The Holles family became extinct in the male line on the death of John, fourth Earl of Clare, who had married Lady Margaret Cavendish, a great heiress, and was created Duke of Newcastle. This nobleman, one of the richest subjects in the kingdom, died in 1711, from the effects of a fall while hunting at Welbeck, leaving an only daughter, from whom is descended the present Duke of Portland. Some years before his death, namely, in May, 1705, still clinging to the neighbourhood with which his family had been so long connected, the last Holles in the male line bought from the Marquis of Powis, for the large sum of £7,000, the house at the north-west angle of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, now numbered 66 and 67, which touches Great Queen Street, and is still known as Powis or Newcastle House. The Duke left the greater part of his possessions, including this house, to his nephew, Thomas Pelham, the well-known political leader in the time of George II., who took the name of Holles, and was also created Duke of Newcastle. Here he lived and intrigued, and this was the scene of his levees, so graphically described by Lord Chesterfield. If those silent walls could speak, they might tell us many strange tales. Newcastle House had been built in 1686 by Captain William Winde, or Wynne, as Campbell calls him in the ‘Vitruvius Britannicus’--a pupil of Gerbier, and perhaps also of Webb, who was in his turn a pupil of Inigo Jones. The structure has unfortunately been much altered for the worse since an engraving of it was made for Strype’s Stow (edition of 1754). It replaced an older house which had been burnt to the ground on October 26, 1684, the family escaping with difficulty. William Herbert, first Marquis and titular Duke of Powis, for whom the house was built, suffered severely owing to his attachment to the cause of James II. He accompanied the King into exile, his estates were, in part at any rate, confiscated, and he died at St. Germains in 1696. In some way this house escaped the general wreck; perhaps it was alienated for a few years. Strype says that ‘it was sometime the seat of Sir John Somers, late Lord Chancellor of England’; and Pennant adds, ‘It is said that Government had it once in contemplation to have bought and settled it officially on the great seal. At that time it was inhabited by the Lord Keeper, Sir Nathan Wright.’ Whatever the circumstances may have been, it came into the hands of the second Marquis, who before its sale to the Duke of Newcastle had already built himself another house[76] in Great Ormond Street, on the site of which is Powis Place.