In a remote situation, two miles from Bray Wick, and not to be found marked on many maps, is situated the ancient manor-house of Ockwells. The hills and dales on the way to it are of a Devonshire richness of wooded beauty. The manor was, in fact, originally that of “Ockholt,” that is to say, “Oak Wood,” and oaks are still plenteously represented. Ockholt, as it was then, was granted in 1267 to one Richard de Norreys, styled in the grant “cook” in the household of Eleanor of Provence, Queen of Henry the Third. In respect of his manor, Richard de Norreys paid forty shillings per annum, quit rent; but there is nothing to show what his house was like, the existing range of buildings dating from the time of John Norreys, first Usher of the Chamber to Henry the Sixth, Squire of the Body, Master of the Wardrobe, and otherwise a man of many important offices, eventually knighted for his services. He died in 1467. His grandson was that Sir Henry Norreys who was, with others, executed in 1536, on what appears to have been a false charge of unduly familiar relations with Anne Boleyn. His body rests in the Tower of London, where he met his untimely end, but his head was claimed by his relatives, and buried in the private chapel of Ockwells. The chapel has long since disappeared. The son of this unfortunate man became Baron Norreys of Rycote, and the family thence rose to further honours and riches and left Ockwells for even finer seats. It then came into the hands of the Fettiplaces, and thence changed ownership many times, exactly as old Fuller says of other lands in this county: “The lands of Berkshire are skittish, and apt to cast their owners.” The old mansion finally came down to the condition of a farmhouse, and so remained until some fifty years ago, when it was restored and made once more a residence. Since then it has again been carefully overhauled, and is now a wonderfully well-preserved example of a brick-and timber-framed manor-house of the fifteenth century. Oak framing enters largely into the construction, for this was pre-eminently a timber district; and massive doors, much panelling, and even window mullions in oak testify alike to the abundance of that building-material, and to its lasting qualities, far superior, strange though it may seem to say so, to stone. Even such exceptionally exposed woodwork as the highly enriched barge-boards to the gables is still in excellent preservation. With age they have taken on a lovely silver-grey tone, not unlike that of weathered stone itself. In the Great Hall the heraldic glass yet remains, almost perfect, its colours rich and jewel-like, with the oft-repeated Norreys motto, “Faythfully serve.”

It is somewhat singular that another exceptionally interesting old manor-house of like type with that of Ockwells should be found within three miles. This is the beautiful residence of Dorney Court, on the opposite side of the river, in Buckinghamshire. The village of Dorney lies in a very out-of-the-way situation, and in fact, although the distance from Ockwells is so inconsiderable, the route by which you get to it makes it appear more than twice that length. The readiest way is through Maidenhead, and over the bridge to Taplow railway station, and thence along the Bath road in the direction of London for over a mile, when a sign-post will be noticed directing to Dorney on the right hand.

