CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST HOUSE. THE SIDNEYS.

AITHORNE'S map, as it is usually called, though it "was composed by a scale and ichnographically described by Richard Newcourt, of Somerton, in the county of Somerset, Gentleman," a London antiquarian of credit,1 Faithorne being the engraver and publisher only, is the second great authority for London topography. It shows us the capital as it was in 1658, the year of Cromwell's death. Throughout the reigns of Elizabeth, James, Charles I., and the Protector, the authorities, local and central, had done their best to discourage building in and about London. The repeated attacks of plague, between 1590 and

1 Author of the "Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense," 1708, 2 vols. folio.

the most famous outbreak of 1665,' were no doubt the chief reason for this desire to limit the natural increase of London.

Elizabeth's first proclamation against new building, dated 7th July, 1582,2 assigns for reasons, "1st, the difficulty of governing a more extended multitude, without device of new jurisdiction. and officers for the purpose; 2ndly, the improbability of supplying them with food, fuel, and other necessaries of life at a reasonable rate; and 3rdly, the danger of spreading plague and infections throughout the realm." But the proclamations for the same purpose, after the accession of James I., were more numerous and more stringent. There is a recorded saying of that sapient monarch, "that the growth of the capital resembled that of a rickety child's head, in which an excessive influx of humors drained

1 Sir William Petty, in his "Essay on political arithmetic concerning the growth of the City of London," (published in 1682,) enumerates five such outbreaks in the century before he wrote, viz. in 1592, 1603, 1625, 1636 and 1665. Sir William took his figures for the earlier plague mortalities from Captain Graunt's "Natural and political obtion on the bills of mortality," published in 1662.

2 There were others in 1593 and 1602.

and impoverished the extremities, and at the same time generated distemper in the overloaded part." He would not allow his nobles to remain in London the year through without special licence, and, Lord Bacon tells us, would sometimes say to them, "Gentlemen, at London you are like ships in a sea which show like nothing; but in the country villages you are like ships on a river, which look like great things." An Act of 1657 shows that in this point Cromwell was not less disposed to believe in both the expediency and efficacy of restriction than his predecessors. The preamble recites that the excessive number of new buildings in the suburbs of the City, and parts adjoining, is very mischievous and inconvenient, and that "the said growing evil is of late so much multiplied and increased, that there is a necessity for some further and speedy course for the redress thereof." The statute imposed a fine of £100, and a continuing penalty of £20 a month, on every one building a house or cottage on a new foundation, in or within ten miles of the suburbs; and enacted that

1 Quoted from Brayley's "Londiniana," vol. iv. p. 311.

every building erected since 1620, and not having four acres of land attached to it, should pay a fine of one year's rent. This was in relief of offenders, for, under the existing law, such houses were liable to be pulled down. Exemptions from penalties to the amount of £7,000 under the Act were allowed to the Earl of Bedford and his brothers, in respect of the buildings in Covent Garden parish; and the builders of Lincoln's Inn Fields were exempted from forfeits in regard to new buildings erected on three sides of the square, before the 1st of October, 1659, provided they paid a fine of one full year's value for every house within a month of its erection, and conveyed the residue of the Fields to the Society of Lincoln's Inn, "for laying the same into walks for common use and business.'

In spite of this strenuous discouragement, London without the walls continued to grow. In Faithorne's map (1658), the quarter between Chancery Lane and the Haymarket, east and west, and Holborn and the Strand, north and south, which in Aggas's map (1592) was open fields,

1 Dobie's "History of St. Giles's and St. George's," p. 31.

is seen covered for the most part with houses. Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden Piazza are complete, stately squares, planned and built from the designs of Inigo Jones. But St. Giles's Fields, now covered with the unsavoury streets that ramify from Seven Dials, are still an open space; and though a fringe of houses has been erected northward, along the western side of St. Martin's Lane, all is still a blank both to the north and west between that lane and the Haymarket, except that at the corner of what is to be Leicester Fields, stands Newport House and Gardens, built by the Earl of Newport,1 probably about the same time as Leicester House, and occupying the present site of Newport Street and part of Newport Market.2

Montjoy Blount (created 1628, extinct 1681), natural son of Charles Blount Earl of Devonshire, and Lady Penelope Devereux, afterwards his countess, the divorced wife of Robert Lord Rich: created by James I., Lord Montjoy of Montjoy Fort in Ireland, by Charles I., Lord Montjoy of Thurveston in Derbyshire, and the year after, Earl of Newport in the isle of Wight.

2

* In Faithorne's map, which, like Aggas's, is a bird's-eye view, from which we may infer the character of the houses, the house looks almost like a fortalice, and it may have been