Norfolk House

Norfolk (the Duke) his House is on the Wly side of St. James's Square.

Norfolk House, in the south-east comer of St. James's Square, the town residence of the Dukes of Norfolk from 1684 to the present time. King George III. was born in this house. May 24, 1738 (O.S.), and baptized in it on June 21 following. His father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, removed from hence to Leicester House, in Leicestor Fields. According to Lord Marchmont, Sir Robert Walpole at this time used to talk of the Two Pretenders,—the one at Rome, and the other at Norfolk House!

Oh to what Court will he now go,
To which will he repair?
For he is ill at St. James's House,
And much worse in the Square.
Sir C.H. Williams, On Bubb Dodington^ Argule Decampment,
June 1740 (Works, vol. i. p. 22).

The present Norfolk House, which stands in front of the old house, was built 1742–1756 from the design of Matthew Brettingham, architect, and the portico added in 1842 by R. Abraham.

No. 31: Norfolk House

... The history of this site is made obscure in some respects by the absence of the relevant title-deeds and estate papers of the Dukes of Norfolk. Some of this evidence is recorded by Dasent, who had access to the papers.

The present building has the same frontage of about 107 feet to the square as the house built by Matthew Brettingham for the Duke of Norfolk in 1748–52. This frontage comprised that of two older houses, the more southerly, with a frontage of about sixty-eight feet, being the original St. Albans House (A on fig. 36), first owned and occupied by the Earl of St. Albans before his removal to the site of Nos. 9–11, and the more northerly, with a frontage of about thirty-nine feet, being one of the three houses originally built by Lord Belasyse under a grant from the Earl (B on fig. 36).

The Dukes of Norfolk acquired the St. Albans House site in 1722 and the Belasyse house site in 1748. The history of these two sites is discussed before that of the house built in 1748–52 and its modern successor. In the following account the name 'Norfolk House' will, unless otherwise indicated, be applied only to the house which existed from 1748 to 1938.

St. Albans House site

The house built on this site by the Earl of St. Albans for his own occupation was the first erected in the square, within two years of the Crown's grant of the freehold in 1665 and during the period of the Earl's early plans for a square occupied by mansions even greater than those which were ultimately built. The history of the house does not, however, suggest that its construction was particularly sound. Nothing is known of its erection, although Sutton Nicholls's view of c. 1722 (Plate 128) shows that it had been built in a style uniform with that adopted for the other houses erected in the square in the next decade or so. Dasent summarizes an inventory of 1674 (fn. 11) and notes that this indicates that there were twelve or thirteen rooms in all on the main floors. The house is included in the ratebook for 1667. According to Dasent, on the authority of ratebooks no longer available, (fn. 12) this is the first year it appears. (fn. 1) Dasent says that the house was undoubtedly approached from Pall Mall when first built, (fn. 13) and this has perhaps encouraged the mistaken belief, not shared by Dasent, that the older building which until 1938 stood on the eastern side of the garden of Norfolk House (C on fig. 36) was the original St. Albans House, Sutton Nicholls's view, however, shows clearly that the house fronted on the square and this is confirmed by such evidence as survives from title-deeds. The statement that it was approached from Pall Mall probably derives from its inclusion in that section of the ratebooks down to 1672: the three houses in the opposite, south-westerly, corner of the square were similarly listed under Pall Mall in the ratebook for 1675. (fn. 2)

Figure 36 Norfolk House, layout plan. Based on the Ordnance Survey 1869 Key. The bold line indicates the boundary of the Norfolk House property in 1869. A. Old St. Albans House. B. House on Belasyse freehold, bought for Duke of Norfolk in 1748. C. Garden block probably erected by Earl of Portland, c. 1710–13. D. Houses hired by Prince of Wales, 1738–41. E. Broken-and-dotted line indicates boundary of stables and yard (sometime Hubbard's Yard), leased from Crown in 1710. F. Dotted line indicates boundary of stable yard (sometime Robin Hood Yard) as in 1794. G. Entrance to stable yard probably built by the New Street Commissioners c.1814. H. Entrance to stable yard of No. 32 built by the New Street Commissioners c. 1814–16. I. Frontage of five houses acquired by Dukes of Norfolk between 1730 and 1777

