AUDLEY END, WESTERN FRONT.
Journeying farther from London, and into the county of Essex, we come to the little river Cam, and on the side of its valley, among the gentle undulations of the Essex uplands, is seen the palace of Audley End, and beyond it the village of Saffron Walden. Here in earlier times was the abbey of Walden, which, when dissolved by Henry VIII., was granted to Sir Thomas Audley, who then stood high in royal favor. But almost all remains of this abbey have disappeared, and Sir Thomas, who was Speaker of the House, got the grant because of his industry in promoting the king's wishes for the dissolution of the religious houses, and was also made Lord Audley of Walden. This, as Fuller tells us, was "a dainty morsel, an excellent receipt to clear the Speaker's voice, and make him speak clear and well for his master." But he did not live long to enjoy it, although giving the estate his name, and it passed ultimately to the Duke of Norfolk, after whose execution it became the property of his son, Lord Thomas Howard, whom Queen Elizabeth made Baron Walden, and King James appointed lord treasurer and promoted to be Earl of Suffolk. He built the great palace of Audley End, which was intended to eclipse every palace then existing in England. It was begun in 1603, and was finished in 1616, the date still remaining upon one of the gateways. King James twice visited Audley End while building, and is said to have remarked, as he viewed its enormous proportions, that the house was too large for a king, though it might do for a lord treasurer. It cost over $1,000,000, but no accurate account was kept, and the earl was so straitened by the outlay, that after being dismissed from office he was compelled to sell out several other estates, and died nearly $200,000 in debt. The second and third earls tried to maintain the white elephant, but found it too heavy a burden, and the latter sold the house to King Charles II. for $250,000, of which $100,000 remained on mortgage. It was known as the New Palace, and became a royal residence. It consisted of a large outer court and a smaller inner one. Around these the buildings were constructed from one to three stories high, with towers at the corners and centres of the fronts. The impression produced by the design is said not to have been very favorable, it being insufficiently grand for so vast a pile, and while it was a pleasant residence in summer, the want of facilities for heating made it in winter little better than a barn. When Pepys visited Audley End in 1660 and 1668, his chief impression seems to have been of the cellars, for he writes: "Only the gallery is good, and, above all things, the cellars, where we went down and drank of much good liquor. And, indeed, the cellars are fine, and here my wife and I did sing, to my great content." It was in the following year that the house was sold to the king. In 1701, however, it passed back to the fifth Earl of Suffolk, and about twenty years later a large part of the structure was taken down. Three sides of the great court, including the gallery referred to by Pepys, were demolished, and Audley End was reduced to the buildings around the smaller quadrangle; this was further reduced in 1749, so that the house assumed its present appearance of three sides of a square, open towards the east, and thus remains an excellent type of an early Jacobean mansion, its best view being from the garden front. Within it has fine apartments, and contains the only authentic portrait of George II. that is known. This king would never sit for his picture, and the artist by stealth sketched his likeness from a closet near the staircase of Kensington Palace, where he had an excellent view of the peculiar monarch. It is, as Thackeray says, the picture of a "red-faced, staring princeling," but is believed true to nature nevertheless. Lady Suffolk, it seems, was one of his few favorites. Audley End has been for a long time in possession of the Barons of Braybrooke, and is their principal seat. Lord Cornwallis, of American Revolutionary remembrance, was a member of this family, and his portrait is preserved here.
VIEWS IN SAFFRON WALDEN.
1. Town-Hall. 2. Church. 3. Entrance to the Town.
Over the undulating surface of the park, barely a mile away, can be seen the pretty spire of Saffron Walden Church, with the village clustering around it. Here on a hill stand the church and the castle, originally of Walden, but from the extensive cultivation of saffron in the neighborhood the town came to have that prefix given it; it was grown there from the time of Edward III., and the ancient historian Fuller quaintly tells us "it is a most admirable cordial, and under God I owe my life, when sick with the small-pox, to the efficacy thereof." Fuller goes on to tell us that "the sovereign power of genuine saffron is plainly proved by the antipathy of the crocodile thereto; for the crocodile's tears are never true save when he is forced where saffron groweth, whence he hath his name of croco-deilos, or the saffron-fearer, knowing himself to be all poison, and it all antidote." Saffron attained its highest price at Walden in Charles II.'s time, when it was as high as twenty dollars a pound, but its disuse in medicine caused its value to diminish, and at the close of the last century its culture had entirely disappeared from Walden, though the prefix still clings to the name of the town. While saffron was declining, this neighborhood became a great producer of truffles, and the dogs were trained here to hunt the fungus that is so dear to the epicure's palate. The church of St. Mary, which is a fine Perpendicular structure and the most conspicuous feature of Saffron Walden, was built about four hundred years ago, though the slender spire crowning its western tower is of later date, having been built in the present century. In the church are buried the six Earls of Suffolk who lived at Audley End, and all of whom died between 1709 and 1745. The ruins of the ancient castle, consisting chiefly of a portion of the keep and some rough arches, are not far from the church, and little is known of its origin. There is a museum near the ruins which contains some interesting antiquities and a fine natural-history collection. The newly-constructed town-hall, built in antique style, overhanging the footway and supported on arches, is one of the most interesting buildings in Saffron Walden: the mayor and corporation meeting here date their charter from 1549. Not far away, at Newport, lived Nell Gwynn in a modest cottage with a royal crown over the door. She was one of the numerous mistresses of Charles II., and is said to have been the only one who remained faithful to him. She bore him two sons, one dying in childhood, and the other becoming the Duke of St. Albans, a title created in 1684, and still continued in the persons of his descendants of the family of Beauclerc. Nell was originally an orange-girl who developed into a variety actress, and, fascinating the king, he bought her from Lord Buckhurst, her lover, for an earldom and a pension. Nell is said to have cost the king over $300,000 in four years. She had her good qualities and was very popular in England, and she persuaded the king to found Chelsea Hospital for disabled soldiers, and he also bore her genuine affection, for his dying words were, "Let not poor Nelly starve." She survived him about seven years. Also in the neighborhood, at Littlebury, was the home of Winstanley, the builder of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, who perished in it when it was destroyed by a terrific storm in 1703.
