Nearly all the bur stone was brought to the bridge by one horse, called “Old Jack.” On one occasion the driver, a steady man, but too fond of his morning dram, kept “Old Jack” waiting a longer time than usual at the public-house, upon which he poked his head in at the open door, and gently drew out his master by the coat collar.[221] Rennie, the architect of the three great London bridges, the engineer of the Plymouth Breakwater and of the London and East India Docks, and a drainer of the Fens, was the son of a small farmer in East Lothian, and was born in 1761.[222] [Illustration: THE SAVOY PRISON, 1793.] [Illustration: DURHAM HOUSE, 1790.] CHAPTER VII. FROM THE SAVOY TO CHARING CROSS. Old York House stood on the site of Buckingham and Villiers Streets. In ancient times, York House had been the inn of the Bishops of Norwich. Abandoned to the crown, King Henry VIII. gave the place to that gay knight Charles Brandon, the husband of his beautiful sister Mary, the Queen of France. When the Church rose again and resumed its scarlet pomp, the house was given to Queen Mary’s Lord Chancellor, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, in exchange for Suffolk House in Southwark, which was presented by Queen Mary to the see of York in recompense for York House, Whitehall, taken from Wolsey by her father. On the fall of that minister, once more a change took place, and the house passed to the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who rented it of the see of York. In this house the great Francis Bacon was born, on the 22d of January, 1561. York House stood near the royal palace, from which it was parted by lanes and fields. Its courtyard and great gates opened to the street. The main front, with its turrets and water stair, faced the river. The garden, falling by an easy slope to the Thames, commanded a view as far south as the Lollards’ Tower at Lambeth, as far east as London Bridge. “All the gay river life[223] swept past the lawn, the salmon-fishers spreading their nets, the watermen paddling gallants to Bankside, and Shakspere’s theatre, the city barges rowing past in procession, and the queen herself, with her train of lords and ladies, shooting by in her journeys from the Tower to Whitehall Stairs. From the lattice out of which he gazed, the child could see over the palace roof the pinnacles and crosses of the old abbey.” The Lord Keeper Pickering died at York House in 1596, and Lord Chancellor Egerton in 1616 or 1617. In 1588 it is supposed the Earl of Essex tried to obtain the house, as Archbishop Sandys wrote to Burghley begging him to resist some such demand. Essex was in ward here for six months, fretting under the care of Lord Keeper Egerton.