26 John of Padua. 
the other hand, the Classical features of the house were, before the 
Revival, almost unknown in English domestic architecture. 
The actual circumstances under which Longleat was built are not 
generally known. 
In the first place, the present house is not the original Longleat 
erected by Sir John Thynne. The present house dates from 1568, 
but there was one before it on the same site, begun twenty years 
earlier. This disappeared: and how much or how little the present 
house resembles it, must of course be to a certain extent (for some 
points of resemblance are known), a matter of conjecture. The 
history of the founder’s building operations, so far as can now be col- 
lected from letters and other documents of the period, is as follows :— 
LonGcueaT THE F rest. 
In the year 1540 Sir John Thynne purchased the dissolved Priory of 
Longleat. What the Priory House was like it is impossible to say, 
no drawing of it being left. The number of the religious brethren 
having been small their house would probably be not very large. 
There was a chapel, which was retained ; and much of the house was 
certainly utilized. But Sir John does not appear to have begun any 
alterations at all until the year 1547 (the last of King Henry the 
Eighth’s reign, and the first of Protector Somerset’s greatness) : 
from which year, it is quite certain from the evidence of old corres- 
pondence and other papers still forthcoming, that by degrees, and 
with continual interruption from public and domestic affairs, he went 
on for more than twenty years, first with one piece of work, then with 
another, often changing his mind, doing and undoing, till at last he 
ended by producing one of the finest houses in the country. His 
steward, writing from the place to his master, says :—“ I think no less 
than that your house now to see to, is, and will be by it is finished, the 
first house and handsomest of that size within the compass of four shires 
round about the same, and so doth all the country report. Some 
pleased, some grieved.” No plan or full description of it has sur- 
vived: but there are some letters of the year 1547, when Sir John 
Thynne began the alteration of the old priory, and of the two fol- 
lowing years, from which the first Longleat would appear to have been 
