“And I have now to speak to you Mr. Mordaunt: God hath appeared in justice, and God doth appear in mercy, as the Lord is just to them, so the Lord is exceeding merciful to you, and I may say to you that God appears to you at this time, as he speaks to sinners in Jesus Christ, for Sir, he doth clear sinners in Christ Jesus even when they are guilty, and so God cleareth you. I will not say you are guilty, but ask your own conscience whether you are or no. Sir, bless God as long as you live, and bless my Lord Protector, by whose authority you are cleared. Sir, I speak no more, but I beseech you to speak to God.”
The very active part which Lord Mordaunt had taken in effecting the restoration of Charles II., in which service, according to his epitaph, he “encountered a thousand dangers, provoking and also defeating the rage of Cromwell,” was not rewarded by any extraordinary marks of distinction or favour, and he seems after that event to have quietly resided on his estate at Parson’s Green, where he died in the forty-eighth year of his age,
on the 5th June, 1675, and was buried in Fulham Church. The son of Lord Mordaunt, who afterwards received the title of Earl of Peterborough, married first, Carey, daughter to Sir Alexander Fraser, of Dover. His second wife was the accomplished singer Anastasia Robinson, who survived him. The earl was visited at Peterborough House by all the wits and literati of his time. Bowack, in 1706, describes the gardens of Peterborough House, as containing twenty acres of ground, and mentions a tulip-tree seventy-six feet in height, and five feet nine inches in girth. Swift, in one of his letters, speaks of Lord Peterborough’s gardens as the finest he had ever seen about London.
On the same side of the Green as Peterborough House, stood the residence of Samuel Richardson, who removed to Parson’s Green from North End in 1755, and in this house his second wife, who survived him, died in November, 1773, aged seventy-seven. Formerly the same house belonged to Sir Edward Saunders, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in 1682. A sketch of the house will be found in Chambers’ Cyclopædia of English Literature. Drury Lodge, situated on the King’s Road adjoining Parson’s Green, and immediately opposite the Malt House, formerly known as Ivy Cottage, was built by Walsh Porter in the Gothic style, and is now the residence of Mr. E. T. Smith, who has called the house after his theatre. The name of the lane which runs down by the side of Drury Lodge has, however, not been altered to Drury Lane, but still retains its old title of Broom Lane.
It is said that on the site of what is now called Drury
Lodge, was formerly a house, the residence of Oliver Cromwell, which was called the Old Red Ivy House. Part of the old walls of that building form the west side of the present cottage.
Proceeding forward from Purser’s Cross on the main Fulham Road, where St. Peter’s Villa may be noticed as the residence of Madame Garcia in 1842, about a quarter of a mile brings us to Munster House, which is supposed to owe its name to Melesina Schulenberg, created by George II., in 1716, Duchess of Munster.
In 1795, Lysons says that Munster House was “occupied as a school.” Faulkner, in 1813, states that it was “in the occupation of M. Sampayo, a Portuguese merchant.” And his successor in the tenancy was John Wilson Croker, Esq., M.P., then secretary of the Admiralty, and afterwards the Right Hon. Mr. Croker, [171] a gentleman who brilliantly retired into private life, but whose character is so well known, and has been so often discussed in political and literary circles, that I shall only venture to remark the local coincidence of three indefatigable secretaries of the Admiralty, during the most critical periods of England’s history—namely, Sir Philip Stevens, Sir Evan Nepean, and Mr. Croker—having selected the quietude of Fulham as the most convenient and attractive position in the neighbourhood of London, where they might momentarily relax from the arduous strain of official duties.
