and inflexible loyalty to the Stuarts,"
says the novelist, "the Comptons had been heavy sufferers, both in purse
and person, during the eventful progress of the civil wars. The Earl of
Northampton, the head of the family, and nephew to Sir Henry, the
presumed builder of Brambletye, had four sons, officers under him,
whereof three charged in the field at the battle of Hopton Heath, and
the eldest, Lord Compton, was wounded. The Earl himself, refusing to
take quarter from the rascally Roundheads, as he indignantly termed
them, even when their swords were at his throat, was put to death in the
same battle; and the successor to his title, with one of his brothers,
finally accompanied the royal family in their exile. Sir John Compton, a
branch of this family, having preserved much of his property from the
committee of sequestration, displayed rather more splendour than fell to
the lot of most of the cavaliers who took an equally conspicuous part
against the parliament armies. Although never capable of any regular
defence, yet the place being hastily fortified, refused the summons of
the parliamentarian colonel, Okey, by whom it Was invested; but it was
speedily taken, when sad havoc was committed by the soldiery, all the
armorial bearings, and every symbol of rank and gentility, being
wantonly mutilated or destroyed."

In the time of the commonwealth, Brambletye was the focus of many a
cavalier conspiracy. "From its not being a place of any strength or
notice, it was imagined that Brambletye might better escape the keen and
jealous watchfulness, which kept the protector's eye ever fixed upon the
strong holds and defensible mansions of the nobility and gentry; while
its proximity to the metropolis, combined with the seclusion of its
situation, adapted it to any enterprize which required at the same time
secrecy, and an easy communication with the metropolis."

In the novel just quoted, which is altogether a pleasant assemblage of
historical facts, aided by the imaginative garniture of the author, the
denouement is brought about by the explosion of a gunpowder vault which
destroyed part of the mansion; and on the marriage of his hero and
heroine Brambletye House was abandoned to its fate; "and the time that
has intervened since its desertion," says our author, "combining with
the casualty and violence by which it was originally shattered and
dismantled, has reduced it to its present condition of a desolate and
forlorn ruin."