Temperance > Autobiography and personal recollections of John B. Gough

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN B. GOUGH.
“cheerfulness without noise, tranquillity without dul-
ness, and facility of communication without disturbance.”
The Earl of Darnley has an elegant villa surrounded by
a plantation, and overlooking the houses and the sea.
The earliest account of Sandgate is to be met with in the
mention of a castle which was standing there in the reign
of Richard II., who directed his writ to the keeper of
the castle of Sandgate, to admit Henry of Lancaster, Duke
of Hereford, with his family, horses, and attendants, to
tarry there six weeks for refreshment. On the site of
this building, which had been demolished, another castle
was built in 1539, by Henry YIII. When Elizabeth
made her famous progress to the coast in 1588, her
majesty honoured Sandgate Castle with her presence, and
was entertained and lodged here by the governor.
This castle was a favourite resort of mine, and having,
when quite a boy, gained favour with the keeper, I was
permitted free access; and, as I acquired some knowledge
of Bluff King Hal, I would wander through the court¬
yards, the turrets, and the battlements, and build castles
in the air, and—in fancy—people the place with its old
inhabitants, and see plumed cavaliers and ruffled dames
pacing the corridors, or surrounding the groaning board.
Katharine of Arragon, Anna Boleyu, Katharine Seymour,
and others, flitted by me, and—living in the past—sur¬
rounded by these associations, almost unconsciously my
imagination was cultured, and my mind imbued with a
love of history and poetry; and, having a taste for the
beauties of nature, I was often to be found roaming on
the beach, gazing at the great sea, and listening to its
everlasting moan;—little dreaming that three thousand
miles beyond, was a land in which my lot would be cast!
But I anticipate.
My father had enlisted as a soldier in 1798, and served