Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/historyofstjamesOOdase_O THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE Walker & Boutall Ph.f < THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE WEST END OF LONDON With a Glimpse oj Whitehall in the Reign of Charles the Second BY ARTHUR IRWIN DASENT iLonfc o n MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1895 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved ST. JAMES’S SQUARE. “ We call it little London ; and it outdoes all the Squares, in dressing and breeding ; nay, even the Court itself, under the rose.” — Shadwell’s Bury Fair, act I., sc. i. THE GETTY CENTER LIBRARY PREFACE The following account of St. James’s Square is, I believe, the first attempt at a systematic visitation from house to house of any particular street or square in London, and may therefore fairly claim to break new ground. I have endeavoured to present a plain record of facts (unrelieved, I trust, by fiction), as they affect some few acres and some five-and-twenty individual houses out of the many square miles of streets and buildings which go to make up the area of the greatest city in the world. Founding my researches on the invaluable series of parochial rate-books preserved at the St. James’s Vestry Hall, — a mine of topographical material much neglected by antiquarian writers, as few authors have hitherto cared to seek inspiration from the tax- collector— -I have also freely consulted the diaries of Evelyn, Pepys, and Luttrell, that trio of enter- taining gossips whose writings have done so much to bring home to us the history of the seventeenth VI PREFACE century, the memoirs of Walpole, Hervey, and Wraxall in the eighteenth century, the Wentworth Correspondence and other MSS. in the British Museum, the Calendars of State Papers, and Original Documents in the Public Record Office, and the Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission. I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to the pages of Mr. Mackenzie Walcott’s little-known Handbook of St. James' s Parish, published so long ago as 1850; to the works of Peter Cunningham and his editor Mr. Wheatley ; to Colonel Chester’s Westminster Abbey Registers ; and to the late Mr. James E. Doyle’s Official Baronage. In addition to these sources of information I have received much valuable assistance from householders in the Square, many of whom have unreservedly placed their title-deeds and other family records at my disposal. Among these I am particularly in- debted to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, who possesses a unique series of deeds relating to property in the Square from its foundation to the present day ; to the Marquis of Bristol, Earl Cowper, and Sir Joseph Bailey. In reviewing the varying aspects of life in close proximity to the Court, where the pulse of fashion beats with greater force and regularity than else- PREFACE vii where, the lighter rather than the more serious side of human nature has been touched upon in sketching the inhabitants of the old Square, many of them famous, and some of them, as will be seen hereafter, decidedly infamous. In an Appendix will be found concise lists of owners and occupiers, and a comparative table of rates levied (for that rates are raised no householder needs to be reminded) on every house in the Square at intervals of twenty years from its foundation. The preparation of these lists has been by far the most laborious part of my researches, and I shall be very grateful for any corrections or additions which may suggest themselves to my readers, and especially for any unpublished letters referring directly to individual houses. Arthur Irwin Dasent. Windham Club , St. James’s Square. f~ CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE V CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE I CHAPTER II ITS EARLIEST INHABITANTS 1 4 CHAPTER III A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES THE SECOND 28 CHAPTER IV GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SQUARE 49 CHAPTER V THE GREAT HOUSES 62 East Side — Norfolk house, derby house, ossulston house North Side — ormond house West Side — Halifax house, Cleveland house CHAPTER VI MEN OF AFFAIRS AND MEN OF ACTION 105 X CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER VII MEN OF SCIENCE, MEN OF LETTERS, AND PATRONS OF THE ARTS I30 CHAPTER VIII AMBASSADORS, DIVINES, LAWYERS, MERCHANTS, MEN OF FASHION, DUELLISTS, AND RAKES 1 46 CHAPTER IX A GROUP OF FEMALE CELEBRITIES 1 68 CHAPTER X THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE SQUARE 1 84 CHAPTER XI ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO 1 89 CHAPTER XII A RETROSPECT 2O3 APPENDIX A CONCISE LISTS OF OWNERS AND OCCUPIERS, WITH COMPARATIVE TABLE OF RATES LEVIED ON EACH HOUSE AT RECURRING PERIODS OF TWENTY YEARS 215 APPENDIX B WARRANT FOR A CROWN LEASE OF PALL MALL FIELDS TO THE EARL OF ST. ALBANS (1662), AND TEXT OF THE GRANT OF THE SITE OF THE SQUARE ( 1 665 ) 265 APPENDIX C western London in 1 67 5, from ogilby’s Britannia . . 280 INDEX 287 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans . Frontispiece. [ From the original picture bp Van Dyck at Rushbrooke) The West End, including St. James’s and Whitehall, shortly before the Restoration . To face page [From Fait home and New court' s Map of London , 1658) Display of Fireworks in the Square after the taking of Namur „ [From a mezzotint by B. Lens , i 6 95 ) Sutton Nicholls’s View of the Square as it appeared early in the Eighteenth Century . „ [First State ) Great Drawing Room at No. 4 (Earl Cowper), designed by Lord Burlington for the Duke of Kent „ Bowles’s View of the Square as it appeared in 1752 Staircase at No. 10, the former residence of Lord Chatham, Lady Blessington, Lord Derby, and Mr. Gladstone ,, Sir Watkin Wynn’s House (No. 20), as designed by Robert Adam, 1772 „ 48 62 io 5 1 1 1 1 14 "7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xii “ The manner in which the Queen proceeded daily from Lady Francis’s House, St. James’s Square, to the House of Lords ” . To face page 134 {From a contemporary print in the author's possession) The West End in 1795, showing Piccadilly, Mayfair, the Green Park, and St. James’s „ 188 {From Hor wood's Map of London) Ackermann’s View of the Square, 1812 .. . „ 202 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT PAGE Allocation of Building Sites in the Square, 1676 .... 22 Plan of the Square at the passing of the Improvement Act of 1726 56 {Add. MSS. British Museum , No. 50,243) Old Building behind Norfolk House in which George the Third was born 75 Norfolk House 76 No. 2, Viscount Falmouth 88 Old Cleveland House shortly before its Demolition in 1894 99 No. 4, Earl Cowper no No. 10, Lord Kinnaird 114 No. 15, Lichfield House 126 No. 13, Windham Club 136 London House 155 No. 5, Earl of Strafford 162 Army and Navy Club 186 The WEST End, including St. James’s and Whitehall, shortly before the Restoration. ( From Faithorne and Newcourt's Map of London, 1658). -i THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE Before dealing with individual houses in the Square and enumerating the celebrities who have dwelt there at one time or another, it will be well to take note of the fact that, as a residential district, the West End of London dates only from the Restoration. If we look at Faithorne and Newcourt’s excellent map of 1658, of which that portion of London lying west of Charing Cross is reproduced on the oppo- site page, we find that the most westerly houses then standing were Tart Hall, Goring House, and a third building in the adjoining place of public entertainment known as the Mulberry Garden. B 2 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. Tart Hall, which had also an extensive garden, stood near the junction of James Street and Buck- ingham Gate, and was the residence of the ill-fated William, Viscount Stafford, who was beheaded in 1680. Goring House was long the property of the Earls of Norwich ; for a time it was occupied by Speaker Lenthall, and, after possession had been resumed by the Goring family at the Restoration, it came into the occupation of Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington. He had not lived here long before it was, with all its contents, entirely destroyed by fire. Buckingham Palace occupies the site of Goring House and the aforesaid Mulberry Garden, and it would be interesting to know, the mulberry being a very long-lived tree, if any specimens survive in the Palace gardens ; for if this be the case, their branches may once have afforded a grateful shade alike to the frolicsome Pepys and the staider Evelyn when they repaired thither in summer time for recreation. Till within quite recent years there flourished one or more of these trees, and perhaps they flourish still, in the gardens at the back of the houses in James Street, and this seems to point to a similar plantation in the cases of Tart Hall (the origin of which name no man can tell) and its neighbours across the road. The situation was a low one, and in the map of 1658 a watercourse is shown meandering down from the high ground beyond Piccadilly to join the Long Ditch and finally discharge itself into the Thames. The track of this stream is not now visible above I THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE 3 ground, but, as is the case with many another ancient watercourse in London, it still exists in the form of a sewer, and all but the most unobservant must have noticed how in foggy weather the atmosphere is always densest at the dip in Piccadilly between the St. James’s Club and Hertford House, and in the neighbourhood of Buckingham Palace itself. When Faithorne drew his map, fashionable London had not as yet sought the rus in urbe beyond the parks. Pimlico, since rechristened Belgravia, but yet not wholly purified in the process, was for the most part a dismal and unhealthy swamp ; Tyburn suggested nothing better than the gallows ; Paddington, Ken- sington, and Chelsea were lonely suburban villages rarely visited by the ordinary citizen. To Chelsea the usual mode of access then, and long after, was by water ; to Kensington, by the “ north-west passage ” skirting Hyde Park, in preference to the dreaded Brompton lanes to the southward, impassable in wet weather, and dangerous at all seasons on account of the frequent and unwelcome presence of footpads and knights of the road. The whole of the area bounded by Piccadilly on the north, by the Haymarket on the east, by Pall Mall on the south, and where St. James’s Street now stands on the west, was unoccupied by houses, save for a few insignificant dwellings at the east end of Pall Mall, and for Berkshire House, which stood on the west side of the roadway leading from St. James’s Palace to Piccadilly. Even these boundaries were B 2 4 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. mere country lanes bordering upon green fields gay with wild flowers and orchards of apple-blossom, and gladdened in early summer by the sweet breath of the May. The Pall Mall Field, or Close, which represents the actual site of St. James’s Square, was one of the largest of these meadows, and was used for