Leicester House and its pleasure-grounds; while the only other object, worthy of notice, was a building on the rising ground at the upper end of the Haymarket then known as the "Gaming House." Shortly after the Restoration, this latter building was pulled down, and Coventry House, from which the present Coventry Street derives its name, was erected on its site. This house appears to have been built by the Right Honourable Henry Coventry, Ambassador to Sweden and Secretary of State in the reign of Charles the Second, who retired here from the cares of public employment in 1679; and who died here in December 1686.*

In 1711, the celebrated statesman, Sir William Wyndham, then a young man of five-and-twenty, was residing in the Haymarket. He had only recently become a husband, and still more recently a father, when a fire broke out in his house, by which his young wife (a daughter of the "proud" Duke of Somerset), and his infant child, very nearly lost their lives. Swift writes on the day on which the accident occurred, "I was awaked at three this morning, my man and the people of the house telling me of a great fire in the Haymarket. I slept again, and two hours after my man came in again, and told me it was Sir William Wyndham's house burnt, and that two maids, leaping out of an upper room to avoid the fire, both fell on their heads, one of them upon the iron spikes before the door, and both lay dead in the streets. It is supposed to have

* Granger's "Biog. Hist."

TRIAL OF BARETTI.

3

been some carelessness of one or both those maids. The Duke of Ormond was there helping to put out the fire. Wyndham gave 60007. but a few months ago for that house, as he told me, and it was very richly furnished. His young child escaped very narrowly; Lady Catherine escaped barefoot; they all went to Northumberland House. Wyndham has lost 10,000l. by this accident; his lady 1000l. worth of clothes; it was a terrible accident."*

In a miserable lodging in the Haymarket, Addison composed his celebrated poem, the "Campaign," written, as is well known, at the express desire of Lords Godolphin and Halifax to celebrate the recent victory of Blenheim. "Pope," says Mr. D'Israeli, "was one day taking his usual walk with Harte in the Haymarket, when he desired him to enter a little shop, where going up three pair of stairs into a small room, Pope said, 'In this garret Addison wrote his 'Campaign!' To the feelings of the poet this garret had become a consecrated spot; genius seemed more itself, placed in contrast with its miserable locality." +

It was in the Haymarket that Baretti (whose name is so intimately associated with the literary annals of the last century,) had the misfortune to take away the life of a fellow-creature in a street quarrel, for which he was subsequently arraigned for murder at the bar of the Old Bailey on the 20th of October, 1769. It is remarkable, that, among * "Journal to Stella," 2nd March, 1711–12.

+ D'Israeli's "Literary Character."

the witnesses who spoke to his character for humanity at his trial, he should have numbered so many celebrated men as Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Topham Beauclerk, and Dr. Johnson. Baretti, it seems, was hurrying up the Haymarket, when he was accosted by a woman, who behaved with such rude indecency, that he was provoked to give her a blow on the arm. Three men, who were her companions, immediately made a rush at him, and pushing him off the pavement, attempted to thrust him into the mud. Alarmed for his safety, Baretti stabbed one of the men with a knife which he was in the habit of carrying for the purpose of carving fruit. On this the man pursued and collared him, when Baretti, still more alarmed for his safety, stabbed him repeatedly with the knife, of which wounds he died the following day. Baretti was acquitted at his trial, on the ground that he had acted in self-defence.*

As late as the year 1755, according to a map printed for "Stow's Survey," the spot of ground, on which the Italian Opera House now stands, was occupied by such places as Market Lane, Whitehorse Yard, and the Phoenix and Unicorn Inns: the latter standing at the south-east corner facing Cockspur Street and Pall Mall East. The next object of interest in the Haymarket is the Haymarket Theatre. The first stone of Sir John Vanbrugh's theatre, as it was then occasionally styled from his

*See Boswell's "Life of Johnson," vol. iii. p. 98; and European Magazine," vol. xvi. p. 91.

The

having been the original projector of it, was laid by Anne, Countess of Sunderland, the most beautiful of the four charming daughters of the great Duke of Marlborough. She was usually styled the "Little Whig," from the smallness of her stature and the interest which she took in party politics, and Colley Cibber informs us that this remarkable title was actually engraved on the foundation-stone. theatre was opened on the 9th of April, 1705, with an Italian Opera, which met with but indifferent success, and about half a century since was burnt to the ground.* The patent by which it is now held was granted to the celebrated Foote, and was afterwards purchased, and successively held, by the two Colmans, father and son.

Close to the Haymarket Theatre, on the site of the present Suffolk Street and Suffolk Place, stood Suffolk House, the residence, in the days of James the First, of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk and his beautiful and unprincipled Countess, whose names so frequently occur in the profligate annals of that reign. In the old street, which was erected on its site, lived the charming actress, Mary Davis, who is said to have captivated the heart of Charles the Second, by singing, in the character of Celania, in "The Mad Shepherdess," the song,

My lodging is on the cold ground.

Pepys informs us, that, in 1667, Charles publicly acknowledged the beautiful girl as his mistress ;

Cibber's "Apology for his Life," "Biographia Dramatica," Introduction.

that he presented her with a ring valued at seven hundred pounds, and furnished a house for her in Suffolk Street. Pepys further informs us that he happened one day to be passing by when she was stepping into her coach, in Suffolk Street, and he tells us a "mighty fine coach" it was. Little else

is known of Mary Davis, but that her picture was painted by Lely, and that a daughter which she had by Charles became the mother of the ill-fated Francis Ratcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater.

In Suffolk Street, lived Miss Van Homrigh, the celebrated Vanessa of Swift's poetry, and the victim of his eccentric brutality. It was at her mother's house, in Suffolk Street, that we find him keeping his best cassock and wig, ready to put them on when he paid visits to the House of Lords, and it was here that,—

Vanessa held Montaigne and read,

While Mrs. Susan combed her head.

Running parallel with Suffolk Place, is James Street, with its well-known tennis-court, in which Charles the Second and his brother, the Duke of York, used frequently to indulge in their favourite game. The house, No. 17, at the south-west corner of the Haymarket and James Street, is said to be that, through which the royal brothers used to pass on their way to the tennis-court.

Passing through Panton Street, (so called from a Colonel Thomas Panton who obtained authority to build houses here, in 1671,) we come to Leicester Square, or, as it is still occasionally styled, Leicester