In friendly rivalry with the beeches stand some noble oaks, and the whole park is richly wooded, while the views from the higher slopes are both varied and extensive, reaching across a pleasant valley to the Medway river in the distance. Penshurst cannot fail to be imposing and beautiful at any season of the year, but only in the ripe summer-time can you see the deep-tinted purple clematis forming a mass of glowing colour against the time-stained walls on the right as you pass through the first court and enter the grand old fourteenthcentury hall. The One glimpse of this hall will convey a more vivid realisation of the life of the olden time than any description which words can give. It was the great centre of family life; the place where the lord of the manor and his numberless retainers, as well as any chance guests, assembled for the daily midday meal. Upon the raised daïs at the end were spread the places for the host and his more honoured guests, perhaps upon a more ornamented table than the long narrow ones along the sides of the hall, which were appropriated to the use of the remainder of the household, and which are among the earliest pieces of furniture in England, being the original ones used at Penshurst. ancient sideboard or buffet, filled with costly plate which in feudal times would have occupied one end of the daïs, is gone, with all its precious ornaments, but at the opposite end of the daïs is the stone staircase leading to the solar, or principal chamber, which has a narrow look-out into the hall. Through this narrow opening the master of the house could call his attendants, and at the same time observe at will the conduct of his retainers as they disported themselves below. The lower chamber beneath this "lord's room was originally a cellar. At the extreme end of the hall is the music gallery, which is still perfect, and a fine example of oak panelling. Under this gallery is a concealed passage called the screens, where there is a place formerly used for washing the hands before dinner, and where several doors lead to different parts of the building, such as the ancient buttery, or the place for giving out beer and other drinks, and the pantry, where the bread and dry stores were given. Sufficient proof of the antiquity of this part of the house is furnished by the fact that most of the wainscoting and the doors are of split oak, untouched with the plane, having been cut and fitted only by the chisel and hatchet. Behind the minstrels' gallery and over the buttery and pantry are a suite of rooms at present unfurnished and uninhabited, called Saccharissa's rooms, which were probably used by that lady when on a visit to Penshurst in later years, after she had married the Earl of Sunderland. In the very centre of the hall stands the hearth, the only one of the kind remaining in England, over which there was at an earlier period an opening1 in the roof, having a small ornamented turret to cover it, called a smoke louvre. The andirons or "fire-dogs are two upright standards supporting a long cross-bar, against which on either side huge logs of wood are piled ready for burning. These fire-dogs are marked on the outer sides near the top with the broad arrow of the Sidney arms. The lofty timber roof of the hall, sixty feet in height, is upheld at intervals by odd wooden figures, all of which have part of their legs cut off; they probably rested originally upon stone corbels which in the course of time must have decayed away or have been destroyed, while the smoke from logs which during centuries past have blazed in the great hall has blackened the ribs of the oak roof as well as the upper walls. A peculiar kind of ornamentation called Kentish tracery surrounds the windows, which are crossed with embattled transome bars. Among the few remaining pieces of armour hanging around the walls is a double-handed sword, once the property of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, bearing his cognizance of the bear and ragged staff, with the escutcheon of the double-tailed lion engraved thereon. This sword is mentioned in the catalogue, still preserved amongst the manuscripts at Penshurst, of his effects at Kenilworth, from which catalogue Sir Walter Scott drew largely in his accounts of the festivities given for Queen Elizabeth. Here too is the helmet of Sir William Sidney, in the time of Edward VI., with the original wooden crest of a porcupine still attached to it; one of the very few examples of such crested helmets remaining in existence. But the noble collection of the suits of the Sidneys from generation to generation, was stolen some seventy years ago, and disappeared into the hands of energetic collectors, where also the greater part of the Sidney correspondence, for so long preserved in the evidence chamber, also found its way, although much valuable matter still remains. In the court opposite the door of the 1 The writer is indebted to the works of Mr. J. H. Parker and