Westminster Part 4

There was a gateway at the end of the Staple. This was still in existence in 1741, when it was pulled down in view of the new bridge.

There has been much dispute as to the origin of the name of Cannon Row.

Some hold that it was derived from the prebendal houses of the Canons of St. Stephen's Chapel, and others that it was a corruption of Channel Row, from the arm of the river which entered near the spot. There were many n.o.ble houses here at one time. The Earl of Derby in 1552 had two houses, with gardens stretching to the river, granted to him by Edward VI.

Anne, d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset, built a house here. The Marquis of Dorset's house gave its name to a court subsequently built on its site. In 1556-57 the Earl of Suss.e.x lived here, and in 1618 a later Earl of Derby built a house, afterwards used as the Admiralty Office. The name is preserved in Derby Street. The Earl of Ess.e.x, Lord Halifax, and the Bishop of Peterborough were all residents in this row. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Duke of Manchester, Lord Privy Seal, resided here also. At present the row is very dreary. The building in which the Civil Service examinations are held stands on the east side.

This was erected in 1784 for the Ordnance Board, then given to the Board of Control, and finally to the Civil Service Commissioners.

The Victoria Embankment was begun in 1864, and completed about six years later. The wall is of brick, faced with granite and founded in Portland cement; it looks solid enough to withstand the tides of many a hundred years. The parapet is of granite, decorated by cast-iron standard lamps.

St Stephen's Club is on the Embankment, close by Westminster Bridge Station. Further on is the huge building of the Police Commissioners, known as New Scotland Yard, built in 1890 from designs of Norman Shaw, R.A. It is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Force, and the architecture is singularly well in keeping with its object. The building is of red brick, with the tower floors cased in granite. It is in the form of a square, built round an inner courtyard, and has an immense bastion at each exterior angle. Besides the offices of the police force, the Lost Property Office, the Public Carriage Office, and the Criminal Investigation Department are here. The building communicates directly by telephone with the Horse Guards, Houses of Parliament, British Museum, and other public places, and has telegraphic communication with the twenty-two head-offices of the Metropolitan Police district. The Criminal Museum is open to the public under certain conditions.

Parliament Street and King Street have now been merged in one, and together have become a part of Whitehall, so that the very names will soon be forgotten. Yet King Street was once the direct land route to the Abbey and Palace from the north, and its narrow span was perforce wide enough for all the pageantry of funerals, coronations, and other State shows that pa.s.sed through it. It must be remembered that King Street formerly ran right up to the Abbey precincts, from which it was separated by a gate-house, called Highgate, built by Richard II.; but the street was subsequently shorn of a third of its length, over which now grows green gra.s.s in smooth lawns. The street was very picturesque: "The houses rose up three and four stories high; gabled all, with projecting fronts, story above story, the timbers of the fronts painted and gilt, some of them with escutcheons hung in front, the richly blazoned arms brightening the narrow way." But it was also dirty: "The roadway was rough and full of holes; a filthy stream ran down the middle, all kinds of refuse were lying about." But what mattered that?

No one went on foot who could possibly go by boat, and there lay the great highway of the river close at hand. We have said processions went down this street; among them we may number all the coronation processions up to the time when Parliament Street was cut through numerous small courts and by-streets in the reign of George II. Lord Howard of Effingham set out from King Street to fight the Spanish Armada. Charles I. came this way from Whitehall Palace to his trial at Westminster; he went back by the same route condemned to death; and later Cromwell's funeral procession followed the same route. Cromwell himself narrowly escaped a.s.sa.s.sination in this very street, where he had a house north of Boar's Head Yard. The story is told that he was in his state carriage, but owing to the crowd and narrow street he was separated from his guard. Suddenly Lord Broghill, who was with him, saw the door of a cobbler's stall open and shut, while something glittered behind it. He therefore got out of the carriage and hammered at the door with his scabbard, when a tall man, armed with a sword, rushed out and made his escape.

Anne Oldfield was apprenticed to a seamstress in King Street. Sir Henry Wootton also lived here; and Ben Jonson says that Spenser died here for "lack of bread," and that the Earl of Ess.e.x sent him "20 pieces" on hearing of his poverty, but the poet refused them, saying they came too late. Fletcher wrote of him: "Poorly, poor man, he lived; poorly, poor man, he died." But it seems hardly credible he was so badly off as to be dest.i.tute, for he was at the time a pensioner of the Crown. Thomas Carew the poet lived in King Street. Most of the taverns in Westminster seem to have cl.u.s.tered about this street; we have the names of the Bell, the Boar's Head, and the Rhenish Wine House still handed down as places of importance. There were innumerable courts and alleys opening out of King Street. On the west, south of Downing Street, were Axe Yard, Sea Alley, Bell Yard, Antelope Alley. Gardener's Lane ran parallel with Charles Street; here Hollar the engraver died in extreme poverty in 1677.

