292 The History of Longleat. 
person. It was not uncommon for English patrons of art to fit out 
young men for study abroad ; and it is not impossible that one who 
trudged away from his native village with a knapsack on his back 
as plain John Thorpe, may, after serving his apprenticeship to the 
Muses under the genial sun of Italy, have applied revival principles 
to his own name, and have come back to Old England a fine gen- 
tleman, to be thenceforth called Giovanni di Padova. But I am 
not aware of the slightest ground for supposing that such was the 
case in this instance. Thorpe is said to have been a native of 
Norfolk, and seems to have been always called by his English 
name. Some of his plans have been lately published by Mr. C. J. 
Richardson, in a work on Old English Mansions. He designed 
amongst others the following houses: Theobald’s, Burghley, Wim- 
bledon, Holdenby, Kirby, and Old Buckhurst. 
In the meantime whilst we have been settling what style and 
what architect Sir John Thynne shall choose for his new house, we 
have left him waiting to begin it. I will therefore only add upon 
this point one thing more, which is, that finding no mention of 
name or payment, or any notice of any kind of any architect what- 
ever, some have said, that after all Sir John was his own architect. 
It is hardly probable that this should have been the case in the 
proper sense of the word: it is not unlikely that having been fur- 
nished with designs he worked them out himself, and was his own 
clerk of the works. His accounts of the building are still preserved 
here. They commence 21st January, 1567, (which according to 
modern reckoning would be called January, 1568,) and continue to 
29th March, 1578, during which time rather more than £8000 had 
been spent: a sum which, of course, requires to be multiplied con- 
siderably to give any approximate notion of the cost in money of 
our own day. 
With so many workmen about, one would fancy that Sir John 
would not be over well pleased to hear that Queen Eiizabeth was 
coming to pay him a visit. Yet she came, for it is mentioned in 
the account of her progress in 1575, that she favoured him with her 
company on her way from Bristol. From Longleat she passed on 
to pay the like honour to Sir William Sharington of Lacock Abbey, 
