GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



St. James's Street, and it is believed that they occupy the exact 

 site of the ancient leper hospital. To the deer-park the King 

 added an extensive chase, to make which he enclosed some miles 

 of land to the north and north-west, and by royal proclamation 

 forbade any of his subjects to hunt or hawk in it. 



Throughout the reigns of Charles II. and James II., we find 

 King and courtiers still established at Whitehall ; nevertheless 

 St. James's Palace by degrees, became the centre of English Court 

 and diplomatic life, and on the marriage of Charles he granted 

 to his queen, Catherine of Braganza, by letters patent under the 

 Great Seal, a ninety-nine years' lease of the ground upon which 

 Sir Christopher Wren afterwards erected Marlborough House. 

 The chapel which had been provided for Queen Henrietta Maria, 

 was restored for the use of the Portuguese princess, who brought 

 to England in her train, certain Capuchin monks for whom lodgings 

 were found near the chapel, the place becoming known as " The 

 Friary." Cloisters were built round a green court, in which per- 

 sons belonging to the Queen's religious establishment might be 

 interred with the Romish ceremonial. 



Edward Walford in " Old and New London," mentions an old 

 plan of St. James's Palace printed in 1689, that shows a burial- 

 ground exactly opposite the Queen's Chapel. The spot was not im- 

 probably selected because it was the supposed site of the burial-place 

 of the old religious house, and therefore already consecrated ground ; 

 but it does not appear that any one of the friars was actually 

 interred there. The only human remains ever found therein were 

 those discovered in a stone coffin, of a date long anterior to the 

 Stuart kings. 



Pepys describes his visit to the Queen's Chapel at the Friary. 

 His diary is a rich mine from which to dig data for the topography, 

 as well as the modes and manners, of the period immediately pre- 

 ceding the foundation of Marlborough House. 



Birdcage Walk, according to Walford, was so called because the 

 aviaries of Charles II. (who was fond of birds as well as of little 

 dogs) were ranged in order along the road which then, as now, 

 forms the southern boundary of St. James's Park ; but the " Mall " 

 of those days was not the broad roadway that stretching from 

 Buckingham Palace to the Admiralty Arch now goes by that 

 name. ' The Mall " of the Pepys period seems to have been a 



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