Mr. Stephen Thompson for several of the facts stated in the following article. banqueting hall hangs a large bell on a frame of wood. Inscribed on this bell in raised letters is the following: "Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, at Penshurst, 1649." What warlike tales must have been recounted in this ancient hall, older than Chevy Chase, or Agincourt, or the Wars of the Roses! How cheery the blazing logs must have looked to the sturdy, steel-clad warriors of those early times, when they found themselves safe home again from the bloody fields where so many of their comrades had been left to sleep the sleep that knows no waking! with shouts and cheers the health was drunk of the lord of Penshurst. Good old times these, if somewhat rough to the cultivated taste of the nineteenth century; brave old times, when a man's sword was ready to defend his word, though the latter might be sharper than the fashion of to-day would countenance. Tradition tells us that the Black Prince himself and his young wife, "The Fair Maid of Kent," once graced these Christmas revels in the proud Kentish home, and joined at midnight in the good old Christmas carol-"God rest you, merry gentlemen," How must the battles have been fought over again in eloquent words and with pardonable pride as the flames rose higher and the smoke ascended to the lofty roof where it was caught in the louvre and dispersed by the wind; and how full of life and movement and warm human hopes and ambitions must the old hall have been in those stirring days when in stern reality the Englishman's home was his castle. And at Yule-time how gay and bright it was with the scarlet holly berries and waxen mistletoe, while the banners waved and the trumpets blazed as the great Yule log was dragged in by some score of foresters, and the wassail bowl was passed around as and we would fain believe that tradition is truth. By reversion, descent, or grant from the Crown, Penshurst passed successively into many different hands, and the successors of Sir John de Pulteney left it much as they found it, excepting one, Sir John Devereux, who added a long wing to the house during the reign of Richard II. In the British Museum there is a copy of the grant of the manor of Penshurst to Sir William Sidney, one of the knights of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and a soldier who had fought at Flodden Field. This princely gift was bestowed by the young King Edward VI., in whose household Sir William had successively discharged the duties of chamberlain, steward, and tutor. Henry Sidney, the son of Sir William, became henchman to the prince at the early age of eight years, and later his beloved companion. It was in Henry Sidney's It was in Henry Sidney's arms that the young king expired, in his sixteenth year, in 1553. Soon after this Sir Henry retired to the secluded beauty of Penshurst, where he remained quietly with his young wife, Lady Mary, taking no part in the ambitious plans of his father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, for placing Lady Jane Grey upon the throne. A picture of this fair girl, whose happiness was so cruelly wrecked and life sacrificed to mad political dreams, hangs in Queen Elizabeth's room at Penshurst, and one fancies in looking at it that the sweet, grave eyes show a foreshadowing of the terrible fate awaiting her. The ruin brought upon all concerned in these ambitious plots is matter of history, and although Sir Henry himself was never suspected of complicity in them, grief came upon Penshurst, where the father, the brother, and the sister-in-law of his wife, Lady Mary, were deeply mourned. All had paid the penalty of death by the hand of the executioner, and still another brother went direct from the Tower only to die at Penshurst. But the terrible gloom which at this time had fallen upon the old place was brightened a few weeks later, November 29th, 1554, by the birth of one whose name is. familiar to every English schoolboy as the type of English chivalry-the brave and noble Sir Philip Sidney. During the first years of the child's life "Bloody Queen Mary" sat on the throne of England with her fanatical husband, the Spanish Philip; and wild tales of a cruelty reaching over the length and breadth of the land came to the ears of the serious-faced boy dreaming under the oaks of Penshurst, or beside the banks of the Medway river in the lovely valley which afterwards he wrote of as "Arcadia.' Fourteen years later, when the boy had become a man, he was to witness a sight which must have burned itself into his mind as iron scars human flesh-the awful sight of the massacre of the Huguenots on the eve of St. Bartholomew. Small wonder that the serious look deepened on Philip Sidney's features, and that life for him meant earnest work, not trifling idleness. He watched the hideous deeds wrought by a weak king at the instigation of a vindictive woman, from the windows of the British Embassy, side