“The said four poor persons should have a key of the said library, which they should for ever keep locked up in the iron chest under all their four keys, unless when any minister or preacher of God’s Word, or other known person, should desire to use the said library, or to study, or to make use of any books in the same, and then the said four poor people, or one of them at the least, should from time to time—unless the heirs of Sir John Kedermister, being then and there present, should otherwise direct—attend within the door of the said library, and not depart from thence during all the time that any person should remain therein, and should all that while keep the key of the said door fastened with a chain unto one of their girdles, and should also take special care that no books be lent or purloined out of the said library, but that every book be duly placed in their room, and that the room should be kept clean; and that if at any time any money or reward be given to the said poor people for their attendance in the library as aforesaid, the same should be to the only use of such of those poor people as should at that time then and there attend.” Clearly, this care has not been always exercised, for the books are now reduced to some three hundred, and those that are left have suffered greatly from damp and rough handling. The books are chiefly cumbrous tomes, heavy in more than one sense, and mostly works on seventeenth-century religious controversies. Although this library has for long past been either forgotten or regarded merely as a curiosity, there was once a time when the books in it were well used, as would appear from the notes made on the end-papers of a Hebrew and Latin Bible, printed at the office of Christopher Plantin, in Antwerp, 1584. It was one J. C. Werndly, vicar of Wraysbury from 1690 to 1724, who made these notes, and he seems to have been indeed a diligent reader. Thus he wrote: 1701/2 Jan. the 17. I began again the Reading of this Hebrew Bible (wʰ is the sixth time of reading it) may the Spirit of Holiness help me and graciously Enable me to peruse it again to the Glory of God, and to the sanctification of my sinful and im’ortal soul. Amen, Lord Jesus, Amen. The last record of his reading appears thus: 1701. xxxiii. 8ᵇʳᵉ the 3rd. I finished the ψalms again by the mercy of my Savʳ. The numerals for “thirty-three” appear to indicate his thirty-third reading. The almshouses on the north side of the churchyard, their front facing the sun, are pleasant with old-fashioned gardens. They were built by Henry Seymour, who in 1669 purchased the Kederminster estates from the son of Sir John Kederminster’s daughter and heiress, who had married Sir John Parsons, sometime Lord Mayor of London. Thus, in less than forty years the Kederminster hopes faded away and the property passed into the hands of strangers. [Illustration: THE ALMSHOUSES, LANGLEY.] CHAPTER VII