This goodly manor-house was only one of several seats belonging to the Culpepers in this neighbourhood. They had a mansion at Greenway Court, which was burnt down in the last century, and another of imposing dimensions where Grove Court now stands. In the seventeenth century the Lords Culpeper also owned Leeds Castle, that noble moated house, a mile to the south, which was once a royal park, and is still one of the finest places in Kent. But the second Lord Culpeper died without a male heir in 1688, and this famous house passed by marriage into the Fairfax family. The Hollingbourne branch of the Culpepers died out in the course of the last century, and at the present time no member of this illustrious family is known to exist in England, although persons bearing this ancient name are still to be found in America. The church at Hollingbourne contains a whole series of Culpeper monuments. The most remarkable is the white marble altar-tomb, which bears the recumbent effigy of Elizabeth Lady Culpeper, who died in 1638, and is described in the inscription on her monument as _Optima Foemina, Optima Conjux, et Optima Mater_. This lady was the heiress of the Cheney family, whose arms, the ox's hide and horns, appear on the shield at the foot of the tomb, and are repeated in the stained glass of the chapel window. Tradition says that Sir John Cheney had his helmet struck off, when he fought by the victor's side on Bosworth Field, and fixed a bull's horns on his head in its place. Afterwards Henry VII. gave him this crest, when he made him a Baron and a Knight of the Garter, in reward for his valour on that hard-fought field. A monument on the north wall of the chancel records the memory of John Lord Culpeper, who was successively Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Rolls, and Privy Councillor to Charles I. and Charles II. "For equal fidelity to the king and kingdome," says the epitaph on his tomb, "he was most exemplary." He followed the last-named king into exile and remained there until the Restoration, when "with him he returned tryumphant into England on the 29th of May, 1660," only to die six weeks afterwards, "to the irreparable losse of his family." Another descendant of the Culpepers is buried under the altar in this church, Dame Grace Gethin, a great grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Culpeper, and wife of Sir Richard Gethin, of Gethinge Grott, in Ireland, whose learning and virtues were so renowned that monuments were erected in her honour both at Bath and in Westminster Abbey. This youthful prodigy, who died at the age of twenty-one, is here represented kneeling between two angels, and holding in her hand the commonplace book which she filled with extracts from her favourite authors, and which was afterwards published under the title of "Reliquiæ Gethinianæ." Her piety was as great as her personal charms, and the inscription on her monument records how, "being adorned with all the Graces and Perfections of mind and body, crowned them all with exemplary Patience and Humility, and having the day before her death most devoutly received the Holy Communion, which she said she would not have omitted for Ten Thousand Worlds, she was vouchsafed in a miraculous manner an immediate prospect of her future Blisse, for the space of two hours, to the astonishment of all about her, and being, like St. Paul, in an unexpressible Transport of joy, thereby fully evincing her foresight of the Heavenly Glory, in unconceivable Raptures triumphing over Death, and continuing sensible to the last, she resigned her pious soul to God, and victoriously entered into rest, Oct. 11th, anno ætatis 21, D'ni: 1697. Her dear and affectionate Mother, whom God in mercy supported by seeing her glorious end, erected this monument, she being her last surviving issue."