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THE NEW LODGE, RICHMOND PARK, THE SEAT OF VISCOUNT SIDMOUTH.

RICHMOND PARK, formerly called king being very urgent, it made a the Great or the New Park, to dis- great clamour, and the outcry was, tinguish it from that made near the that he was going to take away the Green, was made by Charles I. who estates of his subjects at his own was extremely partial to the sports of pleasure. Under these circumstanthe chase, and was very desirous of ces, Bishop Laud and Lord Cothaving a large park well stocked tington advised his Majesty to desist with red and fallow deer in the neigh-from a measure which threatened to bourhood of his two palaces, Rich- be so unpopular and so expensive, as mond and Hampton-Court. Within it was intended to surround the park the space which was marked out for with a brick wall. The king, howthe purpose, the king had large wastes ever, was not to be dissuaded, havand woods of his own; but as some ing already ordered the bricks to be parishes had commons, and many burnt, and began the wall on his own private persons had houses and lands estate. This is Lord Clarendon's intermixed, he found it a work of account. It is to be presumed that some difficulty; for though he offer- the owners of the lands at last comed more than the value of the se- plied, for the park appears to have veral estates, and many of the own- been completed, and Jerome Earl of ers consented to part with their lands Portland made the first ranger in to oblige his Majesty, yet others 1638. could not be prevailed on to alienate their property on any terms. The Vol. IV. No. XXII

On the 30th June, 1649, the House of Commons voted that the New

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at Kingston in April 1758, when the right was established; in consequence of which decision ladder-gates were put up at some of the entrances. The Princess Amelia having surrendered her interest in the rangership, it was granted by his late Majesty to the Earl of Bute.

Park at Richmond should be given || park, which was tried at the assizes to the city of London, and to their successors for ever; and the attorneygeneral was ordered to make out a grant to that effect, to pass the great seal. An act of Parliament for confirming it to the city passed on the 17th of July. On the 18th of June, 1659, it was referred to a committee, to treat with the city about the exchange of Greenwich for the New Park.

At the Restoration, the park reverted to the crown, and Sir Daniel Harvey was appointed ranger. Queen Anne granted the rangership to the Earl of Rochester for three lives. After his death, his successor, who, upon the extinction of the elder branch of the Hydes, became Earl of Clarendon, joined with his son, Lord Cornbury, and sold the grant and remainder for 5000l. to George I. who granted it to Robert, the second Earl of Orford, then Lord Walpole. His father, Sir Robert Walpole, spent much of his leisure time in the park, where he indulged himself with his favourite exercise of hunting, and paid nobly for his amusement by building the Great Lodge, and making other improvements in the park, at the expense of 14,000l. After the death of the Earl of Orford, the Princess Amelia was appointed ranger. While in her hands, a lawsuit was commenced relative to the right of a footway through the ||

Richmond Park is eight miles in circumference, and contains 2253 acres, of which scarcely one hundred are in Richmond parish: there are 650 acres in Mortlake, 265 in Petersham, 230 in Putney, and about 1000 in Kingston.

Nature has disposed the ground of this park to great advantage, and diversified it with a pleasing variety of hill and vale: it is ornamented also with a great number of very fine oaks and other plantations.

The New or Stone Lodge, a View of which accompanies this Number, was built by command of George I. after a design by the Earl of Pembroke, as a place of refreshment after the fatigues of the chase. This lodge, after being fitted up by the direction of his late Majesty, was, upwards of twenty years ago, given by him for life, together with sixtyacres of land around it, to the Right Hon. Henry Addington, now Viscount Sidmouth, whose conduct in various important official stations procured him the particular confidence and favour of our good old king.

THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH PARK. THE hill in Greenwich Park, now occupied by the Royal Observatory, was before its erection the site of a tower built by Humphry the good Duke of Gloucester. This tower, observes Mr. Lysons, was sometimes a

habitation for the royal family, sometimes the residence of a favourite mistress, and sometimes a place of defence. Puttenham, in his Art of English Poesy, mentions " a fayre ladie whom the king (Henry VIII.)

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