Manors changed their lords with the political seasons. Attainders for high treason were of the commonest occurrence, and the Crown seized on forfeited lands and transferred them to new favourites. The caprices of a Court favourite, the humours of a royal mistress, the rivalries of contending houses no less than reasons of State affected the ownership of broad domains, and the faithful recorder of the growth of towns that are now great hives of industry had little to enrich his volumes save the vicissitudes of courts and the fortunes of barons of high degree. But such stories are not to be looked for in the history of Ealing. As we have said the Lordship of Ealing has reposed from time immemorial, such that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, in the curious terminology of the law, in the Church. When all around was in seething turmoil the Church changed not. But once, in that great upheaval we call the Reformation, were the lands of mother Church much affected by imperial changes. Whether the Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors or Stuarts ruled, the Manors of the Church were, in the main, secure from the hands of sacrilege. When fierce barons were fiercest, when intestine troubles were most rife, lands in the Dead Hand were, as a rule, unmolested. And it is to this continuity of possession, this holding by a Corporation sole that never dies, this sacerdotal character of its Lordship, that Ealing owes its immunity from those storms that have raged round other and less happy fiefs. And its inland position has been again a security. It has not been exposed, as border towns have been exposed, to the raids of restless tribes or hostile neighbours. It is too far removed from the mouth of the river to make it a place of strategic importance, and though it has not escaped the tramp of armed men, it has been the scene of no memorable siege or bloody fray. ~Murder Of Edmund Ironside At Brentford.~