never been fine; the old windows and gateway left, and the old gallery, which is a bad narrow room, and hung with all the late patriots, but so ill done, that they look like caricatures done to expose them, since they have so much disgraced the virtues they pretended to. The rest of the house is all modernized, but in patches, and in the bad taste that came between the charming venerable Gothic and pure architecture. There is a great deal of good furniture, but no one room very fine: no tolerable pictures. Her dressing-room is very pretty, and furnished with white damask, china, japan, loads of easy chairs, bad pictures, and some pretty enamels. But what charmed me more than all I had seen, is the library chimney, which has existed from the foundation of the house; over it is an alto-relievo in wood, far from being ill done, of the battle of Bosworth Field. It is all white, except the helmets and trappings, which are gilt, and the shields, which are properly blazoned with the arms of all the chiefs engaged. You would adore it. 2 1 We passed our time very agreeably; both Nugent and his wife are very good-humoured, and easy in their house to a degree. There was nobody else but the Marquis of Tweedale; his new Marchioness, who is infinitely good-humoured and good company, and sang a thousand French songs mighty prettily; a sister of Nugent's, who does not figure; and a Mrs. Elliot, sister to Mrs. Nugent, who crossed over and figured in with Nugent: I mean she has turned Catholic, as he has Protestant. She has built herself a very pretty small house in the park, and is only a daily visitor. Nugent was extremely communicative of his own labours; repeated us an ode of ten thousand stanzas to abuse Messieurs de la Gallerie, and read me a whole tragedy, which has really a great many pretty things in it; not indeed equal to his glorious ode on religion and liberty, but with many of those absurdities which are so blended with his parts. We were overturned coming 2 Harriot, wife of Richard Elliot, Esq., father of the first Lord St. Germains, and a daughter of Mr. Secretary Craggs. For a copy of verses addressed by Mr. Pitt to this lady, see the Chatham Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 373.-E. back, but, thank you, we were not at all hurt, and have been to-day to see a large house and a pretty park belonging to a Mr. Williams; it is to be sold. You have seen in the papers that Dr. Bloxholme is dead. He cut his throat. He always was nervous and vapoured; and so good-natured, that he left off his practice from not being able to bear seeing so many melancholy objects. I remember him with as much wit as ever I knew; there was a pretty correspondence of Latin odes that passed between him and Hodges. You will be diverted to hear that the Duchess of Newcastle was received at Calais by Locheil's regiment under arms, who did duty himself while she stayed. The Duke of Grafton is going to Scarborough; don't you love that endless back-stairs policy? and at his time of life! This fit of ill health is arrived on the Prince's going to shoot for a fortnight at Thetford, and his grace is afraid of not being civil enough or too civil. Since I wrote my letter I have been fishing in Rapin for any particulars relating to the Veres, and have already found that Robert de Vere,' the great Duke of Ireland, and favourite of Richard the Second, is buried at Earl's Colne, and probably under one of the tombs I saw there; I long to be certain that the lady with the strange coiffure is Lancerona, the joiner's daughter, that he married after divorcing a princess of the blood for her. I have found, too, that King Stephen's Queen died at Henningham, a castle belonging to Alberic de Vere: in short, I am just now Vere mad, and extremely mortified to have Lancerona and Lady Vere Beauclerk's3 Portuguese grandmother blended with this brave old blood. Adieu! I go to town the day after to-morrow, and immediately from thence to Strawberry Hill. Yours ever. Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the favourite of Richard the Second; who created him Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland, and transferred to him by patent the entire sovereignty of that island for life. 2 Alberic de Vere was an earl in the reign of Edward the Confessor. 3 Daughter of Thomas Chambers, Esq., and married to Lord Vere Beauclerc, third son of the first Duke of St. Albans by his wife Diana, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 11, 1748. I AM arrived at great knowledge in the annals of the house of Vere, but though I have twisted and twined their genealogy and my own a thousand ways, I cannot discover, as I wished to do, that I am descended from them any how but from one of their Christian names; the name of Horace having travelled from them into Norfolk by the marriage of a daughter of Horace Lord Vere of Tilbury with a Sir Roger Townshend, whose family baptized some of us with it. But I have made a really curious discovery; the lady with the strange dress at Earl's Colne, which I mentioned to you, is certainly Lancerona, the Portuguese; for I have found in Rapin, from one of the old chronicles, that Anne of Bohemia, to whom she had been maid of honour, introduced the fashion of piked horns, or high heads, which is the very attire on this tomb, and ascertains