called the "Belgravia." Its career, however, was but of short duration, as the skating-rink mania soon passed away. The Manor House of the Eabury Estate stood between Hobart Place and the bottom of Grosvenor Place.

The western limits of Belgravia are Lowndes Square, Cadogan Place, and the few connecting streets on the east side of Sloane Street. Lowndes Square itself dates from about the year 1838, when it was built on a vacant piece of ground, described in Rocque's "Map of London and its Environs," engraved in 1746, as then belonging to "-Lowndes, Esq.;" and it was so called, says Mr. Peter Cunningham, "after Mr. Lowndes, of The Bury, near

we may mention Sir John Rennie, the architect of New London Bridge; Sir William Tite, another distinguished architect, and some time M.P. for Bath; General Lord Airey; Thomas Brassey, the engineer; and the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P. for London University.

At the corner of Lowndes Square and Cadogan Place, we quit the Duke of Westminster's estate. Cadogan Place, which occupies an extensive area of ground, is open on the west side to Sloane Street. It is called after the family of Lord Cadogan, into whose hands the manor of Chelsea came, by the marriage of the first Lord Cadogan with the heiress of Sir Hans Sloane.

In a house in Cadogan Place, on the 29th of July, 1833, died William Wilberforce, the eminent philanthropist, many years M.P. for Yorkshire, who is best known for his devotion to the abolition of the slave-trade. There is something peculiarly touching in the fact that Wilberforce died-felix opportunitate mortis-just as the abolition of the slave-trade was in the act of being carried through Parliament, and the last fetters struck from the slaves' hands and feet. His funeral took place on the 3rd of August, in Westminster Abbey. On that day, his friend's son, Thomas Babington Macaulay, writes :-"We have laid him side by side with Canning, at the feet of Pitt, and within two steps of Fox and Grattan. He died with the promised land full in view." Before the end of the next month the British Parliament formally abolished slavery throughout the dominions of the Crown, and the last touch was put to the work that had consumed so many pure and noble lives. It was agreed that he should have been buried in the grave of his friends the Stephens, at Stoke Newington, but the voice of the country ruled otherwise. A subscription was immediately opened among Mr. Wilberforce's friends in London, and his statue has been placed in Westminster Abbey. At York, a County Asylum for the Blind has been founded in honour of him, while his townsmen of Hull have raised a column to his memory. Great part of our coloured population in the West Indies went into mourning at the news of his death; and the same was the case at New York, where also an eulogium was pronounced upon him by a person publicly selected for the task.

In Cadogan Place lived Sir Herbert Taylor, the Private Secretary and attached friend of King William IV. Here, too, was the last London residence of the celebrated actress, Mrs. Jordan. Another resident in Cadogan Place, in more recent times, was Mr. Wynn Ellis, of Tankerton Castle, Whitstable, formerly M.P. for Leicester. He had for many years a mania for collecting pictures, chiefly the works of the old masters, of which he was an excellent connoisseur. Dr. Waagen (1835), in his "Art and Artists in England," mentions a visit paid by him to Mr. Wynn Ellis's gallery :"He possesses, besides many good old pictures,

Mr. Wynn Ellis died in 1875, having by his will left to the nation, for exhibition in the National Gallery, his large collection of the works of the old masters. These alone number some four or five hundred. The mere mention of the names of certain of the artists tell their own tale; for among the collection there are more than one painting, in some cases several, from the brushes of Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, Claude, Van der Velde, Hobbima, Holbein, Guido, Leonardo da Vinci, the Poussins, and a score of others. Mr. Ellis's collection of works by modern artists was brought to the hammer at Christie's, and the sale formed one of the events of the season. Mr. Ellis began life as a warehouseman on Ludgate Hill, and accumulated a large fortune, many thousands of which he left to dif ferent charities.

Of Sloane Square, at the south end of Cadogan Place, we shall speak in a future chapter, when dealing with Sloane Street.

