[Illustration: DOVECOTE, STANTON HARCOURT.]
A short distance from the ferry in Oxfordshire is Stanton Harcourt, with
its three upright sandstones, "the Devil's Coits," supposed to have been
put there to commemorate a battle between the Saxons and the Britons
more than twelve centuries ago. The village gets its name from the large
and ancient mansion of the Harcourts, of which, however, but little
remains. Pope passed the greater part of two summers in the deserted
house in a tower that bears his name, and where he wrote the fifth
volume of his translation of Homer in the topmost room: he recorded the
fact on a pane of glass in the window in 1718, and this pane has been
carefully preserved. The kitchen of the strange old house still remains,
and is a remarkable one, being described as "either a kitchen within a
chimney or a kitchen without one." In the lower part this kitchen is a
large square room; above it is octangular and ascends like a tower, the
fires being made against the walls, and the smoke climbing up them until
it reaches the conical apex, where it goes out of loopholes on any side
according to the wind. The distance from the floor to the apex is about
sixty feet, and the interior is thickly coated with soot. The fireplaces
are large enough to roast an ox whole.
[Illustration: CUMNOR CHURCHYARD.]
Not far from the ferry, in Berkshire, is the ancient manor-house of
Cumnor Hall, sacred to the melancholy memory of poor Amy Robsart. She
was the wife of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and when his ambition led him
to seek Queen Elizabeth's hand it was necessary to get her out of the
way. So he sent Amy to Cumnor, where his servant Anthony Forster lived.
At first poison was tried, but she suspected it, and would not take the
potion. Then, sending all the people away, Sir Richard Varney and
Forster, with another man, strangled her, and afterwards threw her down
stairs, breaking her neck. It was at first given out that poor Amy had
fallen by accident and killed herself, but people began to suspect
differently, and the third party to the murder, being arrested for a
felony and threatening to tell, was privately made away with in prison
by Leicester's orders. Both Varney and Forster became melancholy before
their deaths, and finally a kinswoman of the earl, on her dying bed,
told the whole story. The earl had Amy buried with great pomp at Oxford,
but it is recorded that the chaplain by accident "tripped once or twice
in his speech by recommending to their memories that virtuous lady so
pitifully _murdered_, instead of saying pitifully _slain_." Sir Walter
Scott has woven her sad yet romantic story into his tale of
_Kenilworth_; and to prove how ambition overleaps itself, we find Lord
Burghley, among other reasons which he urged upon the queen why she
should not marry Leicester, saying that "he is infamed by the murder of
his wife." The queen remained a virgin sovereign, and Leicester's crime
availed only to blacken his character.