The property has passed through various hands since that day. It belonged to the Earls of Rutland during part of the seventeenth century, and a reminiscence of their ownership remains in the name of the small street called Rutland Place, issuing from the north-east corner of Charterhouse Square. It was in this house that Sir William Davenant, in the year 1656, was permitted to exhibit stage plays at a time when all theatres were closed by the government. The land is now in the hands of various owners--Charterhouse, Merchant Taylors' School, and others. [Illustration: OLD PORCH, CHARTERHOUSE. _From a drawing by J. P. Neale (1813), engraved by Owen._] In providing himself with a residence on the property which he had purchased, the Duke of Norfolk adopted a plan very different from that of his predecessor. Instead of building for himself a new residence, he adopted a common practice and determined to adapt to his own uses part of the buildings which the Carthusians had left behind them. The part he chose for this purpose was the little cloister, which had been built probably about fifty years before, and was very easily converted into a sufficiently stately mansion in accordance with the fashion of the day. Fortunately, he was able to do this with a minimum of destruction of the old work. The little cloister was, in fact, a house built round a quadrangle. In adapting it to his own use the Duke did not interfere with the outer walls or floors, which are very substantially built, but merely rearranged the rooms inside. This was the more easy because the inside rooms were probably divided from one another by wooden partitions. The result is most interesting to the antiquary, for he finds at Charterhouse not only an excellent specimen of monastic building in the early sixteenth century, but also a very pure example of the London house of a great nobleman of the same date. The Duke left intact a smaller quadrangle opening out of the little cloister, which had been built also in the sixteenth century for the use of the lay brothers. He also beautified the large room which had been used for a Guesten Hall, and perhaps raised the roof. He certainly built two handsome rooms to the north of the Guesten Hall, on the first floor, over what had been the prior's cell and a small part of the cloister walk. To form an approach to these upper rooms he built a handsome interior staircase, which may be seen in perfect condition at the present day. A tradition exists that in order to give himself a little more room he pulled down the east side of the little cloister, and re-erected it in the same style, fourteen feet in the eastern direction. These works were executed during the years 1565 to 1571, during part of which time the Duke made the Charterhouse his residence.