Jacobean Country Gentleman

Abstract

In his fine new house with the garden growing up around, along the shoulder of the hill his spacious park with the deer, to the south, bounding his horizon, the crescent shape of the forest, well-off with money coming in increasingly from both arable and sheep-pasture, Throckmorton was in a position to entertain constantly and generously. He was a natural host, rather than a guest; one does not find him going to stay much in other people’s houses: they came to stay with him. He would have a bowling party, to which Throckmortons and Fermors came; or a match at bowls against the Longfields with whom Charles Wake and Shakerley Marmion dined. Himself would go over to Grafton of a summer afternoon to eat cherries with the Whalleys. Among neighbours who came was Shakerley Marmion, father of the Caroline dramatist, from Aynho, which he was forced to sell to the Cartwrights in 1616 — they remained there right up to the family catastrophe in our own time. In September 1611 Shakerley Marmion went off with a goshawk Throckmorton gave him. Francis Beaumont brought word of Sir John Grey’s death of smallpox at Lady Newdigate’s.¹ One cannot tell whether this was the dramatist, for a Francis Beaumont is qualified as ‘old’ on another visit.