BRAMSHILL 239 



as strongholds to repel or enforce aggression, 

 but as caskets in which to enshrine those 

 gentler arts and tastes in life and living, which 

 peace at home and influences from without 

 were fostering. The casket must therefore 

 be worthy of that which it contained the 

 treasures of art and literature, the wonders 

 of the new world and the old. Pictures, 

 statues, jewels, rich tapestries, precious marbles, 

 rare furniture, porcelain from u far Cathay," 

 and books. For English literature, all but 

 dead through the storm of the Reformation, 

 had come to life, and a galaxy of poets such 

 as the world has seldom known, was turning 

 England into " a nest of singing birds." And 

 thus it came to pass that through the length 

 and breadth of the land those stately mansions 

 of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth 

 centuries sprang into being. 



The very position of Bramshill singles it 

 out among these noble Jacobean mansions. 

 For instead of being set, like too many of 

 them, down in a hole, it stands magnificently 

 on a promontory of the park, the ground 

 falling sharply away south and west to the 



