2 50 THE EXETER ROAD 



system that forwarding agents were established every- 

 where. Kegs of spirits, being bulky, were hidden for 

 the day in ponds and watercourses, wdierever pos- 

 sible, and removed at night for another stage towards 

 their destination, being deposited in a similar hiding- 

 place at the break of day, and so forth until they 

 reached their consignees. Thus the 'moonrakers' 

 by til is explanation are acquitted of being monu- 

 mental simpletons, at the expense of losing their 

 reputation in another way. But everyone smuggled, 

 or received or purchased smuggled goods, in those 

 times, and no one was thouofht the worse for it. 



XXXV 



At the distance of a mile up the bye-road from 

 Tarrant Hinton, in Eastbury Park, still stands in a 

 lonely position the sole remaining wing of the once- 

 famed Eastbury House, one of those immense palaces 

 which the flamboyant noblemen and squires of a past 

 era loved to build. Comparable for size and style 

 with Blenheim and Stowe, and Ijuilt like them by the 

 })onderous Vanbrugh, the rise and fall of Eastbury 

 were as dramatic as the building and destruction 

 of Canons, the seat of the ' princely Chandos ' at 

 Edgware. Of Canons, however, no stone remains, 

 while at Eastbury a wing and colonnade are left, 

 standing sinister, sundered and riven, the melancholy 

 relics of a once proud but hospitable mansion. 



Eastbury was begun on a scale of princely mag- 



