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and to Wemstead (sic), the house where Sir H. Mildmay died, and now Sir Robert Brookes lives, having bought it of the Duke of York, it being forfeited to him. A fine seat, but an oldfashioned house; and being not full of people looks flatly."

(1 May, 1667) "Sir W. Pen did give me an account this afternoon of his design of buying Sir Robert Brookes's fine house at Wansted: which I so wondered at, and did give him reasons against it, which he allowed of: and told me that he did intend to pull down the house and build a less, and that he should get 15007. by the old house, and I know not what fooleries. But I will never believe he intended to buy it, for my part, though he troubled Mr. Gauden to go and look upon it, and advise him in it."

In 1667, Sir Josiah Child became the purchaser of the Manor of Wanstead, and the estate was much improved under his superintendence. John Evelyn thus refers to a visit paid on 16th March,

1683:-

"I went to see Sir Josiah Child's prodigious cost in planting walnut trees about his seate, and making fish-ponds, many miles in circuit, in Epping Forest, in a barren spot, as oftentimes

these suddainly monied men for the most part seate

themselves."

Child's tree

The remains of Sir Josiah planting may still be seen. still be seen in the splendid avenue of limes which runs across that part of Epping Forest known as Bush Wood. Sir Josiah died in 1699, and was buried in Wanstead Church. His monument may still be seen in the chancel of the present church; it is in a splendid state of preservation, and bears on its front a long and characteristic inscription in Latin. His son, Richard, was created Viscount Castlemaine in 1718, and first Earl Tylney in 1732. While still known as Sir Richard Child, he pulled down the old Manor House, and, from plans prepared by Colin Campbell, built on its site a structure of great magnificence. It is said that if the original design had been carried out, Wanstead House would have been "without a parallel in all Europe." As it was, there were very few houses which rivalled it in England.

It was constructed of Portland stone, and covered an area 260 feet long by 70 feet deep. The grand front was adorned in the centre by a noble portico of six Corinthian columns. This portico was ascended by a double flight of stone

steps, and in the tympanum were the family arms, while over the door which led into the great hall was a medallion of the architect. The building consisted of two stories, and contained fifty-eight rooms, besides domestic offices, etc.

Under date 17th July, 1775, Horace Walpole, in a letter to Richard Bentley, thus alludes to a visit paid :

"I dined yesterday at Wanstead; many years have passed since I saw it. The disposition of the house and prospect are better than I expected, and very fine. The garden-which, they tell you, cost as much as the house, that is £100,000—is wretched; the furniture fine, but without taste. The present Earl is the most generous creature in the world; in the first chamber I entered, he offered me four marble tables that lay in cases about the room. I compounded, after forty refusals of everything I commended, to bring away only a haunch of venison. I believe he has not had so cheap a visit a good while. I commend myself as I ought; for, to be sure, there were twenty ebony chairs, and a couch, and a table, and a glass, that would have tried the virtue of a philosopher of double my size."

On the death of the second Earl Tylney, in

1782, the Wanstead estates devolved upon Sir James Tylney Long, who built the present church in 1789-90. Sir James died in 1794, leaving a young son and daughter. The son did not live to attain his majority, and thus Wanstead became the property of Miss Katherine Long; who, with a fortune of some £75,000 a year, was now one of the richest ladies in England. She was eagerly sought after by many suitors, and on March 14th, 1812, was married with great pomp at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, to the Honourable William Pole Wellesley, who thereupon assumed the surname of Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley. Under this name he figures in "Rejected Addresses" in the single line

"Long may Long-Tylney-Wellesley-Long-Pole live." It took this gentleman just ten years to squander his wife's princely fortune. In 1822 she saw the whole of the furniture of her noble mansion disposed of under the hammer, and the following year the mansion itself razed to the ground in order that her husband's creditors might get what they could by carting away its stones. Need we wonder that in 1825 she died of a broken heart? Surely it would be impossible to find another case in which a life with such bright prospects came to so sad and premature an end!

B

bopkins, the Witchfinder.

BY FREDERICK ROSS, F.R.H.S.

ETWEEN the natural and the supernatural,

there exists a screen, so far as we mortals are concerned, impenetrable, beyond which we cannot pass; neither can we form any conception of what is on the other side. Whether the denizens of the supernatural state of existence have the power of regarding it as a transparent medium, or are able to pass through it and visit the earth or any other worlds of the universe, we have no means of knowing: certain it is that we have no well authenticated cases of intercourse between the two classes of being on the opposite sides of the screen.

From the most remote periods of the world's history, and from every part of the earth's surface, particularly from Chaldea, Babylonia, Judea, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Modern Asia, Europe, and Africa, have pretenders arisen, professing to have a knowledge of the invisible world, to be able to operate upon it by means of charms and divination

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