196 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



Copyright. 



THE STAIRWAY TO THE UPPER TERRACE. 



there is the brave front, dating from Elizabeth's days, looking 

 out over that delightful garden ; there are those wonderful 

 leaden vases and iron gates and clairvovt't's ; we may see the 

 splendid classic front with lofty Corinthian fluted columns, 

 strangely linked, in bold contrast, without modification or 

 breaking of the style, with the remains of a much earlier day, 

 enclosing the narrow court, exactly as Walpole describes it. 

 Such a house must be abundantly interesting. The Walter de 



Drayton to whom Walpole 

 refers was a member of the 

 great family of De Vere, 

 Earls of Oxford, who lived 

 in the time of Richard I. 

 The branch of that family 

 which retained Drayton 

 assumed the name, and the 

 estate descended from them, 

 through the marriage of 

 successive heiresses, to the 

 Greens, the Staffords, and 

 the Mordaunts. It was Lewis, 

 third Baron Mordaunt, 1572- 

 1601, who added to the 

 Edwardian structure the noble 

 Tudor front which looks out 

 over the formal pleasaunce, 

 and his arms, with those of 

 his wife, Elizabeth D'Arcy, 

 still remain on the sundial on 

 the low wall dividing the 

 "wilderness" from the 

 principal garden. The famous 

 John Thorpe is said to have 

 been the architect. The fourth 

 Lord Mordaunt, who lay a 

 year in the Tower through 



supposed complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, was deprived of 

 the custody of his boy by James 1. This boy was afterwards 

 created, by Charles I., Earl of Peterborough, but adhered to 

 the Parliament and was General of Ordnance under the Earl 

 of Essex. 



His successor, Henry, the second Earl, was a very 

 remarkable man. His early sympathies were with the 

 Parliament, but he passed over to the King in 1643, and 



" Coitnfry Life." 



Cofyrigl.t 



THE TERRACE WALL AND BANQUET1NG-HOUSES. 



" Country Lift.' 



