I have heard your Lordship has been told there has been three thousand pounds laid out upon it; but upon examining into that account, I find I was not mistaken in what I believed the charge had been, which does not yet amount to eleven hundred pounds, nor did there want above two more to complete all that was intended to be done, and the planting and levelling included. And I believe it will be found that this was by one thousand pounds the cheapest way that could be thought on to manage that hill, so as not to be a fault in the approach. I am very doubtful whether your Lordship (or indeed my Lord Duke) has yet rightly taken the design of forming that side of the valley, where several irregular things are to have such a regard to one another, that I much fear the effects of so quick a sentence as has happened to pass upon the remains of the manour. I have, however, taken a good deal of it down, but before ’tis gone too far, I will desire your Lordship will give yourself the trouble of looking upon a picture I have made of it, which will at one view explain the whole design, much better than a thousand words. I’ll wait upon your Lordship with it as soon as I come to town, and hope in the mean time it won’t be possible that the pains I take in this particular, should be thought to proceed only from a desire of procuring myself an agreeable lodging. I do assure your Lordship that I have acted in this whole business upon a much more generous principle, and am much discouraged to find I can be suspected of so poor a contrivance for so worthless a thing; but I hope the close of this work will set me right in the opinion of those that have been pleased to employ me in it. I am Your Lordship’s, &c. J. VANBURGH. (Endorsed thus by the Duchess.) Nov. 9. All that Sir J. V. says in this letter is false. The manour house had cost me three thousand pounds, and was ordered to be pulled down, and the materialls made use of for things that were necessary to be done. The picture he sent to prevent this was false. My Lord Treasurer went to Blenheim to see the trick: ... and it is now ordered to be pulled down. _Reasons offered for preserving some part of the Old Manor, by Sir J. Vanburgh._[420] June 11, 1709.