married Joan, daughter and co-heir of Robert, 2nd Baron Marmyon, who died 1345; and, on the death of his two sons, the property, for a third time, passed to a female, in the person of his daughter Maude, who married Sir Ralph Cromwell. He was summoned to Parliament as Baron Cromwell in 1375, and died in 1398. His grandson, the 3rd Baron, also a Ralph, married Margaet, sister and co-heir of William, last Baron D’Eyncourt. These several marriages with heiresses had largely augmented the estates and wealth of the successive families, and this Ralph, being made Lord Treasurer in 1433 by Henry VI., levelled the older castle to the ground, and, having obtained the Royal licence to rebuild, he erected the present majestic pile in 1440, at a cost, as William of Worcester informs us, {230} of 4,000 marks. At this palatial residence, and in London, he lived in great state, his household consisting of 100 persons, and his suite, when he rode to London, commonly comprised 120 horsemen; his annual expenditure being £5,000. In a previous chapter we quoted a charge made upon Lord Clinton, when living at Tattershall, for 1,000 faggots. At Hurstmonceux Castle, a similar building to Tattershall, the oven is described by Dugdale (“Beauties of England—Sussex,” p. 206) as being 14ft. long. In such a furnace the daily consumption of faggots would not be a trifle. To speak here for a moment of building in brick. From the ordinarily unsightly character of brick structures it is usual to regard brick-building disparagingly, but we have only to go to Italy, the hereditary land of Art in various forms, to see edifices unsurpassed for beauty in the world, which are constructed wholly, or in part, of brick. The Cathedral at Cremona, with its delicately-moulded Rose windows and its Torrazo, 400ft. in height; those of St. Pantaleone, Pavia; of the Broletto, Brescia; or the Ducal Palace at Mantua, with its rich windows; or the Palazzo dei Signori at Verona, with tower 300ft. high; not to mention more, are all splendid specimens of what can be achieved in brick. In England, nothing like these has ever been attempted; the only modern church of brick worth a mention is that of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, with its graceful spire. In the 15th century, and slightly earlier, a few substantial and finely-constructed erections of brick were made, of which one of the earliest, if not the earliest, was the magnificent Gate Tower of Layer Marney in Essex, built by the 1st Lord Marney, and for which he is said to have imported Italian workmen for the moulded bricks. Owing to his death the entire structure was not completed. But the gateway, flanked by two octagonal towers, each of eight stories; and the summit, chimneys and divisions of windows, with their varied mouldings, are a very fine piece of work. {231a} Another of these brick structures, of about the same date, was Torksey Castle, in our own county; another was Hurstmonceux Castle, in Sussex, said by