Cyriack Skinner, an ingeniose young gent., scholar to John Milton, was chaire-man. -Aubrey's Letters, vol. iii. p. 371.

The Club, called the Rota, lasted little more than a year, Harrington having been arrested and sent to the Tower in 1661. Pepys records a visit he paid to it, January 10, 1660. "To the Coffee-house, where were a great confluence of gentlemen: viz., Mr. Harrington [Sir William] Poultny, chairman, Gold, Dr. Petty [Sir William Petty, ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne], etc., where admirable discourse till 9 at night."

On

The sturdy Puritan, John Stubbs of Lincoln's Inn, and his servant Robert Page, had their right hands cut off in New Palace Yard, December 3, 1580, for a seditious libel against the Queen [Elizabeth] concerning her projected marriage with the Duke of Anjou. March 2, 1585, William Parry, convicted of high treason, was brought from the Tower to the Palace Court, and there hanged and quartered; and in February 1587, Thomas Lovelace, condemned by the Star Chamber for libellous charges, was carried about Westminster Hall and Palace Yard, set in the pillory and had one of his ears cut off. On St. Peter's Day, 1612, Robert Creighton Lord Sanquhar was hanged in front of Westminster Hall for hiring two ruffians to murder Turner, a fencing-master, by whom he had accidentally lost an eye. Dr. Alexander Leighton, the father of Archbishop Leighton, was here publicly whipped, his ears cut off, his nose slit, branded on the face with the letters S.S. (Sower of Sedition), and afterwards made to stand in the pillory, at the instigation of Laud, November 26, 1630, for a libel on the Bishops. Here, March 9, 1649, the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Capel were beheaded; and here in May 1685 Titus Oates stood in the pillory and was nearly stoned to death. The last who stood in the pillory, in New Palace Yard, February 14, 1765, was Mr. John Williams, bookseller of Fleet Street, for republishing the obnoxious North Briton, but with him the exposure was rather a triumph than a punishment, he holding a sprig of laurel all the while in his hand, and receiving the acclamations of the assembled multitude, whilst opposite the pillory was suspended a jack-boot, a Scotch cap and an At the expiration of the sentence the boot and cap were consigned to a bonfire that had been prepared for the purpose, and Williams was carried home in triumph in the hackney-coach "No. 45."

axe.

His Majesty fully authorises his most excellent Lord Eldon to give his consent to the House of Lords proceeding with these Bills, and in particular approves of the one for laying open Westminster Abbey to Palace Yard. Whatever makes the people

more accustomed to view cathedrals must raise their veneration for the Established Church. The King will with equal pleasure consent, when it is proposed, to the purchasing and pulling down the west [south] side of Bridge Street, and the houses fronting Westminster Hall; as it will be opening to the traveller that ancient pile, which is the seat of administration of the best laws, and the most uprightly administered; and if the people really valued the religion and laws of this blessed country,

1 Only half the whipping and cutting was being completed eight days later at the pillory in performed in New Palace Yard, the sentence Cheapside.

we should stand on a rock that no time could destroy.-King George III. to Lord Chancellor Eldon, June 8, 1804.

Sixty years were to pass away before the improvement suggested by the good old king was effected. In 1865, as a part of the scheme of Sir Charles Barry for the completion of the Houses of Parliament the area of New Palace Yard was cleared and laid out as an open place; a covered way, or cloister, for the use of members of the two Houses, was constructed along its eastern side, and the houses on the south side of Bridge Street removed, and the whole enclosed with an iron railing, the handiwork of Skidmore of Coventry, with handsome gates by Hardman of Birmingham; the whole under the directions of Sir C. Barry, R.A. A part of the design was to decorate the enclosure with bronze statues of distinguished statesmen, but the statues of Peel, Palmerston, Derby, and Beaconsfield, are at the sides of the garden plot opposite to it, called Parliament Square. Westmacott's statue of Canning, which formerly stood there, has been removed farther west. In the residence attached to the sinecure office of Yeoman-Usher of the Exchequer, in New Palace Yard, William Godwin spent the last three years of his life, and there died, April 7, 1836, at the age of eighty years.

Pall Mall, a spacious street extending from the foot of ST. JAMES'S STREET to the foot of the HAYMARKET, and so called from a game of that name, somewhat similar to croquet, introduced into England in the reign of Charles I., perhaps earlier. King James I., in his Basilicon Doron, recommends it as a game that Prince Henry should use. The name (Italian palamaglio, French paille maille), is given to avenues and walks in other countries, as at Utrecht in Holland. The Malls at Blois, Tours, and Lyons are mentioned by Evelyn in his Memoirs, under the year 1644.

A paille-mall is a wooden hammer set to the end of a long staffe to strike a boule with, at which game noblemen and gentlemen in France doe play much.---The French Garden for English Ladies, 8vo, 1621; and see Cotgrave, 1632.

