This beautiful place, which is at present owned by the Rev. W. J. Stracey Clitherow, formerly Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, has been in possession of the family since it was purchased by James Clitherow in 1670. The family, though never ennobled, is an ancient one, with a very honourable record. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they resided at Goldmerstone, in the parish of Ash, near Sandwich. The remains of several of the family lie in the parish church there, and the brasses of two remain, though one is sadly mutilated. This last is to the memory of Richard Clitherow, who was Sheriff of the county of Kent in 1403, and 'Admiral of the seas from the Thames eastward.' He married the daughter of Sir John Oldcastle, who, in right of his wife, assumed the title of Lord Cobham,[*] and died for the faith of Christ on Christmas Day, 1417, among the Lollard martyrs at the gate of St. Giles' Hospital. The family was represented at Agincourt in 1415; one sat for the county of Kent in Parliament in 1407, and another was Lord Mayor of London in 1635. [*] From Sir John Oldcastle the Clitherows derive both their arms and crest. In the reign of George IV. the head of the family was Colonel James Clitherow, born in 1766, who married Miss Jane Snow, of Langton, Dorset. A portrait of him hangs in the library, painted by Romney in the year 1785. He was a high-minded, accomplished, and conscientious English gentleman, who took an active interest in many good works, both of local and wider importance. He was actively interested in the establishment of the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, in the Board Room of which his portrait by Pickersgill may still be seen. He was Chairman of the Visiting Justices of the institution from its opening in 1832 till April, 1839, and in 1835 he founded the charity (still in existence) known as Queen Adelaide's Fund. Colonel and Mrs. Clitherow's home at Boston House was shared by his sister Mary, who was two years his senior. About the year 1824 they became acquainted with the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV., who then resided at Bushey, of which park he was Ranger; and they were admitted to an unusual degree of intimacy with their Royal neighbours, observing in their intercourse with them an honesty not usually found in courtiers, but quite in keeping with the family motto, 'Loyal, yet true.' So close did this intimacy become that, after his accession, the King nicknamed Miss Clitherow 'Princess Augusta,' in allusion to her being the old maid of the family as the Princess was in his own, and when inquiring for her of Colonel or Mrs. Clitherow would say, 'How is _your_ Princess Augusta?' her of Colonel or Mrs. Clitherow would say, 'How is _your_ Princess Augusta?'