has been preserved with just the care that should have been expended outside as well. There are oak-wainscoted parlours, oak dressers, and richly-carved fireplaces in the low-ceiled rooms, each one containing furniture much of the period of the house. Upstairs there is a beautiful old bedroom lined with oak, like those on the floor below, and its interest is greatly enhanced by the story of Oliver Cromwell’s residence in the house, for he is believed to have used this particular bedroom. Slight alterations have taken place, but the oak bedstead which he is said to have occupied, minus its tester and with its posts cut down to half their height, still remains to carry us swiftly back to the last siege of the castle. A very curious story is told in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of March, 1791. It gives an anecdote of Oliver Cromwell which Sir John Goodricke used to relate. When he was quite a small boy, he was told by a very old woman who had formerly attended his mother, Lady Goodricke, how Oliver Cromwell came to lodge at this house when she was but a young girl. ‘Having heard so much talk about the man,’ she said, ‘I looked at him with wonder. Being ordered to take a pan of coals and air his bed, I could not, during the operation, forbear peeping over my shoulder several times to observe this extraordinary person, who was seated at the fireside of the room untying his garters. Having aired the bed, I went out, and, shutting the door after me, stopped and peeped through the keyhole, when I saw him rise from his feet, advance to the bed and fall on his knees, in which attitude I left him for some time. When I returned again I found him still at prayer, and this was his custom every night so long as he stayed at our house, from which I concluded he must be a good man, and this opinion I always maintained afterwards, though I heard him very much blamed and exceedingly abused.’