alden paint, on the other hand,
has not improved. The girders are still dark and stained as oak (or is
it chestnut?) should be stained by age and weather. But a yard or two
away there are beams as massive and as well-seasoned which flout the
lapse of centuries with a flaring and be-varnished buff.

The church is noble and tranquil without and within. A chained Bible
stands on a lectern; another Bible, "bought May the tenth 1683," as the
inscription runs on the title-page, "by William Saxby of Surry Esq., for
the use and benefitt of all good Christians" is in use to-day. But the
chief interest of the church to-day, as it has been its chief glory in
the past, is its association with the great family of Cobham. The
Cobhams of Sterborough--their castle stood two miles east of Lingfield,
but has fallen--came of a line which through two of the most eventful
centuries of English history was represented in almost every battle,
consulted in the most difficult diplomacy, and allied at last by
marriage to an English king. Their family goes back to a Justice
itinerant who settled in Kent; but the real founder of the Surrey branch
was the Justice's grandson, the first Lord Cobham of Sterborough. He was
one of the greatest soldiers of his day, and, from the ransoms he had
for the prisoners he took in battle, one of the richest. It was to him,
with Sir John Chandos and the Earl of Warwick, that Edward III entrusted
the Black Prince at Crecy; at Poictiers he rescued the King of France;
he was Lord Admiral of the King's fleet "from the mouth of the Thames
westwards"; and to end it all, he died in his bed of the plague. His
effigy on his tomb tramples a Soldan, whose face has been duly painted
green by the artist--an interesting relic, according to Mr. J.G. Waller,
of Crusaders' traditions. There were not enough names for colours in
those days, and perhaps the soldiers trying to describe the olive skins
of the Arabs, may have called them green. For some obscure reason, too,
the Soldan with his green face and his red beard is intended by the
artist to be alive. Nobody can say why that should be, but the sculptor
doubtless knew. He was a careful and accurate man; you can still trace
below Lord Cobham's left knee the fastenings of the Garter.

Lord Cobham's wife, Joan, was the author of one of the longest wills in
existence. She remembered everybody, including the prisoners in chains
at Southwark and the sick men in the hospitals. Her execu