Lord Purbeck, upon the death of his wife, daughter of Sir Edward Coke, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Slingsby, by whom he had a son, Robert, which Robert, marrying the daughter and heir of Sir John Danvers, one of the judges who sat on the trial of King Charles the First, obtained a patent from Cromwell, Protector of the Commonwealth, to change his name to Danvers, alledging as the reasons for his so doing "the many disservices done to the commonwealth by the name of the family of Villiers." In 1657, Viscount Purbeck granted a lease of the manor and house of Stoke, to Sir Robert Gayer during his own life; and in the same year, his son, Robert Villiers, or Danvers, sold his reversionary interest in the estate to Sir R. Gayer for the sum of eight thousand five hundred and sixty-four pounds. The family of Gayers continued in possession until 1724, when the estate was sold for twelve thousand pounds to Edmund Halsey, Esq., M.P., who died in 1729, his daughter Anne married Sir Richard Temple, created Viscount Cobham, who survived him; and she resided at Stoke until her death in the year 1760. The house and manor of Stoke were sold in the same year, by the representatives of Edmund Halsey, to the Honorable Thomas Penn, Lord Proprietary of the Province of Pennsylvania, the eldest surviving son of the Honorable William Penn, the celebrated founder and original proprietary of the province. Upon the death of Thomas Penn, in 1775, the manor of Stoke, together with all his other estates, devolved upon his eldest surviving son, John, by the Right Honorable Lady Juliana, his wife, fourth daughter of the Earl of Pomfret. In 1789, the ancient mansion of Stoke, appearing to Mr. Penn, after some years absence in America, to demand very extensive repairs, (chiefly from the destructive consequences of damp in the principal rooms,) it was judged advisable to take it down. The style of its architecture was not of a kind the most likely to dissuade him from this undertaking. Most of the great buildings of Queen Elizabeth's reign have a style peculiar to themselves, both in form and finishing, where, though much of the old Gothic is retained, and a great part of the new style is adopted, yet neither predominates, while both, thus indiscriminately blended, compose a fantastic species, hardly reducible to any class or name. One of its characteristics is the affectation of _large_ and _lofty_ windows, where, says Lord Bacon, "you shall have sometimes faire houses so full of glass, that one cannot tell where to become to be out of the sun." A perfect specimen of this fantastic style, in complete repair, may be seen in Hardwick Hall, county of Derby, one of the many residences of that princely and amiable nobleman, the Duke of Devonshire, and a perfect _contrast_ to it, at his other noble residence not many miles distant, in the same county, Chatsworth, "the Palace of the Peak."