Garden. Under it is a long lofty vault, and in it are two old vines. I do not pretend that they are as old as Elizabeth's time; but I have a fond hope that their ancestors' leaves gave grateful trellis shade, as one of them does now. Their roots are somewhere, no doubt; the old mortar in the vaulting must be very good to give such fruit. Now my family is so romantic as to believe that Shakspeare must have many a time walked up and down our bit of terrace; have sat at the end with my Lord Essex and Lord Southampton, admiring the moonlight on the river, or jesting with 'Night' Templars over the parapet wall; must have drunk some sack in the cellar, and taken water at the stairs.' It is even believed that hardly at Stratford is there anything so little altered, and so near to Shakspeare's footsteps as our paved garden."*

In Essex House, on the 14th of September, 1646, the second Earl breathed his last. Another eminent inhabitant of Essex House was the celebrated courtier and statesman, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, who is said to have died here, not without strong suspicions of having been poisoned. Here also Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine, was lodged during his visit to England, previously to his marriage with Elizabeth, the charming daughter of James the First.

The steps leading to the Thames, which the great favourite of Elizabeth descended on his way to the dungeon and the block, still retain their original name of Essex Stairs.

* "Athenæum," Oct. 5th, 1861.

SOMERSET HOUSE.

LORD PROTECTOR SOMERSET.-MATERIALS

USED BY HIM ΤΟ BUILD THE HOUSE.-HENRY LORD HUNSDON AND QUEEN ELIZABETH.-SOMERSET HOUSE SET APART FOR THE QUEENS OF CHARLES THE FIRST AND SECOND, AND OF JAMES THE SECOND.—THEIR MODE OF LIFE THERE.-SOMERSET STAIRS. -CAUSES OF THE DEMOLITION OF THE OLD BUILDING.- CURIOSITIES DISCOVERED AT ITS DEMOLITION.-BUILDER OF THE PRESENT SOMERSET HOUSE. -EXPENSE OF BUILDING.

ΟΝ

N the site of the present Somerset House in the Strand stood Somerset Place and its princely gardens, the residence of the great Protector, Duke of Somerset. To the marriage of his sister with Henry the Eighth, this celebrated man was indebted for his magnificent fortunes. Within little more than ten years he rose from being plain Edward Seymour to be Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England; to be the brother-in-law of one monarch, and the uncle of another. In 1536, on the occasion of his sister's marriage with Henry, he was created Viscount Beauchamp, and the following year, Earl of Hertford. Four years afterwards he received the Order of the Garter, and was appointed Lord Chamberlain for life; besides which, on the accession of his nephew, Edward the Sixth, he was advanced to the Dukedom of Somerset and appointed Governor of the young King, Lord Treasurer, Earl Marshal, and Protector of the realm. These latter honours and appointments were conferred upon him between the 1st and 17th of February, 1547.

The reckless cost and unscrupulous means resorted to by the Protector, in the erection of his magnificent palace in the Strand, are well known. In order to save the expense of hewing quarries and conveying stone from a long distance, the tower and part of the church of St. John of Jerusalem, the charnel-house and north cloister of St. Paul's Cathedral, the church of St. Mary-le-Strand, as well as the episcopal residences of the Bishops of Worcester, Llandaff, and Chester, severally in the Strand, were razed to the ground, and. the materials appropriated to the Protector's splendid but sacrilegious purpose. The architecture of the new edifice was a mixed Gothic and Grecian, a style which had been introduced into England in the reign of Henry the Eighth. The architect is said to have been John of Padua, an Italian, who in the preceding reign had held the appointment of "Devizer of His Majesty's buildings." The edifice, which extended no less than six hundred feet from east to west, by five hundred from north to south, was commenced in April, 1548; four years after which time the Protector laid down his life on the block. Whether he ever resided under its roof appears to be uncertain.

By the attainder of the Protector, his palace came into the possession of the Crown. During the reign of Edward the Sixth, it appears to have been the occasional residence of his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, who, on her accession to the throne, permitted her first cousin, Henry Lord Hunsdon, to reside in it, and here she was not unfrequently his guest.

Here, on the 23rd July, 1596, Lord Hunsdon breathed his last; the refusal of his royal mistress to raise him to the Earldom of Wiltshire having, it is said, had such an effect, on his spirits as to hasten his end. Elizabeth subsequently relented, but when it was, too late. "When he lay on his death-bed," writes Fuller, "the Queen gave him a

gracious visit; causing a patent for the said earldom to be drawn, his robes to be made, and both laid on his bed. But this lord who could not dissemble, neither well nor sickreplied, 'Madam, seeing you counted me not worthy of this honour while I was living, I count myself unworthy of it now I am dying.""

For several succeeding generations Somerset House was the allotted residence of the Queens of England. Here James the First, who greatly preferred the society of his favourites to that of his wife, permitted his consort, Anne of Denmark, to hold her court; and here she gave those famous masques and entertainments which, we are told, "made the nights more splendid than the days." Her court, according to Arthur Wilson, was "a continued Mascarado, where she and her ladies, like so many sea-nymphs or Nereids, appeared in various dresses, to the ravishment of the beholders." Apparently these costly entertainments were conducted with but little attention to morality or decorum; the Countess of Dorset informing us in her Memoirs, that "the ladies about the court had gotten such ill names, that it was grown a scandalous place, and the Queen herself much fallen from her former greatness and reputation she had in the world." Peyton's censure is even far stronger. "The masks and plays," he says, " were used only as incentives for lust; wherefore the courtiers invited the citizens' wives to those shows. There is not a chamber or lobby, if it could speak, but would verify this."

Somerset House is said to have been considerably enlarged and beautified by Anne of Denmark, in compliment to whom James the First desired that it should henceforward be styled Denmark House. Hither, on the 9th of March, 1619, her body was conveyed by night from Hampton Court, where she died; and here, in the apartments which had recently been

the scene of her frivolity and splendour, it lay in state till the 13th of May, when it was interred in Westminster Abbey. Here also subsequently lay in state, between the 23rd of April and the 17th of May, 1625, the remains of King James.

On the marriage of Charles the First with Henrietta Maria, Somerset House was set apart as her jointure-house; and here, moreover, she was allowed that free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, which gave so much offence to her husband's Protestant subjects. The fact is a startling one, that in Henrietta's French retinue, consisting of no less than four hundred and forty persons, there were as many as twenty-nine priests, marshalled by a wrong-headed young bishop, under the age of thirty. The insolent manner in which these persons interfered in the domestic affairs of Charles; the discords which they daily fomented between their royal master and mistress; as well as their frivolous complaints of ill-usage and discomfort, at length occasioned such positive unhappiness to Charles that he came to the determination of sending them, at all hazards, out of the kingdom. Accordingly, having in the first instance given private instructions for their removal from Whitehall to Somerset House, whence carriages were ordered to be in readiness to convey them to the sea-coast, he took upon himself the painful task of communicating to Henrietta the necessity of her parting with her favourites. On his entering her apartments, he beheld, we are told, to his great indignation, a number of Henrietta's light-hearted domestics irreverently dancing and curvetting in her presence. Taking her by the hand, he led her into a private chamber, where he locked himself up with her alone. That which passed between them on the occasion was known only to themselves. Certain, however, it is, that the Queen's violence exceeded all