CHAPTER VII 



A Kentish Parish : the Residents 



WE have not much to brag of in the way of 

 historical or archaeological associations, although 

 the Kentish Archaeological Society once paid us a visit. 

 They say that Henry the Eighth used to visit at the 

 " Cross and Crozier," which subsequently changed its 

 sign to the " King's Head," when he had " cut the 

 Pope adrift," in the words of the " Ingoldsby Legends." 

 And there is a grey stone half sunken in the ridge of 

 Oakenhurst chart, where it is rumoured that he was 

 wont to breathe his horses in riding southward to his 

 flirtations with Anne Boleyn. It is certain, at least, 

 that the woods of Hever, and the tall, tapering spire 

 of its parish church, are full in view from that com- 

 manding eminence ; although the moated keep and 

 battlements of the Boleyn castle lie well out of view in 

 an intervening hollow. There is an old mansion of 

 the Cobhams too in Oakenhurst town, originally a 

 vicarage, which stands in its encircling ponds in a 

 blaze of flower-beds and a wilderness of flowering 

 shrubbery. Nothing can be more cheery than the 



