“A mansion more majestic Than all those she saw before; Many a gallant gay domestic Bows before him at the door. And they speak in gentle murmur When they answer to his call, While he treads with footstep firmer, Leading on from hall to hall. And, while now she wonders blindly, Nor the meaning can divine, Proudly turns he round and kindly, ‘All of this is mine and thine.’ Here he lives in state and bounty, Lord of Burleigh, fair and free, Not a lord in all the county Is so great a lord as he.” The original person from whose doings this poem was written was, in fact, Henry Cecil, tenth Earl, and afterwards first Marquis, of Exeter. He was the lord of Burghley House (not “Burleigh Hall”), by Stamford town, and his descendants are there yet. Not a landscape painter, but a kind of London man about town and Member of Parliament for Stamford, 1774–1780, 1784–1790, and then plain Mr. Henry Cecil (for he did not succeed his uncle in the title until December, 1793), he is found rather mysteriously wandering about Shropshire in 1789, calling himself (there is never any accounting for taste) “Mr. Jones.” He was then a man who had been married fourteen years, and was thirty-six years of age. The scene opens (thus to put it in dramatic form) on an evening towards the end of June, 1789, when a stranger knocked at the door of Farmer Hoggins at Great Bolas in Shropshire, and begged shelter for the night. He was obviously a gentleman, but called himself by the very plebian name of “John Jones.” He made himself so agreeable that his stay “for the night” lasted some weeks, and he returned again in a month or so, taking up his residence in the village. The attraction which brought him back to Great Bolas was evidently Sarah Hoggins, the farmer’s daughter, at that time a girl of sixteen, having been born in June, 1773. He proposed for Sarah, and on April 17th, 1790, they were married in Great Bolas Church, the register showing that he married in the name of “John Jones.” Meanwhile he had purchased land in the village, and built a house which he called “Bolas Villa.” Gossip grew extremely busy with this mysterious stranger who had thus descended upon the place, and it was generally suspected that he was a highwayman in an extensive way of business, especially as some notable highway robberies happened coincidently with his appearance. Early in 1794, “Mr. John Jones,” living thus at Great Bolas, learnt that his uncle, the ninth Earl of Exeter, had died in December. Telling his wife they must journey into Northamptonshire, where he had business, they set out and arrived at “Burghley House, by Stamford town,” and there he disclosed to her for the first time that he was not “John Jones,” but Henry Cecil, and now Earl of Exeter.