a a 
By the Rev. Canon J. BE. Jackson, F.S.A. 29 
the present house began to be built in January, 1568, and was still 
unfinished at his death, in 1580. 
The building account books are in good preservation, but, once 
more, there is not a word about any John of Padua. I am very 
much of opinion that the general design of the former house was 
repeated, with probably some variation and enlargement, and that no 
one had more to do with the plan than Sir John Thynne himself. 
There is a very strong confirmation of this idea in a strange half- 
satirical half-facetious effusion (still preserved), from the pen of a 
Wiltshire gentleman of rather evil notoriety in that day, Wild Will 
Darell, of Littlecote Hall. In this crazy composition the house is 
supposed to be making an Address to its founder, Sir John. It jeers 
him for its pretentious appearance, and for the toil and trouble he had 
himself been at in erecting it. Here is a specimen :—“ But now, see 
him that by these thirty years almost with such turmoyle of mind hath 
been thynking of me, framing and erecting me, musing many a time 
with great care, and now and then pulling down this and that part of 
me, to enlarge sometimes a foot, or some few inches, upon a conceit, 
or this or that man’s speech not worth a woodcock’s brains: and by 
and by” [which, according to the sense of the expression at that 
time, meant directly, all at once] “ beating down windows for this or 
that fault, they knew not why nor wherefore.” Another passage 
of this “ wild’ production speaks of “this Dorick, this Tuscan 
fashion: my quadrants, my ascendances, my columns with a 
geometrical proportion ”: also of “my unquiet, besides many times 
assailed with that ungracious enemy of fire and at last almost 
utterly consumed with that facility coming from above that it was 
miraculous.” * 
At the beginning of the building of the present house a person 
of the name of Moore was the head man, and received the highest 
pay : but he was very soon superseded by another of some eminence, 
There is an original letter at Longleat from a Mr. Humphrey Lovell 
to Sir John Thynne, dated 11th March, 1568, “ recommending Mr. 
Robert Smithson who had been employed by Mr. Vice-Chamberlain 
1 Does this mean that the first house was struck by lightning P 