Among all the exercises of France, I prefere none before the Paille-Maille, both because it is a gentleman-like sport, not violent, and yields good occasion and opportunity of discourse, as they walke from the one marke to the other. I marvell among many more apish and foolish toys which we have brought out of France, that we have not brought this sport also into England.-Sir Robert Dallington, A Method for Travel, 4to, 1598.

Pale Maille (Fr.) a game wherein a round bowle is with a mallet struck through a high arch of iron (standing at either end of an alley), which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed on, wins. This game was heretofore used in the long alley near St. James's, and vulgarly called Pell-Mell.-Blount's Glossographia, ed. 1670.

It is usual to ascribe the introduction of the game, and the first formation of the Mall, to Charles II., but this is only a vulgar error. "The Pall of London" is mentioned by John King, Bishop of London, in 1613,1 and Pall Mall-but whether the game or the place is not quite clear, though it was probably the latter-by Garrard in 1637.

1 Bishop King to Carleton, February 27, 1613, Cal. State Pap., 1611-1618, p. 173.

November 9, 1637.-There fell out a quarrel betwixt my Lord Philip Herbert, son of the Chamberlain, and the Lord Carr, son to the Earl of Roxborough, at Pall Mall, young youths both. Upon some words my Lord Philip struck him, so they fell to cuffs. It passed no further, my Lord had notice of it who made them friends. -Garrard to Wentworth (Strafford Letters, vol. ii. p. 131).

In September 1635 a grant was made to Archibald Lumsden "for sole purchasing of all the malls, bowls, scoops, and other necessaries for the game of Pall mall, within his grounds in St. James's Fields, and that such as resort there shall pay him such sums of money as are according to the ancient order of the game."1 A piece or parcel of pasture ground called "Pell Mell Close," part of which was planted with apple trees (Apple Tree Yard, St. James's Square, still exists), is described by the Commissioners for the Survey of the Crown Lands, in 1650, and the close must have taken its name from the particular locality where the game was played. And that this was the case is proved by the same Survey, the Commissioners valuing at £70 "All those Elm Trees standing in Pall Mall walk, in a very decent and regular manner on both sides the walk, being in number 140." In the Rate-books of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, under the year 1656, eight names of persons are entered as living "in the Pall Mall;" and in 1657 occurs a heading, "Down the Haymarket and in the Pall Mall." Pepys (June 10, 1666), relating the dismissal of my Lady Castlemaine from the Court for some impertinent language in presence of the Queen, says that she left "presently, and went to a lodging in the Pell Mell.” The Mall in the present street certainly existed as early as the reign of Charles I., and probably in that of his predecessor. The Mall in St. James's Park was made by Charles II. [See The Mall.]

September 16, 1660.-To the Park, where I saw how far they had proceeded in the Pell-mell, and in making a river through the Park, which I had never seen before since it was begun.-Pepys.

An attempt was made to compliment the Queen of Charles II. by giving the name of Catherine Street to the thoroughfare which led past the residence of Nell Gwynne to the palace of Lady Castlemaine. In the Statute of 1685 the parish of St. James is said to begin "at the Picture shop having an iron balcony at the south side of the end of Catherine Street, alias Pall Mall." But in the latter part of the same Act this name is dropped and Pall Mall only used. Nor does it ever appear to have come into common acceptation. In descriptions and advertisements, memoirs and letters from this time forward, the street is as far as we have been able to discover invariably called Pall Mall, with one exception. In Letters and Miscellaneous Papers, by Barré C. Roberts, Student of Christ Church, Oxford (4to, 1814), is a letter to Roberts, dated February 1808, from his father, who says

I do not remember old Fribourg: he had kept a shop in the narrow part of Pall Mall, formerly called Catherine Street, in which he was succeeded by Pontet, a Frenchman, who told me he had married Fribourg's daughter. The shop was three

1 Cal. State Pap., 1631-1633, p. 286.

or four doors from the Haymarket on the right hand: I was often sent to buy snuff for my father full fifty years ago.

From which it would seem that the name of Catherine Street was occasionally used, or at least remembered, as late as the middle of the 18th century. But on the other hand Dodsley (London, 1761), whose shop was in Pall Mall, makes no reference to its having ever been so called, either under "Pall Mall" or "Catherine Street." Even in 1685, although so named in the Act of that year, it was not an accepted name.

A tauny more with short bushy hair, very well shaped, in a grey livery lined with yellow, about seventeen or eighteen years of age, with a silver collar about his neck, with these directions, "Captain George Hastings' Boy, Brigadier in the King's Horse Guards." Whoever will bring him to the Sugar Loaf in the Pall Mall shall have 40s. reward.-London Gazette, March 23, 1685.

One of the scenes in Wycherley's Love in a Wood, or St. James's Park, is laid in the Old Pall Mall. This is what we now call the street; for the first time that Pepys mentions Pell Mell is under July 26, 1660, where he says, "We went to Wood's at the Pell Mell (our old house for clubbing), and there we spent till ten at night." This is not only one of the earliest references to Pall Mall, as an inhabited locality, but one of the earliest uses of the word "clubbing" in its modern signification of a Club, and additionally interesting, seeing that the street still maintains what Johnson would have called its "clubbable" character.

