On the meadows below Henley, and on the left bank of the Thames, is Fawley Court, a mansion built by Sir Christopher Wren, but subsequently enlarged. The grounds extend from road to river, and their fine aged trees enhance greatly the beauty of this reach of the Thames. The present house occupies the site of an old manor-house, which was plundered by the Royalist troops at the outbreak of the Civil War. The owner, Bulstrode Whitelock, has left on record a pitiful account of the wanton ravages committed by the troopers. They consumed, or wasted, a great store of corn and hay; they tore up or burnt his books and papers, many of them of great value; they broke up his trunks and chests, stole whatever they could transport of his household goods, and destroyed the rest; they carried off his horses and his hounds, killed or let loose his deer, and broke down his park palings--"in a word, they did all the mischief and spoil that malice and enmity could provoke barbarian mercenaries to commit." We have heard often of the devastation wrought by the Roundheads; it is well to remember that the Cavaliers were by no means guiltless. Remenham village, with its little church, already mentioned, nestles below the slope opposite to Fawley Court, and lower down, on the Buckinghamshire side (for we have now crossed the county boundary), comes Greenland House, opposite to where the Thames makes its sharpest bend. This fared even worse in those unquiet times. About two years later than the incident just related it stood a siege of six months, when it was held by the Royalists against their opponents, and did not capitulate till it was almost knocked to pieces. Some traces of the works raised during the siege still remain, and when the house was enlarged, about a quarter of a century since, quite a crop of cannon-balls was dug up. [Illustration: FAWLEY COURT.] Sweeping round the eastern side of the Berkshire slopes the Thames is checked by Hambledon Lock and its islands--well known to fishermen, the reach above being noted for pike--by Aston Ferry, where the river begins to strike out into the more open part of the valley, by Culham Court and the islands below, till it approaches a place well known to the pleasure-seekers of the present day as a sort of half-way house between Henley and Marlow, and as the fittest site for a picnic.