Elizabeth had come to live in the Manor House, at the age of four, that she might grow up in that healthful air: her father placing, with his customary delicacy, the daughter of Anne Boleyn under the care and tuition and example of his latest wife, the staid and studious Katherine Parr. To this latter, the King had given, on their marriage, the Manor House as her jointure; and there she lived in great state, after Henry’s death. Already before their marriage, even then a wistful widow, she had been bewitched by Seymour; and had meant to marry him, but for being forced to submit to the King’s will to make her his queen. Once queen, she seemed to subdue her passion for Seymour; says the naïve ancient chronicler, “it does not appear that any interruption to connubial comforts arose out of that particular source.” The estimable monarch rotted to death at the end of January, 1546–7, and the month of May was made merry to his widow—but thirty-five years old—by her secret marriage with Seymour. He was a turbulent, unscrupulous, handsome rascal, a greedy gambler, an insane intriguer; brother of the Protector Somerset, maternal uncle of King Edward VII., brother-in-law of the King; and he had tried to marry the Princess Elizabeth, then a girl of thirteen or fourteen, even while coquetting with the Queen-Dowager Katherine Parr. The girl with her Boleyn blood doubtless delighted in the mystery of the secret visits, which she knew of, and in the secret marriage later, which she surely suspected. The Queen-Dowager must have found it a trying and turbulent task to train her, and had more comfort in her other pupil, little Lady Jane Grey; who came here often for a visit, and for sympathy in the studies in which she was already a prodigy, even then at the age of eleven. She is a pure and perfect picture, this lovely and gentle girl, amid all these cruel and crafty creatures; but we cannot follow her farther in the touching tragedy, in which she played the innocent usurper, the blameless martyr. Nor can we say more of Katherine Parr—probably poisoned by her husband—nor of his death on the block, nor of the rascally and wretched record of the future owners of this Manor House; but let us come directly down to the year 1712, when it was sold by Lord William Cheyne, lord of the manor, widely known as “Lady Jane’s husband,” to Sir Hans Sloane. It was looked on then as a grand place, and Evelyn, visiting Lord Cheyne and Lady Jane, notes in his diary that the gardens are fine, the fountains “very surprising and extraordinary.” These had been designed by Winstanley, him who built Eddystone Lighthouse, and who perished therein.