The Magus of Freemasonry by Tobias Churton

Author:Tobias Churton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2011-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

Swallowfield church.

Swallowfield Park, Berkshire, today—more a haven for anglers than for alchemists.

Backhouse married Anne, the daughter of Brian Richards of Hartley Westpall, Hampshire, by whom he had two sons (who predeceased him) and a daughter, Flower. Flower first married William Bishop (d. 1661) of South Warnborough, Hampshire. Her second husband was her father’s kinsman Sir William Backhouse, Bart. (1641–69). Her third husband was Henry Hyde (1638–1709), the second Earl of Clarendon, who rebuilt Swallowfield Park in a style admirable to this day.

On October 22, 1685, Ashmole’s acquaintance, the famous diarist John Evelyn, accompanied Lady Clarendon to her house in Swallowfield. Evelyn’s description of Swallowfield Park gives some idea of the joy that must have entered Ashmole’s heart when he rode or strode through the park to his spiritual father’s house:

This house is after the antient building of honourable gentlemens’ houses when they kept up antient hospitality, but the gardens and waters as elegant as ’tis possible to make a flat (site) by art and industry and no mean experience, my lady being so extraordinarily skilled in the flowery part and my lord in diligence of planting so that I have hardly seen a seat which shows more tokens of it than what is to be found here, not only in the delicious and rarest fruits of a garden, but in those innumerable timber trees in the grounds about the seat to the greatest ornament and benefit of the place.

There is one orchard of 1000 golden and other cider pippins, walks and groves of elms, limes, oaks and other trees. The garden is so beset with all manner of sweet shrubs that it perfumes the air. The distribution of the quarters, walks and parterres is also excellent.

The nurseries, kitchen garden full of the most desirable plants, two very noble Orangeries well furnished, but above all the canal and fishponds, the one fed with a white, the other with a black running water, fed by a quick and swift river, so well and plentifully stored with fish, that for pike, carp, bream and tench, I never saw anything approaching it.

We had at every meal carp and pike of size fit for the table of a Prince, and what added to the delight was to see the hundreds taken by the drag out of which, the cook standing by, we pointed out what most we had a mind to, and had carp that would have been worth at London twenty shillings a-piece.

The waters are flagged about with Calamus aromaticus, with which my lady has hung a closet that retains the smell very perfectly. There is also a certain sweet willow and other exotics, also a fine bowling green, meadow, pasture and wood. In a word all that can render a country seat delightful. There is besides a well furnished library in the house.23

Ashmole left no record of the carp, but he did make excellent use of the library.

Dying at Swallowfield on May 30, 1662, Backhouse left a number of manuscripts: The pleasant Founteine

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.