VIII 



GREAT HOUSES AND GARDENS OF 

 THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



TWENTY-FIVE years after his restoration Charles II. died ; 

 James II. passed uneasily across the scene to his inglorious 

 exit, and William and Mary succeeded him on the throne. 

 But it is not to the sovereigns that we must look as pioneers 

 in house building, although at Greenwich and Hampton Court 

 fine work was accomplished. It is rather to the great nobles, 

 or at least to aristocratic and wealthy families, that we owe 

 the most notable specimens of domestic architecture of the 

 time. At this period the gulf between the upper and lower 

 classes was wide and deep : its widening was perhaps one of 

 the reactions from the conditions of the Commonwealth when 

 many persons of humble origin fought their way to eminence. 

 The distance between the heads of a great household and their 

 retainers had been increasing all through the century ; the 

 increase has already been indicated in the type of plan adopted 

 by Jones and Webb. The great hall, where the whole family 

 used to meet on common ground and with common objects, 

 had disappeared. The great noble of Elizabeth's time lived 

 among his retainers ; the grandee under William and Mary 

 relegated his servants to a distant part of the building or to 

 the basement. The great ones of the land now housed them- 

 selves in splendid buitdings, and surrounded themselves with 

 splendid gardens. Nobody grumbled ; the whole community 

 concurred in this exaltation of birth combined with wealth. 

 Men whose names to us are household words sought the 

 patronage of others whose names and doings are hardly 

 recorded outside the pages of the " Complete Peerage." 

 Manners, customs, dress emphasised this condition at the time ; 

 architecture reflects it to-day. 



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