176 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



Clarke in the Arian controversy. With Dr Clarke he 

 was on terms of intimacy, and acted as his assistant 

 preacher at St James', Westminster. His residence at 

 Winchester, it is interesting to discover, was the pleasant 

 house standing on rising ground near the west end of the 

 Cathedral. Dr Sykes died of paralysis in London in 

 1756 and was buried in the Church of St James', West- 

 minster, thus making way, so far as his Winchester 

 residence was concerned, for Dr Edmund Pyle, who 

 moved into it from one of the inferior houses in Dome 

 Alley. 



Dr Edmund Pyle was a prebendary of some distinc- 

 tion. He had been private chaplain to Bishop Hoadly, 

 and was also Archdeacon of York, and Chaplain-in- 

 Ordinary to George II. He was a Corpus man, and 

 possessed in a remarkable degree the gift of keen and 

 pregnant criticism, whether of men or of affairs, which 

 finds expression in a volume of his correspondence, 

 published a few years ago under the title of Memoirs of 

 a Royal Chaplain. Dr Pyle was very pleased with his 

 new residence " on the mount," as it was termed, sorry 

 though he was to lose his " good friend Sykes, who 

 besides his other valuable qualities was," he says, " an 

 excellent member of our Cathedral." Dr Pyle con- 

 sidered his new residence to be " the very best house in 

 Winchester Close " ; he spent over 200 on it, he tells 

 us ; and when, some years later, he was offered by 

 Bishop Hoadly the Mastership of St Cross a very 

 lucrativeposition in those days he could not bring him- 

 self to give up his " pretty house and garden for a nasty 

 dwelling in a dirty boggy village, a mile and half off any 

 conversible person, in an old rats'-hall, that is worse 

 than Magdalene College First Court, at Cambridge." 



