Northumberland House

Northumberland House, with Gardens, Statues, &c. backward, an ancient graceful Palace situate near Charing-Cross, now in the possession of his Grace the Duke of Somerset; it belong'd formerly to the Earls of Northumberland.

Northumberland House, a noble and spacious Building; having a large square Court at the Entrance, with Buildings round it; at the upper End of which Court, is a Piazzo, with Buildings over it, sustained by Stone Pillars, and behind the Buildings there is a curious Garden, which runneth down to the Thames; all which makes it a stately Habitation, fit to receive such a Person of Quality as is Owner thereof, viz. Charles Duke of Somerset, by Marriage of the Lady Elizabeth, Heiress of Joscelin late Earl of Northumberland.

Northumberland-House, Strand,—facing St. Martin's lane, a few yards on the R. from Charing-cross.

Northumberland House, the town mansion of the Duke of Northumberland, is situated at the south-west corner of the Strand, opposite Charing Cross, and the south end of St. Martin's-lane. It stands on the site of the ancient Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval, a cell to the priory of the same name, in Navarre, founded and endowed by the Earl of Pembroke, in the reign of Henry III. It was suppressed as an alien priory by Henry V., but refounded in 1476, by Edward IV. After the suppression of all the religious houses by Henry VIII., it was granted by Edward VI., in 1549, with its appurtenances, to Sir Thomas Cawarden. It came afterwards into the possession of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, who in the reign of James I. erected three sides of the quadrangle, from the designs, and under the superintendence of Bernard Jansen, an eminent Flemish architect. According to Dr. Entick, however, an Englishman, of the name of Miles Glover, was the architect, as he infers from some initials about the front. After the death of the Earl it beacme the property of his relation, the Earl of Suffolk, and was then known by the name of Suffolk House.

In the reign of Charles Il, Algernon, Earl of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral of England, married the daughter of Lord Suffolk, and about 1642 became its proprietor, and gave it the name of Northumberland House, which it has kept to this day.

Since that period it has been enlarged, the fourth side of the quadrangle added, and the other parts repaired by Inigo Jones: and about seven years ago it underwent a complete and substantial restoration under the superintendence of Samuel Ware, Esq.

It is one of the largest and most magnificent of the town mansions of our nobility, and contains a large collection of fine pictures and other valuable works of art. The pictures are by the Caracci, Guido, Rafaelle, Rubens, Salvator Rosa, Titian, Vandyke, and other great masters. Among these are the celebrated picture of the Cornaro Family, by Titian, which was sold by Vandyke to Algernon, Earl of Northumberland, in the reign of Charles I., for 1,000 guineas.

Northumberland House, Charing Cross, the town house of the Dukes of Northumberland, taken down in 1874 for the formation of Northumberland Avenue, was so called after Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland (d. 1668). It was built circ. 1605² by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton (son of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the poet); he was warden of the Cinque Ports, and his letters are dated in 1609 from this house. Bernard Jansen and Gerard Chrismas are said by Walpole to have been the architects of the new house,³ the front of which was 162 feet in length; the court 81 feet square.⁴ It has, however, been stated by later authorities that the Earl himself designed the building, and that Jansen and Chrismas were only the builders. The Earl of Northampton left it by will, in 1614, to his nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk (d. 1626—father of the memorable Frances, Countess of Essex and Somerset), when it received the name of Suffolk House, and it continued to be so called as late as 1658,⁵ though it had passed to the Percy family by the marriage, in 1642, of Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, with Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland. Josceline Percy, Earl of Northumberland (son of the before-mentioned Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland), dying in 1670, without issue male, Northumberland House became the property of his only daughter, Elizabeth Percy, the heiress of the Percy estates. Her first husband was Henry Cavendish, Earl of Ogle, who died before he was of age to cohabit with her; her second, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, in Wilts, barbarously murdered in his coach in Pall Mall, on Sunday, February 12, 1681–1682; and her third (May 30, 1682), Charles Seymour, commonly called the proud Duke of Somerset. She was in this way twice a virgin widow, and three times a wife, before the age of seventeen. The Duke and Duchess of Somerset lived in great state and magnificence in Northampton House, for by this title it still continued to be called, as the name of Somerset was already attached to an older inn or London town house in the Strand. [See Somerset House.] The duchess died in 1722, and the duke, dying in 1748, was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon, Earl of Hertford and seventh Duke of Somerset, created Earl of Northumberland in 1749, with remainder, failing issue male, to Sir Hugh Smithson, Bart., the husband of his only daughter, which Sir Hugh Smithson was raised to the Dukedom of Northumberland in 1766, and the title has remained with his descendants ever since.

Northumberland House originally formed three sides of a quadrangle (a kind of main body with wings), the fourth side remaining open to the gardens and river. The principal apartments were on the Strand side; but after the estate became the property of the Earl of Suffolk the quadrangle was completed by a side towards the Thames. Of Suffolk House, as it existed at this time, there is a river view in Wilkinson, from a drawing by Hollar, in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge. Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland, built a "new front towards the gardens, which," says Evelyn in his Diary, June 9, 1658, "is tolerable, were it not drown'd by a too massy and clumsy pair of stairs of stone, without any neat invention." Of this front (with the heavy stairs) there is a view by Wale in Dodsley's London (8vo, 1761); it was by Inigo Jones, and erected by him in 1642. The pavilion and wings were built in 1765 by Mylne, and the drawing-room in 1774 by Robert Adair. The coping along the Strand front was "a border of capital letters," and at the funeral of Anne of Denmark, 1619, a young man among the spectators was killed by the fall of the letter S,¹ pushed off by the incautious leaning forward of sightseers on the roof. On the portal in a frieze near the top were the initials in capitals, C. Æ. which Vertue and Walpole construed to signify Chrismas Ædificavit.² The front next the street was burnt down, March 18, 1780; it had been rebuilt 1748–1750 from a design of Daniel Garrett.¹ The lion which formed so famous a feature of the Strand front was erected in 1752; it was of lead cast from a model by Carter. On the demolition of Northumberland House the lion, with the arched pedestal on which it stood, was carefully taken down and re-erected in a corresponding position on the river front of Syon House, Isleworth. The pictures were removed, a few to Alnwick Castle, the rest to the Duke of Northumberland's town residence, No. 2 Grosvenor Place.

Northumberland House was sold by the Duke of Northumberland, under the compulsory clause of an Act of Parliament, to the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1873; and Northumberland Avenue now sweeps over the site of both house and gardens.

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² Rate-books of St. Martin's.
³ Walpole's Ancecdotes, by Dallaway, vol. ii. p. 72.
⁴ MS. note by Inigo Jones in his copy of Palladio, in Worcester College, Oxford.
⁵ Evelyn's Diary, June 9, 1658.

¹ Register of Burials at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, May 14, 1619.
² Vertue's drawing of the portal with the letters C. Æ., upon it was sold at the Strawberry Hill sale, and passed into the hands of the Rev. Henry Wellesley, D.D., Principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford. There is a good view of the House showing Golden Cross, etc., and signs, by T. Bowles, after Canaletti, 1753.

¹ Mr. Wyatt Papworth communicated to the Builder (April 15, 1871), p. 282, two letters from the Countess of Hertford, afterwards Duchess of Somerset, containing information respecting alterations made in Northumberland (then Northampton) House in 1749–1750; a fine plate of the Strand front was published by T. Jefferys, February 24, 1752, from which it appears that the architect of this portion was Daniel Garrett.