To velvet-guards and Sunday-citizens.
Come, sing.

_Lady P._ I will not sing.

_Hot._ 'Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be redbreast teacher.
An the indentures be drawn, I'll away within these two hours; and
so come in when ye will. [_Exit._

My excuse for introducing this little scene is that Kate, whose real
name was Elizabeth, lies here. Her tomb is in the chancel, where she
reposes beside her second husband Thomas, Lord Camoys, beneath a slab on
which are presentments in brass of herself and her lord. It was this
Lord Camoys who rebuilt Trotton's church, about 1400, and who also gave
the village its beautiful bridge over the Rother at a cost, it used to
be said, of only a few pence less than that of the church.

Trotton has still other literary claims. At Trotton Place lived Arthur
Edward Knox, whose _Ornithological Rambles in Sussex_, published in
1849, is one of the few books worthy to stand beside White's _Natural
History of Selborne_. In Sussex, as elsewhere, the fowler has prevailed,
and although rare birds are still occasionally to be seen, they now
visit the country only by accident, and leave it as soon as may be,
thankful to have a whole skin. Guns were active enough in Knox's time,
but to read his book to-day is to be translated to a new land. From time
to time I shall borrow from Mr. Knox's pages: here I may quote a short
passage which refers at once to his home and to his attitude to those
creatures whom he loved to study and studied to love:--"I have the
satisfaction of exercising the rites of hospitality towards a pair of
barn owls, which have for some time taken up their quarters in one of
the attic roofs of the ancient, ivy-covered house in which I reside. I
delight in listening to the prolonged snoring of the young when I ascend
the old oak stairs to the neighbourhood of their nursery, and in hearing
the shriek of the parent birds on the calm summer nights as they pass to
and fro near my window; for it assures me that they are still safe; and
as I know that at least a qualified protection is afforded them
elsewhere, and that even their arch-enemy the gamekeeper is beginning
reluctantly, but gradually, to acquiesce in the general belief of their
innocence and utility, I cannot help indulging the hope that this bird
will eventually meet with that general encouragement and protection to
which its eminent services so ric