Leaving the names of its more ancient proprietors to the dead past, in 1640-42 Sir James Harrington resided at Ken Wood. He was an active Commonwealth man, and fled beyond seas at the Restoration, having narrowly escaped arrest. Subsequently we find Mr. John Bill, the younger, whose father, John Bill, Esq., one of the King’s printers,[196] had been sequestered for delinquency by the Long Parliament, writing to Sir Harry Vane for his advice touching the purchase of the property, which he (Sir Harry), then—1658—resident in his fine house on Hampstead Hill, knew all about. He reports that the ‘estate of Ken Wood appears to him to require handling well; the home demesne is particularly good, and capable of much improvement, but _that little castle of ruinous brick and stone_ could only be used for materials to build another house. There are nearly thirty acres of waste, as ponds, moate, etc., and a deal of trees to be cut down, and many serious expenses to be considered.’ He adds that it is not worth by £100 the price asked for it, and advises his friend not to purchase—advice which appears to have met with the usual fate of counsel that runs counter to the inclination of the client, for two years afterwards (1660) Mr. John Bill the younger purchased the estate. It then consisted of 280 acres of land, well covered with timber, and the house is described as a ‘capital messuage of brick, wood, and plaster.’ That ‘little castle of ruinous brick and stone’ on the demesne must have been a mere excrescence, a relic of more antique times. There were, besides, eight cottages, a farmhouse, windmill, and fishponds.[197] The windmill occupied the summit of what is now known as Parliament Hill, where, says my authority, ‘the trench formed by the removal of its foundation is still to be traced.’[198] It was, no doubt, the Manor Mill, a source of much profit to the Lord, ‘the tenants being compelled to grind their corn there, at his own price.’ Having ‘found a place that he could live in with comfort,’ as he expresses it, Mr. John Bill married Diana, daughter of Mildmay, Earl of Westmoreland, and widow of John Pelham, Esq., of Brokesly, Lincolnshire, whose name the lady preferred and retained. The St. Pancras register for 1661 records the baptism of Diana, daughter of John Bill and Lady Pelham, at Caen Wood, an event that inspired James Howell, the author of ‘Poems on Several Choice and Various Subjects: Lond. 1663,’ to write one ‘Of Mrs. DIANA BILL, Born and Baptized lately in Cane Wood, Hard by Highgate.’ The title is sufficiently curious, and so are the lines that follow, for which I refer my readers to Lysons, or Park.