Several stories are told of Henry hiding from Cromwell’s soldiers, who were sent to surround Bidlake in order to take him prisoner. He was warned, and dressed himself in rags in order to pass them. Some soldiers met him and asked him if he had seen Squire Bidlake. “Aye, sure,” he replied, “her was a-standin’ on ’is awn doorstep a foo minutes agoo.” So they went on to search Bidlake House while he escaped to the house of a tenant of his named Veale in Burleigh Wood. The troopers went there also, and Mrs. Veale made him slip into the clock-case; they hunted high and low, but could not find him. One of the soldiers looking up at the dial and seeing the hand at the hour said, “What, doant he strike?” “Aye, aye, mister,” replied Mrs. Veale, “there be a hand here as can strike, I tell ’ee.” Mr. Bidlake suffered from a chronic cough, and just at that moment it began, but he had the art to dip his head, let the weight down behind his back, and the clock struck the hour and drowned the cough in the case. According to another version of the story, his cough was heard, the clock-case was opened, and he taken. But I doubt this. An old man, William Pengelly, who had been with my grandfather, and father, and myself, told me that Henry Bidlake was concealed by the Veales in Burleigh Wood--that is, the wood over the promontory where are the camps--and they supplied him with blankets and food for some weeks till it was safe for him to reappear. Their farm is now completely ruined, but I can recall when it was occupied. According to Pengelly’s story, later on, Henry Bidlake granted that farm to the Veale family to be held in perpetuity on a tenure of half a crown per annum, so long as there remained a male Veale in the family. Pengelly informed me that the last Veale had died when the Rev. John Stafford Wollocombe held the estate, 1829-66, and that the tenure had remained the same till then. The Rev. J. H. Bidlake Wollocombe, present owner of the Bidlake estate, tells me that he can find no evidence of the grant to the Veales among the deeds, and that he never heard of the story save from me.