The original contract for the brazen equestrian statue, a foot larger than life, is dated 1630. The sculptor was to receive £600. The agreement was drawn up by Sir Balthasar Gerbier for the purchaser, the Lord High Treasurer Weston. Yet the existing statue was not cast till 1633, and the above-mentioned agreement speaks of it as to be erected in the Lord Treasurer’s garden at Roehampton; so that the agreement may not refer to the same work, although it certainly specifies that the sculptor shall “take advice of his Maj. riders of greate horses, as well for the shape of the horse and action as for the graceful shape and action of his Maj. figure on the same.”[380] The present statue was cast in 1633, on a piece of ground near the church in Covent Garden, and not being actually erected when the Civil War broke out, it was sold by the Parliament to John Rivet, a brazier, living at “the Dial, near Holburn Conduit,” with strict orders to break it up. But the man, being a shrewd Royalist, produced some fragments of old brass, and hid the statue underground till the Restoration. Rivet refusing to deliver up the statue after Charles’s return, a replevin was served upon him to compel its surrender. The dispute, however, lasted many years, and he probably pleaded compensation. The statue was erected in its present position about 1674, by an order from the Earl of Danby, afterwards Duke of Leeds. Le Sœur died, it is supposed, before the statue was erected. Horace Walpole, who praises the “commanding grace of the figure,” and the “exquisite form of the horse,”[381] incorrectly says, “The statue was made at the expense of the family of Howard, Lord Arundel, who have still the receipt to show by whom and for whom it was cast.” There is still extant a very rare large sheet print of the statue, engraved in the manner and time of Faithorne, but without name or date. The inscription beneath it describes the statue as almost ten feet high, and as “preserved underground,” with great hazard, charge, and care, by John Rivet, a brazier.[382] John Rivet may have been a patriot, but he was certainly a shrewd one. To secure his concealed treasure he had manufactured a large quantity of brass handles for knives and forks, and advertised them as being forged from the destroyed statue. They sold well; the Royalists bought them as sad and precious relics; the Puritans as mementos of their triumph. He doubled his prices, and still his shop was crowded with eager customers, so that in a short time he realised a considerable fortune.[383] The brazier, or the brazier’s family, probably sold the statue to Charles II. at his restoration. The Parliament voted £70,000 for solemnising the funeral of Charles I., and for erecting a monument to his memory.[384] Part of this sum went for the pedestal, but whether the brazier or his kin were rewarded is not known. Charles II. probably spent most of the money on his pleasures.