In the Civil War the brave old manor-house stood out stoutly for the Royalists, but at length was taken by Lord Grey. The governor, Colonel Dalby, was on the point of making his escape from the stables in disguise when he was recognised and shot. The stronghold shortly afterwards was dismantled, but in Charles II.'s reign was patched up again and made a residence, and so it continued until little more than a century ago. The village of Ashover, midway between Wingfield and Chesterfield, is charmingly situated on the river Amber amidst most picturesque scenery. Here in 1660, says the parish register, a certain Dorothy Mady "forswore herself, whereupon the ground opened and she sank overhead!" There are some old tombs to the Babingtons, of which family was Anthony of Dethick-cum-Lea, nearer Matlock, where are slight remains of the old family seat incorporated in a farmhouse. As is well known, it was the seizure of the Queen of Scots' correspondence with this young desperado, who with Tichborne, Salisbury, and other associates was plotting Elizabeth's assassination, that hastened her tragic end at Fotheringay. Bolsover Castle, which lies directly north of Hardwick, has a style of architecture peculiar to itself. It is massive, and grim, and prison-like, with a strange array of battlements and pinnacles; and Bess of Hardwick showed her genius in making it as different as possible from her other residences. And the interior is as fantastic and original as the exterior. Altogether there is something suggestive of the fairy-tale castle; and the main entrance, guarded by a giant overhead and bears on either side, has something ogre-like about it. The rooms are vaulted and supported by pillars, some of them in imitation of the earlier castle of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They are a peculiar mixture of early-English and Renaissance, but the effect is very pleasing and picturesque. The main arches of the ceiling of the "Pillar parlour" are panelled and rest on Elizabethan vaulting-shafts, and the ribs are centred in heavy bosses. The semicircular intersections of the walls are wainscoted walnut wood, richly gilt and elaborately carved, and there are early-Jacobean hooded fireplaces and queer old painted and inlaid doors and window-shutters. The largest of these rooms is the "Star chamber," so called from the golden stars on the ceiling depicted on blue ground, representing the firmament. In these gorgeous rooms Charles I. was sumptuously entertained by the first Duke of Newcastle. In what is called the "Riding house," a roofless Jacobean ruin of fine proportions, Ben Jonson's masque, _Love's Welcome_, was performed before the king and queen. Clarendon speaks of the stupendous entertainment (that cost some fifteen thousand pounds) and excess of feasting, which, he says, "God be thanked!--no man ever after imitated." The duke (then marquis), who had been the king's tutor, was a playwriter of some