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Forty feet high, this room runs up through two
storeys and has giant Corinthian pilasters. The richly Baroque
panels contain female figures and putti holding medallions
which are executed in plaster, painted to look like stone.
The circular centre to the ceiling is painted in illusionistic
foreshortening with a balustrade adorned with eagles, putti
and garlands wherein, sitting upon a cloud, floats Apollo,
God of Medicine, Music Poetry and all Fine Arts.
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A view of the magnificent forty
foot high stone hall.
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The two portraits, on either side of the double
doors to the Saloon are of important customers of the great
Restoration banker . Sir Charles Duncombe. The gentleman on
the right is Anthony Ashley-Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury,
Lord Chancellor of England in 1673 and, more importantly, from
our point of view, a close advisor to the King.
It was the custom of the London goldsmiths,
including Sir Charles Duncombe, to lend their money to
the Exchequer at their usual rate of 5 or 6 per cent in the
time of King Charles II. This monarch was always in want of
money and, not wishing to go before the House of Commons as
he had done so frequently before, he took counsel of his Ministers
as to the best way of obtaining £1,500,000 without
the aid of Parliament. The King promised a reward of the
Lord Treasurer's post to whoever would suggest the means.
Lord Ashley pointed out that the goldsmiths had approaching
the required sum deposited in the Exchequer and that by
the simple expedient of closing the Exchequer and refusing
to pay the bankers, the King could have the money he required
immediately. The King, apparently, was charmed at the idea
of such invention and cried: 'Odds fish! I will be as good
as my word, if you can find the money '.
The Exchequer was
closed on 2nd January 1672, a black day for almost all
the great goldsmith bankers who were ruined. A red letter day
, however, for Anthony Ashley, soon to become the First
Earl of Shaftesbury and for his bank manager, Charles Duncombe,
who fortuitously removed his deposits from the Exchequer
a few days before the closure, working, no doubt, on some
hunch fed by that kind of natural telepathy which exists
between en all good bank managers and their best customers.
The King had his money , Lord Ashley was upwardly mobile
and Charles Duncombe had a mountain of cash to lend out
with most of his competitors wiped out. Democracy and investigative
journalism have rendered this kind of activity much more
wearisome nowadays, which is why one has to pay rather
more than 6 per cent on one's bank loans.
The gentleman wearing the Garter Chain on the
left of the doors to the Saloon, is John Churchill, First Duke
of Marlborough: another useful customer in need of an understanding
bank manager, to keep him in the funds to support an expensive
wife in a big house whilst he was away winning wars.
These portraits of the Duke of Marlborough
and Lord Shaftesbury were probably their 'Christmas Cards' to
Sir Charles Duncombe. |
