palace so vulgar a name," to assure him that it far surpassed his expectations. "I have never seen a nobler pile. . . . It is without hyperbole the best contrived, the most useful, graceful, and magnificent house in England. . . . Here is taste and use, solidity and beauty, most symmetrically combined together: seriously there is nothing abroad pleases me better; nothing at home approaches it." An entry in his Diary a few months later is less eulogistic :— November 28, 1666.-Went to see Clarendon House, now almost finished, a goodly pile to see to, but had many defects as to ye architecture, yet placed most gracefully. After this, I waited on the Lord Chancellor, who was now at Berkshire House, since the burning of London. The following April the Lord Chancellor himself shows him over the house; but Evelyn records the fact without comment. But now that Clarendon House is finished, be pleased (if at least you dare) to let me know, whether my Lord Chancellor of England, who sayd it should cost him £20,000, or my Lord Orrery, who said it would cost him £40,000, was more in ye right.-Earl of Orrery to Lord Clarendon, March 22, 1666 [7] (Lister, vol. iii. p. 452). April 22, 1667.-To the Lord Chancellor's house, the first time I have been therein; and it is very noble, and brave pictures of the ancient and present nobility. -Pepys. June 14, 1667.-Mr. Hater tells me that some rude people have been, as he hears, at my Lord Chancellor's, where they have cut down the trees before his house, and broke his windows; and a gibbet either set up before or painted upon his gate, and these three words writ: "Three sights to be seen: Dunkirke, Tangier, and a barren Queene."-Pepys. December 9,1 1667. To visit the late Lord Chancellor. I found him in his garden, at his new-built palace, sitting in his gowt wheelechayre, and seeing the gates setting up towards the north and the fields. He looked and spake very disconsolately. After some while deploring his condition to me, I took my leave. Next morning I heard he was gon.—Evelyn. Lord Cornbury, the eldest son of the Chancellor, inhabited the house for some time : December 20, 1668.—I din'd with my Lord Cornbury at Clarendon House, now bravely furnish'd, especially with the pictures of most of our ancient and modern witts, poets, philosophers, famous and learned Englishmen; which collection of the Chancellor's I much commended, and gave his Lordship a catalogue of more to be added.-Evelyn. Evelyn supplies a list of the portraits 2 in a letter to Pepys : There were at full length, the greate Duke of Buckingham, the brave Sir Horace and Francis Vere, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, the great Earl of Leicester, Treasurer Buckhurst, Burleigh, Walsingham, Cecil, Lord Chancellor Bacon, Ellesmere, and I think all the late Chancellors and grave Judges in the reignes of Queen Elizabeth and her successors, James and Charles the First. For there was Treasurer Weston, Cottington, Duke Hamilton, the magnificent Earle of Carlisle, Earles of Carnarvon, Bristol, Holland, Lindsey, Northumberland, Kingston, and Southampton; Lords Falkland and Digby (I name them promiscuously as they come into my 1 This is a mistake on the part of Evelynunless he was reckoning according to the new style. Lord Clarendon fled on November 29. 2 Full particulars respecting the Clarendon portraits, and a "Descriptive Catalogue" of those at Grove Park, will be found in Lady Theresa Lewis's Lives of the Friends and Contempo raries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, vol. iii. pp. 250-435. See Thorne's Handbook to the Environs of London, p. 263. memorie), and of Charles the Second, besides the Royal Family, the Dukes of Albemarle and Newcastle; Earles of Darby, Shrewsbery, St. Alban's, the brave Montrose, Sandwich, Manchester, etc.; and of the Coife, Sir Edward Coke, Judge Berkeley, Bramston, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Jeofry Palmer, Selden, Vaughan, Sir Robert Cotton, Dugdale, Mr. Camden, Mr. Hales of Eton. The Archbishops Abbott and Laud, Bishops Juxon, Sheldon, Morley, and Duppa; Dr. Sanderson, Brownrig, Dr. Donne, Chillingworth, and seuerall of the Cleargie, and others of the former and present age. For there were the pictures of Fisher, Fox, Sir Thomas More, Tho. Lord Cromwell, Dr. Nowel, etc. And what was most agreeable to his Lordship's general humour, Old Chaucer, Shakspere, Beaumont and Fletcher, who were both in one piece, Spencer, Mr. Waller, Cowley, Hudibras, which last he plac'd in the roome where he vs'd to eate and dine in publiq.—Evelyn. Lord Dartmouth relates in his notes on Burnet that Clarendon House was chiefly furnished with cavaliers' goods, brought thither for peaceofferings, and that within his own remembrance "Earl Paulett was an humble petitioner to the sons of the Chancellor for leave to take a copy of his grandfather and grandmother's pictures (whole lengths drawn by Vandyck) that had been plundered from Hinton St. George; which was obtained with great difficulty, because it was thought that copies might lessen the value of the originals." 1 Clarendon, in his autobiography, admits the "weakness and vanity" he had exhibited in the erection of this house, and "the gust of envy" which it drew upon him; while he attributes his fall more to the fact that he had built such a house than to any misdemeanour he was thought to have been guilty of. Lord Rochester (Clarendon's second son) told Lord Dartmouth that when his father left England he ordered him to tell all his friends "that if they could excuse the vanity and folly of the great house, he would undertake to answer for all the rest of his actions himself." 