At the end of the sixteenth century the man who walked out of the city at Temple Bar found himself in a street of gabled houses, which led without interruption to Charing Cross.   On the site indicated by modern Essex Street, with gardens fronting the Thames, was Essex House, in the place of the ancient inn of the bishops of Exeter.   Bishop Edmond Lacy had built there a great hall in the reign of Henry VI.; it had passed into lay possession and had been enlarged by William Lord Paget, and subsequently it had been the London house of the two famous favourites of Elizabeth, Leicester, who rebuilt it, and Essex.    Arundel Street marks the place of Arundel House, once the inn of the bishops of Bath, but afterwards held and largely rebuilt by Thomas  Seymour, lord high admiral under Edward VI. and brother to the Protector. Under Elizabeth the house belonged to the earls of Arundel. Near it was Somerset House, the magnificent palace built for himself by the Protector Somerset, which after his death accrued to the crown.   
 
Its site had been occupied formerly by Strand Inn, and the inns of the bishops of Chester and of Worcester.    Elizabeth gave it into the keeping of  her kinsman,   Lord   Hunsdon.    West   of   it   was   the   Savoy Hospital, and west of that Bedford House, which had once been the inns of the bishops of Carlisle, but had passed from them to the earls of Bedford.    The Hotel Cecil and Salis- bury Street indicate the place of " a large and stately house of brick and timber " built by Sir Robert Cecil, second son to Lord Burleigh.    Near it to the west was Durham House, which for many years was the town residence of the bishops of Durham.    

It was acquired by the crown under Henry VIII., and gained fame as the place of the marriage of Lady Jane Grey, and again as the dwelling-house of Sir Walter Raleigh, on whom it was bestowed by Elizabeth.    "I well remember," says Aubrey, " his study, which was in a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is, perhaps, as pleasant as any in the world." York Place occupied the site of Villiers Street, Duke Street, and Buckingham Street.    Originally the inn of the bishops of Norwich, it was acquired under Mary by the archbishops of York.

On the north side of the Strand there were fewer great houses.    Exeter Hall and  Exeter Street show the place of Exeter  House,  which  was  built  by  Lord  Burleigh,  and acquired its name on the succession to its ownership of his son, the earl of Exeter.     The  earl  of Bedford  built  for himself, under Elizabeth, a new house on the site marked by modern  Bedford Street,  in place of that which he held on the river bank.    As at present, the church of St. Clement Danes stood on an island in the street, but under Elizabeth there were crowded close around it " one large middle row of houses and small tenements . . .  , partly opening to the south, partly towards the north."

Westwards from Holborn Bars, along Holborn and modern Broad Street   and   High  Street,  were "many  fair houses 'lded, and lodgings for gentlemen, inns for travellers, and ch like, up almost-for it lacketh but little-to St. Giles in the fields."    The parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields was, in the middle ages, an isolated suburban village, and it was not until the latter part of Elizabeth's reign that Holborn, outside the actual city, could be called a  street  of   London.     Stow describes its buildings as for the most part " very new."   At its east end Gray's Inn Lane, which had, to the limit of the Inn of Court, " fair buildings and many tenements on both the sides," led " to the fields, towards Highgate and Hamp-stead."    Southampton House, once the inn of the earl of Southampton, stood very near the present site of Bloomsbury Square, and was in 1591 still surrounded by fields, which interrupted the row of houses along Holborn.     Chancery Lane led southwards to the Strand, past the domains of the lawyers.   The two great thoroughfares were otherwise joined by Drury  Lane,   which had houses   clustered round   its northern end, and which derived its name from Drury House at its southern extremity, so called after the family which held it.   There were near Drury House " divers fair buildings, hostelries, and houses for gentlemen of honour " ; but the lane, after it had passed these and before it had reached the vicinity of Holborn, was a country road bordered by green
fields.     Beyond St. Giles's was an even more rural way, St. Martin's Lane, which led southwards to Charing Cross, and had buildings only at its southern end, among them the royal mews. Another country road from St. Giles's followed the line of Oxford Street, and yet another was that of which the further part became Piccadilly. Charing Cross, the origin of which is earlier than the date of Queen leanor's death, stood where is now the equestrian statue of Charles I.

