Chapter X

York House--Francis Bacon--The Great Seal taken from Him--Lord Keeper Egerton--The Duke of Buckingham, King James' "Steenie"--Magnificence of his Entertainments--Contemporary Descriptions--Bishop Goodman's Praise--The Second Duke--Dryden's Revenge--The "Superstitious Pictures" of York House--Buckingham's Marriage--Spanish, Russian, and French Ambassadors Here--Visits by Pepys and Evelyn--Duke of Buckingham sells York House--His Curious Condition of Sale--The Duke's _Litany_.

LEAVING the Adelphi proper, but still within its precincts, we come to the history of York House, the site of which is indicated by Villiers Street, Buckingham Street, and York Buildings, Adelphi. "Next beyond this Durham House," wrote John Stow, in 1598, "is another great house, sometime belonging to the Bishop of Norwich, and was his London lodging, which now pertaineth to the Archbishop of York by this occasion. In the year 1529, when Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York, was indicted in the Premunire, whereby King Henry VIII. was entitled to his goods and possessions, he also seized into his hands the said archbishop's house, commonly called York Place, and changed the name thereof into Whitehall; whereby the archbishops of York, being dispossessed, and having no house of repair about London, Queen Mary gave unto Nicholas Heath, then Archbishop of York, and to his successors, Suffolk House in Southwark, lately built by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, as I have showed. This house the said archbishop sold, and bought the aforesaid house of old time belonging to the bishops of Norwich, which of this last purchase is now called York House. The lord chancellors or lord keepers of the Great Seal of England have been lately there lodged." Our other great chronicler, Strype, records that Archbishop Heath, on August 6, 1557, "obtained a license for the alienation of this capital messuage of Suffolk Place; and to apply the price thereof for the buying of other houses called also Suffolk Place, lying near Charing Cross; as appears from a register belonging to the Dean and Chapter of York." Archbishop Heath did not occupy York House for long, and his successors appear to have let it to the Lord Keepers of the Great Seal.

Lord Chancellor Bacon, the son of Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, was born here in 1561, and here his father died in 1579. One of the most interesting of literary associations is that of Francis Bacon with York House. He built an aviary here at a cost of £300, and here Aubrey laid the scene of his jesting with the fishermen, although Bacon himself placed it at Chelsea: "His Lordship (Bacon) being in Yorke House garden looking on Fishers, as they were throwing their nett, asked them what they would take for their draught; they answered so much: his Lop would offer them no more but so much. They drew up their nett, and it were only 2 or 3 little fishes; his Lop then told them, it had been better for them to have taken his offer. They replied, they hoped to have had a better draught; but said his Lop, 'Hope is a good breakfast, but an ill supper.'"[52] When the Duke of Lennox wished to buy, or exchange, York House,[53] Bacon replied: "For this you will pardon me: York House is the house where my father died, and where I first breathed, and there will I yield my last breath, if so please God and the King." In 1621, however, Bacon, charged before the House of Commons with bribery, confessed that he was guilty of "corruption and neglect," and, on May 21 of that year, the Great Seal was "fetched from" the keeping of Lord Bacon of York House. A little later, Bacon had "leave to repair to York House for a fortnight, but remained so long that he had warning to repair to Gorhambury." Another keeper of the Great Seal was Sir John Puckering, who died at York House in 1596. Lord Chancellor Egerton also died here, in 1617. The commission of enquiry into the death, in 1613, of Sir Thomas Overbury, was held at York House, and resulted in the hanging of four of the agents of Lady Essex. The Orders of October 17, 1615, to Somerset "to keep his chamber near the Cockpit," and to his countess "to keep her chamber at the Blackfriars, or at Lord Knollys's house near the Tilt yard," are dated from York House. An attempt made, in 1588, to obtain the property from Queen Elizabeth, has been attributed to the Earl of Essex, to whom the custody of the house was subsequently committed. Edwin Sandys, when Archbishop of York, wrote a "secret letter" to Lord Burghley entreating his lordship to use his influence with the Queen for the refusal of the request of the Earl of Essex, who, curiously enough, was under surveillance at York House during the time--October 6, 1599, to March 20, 1600--that he was in the charge of Lord Keeper Egerton.

