House and Garden 
PRINCIPAL FACADE 
mansions of the nouveaux riches. It is very sad, 
but happily, although this is not known to the 
world, many of the treasures were saved, others 
have been repurchased and restored to their old 
places, and the house, now the residence of Lady 
Kinloss, the widowed daughter of the last duke, 
is by no means destitute of beautiful 
works of art, the salvage from the 
wreck of Stowe’s former magnifi- 
rate he bestow¬ 
ed his estates 
y! at Stowe on the 
‘ monks of St. 
Friedswide at 
Oxford, whose 
minster is now 
the Cathedral 
Church of the 
Oxford Dio¬ 
cese. 
The proper¬ 
ty remained in 
the peaceful 
possession oi 
the monks until 
Henry VIII. 
That rapa¬ 
cious monarch, 
wishing to 
atone some¬ 
what for his spoliation of their monasteries, created 
five new Sees, and amongst these the Diocese of 
Oxford. His son, Edward VI., bestowed upon it 
for the endowment of the bishopric the estate of 
Stowe, of which the good canons of St. Friedswide 
had been deprived. Oueen Elizabeth, during the 
cence. 
The early history of Stowe need not 
detain us long. From the Domesday 
Survey we gather that the manor 
was held by a Saxon gentleman 
named Turgis, and that William the 
Conqueror gave it to his half-brother 
Odo, the warlike bishop of Bayeux 
in Normandy. The bishop had so 
many manors bestowed upon him 
by the Conqueror, that he could not 
live in them all. So he let the estate 
to Robert D’oiley and Roger Ivory 
for 605 years. But bad times fell 
upon the battle-loving bishop. Wil¬ 
liam the Conqueror found that he 
was conspiring against him; hence, 
the bishop was dispossessed of his 
rich manors, and D’oiley, a faithful 
follower of the king, a prudent man, 
too, who married the heiress of the 
Saxon lord of the old town and 
castle of Wallingford, and gained 
vast possessions, added Stowe to his 
extensive property. Whether he was 
overcome with remorse on account 
of some lawless oppression of the 
English, history sayeth not; at any 
18 
THE CHAPEL 