The Earl was himself rated for the house down to 1672. (fn. 3) In 1669 it had been put at the disposal of Cosmo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, during his visit to London. (fn. 14) The Grand Duke caused the King's birthday to be celebrated with a display by 'a machine with different fanciful artificial fire-works and squibs' before the house, and a distribution of Italian wine and beer to the onlookers. An unexplained episode in the house's history is its sale in April of the following year, 1670, for £5200 to the Earl of Essex, who sold it back to the Earl of St. Albans and his trustees in January 1670/1: (fn. 15) in 1679 Essex bought and occupied No. 19.

By deeds of March and May 1676 St. Albans and his trustees sold the house to the builder Richard Frith and his trustees, John Grosvenor and Richard Heyburne, reserving a rent of £36 per annum. (fn. 16) At that time St. Albans's big new house on the north side of the square was probably recently built or still building by Frith (see page 118), and the conveyance to him of the original St. Albans House may have been intended as some kind of security for his outlay on the new house. On 9 September following Frith and his trustees re-sold the house (it is not clear whether for £6000 or £6500) to James Bridgman of St. Martin's in the Fields, esquire, and William Masemore of the Middle Temple, gentleman (who the previous year had witnessed the Earl of St. Albans's grant of the site of No. 4 to Nicholas Barbon), as trustees for Lord Duras, Marquis de Blanquefort (subsequently, when second Earl of Feversham, commander of the royal forces at Sedgemoor), who moved into the house in the same year. In 1675 Lord Duras had married a daughter of the first Earl of Feversham, who lent him part of the purchase money, and whom he succeeded in 1677 as second Earl. Dasent records what he calls a bill of sale of the goods of Sir John Duncombe (the outgoing tenant), also of 9 September 1676, from St. Albans and Frith to Lord Duras. The 'goods' were presumably furnishings which were perhaps handed on from one owner to the next. (fn. 17) A few days later, on 12–13 September, Lord Duras's trustees mortgaged the house back to trustees for Frith, as security for the payment of the purchase price. (fn. 18) The second Earl of Feversham was rated for the house until 1681 although in 1677–8 he was ambassador in Paris, and he was again rated for the house in 1692–3, after a number of short tenancies. In March 1695/6 he and others, who were evidently mortgagees, conveyed the house for £5000 to two lawyers, Martin Folkes, esquire (a trustee of the Jermyn estate), and Andrew Card, gentleman, both of Gray's Inn, in trust for Sir Stephen Fox. (fn. 19) (fn. 4) The house was then already occupied by the second Earl of Sunderland (of whom Fox had been a creditor). (fn. 20) The Sunderlands inhabited the house until 1708, owning it in at least the later years of their occupation. During their residence here the house was the scene of the highly romantic return of the Jacobite Lord Clancarty to his wife, the second Earl's daughter, in 1698. (fn. 21)

In November 1708 Lady Wentworth was looking for a house in the square for her son, later Earl of Strafford, who eventually settled at No. 5. Two of her voluble letters describe old St. Albans House, which she seems to have thought better built than its later history suggests. (fn. 22) She describes it as 'a very good hous. . . . It has thre large rooms forward and two little ons backward.' The rooms were wainscoted at top and bottom, with provision for hangings and with 'picturs' inset over most of the chimneypieces. She conveyed the gratifying intelligence that 'New River water' was available, as well as a supply from lead cisterns, and that the chimneys did not smoke. She was evidently impressed by the amplitude and convenience of the back premises; this suggested to her that 'you may build a gallary over the offisis'. The construction was thought to be sound: 'they say this hous is soe strong it will last for ever'. In short, 'it is a noble hous'.

