel of those hills and dells which nature formed here when she was in one of her most sportive moods.  I have never seen the earth flung about in such a wild way as round about Hindhead and Blackdown, and this park forms a part of this ground.  From an elevated part of it, and, indeed, from each of many parts of it, you see all around the country to the distance of many miles.  From the south-east to the north-west the hills are so lofty and so near that they cut the view rather short; but for the rest of the circle you can see to a very great distance.  It is, upon the whole, a most magnificent seat, and the Jews will not be able to get it from the present owner, though if he live many years they will give even him a twist.”

The road now goes directly west and in a mile reaches Tillington, which has a Transitional church modernized and practically rebuilt by the Earl of Egremont; here are several interesting tombs and brasses.  A divergence two miles further will take us downhill across the Rother to Selham (with a station close to the village).  The Norman and Early English church has a chancel arch with finely carved and ornamented capitals.  Proceeding westwards between high banks of red sandstone our road soon approaches Cowdray Park, across which it runs without hedge or fence.

[Illustration:  COWDRAY.]

The park is a beautiful pleasaunce for the inhabitants of Midhurst; thickly carpeted with bracken and heather and broken by many picturesque knolls and hollows.  The famous burned and ruined mansion lies on the west, close to the town and river.  This beautiful old house was destroyed in 1793 through the carelessness of some workmen employed in repairing the woodwork of some of the upper rooms.  Within a month of the calamity the last of the Montagues, a young man of 22, was drowned while shooting the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen.  These tragic happenings were supposed to fulfil a curse of the last monk of Battle pronounced against Sir Anthony Browne when he took possession of the Abbey.  “Thy line shall end by fire and water and utterly perish.”

The following is a contemporary account of the tragedy:  “Lord Montague was engaged to the eldest daughter of Mr. Coutts (the present Countess of Guildford) and, with a view to his marriage on his return to England, the mansion house had been for several months undergoing a complete repair and fitting up.  The whole was completed on the day preceding the night on which it was consumed, and the steward had been employed during the afternoon in writing the noble owner an account of its completion.  This letter reached his hands.  On the following day the steward wrote another letter announcing its destruction:  but in his hurry of spirits, he directed it to Lausanne instead of Lucerne, by which accident it was two days