The village is small and scattered, consisting of the Palmer Arms, some cottages and farmsteads; and the little parish church stands in an obscure byway, divided from Dorney Court only by a narrow lane leading nowhither. The church has ever been, and may still be considered, a mere appendage of the Court, as a manorial chapel. Its red-brick tower, apparently of early seventeenth-century date, is added to the west end of a quite humble building, the greatly altered survival of an early Norman structure, whose former existence may easily be deduced from the remains of a small, very plain window built up in the south wall of the chancel with later work in chalk. Entering by a brick archway in the south porch, you find yourself in one of those little rural churches of small pretensions which in their humble way capture the affections much more surely than do many buildings of more aspiring kind. It is a church merely of aisleless nave and chancel, with a chapel—the Garrard Chapel—thrown out on the north side. A great deal of remodelling appears to have taken place in the early part of the seventeenth century, for not only is there the western tower of that period, and the south porch, but the interior was evidently plastered and refitted with pews at the same time. A very quaint and charming western gallery in oak would seem to fix the exact date of these works, for it bears the inscription in fine, boldly cut letters and figures, “Henry Felo, 1634.” That date marked a new era at Dorney, for the Garrards, who had for some time past owned the Manor, ended with the death of Sir William Garrard in 1607. His monument and that of his wife and their fifteen children is in the north chapel, and is a strikingly good example of the taste of that period in monumental art, with kneeling effigies of Sir William and his wife facing one another, and the fifteen children beneath, in two rows—the boys on one side, the girls on the other. The mortality among this family would seem to have been very great, for about 1620 Sir James Palmer, afterwards Chancellor of the Garter, married Martha, the sole survivor and heiress, and thus brought Dorney into the Palmer family, in whose hands it still remains. The Palmers themselves were of Wingham, in Kent, and of Angmering and Parham, Sussex, and have numbered many distinguished and remarkable men. Tradition declares them to be of Danish or Viking origin, while a very curious and interesting old illuminated genealogy preserved at Dorney declares that the family name originated in the ancient days of pilgrimage, when the original Palmer “went a-palmering.” If that were indeed the case, the old heraldic coat of the house might be expected to exhibit an allusive scallop-shell. But we find no badge of the pilgrim’s way-wending on their heraldic shield, which bears instead two fesses charged with three trefoils; a greyhound courant in chief. The crest is a demi-panther argent, generally represented “regardant” spotted azure, with fire issuant from mouth and ears. This terrific beast is shown holding a holly-branch. An odd, but scarcely convincing attempt to account for the greyhound declares it to be “in remembrance, perchance, of their pilgrimage, a dog, that faithful and familiar creature, being a pilgrim’s usual companion.”

A remarkably large and interesting sampler, worked probably about 1625, has recently come to Dorney under rather curious circumstances. It appears to have been sold so long ago that its very existence was unknown, and it only came to the knowledge of the present representative of the Palmers through a photographic reproduction published in an illustrated paper, illustrating the stock of a dealer in antiques. It was readily identified as an old family possession by reason of the many Palmer shields of arms worked into it. On inquiry being made, a disappointment was experienced. It was found that the sampler had been sold; but in the end the purchaser, seeing that its proper place was in its old home, with much good feeling resold it to Major Palmer.

This beautiful piece of needlework, done in coloured silks, has the unusual feature of presenting, as it were, a kind of Palmer portrait-gallery of that period. In the midst is a shield of the Palmer arms impaling those of Shurley of Isfield, Sussex. This identifies that particular Palmer as Sir Thomas, of Wingham, the second Baronet, who married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir John Shurley, and succeeded his grandfather in the title 1625. That baronetcy became extinct in 1838.

There are eight needlework portraits of men in this sampler, obviously Palmers, since each holds a shield of the family arms; and evidently portraits, because each one is clearly distinguished from the others in age, costume, and features, and the first is easily to be identified by the wounded right arm he bears in a sling. Among those other quaintly attired men, who yet are made to seem so very real to us, one notices a figure with a tilting-lance, another, in the lower range, holding a weapon probably intended to represent the axe carried by the honourable corps of gentlemen pensioners in attendance upon the Sovereign; while the last carries a bunch of keys, in allusion to some official position. The sampler appears to have been carried out of the Palmer family by the marriages in the eighteenth century of the two daughters and heiresses of a Sir Thomas Palmer with an Earl of Winchilsea and his brother.

But to revert to the figure with the wounded arm. This personage was Sir Henry Palmer, Knight, second of the famous triplet sons of Sir Edward Palmer, of the Angmering family, who were born in 1487, according to tradition, on three successive Sundays. This remarkable parturition is still famous at Angmering, where the rustics readily point out the identical house, now divided into cottages, near the Decoy. It was this Henry who established the Wingham line that ascended from knighthood to a baronetcy and became extinct in 1838, having in the meanwhile thrown off a branch now represented at Dorney. Let us take the triplet brothers in their proper sequence. John, the eldest, who inherited Angmering, came to a bad end. He was much at the dangerous Court of Henry the Eighth, and was particularly intimate with that monarch, not only playing cards continually with him, but always winning. A careful courtier in those times did well to lose occasionally. It was not well to be always winning from the Eighth Henry, and that fierce Tudor did in fact hang him on some pretext.

