I am much obliged to you, dear sir, and agree with your opinion about the painting of Prince Edward, that it cannot be original and authentic, and consequently not worth copying.  Lord Cholmondeley is, indeed, an original; but who are the wise people that build for him?  Sir Philip Harvey seems to be the only person likely to be benefited by this new extravagance.  I have just seen a collection of tombs like those you describe—­ the house of Russel robed in alabaster and painted.  There are seven monuments in all; one is immense, in marble, cherubim’d and seraphim’d, crusted with bas-reliefs and titles, for the first Duke of Bedford and his Duchess.(80) All these are in a chapel of the church at Cheneys, the seat of the first Earls.  There are but piteous fragments of the house remaining, now a farm, built round three sides of a court.  It is dropping down, in several places without a roof, but in half the windows are beautiful arms in painted glass.  As these are so totally neglected, I propose making a push, and begging them of the Duke of Bedford.  They would be magnificent for Strawberry-castle.  Did I tell you that I have found a text in Deuteronomy to authorize my future battlements?  “When thou buildest a new house, then shalt thou make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thy house, if any man fall from thence.”

I saw Cheneys at a visit I have been making to Harry Conway at Latimers.  This house, which they have hired, is large, and bad, and old, but of a bad age; finely situated on a hill in a beech wood, with a river at the bottom, and a range of hills and woods on the opposite side belonging to the Duke of Bedford.  They are fond of it; the view is melancholy.  In the church at Cheneys Mr. Conway put on an old helmet we found there:  you cannot imagine how it suited him, how antique and handsome he looked; you would have taken him for Rinaldo.  Now I have dipped you so deep in heraldry and genealogies, I shall beg you to step into the church of Stoke; I know it is not asking you to do, a disagreeable thing to call there; I want an account of the tomb of the first Earl of Huntingdon, an ancestor of mine, who lies there.  I asked Gray, but he could tell me little about it.  You know how out of humour Gray has been about our diverting ourselves with pedigrees, which is at least as wise as making a serious point of haranguing against the study.  I believe neither Mr. Chute nor I ever contracted a moment’s vanity from any of our discoveries, or ever preferred them to any thing but brag and whist.  Well, Gray has set himself to compute, and has found out that there must go a million of ancestors in twenty generations to every body’s composition.

I dig and plant till it is dark; all my works are revived and proceeding.  When will you come and assist?  You know I have an absolute promise, and shall now every day expect you.  My compliments to your sisters.

(80) Anne, daughter of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset.