Part 10

J. Holland, Delᵗ. on Stone, by W. Walton. M. & N. Hanhart, Lithogʳˢ.

CHARLTON HOUSE, KENT]

CHARLTON HOUSE,

KENT.

The spacious Hall is of oak, panelled, and has a gallery at the western end, of comparatively recent date; the centre drop depending from the ceiling, ornamented only at the angles, possesses great beauty. At the bottom of the grand staircase is the dining-room; and adjoining to this the Chapel, the ancient doors of both being beautifully carved in oak. The staircase leading to the principal apartments, which are on the upper floor, is of massive chesnut, its arabesque balusters being surmounted by capitals of the Tuscan, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. On the upper floor are the saloon, long gallery, and suite of drawing-rooms, all with highly-wrought chimney-pieces, in stone or marble, and ornamented ceilings. The ceiling of the saloon is composed of exquisitely-worked arabesque ornaments intermixed with fruit and flowers, and decorated with pendants. The chimney-piece is of alabaster and black marble, in which the Greek and arabesque are united, supported by two finely-sculptured figures of Vulcan and Venus. The gallery, 76 feet in length, is of panelled oak, with an elaborately-wrought arabesque ceiling. Between the gallery and the saloon is the chimney-piece here represented. It is carved with the story of Medusa, underneath which

are two allegorical basso-relievos. In the drawing-room, on the other side of the saloon, is a chimney-piece, “so highly polished,” that--if we may credit the testimony of Dr. Plot--“the Lord of Downe did see in it a robbery committed on Shooter’s Hill; whereupon sending out his servants the thieves were taken.”

The House contains a good collection of family portraits, and a Museum of curious and interesting objects in Natural History, gathered chiefly by the late Lady Wilson, and augmented by the present Baronet during travels in the North and South of Europe.

The Park--although small, containing about 100 acres--is exceedingly beautiful; full of finely-grown trees, among which are several yews of venerable antiquity, a perfect avenue of which still leads to the garden north of the House. The gardens are laid out with considerable taste, and abound in shrubs brought from various parts of the world. The annexed print represents a graceful and picturesque “drinking-house,” in the grounds fronting the Mansion; overlooking it is the solitary tree of cypress, the only one which endures of the “Row” of which Evelyn speaks.[44]

Charlton Village, until late in the last century, was famous for a “disorderly fair” called “Horn Fair,” according to Philipott, “by reason of the great plentie of all sorts of winding hornes and cups and other vessels of horne there brought to be sold.” That which had been instituted for a useful purpose degenerated in time, and became a nuisance to the neighbourhood, until its excesses were suppressed by the grandfather of

the present Baronet.[45] It is now held in a field at the end of the village, and is one of the most orderly fairs in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis.

The present Church of Charlton is of a date a little more recent than the Mansion.--It is built, however, on the site, and partly with the materials, of an ancient structure. It is dedicated to St. Luke, and seems to have been surrendered to the crown with the Manor of Charlton, and the rest of the possessions of St. Saviour’s, at its dissolution, June 1st, anno 29 King Henry the Eighth, 1537, and to have remained part of the Royal demesnes till James the First granted it with the Manor to Sir Adam Newton, who dying before he was enabled to repair or rebuild it, “left,” according to Philipott, “the care with his cost, to enlarge and beautify God’s house,” to his executors, who “most amply discharged that trust, and in a manner new builded a great part thereof, and erected the steeple new from the ground, and furnished it with a good ring of bells, decorating the same Church without and within so worthily that it surpasseth most in the shire.” The Patron of the Church is Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson; the Rector is the Rev. Arthur Drummond, who married a sister of the present baronet. The structure is of red brick, consisting of a Chancel, a Nave, and North Aisle. At the West end is a square brick Tower embattled. In the Windows of the Chancel are several Coats of Arms in stained glass--principally those of Lee Warner, Bishop of Rochester; Newton (uncle of Sir Adam, one of his executors) Blunt, of Wricklemarsh; Peto, quartering Langley and Loges; Puckering; Sir William Langhorne, impaling Manners,--Sir William’s first wife being a daughter of the Earl of Rutland; Puckering impaling Chowne, Wilson quartering Smythe, Haddon, and Weller, &c.

The Church contains Monuments to Sir Adam Newton, the founder of the Mansion, and his Lady, with a Latin inscription written by himself; of Sir William Langhorne and his wife Grace, daughter of John, Earl of Rutland, and relict of Viscount Armagh; Brigadier Michael Richards, Surveyor-general of Ordnance to George the First; James Craggs, Esq., Postmaster-general, 1721;[46] John Turnpenny, Esq., “who by industry acquired, by economy improved, and with equity dispensed, a considerable fortune among his surviving friends”; Sir John Lambert Middleton, Bart.; Edward Falkingham, Esq., Comptroller of the Navy, 1757; and of the father and grandfather and other members of the family of the present baronet. A bust by Chantrey, with an inscription, is also placed here over the remains of the amiable and excellent Right Hon. Spencer Perceval, who fell by the hand of an assassin, when Prime Minister of the country, in 1812. He married Jane, second daughter of Sir T. Spencer Wilson. The lamented Edward Drummond, also the victim of assassination, having been mistaken by the murderer for Sir R. Peel, to whom he was private secretary, is buried in a vault in the churchyard. He was brother of the present rector.

