made it for a time his retreat after being ousted from Hampton Court.
A retreat it was to him in every sense. He dismissed his servants
and all state, and cultivated the deepest despondency. His inexorable
master, however, looked down on him, from his ravished towers hard by,
unmoved, and, as the sequel in a few years proved, unsatisfied in
his greed. Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, was called upon for a
contribution. He loyally surrendered to the king the whole estate of
Esher, a splendid mansion with all appurtenances and a park a mile
in diameter. Henry annexed Esher to Hampton Court, and continued his
research for new subjects of spoliation. His daughter Mary gave Esher
back to the see of Winchester. Elizabeth bought it and bestowed it on
Lord Howard of Effingham, who well earned it by his services against
the Armada. Of the families who subsequently owned the place, the
Pelhams are the most noted. Now it has passed from their hands. That
which has alone been preserved of the palace of Wolsey is an embattled
gatehouse that looks into the sluggish Mole, and joins it mayhap in
musing over "the days that we have seen."

[Illustration: CLAREMONT.]

Claremont, its next neighbor, unites, with equal or greater charms of
landscape, in preaching the old story of the decadence of the great.
Lord Clive, the Indian conqueror and speculator, built the house from
the designs of Capability Browne at a cost of over a hundred thousand
pounds. His dwelling and his monument remain to represent Clive. After
him, two or three occupants removed, came Leopold of Belgium, with
his bride, the Princess Charlotte, pet and hope of the British
nation. Their stay was more transient still--a year only, when death
dissipated their dream and cleared the way to the throne for Victoria.
Leopold continued to hold the property, and it became a generation