the tenure of Sir William Pulteney, deceased, or his assigns, in a street called Old Soho, alias Wardour Street, in part, and by a lane called Hedge Lane (now Princes Street), towards the west." This, it will be seen by a reference to the map, includes the whole of Soho, and nearly the whole of the present parish of St. Anne's. So much for the Pennant tradition. The square was built in 1681, and contained at that time the following inhabitants : Duke of Monmouth; Colonel Rumsey; Mr. Pilcher; Henry Inglesby; Earl of Stamford.-Rate-books of St. Martin's. -Broughton, Esq; Sir It is called King's Square (1694) in the quotation below. Hatton describes it in 1708 as "King's or Soho Square" (p. 43); Strype in 1720, and Maitland in 1739, as "a stately quadrate designated King's Square, but vulgarly Soho Square;" in the index to Strype it is entered. as "Soho Square," though the name never occurs in the description. In Strype's Map the present Carlisle Street is called King Square Street and King Square Court; and the latter name by Smith in his Life of Nollekens, 1829. The design also of that Fountain in the middle of King's Square in Soe-Hoe-FieldsBuildings, deserves observation; where on a high pedestal is His Majesty's statue, and at his feet lie the representatives of the four principal rivers of England, Thames, Trent, Humber, and Severn, with subscriptions under each.-Angliæ Notitia, 1694. November 27, 1690.-I went to London with my family to winter at Soho in the great Square.-Evelyn. Sir Will. That's the coxcombly Alderman [Sir Humphrey Maggot], that marry'd my termagant Aunt: she has this dolt under correction and has forced him out of Mark Lane to live in Soho Square.-The Scowrers, by T. Shadwell, 4to, 1691, and so in two other places in the same play. The first of our Society is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of ancient descent, a Baronet his name Sir Roger de Coverley. When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. The Spectator, No. 2 (March 2, 1710-1711). And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves Clothe spice, line trunks, or, fluttering in a row, Eminent Inhabitants.—The Duke of Monmouth, natural son of Charles II., by Lucy Walters (beheaded 1685). In 1717 Monmouth House was an auction-room. J. T. Smith visited the house with Nollekens about 1773, when the workmen were beginning to pull it down. It was on the south side [between Frith Street and Greek Street] and occupied the site of the houses which now stand in Bateman's Buildings. The gate entrance was of massive ironwork supported by stone piers, surmounted by the crest of the owner of the house; and within the gates there was a spacious courtyard for carriages. The hall was ascended by steps. There were eight rooms on the ground floor; the principal one was a dining-room towards the south, the carved and gilt panels of which had contained whole-length portraits. At the corners of the ornamented ceiling, which was of plaster, and over the chimney-piece, the Duke of Monmouth's arms were displayed. . . The staircase was of oak, the steps very low, and the landing-places were tesselated with woods of light and dark colours. . . As I ascended, I remember Mr. Nollekens noticing the busts of Seneca, Caracalla, Trajan, Adrian, and several others, upon ornamented brackets. The principal room on the first floor, which had not been disturbed by the workmen, was lined with blue satin, superbly decorated with pheasants and other birds in gold. The chimney-piece was richly ornamented with fruit and foliage. . . . In the centre over this chimney-piece, within a wreath of oak leaves, there was a circular recess which evidently had been designed for the reception of a bust. The beads of the panels of the brown windowshutters, which were very lofty, were gilt; and the piers between the windows, from stains upon the silk, had probably been filled with looking-glasses. The workmen were demolishing the upper part, so that it was dangerous for us to go higher, or see more of this most interesting house.-Smith's Nollekens, vol. i. pp. 30-32. There is an engraving of the front in Smith's Antiquities of London. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. January 22, 1708-1709.-Walked to Soho Square to the Bishop of Salisbury's, who entertained me most agreeably with the sight of several valuable curiosities, as the original Magna Charta of King John, supposed to be the very same that he granted to the nobles in the field, it wanting that article about the Church, which in the exemplars afterwards was always inserted first; it has part of the great seal also remaining. Thoresby's Diary, vol. ii. p. 27. Sir Cloudesley Shovel (d. 1707.) Here his body, after his melancholy shipwreck, was laid in state previous to interment in Westminster Abbey. On the south side Daniel Finch, Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham, 1708. Ripperda, the Dutch adventurer, once Prime Minister of Spain, lived here in great magnificence, 1726. Lord Chancellor Macclesfield; he died here in 1732. His son, the President of the Royal Society, afterwards resided in the same house. Alderman Beckford (father of William Beckford, author of Vathek), in the house the corner of Greek Street, sold in 1861 to the Sisters of Charity. [See Greek Street.] The Lord Mayor had enjoined tranquillity-as Mayor. As Beckford, his own house in Soho Square was embroidered with “Liberty" in white letters three feet high. Luckily the evening was very wet, and not a mouse stirred.