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TO RICHARD BENTLEY, ESQ.1

Battel, Wednesday, August 5, 1752.

HERE we are, my dear Sir, in the middle of our pilgrimage; and lest we should never return from this holy land of abbeys and Gothic castles, I begin a letter to you, that I hope some charitable monk, when he has buried our bones, will deliver to you. We have had piteous distresses, but then we have seen glorious sights! You shall hear of each in their order.

Monday, Wind S.E.-at least that was our direction.— While they were changing our horses at Bromley, we went to see the Bishop of Rochester's palace; not for the sake of any thing there was to be seen, but because there was a chimney, in which had stood a flower-pot, in which was put the counterfeit plot against Bishop Sprat. 'Tis a paltry parsonage, with nothing of antiquity but two panes of glass, purloined from Islip's chapel in Westminster Abbey, with that abbot's rebus, an eye and a slip of a tree. In the garden there is a clear little pond, teeming with gold fish. The Bishop is more prolific than I am.

From Sevenoaks we went to Knowle. The park is sweet, with much old beech, and an immense sycamore before the great gate, that makes me more in love than ever with sycamores. The house is not near so extensive as I expected: the outward court has a beautiful decent simplicity that charms one. The apartments are many, but not large. The

1 Only son of Dr. Richard Bentley, the celebrated divine and classical scholar. He was educated at Trinity College, under his father. Cumberland, who was his nephew, describes him as a man of various and considerable accomplishments; possessing a fine genius, great wit, and a brilliant imagination; "but there was," he adds, a certain eccentricity and want of prudence in his character, that involved him in distresses, and reduced him to situations uncongenial with his feelings, and unpropitious to the cultivation and encouragement of his talents."-E.

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Evelyn, in his Diary for July 25, 1673, says, "In my way I visited my Lord of Dorset's house at Knowle, near Sevenoaks, a greate oldfashion'd house."-E.

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furniture throughout, ancient magnificence; loads of portraits, not good nor curious; ebony cabinets, embossed silver in vases, dishes, &c. embroidered beds, stiff chairs, and sweet bags lying on velvet tables, richly worked in silk and gold. There are two galleries, one very small; an old hall, and a spacious great drawing-room. There is never a good staircase. The first little room you enter has sundry portraits of the times; but they seem to have been bespoke by the yard, and drawn all by the same painter: one should be happy if they were authentic; for among them there is Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Gardiner of Winchester, the Earl of Surry 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 wholelength of the unfortunate Earl of Surry, with his device, a

1 Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, while a student in the Temple, wrote his tragedy of Gordobuc, which was played before Queen Elizabeth, at Whitehall, in 1561. He was created Earl of Dorset by James the First, in 1604.-E.

2 Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset. On the day previous to the naval engagement with the Dutch, in 1665, he is said to have composed his celebrated song, "To all you Ladies now on Land."-E.

3 On the contrary, he married the Lady Frances, daughter of the Earl of Middlesex, who survived him.-E.

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.1 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 apart

ments.

We lay that night at Tunbridge town, and were surprised with 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 ivy-mantled 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

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'Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, 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.-E.

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May 29, 1652. We went to see the house of my Lord Clanrickard,

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