IV 



THE DRAWINGS OF INIGO JONES 

 ' AND JOHN WEBB 



WEBB'S OWN WORK 



REFERENCE has been made more than once to the design for an 

 immense palace at Whitehall. The drawings for this, which are,, 

 most of them, preserved at Worcester College, Oxford, were first 

 introduced to the public by William Kent, the architect, in the 

 year 1727, under the title of " Designs of Inigo Jones." There 

 are two volumes of this book, the first occupied chiefly with the 

 great palace ; the second with miscellaneous designs, principally 

 houses. The drawings used by Kent were in the possession of 

 Lord Burlington, the well-known dilettante ; at any rate, some 

 of them were, while others seem to have belonged to Dr Clarke 

 of All Souls College, Oxford, who subsequently left them to 

 Worcester College. 



The history of the drawings is not altogether free from 

 obscurity, but it appears to be as follows. John Webb had in 

 his possession a large number of drawings, mostly done by 

 himself, but including some by his old master, Inigo Jones. 

 At his death in 1672 Webb left all his "library and books, and 

 all his prints and cuts and drawings of architecture " to his son 

 William, with strict injunctions that they were to be kept 

 together. 1 This injunction was not respected, and it is said that 

 the widow of William Webb disposed of the collection. John 

 Aubrey, writing between 1669 and 1696, says that "Mr Oliver, 

 the City Surveyor, hath all his [Jones's] papers and designs, not 

 only of St Paul's Cathedral, etc., and the Banqueting House, but 

 his designs of all Whitehall suitable to the Banqueting House ; 

 a rare thing, which see." 2 It is almost certain that the drawings 



1 Peter Cunningham's " Inigo Jones," p. 39. 



2 John Aubrey's "Brief Lives," ed. by Andrew Clark. Oxford, 1898, 

 vol. ii. 10. 



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