repute, though Pepys does not speak highly of his ability, saying his works were silly and tedious.[30] His eccentric wife had also literary inclinations, and wrote, among other things, a high-flown biography of her spouse, which the Diarist said showed her to be "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him." This romantic and theatrical lady was one of the sights of London when she came to town in her extravagant and antiquated dress, and always had a large crowd around her. The practical joke played upon her at the ball at Whitehall, mentioned in de Gramont's _Memoirs_, is amusing, but commands our sympathy, and is a specimen of the bad taste of Society at the time. The romantic situation of the castle, perched upon a steep promontory overlooking a dense mass of trees, must have been quite to the old duchess's taste; and one can picture her walking in state in the curious old gardens as she appears in her theatrical-looking portrait at Welbeck. According to local tradition there is a subterranean passage leading from the castle to the church, which was formerly entered by a secret staircase running from the servants' hall; and there are stories of a hidden chapel beneath the crypt, and ghosts in Elizabethan ruffles. The Cavendish Chapel in the church was erected by Bess of Hardwick's younger son, Sir Charles Cavendish, father of the first Duke of Newcastle, and contains his tomb, a gorgeous Jacobean monument. [Illustration: GARLANDS, ASHFORD CHURCH. (_Photo by Rev. J. R. Luxmoore._)]