Wilton House

I glimpsed Wilton House this autumn, home to the Earls of Pembroke. It occupies the site of Wilton Abbey, where once Queen Edith stayed while her husband, Edward the Confessor, considered divorce. The house was closed, sadly (which was good news for my pocket), but I was able to look through the gates at yonder mansion. Unable to become a paying visitor, nor a member of that noble family, that sturdy gate was far as I could go.

In John Aubrey's Brief Life, William Herbert, the first Earl, lost his home at the time of Bloody Mary, as she restored Roman Catholicism and sought to revive monasticism where she could:

Upon the return of the Catholique religion, the nunnes came again to Wilton Abbey; and this William, Earl of Pembroke, came to the gate which lookes towards the court by the street, but now is walled up, with his cappe in his hand, and fell upon his knees to the Lady Abbess and nunnes, crying peccavi [an old expression of guilt]. Upon Queen Mary's death, the Earl came to Wilton (like a tygre) and turned them out crying, 'Out, ye whores! to worke, to worke—ye whores, goe spinne!"

It would seem that his Lordship was only a true Protestant when the times suited, and was a devoted and remorseful Catholic when it was more convenient. What a silly man, and what a grand theatre for so foolish a clown to perform. If your religious beliefs are just a dim reflection of the prevailing culture and not God's pure word, you merely mirror the midden.