an affection for Slatwoods, and slips of its great willow tree were transplanted to his successive homes at Laleham, Rugby, and Fox How.
East Cowes is shut in by the grounds of East Cowes Castle and Norris Castle, mansions of the modern Gothic period, that have had noble occupants and royal guests. Norris Castle, at the point of the estuary open to briny breezes from every quarter, was in 1833 tenanted by the Duchess of Kent, sea-air having been ordered for her daughter’s precious health. The Princess Victoria made here a collection of sea-weeds which she presented to her friend Maria da Gloria, the girl-queen of Portugal; and no doubt in this sequestered nook she was able to go about more freely than at Bognor or Brighton. She seems to have much enjoyed her stay on the Solent, probably then taking a fancy to this neighbourhood, which in later life led to the purchase of Osborne, her favourite residence when Balmoral was too bleakly bracing. The park begins beyond the ascent out of East Cowes, extending along the wooded northern shore towards the small inlet called King’s Quay, that pretends to be a landing-place of King John, who, after signing Magna Charta, is dubiously said to have sulked here among the pirates of the Island.
Osborne Manor, whose name has been clipped to so aristocratic a sound, would have been originally no more than an _Austerbourne_ or _Oyster-bed_, that, from the Bowermans, an old Island family not yet extinct, came to belong to one Eustace Mann, who, during the troubles of the Civil War, is supposed to have buried a mass of gold and silver coins in a coppice still known as Money Coppice, and having forgotten to mark the spot, was never afterwards able to recover his treasure. Had it been found in the course of the last half century, a curious lawsuit might have arisen between the rights of the Crown and of the Queen as private owner. By marriage the estate came into the hands of the Blachfords. From Lady Isabella Blachford it was purchased by Queen Victoria in 1840, who enlarged her property here to an area of upwards of 5000 acres, bounded north by the Solent, south by the Ryde and Newport road, east by the inlet of King’s Quay, and west by the Medina.