Also on the uplands, and rather further away from Rugeley, is another of the great houses which are the chief interest of this part of the Trent. This is Beaudesert. Once a country seat of the Bishops of Lichfield, it passed into the hands of the Pagets in the reign of Henry VIII. A peerage has been long in the family, but the first Marquis of Anglesey was a dashing officer, who highly distinguished himself in the great war with France, and lost his leg at the battle of Waterloo, where he commanded the cavalry. The house, which stands in a commanding position high up on the slope of the uplands, is built of brick, and not a little of it dates from the reign of Elizabeth, though it is not a striking example of the architecture of that era. Several small villages are dotted over the lowlands near Trent side, each offering some little bit of antiquity or fragment of history, such as Armitage, with its church looking down on canal and river, or Mavesyn Ridware, with some tombs of interest in its highly restored Trinity aisle, and its story of a feud between Mavesyn de Ridware and Sir William of Handsacre; though over these we must not linger, but follow the Trent as it pursues its course through grassy meadows in a widening valley, leaving the old cathedral town of Lichfield some four miles away amidst the undulating ground on its southern bank. It glides by various small villages, and receives the tributary stream of the Blyth, which traverses one of the prettiest districts of Staffordshire, coming down by the park of the Bagots, and the remnant of the ancient forest of Needwood, where many a grand oak still flourishes. By the water side are many fair pictures--pleasant groupings of trees, and reeds, with wide straths of grass and glimpses of scattered farmhouses, or grey towers of village churches--each with its little cluster of memories, sometimes of more than local interest. Of these perhaps the most noteworthy is Alrewas, once famed for its eels. Excerpts from its registers are quoted by Shaw, and make interesting reading. Here they tell of a murder, there of a suicide, now of a death by drowning in Trent or Tame, now of heat, or drought, or frost. Fires and storms also figure in the record, even an earthquake, but the strangest tale of all is the following: "This 21st day of December, anno 1581, was the water of Trent dryed up and sodenly fallen so ebb that I, John Falkner, vicar, went over into the hall meddow, in a low peare of showes, about 4 of the clocke in the afternoone: and so it was never in the remembrance of any man then living in the droughtest yeare that any man had knownen, and the same water in the morning before was banke full, which was very strange." [Illustration: FROM THE MEADOWS NEAR ALREWAS.] [Illustration: ARMITAGE.] [Illustration: BURTON-UPON-TRENT.]