Brooke House, HACKNEY, a mansion which formerly stood on the south side of the road to Clapton, and was named after Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. I went to Hackney to see my Lady Brooke's garden, which was one of the neatest and most celebrated in England; the house well furnish'd, but a despicable building."-Evelyn's Diary, May 8, 1654. This was the manor-house of the manor of King's Hold, and was sometimes known as King's Hold. At one time it belonged to the Knights Templars and afterwards to the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. At the dissolution the estate was granted to Henry, Earl of Northumberland, who died in the house and was buried in the parish church. It afterwards reverted to the Crown, and was granted by Edward VI. in 1547 to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Subsequently it was purchased by Sir Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, who left his mark upon the house. Between his occupancy and that of Lord Brooke the estate was in the possession of Sir Rowland Hayward. The description of the house by J. N. Brewer (London and Middlesex, 1816, vol. iv. p. 270, "Beauties of England and Wales") does not agree with Evelyn's expression-"a despicable building." "This house has experienced considerable alterations, but large portions of the ancient edifice have been preserved. These consist principally of a quadrangle, with internal galleries, those on the north and south sides being 174 feet in length. On the ceiling of the north gallery are the arms of Lord Hunsdon, with those of his lady, and the crests of both families frequently repeated. The arms of Lord Hunsdon, are likewise remaining on the ceiling of a room connected with this gallery. It is therefore probable that the greater part of the house was rebuilt by this nobleman during the short period for which he held the manor, a term of no longer duration than from 1578 to 1583." 66 Brooke House, HOLBORN, stood on the site of the present Brooke Street, and was the London residence of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sydney." It was originally called Bath House, from William Bourchier, Earl of Bath (d. 1623), by whom it had been, says Stow, (p. 145), "of late for the most part new built." Lord Brooke, in his will, describes it as Bath House, now Brooke House, lately new built." Lord Brooke was assassinated by his own servant in this house, September 1, 1628. In 1630 "the Lord Brooke's House in Holborn " was fitted up at the expense of the Crown for the reception of the French ambassador. Here in 1635 Sir Arthur Haselrigge's daughter was christened.”2 Here sat the "Brooke House Committee," appointed by the House of Commons in 1668 to examine the expenditure of the money granted to Charles II. for carrying on a war against the Dutch. From Mercurius Politicus we learn that on June 15, 1658, the French ambassadors were 66 very honourably conducted to Brooke 1 Works' Accounts, 1629-1630, in Audit Office. 2 Malcolm's London, 4to, p. 207. House, Holborn, the place appointed to lodge them, where they were entertained at the charge of His Highness." And that year 1622 I made a diall for my Lord Brook in Holbourn, for the which I had £8: 10s.-N. Stone's Diary (Walpole, vol. ii. p. 59). The Brooke House business, as well as the burning his fleet, struck as deep as anything could into his [Charles II.] heart. He resolved to revenge the one, and to free himself from the apprehensions of the other returning upon him.-Burnet, History of his Own Time, p. 185. July 3, 1668.-To the Commissioners of Accounts at Brooke House, the first time I was ever there, and found Sir W. Turner in the chair; and present Lord Halifax, Thomas Gregory, Dunster, and Osborne. I long with them, and see them hot on this matter; but I did give them proper and safe answers.-Pepys. Brooke Street, HOLBORN, derives its name from Brooke House. Philip Yorke, the great Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, was articled (without a fee it is said) to an attorney named Salkeld in this street. Mr. Salkeld was fortunate in his clerks, for among them, about this time, were Jocelyn, subsequently Lord Chancellor of Ireland, founder of the Roden family; Strange, afterwards Sir John Strange, and Master of the Rolls; and Parker, who became Lord Chief Baron. On August 24, 1770, at the age of seventeen years and nine months, Chatterton put an end to his life by swallowing arsenic in water, in the house of a Mr. Frederick Angell, in this street. His room when broken open was found covered with scraps of paper. He was interred in the burialground of Shoe Lane Workhouse. As to the house in which Chatterton lodged very different statements have been published. The received version was that it was No. 4, on the east side of the street, where now stands the Prudential Assurance Office. Mr. Dix, in his untrustworthy Life of Chatterton, says it was No. 17, and this is the number given in the forged Report of the Inquest with which he furnished the late