cause I preferred it.

Merdon Castle, of which some few scanty ruins remain, was built by the
Bishop Henry of Blois about 1138, and no doubt it served its purpose in
the anarchy of Stephen's time, but thereafter it seems to have become
rather a palace than a fortress. The manor of Merdon had always
belonged to the See of Winchester, it is said, since 636, when it was
granted to the Bishop by King Kinegils. It remained with the Bishopric
until the Reformation, when it was granted to Sir Philip Hoby to be
restored to the Church by Queen Mary, and then again regranted to the
Hoby family about 1559. The manor had passed, however, by 1638 to
Richard Major, a miser and a tyrant, who "usurped authority over his
tentant" and more especially, for he was a fanatic Roundhead, "when
King Charles was put to death and Oliver Cromwell was Protector of
England and Richard Major of his Privy Council, and Noll's eldest son,
Richard, was married to Mr Major's Doll." Thus Merdon came into the
Cromwell family, another piece of Church property upon which that very
typical sixteenth-century family had already grown exceedingly wealthy.
Richard Cromwell (as he called himself) lived at Merdon a good deal,
till he succeeded his father in the usurped governance of England. But
when he was turned out in 1660 he found it safer to return to Merdon,
but only for a little while, France offering him, as he wisely thought,
a more secure asylum, not only from a charge of High Treason, but from
his creditors. While he was abroad, we learn he went under another
name; not a new experience for one of his family, which seems to have
had no legitimate name of its own, its members, Oliver amongst them,
signing in important personal matters such as getting hold of the
dowries of their wives, "Williams _alias_ Cromwell." It would,
therefore, be interesting to know under what alias this latest
descendant of the infamous minister of Henry VIII. corresponded with
the wife and family he had left at Merdon. He did not return to Merdon
till 1705, upon the death of his son Oliver. His wife had died in 1676,
and his time was soon to come. He died at Cheshunt in 1712, and was
buried with considerable pomp in Hursley church, where we may still see
his monument, moved from the old church and re-erected in that built by
the efforts of John Keble, vicar of this parish for thirty years, from
1836 to 1866.

And so considering all these strange things I went on to Winchester.