—Walpole to Mann, April 19, 1770. Walpole's correspondent, Field-Marshal Conway (d. 1795), on the south side, in the right-hand corner, leading from Greek Street. Mrs. Teresa Cornelys, "the Heidegger of the age," in "Carlisle House" (so called from Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle, who built the house between 1786 and 1790), on the east side, corner of Sutton Street; Mrs. Cornelys purchased the house in 1760, and built some. additional rooms in 1769. Here were given a series of balls, concerts, and masquerades, unparalleled in the annals of public fashion. At one of these (February 26, 1770) the Duke of Gloucester (brother of George III.) appeared in the character of Edward IV., with Lady Waldegrave as Elizabeth Woodville; and though their disguise was not made known till two or three years later, "methinks," says Horace Walpole, "it was not very difficult to make out the meaning of the masks." 2 Mrs. Cornelys was a German by birth, and by profession a public singer. She was a bankrupt in 1772, and the house was sold by auction, but in 1776 she re-obtained temporary possession of it. The house was pulled down in 1788, but the ballroom was kept 1 Walpole to Mann, February, 22, 1771. 2 Letters, vol. v. p. 227. standing, and in 1792 St. Patrick's R. C. Chapel was consecrated. Sir John Hawkins says in his Life of Johnson, published in 1787, that she was a prisoner for debt to a large amount, "but in the riots of 1780 found means to escape from confinement, and has not since been heard of." She turned up again, however, as a "vender of asses' milk" at Knightsbridge, but she sank still lower, and died (1797) in the Fleet Prison. The staircase of the house was painted by Henry Cook (d. 1700). Wedgwood thought of taking this house for a warehouse and showrooms. On November 14, 1772, he wrote to his partner, Bentley, "What has become of Mrs. Cornelys's rooms? She is, I hear, to remain in prison, and I cannot think anybody else will venture to take up her place. Soho Square is not a bad situation I think, but then you know better than I do." They ultimately settled in Greek Street. George Colman the elder, at No. 28, left-hand corner of Bateman's Buildings. Sir Joseph Banks, in the house No. 32 in the south-west corner, by Frith Street. and Sunday evening receptions. Here he gave his public breakfasts On Sundays at Sir Joseph's never failed. Matthias, Pursuits of Literature, pt. iv. 1. 275. Sir Joseph Banks's house, as Gifford remarked to Moore,1 was in science what Holland House was in politics and literature. Peter Pindar made merry with the President of the Royal Society and his Sunday gatherings. One morning at his house in Soho Square, As with a solemn awe-inspiring air, Amidst some Royal sycophants he sat ; Most manfully their masticators using, Most pleasantly their greasy mouths amusing, With coffee, butter'd toast, and birds' nest chat. Peter Pindar, Sir Joseph Banks and the Boiled Fleas. To give a breakfast in Soho, Sir Joseph's very bitterest foe Must certainly allow him peerless merit : Where on a wagtail and tom-tit He shines, and sometimes on a nit ; Displaying powers few gentlemen inherit. Peter Pindar, Sir Joseph Banks a Privy Counsellor! (an Ode). By a codicil to his will, dated January 21, 1820, Sir Joseph left the use of his large library and collections to Robert Brown, the eminent botanist, during life, and to the British Museum on his death.2 Brown occupied the apartments in which Banks held his meetings, and there died, June 10, 1858. The front part of the house, overlooking the square, was occupied by the Linnæan Society till its removal to Burlington House. It is now the Hospital for Diseases of the Heart. Richard Payne Knight, the famous collector and writer of many works on art and taste, died, April 24, 1824, at his house No. 3 in this 1 Diary, vol. ii. p. 230. 2 Weld, Hist. of Royal Society, vol. ii. p. 115. square, now Messrs. Kirkman's pianoforte warehouse. Here he formed, at a cost of over £50,000, the remarkable collection of bronzes and Greek coins, drawings, etc., which he bequeathed to the British Museum. surgeon. No. 12 was the residence of Sir Anthony Carlisle the great In this solitary sullen life Barry [the painter] continued till he fell ill, very probably from want of food sufficiently nourishing; and after lying two or three days under his blanket, he had just strength enough to crawl to his own door, with a paper in his hand on which he had written his wish to be carried to the house of Mr. Carlisle in Soho Square. There he was taken care of, and the danger which he had thus escaped seems to have cured his mental hallucinations.