Along the course of Whitehall, from Charing Cross to Westminster, the fashionable had also established themselves recently. On either side of the street there were " divers fair houses " and tenements, " lately builded."

The chief glory of this street was "the White Hall," that most royal of the palaces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It faced the river in the place now occupied by Whitehall Gardens, Montagu House, and the Board of Trade, and it extended to St. James's Park. A house on part of the site was built by Hubert de Burgh in the reign of Henry III.; it was bought by the archbishop of York in 1248, and for nearly three centuries was attached to his see and known as York House. Wolsey is said to have rebuilt it, and to him is ascribed the " sumptuous magnificence," which " most probably has never been equalled " by " any other English subject, or surpassed in the palaces of many of its kings." The house devolved on the crown when Wolsey was disgraced, and Henry VIII. added to it many " distinct, beautiful, costly, and pleasant lodgings for his Grace's singular pleasure, comfort and commodity, to the great credit of the realm," and " inclosed the premises by a wall of brick and stone for a park, with many conveniences and decorations, fit only for the residence and honour of so great a Prince." In " Henry VIII." there occur, in allusion to the palace, the lines:
" Sir, You must no more call it York Place ; that's past: For since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost; 'Tis now the King's and called Whitehall."

The house was a fine specimen of Tudor architecture. The road from Charing Cross abutted on it, but a passage through its precincts preserved the right of way to Westminster.    This was entered by two beautiful gates, the one the end of the road from Charing Cross, the other at the tremity of the King's Street which led to Westminster. Near the palace was the place afterwards known as Old Scotland Yard.    It had been the residence of Scottish kings when they were in London, and Stow relates that as such it was occupied by Margaret Tudor under Henry VIII.    In the reign of Elizabeth it had fallen into decay.    On the other side of the street, opposite St. James's Park, there was " a large tilt yard for noblemen and others to exercise themselves in jousting, tourneying and fighting at barriers."
The park had appertained to the hospital of St. James, Westminster.    When surrendered to the crown it became a royal pleasure   ground,   and Henry  VIII.  built  in  it  "a magnificent   and   goodly  house."    St.   James's   palace   is described in the reign of Elizabeth as " of a quadrate forme, erected of brick, the  exterior  shape whereof, although it appears without any sumptous or superflous devices, yet is the  spot very princely, and  the  same with  art  contrived within and without.    It standeth from other buildings about two furlongs, having a farm house opposite to its north gate. But the situation is pleasant, indued with a good air and pleasant prospects.    On the east London offereth itself in view;   in the south   the stately buildings of Westminster, with the pleasant park, and the delights thereof;   on the north the green fields."    The northern entrance to the palace was from a country road which ran along the north side of the park to Charing Cross, and is now represented by Pall Mall.

King Street, which made way in 1900 for government premises, was " all replenished with buildings and inhabitants." Buildings of various descriptions were clustered round Westminster Palace and Abbey and St. Margaret's church.    From the gateway of the palace Tothill Street led into Tothill Fields, and was bordered by houses, among them one owned by Lord Grey de Wilton, and Stourton House built by Gregory, Lord Dacre of the South, who died in 1504 Hyde   Park,  like   St.   James's,  owes  its  institution to Henry VIII.    He reserved to the crown, at the dissolution of religious houses, certain property of Westminster Abbey which included the manor of Hyde, and he disposed 620 acres as a park for hunting.    Of this area, then situated in the open country, part has gone to make Hyde Park Corner and part has been included in Kensington Gardens.    A royal proclamation issued in 1536 preserved the game in the park and its neighbourhood;   it forbade any to hunt or hawk " from the palace of Westminster to St. Giles's in the Fields, and from thence to Islington, to Our Lady of the Oak, to Highgate, to Hornsey Park, and to Hampstead Heath."    In 1582 John Casimir, son to Frederick III., Elector Palatine, " killed a barren doe with his piece in Hyde Park, from amongst three hundred other deer; " and in the same year " two new standings in Marylebone and Hyde Park " were made, " for the Queen's majesty and the noblemen of France to see the hunting."

