so it sounds

complete list of its abbots is known to exist. Its monks were not learned scholars, like the Benedictines of St. Albans, but men who prayed and laboured hard; strange to be told that in 1234 the institution was so poor that the monastery had to be broken up for a time, the brethren being dispersed among other convents till their debts were paid off.

There is no ground, however, for believing that the internal arrangements of Woburn Abbey were different from those of the other great houses which claimed St. Bruno as their founder; nor is there reason to suppose that its discipline had become in any way relaxed, for even Thomas Cromwell was unable to throw a stone at its inmates. At all events, its brethren were true to their creed; and the last abbot, Robert Hobbes, was hanged at Woburn, on a tree opposite his own gates, like the Prior of the Charter House in London, really, though not ostensibly, for denying the king's supremacy in spiritual matters. The tree is still shown, but it is verified only by tradition; and it does not look as if it were three centuries and a half old. It is an oak, near the bridge which crosses the water in the Great Drive; to it is fixed a sheet of iron or copper, on which are painted some doggrel lines, signed " J. H. Wiffen," and addressing this lord of the forest as an "old memorial of the mitred monk." It would seem from such records as remain that the abbot, having been grossly ill-treated by the king's minions, was at last goaded into joining the rebels in the North, in "the Pilgrimage of Grace," and was therefore made to suffer the last penalty of the law as a traitor.

At the dissolution of the greater monasteries, Woburn shared the fate of the rest of the sister establishments, which went to feed the maw of the rapacious King Henry VIII. Its revenues then amounted to £430 13s. 11d. For a time the abbey was left empty,

the broad acres around it being farmed by the king's auditor; but in 1517 it was granted, with its lands and revenues, by the boy-king Edward VI. to John, Lord Russell, of whom we shall have more to say presently, and who was shortly afterwards created Earl of Bedford; and the estate has remained ever since in the hands of his descendants.

The new owners, however, did not make for 200 years and more a clean sweep of the stately building which Henry's son had bestowed on them, though they altered it considerably in order to fit it for the requirements of domestic life. The old walls were freshly cased in stone, and whilst some few of the ancient Gothic windows, buttresses, and doorways were retained, the greater part of its exterior was re-faced by Inigo Jones, who introduced into it a variety of classic details, as may be seen from a print of it in the reign of Anne or George I., engraved in Parry's "History of Woburn." The antiquary, Cole, writes in one of his manuscript volumes, in 1747: "The Duke of Bedford has determined to pull down the old Abbey House in his park, and to build another more suitable to his taste."

He

Horace Walpole, in one of his letters to George Montagu in 1751, records the fact that he saw the work of demolishing the old and building the new abbey in progress. writes: "I came yesterday from Woburn, where I have been a week. The house is in building, and three sides of the quadrangle finished." He speaks of an "old gallery not yet destroyed" as "a bad room, powdered with little gold stars, and covered with millions of old portraits." Doubtless this "gallery" had formed part of the chapel of the monastery, and the "little gold stars" with which it was "powdered" denoted that it was dedicated to

the Blessed Virgin. Three arches on the north side, which are shown in the above-mentioned view, still exist, having been worked into the basement of the present mansion, in which they mark what is called "The Grotto." They were probably left purposely in order to assert the continuity and identity of the modern and the ancient structures.

Since that time, however, the abbey has experienced many alterations, and more particularly under the third duke, to whom the modern mansion is due. It was erected in the middle of the last century (1744-5), from the designs of Henry Flitcroft, the architect of the Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields; but these were much modified about the end of the last century by Mr. Holland, the architect of Drury Lane Theatre.

The mansion is quadrangular, enclosing a square court; and its chief front and state entrance face the west. This front, however, is not generally used now, carriages driving up to a more convenient portico in the rear, on the east. The west front, 230 feet in length, is of the Ionic order, with what is technically called a "rustic basement," and with Venetian windows in the wings; it still, however, contains the principal state rooms. The eastern front is lower, and less imposing, on account of the rising ground. The cloisters and conventual church seem to have occupied the site of the eastern front; the latter disappeared when the new mansion was erected in 1744; but the former remained until 1790, when they were pulled down in order to make room for stables, which have since given place to larger buildings, a little further from the house.

