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Tuesday, November 10, 2020

King’s Place: home of the Earl and Countess of Oxford, 1596-1604.


A researcher can spend a lot of effort sorting through the rubble of time.  At the distance of some five hundred years most of buildings go through one or more metamorphoses. They also appear, however sketchily, in the description of the contemporary writer or keeper of records. Perhaps their foundations now hold up newer buildings, their window frames grace new facades, their fireplaces have been reconstructed within a new home, etc. Most often, the remains are so broken up and scattered that it is not possible to even know that one has encountered them.

In 1596, Elizabeth Trentham received King’s Place, in Hackney, from the estate of one Sir Rowland Hayward. She and her husband, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, moved in shortly afterward.  The original grant of the manor house — King’s House — in which the two lived described it as "a fayre house, all of brick, with a fayre hall and parlour, a large gallery, a proper chapel, and a proper library to laye books in, &c."[1] According to Walford, ‘It is also stated to be "situated near the London road," and to be "enclosed on the back side with a great and broad ditch."’[2]

The mansion was located “On the south side of the road to Clapton”.[3] According to a 1995 local history “Brooke House, formerly a royal seat called King's Place, was centrally placed, on the later border between Upper and Lower Clapton. Early growth was probably densest along Lower Clapton Road.”[4] The last of the Clapton Road near neighbor’s houses seems to have been demolished in 1715.

The house used to belong to a catholic order before the Dissolution and was presented to the then Earl of Pembroke by Edward VI. Among its various Elizabethan owners it was “aliened, anno 1578 to Richard Carew, Esq. to Sir Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon.”[5]

In the year 1609, Elizabeth Trentham, then the dowager Countess of Oxford[6], alienated the manor of Hackney (Actually, the portion called King's Hold) with “four messuages, two cottages, two tofts, &c. one hundred acres of land, fifty of meadow, one hundred of pasture, and twenty of wood, in the parishes of Hackney and Tottenham, to Fulke Grevile, his heirs and assigns.”[7]

It is apparently at this time that the inventory, in the British Museum, of the chattels associated with the various rooms in the house  was taken. Unfortunately, the full inventory does not seem to have been made public. “My Lady's chamber is mentioned; Mrs. Norris's chamber, &c. In the great parlour, a story of Mount Syon in a table; one other table with a story of Moses and Aaron. In the little parlour, the story of a Rich Man and Death. In the hall, stayned clothes; a picture of Adam and Eve, a picture of Fame and Tyme, &c."[8]

According to the Beauties of England and Wales (1816), the crumbling manse had been drafted into use as “a receptacle for insane persons”[9] as of that year. The same  source claims that “large portions of the ancient edifice have been preserved. These consist principally of a quadrangle, with internal galleries, those on the north and south sides being 174 feet in length. On the ceiling of the south gallery are the arms of Lord Hunsdon, with those of his Lady, and the crests of both families frequently repeated. The arms of Lord Hunsdon, are likewise, remaining on the ceiling of a room connected with this gallery. It is, therefore, probable that the greater part of the house was rebuilt by this nobleman during the short period for which he held the manor, a term of no longer duration than from 1578 to 1583.”[10]

This appears to have been received knowledge even before 1816, as another local history, published in 1795, mentions that the poor house called King John's-palace was in the wrong location and lacked other identification points from the original King’s Place grant. “The site of this manor-house is not now known. I was at first induced to suppose it to have been a brick house at the bottom of Well-street, commonly called King John's-palace, the remains of which are now let out in tenements to the poor, but the conjecture is destroyed by the circumstance of its being a copyhold; nor does it agree with the description of the manor-house in the grant to the Earl of Pembroke, where it is said to be situated near the London-road, and to be inclosed on the back-side with a great and broad ditch.”[11]

It is almost certain, then, that King’s Place had been demolished long before 1795.




[1] Lysons, Daniel. The Environs of London Middlesex (1795), II.II.456.

[2] Walford, Edward. Old and New London (1873), V.520.

[3] Ibid., V.520.

[4] 'Hackney: Clapton', in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 10, Hackney, ed. T F T Baker (London, 1995), pp. 44-51. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol10/pp44-51 [accessed 9 November 2020]. Citing

[5] Lysons, Daniel. The Environs of London Middlesex (1795), II.II.455. Citing Pat. 20 Eliz. pt. 5. June 18.

[6] The Earl had died in 1604.

[7] Lysons. The Environs of London Middlesex (1795), II.II.455.

[8] Ibid., (1795), II.II.456.

[9] Brewer, J. Norris. The Beauties of England and Wales (1816), IV.269.

[10] Ibid.,  IV.270.

[11] Lysons. Middlesex, II.II.456.


Also at Virtual Grub Street:

  • A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
  • Portia’s Quality of Mercy.  June 2, 2020. “Likely a line from Sonnenschein’s 1905 follow-up essay “Shakspere and Stoicism” is to the point: ‘I hope, by the way, that no "Baconian" will find in this article grist for his mill.’
  • Shakespeare’s Funeral Meats. May 13, 2020. “Famous as this has been since its discovery, it has been willfully misread more often than not.  No mainstream scholar had any use for a reference to Hamlet years before it was supposed to have been written.”
  • Henry Neville’s Twelfth Night in Context. January 13, 2020. “Winwood informed his correspondent that the Grand Duke de Medici and his Duchess had arrived in Marseilles together with a large entourage including three Florentine princes, Virginio, Giovanni and Antonio.”
  • Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
  • Check out the English Renaissance Letter Index for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

  

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