[Illustration:  TIDESWELL CHURCH.]

When Peak Forest was in its primeval glory, and the Kings of England with their lords, earls, and nobles came to hunt there, many of the leading families had dwellings in the forest, and we passed a relic of these, a curious old mansion called Hazelbadge Hall, the ancient home of the Vernons, who still claim by right as Forester to name the coroner for West Derbyshire when the position falls vacant.

Tideswell was supposed to have taken its name from an ebbing and flowing well whose water rose and fell like the tides in the sea, but which had been choked up towards the end of the eighteenth century, and reopened in the grounds of a mansion, so that the cup-shaped hollow could be seen filling and emptying.

A market had existed at Tideswell since the year 1250, and one was being held as we entered the town, and the “George Inn,” where we called for refreshments, was fairly well filled with visitors of one kind or another.

We left our luggage to the care of the ostler, and went to visit the fine old church adjacent, where many ancient families lie buried; the principal object of interest was the magnificent chancel, which has been described as “one Gallery of Light and Beauty,” the whole structure being known as the Cathedral of the Peak.  There was a fine monumental brass, with features engraved on it which throw light on the Church ritual of the day, to the memory of Bishop Pursglove, who was a native of Tideswell and founder of the local Grammar School, who surrendered his Priory of Gisburn to Henry VIII in 1540, but refused, in 1559, to take the Oath of Supremacy.  Sampson Meverill, Knight Constable of England, also lies buried in the chancel, and by his epitaph on a marble tomb, brought curiously enough from Sussex, he asks the reader “devoutly of your charity” to say “a Pater Noster with an Ave for all Xtian soules, and especially for the soule of him whose bones resten under this stone.”  Meverill, with John Montagu, Earl of Shrewsbury, fought as “a Captain of diverse worshipful places in France,” serving under John, Duke of Bedford, in the “Hundred Years’ War,” and after fighting in eleven battles within the space of two years he won knighthood at the duke’s hands at St. Luce.  In the churchyard was buried William Newton, the Minstrel of the Peak, and Samuel Slack, who in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was the most popular bass singer in England.  When quite young Slack competed with others for a position in a college choir at Cambridge, and sang Purcell’s famous air, “They that go down to the sea in ships.”  When he had finished, the Precentor rose immediately and said to the other candidates, “Gentlemen, I now leave it to you whether any one will sing after what you have just heard!” No one rose, and so Slack gained the position.