GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



When Heathfield House was sold, in 1887, the gates were bought 

 by the sixth Duke of Devonshire, who set them up at Chiswick 

 House, where for sixty years they formed the principal entrance 

 to the lovely grounds of the famous Villa, built by the Earl of 

 Burlington, about 1730 to 1735. 



In 1897 the gates, and their handsome piers, were transplanted 

 to the Duke of Devonshire's residence in Piccadilly, where they 

 still form one of the chief ornaments of that famous thoroughfare. 



The removal, I believe, gave great dissatisfaction to the in- 

 habitants of Chiswick, who had taken considerable pride in the 

 beauty of the gates which stood at the bottom of what is now 

 known as Duke's Avenue. 



When the old Jacobean mansion that preceded the existing 

 Chiswick House, came into the possession of Richard Boyle, third 

 Earl of Burlington a nobleman notable for his patronage of art 

 and artists, and his large building undertakings, it had already 

 had a chequered history. Many people more or less famous and 

 infamous, had made it a place of residence ; indeed the rapidity 

 with which it changed hands was remarkable. 



The Wardour family, to whom it originally belonged, sold it to 

 that Robert Carre, made successively Earl of Rochester and 

 Earl of Somerset, whose supposed share in the murder of his 

 greatest friend, Sir Thomas Overbury, a poet, was one of 

 the lurid sensations of the reign of James I. In the memor- 

 able trial that followed the crash of discovery, the details 

 of the whole horrible conspiracy were . unmasked. The 

 Countess admitted her guilt ; her four chief accomplices were 

 hanged, but, extraordinary to relate, the two principal offenders 

 were pardoned. A short imprisonment, and the forfeiture of their 

 estates, was their very inadequate punishment. A pension sufficient 

 for their needs was granted to them, and in 1624 an entry in the 

 " State Papers domestic " states " that the Earl of Somerset is 

 pardoned, and has taken a house at Chiswick, but promises not to 

 go near Court." This was the original Chiswick House. It was said 

 of the guilty pair that though they lived in one and the same build- 

 ing, it was " only in an alternation of sullenness and chiding 

 . . . they were a mutual torment in their old age as they had 

 been a mutual snare in their youth, until they sank unregretted 

 and unhonoured into the grave." 



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