Few mansions of its date--although that date is no more remote than the beginning of the seventeenth century--have retained, with less injury, the peculiar characteristics of the age of James the First. The present estimable possessor is fortunately anxious to preserve it in its purity; the necessary repairs have been conducted with judgment and taste; and, as an example of the architecture of the period, it may be regarded with exceeding pleasure--a pleasure enhanced by its vicinity to the Metropolis.

COBHAM HALL,

KENT.

Before we commence our description of the Hall, the Demesne, the Church, the College, and the village of Cobham,[48] it is necessary that we supply some information concerning the several families, under whose guardianship they have flourished.

Cobham Hall has not descended from sire to son through many generations. Its present lord is in no way, or at least very remotely, connected with the ancient family who for centuries governed the “men of Kent;” and who, at one period, possessed power second only to that of the sovereign. That race of bold barons has been long extinct, the last of them dying in miserable poverty; and if their proud blood is still to be found within their once princely barony, it runs, probably, through the veins of some tiller of the soil.

The Cobhams had been famous from the earliest recorded times. In Philipott’s “Survey of Kent,” 1659--it is said that “Cobham afforded a seat and a surname to that noble and splendid family; and certainly,” adds the quaint old writer, “this place was the cradle or seminary of persons who, in elder ages, were invested in places of as signall and principall a trust or eminence, as they could move in, in the narrow orbe of a particular county.” Henry de Cobham was one of the Recognitores magnæ assisæ--who were “in some proportion equivalent to the judges itinerant”--in the first year of King John. No less than four Kentish gentlemen of the name embarked with the first Edward in his “victorious and triumphant expedition into Scotland,” and were knighted for services rendered to that Prince in his “successful and auspicious siege of Carlaverock.” With John de Cobham, distinguished in the reign of Edward the Third, the male line determined; Joan, his daughter, is said to have had five husbands, by only one of whom,[49] Sir Reginald Braybrooke, she left issue, Joan, who being married to Sir Thomas Broke, of the county of Somerset, Esq., “knitt Cobham, and a large income beside, to her husband’s patrimony.”[50] Their eldest son, Sir Edward Broke, was summoned to Parliament, as Baron Cobham, in the 23 Henry VI. In 1559, Sir William Broke entertained Queen Elizabeth at Cobham Hall, in the first year of her reign, “with a noble welcome as she took her progress through the county of Kent.” His son and successor, Henry Lord Cobham, was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports; but “being too deeply concerned in the design of Sir Walter Raleigh,” he was deprived of his estates, “though not his life.”[51] His younger brother, George, was executed; but Lord Cobham “lived many years after in great misery and poverty,” dying in January, 1619; and sharing the humble grave of some lowly peasant, apart from the magnificent tombs which cover the remains of his great and gallant ancestors. He is said, by Weldon, to have been reduced to such extreme necessity, that “he had starved, but for a trencher-scraper, sometime his servant at Court, who relieved him with scraps.” His estates, at the time of their confiscation, are estimated to have been worth 7,000_l._ per annum; and he possessed 30,000_l._ in goods and chattels. His nephew was “restored in blood; “but not to the title or property. These were transferred--“the manor and seat of Cobham Hall, and the rest of Lord Cobham’s lands”--by James the First to one of his kinsmen, Ludovick Stuart, Duke of Lennox; whose male line became extinct in 1672. The Lady Katherine, sister of the last Duke of Richmond and Lennox, married into the princely family of the O’Briens of Thomond; but the Duke “dying greatly in debt,” the estates were sold. Cobham Hall was purchased by the second husband of the Lady Katherine, Sir Joseph Williamson, who resided there for some time.[52] In 1701 he died, bequeathing two-thirds of his property to his widow. This proportion descended, on her demise, to Edward Lord Clifton and Cornbury, afterwards Lord Clarendon, who had married the sole child of the Lady Katherine, by her first husband, Henry Lord O’Brien;[53] and on his death, without issue, in 1713, his sister, Lady Theodosia Hyde, inherited. She married John Bligh, of the kingdom of Ireland, Esq.;[54] created, in 1721, an Irish Peer by the title of Lord Clifton of Rathmore, and, in 1725, Earl of Darnley in that kingdom. For some years the estate was in Chancery. After a tedious suit, it was purchased by Lord Darnley for the sum of 51,000_l._, to the third part of which a Mrs. Hornsby became entitled, as relict of the gentleman to whom Sir Joseph Williamson had devised one third part.[55] The present Peer, the sixth Earl of Darnley, was born on the 16th April, 1827, and succeeded his father, the fifth Earl, in 1835. He is hereditary High Steward of Gravesend and Milton. His father, the fifth Peer, married--in 1825--Emma Jane, third daughter of Sir Henry Parnell, Bart., created Lord Congleton in 1841. This estimable lady resides at Cobham Hall. The late Peer died in consequence of an injury received from a woodman’s axe, while he was trimming trees in a plantation adjoining his mansion. His death was the subject of universal sorrow; in his own immediate neighbourhood, it was mourned as a private and personal loss.

