Figs. 1 to 4, Stone Court. Fig. 5, Over King’s Bedroom Window. Figs. 6 and 7, South Front. Fig. 8, Stone Court. Fig. 9, Water Court. ]
In June 1566 Queen Elizabeth had presented him with Knole, but, because the house was then both let and sub-let, it was not until 1603 that he was able to take possession. Tradition says that the Queen bestowed Knole upon him because she wished to have him nearer to her court and councils, and to spare him the constant journey between London and Buckhurst, over the rough, clay-sodden roads of the Weald, at that date still an uncultivated and almost uninhabited district, where droves of wild swine rootled for acorns under the oaks. He does not appear to have spent very much time at Knole during the first years of his ownership, for in a letter written in September 1605, to Lord Salisbury, he says: “I go now to Horsley, and thence to Knole, where I was not but once in the first beginnings all the year, whence for three or four days to Buckhurst, where I was not these seven years.” This did not prevent him from spending a great deal of money on the house; unfortunately there is no record of what he spent between 1603 and 1607, but for the last ten months of his life alone there is a total, spent on buildings, material, and stock, for four thousand one hundred and seven pounds, eleven shillings, and ninepence—an equivalent, in round figures, to forty thousand of modern money. To account for these sums, it is known that he built the Great Staircase, transformed the Great Hall to its present state, and put in the plaster-work ceilings and marble chimney-pieces. He also put up the very lovely lead water-spouts in the courtyards.
The good fortune of Lord Buckhurst did not come to an end with the death of Queen Elizabeth. He was one of those who travelled to meet the new King on his journey down from the North, was confirmed by him in his tenure of the office of Lord Treasurer, and early in the following year was created Earl of Dorset. The illuminated patents of creation are at Knole, showing portraits of both Elizabeth and James I, not very flattering to either; and the Lord Treasurer’s chest is at Knole likewise, a huge coffer covered in leather and thickly studded with large round-headed brass nails. There is a warrant, signed by him as Lord Treasurer, for increasing the duty on tobacco, “That tobacco, being a drug brought into England of late years in small quantities, was used and taken by the better sort only as physic to preserve health; but through evil custom and the toleration thereof that riotous and disorderly persons spent most of their time in that idle vanity.” This warrant, which is dated 1605, shows how little time had elapsed since its introduction before tobacco established its popularity.