30
AND QUERIES.
[0 th S. I. JAN. 8, '98.
The manor of Lilestone, like that of High-
bury, belonged to the Knights Hospitallers,
and it was from this order that the woods
derived their name.
By statute 32 Hen. VIII., c. 24 (1541), the incorporation of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England or Ireland was dis- solved, and their possessions came into the hands of the Crown. Queen Mary restored to the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, situate at Clerkenwell, many, if not all, of their former possessions, and among other lands
"all that our wood and woodland, called Grete St. John's Wood, lying without and near to (juxta et prone) the Park of Marybone, in our County of Midd>" (Pat. 4 & 5 Phil. & Mary, 14 m. 1, quoted by Tomlins in his ' Perambulation of Islington,' p. 117).
But two years afterwards, 5 May, 1559, an Act was passed in the first Parliament of Queen Elizabeth for reannexing the religious houses to the Crown.
In the time of the Commonwealth Mary- bone Park and St. John's Wood were sold as Crown property, and in Septem- ber, 1660, we find John Collins, the tenant of three - fourths of the wood, ground, and lands called St. John's Wood, Middlesex, petitioning that the property came into nis possession by transfer of former leases, but in 1650 he was compelled to redeem one-fourth part for l,79u. 18s. from the Commissioners for Sale of Crown Lands, and that he tried in vain to delay paying the purchase money until he could pay it to his rightful sovereign. He had spent 6,0001. in improving the property, and begged for a new lease for ninety-nine years ('Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser., 1660-61,' p. 290).
Poor John Collins's rights were of very little moment where royal favourites were concerned. On 1 April, 1663, Mr. Secretary Bennet (afterwards Earl of Arlington) prayed for leases in possession or reversion of certain lands in St. John's Wood and Marybone Park, which latter had been mortgaged by King Charles I. at Oxford for 4,0001., but the profits had nearly paid off the mortgage. Accordingly a warrant was passed granting to the Secretary a lease of the moiety of Great St. John's Wood on a rent of 13/. 9s. ; a fourth of the said wood, with Chalcoat's Lane (in Hampstead parish), for 61. 17s. 2d ; and Marybone Park at a fitting rent (' Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser., 1663-64,' pp. 96, 585). On 16 April, 1664, a further warrant was passed confirming the grant of a lease in possession or reversion to Henry, Lord Arlington, of Great St. John's Wood in
Marybone parish, and recapitulating that
one -fourth he held before on a rent
of 61. 14s. 6d. (sic), one -half in reversion
on a rent of 131. 9s., and the lease of the
other fourth he had purchased from Sir
William Clarke (ibid., 1665-66, p. 354). On
14 November, 1666, a third warrant was
passed granting Lord Arlington all the
woods, coppices, &c., in the lands granted
him, being three-fourths of Great St. John's
Wood, Marybone parish, the proviso in his
former grant proving inconvenient, as the
woods were so destroyed that the lands were
fitter for pasture and arable.
After the death of Lord Arlington the
Sroperty seems to have been resumed by the rown, for it was granted by Charles II. to Charles Henry Kirkhoven, Lord Wotton, who owned the neighbouring manor of Belsize, in discharge of 1,300^., part of the moneys due to him in his Majesty's Exchequer, &c. Lord Wotton died in January, 1683, having devised his St. John's Wood estate to his nephew Charles Stanhope, the younger son of his half-brother Philip, Earl of Chesterfield. Subsequently both this and the Belsize estate came into the possession of Philip Dormer Stanhope, the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, who, as re- lated by W. I. K. V., sold St. John's Wood to Mr. Henry Samuel Eyre.
Mr. Walpole Eyre, the next successor to the property, met with his death in a manner that caused some sensation at the time. On 29 March, 1773, the Commissioners of Coln- brooke Turnpike met at the Castle Inn at Salthill, when eleven gentlemen, of whom Mr. Eyre was one, dined together. The dinner consisted of
"soup, jack, perch, and eel pitch cockt ; fowls, bacon, and greens; veal cutlets, ragout of pigs' ears ; chine of mutton and sallad ; course of lamb and cucumbers ; crawfish, pastry, and jellies. The wine Madeira and Port of the best quality."
The chronicler of this event is very careful to inform us that the company ate and drank moderately, and that no excess in any respect appeared. Before dinner several paupers nad been examined, and among them was one remarkably miserable object. Ten or eleven days afterwards the whole company, except one gentleman who had been walking in the garden during the examination of the paupers, were taken ill. Four, including Mr. Eyre, very soon died ; another lingered for some time, but eventually died ; and the rest suffered a long illness. The circum- stances of the case pointed to infection from the paupers, as the gentleman who escaped had eaten and drunk exactly in the same
