When Henry VIII. had resolved to constitute Hampton Court an honour, and make a chace around it, he purchased several neighbouring estates, and, among them, Esher. A survey of the manor, early in the reign of Edward VI., shows there to have been here a mansion-house, sumptuously built, with divers offices, and an orchard and garden; and also a park adjoining, three miles in circuit, stocked with deer. We shall not trace the future possessors of Esher Place. The natural undulations of the ground would seem to have required but little improvement from the conceptions of Art. Yet Kent, the landscape-gardener, "the inventor of an art that realizes painting," was employed by the Right Hon. Henry Pelham, a leading statesman in the reign of George II., possessor of the estate; and the artist and patron have thus been inseparably connected with "Esher's peaceful grove, Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love." Noble fir and beech plantations cover the swelling heights of Esher; and there are fine oaks and elms, together with a remarkable holly-tree, the girth of which is between eight and nine feet. There are also several small ornamental buildings in the park; but the principal one in picturesqueness and historic interest, is the old brick tower, which formed part of "Asher Palace," when this estate belonged to the see of Winchester. It also constituted the central division of the mansion of the Pelhams, but was judiciously left standing, when the modern additions, by Kent, were pulled down by Mr. Spicer, who purchased the estate in 1805, and erected a new mansion upon a more elevated site. In Mr. Pelham's time, the mansion consisted of little more than the Tower, or Gate-house, to that in which Wolsey had resided, and to which Kent's additions were much inferior, proving, as Walpole remarks, "how little Kent conceived either the principles or graces of Gothic architecture." The erection of this Tower has been attributed to Wolsey, whose name is associated with several architectural works; but there is inferential evidence to show that he did not erect the Tower at Esher. Although nominated to the bishopric of Winchester in the autumn of 1528, he was not installed until April in the following year (and that by proxy), at which season he was too deeply engaged in the affair of the King's divorce, to have time for extensive building. The only _distinct_ notice which has appeared to connect Wolsey's name with any architectural works at Asher Palace, is where Cavendish speaks of the removal to Westminster (Whitehall), of "the new gallery which my lord had late before his fall newly set up at Asher;" and "the taking away thereof," he continues, "was to him corrosive--the which discouraged him very sore to stay there any longer,--for he was weary of that house at Asher, for with continual use it waxed unsavoury."