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Englefield House
Englefield House is an Elizabethan country house with surrounding estate at Englefield in the English county of Berkshire. The gardens are open to the public all year round on particular weekdays and the house by appointment only for large groups. Englefield House and its adjoining entrance courtyard are listed Grade II* on the National Heritage List for England, and the formal gardens and parkland are listed at Grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The lodges, gateway, gates and flanking walls are also listed as a group at Grade II, as are the terrace walls to the south-east of the main house. History The present house was erected before 1558. There were substantial alterations by Thomas Hopper in the 1820s. Englefield House was the home of the Englefield family, supposedly from the time of King Edgar. Sir Thomas Englefield was the Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1559, the house was confiscated from Thomas Englefield's grandson, Sir Francis ...
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Stately Home
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country. However, the term also encompasses houses that were, and often still are, the full-time residence for the landed gentry who ruled rural Britain until the Reform Act 1832. Frequently, the formal business of the counties was transacted in these country houses, having functional antecedents in manor houses. With large numbers of indoor and outdoor staff, country houses were important as places of employment for many rural communities. In turn, until the agricultural depressions of the 1870s, the estates, of which country houses were the hub, provided their owners with incomes. However, the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the swansong of the traditional English country house lifesty ...
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Mary I Of England
Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, and as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions. Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became terminally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant ref ...
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Richard Fellowes Benyon
Richard Fellowes Benyon (17 November 1811 – 26 July 1897), born Richard Fellowes, was a British Conservative politician and civil servant. Richard was born at Haveringland Hall in Norfolk, the third son of William Henry Fellowes of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire and his wife, Emma, sister of Richard Benyon De Beauvoir of Englefield House in Berkshire. He inherited this latter property (16,000 acres, worth 20,004 guineas rental per annum) and its associated estates upon his uncle's death in 1854 and changed his name to Benyon. Educated at Charterhouse and St. John's College, Cambridge, he was a member of Boodle's, Carlton and Conservative London clubs. In 1857 he was appointed High Sheriff of Berkshire, and was the Chairman of the County's Quarter Sessions in 1864. In 1860 he was elected the Member of Parliament for Berkshire, a position he held until his resignation in 1876. He was a patron of the Anti-Mendacity Society, the National Society for School Furniture and t ...
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Richard Benyon De Beauvoir
Richard Benyon De Beauvoir (1769–1854) MP was a 19th-century British landowner, philanthropist and High Sheriff of Berkshire. Background He was born Richard Benyon in Westminster on 28 April 1769, one of four sons and five daughters of Richard Benyon MP of Gidea Hall in Essex and Englefield House, Berkshire and his wife Hannah Hulse, the eldest daughter of Sir Edward Hulse, 1st Baronet of Breamore House, Hampshire. Estates and names Richard Benyon succeeded to his father's estates in 1796. In 1814, after succeeding to the estates of his half-uncle Powlett Wrighte of Englefield House (who had died in 1779) he assumed the name of Richard Powlett-Wrighte; and, in 1822, after the death of his distant relative, the Rev. Peter De Beauvoir, Rector of Davenham in Essex, from whom he inherited very large property, both in estates and in the funds, he assumed the name of Richard De Beauvoir. In 1824 he purchased the Culford Estate, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, for £230,000, in ...
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Lord Keeper Of The Great Seal
The Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, and later of Great Britain, was formerly an officer of the English Crown charged with physical custody of the Great Seal of England. This position evolved into that of one of the Great Officers of State. History The seal was adopted by Edward the Confessor, and its custody was at first entrusted to a chancellor. The office of chancellor from the time of Thomas Becket onwards varied much in importance. The holder being a churchman, he was not only engaged in the business of his diocese, but was sometimes away from England. Consequently, it became not unusual to place the personal custody of the great seal in the hands of a ''vice-chancellor'' or ''keeper''; this was also the practice followed during a temporary vacancy in the chancellorship. This office gradually developed into a permanent appointment, and the lord keeper acquired the right of discharging all the duties connected with the great seal. He was usually, though not nece ...
