Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_ WOODBURN GRANGE. WOODBURN GRANGE. A Story of English Country Life. BY WILLIAM HOWITT. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: CHARLES W. WOOD, 13, TAVISTOCK ST., STRAND. 1867. [_Right of Translation reserved._] LONDON: BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I.—THE LAST OF A LONG LINE 1 II.—THE FIRST OF A NEW LINE 42 III.—THINGS AS THEY USED TO BE 78 IV.—THE WOODBURNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 95 V.—BETTY TRAPPS COMES TO NOTICE 130 VI.—THORSBY AMONGST THE WOODBURNS 156 VII.—THE HAY-FIELD FÊTE 187 VIII.—A NICE SAMPLE OF FARMERS 229 IX.—THE FRIENDS’ PARTY 263 X.—THE PIC-NIC ON THE ISLAND 306 WOODBURN GRANGE. CHAPTER I. THE LAST OF A LONG LINE. Sir Roger Rockville, of Rockville, was the last of a very long line. It extended from the Norman Conquest to the present century. His first known ancestor came over with William, and must have been a man of some mark, either of bone and sinew, or of brain, for he obtained what the Americans would call a prime location. As his name does not occur in the roll of Battle Abbey, he was, of course, not of a high Norman extraction; but he had done enough, it seems, in the way of knocking down Saxons, to place himself on a considerable eminence in this kingdom. The centre of his domains was conspicuous far over the country, through a high range of rock overhanging one of the sweetest rivers in the kingdom. On one hand lay a vast tract of rich marsh land, capable, as society advanced, of being converted into meadows; and on the other, as extensive moorlands, finely undulating, and abounding with woods and deer.