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Berkeley Square derives its name. of Argyll and Greenwich (d. 1743).

In this street lived the great Duke

Yes, sir! on great Argyll I often wait,

At charming Sudbrook or in Bruton Street.

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, Poems, January 1741.

Here too died, January 10, 1775, that noble old soldier, General Stringer Lawrence, the subverter of the French power in India, and instructor of Clive in the art of war. Dr. Robert James (James's Powder) died here in 1776. George Canning lived at No. 24 in 1809. William Owen, R.A., the eminent portrait painter, lived at No. 33 as long as he painted; he died at Chelsea, February 11, 1825. Sir John Macdonald, for twenty-two years Adjutant-General of the Army, died here March 28, 1850. No. 37, still in the same trade, was (1789, etc.) the "patent lamp warehouse" of Ami Argand, from whom the Argand burner is named. No. 16 was the town residence of Earl Granville, and afterwards of the Earl of Carnarvon; No. 15 is now the residence of Lord Hobhouse; 17 of Lord Stratheden and Campbell; 24 of Earl of Longford, and 32 of Lord Clinton. Mrs. Jameson lived in this street from 1851 to 1854.

Bryanston Square, a long narrow square at the northern end of Cumberland Street, so called from Bryanstone, near Blandford, Dorset, the seat of Lord Portman, the ground landlord. Here in 1828 died Admiral Sir Richard Strachan, and here, in 1855, died Henry Colburn, the well-known publisher. Joseph Hume lived for many years in No. 6, and died there, February 20, 1855. No. 1 on the west side is the Turkish Embassy. St. Mary, Bryanston Square, was the living of the Rev. Thomas Frognal Dibdin, the bibliographer. Miss Landon (L.E.L.) was married in this church, June 7, 1838. Lord Lytton gave her

away.

Lord

Bryanston Street, BRYANSTON SQUARE, runs parallel with Oxford Street, from Cumberland Street to Portman Street. Erskine lived at No. 22 in 1815, etc.

Brydges Street, COVENT GARDEN, between Great Russell Street and Catherine Street; it now forms the northern half of CATHERINE STREET. It was built circ. 1637, and so called after George Brydges, Lord Chandos (d. 1654), the grandfather of the magnificent duke of that name. Strype describes it as a "place well built and inhabited, and of great resort for the theatre there." Its character early deteriorated. In the coarse lines which Dryden made the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle repeat as the epilogue to King Arthur, Brydges Street is shown to be a place of disreputable resort; and the epilogue to "Sir Courtly Nice," 1685, declared that "our Brydges. Street is grown a Strumpet Fair." Half a century later there was little improvement, as we learn from Fielding, who knew Covent Garden as well as any one. Both in Jonathan Wild and Tom Jones, Brydges Street figures and

1 Rate-books of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

VOL. I

U

figures unfavourably. In more modern times the old Drury Tavern, the Sheridan Knowles public-house, the Sir John Falstaff, H.'s, and the Elysium, show a dramatic and a festive neighbourhood. Drury Lane Theatre is at its north-eastern corner. [See Catherine Street; Drury Lane Theatre; Rose Tavern.]

Buckbine Hill, in Cary's Map, 1837, BUGDEN HILL, the rising ground towards the north-west corner of Hyde Park.

Buckingham Court, on the north side of the Admiralty, leading into SPRING GARDENS, was so named after Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who lived in Wallingford House. Mrs. Centlivre, the authoress of The Busy Body, and the "Slip-shod Sibyl" of the Dunciad, died in this court (1723). Pope, in an Account of the Condition of E. Curll, calls her "the cook's wife in Buckingham Court." Her husband was "yeoman of the mouth" to George I., and resided here between 1712 and 1724.1 Duncan Campbell, the hero of Defoe's famous work, lived in "Buckingham Court over against Old Man's Coffee House at Charing Cross." He is reported to have amassed a large fortune from practising upon the credulity of the public.-Mr. James Crossley, in Notes and Queries, 1st S., vol. iii. p. 249. Many of the houses in this court (long a nest of vice and dirt) were bought by the Admiralty, and pulled down early in the present century.

Whereas information hath been given to this Board that there is a great and numerous concourse of Papists and other persons disaffected to the Government, that resort to the Coffee House of one Bromefield, in Buckingham Court, near Wallingford House, and to other houses there: And whereas there is a Door lately opened out of that Court into the lower part of the Spring Garden that leads into the St. James's Park, where the said Papists and disaffected persons meet and consult, wch may be of dangerous consequence: These are, therefore, to pray and require you to cause the said Door to be forthwith bricked or otherwise so closed up as you shall judge most fit for the security of their Majesties' Palace of Whitehall, and the said Park and the avenues of the same. And for so doing this shall be your warrant, given at their Majesties' Board of Green Cloth at Hampton Court the 9th-day of September, in the first year of their Majesties' reign, 1689.

