according to a tradition, mentioned by Camden, of their having been planted here in the time of the Emperor Probus, about A.D. 276. Many Roman remains have been found in the vicinity, but the experiment of viticulture, ill suited to the climate and soil of North Hants, would naturally prove unsuccessful. Subsequently to the Roman occupation, no historical record of Vindomis has been brought to light until the period of the Norman Conquest.

The present proprietor of the estate and mansion of the Vyne, Mr. Chaloner William Chute, a scholar and man of letters, has well employed his leisure in compiling an authentic and interesting memoir of his house; an addition to a class of works which possesses a special attraction to many persons; the histories of counties and county families. This ancient fabric of the Vyne has been for many centuries the residence of men who from time to time have played prominent parts on the stage of English history, as soldiers, statesmen, courtiers, or scholars; or who, if less conspicuous in public life, fulfilled useful functions as resident country gentlemen, dispensing hospitality, administering justice, taking the lead in local affairs, and in many ways promoting the well-being of their humbler neighbours and dependants. The old country seat in the Hampshire hills has been the scene of many notable gatherings within its walls, and of some important public transactions. Kings and queens, ambassadors, and other august persons have sojourned under its roof; royal and highborn ladies have trodden measures upon its floors; quaint sports and antique pageantries have been enacted in its halls; groups of gallant sportsmen have mustered on its lawns, and roused the echoes of its woods and glades. Here the great Elizabeth held councils and dictated State papers; here Anne Boleyn enjoyed a few sunny hours of her soon-clouded life; here the grave Burghley committed to writing his sagacious thoughts; here Gray and Walpole enjoyed their scholarly and refined converse; here Sir William Waller found quarters for his Roundhead troopers. Such ancestral mansions as the Vyne form a valuable part of our national memorials, significant of the race of men who reared and embellished them, and typical of the solidity and unpretentious strength of the English character.

We proceed briefly to notice the history and vicissitudes of the successive families through which, by descent, marriage, or devise, the ownership of the Vyne estate was transmitted through the course of eight centuries. Starting from the Conquest, we find that one of the companions of Duke

William, named Hugh de Pont, received as the guerdon of his services no less than seventy lordships, of which fifty-five were in Hampshire, one of them being Sherborne, the parish which now includes the Vyne. His grandson, John de Pont, together with his feudal tenant, William FitzAdam, founded there, in the reign of Henry II., a chantry chapel, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Early in the sixteenth century the original chapel was replaced by another, which was built by the first Lord Sandys, of the Vyne. This chapel, though disendowed, in common with other chantries, in the reign of Edward VI., was preserved undesecrated, and still retains much of its original beauty. 'At the Vyne,' wrote Horace Walpole in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, is the most 'heavenly chapel in the world: it only wants a few pictures to 'give it a true Catholic air.' Such an air it may well have had, for under its roof masses for the faithful departed' were celebrated four hundred years ago with splendid ceremonial.

Adam de Pont, son of the founder of the chantry chapel, having married Mabel, an heiress of the St. John family, his son William assumed the name of St. John, instead of De Pont, early in the thirteenth century; and his descendants continued to be lords of the manor of the Vyne, using the mansion as a favourite hunting-seat. From the St. Johns the estate passed, in the fourteenth century, to the distinguished family of Cowdray, who at the date of Domesday Book were seated at their great manorial residence in Sussex, which was destroyed by fire in 1793. From them it passed by marriage to Sir William Fyffhide, whose principal seat was at Fifield, near Andover, and subsequently it vested, again by marriage, in the more eminent family of Sandys, in whose possession it continued for nearly three hundred years; that is, from the reign of Richard II. to the Commonwealth. It was Sir William, afterwards the first Lord Sandys, the most conspicuous member of that ancient stock, who erected, about the year 1509, near to, though not upon, the original site, the present mansion. This able and gallant nobleman and his descendants were associated with many of the principal persons and events of the Tudor period, and his 'poor house,' as he speaks of it in some of his extant letters, is rich in historic memories.

The house built by Lord Sandys is of red brick with the well-known Tudor diaper of darker colour, the coigns, dressing, and battlements being of stone. Some parts of the building are of remarkable solidity, the central wall which

divides the northern from the southern chambers being ten feet in thickness. As originally built, it was considerably larger than at present, having a basse-cour forming a north quadrangle, which was pulled down in 1654. The description of the ancient house of Cowdray given by Professor Freeman may justly be applied, says the author of the volume before us, to the Vyne, which was built about the same time. It belonged,' writes Mr. Freeman, to that happy 'moment of our national art when purely domestic archi'tecture was at its height, and the notion of "the great ""house," as distinguished from the castle, had been 'brought to perfection. The architecture was as yet purely English; it did not yet Italianise. Both the actual style and the arrangements of the buildings are exactly at the 'point which is best suited for domestic work. . . . The 'whole house, and every part of it, is meant to serve its own 'purpose, and the reward of building rationally and straightforwardly is the creation of a magnificent and harmonious 'whole.'

