out of the chapel we could not help reflecting on the hard-heartedness of men fifty years ago, who could allow this consecrated place, beautiful and fair as it still is, to fall gradually to the ground, nor attempt to put forth a helping hand to save it ere it crumbles into dust.  How ungrateful it seems to those whose labour and hard, self-sacrificing toil erected it two hundred and fifty years ago!  Those men of whom Ruskin wrote:  “All else for which the builders sacrificed has passed away; all their living interests and aims and achievements.  We know not for what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their reward.  Victory, wealth, authority, happiness, all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice.”

It should be mentioned, however, that Mr. R. Hurst is at the present time engaged in a laudable endeavour to restore this chapel to its original state.  Inside the house the most noteworthy feature of interest is a remarkably fine ornamental ceiling.  Good judges inform us that the ballroom ceiling at Burford Priory is one of the finest examples of old work of the kind anywhere to be seen.  The room itself is a very large and well-proportioned one; the oak panels, which completely cover the walls, still bear the marks of the famous portraits that once adorned them.  Charles I. and Henry Prince of Wales, by Cornelius Jansen; Queen Henrietta Maria, by Vandyke; Sir Thomas More and his family, by Holbein; Speaker Lenthall, the former owner of the house; and many other fine pictures hung here in former times.  The staircase is a fine broad one, of oak.

But now let us leave the inside of the house, which ought to be so beautiful and bright, and is so desolate and bare, for it is of no great age, and let us call to mind the picture which Waller painted, engravings of which used to adorn so many Oxford rooms:  “The Empty Saddle.”  For, standing in the neglected garden we may see the very terrace and the angle of the house which were drawn so beautifully by him.  Then, as we stroll through the deserted grounds towards the peaceful Windrush, where the great trout are still sucking down the poor short-lived may-flies, let us try to recollect what manner of men used to walk in these peaceful gardens in the old, stirring times.

Little or nothing is known of the monastery which doubtless existed somewhere hereabouts prior to the dissolution in Henry VIII.’s reign.

Up to the Conquest the manor of Burford was held by Saxon noblemen.  It is mentioned in Doomsday Book as belonging to Earl Aubrey; but the first notable man who held it was Hugh le Despencer.  This man was one of Edward II.’s favourites, and was ultimately hung, by the queen’s command, at the same time that Edward was committed to Kenilworth Castle.  Burford remained with his descendants till the reign of Henry V., when it passed by marriage to a still more notable man, in the person of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the “kingmaker.”