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instructive life of the late John Elwes, esq. was a very worthy gentleman, that had involved as far as they would go all the estates he received and left behind him." On his death, his grandson and successor," Sir Hervey, found himself nominally possessed of some thousands a year, but really with an income of one hundred pounds per annum. He declared on his arrival at the family seat at Stoke, that he would never leave it till he had entirely cleared the paternal estate, and he lived to do that, and to realize above one hundred thousand pounds in addition." At his death the estate at Stoke devolved to his nephew the late John Elwes, esq. from whom it descended to the present possessor, J. H. T. Elwes, esq.*

* In the annals of avarice, there is not a more celebrated name than that of Elwes. The accumulation of money was the only passion and employment of the long life of Sir Hervey, who, though given over in his youth for a consumption, attained to the age of upwards of eighty years. To avoid the expense of company, he doomed himself, for above sixty years, to the strictest solitude, scarcely knew the indulgence of fire and candle, and resided in a mansion where the wind entered at every broken casement, and the rain descended through the roof. His household consisted of one man and two maids; and such was the systematic economy which governed his whole establishment, that the annual expenditure of Sir Hervey, though worth at least 250,0001. amounted to 1101. "Among the few acquaintances he had,” says Mr. Topham, was an occasional club at his own village of Stoke, and there were members of it two baronets besides himself, Sir Cordwell Firebras, and Sir John Barnardiston. However rich they were, the reckoning was always an object of their investigation. As they were one day settling this difficult point, an odd fellow, who was a member, called out to a friend who was passing: "For heaven's sake step up stairs and assist the poor! Here are three baronets, worth a million of money, quarrelling about a farthing !” On the death of Sir Hervey in 1763, he lay in state, such as it was, at Stoke; and some of his tenants observed with more humour than decency, that it was well he could not see it. His immense property devolved to his nephew, John Meggot, who, by his will, was ordered to assume the name and arms of Elwes.

Mr. Elwes, whose mother had been left a widow by a rich brewer, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds, and starved herself to death, proved himself a worthy heir to her and Sir Hervey. On his first coming to Stoke

after

At GREAT THURLOW was once a small hospital or free chapel of the yearly value of 31. which was granted by Edward IV. to the

after his uncle's death, he began, it is true, to keep fox-hounds; and his stable of hunters at that time was said to be the best in the kingdom. This was the only instance in the whole life of Mr. Elwes of his sacrificing money to pleasure; but even here every thing was conducted in so frugal a manner, that the whole of his establishment, huntsman, dogs, and horses, did not cost him three hundred pounds a year. After a residence of near fourteen years at Stoke, he was chosen to represent Berkshire in parliament, on which occasion he removed to his seat at Marcham in that county. He now relinquished the keeping of horses and dogs; and no man could be more attentive to his senatorial duties than Mr. Elwes while he continued to sit in the House of Commons. On his retirement from public life, to avoid the expense of a contested election, he was desirous of visiting his seat at Stoke, where he had not been for some years. When he reached this place, once the seat of more active scenes, of somewhat resembling hospitality, and where his fox-hounds had diffused something like vivacity around, he remarked that " he had formerly expended a great deal of money very foolishly, but that a man grows wiser in time."

Of the way of living of this accomplished miser during this his last resi dence at Stoke, the following account is given by his biographer :

"The rooms at his seat at Stoke, that were now much out of repair, and would have all fallen in, but for his son, John Elwes, Esq. who had resided there, be thought too expensively furnished, as worse things might have done. If a window was broken, there was to be no repair, but that of a little brown paper, or piecing in a bit of broken glass, which had at length been done so frequently, and in so many shapes, that it would have puzzled a mathematician to say what figure they described. To save fire, he would walk about the remains of an old green-house, or sit with a servant in the kitchen. During the harvest he would amuse himself with going into the fields to glean the corn on the grounds of his own tenants; and they used to leave a little more than common, to please the old gentleman, who was as eager after it as any pauper in the parish. In the advance of the season, his morning employment was to pick up any stray chips, bones, and other things to carry to the fire, in his pocket; and he was one day surprised by a neighboring gentleman in the act of pulling down a crow's nest for that purpose. On the gentleman woudering why he gave himself this trouble. "Oh, Sir!" replied old Elwes, "it is really a shame that these creatures should do so. Do but see what waste they make! They don't care how extravagant they are."

VOL. XIV.

the Maison de Dieu, now part of King's College, Cambridge. The hall, with the lordship, formerly belonged to the Waldegraves,

"As no gleam of favourite passion, or any ray of amusement, broke through this gloom of penury, his insatiable desire of saving was now become uniform and systematic. He used still to ride about the country on one of the wornout mares, but then, he rode her very economically, on the soft turf adjoining the road, without putting himself to the expence of shoes, as he observed, the turf was so pleasant to a horse's foot.' When any gentleman called to pay him a visit, and the boy who attended in the stable, was profuse enough to put a little hay before the horse, old Elwes would slily steal back, and take it carefully away.

