137 Letter 64 To Richard Bentley, Esq.(329) Battel, Wednesday, August 5, 1752.

here we are, my dear Sir, in the middle of our pilgrimage; and lest we should never return from this holy land of abbeys and Gothic castles, I begin a letter to you. that I hope some charitable monk, when he has buried our bones, will deliver to you.  We have had piteous distresses, but then we have seen glorious sights!  You shall hear of each in their order.

Monday, Wind S. E.—­at least that was our direction—­While they were changing our horses at Bromley, we went to see the Bishop of Rochester’s palace; not for the sake of any thing there was to be seen, but because there was a chimney, in which had stood a flower-pot, in which was put the counterfeit plot against Bishop Sprat.  ’Tis a paltry parsonage, with nothing of antiquity but two panes of glass, purloined from Islip’s chapel in Westminster Abbey, with that abbot’s rebus, an eye and a slip of a tree.  In the garden there is a clear little pond, teeming with gold fish.  The Bishop is more prolific than I am.

>From Sevenoaks we went to Knowle.  The park is sweet, with much old beech, and an immense sycamore before the great gate, that makes me more in love than ever with sycamores.  The house is not near so extensive as I expected:(330) the outward court has a beautiful decent simplicity that charms one.  The apartments are many, but not large.  The furniture throughout, ancient magnificence; loads of portraits, not good nor curious; ebony cabinets, embossed silver in vases, dishes, etc. embroidered beds, stiff chairs, and sweet bags lying on velvet tables, richly worked in silk and gold.  There are two galleries, one very small; an old hall, and a spacious great drawing-room.  There is never a good staircase.  The first little room you enter has sundry portraits of the times; but they seem to have been bespoke by the yard, and drawn all by the same painter; One should be happy if they were authentic; for among them there is Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Gardiner of Winchester, the Earl of Surry, the poet, when a boy, and a Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, but I don’t know which.  The only fine picture is of Lord Goring and Endymion Porter by Vandyke.  There is a good head of the Queen of Bohemia, a whole-length of Duc d’Espernon, and another good head of the Clifford, Countess of Dorset, who wrote that admirable haughty letter to Secretary Williamson, when he recommended a person to her for member for Appleby:  “I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a court, but I won’t be dictated to by a subject:  your man shan’t stand.  Ann Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery.”  In the chapel is a piece of ancient tapestry:  Saint Luke in his first profession is holding an urinal.  Below stairs is a chamber of poets and players, which is proper enough in that house; for the first Earl wrote a play,(331) and the last Earl was a poet,(332) and I think married a player(333) Major Mohun and