(1446) Auditor of the exchequer and Master of the buck-hounds.

(1447) “Aedes Walpolianae, or a Description of the Pictures at Houghton Hall, in Norfolk,” first printed in 1747, and again in 1752.

556 Letter 257 To George Montagu, Esq.  Mistley, July 25, 1748.

Dear George, I have wished you with me extremely:  you would have liked what I have seen.  I have been to make a visit of two or three days to Nugent, and was carried to see the last remains of the glory of the old Aubrey de Veres, Earls of Oxford.  They were once masters of’ almost this entire county, but quite reduced even before the extinction of their house:  the last Earl’s son died at a miserable cottage, that I was shown at a distance; and I think another of the sisters, besides Lady Mary Vere, was forced to live upon her beauty.

Henningham Castle, where Harry the Seventh(1448) was so sumptuously banqueted, and imposed that villainous fine for his entertainment, is now shrunk to one vast curious tower, that stands on a spacious mount raised on a high hill with a large fosse.  It commands a fine prospect, and belongs to Mr. Ashurst, a rich citizen, who has built a trumpery new house close to it.  In the parish church is a fine square monument of black marble of one of the Earls; and there are three more tombs of the family at Earl’s Colne, some miles from the castle.  I could see but little of them, as it was very late, except that one of the Countesses has a headdress exactly like the description of Mount Parnassus, with two tops.  I suppose you have heard much of Gosfield, Nugent’s seat.  It is extremely in fashion, but did not answer to me, though there are fine things about it; but being situated in a country that is quite blocked up with hills upon hills, and even too much wood, it has not an inch of prospect.  The park is to be sixteen hundred acres, and is bounded with a wood of five miles round; and the lake, which is very beautiful, is of seventy acres, directly in a line with the house, at the bottom of a fine lawn, and broke with very pretty groves, that fall down a Slope into it.  The house is vast, built round a very old court that has never been fine; the old windows and gateway left, and the old gallery, which is a bad narrow room, and hung with all the late patriots, but so ill done, that they look like caricatures done to expose them, since they have so much disgraced the virtues they pretended to.  The rest of the house is all modernized, but in patches, and in the bad taste that came between the charming venerable Gothic and pure architecture.  There is a great deal of good furniture, but no one room very fine — no tolerable pictures.  Her dressing-room is very pretty, and furnished with white damask, china, japan, loads of easy chairs, bad pictures, and some pretty enamels.  But what charmed me more than all I had seen, is the library chimney, which has existed from the foundation of the house; over it is an alto-relievo in wood, far from being ill done, of the battle of Bosworth Field.  It is all white, except the helmets and trappings, which are gilt, and the shields, which are properly blazoned with the arms of all the chiefs engaged.  You would adore it.