2 There was much in the house to call up popular clamour against him. Part of it was built with stones designed, before the Civil War, for the repair of old St. Paul's. He was said to have turned to a profane use what he had bought with a bribe. Old St. Paul's supplied stones for the palace of another great minister of State; but Somerset stole, Clarendon bought. The popular feeling is embodied in the following lines :— Lo! his whole ambition already divides The sceptre between the Stuarts and Hydes. Being less than the Custom-house farmers gave him ; Whose sacrilege plundered the stones from Paul's. Clarendon's House-warming, by Andrew Marvell. The subsequent history of Clarendon House is as interesting as its early history. It appears to have been leased to the great Duke of Ormond. Ormond was living in Clarendon House when Blood 1 Burnet, ed. 1823, vol. i. p. 168. 2 Ibid., ed. 1823, vol. i. p. 431. Lord (December 6, 1670) seized his person in St. James's Street. Chancellor Clarendon died December 9, 1674, and on July 10, 1675, his sons sold the house to Christopher Monk, the second and last Duke of Albemarle. July 10, 1675.-The Duke of Albemarle bought the Earl of Clarendon's house in Piccadilly, that cost £40,000 building, for £26,000.-Annals of the Universe, 8vo, 1709. The Duke's extravagancies increasing with his difficulties, he was obliged to part with his new purchase; and Albemarle House, as it now was called, was sold to Sir Thomas Bond, who pulled it down, and raised Bond Street and Albemarle Buildings in its stead. We are informed that Clarendon House is sold for £20,000, and that the purchasers design very speedily to pull it down.-The Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligencer, February 25, 1668; Nichols's Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 70. However it were, September 18, 1683.-After dinner I walked to survey the sad demolition of Clarendon House, that costly and only sumptuous palace of the late Lord Chancellor Hyde, where I have often been so cheerful with him and sometimes so sad. The Chancellor gone and dying in exile, the Earl his successor sold that which cost £50,000 building, to the young Duke of Albemarle for £25,000, to pay debts which how contracted remains yet a mystery, his sonn being no way a prodigal. Some imagine the Dutchesse his daughter had ben chargeable to him. this stately palace is decreed to ruin, to support the prodigious waste the Duke of Albemarle had made of his estate since the old man died. He sold it to the highest bidder, and it fell to certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it and the ground about it £35,000; they designe a new towne, as it were, and a most magnificent piazza (i.e. square). 'Tis said they have already materials towards it with what they sold of the house alone, more worth than what they paid for it. see the vicissitude of earthly things! I was astonished at this demolition, nor less at the little army of labourers and artificers levelling the ground, laying foundations, and contriving greate buildings, at an expense of £200,000, if they perfect their designe.-Evelyn. 1 Mr. D'Israeli assures us that the two Corinthian pilasters, one on each side of the "Three Kings Inn" gateway in Piccadilly, "belonged to Clarendon House, and are perhaps the only remains of that edifice."2 Nothing was grand about Clarendon House but the site. Clarges Street, PICCADILLY, leading to Curzon Street, originally called Clarges Street in Hay Hill Row," was built circ. 1716, and so called after Sir Walter Clarges, the nephew of Ann Clarges, wife of General Monk. In 1717, when Clarges Street was rated to the poor for the first time, there were twelve houses only, and those on the east side, and all inhabited save one. The west side was built the next year. Eminent Inhabitants.—Sir John Cope dates a letter to Duncan Forbes, "Clarges Street, June 12, 1746." Mrs. Vesey bought a house here in 1780 for £800, and here gave her blue-stocking parties commemorated by Walpole and Boswell. Sir Nicholas Wraxall was living at No. 10 in 1792. Mrs. Elizabeth Carter lived for many years in the first floor of No. 20, and died, February 19, 1806, at No. 21, at the age of 1 In 1688 there were 24 acres of land attached to the house.-Rate-books of St. Martin's. 2 Cur. of Lit. p. 443. The best views are in Wilkinson and Smith. 3 Smith Streets, p. 12. 4 Rate-books of St. Martin's. eighty-nine. Mrs. Delany, when Mrs. Pandarves, and after her marriage with Dr. Delany, lived in this street from 1742 to 1744. Miss O'Neill, celebrated as Juliet and Belvidera, lived on the west side of Clarges Street, a few doors from Piccadilly. The name O'Neill was on the door. Charles James Fox at No. 43 in 1803. Lord Nelson's Lady Hamilton at No. 11 (1804 to 1806). Here Nelson's unworthy brother and heir was dining with Lady Hamilton when word was brought that £120,000 had been voted to him by Parliament, on account of his brother's services; here too, and on this occasion, he produced the famous codicil, and, throwing it to Lady Hamilton, coarsely observed, "she might do with it as she pleased." In 1807, after the death of Nelson, the house was inhabited by the Countess Stanhope. William Mitford, the historian, at No. 14 in the years 18101822. No. 32 was the residence of the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, the friend and banker of Lord Byron. Of the evenings here Moore writes December 1814: The opportunities I had of seeing Lord Byron were frequent; and among them not the least memorable or agreeable were those evenings we passed together at the house of his banker, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, when music-followed by its accustomed sequel of supper, brandy and water, and not a little laughter-kept us together usually till rather a late hour. On one or two of these evenings his favourite actor, Mr. Kean, was of the party, and on another occasion we had at dinner his early instructor in pugilism, Mr. Jackson.