Who steals my purse steals stuff!— ’Twas mine—’tisn’t his—nor nobody else’s! But he who runs away with my GOOD NAME, Robs me of what does not do him any good, And makes me deuced poor: a novel reading of Iago’s passionate declaration, _Othello_, Act iii., Scene 3: Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he, that filches from me my good name, Robs me of that, which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed. His also was the reading: Pray, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty cock-horses?— a new version of Bolingbroke’s speech in _Richard the Second_: Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? [Illustration: A DESCENDANT OF THE SAXON CHURLS.] Sir Godfrey Webster, sixth Baronet, in 1857 sold Battle Abbey to Lord Harry Vane, afterwards Duke of Cleveland, chiefly because of the extraordinary situation brought about by there being at that time no fewer than five dowager Lady Websters drawing jointures from the already impoverished property. It had long been a cherished dream of the Websters to repurchase their old home, and this was realised in 1901 by Sir Augustus Webster, the present and eighth Baronet, on the death of the Duchess of Cleveland. But although he effected that aim, he could not maintain the Abbey itself, and accordingly let it to Mr. Grace, the wealthy American who resides there now and lords it over this historic spot and this beautiful park occupied by English gentlemen when the place whence he came was the primeval forest roamed by the North American redskin. It is a picturesque example of the newer conquering of England by the dollar, over eight hundred years after the famous battle that won it with the sword. It is in a remote and picturesque corner of the park, in Powder Mill House, that Sir Augustus Webster resides; in a house which, as indicated by its name, was one of those gunpowder factories whose numerous accidents, according to Horsfield, historian of Sussex, “it would be harrowing to relate and uncharitable to publish.” The manufacture is a thing of the past at Battle, but the great pond, used in the work, remains, and so do those brushwood thickets that contributed charcoal to the industry. Brushwood coppices are still one of the character-touches of the place, and those “leather-legged chaps, the clay and coppice people,” as Cobbett names them, are, as they have been from Saxon times, the greater proportion of the inhabitants. Any day their rustic and toil-worn figures, bent under huge faggots, may be seen in Battle street, and they serve to show how, although the Normans and the monks in turn have gone, the rural Saxon people remain.