Such was London west of the city liberties at the end of the reign of Elizabeth.    The district known in modern times as the West End was little developed in the succeeding half century.    Some stately houses were built.    On part of the present  site of Buckingham Palace was Goring House in which George, Lord Goring, afterwards Earl of Norwich, was living in  1630, and which was subsequently occupied  by Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons,    Tart Hall, which stood next to it, was built for Alethea, Lady Arundel, in 1638, and inherited by her second son, the Lord Stafford who was beheaded in 1680.   The rest of the site of Buckingham Palace was occupied by Mulberry Garden, a pleasure garden known  to  Pepys.    Berkshire  House stood at the corner of Pall Mall1 and the road which led from St. James's Palace to Piccadilly.    Spring Gardens were at the eastern corner of St. James's Park and were a great resort of fashion in the seventeenth century.    They were described in 1659 as an " inclosure not  disagreeable, for  the  solemness  of the grove is broken by the warbling of the birds, as it opens into the spacious walks at St. James's. . . . The thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry." Visitors were " refreshed with the collation; which is here seldom omitted, at a certain cabaret in the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain trifling tarts, neats' tongues, salacious meats, and bad Rhenish; for which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all such houses throughout England."

The Haymarket was a mere lane which had at its northern end a gaming house. It was continued northwards from Pall Mall to modern Oxford Street, then known as the way to Tyburn or to Paddington, by a road sparsely bordered by houses which had on its west side a windmill, and of which part is now Windmill Street.

The real West End of the early Stewarts was the West Central district of modern London. The Strand was still a street of great mansions, some of which suffered changes of ownership. The house facing the river which had belonged to the earls of Bedford became the property of Henry, first Marquess of Worcester, and was thereafter known as Worcester House. Drury House was bought and rebuilt by So called because the game of " paille maille," a species of croquet, was played in it.

The Lord Craven who flourished under James I., and came to be called Craven House. York House was acquired in 1624 by Buckingham, and was demolished and rebuilt. ^ was bestowed by Cromwell on Fairfax, whose daughter married the second duke of Buckingham. Durham House reverted to the see which had named it at Raleigh's imprison-ment; and on part of the site an exchange, known as Britain's Burse, which consisted of various shops, was opened in i6oq. At the corner of modern Wellington Street, Wimbledon House was built by Sir Edward Cecil, son to the first earl of Exeter, but was burnt in 1628.

Northumberland House had a site at the top of modern Northumberland Avenue. It was built by the earl of Northampton in 1605, and subsequently held by the earl of Suffolk who called it Suffolk House, and, after 1642, by the earl of Northumberland. In August, 1647 the Puritans demolished the beautiful Charing Cross.

" Undone, undone, the lawyers are ;They wander about the towne ; Nor can find the way to Westminster
Now Charing Cross is downe. At the end of the Strand they make a stand, Swearing they are at a loss, And chaffing say that's not the way, They must go by Charing Cross."

Along the line of Holborn, Broad Street and High Street, to the junction of the way to Tyburn with that now Tottenham Court Road, there was a serried row of houses. Northwards of Holborn there was little extension, but between 1603 and 1658 the area enclosed by Holborn, Chancery Lane, St. Martin's Lane and the Strand came to be covered with buildings interrupted only by the green spaces of Lincoln s Inn Fields, St. Giles's Fields and Covent Garden.    Its chief thoroughfares were, from west to east, Long Acre and Queen Street now Great Queen Street, and the road now New Street and King Street, continued by Russell Street, and by Princes Street and Duke Street, which have become Kemble Street and Sardinia Street. From north to south Drury Lane was still the main way. There were many smaller streets intersecting this district, which until the construction of Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue and the Kings-way, was one of the most labyrinthine in all London. The houses were packed closely together and hardly any of them had gardens.