Lady Wentworth said that Lord Sunderland had found the house too small for him, and had disposed of it to a 'marchant' with whom she was dealing. (fn. 5)

By 1710 the house was in the possession of the second Earl (later first Duke) of Portland, who purchased the house at about this time, (fn. 23) and moved hither from No. 32. In September 1710 and in April and May 1712 the Earl acquired leases of additional stable yards and coach-houses. Part of this leasehold property, held from the Crown, was in Hubbard's Yard and gave access to the back or eastern side of the freehold site from St. Albans Street (E on fig. 36). (fn. 24) Previously, access to the back of the house had been only from Charles Street by a passage across the easternmost part of the site granted to Lord Belasyse, the use of which had been reserved in St. Albans's grant of 1670. (fn. 25) Lord Portland's leasehold acquisitions also included stable yards evidently communicating with Charles Street and he was perhaps responsible for the enlargement of the yard off that street shown in eighteenth-century maps and plans (fn. 6) (F on fig. 36). The present more extensive frontage of the 'Norfolk House' site to Charles Street forming the present No. 30 Charles II Street (G on fig. 36), was, however, probably formed in about 1814, when the back premises in the southeastern corner of the square were being reconstructed by the New Street Commissioners in consequence of the formation of Waterloo Place.

Dasent says that on acquiring the freehold of St. Albans House the Earl of Portland 'made extensive alterations and improvements utilizing the courtyard or garden for the erection of new reception rooms . . .'. (fn. 23) These improvements almost certainly included the erection of the building which until 1938 stood on the eastern side of the garden of Norfolk House and which has sometimes been supposed to have been the original St. Albans House (C on fig. 36; see also Plate 163, fig. 39). In the summer and autumn of 1713 Lord Berkeley of Stratton discussed Lord Portland's 'great room' in letters to his friend the Earl of Strafford, (fn. 26) who was thinking of building a similar addition in the garden of No. 5 (see page 100). (fn. 7) Lord Berkeley thought the room 'dark and unpleasant', but it was evidently admired and in 1714 was, with the 'Duke of Kent's Gallery' at No. 4, thought especially worthy of 'the Curiosity of a Stranger' viewing the square. (fn. 27)

The building on the east of the garden had a coved painted ceiling. This may have been one of the works of the Venetian, Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, who is said to have painted 'the hall and Staircase and one or two of the great rooms' here for the Duke of Portland, and whose 'very noble and fruitfull invention' has been celebrated by Vertue. (fn. 28) Alternatively, Sebastiano Ricci, who worked for the Duke of Portland at Bulstrode, may have been responsible for the ceiling. (fn. 29) An architectural description of this building is given on page 200.

By deeds of 31 May and 1 June 1722 the Duke of Portland sold the house and assigned the leasehold properties at the back to Lord Howard of Effingham and Lord Frederick Howard, doubtless as trustees for the eighth Duke of Norfolk. (fn. 29) The price is said to have been £10,000. (fn. 30) The site was henceforward owned by the Dukes of Norfolk until 1938. The eighth Duke and the four succeeding Dukes all died here or in the rebuilt house.

In September 1737 Frederick, Prince of Wales, having been dismissed from St. James's Palace by his father, took the Duke of Norfolk's house furnished, at a rent said to be £1200 per annum. (fn. 31) The Prince was rated here and also for three adjacent houses in Pall Mall during the years 1738–41. It was in this house that the future George III was born, on 24 May (the New Style 'Fourth of June') 1738. (fn. 32) The Rev. James Dallaway, chaplain of the eleventh Duke of Norfolk, told his fellow topographer, J. T. Smith, that at that time 'only the buildings on the north side of the inner court were completed' and that it was these which were leased to the Prince. (fn. 33) This is perhaps the origin of the belief that the painted room on the eastern (not the northern) side of the garden was the birthplace of the future King. But Dallaway's account of the rebuilding of the house is not in other respects accurate, and it seems possible that the birth took place in the main part of the old house.

