[4]
tiful home-Scene (in which the factitious piece of water and its banks make elegant ornaments) and a diversified distant prospect. It rose, phoenix-like, from the ruins of a more ancient edifice, begun probably by its original lords, the Norman family of St. Lo, or De Sancto Laudo, who in the latter end of Henry Illd.'s reign numbered this manor on the list of their possessions.
Amongst the other instances of royal oppression which the Pipe-Rolls of John's reign afford, (a prince as wicked as he was weak, and as extortionate as avaricious) is a fine mentioned to have been levied on Roger de Sancto Laudo as a heriot, on the demise of his ancestor, for the manors of Newton and Publow, to the amount of one hundred pounds and two palfries, a sum of considerable importance in the twelfth century. Justly irritated by the extravagant levy, Roger joined the association of the Barons who rose in arms against the tyrannical John, and had the satisfaction, if tradition may be believed, of keeping him for some time as a captive in one of the towers of his castellated mansion at Newton, the scene of the monarch's rapacity. All vestiges of this edifice, the prison of a king, have long since disappeared; but an embattled gateway of a later date is preserved, as a memorial of the venerable edifice which frowned