-Life of Byron, vol. iii. p. 156. Byron was married on January 2, 1815, and on February 2 he writes to Moore, "I must go to tea-damn tea; I wish it were Kinnaird's brandy." It was at this house that he saw Sheridan for the last time, November 14, 1815. Edmund Kean at No. 12 from 1816 to 1824. Here, in his drawing-room, one day Mrs. Plumptre remarked to Kean that several years before she had been much pleased with a little boy who spoke poetry at the Sans Souci. Kean asked if she would like to know who the boy was, and without waiting for a reply, turning over head and heels and bringing himself up in the famous attitude in Zanga, exclaimed "Know then 'twas I." At No. 9 Daniel O'Connell in 1835. Macaulay on his return from India in 1838 took lodgings at No. 3 in Clarges Street, and stayed there for the next two years. Grafton House (No. 47), for many years the residence of the Dukes of Grafton, was in 1876 converted into the Turf Club-house. The turnpike which stood at the end of this street, marking the old entrance into London, was removed to Hyde Park Corner in 1761. Clement's Danes (St.), STRAND, opposite Clement's Inn. A church so called because Harold, A Danish king, and other Danes, were buried there.-Stow, p. 166. There is yet another reason given of this denomination of the church from the Danes; namely, that when the Danes were utterly driven out of this kingdom, and none left but a few who were married to English women; these were constrained to inhabit between the Isle of Thorne (that which is now called Westminster) and Caer Lud, now called Ludgate. And there they builded a synagogue, the which being afterwards consecrated, was called "Ecclesia Clementis Danorum." This account of the name did the learned antiquarian Fleetwood, some time Recorder of London, give to the Lord Treasurer Burghley, who lived in this parish.—Strype, B. iv. p. 113. A bull was issued by Pope Leo X. setting forth indulgences and pardons to be granted to the "Bredren and Systren of Saynet Clement without Temple Barre of London." The old church described by Stow being old and ruinous, was taken down in 1680. The new church was built by Edward Pierce and John Shorthose, masons, from the designs of Sir C. Wren. The agreement, dated May 13, 1680, is in the British Museum (Add. Charters, 1605). Evelyn records, under October 28, 1684, that he "went to St. Clement's, that pretty built and contrived church." The date on the ornamental ceiling is 1681. The church was restored in 1879. The first person buried in this church after it was rebuilt was Nicholas Byer, the painter, a Norwegian; employed by Sir William Temple at his house at Shene. The Steeple was added by James Gibbs in 1719. The Society of New Inn subscribed £46:14:6 towards the rebuilding, and £21 towards the steeple. Between these two entries in the Society's Order Book is another payment of 5 guineas to Dean Hardcastle, rector, on his "giving an acknowledgment under his hand that he has no title for any duty or tithe out of the house, and acknowledging also that the passage to the pulpit through the pew of this house is on sufferance, and not of right." Henry Smith, "the English Chrysostom," was lecturer here. from 1587 till shortly before his death in 1591. The three stained glass windows over the altar by Collins were erected March 23, 1844. Dr. Johnson attended this church: Dr. Burrowes was then rector. The seat occupied by Johnson for many years was No. 18 in the north gallery, near the pulpit: a brass plate affixed to a pillar against which Johnson must often have leaned records the fact: the inscription is by Dr. Croly. In this Pew, and beside this Pillar, for many years attended divine service the celebrated SAMUEL JOHNSON, the philosopher, the poet, the great lexicographer, the profound moralist, and chief writer of his time. Born 1709, died 1784. In the remembrance and honour of noble faculties, nobly employed, some inhabitants of the parish of St. Clement Danes have placed this slight memorial.-A.D. 1851. On the 9th of April [1773] being Good Friday, I breakfasted with him on tea and cross-buns; Doctor Levett, as Frank called him, making the tea. He carried me with him to the church of St. Clement Danes, where he had his seat; and his behaviour was, as I had imaged to myself, solemnly devout. I never shall forget the tremulous earnestness with which he pronounced the awful petition in the Litany "In the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, good Lord deliver us.”Boswell, by Croker, p. 250. London, April 21, 1784.-After a confinement of 129 days, more than the third part of a year, and no inconsiderable part of human life, I this day returned thanks to God in St. Clement's Church for my recovery; a recovery, in my 75th year, from a distemper which few in the vigour of youth are known to surmount.-Johnson to Mrs. Thrale (Boswell, by Croker, p. 752). Eminent Persons baptized in.-"April 23, 1561, Master William Cecill." "June 6, 1563, Master Robert Cecil [afterwards Earl of Salisbury], the son of yo L. highe Threasurer of England." August 1587, |