SQUARES 
229 
Shakespeare in the centre, and the four busts, were 
also the gift of the same public benefactor, who 
presented the Square complete, with trees, statues, 
railings, and seats, in 1874. 
Soho Square was another of the fashionable squares of 
London, now gloomy and deserted by its former aristo¬ 
cratic residents. The gardens are kept up for the benefit 
of those living in the Square only, and are not enjoyed 
by the masses, like Leicester Square. Maitland describes 
the building and consecration of St. Anne’s, Soho, or, as 
he calls it, St. Anne’s, Westminster, which was in 1685 
separated from St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and a new 
parish created, just in the same way as scores of parishes 
have to be treated nowadays, to meet the needs of the 
much more rapidly-growing population. Of the new 
parish, he says the only remarkable things were “ its 
beautiful streets, spacious and handsome Church, and 
stately Quadrate, denominated King’s-Square, but vulgarly 
Soho-Square.” Various suggestions have been made as 
to the origin of the name, and the most popular explana¬ 
tion is that it was a hunting-cry used in hunting hares, 
which sport was indulged in over these fields. The word 
Soho occurs in the parish registers as early as 1632. 
When first built the Square was called King Square, from 
Geoffrey King, who surveyed it, not after King Charles II. 
But the old name of the fields became for ever attached 
to the Square, to the entire exclusion of the more modern 
one, after the battle of Sedgemoor. Monmouth’s sup¬ 
porters on that occasion took the word Soho for their 
watchword, from the fact that Monmouth lived in the 
Square. In 1690 John Evelyn notes that he went with 
his family “ to winter at Soho in the Great Square.” 
Monmouth House was built by Wren, when the Square 
