Russell House

Worcester House. The Bishop of Carlisle's Inn west of the Savoy was built in the Middle Ages.

In 1598 John Stow described it thus: "The next [to the Savoy] was sometime the Bishoppe of Carliles his Inne, which now belongeth to the Earle of Bedford, & is called Russell or Bedford house. It stretcheth from the Hospitall of Sauoy, West to Iuie [Ivy] bridge." The 1633 edition noted further

... West to Ivie Bridge; where Sir Robert Cecill, principall Secretarie to Queen Elizabeth, did then raise a large and stately house of Bricke and Timber, as also levelled and paved the high-way neere adjoyning, to the great beautifying of that street, and commodity of passengers.

Henry VIII gave it to the 1st Earl of Bedford, who sold the house to the 3rd Earl of Worcester upon which it became known Worcester House, and was used as the mansion of the Dukes of Beaufort. It was seized by Parliamentarians during the Civil War. According to Wheatley's London, Past and Present, Worcester House was taken down in 1683; according to The London Encyclopaedia it was demolished soon after 1674. On this spot the Beaufort Buildings were built (which see).

Carlisle [Inn] { Strand { Formerly Bp of Worcester's House or Inn { [Now are,] Tenements.

Bedford House. ... the old Bedford-House, namely, called Russel-House, and Dacres-House, now the House of Sir Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley.

Russell House, on the south side of the Strand, was inhabited by the Russells, Earls of Bedford, prior to the erection of their house on the north side of the Strand, between it and the great square of Covent Garden. Stow, 1598, speaks of it as "Russell or Bedford House."

Russell House, near Ivye bridge, seytuate upon the Thamise now [1592] in the use of the right honorable Sir John Puckering, knight, Lord Keeper of the Prevye Seale.—Norden's Speculum Brit. Harl. MSS., p. 570.

September 13, 1595.—I dyned with the Erie of Derby at Russell Howse. Mr. Thymothew, and Mr. John Hatfeldt, German, being there: [and again Sept. 22].—Dr. Dee's Diary, p. 53.

Worcester House, in the Strand, stood on the site of the present Beaufort Buildings. An earlier Worcester House was in St. James, Garlickhithe, overhanging the river.¹ The Strand house originally belonged to the see of Carlisle, but, at the Reformation, was presented by the Crown to the noble founder of the Bedford family. Under the Earls of Bedford it was known as Bedford or Russell House, a name which it bore till the family moved over the way and built a second Bedford House, on the site of the present Southampton Street, when the inn of the see of Carlisle took the name of its new occupant, Edward, second Marquis of Worcester, the Earl of Glamorgan of the Civil Wars, and the author of the Century of Inventions. The Marquis of Worcester died in 1667, and his son Henry was created, in 1682, Duke of Beaufort; hence Beaufort Buildings. During the Commonwealth, Worcester House in the Strand was used for committees of all kinds, and furnished by Parliament for the Scotch commissioners.² Subsequently, according to Whitelocke, it was sold by Parliament to the Earl of Salisbury, "at the rate of Bishop's Lands."³ But on May 2, 1657, there was brought into Parliament a "Bill for settling of Worcester House in the Strand upon Margaret Countess of Worcester, during the life of Edward Earl of Worcester"; and on April 14, 1659, it was resolved that "Margaret Countess of Worcester, shall have the actual possession of Worcester House delivered up to her on March 25 next; and in the mean time the rent of £300 be paid her for the said house for this year; and that the sum of £400 be paid in recompense of all demands for detaining of Worcester House from her since her title thereunto by the late Acts of Parliament."⁴ Twelve days after the entrance of Charles II. into London on his Restoration, the Marquis of Worcester wrote and offered his house (free of rent) to the great Lord Clarendon.

In a word, if that your Lordship pleased to accept of me, I am the most real and affectionate servant, and as a little token of it, be pleased to accept of Worcester House to live in, far more commodious for your Lordship than where you now are [Dorset House], though not in so good reparation, but such as it is, without requiring from your Lordship one penny rent (yet that only known between your Lordship and me). It is during my life at your service, for I am but a tenant in tail; but were my interest longer, it should be as readily at your Lordship's command.—Marquis of Worcester to Lord Clarendon (Lister, vol. iii. p. 108).

The Chancellor leased the house of the marquis, as he tells us in his Life, at a yearly rent of £500; and here, in Worcester House, on September 3, 1660, between eleven and two at night, Anne Hyde, the Chancellor's daughter, was married to the Duke of York, according to the rites of the English Church.

