78 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
title came to his cousin the Duke of Wellington, and the Wanstead estates passed
to another of the Wellesley family, the late Earl Cowley.
During the 111 years from Sir J. Child's time to that of the second Earl Tylney,
the park underwent all manner of alterations. Sir Josiah Child was an authority in
commercial affairs, and wrote "The Discourse on Trade;" a very wealthy man,
an alderman and goldsmith of London, victualler to the navy, and so greatly
the dominant spirit of the East India Company that the most important papers
were kept not in the muniment room in Leadenhall Street, but in his desk at
Wanstead. By his purchase of the manor of Wanstead he became Warden of the
Forest, and appears to have largely used his official powers for his own advantage.
Macaulay writes of him : "He obtained a baronetcy ; he purchased a stately seat
at Wanstead, and laid out immense sums in excavating fish ponds and in planting
whole square miles of barren land with walnut trees." On March 16th, 1683,
John Evelyn writes: "I went to see Sir Josiah Child's prodigious cost in
planting walnut trees about his seate, and making fish-ponds, many miles in circuit,
in Epping Forest, in a barren spot, as oftentimes these suddenly monied men for
Old Wanstead House (Circa 1710).
From an old engraving, "L. Knyff, delt. ; J. Kip, sculpr." This house was pulled down
in 1715, to make room for Sir Richard Child's mansion.
the most part seate themselves." His son, Sir Richard, found the old house not
good enough, and in 1715 a new one was begun from designs of Colin Campbell,
the celebrated architect. There were two designs, but the second, engraved in
the "Vitruvius Britannicus," was the one accepted, though never fully carried
out. It was built of Portland stone, was 260 feet long, and 70 feet in depth. In
front was a fine portico, with pediment, containing the arms, supported by six
Corinthian columns, and the back, or garden front, by a pediment and six
pilasters. There were four floors and two great staircases, the principal, or stone,
little plot which was successfully resisted at the Chelmsford assizes in 1813. He married as his
second wife a daughter of Col. Thomas Paterson, who died in 1869, and whose life added, to
quote the Athentaum, an "incident to the romance of the peerage. After the ruin into which
the reckless Earl's affairs fell, some forty years ago, this lady was, for a brief time, an inmate of
St. George's Workhouse, and more than once had to apply at police courts for temporary relief.
Yet she might have called monarchs her cousins. She was descended from the grandest and
greatest of all the Plantagenets. Her mother (wife of Col. Paterson), Ann Porterfield of that ilk,
came, through the houses of Boyd, Cunningham, Glencairn, and Hamilton, from Mary Stuart,
daughter of King James II. of Scotland, and seventh in descent from Edward I. of England,"—