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At the entrance of Weybridge was a deserted estate and dilapidated mansion, Portmore Park, once a royal domain, through which the river ran and where we used to go constantly to fish.
Weybridge was not then reached by train in half an hour from London; it was two or three hours' coach distance: a rural, rather deserted-looking, and most picturesque village, with the desolate domain of Portmore Park, its mansion falling to ruin, on one side of it, and on the other the empty house and fine park of Oatlands, the former residence of the Duke of York.
Mackenzie of Portmore died in September 1830, when Sir Walter wrote Mr. Skene the following letter: "DEAR SKENE, I observe from the papers that our invaluable friend is no more. I have reason to think, that as I surmised when I saw him last, the interval has been a melancholy one, at least to those who had to watch the progress.
Eobert Walpole. The command of the forces in Portugal was bestowed upon the earl of Portmore; the duke of Hamilton was appointed lord-lieutenant of the county palatine of Lancaster.
At Gloonen the people will show him "Cennick's Well"; at Kilwarlin he may stand under "Cennick's Tree"; and at Portmore, near Lough Beg, he will see the ruins of the old church, where Jeremy Taylor wrote his "Holy Living and Holy Dying," and where Cennick slept many a night. For the rest, however, the work has collapsed; and Cennick's two hundred and twenty societies have left not a rack behind.
We lived chiefly in the open air, on the heath, in the beautiful wood above the meadows of Brooklands, and in the neglected, picturesque inclosure of Portmore Park, whose tenantless, half-ruined mansion, and noble cedars, with the lovely windings of the river Wey in front, made it a place an artist would have delighted to spend his hours in. We haunted it constantly for another purpose.
Upon the walls hung portraits of the Duchesses of Leeds and Dorset, of Nell Gwyn and the Countess herself, and of Earl Portmore, who married her daughter. Here also formerly was Holbein's famous picture, Bluff King Hal and the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk dancing a minuet with Anne Boleyn and the Dowager-Queens of France and Scotland.
According to the earlier writer, the man was David Colyear, afterwards Lord Portmore, and husband of Catherine Sedley, Lady Dorchester, James's favourite and ugliest mistress.
His father died in 1830, after so much invalidism and separation that his five-year- old boy had no personal recollection of him. The eldest son, Mr. Forbes Mackenzie, succeeded to the estate of Portmore, and the rest of the family resided in Edinburgh for education.
'Let me have your prayers for the completion of my recovery: I am now better than I ever expected to have been. May GOD add to his mercies the grace that may enable me to use them according to his will. My compliments to all. April 13. 'I had this evening a note from Lord Portmore , desiring that I would give you an account of my health. You might have had it with less circumduction.
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