ark is a superb common of sand and heather, an inland paradise
for children.

Petworth station and Petworth town are far from being the same thing,
and there are few more fatiguing miles than that which separates them. A
'bus, it is true, plies between, but it is one of those long, close
prisons with windows that annihilate thought by their shattering
unfixedness. Petworth's spire is before one all the way, Petworth itself
clustering on the side of the hill, a little town with several streets
rather than a great village all on one artery. I say several streets,
but this is dead in the face of tradition, which has a joke to the
effect that a long timber waggon once entered Petworth's single,
circular street, and has never yet succeeded in emerging. I certainly
met it.

[Sidenote: THE SHADOW OF THE PEER]

The town seems to be beneath the shadow of its lord even more than
Arundel: it is like Pompeii, with Vesuvius emitting glory far above. One
must, of course, live under the same conditions if one is to feel the
authentic thrill; the mere sojourner cannot know it. One wonders, in
these feudal towns, what it would be like to leave democratic London or
the independence of one's country fastness, and pass for a while beneath
the spell of a Duke of Norfolk, or a Baron Leconfield--a spell possibly
not consciously cast by them at all, but existing none the less, largely
through the fostering care of the townspeople on the rent-roll, largely
through the officers controlling the estates; at any rate unmistakable,
as present in the very air of the streets as is the presage of a
thunderstorm. Surely, to be so dominated, without actual influence,
must be very restful. Petworth must be the very home of low-pulsed
peace; and yet a little oppressive too, with the great house and its
traditions at the top of the town--like a weight on the forehead. I
should not like to make Petworth my home, but as a place of pilgrimage,
and a stronghold of architectural taste, it is almost unique.

[Illustration: _Stopham Bridge._]

[Sidenote: PETWORTH'S HISTORY]

[Sidenote: HOTSPUR'S DESCENDANTS]

In the Domesday Book Petworth is called Peteorde. It was rated at 1,080
acres, and possessed a church, a mill worth a sovereign, a river
containing 1,620 eels, and pannage for 80 hogs. In the time of the
Confessor the manor was worth _L_18; a few years later the price went down
to ten shillings. Robert de Montgomerie held Petworth till 1102, when he