Roger Pratt is mentioned in the text (p. 180) as the architect of Clarendon House, built by the Lord Chancellor Hyde, and as one of the men whom the great fire of London led into the pursuit of architecture. But his note-books show him to have been a student and practitioner of the art before that event. He was under no necessity to earn his own living, as he appears to have been a man of means, succeeding to his father’s property before he was of age, and in later years inheriting from his cousin the estate of Ryston. Still his interest in architecture was more than that of an amateur, for he clearly had a good knowledge of building, and a practical acquaintance with the many matters involved in the erection of large houses. He was born in 1620, and entered Magdalen College, Oxford, when he was nineteen; in the following year he became possessed of his father’s property, and three years later, in 1643, he went to travel abroad. He visited France, Italy, Holland, and Flanders, for the purpose, as he states, to “give himself some convenient education”; his tour lasted six years, thus keeping him away from England during the troubled times of the Civil War. This education was evidently in architecture, for although he became a member of the Inner Temple in 1657, there is no record of his having followed the law as a profession. He had rooms in the Temple from the time of his entrance until 1676, and doubtless they enabled him to enjoy congenial society and provided him with a convenient residence during his frequent visits to London. For more than half his tenancy he was a bachelor, for he did not marry until he was forty-eight, when he took to wife, in the year 1668, the eldest daughter of Sir Edward Monins of Kent, a lady of good family--“descended,” as he said, “from ye second best famely in hir county”--who brought him a fortune of £4,000. The same year saw another notable event in his life, the conferring of a knighthood upon him by Charles II. A year before his marriage he had succeeded to the Ryston estate, and thenceforward he appears to have followed the life of a country gentleman, for we hear no more of him in connection with architecture, save that he designed and built himself a new house at Ryston, which remains to this day, and is the only example of his work left, unless the attribution of Coleshill to Inigo Jones is a mistake. There is no doubt that Roger Pratt had something to do with Coleshill, which was built by a relative of his, Sir Henry Pratt; for he says, in considering the proportions of cornices for ceilings, “all wh. 4 last recited proportions have bin made use of by mee at Sr George Pratt’s at Colsell.” Sir George was the son and successor of Sir Henry.