sire was not in a "respectable" position in society. That sire had had for his neighbour, only half-a-dozen years before Thomas was born, the well-known Sir Henry Spelman, who had since removed to more cheerful quarters in Barbican. A very few years previously, Sir George Carew resided here, in Caron House, and his manuscripts are not very far from the spot even now. They refer to his experiences as Lord Deputy in Ireland, and are deposited in the library at Lambeth Palace. These great men were neighbours of the elder Betterton, and they had succeeded to men not less remarkable. One of the latter was Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend of Spenser, and the Talus of that poet's "Iron Flail." The Greys, indeed, had long kept house in Tothill Street, as had also the Lords Dacre of the South. When Betterton was born here, the locality was still full of the story of Thomas Lord Dacre, who went thence to be hanged at Tyburn, in 1541. He had headed a sort of Chevy-chase expedition into the private park of Sir Nicholas Pelham, in Sussex. In the fray which ensued, a keeper was killed, of which deed my lord took all the responsibility, and, very much to his surprise, was hanged in consequence. The mansion built by his son, the last lord, had not lost its first freshness when the Bettertons resided here, and its name, _Stourton_ House, yet survives in the corrupted form of Strutton Ground. Thus, the Bettertons undoubtedly resided in a "fashionable" locality, and we may fairly conclude that their title to "respectability" has been so far established. That the street long continued to enjoy a certain dignity is apparent from the fact that, in 1664, when Betterton was rousing the town by his acting, as Bosola, in Webster's "Duchess of Malfy," Sir Henry Herbert established his office of Master of the Revels, in Tothill Street. It was not till the next century that the decline of this street set in. Southern, the dramatist, resided and died there, but it was in rooms over an oilman's shop; and Edmund Burke lived modestly at the east end, before those mysterious thousands were amassed by which he was enabled to establish himself as a country gentleman.