On entering the house, and ascending a few stairs, we find ourselves in a corridor on the first floor, which runs round three sides of the quadrangle on the interior, the state

rooms and the apartments occupied by the family being on the exterior, and looking out upon the park. The sides of this corridor are filled with small bronzes and other works of art in glass cases, including several well-known ancient sculptures, and copies of others, and specimens of pottery and vases. The sitting-rooms occupied by the Queen and Prince Consort on their visit here in 1811 are on the first floor, at the north-west corner, the window of their bed-room being that nearest to the northern end of the west front, shown in our view. These rooms are finely gilt and sumptuously furnished; they still remain as they were left by Her Majesty, and have seldom been occupied since that date. The library, and the other rooms chiefly used by the family when alone, form a suite on the ground-floor running the whole length of the south front. Like the rest of the rooms throughout the abbey, they are filled with portraits in oil, and the mere enumeration of these would almost occupy a catalogue. The only exception is the breakfast-room, which is adorned with twenty-four masterpieces of Canaletti, most of them illustrative of scenes in Venice.

Among the most important and interesting of the portraits on the walls are those of Jane Seymour, by Holbein, and her son Edward VI.; Lord Treasurer Burghley; Robert, Earl of Salisbury; Thomas, Earl of Exeter; Robert Devereux, Lord Essex; Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, and his wicked Countess, with Anne, her good and excellent daughter, afterwards Countess of Bedford; Anne Askew; Lord William Russell, and his admirable wife Lady Rachel, and her father Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton; Queen Elizabeth, at full length, in a richly embroidered gown; Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, sister of Henry VIII.; Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, the Duke of Monmouth; Charles I. and his queen, Henrietta Maria; Sir Philip Sidney; Monk, Duke of Albemarle; Courtenay, last Earl of Devon; and Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper. The panels of one of the largest state rooms-the dining-room-are entirely filled with portraits of distinguished persons by Vandyck. To these must be added portraits of all the Earls and Dukes of Bedford from the first, with their countesses and duchesses, copies of which, in the shape of miniatures by Bone, are to be seen in one of the larger rooms on the ground-floor. The cane of William, Lord Russell, with which he walked to the scaffold, hangs over his picture-a highly-treasured family relic.

Horace Walpole thus sarcastically sums up the contents of this collection :"There are here all the successions of the Earls and Countesses of Bedford, and all their progenies. One countess is a whole-length drawing in the drollest dress you ever saw; and there is another picture of the same woman leaning on her hand, I believe by Cornelius Johnson (Jansen), and as fine a head as ever I saw." (This was Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, the patron of Ben Jonson, Drayton, &c.) "There are many of Queen Elizabeth's worthies-the Leicesters, the Essexes, and Philip Sidneys, and a very curious portrait of the last Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, who died at Padua. Have I not read of him that he was in love with Queen Elizabeth, and Queen Mary with him? He is quite in the style of the former's lovers-red-bearded, and not comely. There is Essex's friend, the Earl of Southampton; his son, the Lord Treasurer; and Madame L'Empoisonneuse, that married Carr, Earl of Somerset: she is very pretty. Have you not seen a copy Vertue has made of Philip and Mary? That is in this gallery, too, but more curious than good."

It is clear, however, from what he scribbles to his friends, that Horace Walpole found

THE PORTRAITS AT WOBURN

211

the task of writing the catalogue rather a dry and dull one, for he had a downright horror of working out pedigrees and genealogies. "For mercy's sake," he writes, "do not let the duke suppose he owes me any thanks; he might as well think himself obliged to his frame-maker for cleaning a few old frames of some of his family pictures, and writing their names in a modern hand."

Sir Bernard Burke remarks generally, with respect to this collection, that "to the historian or the antiquary its chief attractions will consist in the portraits of the illustrious dead which it contains, whilst the artist, as such, will find greater pleasure in dwelling on the numerous works of the eminent masters, of whom it affords, for the most part, excellent specimens. It will be sufficient to mention the names of Rembrandt, Murillo, Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorraine, Gaspar Poussin, Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, Teniers, and Canaletti; though the list might be much extended."

