as the other religious houses. A large part of its estates were granted to the Washington family; and in the old church of Sulgrave is a plate of brass with Lawrence Washington and his wife incised on it, and also his eight sons and nine daughters. Sulgrave is in a pleasant rural part of England, not far from Banbury and from Whittlebury Forest. The mansion of the Washingtons was probably at one time the priors' dwelling, and altered for their use. Part of it stills remains, and is converted into a farmhouse; and in a buttery-hatch is a piece of stained glass with the Washington

crest upon it. It is hoped that this picturesque relic may at some future time form a part of the present series. John Washington, of South Cave Castle, was the great-grandson of the lord of the manor of Sulgrave. South Cave Castle, which is engraved above, is reached by the railway that runs between York and Hull. Brough is the nearest station, and from there to South Cave is a walk or drive of three miles. The road is a pleasant one, and lies through a shaded lane, with here and there a long opening, and some comfortable dwellings, set in dark evergreens. A road that turns to the right leads us to Hull and the village of Rowley, which is quite worth a visit, as it was the veritable parent of

Rowley, Mass.; indeed, all the inhabitants left Rowley, York, with their vicar, and crossed the ocean to their new home. South Cave Castle is a truly delightful residence, and is well seen from the road-whence, in fact, the drawing here shown is taken. It has, of course, undergone some modernising since the Washingtons resided there; but the dimensions are the same, and the pleasant park is circumscribed by the same boundaries. Plate-glass windows have superseded the old-fashioned mullions and lead lights; and panelled doors have been placed in frames, instead of

the heavy ones studded with nail-heads; but an old engraving I saw in York gives the same walls and elms; and doubtless the rooks are lineally descended from those that heralded springtime to John Washington.

In one corner of the park stands South Cave Church, a small but venerable building, in the shadiest of churchyards. An embattled gateway, with a wrought-iron gate, that leads up to the Hall, juts out on the road opposite to where the view is taken from, and one of the sides of the archway is extended into a quaint lodge, covered with ivy. The wall of the lodge forms a boundary of the churchyard, and the whole group is of exquisite beauty. Of

course a private path through the park leads into the chancel, where the family pews are. There is a fine collection of paintings here one of President Washington, on which a great value is set, among them. The little church has the dignity of being a parish one and possessing a rector; and here the parish records are kept. Unhappily, they are very imperfect; those relating to Washington's great-grandfather are not to be found, and there are others of later date that are very puzzling.

It would appear to have been the opinion of most of the historians of the family that their connection with the Yorkshire property ceased after the emigration in the middle of the seventeenth century; but this is not the case. Henry Washington, variously described as of Symond's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, Doncaster, and Cookham, &c., married Eleanor Harrison, in the year 1689. She was the daughter of Richard Harrison, armiger; and the singular part of it is, that he succeeded to the property in right of his wife. The question naturally arises, who this Henry Washington was; and, curiously enough, it was impossible for us to decide, even with the advantage of being on the spot, with the registers all before us. Various theories suggested themselves to a gentleman who resides not far from South Cave, and has made the Washington family a study; but none are free from difficulty; and it seems to both of us that South Cave Castle has come into the family possession twice over, and Henry Washington is only an episode. He may have been, and probably was, a connection of the gallant defender of Worcester; and it is curious that he had two daughters, Susannah and Elizabeth, whose baptism is duly recorded in the register; Sir Henry, too, had two sisters, also named Susannahı and Elizabeth, which would point to these being family names. Susannah died, and is buried at the church in the precincts of the park; and the estate seems to have become the property of her sister, who married John Idell in the year 1719; and they sold it to the present proprietor's family. It is a little singular that after so short a lapse of time there should be the least difficulty in exactly tracing out all the connections of the parties; but in many similar instances the troubled times and family changes caused records to be mislaid or lost. The Washington narrative only belongs to the present chapter in consequence of its connection with the county of York; and the history of New York (especially so far as its origin is concerned) pertains rather to Holland than to England. In James I's. time there was a Dutch trading company, and they really founded New York, under the name of New Amsterdam. Indeed, we should have to go to the land of such families as Schuylers, Beekmans, de Lancys, Schenks,

or others, whose names speak aloud of their country, to find the corresponding types in Europe. Singularly enough, the best history of the Dutch Republic, and indeed one of the most excellent histories of any local period, was written by an American; and the writer of this article was perfectly confused once in Amsterdam by hearing a Dutch lady quote a passage and compliment him upon what she was pleased to call his countryman's literary excellence. The stigma was, that he was ignorant of the work except by name, though he lost but little time in pulling up arrears on returning to England.

