56
EPPING FOREST.
and that a building calculated for the residence
of the greatest subject in Britain should be in-
habited only by a few servants."
The Earls Tylney were Hereditary Lords-War-
den of the Forest, a dignity which descended to
their successors in estate until the Epping Forest
Act, 1878, deprived them of it. In 1784 the
last Earl Tylney died, and Wanstead came to the
Tylney Longs, whose heiress married the Hon.
Wellesley Pole, immortalised by the well-known
line in Rejected Addresses—
" Long may Long Tylney Wellesley Long Pole live ! "
In the neighbourhood of Wanstead, however,
Mr. Wellesley does not need Rejected Addresses
to keep alive the memory of his extraordinary
career. Such was his reckless prodigality that,
having acquired by his marriage a rent-roll in
Essex alone, raised under the influence of war
prices to £70,000 per annum, he was within ten
years of that time obliged to escape down the
Thames from his creditors in an open boat. His
wife died broken-hearted, the custody of his chil-
dren was taken from him by the Court of Chancery,
Wanstead House was pulled down,1 and, though he
had succeeded in the meantime to the headship
of his own family as Earl of Mornington, he died
a pensioner of his younger brother, the great Duke
of Wellington. The estates came to his son, an
estimable gentleman, but one who lived chiefly
abroad and took no interest in them. Mortgaged
up to the lips, the broad acres about Rochford,
1 The only relic of the house, so far as I know, existing
in the neighbourhood is the white obelisk in the grounds of
the Warren House, the residence of the Forest Superintendent.