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Updated: June 21, 2025
In the Earl of Leicester's journal, under date Thursday, July 8th, 1652, we find: "My daughter Spencer was married to Sir Robert Smith at Penshurst, my wife being present with my daughters Strangford, and Lacy Pelham, Algernon and Robin Sydney, etc.; but I was in London." From this we may imagine the Earl did not greatly approve the match.
The Countess of Pembroke, in mourning for her parents, was spending a midsummer month in leafy Penshurst. It was a drowsy month, of roses fully blown and heavy lilies, of bees booming amongst all honey flowers, of shady copses and wide sunlit fields; and it was a quiet month because of the Countess's mourning and because Philip Sidney was Governor of Flushing.
Having chosen their cards, they all walked through the little church-yard, with its ancient yew trees, and out into a field from which they could see Penshurst Place itself. "Why! isn't it a huge place!" cried Barbara. "This is just as new to Philip and me, you know, Betty, for we have never been here, either." "How charmingly situated it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Pitt enthusiastically.
Within fifteen months his grandfather and uncle had been beheaded for treason; and his sorrowing mother, a truly noble and tender woman, had been the victim of small-pox, and hid her grieving heart and poor scarred face in the silence and seclusion of Penshurst.
"Well, daughter," the Count of Montepone said to Katarina as she was sitting by his couch in the evening, "so you think that Penshurst is a comfortable abode?" "Yes, father, the rooms are brighter and lighter than these and the walls are all hung with arras and furnished far more comfortably." "Wouldst thou like to be its mistress, child?" A bright flush of colour flooded the girl's face.
The first view which I got of the old house of Penshurst, called formerly both Penshurst Place and Penshurst Castle, was as I descended the hill opposite to it. Its gray walls and turrets, and high-peaked and red roofs rising in the midst of them; and the new buildings of fresh stone, mingled with the ancient fabric, presented a very striking and venerable aspect.
Penshurst was a strong castle, though scarcely equal in size to Summerley; it was, however, a more comfortable habitation, having been altered by the late owner's father, who had travelled in Italy, with a view rather to the accommodation of its inmates than its defence, and had been furnished with many articles of luxury rare in England. "A comfortable abode truly, Guy!" his father said.
But in the "idlesse" and solitude of the poet's exile the great work begun in the two pleasant years of his stay at Penshurst had at last taken form, and it was to publish the first three books of the "Faerie Queen" that Spenser returned in Raleigh's company to London.
There are, too, in some illustrations in "Shaw's Ancient Furniture," some lamp-holders, in which this spiral turning is overdone, as is generally the case when any particular kind of ornament comes into vogue. In carved ebony, part of Indo-Portuguese suite at Penshurst Place, with Flemish folding chair.
How comfortless the house must have been from our standard even in its best days, with its rough stone floors and rude furnishings! No fireplace appeared in the banqueting hall, which must have been warmed by an open fire, perhaps in the center, as in the hall of Penshurst Place.
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