HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY SQUARE.

of RUSSEL Earls and Dukes of RRDFORD: was built under the direction of the celebrated
belonging in 1667 to Lady Rachel Vaughan, who married W Lord Russell and by this Union
Museum was built to the Russell Family. In the year 1800 Bedford House was taken down,
SARA called Betford Place and Montague Street were erected by Francis the late Incke of Bedfont.

nothing more of the culprit, it would seem that he made good his escape. Thus far Luttrell-but the antagonists in this quarrel were no ordinary men, for the Mr. Wilson was the once celebrated Beau Wilson; the Mr. Lawes no less a person than the great John Law himself, who eventually received a full pardon in 1719. The cause of the quarrel, according to Evelyn, "arose from his (Wilson's) taking away his own sister from lodging in a house where this Law had a mistress, which the mistress of the house, thinking a disparagement to it, and losing by it, instigated Law to this duel." 1

Evelyn appears to have been equally intrigué with Luttrell as to the source of Wilson's income, which he says was "a subject of much discourse.' The spot where these encounters took place was that "vast area renowned in the seventeenth century for peaches and snipe. It was indeed, at one time, as Gray says in a letter to Wharton, who had come to live in the vicinity, "a region of air and sunshine."

"2

Southampton or Bedford House, which Noorthouck describes as elegant though low, having but one story," housed in its time some notable people. There was the fourth Earl of Southampton, that staunch supporter of Charles I., whom Clarendon described as "in his nature melancholic and reserved in his conversation," who became Lord Treasurer in 1660, and died at Southampton House, which, as we have seen, he built, on May 16, 1667. The mansion then passed into the possession of his daughter, Lady Rachel Wriothesley, who, marrying William, Lord Russell, became that Lady Rachel Russell who is known as an example of pious and courageous womanhood, and, as it has been observed, was "alike exemplary in prosperity and adversity, when observed by multitudes, or hidden in retirement." The history of herself and her noble husband is too well known to require recapitulation here. These two were certainly the most illustrious of those who, at various times, lived in Southampton House. It is said that the proposal was made by the Duke of York that William, Lord Russell, should be beheaded in Bloomsbury Square, but that the King, to his honour, refused to listen to such a proposal, and so this true patriot was executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields; but on his way to execution he passed his old home and for a moment his fortitude forsook him; then overcoming it, he exclaimed, "The bitterness of death is now passed," and Dr. Tillotson saw a tear gather in his eye. His son succeeded to the Dukedom of Bedford in 1700, and the mansion thus passed into the Russell family, and became known as Bedford House. Lady Rachel continued to reside here in what she termed "that desolate habita

1 Diary for April 22, 1694; also see Timbs's Romance of London.

2 Macaulay.

tion of mine . . . a place of terror to me," till her death in the reign of George I. (1723), and as some of her celebrated letters from here are headed "Russell House," it would seem that the mansion must have been so called for a short time before its name was changed to Bedford House.

It was during Lady Rachel's occupancy of Bedford House that Montague House, close by, was burnt to the ground in January 1686. In a letter to Dr. Fitzwilliam, she thus mentions the occurrence: "If you have heard of the dismal accident in this neighbourhood, you will easily believe Tuesday night was not a quiet one with us. About one o'clock in the night I heard a great noise in the Square, so little ordinary, I called up a servant, and sent her down to hear the occasion; she brought up a very sad one, that Montague House was on fire; and it was so indeed; it burnt with so great violence, the house was consumed by five o'clock. The wind blew strong this way, so that we lay under fire a great part of the time, the sparks and flames covering the house and filling the court. My boy awoke and said he was almost suffocated with smoke, but being told the reason, would see it, and so was satisfied without fear."

It was a son of the "boy" here mentioned, who became fourth Duke of Bedford and succeeded to the possession of the mansion; and he it was whom Junius subsequently lashed with such biting invective. Looking back with more equanimity and a greater sense of proportion than contemporaries could be expected to bring to the contemplation of political disputes, the Duke does not seem to have deserved either the unpopularity he laboured under or the abuse Junius poured upon him. It was he who, in 1748, gave a great masqued ball at Bedford House, at which the King and the Duke of Cumberland were present together with a most brilliant company; and, as a proof of the then rural conditions obtaining around the mansion, his Duchess on one occasion sent out cards of invitation to her friends to "take tea and walk in the fields." A contemporary notice records the death of the first wife of this Duke thus, "Died September 1734, at Southampton House, Bloomsbury Square, in the twenty-sixth year of her age, of a consumption, the most noble Diana, Duchess of Bedford, &c., sister of the present Duke of Marlborough, youngest daughter of the late Earl of Sunderland."

Bedford House was demolished two years before the death of the fifth Duke, who had succeeded his grandfather in 1771.

As we have seen, the Parliamentary forces raised a fortification in Grosvenor Square, so in Bloomsbury Square, "two batteries and a breastwork" were erected in the gardens of Bedford House in 1642.

Besides the successive owners of Bedford House, Bloomsbury Square