Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 3
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter XV: Somerset House and King's College.
Chapter XV: Somerset House and King's College.
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The building so familiar to Londoners, old and young, by the name of , occupies the space formerly covered by or buildings of note in their day; of some of which we have already spoken. It appears from Stow that in order to make a level space of ground to hold the fair new palace which he purposed to erect- --the Protector Somerset pulled down, and the Inns, as they were called, of the Bishops of Chester, Llandaff, Lichfield and Coventry, and Worcester, with all the tenements adjoining, and also the old parish church of . | |
The [extra_illustrations.3.89.2] , it is almost needless to remark, took its name from the [extra_illustrations.3.89.3] , the Lord Protector of the reign of the boy-king, Edward VI.; but the present building is of much more recent date. By the attainder of Somerset it reverted to the Crown, and it was frequently tenanted by Queen Elizabeth. Anne of Denmark, the wife of James I., and Catherine of Braganza, the neglected queen of Charles II., both in succession held their courts within its walls. At length it came to be appropriated by usage as a residence to the queens-dowager, and was frequently appointed as a temporary residence for such of the ambassadors of foreign princes as the later Stuarts and the earlier Brunswick sovereigns cared especially to honour. | |
Mr. A. Wood, in his is of opinion that the Protector Somerset already possessed some property on the site of when he began the great work of pulling down his neighbours' houses around their ears and his own. But be this true or not, he seems to have known, or at all events to have made, little distinction between and , and when he had once resolved on his end-namely, to build a palace on this central site, at a bend commanding the view of the river from to the Abbey at Westminster-he was not likely to be at much loss as to the means to be employed. Wide space and materials were all that he needed, and these he soon obtained in a manner such as we should now probably distinguish by the term And further, in order to complete the undertaking in a thoroughly substantial and, as it would now be called, style, he pulled down also the charnel-house of Old and the chapel over it, together with a structure in and the steeple, tower, and part of the church of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell. With these materials he commenced his work, unblessed by either the Church, or the people, or the poor. | |
Bishop Burnet, alluding to the Protector's rapacity, admits that though he adds, He also accuses the Protector of selling chantry lands to his friends at easy rates, for which it was concluded he had great presents. The rise of exposed its owner to the reflection that
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Pennant tells us that the architect employed by the Protector Somerset in the erection of was the celebrated John of Padua, the architect of Longleat, in Wiltshire, who is said, in Walpole's to have held, under Henry VIII., the post of
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Whether the Protector Somerset ever resided in the palace he had thus been at so much trouble in building, there is some room to doubt. The building itself was commenced in -, and as soon after as the month of , at which time the works were still going on, he was deprived of the Protectorship and committed to the Tower. | |
p.90 | He was, however, pardoned after years' imprisonment, and restored to the Council; but in the following year he was again committed to the Tower on charges of high treason, and was beheaded on in . of the grounds of dissatisfaction at exhibited against him appears to have been On the attainder of the Duke of Somerset his palace was, of course, forfeited to the Crown, and his nephew, King Edward, appears to have assigned it to his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, for her use whenever she visited her sister's court. But when she came to the throne, she preferred the regions of and St. James's, and fashion followed in the wake of royalty westwards. At this period the building is spoken of as On Elizabeth's succession to the throne some partial restoration of Somerset's property was probably made, for became the residence of the Dowager Duchess. |
Elizabeth seems to have lived here occasionally, | |
| most probably, however, at the expense of her kinsman, Lord Hunsdon, to whom she had given the use of it. Such, at all events, was the opinion of Pennant. | |
Stow tells us that the [extra_illustrations.3.90.1] this house her palace, and that she entertained the king with a feast within its walls on Shrove Tuesday, , when the latter was so delighted at her reception of him that he ordered it to be called Denmark House in her honour. The palace was much improved and beautified by the queen, who added much to it in the way of new buildings, Inigo Jones being called in to furnish the designs. She also brought a supply of water to it by pipes laid on from . In it was settled for life on Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles I., for whom it had been stipulated on her marriage that she should be allowed the free practice of her religion, having been born and brought up a pious Catholic. Accordingly it was fitted up for the reception of herself and her household, including, of course, a body of priests to say mass daily, and to celebrate the offices of the Church. The priests in attendance on the queen were Capuchins. They had succeeded to the | |
