174 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



the swifts are sailing and shrieking, as they sailed 

 and shrieked of old when the house stood in all its 

 ancient glory. For the Mr. Wriothesley who built 

 this stately house was the famous Lord Chancellor 

 of England in the reign of Henry VIII., best known 

 perhaps to the majority of English readers as the 

 Lord Chancellor who, with infamous cruelty, racked 

 with his own hands the Lady Anne Ascue " till she 

 was nigh dead." About half a mile down the stream 

 stands the " ancient market-towne of Tytchfyelde," as 

 the Lord Chancellor names it in his will, a market- 

 town even in the days of the Conqueror, in the parish 

 church of which repose the ashes of Wriothesley and 

 of his successors, one of whom will be for ever famous 

 as the friend and patron of Shakespeare. 



An " ancient towne " indeed, the name of which is 

 doubtless of Celtic origin, and carries us back to the 

 far-off period when the Meonwaras peopled the fertile 

 valley, and fished with bone hooks in the tidal haven, 

 and hunted deer and wild boars in the forest around. 

 The stone implements of these early inhabitants are 

 scattered all along the valley, and are sometimes 

 picked up by carters and plough-boys when working 

 in the fields. Later on the Romans settled in the 

 valley, and left their trace in the form of thin red 

 tiles, some of which were utilised ages afterwards 

 by Norman builders when erecting the tower of the 

 parish church. Then after the Romans came the 

 Saxon invasion, when for a time civilisation perished, 

 and the neighbouring city of Portchester was reduced 

 to ashes. The Jutes settled along the stream, once 

 the home of the stone-men and of the bronze-men, 

 and in their turn were harassed and plundered by the 

 fierce Northmen, whose black boats must have often 



