Xliv. WOOL, BINDON, AND LULWORTH MEETING. 



Farmhouse) being used in its construction. The stones from the cloisters of 

 Bindon are supposed to have been used for the terrace, and tradition assigns as 

 once having belonged to the abbey the beautiful old door now at the servants' 

 entrance. It is said that Inigo Jones was the architect of the castle. The 

 erection of the building occupied a great many years, and when the Earl of 

 Norfolk was resting here in 1605. little but the outer walls would appear to have 

 been finished, and the place was scarcely habitable. In fact, when Mr. 

 Humphrey Weld purchased it in 1641, a great deal of the interior appears to have 

 been incomplete. The castle is described as an exact cube of 80 feet, with a 

 circular tower at each of its four corners. These are 30 feet in diameter, and 

 rise about 15 feet above the embattled walls. The walls themselves are very 

 thick, in many places about six feet. During the Civil War the castle was at one 

 time garrisoned for King Charles ; but in the years 1643-44 (two years after its 

 purchase by Mr. Humphrey Weld) it was held by Captain Hughes for the 

 Parliamentarians as a check upon Corfe Castle. When the garrison was broken 

 up, Sir Bernard Burke says that its members committed a great deal of the most 

 wanton and unnecessary havoc, carrying off and selling the iron window bars, the 

 leaden water pipes, and even a large quantity of the wainscotting of the rooms 

 and chambers. 



The Welds are lineally descended from Edric Sylvaticus, alias Wild, who was 

 nephew to Edric, Duke of Mercia, husband of Edina, daughter of King Ethelred. 

 William Weld was Sheriff of London, 25th Edward III. Five generations later, 

 in 1529, Sir Humphrey Weld was Sheriff of London, and Lord Mayor ten years 

 later. He was succeeded by his son, Sir John Weld, of Arnolds, in the county of 

 Middlesex, whose son, Humphrey, of Holdwell, as before stated, purchased the 

 Lulworth estates in 1641. The name of the Welds (originally Wild) was long 

 preserved in London by Wild Street and Wild Court, between Lincoln's Inn 

 Fields and Drury Lane, where Mr. Humphrey Weld built himself a mansion 

 in the middle of the 16th century. The street and court have been swept 

 away only within the last 80 years. He died about the year 1684, and was 

 buried in Henry VII. 's Chapel at Westminster Abbey. Mr. Edward Weld, who 

 held the estate from 1761 to 1775, up 11 the death of his first wife, married Miss 

 Mary Anne Smythe, daughter of Mr. Walter Smythe, of Banbridge, Hants. 

 After Mr. Weld's death his widow married Mr. Thomas Fitz-Herbert, of 

 Swinnerton, whom she survived. She subsequently married the Prince of Wales, 

 afterwards George IV. The portrait of Mrs. Fitz-Herbert and the pearl necklace 

 which once belonged to her will be on view. Mrs. Fitz-Herbert, until her death 

 at Brighton, was in receipt of an annuity of SOO from the Lulworth estate in 

 addition to what she received from the Crown. Mr. Thomas Weld, who 

 succeeded to the estate in 1810, became a priest, and was made Bishop, and in 

 1830 a Cardinal. He was the first Englishman since the Pontificate of Clement IX. 

 to take a seat in the Conclave for the election of a Pope. Whilst Cardinal Weld 

 held the estate, the castle was let from 1820 to 1824 to Sir Eobert Peel, and from 

 1824 to 1828 to the Duke of Gloucester. Charles X. of France, with a suite of 

 about 100, occupied the castle from August 23rd to October 17th, 1830, landing at 



