Sheep ruminating above Encome House

This photo was taken on the ridge path leading to Swyre Head, a prominent headland in Purbeck with a height of 682 feet (208 metres).

Encome House is at the bottom of the ridge, to the right of the photo.  It was built in the mid 18th century by a member of the Pitt family.  In 1806 the Encome estate was sold to Lord Eldon, who had been the Lord Chancellor of Pitt the Younger, the British Prime Minister.


Lord Eldon and Shelley's "The Masque of Anarchy"

This angry diatribe was the poet Shelley's reaction to the 1819 "Peterloo Massacre"; in it, he castigated Britain's repressive rulers as anarchists.  These extracts are from the beginning of the poem:

As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh....

Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

Shelley's vitriol towards Eldon was personal: Eldon had refused to give Shelley custody of his children after the suicide of his first wife.  Eldon was also renowned for weeping when pronouncing sentence on criminals.