of course incorrect. The ground was laid out and the buildings commenced, 1698, in the reign of Anne, but the progress was slow, and perhaps fitful, and the houses were only completed during Walpole's ministry. But even this is sufficient to refute an anecdote related by the painter Haydon, that Coke of Holkham (Earl of Leicester) told him that he remembered when "where Berkeley Square now stands was a capital place for snipe."1 Coke of Holkham, though of a good age when he told the story, was not born till 1752, ten years after the termination of Walpole's ministry.

October 11, 1779.-I am removing into a new house in London that I bought last winter. It is in Berkeley Square, whither for the future you must direct. It is a charming situation and a better house than I wanted,-in short, I would not change my two pretty mansions for any in England.—Walpole to Mann.

October 14, 1779.-I came to town this morning to take possession of Berkeley Square, and am as well pleased with my new habitation as I can be with anything at present. Lady Shelburne's being queen of the palace over against me, has improved the view since I bought the house.—Walpole to Lady Ossory.

I have told you before of the savage state we are fallen into: it is now come to such perfection that one can neither stir out of one's house safely, nor stay in it with safety. I was sitting here very quietly under my calamity on Saturday night when, at half an hour after ten, I heard a loud knock at the door. I concluded that Mr. Conway or Lady Aylesbury had called after the Opera to see how I did; nobody came up; a louder knock. I rang to know who it was; but before the servants could come to me, the three windows of this room and the next were broken about my ears by a volley of stones, and so were those of the hall and the library below, as a hint to me how glad I must be of my Lord Rodney's victory six or eight months ago. In short he had dined at the London Tavern, with a committee of the Common Council; for the Mayor and Aldermen had refused to banquet him. Thence he had paraded through the whole town to his own house at this end, with a rabble at his heels breaking windows for not being illuminated, for which no soul was prepared, as no soul thought on him; but thus our conquerors triumph. My servants went out, and begged these Romans to give them time to light up candles, but to no purpose; and were near having their brains dashed out.-Walpole to Mann, November 26, 1782.

The mother of a gentleman who died not many years since recollected this veteran [Colley Cibber] perfectly, standing at the parlour window of his house in Berkeley Square (at the corner of Bruton Street) drumming with his fingers on the frame.-Fitzgerald's Garrick, vol. i. p. 104, note.

Cibber died at this house. The second Earl of Chatham lived at No. 6. At this house his brother, William Pitt, then Prime Minister, received a deputation from the City of London, who brought him his letters of freedom and attended him to a banquet given in his honour at the Hall of the Grocers' Company. No. 28 was the residence of Lord Brougham whilst Chancellor. He took it of Earl Grey (its previous occupant), and when he left it in 1834, as Bromley, Lord Grey's agent, told Haydon, "never was house left in such a filthy condition." "2 At No. 38 (now Lord Londesborough's), in the year 1804, the Earl of Jersey was married to Lady Sophia Fane, eldest daughter of John, tenth Earl of Westmorland—a celebrated beauty and for fifty years leader of fashion in London. The house in 1804 belonged to

1 Life of Haydon, by his son, vol. ii. p. 360.

2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 418.

her father, but became hers the next year as the heiress of the Childs of Osterley. She died in 1867. The Earl of Powis lives at No. 45; the Marquis of Bath at No. 48; Field-Marshal Lord Strathnairn at No. 52. Lord Clyde (the Indian general) lived at No. 10, and mentions it in his will, dated July 11, 1863. In No. 21 lived and died (1825) Lady Anne Barnard, authoress of the beautiful song of "Auld Robin Gray." It was for many years afterwards the residence of the Earl of Crawford, and then that of the late Lord Brougham and Vaux. No. 5 on the east side is Messrs. Gunters', the first confectioners in London. No. 25 is Thomas's Hotel. This was the London residence

of Charles James Fox in 1802-1803. At No. 28 lived Sidney Smirke, R.A., the architect of the Carlton Club House and the Reading Room of the British Museum. In the centre of the square was an equestrian statue of George III., in a Roman habit, "in the character of Marcus Aurelius." It was executed by Beaupré under the direction of Wilton for the Princess Amelia, who placed it in 1766 where it stood until a few years ago.

I congratulate you on your removal to Berkeley Square. May you enjoy the comforts of your new situation as long as the Phidian work which is placed in the centre of that square continues to be its chief ornament.-Mason to Horace Walpole (Walpole's Letters, vol. vii. p. 263, note).

The centre of the Square was planted with shrubs and plane trees about the end of the last century.

