remained in the possession of the Townshend family.** Walpole has
given a description of the place in the days when he used to visit
it.

** Bigland, "History of Gloucestershire," vol. ii. p. 200.

"I stayed two days at George Selwyn's house, called Matson, which
lies on Robin Hood's Hill; it is lofty enough for an Alp, yet it is
a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over it,
springs that long to be cascades in twenty places of it, and from
the summit of it beats even Sir George Lyttleton's views, by having
the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening to the
horizon. His house is small, but neat. King Charles lay here at the
siege, and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the
window-shutters of his chamber, as a memorandum of his being there.
Here is a good picture of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in his later
age, . . . and here is the very flower pot and counterfeit
association for which Bishop Sprat is taken up, and the Duke of
Marlborough sent to the Tower. The reservoirs on the hill supply the
city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by them, and I
believe by some wine too. . . .

"A little way from the town are the ruins of Lantony Priory; there
remains a pretty old gateway, which G. Selwyn has begged to erect on
the top of his mountain, and it will have a charming effect."*

* "The Letters of Horace Walpole," vol. ii. p. 354.

Selwyn's schooldays were passed at Eton with Gray and Walpole. In
1739 he became an undergraduate of Hertford College, Oxford, or Hart