Great Queen Street

Queen Street (Great), extends west from the north-west corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields to Drury Lane, and is the continuation east of Long Acre. It was so named in compliment to Queen Henrietta Maria, and was commenced about 1606; fifteen houses had been erected before 1623. Howes, in his edition of Stow (1631), speaks of the "new fair buildings called Queene's Street leading into Drury Lane." The houses in the first instance were built on the south side only. Webb, the scholar of Inigo Jones, was the architect of some in 1640-1660, and, from the date, was most likely assisted in the designs by his great kinsman. Sir Balthazar Gerbier, in his Counsel and Advice to all Builders (1663), ridicules the heads of lions which are creeping through the pilasters on the houses. Vertue, however, assigned the credit to "Mr. Mills, one of the four surveyors appointed after the fire of London."

He [Inigo Jones] built Queen Street, also designed at first for a square, and, as reported, at the charge of the Jesuits; in the middle whereof was left a niche for the statue of Henrietta Maria, and this was the first uniform street, and the houses are stately and magnificent. At the other side of the way, near Little Queen Street, they began after the same manner with flower de lices on the wall, but went no further.—Bagford, Harl. MS., 5900, fol. 50^b.

The statue of Henrietta Maria was probably set up, and also one of the King, for on January 17, 1651-1652, the Council of State ordered "that Colonel Berkstead doe take care of the pulling downe of the gilt image of the late Queene and alsoe of the King, the one in the street commonlie called Queene's Street, and the other at the upper end of the same street towards Holborne. And the said images are to be broken in pieces."² One of the earliest residents must have been the Spanish Ambassador.

May 10, 1638.—The Spanish Ambassador, the Conde de Oniate, accompanied with an Irish gentleman of the order of Calatrava, in the Holy Week came to Denmark House [i.e. Somerset House] to do his devotions in the Queen's Chapel there. He went off thence about 10 o'clock, a dozen torches carried before him by his servants, and some behind him. He and the Irish gentleman were in front with their beads in their hands, which hung at a cross; some English also were among them; so that with their own company and many who followed after, they appeared a great troop. They walk from Denmark House down the Strand in great formality, turn into the Covent Garden, then to Seignior Con's house in Long Acre, so to his own house in Queen Street.—Garrard to Wentworth (Stafford's Letters, vol. ii. p. 165).

Another very early resident was John Digby, first Earl of Bristol (d. 1653), whose house here was seized by the Parliament, and granted, September 13, 1644, to the widow of Robert Lord Brooke, killed in the previous year at the siege of Lichfield. The Restoration gave it back to Lord Bristol.

May 26, 1671.—The Earl of Bristol's house in Queene Street was taken for the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and furnish'd with rich hangings of the King's. It consisted of seven roomes on a floore, with a long gallery, gardens, etc. This day we met; the Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Lauderdale, Lord Colpeper, Sir Geo. Carteret, Vice Chamberlaine, and myself, had the oathes given us by the Earle of Sandwich, our President. ... We then tooke our places at the Board in the Council Chamber, a very large roome furnished with atlases, mapps, charts, globes, etc.—Evelyn.

The celebrated Edward, first Lord Herbert of Cherbury, lived on the south side, at the east corner of Great Wild Street. On July 13, 1645, Howel writes to him from the Fleet prison:—

God send you joy of your new habitation, for I understand your Lordship is removed from the King's Street to the Queen's. It may be with this enlargement of dwelling your Lordship may need a recruit of servants.

He died here in 1648.

He dyed at his house in Queen Street in the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, very serenely; asked what was o'clock, and then, sayd he, an hour hence I shall depart; he then turned his head to the other side and expired.—Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 387.

Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Parliament General, and his father both lived in this street, most probably in the same house. The old lord announced his second marriage in a letter dated Queen Street, October 20, 1646; and it was here that the young general on November 14, 1647, when the war was brought to a conclusion, received a congratulatory visit from both Houses of Parliament. The Lords, who arrived in a long train of coaches, had the Earl of Manchester for their spokesman, and the Commons were headed by their renowned Speaker Lenthall. Fairfax dates a printed proclamation of February 12, 1648, from his house in Queen Street. Sir Heneage Finch, Earl of Nottingham and Lord Chancellor (d. 1682), was living here when the Mace and Purse were stolen from him. [See Lincoln's Inn Fields.] In this house he used to receive the New Year's gift from the Bar, which, in his time, "came to near £3000 in gold."—Lady Cowper in her Diary (p. 63) says:—

He received them standing by a table; and at the same time he took the money to lay upon the table he used to cry out "Oh, Tyrant Cuthtom!" (for he lisped). My Lord [Cowper] forbade the bringing them.

Richard, Earl Rivers, the reputed father of Richard Savage, the poet, makes mention in his will of "Rivers House, in Great Queen Street, in the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields." Sir Godfrey Kneller came here from the Piazza in Covent Garden. He writes to Pope "from Great Queen Street, June 16, 1719," and sends his "humble respects to Lady Mary Whortly." Walpole and others have wrongly assigned the scene of his wit combat with Dr. Radcliffe to this residence. It really took place when Kneller was living in the Piazza, and the Doctor on the west side of Bow Street. Thomas Hudson (d. 1779), the portrait painter, in the house west of Freemasons' Hall, now divided and numbered 55 and 56, and which it seems certain was the one previously occupied by Kneller. Here, on October 18, 1740, the young Joshua Reynolds came to him as a house pupil, and remained under his roof till July 1743. Thomas Worlidge, the portrait painter and engraver (best known by his etchings), afterwards lived in it.¹ Hoole, the translator of Ariosto and Dante (d. 1803), was then its occupant, and after him it was rented by Chippendale the cabinet- maker, whose furniture has during the last few years been so eagerly sought after and imitated. Sir Robert Strange, the engraver, in No. 52; here he engraved his Charles I. with the horse, and the companion print of Queen Henrietta Maria; and here he died, July 5, 1792. His widow continued to reside in the house. No. 34 was in 1796 the residence of James Basire, the engraver, with whom William Blake passed his apprenticeship. According to Mr. Gilchrist,² the house was No. 32 (31), the more western of the two houses occupied by Messrs. Corben the coachbuilders. Blake was fond of describing a visit paid by Goldsmith to Basire at this period. Fuseli the painter was living at No. 7 in 1803. Twenty years earlier John Opie, R.A., was a resident in this street. Our great classic landscape painter, Richard Wilson, had at one time apartments in Queen Street, which were afterwards occupied by Theed, the sculptor.³ The beautiful Perdita, when she first became Mrs. Robinson, lived here in "a large old-fashioned house, which stood on the spot where the Freemasons' Tavern has been since erected."⁴ Her house was probably that in which William Hayley, the poet and friend of Cowper, resided for some years previous to his retirement to Eartham in 1774. Hayley believed his house to have been Kneller's. R. Brinsley Sheridan was living in this street in July 1780. Dr. Francklin, the translator of Lucian, in March 1784. About the same time Dr. Wolcott [Peter Pindar] was a resident.

The concealed author of Lyrick Odes, by Peter Pindar, Esquire, is one Woolcot, a clergyman who abjured the gown, and now lives in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, under the character of a physician.—Maloniana (Prior's Life of Malone, p. 364).

On the south side of this street are Freemasons' Hall and Tavern [which see], and a little east of it the once popular Great Queen Street Chapel, erected 1818, and the portico added in 1840. On the opposite side is the unfortunate Novelty Theatre.

The old west-end gateway entrance to this street, taken down in January 1765, was by a narrow passage under a house, familiarly known as "The Devil's Gap," or "Hell Gate."

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² Sainsbury in Fine Arts Quarterly Review, vol. i. p. 167.

¹ Smith (Nollekens, vol. ii. p. 220) says he died here; but he died at Hammersmith, and was buried in Hammersmith Churchyard, where a table records that "Here lies the body of Thomas Worlidge, painter, who died the 23d of September, 1766, aged 66 years."

.   .   .   .   .
Yet tho' his mortal part inactive lies,
Still Worlidge lives—for Genius never dies.

² Life of Blake, vol. i. p. 22.
³ Wright's Wilson, p. 4.
⁴ Life, vol. i. p. 74.