At the north end of King Street stood a second gate, called the King's Gate, and sometimes the c.o.c.kpit Gate. It stood at the corner of what is now Downing Street. It had four domed towers; on the south side were pilasters and an entablature enriched with the double rose, the portcullis, and the royal arms. The gate was removed in 1723.

In the year 1605 a solemn function took place in which the gate played a part:

"On January 4, 1605, when Prince Charles, Duke of Albany, then only four years old, was to be created Knight of the Bath, his esquires, the Earls of Oxford and Ess.e.x, with eleven n.o.blemen who were to share in the honour, tooke their lodgings in the first Gate-house going to King's-streete, where they were all after supper, at which they sat by degrees, a row on the one side, with the armes of every of them over the seate where he was placed; and lodged upon severall pallets in one chamber, with their armes likewise over them, having their bathes provided for them in the chamber underneath. The next morning they went about through the gallory downe into the Parke in their hermits' weedes, the musitions playing, and the heralds going before them into The Court, and so into the Chapell, and there after solemn courtesies, like to the Knights of the Garter, first to the Altar, and then to the Cloath of Estate, every one took his place in the stalles of the Quier" (Walcott, p. 58).

Great George Street, made 1750--at the same time as the Bridge, Bridge Street, etc.--contains the Inst.i.tution of Civil Engineers, a fine building, and at the west end is Delahay Street, once Duke Street, a very fashionable locality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The poet Matthew Prior lived here, and Bishop Stillingfleet died here in 1699. Duke Street Chapel, recently pulled down, was a very well-known place; it was originally part of a house, overlooking the park built by Judge Jeffreys, and the steps into the park at Chapel Place were made for Jeffreys' special convenience. In this wing of his house he sometimes heard cases, and it was later made into a chapel for private subscribers. Jeffreys' house was also used for a time as the Admiralty Office. In Delahay Street may be noted the west end of the Boar's Head Court, marking the spot where Cromwell's house stood. The s.p.a.ce between Great George Street and Charles Street will soon be covered by Government offices, now in course of erection. When Parliament Street was made it effaced Clinker's Court, White Horse Yard, Lady's Alley, Stephen's Alley, Rhenish Wine Yard, Brewers' Yard, and Pensioners'

Alley--some of the slums which had sprung up outside the Abbey precincts. Now Parliament Street in its turn is effaced, swallowed up in an extended Whitehall. King Street has been completely swept away, as one sweeps a row of crumbs from a cloth, but the part it played in the ancient history of Westminster is not yet forgotten. Undoubtedly the change could be justified: the thoroughfare is an important one, the view as now seen from the direction of Charing Cross one of the finest in the world; yet to gain it we have had to give, and one wonders sometimes whether the gain counterbalances the loss.

Beyond the now vacant s.p.a.ce on the north are the great group of Government offices, the Home and Colonial Offices facing Parliament Street, and behind them the India and the Foreign Offices. Above Downing Street there are others, the Privy Council Office and the Treasury.

Downing Street is called after George Downing, an American Amba.s.sador to the Hague under Cromwell and in Charles II.'s reign. John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Ossory and the last Earl of Oxford, lived here. Boswell occupied a house in Downing Street in 1763. But the street is chiefly a.s.sociated with the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury. Sir Robert Walpole accepted this house from George II. on condition it should belong to his successors in office for ever.

On the east side, nearly opposite Downing Street, Richmond Terrace stands on the site of the Duke of Richmond's house, burnt down in 1790.

Beyond Richmond Terrace is Montagu House, the town residence of the Duke of Buccleuch; the present building, which is of stone, in the Italian style, dates from the middle of the nineteenth century.

Beyond, again, are Whitehall Gardens, on part of the site of the Privy Gardens, belonging to Whitehall Palace. There is now a row of fine houses overlooking the Embankment and the Gardens. One of these was the residence of Sir Robert Peel. A great gallery of sculpture formerly extended along this part of the Embankment. It was partly destroyed in 1778, and wholly burnt down some years later. Gwydyr House, a sombre brick building with heavy stone facings over the central window and doorway is now occupied by the Charity Commission; it was built by Adam.