To the general run of visitors the most interesting portraits here are those of Lord William Russell and his wife, the excellent Lady Rachel Russell. Readers of English history, by whatever author written, will not have forgotten how Lord William Russell, though innocent, was saddled by a venal Court and Government with a share in the Rye House Plot for the murder of Charles II. and the Duke of York, to which he was in no way privy, and was accordingly executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, nominally on that charge, though in reality his only offence was his zeal for the Bill for the exclusion of the latter from the throne; or how he met his death with "manly firmness and Christian meekness," Dr. Burnet standing and praying by his side. Nor will they forget how, within six years, the next year after the Revolution of 1688, the attainder which had been passed upon him was reversed, almost without an opposing voice; "the desolation of his noble house, the misery of his bereaved father, the blighted prospects of his orphan children, and above all, the union of womanly tenderness and angelic patience in her who had been dearest to the brave sufferer, who had sat with the pen in her hand by his side at the bar, who had cheered the gloom of his cell, and who, on his last day of life, had shared with him the memorials of the great sacrifice, softening" (as Macaulay writes) "the hearts of many who were little in the habit of pitying an opponent." It is impossible to peruse the account of his trial, sentence, and execution without being persuaded that his conviction was a foregone conclusion, and that his decapitation was a murder under the guise of law, committed on one whom Charles Knight calls "the purest of patriots, though his patriotism was perhaps dimmed by religious intolerance." We read in Burnet that the speech which he delivered on the scaffold, in which he declared his innocence, was printed, and read with eagerness in every corner of the town, within an hour or two after the axe had fallen; a copy of it, as it was printed on that day, hangs on the wall at Woburn, near the picture of his execution. It was probably written by the noble victim and his wife, with

the aid of Dr. Burnet. Of Lord William, Macaulay writes, in his eloquent and epigrammatic language, "Russell, who appears to have been guilty of no offence falling within the definition of high treason, and Sidney, of whose guilt no legal evidence could be produced, were both beheaded in defiance of law and justice. Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian, Sidney with the fortitude of a Stoic." One portrait of Lady Rachel Russell represents her at a very advanced age, and

nearly blind. It is stated by many writers that she lost her eye-sight by weeping for the loss of her husband. She is painted in her widow's weeds, with her head reclining on her hand in an attitude of sorrow; and the picture seems to confirm the story. The one of which we give a reproduction is the more generally known.

Most visitors who have gone over the gallery will agree in considering the finest portrait of all, artistically speaking, to be that of Francis, fourth Earl of Bedford. He is in a black silk dress, standing in an attitude of repose, with his left hand hanging by his side. It was painted by Vandyck in 1636, and, as Dr. Waagen observes, "it combines a remarkably noble conception with the deep, warm, golden tone and the finished execution so peculiar to the painter at that time." The companion portrait, that of his lordship's consort, Ann Carr, is

much admired.

LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL.

(From the Original by Sir Peter Lely.)

She is painted in a white silk dress, and the picture unites the triple merit of rare beauty of features, delicacy of touch, and most careful execution.

The stiff and formal portrait of Queen Mary, painted on a panel by Sir Antonio More, depicts her with harsh and almost repulsive features. Another picture represents her and Philip in their "courting" days, half seated and half standing, in stiff, ungainly attitudes.

"A pale Roman nose, a head of hair loaded with crowns and powdered with diamonds, a vast ruff, and still vaster fardingale, and a bushel of pearls, are the features by which everybody knows at once the pictures of Queen Elizabeth." So writes Horace Walpole; and it is difficult to believe that he had not the Woburn portrait before him in his mind's eye when he penned those words.

Of the other pictures the most generally admired are those of Rembrandt, Cuyp, Antonio More, &c., painted by themselves, and hung in the library; the Duke and Duchess of Bedford and the Marchioness of Tavistock, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; a Scripture subject, by Annibale