In 1626, on All Saints' Day, Lew Trenchard Manor, and all the rights that went with it, was sold by Sir Thomas Monk to Henry Gould, though previously held in mortgage by him since 1620. There was probably some family arrangement, as his eldest son married Mary Gould in S. Edmond's Church, Exeter, on Christmas Eve, 1626. But for the sale of Lew it would have become the appanage of George Monk, second son, who became eventually Duke of Albemarle. Thomas Monk, who married Mary Gould, died in 1648, but that is neither here nor there.[1]
The manor-house remained the residence of the family of Gould till 1736, when William Drake Gould came into the estates of Edward Gould of Staverton, near Ashburton, when he moved to Pridhamsleigh House in Staverton. At that time a good deal of Lew House was pulled down, so as to reduce it to serve as Dower House. But when the son of William Drake Gould, Captain Edward Gould, dissipated all the Staverton property, then Lew House became the residence of my grandfather, the grandson of W. D. Gould, and he set to work to modernize what remained of the house, according to the taste of the period. It was, however, my ambition to restore and rebuild the manor-house, which probably had been Elizabethan or earlier, as coins have been found in the walls and about the foundations from the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, downwards.
And now I can look upon Lew House as a very beautiful residence of the sixteenth century.
So that of the three purposes I set out in life to accomplish I have certainly achieved two.
With regard to the formation of my political opinions, I say nothing, as that took place at a period not described in my Early Reminiscences. My father was a very pronounced Liberal, and I had contracted similar principles, and went to the first election I ever voted in wearing yellow ribbons and daffodils. But I think that Radicalism has passed beyond the limit regarded as permissible, and the attainment of which was desirable. With every wish to promote the well-being and emancipation of the working classes, I should be sorry to see—what is approaching—
- ↑ His eldest son and heir Thomas, who was Lieutenant to his father, Colonel Thomas Monk, was slain in South Street, Exeter, on the night of 9 July, 1644, through mistake of a password.
