60 WILTON HOUSE THE DOUBLE CUBE ROOM 



A small but admirable piece of work which may safely be 

 assigned to Jones is the water-gate of York House (Fig. 35). 

 Its present rather forlorn situation at the bottom of Buckingham 

 Street, Strand, gives no indication that it was an adjunct of the 

 town house of the princely Villiers. Duke of Buckingham, the 

 "Steenie" of Charles I. York House, for so the place was 

 called, had belonged to the Archbishops of York, but when it 

 came into the hands of Buckingham, he pulled it down and built 

 a large and temporary structure, apparently for the purpose 

 of using it for state occasions. Within its walls he housed a 

 magnificent collection of pictures and other works of art, 

 purchased from Rubens. 1 Gerbier (who will be mentioned again 

 later) was employed by the duke to design some of the new 

 work at York House, and hence the water-gate has been 

 attributed to him. But the fact that a drawing of it by Webb 

 is included among the " Inigo Jones" drawings precludes this 

 idea, for it is hard to imagine either Jones or Webb conde- 

 scending to delineate any work of Gerbier's. Apart from this 

 it is improbable that Gerbier could have designed anything so 

 good. That excellent mason and sculptor, Nicholas Stone, was 

 employed upon its execution, and he put in a claim to the design, 

 but Webb's drawing is a sufficient answer to this pretension also. 



York House was sold in 1672 by the second duke, the 

 "chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon" of Dryden, to a 

 syndicate who pulled down the house, and covered the site with 

 new buildings, leaving the water-gate as practically the sole relic 

 of the old palace. Its appearance, backed by its newer 

 neighbours, is well indicated in a drawing by Thomas Sandby, 

 made about 1760 (reproduced as the frontispiece). 



Inigo Jones died in June 1652.- His will is dated the 22nd 

 July 1650, when he was " aged seaventy-seaven yeares." He 

 left in specified sums the amount of .4,150, and he bequeathed 

 the debt owing to him from the late king and queen, of which 

 the amount is not stated, in equal shares to his executor, John 

 Webb, and one Richard Gammon, a carpenter, after deducting 

 $o for the paymaster of the works payable within a month 

 after the discharge of the debt. He disposes of one half of his 

 wearing apparel, but does not mention the other half, nor does 



1 " London Past and Present," by Wheatley and Cunningham. 



2 Peter Cunningham's " Life," where it is stated that the register of St 

 Rennet's records his burial on the 26th June. 