Adjoining it is a new building with an angle tower and cupola; this belongs to the Royal United Service Inst.i.tute, and next door to it is the banqueting-hall, now used as the United Service Museum. This is the only fragment left of Whitehall Palace, and is described in detail on p.

88.

The gatehouse known as the Holbein Gate stood across Whitehall a little south of the banqueting-hall. It was the third, and the most magnificent of those which previously stood in Westminster, and was built by Henry VIII. after the design of Holbein. It is said that one of the chambers was Holbein's studio. Later it was used as a State Paper Office, and was removed in 1750 to widen the street. It was intended to rebuild it in Windsor Park, but this design was never carried out; though various fragments of it were afterwards worked into other buildings.

It is a pity that it vanished, for it would have been a fine relic of the Tudor times, with its high angular towers and its elaborate decoration. It had a large central entrance and two smaller doorways beneath the towers. The brickwork was in diaper pattern, and the front ornamented with busts in niches--altogether a very elaborate piece of work.

WHITEHALL PALACE.

Hubert de Burgh bequeathed a house on this site to the Dominican Friars in the thirteenth century, and they sold it to the Archbishop of York.

For 250 years it was the town-house of the Archbishops of that see, and when Wolsey became Archbishop he entered into his official residence with the intention of beautifying and enlarging it greatly; he had a pa.s.sion for display, a quality which perhaps cost him more than he was ever aware of. It was a dangerous thing to build or rebuild great mansions close to the palace of so jealous a King as Henry VIII. It was especially dangerous to do so at Whitehall, because, as has been already shown, the King lived at Westminster in a congeries of old buildings more or less dilapidated and inconvenient. Wolsey's fall was doubtless hastened by his master's covetousness, and after it, by agreement with the Chapter of York, the King had the house conveyed to himself. Up to this time it had been known as York Place, but was henceforth Whitehall.

At Anne Boleyn's coronation in the Abbey, the Royal party came to and from Whitehall.

"You must no more call it York Place--that is past For, since the Cardinal fell, that t.i.tle's lost; 'Tis now the King's and call'd Whitehall."

'_King Henry VIII._,' Act IV.

It must be remembered that there was then no Parliament Street, and the palace buildings occupied all the ground from Old Scotland Yard to Downing Street, from St. James's Park to the river. King Henry added very much to the land belonging to the palace, also to the buildings. He was fond of sport, and his additions show his tastes in this direction; he built a tennis-court, a tilt-yard,--on the site of the Horse Guards--a bowling-green, and a c.o.c.kpit. The exact site of the c.o.c.kpit has long been a matter of uncertainty, but it is now very generally believed that the entrance was just where the present Treasury entrance is.

The palace does not seem to have been very h.o.m.ogeneous; it contained three courts, including Old Scotland Yard, in which was the Guard House.

The King and Queen occupied the first court, where was what remained of old York House; here also was the great Hall, the Presence Chamber, and the Banqueting House. In the second court was the way to the Audience and Council Chambers, the Chapel, the offices of the Palace, and the Watergate.

Henry VIII. died in this palace, and all the n.o.ble names of his and the succeeding reigns seem to haunt the site of the now vanished building.

Here came Sir Thomas More, Erasmus and Thomas Cromwell; Holbein occupied a set of apartments, and received a salary of 200 florins for painting and decorating the rooms. Here are the ghosts of Cranmer, Katharine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, Latimer and Ridley; later we see a courtlier gathering--Cecil, Ess.e.x, Leicester, Raleigh, Drake, Walsingham, Philip Sydney. So true it is, the King doth make the Court. Some time later, in the reign of Charles II., we have a different cla.s.s of men altogether--Monk, Clarendon, Sedley, Rochester, Wycherley, Dryden, Butler, Suckling, Carew. Here came crowds to be touched for the King's evil. Here the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth implored pardon at his uncle's feet in vain. Whitehall was also the home of the short-lived masque, a form of entertainment extremely costly.

In 1691 a fire broke out, and all the buildings between the stone gallery and the river were burned down, and six years later another fire finished nearly all that the first had left.

Inigo Jones prepared plans for a new palace that should eclipse the old, and his designs lacked not anything on the side of magnificence; if the palace had been built as he designed, it would have exceeded in splendour any building now in London, but he did not finish it. Like William Rufus with Westminster Palace, like many another architect, his plans demanded more than his allotted span of years, and before he could do more than put his imagination upon paper, and realize but a fragment of it in stone, he was called away from a world dependent on the "work of men's hands."

