Though its high-pitched situation precluded at that period, and for a long time after, such an increase of buildings as lower situations were afflicted with, its position, fine air, and beautiful prospects made it much sought, and in the times of the Stuarts many notable persons in connection with the Court had houses here. Sir Henry Vane built his fine mansion on what was then called Hampstead Hill, and J. Bills, Esq., son of the printer to His Majesty, resided at Caen Wood; while my Lord Wotton had his country-house at Belsize. After the Restoration we find Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Attorney-General, residing at Hampstead, where he died, May 1, 1670, and though Pepys does not mention it, Sir George Downing, Secretary to the Treasury, who so often appears in the ‘Diary,’ and whom Pepys stigmatizes as a ‘sider with all times and changes,’ resided here, and had his house broken into and robbed (1685). From the _St. James’s Gazette_, published by authority, I find that, amongst other articles of which the thieves deprived Sir George, were the following items: ‘A large agate about the bigness of a crown piece, with Cupid and Venus and Vulcan engraved on it. A blue sapphire seal, set in gold, enamelled, with an old man and woman’s head engraved on it. A pomander,[6] set in gold. A locket, with fourteen diamonds and a crystal in the middle, engraved with two Cupids holding a heart over a cypher.’ This catalogue appeals to the sympathies of every lover of delightful bric-à-brac, but one fears the advertisement of them failed to recover the charming items, some of which may even yet find their way to one of the table-cases in South Kensington. Every year appears to have added to the favour of Hampstead as a summer resort, a fact that was not lost upon the inhabitants, who were not slow to realize the benefit of these annual incursions. Copyholds were readily procurable, and Hampstead was soon dotted about in various directions with weather-boarded or brick dwellings, so that by the end of the seventeenth century twelve houses had risen upon the demesne, two upon the freeholds, and 257 upon the copyholds, besides cottages, barns, brewhouses, etc., together with a dancing-room, shops, and other tenements in connection with the Wells.[7] In the first year of the present century we find that Hampstead possessed 691 houses, which in 1811 had increased to 842, with 5,483 inhabitants, and there were seventeen houses building, and forty-five unlet. In 1815, when Britton revisited it, he tells us that Hampstead, from a beautiful rural village, had become a town, with hundreds of mean houses (intended for lodging-houses) disposed in narrow courts, squares, and alleys, many of them uninhabited.