An illustration is given of one of these chimneys which form such an attractive feature of the house.
Chimney at Compton Wynates.
It is unnecessary to record the history of Compton Wynyates. The present owner, the Marquis of Northampton, has written an admirable monograph on the annals of the house of his ancestors. Its builder was Sir William Compton,[35] who by his valour in arms and his courtly ways gained the favour of Henry VIII, and was promoted to high honour at the Court. Dugdale states that in 1520 he obtained licence to impark two thousand acres at Overcompton and Nethercompton, alias Compton Vyneyats, where he built a "fair mannour house," and where he was visited by the King, "for over the gateway are the arms of France and England, under a crown, supported by the greyhound and griffin, and sided by the rose and the crown, probably in memory of Henry VIII's visit here."[36] The Comptons ever basked in the smiles of royalty. Henry Compton, created baron, was the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and his son William succeeded in marrying the daughter of Sir John Spencer, richest of City merchants. All the world knows of his ingenious craft in carrying off the lady in a baker's basket, of his wife's disinheritance by the irate father, and of the subsequent reconciliation through the intervention of Queen Elizabeth at the baptism of the son of this marriage. The Comptons fought bravely for the King in the Civil War. Their house was captured by the enemy, and besieged by James Compton, Earl of Northampton, and the story of the fighting about the house abounds in interest, but cannot be related here. The building was much battered by the siege and by Cromwell's soldiers, who plundered the house, killed the deer in the park, defaced the monuments in the church, and wrought much mischief. Since the eighteenth-century disaster to the family it has been restored, and remains to this day one of the most charming homes in England.
Window-catch, Brockhall, Northants
"The greatest advantages men have by riches are to give, to build, to plant, and make pleasant scenes." So wrote Sir William Temple, diplomatist, philosopher, and true garden-lover. And many of the gentlemen of England seem to have been of the same mind, if we may judge from the number of delightful old country-houses set amid pleasant scenes that time and war and fire have spared to us. Macaulay draws a very unflattering picture of the old country squire, as of the parson. His untruths concerning the latter I have endeavoured to expose in another place.[37] The manor-houses themselves declare the historian's strictures to be unfounded. Is it possible that men so ignorant and crude could have built for themselves residences bearing evidence of such good taste, so full of grace and charm, and surrounded by such rare blendings of art and nature as are displayed so often in park and garden? And it is not, as a rule, in the greatest mansions, the vast piles erected by the great nobles of the Court, that we find such artistic qualities, but most often in the smaller manor-houses of knights and squires. Certainly many higher-cultured people of Macaulay's time and our own could learn a great deal from them of the art of making beautiful homes.