; 
i 
19 
in favour with Henry VIII, and by him was made 
Chancellor of Ireland, and enriched by many emoluments. 
Indeed, Henry VIII is said to have paid him a visit at 
Compton. The house forms a quadrangle, and is built of 
brick, with stone facings and garnishments.. Perhaps the 
best example of a moulded brick-work chimney is to be 
found when entering upon the leads near the ancient 
Roman Catholic Chapel, in the roof. In the Chapel is to 
be found a very rare, and we might say unique specimen 
of a wooden altar, still marked with five crosses. It 
is not of oak, but of elm. In the hall is preserved an 
ancient leather drinking-bottle, and in the drawing-room a 
chimney piece, the centre panel is of excellent carved 
Elizabethan work, brought from Canonbury, in the parish 
of Islington, formerly the seat of Sir John Spencer. The 
house was besieged by the Parliamentarians in the civil 
wars, and there is a tradition that eight officers were 
killed in one room, at the extremity of the eastern end of 
the quadrangle. Spencer, Harl of Northampton, whose 
horse stumbled at the skirmish of Hopton Heath, in some 
rabbit burrows, was butchered upon the spot by the 
Parliamentarians. The Church of Compton Winyates 
contains little of interest. The only mutilated remains of 
the monuments of the Compton family, consist of a 
helmet, scabbard, gauntlets, swords, spurs, &c., still 
hanging upon the north wall of the Church. Brailes 
Church was next visited. It is chiefly remarkable for the 
ornamental parapet of stone which surrounds it, and also 
for the mutilated remains of the monuments of the later 
end of the fourteenth century, on the south side of the 
Churchyard. The interior contains nothing of antiquarian 
interest, if we except the curious chest still preserved in 
