The Romans preserved the right of erecting tombs in their country residences. Their very stringent laws prevented them from burying the dead inside the cities (except certain classes of privileged persons), but as long as the interment took place outside the walls, it seems, at one time, to have mattered little where a tomb was set up. This practice was put a stop to in the time of Duillius, and sepulchres were no longer allowed in fields and private grounds, as it was found that the custom was tending to diminish the area of land available for cultivation. I think that such a practice was never general in London or the surrounding district, but there are a few cases in which something of the sort took place. In Wood’s “Ecclesiastical Antiquities” it is stated that there was a cemetery at Somerset House, Strand, for the Catholic members of Queen Henrietta Maria’s household (1626). It is certain that the vaults under the palace chapel were used, as they were closed for interments in 1777 (fourteen burials having taken place in fifty-seven years), and if there was also a cemetery, the use of which was in this way restricted, it may fairly be called private. It is possible however that this may have been a part of the original churchyard of St. Mary le Strand. The site has now disappeared, the present building of Somerset House being far more extended than was the old one. Another curious private ground, also used by Romanists, was the garden of Hundsdon House, the French Embassy, in Blackfriars. In 1623 the floor of a neighbouring Jesuit chapel gave way, and about 95 persons were killed. Stow says that 20 bodies (of the poorer people) were buried on the spot. Malcolm states that 44 were buried in the courtyard before the Ambassador’s house, and 15 in his garden. Brayley’s version is that some were buried in a burying-place “within the Spanish Ambassador’s house in Holborn,” and that two great pits were dug, one in the forecourt of the French Ambassador’s house, 18 feet by 12 feet, where 44 were interred, the other in the garden behind, 12 feet by 8 feet. Wood gives the number of those buried in these pits as 47. It was, at any rate, a curious and summary way of disposing of the bodies of those who had so suddenly lost their lives.