purposes of recreation by the courtiers. Such then was the state of the neighbourhood when, soon after the Restoration, Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, on his return from Paris, obtained (owing to his long and intimate connection with the King and the Queen-mother) in the first instance a building lease of forty-five acres of St. James’s Fields, and eventually the grant in fee of the site of the Square. His influence at Court was mainly of the backstairs or bed-chamber order, but none the less valuable on that account, as in those days the officers of the household had at all times a readier access to the King’s ear than those Ministers and Secretaries of State whose functions were political rather than social. Sorbiere, who must have known Jermyn in France, speaks of him as “ a man of pleasure, who makes little or no pretensions to the Prime Ministry, and entertains no other thoughts than to live at ease ; ” admirable qualifications these for one desirous of ingratiating himself with the King, and well calcu- lated to ensure his position at Court. Jermyn, having obtained these valuable concessions, set him- self to work in conjunction with Sir John Coell, i THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE 5 Sir Thomas Clarges, and others to develope his building-estate, with the entire approval and under the personal direction of the King. The warrant for the original lease of 1662, preserved in the Public Record Office and never yet printed in its entirety, is given in Appendix B. Perhaps the earliest mention of the actual commencement of this enterprise is the entry in Pepys’s Diary, September 2nd, 1663, where he notes: “The building of St. James’s by my Lord St. Albans, which is now about, and which the City stomach, I perceive, highly, but dare not oppose it.” In laying out his estate the founder of the West End of London, for so Harry Jermyn deserves to be designated, reserved a central site for the great piazza which was intended to surpass in general convenience all similar places in the town, and to eclipse the building operations of Lord Treasurer Southampton then going forward in Bloomsbury Square. For a time, however, the great project languished, and in a petition presented by Lord St. Albans to the King in August, 1663, we read : “ Whereas the beauty of this great town and the convenience of the Court are defective in point of houses fit for the dwellings of noblemen and other persons of quality, and that your Majesty hath thought fit for some remedy hereof to appoint that the Place of St. James’s Field should be built in great and good houses, it is represented that unless your Majesty be pleased to grant the inheritance of 6 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SOUARE chap. the ground whereon some 13 or 14 houses that will compose the said Place are to stand, it will be very hard to attain the end proposed, for that men will not build palaces upon any term but that of inherit- ance.” 1 This petition, than which nothing could be more precise, was apparently mislaid at the Treasury, for on December 12th of the same year Lord St. Albans wrote (from Somerset House) to Williamson entreating him most earnestly to find out from Mr. Secretary Bennet into whose hands it had been put by him on his journey to Bath, and desiring its immediate return. The French traveller Monconys, who visited England in the train of the Due de Chevreuse in the summer of 1663, records a visit to “ M. Olden- burg loge au Vieux Mail [Pall Mall], qui est situe au cote d’une tres grande place qui est peut-etre quatre fois la place Royale et deux fois Belle-Cour ; elle appartient au Milord St. Alban, qui y va faire des batimens qui la detruiront.” 2 From the dimen- sions given, Monconys no doubt intended to refer to the plotting out of the entire building estate of forty-five acres, and not to the Square in particular. Sorbiere, who visited London at the same time, also mentions the “ New Buildings carried on towards St. James’s, which cannot be inferior to those of Belle Court at Lyons.” ] State Papers Domestic; August 14th, 1663, No. 340, p. 239 - 2 Voyages en Angleterre, Paris, 1695, p. 18. I THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE 7 A fair which had been held in St. James’s Fields from time immemorial was suppressed in July, 1664, as “ tending rather to the advantage of looseness and irregularity than to the substantial promoting of any good,” and in its stead a market (the legitimate suc- cessor of most fairs) was proclaimed in the following September. 1 Notwithstanding the delay in the commencement of the great Square, 2 building operations must have been actively pushed on elsewhere, as the rate-books of St. Martin’s parish for the same year refer to a number of houses in “ St. James’s Fields in the Market Place ” all assessed at a low figure. The inhabitants of the bailywick of St. James’s now petitioned Parliament for a bill to divide St. James’s from the mother parish of St. Martin, 3 and for the erection of a separate church, but their prayer was not destined to be granted till many years later. Building operations were brought to a standstill during the Plague, but resumed in earnest after the Fire of London. Jermyn Street, Charles Street, St. Albans Street, and King Street, were the first streets completed north of Pall Mall, and no sooner built than inhabited by the prime quality of the Cavalier 1 Morley’s Memorials of Bartholomew Fair , 1859, p. 242. 2 Lord Arlington writes on March 25th, 1665, to Lord Chancellor Clarendon to urge the immediate completion of Lord St. Albans’s grant of the inheritance of the Square whether it had received the Lord Treasurer’s sanction or not, 3 Journals of the House of Commons (1664), viii. 544. 8 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. nobility and gentry who till now had known nothing better than Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Piazza in Covent Garden. One of the most fashionable streets in London in the reign of Charles the First, was Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Some of the houses therein are said to have been designed by Inigo Jones, but that now numbered 55 and 56 on the south side is perhaps the only remaining specimen of his work to be seen in the whole street. These interesting houses, before their conversion into shops, figure in one of the woodcuts in Leigh Hunt’s The Town. Previous to the Restoration we also find the Cavalier aristocracy crowded in Drury Lane and in the neighbourhood of Craven House, if they were not numbered among the few fortunate owners of mansions in the Strand. The timbered and gabled London depicted by Hollar now gave way gradually to a new town of brick and stone, possibly less picturesque, but certainly more convenient. Perhaps the very first of the aristocracy to take up his abode in any of Lord St. Albans’s new buildings was Sir William Stanley, who in 1666 was rated for a house then described as being in “ the upper side of the Fields,” and, in the next year’s rate-book as being in “Jarman Street, West End, North Side.” The rate was only £ 1 , and yet he did not pay it ! The path of fashion in those latter days of the seventeenth century may readily be traced westwards, from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, through Great Queen 1 THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE 9 Street and Covent Garden, towards Leicester Fields, and thence onward again to the undiscovered region beyond the Haymarket and to the north of Pall Mall. A forest of bricks and mortar replaced the apple-orchards of a previous generation, and this new quarter of the town is alluded to by Chamberlayne in the second part of his Anglia Notitia , so early as 1671, as “ the many stately uniform piles in St. James’s Fields.” Some of the nobility still lived in the City itself, but with the close of the Civil Wars a greater sense of security seems to have prevailed among all classes, and the fashion of dwelling within the walls commenced to decline. City men still clung for a time to their counting-houses, but courtiers and gallants, the “ men of honour and quality,” for whom Lord St. Albans built, preferred to cluster round the palace of the sovereign. As has been well said by a recent historian, “ with the entry of Charles the Second into Whitehall, modern England begins ” ; and the same holds true as regards London. Shaftesbury was probably the last Lord Chancellor who lived within the precincts of the City, though by way of contrast his successor, Heneage Finch, Earl of Nottingham, lived at what is now Kensington Palace, a good four and a half miles from the centre of London, reckoning from the Standard in Cornhill ; 1 and the general tendency 1 For a curious view of Shaftesbury’s house in Aldersgate Street, which existed in a mutilated form till quite recently, see Delaune’s Present State of London , 1681. IO THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAP. to move westward which set in at the Restoration undoubtedly received a fresh impetus after the Great Fire of London. From 1667, when his house at the south-east corner of the projected piazza was first rated in the parish books, Lord St. Albans was in a position to superintend his building operations on the spot, 1 and having two years earlier, in spite of the opposition of Lord Treasurer Southampton, obtained from the King, the coveted grant of the freehold of the ground on which these great houses were to stand, 2 he proceeded 1 See the account of Norfolk House. 2 The very extensive and valuable series of title-deeds and miscellaneous documents relating to this property possessed by the Duke of Norfolk having been placed at the entire disposal of the author, it has been rendered possible, in conjunction with the parochial rate-books, to reconstruct the past, and to trace the successive ownership of the various houses on this spot from the very earliest date at which St. James’s Square had any separate existence and definite position in the world of London. From one of these deeds, the wording of which differs somewhat from that of the warrant for the same grant dated September 23rd, 1664, preserved in the Public Record Office and quoted in part by Mr. Wheatley and others, we learn the precise limits of the twelve acres three roods and twenty-two perches, on part of which the Square stands. The grant by letters patent under the great seal of England, bearing date at Westminster, April 1st, 1665 (printed in Appendix B), besides conveying to Lord St. Albans and his trustees, Baptist May and Abraham Cowley, the freehold of this preferential site, included King-street, which is not now private property and must therefore have been subsequently re- sumed by the Crown, a considerable portion of ground sub- sequently covered by the houses on the north side of Pall Mall, I THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE 1 1 to distribute the various plots among his friends and the principal builders of the day in about equal proportions, his practice being to devise the fee and inheritance of the soil for a sum of money down, while reserving a small yearly ground-rent in per- petuity. 