If, after leaving South Cave, the traveller desires to change his route back to York, he can continue his journey to Market Weighton, an old-fashioned town, as its name would fully imply. Newbald, Hortham, and Sancton are passed; but these are only villages; and by a curious chance I was reminded of the loneliness of the country between the Humber and the North Sea. In walking along the road I saw a man in a velveteen coat looking intently at a swamp that lay some little distance from the roadside, and he motioned to me to stop; but directly after we noticed a bird rise that there was no difficulty in recognising as a bittern, now such a rara avis that if one is shot in any part of England it is considered worth reporting in the provincial papers. The man was a gamekeeper on some neighbouring property, and I was very glad of his company to Market Weighton, for he had had abundant chances of studying wild animals and birds. Rare as bitterns are now, he assured me that his father remembered them as quite common in that part of Yorkshire; and he said that at Hatfield Chace and Thorne Waste, which cover many square miles, and lie to the south of the Market Weighton road, numbers of strange wild fowl are met with: among others, the avoset, the ruffs and reeves, the redshanks, and godwits are not uncommon visitors. We had the good fortune to see a peregrine falcon wheeling round some low lands on the right of the road in slow, wide, and majestic circles, and naturally discussed the object of such a singular flight, which seems to be common to the hawk tribe in all parts of the world. Often have I seen them on American marshes hovering with expanded motionless wings, and, with a slight flutter at the end of each circle, mount up to the altitude they had lost. Some old-fashioned works on natural history speak of these circles as intended to dismay the prey that hawks wish to capture, and say that they lessen them until they find them within their reach; but against this it must be said that, with the exceeding fleetness and keen sight of a hawk, all prey he wishes for is very much within his reach the moment he sees it; and, as my very intelligent com

VOL. XII. NO. CLXIV,

EE

panion said, a hawk when after his prey generally flies low, and with somewhat the motion of an owl. He usually keeps along hedgerows or the side of a plantation, and very easily finds a supper. I was pleased to hear a theory I had formed in America confirmed; for when waiting for wild ducks we used to see these birds of prey soaring around in great sweeps, and it seemed most probable they were only taking an airing; indeed, they appeared to be almost in a dreamy state, for even after hearing a shot they would circle round very probably within easy reach of a gun. My gamekeeper friend quite confirmed this; and, as the passage in 'Macbeth' occurred to me at the moment, I quoted the words—

On Tuesday last

A falcon towering in her pride of place

Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.

He said that he could well believe this was an actual scene, as when owls are hungry they will take birds in the air, and he might have mistaken the falcon easily for a more dainty meal. In the course of our conversation I learned that two years previously a bustard had been shot in these parts of Yorkshire, and two more had been seen. Now, of course, such birds are regarded as extinct, though at the same time not fewer than five had been seen on Salisbury Plain, and one I saw in the hands of the bird-stuffer. It is a great pity that such noble birds should be allowed to die out, or rather to be exterminated; and we should do well to imitate the Americans in their generous protection of native fowl, and even stop shooting for a season when the gunner threatens to exterminate any particular species. The bustard especially is more capable of domestication than the turkey, as has been proved by more than one experiment; and indeed the latter never loses its desire to roam, or, in the happy language of Earl Worcester to Sir Richard Vernon before the battle of Shrewsbury, 'A fox who ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up, will have a wild trick of his ancestors.' But all walks have an end, and I was sorry to part with my acquaintance after we had arrived at the Devonshire Arms, in Market Weighton.

On one side of this town is Beverley, with its grand Minster and unrivalled parish church of St. Mary; and on the other side is Howden. I was strongly reminded of the origin of the name of Beverley by my conversation with the keeper. Formerly, before drainage and other causes had raised the level of the land to the north of the Humber, floods were of common occurrence, and landlakes were formed after the subsidence of the waters. From one of these it is now generally supposed that Beverley took its name,