GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



Countess du Roy, the same is pulling down in order to rebuild 

 the house for His Grace ; and about a third of the garden lately 

 in the occupation of the Right Honourable Henry Boyle, Her 

 Majesty's principal Secretary of State, is marked out in order to be 

 annexed to the house of His Grace the Duke of Marlborough." 



The lease, granted for a period of fifty years, was obtained on 

 easy terms, but the Duke was abroad ; he was (to use a now familiar 

 phrase) " somewhere in France," engrossed in the business of war. 

 The business of building a house and settling into it, had, perforce, 

 to be managed entirely by the Duchess, who showed her wisdom 

 in employing Sir Christopher Wren as the architect, although he 

 was then verging on eighty years of age. 



She herself laid the foundation stone on Tuesday, May 24th, 

 1709 (O.S.), " a fine warm day ' we are told. The stone was 

 inscribed, " Laid by her Grace the Duchess oj Marlborough, May ye 

 24<th June ye 4>th, 1709." The use of both the old and new style 

 of chronology, was unusual, for though the new style had been 

 accepted on the Continent, it was not adopted in this country 

 until 1752. 



The Marlboroughs were thrifty people history has called them 

 parsimonious, but in using Dutch bricks for Marlborough House 

 as they are said to have done, they were not blameworthy. Dutch 

 bricks were redder, smaller, and also cheaper, than English ones. 

 They were probably brought over as ballast, from Holland, in the 

 picturesque ' bluff-bowed " and high-sterned transports plying 

 between Deptford and Holland. Mr. Arthur Beavan, the author 

 of " Marlborough House and its Occupants," points out that 

 the names of these vessels Elephant, Expedition and so on, 

 are to be seen again and again in the records of the transport 

 office in 1709, and that they might very well have conveyed 

 *' a cargo of the raw material for the house then building in 

 Pall Mall." 



However this may have been, " the third of the garden lately 

 in the occupation of the Right Honourable Henry Boyle " was 

 by no means sufficient to content Her Grace of Marlborough. 

 Therefore she obtained, -under the Great Seal, a second lease, 

 which cancelled the first, and gave into her possession a plot of 

 ground about two acres in extent, next to the Friary and known 

 as " the Royal Garden." 



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