Henry Palmer, the second brother, was a distinguished soldier, and Master of the Ordnance. He received a shot-wound in the arm at Guisnes, of which he eventually died, at Wingham, in 1559. The sampler clearly shows this wounded soldier, with his arm bound up, and supporting himself with a stick. The third brother, Thomas, died on Tower Hill, by the headsman’s axe, as an adherent of the Lady Jane Grey. He suffered with the Duke of Northumberland and Sir John Gates, and chroniclers tell how the unhappy trio quarrelled to the last as to whose was the responsibility for the failure of that rising. But Palmer made the boldest exit of all, declaring with his last breath on the scaffold that he died a Protestant.

Sir James Palmer, Chancellor of the Garter, who married the heiress of Sir William Garrard, and thus founded the Palmer family of Dorney, was a younger son of the Wingham Palmers. He died in 1657, and was succeeded by his son, Sir Roger, created Earl of Castlemaine, who died 1705, without acknowledged children, and left the property to his nephew, Charles, from whom the present family are descended.

Dorney Court is a picturesque mansion, chiefly of the period of Henry the Seventh. It was once much larger, as appears from old drawings preserved in the house, in which it is shown as groups of buildings surrounding two large courts and one smaller. The construction is largely of oak framing filled with brick nogging, disposed sometimes in herring-bone fashion, and in other places in ordinary courses. There are no elaborate and beautiful verge-boards to the gables, such as those extremely fine examples seen at Ockwells, but, if a distinction may be drawn between the two houses, Dorney Court is especially attractive in the fine pictures it gives from almost every point of view. It forms a strikingly picturesque composition seen from the north-east, a grouping in which the great gable of the entrance-front and its two remarkable flaunting chimneys come well with the three equal-sized gables of the north front, the church-tower rising in its proper association in the background, emphasising the ancient manorial connection.

A good deal of work has recently been undertaken, in the direction of correcting the tasteless alterations made at some time in the eighteenth century, when sashed windows here and there replaced the original leaded lights. The plan adopted has been that of acquiring such old oak timbering as could be picked up from houses demolished in neighbourhoods near and far, and of setting it up in the reconstructed doors and windows. If it may be permitted to speak of the interior, it can at any rate be well said that it does by no means belie the exterior view. The panelled and raftered rooms are in thorough keeping, and the hall, neglected for generations, has been brought back to something of its ancient appearance. From those walls the panelling had disappeared, but it has now been replaced with some genuine old work of the same period, acquired by fortunate chance at Faversham in Kent, from an old mansion in course of demolition. The hall greatly resembles that of Ockwells; but whatever heraldic glass may have been here has long vanished, leaving no trace. Here, among the many family portraits, hangs a fine example of a helmet brought from the church, an unusually good piece of funeral armour, removed from the church to prevent its rusting away. The family portraits include some Lelys, Knellers, and Jamesons, and a number of early-eighteenth-century pastel portraits, many of them displaying a facial characteristic of the Palmers, constant through the successive generations: that of a somewhat unusually long nose.

It is one of the greatest charms of our long-settled English social order, that we have in this England of ours a not inconsiderable number of ancient homes that have been “home” to one family throughout the changes and chances of centuries, and in Dorney Court we see such a house. Here, on the old woodwork, are painted the heraldic shields of the Palmers, with their greyhound courant conspicuous, and the devices of the families with whom they have intermarried.

An interesting incident in fruit-growing history belonging to Dorney Court is alluded to in the model on a gigantic scale of a pineapple, shown in the hall. It recalls the fact that the first pineapple grown in England was produced here in the reign of Charles the Second by the Dorney Court gardener. A panel-picture at Ham House, the seat of the Earl of Dysart, near Richmond, illustrates this first English-grown pineapple being presented to the King in the gardens of either Ham or Hampton Court, by Rose, the royal gardener. The rendering of the architecture in the picture makes it uncertain which of the two places is intended. It will be observed by the illustration that there has been a great improvement in the art of growing hot-house pineapples since that time, for it is a very small specimen that is being offered to the King.