Some building at about this period was, however, in progress on the leasehold property to the east of the freehold site. On this Crown property immediately east of the garden block, a 'large and commodious kitchen' had in 1739 lately been built. Other coach-houses and stables here were said to be 'old and ruinous'. The Surveyor General of Crown Lands recommended a renewal of the Duke of Norfolk's leasehold interest, derived from the Duke of Portland, until Lady Day 1789. (fn. 25)

Old St. Albans House was itself already in decay, and this hastened the Prince's departure in the summer of 1741. On 4 June Lady Irwin wrote to Lord Carlisle: 'The Prince has met with a great disappointment in regard to Norfolk House; upon making some repairs the workmen found the house in a dangerous condition; upon this it was examined by two or three head builders, who report the front to the square to be in a falling condition—several cracks and failures in the wall. Upon this the Prince has left it, and proposes being in the country all winter.' (fn. 34)

It was not, however, until 1748 that the house was demolished and rebuilt with a wider frontage. This was made possible by the acquisition in that year of the adjacent house to the north, the site of which was incorporated in the new Norfolk House, but which had had a separate history as part of Lord Belasyse's freehold.

Lord Belasyse's house site

This house (B on fig. 36) was the southernmost of three which were built for the first Lord Belasyse, a younger son of Thomas Belasyse, Lord Fauconberg. They were built on a site with a frontage of 133 feet to the square south of Charles Street. The sites of the two more northerly Belasyse houses survive as those of Nos. 32 and 33.

The overall site was granted (fn. 35) by the Earl of St. Albans and Baptist May on 24 March 1669/70 to Viscount Fauconberg and Viscount Castleton in trust for Fauconberg's uncle, the first Lord Belasyse, at a rent of £30 per annum. (fn. 8) Dasent, who doubtless saw the original grant or an associated covenant, records that Lord Belasyse undertook to build three houses before 1671, as well as to pave the square sixty feet in breadth in front of his property. (fn. 36) The ratebooks suggest that the undertaking was not exactly fulfilled as Nos. 32 and 33 were the first to appear in 1673: all were first listed under Charles Street. The southernmost house first appears in 1674, its first occupant being the Countess of Newburgh. She remained here only until 1678 and the subsequent history of the house was one of comparatively short tenancies. From the Belasyses the house descended to John Talbot of Longford, Shropshire, (fn. 37) who lived there in 1706–7 and possibly later. For the years 1716–17 it was occupied by the Lord Mayor, Sir James Bateman. Sutton Nicholls in c. 1722 shows the original seventeenth-century front (Plate 128), and this doubtless survived until its demolition in 1748: when it was being offered for sale in January 1726/7 it was said to have been 'lately repaired and painted'. (fn. 38) It stood empty during 1726 and 1727, and in March 1727/8 was sold by John Talbot and his wife to Joseph Banks of Revesby Abbey, Lincolnshire, (fn. 39) who about this time was elected member of Parliament. He occupied the house for two years or so, and then let it to the Prussian minister, Count Daggenfielt, at a rent falling from £30 to £20 a month. In August 1731 repairs were being carried out. (fn. 40)

In 1748 an Act of Parliament was obtained (fn. 41) enabling the Banks family to sell the house, which had been entailed by a marriage settlement. The Act stated that the Duke of Norfolk's house to the south was 'now pulling down' to be rebuilt and that this removed the likelihood of leasing the Banks's house which was unlet and 'much out of Repair'. Whether this was so or not, the Earl of Effingham had agreed in March of that year to buy the house, undoubtedly on behalf of the Duke of Norfolk, for the very low sum of £1830. (fn. 41) In the same year the house was pulled down.