Berkeley Street, BERKELEY SQUARE, leading from Berkeley Square to Piccadilly, so named, like Berkeley Square, from being built on the grounds of Berkeley House. It was built by Lady Berkeley in 1684, under the directions of John Evelyn. In 1737 Pope purchased a thirty-one-years' lease of No. 9 Berkeley Street, and presented it to Martha Blount, to the great disgust of the sons of his half-sister, Mrs. Rackett. Mr. Carruthers found at Mapledurham a letter from George Arbuthnot, Pope's executor, detailing the circumstances. Martha Blount, in her will, dated December 13, 1762, calls herself" of Berkeley Row, Spinster." She died in this house in the following July. Richard. Cosway, R.A., the miniature painter, lived at No. 4 Berkeley Street in 1770 and following years. "It was in this house," says J. T. Smith, "that the Prince of Wales and his Royal brothers first noticed and employed Cosway." Shackelton the portrait painter had previously

lived in the same house. Mr. Chaworth was carried to a house in this street after his duel with Lord Byron, the great-uncle of the poet, at the Star and Garter Tavern in Pall Mall, on January 24, 1765. At No. 9 lived Mrs. Howard, the mistress of Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III.) It was at the Piccadilly corner of this street that Rogers the poet was knocked down by a brougham. Though over eighty at the time, he recovered the blow and lived for several years after.

Berkeley Street, CLERKENWELL (leading from St. John's Lane by St. John's Gate to Red Lion Street), was so called from a mansion

of the Lords Berkeley which stood here in Charles I.'s time, and probably much earlier.1 In 1788, when the Church of St. James, Clerkenwell, was being rebuilt, the body of Lady Elizabeth Berkeley (d. 1585) was disclosed. It was quite perfect, in the dress of the period, with brown gloves on the hands.

Berkeley Street, PORTMAN SQUARE (UPPER and LOWER). Lower Berkeley Street leads from Manchester Square to Portman Square, Upper Berkeley Street from Portman Square to the Edgeware Road. At No. 24 Upper Berkeley Street lived (1819, etc.) Lord Erskine, the famous advocate and Chancellor. Admiral Sir Charles Napier was living in Upper Berkeley Street in 1854 when suddenly appointed, amid much popular excitement, to command the fleet in the Baltic.

Berkshire House, ST. JAMES's, the town-house of the Howards, Earls of Berkshire, built circ. 1630, and purchased and presented by Charles II. to Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, and Duchess of Cleveland. In 1664-1665 it was fitted up by the Surveyor of the Works for the reception of the French Ambassador. Lord Clarendon lived in it for a short time after the Great Fire; Lord Craven in 1667; the Earl of Castlemaine in 1668; and the Countess of Castlemaine (alone) in 1669. Its subsequent fate will be found under Cleveland House, a name it received when it became the residence of the Duchess of Cleveland.

November 19, 1666.—To Barkeshire House, where my Lord Chancellor [Clarendon] hath been ever since the Fire.-Pepys.

November 20, 1666.--By coach to Barkeshire House, and there did get a very great meeting; the Duke of York being there, and much business done; though not in proportion to the greatness of the business; and my Lord Chancellor sleeping and snoring the greater part of the time.-Pepys.

May 8, 1668.-He [Lord Crewe] tells me that there are great disputes like to be at Court, between the factions of the two women, my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, who is now well again, the King having made several public visits to her, and like to come to Court; the other [Lady Castlemaine] is to go to Berkshire House, which is taken for her, and they say a Privy Seal is passed for £5000 for it.-Pepys.

Bermondsey, SURREY, a river-side parish in the hundred of Brixton, adjoining St. Olave's, St. John's, St. Thomas's, St. George's, and other parishes. The "land-side" is traversed by the London and Greenwich, the London, Brighton and South Coast, and the South Eastern Railways. The name is believed to be a slight modernisation of the Beormund's ey, or island, the district being insulated by watercourses running down to the Thames. In the Domesday Survey it is written Bermundeseye. It was then held by King William. Before him Earl Harold held it. The district was one famous for its millstreams and market-gardens; one broad canal-like stream is left, but the rest are mostly covered over and converted into sewers, and the gardens have disappeared. Tanneries and leather works are the leading industry. Bermondsey has been for more than 200