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Nathan Wright (judge)
Sir Nathan Wright (1654–1721) was an English judge, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under King William III and Queen Anne. He offended the House of Commons by his use of ''habeas corpus'' in 1704, and lost office in 1705. Life The eldest surviving son of Ezekiel Wright, rector of Thurcaston, Leicestershire and son of Robert Wright, and his wife Dorothy, second daughter of John Oneby of Hinckley in the same county, he was born on 10 February 1654. In 1668 he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but left the university without a degree. In 1670 he was admitted at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar on 29 November 1677, and elected bencher in 1692. On the death of his father in 1668 Wright inherited enough to enable him to marry early, and have a standing in his native county. The recordership of Leicester, to which he was elected in 1680, he lost on the surrender of the charter of the borough in 1684, but was reinstated in office on its restoration in 1688. In th ...
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English Restoration
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in continental Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the civil wars came to be known as the Interregnum (1649–1660). The term ''Restoration'' is also used to describe the period of several years after, in which a new political settlement was established. It is very often used to cover the whole reign of King Charles II (1660–1685) and often the brief reign of his younger brother King James II (1685–1688). In certain contexts it may be used to cover the whole period of the later Stuart monarchs as far as the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the Hanoverian King George I in 1714. For example, Restoration comedy typically encompasses works written as late as 1710. The Protectorate After Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector from 1658 to 1659, ceded power to the Rump Parliament, Charles Fleetwood and J ...
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Basing House
Basing House was a Tudor palace and castle in the village of Old Basing in the English county of Hampshire. It once rivalled Hampton Court Palace in its size and opulence. Today only parts of the basement or lower ground floor, plus the foundations and earthworks, remain. The ruins are a Grade II listed building and a scheduled monument. History Basing House was built from 1531 as a new palace for William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, treasurer to King Edward VI, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. The nearby 'Great Barn' was completed in 1534, just before a visit from Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. In its final form, Basing House comprised two linked houses. The "Old House" replaced the keep of an older ringwork castle, so was located within a defensive ring of earthworks and walls, whilst the slightly later "New House" was located outside the defences. A bridge and gateway linked the two across and through the defences, a link that was to prove fatal in the final ...
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English Civil War
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of religious freedom. It was part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648–1649) wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The wars also involved the Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates. The war ended with Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651. Unlike other civil wars in England, which were mainly fought over who should rule, these conflicts were also concerned with how the three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland should be governed. The outcome was threefold: the trial of and ...
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John Paulet, 5th Marquess Of Winchester
John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester (c. 1598 – 5 March 1675), styled Lord John Paulet until 1621 and Lord St John from 1621 to 1628, was the third but eldest surviving son of William Paulet and his successor as 5th Marquess of Winchester. Life He kept terms at Exeter College, Oxford, but as a Roman Catholic could not matriculate. He sat for St Ives from 1620 to 1622. Staying away to recover his family fortune for most of the 1630s, he returned and presented himself to the court and the king in 1639. The fifth Marquess and the Queen became firm friends thereafter, and therefore his chief seat, Basing House, was the great resort of Queen Henrietta Maria's friends in southwest England. On the outbreak of the English Civil War, he fortified and garrisoned Basing House and held it for Charles I during 1643 and 1644. The siege of Basing House, notwithstanding an attempt of his youngest brother, Lord Edward Paulet, to deliver it up to the enemy, lasted from August 1643 to 16 O ...
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Francis Walsingham
Sir Francis Walsingham ( – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster". Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Walsingham attended Cambridge University and travelled in continental Europe before embarking on a career in law at the age of twenty. A committed Protestant, during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England he joined other expatriates in exile in Switzerland and northern Italy until Mary's death and the accession of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. Walsingham rose from relative obscurity to become one of the small coterie who directed the Elizabethan state, overseeing foreign, domestic and religious policy. He served as English ambassador to France in the early 1570s and witnessed the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. As principal secretary, he supported exploration, colonization, the use of England's maritime strength and the ...
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Earley
Earley is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Wokingham, Berkshire, England. Along with the neighbouring town of Woodley, the Office for National Statistics places Earley within the Reading/Wokingham Urban Area; for the purposes of local government it falls within the Borough of Wokingham, outside the area of Reading Borough Council. Its name is sometimes spelt Erleigh or Erlegh and consists of a number of smaller areas, including Maiden Erlegh and Lower Earley, and lies some south and east of the centre of Reading, and some northwest of Wokingham. It had a population of 32,036 at the 2011 Census. In 2014, the RG6 postcode area (which is nearly coterminous with the area of the civil parish) was rated one of the most desirable postcode areas to live in England. The main campus of the University of Reading, Whiteknights Park, lies partly in Earley and partly in the borough of Reading. History Evidence of prehistoric man has been found in locations around Earley. Fo ...
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