On the arrival of Ambassadors the Lords of the Council sent a letter to the Lord Mayor commanding him to find a suitable residence and a proper reception. In 1580 the Spanish Ambassador was allotted a house in Fenchurch Street which he did not like, so he asked instead for Arundel House. In 1583 the Swedish Ambassador arrived; he was to have three several lodgings, with stabling for twenty horses. In 1613 the “Emperor of Muscovy” sent an Ambassador; in 1611 one came from the Duke of Savoy; in 1616 an Ambassador-Extraordinary arrived from the King of France; in 1626 two from the State of Venice; in 1628 another Spanish Ambassador; in the same year a Russian Ambassador; in 1637 an Ambassador from the “King of Morocco.” All these Ambassadors were lodged and entertained in the City after a formal reception and procession through the streets to their lodging. Mediæval London was a city of palaces and of nobles’ palaces. Under the Tudors there were still some of these town houses left. Toward the end of the seventeenth century there were very few, only one or two. A long list of noblemen and gentlemen living around London in the year 1673 may be found in the _London and Middlesex Note-book_. When one examines this list a little closely, it is remarked that the residences of far the greater number of those on the list are at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, at Westminster, in St. James’s Fields, in Leicester Fields, at Hackney, and that, though some actually belong to the outskirts of the City, none are living within the walls of the City itself except the City knights and merchants. [Illustration: WARWICK HOUSE, CLOTH FAIR] The houses still occupied by nobility, taking them from Ogilby’s Map (see Map) were: Thanet House in Aldersgate Street, the town house of the Earl of Thanet; the Earl of Bridgwater’s house in the Barbican; Warwick House; Brook House and Ely House, in Holborn; Lord Berkeley’s house in St. John Street; the Marquis of Dorchester’s, Lord Grey’s, and the Earl of Ailesbury’s in Charter-house Lane; in the Strand, Somerset House, belonging to, or occupied by successively, Queen Anne of Denmark, Queen Henrietta Maria, Queen Catherine of Braganza; Arundel House, then the residence of the Duke of Norfolk, who was a great collector of statues and inscriptions; Essex House, where Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the parliamentary general, was born. All these three were in the Strand. Outside Ogilby’s Map, but still in the outskirts of the City, were Lord Craven’s and Lord Clare’s houses, in and near Drury Lane. If we take one parish for an example—say that of St. Benet’s, Thames Street—we find that the son of the Earl of Carnarvon was christened in that church on November 26, 1633, that four children of the Earl of Pembroke were born in this parish and christened in this church, viz. Susanna, christened May 7, 1650; Mary, December 12, 1651; Philip, January 5, 1652; and Rebecca, July 18, 1655.