CHAPTER XIII.

ST. JAMES'S SQUARE.

FASHIONABLE neighbourhoods are continually changing, but this square is an exception to the rule, as it has been for two centuries one of the most aristocratic places in London. At the Restoration, the site was a quiet and unfrequented place, forming part of St. James's Fields. In August, 1662, a duel took place there at eleven o'clock in the morning, when Henry Jermyn was one of the combatants.' About the year 1663, the square appears to have been planned out by the Earl of St. Alban's, to whom the ground belonged, and who lived in a large house in the fields. The French traveller Monconys was in England at that time, and describes St. James's Fields as about to be destroyed. In the following year a warrant was issued for the grant of the ground upon which the houses were to be built." Sept. 23, 1664. Warrant for a grant to Baptist May and Abraham Cowley on nomination of the Earl of St. Albans of several parcels of ground in Pall Mall described, on rental of 80l., for building thereon a square of 13 or 14 great and good houses; also of the common highway lying between the houses in south Pall Mall Street and St.

2

■ Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1661-62, p. 463.

2 1663.—“ "Après avoir quitté M. d'Aubigny, je fus chercher M. Oldembourg, logé au vieux mail, qui est situé au costé d'une grandissime place qui peut estre quatre fois la place Royale, et deux fois Bellecour : elle appartient au Milor St. Alban, qui y va faire des bastiments, qui la destruiront."-Journal des Voyages de M. de Monconys, Seconde partie. 4to, Paris, 1677, p. 11.

James's Park wall on rental of 40/., with proviso of erecting no building thereon that should cause annoyance to the inhabitants. The said grant is made because persons were unwilling to build such great houses on any terms save that of inheritance, and the former leases recapitulated were only for years." The newly erected square was called the Piazza, as appears by the Rent-Roll of the Earl of St. Alban's, dated 1676. This use of the Italian word in its original meaning is curious, as the arcades at the Piazza, Covent Garden, built about the year 1634, gave rise to the popular notion that a piazza must necessarily be an arcade. The square soon lost this name, and obtained its present one, leaving the sole glory of the Italian word to Covent Garden, as Byron says:—

"For bating Covent Garden I can hit on

No place that's called Piazza in Great Britain.”

The square was at once occupied by the residences of the chief nobility and gentry, as is seen by the lists from the St. Martin's Rate-Books given by Mr. Cunningham in his Handbook, and also from the Rent-Roll of Lord St. Alban's mentioned before.

The present numbering commences with the house on the east side, which is the north corner of Charles Street. In 1676 there were living on the east side the following men of note: Lewis de Duras, Marquis of Blanquefort, a naturalized Frenchman, who was created Baron Duras of Holdenby, and afterwards succeeded his father-in-law as Earl of Feversham. He was a nephew of the great Turenne, but had none of his distinguished relative's military genius, for he proved himself a sorry soldier when he commanded James II.'s troops against the Duke of Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor. He is thus praised in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel—

"Even envy must consent to Helon's worth;
Whose soul, though Egypt glories in his birth,

3 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1664-5, p. 15.
* British Museum, Add. MSS., No. 22,063.

Could for our captive ark its zeal retain,

And Pharaoh's altars in their pomp disdain :
To slight his gods was small, with nobler pride

He all the allurements of his court defied ;'

but Swift calls him "a very dull old fellow."5

Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last Earl of Oxford, and Colonel of the Horse Guards, who were called after him the Oxford Blues, lived here till his death, on the 12th of March, 1702, at the age of eighty. This man was a great blackguard, for he deceived an actress, supposed to have been Mrs. Davenport, by a false marriage. He came to her lodgings attended by a clergyman and a witness, who turned out afterwards to be his lordship's trumpeter and kettle-drummer. The unfortunate woman threw herself at the King's (Charles II.) feet to supplicate for redress for the outrage, but all she could obtain was an annuity of 300%, the receipt of which caused her to leave the stage.

Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, lived here for a few years, and the ground of his house was conveyed to him in 1665.

In 1698-99 Anthony Grey, Earl of Kent, occupied a house on this side of the square, and in 1708 his son Henry, first Marquis of Kent, had succeeded him.

In 1698-99 Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, the Prime Minister, was living here, and in 1708 his son Charles, the third Earl, had taken his place. In 1709 the body of William Bentinck, Earl of Portland, the Dutch favourite of William III., lay in state at his house here. In 1710 the pictures of Baron Schutz, Envoy of Hanover, were sold after his death at his house, also on the east side of the square.

The north side was chiefly occupied by two large houses situated on either side of York Street. The house on the east side was the residence in 1676 and 1677 of the French Ambassador. Mr. Cunningham states in his Handbook that

5 Notes on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne.

• The actress is sometimes said to be Mrs. Marshall, but this appears to be a mistake.-See Notes and Queries, 2nd Series, vol. vi. p. 461.