The great duke died in the Lodge in Windsor Great Park, and his body was brought here to lie in state, previous to the temporary interment in Westminster Abbey. The duchess survived him twenty-two years, which she passed in warfare with all the world, and died in this house on October 18, 1744. The duchess used to speak of her neighbour George, meaning the King in St. James's Palace, and here she is described as receiving a deputation of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs, sitting up in her bed in her usual manner." The Pall Mall entrance to the house being extremely bad, the duchess designed a new one, and was busy trying to effect the necessary purchases when Sir Robert Walpole, wishing to vex her, stept in and bought the very leases she was looking after.2 The blocked-up archway of the intended opening faces the principal entrance to the house, and forms a sort of screen to the parlours in Pall Mall. Yesterday her Grace the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough viewed several old houses in the Friery, St. James', her Grace being about to purchase them in order to be pulled down, for making the entrance to her House more spacious and commodious.. -The Daily Journal, January 6, 1733. The old buildings between Marlborough House and St. James's Palace were removed by John Vardy, architect, in 1748.3 The upper storey and state-rooms were added by the third Duke of Marlborough. Marlborough House reverted to the Crown in 1817, and was appropriated as the residence of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. The princess died before the assignment was effected, but the prince (afterwards King of the Belgians) lived here for several years, at a rental of £3000 per annum. The next inhabitant was the Queen Dowager Adelaide, widow of William IV. It was after her death lent to the Government School of Design (the forerunner of the South Kensington Art Schools and Museum); and then served as a temporary repository for the Vernon Collection and the Turner paintings. These were removed to South Kensington in 1859, and Marlborough House was (1861) put into thorough repair and the interior remodelled for the London residence of the Prince of Wales. stables were added (1863) from the designs of Sir James Pennethorne, architect. The Marlborough Street (Great), OXFORD STREET, leads from Poland Street to Argyll Place. It was built circ. 1698, and so called after John, the great Duke of Marlborough. Behind this square [Golden Square] at a little distance off, is Great Marlborough Street, which, though not a square, surpasses anything that is called a street, in the magnificence of its buildings and gardens, and inhabited all by prime quality.-Macky, A Journey through England, 8vo, 1722. 1 Sheriff Hoare's Journal in Londiniana, vol. ii. p. 46: Acquainted with the world, and quite well bred, Gay, Sixth Satire. 2 Dodsley's London, vol. iv. p. 263. 3 See Exhibition Catalogue of 1761, under "Vardy." Sir C. Hanbury Williams wrote a "Dialogue between Marlborough Street and Pall Mall" (January 1741), i.e. between Giles Earle and Bubb Dodington, in which the latter says: Dear witty Marlborough Street for once be wise, Nor happiness you never knew despise.—(Works, vol. i. p. 30). Eminent Inhabitants.-Lord Mohun, who fell in a duel with the Duke of Hamilton in 1712; here his lifeless body was brought in the same hackney coach he had set out in to fight the duel.1 The Rev. John Logan, author of the beautiful "Ode to the Cuckoo," died "at his apartments in Great Marlborough Street," December 28, 1788. Mrs. Siddons from 1790 to 1802 at No. 49. Mr. and Mrs. Siddons, who resided opposite, had, en chemise, thrown up the sashes of their bedroom on the second floor, and called to us that the Pantheon was in flames.-Angelo, p. 93. In 1808, when Fuseli said to young Haydon, "I think now you may venture on a first floor," the house he selected for the experiment was No. 41 in this street. Here he painted Dentatus and the Judgment of Solomon, and passed, as he said, many happy and many painful days. In 1817 he removed to Lisson Grove. Gilbert Stuart Newton, R.A., succeeded him in the apartments, and here painted his best picture, the Return of Olivia to her Parents, a scene from the Vicar of Wakefield. At No. 21, is the "Marlborough Street Police Office." Here, on July 7, 1869, when Mr. Grenville Murray preferred a charge of assault against the young Lord Carrington, as strange a scene occurred as was ever witnessed in a London Court of Justice. The solicitor for the defence had a box of papers with him which the friends of the prosecutor attempted to carry off by force. The friends of the defendant rushed to the rescue, and a fierce struggle ensued, which lasted for many minutes. It was said that an equal number of English noblemen had not taken opposite sides in a fight since the battle of Barnet. No. 13 is Hurst and Blackett's, dear to novel