While he was abroad, we learn he went under another
name; not a new experience for one of his family, which seems to have
had no legitimate name of its own, its members, Oliver amongst them,
signing in important personal matters such as getting hold of the
dowries of their wives, "Williams _alias_ Cromwell." It would,
therefore, be interesting to know under what alias this latest
descendant of the infamous minister of Henry VIII. corresponded with
the wife and family he had left at Merdon. He did not return to Merdon
till 1705, upon the death of his son Oliver. His wife had died in 1676,
and his time was soon to come. He died at Cheshunt in 1712, and was
buried with considerable pomp in Hursley church, where we may still see
his monument, moved from the old church and re-erected in that built by
the efforts of John Keble, vicar of this parish for thirty years, from
1836 to 1866.
And so considering all these strange things I went on to Winchester.
CHAPTER XX
WINCHESTER
I do not know what it is that moves me so deeply in the old cities of
Southern England, in Canterbury, Rochester, Chichester, most of all,
perhaps, in Winchester, unless it be that they sum up in a way nothing
else can do the England that is surely and irrevocably passing away.
Pages:
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387