Restoration House, Rochester 
Houses With a History 
ENGLISH MANOR-HOUSES OE THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 
By B. C. FLOURNOY 
unr HE greatest advantages men have by riches 
I are, to give, to build, to plant and make 
pleasant scenes.” So wrote Sir William 
I'emple, the cultured diplomatist, philosopher and 
garden lover of the time of the last Stuart kings 
and William III. And from the number of delight¬ 
ful old country houses set amid pleasant scenes to 
be found in England to-day, we may infer that 
many other Englishmen, long before Sir William’s 
time, held in part at least, the same opinion as to 
the advantages of wealth. 
Macaulay gives a very unflattering picture indeed 
of the old English country squire, but in his endeavor 
to make out his case against those who cried up 
“the good old times” he must have been drawn into 
exaggeration or was totally unappreciative of the 
artistic merits of the old country seats. Is it possible 
that men so ignorant and crude could have built 
houses bearing evidence of such good taste, so full 
of grace and charm and surrounded by such rare 
blendings of art and nature as are displayed so often 
m garden and park And it is not, as a rule, in 
the greatest mansions, the vast piles erected by the 
great nobles of the court that we find such artistic 
qualities, but most often in the smaller manor- 
houses of the baronets and squires. Certainly many 
highly cultured people of Macaulay’s time and our 
own could learn a great deal from them of the art 
of making beautiful homes. 
Most of the houses shown in our illustrations date 
from the great Elizabethan building epoch, when 
the untold wealth of the monasteries, which had 
been distributed among the aristocracy, the plunder 
of gold laden Spanish galleons and the unprece¬ 
dented prosperity in trade gave such an impulse to 
the erection of fine houses that the England of that 
period has been described as “one great stone¬ 
mason’s yard.” d he great noblemen and gentlemen 
of the court were filled with the desire for extrava¬ 
gant display and built such clumsy piles as Wollaton 
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