Mr. J. M. Gooch;1 while the Rev. C. V. Le Grice, who "visited Brooke Street for the purpose of endeavouring to verify the house," in 1796, only twenty-six years after Chatterton's death, says "the house was on the left-hand (west) side of Brooke Street, as you go from Holborn, and I always understood it was No. 12,"2 and with this statement Mr. Gooch, who "visited Brooke Street for the same purpose in 1806," coincides.3 The question was however solved by Mr. Moy Thomas, who found, on examining the Poor Rates Books of the Upper Liberty of St. Andrew's parish, in which nearly the whole of Brooke Street is situated, that in June 1771, ten months after Chatterton's death, Frederick Angell rented the house numbered 39, and that is beyond doubt the house in which Chatterton lodged. It was the second house from Holborn (the first beyond the City bounds) on the west side. It was pulled down a year or two ago, but had been previously so much altered as to have retained little, if anything, of the house of Chatterton's time. The vast building at the opposite corner, with its principal front in Notes and Queries, 1st S., vol. vii. p. 138. 2 Ibid., 2d. S., vol. iii. p. 362. 3 Ibid. 4 Athenæum, December 5, 1857. Holborn, and extending 200 feet down Brooke Street, was completed in 1879 for the Prudential Assurance Company: architect, Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, R.A. It is Domestic Gothic, of red brick and terra-cotta, and is a very superior design. Nearly 400 clerks are employed in the office, a large proportion of them being the daughters of professional men. At the bottom of Brooke Street is the St. Alban's Clergy House. East of this is BROOKE MARKET, now a very low neighbourhood. Joseph Munden, the comedian (d. 1832), was born, 1758, "in Brooke Market, Holborn," where his father kept a poulterer's shop. Brooks's Club, ST. JAMES'S STREET: the Whig Club-house, No. 60 on the west side, but founded in Pall Mall in 1764, on the site of what was afterwards the British Institution, by twenty-seven noblemen and gentlemen, including the Duke of Roxburgh, the Duke of Portland, the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Grafton, the Earl of Strathmore, and Mr. Crewe, afterwards Lord Crewe. It was originally a gaming Club, and was farmed at first by Almack, but afterwards by Brooks, a wine merchant and money lender,1 described by Richard Tickell (1780) as Liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill Is hasty credit, and a distant bill; Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade, Exults to trust and blushes to be paid. The present house was built at Brooks's expense (from the designs of Henry Holland, architect), and opened in October 1778. Some of the original rules will show the nature of the Club. 21. No gaming in the eating-room, except tossing up for reckonings, on penalty of paying the whole bill of the members present. 22. Dinner shall be served up exactly at half-past four o'clock, and the bill shall be brought up at seven. 26. Almack shall sell no wines in bottles that the Club approves of, out of the house. 30. Any member of this society that shall become a candidate for any other Club (old White's excepted) shall be ipso facto excluded, and his name struck out of the book. 40. That every person playing at the new quinze table do keep fifty guineas before him. 41. That every person playing at the twenty guinea table do not keep less than twenty guineas before him. Against the name of Mr. Thynne, in the books of the Club, is an indignant dash through, and the following curious note in a contemporary hand: "Mr. Thynne having won only 12,000 guineas during the last two months, retired in disgust, March 21, 1772." Lord Lauderdale informed me that Mr. Fox told him that the deepest play he had ever known was about this period, between the year 1772 and the beginning of the American War. Lord Lauderdale instanced £5000 being staked on a single card at faro, and he talked of £70,000 lost and won in a night.-Croker, note to Boswell, p. 501. 1 Selwyn's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 167. Members were originally elected between the hours of eleven and one at night, and one black ball excluded. The present period of election is from three to five in the afternoon. The old betting-book of the Club (which is preserved) is a great curiosity. The principal. bettors were Fox, Selwyn, and Sheridan. Eminent Members.—C. J. Fox, Pitt, Burke, Selwyn, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Horace Walpole, David Hume, Gibbon, Sheridan.1 The last survivor of the original. members was the first Lord Crewe, who died in 1829, having been sixty-five years a member of the Club. The old Club [old White's] flourishes very much, and the young one [Young White's] has been better attended than of late years, but the deep play is removed to Almack's [Brooks's], where you will certainly follow it.-R. Rigby to George Selwyn, March 12, 1765. We are all beggars at Brooks's, and he threatens to leave the house, as it yields him no profit.