Wilton House and the art of floating meadows

Abstract

"I propose to raise a golden world (for commonwealth) in the Golden Vale in Herefordshire," writes Rowland Vaughan in his dedication to a distant cousin, William Herbert, the Third Earl of Pembroke. The dedication, which appears in his 1610 treatise, 'Most Approved and Long Experienced Water-workes', is an appeal to Pembroke for financial support for Vaughan's vision to create an ideal Commonwealth on his Welsh estate (see Figure 14.1). Central to Vaughan's bold plan is the establishment of sophisticated irrigation technology in the form of floated water meadows. The general scholarly consensus is that William, and his brother Philip, paid little heed to Vaughan's work. However, Vaughan's treatise suggests a meeting of minds with his cousins and the renowned intellectual culture of Wilton House. The organic utopian vision and scientific empiricism expressed in 'Water-workes' resonate deeply with the intellectual preoccupations of the Wilton Circle: a group of thinkers and writers championed by Pembroke's mother, Mary Sidney, and later by Pembroke himself, and which included in its melange his close friend, Francis Bacon.