The Widow Camell, 2s. 2d., William Vaugh, 2s. 2d., Thomas Heylock, 2s. 2d., Mrs. Mary Baker, 3s. 6d., Sir Richard Grymes, Knight, 9s. 6d., William Larke, 3s. 4d., Widow Bedwell, 2s. 2d., Symme Osbaldston, 8s. 6d., Anthony Walter, 6d.
This certainly implies lodgers or subletting of houses on her own or her son’s property, as the ground rent is still paid in Mrs. Baker’s name. It is an important list, for it shows that “the gaming-house” must have been very near, or part and parcel of the Bakers’ lands.
In another book, entitled “An Abstract of Rents in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields,” there are entries concerning the Earl of Salisbury and others which show that, though undated, it commences about 1633. Mrs. Mary Baker has to pay for “the Lammas common of the land neere Pick a dillie where his buildings are erected, 30s.” The next folio is dated 1635, where her ground is “usually now called Pick a dilly.” In that list appears “Of Symon Osbalston, Esq., for ground built upon sence, neere Pick a dilly, the some of 4l.” There is some reverse writing on p. 1 of this volume, which reads:
Item of Mr. Fox for the Bowling Greene and Bear in Swanne Close yearely 10l.
Rents due yearely from these undernamed for the ground rent of the ground added to the ends of their gardens out of Swanne Close, Mr. Dobbins, 1l., Mr. Boulton, 12s., Mr. Cooke, 4s., Mr. Temple, 1l., Mr. Plunkett, 15s., the Lady Vane, 1l., the Lady Armin, 2l., Mr. Bull, 6s.
A marginal reference adds, “The Earl of Leicester hath these now.”
On p. 4, also reversed and without date:
Of the owners of Pickadilly House and Bowling Greens, 4l. Of Mrs. Mary Baker, for the Lammas Common of grounds whereon she hath houses at Pickadilly, 1l.
These notices clearly show that the name was first applied to the Bakers’ property, and the title of “Pickadilly Hall” only applied to their house; that the neighbouring building of Simon Osbaldistone’s, which became the “gaming-house,” was built either partly on their ground or in close proximity to it (probably including the old bowling alley of Culsheth or Kelsey), and that it was therefore called “Pickadilly House.”
The earliest notice of the name in the State Papers occurs in “Dom. Ser. St. Pap. Car. I, 178 (43), 1630 (?),[92] note of priests and Jesuits now in England: ‘John Blundeston, a priest, son to Blundeston in Fetter Lane, is now much at Pecadily Hall at the Countess of Shrewsbury’s’”; and in the same series, S. P. D. C. Car. I, 195 (3), on 24 June 1634, Rich. Wainwright and others, writing to Secretary Dorchester, say: