The essay refers to a story involving one of Kingsley's ancestors, an archbishop named Abbot, whose portrait he is said to have taken great notice of.  During Shakespearian times, Archbishop Abbot, when he was trying his hand at the crossbow, had aimed an arrow at a stag and killed a keeper.  The outcry that followed resulted in the Archbishop being removed from office.

'I went the other day to Bramshill Park, the home of the lord of the manor here, Sir John Cope.  And there I saw the very tree where an ancestor of mine, Archbishop Abbot, in James the First's time, shot the keeper by accident!

I sat under the tree, and it all seemed to me like a present reality.  I could fancy the noble old man, very different then from his picture as it hangs in our dining-room at Chelsea.  I could fancy the deer sweeping by, and the rattle of the crossbow, and the white splinters sparkling off the fated tree as the bolt glanced and turned - and then the death shriek.  He never smiled again!  And that solemn form always spoke to me, though I did not then know what it meant.