[1] After the death of More, this favorite home of his, where he had so frequently gathered "a choice company of men distinguished by their genius and learning," passed into the rapacious hands of his bad sovereign, and by him was presented to Sir William Pawlet, ultimately Lord High Treasurer and Marquis of Winchester; from his hands it passed into Lord Dacre's, to whom succeeded Lord Burghley; then followed his son, the Earl of Salisbury, as its master; from him it passed successively to the Earl of Lincoln, Sir Arthur Gorges, the Earl of Middlesex, Villiers duke of Buckingham, Sir Bulstrode Whitelock, the second Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Bristol, the Duke of Beaufort, and ultimately to Sir Hans Slonne, who obtained it in 1738, and after keeping it for two years razed it to the ground; an unhappy want of reverence on the part of the great naturalist for the home of so many great men. There is a print of it by J. Knyff, in 1699, which is copied (p. 292); it shows some old features, but it had then been enlarged and altered. Erasmus has well described it as it was in More's lifetime. It had "a chapel, a library, and a gallery, called the New Buildings, a good distance from his main house, wherein his custom was to busy himself in prayer and meditation, whensoever he was at leisure." Heywood, in his _II Moro_ (Florence, 1556), describes "the garden as wonderfully charming, both from the advantages of its site, for from one part almost the whole of the noble city of London was visible, and from the other the beautiful Thames, with green meadows by woody eminences all around, and also for its own beauty, for it was crowned with an almost perpetual verdure." At one side was a small green eminence to command the prospect.