32 England's oldest hunt. 



belonged to the Fairfax family, but recently competent judges have 

 assigned it to a foreign origin." 



Mr. Gordon Home, in his " Evolution of an English 

 Town," says : — 



" I have carefully examined the house without finding anything 

 to suggest that such squalor could ever exist there. The staircase 

 is very picturesque, and one of the brass drop handles on the bedroom 

 doors shows that the building was a good one. The bedroom in which 

 the Duke died has the fireplace blocked up ; there is a recessed window 

 containing a seat, and the walls, where they are panelled, are of fir, 

 although the larger beams throughout the house seem to be of oak." 



The illustration given of Buckingham House shows the 

 structure as it was some years ago before the windows were 

 altered. 



Here then it was that the Duke of Buckingham breathed 

 his last, and the very opening sentence of Miss Katherine 

 Duncombe's book on " Ryedale " tells us : — 



" George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, has conferred a cer- 

 tain distinction upon the little town of Kirbymoorside, one of the two 

 market towns of Ryedale, by dying there. The house in which he 

 died stands in the main street, next to the King's Head Inn, and has, 

 it appears, undergone very little alteration since that event. . . . The 

 room in which Buckingham died — a low-ceilinged apartment of modest 

 dimensions — is on the first floor." 



Heroes and kings, those gods of earth, whose fame 

 Aw'd half the nations, now are but a name. 

 The great in arts, or arms, the wise, the just, 

 Mix with the meanest in the congenial dust. 



William Broome. 



