It is in Ralph Agas his survey of 592 (or rather in Mr. W. H. Overall's excellent facsimile) that we make our first acquaintance with the Fields, then really entitled to their name. According to Agas, the ground to the north-west of Charing Cross, and immediately to the east of the present Whitcomb Street (at that time Hedge Lane) was formerly open pasture land, occupied—in the plan—by a pair of pedestrians larger than life, a woman laying out clothes, and two nondescript quadrupeds, of which one is broken-backed beyond the licence of deformity. The only erections to be discovered are the King's Mews, clustering together for company at the back of the Cross. Sixty years later, judging from the map known generally as Faithorne's, the locality had become more populated.. To the right of St. Martin's Lane it is thickly crowded with buildings; to the left also a line of houses is springing up and creeping northward; while in the open space above referred to stand a couple of lordly mansions. One, on a site which must have lain to the north of the present Little Newport Street, is Newport House, the town residence of Mountjoy Blount, Earl of Newport; the other, which occupies ground now traversed by Leicester Place, is Leicester House. Its garden at the back extended across the eastern end of Lisle Street, and its boundary wall to the north was also the southern boundary wall of the old Military Garden where King James's son, Prince Henry of Wales—whose gallant and martial presentment you shall see figured in the forefront of Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion—had been wont to exercise his troops, and make the now-discredited welkin ring with the shooting-off of chambers, with alarums, and points of war.
Leicester House the first was built about 1632-6 by Robert Sydney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, the father of Algernon Sydney and of that beautiful Dorothy, afterwards Countess of Sunderland, whom Van Dyck painted and Waller 'Petrarchized' as Sacharissa. The site (Swan Close) * was what is known as Lammas-land, and from the Overseers' books of the Parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, the Earl seems not only to have paid 'Lamas' for 'the ground that adjoins to the Military Wall,' but also 'for the field that is before his house'—i.e. Leicester Fields.
* Cunningham failed to identify Swan Close. But from a
letter in the State Paper Office, quoted in 'Temple Bar' for
June, 1874, it would seem that this was the aetual site of
the building.
This latter probably extended to the present Orange Street, so that the grounds of the old mansion may be roughly said to be bounded by the Mews on the south, and by the Military Garden on the north. Few memories cling about the place which belong to Lord Leicester's lifetime. When not engaged in embassies and the like, he was absent at his other and more famous seat of Penshurst in Kent, and Leicester House was 'To Let.' One of the earliest of its illustrious tenants was that quondam 'Queen of Hearts' (as Howell calls her), the unfortunate Elizabeth of Bohemia, who, already smitten with her last illness, died there in February, 1662, after a few days' residence, 'in the arms' (says Evelyn) 'of her nephew the King' [Charles II.]. Another tenant, some years later, was Charles Colbert, Marquis de Croissy, the French Ambassador, a brother of Louis the Fourteenth's famous minister and financier; and Pepys records, under date of 21st October, 1668, that he was to have taken part in a deputation from the Royal Society to Lord Leicester's distinguished lessee. But having unhappily been 'mighty merry' at a house-warming of his friend Batelier, he arrived too late to accompany the rest, and was fain to console himself (and perhaps to do penance) by carrying his wife to Cow Lane, Smithfield, in order to inspect a proposed new coach, with the splendours of which 'she is out of herself for joy almost,' although, from the sequel, it was not the one ultimately purchased.
Pepys, as will be seen, did not actually enter Leicester House, at all events upon this occasion. His brother diarist was more fortunate. Going in October, 1672, to take leave of the second Lady Sunderland (Sacharissa's daughter-in-law), whose husband had already set out as ambassador to Paris, grave John Evelyn was entertained by her Ladyship with the performances of Richardson the fire-eater, who, in those days, enjoyed a vogue sufficient to justify the record of his prowess in the 'Journal des Sçavans' for 1680. 'He devour'd brimston on glowing coales before us,' says Evelyn, 'chewing and swallowing them; he mealted a beere-glasse and eate it quite up; then taking a live coale on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster, the coal was blown on with bellows till it flam'd and sparkl'd in his mouth, and so remain'd till the oyster gaped and was quite boiled; then he mealted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank downe as it flam'd; I saw it flaming in his mouth a good while; he also tooke up a thick piece of yron, such as laundresses use to put in their smoothing-boxes, when it was fiery hot, held it betweene his teeth, then in his hand, and threw it about like a stone, but this I observ'd he car'd not to hold very long; then he stood on a small pot, and bending his body, tooke a glowing yron with his mouth from betweene his feete, without touching the pot or ground with his hands; with divers other prodigious feates.' *
* 'Memoirs of John Evelyn,' etc., 1827, ii. pp. 375-6.