In some manner, which is not very clear, York House passed to George, the first Duke of Buckingham of the Villiers family. He "borrowed" it from Archbishop Mathew till such time as he could persuade him "to accept as good a seat as that was in lieu of the same, which could not be so soon compassed, as the Duke of Buckingham had occasion to make use of rooms for the entertainment of foreign princes." On "Whitson-Eve," 1624, as recorded in Archbishop Laud's _Diary_, "the Bill passed in Parliament for the King to have York House in exchange for other lands. This was for the Lord Duke of Buckingham." The old structure was destroyed, and a large, but temporary, building, erected in its place, great mirrors covering many of the walls. Nothing remains of this house; but the water-gate, at the foot of Buckingham Street, still marks the stately approach to the York House of Buckingham's time. "I am confident there are some that live," wrote Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who was the keeper of York House and collector of pictures for Buckingham, "who will not deny that they have heard the King of blessed memory, graciously pleased to avouch he had seen in Anno 1628, close to the Gate of York House, in a roome not above 35 feet square, as much as could be represented as Sceans, in the great Banqueting Room of Whitehall." The "sceans" were the pictures with which York House was filled by Buckingham, who paid Rubens a hundred thousand florins for an art collection "'more like that of a prince than a private gentleman' with which the great painter of Antwerp had enriched his own dwelling. Among the pictures were no fewer than 19 by Titian; 21 by Bassano; 13 by Paul Veronese; 17 by Tintoretto; 3 by Raphael; 3 by Leonardo da Vinci; and 13 by Rubens himself."[54] Buckingham did not live at York House: he only used it on state occasions. He was assassinated, at Portsmouth, by John Felton, on August 23, 1628.

The entertainments given by Buckingham at York House were unrivalled in their magnificence. A contemporary account of one of them is furnished by the great courtier, François de Bassompiere (1579-1646), Marshal of France, in his _Embassy to England_,[55] an account of his sojourn here in 1626. "The King," he says, "supped at one table with the Queen and me, which was served by a complete ballet at each course with sundry representations--changes of scenery, tables, and music: the Duke waited on the King at table, the Earl of Carlisle on the Queen, and the Earl of Holland on me. After supper the King and we were led into another room, where the assembly was, and one entered it by a kind of turnstile, as in convents, without any confusion, where there was a magnificent ballet, in which the Duke danced, and afterwards we set to, and danced country dances till four in the morning; thence we were shown into vaulted apartments, where there were five different collations." D'Israeli extracted an account of the same entertainment from the Sloane MSS.: "Last Sunday at night, the Duke's grace entertained their Majesties and the French Ambassador at York House with great feasting and show, where all things came down in clouds; amongst which, one rare device was a representation of the French King and the two Queens, with their chiefest attendants, and so to the life that the Queen's Majesty could name them. It was four o'clock in the morning before they parted, and then the King and Queen, together with the French Ambassador, lodged there. Some estimate this entertainment at five or six thousand pounds."[56] Sir Balthazar Gerbier, writing to Buckingham on February 8, 1625, says: "Sometimes, when I am contemplating the treasure of rarities which your Excellency has in so short a time amassed, I cannot but feel astonishment in the midst of my joy. For out of all the amateurs, and princes, and kings, there is not one who has collected in forty years as many pictures as your Excellency has collected in five. Let enemies and people ignorant of paintings say what they will, they cannot deny that pictures are noble ornaments, a delightful amusement, and histories that one may read without fatigue. Our pictures, if they were to be sold a century after our death, would sell for good cash, and for three times more than they have cost. I wish I could only live a century, if they were sold, to be able to laugh at those facetious folk, who say it is money cast away for baubles and shadows: I know _they_ will be pictures still, when those ignorants will be less than shadows."

_H. Maund._

THE BALL-ROOM, NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE.]

Buckingham, as is well known, was the "Steenie" of King James, who quoted the passage (Acts vi. 15), in which it is said of St Stephen: "All that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." So the King called his favourite Stephen, and the appellation became corrupted into Steenie. Buckingham, undoubtedly, was a man of great personal attraction. Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, who knew him well, says that, "Of all others he was most active; he had a very lovely complexion; he was the handsomest bodied man of England; his limbs so well compacted, and his conversation so pleasing, and of so sweet a disposition. And truly his intellectuals were very great; he had a sound judgment, and was of a quick apprehension, insomuch that I have heard it from two men, and very great men (neither of them had gotten so little as £3600 per annum by the Court), whom of all men in the world Buckingham had most wronged--yet I heard both those men say and give him this testimony, that he was as inwardly beautiful as he was outwardly, and that the world had not a more ingenious gentleman, or words to that effect."[57]

His son, George, the second Duke of Buckingham, was born in Wallingford House, which stood on the site of the Admiralty buildings, Whitehall, the house having been purchased by his father from Lord Wallingford, in 1621-22. At Wallingford House, "and at York House in the Strand," says Leigh Hunt, "he turned night into day, and pursued his intrigues, his concerts, his dabblings in chemistry and the philosopher's stone, and his designs on the crown; for Charles's character, and the devices of Buckingham's fellow quacks and astrologers, persuaded him that he had a chance of being king. When a youth, he compounded with Cromwell, and married Fairfax's daughter;--he was afterwards all for the king, when he was not 'all for rhyming' or ousting him;--when an old man, or near it (for these prodigious possessors of animal spirits have a trick of lasting a long while), he was still a youth in improvidence and dissipation, and his whole life was a dream of uneasy pleasure".[58] Apart from his Court intrigues and his disordered life, he is interesting to lovers of literature and the stage by reason of his various satires and verses, and, particularly, for _The Rehearsal_, brought out in 1671, in which he ridiculed contemporary dramatists, including Dryden. But Dryden had his revenge, for, ten years later, he made Buckingham the Zimri of his _Absalom and Achitophel_:--