-James Hare to George Selwyn, May 18, 1779. Soon as to Brooks's thence thy footsteps bend, What gratulations thy approach attend! R. Tickell, From the Hon. C. J. Fox to the Hon. John Townshend, 1780. The first time I was at Brooks's, scarcely knowing any one, I joined from mere shyness in play at the faro tables, where George Selwyn kept bank. A friend who knew my inexperience, and regarded me as a victim decked out for sacrifice, called to me "What, Wilberforce, is that you?" Selwyn quite resented the interference ; and turning to him, said, in his most expressive tone, "O Sir, don't interrupt Mr. Wilberforce; he could not be better employed."-Wilberforce, Life, vol. i. p. 16. Would you imagine that Sir Joshua Reynolds is extremely anxious to be a member of Almack's? [Brooks's.] You see what noble ambition will make a man attempt. That den is not yet opened, consequently I have not been there; so, for the present, I am clear upon that score.—Topham Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemont, November 20, 1773. Sheridan was black-balled at Brooks's three times by George Selwyn, because his father had been upon the stage, and he only got in at last through a ruse of George IV. (then Prince of Wales), who detained his adversary in conversation in the hall whilst the ballot was going on.-Quar. Rev., vol. cx. p. 483. When Lord (then plain John) Campbell was elected a member, February 21, 1822, he wrote to his father: "To belong to it is a feather in my cap. Indeed since we lost our estates in the county of Angus, I am inclined to think that my election at Brooks's is the greatest distinction our house has met with. The Club consists of the first men for rank and talent in England." 2 Lord Palmerston was not elected a member until 1830. There were never many Radicals in the Club, but O'Connell was a member. 1 Pitt, proposed by C. J. Fox, February 28, 1781, and elected. Sheridan, proposed by Fox and rejected; again proposed (November 2, 1780) by Col. Fitzpatrick and elected. Reynolds, proposed by Col. Burgoyne and elected in 1764. David Hume, proposed by Mr. Crawfurd and elected 1766. Gibbon, proposed by Mr. St. John and elected 1777. Garrick, proposed by Beauclerk and elected 1777. H. Walpole, proposed by Lord G. Cavendish and elected in 1779. Burke, proposed by the Duke of Devonshire and elected March 19, 1783. Wilberforce, proposed and elected April 9, 1783. 2 Life, vol. i. p. 409. The Club is restricted to 575 members. Entrance money, 11 guineas; annual subscription, 15 guineas; two black balls will exclude. Brooks retired from the Club soon after it was built, and died poor about 1782. The Club (like White's) is still managed on the farming principle. Brothers Steps. [See Field of Forty Footsteps.] Broughton's New Amphitheatre, a boxing theatre "in the Oxford Road, at the back of the late Mr. Figg's." It was situated near Adam and Eve Court, opposite Poland Street, built in 17421743 by John Broughton, successor to James Figg [see Figg's], for eighteen years the Champion of the Ring. his own stage by one Slack, a butcher. Lambeth, in 1789, in his eighty-fifth year. He was beaten at last on He died in Walcot Place, Brownlow Street, DRURY LANE, took its name from Sir John Brownlow, a parishioner of St. Giles in the reign of Charles II., whose house and gardens stood where Brownlow Street now stands, parallel to and south of Short's Gardens. A dispute arose between the parishes of St. Giles and St. Martin as to which included Sir John Brownlow's house; it was decided in favour of the former. The name was changed to Betterton Street in 1877. Major Michael Mohun, the celebrated actor of the time of Charles II., died in this street in 1684, as appears by the following entry in the burial register of St. Giles's-inthe-Fields: October 11, 1684.—Mr. Michael Mohun, Brownlow Street. Another inhabitant was George Vertue, the engraver. At the end of Vertue's edition of Simon's Medals, Coins, etc., 4to, 1753, is a list of the various prints "engraved, already printed, and published by George Vertue, engraver in Brownlow Street, Drury Lane." John Banister the younger, violinist and composer, died here in 1735. Brunswick Square. Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall) was living at a house in this square in 1816, and another famous resident was John Leech, the great artist of Punch. When living in Great Ormond Street, Macaulay would pace up and down the square with his sisters for a couple of hours at a time. Brunswick Theatre, WELL STREET, WELLCLOSE SQUARE, stood on the site of the old Royalty Theatre, was built in seven months (T. S. Whitwell, architect), opened February 25, 1828, and fell in during a rehearsal three days after (February 28), when ten persons were killed and several seriously injured. The site is now occupied by the Sailors' Home, founded in 1830, opened in 1835, and enlarged in 1865. Bruton Street, BERKELEY SQUARE, was so called after Sir John Berkeley of Bruton, created Lord Berkeley of Stratton, from whom |