Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/46

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

[128. VI. FEB., 1920.

THE SUPER-NABOB OF WANSTEAD.

Sir J. Child, for whom, of course, a " coat " was soon found, became the super nabob of what had once been part of th Forest of Essex, and had spent i

large portion of his great fortune upon the construction of a lordly palace and pleasaunce when he was visited by John Evelyn on March 15, 1683. The entry in the Diary under date March 16 is :

"I went- to see Sir Josiah Child's prodigious cos' in planting walnut trees about his seate, anc making tish ponds, many miles in circuit, in Epping Forest, in a barren spot, as oftentimes these suddenly monied men, for the most part, seate themselves. He, from a merchant's apprentice and management of the East India Company's Stock, being ariv'd to an Estate ('tis said) of 200,000, and lately married his daughter to the Eldest Soun of the Duke of Beaufort, late Marquis of Worcester, with 50,000 portional present, and various expecta- tions." And, by the by, Evelyn adds :

" I dined at Mr. Houblon's, a rich and gentle French merchant (Morant in his 'History of Essex' says the Family were eminent merchants in the time of Queen Elizabeth) who was building a house in the Forest, near Sir J. Child's, in a place where the late Earl of Norwich dwelt some time, and which came from his lady the widow of Mr. Baker. It will be a pretty villa, about five miles from Whitechapel."

HORACE WALPOLE AND WANSTEAD.

When on July 17, 1758, Horace Walpole wrote to Richard Bentley, he said :

" I dined yesterday at Wanstead. Many years have passed since 1 saw it. The disposition of the house and the prospects are better than I expected, afid very fine ; the garden, which they tell you, cost as much as the House, that is, 100,000, is wretched ; the furniture fine but totally without taste ; such continences and incontinences of Scipio and Alexander, by 1 don't know whom ! Such flame-coloured gods and goddesses, by Kent ! Such family pieces i believe the late Earl him- self (the heirs of Child, now Irish Peers, were in possession), for they are as ugly as the children that he really begot ! The whole great apartment is of oak, finely carved, unpainted, and has a charm- ing effect. The present Earl is the most generous creature in the world ; in the first chamber I entered he offered me four marble tables that lay in cases about the room ; I compounded, after forty refusals, with only a haunch of vension ; I believe he has not had so cheap a visit a good while. I commend myself as 1 ought, for to t>e sure, there

inspired by the fortunes of the heirs of the Satrap of the Indies and the downfall and ignominies of the rococo and garish glories of Wanstead House, the site of which is a turf- covered mound used as a golf -ground by the denizens of the neighbourhood by grace of the Corporation of London whose charge of Wanstead Park is one of the most public spirited of its latter day enterprises as their first municipality in the kingdom. -**

and a glass that would have tried the virtue of a philosopher of double my size ! "

THOMAS HOOD AND WANSTEAD HOUSE.

It was at Lake House, an appanage of the Child-Tylney palace, that Thomas Hood dwelt for the four years to 1836. His fierce satire in the story of Miss Kilmansegg was

FIELDING'S ANCESTORS AT SHARPHAM PARK, SOMERSET. It may be worth while to put on record some facts, which I have recently noted, indicating how Henry Field- ing's birthplace at Sharpham came into the possession of his mother's family.

Richard Davidge, a London merchant, bought the estate from the Dyer family and others in 1657, and in 1692, after the deaths of himself, his widow, and five of his children, the whole of the considerable Davidge property had come to three of the merchant's daughters, viz., Sarah, wife of Henry (after- wards Sir Henry) Gould, grandmother of the novelist, Katherine, wife of Charles Cot- ington of Funthill, Wilts, and Ann Davidge., There can be no doubt that Sarah brought Sharpham to her husband as her share of her Bather's and brothers' estates.

The Davidges were a family of merchants' settled for a century or more at Bridport.

Sir Henry Gould: Burke' s ' Landed

and Dorchester, Dorset, was not, as stated in

He was in fact a son of. a yeoman of Winsham,.

Gentry,' a member of the Gould family of

Jpwey, Dorset. Andrew Gould,

Somerset, and a grandson of Henry Gould, also a yeoman living at the same place.

Thus in Fielding the " blue blood " he

nherited from his father was mingled with another kind of blood (yeoman and com^ rnercial) derived from his mother.

F. J. POPE.. 17 Holland Road, W.14.

CRATEMAN, BEDLAMER, &c. I have re- cently discovered two earlier instances of names given to occupations than those recorded in ' N.E.D.', and it may be worth while to place them in ' N. & Q.' for per- manency.

" Crateman," i.e., a hawker of pottery, is given in the Burnley Parish Register in 1650, twenty-nine years earlier than the reference in the ' Oxford Dictionary ' ; and " bed 1 - lamer " a lunatic, will be found in the Croston Parish Register for 1640, the earliest quotation in ' N.E.D.' being 1675,