The stable-clocks of Gayhurst and Tyringham chiming from either side of the road advertise the whereabouts of those places, effectively hidden though they be in summer by wayside foliage, save for a glimpse here and there. The historic manor-house of Gayhurst might readily be missed, were it not for the lodge-gates; and that would be a loss indeed, for the place is historic in very dramatic sort. The present house dates back in its oldest portions to 1500, when an Early Renaissance mansion was erected by the Nevill family, who ended in an heiress whose marriage brought the estate into the family of Mulso. It was Thomas Mulso who in the time of Queen Elizabeth remodelled the house, and, like many another loyal gentleman of that age, gave it a ground-plan representing the letter E, in compliment to his sovereign: the end limbs of the E being represented by the wings, and the middle limb by the projecting porch. Soon again, however, for lack of heirs male, Gayhurst changed hands, when Mary Mulso married the handsome young Catholic gentleman, Sir Everard Digby, in 1596. The old hiding-places, secret chambers, and uncomfortable quarters in the chimney-flues, with which the house had been thoughtfully provided, were found very useful in the rash young Sir Everard’s time, for he was one of the participants in the Gunpowder Plot, and entertained his fellow-plotters here. Realising the risks he ran, he made over Gayhurst by deed of gift to his son, Kenelm, then but twelve months old. Thus, by early application of the Heaven-sent limited-liability principle, he preserved the estate from the otherwise inevitable confiscation that awaited unsuccessful treason; and went to the scaffold in January 1606, easy on that head. And so, in due course, Sir Kenelm came to his own, and although he endured persecutions and whips and scorns under the Commonwealth, was not altogether unhappy. The large edible snails he introduced from the South of France, in the hope of curing his consumptive wife, Venetia, still have their descendants in the woods here: the woods that represent those early boskages whence Gayhurst obtained its original name of Goddeshurst, which gradually, by way of “Gotehurst”, _i.e._ “God’s Wood”, and “Gothurst”, has become what it is now. [Illustration: GAYHURST.] The Digbys ended in two unmarried sisters, who in 1704 sold their ancestral home to Sir Nathan Wrighte, Queen Anne’s Keeper of the Seals, whose monumental effigy, gorgeously robed, lies in the classic church hard by the house; and the Wrightes themselves parted with it in 1830.