Newcastle House, now occupied by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, was, for forty years or more, inhabited by Sir Alan Chambre, one of King George III.’s judges. The society, then lodged in Bartlett’s Buildings, in Holborn, derived its first name from that place, and at Sir Alan’s death they purchased the house and site.
About the centre of the west side of the square, in Sir Alan’s time, lived the Earl and Countess of Portsmouth. The earl was half-witted, but was always well-conducted and quite producible in society under the guidance of his countess, a daughter of Lord Grantley.
Near Surgeons’ Hall, at the same epoch, lived the first Lord Wynford, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, better known as Serjeant Best. A quarrel between this irritable lawyer and Serjeant Wilde, afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro, one of the most stalwart gladiators who ever won a name and title in the legal arena, gave rise to an epigram, the point of which was—“That Best was wild, and Wilde was best.”
In 1774, when Lord Clive had rewarded Wedderburn, his defender, with lacs of rupees and a villa at Mitcham, the lawyer had an elegant house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, not far from the Duke of Newcastle’s,—“a quarter,” says Lord Campbell, “which I recollect still the envied resort of legal magnates.”
Wedderburn, afterwards better known as Lord Chancellor Loughborough, had a special hatred for Franklin, and loaded him with abuse before a committee of the Privy Council, for having sent to America letters from the Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, urging the Government to employ military force to suppress the discontents in New England.[722] The effect of Wedderburn’s brilliant oratory in Parliament was ruined, says Lord Campbell, by “his character for insincerity.”[723] When George III. heard of his death, he is reported to have said, “He has not left a greater knave behind him in my dominions;” upon which Lord Thurlow savagely said, with his usual oath, “I perceive that his majesty is quite sane at present.” Wedderburn was a friend of David Hume; his humanity was eulogised by Dr. Parr, but he was satirised by Churchill in the Rosciad.
Montague, Earl of Sandwich, the great patron of Pepys, lived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, paying £250 a year rent.[724] Pepys calls it “a fine house, but deadly dear.”[725] He visits him, February 10, 1663-4, and finds my lord very high and strange and stately, although Pepys had been bound for £1000 with him, and the shrewd cit naturally enough did not like my lord being angry with him and in debt to him at the same time. The earl was a distant cousin of Pepys, and on his marriage received him and his wife into his house, and took Pepys with him when he went to bring home Charles II., when he was elected one of the Council of State and General at Sea. He brought the queen-mother to England and took her back again. He also brought the ill-fated queen from Portugal, and became a privy-councillor, and was sent as ambassador to Spain. He seems to have been not untainted with the vices of the age. He was in the great battle where Van Tromp was killed, and in 1668 he took forty-five sail from the Dutch at sea, and that is the best thing known of him. He died in 1672, and was buried in great state.
Inigo Jones built only the west side of the square. No. 55 was the residence of Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles. It is described in 1708 as a handsome building of the Ionic order, with a beautiful and strong Court Gate, formed of six spacious brick piers, with curious ironwork between them, and on the piers large and beautiful vases.[726] The open balustrade at the top bore six urns.
The Earl of Lindsey was shot at Edgehill in 1642, when a reckless and intemperate charge of Rupert had led to the total defeat of the unsupported foot. His son, Lord Willoughby, was taken in endeavouring to rescue his father. Clarendon describes the earl as a lavish, generous, yet punctilious man, of great honour and experience in foreign war. He was surrounded by Lincolnshire gentlemen, who served in his regiment out of personal regard for him. He was jealous of Prince Rupert’s interference, and had made up his mind to die. As he lay bleeding to death he reproved the officers of the Earl of Essex, many of them his old friends, for their ingratitude and “foul rebellion.”[727]
The fourth Earl of Lindsey was created Duke of Ancaster, and the house henceforward bore that now forgotten name. It was subsequently sold to the proud Duke of Somerset, the same who married the widow of the Mr. Thynne whom Count Königsmarck murdered.
In the early part of George III.’s reign Lindsey House became a sort of lodging-house for foreign members of the Moravian persuasion. The staircase, about 1772, was painted with scenes from the history of the Herrnhuthers. The most conspicuous figures were those of a negro catechumen in a white shirt, and a missionary who went over to Algiers to preach to the galley-slaves, and died in Africa of the plague. There was also a painting of a Moravian clergyman being saved from a desert rock on which he had been cast.[728]