December 22, 1660.—The marriage of the Chancellor's daughter being now newly owned, I went to see her. ... She was now at her father's at Worcester House in the Strand. We all kiss'd her hand, as did also my Lord Chamberlain (Manchester) and Countess of Northumberland. This was a strange change—can it succeed well?—Evelyn.

The Chancellor was surrounded by all sorts of seekers—"the creatures of Worcester House," as they are called by Mrs. Hutchinson in her Memoirs of her husband. After Clarendon's removal to his new house in Piccadilly, near the top of St. James's Street, Worcester House would appear to have been left unoccupied, or let for installations and state receptions. On August 26, 1669, the Duke of Ormond was installed Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and on September 3, 1674, the Duke of Monmouth Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, in this house. The great hall is mentioned by Pepys (August 20, 1660), and the "Conference at Worcester House betwixt the Episcopal and the Nonconformist Divines, by His Majesty's Commission," of the reign of Charles II., by Andrew Marvell in his Rehearsal Transprosed.⁵

---

¹ Machyn's Diary, p. 301; Stow.
² Whitelocke, ed. 1732, p. 80.
³ Ibid. p. 289.
⁴ Burton's Diary.
⁵ Ed. 1674, part ii. p. 344.

[Worcester House.] between the Savoy and Durham Place, stood Worcester House, the town mansion of the Earls of Worcester, and previously the residence of the Bishops of Carlisle. Its gardens extended to the river-side. The great Earl of Clarendon occupied this house before his own mansion was built, and paid for it the annual rent of £500. ... Concerning the old house of the Earls of Worcester, afterwards called Beaufort House, honest John Stow tells a story to the effect that "there being a very large walnut-tree growing in the garden, which much obstructed the eastern prospect of Salisbury House, near adjoining, it was proposed to the Earl of Worcester's gardener, by the Earl of Salisbury or his agent, that if he could prevail with his lord to cut down the said tree, he should have £100. The offer was told to the Earl of Worcester, who ordered him to do it and to take the £100; both which were performed to the great satisfaction of the Earl of Salisbury, as he thought; but, there being no great kindness between the two earls, the Earl of Worcester soon caused to be built in the place of the walnut-tree a large house of brick, which took away all his prospect." The house was burnt down in 1695.

Carlisle Inn. Prior to the Reformation another episcopal mansion, that of the Bishop of Carlisle, occupied the site west of Durham Place on the opposite side of Ivy Lane. Early in the fifteenth century the Bishop granted out the Strand and Ivy Lane frontages to the Prior of Carlisle, and shops and small houses were built there which became known as Carlisle Rents. In 1539 an exchange took place by which Carlisle Inn passed into the possession of John Russell, afterwards Earl of Bedford.¹ Francis, the 2nd Earl of Bedford, who died in 1585 at Russell Place (sometimes called Bedford House), left that house to his twin grand-daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, and his stables and ground on the north side of the Strand to his grandson, Edward Russell,³²⁵ who became the 3rd Earl of Bedford, and who built the second Bedford House there "over against [across the street from] the olde."³⁰¹ The old house was renamed Worcester House, for it became vested in Anne Russell, who married Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert, afterwards 1st Marquess of Worcester.² In the reign of Henry VIII Thomas, Lord Dacre, built himself a house in Carlisle Rents and in 1527 his successor, William, 3rd Lord Dacre, obtained a lease thereof from the Bishop of Carlisle.²⁸⁸

Elizabeth, granddaughter of the 3rd Lord Dacre, married Lord William Howard, who rebuilt this house and used it as his London residence.³²⁷ In 1598 it was occupied by Sir Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley, who afterwards leased it to Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (afterwards Earl of Dorset). In 1599 Sir Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, bought the house³ from Lord Herbert, together with the tenements on the north-west corner of Ivy Lane,³²⁷ and proceeded to pull them down and erect a new house [Salisbury House] on the site.

---

¹ The Bishop of Carlisle was compensated with the Bishop of Rochester's house in Lambeth, while the latter bishop obtained Russell's house in Chiswick.

² In 1616–17 the Earl of Bedford guaranteed that water should be supplied to Worcester House from the conduit in or near Bedford's ground called "Fryers Pyes" (see p. 12).

³ Described in the deed as lying "betweene the highe Streete on the North and the Ryver of Thames on the Southe and the messuage ... called Russell house ... on the East and ... Ivey lane on the weste."

²⁸⁸ Hatfield MSS.
³⁰¹ Stow's Survey, 1618 edn.
³²⁵ P.R.O., C. 142/211/183.
³²⁷ P.R.O., C. 54/1713.