in Thame, founded by Richard Quartemayne, Squier, who died in the year 1460.  This house, though in some respects adapted during later years from its original plan, is structurally but little altered, and should be taken in hand and intelligently restored as an object of local attraction and interest.  The choicest oaks of a small forest must have supplied its framework, which stands firm as the day when it was built.  The fine corner-posts (now enclosed) should be exposed to view, and the mullioned windows which jut out over a narrow passage should be opened up.  If this could be done—­and not overdone—­the “Bird Cage” would hardly be surpassed as a miniature specimen of medieval timber architecture in the county.  A stone doorway of Gothic form and a kind of almery or safe exist in its cellars.

A school was founded at Thame by Lord John Williams, whose recumbent effigy exists in the church, and amongst the students there during the second quarter of the seventeenth century was Anthony Wood, the Oxford antiquary.  Thame about this time was the centre of military operations between the King’s forces and the rebels, and was continually being beaten up by one side or the other.  Wood, though but a boy at the time, has left on record in his narrative some vivid impressions of the conflicts which he personally witnessed, and which bring the disjointed times before us in a vision of strange and absolute reality.

He tells of Colonel Blagge, the Governor of Wallingford Castle, who was on a marauding expedition, being chased through the streets of Thame by Colonel Crafford, who commanded the Parliamentary garrison at Aylesbury, and how one man fell from his horse, and the Colonel “held a pistol to him, but the trooper cried ‘Quarter!’ and the rebels came up and rifled him and took him and his horse away with them.”  On another occasion, just as a company of Roundhead soldiers were sitting down to dinner, a Cavalier force appeared “to beat up their quarters,” and the Roundheads retired in a hurry, leaving “A.W. and the schoolboyes, sojourners in the house,” to enjoy their venison pasties.

He tells also of certain doings at the Nag’s Head, a house that still exists—­a very ancient hostelry, though not nearly so old a building as the Bird Cage Inn.  The sign is no longer there, but some interesting features remain, among them the huge strap hinges on the outer door, fashioned at their extremities in the form of fleurs-de-lis.  We should like to linger long at Thame and describe the wonders at Thame Park, with its remains of a Cistercian abbey and the fine Tudor buildings of Robert King, last abbot and afterward the first Bishop of Oxford.  The three fine oriel windows and stair-turret, the noble Gothic dining-hall and abbot’s parlour panelled with oak in the style of the linen pattern, are some of the finest Tudor work in the country.  The Prebendal house and chapel built by Grossetete are also worthy of the closest attention.  The