This individual was Sir Balthazar Gerbier, to whom Horace Walpole devotes several pages in his “Anecdotes of Painting,” where he treats of him as a painter. But Gerbier does not appear to have pursued any art with much application. He hung on the fringe of state affairs, and was a versatile adventurer of indifferent character, if Walpole does him no injustice. Among other things he dabbled in architecture. He was surveyor to the Duke of Buckingham, for whom he is said to have designed a temporary house on the site of old York House in the Strand. According to Gerbier’s own account, in a letter to the duke dated 2nd December 1624, Inigo Jones came to see this house, and “was like one surprised and abashed ... he is very jealous of it.”[47] It may have been so, but it is certain that Gerbier was jealous of Jones, for he makes several slighting references to him in the little book which he published, “Of Counsel and Advice to all Builders.” It is, indeed, this book which gives him a claim to be mentioned in connection with architecture, and that because of incidental allusions to matters of interest. In his dedication to Charles II. (the book was published in 1664) he advises the king to set the main body of his contemplated palace on the side of St James’s Park, and the gardens along the river. This, no doubt, refers to the schemes upon which Webb, as already mentioned, was then engaged. Gerbier has several oblique as well as one direct thrust at Inigo Jones. He carps at those “who have marshald colombs,” and have made them “like things patcht or glewed against a wall, and for the most part against the second Story of a Building ... as if their intent were, that the weight of the colombs should draw down the Wall on the heads of those that passe by.” Doubtless this was an allusion to the Banqueting House, about which he makes further and more definite criticisms. After cavilling at the elaboration of stage effects in masques, he roundly states that “Inigo Jones (the late surveyor)” found the Banqueting House unsuitable for such purposes, and that he “was constrained to Build a Wooden House overthwart the Court of _Whitehall_.” He then takes exception to the height of the room, alleging that the king and his retinue were lost in it because of its vastness; and goes on to say that he does not undervalue any modern works, “every good Talent being commendable,” including, presumably, even the late surveyor’s. At the same time there were some alive who knew that the king of blessed memory had graciously avouched, in the year 1648, that a room near York Gate not above 35 ft. square (which was the one Gerbier had designed himself) was as apt for masques as the Banqueting House itself. Moreover judicious persons would not deny that the excellence of the Triumphal Arches erected in London (which Gerbier is said to have designed for the entry of Charles II.) consisted not in their bulk.