TTTK BATH ROAD 



57 



Of all the great people who put up at the Castle in 

 the days of its prime, perhaps the greatest of them, as 

 is meet and right, has left the most lasting impression 

 behind him. But he did so by rather out-of-the-way 

 means, and advertised himself as a great statesman, not 

 indeed at all more than is customary at the present day, 

 but with a naive absence of affectation that raises a 



Eloped! 



smile. There were no paragraphists in the land in those 

 times, be it remembered, to announce to an expectant 

 world that a prime minister had cut a tree down, or read 

 the first lesson in church ; so Lord Chatham having 

 been attacked b}^ gout on his way from Bath to London, 

 in 1762, took a more picturesque way of acquainting 

 his countrymen with his whereabouts. He made it an 

 insistive condition to his staying at the Castle that every 