The fragment he has left us still stands; it was to be the banqueting-hall, but no Royal banquets were held there; it was used as a Chapel Royal for many years, and is now the home of the United Service Museum. For the magnificent ceiling painted by Rubens we are indebted to Charles I., who also designed to have the walls painted by Vandyck, a still more costly operation, which was never carried out. The weatherc.o.c.k on the north end was put up by order of James II., so that he might see whether the wind was for or against the dreaded Dutch fleet. The building has one a.s.sociation never to be forgotten. On that black day when England shamed herself before the nations by spilling the blood of her King, the scaffold was erected before this building, though the exact site is unknown. It is believed that the window second from the north end is that in front of which it stood, and that the King stepped forth from a window in a small outbuilding on the north side; he came forth to die, the only innocent man in all that great crowd, who watched him suffer without raising a finger to save him. At that time the present windows were not glazed, but walled in. William III. talked of rebuilding the palace, but he died too soon. Queen Anne went to St.

James's, and Whitehall was never rebuilt.

The Horse Guards is almost directly opposite the Banqueting House, and stands on the site of an old house for the Gentlemen Pensioners who formed the guard when there was not a standing army in England. This itself superseded the tilt-yard built by King Henry VIII., though the actual yard was the wide s.p.a.ce at the back of the building, which still witnesses the trooping of the colours and other ceremonies on state occasions. It is interesting to notice that the words "Tilt-yard Guards"

still occur in the regulations hung up inside the sentry-boxes where the magnificent sentries keep guard, to the wonder and admiration of every small boy who pa.s.ses.

The whole of St. James's Park is now included in the City of Westminster, but only the south-east part is in the parish of St.

Margaret's, which we are now considering. The remainder will be found described in the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which is included in the electoral district of the Strand in the same series. In "The Strand District" there are also full accounts of St. James's Palace, and of Buckingham Palace.

The spot now known as St. James's Park was once a dismal marshy field.

In 1531 Henry VIII. obtained some of the land from the Abbey of Westminster, and in the following year he proceeded to erect what is now St. James's Palace, on the site of a former leper hospital. The park, however, seems to have remained in a desolate condition until the reign of James I., who took a great interest in it, and established a menagerie here which he often visited. The popularity of the park continued throughout the Stuart period. Charles II. after the Restoration employed a Frenchman, Le Notre, to lay out the grounds, and under his advice the ca.n.a.l was formed from the chain of pools that spread across the low-lying ground, and also a decoy, where ducks and wildfowl resorted. Rosamund's Pond, an oblong pool, lay at the south-west end of the ca.n.a.l. Of the origin of this name there is no record, though Rosamund's land is mentioned as early as 1531. A new Mall was laid out soon after the Restoration, and preserved with great care.

Powdered c.o.c.klesh.e.l.ls were sprinkled over the earth to keep it firm. As the game of pall-mall went out of fashion the Mall became a promenade, and was the resort of the Court. A pheasant-walk was also formed where Marlborough House now stands. There are two ancient views of the park extant, in one of which the heads of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw stuck upon poles at the end of Westminster Hall are visible, and in the other, a figure walking in the foreground is supposed to be Charles II.

himself. The park was not opened to the public at this time, but those whose houses bordered it appear to have been allowed free entrance.

Milton, the poet, certainly strolled here from his house in Petty France.

Charles II. himself frequently used it, and kept his pet animals here, and the lords and ladies of his time made it their fashionable rendezvous. The park is mentioned constantly by Pepys and Evelyn. A couple of oaks planted by Charles from acorns brought from Boscobel survived until 1833, when they were blown down.

The origin of the name of Birdcage Walk has been disputed. It has been derived from "boccage," meaning avenue; another account says it was from the bird-cages of the King's aviary, which were hung in the trees. This seems more probable.

For many reigns St. James's Park continued to be a fashionable place of resort. In 1770 Rosamund's Pond was filled up, and the moat round Duck Island was filled in. In 1779 a gentleman was killed in a duel in the park.

In 1827-29 the park was finally laid out and the ca.n.a.l converted into a piece of ornamental water under the superintendence of Nash. In 1857 the lake was cleared out to a uniform depth of four feet and the present bridge erected, and the park became something like what we see at the present time. The vicinity of Marlborough House and Buckingham Palace still give it a certain distinction, but it cannot be called in any sense fashionable, as it was in the later Stuart times. And in the midst of the park we must take leave of our present district, having rambled within its borders east and west, north and south, and having met in the process the ghosts of kings and queens, of statesmen and authors, of men of the Court and men of the Church, those who have made history in the past and laid the foundations for the glory of the future.