IQ John of Padua. 



only palace on which King Henry was engaged at his death 

 was Nonesuch, near Cheam, in Co. Surrey, now long since en- 

 tirely destroyed. This fantastical and costly building was one on 

 which some very novel and un-English ideas in architecture were 

 indulged : and it is possible (though there is no evidence to show it) 

 that the Italian new-comer may have brought those fanciful ideas 

 with him. 1 



It is only a tradition that he was employed by Protector Somerset 

 upon Old Somerset House, in the Strand : 2 and Sir John Thynne, 

 the founder of Longleat, having been closely and officially connected 

 with the Protector, the same tradition extends to the designing of 

 Longleat. And because there are other houses in the West of 

 England that are built somewhat in the style of Longleat (as, for 

 instance, Kingston, or the Duke's House, at Bradford-on-Avon), for 

 this,and for no other conceivable reason, topographers, andguide-book 

 compilers, copying from one another,and without any other authority, 

 persist in referring them to this John of Padua. Walpole would 

 give him Sion House, in Middlesex. "Much," says Mr. M. D. 

 Wyatt most justly, 3 "is attributed to him that is apocryphal." 

 Instead of "much" I am rather disposed to say "all": that is, so 

 far as regards his having been the sole contriver and arranger of 

 the architecture of any large house. For the fact is that not a 

 single scrap of documentary evidence has ever been produced of any 

 work, great or small, in which he was engaged. 



In the " Vetusta Monumenta," vol. iv., the Gate of Honour at 

 Caius College, Cambridge, there delineated, is also ascribed to him, 

 but quite erron eously. Still, in the middle of the last century, his 



» Nonesuch palace was an expensive toy left unfinished by King Henry : the 

 grounds filled with statues, pyramids, fountains, Dianas and Acteons, &c. lhe 

 whole front of the house was faced with plaster work, made of rye-dough, m 

 imagery very costly." (MS. note in Le Neve s copy of Aubrey's « Surrey. ), 

 There is an engraving of this very singular palaee, by Hoffnagle, copied in 

 '•Lysons' Environs of London/' vol. i., 153: also in « Nichols s Progresses of 

 Queen Elizabeth" : and on the margin of Norden and Speed s Map of the Co. 

 of Surrey : but the most complete is in Braun's " Orbis Terrarum, 1572. 



A mixture of the most heterogeneous conceits." "A piebald mass of 

 masonry." (Mr. Sarsfield Taylor.) 



« « The Builder," 20th June, 1868. 



