The Town: Its Memorable Characters and EventsHunt, Leigh
History
The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events
Hunt, Leigh
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
After all, the father, John Clarges, must have been a man of
substance in his trade, to be enabled to set up the enormous May-pole
which we see in the picture. But this did not prevent the daughter
from growing up vulgar and foul-mouthed, and a very different person
from the _Belles Ferronières_ of old.
The Savoy, on the one side, with its Gothic gate and flint wall, and
the splendid mansion called Exeter House on the other, appear in
former times to have narrowed the highway hereabouts, as much as
Exeter 'Change did lately.
At the corner of Beaufort Buildings flourished Mr. Lillie, the
perfumer so often mentioned in the _Tatler_. He was secretary to Mr.
Bickerstaff's Court of Honour, in Shire Lane, where people had actions
brought against them for pulling out their watches while their
superiors were talking; and for brushing feathers off a gentleman's
coat, with a cane "value fivepence." Lillie published two volumes of
Contributions, of which the _Tatler_ had made no use. We believe they
had no merit. In Beaufort Buildings lived Aaron Hill, and at one time
Fielding.
Southampton Street, a little to the west, on the other side of the
way, has been much inhabited by wits and theatrical people. Congreve
once lived there, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Garrick. It was called
Southampton Street from the noble family of that title, who are allied
to the Bedford family, the proprietors.
On the ground of Cecil and Salisbury Streets, opposite Southampton
Street, stood the mansion of Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury,
the cunning son of a wise father. It was he who, contriving to keep up
to the last his interest with the queen Elizabeth, and to oust his
rivals, Essex and others, was the first to make secret terms with her
successor James, and to prepare the way for his reception in England:
of which, perhaps, Elizabeth was aware, when she lay moaning on the
ground.
Where the Adelphi now stands, was Durham Place, originally a palace of
the Bishops of Durham, who resigned it to Henry VIII. Henry made it
the scene of magnificent tournaments. The Lord High Admiral Seymour
caused the Mint to be established in this house, with a view to coin
money for his designs on the throne. It was afterwards inhabited by
Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, who here married his son to Lady Jane
Grey. But its most illustrious tenant was Raleigh, to whom it was
lent by Queen Elizabeth, and who lived in it during the attempt made
at Essex House. The four turrets of the mansion, under the roof of
which lived and speculated that romantic but equivocal person, have
been marked out in an engraving from Hollar. Durham Place, though it
got into royal hands during the fluctuation of religious opinions,
never seems to have been reckoned out of the pale of the bishopric of
Durham; for Lord Pembroke bought it of that see in 1640, and pulled it
down for the erection of houses on its site.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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