10
THE COURT
Crosby Hall was the abode of wealthy merchants.[1] Somerset House, the unfinished palace of the Protector on the Strand, had been made over to Elizabeth as princess by Edward VI in 1552. She sometimes occupied it, in order to be near the city, but more usually kept it available for foreign visitors or favoured courtiers.[2] For the latter purpose it was supplemented by Durham House, farther westwards on the Strand, which Henry VIII had acquired by exchange from the see of Durham in 1536.[3] Most of the ecclesiastical buildings, which had reverted to the Crown on the dissolution of the religious orders, such as the Blackfriars, the Whitefriars, and the Charterhouse, had been alienated.[4] Elizabeth
- ↑ Chapman, 36; Clapham and Godfrey, 119.
- ↑ S. Pegge, Curialia (1806); R. Needham and A. Webster, Somerset House, Past and Present (1905). Elizabeth was there in 1558, 1562, 1571, 1573, 1582, 1583, 1585, 1587, 1588, 1589, 1590, 1593, 1594, and 1599. She gave lodgings there to Somerset's son, the Earl of Hertford, and amongst other guests were the Duke of Holstein (1560), Cornelius de la Noye, an alchemist (1567), the Duke of Montmorency (1572), and the Duke of Mayenne (1600). Conferences were held there with Alençon's commissioners in 1581. In 1574 (Berkeley MSS. 223) the keepership was given to Henry Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, who took up his residence there, and after his death to Lady Hunsdon. In early documents of the reign, the name Strand House (P. C. Acts, Jan. 1563; Procl. 496) or Strand Place (Procl. 497) occurs; in the patent of Hunsdon's predecessor John West in 1559 (Berkeley MSS. 218) it is 'Somersett Place al. Strande House al. Somersett House'.
- ↑ M. A. S. Hume, A Palace in the Strand in The Year after the Armada (1896), 263; Nichols, James, i. 75; Clapham and Godfrey, 151; T. N. Brushfield, The History of Durham House, London, in Trans. of Devon. Assoc. xxxv. 539. Elizabeth was there in 1565 or 1566. Lodgings were assigned to Alvaro de la Quadra, the Spanish ambassador (1559-63), Cecilia of Sweden, Margravine of Baden (1565), Walter, Earl of Essex (1572), Sir Walter Raleigh (1584-1603), Sir Edward Darcy (c. 1600-3). In 1603 James turned Raleigh and Darcy out and restored the freehold to Toby Mathew, Bishop of Durham, who retained the river front, and leased the Gatehouse on the Strand. The lease passed to Lord Salisbury, who built there the New Exchange or Britain's Burse in 1609.
- ↑ L. Hendriks, The London Charterhouse (1889); W. F. Taylor, The Charterhouse of London (1912). The Charterhouse, after temporary use as a storehouse for the Tents (cf. Tudor Revels, 13), was granted to Sir Edward North, afterwards Lord North of Kirtling, in 1545 and the grant was confirmed by Mary in 1554. Elizabeth visited him there in Nov. 1558 and July 1561. After his death in 1564 the second lord kept a house in Charterhouse Square, which passed to the Earls of Rutland and as Rutland House became the scene of Davenant's First Day's Entertainment in 1656. The main building was bought in 1565 by Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and called Howard Place. Elizabeth visited him there in 1568. On his attainder in 1572, she lodged the Portuguese ambassador in the house, but afterwards granted it to Norfolk's son Thomas, Lord Howard of Walden, whom she visited there in Jan. 1603. In 1611 Thomas Sutton bought the Charterhouse from Howard for a hospital. On the Blackfriars and Whitefriars, cf. ch. xvii.