"Some of the chiefs were princes in the land: In the first rank of these did Zimri stand, A man so various, that he seemed to be, Not one, but all mankind's epitomê; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman! who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy. Railing and praising were his usual themes; And both to show his judgment, in extremes; So very violent, or over civil, That every man with him was God or devil. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert. Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, and they had his estate. He laugh'd himself from court; then sought relief By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief; For spite of him, the weight of business fell On Absalom, or wise Achitophel; Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, He left not faction, but of that was left."

Buckingham, whose estates had been confiscated by Cromwell in 1648, regained control of York House in a curious manner--by marriage with the daughter of General Fairfax. Cromwell had bestowed this property on Fairfax at the time of the Civil Wars. "Every chamber," says Brian Fairfax in his _Memoirs_ of Buckingham, "was adorned with the arms of Villiers and Manners, lions and peacocks. He (Lord Fairfax) was descended from the same ancestors, Earls of Rutland." We have the same authority for the statement that the "superstitious pictures in York House" were ordered to be sold on August 20, 1645, but not before one John Trayleman, an "old trusty servant," had smuggled some of the treasures over to Holland, where they found a purchaser in the Archduke Leopold. For one of these pictures, the Ecce Homo, by Titian, the first Duke of Buckingham had been offered £7000, either in money or land, by Lord Arundel. In this painting, likenesses of the Pope, Charles V., and Solyman the Magnificent were introduced. The Duke returned to England in 1657, and obtained an introduction to General Fairfax, who gave a willing ear to the marriage proposition. The lady, we are told, could not resist the fascination of "the most graceful and beautiful person that any court in Europe saw," and the marriage took place at Nun Appleton, near York--a seat of Lord Fairfax--on September 7, 1657. According to Jesse, Cromwell, "who was supposed to have intended Buckingham for one of his own daughters, was greatly enraged when he heard of the match, and immediately committed Buckingham to the Tower. Fairfax demanded his release, which, being angrily and obstinately refused by the Protector, a quarrel was the consequence." After the death of Cromwell, Buckingham was permitted to remove to Windsor Castle. At the Restoration he was restored to his property, and became "the most reckless, unprincipled, and irregular character" at the Court of Charles II.

York House fell from its high estate on coming into the possession of General Fairfax. On November 27, 1655, Evelyn "went to see York House and gardens, belonging to the former greate Buckingham, but now much ruin'd thro' neglect." In 1661, Baron de Batteville, the Spanish Ambassador, was lodged there, a fact which affords us, through the pages of Samuel Pepys, a curious peep into the past. On May 19, 1661 (Lord's Day), this delightful chronicler walked in the morning towards Westminster, and, seeing many people at York House, he went down from the Strand "and found them at masse, it being the Spanish Ambassador's; and so I got into one of the galleries, and there heard two masses done, I think not in so much state as I have seen them heretofore. After that, into the garden, and walked an hour or two, but found it not so fine a place as I took it for by the outside." In September of the same year, Pepys witnessed a strange encounter between the retainers of the ambassadors of Spain and France, which terminated at York House: "This morning, up by moonshine, at five o'clock, to Whitehall, to meet Mr More at the Privy Seale, and ther I heard of a fray between the two embassadors of Spaine and France, and that this day being the day of the entrance of an embassador from Sweeden, they intended to fight for the precedence. Our king, I heard, ordered that no Englishman should meddle in the business, but let them do what they would. And to that end, all the soldiers in town were in arms all the day long, and some of the train bands in the city, and a great bustle through the city all the day. Then we took coach (which was the business I came for) to Chelsey, to my Lord Privy Seale, and there got him to seal the business. Here I saw by daylight two very fine pictures in the gallery, that a little while ago I saw by night; and did also go all over the house, and found it to be the prettiest contrived house that I ever saw in my life. So back again; and Whitehall light, and saw the soldiers and people running up and down the streets. So I went to the Spanish embassadors and the French, and there saw great preparations on both sides; but the French made the most noise and ranted most, but the other made no stir almost at all; so that I was afraid the other would have too great a conquest over them. Then to the wardrobe and dined there; and then abroad, and in Cheapside hear, that the Spanish hath got the best of it, and killed three of the French coachhorses and several men, and is gone through the city next to our King's coach: at which it is strange to see how all the city did rejoice. And, indeed, we do naturally all love the Spanish and hate the French. But I, as I am in all things curious, presently got to the water-side, and there took oars to Westminster Palace, and ran after them through all the dirt, and the streets full of people; till at last, in the Mews [Charing Cross], I saw the Spanish coach go with fifty drawn swords at least to guard it, and our soldiers shouting for joy. And so I followed the coach, and then met it at Yorke House, where the embassador lies; and there it went in with great state. So then I went to the French house, where I observe still, that there is no men in the world of a more insolent spirit where they do well, nor before they begin a matter, and more abject if they do miscarry, than these people are; for they all look like dead men, and not a word among them, but shake their heads. The truth is, the Spaniards were not only observed to fight more desperately, but also they did outwitt them; first in lining their own harnesse with chains of iron that they could not be cut, then in setting their coach in the most advantageous place, and to appoint men to guard every one of their horses, and others for to guard the coach, and others the coachman. And, above all, in setting upon the French horses and killing them, for by that means the French were not able to stir. There were several men slaine of the French, and one or two of the Spaniards, and one Englishman by a bullet. Which is very observable, the French were at least four to one in number, and had near one hundred cases of pistols among them, and the Spaniards had not one gun among them, which is for their honour for ever, and the others' disgrace. So having been very much daubed with dirt, I got a coach and home; where I vexed my wife in telling her of this story, and pleading for the Spaniards against the French."

