Some of the ancient cabinets at Chastleton are full of secret drawers, and in one of them some years ago a very curious miniature of the martyr king was discovered. It is painted on copper, and represents Charles I. with the Order of St. George, and a set of designs drawn on talc, illustrating the life of the ill-fated monarch from his coronation to his execution. They are thus described by one of the past owners of Chastleton: "They consist of a face and bust in one miniature, in a case accompanied with a set of eight or nine pictures drawn on talc, being different scenes or dresses, which are to be laid on the miniature so that the face of the miniature appears through a hole left for that purpose: and thus the one miniature does duty in every one of the talc pictures. These were accidentally discovered some twenty years ago.[17] The miniature was well known, and was supposed to be complete in itself; but one day whilst being handled by one of the family, then quite a child, it fell to the ground, and being in that way forced open at the back, those talc pictures were brought to light. The careful manner in which they had been concealed, and the miniature thereby made to appear no more than an ordinary portrait, seems to warrant the suggestion that they were in the first instance the property of some affectionate adherent of Charles, whose prudence persuaded him to conceal what his loyalty no doubt taught him to value very highly. There is no direct evidence to show that they belonged to Bishop Juxon; nor is there any tradition that I ever heard connected with them. The two concluding pictures of the series represent the decapitated head in the hand of the executioner, and a hand placing the martyr's crown upon the brows." There are two huge oak staircases running up to the top of the house, where is the old gallery or ballroom, with a coved ceiling of ornamented plaster-work, and above the mullioned windows grotesque monster heads devised in the pargeting. The grounds and gardens are quite in character: not made to harmonise, as are so many gardens nowadays, but the original quaint cut box hedges and trim walks. The grand old house in the centre with its rusty roof of lichen, and hard by the little church nestling by its side with the picturesque entrance gateway and dovecot, form together a delightful group. Chastleton church contains some good brasses. The tower is oddly placed over the south porch. A couple of miles to the north, and the same distance beyond, are two other interesting manor-houses, Barton-on-the-Heath and Little Woolford. The former, a gabled Jacobean house, was once the seat of the unfortunate Sir Thomas Overbury, who was done to death in the Tower by the machinations of that evil couple, Carr, Earl of Somerset, and his countess. Overbury, it will be remembered, had written the Court favourite's love letters and poems, and knew too much of that guilty courtship.