BRAMSHILL 249 



of Canterbury, were guests of Lord Zouch in 

 1622. Much against his will, at the command 

 of the King his master, the Archbishop went 

 a-hunting deer in the park. And his arrow, 

 glancing from a tree the great Oak that stands 

 on the slope beyond the Lime avenue struck 

 one of the keepers and killed him on the spot. 

 The Archbishop was suspended for a year ; and 

 it is said he never smiled again, which one can 

 well believe from the fine portrait by Vandyke, 

 which we possess the original of that at 

 Lambeth Palace. In a letter written by my 

 father on his arrival at Eversley as curate, in 

 1842, he says : 



" I went the other day to Bramshill Park. 

 And there I saw the very tree where an ancestor 

 of mine, Archbishop Abbot, in James First's 

 time, shot the keeper by accident ! I sat 

 under the tree, and it all seemed to me like a 

 present reality. I could fancy the noble old 

 man, very different then from his picture as it 

 hangs in the dining-room at Chelsea. I could 

 fancy the deer sweeping by, and the rattle of 

 the cross-bow, and the white splinters sparkling 



