180 CLARENDON'S HOUSE IN PICCADILLY 



his long residence in France. The second building ascribed 

 to Hooke is the old Bethlem Hospital, likewise begun in 1675 

 and pulled down in 1814 (Fig. 1 16) ; and the third is Aske's 

 Hospital at Hoxton, begun about 1688. Engravings of the last 

 two buildings (there is no record of the first Montagu House) 

 do not lead to the opinion that Hooke was a great master of 

 architecture, although it is true that the long front of Bethlem 

 Hospital is handled in a simple, straightforward manner. He 

 was far behind Wren, but he is interesting as being another 

 whose training led him, under the special conditions of the time, 

 into active practice. 



Lord Chancellor Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, built a fine house 

 during the heyday of his prosperity, on a site in Piccadilly, 

 opposite the top of St James's Street (Fig. 118). It was highly 

 extolled by Evelyn (especially when writing to Lord Cornbury, 

 the chancellor's eldest son), and after him by Pepys, who went 

 to see it, " hearing so much from Mr Evelyn of it." He declared 

 it to be the finest pile he ever did see, and on a subsequent visit 

 he climbed with some trouble to the top, and there found the 

 noblest prospect that ever he saw, Greenwich being nothing to 

 it. The engraving hardly bears out this extravagant praise, but 

 it must have been a stately house. The architect was Roger 

 Pratt, afterwards knighted, another of the men whom the great 

 fire appears to have brought into the service of architecture. 1 

 Evelyn mentions him more than once ; he was a fellow com- 

 missioner of his in the inquiry as to the rebuilding of St Paul's, 

 and Evelyn had met him years before in Italy. The house was 

 begun in 1664, and was approaching completion in November 

 1666. But misfortune dogged it from the outset. The populace, 

 with whom Clarendon was no favourite, dubbed it Dunkirk 

 House, in allusion to his supposed connection with the sale of 

 that town to the French. The chancellor occupied it but a 

 single year before he fled the country ; his son occupied it for 

 another year or two, and it was then let on lease to the Duke of 

 Ormond. After Clarendon's death at the end of 1674, it was 

 sold to the second Duke of Albemarle, and became known as 

 Albemarle House ; he again sold it some three years later 

 to a kind of building syndicate, who in a few years pulled it 

 down and laid out its site and the surrounding land in streets, 

 one of which was called Albemarle Street, and another Bond 

 Street, after Sir Thomas Bond who was one of the principals 

 concerned in the transaction. The house was regarded as an 



1 But see Appendix I., p. 395. 