Lord Leicester closed a long life in 1677, and many other tenants afterwards occupied the mansion in the Fields. Under Anne it was the home of the German Ambassador, or 'Imperial Resident,' who lived in it far into the reign of the first George. At this time, judging from a water-colour bird's-eye view in the Crace Collection at the British Museum, it was a long two-storeyed building, with attics above, a courtyard in front, and a row of small shops or stalls extending on either side of its entrance gate. Behind came the garden, stretching northward, and decorated in the Dutch fashion with formal trees and statues. Hither, on a Saturday in January, 1712, conveyed unostentatiously in a hackney coach from Whitehall Stairs, came Eugene of Savoy, who, by desire of the Emperor Charles VI., had just crossed from the Hague in Her Majesty's 'Yatcht "Fubs"' (Captain Desborough), with the intention of preventing, if possible, what Prior calls that 'vile Utrecht Treaty.' His mission was to be fruitless from the outset, for at the Nore he was greeted with the news of Marlborough's disgrace, and his presence in England had little or no effect upon the pending proposals of peace. But for two months he was to be fêted and lionized by the nobility in a way which modest warrior and discreet diplomatist as he was—must have taxed his resources as much as a campaign in Flanders. His admirers mobbed him on all occasions. 'I could not see Prince Eugene at court to-day,'—writes Swift to Mrs. Johnson at Dublin,—'the crowd was so great. The Whigs contrive to have a crowd always about him, and employ the rabble to give the word when he sets out from any place.' Elsewhere Swift had said—'I hope and believe he comes too late to do the Whigs any good.' At first His Highness's appearance prepossessed him. He is not ill-looking, 'but well enough, and a good shape.' Later on he has revised his opinion. 'I saw Prince Eugene at court to-day very plain. He is plaguy yellow, and literally ugly besides.' A great Tory lady, Lady Strafford (wife of that haughty envoy to the Hague who declined to serve with Prior in the Utrecht negotiations) goes farther still. She calls him—her Ladyship spells far worse than Stella—a 'frittfull creature,' and adds, 'the Ladys here dont admire Prince Eugene, for he seemes to take very little notis of them,'—a sentiment in which we may perhaps detect a spice of the 'spreto injuria formho'
Much, indeed, depends upon the point of view, political and otherwise. To Steele, with his military instincts and quick enthusiasm, the great Captain, who surprised Cremona and forced the trenches of Turin, comes surrounded with an aura of hyperbole. 'He who beholds him,' he writes in 'Spectator,' No. 340, 'will easily expect from him anything that is to be imagined or executed by the Wit or Force of Man. The Prince is of that Stature which makes a Man most easily become all Parts of Exercise; has Height to be graceful on Occasions of State and Ceremony, and no less adapted for Agility and Dispatch: His Aspect is erect and compos'd; his Eye lively and thoughtful, yet rather vigilant than sparkling: His Action and Address the most easy imaginable, and his Behaviour in an Assembly peculiarly graceful in a certain Art of mixing insensibly with the rest, and becoming one of the Company, instead of receiving the Courtship of it. The Shape of his Person, and Composure of his Limbs, are remarkably exact and beautiful.' Burnet, as staunch a Whig as Steele, writes more moderately, to the same effect. 'I had the honour to be admitted at several times, to much discourse with him; his Character is so universally known, that I will say nothing of him, but from what appeared to myself. He has a most unaffected Modesty, and does scarcely bear the Acknowledgments, that all the World pay him: He descends to an easy Equality with those, with whom he converses; and seems to assume nothing to himself, while he reasons with others: He was treated with great respect by both Parties; but he put a distinguished Respect on the Duke of Marlborough, with whom he passed most of his Time. * The Queen used him civilly, but not with the Distinction, that was due to his high Merit: Nor did he gain much ground with the Ministers.' **
* It was for Marlborough, no doubt, that the Prince sat to
Kneller. The portrait, in which he wears the Order of the
Golden Fleece over a rich coat of armour, and holds a
marshal'? baton, was mezzotinted by John Simon in this very
year 1712
** 'History of His Own Time,' ii. (1731), pp. 589-90.
Eugene's stay at Leicester House was brief; but it must have been fully occupied. 'Je caressais beaucoup les gens en place,' he writes in his 'Mémoires,' and it is clear that, however attentive he may have been to his fallen comrade-in-arms of Blenheim and Oudenarde, he did not omit to pay assiduous court to those in power. 'He has been every day entertain'd at some great man's,' says gossiping Peter Wentworth. Lord Portland gives him 'dinner, musick and a dancing' all at once; the Duke of Shrewsbury has Nicolini to sing for him; the Duke of Buckingham turns out the militia in his honour. And so forth. He, in his turn, was not backward in responding. 'Prince Eugene,' says Lady Strafford, 'has given an order to six ladys and six men. The ladys are the four Marlborough daughters and the Duchess of Bolton and Lady Berkely. 'Tis a medall—Cupid on won side with a sword in won hand and a fann in the othere, and the othere side is Cupid with a bottle in his hand with a sword run through it. And the motto's are in French which I dare not write to you but the English "won don't hinder the othere" ["L'un n'empêche pas l'autre">[.' He had arrived in London on January 5, and he returned to Holland on March 17, carrying with him nothing but the diamond hiked sword ('very rich and genteele, and the diamonds very white,' says Lord Berkeley of Stratton), which, at a cost of £5,000, had been presented to him by Queen Anne. *