In a map of London and its neighbourhood, published in 1804, the whole of the site of Belgravia, between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street, appears still covered with fields. They are crossed by "the King's private road," which is now occupied by Hobart Place, the roadway in the centre of Eaton Square, and Westbourne Place, terminating in Sloane Square. About the centre of Grosvenor Place, at that time, stood the Lock Hospital or Asylum, which was founded in 1787 by the Rev. Thomas Scott, the commentator; a little to the south, at the corner of the "King's private road," was the Duke's Hospital. What is now Ebury Street was then an open roadway, called Ranelagh Street, having a few houses on one side only. Twenty years later the whole character of this locality was considerably changed. Belgrave Square and Wilton Crescent had sprung into existence, as also had Cadogan Square and Cadogan Place, together with a few connecting streets. Sir Richard Phillips, in his "Walk from London to Kew," published in 1817, speaks of the creeks which at that time ran from the Thames "in the swamps opposite Belgrave Place," and adds that they "once joined the canal in St. James's Park, and, passing through Whitehall, formed by their circuit the ancient isle of St. Peter's. Their course," he continues, "has been filled up between the wharf of the water-works and the end of the canal in St. James's Park, and the isle of St. Peter's is no longer to be traced." The cut on the preceding page shows the locality in 1814.

IN the early Saxon days, when "Chelsey," and "Kensing town," and "Charing" were country villages, there lay between all three a sort of "No Man's Land,” which in process of time came to be called "Knightsbridge," although it never assumed, or even claimed, parochial honours, nor indeed could be said to have had a recognised existence. It was a district of uncertain extent and limits; but it is, nevertheless, our purpose to try and "beat the bounds" on behalf of its former inhabitants.

The name of Knightsbridge, then, must be taken as indicating, not a parish, nor yet a manor, but only a certain locality adjoining a bridge which formerly stood on the road between London and far distant Kensington. There is much difficulty as to the derivation of the name, for in the time of Edward the Confessor, if old records are correctly deciphered, it was called "Kyngesburig;" while some hundred years or so later we find it spoken of as "Knightsbrigg," in a charter of Herbert, Abbot of Westminster. A local legend, recorded by Mr. Davis, in his " History of Knightsbridge," says that: "In ancient time certain knights had occasion to go from London to wage war for some holy purpose. Light in heart, if heavy in arms, they passed through this district on their way to receive the blessing awarded to the faithful by the Bishop of London at Fulham. For some cause or other, however, a quarrel ensued between two of the band, and a combat was determined upon to decide the dispute. They fought on the bridge which spanned the stream of the Westbourne, whilst from its banks the struggle was watched by their partisans. Both fell, if the legend may be trusted; and the place was ever after called Knightsbridge, in remembrance of their fatal feud."

Another possible derivation of the name is quoted from Norden, the topographer, by the Rev. M. Walcott, in his "Memorials of Westminster:"-" Kingsbridge, commonly called Stonebridge, near Hyde Park Corner, [is a place] where

I wish no true man to walk too late without good guard, as did Sir H. Knyvett, Knight, who valiantly defended himself, there being assaulted, and slew the master thief with his own hands." However, in all probability the name is of older date than either of the above events; therefore we may be content to leave the question for the solution of future topographers, merely remarking that whether it was originally "Knightsbrigg," or "Kyngesbrigg," King Edward the Confessor held lands here, and possibly may have built a bridge for the use of the monks of Westminster, to whom he devised a portion of his acres. That such was the case we learn from a charter preserved in the British Museum, which conveyed to the monks of Westminster, along with the manor of Chelsea, “every third tree, and every horse-load of fruit grown in an adjacent wood at Kyngesbyrig, as heretofore by law accustomed."

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Knightsbridge," observes Mr. Davis, in his "History," "is not mentioned in Domesday Book, neither are Westbourne, or Hyde, or Paddington, these places being probably included in the surrounding manors." Moreover, we read that "Knightsbridge lies in the manor of Eia or Ea, formerly a portion of Cealcyth (Chelcheth or Chelsey), and now known as Eabury or Ebury." The manor of Ea, as confirmed to the Abbey of Westminster by the Conqueror, seems to have included all the lands lying between the Westbourne on the west, and the Tyburn on the east, from the great road which ran from Tyburn towards Uxbridge down to the Thames. Yet, curiously enough, as Mr. Davis tells us, though given thus early to the Abbey, the manor was not included in the franchise of the city of Westminster, though Knightsbridge, which lay partly, at least, beyond it, was so included. The fact is the more strange, as a large part of Knightsbridge belonged for many centuries, and indeed still in theory belongs, to the parish of St. Margaret, Westminster.