by side with the ambassador Walsingham, and the cruel sights and cries of those seven days of slaughter were never forgotten until the close of his own short life. Paris became for ever hateful to him, and as speedily as passports could be procured he went to Germany. There it was that he met the man who so strongly influenced his after life, Hubert Languet, but want of space forbids our entering into his relations with this brave old Huguenot-relations which only ceased at his death. Philip Sidney travelled into what in those days were literally "far countries," and stored his mind with the beauties and teachings of many lands. twenty years had gone by since those gloomy days at Penshurst, and the downfall of his mother's family, the Dudleys, and now one of the surviving brothers, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had become chief favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and basked in the sunshine of the court, untroubled by any remembrance of Amy Robsart and her tragic fate. Full Bad as was Leicester himself, he admired his handsome nephew and carried him off to the great revels he gave in honour of the Queen at Kenilworth, which lasted for seventeen days, and were witnessed with keen interest by a village lad called William Shakespeare. The high mental and moral qualities of Philip were far beyond Leicester's powers to appreciate, but his shrewd surmise that the young man would be a success at court, proved correct. After the Kenilworth fêtes young Sidney accompanied the maiden Queen to Chartley Castle, the seat of the Earl of Essex, and there it was that he met Penelope Devereux, whose charms he afterwards celebrated in his sonnets under the name of "Stella." His thwarted attachment for this lady has been told in verse and story, and doubtless added its weight to his passionate longing to become of some use in the world, and to do good to his fellows. As a statesman Philip Sidney rendered good service, but when he lost the favour of the Queen he retired from court and spent much of his time at Penshurst, occupied with literary work and correspondence with the Huguenot Languet, and happy in the society of his gifted sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, to whom his Arcadia was dedicated. This same Countess of Pembroke was the lady who inspired Jonson's famous epitaph, considered one of the most perfect ever written : "Underneath this sable hearse, In 1583 Philip Sidney was knighted by the Queen, and a few months afterwards he married the daughter of his old friend Sir Francis Walsingham. After this he entered Parliament, and later, when war broke out between Spain and the Netherlands, England aiding the latter country, he was appointed governor of Flushing, and in 1585 he said farewell to his friends and to Penshurst, which he loved, and left his country never to return. In the following spring his father died, and he became lord of Penshurst, but his duties abroad prevented his returning to the old homestead, and some months later the battle of Zutphen was fought, where life had all the nobleness of expiring chivalry without its barbarity." Philip Sidney's nature must indeed have been a rare one, for with an amount of information and accomplishments which caused him to be called "the very mirror of knighthood," and led his sovereign to pronounce him "the brightest jewel of her crown," he yet won the friendship and esteem of the most distinguished men and finest spirits of his time, without arousing their jealousy. Sir Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, caused it to be inscribed upon his monument that he was "the friend of Sir Philip Sidney," and foreign countries singled him out for that touching incident occurred which to this day is quoted as showing the noble chivalry and Christian kindness of the man, who, when grievously wounded, could give up the water which his parched lips so longed for, to a dying soldier near, with the words, "He has more need of it than I." On the 17th of October, 1586, Philip Sidney's noble spirit passed away, leaving England and the world the poorer for its loss. "Of all the monuments in St. Paul's destroyed by the great fire of London," wrote Dean Milman, "that of Sir Philip Sidney (it was but a tablet of wood), is the one the loss of which I most deplore. His distinction, Poland going so far as to offer him her crown. In his family circle he showed tenderness and devotion, and not many fathers could use the language which Sir Henry Sidney did in writing to his younger son Robert, urging him to adopt Philip as his model in life, and concluding with these words-" He has the most virtues that I ever found in any man." To readers of the present day both his poetical and prose works possess too much of the stiffness and affectations of the period, yet even with these drawbacks each page proves his genius by the delicacy and brilliancy of his thoughts. When Charles I. went to the scaffold he |