Arundel House

[Arundel House]. Then was the Bishop of Baths Inn, (called also Hampton Place) lately new builded (for a great Part thereof) by the Lord Thomas Seimour, Admiral, being parcel of his Possessions. This House of the Bishop of Bath and Wells was assured to the said Admiral Seimour in King Edward the Sixth's Reign; and is now quite severed from that Bishoprick without Recompence.] Which House came sithence to be possessed by the Earl of Arundel, and thereof called Arundel House. [That Earl having upon the Admiral's Attainture, bought it of King Edward the Sixth in the third of his Reign, with several other Messuages; Lands and Tenements in the Parish, for 41l. 6s. 8d.

Arundel House, in the Strand. The old Inn, or town-house, of the Bishops of Bath, from whose possession, in the reign of Edward VI., it passed "without recompence" into the hands of Lord Thomas Seymour (Admiral), brother of the Protector Somerset. Seymour was subsequently beheaded, and his house in the Strand was bought by Henry Fitz Alan, Earl of Arundel, for the sum of £41 : 6 : 8, with several other messuages, tenements, and lands adjoining.¹ This Henry Fitz Alan, Earl of Arundel, dying in 1579, was succeeded by his grandson, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, son of the Duke of Norfolk, beheaded for his share in the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots; and this Philip, attainted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and dying abroad in 1595, his house was in 1603 granted to Charles, Earl of Nottingham, but four years later was transferred to Thomas Howard, the son of Philip, who was restored to the Earldom of Arundel by James I.

December 23, 1607.—Grant to the Earl of Arundel and Robert Cannefield, in fee simple, of Arundel House, St. Clement Danes, without Temple Bar, lately conveyed to the King by the Earl of Nottingham.—Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, James I., 1603–1610, p. 390.

In his time Arundel House became the repository of that noble collection of works of art, of which the very ruins are ornaments now to several principal cabinets. The collection contained, when entire, 37 statues, 128 busts, and 250 inscribed marbles, exclusive of sarcophagi, altars, gems, fragments, and what he had paid for, but could never obtain permission to remove from Rome. A view of the Statue Gallery forms the background to Vansomer's portrait of the earl, and a view of the Picture Gallery to Vansomer's portrait of his countess. Wenceslaus Hollar, "my very good friend," as Evelyn calls him, was brought to England by the Earl of Arundel in 1636, given an apartment in Arundel House, of which he engraved several views. His well-known View of London he drew from the roof. Vanderborcht, the portrait painter, came over at the same time, and was similarly lodged: Evelyn sat to him, "at Arundel House, for his picture in oil," in 1641. During the Protectorate Arundel House appears to have been used for the reception of strangers of distinction. Thomas, Earl of Arundel, died 1646; and at the Restoration, in 1660, his house and marbles were restored to his grandson, who, at the instigation of Evelyn, gave the library to the Royal Society, and the inscribed marbles, still known as the Arundelian Collection, to the University of Oxford.

September 19, 1667.—To London with Mr. Hen. Howard of Norfolk, of whom I obtained ye gift of his Arundelian marbles, those celebrated and famous inscriptions, Greek and Latine, gathered with so much cost and Industrie from Greece, by his illustrious grandfather, the magnificent Earl of Arundel, my noble friend whilst he liv'd. When I saw these precious monuments miserably neglected and scatter'd up and down about the garden, and other parts of Arundel House, and how exceedingly the corrosive air of London impaired them, I procur'd him to bestow them on the University of Oxford. This he was pleas'd to grant me, and now gave me the key of the gallery, with leave to mark all those stones, urns, altars, etc., and whatever I found had inscriptions on them that were not statues.—Evelyn.

The donor of the marbles died in 1677. He seems to have contemplated rebuilding Arundel House, but did not do so, and it was taken down by his successor, and the present Arundel Street, Surrey Street, Howard Street, and Norfolk Street erected on the site.

Private Acts, 22 & 23 Charles II. (1671), c. 19.—An Act for building Arundel House and the tenements thereunto belonging.
     I. William and Mary (1689), an Act for building into tenements the remaining part of Arundel Ground as now enclosed.

The few marbles that remained were removed to Tart Hall and Cuper's Gardens (which see). From Hollar's views of the house it would appear to have been little more than a series of detached buildings, erected at different periods, and joined together without any particular display of taste or skill. Sully, when ambassador in England in the reign of James I., was lodged in Arundel House. He speaks in his Memoirs of its numerous apartments upon one floor. The first meetings of the Royal Society were held in this house.

July 16, 1668.—I by water with my Lord Brouncker to Arundell House, to the Royall Society, and there saw the experiment of a dog's being tied through the back, about the spinal artery, and thereby made void of all motion; and the artery being loosened again, the dog recovers.—Pepys, Diary.

Among Wren's designs at All Souls' College, Oxford, is a general plan for a house for the Dukes of Norfolk on the site of Arundel House.

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¹ Strype, B. iv. p. 105.