357 



IJitsibcntinl §^bhts$, 



By the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Pembroke, G.O.V.O., President of tlie Society. 



[Read at the General Meeting of the Society held at Wilton House, 

 July 17 th, 1906.] 



In moving the adoption of the Eeport I venture to preface what 

 I have to say by l)i(lding a hearty welcome to the Members of the 

 Wiltshire Arch ecological Society, and further to express a hope 

 that their visit to Wilton may be not only pleasant but instructive. 

 I think that I cannot do better than give you a short summary of 

 some of the objects of interest in this house, which you will see 

 when you go round, and at the same time recall to your recollections, 

 in more or less chronological order, some events of historical 

 interest that have occurred here from time to time in the lives of 

 successive Earls of Pembroke. 



I pass over the earlier period relating to the battle between 

 King Alfred and the Danes in 871, to the founding of the Abbey, 

 its history, with its associations with Cardinal Wolsey, all of which 

 subjects have been so fully dealt with by Aubrey, Sir Eichard 

 Colt Hoare, and the late Mr. James Nightingale, and I pass on to 

 the period of William, first Earl of Pembroke, so created by 

 Edward VI. in 1551. He it was, who, as Sir William Herbert, 

 was granted the abbey lands by Henry VIII., and he built the 

 house from designs said to have been made by Hans Holbein. Of 

 this house only the central tower on the east side, and the porch 

 which formerly stood in the N.E. corner of the quadrangle, but is 

 now in the garden, remain. A portrait of this Earl, atrributed to 

 Holbein, is in the library. He was a very leading and powerful 

 nobleman in the days of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and 

 Elizabeth, and no doubt his power and importance during the 

 first-named reign was increased by the fact of Henry VIII. marrying 



