Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/60

58 But before the beginning of the civil wars St. Giles's, too, had been completely united to the body of the great congeries upon the outskirts of which it formerly hung apart; and a large portion of what was now known as the capital, including Clare Market, Long Acre, Bedfordbury, and the adjoining ranges of streets, stood upon the soil of the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. "The very names of the older streets about Covent Garden," observes a writer about the middle of the last century, in a passage which furnishes a curious and comprehensive retrospect of these and also of some subsequent changes, "are taken from the royal family at this time (some, indeed, in the reign of King Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York Street, &c.), such as James Street, King Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, &c., all laid out by the great architect Inigo Jones, as was also the fine piazza there; although that part where stood the house and gardens of the Duke of Bedford is of a much later date, namely, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. Bloomsbury and the streets at the Seven Dials were built up somewhat later, as also Leicester Fields, namely, since the restoration of King Charles II., as were also almost all St. James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons in my younger days who remembered that there was but one single house (a cake house) between the Mews Gate at Charing Cross, and St. James's Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square, Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge. Yet High Holborn and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses almost one hundred and fifty years ago. Those fine streets on the south side of the Strand, running down to the River Thames, have all been built since the beginning of the seventeenth century, upon the sites of noblemen's houses and gardens who removed farther westward, as their names denote. Even some parts within the bars of the city of London remained unbuilt within about one hundred and fifty