The front room on the ground floor was dismantled early in the 19th century and nothing of interest is left.
Condition of repair.
The premises are in good repair.
Biographical Notes.
The indenture[[224]] relating to the sale of the freehold by Newton on 26th October, 1639, to Sir Henry Compton, Sir Lewis Dive and Thos. Brewer, refers to the house as “late in the tenure of the Rt. Hon. Thomas, Lord Arundell, Baron of Warder, now deceased.”
Thomas Arundell, first Baron Arundell of Wardour, was born in 1560. He greatly distinguished himself in the wars against the Turks in Hungary, and for his valour, was, in 1590, created Count of the Holy Roman Empire. He was raised to the English peerage by James I. in 1605, and died in 1639.
In the sale mentioned above, Compton, Dive and Brewer were acting on behalf of the Marquess of Clanricarde, and the latter is referred to as actually in occupation of the house in January, 1639–40.[[225]]
De Burgh.
Ulick De Burgh, Marquess of Clanricarde, Earl of St. Albans, was born “in Clanricarde House, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London”[[226]] in 1604. The exact position of this house is not known, but it must have been on the north side of the street, as the south was not built on for many years afterwards. From his father he inherited, together with the viscounty of Galway, vast estates and an enormous influence in the south of Ireland. He sat in the Short Parliament, and accompanied the King in his expedition against the Scots in 1640. His occupation of the house on the south side was brief, for in September, 1641, he disposed of the property to the Earl of Bristol.[[227]] In the summer of the latter year[[228]] he had taken up his residence in Ireland. During the troublous times that followed the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in that year, Clanricarde played a prominent part. Although many of his relatives joined the Irish Confederation, he alone among the Irish Roman Catholic nobility remained loyal to the king, kept Galway, of which he was governor, neutral, and made “his houses and towns a refuge, nay even a hospital, for the distressed English.”[[229]] When the Viceroy, Ormonde, quitted Ireland in 1650, Clanricarde was appointed his deputy, but his efforts against the parliamentary forces were rendered fruitless by the distrust with which he was regarded by many of the Irish royalists. In 1652 he received Charles’s permission to make the best terms possible with the parliamentarians, and articles were accordingly concluded, by virtue of which he was able in the same year to withdraw from Ireland. Though expressly excepted by statute from pardon for life and estate, he was enabled, by permits renewed from time to time, to retire for the remainder of his life to his seat at Summerhill, Kent, where he died in 1657. Though he was the object of bitter denunciation by the native Irish faction, he has earned the commendation of Hallam as being “perhaps the most unsullied character in the annals of Ireland.”[[230]]