1 Lords Arlington, Halifax, and Bellasis were his earliest and most favoured clients, and each of them obtained a corner site in this desirable position, — the nearest residential square to Charing Cross, now the acknowledged centre of London and even then a busy place. The names of eminent builders like Nicholas Barebone (the son of Praise-God-Barebones), Abra- ham Storey, and Richard Frith, occur in Lord St. Albans’s rent-roll of 167 6, 2 of which that part relating exclusively to the Square is reproduced on a later page ; and they seem to have been in some instances so far associated with the ground landlord in the speculation as to have acquired plots of land to sell again. All these three builders have left their mark upon London ; Barebone afterwards built Red Lion Square ; Storey (who had lived in Pall Mall even before the Restoration), or one of the same family, is commemorated in Storey’s Gate ; and and the two stable-yards now known as Babmaes Mews and Mason’s Yard respectively. 1 The area of the Square is stated by Hatton in the New View of London (1708) to be about four and a half acres. 2 Add. MSS. British Museum, 22,063. 12 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. Frith, who built Lord St. Albans’s own house, has given his name to Frith Street, Soho, the formation of which dates from but a few years later than St. James’s Square itself. The grand undertaking, the construction of the “ palaces fit for the dwellings of noblemen and persons of quality,” proceeded but slowly, a decade indeed elapsing between the date of Jermyn coming to live at old St. Albans House and the completion of the piazza. Life was not then the mad hurry it has now become ; and men could still afford to recognise the wisdom of Chaucer’s words : There is na workeman That can bothe worken wel and hastilie. This must be done at leisure parfaitlie. The words of a recent writer in The Quarterly Review are so germane to this subject that no apology is needed for quoting them here. “ In the Metropolis and throughout England some two centuries ago, the houses of the better class were for the most part built and planned for the convenience of the occupier in proportion to his means. The occupier was pre- sumably the owner ; he acquired sufficient width of land on which to build a proper house, and deliber- ately made it fit to live in, in accordance with the simple custom of the times. The rooms were spacious as their name implies ; the stairs were broad and easy of ascent ; and the wide entrance-hall was a fit introduction, liberally proportioned, to a dignified and I THE ORIGIN OF THE SQUARE i3 ample suite of rooms.” 1 In such deliberate manner were the houses in St. James’s Square constructed in the first instance. A generation later, in 1708, Lady Went- worth, alluding to a house here which she was anxious her son should buy, writes : “ I wish and hope you will have that in the Square, it is a noble house and fit for you, and strong. No danger of its falling by great winds, and it must be very warm, having those brick walls.” It is only fair to add that she also says, “ abundance of the new buildings fall,” which only goes to prove that builders were beginning to get careless even in Queen Anne’s time. The party- walls of many of these same houses testify to this day to the excellence of the workmanship of the seven- teenth century, and when Cleveland House was re- cently demolished even the interior brickwork was found to be over three feet thick. 2 Having thus briefly sketched the origin of the Square, and, so to speak, assisted at the laying of the foundations of the West End, it will be convenient to treat more particularly of the earliest inhabitants, of whom any record has been preserved, in a separate chapter. 1 The Quarterly Review, No. 351, p. 68. 2 A workman employed in pulling the house down told the author that enough materials were taken out of it to build half a street of the eligible villas of our day. CHAPTER II THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF THE SQUARE In the Civil Wars half the British electorate had been disfranchised as Malignants ; but, with the Restoration, Parliament began to feel its feet, as it were, and its members to show their power at the polls, and sometimes, more disagreeably to the Court, in their places at Westminster. This circumstance, coupled with the re-establishment of the pomp and pageantry of the Court at Whitehall, attracted to London, notwithstanding the difficulties of loco- motion and the perils of the roads, many to whom the metropolis had hitherto been an unknown world ; and we may be sure that the wives and daughters of the new Parliament men were only too willing to exchange provincial obscurity for the gaiety and excitement of town. The meteoric career of a country gentleman, newly elected to Parliament, who brings his wife and family up to town, has been vividly sketched for us by Vanbrugh in his unfinished comedy, A Journey to London. Setting out in a coach and six, horsed by equal contingents from the livery CH. II EARLIEST INHABITANTS 15 and the farm stables, and with a goodly retinue of body servants, temporarily diverted from their ordinary avocation of following the>.plough (a device, it will be remembered, resorted to \ in after-years by Mr. Hardcastle on the occasion of young Marlow’s visit), the squire and his family reach London only to find that the possible political advantages to be gained by the husband in the House of Commons will certainly be more than counterbalanced by the evils attendant on the wife’s introduction to the frivolous habits and agreeable vices of the West End : “ In short before her husband has got five pounds by a speech at Westminster she will have lost five hundred at cards and dice in the parish of St. James’s.” But what were the conditions of social life in 1676, which is the first year in which St. James’s Square as a whole appears in the parochial books as a separate place of residence ? The liberty of the Press had still not commenced to dawn in England ; the ad- vantages of education were confined to the upper classes, and not much esteemed by many of them. There was no regular standing army, and the navy had scarcely begun to feel the beneficent effects of the Duke of York’s administration of the Admiralty, although it was soon to occupy much of the time and attention of the House of Commons. Paint- ing, since the death of William Dobson the first English portrait-painter, was confined to foreign talent, as was architecture until the advent of Wren. The 1 6 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAP. two playhouses which London supported were centres of immorality rather than schools of art, and the general tone of society was sadly wanting in refine- ment. A more temperate spirit and a gradual improvement in manners is said to date from the introduction of coffee-houses, and a consequently somewhat more restricted use of strong drinks by both sexes. Medicine and surgery may be said to have been still in their infancy. Commercial pros- perity was however on the increase ; and though science had as yet made little progress, notwithstand- ing the establishment of the Royal Society, the experiments of Boyle, Oldenburg, and others were beginning to attract the attention of thoughtful men in all parts of Europe, many of the earlier meetings of the Society being attended by distinguished foreigners. By 1676 the new piazza in St. James’s Fields was sufficiently advanced to house a baker’s dozen of ratepayers, the highest assessment then being £ 1 o in the case of Lord Purbeck, who paid it, and the lowest £2 in the cases of Lady Newburgh and Sir Fulke Lucy, both of whom allowed their rates to fall into arrear. In Charles Street, south side, west end, were living in 1676, among others, Lady Sunderland, Lady Legge, and Lord Clifford, according to the rate- books, this particular street having been built and inhabited as early as 1671 (though Mr. Wheatley does not mention it before 1673), when the name of II EARLIEST INHABITANTS *7 Lord Clifford also appears for a house assessed at thirty shillings. In the two previous years he had paid the same rate for a house then described as being in St. Albans Street, north-west side. In 1675 Lady Newburgh was rated in Charles Street (in which a few of the houses subsequently entered as being in the piazza were probably first reckoned by the paro- chial authorities, pending the completion of the Square as a whole), at the same figure as she after- wards paid in the latter position. Lord St. Albans himself is rated under Charles Street in 1675, which seems to suggest that the principal entrance to his original house in the south-east corner of the Square (where Norfolk House now stands) was even then through the stable-yard still existing at the back of the houses which now form the south-east block. On its first erection it was undoubtedly approached by way of Pall Mall, when from the upper windows of the elevation towards the Mall there would have been enjoyed an almost uninterrupted view southward over St. James’s Park towards Whitehall and even to the City of Westminster beyond, where the long barn-like roof of the Abbey (for there were no flanking western towers then) broke the sky-line in the far distance. 1 1 A very clear and detailed description of Western London at this period is contained in Ogilby’s Britannia , published in 1675, but for which the actual particulars were no doubt collected slightly earlier. This account, which has hitherto been strangely overlooked by most topographical writers is reproduced in Appendix C. C 1 8 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. It will here perhaps be found convenient to give the names of the first inhabitants, and the rates they paid, as they occur in the earliest rate-book which refers specifically to the Square (the spelling being modernised), and to contrast them with the list of names given in Lord St. Albans’s rent-roll of the same year. POOR’S RATE BOOK OF THE PARISH OF ST. MARTIN’S IN THE FIELDS, 1676. St. James’s Square in the Fields. Marquess of Blanquefort . . . Lady Newburgh Countess of Warwick Earl of Oxford Earl of Clarendon Sir Cyril Wyche Lawrence Hyde Sir Fulke Lucy Lord Purbeck Lord Halifax Sir Allen Apsley Madam Churchill Madam Davis Rated. Received. Arrears. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. 5 0 0 3 15 0 I 5 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 0 3 0 0 3 10 0 — 3 10 0 5 0 0 — 5 0 0 2 10 0 2 10 0 2 10 0 2 10 0 2 0 0 — 2 0 0 10 0 0 10 0 0 6 0 0 6 0 0 2 1 6 0 2 16 0 3 6 0 3 6 0 2 6 0 2 6 0 Here we have the names of thirteen, for the most part prominent, men and women, who were the first to take up their abode in this historic spot ; but certain discrepancies are at once apparent between the entries in this parochial rate-book and the following more complete list set forth in Lord St. Albans’s MS. rent-roll for the same year, and never hitherto printed. EARLIEST INHABITANTS *9 RENT ROLL OF HENRY JERMYN, EARL OF ST. ALBANS, 1676. Add. MSS. British Museum, No. 22,063. Arranged in conformity with the modern numbering of the houses in the Square, commencing at the south-east comer. In the original the entries are made haphazard. The New Buildings in St. James’s Fields whose rents are only ground-rents. Correspond- ing modern numbering, etc. The names of the tenants and dates of their leases. The particulars devised and places where they lie. The yearly rents reserved. The more The Rt. Hon. northerly John Lord Bellasis portion of holdeth by Assur- Norfolk ance dated 24th House, March, 1669. London House, and Derby House. The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the east side of the Piazza of one hundred and thirty-three foot in front. Since built. To commence at midsum- mer, 1670. £3° o o 1 and 2. 