The writing of that play [Love in a Wood] was the occasion of his [Wycherley's] becoming acquainted with one of King Charles's mistresses after a very particular manner. As Mr. Wycherley was going thro' Pall Mall, towards St. James's, in his chariot, he met the foresaid lady [the Duchess of Cleveland] in hers, who thrusting half her body out of her chariot, cry'd out aloud to him, "You, Wycherley, you are a son of a whore," at the same time laughing aloud and heartily. Perhaps, sir, if you never heard of this passage before, you may be surprised at so strange a greeting from one of the most beautiful and best bred ladies in the world. Mr. Wycherley was very much surpris'd at it, yet not so much but he soon apprehended it was spoke with allusion to the latter end of a song in the fore-mentioned play :When parents are slaves

Their brats cannot be any other;

Great Wits and great Braves

Have always a Punk to their Mother.

Dennis's Letters, 8vo, 1721, p. 215.

The Pail Mail, a fine long street. The houses on the south side have a pleasant prospect into the King's Garden; and besides they have small gardens behind them, which reach to the wall, and to many of them are raised Mounts, which give them the prospect of the said Garden and of the Park.-Strype, B. vi. p. 81.

Eminent Inhabitants.-Dr. Sydenham, the celebrated physician. He was living in the Pavement [on the south side of St. James's Square, and overlooking Pall Mall] in 1658, and in Pall Mall from 1664 till his death there, December 29, 1689. He is buried in St. James's Church. Mr. Fox told Mr. Rogers that Sydenham was sitting at his window looking on the Mall, with his pipe in his mouth and a silver tankard before him, when a fellow made a snatch at the tankard and

ran off with it. Nor was he overtaken, said Fox, before he got among the bushes in Bond Street, and there they lost him.1 Sydenham's executor was Thomas Malthus, afterwards apothecary to Queen Anne, and also a resident in this street. Thomas Robert Malthus, the writer on Population, was his great-grandson. Nell Gwynne, in 1670, on the "east end, north side," next to Lady Mary Howard; from 1671 to her death in 1687 in a house on the "south side," with a garden towards the Park-now No. 79; but the house has been twice rebuilt since Nell inhabited it. The "south side, west end," was inhabited in 1671 as follows:—

Mrs. Mary Knight [Madam Knight the Singer-the King's mistress],

March 5, 1671.-I thence walk'd with him [Charles II.] thro' St. James's Parke to the gardens, where I both saw and heard a very familiar discourse between [the King] and Mrs. Nellie, as they cal'd an impudent Comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace at the top of the wall,3 and [the King] standing on ye greene walke under it. I was heartily sorry at this scene. Thence the King walk'd to the Duchess of Cleaveland, another lady of pleasure and curse of our nation.-Evelyn.

My friend Dr. Heberden has built a fine house in Pall Mall, on the Palace side; he told me it was the only freehold house on that side; that it was given by a long lease by Charles II. to Nell Gwyn, and upon her discovering it to be only a lease under the Crown, she returned him the lease and conveyances, saying she had always conveyed free under the Crown, and always would; and would not accept it till it was conveyed free to her by an act of Parliament made on and for that purpose. Upon Nell's death it was sold, and has been conveyed free ever since. I think Dr. Heberden purchased it of the Waldegrave family.-W. F. Ewin to Rev. James Granger (Granger's Letters, p. 308).

Henry Oldenburg, first Secretary of the Royal Society, in a house for which he paid little more than £40 a year. Sir Isaac Newton directed a letter to him (March 16, 1671-1672), "At his house about the middle of Old Pell Mail in Westminster, London." Mary Beale, portrait painter (d. December 28, 1697). Sir William Temple, in 1681, two doors eastward of Nell Gwynne. Hon. Robert Boyle, about 1668, "settled himself for life in London" in the house of his sister, Lady Ranelagh, in Pall Mall, next door to Sir William Temple, and three from Nell Gwynne. He wrote from here to Hooke in 1680, declining to be made President of the Royal Society. He died here, December 31, 1691, within a week of the sister, with whom he had lived many years, and was buried near her on the south side of the chancel of St. Martin's Church. Countess of Southesk, on the south side, in 1671. This is the celebrated Countess of De Grammont's Memoirs. Duke

1 The story is told with fuller particulars in Seward's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 52.

2 Rate-books of St. Martin's.

3 Nell stood on a mount to speak to the King. The following advertisement from the Postman newspaper of April 1703 affords an interesting

glimpse of this locality: "One, two, or three houses, about the middle of the Pall Mall, on the Park side, with Gardens and Mounts adjoining to the Royal Garden, to be sold or let by long lease. Enquire at the 2 Golden Balls, in the Pall Mall over against St. James's Square."