In 1631 there were unmistakable signs that this land was going to be built over, and people were aghast at the pace at which London was growing. Business-like men were measuring and staking; the report was that the land had been given to Sydney, Earl of Leicester. Too soon the builders got possession, and the holiday folk with military proclivities no longer enjoyed their old ecstasy of accompanying the soldiery to Paggington’s tune of
My masters and friends and good people, draw near.
Why Sydney was allowed to establish himself on the lammas land no one can tell. All that we know is, that Lord Carlisle wrote from Nonsuch, in August 1631, to Attorney-General Heath, informing him that it was the king’s pleasure that Mr. Attorney should prepare a licence to the Earl of Leicester to build upon a piece of ground called Swan Close, in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, a house convenient for his habitation.’
The popular idea of Earl of Leicester is Elizabeth’s Robert Dudley. Well, that earl had a sister, Mary, who married Sir Henry Sydney, of Penshurst. This couple had a son, whom they called Robert, and whom King James created at successive periods Baron Sydney, Viscount Lisle, and Earl of Leicester. And this Earl Robert had a son who, in 1626, succeeded to the earldom, and to him King Charles, in 1631, gave Swan Close and some other part of the lammas land, whereon he erected the once famous Leicester House.
This last Robert was the father of the famous and rather shabby patriot, Algernon Sydney, also of the handsome Henry. He is still more famous as having for daughter Dorothy, the ‘Sacharissa’ with whom Waller pretended to be in love, and he gave his family name to Sydney Alley. When, some few years later, the Earl of Salisbury (Viscount Cranbourn) built a house in the neighbourhood, he partly copied the other earl’s example, and called the road which led to his mansion Cranbourn Alley.
The lammas land thus given away was land which was open to the poor after Lammastide. Peter Cunningham quotes two entries from the St. Martin’s rate-books to this effect: ‘To received of the Honble. Earle of Leicester for ye Lamas of the ground that adjoins the Military Wall, 3l.’ The ‘military wall’ was the boundary of the Wormwood Scrubs of that day. The Earl also had to pay ‘for the lamas of the ground whereon his house and garden are, and the field that is before his house, near to Swan Close.’ The field before his house is now Leicester Square, ‘but Swan Close,’ says Peter, ‘is quite unknown.’ Lord Carlisle’s letter in the State Paper Office states that the house was to be built ‘upon Swan Close.’
It was a palatial mansion, that old Leicester House. It half filled the northern side of the present square, on the eastern half of that side. Its noble gardens extended beyond the present Lisle Street. At first that street reached only to the garden wall of Leicester House. When the garden itself disappeared the street was lengthened. It was a street full of ‘quality,’ and foreign ambassadors thought themselves lodged in a way not to dishonour their masters if they could only secure a mansion in Lisle Street.
Noble as the mansion was, Robert Sydney Earl of Leicester is the only earl of his line who lived in it, and his absences were many and of long continuance. He was a thrifty man, and long before he died, in 1677, he let the house to very responsible tenants. One of these was Colbert. If the ordinary run of ambassadors were proud to be quartered in Lisle Street, the proper place for the representative of ‘L’Etat c’est moi,’ and for the leader of civilisation, was the palace in Leicester Fields; and there France established herself, and there and in the neighbourhood, in hotels, cafés, restaurants, charcutiers, commissionnaires, refugees, and highly-coloured ladies, she has been ever since.
Colbert probably the more highly approved of the house as it had been dwelt in already by a queen. On February 7, 1662, the only queen that ever lived in Drury Lane—the Queen of Bohemia (daughter of James I.)—removed from Drury House and its pleasant gardens, now occupied by houses and streets, at the side of the Olympic Theatre, to Leicester House. Drury House was the residence of Lord Craven, to whom it was popularly said that the widowed queen had been privately married. Her occupancy of Leicester House was not a long one, for the queen died there on the 12th of the same month.
Six years later, in 1668,the French ambassador, Colbert, occupied Leicester House. Pepys relates how he left a joyous dinner early, on October 21, to join Lord Brouncker, the president, and other members of the Royal Society, in paying a formal return visit to Colbert; but the party had started before Pepys arrived at the Society’s rooms. The little man hastened after them; but they were ‘gone in’ and ‘up,’ and Pepys was too late to be admitted. His wife, perhaps, was not sorry, for he took her to Cow Lane; ‘and there,’ he says, ‘I showed her the coach which I pitch on, and she is out of herself for joy almost.’