To Sir Christopher Wren, Knt.,`
Surveyor of their Majesties' Works.

DEVONSHIRE.
NEWPORT.2

Buckingham Gate, ST. JAMES'S PARK, called in the Works Accounts of the Crown, 1678-1679, "Goreing Gate in St. James's Park," and in Kip's old view the Gate to Chelsea. It is hardly necessary to add that it took its name from Buckingham House, hard by.

I entered very young on public life, very innocent, very ignorant, and very ingenuous. I lived many happy years at West Ham, in an uninterrupted and successful discharge of my duty. A disappointment in the living of that parish obliged me to exert myself, and I engaged for a chapel near Buckingham Gate. Great success attended the undertaking; it pleased and it elated me.-Dr. Dodd's Account of Himself.

The chapel is still standing in Palace Street (formerly Charlotte Street).

1 Rate-books of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

2 Letter Book in Lord Steward's Office.

It was subsequently held by the notorious Dr. Dillon, who was suspended by the Bishop of London in 1840.

Buckingham House, a spacious mansion, on the east side of College Hill, for some time the city residence of the second and last Duke of Buckingham of the Villiers family. Part of the court-yard still exists, and the site of the house is particularly marked in Strype's Map of the wards of Queenhithe and Vintry.

Almost over against the said church [St. Michael's, College Hill] is Buckingham House, so called as being bought by the late Duke of Buckingham, and where he sometime resided upon a particular humour. It is a very large and graceful building, late the seat of Sir John Lethulier, an eminent merchant, sometime sheriff and alderman of London, deceased.-R. B., in Strype, B. iii. p. 13.

From damning whatever we don't understand,

From purchasing at Dowgate and selling in the Strand,
Calling streets by our name when we have sold the land,

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Shaftesbury and Buckingham joined in becoming Citizens. The Earl had a great house in Aldersgate Street; the Duke had one at Sion Hill, for the more security of their trade, and convenience of driving it among the Londoners. So that in raillery they were called Alderman Shaftesbury and Alderman Buckingham.—Roger North, Reflections, p. 683.

The

Buckingham House, PALL MALL, a stone-fronted house, built 1790-1794 from the designs of Sir John Soane for George Grenville, Earl Temple, and first Marquis of Buckingham, who let it to Alexander, Duke of Gordon, husband of the celebrated political Duchess, the rival of Georgiana, shortly afterwards Duchess of Devonshire. house remained in the possession of the Dukes of Buckingham until the sale of the property in 1848. It was used for the purposes of the Carlton Club while the Club was being rebuilt, and is now a part of the War Office. The house has no very special architectural character, but it possesses a curious staircase.

Buckingham House, in ST. JAMES'S PARK, built in 1705 after the designs of Captain Wynne, a native of Bergen-op-Zoom, for John Sheffield, Marquis of Normanby and Duke of Buckinghamshire, the poet and patron of Dryden. The house was built on Crown land, for the surrender of a lease of which, to expire in 1771, the Duke gave £13,000. [For its earlier history see Mulberry Garden.]

It [Buckingham House] was formerly called Arlington House, and being purchased by his Grace, the present Duke, he rebuilt it from the ground in the year 1703.-Hatton, p. 623.

Buckingham House is one of the great beauties of London, both by reason of its situation and its building. It is situated at the west end of St. James's Park, fronting the Mall and the great walk; and behind it is a fine garden, a noble terrace (from whence, as well as from the apartments, you have a most delicious prospect), and a little park with a pretty canal. The Court-yard which fronts the Park is spacious; the offices are on each side divided from the Palace by two arching galleries, and in the middle of the court is a round basin of water, lined with freestone, with the figures of Neptune and the Tritons in a water-work. The staircase is large and nobly painted; and in the Hall before you ascend the stairs is a very fine statue of Cain slaying of Abel in marble. The apartments are indeed very noble, the furniture

rich, and many very good pictures.1 The top of the Palace is flat, on which one hath a full view of London and Westminster, and the adjacent country and the four figures of Mercury, Secrecy, Equity, and Liberty, front the Park, and those of the Four Seasons the gardens. His Grace hath also put inscriptions on the four parts of his palace. On the front towards the Park, which is as delicious a situation as can be imagined, the inscription is-Sic siti lætantur Lares-(The Household Gods delight in such a situation); and fronting the garden, Rus in Urbe.2-The Country within a City), which may be properly said, for from that garden you see nothing but an open country, and an uninterrupted view, without seeing any part of the city, because the Palace interrupts that prospect from the Garden.-[J. Macky] Journey through England, 8vo, 1722, vol. i. p. 194.