"That very strong appetite, which Mr. Elwes had in some measure restrained, during the long sitting of parliament, he now indulged most vora. ciously, and on every thing he could find. To save, as he thought, the expence of going to a butcher, he would have a whole sheep killed, and so eat mutton to the end of the chapter. When he occasionally had his river drawn, though sometimes horse loads of small fish were taken, not one would he suffer to be thrown in again; for he observed, he should never see them again,' Game, in the last state of putrefaction, and meat, that walked about his plate, would he continue to eat, rather than have new things killed, before the old provision was finished. With this diet, the charnel-house of sustenance, his dress kept pace, equally in the last stage of dissolution. Sometimes he would walk about in a tattered brown-coloured, and sometimes in a red and white woollen cap, like a prisoner confined for debt. His shoes he never would suffer to be cleaned, lest they should be worn out the sooner. When any friends, who might occasionally be with him, were absent, he would carefully put out his own fire, walk to the house of a neighbor, and thus make one fire serve for both. But still, with all this self-denial, this penury of life, to which the inhabitant of an alms-house is not doomed, still did he think himself profuse, and frequently say, he must be a little more careful of his property.'

"The scene of mortification at which Mr. Elwes had now arrived, was all but a denial of the common necessaries of life; and indeed it might have admitted a doubt, whether, if his manors, his fish-ponds, and some grounds in his own hands had not furnished a subsistence, where he had not any thing actually to buy, he would not rather have starved than have bought any thing. He one day, during this period, dined upon the remaining part of a moor

hen,

graves, and afterwards to Sir Cordel Firebrace, Bart. By the latter they were sold to James Vernon, Esq. whose descendant now has his seat here.

In the contiguous parish of LITTLE THURLOW is a noble old mansion, long the residence of the family of Soame. The church contains a handsome monument, in memory of Sir Stephen Soame, knt, who had been lord mayor of London. He built the family residence during the reign of queen Elizabeth; he also founded here a free-school and au alms-house, and died in 1619.

HUNDRED OF BABERGH,

This hundred is divided from Essex on the south by the Stour; on the west it is bounded by the same river, and the hundred of Risbridge; on the north by the hundreds of Thingo and Thedwestry; and on the east by those of Cosford and Samford. The principal place in the hundred of Babergh is,

SUDBURY, a borough and market town of high antiquity, and once of much greater importance than at present, situated on the Stour, which is navigable for barges to this place, and over which there is a well built stone bridge. It comprehends three parishes, now incorporated, with the same number of large, handL2

some

hen, which had been brought out of the river by a rat; and at another ate the undigested part of a pike, which a larger one had swallowed, but had not finished, and which were taken in this state in a net. At the time this last circumstance happened, he discovered a strange kind of satisfaction, observing: Aye! this was killing two birds with one stone! In the room of all comment, let it be remarked that at this time Mr. Elwes was perhaps worth near eight hundred thousand pounds."

This extraordinary man died November 26th 1789, at his seat at Marcham, in Berkshire, having by will bequeathed all his real and personal estates, to the value of half a million sterling, to his two natural sons, George and John Elwes, the latter of whom is the present proprietor of Stoke,

some churches, St. Gregory's, St. Peter's, and All Saints, 594 houses, and 3283 inhabitants. It is a corporate town, governed by a mayor, six aldermen, and twenty-four capital burgesses. Ever since 1559 it has returned two members to parliament, elected by the whole body of freemen, about 720 in number; and it gives the title of baron, to the duke of Grafton. It has a weekly market on Saturday, and two annual fairs, on March 12th and July 10th.

Sudbury was anciently denominated Southburgh, in contradis tinction to Norwich, then called Northburgh. It was one of the first places at which king Edward III. settled the Flemings whom he invited to this country, to instruct his subjects in the woollen manufacture, of which they were before wholly ignorant. The various branches of this manufacture continued to flourish here for some centuries, and afforded subsistence to a great number of the inhabitants of this town, who were chiefly employed in the weaving of says, burying crape, and ship's flags: but Sudbury, like many other places in this county, possessing scarcely any remains of its former trade, which has fixed its seat in other districts of the kingdom, is consequently on the decline.

Simon de Sudbury, who was archbishop of Canterbury in 1375, and beheaded by the populace in Wat Tyler's insurrection, was a native of this town: his family name was Theobald. He built the upper end of St. Gregory's church, and on the spot where his father's house stood, he founded and endowed a college, which at the suppression, was of the yearly value of 1221. 18s. Leland says, that the same prelate, in conjunction with John de Chertsey, founded here a priory of the order of St. Augustine, though Weever ascribes it to Baldwin de Shimpling and Mabel his wife, who were both interred in the chancel of the priory church. This priory had a revenue, valued at the dissolution at 2221. 18s. 3d. per annum; and part of the building, converted into a private habitation, is still standing. In the reign of John, Amicia, countess of Clare, founded in this town an hospital, dedicated to Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary; and a church, or chapel, in its neighborhood, dedi

cated