Such is a brief history of the several noble families through whom the mansion, demesne, and estates, of Cobham have passed.

THE HALL is backed by a noble Park, amply stocked with deer, and containing trees, of great variety and immense size, some of them measuring above thirty feet in circumference. It comprises 1,800 acres, and encloses an area of about seven miles. The old approach, long disused, was through an Avenue of lime-trees, consisting of four rows, and extending more than half a mile in length from the dependent village. The present entrance is through a red-brick, turreted, Gateway, adjacent to which is “the Lodge.” On nearing the House, the eye encounters a Cedar of magnificent growth, and to the left are the Gardens, into which there are two Terrace-walks; one from the great gate, and another, at a considerable elevation, from the suite of apartments which constitute the first floor. The View taken by Mr. Harding pictures the more ancient portion of the venerable edifice--the north wing; with which the south wing mainly corresponds. They are, however, connected by a centre, built by Inigo Jones; and

this centre, which consists of a façade with Corinthian pilasters, is sadly out of keeping with the quaint gables, octagonal turrets, ornamental door-ways, carved cornices, projecting mullioned windows, and elaborated chimneys, which distinguish the earlier dwelling of the Cobhams. In front, this incongruity is sadly apparent; but examined from either of the sides it is not perceived. The additions made by Inigo Jones are injurious, because they impair the harmony of the building; although, considered apart, they are worthy of his high fame. The nature of the architecture and the singular contradiction it exhibits, cannot be better shown than by reference to this engraving of one of the projecting entrances, of stone, extending to the roof, by which the wings are backed--including one of the ancient latticed windows on either side. The structure thus assumes the form of a half H, the wings being terminated by octagonal towers; a sunken wall in front encloses a quadrangular Lawn, ornamented with vases and statues. The wings exhibit the dates--1582 and 1594--and retain all the characteristics of the later Tudor style; although, as we have intimated, it has been materially corrupted by the several alterations to which it has been, from time to time, subjected. The ordinary entrance to the house is through a vaulted Passage, “built in the form of a Gothic cloister by James Wyatt,” which contains the arms of the Cobhams, with the date 1587. This passage leads to the grand Staircase, and the several apartments on the ground-floor. The first to which strangers are conducted is the Dining-hall; which contains an elaborately carved black and white marble Chimney-piece, having quaint and curious figures and buildings; and a series of Portraits of rare excellence. The Music Room, one of the suite added to the ancient building, affords a brilliant contrast to the sombre and solid character of the dining-room. It contains but one picture--full-length Portraits of the Lords John and Bernard Stuart, sons of the Duke of Lennox--a chef-d’œuvre of Vandyke. The Chimney-piece is formed of the purest white marble, sculptured in bas-relief after Guide’s Aurora, by the elder Westmacott, with fauns, life-size, as supporters. The Ceiling was designed by Inigo Jones; it is divided into several square and circular compartments, with a deep oval in the centre, “superbly gilt and enriched by appropriate ornaments, among which are twelve pendent coronets.” The apartment is in length 50 feet, in breadth 36 feet, and in height 32 feet; and although superbly ornamented and richly gilt--the Pillars, of the composite order, being of white marble, and the lining of scagliola--the whole is in fine harmony with the grace and chasteness of the design. There are two Galleries, one of which contains an Organ. The Vestibule is a small chamber, decorated with valuable Vases of verde antique. The Library contains a series of Portraits of eminent literary men--Bolingbroke, Sidney, Shakspere, Swift, and others; none of them, however, advance strong claims to originality. On the walls of the great staircase are hung several large pictures, which may bear examination before the gallery is entered. The most remarkable is attributed to Domenichino.

The grand Staircase conducts, first to the Portrait Gallery, and next to the Picture Gallery. The walls of the former are hung with portraits, among which are many of exceeding interest, including those of heroes, statesmen, kings and queens, church-reformers, and poets, mingled without regard to date or order.[56] The Picture Gallery is the great “show-room” of the house. It is a noble apartment, the walls of which are