six or seven o'clock in the evening, so that the people of Otterbourne,
Compton, and Twyford must have had a good view of the Spanish Prince who
was so unwelcome to them all.

Thomas Sternhold, who together with Hopkins put the Psalms into metre for
singing, lived in the outskirts of Hursley.

When the plunder of the Monasteries was exhausted, the Tudor Sovereigns,
or perhaps their favourites, took themselves to exacting gifts and grants
from the Bishops, and thus Poynet who was intended in the stead of
Gardiner gave Merdon to Edward VI, who presented it to Sir Philip Hobby.
It was recovered by Bishop Gardiner, but granted back again by Queen
Elizabeth. Sir Philip is believed to have first built a mansion at
Hursley, and his nephew sold the place to Sir Thomas Clarke, who was
apparently a hard lord of the manor. His tenants still had to labour at
his crops instead of paying rent, but provisions had to be found them.
About the year 1600, on the arrival of a hogshead of porridge, unsavoury
and full of worms, the reapers struck, and their part was taken by Mr.
Robert Coram, who then owned Cranbury, so hotly that he and Mr. Pye, Sir
Thomas Clarke's steward, rode at one another through the wheat with drawn
daggers. Lady Clarke yielded, and cooked two or three bacon-hogs for the
reapers.

The old road from Winchester to Southampton then went along what we now
call the Old Hollow, leading from Shawford Down to Oakwood. Then it
seems to have gone along towards the old Church, its course being still
marked by the long narrow meadows, called the Jar Mead and Hundred Acres,
or, more properly, Under an Acre. Then it led down to the ford at
Brambridge, for there was then no canal to be crossed. The only great
personage who was likely to have come along this road in the early 17th
century was King James the First's wife, Queen Anne of Denmark, who spent
a winter at the old Castle of Winchester, and was dreadfully dull there,
though the ladies tried to amuse her by all sorts of games, among which
one was called "Rise, Pig, and Go."

James I gave us one of the best of Bishops, Lancelot Andrewes by name,
who wrote a beautiful book of devotions. He lived on to the time of
Charles I, and did much to get the ruins made in the bad days round
Winchester Cathedral cleared and set to rights. Most likely he saw that
the orders for putting the altars back into their right places were
carried out, and very likely the chancel was then