SQUARES 233 



Mr. Hooke of our Society [the Royal] after the French 

 manner." This house was burnt down ten years later, 

 and rebuilt with equal magnificence ; but when the Duke 

 moved to Montagu House, Whitehall, in 1757, it became 

 the home of the British Museum. The old house was 

 pulled down and the present building erected in 1845. 

 The Square was laid out at the end of the eighteenth 

 century on the gardens and the open fields of the parish 

 of St. Gilcs-in-the-Fields beyond. Lord Loughborough 

 lived in No. 6, and after him Lord Eldon from 1804 to 

 18 1 5. At the time of the Gordon Riots in 1780, when 

 Lord Mansfield's house was plundered, troops were 

 stationed near, and a camp formed in the garden of the 

 British Museum. That garden was also of use when, in 

 March 18 15, Lord Eldon's house in Bedford Square was 

 attacked by a mob, and he was forced to make his escape 

 out of the back into the Museum garden. 



Of Queen's Square, built in Queen Anne's time, 

 but containing a statue of Queen Charlotte, and all the 

 other squares of this district there is little of special 

 interest to record directly connected with their gardens. 

 They all have good trees, and are kept up much in the 

 same style. 



Red Lion Square is an exception. It has a longer 

 history, and now its garden differs from the rest, as it 

 is open to the public, and a great boon in this crowded 

 district. It takes its name from a Red Lion Inn, which 

 stood in the fields long before any other houses had 

 grown up near it. It was to this inn that the bodies 

 of the regicides Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were 

 carried, when they were exhumed from Westminster Abbey 

 and taken, with all the horrible indignities meted out to 

 traitors, to Tyburn. A tradition, probably without foun- 



