The island is occupied by a modern picturesque cottage in a Gothic convention, standing amid trim lawns and weeping willows, near the camp-shedded shore, its gracefulness entirely out of key with those rude times. A little cottage contains a large stone with an inscription bidding it to be remembered that here that epoch-making document was executed, and further, that George Simon Harcourt, Esq., lord of the manor, erected this building in memory of the great event. It is an excellent example of a small modern person seeking to wring a modicum of recognition out of great historic personages and events. Adjoining this famous isle is Ankerwyke, where are some few remains, in the form of shapeless walls, of a Benedictine nunnery, founded late in the twelfth century; and behind that is a village with the very Saxon name of Wyrardisbury: long centuries ago pronounced “Wraysbury,” and now spelled so. We hear nothing of the Saxon landowner, Wyrard, who gave his name to the place, but Domesday Book tells us that one Robert Gernon held the manor after the Conquest. “Gernon,” in the Norman-French of that age, meant “Whisker,” a name which would seem to have displeased Robert’s eldest son, for he assumed that of Montfitchet, from an Essex manor of which he became possessed. The river Colne flows in many channels here, crossed by substantial and not unpicturesque white-painted timber bridges, with here and there a secluded mill. Wraysbury church, restored out of all interest, stands in a situation where few strangers would find it, unless they were very determined in the quest, through a farmyard; and having found it, you wonder why you took the trouble incidental to the doing so. But that is just the inquisitive explorer’s fortune, and he must by no means allow himself, by drawing blank here and there, to be dissuaded from seeking out other byways. But stay! there is some interest at Wraysbury. Outside the church is the many-tableted vault of a branch of the Harcourt family, and among the names here you shall read that of Philip, “youngest brother of Simon, Viscount Harcourt, sometime Lord High Chancellor of Great Britian” (_sic_). Thus, you perceive, that although not the rose, Philip found some satisfaction in kinship with it, and doubtless lived and died happily in the glow of glory radiating from that ennobled elder brother. [Illustration: BRASS TO AN ETON SCHOLAR, WRAYSBURY.] There are brasses lurking unsuspected under the carpeting of this unpromising church; notably a very small and curious example on the south side of the chancel, protected beneath a square of carpet about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. It represents a boy in the costume worn by Eton scholars in the sixteenth century. The inscription runs: Here lyeth John Stonor, the sone of Water Stonor squyer, that departed this worlde ye 29 day of August in ye yeare of our Lorde 1512.