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The Landlords.
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enriched themselves by a war, the most expensive in which their country had ever been engaged. The general who had conducted that war with consummate ability was on their side. Everything that had opposed them was prostrate in the dust; and the monarchical potentates of Europe were banded together in a Holy Alliance to establish them, as Strafford wrote to Charles the First, "in wealth, strength, and glory, far above any of their progenitors."[1]
In this plenitude of power, the English, Scotch, and Irish landlords could find little more for their hearts to desire. Their palaces—for their old manor-houses [2] were found too rude and too small
- ↑ Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. ii., pp. 61-62.
- ↑ Some of those manor-houses might suggest antiquity of family. But the wars of the Roses had rooted up most of the older families. I knew a manor-house from its belonging to an old friend which once belonged to Robert Bruce, King of Scotland. There was a moat round it of clear water full of beautiful water-plants. It came to Robert Bruce in this way. Bruce, Lord of Skelton and Anandale, gave Anandale to his second son who complained to his father that he could not get wheaten bread in Scotland. Thereupon his father gave him the manor I have referred to, and another in Essex to supply him with wheaten bread. I forget the name of the manor in Essex, but I feel confidence in the accuracy of the