p.91 | Oratorians, who had been expelled by the influence of Buckingham (Steenie) with his royal master The foundation-stone of the chapel was laid by the queen, the work being carried out under the direction of Inigo Jones. The stone was laid with great ceremony. From in the morning there was a succession of masses daily till nearly noon, and as it was difficult to approach the sacraments elsewhere, except clandestinely, the confessionals were thronged constantly. On Sundays and festivals there was a controversial lecture at noon, and soon after followed vespers, sung by the Capuchins and musicians in the galleries. When vespers were over, there was a sermon on the gospel of the day, and lastly, compline. The |
chapel seems to have been also turned to account constantly in other ways. There were frequent for the edification of Catholics and the instruction of Protestants, and on days in each week the Christian doctrine was taught catechetically in English and in French. The con. sequence was that there were frequent conversions to the ancient faith, and the name of the chapel began to offend the ruling powers. Accordingly, when the queen was absent in Holland, it was resolved by the authorities to make an assault upon the place. The Capuchin fathers were silenced and driven out, then imprisoned, and at length banished; their dwelling itself was pulled down, and the chapel desecrated, in spite of its being the | |
p.92 | property of the queen. The Capuchins were brought back, and the chapel was repaired, when Henrietta Maria returned to England, a widowed queen, after her son's restoration. |
Here, in , died the Duke of Gloucester, from the small-pox; and hence his body was taken by water as Pepys tells us, to , to be buried in the Abbey. | |
Pepys, in his gives an account of a service held in the chapel of in -. In October he again visits , and saw the queen's new rooms, In -, he went there again, and was shown the queen's mother's chamber and closet, In consequence, however, of the plague in the June following, the Court prepared to leave and . The Queen went to France, and there died in . On the death of Charles II. in , became the residence of [extra_illustrations.3.92.1] , who lived here until her return to Portugal in . It had previously belonged to her as Queen Consort, and during the ultra-Protestant , which exhibited itself for some years prior to the Revolution, attempts were made to implicate her household in the pretended Popish Plot of the time, and to connect the mysterious murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey in with persons in her service. | |
There is so much doubt and uncertainty mixed up with the story of the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, that it is almost impossible to winnow the truth from the falsehood, owing to the perjuries of Titus Oates and his confederate, Bedloe, the discharged servant of the Lord Belasyse. But it appears clear that the worthy justice of the peace was inveigled to a spot close to under the pretence of his presence being wanted to allay a quarrel, and that he was strangled on the spot with a twisted handkerchief. His dead body, it would seem, was afterwards carried to , at that time a retired and lonely spot, where a sword was run through it. For their presumed share in this murder persons were hung at Tyburn in . An attempt was made by Oates and Bedloe to implicate the Jesuits in the plot, and even the Queen, who then resided at ; but Charles, with his usual wit, refused to listen to the charge, telling Burnet that though
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We have already said that, under the Stuarts, was frequently appointed for the reception of ambassadors whom the sovereign and the court delighted to honour. The last foreigner of importance who lodged there was the Venetian ambassador, who made a public entry into it in , shortly before the building was pulled down. | |
From the time of the departure of Catherine of Braganza, ceases to possess any interest in its strictly palatial character. It continued as an appurtenance of successive queens down to the year , when Parliament was recommended, in a message from the Crown, to settle upon Queen Charlotte the house in which she then resided, in which case , already settled upon her, should be given up and appropriated
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Mr. Wood, in his tells us that in the reign of James II., Dr. Smith, of the vicars-apostolic who acted as Catholic bishops in England, was consecrated at . There was also in the grounds of a small cemetery, in which the Catholic members of the Queen's household were buried. In Father Richard Blount, who had Anne of Denmark, the consort ot James I., to the Roman Church, was buried here by the Queen's permission. The value of such a permission at that time may be inferred from the fact that, owing to the severity of the penal laws, Catholics were for the most part obliged to be buried in Protestant cemeteries, with rites distasteful to themselves; and they were only too glad when the priest who attended them in their last illness could bless a little mould which was put into their coffin, and perform the usual ceremonies in secret, and even at a distance from their bodies. | |
A map and ground-plan of old Somerset, or Denmark House in , shows that it consisted of large and principal quadrangle, called facing the Strand. Its out-buildings were very extensive, and still more so its terraced gardens, facing the Thames, with stairs at either end, In the southern front of the quadrangle named above were the Guard Chamber, with a waiting-room, the Privy Chamber, the Presence Chamber, from the west end of which a flight of stone steps led down into the garden. On the | |
