Battersea Parish and Manor--Sir Robert Walpole and Bolingbroke--Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Thomson, and Mallet at Bolingbroke House--Burning of 500 Copies of the _Patriot King_--Death of Bolingbroke--Tomb, by Roubiliac--Site of Bolingbroke House--Horizontal Mill--"Pope's Parlour," and _Essay on Man_--Rose's _Diaries_, and Mallet's treacherous Executorship--Bolingbroke's Ingratitude--Lord Brougham's Comments--York House, Battersea--Archbishop Holgate--Residence of Sir Thomas Boleyn at Battersea--A Shakespearian Query 343-352 THE LAST OF EPPING FOREST. Inclosure of the Forest--A Royal Chase--Hainault--Forest Scenery--History of Epping Forest--Visit to Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge--Chingford Hall--Curious Tenure Custom--Elizabeth's Fondness for Hunting--Conclusion 353-361 APPENDIX. Ancient British Dwellings--The Saxon Hall--Abury and Stonehenge 362-364 I. Early English Life. DWELLING-PLACES OF THE EARLY BRITONS. It has been well observed that the structure of a house reveals much of the mode of life adopted by its inhabitants. The representations of the dwellings of the people of the less cultivated parts of Europe, contrasted with those of the more cultivated countries, should afford us the means of comparing their different degrees of civilization. In the same manner we may measure the growth of improvement in any one country by an attentive consideration of the structure and arrangement of the homes of the people at different periods. The aboriginal Britons are described as dwelling in slight cabins of reeds and wattles, and in some instances in _caverns of the earth_, many sets of which, arranged with some degree of symmetry, antiquaries have recognised; but Cæsar tells us that the maritime tribes had buildings in the fashion of the Gauls--that is, of wood, of a circular figure, and thatched. Such towns as they had were clusters of huts erected on a cleared portion of the forest, which covered the greater part of the island; and they were invariably surrounded by a rampart, constructed of felled trees strongly interlaced and wattled, and a deep fosse, which together formed a fortification. The site of the modern city of London, with the river Thames in front, the river Fleet on the west, and an almost inpenetrable forest in the rear, may be taken as a fair specimen of the locality usually selected for the residence of the British Chief.[1]