In the course of time the monks of Westminster

Knightsbridge.]

be found. Forty years since there was neither a draper's nor a butcher's shop between Hyde Park Corner and Sloane Street, and only one in the whole locality, where a newspaper or writing-paper could be bought. There was no conveyance to London but a kind of stage-coach; the roads were dimly lighted by oil; and the modern paving to be seen only along Knightsbridge Terrace. Till about 1835 a watch-house and pound remained at the east end of Middle Row; and the stocks were to be seen, as late as 1805, at the end of Park-side, almost opposite the Conduit."

The high road which led through Knightsbridge towards Kensington, and so on to Brentford, was, two centuries ago, very badly kept and maintained, as regards both its repairs and the security of those who passed along it. There was no lack of inns about Knightsbridge; but the reputation of their keepers would not bear much inquiry, as it is almost certain that they were in league with the highwaymen who infested the road. As a proof of the former part of our assertion, it may be mentioned that when Sir Thomas Wyatt brought up his forces to attack London, this was the route by which they came. "The state of the road," we are told, "materially added to their discomfiture, and so great was the delay thereby occasioned that the Queen's party were able to make every preparation, and when Wyatt's men reached London, their jaded appearance gained them the name of 'Draggle-tails.'" In this condition, however, things remained for more than a century and a half; for, in 1736, when the Court had resided at Kensington for nearly fifty years, Lord Hervey writes to his mother thus, under date November 27th:-" The road between this place (Kensington) and London is grown so infamously bad, that we live here in the same solitude we should do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean; and all the Londoners tell us there is between them and us a great impassable gulf of mud. There are two roads through the park; but the new one is so convex, and the old one so concave, that by this extreme of faults they agree in the common one of being, like the high road, impassable.”

As to the danger from footpads to which travellers were exposed on the high road between Kensington and London, we will quote the following proofs. In the register of burials at Kensington is the following entry, which speaks for itself: -"1687, 25th November.-Thomas Ridge, of Portsmouth, who was killed by thieves almost at Knightsbridge." John Evelyn, too, writes in his "Diary," November 25th, 1699:-"This week robberies were committed between the many lights

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which were fixed between London and Kensington on both sides, and while coaches and travellers were passing." Lady Cowper, too, has the following entry in her " Diary," in October, 1715"I was at Kensington, where I intended to stay as long as the camp was in Hyde Park, the roads being so secure by it that we might come from London at any time of the night without danger, which I did very often."

It is clear, from the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1740, that about a quarter of a century later matters were as bad as ever. "The Bristol mail," writes Sylvanus Urban, "was robbed, a little beyond Knightsbridge, by a man on foot, who took the Bath and Bristol bags, and, mounting the postboy's horse, rode off towards London." Four years later three men were executed for highway robberies committed here; and in another attempted highway robbery, a little westward of the bridge at Knightsbridge, we read of a footpad being shot dead.

This being the case, we need not be surprised to find, from the Morning Chronicle of May 23, 1799, that it was necessary at the close of last century to order a party of light horse to patrol every night the road from Hyde Park Corner to Kensington; and Mr. Davis, in his work already quoted, states that persons then (1854) alive well remembered when "pedestrians walked to and from Kensington in bands sufficient to ensure mutual protection, starting on their journey only at known intervals, of which a bell gave due warning." It would, however, be unfair to suppose that Knightsbridge, in this respect, was worse than any other suburb of London at that time, as we have already shown in our accounts of Marylebone, Tottenham Court Road, and other parts.

In proof of the bad character of the innkeepers of Knightsbridge, we may mention that Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, tells us that when about to be engaged in a duel with the Earl of Rochester, he and his second "lay over-night at Knightsbridge privately, to avoid being secured at London upon any suspicion;" adding, that he and his friend "had the appearance of highwaymen, for which the people of the house liked us all the better." So also in The Rehearsal, written to satirise Dryden, we find the following dialogue, the drift of which is obvious:

Smith: But pray, Mr. Bayes, is not this a little difficult, that you were saying e'en now, to keep an army thus concealed in Knightsbridge?

Bayes In Knightsbridge? No, not if the innkeeper be his friends.

The "wood at Kyngesbrigg," of which we have