3 - 4 - 5 - Henry Earl of Arlington holdeth by Conveyance dated the 27th July, 1665. His proportion of the £80 a. year rent is £5 i6j. 8d. being ir. 2 d. a foot. Edward Shaw holdeth by Assur- ance dated the 14th day of January, 1673. (Now my Lord Cavendish.) Nicholas Barebone holdeth by Assur- ance dated the 30th April, 1675. George Clisby holdeth by Assur- ance dated the 2nd day of April, 1675. The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground of one hundred foot in front on the east side of the Piazza. Without rent, only covenant- ing to pay a proportionable part of £ 80 yearly rent re- served to His Majesty upon my Lord’s grant and to pay for sewers and paving. The fee and inheritance ^23 4 4 of a piece of ground on the east side of the Piazza of fifty foot in front and a piece of ground in the east stable-yard, since built. The fee and inheritance ^28 12 8 of a piece of ground on the east side of the Piazza fifty-two foot in front, and three pieces of ground in the east stable-yard, since built. The fee and inheritance j£i 5 8 4 of a piece of ground on the north side of the Piazza fifty foot in front, since built. C 2 20 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. Correspond- g modern numbering, etc. The names of the The particulars tenants and dates of devised and places where their leases. they lie. The yearly rents reserved. 6 . Abraham Storey holdeth by Assur- ance dated the 2nd of April, 1675. The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the north side of the Piazza fifty foot in front, since built. ^15 4 7- 8 . 12. 13- John Angier hold- eth by Assurance dated the — day of — The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the north side of the said Piazza fifty foot in front, since built. £i5 § 4 His Excellency — £ 4 °° o o Monsieur Courtin, the French Am- bassador, payeth for his Lordship’s House situate on the north side of the Piazza on the east comer of Y ork Street there by the year by quarterly payments. Sir Cyril Wyche, Knight, holdeth by Assurance dated the 2nd day of July, 1675. The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the north side of the Piazza of thirty-six foot in front, since built. 2 o Sir Thomas Clar- ges holdeth by Assurance dated the nth day of June, 1675. The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the north side of the Piazza of forty-seven foot in front and a piece of ground in the east stable-yard of thirty- six foot in front. ^19 17 10 14. Richard Frith holdeth by Assur- ance dated the 14th day of June, 1673. (Now Sir Fulke Lucy. ) The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the west side of the Piazza of twenty-seven foot in front with another little piece of ground three foot in front. £9 5 ° EARLIEST INHABITANTS Correspond- ing modern numbering, etc. The names of the The particulars tenants and dates of devised and places where their leases. they lie. is- The same Richard Frith holdeth by like Assurance dated the 14th day of June, 1673. The fee and inheritance of another piece of ground on the west side of the Piazza of forty-three foot in front, since built. The yearly rents reserved. £13 5 2 16. The Honble. Mr. Thomas Jermyn holdeth by Assur- ance dated the — ■ day of — , 1670. The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the west side of the Piazza fifty foot in front, since built by Mr. Angier. o o 17 and 18. The Right Honble. George, Viscount Halifax holdeth by Assurance dated the 24th March, 1669. The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the west side of the Piazza eighty foot in front, since built. The rent to commence at midsummer, 1670. £ 24 12 o 20. 21. Abraham Storey holdeth by Assur- ance dated the 14th day of January, 1674. (Now Sir Peter Apsley’s. ) The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the west side of the said Piazza forty-four foot in front, since built. £13 11 4 Robert Werden Esquire holdeth by Assurance dated the 14th of June, 1673. (In trust for Mrs. Churchill.) The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the west side of the Piazza of fifty-eight foot in front, since built. £^1 17 8 Part of the Edward Shaw Army and holdeth by Assur- Navy Club, ance dated the — day of — , 1672. (Now Mrs. Davis.) The fee and inheritance of a piece of ground on the west side of the Piazza forty-three foot in front, since built. ^13 5 2 In this most interesting MS. we have a record of nineteen houses either built or planned, and the expla- nation of the differences between the two authorities would seem to be as follows. The four houses 22 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAP. fi 3 l 1 Sir. [l2] Sir. JNos. 11 10 9] Earl of St. h ¥ UJ [8] [7] fsl Thomas Cyril Albans’ own house, Or UJ French John Abraham George Clarges. Wyche. afterwards Ormond House Sh CO Embassy. Angier. Story. Clisby. 47 feet 36 feet 120 feet 58 feet 50 feet 50 feet 50 feet cr o ; is |t c 5 » - jrfL j KING STREET w. E. CHARLES STREET _ l! 3 -g g ha <1 o ^ >>.C m >»" 4) >* > 3 2 H >,-> “ Z; 5?i o H « o. Q co 3J co C _ O r» W s’ g>^. g Back of Houses in North Itow of Pall Mall Street ALLOCATION OF BUILDING SITES IN THE SQUARE, 1 676. II EARLIEST INHABITANTS 23 mentioned in the rate-book as being at the south- eastern corner of the Square represent the site of Lord St. Albans’s original house (which had a front- age of sixty-five feet), and the large plot of land to the northward of it acquired by Lord Bellasis. The remainder of the eastern side lying to the north of Charles Street, (which side from the rate-book would appear to have been still unfinished in 1676) included the sites allotted in the rent-roll to the Earl of Arlington, and to the builder Nicholas Barebone or Barbon, the latter erecting for the Earl of Kent, in 1676-7, the house now owned by Earl Cowper. The houses on the north terrace occupied by Lord Claren- don, Sir Cyril Wyche, and Lawrence Hyde, represent the names in the rent-roll of George Clisby (another builder), Sir Cyril Wyche, and Sir Thomas Clarges. Sir Fulke Lucy’s name occurs in both authorities and his house was that now numbered 1 4 and the London Library, with a frontage of only twenty-seven feet towards the Square. Abraham Storey’s name in the rent-roll represents No. 6 of the present day (Mar- quis of Bristol), he erecting a house here for John Hervey of Ick worth, Treasurer and Receiver General to Katherine of Braganza, at a cost of ^5,100. This John Hervey had previously obtained a lease- hold interest in St. James’s Fields at an even earlier date than that of Lord St. Albans’s first connection with the same Crown property. No. 7, first built by John Angier, was, like the last house, unfinished for rateable purposes in 1676. The French Ambassa- 24 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAP. dor’s house (now No. 8) although mentioned in the rent-roll does not appear in the rate-book for 1676 ; and Lord St. Albans’s unfinished mansion on the north (known subsequently as Ormond House and occupying the sites of Nos. 9, 10, and 1 1 of our day) would naturally not appear in his own terrier ; in 1677 and thenceforward it is duly entered in the parochial books. The five remaining houses mentioned in the rate-book for 1676 were all on the west side. Of these Lord Purbeck’s (probably, from the high assessment, originally intended to cover the site of both No. 15 and No. 16 of the present numbering) corresponds with the names of Richard Frith, the builder, and the Honourable Thomas Jermyn in the rent-roll. Lord Halifax’s double house at the north- east corner of King Street (covering the site of Nos. 17 and 18) appears in both authorities. No. 19 is omitted in both, the site being as yet unappropriated though soon afterwards granted to the Earl of Essex on his return from Ireland. The Apsleys appear in each record for No. 20, as do Arabella Churchill and Moll Davis for No. 21 and a part of the site of the Army and Navy Club respectively. It will be seen therefore that in the earliest years of its existence the new Square attracted to itself representatives of the great territorial families of Bellasis, Cavendish, De Vere, Grey, Hervey, and Savile. These, with the Hydes, the Jermyns, and the Bennets, will be more particularly alluded to in the course of this work. Of the remainder Lady II EARLIEST INHABITANTS 2 5 Warwick was the daughter of the celebrated parlia- mentary general, the Earl of Manchester, who mar- ried no fewer than five wives and yet lived long enough to enjoy various places of profit under the Crown which he had formerly worked so hard to up- set. Sir Cyril Wyche, one of eight residents in the Square who have filled the distinguished post of President of the Royal Society, was connected with Lord St. Albans by marriage. Having previously been secretary to Ormond when Viceroy of Ireland, he was made a Lord Justice of that country in 1693. Dying in 1707 he was buried in St. James’s Church, and an extensive library which he had formed was sold by auction at Exeter Change in 1710. Sir Fulke Lucy was one of the new Parliament men, and Sir Allen Apsley was the Keeper of the King’s hawks and Treasurer of the Household to the Duke of York. He represented the borough of Thetford, and Pepys, in a remarkable passage which many will think not wholly inapplicable to the Mother of Parliaments in our own day, tells us that his behaviour at Westminster was not always irre- proachable. “Sir R. Ford did make me understand how the House of Commons is a beast not to be under- stood, it being impossible to know beforehand the success almost of any small plain thing, there being so many to think and speak to any business, and they of so uncertain minds and interests and passions. He did tell me how Sir Allen Brodrick and Sir Allen Apsley did come drunk the other day into the House 2 6 THE HISTORY OE ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. and did both speak for half an hour together, and could not be either laughed or pulled, or bid to sit down and hold their peace.” (December 19th, 1666.) It was in Sir Allen’s house that the Duke of York slept on his sudden return to England (on the King’s being taken ill in 1679) before proceeding to Windsor. 