By-and-by the name slid into a new form, conveying a new idea. The new name into which it merged is one that has been freely propagated both at home and in the colonies, with pleasing associations of soft and gently undulating landscape suggestive of homely scenery and a sheltered situation. Very different is the connotation of the name in its documentary form. In ‘Ferfelle’ we can see only some outlying ‘remoter fell,’ such as would be little visited save for uses of summer pasture. In Collinson’s picture of the mansion, which is here reproduced, while the foreground seems to justify the modern name, the hills and hanging woods at the back of the house seem to bear out the more primitive signification of an outlying mountain fell. And probably this was also the idea which originally gave name to the well-known mountain in Westmoreland over Grasmere. [Illustration: FAIRFIELD HOUSE.] After a succession of owners of various names this new estate came (14 Edw. I) into the possession of William de Vernai, who had married the sole daughter and heiress of the previous proprietor. For nearly three hundred years there was always a Vernai at Fairfield. In 12 Edw. IV the Vernai of that day (the fourth of the name of William) had a licence to build a wall and seven round towers about his mansion-house at Fairfield, and to enclose two hundred acres of ground for a park. ‘The tomb in the Vernais isle in the fine old Priory church of Stoke Courcy, with an image of an armed man lying thereon, belongs to this William Vernai’ (Collinson). Fairfield had come into the family of Vernai by an heiress, and at length it passed in the same manner to the family of Palmer. Hugh de Vernai left one only daughter, and she was called Elizabeth, after the great queen, who was her godmother. On the death of her father her wardship was granted to Sir Thomas Palmer, of Parham, in the county of Sussex, Knt.; to whose only son, William, she was afterwards married. Soon after this marriage, Sir Thomas Palmer pulled down the old house, and began the present mansion, which was completed by his grandson (also Sir Thomas Palmer, Knt.), who inherited Fairfield in 1587. This proprietor was not a keeper at home. In 1595 he was with Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins in the expedition to Porto Rico, and afterwards commanded a ship at the taking of Cadiz, where he was knighted. He was one of the most considerable persons in the Court of Queen Elizabeth; but on the accession of King James he resolved to spend the remainder of his days beyond the seas, and accordingly, in the year 1605, he went with the earl of Nottingham into Spain, where, as he was providing a settlement for his family at Valladolid, he died of the small-pox, and was there buried.