56 EPPING FOREST. 



and that a building calculated for the residence 

 of the greatest subject in Britain should be in- 

 habited only by a few servants." 



The Earls Tylney were Hereditary Lords-\\'ar- 

 den of the Forest, a dignity which descended to 

 their successors in estate until the Epping Forest 

 Act, 1878, deprived them of it. In 1784 the 

 last Earl Tylney died, and Wanstead came to the 

 Tylney Longs, whose heiress married the Hon. 

 Wellesley Pole, immortalised by the well-known 

 line in Rejected Addresses — 



" Long may Long Tylney Wellesley Long Pole live ! " 



In the neighbourhood of Wanstead, however, 

 Mr. Wellesley does not need Rejected Addresses 

 to keep alive the memory of his extraordinary 

 career. Such was his reckless prodigality that, 

 having acquired by his marriage a rent-roll in 

 Essex alone, raised under the influence of war 

 prices to ^70,000 per annum, he was within ten 

 years of that time obliged to escape down the 

 Thames from his creditors in an open boat. His 

 wife died broken-hearted, the custody of his chil- 

 dren was taken from him by the Court of Chancery, 

 Wanstead House was pulled down,-^ and, though he 

 had succeeded in the meantime to the headship 

 of his own family as Earl of Mornington, he died 

 a pensioner of his younger brother, the great Duke 

 of Wellington. The estates came to his son, an 

 estimable gentleman, but one who lived chiefly 

 abroad and took no interest in them. Mortgaged 

 up to the lips, the broad acres about Rochford, 



^ The only relic of the house, so far as I know, existing 

 in the neighbourhood is the white obelisk in the grounds of 

 the Warren House, the residence of the Forest Superintendent. 



