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sheep are shorn, soak the roots of the wool that remains all over with butter and brimstone; three or four days afterwards wash them with salt and water; the wool next season will not only be much finer and softer, but the quantity will be in greater abundance.

A Caution to Farmers.-An ingenious surveyor has given the following intimation, which appears to merit the serious attention of every one engaged in agriculture: "I beg leave to recommend every farmer to be guarded against that wellknown shrub the Barberry, which

frequently grows, spontaneously in the hedges in many parts of this country; as whole fields of wheat have been blighted by only one of those plants, their effects beginning first in a semi-circle from the plant, and spreading regularly over the whole field. As many persons to whom I have mentioned this circumstance have been very incredulous, I can assure them that I have often been an eye-witness of the fact; and for their further information of it, refer them to almost every respectable farmer in the counties of Suffolk and Berks,"

ANTIQUITIES.

874

ANTIQUITIES.

A History of Somerset-House, from the Commencement of its Erection, in 1549. By Samuel Pegge, Esq. F. S. A.

[From "Curialia." Part IV.]

R. PEGGE introduces his

M subject

dispersed in the works of writers of different complexions and parties, that no dispassionate account has been given of it; nor has any been compressed into an uninterrupted narrative. In this attempt I foresee that I shall be obliged to combat

ter to the President of the Antiqua- must always be the case where his

rian Society:

"Dear Sir,

torians have implicitly copied each other; for, when traditions have passed muster for three centuries, their verity is seldom afterwards brought to the test."

Having given a history of the life of the great duke of Somerset, who was beheaded January 22, 1552-3,

"After the interest you have taken in Old London, including Westminster, I hope I may be excused in addressing to you an account of a building now no more; but which embraces a larger portion of history than ever fell to the lot of" on a charge which amounted to no a private edifice, when taken with all more than a doubtful act of felony, its concomitant circumstances - I and which the king's ministers would mean Somerset-House; which, hav- not allow him to pardon," Mr. Pegge ing been founded in the middle of well observesthe sixteenth century, and begun to be demolished at the latter end of the eighteenth, is now become within the pale of antiquity. That alone, however, is not what places it within my cognizance; for in a very few years after its foundation it became the property of the crown, and has ever since carried with it such royal appendages as may, with no impropriety, bring it under the general title of this work. All that has been hitherto said of it is so very much

"This fatal conclusion of the duke's life, immaterial as it may appear to us at this distance of time, had an excellent and invaluable effect on our criminal laws, from which every unfortunate culprit, at this day, receives a very essential benefit. The evidence against the duke consisted merely of written depositions, unsupported by oral testimony, and was withal so weak, that a law was made, in consequence of it, which enacted that witnesses, in all cases,

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should hereafter be brought face to and on the whole, perhaps, the road face with the prisoner, and examined was rendered better by the change. in bis presence."

By Stowe's account there was not An inquiry here follows, as to the any current of water under this buildings that were demolished, to bridge ; " for,” says he, in the automake room for the intended edifice. graph remaining in the British Mu

• Those which occupied the space seuin, “ Then had ye, in the high on which Somerset House originally street, a fair bridge, called Strandstood, were, principally, 1. an inn bridge, and under it a lave, which of chancery, promiscuously called went down to the Strand, so called Strand Inn and Chesler's Inn*; 2. from being a banque of the river of the episcopal house of the bishop of Thames.” But here Stowe speaks Lichfield and Coventry, then also of it as if it were in his own time, known by the name of the Bishop of and not with reference to the reign Chester's inn; 3. the episcopal house of king Edward VI. or to any prior, of the bishop of Landafft; 4. the period. Mr. Maitland|l, on the other episcopal house of the bishop of band, tells us, that there was a rivuWorcester; 5. the church of St. let under the bridge; for," says he, Mary-le-Strand, and its cemetry1; “a little to the east of the present 6. the Strand bridge."

Catherine Street, and in the High Mr. Pegge gives a particular ac- Street, was a handsome bridge, decount of these places respectively; nominated, from its situation, Strand and then proceeds

Bridge, through which ran a small “ What is now a street, called water-course from the fields, which, The Strand, was at that time no gliding along a lane below, had its more than a highway, leading from influx to the Thames near SomersetLondon westward to the village of Stairs.":— In this account I should inCharing, where stood queen Elea-. cline to believe Mr. Maitiand; be. nor's cross, and a few houses; from cause lanes do not often become whence, in a right line, you was led rivers, though the beds of rivers, by on, through open fields, to St. a diversion of their courses, may beJames's house, lately an hospital, but come lanes." then a royal house. This high-way,

Our author now.enters upon the being the property of the crown, as regular history of Somerset House, such was easily modified to accom- as follows: modate the king's uncle, and conse- “Very little can be said of this quently there was little difficulty or house in the reign of queen Mary; hardship upon the subject in the for, though it had become the prochange it underwent by levelling; perty of the crown upon the duke of

Somerset's

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*" Maitland confounds Chester Inn and Strand Inn; " which, from its neighbour. bood to the bishop of Chester's house and the Strand, was indifferently denominated Chester's, or Strand Inn,” p. 739.

+ “ Almost contiguous to this inn, on the west, was the city mansion of the bishop of Landaff.” Maitland, History of London, edit. 1759, p. 739.

“ The new church is in the patronage of the bishop of Worcester, the west end being opposite to the place where the old church stood.

“ Bibl. Harl, No. 538."