1 Brayley, Londiniana, p. 148.

years the centre of the leather trade. The tanners of Bermondsey received a Charter of Incorporation from Queen Anne (1703) by the name of the "Masters, Wardens, and Commonalty of the Art or Mistery of Tanners, of the parish of St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey." 1 The Neckinger Mill is the largest leather factory in England; there are many extensive fellmongers' skin-dressing yards; a great leather market and a skin market. Hat-making employs a large number of hands, the hat factory of Messrs. Christy being, it is said, the largest in the world. Woolstaplers' yards, parchment, glue, and size factories, ropeyards, chemical engineers' yards, iron foundries, emery works, and a great variety of other works. Pin and needle making were once carried on here, but are now extinct. In the parish church is a tablet to "James Hardwidge, needle-maker to Her Majesty, Queen Charlotte," who, with his wife and daughter, "moulded in Nature's fairest form," was interred there. By the river are extensive wharfs, granaries, shipwrights, mast and block-making yards, and sailmakers' lofts. Altogether it is a busy and populous but not particularly fragrant place. Lying low and being much intersected by watercourses it was damp, foggy, and reputed unhealthy. In common with the other low-lying districts it suffered greatly from the plague in 1603, 1625, and 1665; from the cholera in 1848-1849 and 1853, as well as from other epidemic diseases. But of late years the drainage has been amended and other sanitary improvements made with great benefit to the general health. The parish church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, erected in 1680, on the site of the old church, was a plain unpretending building till 1830, when it was remodelled in the Gothic of that year. The church of St. James, brick, with stone dressings, with an Ionic portico, and, rising above it a tall square steeple, was designed by James Savage, architect, between the years 1827 and 1829, at a cost of £21,412. St. Paul's Church, in Long Lane, was designed by Mr. S. S. Teulon, and was consecrated in 1848. One or two other churches have since been built to meet the requirements of the greatly increased population, now little short of 100,000 in number. There are also a Roman Catholic church and convent, and many chapels.

Aylwin Child, citizen of London, founded, A.D. 1082, a monastery at Bermondsey for monks of the Cluniac order. Catherine, Queen of Henry V., died in it in 1437; and Elizabeth, widow of Edward IV., was condemned by order of council in 1480 to forfeit all her lands and goods, and be confined in Bermondsey Abbey, where she died in 1492. The abbey possessed a famous cross, which was much

visited.

I pray yow voysyt the Rood of Northedor and Seynt Savyour at Barmonsey, amonge whyll ye abyd in London, and lat my sustyr Margery goo with yow to pray to them that sche may have a good hosbond or sche com hom ayen.—John Paston the youngest to Margaret Paston, 1465 (Fenn's Paston Letters, iv. 224, Gairdner's ed. vol. ii. p. 233).

1 Lysons, vol. i. p. 47.

L

At the commencement of Bermondsey Street, which led to the Abbey (where it joins Tooley Street), was situated Bermondsey Cross, which is marked in the valuable map of Southwark (circ. 1542) given in Mr. Rendle's Old Southwark as "Barmesé Cross." The site of the monastery and the manor itself were granted at the Dissolution to Sir Robert Southwell (Master of the Rolls), and sold by him the same year to Sir Thomas Pope, who built a mansion called Bermondsey House. In 1094 William Rufus gave the manor to the monastery on the site of the old conventual church, afterwards inhabited by Thomas Ratcliff, Earl of Sussex, who died here in 1583. The gate of the monastery, and a large arch and postern on one side, were standing till 1807, when they were pulled down for the formation of a new road. The site is indicated by Abbey Road, the Grange, and Long Walk, but no traces of the Abbey buildings remain. The only memorial left of this once famous monastery is a silver dish of the 14th century, with figures in the centre, used as the alms-dish in the parish church. A plan of the abbey and views of the gateway, etc., are engraved in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, which is particularly rich in old Bermondsey illustrations. There are a large number of sketches and drawings of the Abbey of Bermondsey by Mr. Buckler, with illustrative text, at the British Museum.-Add. MSS., 24,432; 24,433. In Grange Road was established, with six scholars, in 1792, the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, the first institution of the kind in this country. The founders were the Rev. H. Henry Cox Mason, curate (and afterwards rector) of Bermondsey, and the Rev. John Townsend. asylum was removed, 1807-1809, to the spacious building erected for it in the Old Kent Road. In Grange Walk, John Scott (Scott of Amwell) the Quaker poet, was born in 1730.

Bermondsey Spa.

About 1770 a chalybeate spring was discovered by the owner of the ground, Mr. Thomas Keyse, a self-taught artist, whose pictures of butchers' and fishmongers' shops, joints of beef, vegetables, and the like, found many admirers, and who had been awarded a premium of 30 guineas by the Society of Arts for a method of fixing crayon drawings. In order to make known the virtues of the spring he opened the grounds as a place of entertainment under the name of the Bermondsey Spa, exhibiting as an additional attraction a collection of his own paintings. The place becoming popular, he, in 1780, obtained a music licence and converted it into a "minor Vauxhall." There were music and fireworks, and, as the culminating effect, a representation of the Siege of Gibraltar, designed and arranged by Mr. Keyse, which, with the apparatus, occupied an area of four acres, the height of the rock being about 50 feet and its length 200 feet. Keyse died in 1800, and the gardens were closed about 1805, and built over, but the site is marked by the Spa Road. Jacob's Island, familiar to the readers of Oliver Twist, has a separate notice. [See Jacob's Island.]