1 Arabella Churchill before reaching her twentieth year became a Maid of Honour to the Duchess of York, an appointment which led to her forming a less creditable connection with that lady’s husband. De Grammont speaks of her as “ a tall creature, pale faced, nothing but skin and bone ” ; but in spite of this unprepossessing description it is usually supposed that Marlborough owed much of his early advance- ment to her influence, and to her house here he must frequently have come from his own lodgings in Jermyn Street. Madam Davis, the only remaining resident in the south-west corner, was the sprightly young actress and dancer whose antics on the stage made the pulse of our friend Pepys beat quicker as he sat in the pit of Old Drury, marking time with his foot as he applauded the measure. Naive and flippant on the stage, what she lacked in beauty she made up for in agility. Her picture by Lely in the National Portrait Gallery makes her features so little pleasing that one would think they would have proved an impediment to frailty ; but that this was not the case must be set down the fact that the standard of 1 Hatton Correspondence ; Camden Society, i., 19 1. II EARLIEST INHABITANTS 2 7 female grace and beauty as invariably depicted by Lely and his contemporaries, to wit, “the sleepy eye which spoke the melting soul,” has undergone a complete transformation since the seventeenth century. 1 With the establishment of the Square and the adjacent streets as a centre of fashionable life Lord St. Albans seems to have endeavoured to convert his speculation into a monopoly, for on March i ith, 1 677, a Bill was brought into the House of Commons, presumably at his instance, to prevent the erection of any new buildings in London, unless their founda- tions had been laid before that date or contracted for prior to the following Christmas, — any houses built contrary to such order to be demolished. The Bill, however, failed to secure general approval, and the expansion of western London suffered no such disastrous check as was then sought to be imposed. 1 Moll Davis was the creator of the part of Celania in Davenant’s Rivals an alteration of the older play, The Two Noble Kinsmen. Downes in his entertaining Roscius Anglicanus states that she enacted the part of a“ shepherdess mad for love,” but this was not so, as a comparison with the printed text of the play will prove. Her daughter by the King married the second Earl of Derwentwater, and became the mother of the Jacobite Lord beheaded on Tower Hill. CHAPTER III A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES THE SECOND Let us picture to ourselves, with the assistance of contemporary chroniclers, a royal perambulation of the “ great Square in St. James’s Fields ” (as it gradually came to be called when the un-English word “piazza” fell into disuse) on a summer’s day in the year 1683. This particular year has been deliberately chosen because it was the time of all others when Charles’s power was the most absolute. After the fall of Clarendon the King had mainly controlled the Cabal government through Arlington, Shaftesbury, Danby, and Temple. All had their day as nominal leaders, though each had been more or less hampered by an inconvenient House of Com- mons or by an unruly section of its members ; but now, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament and the flight of Shaftesbury, Charles, who had re- covered much of his old popularity in the country since the exposure of the Rye House plot, felt himself strong enough to stand alone. Taking for his watchword “ Never insist,” he yet CH. Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 29 aspired to rule autocratically if he could, and only to follow where he could not lead ; and it must be admitted that on the whole he found this plan work very well, from his point of view. Burned out of Newmarket in the spring, he spent much of his time in London this summer, entrusting the direction of his affairs mainly to Halifax (who had graduated under Shaftesbury), and in a lesser degree to Law- rence Hyde, now Earl of Rochester, though the two ministers did not always agree very well together. This was essentially the period of Tory reaction, when the King, acting chiefly on the advice of the aforesaid statesmen and of the acute intriguer Sunder- land, who had gradually strengthened his position at Court, determined to dispense with the services of a Parliament altogether, since the last had proved none too compliant ; to institute a repressive policy to- wards the City party formerly led by Shaftesbury ; and to replenish if possible the royal purse by the enforced surrender of the existing Corporation Charters, thereafter only to be graciously renewed on payment of a heavy fine. The easy-going King, who would probably be accompanied by the indispensable Will Chiffinch, after sauntering from Whitehall through St. James’s Park would pass through the Palace in which he was born in order to enter Pall Mall. Looking up at St. James’s we hear him say to his companion : “ The astrologers tell me that, when first I saw the light of day, the star of Venus was in the ascendant, and what 30 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. man dare assert that I have not done my best to keep it there ever since ! ” After stopping to chat with the Duchess of Mazarin about the gains and losses of the previous night at her basset-table, or dallying awhile with Nell Gwynne in Pall Mall to hear the latest and most piquant gossip, he would, at the outset of his morning stroll, naturally turn into the Square at its south-west corner, and in all probability (Chiffinch having first been deputed to ascertain whether the lady was yet up, for Charles was notoriously an early riser,) make a halt at what was in those days the first house on his left hand. This was now tenanted by little Moll Davis, whose fascinating rendering of the old song, “ My lodging is on the cold ground,” had some years before so captivated the King as to procure her rapid elevation from that uncomfortable resting place, to what may be styled a vice-regal establishment. So at least we read in the Roscius Anglic anus , but by this time she had been ousted by others in Charles’s affections, and her star being well-nigh set, the King would not tarry here long. Continuing his progress northwards, Sir Joseph Williamson’s house would next be reached. As one of his former ministers and a creature of Arlington’s throughout his official career, Charles might condescend to pay him a brief ceremonial visit ; but there was not much in common between the sovereign and the subject in this instance, so we pass on to Sir Allen Apsley at No. 20 (now Sir W. Williams Wynn’s). He Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 3i was, however, more of an adherent of the Duke of York, to whom he was Treasurer of the Household, than of Charles himself, and perhaps therefore at this time Sir Allen would be more or less tainted with the suspicion that undoubtedly attached to his next- door neighbour, “ a hound out of the same pack,” as Chiffinch in his coarse manner describes Lord Essex in conversation with Charles. The ill-fated peer, who then lived at what was afterwards to be known as Cleveland House, is described by Evelyn, as “ A sober, wise, judicious and pondering person, not illiterate beyond the rate of most noblemen in this age [a somewhat sweeping pronouncement by the way], industrious, frugal, methodical, and every way accomplished.” A few weeks later he was to be hurried to the Tower on a charge of being im- plicated in the Popish Plot. In that fortress, and before he could be brought to trial, he was found one morning with his throat cut, not without strong suspicions of foul play. A report was therefore assiduously circulated that he had committed suicide in a fit of melancholy, to which he was known to be subject. Crossing King Street, the King would arrive at Halifax House, the double-sized mansion which was so long the home of the Savile family, at the head of which now stood the celebrated Trimmer, who was alternately Lord Privy Seal and President of the Council under three such widely different masters as Charles the Second, James the Second, 32 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. and William the Third. An amusing hoax, of which he was the victim about this time, has recently been published in the Rutland papers by the Historical Manuscripts Commission where, in a gossiping letter from Lady Campden, we read that some malicious persons ingeniously printed funeral cards and dispersed them among the nobility, desiring them to send their coaches on a day named to St. James’s Square, to accompany the body of Lord Halifax out of town. At this particular period he was Charles’s most trusted adviser, and both in genius and capacity he outshone all the ministers of this reign. Sunderland was too notoriously shifty, and Rochester now rather too much disposed to favour the Duke of York’s views, to retain Charles’s entire confidence. With no Parliament in session there were no measures to be forced upon an unwilling Lower House, and in those days of Tory revival the King’s only immediate care, as indeed it was throughout his reign, was the raising of supplies independently of the ordinary con- stitutional methods which had been tried and pronounced wanting. While thus engaged in re- cruiting the royal purse, Halifax was careful to play off Monmouth against the Duke of York at Court so that the adherents of neither should interfere with his own ascendency ; and though the former had absconded on the exposure of the Popish Plot, the crafty minister persuaded the King to recall him before the year was out. Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 33 But leaving politics for persons we will accompany the King further in his perambulation of the Square. At what is now No. 16 and a portion of the East ' ndia United Service Club lived the Earl of Suffolk, of whom we know little, except that it was to his rouse at Audley End that Charles removed after the great fire which took place at Newmarket in March this year, a disaster, by the way, which is said to lave been the means of preventing a still greater one ; the plot to murder the King at the Rye House neing frustrated owing to the premature removal of the Court to London. Next to Lord Suffolk, in a house which La Belle Stewart , another old love of the King’s, had formerly occupied, now lived the Earl of Kildare, who was soon after to wed the Lady Elizabeth Jones, daughter of Lord Ranelagh, herself a resident in the Square and one of the most beautiful young women of the time. Her features are preserved to us in Williams’s mezzotint engraving after one of Wis- sing’s best portraits. In this she is represented in ia low dress with a bewitching hat, looped up on one side with a bunch of flowers, and almost as wide as the famous cartwheel worn by Nell Gwynne on the stage when delivering the prologue to one of Dryden’s plays. 