Ubi supra.

Somerset's attainder, yet had king Edward given it to his sister the princess Elizabeth; and it was during this reign her independent residence when she came to visit the court. Thus, on the queen's accession, Strype says, that "the lady Elizabethi came out of the country to be ready to congratulate her sister, and now her sovereign; riding through London, along Fleet-street, and so to the duke of Somerset's Place, which now belonged to her t." In the progresses made by Elizabeth while princess, I find it styled "Her Place called Somerset Place, beyond Strand Bridge 1."

Queen Elizabeth, on her way to Westminster, at her accession to the crown, resided nearly three weeks at Somerset House.

"Queen Elizabeth having two palaces more commodious for her esta blishment as a sovereign (Whitehall and St. James's), Somerset House still remained a secondary mansion for occasional purposes, and a momentary residence for the queen herself. It operated very well for the reception of the great personages of a certain rank and description; and the queen was not wanting in accommodating some of her own subjects, who were nearly allied to the royal family, with the use of it."

"In the second year of this reign we find, that when the duke of Holstein, nephew to Frederick II. king of Denmark, came hither to treat of a marriage between the queen and

"See the Progresses." +"Memorials III. p. 14."

his uncle, he was lodged in Somerset Places. Again, in the year 1572, Francis duke of Montmorency, marshal of France, visited England with the similar purpose of negociating a marriage between the queen and the duke of Alençon, the youngest brother of Charles the IXth, king of France. The marshal continued here nearly a mouth, where he was entertained at the queen's expence, had an escort of thirty of the queen's yeomen of the guard to attend him, and was lodged in Somerset Place¶. The count palatine of the Rhine, an ally of the queen, came over hither upon political business, and was honourably received. His stay was from the 22d of January to the 14th of February; when, excepting a few days on his arrival, in which he was entertained by Sir Thomas Gresham, in Bishopsgate-street, he was lodged in Somerset House**. Again: the queen herself is found here for a moment in person, in the year 1588, when she went in state to St. Paul's church, to return thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. If the procession did not begin from heace, it at least terminated here; for my authority says, that the queen "returned in the same order by torchlight to Somerset House++.”

In Norden's MS. copy of his "Speculum Britanniæ," is the following passage, omitted in the copy of that valuable work printed in 1593:

"Somerset Howse, scytuate in the

Strond,

"The term beyond has reference to Hatfield; for the house was a little westward of the bridge, as appears by a Plan of London, about 1558, in the Progresses."

"Strype's Annals, vol. I. p. 195.”

"Sully's Memoirs."

"Progresses, from the Lambeth MSS."

**"Ibid. from Stowe's Chronicle."

"Ibid. in the Preface, p. xxiii.”

Strond, nere the Thamise, buylded by the late duke of Somerset, not fully finished, yet a most stately house, and of great receyte; havinge chiefe prospecte towardes the sowthe, and the sweete river of the Thamise, offereth manie pleasinge delightes. The right honorable lord Hunsedon, lord chamberlayne to her majestie, hath, under her majestie, the use thereof."

Lord Hunsdon died here, in 1596. "In the reign of King James 1. the house before us became, ipso facto, a royal residence on the part of the queen, and even changed its name; and it appears that her majesty repaired it, at her own charge, for the reception of her brother, Christian IV. king of Denmark, who visited England A. D. 1606; from which time, it is said, that the queen affected to call it Denmark House. Here at least her majesty kept her court, which was celebrated for its gaiety, whereof the king occasionally partook. Her courtiers often appear ed in masquerade, not a little favour able to the intriguing spirit of the time; and the queen herself does not seem to have escaped all censure † The visit of the king of Denmark was very flattering to king James, who was glad of the company of a stranger, to whom he might display his wit and magnificence; which last was carried to so great an excess, that, on this occasion, added to another visit, which immediately followed from the prince de Vaudemont, son of the duke of Lorrain, his majesty consumed nearly the whole of a subsidy of four hundred fifty-three thou

"Harleian MS. No. 570.'

sand pounds, lately granted by the parliament for the necessary and urgent demands of his household. At this time the king maintained three distinct courts, at an incredible expence: his own, at Whitehall; the queen's, at Somerset House; and prince Henry's, at St. James's; all upon large establishments §. His Danish majesty liked his reception so well, in the year 1606, that, unsolicited and unexpectedly, he repeated his visit A.D. 1614, when king James lavished away about fifty thousand pounds in excessive feasting, &c. which he had obtained from his subjects under the specious title of a benevolence ]]. On both these occasions the two monarchs were guilty of great intemperance; the Dane being much addicted to drunkenness, to which James liad not the least objection. To this, Christian added several indelicate traits of manners to the ladies about the court, and particularly in his indecent behaviour to the wife of the high admiral, the countess of Nottingham, who resented it in a very spirited manner to the Danish ambassador, in a letter which is preserved in Dr. Harris's Life of King James, p. 67. Such of these scenes as are on record, lay, for the most part at Theobald's, though the same writers who mention them leave sufficient insinuations to suspect that some of them were repeated at Somerset House. Dr. Failer tells us, that, on the first visit of the king of Denmark, A. D. 1606, it was ordered, by king James himself, that Somerset House should be thenceforth called Denmark Honse, in honour of

"Whitelock's Memorials. Arthur Wilson, page 33." ' + "Rapin."

"Acta Regia, p. 511, folio.

"Rapin, who says the money granted was 52,9001,"

his

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