APPENDIX I 



SIR ROGER PRATT 



THE foregoing pages had already passed through the press 

 when the contents of the note-books of Sir Roger Pratt were 

 placed at my disposal by the courtesy of his descendant, 

 Edward Roger M. Pratt, Esq., of Ryston Hall, Norfolk. 



Roger Pratt is mentioned in the text (p. 180) as the architect 

 of Clarendon House, built by the Lord Chancellor Hyde, and 

 as one of the men whom the great fire of London led into the 

 pursuit of architecture. But his note-books show him to have 

 been a student and practitioner of the art before that event. 

 He was under no necessity to earn his own living, as he appears 

 to have been a man of means, succeeding to his father's property 

 before he was of age, and in later years inheriting from his 

 cousin the estate of Ryston. Still his interest in architecture 

 was more than that of an amateur, for he clearly had a good 

 knowledge of building, and a practical acquaintance with the 

 many matters involved in the erection of large houses. 



He was born in 1620, and entered Magdalen College, Oxford, 

 when he was nineteen ; in the following year he became possessed 

 of his father's property, and three years later, in 1643, he went 

 to travel abroad. He visited France, Italy, Holland, and 

 Flanders, for the purpose, as he states, to " give himself some 

 convenient education" ; his tour lasted six years, thus keeping him 

 away from England during the troubled times of the Civil War. 

 This education was evidently in architecture, for although he 

 became a member of the Inner Temple in 1657, there is no 

 record of his having followed the law as a profession. He had 

 rooms in the Temple from the time of his entrance until 1676, 

 and doubtless they enabled him to enjoy congenial society and 

 provided him with a convenient residence during his frequent 

 visits to London. For more than half his tenancy he was a 

 bachelor, for he did not marry until he was forty-eight, when 

 he took to wife, in the year 1668, the eldest daughter of Sir 

 Edward Monins of Kent, a lady of good family " descended," 

 as he said, " from ye second best famely in hir county " who 

 brought him a fortune of ^,'4,000. The same year saw another 



395 