p.93 [extra_illustrations.3.93.1] |
western side, from the Strand nearly to the riverside, there ran along Duchy Lane (now absorbed in South) a row of coach-houses, stables, and store-yards. To the south-east angle of the chief quadrangle there was a passage down the to a , or lower court, storeys lower than the upper court. Here were the more private apartments of the queen-the
dressing-room, bed-chamber, and the last-named facing the gardens and commanding a fine view of the reach of the river. Still further to the east, extending across what now is part of , as far as Strand Passage, or Lane, were a variety of other buildings, occupied by the members of the Court, called the French buildings, connected with the Yellow Room, the Cross Gallery, the Long Gallery, and leading to a which opened into the garden. A print in the , showing some of These last-named buildings before they were pulled down, together with the new building of Sir William Chambers on the north, leads us to suppose that, though interesting as a specimen of the style of Edward VI., their removal was no great loss from an architectural point of view. |
The gardens were laid out in the square and monotonous style of the period, so well described by Pope- This was literally true here, for in front of both the greater and the lesser quadrangle there were square gardens, with straight gravel walks on each side, and avenues of trees; a handsome flight of stone steps, with iron gates; and on either side some handsome statues of Tritons and Nereids. Along the river ran a raised terrace, with a heavy warf wall. In a print of the river front of [extra_illustrations.3.93.2] , dated , there appears moored a little way off the stairs a sort of house-barge, under which is written and a queershaped wherry, approaching the form of a gondola. | |
observes Stow, How amused would Pugin or Sir Gilbert Scott be to read this statement! and also the sentiment which follows :-- In all probability the architect was an Englishman, and this his attempt to refine on the work of his predecessors. | |
It is currently believed that [extra_illustrations.3.93.3] , the elder was at time secreted in old ; and there is an allusion to this belief in the , published in :--
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The demolition of the old building was commenced as soon as an Act could be passed, and [extra_illustrations.3.93.4] was appointed architect of the [extra_illustrations.3.93.5] . They were commenced in , and in of the fronts was completed. The site occupies an area of upwards of feet by . The front towards the Strand consists of a rustic basement of arches, supporting Corinthian columns, and an attic in the centre, and a balustrade at each extremity. Emblematic figures of Ocean and of the principal rivers of England in alto-relievo adorn the keystones of the arches. Medallions of George III., Queen Charlotte, and the Prince of Wales were formerly placed over the central windows of the floor. The attic is divided into separate portions by statues of Justice, Truth, Valour, and Moderation; and the summit is crowned with the British arms, supported by emblematical figures of Fame and the genius of England. The chief featureof the river front of is its broad terrace, about feet in length, raised on rustic arches, and ornamented with emblematic figures of the Thames. The centre of the large quadrangle opposite the chief entrance from the Strand is occupied by a gigantic piece of bronze work, executed by Bacon. The principal figure is a fanciful and almost allegorical representation of Father Thames. | |
The building affords at present accommodation during the working hours of the day to about Government officials, maintained at an annual cost of something like , and belonging to the Audit Office, the office of the Registrar-General, and the offices connected with . In the north front the annual exhibition of the [extra_illustrations.3.93.6] was held from down to about the year , when it was transferred to the in . The use of apartments in for the meetings of the society was also granted in . The Royal Society removed from to , , in . The Society of Antiquaries, and also the Royal Astronomical and [extra_illustrations.3.93.7] | |
p.94 [extra_illustrations.3.94.1] [extra_illustrations.3.94.2] | the Geological Societies, have also at various times occupied apartments in . |
writes Malcolm, in ,
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The Society of Antiquaries dates its origin from the year . Malcolm tells us that previous to that time several unsuccessful, or at least interrupted, attempts had been made, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I., to establish such a society, but nothing effective was done until the reign of George II., who granted a charter, styling himself the founder and patron of the Society of Antiquaries, appointing Martin Folkes, Esq., as its president, and limiting the society's permanent income to a year. The president must be assisted by a council of members, half of whom are elected annually, along with himself, and the officers and members of the society are required to possess an accurate knowledge of the history and antiquities of their own and foreign nations, and to be The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, and the Secretaries of State for the time being, are visitors of the society. The number of fellows is not limited by their charter. At their meetings descriptions and dissertations are read, and illustrative drawings are exhibited. Their transactions as a body are under the control of an elective director in the arrangement of communications to be published. Their official publication, in a handsome quarto form, is known as the
