House and Garden 
East Claydon 
banks and 
moats still re¬ 
main, which 
may very well 
mark, as in 
other places, 
the site of the 
Saxon manor- 
stead. It is 
therefore inter¬ 
esting to re¬ 
member that 
Sir Edmund 
Verney, the 
present lord of 
all four manors, 
is the successor 
ot Alwyn the 
Confessor’s 
thegn, and of 
An s gar, his 
staller, or horse 
master. Nearly 
a thousand 
years divides 
them, but from 
century to cen¬ 
tury the homes 
of lord and la¬ 
borer have con¬ 
tinued on very 
much the same 
plots ofground. 
So tenacious is the life ot a people when 
once it takes root in the soil, and tends ever 
towards freedom. As the illustrations show, 
these villages, with their homes of wattle and 
daub, timber and thatch, have all the Old 
World picturesqueness that befits their long 
descent, and no specifications of material or 
artist’s sketches can convey what they stand 
for to the reflective English mind. 
The onetime manor of Alwyn, at Middle 
Claydon, unlike so many large English es¬ 
tates, came into the hands of the Verneys, 
not by confiscation but by purchase. Ralph 
Verney, of Fleetmarston, Alderman and 
Lord Mayor of London in 1465, was the 
purchaser. He was an ardent Yorkist in 
the Wars of the Roses, and when Edward 
IV. rode through London streets after 
the victory of Tewkesbury, was knighted, 
with eleven 
other promi¬ 
nent citizens, 
whilst the dead 
body of the de¬ 
feat e d King 
Henry was 
being shown to 
the people in 
the Tower. Sir 
Ralph’s son 
John married 
the daughter 
and heiress of 
Sir Robert 
Mortimer, who 
lost his life and 
lands in the 
cause of Lan¬ 
caster. When 
it was desired 
to recover his 
estates for his 
daughter and 
her husband, 
it was thus pos¬ 
sible to lay 
claim to them 
on the strength 
of services ren¬ 
dered to either 
side, according 
to the end of 
the seesaw 
which happened to be uppermost. The Ver¬ 
neys by this time had built a fine house at 
Middle Claydon, in place of an older one, 
which had been the home of the Cantelupes. 
The new house, with the manor, was let to the 
Giflards of Hillesdon, on two long leases, so 
that the Verneys did not come into occupa¬ 
tion again until more than a century later. 
Much of the core of that house still remains. 
An old pencil sketch shows it with the 
stepped gables of Flemish flavor, and with 
certain Renaissance detail about the windows 
which probably belonged to the sixteenth 
century additions. So near are church and 
manor-house that, if the house windows are 
open to the south, an invalid might follow 
the service from one of the neighboring 
rooms. The nave of the church dates from 
the fourteenth century, but the chancel was 
THE DRAWING-ROOM OF CLAYDON HOUSE 
( Van Dyck's King Charles O'ver the mantel) 
3 
