siege in the time of Edward II because Queen Isabella was refused
admission. The King hung the Governor, Thomas de Colepepper, by the
chain of the drawbridge. Henry IV retired here on account of the
Plague in London, and his second wife, Joan of Navarre, was imprisoned
here. It was a favourite residence of the Court in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Here the wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
was tried for witchcraft. Dutch prisoners were confined here in 1666
and contrived to set fire to some of the buildings. It is the home of
the Wykeham Martin family, and is one of the most picturesque castles
in the country.

In the same neighbourhood is Allington Castle, an ivy-mantled ruin,
another example of vanished glory, only two tenements occupying the
princely residence of the Wyatts, famous in the history of State and
Letters. Sir Henry, the father of the poet, felt the power of the
Hunchback Richard, and was racked and imprisoned in Scotland, and
would have died in the Tower of London but for a cat. He rose to great
honour under Henry VII, and here entertained the King in great style.
At Allington the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt was born, and spent his days in
writing prose and verse, hunting and hawking, and occasionally
dallying after Mistress Anne Boleyn at the neighbouring castle of
Hever. He died here in 1542, and his son Sir Thomas led the
insurrection against Queen Mary and sealed the fate of himself and his
race.

Hever Castle, to which allusion has been made, is an example of the
transition between the old fortress and the more comfortable mansion
of a country squire or magnate. Times were less dangerous, the country
more peaceful when Sir Geoffrey Boleyn transformed and rebuilt the
castle built in the reign of Edward III by William de Hever, but the
strong entrance-gate flanked by towers, embattled and machicolated,
and defended by stout doors and three portcullises and the surrounding
moat, shows that the need of defence had not quite passed away. The
gates lead into a courtyard around which the hall, chapel, and
domestic chambers are grouped. The long gallery Anne Boleyn so often
traversed with impatience still seems to re-echo her steps, and her
bedchamber, which used to contain some of the original furniture, has
always a pathetic interest. The story of the courtship of Henry VIII
with "the brown girl with a perthroat and an extra finger," as
Margaret More described her, is well known. Her old home,