new Church of England.  But this is by the way.  The fate of the land is what is interesting.  From Anne of Cleves, whose portion it had been, and to whom the Government of the great nobles under Edward VI. confirmed it after Henry VIII.’s death, it passed, upon her surrendering it in 1552, to a certain Sir Philip Hoby.  He had been of the Privy Council of Henry VIII.  Upon his death it passed to his nephew, Edward Hoby; Edward was a Parliamentarian under Elizabeth, wrote on Divinity, and left an illegitimate son, Peregrine, to whom he bequeathed Bisham upon his death in 1617.  It need hardly be said that before 100 years were over the son was already legitimatised in the county traditions; his son, Edward, was created Baron just after the Restoration, in 1666.  The succession was kept up for just 100 years more, when the last male heir of the family died in 1766.  He was not only a baron but a parson as well, and on his death the estate went to relatives by the name of Mill, or, as we might imagine, “Hoby” Mill.  It did not long remain with them.  They died out in 1780 and the Van Sittarts bought it of the widow.

Consider Chertsey, from which Bisham sprang.  The utter dispersion of the whole tradition of Chertsey is more violent than that perhaps of any other historical site in England.  The Crown maintained, as we have seen to be the case elsewhere, its nominal hold upon the foundations of the abbey and of what was left of the buildings, though that hold was only nominal, and it maintained such a position until 1610—­that is, for a full lifetime after the community was dispersed.  But the tradition created by FitzWilliam continued, and the Crown was ready to sell at that date, to a certain Dr. Hammond.  The perpetual mobility which seems inseparable from spoils of this kind attaches thenceforward to the unfortunate place.  The Hammonds sell after the Restoration to Sir Nicholas Carew, and before the end of the seventeenth century the Carews pass it on to the Orbys, and the Orbys pass it on to the Waytes.  The Waytes sell it to a brewer of London, one Hinde.  So far, contemptuous as has been the treatment of this great national centre, it had at least remained intact.  With Hinde’s son even that dignity deserted it.  He found it advisable to distribute the land in parcels as a speculation; the actual emplacement of the building went to a certain Harwell, an East Indian, in 1753, and his son left it by will to a private soldier called Fuller, who was suspected of being his illegitimate brother.  Fuller, as might be expected, saw nothing but an opportunity of making money.  He redivided what was left intact of the old estate, and sold that again by lots in 1809; a stockbroker bought the remaining materials of a house whose roots struck back to the very footings of our country, sold them for what they were worth—­and there was the end of Chertsey.