Of two houses in the Piazza, built for Francis, Earl of Bedford, we obtain some minute information from the lease granted in 1634, to Sir Edmund Verney, Knight Marshal to King Charles I.; these two houses being just then erected as part of the Piazza. There are also included in the lease the "yardes, stables, coach-houses, and gardens now layd, or hereafter to be layd, to the said messuages," which description of the premises seems to identify them as the two houses at the southern end of the Piazza, adjoining to Great Russell-street, and now occupied as the Bedford Coffee-house and Hotel. They are either the same premises, or they immediately adjoin the premises, occupied a century later as the Bedford Coffee-house. (Mr. John Bruce, _Archæologia_, XXXV. 195.) The lease contains a minute specification of the landlord's fittings and customary accommodations of what were then some of the most fashionable residences in the metropolis. In the attached schedule is the use of the wainscot, enumerating separately every piece of wainscot on the premises. The tenant is bound to keep in repair the "Portico Walke" underneath the premises; he is at all times to have "ingresse, egresse and regresse" through the Portico Walk; and he may "expel, put, or drive away out of the said walke any youth or other person whatsoever which shall eyther play or be in the said Portico Walke in offence or disturbance to the said Sir Edmund Verney." The inventory of the fixtures is curious. It enumerates every apartment, from the beer-cellar, and the strong beer-cellar, the scullery, the pantry, and the buttery, to the dining and withdrawing-rooms. Most of the rooms had casement windows, but the dining-room next Russell-street, and other principal apartments, had "shutting windowes." The principal rooms were also "double creasted round for hangings," and were wainscoted round the chimney-pieces, and doors and windows. In one case, a study, "south towards Russell-street, the whole room was wainscoted, and the hall in part." Most of the windows had "soil-boards" attached; the room-doors had generally "stock locks," in some places "spring plate locks" and spring bolts. There is not mentioned anything approaching to a fire-grate in any of the rooms, except perhaps in the kitchen, where occurs "a travers barre for the chimney." FOOTNOTES: [24] See "Club at Tom's Coffee-house," vol. i. pp. 159-164. [25] Memoir by Moy Thomas, prefixed to Collins's Poetical Works. Bell and Daldy, 1858. MACKLIN'S COFFEE-HOUSE ORATORY.