[232] The eldest son of the Earl of Portland, afterwards created Duke of Portland. [233] A portrait of this lady in full profile, with a pale face and black hair, painted somewhat in the style of Sir Peter Lely, is in the possession of Mrs. Pigott. CHAPTER XIV. 1709-1723. PRIVATE HOUSES BUILT--QUEEN ANNE'S GIFTS--LAST STONE OF S. PAUL'S--WREN DEPRIVED OF HIS SALARY--HIS PETITION--'FRAUDS AND ABUSES'--INTERIOR WORK OF S. PAUL'S--WREN SUPERSEDED--PURCHASE OF WROXHALL ABBEY--WREN'S THOUGHTS ON THE LONGITUDE--HIS DEATH--BURIAL IN S. PAUL'S--THE END. Heroick souls a nobler lustre find, E'en from those griefs which break a vulgar mind. That frost which cracks the brittle, common glass, Makes Crystal into stronger brightness pass. Bp. Thos. Sprat, quoted in _Parentalia_. The year 1709 passed in steady work, and has little but finishing touches to the churches to be recorded, unless some of the various private houses built by Wren belong to this period. A house for Lord Oxford, and one for the Duchess of Buckingham, both in S. James's Court; two built near the Thames for Lord Sunderland and Lord Allaston; one for Lord Newcastle in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury; and a house, so large and magnificent that it has been divided in late years into four, in Great Russell Street. This house was afterwards occupied by Wren's eldest son, and in turn by his second son Stephen. Sir Christopher himself, while keeping the house in Whitehall from which his letters are dated, had received from Queen Anne the fifty years' lease of a house at Hampton Green at a nominal rent of 10_l._ a year;[234] he must have found great refreshment in going there occasionally by the then undefiled Thames, to country rest and quiet. Queen Anne was uniformly gracious and friendly to her Surveyor, and presented him with a buhl cabinet inlaid with red tortoiseshell of remarkably handsome work and design.[235] The following year saw the crown put to the labour of thirty-five years. Mr. Christopher Wren, who had been a year old when the first stone was laid, now laid the last stone of the lantern above the Dome of S. Paul's in the presence of his father, Mr. Strong the master-builder, his son, and other free and accepted masons, most of whom had worked at the building. The scene could hardly be better painted than in the words of Dean Milman:[236]