The Duke's own account of it is as follows:

The avenues to this House are along St. James's Park, through rows of goodly elms on one hand, and gay flourishing limes on the other; that for coaches, this for walking; with the Mall lying between them. This reaches to my iron palisade that encompasses a square court, which has in the midst a great bason with statues and water-works; and from its entrance rises all the way imperceptibly, 'till we mount to a Terrace in the front of a large Hall, paved with square white stones mixed with a dark-coloured marble; the walls of it covered with a set of pictures done in the school of Raphael. Out of this on the right hand we go into a parlour 33 feet by 39 feet, with a niche 15 feet broad for a Bufette, paved with white marble, and placed within an arch, with Pilasters of divers colours, the upper part of which as high as the ceiling is painted by Ricci. . . . Under the windows of this closet [of books] and greenhouse is a little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales. The trees, though planted by myself, require lopping already, to prevent their hindering the view of that fine canal in the Park.-A Letter to the D[uke] of Sh[rewsbury],—(D. of Buckingham's Works, 8vo, 1729).3

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The Duke died in 1721, having bequeathed his house to the Duchess, upon this express condition only, that she does not marry again." In 1723 the Prince and Princess of Wales (afterwards George II. and Queen Caroline) were in treaty with the widow for the purchase of the house. The Duchess, a natural daughter of James II. by Catherine Sedley, names the purchase-money she requires, in a letter to Mrs. Howard :

If their Royal Highnesses will have everything stand as it does, furniture and pictures, I will have three thousand pounds per annum; both run hazard of being spoiled, and the last, to be sure, will be all to be new bought whenever my son is of age. The quantity the rooms take cannot be well furnished under ten thousand pounds; but if their Highnesses will permit the pictures all to be removed, and buy the furniture as it will be valued by different people, the house shall go at two thousand pounds. . . . If the prince or princess prefer much the buying outright, under sixty thousand pounds it will not be parted with as it now stands, and all His Majesty's revenue cannot purchase a place so fit for them nor for a less sum.— Duchess of Buckingham to Mrs. Howard, August 1, 1723 (Suffolk Papers, vol. i. p. 117).

The sum was either thought too much or the Duchess changed her mind-for nothing was done.

On the martyrdom of her grandfather [Charles I.] she [the Dss. of B.] received him [Lord Hervey] in the Great Drawing-room of Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr.-Walpole's Reminiscences.

1 See a Catalogue of the Pictures in Harl. MS., 6344.

2 Tatler, No. 18.

3 There are three small views of Buckingham House and Gardens worked into the text of this edition of the Duke's Works.

The Duchess left the house to John, Lord Hervey (Pope's Lord Hervey), for his life; but he tells us he did not care to take possession. It was bought by George III. of Sir Charles Sheffield (the Duke's natural son) in 1762 for £28,000, and was called by the mob Holyrood House.1 It was settled on Queen Charlotte in lieu of Somerset House by an Act passed in 1775 (15 Geo. III., c. 33). Here, in "the Queen's House," as it was then commonly called, Johnson had his famous interview with George III. The principal portion of the King's Library (which was afterwards presented to the nation by George IV.) occupied three large rooms, two oblong and one octagon. Here all that king's children were born, George IV. alone excepted.

At Pimlico an ancient structure stands
Where Sheffield erst, but Brunswick now commands.

Rolliad (Probationary Odes).

Buckingham House stood till 1825, when it was added to by George IV., and the present unsightly palace (the subject of the next article) arose in its stead. More than half the house, all the north-west wing, and other buildings on the north part, occupied the site of the famous Mulberry Garden; and that part of the courtyard in front of the house, containing two rods and nine perches, was taken by the Duke of Buckingham from St. James's Park, with, it was said, the consent of Queen Anne.

Buckingham Palace, the palace of Her Majesty in St. James's Park, built in the reign of King George IV., on the site of Buckingham House, from the designs of John Nash, and completed in the reign of William IV., but never inhabited by that sovereign, who is said to have expressed his great dislike to the general appearance and discomfort of the whole structure.

Yet I must say, notwithstanding the expense which has been incurred in building the Palace, that no Sovereign in Europe, I may even add, perhaps, no private gentleman, is so ill lodged as the King of this country.-Duke of Wellington to House of Lords, July 16, 1828.

When the grant was given by Parliament it was intended only to repair and enlarge old Buckingham House; and therefore the old site, height, and dimensions were retained, probably from knowing that Parliament would not have granted the funds for an entirely new Palace. On Her Majesty's accession several alterations were effected-a dome in the centre was removed, and new buildings added to the south. The alterations were made by Mr. Edward Blore, and Her Majesty entered into her new Palace on July 13, 1837. Greater changes have since been made by the removal of the Marble Arch (1850) and the erection, at a cost of £150,000, of an east front, under the superintendence of Mr. Blore, by which the whole building was converted into a quadrangle. The chapel on the south side, originally a conservatory, was consecrated by

1 Walpole to George Montagu, June 8, 1762.

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