NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



poet, Lord Somervile. Educated at Winchester and 

 New College, Oxford, where he seems to have held a 

 fellowship till the year 1704, he succeeded to two estates, 

 that of Edstone, near Wooton Wawen, in Warwick- 

 shire, and Somervile-Aston, in Gloucestershire. Of 

 these, Edstone, where, from the year of his quitting 

 Oxford in 1704, he abode till his death, and made his 

 chief hunting quarters, had descended to the family 

 by a marriage with the heiress of the Ailesbury line 

 in the time of Edward IV. Somervile-Aston, from its 

 name, must have been in the family many centuries, 

 probably longer even than had the Warwickshire 

 estate. 



It is worth noticing that Edstone House, an old 

 mansion, long since pulled down and replaced by a 

 more modern structure, lay in the very heart of Shake- 

 speare's country ; its parish church, Wooton Wawen, 

 where Somervile is buried, is situated between Stratford- 

 on-Avon and Henley-in-Arden, being about six and a 

 half miles from the former and two and a half from the 

 latter place. The great-grandfather of the hunting poet 

 seems to have been well acquainted with Shakespeare, 

 and a portrait of that great Warwickshire worthy was long 

 an heirloom in the family. This portrait was attributed 

 to Nicholas Hilliard, and it would be extremely inter- 

 esting to know where it has drifted to, if, indeed, it 

 is still in being. In 1820 a steel engraving of Somer- 

 vile was executed by Worthington from a drawing 

 by J. Thurston. This drawing is stated to have been 

 made ''from an original picture in the possession of 

 C. Wren, Esq.," which for more than eighty years 

 remained unknown and undiscoverable by the British 

 public. Two years since (1902) this portrait suddenly 

 appeared in the National Portrait Gallery, London, 

 having been presented by Mrs. Catherine Pigott, the 



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