Norfolk House

The great house built for the ninth Duke of Norfolk between 1748 and 1752 was the work of Matthew Brettingham the elder, who also built No. 5. His account book survives and gives a rather summary statement of the work on the house. (fn. 42) The total cost, including the purchase of materials, but excluding the fine furnishings and perhaps also some of the interior decorative work, seems to have been about £18,575. This included payments in cash totalling £800 to Brettingham himself 'for my trouble Jorneys Drawings and expences and attendance'.

The 'pullying down' of the two old houses was completed by September 1748, and the rebuilding was begun in that month. By August 1749 the house was sufficiently advanced for a watchman to be employed; he was paid until the spring of 1751. In that year the Duke of Norfolk reappeared in the ratebook after two years' absence, while he lodged in No. 32, but the payment to workmen for building the house continued until the spring or summer of 1752.

One payment of £48 is mentioned 'for 32000 white brick from Norfolk'; their 'ship freight' cost £44 and land-carriage a further £13 11s. 6d. Payments to a Mr. Scott for bricks are also recorded, including one for £1000. There were also separate purchases of lime and sand.

Between September 1748 and July 1750 payments by Brettingham are recorded to 'Mr. Leoni, my clark' for 'trouble and attendance'; it is not known whether he was related to the Duke of Kent's architect (see page 90) who died in 1746. The mason was 'Mr. Rouchead', probably the mason later employed at No. 15. Other workmen were John Elliott and his brother, and William Clark, bricklayers; William Edwards, carpenter and joiner; another workman named Clark, a plasterer; Broadbelt, painter; Cook or Cock, plumber; Fitzgerald, slater; Stephens, smith; Airs or Ayray, glazier; and Davis, paviour. A Mr. Croucher paved over the Vaults' and a workman called Griffon was paid for 'paving the Square'.

The decoration of the interior continued for some years, and it was February 1756 when Mrs. Delany wrote to a friend: 'The Duke of Norfolk's fine house in St. James's Square is finished, and opened to the grand monde of London; I am asked for next Tuesday. . . .' (fn. 43) This reception celebrating the completion of the house was attended also by Horace Walpole who described the effect of the brand-new splendour on the guests: 'All the earth was there. . . . You would have thought there had been a comet, everybody was gaping in the air and treading on one another's toes. In short, you never saw such a scene of magnificence and taste. The tapestry, the embroidered bed, the illumination, the glasses, the lightness and novelty of the ornaments, and the ceilings, are delightful.' (fn. 44) This interior brilliance was in striking contrast to the quiet unostentatious exterior which is well shown in Bowles's view of c. 1752. By 1771 this exterior was being ridiculed by the author of Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London, whose hand can probably be seen in the more assertive façade of No. 15: 'Would any foreigner, beholding an insipid length of wall broken into regular rows of windows, in St. James's Square, ever figure from thence the residence of the first duke of England ? "All the blood of all the Howards" can never ennoble Norfolk House.' (fn. 45)

In 1802 the eleventh Duke bought from the Crown for £1634 the freehold of the stable yard running back to St. Albans Street which had hitherto been held on lease. (fn. 46) In December 1813 the stables here, which had evidently been repurchased by the New Street Commissioners, were being pulled down, (fn. 47) to allow the creation of Waterloo Place. At about the same time the Commissioners probably rebuilt the approach to the back of the house from Charles Street as a stable yard (G on fig. 36), with a wider frontage to that street of nearly seventy feet. (fn. 48) This, like the approach to No. 32 across the back premises of No. 33 which the Commissioners constructed (H on fig. 36), was on part of the original Belasyse freehold where five small houses faced Charles Street (I on fig. 36), which the Dukes of Norfolk seem to have acquired at some time between 1730 (fn. 49) and 1777, (fn. 50) and to have surrendered to the Commissioners. (fn. 51)