But the whirligig of time brings in its own revenges, and, in 1672, the French Ambassador was installed at York House. On April 4, Evelyn "went to see the fopperies of the Papists at Somerset House and York House, where now the French Ambassador had caus'd to be represented our Blessed Saviour at the Paschal Supper with his disciples, in figures and puppets made as big as the life, of wax-work, curiously clad and sitting round a large table, the roome nobly hung, and shining with innumerable lamps and candles; this was expos'd to all the world, all the Citty came to see it: such liberty had the Roman Catholicks at this time obtain'd." In 1663, the Russian Ambassador was in occupation. On June 6, of that year, Pepys journeyed "To York House, where the Russian Embassador do lie; and there I saw his people go up and down losing themselves: they are all in a great hurry, being to be gone the beginning of next week. But that that pleased me best, was the remains of the noble soul of the late Duke of Buckingham appearing in his house, in every place, in the door-cases and the windows. Sir John Hebden, the Russian Resident, did tell me how he is vexed to see things at Court ordered as they are by nobody that attends to business, but every man himself or his pleasures. He cries up my Lord Ashley to be almost the only man that he sees to look after business; and with the ease and mastery, that he wonders at him. He cries out against the King's dealing so much with goldsmiths, and suffering himself to have his purse kept and commanded by them."

How the French Ambassador came to be in residence at York House in April, 1672--as most certainly he was--is somewhat curious. For, by a deed dated January 1, of that year, the Duke sold the house and gardens in order to obtain money for his extravagances. The purchasers were Roger Higgs, of St Margaret's, Westminster, Esq.; Emery Hill, of Westminster, gentleman; Nicholas Eddyn, of Westminster, woodmonger; and John Green, of Westminster, brewer; and the price of the property was £30,000. In 1668, the rental of "York House and tenements, in the Strand," had been fixed at £1359, 10s. The Duke made it a condition of the sale that his name should be commemorated in the new buildings to be erected on the site of York House; hence we have York Buildings, Buckingham Street, Villiers Street, and Duke Street, at the present day. There was even an "Of" Lane, but this has been converted into George Court. It is said that, with part of the money thus obtained, the Duke purchased land in Dowgate. Be this as it may, the nomenclature of the York House estate caused much derision at the time, and brought forth _The Litany of the Duke of Buckingham_, a merry satire containing the following exhortation:--

"From damning whatever we don't understand, From purchasing at Dowgate, and selling in the Strand, Calling streets by our name when we have sold the land, Libera nos Domine!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 52: Aubrey's _Lives_, vol. ii., p. 224.]

[Footnote 53: A brilliant entertainment given at York House in 1620 was attended by Ben Jonson, who said that all things seemed to smile about the old house--"the fire, the wine, the men"; he speaks of Bacon as:--

"England's high Chancellor, the destin'd heir, In his soft cradle, to his father's chair, Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full, Out of their choicest and whitest wool."

A few months later, the Committee of the House of Lords waited upon the Chancellor at York House in order to enquire personally whether the confession of guilt which he had sent them was really his. "My Lords," he replied, "it is my act, my hand, my heart; I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed."]

[Footnote 54: _London Past and Present_, vol. iii., p. 538.]

[Footnote 55: P. 95.]

[Footnote 56: _Curiosities of Literature_, vol. v., p. 223.]

[Footnote 57: Bishop Goodman's _Memoirs_, vol. ii., p. 371.]

[Footnote 58: _The Town_, ed. 1859, p. 362.]