By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 307 
muniment room of Longleat, is mentioned among Sir Thomas 
Phillipps’s Wiltshire Manuscripts. ' 
The Rey. Isaac Walton, of Poulshot, Ken’s nephew, and a 
frequent visitor at this time, was the son of the “ Father of anglers.” 
These were some of the more familiar guests during Bishop 
Ken’s residence here; but the house is described in all the bio- 
graphies of the bishop, as having been the scene of old English 
hospitality, its festivities open to all comers of fashion and quality. 
In its turn this pleasant scene dissolves, and is succeeded by 
another wholly different. The first Lord Weymouth died in 1714. 
His only son was already dead, leaving no son; and the estate 
passed to his second cousin, Thomas Thynne, of Kempsford, in 
Gloucestershire, an infant at the time, of only four years old. 
From dates, and other circumstances, it would appear that the 
House at Longleat must now have remained without a resident 
proprietor for forty years. There was the minority of seventeen 
years, to May, 1731; and then, on coming, or soon after coming, 
of age, the second Lord Weymouth appears to have forsaken it, 
and to have lived in an old manor house in the village of Horn- 
ingsham. He died at the early age of forty, in 1751, and was 
buried in Horningsham churchyard. He was Ranger of Hyde 
Park and St. James’s Park. His son, the 3rd Lord Weymouth, 
was eighteen years old at his father’s death. On coming of age, 
in 1754, he found plenty to do, the garden and ornamental grounds 
in the Dutch style (as introduced by the first Lord, and as 
seen in the old print) having fallen, not only into disorder, but 
wholly out of fashion. The taste for foreign gardens had gone by. 
For the work of restoration he called in the celebrated landscape 
gardener of the day, who, from his invariable habit of pointing out 
1 This Mr. George Harbin was the real author of a book called ‘* The Hered- 
itary right of the Crown of England asserted; the history of the Succession 
since the Conquest cleared, and the true English Constitution vindicated from the 
misrepresentations of Dr, Higden’s View and Defence.” Folio, London, 1713. 
A work for which Hilkiah Bedford, (as the alleged author,) was prosecuted in 
the King’s Bench, fined 1000 marks, and imprisoned three years, On account 
of his sufferings Lord Weymouth (probably at the instigation of Mr. Harbin, 
whom Bedford’s friendship thus screened,) gave him £100: without however 
knowing that the real author all the time was his own Chaplain. See Chalmers’ 
Biog. Dict., Article Bedford.” 
