YORK HOUSE AND POWIS HOUSE.
Whilst the great body of lawyers dwelt in or hard by the Inns, the dignitaries of the judicial bench, and the more eminent members of the bar, had suitable palaces or mansions at greater or less distances from the legal hostelries. The ecclesiastical Chancellors usually enjoyed episcopal or archiepiscopal rank, and lived in the London palaces attached to their sees or provinces. During his tenure of the seals, Morton, Bishop of Ely, years before he succeeded to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and received the honors of the Cardinalate, grew strawberries in his garden on Holborn Hill, and lived in the palace surrounded by that garden. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Chancellor Warham maintained at Lambeth Palace the imposing state commemorated by Erasmus.
When Wolsey made his first progress to the Court of Chancery in Westminster Hall, a progress already alluded to in these pages, he started from the archiepiscopal palace, York House or Place—an official residence sold by the cardinal to Henry VIII. some years later; and when the same superb ecclesiastic, towards the close of his career, went on the memorable embassy to France, he set out from his palace at Westminster, "passing through all London over London Bridge, having before him of gentlemen a great number, three in rank in black velvet livery coats, and the most of them with great chains of gold about their necks."
At later dates Gardyner, whilst he held the seals, kept his numerous household at Winchester House in Southwark; and Williams, the last clerical Lord Keeper, lived at the Deanery, Westminster.
The lay Chancellors also maintained costly and pompous establishments, apart from the Inns of Court. Sir Thomas More's house stood in the country, flanked by a garden and farm, in the cultivation of which ground the Chancellor found one of his chief sources of amusement. In Aldgate, Lord Chancellor Audley built his town mansion, on the site of the Priory of the Canons of the Holy Trinity of Christ Church. Wriothesley dwelt in Holborn at the height of his unsteady fortunes, and at the time of his death. The infamous but singularly lucky Rich lived in Great St. Bartholomew's, and from his mansion there wrote to the Duke of Northumberland, imploring that messengers might be sent to him to relieve him of the perilous trust of the Great Seal. Christopher Hatton wrested from the see of Ely the site of Holborn, whereon he built his magnificent palace. The reluctance with which the Bishop of Ely surrendered the ground, and the imperious letter by which Elizabeth compelled the prelate to comply with the wish of her favorite courtier, form one of the humorous episodes of that queen's reign. Hatton House rose over the soil which had yielded strawberries to Morton; and of that house—where the dancing Chancellor received Elizabeth as a visitor, and in which he died of "diabetes and grief of mind"—the memory is preserved by Hatton Garden, the name of the street where some of our wealthiest jewelers and gold assayers have places of business.
Public convenience had long suggested the expediency of establishing a permanent residence for the Chancellors of England, when either by successive expressions of the royal will, or by the individual choice of several successive holders of the Clavis Regni, a noble palace on the northern bank of the Thames came to be regarded as the proper domicile for the Great Seal. York House, memorable as the birthplace of Francis Bacon, and the scene of his brightest social splendor, demands a brief notice. Wolsey's 'York House' or Whitehall having passed from the province of York to the crown, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, established himself in another York House on a site lying between the Strand and the river. In this palace (formerly leased to the see of Norwich as a bishop's Inn, and subsequently conferred on Charles Brandon by Henry VIII.) Heath resided during his Chancellorship; and when, in consequence of his refusal to take the oath of supremacy, Elizabeth deprived him of his archbishopric, York House passed into the hands of her new Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon. On succeeding to the honors of the Marble Chair, Hatton did not move from Holborn to the Strand; but otherwise all the holders of the Great Seal, from Heath to Francis Bacon inclusive, seem to have occupied York House; Heath, of course, using it by right as Archbishop of York, and the others holding it under leases granted by successive archbishops of the northern province. So little is known of Bromley, apart from the course which he took towards Mary of Scotland, that the memory of old York House gains nothing of interest from him. Indeed it has been questioned whether he was one of its tenants. Puckering, Egerton, and Francis Bacon certainly inhabited it in succession. On Bacon's fall it was granted to Buckingham, whose desire to possess the picturesque palace was one of the motives which impelled him to blacken the great lawyer's reputation. Seized by the Long Parliament, it was granted to Lord Fairfax. In the following generation it passed into the hands of the second Duke of Buckingham, who sold house and precinct for building-ground. The bad memory of the man who thus for gold surrendered a spot of earth sacred to every scholarly Englishman is preserved in the names of George Street, Duke Street, Villiers Street, Buckingham Street.
The engravings commonly sold as pictures of the York House, in which Lord Bacon kept the seals, are likenesses of the building after it was pulled about, diminished, and modernized, and in no way whatever represent the architecture of the original edifice. Amongst the art-treasures of the University of Oxford, Mr. Hepworth Dixon fortunately found a rough sketch of the real house, from which sketch Mr. E.M. Ward drew the vignette that embellishes the title-page of 'The Story of Lord Bacon's Life.'
After the expulsion of the Great Seal from old York House, it wandered from house to house, manifesting, however, in its selections of London quarters, a preference for the grand line of thoroughfare between Charing Cross and the foot of Ludgate Hill. Escaping from the Westminster Deanery, where Williams kept it in a box, the Clavis Regni inhabited Durham House, Strand, whilst under Lord Keeper Coventry's care. Lord Keeper Littleton, until he made his famous ride from London to York, lived in Exeter House. Clarendon resided in Dorset House, Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, and subsequently in Worcester House, Strand, before he removed to the magnificent palace which aroused the indignation of the public in St. James's Street. The greater and happier part of his official life was passed in Worcester House. There he held councils in his bedroom when he was laid up with gout; there King Charles visited him familiarly, even condescending to be present to the bedside councils; and there he was established when the Great Fire of London caused him, in a panic, to send his most valuable furniture to his Villa at Twickenham. Thanet House, Aldersgate Street, is the residence with which Shaftesbury, the politician, is most generally associated; but whilst he was Lord Chancellor he occupied Exeter House, Strand, formerly the abode of Keeper Littleton. Lord Nottingham slept with the seals under his pillow in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, the same street in which his successor, Lord Guildford, had the establishment so racily described by his brother, Roger North. And Lord Jeffreys moving westward, gave noisy dinners in Duke Street, Westminster, where he opened a court-house that was afterwards consecrated as a place of worship, and is still known as the Duke Street Chapel. Says Pennant, describing the Chancellor's residence, "It is easily known by a large flight of stone steps, which his royal master permitted to be made into the park adjacent for the accommodation of his lordship. These steps terminate above in a small court, on three sides of which stands the house." The steps still remain, but their history is unknown to many of the habitual frequenters of the chapel. After Jefferys' fall the spacious and imposing mansion, where the bon-vivants of the bar used to drink inordinately with the wits and buffoons of the London theatres, was occupied by Government; and there the Lords of the Admiralty had their offices until they moved to their quarters opposite Scotland Yard. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary contains the following entry:—"April 23, 1690. The late Lord Chancellor's house at Westminster is taken for the Lords of the Admiralty to keep the Admiralty Office at."
William III., wishing to fix the holders of the Great Seal in a permanent official home, selected Powis House (more generally known by the name of Newcastle House), in Lincoln's Inn Fields, as a residence for Somers and future Chancellors. The Treasury minute books preserve an entry of September 11, 1696, directing a Privy Seal to "discharge the process for the apprised value of the house, and to declare the king's pleasure that the Lord Keeper or Lord Chancellor for the time being should have and enjoy it for the accommodation of their offices." Soon after his appointment to the seals, Somers took possession of this mansion at