'To my best b[rother]

Sur Nicholas
Carew, at

beddington.

'I DESIAR, good brother, that you will be pleased to let me berri the worthi boddi of my nobell husban, Sur Walter Ralegh, in your chorche at beddington, wher I desiar to be berred. The lordes have give me this ded boddi, though they denied me his life. This nit hee shall be brought you, with two or three of my men. Let me her presently,

'God hold me in my wites.'

'E. R.'

Unfortunately there is no date to this note, yet no reasonable cause can be assigned for any refusal by Sir Nicholas of his sister's request.

Sir Edmond Nicholas, who settled at West Horsley soon after the above purchase, was secretary to Villiers Duke of Buckingham when Lord High Admiral. He also filled other appointments, adhered to the party of the king during the Civil War, and followed Charles II. into exile. After the Restoration, Sir Edmond Nicholas was reinstated as Secretary of State. He resigned in 1663, having declined a peerage offered him by the king, as a cheap reward for his long and faithful services. He then retired from public life, and passed his few remaining years at West Horsley. He died in 1669, aged 77. He was succeeded by his eldest son John, who, like his father, attended Charles II. in exile. He died in 1704, at the age of 81. He married the Lady Penelope, daughter of Spencer Compton, Earl of North

ampton, who was slain during the Civil Wars at Hopton Heath, near Stafford. Lady Nicholas also met with a violent death, being killed at Horsley by the falling of a chimney during the great storm of 1703. Sir John, who entered all his expenses and memoranda in small almanacks, thus records the accident: Nov. 26th.-This night was the dreadful storm and tempest, wherein my deare wife was killed in our bed by the fall of the chimney, and I was wonderfully preserved by God's providence. Væ! væ! væ! A little after three on Saturday morning this sad affliction befel me.'

In An Exact Relation of the late Dreadful Tempest, quarto, 1704, are the following particulars: My Lady Penelope Nicholas, living at Horsley with Sir John Nicholas, a learned and antient gentleman, was, as it was conceived, killed by the fall of a stack of chimneys; and her husband, Sir John, was taken out of the rubbish very dangerously hurt. But the chirurgeons, who viewed the body, gave in their opinion, "That her ladyship, being between 80 and 90, was killed by the fright of that most terrible storm; and though her leg was broke, yet no blood, nor matter flowing from it, [that] she was dead before the fall of the chimney.'

The last of Sir John Nicholas's three sons, coming into the possession of West Horsley, and dying a bachelor, bequeathed the estate, by will, to Henry Weston, Esq. He formed a design of rebuilding the mansion of West Horsley; and he one day showed the plan for a new house to the Duke of Marlborough, who looked at him, and said, ' Pray,

Mr. Weston, how old are you?' 'I was so struck,' said he, 'at the question, that I laid aside all thoughts of building, and only made some alterations.' He died in 1759.

In the pedigree of the Weston family, its origin is traced to Radulphus de Wistaneston, who held certain lands under the Lord de Braose, in the twentieth year of William the Conqueror. The pedigree is entered on a roll of vellum. It enumerates all the lands and estates that have belonged to different branches of the family, down to 1624, and has the arms blazoned of all the families which the Westons have intermarried with. The pedigree fills eight pages in Brayley's History of Surrey.

West Horsley Place, the family mansion of the Westons, is a gabled brick edifice of the time of James I., but with alterations in the reigns of George 1. and II. The house is thought to have been originally erected by Sir Anthony Browne, after his marriage with the Fair Geraldine; and a plan of the old drawing-room ceiling bears the crest of the Earl of Kildare, the father of the Fair Geraldine; also the initials A. B., and various crests, all known to have belonged to the Browne family.

Here is preserved a collection of portraits (many of the Westons) originally formed by Sir Edward Nicholas, including Sir Walter Raleigh, apparently an original; Jerome Weston, Earl of Portland, by Vandyke; Sir Richard Fanshawe, ambassador to Spain; Sir William Perkins of Chertsey; and his brother, Captain Matthew Perkins. Among the papers of Sir William Perkins, at West Horsley,

are documents relating to his having sold to the Crown a precious stone, which he calls 'a carbuncle, more valuable than a diamond,' for which he received the sum of £12,000. At Horsley, too, is a collection of papers of curious things, 'as well during the troubles, as since,'-the Restoration, the Popish Plot, and the Revolution, and its Parliaments and journals, all which, if digested into a method, 'would form an authentic record of transactions for near one hundred years past.'

SUTTON PLACE AND THE WESTONS.

The Westons of Sutton (Sudtone, in Domesday), are also a family of considerable antiquity. The manor descended to Margaret Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry the Seventh; and on her decease, in 1509, it came into the possession of her grandson, Henry the Eighth. This prince granted the manor of Sutton, with its appurtenances, to Sir Richard Weston, Knt., with licence to impark land and pasture, wood, heath, and furze, with free warren within the limits of the forest. The grantee, Sir Richard Weston, was the founder of Sutton Place, and the elder brother of William Weston, the last Prior of the house of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, at Clerkenwell. Sir Richard was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Henry VIII., Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries, Treasurer of Calais, and Under-Treasurer of England. He had an only

son, named Francis, who was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. He was one of the five unfortunate persons involved in the fate of that queen; for, being accused of high treason, in holding an alleged criminal intercourse with her, he was convicted on trial, and beheaded on Tower Hill, on the 17th of May 1536, whilst his father was still living.

Among his descendants was Sir Richard Weston, remembered for his valuable improvements in agriculture and commerce. In 1782, Mrs. Melior Mary Weston dying unmarried, devised the estate and manor of Sutton to John Webb, Esq., of Sarsfield Court, when he assumed the name and arms of Weston; this gentleman being a maternal descendant of Robert Weston of Prested, in Essex, who lived in the reign of Henry vi., and was the brother of John Weston of Bolton, the ancestor of the Westons of Sutton.1

Sutton Place was so named to distinguish it from the more ancient manor-house called Sutton House, the re

'Humphrey Weston, who resided at Prested, in Richard the Second's reign, was, by different wives, the founder of two different families. The Westons of Sutton descended from his son John, by his first wife, Catherine; whilst the ancestor of those who continued at Prested was Robert, his son by Joan, his second wife; and from a younger branch of which sprang Richard Weston, created Earl of Portland by Charles I. John Weston, who was Prior of St. John's, Clerkenwell, in the years 1477 and 1485, and William, his nephew, who was also Prior of the same house on the eve of its dissolution, were both of this family. The latter is represented to have died of grief on the very day when the Act was passed for dissolving his monastery, viz. on the 7th of May 1540, 32d of Henry VIII.