at some time the house which in 1585 stood on the site of the little kitchen of 1548, and the bit of land sold to John Tice in 1603, the whole of the plot between the frater on the east, Water Lane on the west, the kitchen yard on the north, and the way to Lord Hunsdon's house on the south, will have passed into their hands. There is no indication that they ever acquired any part of Lord Hunsdon's house. This was apparently occupied by the French ambassador in 1623, when one of its upper rooms, used as a chapel, fell, and many persons were killed. Camden in his notes for Jacobean annals confused this room with the theatre.[1] About 1629 the King's printers, Robert Barker and John Bill, secured Hunsdon House for their press, and it remained the King's printing house until the Great Fire.[2] On 19 December 1612 the Burbadges obtained from the Cobham estate a piece of land for the enlargement of the yard near the Pipe Office, which was serving twenty years later to turn coaches in.[3]
To make an end for the present of topography, the fortunes of the property to the north of the Burbadge purchases may be briefly traced. Sir William More died in 1601 and his son and successor, Sir George, had no need for a Pipe Office. The rooms were therefore leased, with others, on 23 April 1601 to Sir Jerome Bowes at a rent of £14 6s. 8d. 'and certein glasses'.[4] I think that the other rooms included the old lavatory of the friars, once a Revels storehouse and thereafter a wash-house for More's mansion, and that it was in this room that Bowes established the glass-house which became an important industry of the Blackfriars.[5] On 19 June 1609 Sir George More sold this property, subject to Bowes's lease, together with the mansion house, the great garden and all that remained to him within the great cloister, to a syndicate,
- [Footnote: and Charles Pole), 84 (conveyance by Richard and Elizabeth Mansell),
125.]
- ↑ Variorum, iii. 62; Birch, ii. 426.
- ↑ H. R. Plomer, The King's Printing House under the Stuarts (2 Library ii. 353).
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 83 (Recital of conveyance by trustees of Lady Howard); cf. p. 512.
- ↑ Ibid. 98 (Recital of lease in deed of sale of 1609).
- ↑ Ibid. 93, 'all that greate Vault or lowe roome adioyneing to the said greate Garden lyeing and being at the south west end of the said greate garden nowe vsed and imployed for a glassehowse' (1609). By 26 June 1601 (M. S. C. ii. 70) the way south of the kitchen yard has become 'the yard or way . . . which leadeth towardes the glassehouse nowe in the tenure of Sir Ierom Bowes'. Bowes had obtained a patent for making drinking-glasses in 1592 and occupied a warehouse under the church in 1597 (D. N. B.). Dekker, Newes from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 97), says, 'Like the Glass-house Furnace in Blacke-friers, the bonefiers that are kept there neuer goe out'.