St. Martin's Lane abutted to the north on St. Giles's Fields, an area roughly rectangular of which diagonals are now formed by Earle Street and St. Andrew Street. It had been part of the lands of the leper hospital of St. Giles. A commission was formed in 1618 " to reduce Lincoln's Inn Fields," hitherto a mere waste, " into walks;" and Inigo Jones-was requisitioned to make of the place that invention of the period, a London square. He built along its western side the houses known as Arch Row, of which one was the dwelling of the earl of Lindsey. The building of the other two sides, Portugal Row and Newman's or Holborn Row, was delayed by the civil troubles, until in 1657 permission for it was obtained. Covent Garden, so called because it had been a " convent garden," an appurtenance of Westminster Abbey, constituted part of the property on which the Elizabethan earl of Bedford built his house in the Strand. The market was laid out by the sixth earl in 1631, but had as such little importance until the next century.

The whole district was very fashionable. In Drury Lane dwelt Lady Jacob, wife of Christopher Brooke the poet, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, who also was a poet, and the celebrated marquess of Argyll of the reign of Charles I Oliver Cromwell lived in Long Acre in the eventful years from 1637 to 1643, and had for a near neighbour Nicholas Stone the sculptor.    In 1646 Cromwell was established in Drury Lane.    Inigo Jones  about  the year   1634   built   an  open arcade, which enclosed a rectangular space, to the north of Covent  Garden   Market.    It  was  called  the   Piazza, and houses which fronted on it were inhabited by Thomas Killi. grew the wit from 1637 to 1642 and from 1660 to 1662, by Denzil Holies in 1644 and after 1666, and by Sir Harry Vane the younger in 1647.    

Lord Stirling in   1637   nad  moved thither from Drury Lane.    " God send you joy of your new habitation," wrote Howel from the Fleet prison in 1645 to the great Lord   Herbert, " 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."    In this house Herbert died three years later.    Fairfax  was also  living  in Queen  Street in  1648. Carr, Earl of Somerset, was in 1644 an inhabitant of Russell Street; and in 1659 Evelyn " tooke lodgings at the 3 Feathers in Russell Street, Covent Garden, for all the winter."    The crowded building in the neighbourhood explains the occurrence in it of the first outbreak of the great plague.

In Leicester Fields, now part of Leicester Square, the earl of Leicester built a house in the reign of Charles I., and at much the same time the earl of Newport erected Newport House of which the site is indicated by Newport Street. These houses were situated in some isolation.

The West End of modern times was founded in the days of the Restoration. In 1665 Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, petitioned the king. " Whereas the beauty of this great town and the convenience of the Court are defective in int 0{ houses fit for the dwellings of noblemen and other oersons of quality, and that your Majesty hath thought fit for  some remedy hereof to appoint that the Place of St.

James's Field should be built in great and good houses, it is represented that unless your Majesty be pleased to grant the inheritance  of the ground whereon some 13 or 14 houses that will compose the said place are to stand, it will be very hard to attain the end proposed, for that men will not build
palaces  upon  any  terms  but  that  of   inheritance."    The desired   grant   was   obtained   in    1665,   and   St.   James's Square was inaugurated accordingly.    St. Albans built for
himself first a house at the south eastern corner of the square, afterwards  Norfolk   House,  then  another  at  the  western corner of York Street, which came to be known as Ormond House.    There is in " The History of St. James's Square," by Arthur Irwin Dasent, a detailed account of these houses
and of some of the other " palaces " of the square, of Derby House,  Ossulston   House,   Halifax   House  and   Cleveland House.    Among their occupants in the seventeenth century were  Sir  John   Duncombe,  Chancellor  of the   Exchequer under Charles II.; the Frenchman Louis de Dumas, after
wards Earl of Faversham, who commanded the royal forces at Sedgemoor; Sunderland whom Queen Anne called "the subtlest, workingest villian that is on the face of the earth " ; the twentieth  earl  of   Oxford;   the  first  Lord   Belasyse; Cavendish,  the   zealous   Protestant ;   the   great   duke   of Ormond; Lord Halifax, the Trimmer;   and Arthur Capel, earl of Essex.    The district of the square was taken from the  parish  of St. Martin-in-the-Fields  to  form a distinct parish for which the church of St. James in Piccadilly was founded.    It had a congregation which in modishness outdid
all others in the town.    Mr. Dasent quotes a dialogue from H.L.
" Relapse, or Virtue in Danger,"  a comedy by Vanburgh produced at Drury Lane in 1697 :
" Berinthia : Pray which church does your lordship most oblige with your presence ?
Lord Foppington: Oh! St. James's, madam; there's much the best company.
Amanda : Is there good preaching too ?
Lord Foppington ; Why, faith, madam, I can't tell. A man must have very little to do there that can give an account of the sermon."

