260 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS 



and loneliness which struck him on visiting the 

 great palace. " I came to Knole, and that was 

 a medley of various feelings ! Elizabeth and 

 Burleigh and Buckhurst, and then Charles and 

 Anne, Dorset and Pembroke and Sir Edward 

 Sackville : and then a more engaging Dorset 

 and Villiers and Prior, and then the old Duke 

 and Duchess and Lady Betty Germaine and the 

 Court of George II.! The place is stripped of 

 its Beeches and honours, and has neither beauty 

 nor prospects. 



" The house, extensive as it is, seemed dwindled 

 to the front of a college and has the silence and 

 solitude of one. It wants the cohorts of retainers, 

 and the bustling jollity of the old nobility to 

 disperse the gloom. I worship all its faded splen- 

 dour and enjoy its preservation and could have 

 wandered over it for hours with satisfaction." 



Something of the story of Knole is told in 

 these words of Walpole, but to realise fully the 

 various phases the House and Gardens have gone 

 through, the pages of history must be turned still 

 further back. Old books state that in King John's 

 reign the manors of Knole, Kemsing, and Scale 

 were in the possession of Baldwin de Betun, Earl of 

 Albemarle, who gave his daughter and estates to 

 William Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke. 



Pembroke's brother, who succeeded to the title 

 and estates, took part in the rebellion against 



