King Henry's funeral is history; another tale of the Chertsey curfew bell is legend. It was first put into the form of a story and dramatised by a now almost forgotten novelist-poet, Albert Smith, who was born at Chertsey himself, and wrote books which were illustrated by Leech. He called his story _Blanche Heriot: a Legend of the Chertsey Church_, and the play in its outline follows the legend. Blanche's lover, Neville, the nephew of Warwick the Kingmaker, had been captured by the Yorkists and condemned to die on Chertsey Mead within twenty-four hours. There was a hope of reprieve if he could send his ring as a token to the king. He sent it, but the messenger returning with the pardon was late, and the twenty-four hours were up while the reprieve was being carried over Laleham Ferry. But the knell for the death-stroke never sounded; Blanche had climbed the curfew tower and held the clapper of the great bell. The story has always been popular locally, but it first reached a really wide audience, perhaps, when Mr. Clifford Harrison embodied it in his poem _The Legend of Chertsey_. Since then, reciters' audiences have had their fill. About a mile outside the town lies St. Anne's Hill, chiefly notable, perhaps, to-day because on its southern slope stands a house which was at one time the residence of Charles James Fox. Its older title to fame was the magnificence of its view. On the highest point stood St. Anne's Chapel, of which the half-buried ruin of but a single wall remains. It is, Aubrey remarks, "a most romancy place, from whence you have the Prospect over Middlesex and Surrey, London, to Hertfordshire and St. Albans, Berks, Bucks, Oxfordshire, to Windsor Castle, St. Martha's Chapel, Hampton Court, Kingston, Hampshire, etc." Eight counties is a noble stretch of England. But to-day the view has lost most of its grandeur. The hill has been thickly planted with trees, conifers for the most part, and the view can only be had in peeps and patches. Forty or fifty years ago, before the pines were planted, there stood on the hill three sister elms, a proud mark for all the country round. One alone remains, fenced in with iron and hollow, and still a splendid tree; but her shade falls on altered ground. Before the middle of the last century the level stretch of soil to the south was ploughland: it is now a level mead of green, glowing with bordering rhododendrons in June, and bitten close and smooth by rabbits. It is amusing to notice the fineness of the turf within three or four yards of the rhododendrons all round the green; the rabbits are "poor men," like Chuchundra, and afraid to come out into the middle of the room.