Sir John Denham, the poet and unsuccessful defender of Farnham Castle in the Parliamentary Wars, lived at the house which is now the vicarage, and from its windows looked out on the long rising slope of Cooper's Hill. He has been laughed at for his description of the hill as an "airy mountain," but three hundred years ago, before the hill was cut up with hedges and ditches, and when he could look across open grass to its foot, Cooper's Hill may well have seemed higher than to-day. It is higher than St. Anne's Hill, after all, and can make an imposing break on the horizon. Here is Runemede as Sir John Denham saw it from Cooper's Hill:-- "There lies a spatious and a fertile Greene, Where from the woods, the _Dryades_ oft meet The Nayades, and with their nimble feet, Soft dances lead, although their airie shape All but a quicke Poeticke sight escape, There _Faunus_ and _Sylvanus_ keepe their Courts, And thither all the horrid hoast resorts, When like the Elixar, with his evening beames, The sunne has turn'd to gold the silver streames. Here have I seene our _Charles_, when great affaires Give leave to slacken, and unbend his cares, Chacing the royall Stagge, the gallant beast, Rowz'd with the noyse 'twixt hope and feare distrest, Resolv's 'tis better to avoyd, than meet His danger, trusting to his winged feet." Which he does, a most moving business, until at last the gallant animal turns. He stands at bay-- "Till _Charles_ from his unerring hand lets flie A mortall shaft, then glad, and proud to dye By such a wound he fals, the Chrystall flood Dying he dyes, and purples with his blood."