The eleventh Duke died in 1815. Before the twelfth Duke entered into occupation of the house it was repaired and stood empty for two years. (fn. 52) It was reported in 1819 that the Duke had in the previous year wished to raise his garden wall and had been prevented because it would darken houses in Pall Mall. (fn. 53) In September 1819 Robert Abraham, the Duke's surveyor, was certainly enquiring about the right of 'Ancient Lights' claimed in respect of No. 32, then rebuilding. (fn. 54) The work at Norfolk House was presumably completed by November 1820 when Creevey was shown over the house 'and a capital magnificent shop it is'. (fn. 55)

---

1. In a letter of August in that year the Earl, writing from France to the Duke of Richmond, offered 'my hows' to the Duke for £5000, the sum which it had cost him, and explained that this was because 'my debts pres me soe'. This was more probably a house in France, where the Earl was ambassador in 1667 and 1669, than in the square.

2. That St. Albans House was ever regularly approached from Pall Mall is the less likely as the land between the house and the street was not part of the St. Albans freehold. A reference in 1740 to 'the Pall Mall door' of the house is probably to the door of one of the houses in Pall Mall (D on fig. 36) which were then occupied, together with the main house, by the household of the Prince of Wales.

3. Dasent says that Sir John Duncombe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, occupied the house in 1675 and 1676. In fact, Duncombe seems to be occupying St. Albans House in the 1673 and 1674 ratebooks: in 1675, rather confusingly, both he and the Earl are rated in this part of the square. Duncombe was certainly occupying St. Albans House in May (though not in September) 1676. In the ratebook for 1676, however, he is already replaced at St. Albans House by his successor there, Lord Duras, Marquis de Blanquefort. The inclusion of the Earl of St. Albans in the 1675 ratebook apparently as a fifth ratepayer in the south-east corner of the square (i.e., in addition to the occupants of the northern and southern houses on the Norfolk House site and of Nos. 32 and 33) is presumably erroneous. He was rated at £10, the same sum for which he was rated in 1677 as occupant of the new 'St. Albans House' on the north side of the square and twice as high as his previous rating for the old house. This suggests that it was the new house for which he was rated in 1675 and that by oversight or inertia on the collector's part the Earl retained the position in the sequence of ratebook entries which he had held since 1667. It should be noted, however, that the site of the new house seems still to have been vacant in at least the early part of 1675 (see page 119), and that in 1676 St. Albans does not seem to have been rated anywhere in the square.

4. One of Feversham's co-parties in this conveyance, Nicholas Fenn, esquire, had in 1685 been, with Sir Stephen Fox, a grantee of 'Monmouth House' in Soho Square, with which transaction Frith and Andrew Card had also been associated.

5. Lady Wentworth's rather confusing reference to the sale to the merchant, and her account of the previous history of the house, are silently omitted by Dasent from his quotations of her letters. According to Lady Wentworth the house had belonged to the Dowager Countess of Bristol who 'gave it' to her daughter, the wife of the second Earl of Sunderland, by whom it was apparently sold to the merchant. Lady Wentworth seems to say that this Countess of Sunderland's son, Lord Spencer (from 1702 the third Earl of Sunderland) occupied the house, with his wife, as tenant first of his mother and then of the 'merchant'. Dasent may have known, on the evidence of the Duke of Norfolk's title-deeds, that this was erroneous, and omitted it for that reason; it was evidently for such a reason that he also omitted Lady Wentworth's erroneous statement about the early history of No. 21 (see page 175n.).

6. Sometimes called Robin Wood's or Robin Hood Yard.

7. He gives the width of Lord Portland's room as twenty-three feet, whereas the building on the east of the garden had an over-all width of about twenty-five feet; the difference being perhaps that between an internal and external measurement. The building which survived until 1938 extended north of the line dividing Lord Portland's house from the Belasyse house later bought by the Duke of Norfolk, and was presumably erected partly on ground leased by Lord Portland in 1710.

