yed by fire. To my thinking,
the most suggestive view of the present edifice is gained from the
Mansfield road, within a few minutes' walk of the town.

From an ancient engraving we find that the first house bore some
resemblance to Hardwick Hall, the great Bess's most successful building.
It contained five hundred rooms; in front was a fine courtyard, with a
central octagonal green plot surrounding a basin with a fountain. The
artist gave to this a touch of life by drawing a coach and six proudly
curving towards the outlet; on the lawns beyond are ladies with
fan-shaped hoops, and thin-legged gentlemen with puffed coat skirts.

[Illustration: WORKSOP MANOR]

Of this house Horace Walpole writes, in 1756: "Lord Stafford carried us
to Worksop, where we passed two days. The house is huge and one of the
magnificent works of Old Bess of Hardwick, who guarded the Queen of
Scots here for some time in a wretched little bedchamber within her own
lofty one:--there is a tolerable little picture ('The story of
Bathsheba, finely drawn and shaded, in faint colours') of Mary's
needlework. The great apartment is vast and _triste_, the whole leanly
furnished: the great gallery, of about two hundred feet, at the top of
the house, is divided into a library and into nothing. The chapel is
decent. There is no prospect, and the barren face of the country is
richly furred with evergreen plantations." In 1761 he records that
"Worksop--the new house--is burned down; I don't know the circumstances,
it has not been finished a month; the last furniture was brought in for
the Duke of York: I have some comfort that I had seen it; except the
bare chamber in which the Queen of Scots lodged, nothing remained of
ancient time".

Not only was Mary Stuart well acquainted with Worksop Manor, but later,
her son, James the First, on his first progress to London, became the
guest of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, her jailer's successor. In a
letter to his agent, John Harpur, this nobleman writes forewarning him
of the expected honour, and, after bidding him see to horses being in
readiness, adds, as postcript: "I will not refuse anie fatt capons and
hennes, partridges, or the like, yf the King come to me". We find that
James left Edinburgh on the fifth of April, 1603, and reached Worksop on
the twentieth, after leaving the High Sheriff of Yorkshire at Bawtry,
and being met and escorted by his brother of Nottinghamshire. It is
matter for surprise that the kin