There is a certain similarity about the villages that dot the Vale of Aylesbury.  The old Market House is usually a feature of the High Street—­where it has not been spoilt as at Wendover.  Groups of picturesque timber cottages, thickest round the church, and shouldered here and there by their more respectable and severe Georgian brethren, are common to all, and vary but little in their general aspect and colouring.  Memories and legends haunt every hamlet, the very names of which have an ancient sound carrying us vaguely back to former days.  Prince’s Risborough, once a manor of the Black Prince; Wendover, the birthplace of Roger of Wendover, the medieval historian, and author of the Chronicle Flores Historiarum, or History of the World from the Creation to the year 1235, in modern language a somewhat “large order”; Hampden, identified to all time with the patriot of that name; and so on indefinitely.  At Monk’s Risborough, another hamlet with an ancient-sounding name, but possessing no special history, is a church of the Perpendicular period containing some features of exceptional interest, and internally one of the most charmingly picturesque of its kind.  The carved tie-beams of the porch with their masks and tracery and the great stone stoup which appears in one corner have an unrestored appearance which is quite delightful in these days of over-restoration.  The massive oak door has some curious iron fittings, and the interior of the church itself displays such treasures as a magnificent early Tudor roof and an elegant fifteenth-century chancel-screen, on the latter of which some remains of ancient painting exist.[15]

  [15] The rood-loft has unfortunately disappeared.

[Illustration:  Fifteenth-century Handle on Church Door, Monk’s Risborough, Bucks]

Thame, just across the Oxfordshire border, is another town of the greatest interest.  The noble parish church here contains a number of fine brasses and tombs, including the recumbent effigies of Lord John Williams of Thame and his wife, who flourished in the reign of Queen Mary.  The chancel-screen is of uncommon character, the base being richly decorated with linen panelling, while above rises an arcade in which Gothic form mingles freely with the grotesqueness of the Renaissance.  The choir-stalls are also lavishly ornamented with the linen-fold decoration.

The centre of Thame’s broad High Street is narrowed by an island of houses, once termed Middle Row, and above the jumble of tiled roofs here rises like a watch-tower a most curious and interesting medieval house known as the “Bird Cage Inn.”  About this structure little is known; it is, however, referred to in an old document as the “tenement called the Cage, demised to James Rosse by indenture for the term of 100 years, yielding therefor by the year 8s.,” and appears to have been a farm-house.  The document in question is a grant of Edward IV to Sir John William of the Charity or Guild of St. Christopher