Simultaneously with the square the rest of the West End was building. It had in 1675 the streets of Piccadilly, Jermyn Street and Pall Mall, and, to connect Pall Mall and Piccadilly, the Haymarket and St. James's or James Street. York Street, Charles Street and King Street gave entrance to St. James's Square, and Duke Street joined King Street to Piccadilly. From Piccadilly Swallow Street and Chip Street, now Sackville Street, went northwards. Suffolk Street was reached from the Haymarket, from which James Street, now part of Orange Street, and Panton Street, led eastwards, and Morris Street, as well as Charles Street, westwards.

In 1664 Clarendon obtained a grant of a site in Piccadilly opposite to St. James's Street. Here he built Clarendon House, of which Evelyn in January, 1666, says: " I have never seen a nobler pile. . . It is, without hyperboles, the best contrived, the most useful, graceful and elegant house in England. . . Here is state and use, solidity and beauty most symmetrically combined together. . . When I had seriously contemplated every room (for I went into them all, from the cellar to the platform on the roof)> seen how well and judiciously the walls were erected, the arches cut and turned, the timber braced, their scantlings and contignations disposed, I was incredibly satisfied, and acknowledge myself to have much improved by what I , erved." The architect was Pratt. After Clarendon's flVht from England, in 1667, the house was inhabited by the duke of Ormond. When the founder had died in exile his sons, in 1674, sold it to the second duke of Albemarle, who named it Albemarle House. In or before 1686 it was bought by Sir Thomas Bond of Peckham and others who founded on its site Stafford Street, Bond Street, Albemarle Street, and Dover Street.

Berkeley House was erected in 1665, on the present site of Devonshire House, for Sir John Berkeley of Buxton, afterwards  Lord  Berkeley  of  Stratton.     In   1684,  after  Lord Berkeley's death, his widow let a part of the gardens for the foundation of Berkeley Street and Stratton Street.   "I could not but deplore," says Evelyn, " that swete place (by far the most  noble  gardens,  courts  and  accommodations, stately porticoes, etc., anywhere about the towne) should be so much straitened  and  turned   into  tenements."    The  house  was occupied in 1695 by the Princess Anne, afterwards queen, and in   1697 was sold  to the  first  duke  of   Devonshire. Berkeley Square was laid out on part of the gardens, and the building of it was begun in 1698 ; but it was not completed for some twenty or thirty years.

The first Burlington House, a mansion of red brick, was built between 1664 and 1667, and was inhabited by the earl of Burlington.

The West End of the seventeenth century did not extend far north of Piccadilly. Pennant describes Oxford Street or the Tyburn Road as it was in 1716. " I remember there was a deep hollow road and full of sloughs ; there was here and there a ragged house, the lurking-place of cut-throats : insomuch that I never was taken that way, in my hackney coach, to a worthy uncle's . . . but I went in dread the whole way." The building of Grosvenor Square was begun in 1695 ; that of Golden Square some ten years earlier.

Green Park, generally known as Upper St. James's Park lay, as at present, on the southern side of further Piccadilly, Beyond it and beyond Westminster the districts of Belgravia and Pimlico were still entirely rural.

