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 
