Within sight of this stone are the Whittington Almshouses, that represent those of the ancient foundation of Sir Richard in Paternoster Row, and were built in 1822 by the Mercers Company, as trustees of the Lord Mayor's will made in 1421, bequeathing the funds for erecting and endowing a college of priests and choristers, and building homes for thirteen poor men. With their picturesque chapel and general air of comfort, it must be owned that they contrast favourably with the ancient almshouses not far off in Southwood Lane, that were founded in 1658 by Sir John Wollaston, and added to seventy years later by Edward Pauncefoot. Within the grounds of Waterlow Park, part of which was given to the public by Sir Sydney Waterlow, is the famous Lauderdale House, built about 1650, that was long the residence of the infamous Viceroy of Scotland under Charles II., the Duke of Lauderdale, who was probably often visited in it by his venial tool, Archbishop Sharp. To Lauderdale House the dissipated king brought the merry-hearted Nell Gwynn, and it was here that she is said to have forced her royal lover to acknowledge himself to be the father of her boy, the future Duke of St. Albans, by threatening to drop the child out of the window if he refused to do so. {33} Quite close to Lauderdale House, in a cottage that was pulled down in 1869, lived the poet-patriot Andrew Marvell, who was the friend of Milton and the bitter enemy of his fair neighbour Nell Gwynn, who tried in vain to soften his animosity. Opposite to Marvell's cottage, in Cromwell House, now a branch of the Ormond Street Children's Hospital, resided General Ireton and his wife Bridget, the daughter of the Protector; and a little higher up, in what is now called the Bank, was Arundel House, the seat of the Earls of Arundel, supposed to have been at one time the residence of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, and to have been visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1589 and James I. in 1604. It is, however, more famous as having been the death-place of Francis Bacon, who expired in it in 1626, his end having been hastened, it is popularly believed, through an experiment he tried on his way from London with a view to finding out whether flesh could be preserved in snow.