[B] ASHOVER. This village is of great antiquity, being mentioned in the Doomsday Book, as having a church and a priest. In the church is an ancient font, supposed to be Saxon; the base is of stone; the lower part is of an hexagonal form; the upper part circular, surrounded with twenty figures, in devotional attitudes, embossed in lead, in ornamental niches. There are also some ancient monuments of the Babington family, who were for a long time seated at Dithicke, a chapelry in this parish. Anthony Babington was executed for high treason in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, having engaged in a conspiracy to destroy that princess. On the declivity of a hill on Ashover Common is a rocking stone, called Robin Hood's Mark, which measures about twenty-six feet in circumference. From its extraordinary position, it appears not only to have been the work of art, but to have been placed with great ingenuity. About 200 yards to the north is a singularly shaped work, called the Turning-stone, nine feet high: it is supposed to have been a rock idol. Overton Hall, in this vicinity, was once the seat of Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society. [Sidenote: A singular rocking stone, formerly an idol.] [C] ASHRIDGE was formerly called Escrug. In very early times this village is reported to have possessed a royal palace; which, when the estate became the property of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, son to Richard, King of the Romans, was converted into a college for Bonhommes (or monks who followed the rules of St. Augustine,) and endowed with the manors of Ashridge, Gaddesden, and Hemel Hempstead. A parliament was held here by Edward the First, in the year 1291; and, though of short continuance, it was distinguished by a spirited debate on the origin and necessary use of fines. After the dissolution, the monastery appears to have become the seat of royalty; and Norden describes it as the place "wherein our most worthy and ever famous Queen Elizabeth lodged, as in her owne, being a more statelie house." This queen, in the 17th year of her reign, granted it to John Dudley, and John Ayscough, who within the short period of a fortnight, conveyed it to Henry, Lord Cheny, whose lady sold it to Ralph Marshal, by whom it was again conveyed to Randolph Crew and others, and soon afterwards granted to Egerton, Lord Ellesmere, ancestor to the late Duke of Bridgewater; several of whose family are buried in the neighbouring church of Little Gaddesden. The old college, the greater part of which was standing in the year 1800, exhibited a fine specimen of the gothic architecture of the thirteenth century. The cloisters were particularly beautiful. The walls were painted in fresco with Scripture subjects. The late Duke of Bridgewater pulled down the whole of these buildings, the materials of which were disposed of in lots; the present earl, the dukedom being extinct, has erected a most magnificent mansion at a great expense. Ashridge Park, which contains