The period of his residence at the house in Great Queen Street cannot be exactly determined. He was not there in 1683, but a letter from him (as Lord Mulgrave) to Dykevelt, headed “Queen Street,” dated, “March 8th,” and assigned to the year 1691,[[352]] affords some evidence towards limiting the date of the beginning of his occupation. His removal from the house seems to lie between 1698 and 1700, the ratebook for the latter year having no entry in respect of the house.
In 1702 the house was purchased of William Withers by Robert Lane and Jonathan Blackwell,[[353]] apparently on behalf of their brother, Ralph Lane, an eminent Turkey merchant. Lane divided the house, letting off the portion fronting the street, and reserving for his own use that in the rear. This he used as his own house[[354]] until his death in 1732. By his will,[[355]] dated 15th June, 1726, he left his “two messuages or tenements” in Great Queen Street to his wife Elizabeth for her widowhood, and the reversion to his brothers in trust for his daughters, the Lady Parker[[356]] and Byzantia.[[357]] A codicil of 6th July, 1728, however, revoked this and settled the property on his wife absolutely.
The widow is shown in the ratebooks as occupying the house from 1733 to 1753 inclusive. She died in March, 1754, leaving[[358]] her “two freehold messuages scituate in Great Queen Street ... one of them being in [her] own occupation, and the other adjoyning thereto, in the occupation of Mr. Hudson,” to her grandson, George Lane Parker, the younger son of her daughter and the Earl of Macclesfield.
In 1764 Parker sold[[359]] both of the houses to Philip Carteret Webb, who was already in occupation of the house in the rear, having, in fact, succeeded Mrs. Lane in the year in which she died.
Philip Carteret Webb was born about 1700. In 1724 he was admitted attorney-at-law, and soon acquired a great reputation for knowledge of records and of precedents of constitutional law. He was employed in connection with the prosecution of the prisoners taken in the rebellion of 1745, and in that of John Wilkes. For his share in the latter he incurred great obloquy, culminating in 1764 in a trial for perjury, in which, however, the jury returned a verdict of “Not guilty.” When in January, 1769, he was charged in the House of Commons with having used the public money to bribe witnesses against Wilkes, counsel pleaded on his behalf that he was now blind and of impaired intellect, and the motion against him was defeated. He died in the following year, leaving[[360]] all his property to his wife Rhoda.
Webb was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society. He had acquired large collections of MSS., coins and medals, marble busts and bronzes.
His widow married, in 1771, Edward Beavor, whose name is found in the ratebooks in connection with the house from that date until 1774. On 16th November, in the latter year, the two houses were sold[[361]] to Trustees for the Freemasons, who have ever since held the property.
It is now time to return and trace the history of the other of the two portions into which Lane had divided the house, viz., that part which fronted Great Queen Street.
Burnet.