-Southey to A. Cunningham. Hatton (1708) gives the following as the aristocratic inhabitants of the square at that date: on the east side, Lord Berkeley, Lord Carlisle ; on the west side, Lord George Howard, Sir Thomas Mansel, comptroller of the Household; on the south side, Lord Nottingham; and on the north side, Lord Leicester, whose house in Leicester Square was then let to the Imperial ambassador. The White House opposite Mrs. Cornelys had long a very unsavoury reputation. It is now included in Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell's premises. No. 18 on the east side was occupied in 1824, and for many years, by W. H. Pickersgill, R.A., portrait painter. In 1811, when Sir Charles Bell, the great anatomist, married, he took the house No. 34 Soho Square. Here, on the west side, is the Soho Bazaar, established 1815 by Mr. Trotter. This the chief bazaar in London was offered for sale by auction in July 1879, but the reserved price was not reached, and the bazaar, to the great delight of young folks (and their elderly relations), still keeps its doors open, although its proportions are somewhat contracted, the upper rooms being closed. The statue of Charles II. which stood in the centre of the square was removed in the summer of 1876 to the grounds of Mr. Frederick Goodall, R.A., at Harrow Weald, and an octagonal tool-house erected on the site.1 Sol's Row. [See Hampstead Road.] Somers Town, a poorly inhabited suburb of London, on the north-west side, built in 1786 and following years, and so called from the noble family of Somers, whose freehold property it is, or was, when it was named. "The Brill," or, as Dr. Stukeley has called it, Cæsar's Camp, was a part of the present Somers Town, but the district called the Brill and a considerable portion of the rest of Somers Town has been cleared away during the last twenty years in order to construct the Midland Railway Terminus and goods depôt. Towards the end of the last century Somers Town became a great resort of Roman Catholic priests and other refugees from the French Revolution, attracted probably by the low rents of houses in the unfinished "town," 1 Builder, July 29, 1876 and the proximity of the St. Pancras burial - ground. A chapel and various benevolent institutions were established here by the Abbé Caron, a man of great influence among his compatriots. In the chapel were interred the Princess of Condé, M. Caron and his brother, and other persons of note, but the majority were buried at St. Pancras. The chapel remains, but all other vestiges of the French colony have disappeared. William Godwin lived in Somers Town from the beginning of 1793, first in Chalton Street, where he wrote Caleb Williams and published Political Justice; afterwards (1797), when he married Mary Wollstonecraft, in Evesham Buildings, and then in the Polygon. Dr. Wolcott (Peter Pindar) died at his house in Somers Town, January 14, 1819. He had gone there to live when the house was in the midst of nursery grounds, and remained when it was surrounded by dull lines of streets. Leslie the painter visited him shortly before his death. A short time before Dr. Wolcott's death I became acquainted with a young Irishman, a literary man, named Desmoulins, who was intimate with him, and who, knowing my admiration of his poems, offered to take me to see him. The doctor appointed a day to receive us, and we called at his lodgings in a small house in an obscure street in Somers Town. But he was too ill to see a stranger. Mr. Desmoulins went up to his bedroom, and I stayed in his little sitting-room which was furnished as might be expected. There were shelves with books, a piano on which lay a violin, and there were pictures and drawings on the walls, of which some were small copies from Reynolds, and some landscapes in water-colours by Wolcott himself.-Autob. Recollections of C. R. Leslie, R.A., vol. i. p. 248. Somerset Coffee-house, in the STRAND, east corner of the entrance to King's College. The letters of Junius were occasionally left at the bar of this coffee-house, sometimes at the bar of the New Exchange, and now and then at Munday's in Maiden Lane. The waiters received occasional fees for taking them in. Somerset House, in the STRAND (the old building), "a large and goodly house,"1 built by the Protector Somerset, brother of Queen Jane Seymour, and maternal uncle of Edward VI. Two inns, appertaining to the sees of Worcester and Lichfield, and several tenements adjoining, were pulled down in 1549 to make way for it; and the great cloister on the north side of St. Paul's, containing "The Dance of Death," and the priory church of the Knights Hospitallers (of St. John of Jerusalem), Clerkenwell, were demolished to find stones to erect it. The present Somerset House occupies the same site. The Protector began his palace in the Strand very soon after the death of Henry VIII. Letters exist dated from "Somerset Place" as early as 1547; Foxe tells of speeches in "the Gallery at his Grace's house in the Strand," and of his examining prisoners there; 2 and one of the "Articles objected against the Lord Protector" was that "you had and held, against the law, in your own house, a Court of Requests." But this house may have been an inn seized and new named-not an uncommon circumstance at this time, or indeed for many years after. 2 Foxe, vol. vi. pp. 198, 246. 1 Stow. |