Foremost among the thirty or more portraits at Dorney are the two large Lelys hanging in the hall, representing Roger Palmer, Baron Limerick, and Earl of Castlemaine, and his wife Barbara, the beautiful and notorious Barbara Villiers. They are half-lengths. She is curiously shown, holding what looks like the model of a church-steeple in her left hand. Lely intended it for a castle, and thus is seen to be guilty of painting an Anglo-French pun; “Castlemain.” The beautiful Barbara is better known in history as “Barbara Villiers,” her maiden name, and by the title of Duchess of Cleveland. Born in 1641, she married Palmer in 1659. He was shortly afterwards raised to the peerage. There were no children of this marriage, for it was very shortly afterwards that Lady Castlemaine began that extraordinary career of vice which has made her name eminent among even the notorious beauties of Charles the Second’s scandalous Court. The first of her seven children was a daughter, Anne, born in May 1661, and at first acknowledged by Palmer, although Lady Castlemaine had undoubtedly been mistress of Charles the Second since May 1660. There are three portraits of Anne Palmer, or Anne Palmer Fitzroy, as she was afterwards known, at Dorney, the earliest of them exhibiting a romantic hilly landscape for background, with a beacon or fire-cresset along the winding road, such as were placed on the more obscure ways in those times for the guidance of travellers. She married in 1675 Thomas Lennard, Lord Dacre and Earl of Sussex.

Castlemaine, shortly after the birth of this putative daughter, became a pervert to the Roman Catholic religion, and his wife, seizing upon this as a pretext, finally left him and lived openly as the King’s mistress. Several of her children were acknowledged by Charles, and two of them were created dukes, her second son, Henry Fitzroy, becoming Duke of Grafton, her third, George, Duke of Northumberland. She was, with an astounding display of cynical humour, in 1670 created Baroness Nonsuch, “in consideration of her own personal virtues,” and Duchess of Cleveland; and as Duke of Cleveland her eldest son succeeded her. Thus, with Barbara, with Nell Gwynne, and others, Charles the Second abundantly recruited the ducal order and other ranks of the peerage; thus giving point to the Duke of Buckingham’s joke. The King had been addressed at Court as the “father of his people.”

“Of a good many of them,” observed Buckingham behind his hand.

The Earl of Castlemaine lived to see a good many changes. It was not necessary in those times to live to a great age to witness many revolutions and counter-revolutions. He was committed to the Tower shortly after the accession of William the Third, and remained a prisoner there from February 1689 until February 10, 1690. He died in 1705.

A little to the north of Dorney, between it and the Bath road, are the remains of Burnham Abbey, a house for Benedictine nuns founded in 1265 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and titular King of the Romans, brother of Edward the Third. There were an abbess and nine nuns when the establishment was surrendered to Henry the Eighth’s Commissioners. The ruins are now amid the rickyards and agricultural setting of the Abbey Farm, and although the church has wholly disappeared, the remains of the chapter-house and the domestic buildings form an exquisite picture, untouched by any busybodying “tidying-up” activities. The seeker after the picturesque, who finds historical evidences destroyed by well-meaning “restorers”; the artist, who generally discovers the artistic negligence of his foregrounds abolished in favour of neatly kept flower-beds and gravel paths and the feeling of ruin and decay thus utterly disregarded, will be rejoiced here, and will find the ruins still put to farming uses, just as Girtin and Turner and the other roaming artists of a hundred years ago were accustomed to find the castles and abbeys of their day. There is more pure Æsthetic delight in such scenes as this, left in their natural decay and put to the uses to which they in the logical order of things descended, than in the same place swept and garnished to be made a show. The Lady Chapel and the refectory are stables, where the cart-horses shelter and form a picture so exactly like Morland’s stable interiors that the place might well have been a model for him. Every detail is complete in the Morland way, even to the old stable-lantern hanging on a post. Much of the ruined buildings is of the Early English period, and the horses come and go through pointed doorways. Gracious trees richly surround and overhang the scene.

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