William Blathwayt was on the battlefield. Thunderously noisy, smoky, confused, and a long way from home, this was not a comfortable place to be. As England’s influential (and extremely wellremunerated) secretary of war, Blathwayt was a bureaucrat, not a soldier. As such, he was tucked a distance from frontline action – but nowhere was safe. In a battle of 1695, when the English were fighting in Flanders, Blathwayt had been standing by Michael Godfrey, deputy governor of the newly formed Bank of England. The man had been speaking one moment; the next, a cannonball struck his head from his shoulders.
Despite any horrors unfolding in front of him on this particular day, Blathwayt had more pressing things on his mind. Hundreds of miles away, back home at Dyrham Park – then in the shire of Gloucester - his new mansion was taking shape. Fashionable leather wall hangings had recently been delivered, made by Martinus van den Heuvel, one of
