St. Mary Rounceval, on the site of Northumberland House, was founded by William Marischal, Earl of Pembroke, in Henry III.'s reign. The Earl gave several tenements to the Prior of Rounceval, in Navarre, who established here the chief house of the priory in England. The hospital was finally suppressed by Edward VI. The little village of Charing then stood between London and Westminster. It formed part of the great demesne belonging to the Abbey of Westminster, and was inhabited chiefly by Thames fishermen, who had a settlement on the bank, and by the farmers of the Westminster estates. The derivation of the name from _La Chere Reine_ is purely fanciful. There is certainly no part of London which has been so much changed as Charing Cross. In other parts the houses are changed, but the streets remain. Here the whole disposition of the streets has been transformed. The secondary part of the name recalls the beautiful cross, the last of the nine which marked the places where Queen Eleanor's coffin rested on its journey from Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey. The cross was destroyed by the fanatical zeal of the Reformers. The equestrian statue of Charles I., cast in 1633 by Le Soeur, occupies the site of the cross. It had not been set up when the Civil War broke out, and was sold by the Parliament to John Rivit, a brazier, who lived by the Holborn Conduit, on condition that it should be broken up. John Rivit, however, buried the statue, and dug it up again after the Restoration. It was not until 1674 that it was actually erected, on a new pedestal made by Grinling Gibbons, in the place which it now occupies, which is the site of the old cross, the place where the regicides were executed, and where the Charing Cross pillory stood. It is curious to remark on the preservation of the site of the cross. It was apparently railed in; some of the stones of which it was made were used in paving Whitehall. Ballads were written on its destruction: "Undone, undone, the lawyers are; They wander about the towne, Nor can find the way to Westminster Now Charing Cross is downe. At the end of the Strand they make a stand, Swearing they are at a loss, And chaffing say that's not the way, They must go by Charing Cross." CUNNINGHAM.