Wanstead House was another seat of Buckingham’s. The village which bears that name is situated on the borders of Waltham Forest; it commands a view of London and of Kent; the prospect stretching over a fertile and beautiful country. The manor of Wanstead had passed through various possessors to Sir John Heron, whose son, Sir Giles, being attainted, it was seized by the Crown. It was then granted to Robert, Lord Rich, who built the Manor House, then called Naked Hall House. The son of Lord Rich sold it to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; and it thus became eventually the residence of two royal favourites. The unscrupulous Dudley owned it for some years. He enlarged and improved the house; and here his marriage with the Countess of Essex was solemnised in 1578. At his death, Wanstead passed into the hands of his widow, Lady Essex; and the Earl being much involved in debt, an inventory was made of his property, real and personal. The furniture at Wanstead was valued at one hundred and nineteen pounds, six shillings, and sixpence; the pictures at eleven pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence. Such is the small amount of that which was reckoned costly in those days; yet there were in this collection original portraits of Henry the Eighth, of his daughters, and Lady Cartmills, Lady Rich, and thirty-six others not particularized. The library, consisting of an old Bible, of the Acts and Monuments, old and torn, of seven Psalters and a Service book, was valued at thirteen shillings and eightpence. The horses, however, were rated at three hundred and sixteen pounds and threepence. The Countess of Essex married Sir Christopher Blount, and by some family arrangements the house was conveyed to his son, Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire. At his death it was escheated to the Crown, and became the property of Buckingham. In 1619, he sold it to Sir William Mildmay;[301] and in our days this once noble possession, which has fallen, like its possessors, to ruin and destruction, came into the family of the present Earl of Mornington.[302] Footnote 301: Wright’s Hist. of Essex, vol. ii., p. 502-3. Footnote 302: Nichols, vol. iii., p. 364. A mineral spring was about this time discovered at Wanstead, and there was such “running there” by lords and ladies, that the spring was almost “drawn dry,” “and if it should hold on,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “it would put down the waters at Tunbridge, which, for these three or four years, have been much frequented, specially in summer, by many great persons, insomuch that they who have seen both, say it is not inferior to the Spa for good company, numbers of people, and other appearances.”[303] Footnote 303: