Thrale history

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truly loved and adored her Duke from the time of their meeting to the time of his death and he returned that love in full. It is curious to note that at Waterend House during her childhood days there was an old tithe barn which was over one hundred feet long. Sarah almost certainly played in this barn as a child. In 1939 the direct descendents of Thomas Thrale were to remove the barn, beam by beam, and re-erect it as a restaurant on a site which has now become the Civic Centre in St. Albans. How the wheel of fortune turns! Sarah was indeed fierce and unrelenting. In the Althorp Muniment room there is the following 'Duchess of Marlborough's letter with instructions for setting fines at Sandridge Court. '14th June 1728. I send a messenger on purpose to St. Albans with my resolution concerning Fairfolds and Mrs. Thrale's fine. What you find upon the the Bookes in 1705 is no rule that I will go by because the people employed at that time proved themselves notorious knaves, as appears by the Paper I send you. By which you will see that Mrs. Thrale's quantity of land is 213 acres at 13/- acre. I believe there is no land of hers is worth so little as 10/- per acre. And I have been assured by several who have viewed her estate that a great part of it is worth more than one pound an acre. In renewals an estate ought to be valued as the whole is worth to let and likewise the house, which is a very good ore. As for Fairfolds Farm, I have been told it is not so good by a good deal as Mrs. Thrale's though the quantity of acres is more. Mrs. Thrale's is reckoned at 53 acres less than it is; which showed that they though it necessary to set down the number of acres wrong to justify the fine. Mrs. Thrale has had the advantage of the interest of this money for so many years that she must be very unreasonable if she is not satisfied'. Sarah's language was always pretty vigourous. In a letter sold at Christie's during the summer of 1970, she wrote in 1737 of her quarrel with the Duke of St. Albans (who had nothing to do with St. Albans) over the rangership of Windsor Park. 'You can lose nothing by being in the right, but a Family of Idiots, some of which, it is very probably, may never pay you. Who value themselves on being bastards on a Player. The Duke of St. Albans is an Idiot, and a Worthless One'.

Duchess Sarah's complaint about 'Mrs. Thrale's fine' was in keeping with her general attitude to her Sandridge estate. She wrote about this time 'Sandridge not well look'd after and too low rented. There are great abuses in the land tax, which they put more than they should to lessen the Taxes upon the Copyhold tenants and others. And at St. Albans there is a very great abuse from the Corporation. They tax a house at