This, I must confess, is a trifle vague. Sir William Sharington, or Sherington—Pennant's Sharrington—vice-treasurer of the mint at Bristol, assisted in the plots of Thomas Seymour, baron Seymour of Sudeley, and was arrested and attainted, but subsequently pardoned. He was sheriff of Wiltshire in 1552, and he died in 1553. Seymour was found guilty of treason and executed in 1549, the second year of King Edward VI. Is it not possible that the Duke of Northumberland received Durham House in reward for his discovery there of the illegal mint? Be this as it may, it certainly was the residence of John Dudley in May, 1553—the year of Edward's death. To quote once more from Pennant: the Duke of Northumberland, in the month mentioned, "in this palace, caused to be solemnised, with great magnificence, three marriages—his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, with the amiable Lady Jane Grey; Lord Herbert, heir to the Earl of Pembroke, with Catherine, younger sister of Lady Jane; and Lord Hastings, heir to the Earl of Huntingdon, with his youngest daughter, Lady Catherine Dudley. From hence he dragged the reluctant victim, his daughter-in-law, to the Tower, there to be invested with regal dignity. In eight short months his ambition led the sweet innocent to the nuptial bed, the throne, and the scaffold." It is, indeed, sad to think of the marriage rejoicings of Durham House turned so speedily and so sadly into the sojourn in the dreaded Tower and the execution of the bride-queen of seventeen summers.
On the accession of Mary, Durham House was restored to Bishop Tunstall, but Queen Elizabeth acquired it in 1559, the year of Tunstall's death. "The queen," said Bishop Goodman (1583-1656), in his Court of James I., "did not spare Cuthbert Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, though some will not stick to say that he was her god-father; which, if he were not, it is most certain that he was then present and did officiate at her christening. But I think he was her god-father, because I am certain he gave her Durham House in the Strand to dwell in, which she kept during her life, and did not restore it to his successors, but suffered Sir Walter Raleigh to live there. I remember when the Bishop of Durham in the queen's time came up to Parliament, he was fain to hire my schoolmaster's house" (Camden's) "in Westminster to lodge in." It is a pity that we cannot agree with Goodman on this point, but, at the time of Elizabeth's christening, 1533, Tunstall was faithful to the Catholic dogma. It is also to be noted that Shakespeare makes the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, pronounce the blessing on the infant Elizabeth in King Henry VIII.
DURHAM HOUSE. SALISBURY HOUSE. WORCESTER HOUSE.
From Queen Elizabeth we obtain a picture of two of the most distinguished of the literary occupants of Durham House—Philip Sidney and Walter Raleigh. In March, 1567-1568, Sir Henry Sidney writes from it to Archbishop Parker for permission to eat meat in Lent for "my boy Philip Sidney, who is somewhat subject to sickness." The future soldier, statesman, and poet was then but a child of thirteen, and his presence there is one of the treasured memories of Durham House.
Sir Walter Raleigh was given the use of Durham House in 1583, and he held it until his fall from favour in 1603. A picturesque glimpse of him is afforded by Aubrey, the antiquary, who, although he was not born until eight years after Raleigh's death, knew the Durham House of that period. It was "a noble palace," he says. "After he" (Raleigh) "came to his greatness, he lived there, or in some apartment of it. I well remember his study, which was on a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any in the world."[8] Many a time and oft did the young favourite of the queen set out from Durham House, by water, for the court of Elizabeth, and it is not inconceivable that Elizabeth, in her royal barge, should have journeyed on more than one occasion from her palace at Westminster to Raleigh's residence on the Thames. For, during his early years here, Raleigh was in high favour. Then there came the influence of the new favourite, Essex, Raleigh's intrigue with Elizabeth Throgmorton, the queen's jealousy, and his commitment to the Tower. He then settled at Sherbonne, and in 1595, 1596, and 1597, he was abroad on various expeditions. But he appears to have retained possession of Durham House until the end of Elizabeth's reign—1603. In that year Tobias Mathew, the then Bishop of Durham, set forth the claim of his see to the place, and Raleigh, in a letter of remonstrance, states that he had been in possession of the house for about twenty years, and that he had expended some two thousand pounds upon it, out of his own purse. But James I. and the Council, on May 25 of that year, recognised the right of the see of Durham, and restored the house to the successors of Bishop Hatfield.
Raleigh's letter, directed "to the Right Honorabell my verie good Lords, the Lorde Keeper of the Great Seale and my Lorde Chiefe Justice of Ingland, and to my verie good friende, His Majesties Atturney Generall," is as follows:—"I received a warrant from your lordships, my Lorde Keeper and my Lorde Chiefe Justice, and signed also by Mr Atturney Generall, requiringe me to deliver the possession of Deram House to the Byshoppe of Deram or to his Atturney before the xxiiiith day of June next insuing, and that the stabells and gardens should be presentlie putt into his hands.... This letter seemeth to me verie strange, seeinge I have had the possession of the house almost xx yeares, and have bestowed well neare 2000 L. uppon the same out of myne owne purse. I am of opinion that if the King's Majestye had recovered this house, or the like, from the meanest gentleman and sarvannt hee had in Inglande, that His Majestye would have geven six monenths tyme for the avoydance, and I doo not know but the poorest artificer in London hath a quarter's warninge geven him by his landlord. I have made provision for 40 persons in the springe ... and now to cast out my hay and oates into the streates att an hour's warninge, and to remove my famyly and staff in 14 dayes after, is such a seveare expulsion as hath not bynn offered to any man before this daye."
It is more than likely that Raleigh wrote several of his poems in Durham House. His Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of the Azores (1591), and his Discovery of the Empire of Guiana (1596), were published during his tenure of Durham House. Raleigh was Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and, as such, many cases were brought before him here, the most celebrated of them being that of Glanville v. Courtney, which was heard at divers stages in 1591 and subsequent years, Thomas Egerton (afterwards Baron Ellesmere), and Viscount Brackley, lord chancellor, being counsel on one occasion. In 1600, when Raleigh was away in Jersey, where he had been appointed governor, some of the out-buildings of Durham House were destroyed by fire, and this was the beginning of the end of the magnificence which had for so long attended this palace on Thames-side.
Oldys, in his Life of Raleigh, has described the "stalwart, sour-faced" statesman during his residence at Durham House, as attired in a suit of clothes surmounted by jewels to the value of six thousand six hundred gold pieces. The well-known story of Raleigh's first pipe applies—if there is any truth in the legend—to the time when he resided here. In 1586, Drake brought tobacco to England from Virginia. It is said that one day Raleigh's servant, carrying a tankard of spiced ale to Raleigh in his study in the turret, found his master on fire, as he thought, and, dropping the vessel, rushed for assistance, shouting that his master "would be burnt to ashes if they did not run to his assistance." Another version is that the clown dashed the ale over his master's head. Be this as it may, the early use of tobacco is intimately associated with Durham House, for, as is well known, Raleigh smoked as he worked.