This diversion appears to have been amongst the last devices of the proprietor to retain the patronage of the people. But new tea-gardens had been opened; New Tunbridge Wells at Islington had put forth renewed claims to popular favour, and a new generation had arisen indifferent to the past prestige of Belsize House, which was subsequently restored as a private mansion, and tenanted by several persons of importance, amongst them the unfortunate Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, who was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons, May 15, 1812, by Bellingham, ‘a mild-mannered man,’ maddened by misfortune. Mr. Perceval, whose character, both in public and private life, appears to have been unimpeachable, had taken an active interest in all that concerned the well-being of Hampstead and its inhabitants, especially where the poorer classes of them were concerned. But when, on the suggestion of his colleagues in the conduct and support of the Sunday-school (less than half of the scholars in which were unable to attend a day-school for want of funds), it was proposed to introduce the Lancastrian system, Mr. Perceval withdrew his patronage and resigned his presidency of the schools, to which Mr. Holford (an old and honoured name in Hampstead), who had been vice-president for years, was nominated. Park says nothing of it, but in the _Lady’s Magazine_, 1812-13, it is noted that Mr. Samuel Hoare had obtained permission to establish a Lancastrian school. Subsequently Belsize House was let to other persons of position, and in 1811-12 Mr. Everett occupied it, and afterwards Mr. Henry Wright, a London banker, resided here.[294] How it was afterwards tenanted I do not know. In 1841 the house and demesne were offered for sale for building purposes, and subsequently the whole fell into dilapidation and decay. When I first knew it a great gloom seemed to have settled on the place. Many of the windows were boarded up, and the house assumed that air of mystery that always appertains to large, old uninhabited houses. If one inquired, unknowing that it waited purchasers, the reason for the neglected appearance of the mansion and grounds, curiosity was met by a common cause for it in those days, viz., that the property was in Chancery, which it was not. But one was free to wander in the unpruned wilderness and forgotten flower-garden, and under the large-limbed magnificent trees, the planting of which one or other of the Tradescants might have superintended.