1 Lady Kildare’s many charms have 1 Nell’s hat was, however, a deliberate caricature of the French fashions brought over by the Duchess of Orleans and aer suite, and what was then regarded as extravagant may well rave become the normal mode when Lady Kildare’s picture vas painted. D 34 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. been sung by St. Evremond, and by Lord Lansdowne in his Progress of Beauty. Either she or one of her unmarried sisters is believed to have attained the dignity of being numbered among the King’s many mistresses, which may perhaps account for her father having been continued in office after embezzling large sums of the public money in Ireland, where he was Vice-Treasurer. Lady Kildare died in 1758 at the great age of ninety-three, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, within a stone’s throw of her old admirer, so unceremoniously bundled into his grave at dead of night two years after our imaginary visit to the Square in his company. We now come to the last house on the west side and at the top corner. This, in 1683, was in the occupation of Lord Downe, who as Sir John Dawnay sat for Pontefract in several Parliaments but was not otherwise prominent in London society at this time. At what is now No. 13 and the Windham Club lived Sir John Williams, a Dorsetshire baronet, and his mother, a daughter of Sir Thomas Skipwith. Lady Williams, who is said to have been an intimate friend of the Duke of York and a more than suspected harbourer of Papists, is referred to in one of Nell Gwynne’s few extant letters in terms of easy familiarity, a fact which lends some colour to her supposed connection with the King’s brother, who, if not quite so promiscuous in his amours, was quite as indiscreet as Charles himself. We know also that Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 35 other ladies under his protection were established in the Square at an early period of its history, obtaining their houses on exceptionally favourable terms through the influence of the Court. At her death Lady Williams found a last resting-place in Westminster Abbey, wherein indeed were laid many of the residents in the Square, famous, infamous, or insignificant, who happened to die in town previous to the erection of St. James’s Church. Coming now to No. 12 we find the name of a man with whom the King must have had much in common, Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards Blue, and an old cavalier of nearly as dissolute habits as Charles himself . 1 The great house which stood next to Lord Oxford’s, with a frontage of no less than one hundred and twenty feet towards the Square, was Ormond House, where Charles must have been a constant visitor when Harry Jermyn occupied it, but, on the latter’s retirement from London in the course of this year, the Duke of Ormond came here from Piccadilly. The great Barzillai, abandoning Irish politics for the time, was again a favourite at Court, but as it is doubt- ful whether he had yet replaced Jermyn in the Square, we will cross York Street, and draw up at No 8 , the residence of Sir Cyril Wyche. He was 1 Lord Oxford’s daughter and eventual heiress married the King’s son by Nell Gwynne, the first Duke of St. Albans, some ten or eleven years later. D 2 3 6 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. elected President of the Royal Society this year, and therefore Charles, who was fond of dabbling in science, especially in its bearings on navigation, provided that it cost him nothing, may have paid Sir Cyril a formal visit as in the case of Sir Joseph Williamson. In his capacity of president Sir Cyril is anxious that the King should honour the meeting of the society at Gresham College that afternoon, when a pretty experiment is to be made with the larmes de verre , or Prince Rupert’s Drops, and when Hooke, Boyle, and other lights of science are expected to lecture on the recently discovered marvels of the air- pump. Charles, however, is unable to promise to attend, as he hopes to see Betterton in a new part if his engagements should permit of his reaching the theatre in time. Taking leave of Sir Cyril, he would find himself in much more congenial company next door, where (at what is now No. 7) dwelt the Earl of Ranelagh, of whose character and circum- stances some hint has already been given. However, at the time of which we write he had the King’s entire confidence and approbation, although his defalcations had thus early been brought to light. One of his fair daughters (whom Charles has come to invite to a ball at Whitehall that night, to be given perhaps in honour of the betrothal of the Lady Anne to the Prince of Denmark,) was carrying on a dangerous intrigue with the King at the time, so we must leave him in the toils of Venus for a while, and look in upon Lord Dartmouth at No. 6. Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 37 This house, which was, and still is, the freehold of the Hervey family, was in the temporary possession of Colonel George Legge, the first of his name to be ennobled. About this time he was deputed by Charles to dismantle the defences of Tangier ; an irreparable loss, since on the acquisition of Gibraltar in after years, England, with Tangier as well in her possession, would have held in her grasp the only really effective key to the Mediterranean. Its abandonment, however, was probably only finally decided upon when it became absolutely necessary to reduce the public expenditure within the narrowest limits, there being no longer any opportunity of wring- ing money out of a reluctant House of Commons towards its equipment. After the King’s death, Lord Dartmouth removed to Whitehall where James gave him the Duke of Monmouth’s old lodgings ; but the change of abode brought him no good luck, as in the next reign he was apprehended on a charge of high treason and committed to the Tower, where he died. Now, tearing Charles from the allurements of Lord Ranelagh’s domestic circle, we may hurry him past the next house eastward of Lord Dartmouth’s, now the Earl of Strafford’s, but then inhabited by the Countess of Thanet, widow of the Earl of that name who was imprisoned in the Tower by Cromwell. Lady Thanet is at the window to see the King go by, and, at the sight of Chiffinch, indignantly exclaims that his royal father kept better 38 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. company, and that through the influence of these loose companions the country will again be undone. At No. 4 would have been found the Earl of Kent, but except as the titular head of the powerful family of Grey, whose descendant in the female line still holds this valuable property, his public career calls for no comment. He died suddenly, while playing bowls at Tunbridge Wells in 1702, and his successor in the family honours will be more particularly alluded to on a later page. At the next inhabited house to the Earl of Kent lived a man with whose family the King had long been on terms of the very closest intimacy, that is to say, John, Lord Ossulston, Arlington’s elder brother. He was also one of the earliest residents in the Square, and at a time when his house could have been hardly finished, in 1677, it is recorded in the Belvoir MSS. that it was hired by Lord Purbeck, a wild young rake, for a masquerade ball to which none but debauchees of both sexes, or as Carlyle would have said, “ the blackguard quality,” were invited. Empty houses in the West End of London are, as we know, sometimes hired nowadays for the purposes of co-operative as well as individual hospi- tality, but the entertainments given in them fortu- nately in no wise resemble the mad revels organised by the Scourers and Mohocks of an earlier time. The ground on which Lord Ossulston’s house stood had a frontage of no less than a hundred feet towards the Square, and is identical with the building-plot Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 39 conveyed to Arlington by Lord St. Albans as early as 1665, which, as we have seen, was the year in which the latter obtained the freehold from the Crown. Arlington, however, seems never to have lived here, preferring Goring House in close prox- imity to the Mulberry Garden, although it will have been seen from Lord St. Albans’s rent-roll that he was exceptionally favoured in the original allocation of sites in the Square, as the freehold was conveyed to him without, as in other cases, the grantee becom- ing liable to any ground-rent, he only covenanting “to pay a proportionable part of -£80 yearly rent reserved to his Majesty upon my Lord’s grant, and to pay for sewers and paving.” The stipulation as regards paving the roadway in front of the dwelling- house was probably inspired by the King’s stay in the Low Countries, where the neat condition of the streets and squares (who that knows them does not admire the clinkered alleys of the Hague ?) may have excited a desire on his part to introduce a similar con- venience into his own capital. Lord Ossulston’s niece, and Arlington’s only daughter, had been given in marriage at the tender age of twelve to the King’s son, the Duke of Grafton, in the previous year. A few years later this hot-tempered young man fought a desperate duel in Chelsea Fields with Mr. Jack Talbot, in which the latter was killed on the spot and the Duke severely wounded. Soon after his early death, from wounds received at the siege of Cork by Marlborough in 1690, his young widow 40 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAP. came to live in the Square, at No. 3, next door to her uncle at Ossulston House. Crossing Charles Street we meet with Lord Cavendish at the south-east corner (now Derby House), a son-in-law of Ormond, and afterwards the first Duke of Devonshire. As he now laboured under suspicion of being concerned in the Whig Plot with Lord Russell, and had in consequence ceased to be a member of the Privy Council, we may pass on to what is now London House, but which was then in the occupation of the Countess of Warwick. The only two remaining inhabitants of the south- east corner of the Square (where Norfolk House now stands) were both of them the King’s ministers ; Sir John Ernley his Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Earl of Conway, who became a principal Secretary of State in succession to Sunderland. 1 Having thus completed the circuit of the Square, we will now follow the King back through Pall Mall into St. James’s Park. Softly humming to himself 1 Sir John Ernley, one of the few public men whose name is missing from that monumental work The Dictionary of National Biography , was a member of an old Wiltshire family who suc- ceeded Sir John Duncombe as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1676. He was a frequent speaker in the Oxford Parliament on the question of the exclusion of the Duke of York, whose suc- cession to the throne, as apart from the administration, he supported. For his pedigree see La Neve’s Pedigrees of the Knights , Harleian Society, 8, 199. Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 4i his favourite tune of Cuckolds all awry (an old English ditty with a theme on which no one was better qualified to express an opinion than the King himself) he may perhaps stop, on the leisurely com- pletion of this metropolitan Rowley’s Mile (to adapt to our present purpose the then recently coined nomenclature of Newmarket Heath), to drink a class of red cow’s milk at the Spring Garden corner of the Park (then a favourite rendezvous for the fashion and frailty of both sexes) ; or he may end his morning in watching his gallants amusing them- selves at the game of paille-maille, known to us only in our own day by its attenuated and degenerate successor croquet, a nerveless pastime which bears about the same resemblance to the parent game as does lawn-tennis to its nobler and more scientific prototype. From the Park Charles would turn into White- hall by a passage leading past Miss Kirke’s old lodgings , 1 and regaining the Palace by a gate nearly opposite to the Tilt Yard, would rejoin his neglected 1 When Moll Kirke was turned out of St. James’s in 1675, she went to live at a very private sanctuary in Whitehall, close to Henry Savile, the brother of Halifax. In 1 677 she married Sir Thomas Vernon ofHodnett, in Shropshire. Successive editors of Grammont’s Memoirs have sought to confound her with a Miss Warminster, or Warmistre, but without any justification. Her name only appears once in the lists of the Royal households given by Edward Chamberlayne in his Anglics Notitia, i.e. in 1674 when she is said to have been a Maid of Honour to the late Duchess of York. Her sister, Diana Kirke, married the Earl of Oxford in 1679. 42 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAP. Queen, compelled to spend much of her time in the society of maids of tarnished honour such as the Duchess of Cleveland, and parasites of the Court like the Killigrews. Crossing the Stone Gallery in order to reach his private apartments, which were near the riverside, the King would be very likely to meet the Duke of York pacing up and down with Samuel Pepys, in earnest conversation on the needs of the Navy and the progress made with the thirty new ships ordered by a recent Parliament for the security of the realm. The King’s interest in England’s sovereignty of the seas was one of his redeeming features, and, after greeting his old servant cordially, he would enter on a discussion of naval affairs with intelligence and animation, making mental note of Samuel’s capacity for further employment ; and we may be sure that, on his return home, Pepys will make the most of the royal consideration extended to him by both brothers, and of his prospects of rendering further valuable service to the State in the near future. The King’s undoubted popularity, notwithstanding all his extravagances, among the humbler classes, was due in great measure to his being the most accessible monarch within living memory. After dining in public, he would (if time permitted) allow an un- wholesome-looking crowd of superstitious invalids, stricken with a sore disease, to be admitted to his presence, in order that he might touch them for the evil, and send them away happy with their angelots Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II +3 round their necks. This object-lesson in faith- healing concluded, the King and Queen would honour Drury Lane Theatre with a visit, perhaps driving thence to the Ring in Hyde Park, to take the air or to witness a horse-race. Tom Jermyn, St. Albans’s nephew, was a famous rider and fond of matching himself against time for a substantial wager, and the Duke of York had a running foot- man who was regarded as a prodigy of fleetness. At nightfall the Ring grows deserted as the royal party return to Whitehall ; and an hour or two later many a well-appointed coach, each with its equipment of liverymen, rolls heavily into the courtyard of the Palace from divers parts of Westminster, from Spring Gardens, from Leicester Fields, and from the new West End of the town. Among the number are certain to be some from St. James’s Square. Thence would come Lord Ranelagh with his handsome daughter (the Lady Elizabeth Jones, for she is not yet Countess of Kildare,) glad enough of an opportunity to show her proficiency in the steps of the stately minuet, even if she must plead guilty to an occasional faux pas in another respect. Halifax might wish to show himself at Court on his recent promotion to the rank of a Marquis : Lord Suffolk, an old courtier now, would bring his newly-wedded bride ; and some of the Bennet family, either Lord Arlington or his brother Lord Ossulston, and the Duke of Grafton with his child-wife are sure to be of the company. 44 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. Soon after their arrival at Inigo Jones’s noble Banqueting House, the first of our public buildings in Portland stone, the Queen enters with Charles and the Duke and Duchess of York, and seats her- self on the dais at the farther end. And, in spite of her prominent teeth, we may note that she has a kindly smile for all, and produces a pleasing im- pression, for without being clever or brilliant, she has, what must often have stood her in good stead in the land of her adoption, tact, discernment, and patience. Up in the Musicians’ Gallery the fiddles begin to squeak not later than ten o’clock, for Court balls did not often last beyond midnight in those days, a commendable example of early hours which we in the nineteenth century should do well to imitate. Dancing would begin, as over the water, with a branle, a measure popularised in this country by the graceful musical settings of Lully and Couperin. Then would come a coranto , a kind of quick step not very dissimilar to the branle ; and next a minuet would be commanded in which the royal family would take part. Charles was passionately fond of music and dancing, as indeed are most men of his peculiar temperament ; and in his reign the royal private band was much augmented and improved. In one of the pauses between the dances the Lord Privy Seal (Halifax) makes bold to tell his master that, without summoning a Parliament, even a moderate expenditure on the part of the Court can- Ill A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 45 not be met much longer. To this Charles demurs. “ Supposing for a moment,” he says, “ that we do have a new Parliament, ’tis no certainty, I take it, that it will grant me the money I want. It may well prove as untractable as its predecessors. We have sold Dunkirk and far too cheaply, and we are now prepared to abandon Tangier ; what a pity ’tis we have not still got Calais to sell, the loss of which Harry Jermyn has often told me that his grandfather well remembered, and what mortification it caused Queen Mary at the time, though to be sure it was no real loss to England. I only wish I had it now, for Louis would give far more for it than the beggarly sum he paid for Dunkirk, which town also we are better without, in my opinion. Think too what it must have cost to keep up the establishment of a place like Calais ! an annual drain on the Exchequer of £ 100,000 and more ; money that would far better be spent at home. We have abolished Purveyance and given the people the Habeas Corpus Act ; what more can they want ? Then too we have harried the Nonconformists to please the Churchmen, and assented to the Test Act to gratify the hatred of both persuasions for the Roman Catholics. How- ever, if you think I must call a new Parliament, I will ask ‘ Hushai, the friend of David in distress,’ as that impudent fellow Dryden has dubbed him, what he thinks about it, [well knowing that the minister would advise against such a step], and if the thing cannot be helped, we must see what steps can be 46 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. taken to prevent too many Whigs from being chosen in the country ; and then perhaps, when once more I meet my faithful Commons, something can be squeezed out of them to keep the wolf from the door.” Halifax bows and retires, as the band strikes up a lively country dance and gallants choose their fair partners for this favourite measure, since there were no jerky polkas or romping lancers in those days, and the waltz was a thing not yet dreamed of. But if the floor of the ball-room was well suited to its purpose, it must be owned that the lighting arrangements of the seventeenth century left much to be desired, even at Whitehall. A few silver candelabra on the mantelpieces, some spluttering flambeaux held by the Yeomen of the Guard (resplendent in their scarlet hoquetons and puffed velvet sleeves) stationed at the corners of the great hall, and a single crystal chandelier in the centre, provided an indifferent light, and at the same time a good deal of smoke. To specify the best dancers at Court would be to name Sir Edward Villiers (the Knight-Marshal) and, in her younger days at all events, the Duchess of Cleveland. Miss Fraser, a lady in waiting to the Duchess of York, was long one of the most admired beauties at Whitehall, and one of the best-dressed members of the royal household, although she was only the daughter of a doctor. At one of these same Court festivities a few years earlier she is said to have worn a dress of black velvet, ermine, and cloth of II A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES II 47 gold, the cost of which her envious companions computed at £800, throwing out dark hints at the same time that such an outlay could never have been honestly come by. The young lady’s extravagance so frightened Sir Carr Scroop, who was in love with her at the time, that he straightway abandoned his matrimonial intentions. The Duchess of Cleveland would affect a coif of pure white crepe studded with precious stones to surmount her ample tresses, an alluring combination of simplicity and ill-gotten wealth which never failed to produce its effect on the beholder. But the night wears on, and, after supper has been served in one of the galleries of the Palace, the lights begin to burn low and the dancers to tire with their exertions, whereon the Queen withdraws to her own apartments, thus giving the signal for the company to disperse. One by one the coaches rumble away into the distance, but one at least of the departing guests, a great favourite at Court, the young Earl of Arundel, can return to his home by the silent highway of the Thames. For though the ancestral town house of the Dukes of Norfolk is now fallen from its former high estate, since whole streets of new houses are springing up on the site of its once extensive gardens, St. Clement Danes has not even yet been finally deserted by the family for St. James’s. Only to- night the King has been telling the young Lord (already, in his father’s lifetime, Constable of Windsor and Lord-Lieutenant of two or three counties) how 48 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CK. Ill far more conveniently situated is the new West End piazza than the neighbourhood of the Strand for the Court at Whitehall ; and so, in the course of the very next year we find him (on succeeding to the dukedom) occupying Lord Conway’s old house in the Square, the freehold of which was in after years to be acquired by the next Duke of Norfolk. But at the time of which we speak, perhaps the very last sound which the drowsy sentinels by the waterside will hear is the plash of oars breaking in upon the stillness of the summer night, as my Lord is borne swiftly away down stream to be landed at Arundel Stairs by the stalwart watermen who wear the livery of the Howards. Although it is summer-time, the King will very likely be going out of town on a hunting expedition to Hampton Court or Windsor in the very early hours of the morning . 1 So, with the extinction of the lights and the hushing of the sounds of revelry, we will leave him to his short night’s rest and drop the curtain on this long day’s work in the careless, pleasurable life of the second Charles. 