Essex possesses in Audley End (Plates XLII and XLIII) a special reminder of the past. This mansion was more imposing in size originally than it is now, so much so that James I is said to have remarked, “It is too much for a King, though it might do very well for a Lord Treasurer”; an observation matched by Queen Victoria, who on visiting Stafford House, now the London Museum, said to the Duchess of Sutherland, “I have come from my house to your palace.” Audley End takes its name from Sir Thomas Audley, afterwards Baron Audley of Walden, who was Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII in succession to Wolsey and More. The Manor of Walden had been granted by William the Conqueror to his famous follower, Geoffrey de Mandeville, first Earl of Essex, and in course of time had reverted to the Crown. Sir Thomas Audley acquired it in 1538, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries with which he had so much to do and by which he profited extremely. His elder daughter married first Lord Henry Dudley and afterwards the Duke of Norfolk, whose son, Lord Thomas Howard, created Earl of Suffolk and Baron Howard de Walden, built the magnificent home, named Audley End in memory of his mother’s father. Lord Thomas Howard, who was one of the heroes in the fight against the Armada, and became Lord Treasurer of England, made plans for a building of surpassing grandeur and spent something like £190,000 on the place, an enormous sum in those days. The work was begun in 1603 and was finished about 1616. Soon afterwards the fortunes of the owner changed and he found himself in the Tower. His successors were unable to maintain the establishment, and in 1666 the third Earl of Suffolk sold it to Charles II. It became a favourite place with the King, partly because it was on the road to Newmarket, and the mansion became alive with the festivities of the Court. Pepys records how having drunk the King’s health he played a flageolet solo in the enormous cellars, the echo pleasing him greatly. Evelyn described the mansion as “Indeede a cheerfull piece of Gotic building, or rather antico moderno,” conveying a hint of its Italian features. Audley End reverted to the Howard family in 1701, and in 1721 Vanbrugh took it in hand, demolishing three sides of the grand quadrangle and in other ways reducing its size to more homely proportions. At the end of the eighteenth century Lord Braybrooke restored the mansion at great expense and wrote its history. Another Jacobean house associated with the Howard family was Charlton House, Wiltshire (Plate XXXII), the seat near Malmesbury of the present Earl of Suffolk. This building was “modernised” by Matthew Brettingham in the time of George III, but many of its original characteristics survived.