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Pennant writes, in :
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Mr. John Timbs, in his tells us an amusing traditionary story relative to this place:-- A very pretty story, indeed, if it was only true. But, unfortunately for the age of poetry, Mr. Timbs lets us into the real secret of the watch, which is essentially prosaic. he says, and the late Admiral W. H. Smyth, the eminent hydrographer to the Admiralty, would often tell his friends that, having assisted in mounting the instrument, he well remembered the watch being inserted in the wall. We fear, therefore, that the poetic view must be dismissed. | |
Running parallel with the buildings forming the west side of the quadrangle, and having its frontage towards , a new wing was built in , from the designs of Mr. Pennethorne, in a style of architecture corresponding with the rest of the building. Here are the offices of the Inland Revenue Department, and in the basement several rooms are set apart for the printing of postage and other stamps, postal wrappers, envelopes, &c. | |
The vaults of were formerly used for the purpose of keeping some of the various public records, which happily have now all been collected into repository in . | |
The whole of the east wing was left incomplete by Sir William Chambers, but in this part of the edifice was finished from the designs of Sir Robert Smirke, R.A., and it now forms [extra_illustrations.3.94.3] , which was founded by royal charter in the previous year. The entrance is a neat, though confined semi-circular archway from the Strand, over which stand the Royal Arms, supported by figures symbolical of Wisdom and Holiness, with the motto, The building extends from the Strand to the Thames, and occupies a considerable area of ground. The interior, which is very capacious, is well calculated for its intended objects. The centre of the principal floor is occupied by the chapel, under which is the hall for examinations, &c., and a new triangular wing, storey high, built in a line with , and fronting the Thames , adjoining the residence of the Principal, is now () in course of erection. | |
The government of is vested in a Council, which reports annually to the Court of Governors and Proprietors, as the official title of the corporation runs. members compose this council, of whom are the official governors; is the treasurer, are life governors, and the other , of whom go out every year, are elected by the Court of Proprietors, from a list prepared by the Governors. | |
p.95 [extra_illustrations.3.95.1] [extra_illustrations.3.95.2] | There are certain endowments, producing in all an annual income of , which are specially appropriated to certain prizes, scholarships, and professorships, classical and scientific; but the College possesses no endowment applicable to general purposes, and the whole of the expenditure required for the ordinary every-day work of the College has to be defrayed out of the fees paid by the students. The general education of the College is carried on in distinct departments-viz., the theological department; the department of general literature and science (divided into the classical, the modern, and the Oriental); the department of the applied sciences; the medical department; the evening classes; and finally, the school. This last is in the hands of a head master, subject to consultation with the principal, who has the general supervision of the whole College. The scientific professorships in the department of general literature and science are in number, of which --physiology and practical physiology- are held by the same individual. There is also a lecturer in photography. It should be added that the education given here is strictly in accordance with the principles of the Church of England. |
The students of [extra_illustrations.3.95.3] are divided into classes--the and the The former are those who are admitted to the full prescribed course of study, while the latter, through inability to attend the whole course, devote themselves to the pursuit of particular subject, as at the great universities of England. The principals of in the years which have passed since its foundation have been distinguished theologians, Bishops Otter and Lonsdale, Canon Jelf and Canon Barry. [extra_illustrations.3.95.4] | |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.3.89.2] original Somerset House [extra_illustrations.3.89.3] Duke of Somerset [extra_illustrations.3.90.1] queen of James I. made [extra_illustrations.3.92.1] Catherine of Braganza [extra_illustrations.3.93.1] Zoffany's picture of the Royal Academy [extra_illustrations.3.93.2] Somerset House [extra_illustrations.3.93.3] James Stuart [extra_illustrations.3.93.4] Sir William Chambers [extra_illustrations.3.93.5] new buildings [extra_illustrations.3.93.6] Royal Academy [extra_illustrations.3.93.7] Registry of Wills Office [extra_illustrations.3.94.1] Meeting of Royal Society, Somerset House [extra_illustrations.3.94.2] Royal Naval Museum, Somerset House [extra_illustrations.3.94.3] King's College [extra_illustrations.3.95.1] Queen laying ground stone [extra_illustrations.3.95.2] Queen's visit to Savoy- Sketches [extra_illustrations.3.95.3] King's College [extra_illustrations.3.95.4] Savoy and Cecil Hotels |
