The manor of Stanwell was granted to the then Sir Thomas Kynvett by James the First, in 1608. It had been a Crown property since 1543, when Henry the Eighth took it, in his autocratic way, from the owner, Lord Windsor. The story is told by Dugdale, who relates how the King sent a message to Lord Windsor that he would dine with him at Stanwell. A magnificent entertainment was accordingly prepared, and the King was fully honoured. We may therefore perhaps imagine the disgust and alarm with which His Majesty’s host heard him declare that he liked the place so well that he was determined to have it; though not, he graciously added, without a beneficial exchange. Lord Windsor made answer that he hoped His Highness was not in earnest, since Stanwell had been the seat of his ancestors for many generations. The King, with a stern countenance, replied that it _must_ be; commanding him, on his allegiance, to repair to the Attorney-General and settle the business without delay. When he presently did so, the Attorney-General showed him a conveyance already prepared, of Bordesley Abbey in Worcestershire, in exchange for Stanwell, with all its lands and appurtenances. “Being constrained,” concludes Dugdale, “through dread of the King’s displeasure, to accept of the exchange, he conveyed this manor to His Majesty, being commanded to quit Stanwell immediately, though he had laid in his Christmas provision for keeping his wonted hospitality there, saying that they should not find it _bare Stanwell_.” But the deed of exchange, still in existence in the Record Office, is dated nearly three months later, March 14, 1543. Two and three-quarter miles below the now commonplace town of Staines, and past Penton Hook lock, the village of Laleham stands beside the river, on the Middlesex side, in a secluded district, avoided alike by railways and by main roads. Laleham—in Domesday Book “Leleham”—has altered little for centuries past, and although quite recently the park of Osmanthorpe, by the riverside, has been cut up and built upon, the building speculation does not appear to have been very successful. The old church, barbarously interfered with, as most Thames Valley churches within some twenty miles of London were, in the eighteenth century, has suffered only in respect of its tower, rebuilt in monumentally heavy style, in red brick; and a dense growth of ivy now kindly mantles it, from ground to coping. It is a picturesque church, with queer little dormer windows in the roof, and the interior shows it to be much more ancient than the casual passer-by would suppose; heavy Norman pillars and capitals with billet mouldings proving it to date from some period in the twelfth century. It was, in fact, the mother-church of the district, and Staines and Ashford were mere chapelries to it, and so they remained, in ecclesiastical government, until the middle of the nineteenth century.