8. The archives of the Wombwell family, consisting largely of those of the senior branch of the Belasyse family (Lords Fauconberg) contain an agreement dated 1665 to grant to Sir Philip Warwick a site in the square but this seems certainly to be part of that later occupied by Halifax House (see page 157n.).

9. Bowles's view of the square published in c. 1752 (Plate ) mistakenly shows the front of Brettingham's house set forward beyond the normal building-line of the square.

10. The plan proved to be of use, as confirmatory evidence, in 1959, when the drawings were made for fig. 37.

11. Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), pp. 66–7.

12. Ibid., p. 10.

13. Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), pp. 17, 62.

14. Travels of Cosmo the Third . . ., trans. G. Magalotti, 1821, pp. 163, 371, 395.

15. B.M., Add. Ch. 65723.

16. P.R.O., C54/4457, No. 8; recital in C54/4483, No. 31.

17. P.R.O., C54/4459, No. 13; C10/207/25; Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), pp. 65–7.

18. P.R.O., C10/207/25.

19. Ibid., C54/4805, No. 34.

20. D.N.B.

21. Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), p. 210; T. B. Macaulay, History of England, 1849 ed., vol. v, pp. 28–32; see also H.M.C., 10th Report, Appendix, part iv, 1885, p. 333.

22. The Wentworth Papers 1705–39, ed. J. J. Cartwright, 1883, pp. 64–5, quoted in part by Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), pp. 13, 70–1.

23. Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), p. 72.

24. M.L.R. 1722/1/54–6.

25. P.R.O., T55/5, pp. 118, 129–31.

26. The Wentworth Papers, etc., pp. 349–57.

27. John Macky, A Journey through England, 1714, vol. i, p. 119.

28. Walpole Society, vol. 18, 1930 (George Vertue Note Book 1), p. 38.

29. M.L.R. 1722/1/57–8.

30. Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), p. 73; J. T. Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 1829, pp. 170–1.

31. H.M.C., Egmont MSS., Diary of Viscount Percival, vol. ii, 1923, p.435; Lord Hervey and his Friends 1726–38, ed. the Earl of Ilchester, 1950, p. 273.

32. The Daily Post, 25 May 1738.

33. J.T. Smith, op. cit., 1829, pp. 170–1.

34. H.M.C., MSS. of Earl of Carlisle, 1897, p. 197.

35. P.R.O., C54/4287, No. 29.

36. Dasent, op. cit. (53 above), pp. 49, 77.

37. Will of Lord Belasyse, P.C.C. 165 Dyke.

38. The Daily Post, 26 Jan. 1726(77).

39. M.L.R. 1727/1/426–7.

40. The Letters and Papers of the Banks Family of Revesby Abbey, 1704–60, ed. J. W. F. Hill, Lincoln Record Society, 1952, pp. xxviii, 133.

41. 21 Geo. II, c. 19, private.

42. P.R.O., C108/362.

43. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, ed. Lady Llanover, 1st series, 1861, vol. iii, p. 409.

44. The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, vol. iii, 1903, p. 396.

45. Anon. (? James Stuart), Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London, 1771, p. 28.

46. C.E.O., sale book No. 1, pp. 326–32; No. 2, pp. 71–5.

47. Guildhall Library, MS. 8674/145, f. 114.

48. Plan in Soane Museum, Soane drawings, drawer 7, set 1.

49. M.L.R. 1730/6/20.

50. P.C.C., 430 Collier.

51. Report of Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues to the Treasury, I 3 July 1813, in Soane Museum, correspondence, cupboard 1, division VII, F; Church Commissioners, file FP132, 16 April 1815.

52. R.B.

53. H.M.C., MSS. of J. B. Fortescue, vol. x, 1927, p. 446.

54. Church Commissioners, file FP13 2, 15 Sept. 1819.

55. The Creevey Papers, ed. Sir Herbert Maxwell, 1903, vol. i, p. 335.