part of which they say her Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large as life, sewed and embroidered on black velvet, white satin, etc. and represent the virtues that were necessary for her, or that she was forced to have, as patience and temperance, etc.  The fire-screens are particular; pieces of yellow velvet, fringed with gold, hang on a cross-bar of wood, which is fixed on the top of a single stick, that rises from the foot.  The only furniture which has any appearance of taste are the table and cabinets, which are all of oak, richly carved.  There is a privata chamber within, where she lay, her arms and style over the door; the arras hangs over all the doors; the gallery is sixty yards long, covered with bad tapestry, and wretched pictures of Mary herself, Elizabeth in a gown of sea-monsters, Lord Darnley, James the Fifth and his Queen, curious, and a whole history of Kings of England, not worth sixpence apiece.  There is an original of old Bess(97) of Hardwicke herself, who built the house.  Her estates were then reckoned at sixty thousand pounds a-year, and now let for two hundred thousand pounds.  Lord John Cavendish told me, that the tradition in the family was that it had been prophesied to her that she should never die as long as she was building; and that at last she died in a hard frost, when the labourers could not work.  There is a fine bank of old oaks in the park over a lake; nothing else pleased me there.  However, I was so diverted with this old beldam and her magnificence, that I made this epitaph for her: 

Four times the nuptial bed she warm’d,
And every time so well perform’d,
That when death spoil’d each husband’s billing,
He left the widow every shilling. 
Fond was the dame, but not dejected;
Five stately mansions she erected
With more than royal pomp, to vary
The prison of her captive
When Hardwicke’s towers shall bow their head,
Nor mass be more in Worksop said;
When Bolsover’s fair fame shall tend,
Like Olcotes, to its mouldering end;
When Chatsworth tastes no Can’dish bounties,
Let fame forget this costly countess.

As I returned, I saw Newstead and Althorpe:  I like both.  The former is the very abbey.(98) The great east window(99) of the church remains, and connects with the house; the hall entire, the refectory entire, the cloister untouched, with the ancient cistern of the convent, and their arms on it; a private chapel quite perfect.  The park, which is still charming, has not been so much unprofaned; the present lord has lost large sums, and paid part in old oaks, five thousand pounds of which have been cut near the house.  In recompense he has built two baby forts, to pay his country in castles for the damage done to the navy, and planted a handful of Scotch firs, that look like plough-boys dressed in old family liveries for a public day.  In the hall is a very good collection of pictures, all animals; the refectory, now the great-drawing-room, is full