The name of Cheveley is associated with what Professor Maitland calls "the curious if disgraceful story of the decline and fall" of the ancient Corporation of Cambridge.[138] When the Revolution of 1688 had put a final end to the old Royal prerogatives over local administration, "the Corporation stood free from national supervision"; and Parliament, as time went on, appointed Commissioners to undertake the duties of police and hygiene, which had formerly been entrusted to it. With the cessation of recognised responsibilities the Corporation also ceased to have a conscience, and shamelessly squandered the corporate property on the personal greediness of its members. The Duke of Rutland, from his great seat at Cheveley, became, till the flood of nineteenth century reforms cleansed the Augean stable, its absolute master, and his nominees only were chosen into it, and thus, after a thousand years of strenuous, and mostly beneficent life, "first as a knot of heathen hidesmen,[139] then as a township of early English burg-men, then as a corporation of mediaeval burgesses," it finally dwindled to a small dining club, "with good wine, and plenty of it," absolutely dominated by one great Tory magnate, and claiming "the right to expend their income on themselves and their friends, without being bound to apply any part of it to the good of the Town." Reform came none too soon. [Footnote 138: _Township and Borough_, p. 96.] [Footnote 139: The original Corporation (not yet so called) consisted of the local residents who held (or were rated at) a "hide" of land (120 acres). This was at the end of the ninth century, when the landowners were Danes and heathen.] Cheveley is some three miles from Newmarket, and, as much further on, we reach another interesting little village, Kirtling. The local pronunciation of the name is "Catlage," which is unhappily becoming obsolete, like so many other local pronunciations throughout England, under the orthographical dead level of elementary scholasticism. The most striking edifice here is the great red-brick gate tower, with its four octagonal turrets, which is all that remains of a mansion, in its day one of the most famous in England. It was built in the reign of Queen Mary by the first Lord North, whose family still hold "Kirtling Tower," and whose son here magnificently entertained Queen Elizabeth.[140] [Footnote 140: A constant tradition declares that she was imprisoned (or hidden) here during part of her sister's reign, but it cannot be verified.]