Goring House was bought in 1662 by Henry Bennett afterwards Earl of Arlington, who in 1672 was able to add the Mulberry Gardens to the property. The house was burnt in 1674 and rebuilt as Arlington House. A more celebrated fire was that which in 1678 consumed Whitehall. Queen Square, Westminster, for long called Queen Anne Square, dates probably from the last years of this century. It is described in 1708 as " a beautiful new square of very fine
buildings."

But fashion in the late seventeenth century did not reside only in the West End. The district immediately west of St. Martin's Lane was also patronised by the quality; in 1675 Mr. Secretary Coventry's house stood in what came to be called Coventry Street, and Windmill Street existed as such ; and in the reign of Charles II. the two great squares, Leicester Square and Soho Square, hardly eclipsed by St. James's, were built.

Leicester House was still owned and occupied by the earls of Leicester of the Sidney family, of whom Robert, the father of Algernon Sidney, there had charge of the duke of Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth, while the king was a prisoner. In 1662 the house was let by the earl to the queen of Bohemia, who removed thither from Craven House. " I shall think it a great happiness to me," Leicester wrote, " if the air of my house may contribute to the recovery of her health, or that I myself may be of any service to her Majesty."    It was robably in order to gain fresher air that the queen had left Drury Lane, but the change availed her little for she died in  Leicester House very soon after her arrival there.    The square was completed about the year 1671.    There were in it Ailesbury  House, held successively by  the earl  of Elgin, created earl  of Ailesbury in   1665, and by the unpopular Peregrine    Osborne,   Marquess   of   Carmarthen,   and   the houses of Dr.  Lloyd,  Bishop of St.
Asaph, and  of  Lord Chancellor Somers.    Some of the neighbouring streets were built between 1680 and 1700, notably Gerrard Street where, on the site of number 43, Dryden lived in the last years of his life, "a poor inhabitant "of" the suburbs, whose best prospect is on the garden of Leicester House,"    Numbers 34 and 35 occupy the place of Gerrard or Macclesfield House which named the street  and where lived the Gerrards, earls of Macclesfield.

Soho Square was  made some ten years  after Leicester Square, and was at first called King Square, after a certain Gregory King who participated in the work of building it. Its whole southern side was acquired in 1681 by Monmouth, as a site for a house of extraordinary magnificence.    "The principal  room on  the  ground floor  was  a  dining room, the  carved  and   gilt   panels   of   which   contained  whole length  pictures.    The   principal   room   on   the   first   floor was lined with blue satin superbly decorated with pheasants and  other  birds in  gold.     The  chimneypiece  was  richly ornamented with fruit and foliage; in the centre, within a wreath of dark leaves, was a circular space for  a bust." Evelyn has the following entry in his diary : " November 27, logo.-I went to London with my family to winter at Soho in the great square."    Thither sometimes the ambitious city merchant came to live, for in Shadwell's play, " fjj Scourers," printed in i6gi, Sir Will says of Sir Humphrey Maggot: " That's the coxcombly Alderman, that married my termagant Aunt; She has this dolt under correction and has forced him out of Mark Lane to live in Soho Square." Between 1680 and 1700 smaller streets were built around the Square Dean Street, Greek Street, Frith Street, and others.
Already in 1678 the population of the neighbourhood was such that the parish of St. Anne Soho, which includes part of Leicester Square, was separated from that of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The foreign character of the lesser streets of the Soho district was established before the end of the seventeenth century. In them many of the Huguenots, driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, probably settled.

One other quarter of London was building in this period, and was becoming a place for the dwelling houses of the great and wealthy; " to such a mad intemperance," in the words of Evelyn, " was the age come, of building about a citty." The manor of Bloomsbury had, since the reign of Henry VIII., been held by the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton. A new Southampton House was built under Charles II. for the earl who was the son of Shakespeare's patron. It was known afterwards as Bedford House, and occupied the whole northern side of Bloomsbury Square, then called Southampton Square, to which there is an allusion in 1666 as " the great square" in Bloomsbury. In this square Lord Chesterfield was living in 1681. " I wish," Arlington wrote to him, " you would give me commission to let your house in Southampton Square and hire you another near Whitehall, that I might, with less trouble to you, enjoy the honour and satisfaction of a frequent conversation with you."    Great  Russell  Street was built about 1670, and contained a house erected for himself by Sir Christopher Wren.    Montague House, on the north side of Great Russell  Street, was built in 1678  for the  Lord Montague, whom Queen Anne made a duke.    It was burnt in 1686.    Red Lion Square was begun about the year 1698, and at much the same time Queen Square, of which the north side " was left for the sake of the beautiful landscape formed by the hills of Highgate and Hampstead, together with the adjacent fields."

