306 The History of Longleat. 
staff. His library continues to be carefully preserved in this house, 
his portrait in the gallery: the odour of his name is still fragrant 
at Longleat, but Ken belongs to his country. 
It is to be lamented that we have not some more particular 
knowledge of his friend and patron, the first Lord Weymouth, 
than is to be gleaned from a few notices left of him in letters from 
Ken and others. Not only was he, as those letters describe him, 
a deeply religious and amiable man; but it would seem that Long- 
leat must have been, during his time, a home of accomplished and 
cultivated minds. He had only one son, the Hon. Henry Thynne, 
who never came to the title, dying in his father’s lifetime, in the 
year 1708, aged 33. He was of a literary turn of mind, and en- 
couraged it in others. There was living at this time, retired upon 
his own property at Frome, a Mr. Walter Singer, formerly a non- 
conformist minister at Ilchester. He was the father of Elizabeth 
Singer, afterwards and now better known as Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe. 
Already at the age of twelve she showed a taste for music, painting, 
and poetry; and being of a devout and simple mind, attracted the 
notice of Bishop Ken. Longleat then became open to her, and 
Mr. Thynne himself instructed her in French and Italian. 
Mr. Thynne had two daughters, the elder of whom, Frances, 
afterwards became Countess of Hertford, of Marlborough Castle. 
She was an enthusiastic patroness of literature, especially poetry; 
and is known by her three volumes of correspondence with the 
Countess of Pomfret. Lady Hertford encouraged every aspirant 
to Parnassus, from Pope down to the Wiltshire Thresher, Stephen 
Duck. Mr. Waylen, in his History of Marlborough,’ has described 
the poetical coteries that used to assemble at Marlborough Castle, 
including Thomson of the Seasons, (who, nevertheless, very much 
preferred the aroma of Lord Hertford’s port, to scribbling verses 
in her ladyship’s grotto :) but to follow them thither would take us 
from our point, which is only to show that this literary taste of the 
Countess was fostered under her father’s roof. 
Mr. Harbin, the chaplain, was wont to amuse himself in a way 
that entitles him to our respect; if at least he is the person of that 
name, a volume of whose extracts, from the evidences in the 
1p, 383, 
