These proud inclosures, guarded by the growth within, first appeared under the dimension of one or two hundred acres; but fashion, emulation, and the park, grew up together, till the last swelled into one or two thousand.

If religions rise from the lowest ranks, the fashions generally descend from the higher, who are at once blamed, and imitated by their inferiors.

The highest orders of men lead up a fashion, the next class tread upon their heels, the third quickly follow, then the fourth, fifth, &c. immediately figure after them.  But as a man who had an inclination for a park, could not always spare a thousand acres, he must submit to less, for a park must be had:  thus Bond, of Ward-end, set up with thirty; some with one half, till the very word became a burlesque upon the idea.  The design was a display of lawns, hills, water, clumps, &c. as if ordered by the voice of nature; and furnished with herds of deer.  But some of our modern parks contain none of these beauties, nor scarcely land enough to support a rabbit.

I am possessed of one of these jokes of a park, something less than an acre:—­he that has none, might think it a good joke, and wish it his own; he that has more would despise it:  that it never was larger, appears from its being surrounded by Sutton Coldfield; and that it has retained the name for ages, appears from the old timber upon it.

The manor of King’s-hurst was disposed of by the Mountforts, about two hundred years ago, to the Digbys, where it remains.

COLESHILL.

One mile farther east is Coleshill-hall, vested in the crown before, and after the conquest; purchased, perhaps, of William Rufus, by Geoffrey de Clinton, ancestor to the present Duke of Newcastle.  In 1352, an heiress of the house of Clinton, gave it, with herself, to Sir John de Mountfort, of the same family with Simon, the great Earl of Leicester, who fell, in 1265, at Evesham, in that remarkable contest with Henry the Third.

With them it continued till 1497, when Sir Simon Mountfort, charged, but perhaps unjustly, with assisting Perkin Warbeck with 30_l_. was brought to trial at Guildhall, condemned as a traitor, executed at Tyburn, his large fortune confiscated, and his family ruined.  Some of his descendants I well know in Birmingham; and they are well known to poverty, and the vice.

In the reign of Henry the Seventh, it was almost dangerous, particularly for a rich man, even to think against a crafty and avaricious monarch.—­What is singular, the man who accused Sir Simon at the bar, succeeded him in his estate.

Simon Digby procured a grant of the place, in whose line it still continues.  The hall is inhabited, but has been left about thirty years by the family; was probably erected by the Mountforts, is extensive, and its antique aspect without, gives a venerable pleasure to the beholder, like the half admitted light diffused within.  Every spot of the park is delightful, except that in which the hall stands:  our ancestors built in the vallies, for the sake of water; their successors on the hills, for the sake of air.