Of a minister in this church we have an amusing notice in Evelyn’s Memoirs, where the following contrast is found, under date of August 18th, 1688: “Dr. Jeffryes [a misnomer for _Jessop_], the minister of Althorp, who was my Lord’s chaplain when Ambassador in France, _preached the shortest discourse I ever heard_; but what was defective in the amplitude of his sermon he had supplied in the largeness and convenience of the parsonage-house.”[42] Less than a mile from the church is the famous seat of the Spencers, surrounded by a park of five hundred acres, with one of the gates opening near the church. Bordering on the churchyard are oak-trees which were growing at the purchase of the estate in the reign of Henry the Seventh. Evelyn was often here, a delighted visitor. On one occasion he speaks of “the house, or rather palace, at Althorp.”[43] Elsewhere he describes it as “in a pretty open bottom, very finely watered, and flanked with stately woods and groves in a park.”[44] An engraving by the younger Luke Vorsterman, a Dutch artist, attests the attraction of the place at this time. One feature of the park excited the admiration of Evelyn, and at a later day of Mrs. Jameson, who gives to it some beautiful pages in her “Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad.” It is a record of the dates when different plantations of trees were begun. While recommending this practice in his “Sylva,” Evelyn remarks, “The only instance I know of the like in our own country is in the park at Althorp in Northamptonshire, the magnificent seat of the Right Hon. the Earl of Sunderland.”[45] Here are six of these commemorative stones. The first records a wood planted by Sir John Spencer, in 1567 and 1568; the second, a wood planted by Sir John Spencer, son of the former, in 1589; the third, a wood planted by Robert Lord Spencer, in 1602 and 1603; the fourth, a wood planted by Sir William Spencer, Knight of the Bath, afterwards Lord Spencer, in 1624. This stone is ornamented with the arms of the Spencers, and on the back is inscribed, VP AND BEE DOING AND GOD WILL PROSPER. In this scenery and amidst these associations the Washingtons lived. When the emigrant left, in 1657, the woods must have been well grown. Not long afterwards they arrested the attention of Evelyn. The fifth and sixth stones were never seen by the Washingtons, or by Evelyn. They were set up in 1798 and 1800, by George John, second Earl Spencer, who planted trees as well as amassed books.