The lammas land thus given away was land which was open to the poor after Lammastide. Peter Cunningham quotes two entries from the St. Martin’s rate-books to this effect: ‘To received of the Honble. Earle of Leicester for ye Lamas of the ground that adjoins the Military Wall, 3_l._’ The ‘military wall’ was the boundary of the Wormwood Scrubs of that day. The Earl also had to pay ‘for the lamas of the ground whereon his house and garden are, and the field that is before his house, near to Swan Close.’ The field before his house is now Leicester Square, ‘but Swan Close,’ says Peter, ‘is quite unknown.’ Lord Carlisle’s letter in the State Paper Office states that the house was to be built ‘_upon_ Swan Close.’ It was a palatial mansion, that old Leicester House. It half filled the northern side of the present square, on the eastern half of that side. Its noble gardens extended beyond the present Lisle Street. At first that street reached only to the garden wall of Leicester House. When the garden itself disappeared the street was lengthened. It was a street full of ‘quality,’ and foreign ambassadors thought themselves lodged in a way not to dishonour their masters if they could only secure a mansion in Lisle Street. Noble as the mansion was, Robert Sydney Earl of Leicester is the only earl of his line who lived in it, and his absences were many and of long continuance. He was a thrifty man, and long before he died, in 1677, he let the house to very responsible tenants. One of these was Colbert. If the ordinary run of ambassadors were proud to be quartered in Lisle Street, the proper place for the representative of ‘_L’Etat c’est moi_,’ and for the leader of civilisation, was the palace in Leicester Fields; and there France established herself, and there and in the neighbourhood, in hotels, cafés, restaurants, _charcutiers_, _commissionnaires_, refugees, and highly-coloured ladies, she has been ever since. Colbert probably the more highly approved of the house as it had been dwelt in already by a queen. On February 7, 1662, the only queen that ever lived in Drury Lane--the Queen of Bohemia (daughter of James I.)--removed from Drury House and its pleasant gardens, now occupied by houses and streets, at the side of the Olympic Theatre, to Leicester House. Drury House was the residence of Lord Craven, to whom it was popularly said that the widowed queen had been privately married. Her occupancy of Leicester House was not a long one, for the queen died there on the 12th of the same month.