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GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



other's heads. Implicated, at Edward's death, in 

 the Lady Jane Grey plot, he was condemned, but 

 pardoned, and so lived to be a Privy Councillor under 

 Elizabeth. He did not, however, keep Easton long, 

 for we find it next in the possession of the Wriothes- 

 leys, of whom the elder, Thomas, rose from small 

 beginnings at the Court of Henry VIII., got, as his 

 share of monastic plunder, the Hampshire abbeys of 

 Tichfield and Beaulieu, became Lord Chancellor and 

 Earl of Southampton, and, dying in 1550, left a 

 minor as his son and heir. This Henry, second 

 Earl of Southampton, sought to undo what his father 

 had done, to ruin rather than build up a family, to 

 be in opposition rather than in office. His name 

 crops up repeatedly in connection with every intrigue 

 against Elizabeth ; but, though more than once 

 imprisoned, he escaped the fate of his principals, 

 such as Mary of Scotland and Thomas of Norfolk. 



ownership, for his descendants hold it now. More- 

 over, it became no longer an unconsidered fragment 

 of a great estate, but the chief seat of its lord. Sir 

 Henry built a house of which much of the substance, 

 if little of the appearance, yet remains, and which, 

 even in the latter respect, had been little altered 

 when Morant published his " History of Essex " in 

 1768, and gave an illustration of its entrance front. 

 It shows a house typical of its age. At the bottom 

 of a forecourt, which is flanked by low gabled out- 

 buildings, rises the porch, and on each side of it two- 

 storeyed mullioned bays, surmounted by gables with 

 curved copings. Tall, narrow, cupola-rooted towers 

 occupy the corners. The whole is not unlike Blick- 

 ling on a smaller and simpler scale. We read that 

 " Easton Lodge is an ancient edifice, but more 

 convenient in several respects than many modern 

 buildings." This convenience, however, did not save 



THE rn o PEKGULAS. 



Meanwhile the name of Wriotheslcy disappears 

 from the records of Easton, and in its place appears 

 that of another family of conspirators the Throck- 

 mortons, of whom Kenelm exercises the right of 

 ownership in 1582. What his relationship was to 

 the Cheshire branch of the family, whence sprang 

 Francis Throckmorton, whose conspiracy and treason 

 brought him to the rack and to the gibbet in 1585, 

 we have not traced ; nor whether it was from this 

 connection that Easton came into the hands of the 

 Crown, and thus enabled Elizabeth to grant it to Sir 

 Henry Maynard in 1589. He was of a Hertford- 

 shire family, his father having been Steward of 

 St. Albans, and he entered the service of William 

 Cecil, became his secretary, and therefore a meet 

 object for Royal favour. With him, Easton ceased to 

 change hands and entered on a period of settled 



it from alteration, for Wright, in 1833, pictures the 

 garden side and r.hows a flat-roofed, sash-windowed 

 wing, anil we learn that though "the house was 

 erected in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, 

 and is distinguished by large projecting windows and 

 other peculiarities which characterise the architecture 

 of the period," yet "at more recent periods important 

 improvements have been made." The "improving" 

 spirit continued to reign after Wright's time, and the 

 house only appears in our illustrations as the back- 

 ground to its gardens, for after a disastrous fire in 

 1847 '* was practically rebuilt, and but little shows 

 of Sir Henry's original dwelling except a few chimney- 

 stacks. He left a son, William, who was educated at 

 St. John's College, Cambridge, where he " founded a 

 Logick Professor's place." He took a wife from the 

 house of Devonshire a grand-daughter of Bess of 