it to belong to Robert de Vere, the great Earl of Oxford, made Duke of Ireland by Richard II, who, after the banishment of this minister, and his death at Louvain, occasioned by a boar at a hunting match, caused the body to be brought over, would have the coffin opened once more to see his favourite, and attended it himself in high procession to its interment at Earl's Colne. I don't know whether the Craftsman some years ago would not have found out that we were descended from this Vere, at least from his name and ministry: my comfort is, that Lancerona was Earl Robert's second wife. But in this search I have crossed upon another descent, which I am taking great pains to verify (I don't mean a pun), and that is a probability of my being descended from Chaucer, whose daughter, the Lady Alice, before her espousals with Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, and afterwards with William de la Pole, the great Duke of Suffolk (another famous favourite), was married to a Sir John Philips, who I hope to find was of Picton Castle, and had children by her; but I have not yet brought these matters to a consistency: Mr. Chute is persuaded I shall, for he says any body with two or three hundred years of pedigree may find themselves descended from whom they please; and thank my stars and my good cousin, the present Sir J. Philips,1 I have a sufficient pedigree to work upon; for he drew us up one, by which Ego et rex meus are derived hand in hand from Cadwallader, and the English Baronetage says from the Emperor Maximus (by the Philips's, who are Welsh, s'entend). These Veres have thrown me into a deal of this old study: t'other night I was reading to Mrs. Leneve and Mrs. Pigot, who has been here a few days, the description in Hall's Chronicle of the meeting of Harry VIII. and Francis I. which is so delightfully painted in your Windsor. We came to a paragraph, which I must transcribe; for though it means nothing in the world, it is so ridiculously worded in the old English that it made us laugh for three days: And the wer twoo kynges serued with a banket and after mirthe, had communication in the banket time, and there shewed the one the other their pleasure. 3 3 Would not one swear that old Hal showed all that is showed in the Tower? I am now in the act of expecting the house of Pritchard, Dame Clive, and Mrs. Metheglin to dinner. I promise you the Clive and I will not show one another our pleasure during the banket time nor afterwards. In the evening, we go to a play at Kingston, where the places are two pence a head. Our great company at Richmond and Twickenham has been torn to pieces by civil dissensions, but they continue acting. Mr. Lee, the ape of Garrick, not liking his part, refused to play it, and had the confidence to go into the pit as spectator. The actress, whose benefit was in agitation, made her complaints to the audience, who obliged him to mount the stage; but since that he has retired from the company. I am sorry he was such a coxcomb, for he was the best. 'The grandmother of the Hon. Horace Walpole was daughter of Sir Erasmus Philips, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire. 2 Niece of Mrs. Leneve, and first wife of Admiral Hugh Pigot.-E. Two celebrated actresses. You say, why won't I go to Lady Mary's?1 I say, why won't you go to the Talbots? Mary is busied about many things, is dancing the hays between three houses; but I will go with you for a day or two to the Talbots if you like it, and you shall come hither to fetch me. I have been to see Mr. Hamilton's, near Cobham, where he has really made a fine place out of a most cursed hill. Esher I have seen again twice, and prefer it to all villas, even to Southcote's-Kent is Kentissime there. I have been laughing too at Claremont house; the gardens are improved since I saw them: do you know that the pine-apples are literally sent to Hanover by couriers? I am serious. Since the Duke of Newcastle went, and upon the news of the Duke of Somerset's illness, he has transmitted his commands through the King, and by him through the Bedford to the University of Cambridge to forbid their electing any body, but the most ridiculous person they could elect, his grace of Newcastle. The Prince hearing this, has written to them, that having heard his Majesty's commands, he should by no means oppose them. This is sensible; but how do the two secretaries answer such a violent act of authority? Nolkejumskoi3 has let down his dignity and his discipline, and invites continually all officers that are members of parliament. Doddington's sentence of expulsion is sealed; Lyttleton is to have his place (the second time he has tripped up his heels); Lord Barrington is to go to the treasury, and Dick Edgecumbe into the admiralty. Rigby is gone from hence to Sir William Stanhope's to the Aylesbury races, where the Grenvilles and Peggy Banks design to appear and avow their triumph. Gray has been here a few days, and is transported with your story of Madame Lady Mary Churchill. 2 The favourite seat of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham, which he embellished under the direction of Kent. It is pleasingly mentioned by Pope, in his Epilogue to the Imitations of the Satires of Horace : "Pleas'd let me own, in Esher's peaceful grove, 3 A cant name for the Duke of Cumberland. |