readers. This corner house of Blenheim Street (now Ramilies Street) was the residence of Henry Cavendish, the great chemist, and afterwards of Joshua Brookes, the well-known anatomist, who formed here his important museum. No. 18, Erard's famous harp and pianoforte rooms; Nos. 40 to 43, Metzler's music warehouse; No. 61, the British Hospital for Diseases of the Skin, and St. John the Baptist church between Nos. 48 and 51. Marsh Street, LAMBETH. [See Lambeth Marsh.] At No. 29, near the Turnpike" (where the railway arch across the Westminster Road is), lived in 1787 Francis Haward, one of the best of our English engravers. His Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, after Sir Joshua, was engraved in this house, and will perpetuate his name. 1 Pennant says Lord M. lived in Gerard Street at this time, but the hackney-coachman, in his evidence before the Coroner, states that he drove to his lordship's lodgings in Great Marlborough Street, and his lordship's footman makes a similar statement. Marshall Street, GOLDEN SQUARE. [See Carnaby Street.] Marshalsea (The), a prison in High Street, SOUTHWARK, attached to the King's House, and adjoining the King's Bench, and so called "as pertaining to the Marshals of England." The Court of the Marshalsea was an ancient court held by the steward and marshal of the King's House, and had a general jurisdiction over all offences committed between the servants of the royal household within the verge, that is, a circle of 12 miles round the residence of the King; but in the 28th of Edward I. (1300) its jurisdiction was limited to trespasses done within the verge, and to "contracts and covenants that one of the King's House shall have made with another of the same house." In the time of James I. doubts arose as to the jurisdiction in this matter of trespass, and by Bacon's advice the King created a new court called the Court of the Verge. [See Verge, Court of.] The Palace Court, which had the right to try all personal actions, though neither of the parties concerned belonged to the royal household, where the cause of action arose within 12 miles of Whitehall, was created by Charles I., and confirmed by Charles II.1 The Marshalsea Court and Prison and the Palace Court were abolished by the 12 and 13 Vict., c. 101, and the prison was shortly after taken down. The Marshalsea Prison was the second in importance of the five great prisons existing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The first was the Tower; the second the Marshalsea, attached to the King's House; the third the Fleet, for Westminster Hall; the fourth the Compter, for the City of London; and the fifth the Gatehouse, for the city of Westminster. The chief officer was the marshal, whose men attended at the Privy Council door, as the officers of the Warden of the Fleet did at the Star Chamber door. When the. Gaol Committee made their inquiry in 1729 they found that "the prison of the Marshalsea doth belong to the Court of Marshalsea of the King's Household and to the Court of Record of the King's Palace of Westminster," and that the Knight Marshal of the King's Household farmed it out to his Deputy Marshal for the yearly rent of £140, and the further yearly rent of £260 arising from lodging money; and in the Act of Parliament (5 and 6 Vict., c. 22), by which it is consolidated with the Queen's Bench and the Fleet, it is thus described: "The prison of the Marshalsea of Her Majesty's household is a prison for debtors and for persons charged with contempt of Her Majesty's Courts of the Marshalsea, the Court of the Queen's Palace of Westminster, and the High Court of Admiralty, and also for Admiralty prisoners under sentence of courts martial." The date of the first establishment of the Marshalsea in Southwark is unknown. It was here, however, as early as Edward III.'s reign, 1 The jurisdiction of the Court accompanied a progress, but not a chase. 2 Lansdowne MS., No. 74, a paper "touching the Marshalsea" drawn up by the Marshal and addressed to Lord Burghley. and was destroyed by the rebels of Kent in 1381. It stood on the south side of the High Street, between King Street and Mermaid Court, and over against Union Street.1 "The Palace Court, or the Court of the Marshalsea of the Queen's House," of which the Lord Steward was the judge, was removed in 1801 from Southwark to Scotland Yard, and finally abolished December 31, 1849. It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms; environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs, who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door, closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle ground, in which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.-Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, chap. vi. When Dickens was writing Little Dorrit (1856), he made a careful examination of the locality to ascertain whether any portion of the Marshalsea Prison was yet standing. He found little beyond some parts of the lowered walls, the "narrow yard," and "the very paving stones of the extinct Marshalsea" which he discovered after much search in "Marshalsea Place turning out of Angel Court leading to Bermondsey." 2 Another quarter of a century has further reduced these poor vestiges of the old prison, and Angel Court (it is the first narrow passage north of St. George's church) will certainly not now repay an exploratory visit; and it may be as well to point out that the remains found and described by Dickens were a part of the old King's Bench Prison of 1758, though when the King's Bench and the White Lion prisons were removed to St. George's Fields and Horsemonger Lane the Marshalsea seems to have taken up their site. The Marshalsea proper lay some distance north of Angel Court. Henry VI. made Littleton, the great lawyer, steward or judge of the Marshalsea Court. During the reign of Edward VI. Bonner was confined "in the most vile dungeon of the Marshalsea." On the accession of Elizabeth he was again committed to the Marshalsea, and "after having lived in his confinement some years in a cheerful condition, which made some compare him to Dionysius the Tyrant," he died there September 5, 1569, and three days afterwards was buried at midnight in the churchyard of St. George's, Southwark. According to a contemporary satirist a temporary pulpit was erected opposite the prisoner's, door to enable zealous preachers to address the bishop. One morne betime I looked forthe, as ofte as I did before And did se a pulpit, in churcheswise, made by my prison dore, A preacher there was, that Crowly hight, whiche preached in that place, A meane, if God had loved me, to call me then to grace. A Commemoration or Dirige of Bastard Edmonde Boner, alias Savage, usurped Bishoppe of London, 1569. 1 Plan in Wilkinson. 2 Dickens, preface to Little Dorrit. Christopher Brooke, the poet, was confined here for giving Ann More in marriage to Dr. Donne unknown to her father; and here Wither wrote his best poem, "The Shepherd's Hunting." In 1623 Sir John Eliot, the Vice-Admiral of Devon, was committed to the Marshalsea.1 On October 29, 1629, he was transferred to the Marshalsea from the Tower, or as he pleasantly expressed it, "left his palace in London for his country house in Southwark." 2 He was permitted to attend the morning lecture at St. Mary Overy's, and mentions a man bringing him a present of game on his way there. On February 12, 1630, he was sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure, and pay a fine of £2000. Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, in 1634 committed a broker of Long Lane to the Marshalsea for selling a church robe with the name of Jesus on it to the players, to be worn by one representing a heathen priest. [See Long Lane.] Lord Chamberlain. Go, break among the press, and find a way out To let the troop pass fairly, or I'll find A Marshalsea shall hold ye play these two months./ Shakespeare, Henry VIII., Act. v. Sc. 3. A coach being called, I was carried to the Marshalsea, attended by a bailiff and his follower. . . . The turnkey guessing, from my appearance, that I had got money in my pocket, received me with the repetition of the Latin word depone, and gave me to understand that I must pay beforehand for the apartment I should chuse to dwell in-Smollet, Roderick Random, chap. lxi. Marsham Street, WESTMINSTER, named after Charles Marsham, Earl of Romney, owner of the property. On the corner house of this street and Great Peter Street is a stone with this inscription: "This is Marsham Street 1688." Martin's (St.) in-the-Fields, was constituted a parish in the middle of the 14th century, but first made independent of St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1535, temp. Henry VIII., before which time the inhabitants "had no parish church, but did resort to the parish church of St. Margaret's, in Westminster, and were thereby found to bring their bodies by the Courtgate of Whitehall, which the said Henry, then misliking, caused the church in the parish of St. Martin'sin-the-Fields to be there erected and made a parish there." 4 Henry, Prince of Wales, had added a chancel in 1607; but this was found insufficient for the parish, and the present church, designed by James Gibbs, architect, was commenced in 1721 and finished in 1726, at a cost of £36,891 : 10: 4, including £1500 for an organ. On Monday last [Sept. 4, 1721] they began to take down the steeple of the church of St. Martin's in the Fields.—The Weekly Journal, or Saturday's Post of September 9, 1721. Aaron Hill addressed a poem "To Celia in the Country: on the pulling down St. Martin's Church," from which it would seem that the 1 Forster's Sir John Eliot, vol. i. p. 59. 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 527. 3 1353-1361, Walcott, p. 9. 4 Recital in grant to the parish from King James I. |