Buckingham’s delight in improving his estates soon found scope here. “I have not beene yet att New Hall,” wrote his lady to him, in 1623, when he was in Spain, “but I do intend to go shortly to see how things ar ther. The walk to the house is done, and the tenis-court is all most done, but the garden is not done, nor nothing to the bouling greene, and yett I told Totherby, and he tould me he would sett men a worke presently; but I warant you they will all be redey before you come.” In a letter from the Countess of Denbigh, she informs her brother that there is one of the finest approaches to the house made that she ever saw. Buckingham, on his return from Spain, seems to have enjoyed thoroughly the sight of Newhall, in all its freshness, and to have gloried in its sylvan beauties. “I have found this morning,” he writes to the King, “another fine wood that must go in with the rest, and two hundred acres of meadows, broomes, closes, and plentiful springs running through them, so that I hope Newhall shall be nothing inferior to Burleigh. My stags are all lusty, my calf bold, and others are so too. My Spanish colts are fat, and so is my jovial filley.”[298] How gladly must he have returned to those more innocent pursuits of a country life, that formed so strong a contrast to the harassing existence of a courtier.[299] Footnote 298: Harleian MSS., 6987., quoted in Nichols’s Progresses of King James. Footnote 299: Newhall is now a nunnery. Another place much coveted by Buckingham was stoutly refused, even to the all-powerful favourite. This was Beddington Hall, in Surrey, then possessed, and still inhabited, by the ancient family of Carew, on whom it was bestowed, having been before a royal manor, by Queen Elizabeth. It was, probably, its vicinity to London which increased Buckingham’s desire to possess this fine old house, with its stately precincts. “The Marquis,” as we learn from a private letter of the day, from London, “would settle himself hereabout, and is much in love with Beddington, near Croydon, having won over the King, Prince, and others, to move Sir Nicholas Carew about it; but it seems he will not be removed, by reason his uncle bestowed it so frankly on him, with purpose to continue his memory there, and to that end caused him to change his name. If his lordship would have patience, he would soon find out many places convenient enough, or, at farthest, stay for Gorhambury, whereof (they say) he hath the reversion after my Lord Chancellor’s life, but upon what terms and conditions is only between themselves.”[300] Footnote 300: Inedited Letters in the State Paper Office, Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, July 31, 1619.