It is easy to guess why the Royal Society honoured themselves by honouring Colbert. The great Frenchman was something more than a mere Marquis de Segnelai. Who remembers M. le Marquis? Who does not know Colbert—the pupil of Mazarin, the astute politician, the sharp finance-minister, the patron—nay, the pilot—of the arts and sciences in France? The builder of the French Royal Observatory, and the founder of the Academies of Painting and Sculpture and of the Sciences in France, was just the man to pay the first visit to the Royal Society. Leicester House was nobly tenanted by Colbert, and nobly frequented by the men of taste and of talent whom he gathered about him beneath its splendid roof.
The house fell into other hands, and men who were extremely opposite to philosophers were admitted within its walls with philosophers, who were expected to admire their handiwork. In October 1672, the grave Evelyn called at Leicester House to take leave of Lady Sunderland, who was about to set out for Paris, where Lord Sunderland was the English ambassador. My lady made Evelyn stay to dinner, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. A few years ago a company of Orientals, black and white, exhibited certain feats, but they were too repulsive (generally) to attract. What the members of this company did was done two hundred years ago in Leicester Square by Richardson alone. ‘He devoured,’ says Evelyn, ‘brimstone on glowing coals before us, chewing and swallowing them; he melted a large glass and eat it quite up; then, taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster, the coal was blowed on with bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained till the oyster gaped and was quite boiled. Then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed. I saw it flaming in his mouth a good while. He also took up a thick piece of iron, such as laundresses use to put in their smoothing-boxes, when it was fiery hot, held it between his teeth, then in his hands, and threw it about like a stone; but this I observed, that he cared not to hold very long. Then he stood on a small pot, and bending his body, took a glowing iron in his mouth from between his feet, without touching the pot or ground with his hands; with divers other prodigious feats.’ Such was the singular sort of entertainment provided by a lady for a gentleman after dinner in the seventeenth century and beneath the roof of Leicester House.
Meanwhile Little France increased and flourished in and about the neighbourhood, and ‘foreigners of distinction’ were to be found airing their nobility in Leicester Square and the Haymarket—almost country places both.
Behind Leicester House, and on part of the ground which once formed Prince Henry Stuart’s military parade ground, there was a riding academy, kept by Major Foubert. In 1682, among the major’s resident pupils and boarders, was a handsome dare-devil young fellow, who was said to be destined for the Church, but who subsequently met his own destiny in quite another direction. His name was Philip Christopher Königsmark (Count, by title), and his furious yet graceful riding must have scared the quieter folks pacing the high road of the fields. He had with him, or rather he was with an elder brother, Count Charles John. This elder Count walked Leicester Fields in somewhat strange company—a German Captain Vratz, Borosky, a Pole, and Lieutenant Stern, a third foreigner. To what purpose they associated was seen after that Sunday evening in February 1682, when three mounted men shot Mr. Thomas Thynne (Tom of Ten Thousand) in his coach, at the bottom of the Haymarket. Tom died of his wounds. Thynne had been shot because he had just married the wealthy child-heiress, Lady Ogle. Count Charles John thought he might obtain the lady if her husband were disposed of. The necessary disposal of him was made by the three men named above, after which they repaired to the Counts lodgings and then scattered; but they were much wanted by the police, and so was the Count; when it was discovered that he had suddenly disappeared from the neighbourhood of the ‘Fields,’ and had gone down the river. He was headed, and taken at Gravesend. The subordinates were also captured. For some time indeed Vratz could not be netted. One morning, however, an armed force broke into a Swedish doctor’s house in Leicester Fields, and soon after they brought out Vratz in custody, to the great delight of the assembled mob. At the trial, the Count was acquitted. His younger brother, Philip, swore to an alibi, which proved nothing, and the King influenced the judges! The three hired murderers went to the gallows, and thought little of it. Vratz excused the deed, on the ground of murder not having been intended; ‘besides,’ said this sample of the Leicester Fields foreigner of the seventeenth century, ‘I am a gentleman, and God will deal with me accordingly.’ The two counts left England, and made their names notorious in Continental annals. The French riding-master shut up his school behind Leicester House, and removed to a spot where his name still lives: Foubert’s Passage, in Regent Street, opposite Conduit Street, is the site of the academy where that celebrated teacher once instructed young ladies and gentlemen how to ‘witch the world with noble horsemanship.’
We have spoken of the square being almost in the country. It was not the only one which was considered in the same light. In 1698 the author of a book called ‘Mémoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre,’ printed at the Hague in the above year, thus enumerates the London squares or places: ‘Les places qui sont dans Londres, ou pour mieux dire, dans les faubourgs, occupent des espaces qui, joints ensemble, en fourniraient un suffisant pour bâtir une grande ville. Ces places sont toutes environnées de balustrades, qui empêchant que les carrosses n’y passant. Les principales sont celles de Lincoln’s Inn Fields, de Moor Fields, de Southampton ou Blumsbury, de St. James, &c., Covent Garden; de Sohoe, ou Place Royale, du Lion rouge (Red Lyon), du Quarré d’Or (Golden Square), et de Leicester Fields.’
All these are said to be in the suburbs. Soho Square was called by fashionable people, King Square. It was only vulgar folk who used the prevailing name of Soho.
From early in Queen Anne’s days till late in those of George I., the representative of the Emperor of Germany resided in Leicester House. It was said that Jacobites found admittance there, for plotting or for refuge. It is certain that the imperial residence was never so tumultuously and joyously surrounded as when Prince Eugene arrived in Leicester Square, in the above Queen’s reign, on a mission from the Emperor, to induce England to join with him in carrying on the war. During his brief stay Leicester Fields was thronged with a cheering mobility and a bowing nobility and gentry, hastening to ‘put a distinguished respect’ on Marlborough’s great comrade, who was almost too modest to support the popular honours put on himself. Bishop Burnet and the Prince gossiping together at their frequent interviews at Leicester House have quite a picturesque aspect.
The imperial chaplain there was often as busy as his master. Here is a sample of one turn of his office:
One evening a man, in apparent hurry, knocked at the door of Leicester House, the imperial ambassador’s residence. He was bent on being married, and he accomplished that on which he was bent. This person was the son of a cavalier squire; he was also a Templar, for a time; but he hated law and Fleet Street, and he set up as near to being a courtier as could be expressed by taking lodgings in Scotland Yard, which was next door to the court then rioting at Whitehall. His name was Fielding, and his business was to drink wine, make love, and live upon pensions from female purses. Three kings honoured the rascal: Charles, James, and William; and one queen did him a good turn. For a long time Beau Fielding was the handsomest ass on the Mall. Ladies looked admiringly and languishingly at him, and the cruel beau murmured, ‘Let them look and die.’ Maidens spoke of him as ‘Adonis!’ and joyous widows hailed him ‘Handsome as Hercules!’ It was a mystery how he lived; how he maintained horses, chariot, and a brace of fellows in bright yellow coats and black sarcenet sashes. They were the Austrian colours; for Fielding thought he was cousin to the House of Hapsburg.
Supercilious as he was, he had an eye to the widows. His literature was in Doctors’ Commons, where he studied the various instances of marital affection manifested by the late husbands of living widows. One day he rose from the perusal of a will with great apparent satisfaction. He had just read how Mr. Deleau had left his relict a town house in Copthall Court, a Surrey mansion at Waddon, and sixty thousand pounds at her own disposal. The handsome Hercules resolved to add himself to the other valuables of which widow Deleau could dispose.