PRIVATE GARDENS 351 



town for persons of the best quality to be exceeding 

 cheated at, Cromwell and his partisans having shut 

 up and seized Spring Garden, which till now had been 

 the usual rendezvous for the ladies and gallants at this 

 season." 



Goring House stood just where Buckingham Palace 

 does now, and was the residence of George Goring, Earl 

 of Norwich, and of his son, with whom the title became 

 extinct. It was let in 1666, by the last Earl of Norwich, 

 to Lord Arlington, and became known sometimes as 

 Arlington House, It was burnt in 1674, and Evelyn 

 notes in his " Diary" of 21st September : " I went to see 

 the great losse that Lord Arlington had sustained by fire 

 at Goring House, this night consumed to the ground, 

 with exceeding losse of hangings, plate, rare pictures, and 

 cabinets ; hardly anything was saved of the best and 

 most princely furniture that any subject had in England. 

 My lord and lady were both absent at the Bath." Buck- 

 ingham House, which was built in 1703 on the same 

 site for the Duke of Buckingham, must have been very 

 charming. Defoe describes it as " one of the beauties 

 of London, both by reason of its situation and its build- 

 ing. . . . Behind it is a fine garden, a noble terrace 

 (from whence, as well as from the apartments, you have 

 a most delicious prospect), and a little park with a pretty 

 canal." The Duke of Buckingham himself gives a full 

 description of his garden in a letter to a friend, telling 

 him how he passed his time and what were his enjoy- 

 ments, when he resigned being Privy Seal to Queen 

 Anne (1709). "To the garden," he writes, " we go 

 down from the house by seven steps into a gravel walk 

 that reaches across the garden, with a covered arbour at 

 each end. Another of thirty feet broad leads from the 



