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made; but so magnificent and statelie, as the basest house of a barondooth often match in our daies with some honours of princes in old.times.”
Bagford and other writers date the introduction of bricks in the reignof Henry VII. * Yet Ewelme palace, in Oxfordshire , erected by Williamde la Pole, and Herstmonceaux castle, Sussex , both built of brick, areattributed to the reign of Henry VI . Leland mentions the walls ofWallingford, as early as Richard II. , being of that material; and Stow
fore-fronts and all their new buildings should be made either of brick or stone; but neitherthat, nor divers other proclamations wholly to that purpose, prevailed ; whereupon diverswere censured in the star-chamber. From this time began the new reformation of building;and the first house of note was Colonell Cecil’s house in the'Strand; and after that, a housenear Drapers’ Hall, toward Broade-street; and after that, a goldsmith’s house in Cheapside,over against Sadlers’ Hall; and a leather-seller’s house in Paule’s Churchyard, near the northgate, he was compelled thereunto after his house was set up, being all timber.”— Stow.
In 1607, another proclamation to the same effect, “ by reason that all great and well-growne woods were spent and much wasted.”
“ In the Fcedera is a commission to the Earl of Arundel, Inigo Jones , and several others,to prevent building on new foundations within two miles of London and palace of West minster .”— Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting.
* The Roman bricks differed widely from those now in use among us, to which, of course,these observations apply. But for the origin of bricks, we may go back, with Mr. Whitaker, tothe antediluvians. “ And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn themthoroughly.”— Genesis, xi. 3.
“ Bricks,” says that writer, “ were very probably made by the inhabitants of the ante-diluvian world, and were actually used in the first ages of their descendants. The art,therefore, would be carried away by the several parties from Babel, upon the dispersion of thewhole, into all the countries which they successively planted : and it accordingly appears tohave been known to the earliest inhabitants of the east and west in general; and probablywas, though it does not appear, to the colonists of Britain in particular. It was to theirbrethren of Gaul: and our present appellation of brick is derived to us from our British
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