When Mackey wrote his ‘Tour through England’ (1720), Ken Wood had become the property of one Dale, an upholsterer, who is said to have bought it out of the ‘Bubbles.’[200] His hold upon it appears to have been quite as fleeting, for he very soon mortgaged it to Lord Hay for £1,575. Fifteen years later we find his lordship bringing an action[201] to foreclose, on the plea that he can neither get principal nor interest from him, and that a second mortgage had been made to William, Lord Forbes, and the mortgagee had suffered the house to go to ruin, had felled a quantity of timber, and committed great waste. The end was that, after being allowed six months to pay £1,907 7s. 6d. (October 24, 1724), the miserable upholsterer found himself absolutely foreclosed of all equity of redemption of the mortgaged property, and shortly after, February, 1725, the same order was made against Lord Forbes, the second mortgagee. ‘This is interesting,’ says Mr. Lloyd, ‘as showing the value of the property 167 years ago. It is set out as a messuage, pleasure-grounds, orchards, kitchen-garden, paddock, and woodlands, with four ponds, covering 22 acres, together with £5 per annum parcel of £15 a year secured upon lease granted to the Governors of the Waterworks. Yet, all this only brought as much as would cover the first mortgage, under £2,000—little more than £100 per acre; and yet within the last three years (1892) some 200 acres of the adjoining bare land has been sold by Lord Mansfield for public purposes at £1,000 per acre! and the vendor was so completely master of the situation as to compel the erection of a fence by the public of something approaching the value of the fee simple of the estate when it was sold by order of the Court in 1724; and doubtless it would have sold for more if cut up for building purposes.’ In the same year that Lord Hay recovered the estate the famous Duke of Argyle purchased it; and at his death he left it to his nephew, Lord Bute. Horace Walpole, his old schoolfellow, describes him as a man of taste, who he thinks ‘meant well.’ He was said to be the favourite of the Dowager Princess of Wales (mother of George III.), who, according to the above authority, forced the King to employ him. He proved a weak and incompetent Minister, who, in his desire to fuse all parties, offended all. He married the only daughter of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the sometime friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole and Pope, and, Court scandal apart, proved passably amiable in his domestic relations.[202]