“_Donington Rectory, Oct. 13._--This is a pleasant place in itself, and any place would be pleasant within view of the beloved Wrekin.[223] On arriving, I went on at once to Boscobel, and saw the oak which grew from an acorn of the tree that sheltered Charles II., and in the ancient half-timbered house, the hiding-place under the floor at the top of the turret-stairs, where the Prince is said to have crouched for forty-eight hours, with his trap-door concealed by cheeses. Well smothered he must have been, if Staffordshire cheeses smelt then as they do now. There is a good portrait of Charles, which he presented to the house after the Restoration. I went on with Henry de Bunsen to White Ladies, now a low ruin of red walls in a meadow, but entered still by a fine Norman archway. Inside is a quiet burial-ground for Roman Catholics, amongst whose lichen-tinted headstones is that of ‘Mistress Joan, who was called friend by Charles II.’--being one of those who assisted in his escape. Beyond, in Hubble Lane, is the ruin of the Pendrill house. The Pendrills[224] were seven brothers, common labourers, but went up to London and had a pension after the Restoration.
“We went on to Tong--a glorious church, quite a church of the dead, so full of noble tombs of Stanleys and Vernons. Near it, in low-lying lands with water, is Tong Castle, the old house of the Durants. The last Mr. Durant brought in another lady to live with his wife, which she resented, and she left him. There was a long divorce suit, which they both attended every day in coaches and six. Owing to some legal quibble, he gained his suit, though the facts against him were well known, and he was so delighted at the triumph over his wife that he erected a monument in honour of his victory on the hill above the castle. The sons all took part with their mother, and when Mr. Durant was lying in his last illness, they set barrels of gunpowder surreptitiously under the monument, and had a match and train ready. They bribed a groom at the house to ride post-haste with the news as soon as the breath was out of their father’s body; and the news of his death first became known to the county by the monument being blown into shivers. The Durants sold Tong to Lord Bradford.”