Its occupiers have been for many generations the Earls of Dysart, whose family rose to noble rank by sufficiently curious means in the time of Charles I., an era when the peerage was reinforced by methods essentially romantic and irregular. Beauty (none too strictly strait-laced) secured titles for its bar-sinistered descendants in those times: in our own it is commonly Beer that performs the same kindly office. [Illustration: _New Inn, Ham_] The first Earl of Dysart had in his time fulfilled the painful post of “whipping-boy”--a species of human scapegoat--to his sacred Majesty, and by his stripes was his preferment earned. I am told that it is not to be supposed this house and manor are the property of the Dysarts: they pay and have paid, time almost out of mind, an annual rent into the Court of Chancery for the benefit of the lost owners. “But yet,” said my informant at Ham--the strenuous upholder of public rights in that notorious Ham Common prosecution,--“but yet, although this is their only local status, the Dysart Trustees have endeavoured, from time to time, to assume greater rights over Ham Common and public rights-of-way, than even might be claimed by the veritable lord of the manor.” In the early part of 1891, the Trustees placed notice-boards at different points of the Common, setting forth the pains and penalties and nameless punishments that would be incurred by any who should cut turf or cart gravel, exceeding in this act (it seems) their rights, even had they possessed the title, for there is extant a deed executed by Charles I., in favour of the people of Ham, giving the Common to their use for ever. Fortunately there was sufficient public spirit in Ham for the resisting of illegal encroachments, and eventually the notice-boards were sawn down by village Hampdens. Thereupon followed a prosecution at the instance of the Dysart Trustees, with the result that the defendants were all triumphantly acquitted. It were indeed a pity had this, one of the largest and most beautiful commons near London, been gradually drawn within the control of family trustees. It is now a breezy open space of some seventy-eight acres, stretching away from Richmond Park to near Teddington, and pleasingly wild with gorse and sandpits and ancient elms. Here, almost to where the Kingston road bisects the Common, the avenue leading to Ham House stretches its aisle of greenery, its length nearly half-a-mile. To pursue this walk to the wrought-iron gates of the House is to be assured of interest. Erected in the early years of the seventeenth century, it remains a splendid specimen of building ere yet the day of contracts had set in. The red-brick front faces toward the river, and includes a spacious courtyard in whose centre is placed a semi-recumbent stone figure of Thames with flowing urn. Along the whole extensive frontage of the House, placed in niches, runs a series of busts, cast in lead and painted to resemble stone--a quaint conceit.