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FAWLEY COURT.

(SEEN FROM HENLEY BRIDGE.)

FAWLEY COURT, the seat of Strickland Freeman, Esq. is seen to the greatest advantage from Henley Bridge; from whence it appears to give a kind of dignity to the northern bank of the Thames, as well as to the scene around it. It is situated in Buckinghamshire, and on the very verge of it; as the line which marks the boundary between that county and Oxfordshire, passes across the lawn on which the house stands.

This place was formerly the property of the Whitelocke family, who obtained possession of it in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Sir James Whitelocke, the celebrated Judge, died here, in the year 1632, and left the estate to his son, Bulstrode Whitelocke, an eminent Lawyer and Statesman, during the usurpation of Oliver Cromwell; and author of the Memorials, which form an interesting part of the history of that period. That memorable person died in 1676, and his son, James Whitelocke, sold it, in the year 1680, to Colonel William Freeman, an ancestor of the gentleman who, at present, possesses it.

The old manor-house received great, and indeed almost irreparable, damage, from a body of cavalry, in the service of Charles the First, which took up its quarters there, in the latter end of the year 1642. They are represented to have acted with the most hostile disposition to it, and, though their officers had commanded the utmost care to be taken of the property, the soldiers acted as if they had been commanded not only to disturb, but to destroy. "Of divers writings of consequence, and books which were found in the study, some they tore in pieces, and others they employed to light their tobacco, and others they carried away. They littered their horses with sheaves of wheat,

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