PETERBOROUGH SOKE 



the buildings extending at right angles to the house on 

 the south side are still shown. The whole is probably 

 a preliminary design for the I 8th-ccntiiry alterations, 

 and was considerably modified in actual execution. 



The first great alteration which is known to have 

 taken place is the building of the block of stabling 

 which still exists at right-angles to the house, at its 

 north-east corner ; on the front of this appears the 

 date of 1690. Thirty years later, judging from the 

 date on further stable buildings behind those of 1690, 

 and also from the character of the present garden 

 front, the house was again altered and enlarged.' 

 There is ground for thinking that it was at this time 

 that the buildings to the south of the house were 

 swept away, and that the width of the house from 

 north to south was doubled. One effect of this was 

 to make the house as it is now, very long in propor- 

 tion to its width, and consisting of one solid block, 

 with no suggestion of quadrangle. Another result 

 was the necessary destruction of the small formal 

 garden to the south of the west half of the older 

 house, part of it being occupied by the new build- 

 ing, and the gradual transformation of the old 

 orchard and other parts of the garden due south 

 of the house into the open lawn which they 

 have now become. It should be added here that the 

 small piece of water nearest to the house on the 

 south-east side was removed early in the 19th 

 century. Internally Milton is in character a house 

 built in the first quarter of the 1 8th century. Of 

 that date are the window-work and the plaster 

 ceilings, both excellent examples of their style. To 

 that date belongs the fine marble mantelpiece in 

 Mrs. Fitzwilliam's boudoir, and the great gallery or 

 ballroom seems to have been then made in more or 

 less conscious imitation of the long gallery so usual in 

 Elizabethan houses. Of the same period also are 

 the walled gardens already mentioned, which extend 

 for six acres, and the orangery beyond them, which 

 unlike those at Burghley and Apethorpe is not part of 

 the house or adjoining it, but some distance away in 

 the grounds. Similar in date are the admirable iron 

 gates leading from the walled garden westward 

 towards the lawn, where what must have been the 

 wilderness is now a shrubbery garden with fine timber. 

 The design of these gates is simple and graceful, 

 and the relation of the light scroll-work to the more 

 solid parts, among which are the family arms and 

 supporters, is excellent ; the whole composition is 

 surmounted by an earl's coronet, and was probably 

 the work of the second or third earl. Contempo- 

 rary with this is a fine gateway on the opposite side 

 of the walled garden, which has been for many 

 years greatly out of the perpendicular, but shows no 

 other signs of insecurity. 



Milton, which was the principal seat of the 

 Fitzwilliams till they inherited Wentworth by mar- 

 riage in 1 769, contains many treasures of his- 

 torical and artistic value. There is a large col- 

 lection of family and other pictures, among them 

 being several examples of Sir Joshua Reynolds, in- 

 cluding the famous ' Puck,' and portraits of Edmund 

 Burke, his brother William and his son Richard, and 

 also a portrait of Lady Charlotte Fitzwilliam. There 

 is a Holbein representing Sir William Fitzwilliam, 



CASTOR 



who was created earl of Southampton in the reign of 

 Henry VIII, a cousin of the owner of Milton ; there 

 is also an old man's head by Rembrandt, and portraits 

 of Colonel and Mrs. Hutchinson which are by Van 

 Dyck. The house contains a fine Ruysdael, and 

 some very good specimens of Canaletto. Special 

 historical interest attaches to the portrait of James I 

 as a lad, which was given by Mary Queen of Scots 

 to Sir William Fitzwilliam in recognition of his kind- 

 ness to her when her gaoler at Fotheringhay. Here, 

 too, is preserved an ancient watch given by Lady 

 Godolphin, the daughter of the second earl, to her 

 sister-in-law Lady Fitzwilliam, about 17+6, and 

 alleged, according to a paper in Lady Godolphin's 

 writing, to have once been the property of Mary 

 Queen of Scots. Here, too, are five gold boxes, in 

 which the freedoms of five Irish towns were presented 

 to the fourth earl on his retirement from the vice- 

 royalty of Ireland in 1795. 



The Milton Papers include several letters from 

 Charles James Fox to the fourth earl, written in the 

 early period when Fox was a supporter of Bute and 

 was immersed in gaiety and travel. 



Milton ' has for more than four centuries been 

 the seat of a family which has taken a prominent 

 part in public affairs. William Fitzwilliam, alderman 

 and sheriff of the city of London, whose seats were 

 Milton and Gaynes Park, Essex, had for some time 

 been in the train of Cardinal Wolsey, and when the 

 cardinal after his disgrace passed by Milton received 

 and entertained him. Two elm-trees in the garden 

 beyond the walled garden are still standing, though 

 greatly injured by age, beneath which, according 

 to tradition, Wolsey's tent was pitched. King 

 Henry VIII brought Mr. Fitzwilliam to task for this 

 treatment of the fallen cardinal, and upon his reply- 

 ing that he had done so not from want of allegiance to 

 the king, but from gratitude to one who had helped 

 to found his fortune, the king, saying he wished that 

 others showed the same spirit, knighted him, and 

 swore him of the Privy Council. The grandson of 

 this Sir William was five times lord deputy of Ireland, 

 and was constable of the castle of Fotheringhay under 

 Queen Elizabeth. 



The action of the Fitzwilliams in the Civil War 

 has not at the present time been traced, though 

 the fact that their property was not impaired, and 

 that a great Parliamentarian, Oliver St. John, was 

 settled at Thorpe in the next parish, is some evidence 

 that their leanings were rather Parliamentarian than 

 Royalist. They came back into high prominence 

 with the accession of the House of Hanover, the 

 chief matter to note about them in the later Stuart 

 period being that the daughter of the second lord 

 married Sir Christopher Wren. 



In 1 7 16 the third baron at the age of seventy-three 

 was created Viscount Milton and Earl Fitzwilliam in 

 the Irish peerage. He, like his father, married an 

 heiress, and the habit was continued by his son the 

 second earl, facts which probably explain changes and 

 enlargements in the house at this period. The 

 third earl, a grandson of the first, obtained English 

 peerages duplicating the Irish ones already held, and 

 by his marri.age in 1 744 with Lady Anne Watson- 

 Wentworth, the eldest daughter of Thomas marquess 



* Before 1721, as may be deduced from 

 a drawing of that date in the British 

 Museum (Add. MS. ;2467). 



'^ Among the heirlooms at Milton is an 



ancient silk scarf with gold fringe, in 

 which the heirs to the earldom of Fitz- 

 william and the heirs to Milton for many 

 generations have been wrapped at their 



477 



christening. An unverifiable family tra- 

 dition claims that it was given by 

 William I to an ancestor of Mr. FiLz- 



wiliiain. 