To some extent fashion abandoned the older quarters for the new.    The famous mansions of the Strand fell from their high place.    Meaner buildings were in course of erection or stood already, in 1675, on the sites of Essex House, Arundel House, Salisbury House, and York House, as well as that of Durham House.    Drury Lane and some of its neighbourhood were accounted disreputable towards the end of the century,  but the   Piazza, a pleasanter place,  enjoyed for longer an aristocratic character.    Between 1660 and 1700 it was inhabited by Sir Kenelm Digby, Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, the last earl of Oxford, Sir Dudley North, Lady Muskerry, and two great painters, Lely, who lived at the north east corner from 1662 until his death in  1680, and Knellner, who after 1680 was in a house near Covent Garden Theatre, and had there an " extremely curious and inviting " back garden.   Great Queen Street also continued respectable. The tradesmen who established themselves west of the city naturally supplied the needs of the locality, and in 1700 a pamphleteer condemned the extension of the city because it had attracted many countrymen to live about London as mamtainers of luxury.''    With one exception the playhouses of the Restoration were in this district.    Immediately after
the king's return some of the old actors collected and gave performances in certain theatres which had been in use before the  Commonwealth:   the   Red  Bull  in  St.   John   Street Clerkenwell, Salisbury Court or Whitefriars, and the Cockpit in Drury Lane, and in a tennis court in Vere Street, Clare Market,  improvised for the purpose.     In   1661   Davenant engaged a company, sworn to serve the duke of York, to act in the theatre he had erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and on the 8th of April, 1663, the Theatre Royal, in which the king's company acted and for which Killigrew was responsible, was opened in Drury Lane.    It was burnt in 1671-2, but rebuilt, and opened again on the 26th of March, 1674.    The duke of York's company abandoned the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1671, in favour of another theatre called the Dorset Garden, on the river side of Fleet Street, which occupied part of the site of a former house of Thomas Sackville, earl of Dorset, the poet.    In 1684 the two companies of actors united.    The Little Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre was founded by Betterton and opened in 1695.

These theatres differed little in construction from those of the present day. Women's parts were played in them by women. The stage of the Restoration was patronized rather by courtiers than by citizens. The footmen who attended the gallants often predominated in the galleries ; the pit was much frequented by men of fashion. The playhouses were more remote from the lives of the people than they had been in the days of Elizabeth.

The new London of the late seventeenth century was very different from the irregular town of timbered and gabled houses which had preceded it. Building and the study of building had become a favourite hobby; letters and diaries show how widespread was knowledge of architecture and ' terest in it.    Great houses were not built only to allow the satisfaction of the desires of   wealthy and liberal people; architects strove also, consciously, after  an  artistic  ideal. The  great  fire  provided   them,   whether  professionals  or amateurs, with an opportunity, but they were unable to take full advantage of it, since in the reconstruction of the city originality of design could be expended only on the actual construction, not on the disposition, of the buildings.    Yet the rebuilding encouraged, in that it indulged, the taste for architecture, and educated it by experience.    In the West End architects were unhampered: their works were robbed of nothing by the surroundings; they built   frequently for men of large means.    It was therefore in the West End that they most nearly attained to their ideal, an effect of ordered magnificence, of solidity without clumsiness, rather than of grace or richness of fancy.    At its best, as it was realised by Inigo Jones and Wren, it was distinguished, in the words of Evelyn,  by  "state   and  use,   solidity   and   beauty,   most symmetrically  combined."     In   town  planning   the  most admirable innovation in London in this age was the square.