y was dispersed. But the
tradition created by FitzWilliam continued, and the Crown was ready to
sell at that date, to a certain Dr. Hammond. The perpetual mobility
which seems inseparable from spoils of this kind attaches
thenceforward to the unfortunate place. The Hammonds sell after the
Restoration to Sir Nicholas Carew, and before the end of the
seventeenth century the Carews pass it on to the Orbys, and the Orbys
pass it on to the Waytes. The Waytes sell it to a brewer of London,
one Hinde. So far, contemptuous as has been the treatment of this
great national centre, it had at least remained intact. With Hinde's
son even that dignity deserted it. He found it advisable to distribute
the land in parcels as a speculation; the actual emplacement of the
building went to a certain Harwell, an East Indian, in 1753, and his
son left it by will to a private soldier called Fuller, who was
suspected of being his illegitimate brother. Fuller, as might be
expected, saw nothing but an opportunity of making money. He redivided
what was left intact of the old estate, and sold that again by lots in
1809; a stockbroker bought the remaining materials of a house whose
roots struck back to the very footings of our country, sold them for
what they were worth--and there was the end of Chertsey.

Then there is also Radley: which begins as an exception, but fails. It
was a manor of Abingdon, and after the Dissolution it fell a prey to
that one of the Seymours who proved too dirty and too much even for
his brother and was put to death in 1549. It passed for the moment, as
we have seen several of these riverside manors do, into the hands of
Mary. But upon her death Elizabeth bestowed it upon a certain
Stonehouse, and the Stonehouses did come uncommonly near to founding a
family that should endure. Nor can their tradition be said to have
disappeared when the name changed and the manor passed to the nephew
of the last Stonehouse, by name Bowyer. But Bowyer did not retain it.
He gradually ruined himself: and it is amusing at this distance of
time to learn that the cause of his ruin was the idea that coal
underlay his property. Everyone knows what Radley since became: it was
purchased by an enthusiast, and is now a school springing from his
foundation.

Or consider the two Hinkseys opposite Oxford, both portions of
Abingdon manors; they are granted in the general loot to two worthies
bearing the names of Owen and Bridges: a doctor.

These wer