The builder of the Vyne, Lord Sandys, was one of the leading personages of his time. He was the friend of Henry VII. and VIII., and became Lord Chamberlain to the latter, who visited him at his Hampshire mansion in 1510. In the expedition sent by that monarch to Fontarabia, Sandys served as 'keeper of the ordnance,' and in consideration of his services in Spain, Guienne, Flanders, and Picardy, he was made Treasurer of Calais in 1517, with an allowance of 561. per annum 'out of the issues of that town.' In 1518 he became a Knight of the Garter, and two years later was one of the commissioners selected to make arrangements for the famous interview of Henry and Francis I. at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In Shakespeare's drama of Henry VIII. Sir William (whom the poet calls Lord Sandys' by anticipation) figures as one of the prominent lords and courtiers in attendance on their sovereign, and he is represented as holding a conversation with the Earl of Worcester, who preceded him in the office of Lord Chamberlain, and who asks him, in grave disapprobation of the follies of the revels,

Is it possible the spells of France should juggle
Men into such strange mysteries?'

Sandys replies in a similar tone of austere censure of the new and unmanly customs' introduced by the French gallants, that fill the Court with quarrels, talk, and tailors.' He too mislikes the trim vanities' that dazzle the fancy of

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the English ladies, and turn away their minds from their own countrymen, such as he describes himself to be, an 'honest country lord, beaten a long time out of play.' Nevertheless, the poet describes how the same lord, thus severely minded towards foreign extravagances, was quite ready and willing to join in the king's diversions upon English soil, for he exhibits Lord Sandys as playing a lively part at Wolsey's great supper in York Place, Whitehall, where he was introduced to Anne Boleyn, and, seating himself by her side, begins:

'If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me;

I had it from my father.'

'Was he mad, sir?' (asks the lady.)

Sandys: O very mad-exceeding mad-in love too-
But he would bite none: just as I do now,

He would kiss you twenty with a breath.' (Kisses her.) He clearly understood how to make himself agreeable to the lady, who says to him,

'You are a merry gamester, my Lord Sandys.'

Henry VIII. act i. sc. .

But, however willing to take part in such revels as his sovereign delighted in, the solid qualities of Sandys' character were more congenially exercised in the functions of the soldier and the statesman. He did the king good service in the field, when at his post at Calais, defending the marches against the French, and he was associated with Sir Thomas More in conducting the affairs which formed the subject of Wolsey's embassy to Calais. He was created Baron Sandys of the Vyne while serving in France under the famous Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; and on the death of the Earl of Worcester, in 1526, he succeeded to the office of Lord Chamberlain, resigning thereupon the post of Lord Treasurer of Calais. In 1531 the king again visited the Vyne, and the household accounts of that year show the costly preparations then made for the royal entertainment. Lord Sandys took his part as Lord Chamberlain in the public reception of Queen Anne Boleyn, after her secret marriage, when she made her splendid entry by water into London. In 1533, however, the divorce of Queen Katharine and the schism which thence arose between England and the See of Rome, caused serious disturbance in the mind ot Sandys, who was strongly attached to the old faith; and the loyalty of the Lord Chamberlain to his sovereign was sorely shaken by these events. In 1534 he withdrew himself from

the Court on the plea of sickness, and was even ready, we are told, to welcome an invasion of England by the Emperor Charles V., as preferable to the tyranny of his own king in ' matters ecclesiastical.' In October 1535, nevertheless, the king, accompanied by Queen Anne Boleyn, came to the Vyne on a visit to Lord Sandys, and stayed there several days; from which it would appear that neither the Chamberlain's vacillation in his allegiance, if it ever became known at Court, nor his withdrawal thence under pretext of sickness, had alienated Henry's mind from his favoured servant. Lord Sandys' last service to the king was when the great rebellion in the north endangered the realm in 1536. He quitted his retirement on that occasion to take his place in council by the side of his sovereign, who, in a letter written in answer to the demands of the rebels, mentions the Lord Sandys, my Chamberlain,' as one of the trusty advisers in whom they might well place confidence. The Chamberlain's last official service was at a Privy Council in August 1540, a few weeks before his death. We are told,

'Lord Sandys departed to God's mercy, much lamented by all those who were associated with him, at Calais, December 4, 1540, after a long life spent in the service of his country. A valiant soldier abroad, and an honest country lord at home, he was averse to change, and a devoted supporter of the ancient faith; and if he hesitated to approve the design imputed to him of sacrificing his allegiance to his religion, we must remember that he did not carry into effect what he is said to have contemplated, but lived and died the loyal servant of a tyrannical and exacting master.'

His remains were interred in the chapel of the Holy Ghost at Basingstoke, in a richly carved tomb, of which some portions still remain, displaying his arms and badge. To this chapel Lord Sandys had made important additions in his lifetime, and had obtained a royal charter for a fraternity and chaplain in connexion with the building. The graceful tower and the picturesque ruins of the chapel of the Holy Ghost form an attractive object, familiar to travellers by the London and South-Western Railway as they approach Basingstoke.

The title and residence of the first Lord Sandys were inherited in succession by three of his descendants. His son, Thomas, achieved no distinction, but his grandson, William, the third lord, owned the property for sixty-seven years, and was honoured by the visits of illustrious persons at the Vyne. Queen Elizabeth was his guest in 1569, and in 1601 the hospitality of the mansion was largely exercised in the

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