1 one should be happy if they were authentic; for among them there is Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Gardiner of Winchester, the Earl of Surrey the poet, when a boy, and a Thomas, Duke of Norfolk; but I don't know which. The only fine picture is of Lord Goring and Endymion Porter by Vandyke. There is a good head of the Queen of Bohemia, a whole-length of Duc d'Espernon, and another good head of the Clifford, Countess of Dorset, who wrote that admirable haughty letter to Secretary Williamson, when he recommended a person to her for member for Appleby: “I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a court, but I won't be dictated to by a subject: your man shan't stand. Ann Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery." In the chapel is a piece of ancient tapestry; Saint Luke in his first profession is holding an urinal. Below stairs is a chamber of poets and players, which is proper enough in that house; for the first Earl wrote a play,' and the last Earl was a poet, and I think married a player.' Major Mohun and Betterton are curious among the latter, Cartwright and Flatman among the former. The arcade is newly enclosed, painted in fresco, and with modern glass of all the family matches. In the gallery is a whole-length of the unfortunate Earl of Surrey, with his device, a broken column, and the motto Sat superest. My father had one of them, but larger, and with more emblems, which the Duke of Norfolk bought at my brother's sale. There is one good head of Henry VIII., and divers of Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, the citizen who came to be Lord Treasurer, and was very near coming to be hanged. His countess, a bouncing kind of lady-mayoress, looks pure awkward amongst so much good company. A visto cut through the wood has a delightful effect from the front; but there are some trumpery fragments of gardens that spoil the view from the state apartments. We lay that night at Tunbridge town, and were surprised with 1 See vol. ii. p. 268.-CUNNINGHAM. 2 The tragedy of Gordobuc,' acted before Queen Elizabeth in 1561, and first printed in 1565. The first three acts are by Thomas Norton, the last two by Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset.-CUNNINGHAM. 3 The last Earl, and father of the first Duke, was Charles Sackville, whose Life is included in 'Johnson's Lives of the Poets.' He did not marry a player, but he lived with Nell Gwynne.-CUNNINGHAM. It is by Guillim Strete or Strote, and is now at Arundel Castle.-CUNNINGHAM. 5 Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex [died 1645], married two wives: the first was the daughter of a London citizen; the second, the daughter of James Brett, Esq., and half sister of Mary Beaumont, created Countess of Buckingham. To this last alliance, Lord Middlesex owed his extraordinary advancement.-WRIGHT. the ruins of the old castle. The gateway is perfect, and the inclosure formed into a vineyard by a Mr. Hooker, to whom it belongs, and the walls spread with fruit, and the mount on which the keep stood, planted in the same way. The prospect is charming, and a breach in the wall opens below to a pretty Gothic bridge of three arches over the Medway. We honoured the man for his taste-not but that we wished the committee at Strawberry Hill were to sit upon it, and stick cypresses among the hollows-But, alas! he sometimes makes eighteen sour hogsheads, and is going to disrobe "the ivymantled tower," because it harbours birds! Now begins our chapter of woes. The inn was full of farmers and tobacco; and the next morning, when we were bound for Penshurst, the only man in the town who had two horses would not let us have them, because the roads, as he said, were so bad. We were forced to send to the Wells for others, which did not arrive till half the day was spent-we all the while up to the head and ears in a market of sheep and oxen. A mile from the town we climbed up a hill to see Summer Hill,' the residence of Grammont's Princess of Babylon. There is now scarce a road to it: the Paladins of those times were too valorous to fear breaking their necks; and I much apprehend that la Monsery and the fair Mademoiselle Hamilton' must have mounted their palfreys and rode behind their gentlemenushers upon pillions to the Wells. The house is little better than a farm, but has been an excellent one, and is entire, though out of repair. I have drawn the front of it to show you, which you are to draw over again to show me. It stands high, commands a vast landscape beautifully wooded, and has quantities of large old trees to shelter itself, some of which might be well spared to open views. 1 "May 29, 1652. We went to see the house of my Lord Clanrickard, at Summer Hill, near Tunbridge (now given to that villain Bradshaw, who condemned the King). 'Tis situated on an eminent hill, with a park, but has nothing else extraordinary."-Evelyn's Diary.-WRIGHT. 2 Lady Margaret Macarthy, daughter and heiress of the Marquis of Clanricarde, wife of Charles, Lord Muskerry.-WRIGHT.-"I poked out Summer Hill for the sake of the Babylonienne in Grammont; but it is now a mere farmhouse."- Walpole to Conway, Aug. 21, 1778.-CUNNINGHAM. 3 Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir George Hamilton, fourth son of the first Earl of Abercorn, and niece to the first Duke of Ormond, celebrated in the Mémoires de Grammont' (written by her brother, Count Anthony Hamilton,) for her beauty and accomplishments. She married Philip, Count de Grammont, by whom she had two daughters; the eldest married Henry Howard, created Earl of Stafford, and the youngest took the veil.-WRIght. 4 A rough drawing by Walpole of Summer Hill was inserted by him in his own copy of De Grammont (his own edition), once in my possession.-CUNNINGHAM. From Summer Hill we went Lamberhurst to dine; near which, that is, at the distance of three miles, up and down impracticable hills, in a most retired vale, such as Pope describes in the last Dunciad, "Where slumber abbots, purple as their vines," we found the ruins of Bayham Abbey, which the Barrets and Hardings bid us visit. There are small but pretty remains, and a neat little Gothic house built near them by their nephew Pratt. They have found a tomb of an abbot, with a crozier, at length on the stone. Here our woes increase. The roads grew bad beyond all badness, the night dark beyond all darkness, our guide frightened beyond all frightfulness. However, without being at all killed, we got up, or down, I forget which, it was so dark, a famous precipice called Silver Hill, and about ten at night arrived at a wretched village called Rotherbridge. We had still six miles hither, but determined to stop, as it would be a pity to break our necks before we had seen all we intended. But, alas! there was only one bed to be had: all the rest were inhabited by smugglers, whom the people of the house called mountebanks; and with one of whom the lady of the den told Mr. Chute he might lie. We did not at all take to this society, but, armed with links and lanthorns, set out again upon this impracticable journey. At two o'clock in the morning we got hither to a still worse inn, and that crammed with excise officers, one of whom had just shot a smuggler. However, as we were neutral powers, we have passed safely through both armies hitherto, and can give you a little farther history of our wandering through these mountains, where the young gentlemen are forced to drive their curricles with a pair of The only morsel of good road we have found, was what even the natives had assured us was totally impracticable; these were eight miles to Hurst Monceaux.' It is seated at the end of a large vale, five miles in a direct line to the sea, with wings of blue hills covered with wood, one of which falls down to the house in a sweep of a hundred acres. The building, for the convenience of water to the moat, sees nothing at all; indeed it is entirely imagined on a plan of defence, with draw-bridges actually in being, round towers, watchtowers mounted on them, and battlements pierced for the passage of oxen. The ancient inheritance of Lord Dacre of the South.-WRIGHT.-See a very agreeable volume entitled 'The Castle of Herst Monceaux and its Lords, by the Rev. Edmund Venables, 1851.' 8vo.-CUNNINGHAM. |