When Hotspur treads the stage with passionate grace, the spectator hardly dreams of the fact that the princely original lived, paid taxes, and was an active man of his parish, in Aldersgate Street. _There_, however, stood the first Northumberland House. By the ill-fortune of Percy it fell to the conquering side in the serious conflict in which Hotspur was engaged; and Henry IV. made a present of it to his queen, Jane. Thence it got the name of the Queen’s Wardrobe. Subsequently it was converted into a printing office; and in the course of time, the first Northumberland House disappeared altogether. In Fenchurch Street, not now a place wherein to look for nobles, the great Earls of Northumberland were grandly housed in the time of Henry VI.; but vulgar citizenship elbowed the earls too closely, and they ultimately withdrew from the City. The deserted mansion and grounds were taken possession of by the roysterers. Dice were for ever rattling in the stately saloons. Winners shouted for joy, and blasphemy was considered a virtue by the losers. As for the once exquisite gardens, they were converted into bowling-greens, titanic billiards, at which sport the gayer City sparks breathed themselves for hours in the summer time. There was no place of entertainment so fashionably frequented as this second Northumberland House; but dice and bowls were at length to be enjoyed in more vulgar places, and ‘the old seat of the Percys was deserted by fashion.’ On the site of mansion and gardens, houses and cottages were erected, and the place knew its old glory no more. So ended the second Northumberland House. While the above mansions or palaces were the pride of all Londoners and the envy of many, there stood on the strand of the Thames, at the bend of the river, near Charing Cross, a hospital and chapel, whose founder, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, had dedicated it to St. Mary, and made it an appanage to the Priory of Roncesvalle, in Navarre. Hence the hospital on our river strand was known by the name of ‘St. Mary Rouncivall.’ The estate went the way of such property at the dissolution of the monasteries; and the first lay proprietor of the forfeited property was a Sir Thomas Cawarden. It was soon after acquired by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the first Earl of Surrey. Howard, early in the reign of James I., erected on the site of St. Mary’s Hospital a brick mansion which, under various names, has developed into that third and present Northumberland House which is about to fall under pressure of circumstances, the great need of London, and the argument of half a million of money.