1 The transcripts of Kent’s letters (HA 8042-8048) are published by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

I first examined them at the Huntington in 1965, and since then have benefited from the advice and assistance of Jean Preston, former Curator of Manuscripts, and Mary L. Robertson, currently Curator of Manuscripts. Details of the acquisition and contents of the Hastings Collection are given in Guide to British Historical Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1982), 78-144.

The two published letters are of 25 September and 15 December 1739, from Kent to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, of which edited versions appear on pp. 23 and 26 respectively of HMC 78, Hastings III, 1724-1817 (1934).

For help in the preparation of this article I am grateful to Malcolm Baker, Canon J. E. Bowers, Peter Day, J.J. Farrell, John Harris, Ian Leith, Hentie Louw, John Physick, Hugh Richmond, Michael Snodin and Margaret Wills. Geoffrey Beard, Mary L. Robertson, Cinzia Sicca and Granville Wheler kindly read a draft of the text and made valuable suggestions for improvement.

2 According to Hugh Richmond, who generously examined and photographed the monument for me, the medallion is signed ‘M.^Ḷ Rysbrack, Fecit’, and the plinth bears the inscription ‘Gul^ṣ Kent Invenit’ and ‘Jos: Pickford: St’. Cf. the references in Webb, M.I., Michael Rysbrack, Sculptor (London, 1954), 218 Google Scholar, and Gunnis, Rupert, Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660-1851, rev. ed. (London, 1968), 338 Google Scholar.

For the context of the monument see Pevsner, N., Leicestershire and Rutland, The Buildings of England, rev. Williamson, Elizabeth (Harmondsworth, 1984), 79–80 Google Scholar, and the detail reproduced as pl. 49.

The relationship between Kent and Rysbrack is discussed, for instance, in Wilson, M., William Kent. Architect, Designer, Painter, Gardener, 1685-1748 (London, 1984), esp. 138-41Google Scholar.

3 See Survey of London, XXXII (1963), passim, esp. 451, 519-24, 561, 571 n. 2. On p. 451 the rent is inaccurately stated as £100 a year; the correct figure can be deduced from Kent’s letter to Selina of 1 March 1739/40, and from Ledgers N and O at Hoares Bank in Fleet Street, which show payments to Kent from Theophilus of £700 between 27 August 1735 and 15 February 1739/40. For assistance at Hoares I am indebted to Arabella C. Stuart-Smith and Maurice Lloyd.

4 See Survey of London, XXXII (1963), 451, and the text of Kent’s will in Jourdain, M., The Work of William Kent. Artist, Painter, Designer and Landscape Gardener (London and New York, 1948), 89–91 Google Scholar.

5 Survey of London, XXXII (1963), 571 n. 2.

6 Survey of London, XXXII (1963), 520. The petition is given in The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, edited by Sherburn, George (Oxford, 1956), IV, 323-24Google Scholar.

7 See Kent’s letter to Burlington of 28 November 1738 in Sherburn, , Pope Correspondence, IV, 149-50Google Scholar.

8 For Wright see A House in Town. 22 Arlington Street, Its Owners and Builders, edited by Campbell, Peter (London, 1984), esp. 98–101, 119-20Google Scholar.

9 Letter from Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, to Lady Anne Hastings, of 12 August 1739, in Hastings Wheler Family Letters, 1693-1739, edited by Wheler, George Hastings, 11 (Wakefield, 1935), 173 Google Scholar. Theophilus, 9th Earl, was Lady Betty’s half-brother (the son of the 7th Earl’s second marriage). For Ledston’s connections with Bridgeman, see Willis, Peter, Charles Bridgeman and the English Landscape Garden (London, 1977), 61, 180-81 and pl. 48bGoogle Scholar; Linstrum, Derek, West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture (London, 1978), esp. 61 Google Scholar.

10 ‘Horace Walpole’s Journals of Visits to Country Seats, & c’, Walpole Society, XVI (1927-28), 64.

11 The 9th Earl of Huntingdon’s account at Hoares Bank, Fleet Street, London, Ledger O, fol. 427, notes a payment to Kent (apparently additional to the rent for No. 2 Savile Row) of £113 on 7 July 1740, and Ledger R, fols 259 and 401, payments to Roger Morris of £300 on 19 September 1744, and to a ‘Mr. Morris’ of £150 on 28 May 1745 respectively. The Countess left Donington in 1749 when her son Francis, the 10th Earl (1728-89), attained his majority, and she took a house at Ashby de la Zouch with her other children and her sisters-in-law, the Ladies Hastings.

12 Bray, William, Sketch of a Tour into Derbyshire and Yorkshire, including Part of Buckingham, Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham, Northampton, Bedford, and Hertford-shires, 2nd edn (London, 1783), 100 Google Scholar.

