Edward VI. granted the house to his sister Elizabeth for life, and here that princess bore the scorn and persecution of Bonner and his spies. On Mary coming to the throne and finding Tunstall driven from the Strand and without a shelter, she restored to him Durham House. This Tunstall led a life of great vicissitudes. Henry VIII. had moved him from London to Durham; Edward VI. had dissolved his bishopric altogether; Mary had restored it; and Elizabeth again stripped him in 1559, the year in which he died.
The virgin queen kept the house some time in her own tenacious hands, but in 1583 granted it to Raleigh, whom she had loaded with favours, and who, in 1591, was Captain of the Guard, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and Lieutenant of Cornwall.
On the death of Queen Elizabeth Raleigh’s sun of fortune set for ever, and that sly time-server Toby Matthew, Bishop of Durham, claimed the old town house of the see, relying on Cecil’s help and King James’s dislike to the great enemy of Spain. Sir Walter opposed him, but the king in council, 1603, recognised the claim, and stripped Raleigh of his possession. The aggrieved man, in a letter of remonstrance to the Lord Keeper Egerton, states that he had occupied the house about twenty years, and had expended on it £2000 out of his own purse.[163] Raleigh did not die at Tower Hill till 1618; but Durham House was never occupied again either by bishop or noble, and five years after the stables of the house came down to make way for the New Exchange.
In Charles I.’s reign the Earl of Pembroke bought Durham Yard from the Bishop of Durham for £200 a year, and built a handsome street leading to the river.[164] The river front and the stables remained in ruins till the Messrs. Adam built the Adelphi on the site of Raleigh’s old turret study. Ivy Street had been the eastward boundary of the bishop’s domain.[165]
The New Exchange was opened April 11, 1609, in the presence of King James and his Danish queen. It was built principally through the intervention of Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who lived close by. It was called by the king “Britain’s Bourse,” but it could not at first compete with the Royal Exchange. At the Restoration, however, when Covent Garden grew into a fashionable quarter, the New Exchange became more frequented than Gresham’s building in the city.
In the year 1653 (Cromwell), the New Exchange was the scene of a tragedy. Don Pantaleon de Saa, brother of the Portuguese ambassador, quarrelled with a gentleman named Giraud, who was flirting with the milliners, and who had used some contemptuous expression. The Portuguese, bent on revenge, hired some bravos, who the next day stabbed to death a gentleman whom they mistook for Mr. Giraud. They were instantly seized, and Don Pantaleon was found guilty and executed. Singularly enough, the intended victim perished on the same day on the same scaffold, having in the meantime been condemned for a plot against the Protector.
There are many legends existing about the New Exchange. Thomas Duffet, an actor of Charles II.’s time, kept originally a milliner’s shop here. At the Eagle and Child, in Britain’s Bourse, the first edition of Othello was sold in 1622. At the sign of the “Three Spanish Gypsies” lived Thomas Radford, who sold wash-balls, powder, and gloves, and taught sempstresses. His wife, the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy before or after Radford’s death, married General Monk, became the vulgar Duchess of Albemarle, and was eventually buried in Westminster Abbey. At the sign of the Fop’s Head lived, in 1674, Will Cademan, a player and play-publisher.[166] Henry Herringham, the chief London publisher before Dryden’s petty tyrant, Tonson, had his shop at the Blue Anchor in the Lower Walk. Mr. and Mrs. Pepys frequented the New Exchange. Here the Admiralty clerk’s wife had “a mind to” a petticoat of sarcenet bordered with black lace, and probably purchased it. Here also, in April, 1664, Pepys and his friend Creed partook of “a most delicate dish of curds and cream.”[167] Both Wycherly and Etherege have laid scenes of their comedies at the New Exchange; and here, too, Dryden’s intriguing Mrs. Brainsick pretends to visit her “tailor” to try on her new stays.
This Strand Bazaar, in the time of William and Mary, was the scene of the pretty story of the “White Widow.” For several weeks a sempstress appeared at one of the stalls, clothed in white, and wearing a white mask. She excited great curiosity, and all the fashionable world thronged her stall. This mysterious milliner was at last discovered to be no less a person than the Duchess of Tyrconnel, widow of Talbot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland under James II. Unable to obtain a secret access to her family, and almost starving, she had been compelled to turn shopwoman. Her relatives provided for her directly the story became known.[168] This duchess was the Frances Jennings mentioned by Grammont, and sister to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.
This long arcade, leading from the Strand to the water stairs, was divided into four parts—the outward walk below stairs, the inner walk below stairs, the outward walk above stairs, and the inner walk above stairs. The lower walk was a place of assignations. In the upper walk the air rang with cries of “Gloves or ribands, sir?” “Very good gloves or ribands.” “Choice of fine essences.”[169] Here Addison used to pace, watching the fops and fools with a kindly malice.[170] The houses in the Strand, over against the Exchange door, were often let to rich country families, who glared from the balconies and stared from the windows.[171]
Soon after the death of Queen Anne the New Exchange became disreputable. No one would take stalls, so it was pulled down in 1737, and a frontage of dwelling-houses and shops made to the Strand, facing what is now the Adelphi Theatre. But we must return for a moment to old Durham House and a few more of its earlier tenants.