1 In the seventeenth century it was a common practice in summer to weed out the “rascal” deer (the lean animals not worth preserving either for the chase or for venison) by driving them, with the aid of specially trained hounds, past a “ standing,” placed in a forest glade or park lawn, upon which the marksman was stationed. DISPLAY OF FIREWORKS IN THE SQUARE AFTER THE TAKING OF NAMUR. CHAPTER IV GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SQUARE The open space in the centre of St. James’s Square was neither paved nor lighted in the early days of its existence, the residents not seeing any necessity for a departure from the precedent established in the case of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the centre of which then, and for many years after, lay waste. Lord St. Albans, on granting a building site here to Lord Bellasis so early as 1669, had indeed made it a stipulation that he should pave the intended piazza sixty feet in breadth in front of the house he designed to erect with “ square Purbeck stones ; ” but probably all that was done was to make a raised pavement for foot-passengers around the Square, pro- tected from the carriage-way by posts and chains ; the whole of the centre being left uneven and neglected, though here and there a tree remained, as if to emphasise the former rural character of the neighbourhood. In the seventeenth century this open space was frequently utilised for the exhibition of fireworks, just as similar displays were presented in Covent E 50 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE CHAP. Garden on the public rejoicings after the Battle of the Boyne. That it was a somewhat lonely place in William the Third’s reign we gather from the invaluable Luttrell, who states that a gentleman crossing the Square about noonday had two pistols clapped to his breast, and was relieved of £2 which he had about him, though it is added that this occurred on a foggy day when several other robberies were committed in London. Lord Romney, William the Third’s Master of the Ordnance, seems to have had a positive genius for pyrotechnics ; and grander displays than had ever yet been seen in England took place here in 1695 under his direction, when the King himself was present at the house of his favourite (No. 16) to witness a representation of the storming of Namur. Yet another public rejoicing occurred in the Square after the peace of Ryswick, when Luttrell says that the cost of the display amounted to no less than £ 1 0,000 ; but this must surely have been an ex- aggeration. Preparations for it were commenced long beforehand by the chief engineer at the Tower, Sir Martin Beckman, who is said to have told the Master of the Ordnance, in the coarse humour of the period, that “ he would not see better fire in hell.” An eye-witness, writing to Christopher, Viscount Hatton, certainly did not consider these fireworks worth anything like so much as is said to have been spent upon them. There was, to be sure, an emblem- atical device, whence, “ Peace , out of a cornucopia XV GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF SQUARE 51 flung out rockets of wild fire ; Conduct (?) had a death’s head in one of her hands ; Concord held in a dish a flaming heart ; and Valour had by it a ravenous lion ; ” but he adds that it all “ ended in smoke and stink ” (as indeed is the nature of fireworks) and that Sir Martin Beckman “ hath got the curses of a great many, the praises of nobody.” The same writer, himself a member of the Hatton family, says that several people were killed on this occasion by the falling rocket-sticks, one of which went right through the roof of Halifax House, frightening a large number of people who had assembled there, at the invitation of the Saviles, to see the rejoicings. 1 About this time (December, 1697) a movement seems to have sprung up to commemorate King William’s victories in a more permanent manner on this very spot ; and we read that “ The King’s statue in brass is ordered to be set up in St. James’s Square, with several devices and mottoes trampling down popery, breaking the chains of bondage, slavery, &c.” A very long time was however to elapse before this ambitious and laudable intention to adorn the Square was realised. In 1721 the Chevalier de David en- deavoured to procure a subscription of £2,500 for the erection here of an equestrian statue of George the First, to be sculptured by himself, but obtaining only £ 1 00 he relinquished the design, and returned the money to the subscribers. 2 David, who was a 1 Hatton Correspondence , Camden Society, ii., 230. 2 Malcolm’s Londinium Redivivum, 1807 ; iv., 326. E 2 52 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. pupil of Bernini, had executed two marble figures for the garden of St. James’s Palace, having been sent over to William by Prince Vaudemont to make the statues and figures with which that King intended to adorn the royal palaces. The next we hear of the scheme is in connection with a legacy left by one Samuel Travers, who, in his will dated July 6th, 1724, said, “ I will and bequeath a sufficient sum of money to purchase and erect in St. James’s Square, an equestrian statue in brass to the glorious memory of my master King William the Third.” Though this loyal bequest was destined to be lost sight of for many years, the serious attention of the principal inhabitants of the Square began soon after to be drawn to the unsightly appearance of the central open space, which had now become the accustomed receptacle of offal, cinders, dead dogs, and all kinds of miscellane- ous refuse. In February, 1726, the residents accord- ingly petitioned Parliament for leave to bring in a Bill to enable the present and future inhabitants of the east, north, and west sides (for the south side was not considered to belong to the Square proper, but rather, as will be afterwards shown, to Pall Mall,) to make a rate on themselves for raising money sufficient to “ cleanse, adorn, and beautify ” the same and maintain it in repair. The petition alleged that “ the ground of the said Square hath for some years past lain, and doth now lie, rude and in great disorder, contrary to the design of King Charles the Second, who granted the soil for erecting of capital buildings IV GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF SQUARE 53 on the east, north, and west parts thereof.” 1 The Committee of the House of Commons to whom the petition was referred examined witnesses, one of whom alleged that, in addition to the refuse cast upon the ground causing it to resemble a common dung- hill, a coachmaker had erected a shed in theSquare about thirty feet long for the storage of timber. This en- croachment was more than flesh and blood could stand, so we are not surprised to find that the Bill passed rapidly through both Houses, and received the royal assent on April 26th, 1726. By its provisions the Dukes of Norfolk, Kent Cleveland, and Chandos, Lords Pembroke, Lincoln, Clarendon, Portmore, Strafford, Tankerville, Bristol, Mountrath, Palmerston, and Bathurst, Sir Spencer Compton, Sir Matthew Decker, Thomas Scawen, Samuel Trotman, and George Clarges, were appointed trustees for putting it into execution. It provided, among other things, that any one “ annoying the Square” after the 1st of May, 1726, by depositing therein filth, forfeited twenty shillings ; any one making an encroachment thereon forfeited ^50 ; that no hackney-coach should ply therein under a penalty of ten shillings, but should, “ as soon as such coachman has set down his fare, drive out of the same,” which last provision would nowadays be thought highly inconvenient. The rate to be levied on the houses, to pay for the intended improvements, was not to exceed ten shillings a foot yearly ; empty houses, or 1 Journals of the House of Commons , xx., 590. 5+ THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. houses occupied by ambassadors, &c., were to have their rates paid by the landlord ; the Square was to be thenceforward exempt from scavengers’ rates, and in return the parish was to be exonerated from re- moving filth, &c., therefrom. The inhabitants were also empowered by the Act to advance and pay to the trustees the sum of .£6,000 to purchase annuities for thirty-two years, &c. The interesting minutes of the Commissioners’ meetings, preserved by Lord Bristol, give us an insight into the actual state of the Square at this period. The houses of the Duke of Kent and Lord Tankerville are mentioned as having been recently rebuilt or much altered, and two new houses, which had just been erected on the site of old Halifax House by a builder named Phillips, are specially referred to. In the case of the latter, notice was taken of an attempted encroachment of two foot on the roadway of the Square by bringing forward the iron railings in front of the new buildings. One Sir Thomas Hardy, living in Pall Mall, applied to the Commissioners for leave to deposit materials on the south side of the Square, during the rebuilding of his house there, and was graciously allowed to do so on payment of an acknowledgment-rent. Other inhabit- ants on the south side were desirous, it appears, of making entrances to their houses from the Square, although the principal entrance-doors really lay in Pall Mall, whereupon Lord Palmerston and Sir IV GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF SQUARE 55 Matthew Decker were deputed to “ talk with the inhabitants of the Pall Mall, and consider about what they must pay for the benefit of a door into the Square.” Lord Palmerston was also desired by the Board to apply to Samuel Travers’s executors, “ in relation to the late King William’s statue,” but no further action seems to have been taken thereon at this time. Before proceeding to level and pave the Square the Commissioners caused a general survey to be made of the ground within their jurisdiction, and a mark to be set upon each house with the amount of its frontage. A plan (reproduced at page 56) drawn up in pur- suance of this order is among the Additional MSS. in the British Museum (No. 50243). After the ground had been levelled, and the accumulations of a generation’s neglect carted away, the clerk to the Board (one William Benny) was directed to write to the managers of the several waterworks in London (the Chelsea, York Buildings, and New River Companies), inviting them to tender for the supply of water for an ornamental basin and fountain which the Commissioners were about to construct in the centre. At a meeting of the Board (Lord Palmerston being in the chair) held in the vestry room of St. James’s Church on March 27 th, 1727, it was resolved : “That a sum not exceeding £5,000 be negotiated by way of annuities for thirty-two years after the rate of seven per cent, per annum ; that every one of the inhabitants 5 6 THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE chap. [*3] [■*] [11] [10] [9] fcj tE HI [S] [7] [ 6 ] [5] Lady Clarges Earl of Pem- broke Duke of Chandos Sir Matthew Decker Mr. Scaweh Earl of Bristol Earl of Strafford 47ft.8in. 27ft.6in irgfl.6in. 0 ) 58. feet So.feet gofl.Sin. 48ft.6in. « B “ o <£ llj 3^-0