13 For Donington see Liscombe, R. W., William Wilkins, 1778-1839 (Cambridge, 1980), 14, 15, 16, 57, 82, 233, and pl. 6Google Scholar; Brushe, John, ‘Wilkins Senior’s Original Designs for Donington Park as Proposed by Repton’, Burlington Magazine, CXXI (February 1979), 113-14Google Scholar; Shields, J. Gillies, ‘A Refuge of Two Centuries’, Country Life, CLXV (22 March 1979), 828-30Google Scholar. As pls 71 and 72 to his article on Donington, incidentally, John Brushe publishes two views by Repton of the house of c. 1790 which apparently show the Palladian extension. They are interleaved in a proof copy of Nichols’ History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester in the Central Library, Leicester.

1 As Cinzia Sicca points out to me, this and the mention of ‘la Guirra’ in Kent’s letter of 15 December 1739 refer to the war with Spain which was declared by Britain in October 1739. The word ‘guerra’, of course, means war in both Italian and Spanish.

Kent’s Italianisms are well known. For a letter in Italian see Kent’s of 12 July 1717 in the archives of San Giuliano dei Fiamminghi in Hoogewerff, Godefridus Joannes, editor, Bescheiden in Italië omtrent Nederlandsche kunstenaars en geleerden, Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, no. 12 (The Hague, 1913), 215 Google Scholar. Fr Marcel Uylenbroeck kindly told me of this.

2 A further reference to the war between Britain and Spain, in which the possession of Gibraltar was an issue.

3 On 6 September 1734 Selina wrote to her husband from Enfield: ‘I came here and hurried the workmen to such a degree that I believe they wish my absence almost as much as I do myself. Were my life with me I should think it the most delightful place under heaven. I have walked round my little farm and everything looks flourishing’. HMC 78, Hastings III, 1724-1817 (1934), 19.

4 Charles FitzRoy (1718-39), who had died on 29 July 1739, and who was fourth son of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, Kent’s patron at Euston and at Wakefield Lodge, Northamptonshire.

5 Namely Rousham in Oxfordshire where Kent was working for James and Robert Dormer.

6 The gate, designed by Inigo Jones, was moved to Chiswick from Beaufort House, the gift of Sir Hans Sloane. Cinzia Sicca kindly informs me that it is referred to in Burlington’s letter to Sloane of 25 July 1738 in the British Library, Sloane MSS 4055, fol. 349.

7 This verse was first attributed to Pope, without evidence, in The Edinburgh Magazine and Review (June 1775), but, as Ault notes, ‘It is not in Pope’s manner, and it may be thought that, ifit had been his, so close a friend as Kent would have known this and mentioned it to Lady Huntingdon’. See Pope, Alexander, Minor Poems, edited by Ault, Norman, completed by Butt, John (London and New Haven, 1954)Google Scholar, in which it appears on p. 459 under ‘Poems of doubtful authorship’. See also the commentary in Brownell, Morris R., Alexander Pope and the Arts of Georgian England (Oxford, 1978), 152 Google Scholar.

8 The Pelham sons Thomas (born 1729) and Henry (born 1736) both died in 1739. Their mother, subsequently referred to by Kent, was Lady Katherine Manners (died 1780), daughter of John, 2nd Duke of Rutland.

9 A reference to the estate of Lady Betty Hastings, who died on 21 December 1739 at Ledston, Yorkshire. Lady Betty’s deep Christian commitment led her to make many charitable bequests. Strangely, although he writes in the past tense, Kent’s letter is dated six days before she died.

10 Sir Mark Pleydell, Baronet (1692-1768), of Coleshill, Berkshire.

11 Charles Bruce, later 3rd Earl of Ailesbury (1682-1747), for whom Burlington (his brother-in-law) designed Tottenham Park, Wiltshire.

12 A further allusion to Lady Betty Hastings’ will; Theophilus, 9th Earl of Huntingdon, Lady Betty’s half-brother, inherited her estate at Ledston. Her reclining figure by Scheemakers may be seen in Ledsham Parish Church.

13 On 21 February 1740 Viscountess Howe writes to Selina: ‘My spirits are quite damped by Mrs. Mordaunt’s telling me you are determined on parting with your house in town. All your friends wished Lady Betty Hastings’s intentions had been more conformable to their wishes’. HMC 78, Hastings III, 1724-1817 (1934), 29.

14 Nicholas Hardinge (1699-1758), Clerk to the House of Commons ( 1731-48).

15 Sir Thomas Frankland, 3rd Baronet (c. 1683-1747), of Thirkleby Park, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, Lord of the Admiralty (1730-42).

16 John Trevor (?1717-43), of Glynde, Sussex, who married Frankland’s daughter Elizabeth in 1740, and who was later Lord of the Admiralty from 1742 until his death.

17 Lord Lewis Gordon (died 1754), Jacobite, third son of Alexander Gordon, 2nd Duke of Gordon, and one of Prince Charles Edward’s council in 1745.