Newhall, in Essex, was another residence of the Marquis of Buckingham’s. This property was purchased after Burleigh, in 1622, and was considered a great bargain, the money paid for it being twenty thousand pounds, for which there was a return of 1,200_l._a year in land, whilst the wood was valued at about 4,000_l._ or 5,000_l._ The house, which cost originally 14,000_l._ in building, was immediately put under the hands of Inigo Jones, the King’s surveyor, “to alter and translate” according to the modern fashion.[296] It is described by Evelyn, who visited it in 1656, in the following terms:—“I saw New Hall, built in a park, by Henry VII. and VIII., and given by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Sussex, who sold it to the late great Duke of Buckingham; and since seiz’d on by O. Cromwell (pretended Protector). It is a faire old house, built with brick, low, being only of two stories, as the manner then was; ye gatehouse better; the court large and pretty, the staircase of extraordinary wideness, with a piece representing Sir F. Drake’s action in the year 1580, an excellent sea-piece; ye galleries are trifling; the hall is noble; the garden a faire plot, and the whole seate well accommodated with water; but, above all, I admir’d the fine avenue, planted with stately lime trees, in foure rowes, for neere a mile in length. It has three descents, which is the only fault, and may be reform’d. There is another faire walk of ye same at the mall and wildernesse, with a tennis-court, and a pleasant terrace towards the park, which was well stor’d with deere and ponds.”[297] Footnote 296: Nichols, p. 881, from Harleian MSS., 6987. Footnote 297: For a fuller history of Newhall, see Nichols’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i., p. 94-6. Our ancestors understood well the adaptation of what may be called landscape gardening, to the style of their stately edifices; and Buckingham appears to have displayed in his improvements the magnificent and refined taste of a man whose nature was noble, and who was intended for a holier career than that of a royal favourite.